Jim Shepard - Flights

His father went into the den and his mother tossed salad in a beige ceramic bowl in front of her. “Finish your supper,” she said. “Your father’s upset right now, that’s all.”

“I don’t need to see a doctor, Mom,” he said quietly.

“Well, what do you need?” she said, pausing over the salad. “We’d all like to know. Have any idea? What do you need?”

His parents, unfortunately, did not enjoy the luxury of being able to worry about him alone. His sister over the last four months had thrown chalk at a teacher, attempted to feed the dog tacks, shoved Sister Theresa on the stairs, started a fight at the water fountain, and tried to bury all of her school-books in the garden. She had racked up more detention time and earned worse grades at school than Biddy. And there was the matter of her temper. “Don’t ask me where she gets it,” her mother would say. “When she gets upset, it’s like Raging Bull .” Recently she’d had a fight with her friend Lisa, whose mother had called to complain that her daughter was “still bleeding” as of the time of the phone call. Kristi had remained unrepentant.

She sat in the backyard next to him, on a lounge chair she had pulled alongside his. Both of them were eyeing the dog, waiting idly for it to do something amusing or interesting. It stretched and rubbed the side of its head in the grass. “You stay around,” their father said, and the dog looked up apprehensively. “You stay around or you’ll really be on my shit list.”

The three of them had been in the sun too long and Kristi was growing dangerously bored. They had been spending a lot of time in the yard recently, owing in part to their various punishments but also of their own accord, to get on their parents’ nerves. Their father was setting the ladder up against the garage wall nearest them. They were getting rain in the garage, and he wanted to check the shingles. The ladder had a sliding arrangement that allowed it to extend to twice its storage height and two hook clamps that kept it in whatever extended position was required. He set it up carefully, working unhurriedly in the bright sun, and returned to the house.

Kristi had been watching all of this with a close interest. When the back door closed, she got up and crossed to the ladder and, reaching high on her tiptoes, one hand spread delicately against the garage for support, she flipped one of the locking clamps away from the rung it was to support. That accomplished, she returned to her chair.

“What are you doing?” he said.

She didn’t move, her eyes remaining on the ladder. He glanced toward the house. The dog’s tail wagged, stirring mosquitoes. His father banged out of the back door and walked over, dropping tools on the pavement near the ladder with a musical noise. He sorted through them, choosing two.

Biddy was as bored as Kristi was, and feeling resentful besides. How far would he fall? Ten feet? Twelve feet? He watched his father mount the ladder and begin to climb. Halfway up he reached the point where the two halves were joined by the clamps and Biddy saw clearly the strain suddenly exerted on the lone remaining one.

“Dad,” he called sharply. His father stopped, surprised by the tone. His sister looked at him.

“One of the things is undone.” He pointed. His father looked, and hastened down the ladder.

“Thanks,” he said, peering at the clamp. “I set both of them. How the hell’d that happen?”

Kristi looked away. “It popped off while you were climbing,” Biddy said.

His father looked unconvinced. “I never heard of that before.” Biddy shrugged. He reset the clamp and climbed carefully up to the roof.

“Jerk,” Kristi whispered. “Fool.”

He went over to the dog, who curled onto his back with his paws in the air at his approach. “We don’t care, do we, Stupid,” he said, scratching its belly just under the rib cage. Its rear paw began to thump against the ground. Abruptly it twisted to its feet and trotted to the garden, sniffing with concentration along the fence, having seen or imagined something. Biddy followed. He collapsed into his chair in boredom and it folded up jerkily around him, banging the back of his head and tipping him backward over the fence into the garden. His head lay in the soft turned earth near a tomato plant. Stupid barked and leaped about the wreckage, startled. His sister had half folded his chair while he was scratching the dog. He started to disentangle himself, one thigh scratched and his hair full of dirt. His sister was still laughing and his father was standing on the roof, peering over at him. “Are you all right?” he called.

He nodded, still trying to climb out. The chair seemed to be holding him down, trapping him in its folding mechanism like a mousetrap or a crab’s claw.

“Now we need lessons on how to sit in a chair,” his father said. “Mr. Abbott, meet Mr. Costello.”

His father held the phone in his direction as though it were for him. “Mr. Rotondo wants to know why you’re not going out for Little League this year,” he said.

“Tell him because I don’t want to,” Biddy said.

His father returned the phone to his ear. “Paulie?” he said. “He’s not showing much interest this year.” He listened for a moment. “I’ll tell him.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “He says they really need good people this year and all the positions are wide open.”

Biddy shook his head.

“Still can’t sell him on it, Paulie. I know, I know. He was getting better and better.” He covered the phone again. “He says you’re a little Doug DeCinces at third.”

Biddy left the room.

“He may come around later,” he heard his father say. “Thanks for calling.”

They sat in the den watching Jason and the Argonauts. He had seen it before and liked the harpies.

“If that isn’t a bite in the ass,” his father said. “All last summer you wanted to be on the team, wanted me to work with you. All those hours Dom and I took you guys over to the dump and worked out. And here I am telling Paulie Rotondo all year you can’t wait.”

He refused to feel guilty.

“You’re losing interest in everything. What’re you going to do, hang around the house the rest of your life? Maybe your mother’s been right all along. Maybe we should be worried.”

“Maybe I’m depressed,” Biddy said.

“Yeah, you’re depressed. Twelve years old. You’re depressed.”

“Thirteen.”

His father didn’t respond. He answered a knock at the back door and returned to the den and stood by the television, ready to turn it off. “Your friend’s here,” he said. “Go out and do something.”

“Where we goin’?” Teddy asked.

“The airport,” Biddy said.

“The airport? Why the airport? You want to build a fort?”

Biddy said no, and denied he was intending to play guns or look for rats, either. They reached the hurricane fence at the end of Birch Street and knelt at the hole underneath it. Weeds surged up through the metal links. He held the fence up but Teddy refused to budge until he knew why they were going.

“I want to look at some stuff,” Biddy said, still holding the fence, considerable tension on his arm. “We can look at airplanes.”

“Look at airplanes?”

“Are you coming or not?” His tone surprised him.

“No, I’m not coming,” Teddy said. “Why do we always gotta do what you want to do?”

Biddy crouched low and slipped under the fence. Teddy followed.

They cantered down the slope to the basin of the airport, moving quickly and efficiently along paths they knew well. At the base they followed the perimeter west, skirting hillocks and standing marsh water. They worked their way through a thin path in the cattails, the reeds underfoot cracking crisply with each step. At points brown water oozed over the reed mat of the path, touching their sneakers. It filled the air with a musty smell.