Jim Shepard - Flights

The effect was, as it was every year, breathtaking. The silver strips became filaments of chrome reflecting, refracting, quadrupling the orange, red, blue, and green lights. The tree was a masterpiece of decorative symmetry, of warmth, and of as much tradition as a thirteen-year-old could invest it with. He sat back on the sofa slowly, a celebrant, his eyes on the tree, its lights mirrored in the darkened glass of the picture window behind it. Stupid shook and drooled.

He listened to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” the notes of the melody ringing soft and clear on the stereo. He was happy, and knew enough by now not to question it. He realized with some surprise that the Vikings had made a run at the playoffs and fallen short almost without attracting his notice. He’d picked up the sketchy outline of what had happened here and there, and it hadn’t bothered him. They seemed very distant, as if, like the Orioles, they were out of season. At times during the days right before Christmas, the world didn’t seem to be pushing in on him as much, and such things as the Vikings were not as necessary or important.

The kind of respite the Christmas season afforded, he was beginning to realize, was something he counted on, and could count on every year. It was as important as ever this year, if not more so, since talismans as disparate as Cindy and Louis and the Vikings were threatening to lose their power, and the alternatives he would be left with frightened him. Sports would not be enough, he knew, even as he knew Christmas would not last forever. Beyond the end of his street he could imagine the lights of the airport, twinkling cold and clear in the darkness.

“Clean up some of the mess on the floor,” his father called from the bedroom. “The Carvers are coming over later.”

The silence hissed and crackled on the stereo. Mr. Carver was coming to answer all questions and keep the answers preeminent in his mind, to dog him through whatever hesitations or barriers he threw up, to penetrate the charmed circles of Advent and Christmas.

His books were upstairs, dog-eared and marked heavily with underlinings and marginalia. Mr. Carver was coming. Questions that had been problems would be dealt with. On his hands and knees he raked the loose tinsel from the rug, piling it with the unused portion, turned off the tree, and went upstairs to prepare.

Put the book away and come say hello to the Carvers, his father told him. And call his sister.

The Carvers were having a drink in front of the tree when he brought her down.

“It’s a beautiful tree,” Mrs. Carver said.

It had a nice shape to it, Mr. Carver agreed.

His father opened the interview for him. “Bill, you still taking the Cessna in to work, or what?”

“Very, very rarely in the winter.”

“I can’t imagine coming to work by plane every day,” Biddy’s mother said.

It wasn’t that expensive, Mr. Carver said. And the time difference was significant.

“How long’s it take to drive?”

“Three and a half hours. That’s opposed to a ten-minute flight.”

“That’s right,” his mother said. “He has to go all the way into the city and back out.”

“You take the Long Island Expressway?” his father asked.

“The L.I.E. to 95, yes.”

“I just think it’s quite a way to begin and end a day, flying,” his mother said.

Carver nodded and sipped his drink.

“When will you be flying again?” Biddy asked.

Mr. Carver peered over at him, mildly surprised at what Biddy realized was an interruption of a sort. “Oh, I expect I’ll be going again when the weather gets better.” He shifted comfortably in his chair. “The cold I don’t mind, but there’s no sense fighting everything else.”

He pressed ahead into the silence, feeling incautious but emboldened by his earlier, still resonating impression of having glimpsed a mechanism of events beginning to take shape. “Which is harder, taking off or landing?”

“Oh, landing,” Carver said without hesitation, and didn’t elaborate. The conversation drifted to other things and dinner was announced. The beef was praised lavishly, though he saw nothing special in it. Afterward the adults slumped in their chairs, lazy with four courses, after-dinner drinks, and coffee. Carols played quietly on the stereo.

He sat at Carver’s feet at the base of the tree. His father seemed lost in the songs, a drink on his thigh; his mother spoke quietly with Mrs. Carver across the room. He asked about the takeoff checklist. He asked about yaw and cruising range. And finally, when he sensed Carver’s attention focusing on the glitter of the ornaments spread before him like the watch fob of a hypnotist, he asked about airport security.

The adults’ argument over nuclear war later that evening raised the possibility in his mind that in fact what he had been doing was simply stockpiling all this information, and although it was being stockpiled there was no inevitability, necessarily, in its ever being used. He drew a double line under the last of the questions that had been answered and shut the note pad and put it away, the Cessna closer than ever and having to wait for the weather. He released the image from his concentration, resolving halfheartedly to give Christmas its chance.

The next night, Mickey was his official guest. The visit wasn’t his idea; they hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since Thanksgiving. Mickey had never explained his earlier behavior and Biddy had long since lost the energy to press for an explanation. Dom and Ginnie were making an annual Christmas trip to Pittsfield to visit friends. Mickey, who hated the trip, was being allowed to stay with the Sieberts, who, Biddy was sure, had only occurred to him in a moment of desperation. Cindy had gotten out of the trip as well, he’d related indignantly to Biddy over the phone, claiming she had other friends to see upstate, near Hartford, so there was no reason he should have to go. Louis alone was going. Long car trips never bothered him, and he bore all strangers and distant relations with equanimity.

They played Nerf Basketball and War and Sports Illustrated Football and then, although he’d never shown anyone else the game and hadn’t touched the dice in months himself, he tried dice baseball. Mickey was bored in minutes and lost interest by the fifth inning.

“This game sucks,” he said. “You got anything else? You got Atari?”

Biddy shook his head. There was nothing on television, either.

“I got Stratamatic Baseball,” Mickey said, without enthusiasm. “Wanna play that?”

Biddy felt himself a host, his guest’s happiness his responsibility. Mickey’s boredom was his failure. “Sure,” he said.

It was at his house. Biddy protested his parents would never let them out so late, but Mickey interrupted impatiently that they would just say they were going out in the yard, to build a snow fort or something. Biddy relented, and after some discussion his parents did as well.

They walked along the road in single file, the wind cold and the snow crunching in the moonlight. The sky seemed a deep blue curtain in the distance over the airport. The plan was to pick up the game and return, pretending Mickey had had it all along.

There seemed to be no cars on the road, nothing stirring.

“It’s so quiet,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” Mickey took it as a complaint.

“Won’t your door be locked?”

“There’s an extra key in the garage.”

They scraped on in silence. Powdery snow drifted across ice and pavement like sand on a dune. They could hear the hiss of snow tires on a nearby street. He was bundled and secure in his coat.

They turned onto Ryegate Terrace and Mickey said, “Someone’s home.”

A warm, feeble light was visible in the downstairs bedroom.