Jim Shepard - Flights

“I used to take Lady down here,” he said, but Stupid gave no sign of understanding. A wave advanced a little farther than usual, collapsing some slabs in front of him.

“I could sing,” he said. “Want me to sing?”

The dog sniffed the air, as if to guess his mood.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. He rubbed his thighs, bunched his mittens into fists. “It was a good Christmas. I was the one who had to make it a good Christmas, and it was a good Christmas. I’m the one who has to help me.”

His rear felt wet, cold. There was ice on the log. “I wonder what Ronnie’s doing,” he said. He broke off a piece of ice and offered it to the dog, who sniffed it and turned away. He tossed it into the water. For a second it stayed opaque, bobbing, but then the dark sea color poured into it and it disappeared completely except for the faintest trace of an outline.

“I keep thinking I’m going to figure out something down here,” he said. “What to do, how to make things better. What’s wrong, even.” He stood, wiping the seat of his pants. “And I never do.”

You’re a very fortunate boy, Sister had told him once. Jesus loves you, your parents love you, you’re healthy and bright, you live in the best country in the world. Imagine if you lived in Pakistan or a place like that. What do you have to be so unhappy about? He shook his head, starting for the bluffs with Stupid. There was a piece of salt ice on his mitten, and he touched it to his tongue, wincing at the familiar saline taste. He labored up the stairs behind the dog, surprised by his fatigue. The wind was picking up behind them. It had been a good Christmas and the beach at night was beautiful. Stupid was a good dog. He would get some sleep. Things would get better. At the top of the stairs, with the new wind across his face as he turned for one last glimpse of the beach in the moonlight, that was what he decided: things would get better.

I saw things in my head. I knew they weren’t real but that didn’t make them any less important. I tried to talk to people about them and never got anywhere. It was like they were keeping something from me. If they’re not, am I the only one like this?

They were dreams I could go to whenever I wanted: except I started them, I made them up. They were mine. But even there I couldn’t always keep control.

Which could make it awful, like I was fighting myself, like what I thought was as hard to control as the way I threw a pass. When my punt was blocked or I threw the ball away on a double play, I got twice as frustrated: whose fault was that? It was like I knew myself and what I couldn’t do so well that I couldn’t even dream it right. I only wanted to do it right; to hold up my end, be part of a team, do a good job.

I didn’t think I was crazy. But my father used to say if I wasn’t, then I’d done a few things that needed explaining.

For a while I needed to see things in my head. But I learned that it didn’t do any good unless I took them out of my head and made them real. And even that, like the BB gun on the roof, or the sailboat, might not be enough. Because I finally figured out that when you’re through with all of that, you’re still in the same place you always were.

A fish jumped nearby, a ripple breaking the water.

He slipped across the surface without hesitation, the cold swirling over him. With his mask a tight seal on his face he submerged, pulling away from the land. The water warmed as he grew used to it and cleared as he dived deeper. He pulled with wide, sweeping strokes and the bottom drifted closer, firm and inviting. It was rippled and sculpted by eddies and currents, and he flippered in close, his mouth holding air pressure steady in the flooded snorkel and his chin inches from the sand. Shells swept by, and hermit crabs, jerking sideways; the occasional gray ghost of a fish disappeared like a magician’s illusion. He followed the slope easily, nosing swiftly along its contours with the confidence of an eel. At a horseshoe crab he stopped, kicking fluidly to stay down. He nudged it, hand on the smooth, hard carapace, and in its haste to escape it skimmed momentarily over the sand like a ray or a flatfish. The pressure in his lungs grew insistent and he looked to the surface, blue dazzling above him, and shot off the bottom, surging toward warmer and brighter levels, his momentum carrying him out of the water in the pleasing manner of a rocket.

“I wish you wouldn’t stay down so long,” his mother said from the shore. “Every three minutes I think I have to go after you.”

He paddled easily for the beach, turning on his back and letting his fins do the work. He floated to the very edge of the shoreline, tiny wavelets breaking over his shoulders. His shoulders rubbed on the pebbly sand. When he stood, the water flowed off his body in a noisy rush, and he took off his fins and mask and crossed to his mother’s blanket, shaking off water like a spaniel before sitting down.

“Well, it’s not something I can do anything about,” Ginnie said, sighing. She was wearing sunglasses and had white cream on her nose, and her face resembled a mask. “What bothers me so much is they won’t say why.”

Biddy’s mother smoothed lotion onto her arms. “I guess it isn’t really anyone else’s business, they figure.”

Ginnie nodded, grimacing slightly.

“And we knew they were having problems.”

She nodded again and lay back, unhappy.

“Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better they find out now.”

“All the preparations, the invitations, the hall—”

“It’s terrible, I know. But what are you going to do? A divorce or annulment is better?”

“These kids, they don’t know what they want,” Ginnie said bitterly. “They get married, they don’t get married — to them it’s like crossing the street.”

His mother glanced out over the water. A red-and-white Sunfish was going by, a boy at the sail and a girl at the rudder, her foot trailing in the water. “I still can’t believe it,” she said.

“You can’t believe it? Check out moi. She comes to me — I’ll never forget it — and says, ‘Ma, I’m not getting married.’ Like that.” Ginnie’s face was to the sun, eyes closed. “Like she’s not having dinner that night.”

“Oh, she was upset.”

“Oh, yeah, she was upset. You should have seen her mother, with two hundred and fifty invitations out. She’s upset, but who ends up feeling like a jackass?”

Biddy settled back on his elbows, looking down the beach. The water still on his shoulders and chest was already warm from the sun. He eyed a puddle in his navel. Opposite him two girls lay on their bellies flanking a cassette player like marble lions on the steps of a museum.

“And how about your cousin’s daughter? From announcement to wedding it has to be six weeks. I tell you, these kids are crazy. She’s getting married next week the same day Cindy was going to. And she’s friends with Cindy, and the groom’s friends with Ronnie. They’ll both be there. Lovely, huh? I can’t wait to see the seating arrangements for that one. I tell you, don’t get married, Biddy. Save your mother some heartache.” She rolled to her stomach, spreading her arms wide of the blanket to scoop sand as if she were swimming. “Or elope. Leave town and write us a note about it.”

For Biddy, Doug DeCinces had always been unalterably a Baltimore Oriole, in his imagination as fixed and immutable at third base as his own identity as a Catholic. DeCinces was a Baltimore Oriole and could no more have gone to another team than Biddy could have joined another family. Journeymen came and went occasionally, utility infielders and relief pitchers, but the central Oriole core remained unchanging, unlike other teams such as California or New York, which seemed filled with malcontents and strangers. The Orioles were stability itself. They made do, won or lost — mostly won — with what they had. To Biddy it had been a great shock when the Orioles traded Doug DeCinces.