Jim Shepard - Flights

“What’s he doing, what’s he doing, what’s he doing?” Laura whispered. He took her arm, afraid she would bolt.

“We got to get out of here.” God, he realized, he’s looking at us.

He glanced behind them. There was nothing but fifty feet of lawn, with a white house to silhouette them. He looked around desperately.

“He’s moving,” Laura whispered, her voice rising.

There was nothing to do but run. “Laura,” he whispered, imagining he sounded calm. “Laura, listen. We’ve got to run. Take your flip-flops off.” He waited while she slipped her feet out of them. “Turn around and when I say run, run and don’t stop until you’re home. We’re going to run together, but if he catches us I’m going to let you go and you’re going to keep running , okay?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“Ready?”

She edged around. He took a last look back. The face was gone.

“Go!” he said, and burst from under the bush with her hand in his, pulling it as hard as he dared, both of them flying down the pavement, Laura grabbing at her nightshirt in a frantic attempt to hitch it up. They heard the car start behind them with a roar and Laura shrieked and he immediately pulled her between two houses, cutting through yards, leaping a sandbox and a garden. They flattened along the wall of another house, panting. She sobbed quietly and he poked his head around the corner a few inches. The station wagon cruised past in the distance, still moving very slowly.

He put his head back against the wall. “We’re okay,” he said. “He won’t find us.”

“I want to go back,” Laura wailed quietly. “I told you I didn’t want to come.”

He took her hand and led her down the driveway to the next street, easing a tricycle away with a gentle push. A dog barked nearby and the wind made a soft, sweeping sound through the leaves of the trees. He heard the engine just in time and clapped a hand to her mouth, pulling her back; it was the station wagon, driving without headlights. They sprinted back the way they’d come, not speaking, not slowing down, staying in backyards, clawing their way over dividing fences and hedges, cutting their feet, scraping their knees, their running as headlong as it could be without total loss of control. Laura raced ahead of him, her hair alive in the wind. They swept through the vacant lot, crashing through vines and creepers, and near her yard Laura missed a turn and sprawled headlong over a bush with a great crash of wood and vegetation, her heel lashing the air in front of him.

He rushed to her, asking if she was all right, and she was crying harder, more from the shock than anything else, and she stood and knocked his hand away and continued down the path. As they approached the fence, she pushed him away again and he ducked back, sure she’d be safe at that point, with lights and anxious voices of people filling her yard, for Sarah Alice, tangled in her nightshirt and buried under the sleeping bag, had woken up to find her missing.

The Sieberts were in the Lirianos’ living room, pants pressed, hair washed, dresses ironed, and bearing presents, when Louis came downstairs and announced he wasn’t going to the wedding.

“You’re not going to the what?” Dom said, and Louis went back upstairs.

“He’s not going to the what?” he repeated to Ginnie, his tie half tied.

Ginnie shrugged. It was news to her.

They sat around the coffee table in a semicircle, slightly embarrassed, while Dom went up to talk with him. They heard Dom’s voice rise and fall. He came downstairs.

“He says he’s not going. He won’t tell me why.” He went into the bathroom and resumed tying his tie. “Christ,” he said finally. “Is the whole world going nuts? Is that it?”

Ginnie went up to talk with Louis.

“If he’s not going, then I’m not either,” Mickey said.

“Don’t start,” Dom said from the bathroom. “Just don’t start. Because if you’re staying home you’re staying home in traction.”

Ginnie came downstairs grim. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “He just says he’s not going.”

“Doesn’t that frost your ass?” Dom said. He was having trouble with his jacket sleeve. “These kids’re gonna drive us all off cliffs. If they haven’t already.”

Louis appeared at the top of the stairs. “Sorry I can’t go, Mr. and Mrs. Siebert,” he said. “I can’t, though.”

“Louis, what in the Christ is the matter?” Dom said.

“I can’t, Dad. Sorry.” He went back upstairs.

Dom remained where he was, staring after him. “Aw, let’s get out of here,” he said, shaking his head, “before I lose any more of them.”

The wedding itself was at Our Lady of Peace and the reception at the Red Coach Inn. It was Biddy’s third wedding and the ceremony was becoming familiar. Sheona, the bride, glanced around as if wondering if all of this were not some sort of elaborate hoax.

Father Rubino handled the Mass with dispatch, labeling the occasion joyous and celebratory as though he were narrating a travelogue. Biddy stood next to his mother, with Cindy and Mickey in the pew ahead of them. Cindy was wearing dark blue, like her father, with a deep red sash. Her hair was up and the thin gold chains were missing from her neck. They had been gifts from Ronnie, he remembered.

The sun came through the windows. Irises on the altar moved slightly in the breeze from the open doors, heavy on their stems. “If he gets any skinnier, they might as well leave the hangers in the shirts,” he heard Dom say about the groom.

Biddy rode to the reception in the same car as Cindy. She hadn’t said a word the entire day that he had been aware of. His father drove in silence, respecting her feelings, awkward.

At the Red Coach Inn they signed the guest register, his name following Cindy’s and hers reading Cynthia Amanda Liriano — for her, oddly formal. They piled silver-and-white presents on one table and searched for name cards with table assignments on the other. Biddy and Cindy would be at table 8, his father at table 9. They threaded their way past circular tables arranged with place settings and fruit cups waiting. Kristi and Mickey were already at table 8, with two teenaged cousins; Dom, Ginnie, and his mother were already at 9. They were early. Uncomfortable where he was and spotting empty chairs at 9, Biddy moved and sat next to Dom.

“This guy’s given up on Little League,” his father said.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Don’t ask me. Paulie Rotondo would love to have him.”

“He’s a great guy, Paulie. Knows his baseball, Biddy,” Dom said. “Don’t kid yourself. Good man to play for.”

“I’ve heard he’s a little wild,” Biddy’s mother said.

“Wild? He’s berserk,” Dom said. “Listen: here’s a good Paulie Rotondo story. Me and Paulie, we go out a few years ago, we’re going somewhere, I don’t remember where. We’re driving down the road, we go past a bar, Paulie slams on the brakes. ‘Aw, look who’s here,’ he goes. I don’t see anybody. We pull over and go inside. There’re two Puerto Ricans playing shuffleboard — you know, that bar game, like bowling. Paulie says, ‘Beer and an orange juice,’ and then goes to the Puerto Ricans, ‘How you doing?’ They’re nodding and smiling, you know. Paulie picks up one of those shuffleboard discs and says, ‘Dom, don’t get excited. I’m gonna kill this guy.’ Then he goes to one of the Puerto Ricans, ‘Remember me? Sure.’ Paulie’s got this big grin, right? ‘Remember? You don’t remember? You took the wallet right out of my pocket. Remember? Right after you kicked me right here?’ And he points to his face. These guys had mugged him the week before. ‘Dom, watch the other one,’ he says to me.” Dom pantomimed himself at the time, stunned. Biddy’s father, already laughing, closed his eyes and shook his head. “And he goes, ‘Don’t you remember?’ and this guy starts backing away and reaches for the beer bottle and Paulie takes that metal shuffleboard disc and hits him like Warren Spahn right here”—he spread his forefinger and thumb across his sternum—“and the sound is like somebody just stepped on a rotten board. This guy goes down like he’s shot.”