Jim Shepard - Flights

“‘Intransigent,’” the girl from St. Ambrose said into the microphone. She was relishing this, he was beginning to realize with some distaste. She began with paralyzing deliberateness, and he could sense the audience’s suspense and resented how easily she had been able to manipulate them. When she finished, there was a burst of heartfelt applause.

Laura was next and misspelled “ostentatious.” He froze when he heard the wrong letter in sequence, and after a beat the judge said, “I’m sorry.” She descended the stairs and took her seat next to her father, who patted her hand.

The rounds continued. He lost count of the number of words he spelled. The girl from St. Ambrose labored through another one, and he returned to the podium and waited, one of three left.

“‘Diary,’” the judge said. The crowd relaxed audibly, happy for him. “I like to write in my diary.”

“‘Diary,’” he said, rapidly. “D-a-i-r-y.” He stood waiting but there was a silence instead, a familiar silence, and the judge said, “I’m sorry.” He went down the steps unbelieving, repeating it to himself, unsure of what had happened. Had they made a mistake? He sat beside Laura, and his father leaned down the row. “You spelled dairy,” he whispered.

Sarah Alice and the girl from St. Ambrose went back and forth for some time. By this point the audience applauded them both for every word, and when Sarah Alice finally missed she was allowed to stay onstage, in case the other girl missed as well. She didn’t, and everyone gave her a rousing ovation.

“It’s too bad,” his father said in the car on the way home. “To get all those tough words and then miss one like diary.” It was very cold in the back seat. Biddy kept his hands in his pockets.

“How come you’ve never had Laura over the house?” his mother said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s coming over tomorrow.”

They turned a corner and the rear of the car slid to the left. “What kind of doctor is he?” his mother said. “Psychiatrist?”

“Um-hm.” His father rubbed the windshield with the flat of his palm.

“Maybe we could get some free advice,” she said.

“We could use it,” his father said. The car turned carefully onto their street, its traction unsteady beneath them.

The next morning when he answered the door, it was Louis, not Laura.

“Hi,” Louis said. “Can I come in?”

Biddy opened the door wider. The snow had stopped, and the wind was blowing powder around, wet and cold.

Louis stomped his boots on the mat on the back porch and bent over and brushed away the snow that clung to his dungarees.

“C’mon in,” Biddy said. He looked back into the kitchen, as if for help. “Your parents coming over too? Mickey?”

Louis shook his head, pulling off his hat. It was white with a large red pom-pom at its peak and the red letters EXECUTIVE SPIRIT across the front. Biddy’s father had given it to him. It advertised Sikorsky’s new business helicopter, the Spirit. It was an awful hat, but Louis was being a staunch employee, even before he was hired.

He’d come alone, he said. He took off his jacket and waited on the porch, holding everything in front of him.

“Well, come on in,” Biddy repeated, wishing his parents were home. He led Louis into the kitchen and pulled a chair away from the table. Louis sat down, clothes in his lap.

“Want me to take your coat?”

“It’s okay.” He looked around the kitchen, apparently content.

Biddy sat opposite him, and fiddled with the sugar bowl. He looked at the clock. He could hear Kristi in the den with the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Kristi, Louis is out here,” he called.

“So what?” she said. In the silence that followed her answer, Road Runner beeped.

Louis shifted, a glove sliding to the floor. His nose was still red from the cold.

Biddy got up and went to the refrigerator. “Sure you don’t want anything? Did you have breakfast?” He looked again at the clock.

“No, thank you. Do you have to go somewhere?”

“No. Someone’s coming over, though.”

“Oh.” He gazed at the cabinets, not in any rush. “I just wanted to talk.”

The doorbell rang. Biddy let Laura in and led her back to the kitchen, uncertain what to tell her. Louis nodded at her.

“Laura, this is Louis,” he said.

“Hi, Louis.”

“Hi.”

She stood awkwardly half in, half out of the room, and he pulled a chair out and motioned for her to sit. She made the long silences that seemed to punctuate discussions with Louis even more uncomfortable than usual for him.

“Let’s go out or something,” Biddy said. “Let’s fix the snow fort.”

Louis shrugged.

Biddy could tell she thought something was strange but wasn’t sure what. She didn’t know Louis was retarded and Biddy had blown his opportunity to tell her. Maybe she would figure it out, he thought.

“What do you want to talk about?” Biddy said.

Louis looked at him.

“It snowed a lot last night,” Laura offered. “I saw buried cars that you couldn’t see almost on the way over.”

“I had to help my father dig out this morning,” Louis said. They were silent, Biddy thinking of nothing as a rejoinder. Louis ran his fingers along the edge of the tabletop. “I don’t usually come over here. I came because Biddy’s my friend and I wanted to talk.”

Biddy waited, and finally asked again what he’d like to talk about.

“Are you a football player?” Laura said.

Louis nodded and rubbed something from his eye.

“You look like a football player.”

“Thank you.” He looked at the fruit bowl before him. “Can I have a pear?”

The back door opened with a merciful bang and a bag of groceries tumbled in. A foot edged it forward and then his parents followed with additional bags, stepping over the one on the floor.

“Here we go, here we go, here we go,” his father said. “Hey, Louis. Long time no see. Where’s Mom and Dad?” They swept to the counter and set everything down with a gentle crash. “Help us with the bags in the trunk, Biddy. Hey, Laura. How’re you today?” Laura smiled.

His mother was outside pulling more bags from the open trunk. Biddy went out and took a big one from her arms. She asked about his coat and he said he’d only be out a second. He brought two bags in.

His father was putting cheese away in the refrigerator. “So you both fell a little short last night, huh?”

“We’re glad for Sarah Alice,” Laura said. “I missed a dumb one.”

“How about this guy? He got all the hard ones, and then he goes in the tank on one I could spell.”

Biddy set the bags on the counter with a clank: cans inside.

“So how’s Mom, Louis?” his mother said.

“Okay.” He got up, still holding his coat, hat, and gloves. “I guess I’m gonna go now.”

“Hey, stick around,” his father said.

“No. I have to go.” He put his hat on. “I feel better now.”

Laura smiled up at him. “It was nice meeting you.”

“It was really nice meeting you.” He walked to the door, stepping over a jar of peanuts, getting his arm caught in his coat. Biddy followed him, stooping over the tumbled bag and closing the door behind him.

His father ran a finger down the long white receipt. “What’d he want? Why’d he say he feels better?”

Biddy shrugged.

“Did he feel bad when he came?”

“I don’t know.”

“He probably feels bad about that job,” his mother said. “He was supposed to have part-time work by this point.” She was collecting things for the freezer in one bag.

“Hey, I’m doing the best I can. It’s not like placing Frank Borman, you know. If it’s at all possible to get the kid a job, we’ll get him a job.”