Jim Shepard - Flights

Biddy came into the kitchen quietly and sat down at the other end of the table, stacked some coffee cups, and asked what happened.

“Your mother’s upset,” his father said. He picked up a slice of green pepper and tinged it off a wineglass.

“What’s she upset about?”

“She doesn’t need anything to be upset about.”

“Must be something,” he said quietly.

His father shrugged. “Leave all this for tomorrow.”

“I’ll get it.”

“No. Leave it.” He looked over at the pot on the stove. “Want some coffee?”

Biddy shook his head. “Where’d she go?”

His father raised his shoulders, and drooped them again. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” Biddy said. “Don’t say that.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” His father rattled an empty cup. “I don’t know. Probably over her sister’s.”

“Now? It’s so late.”

“I don’t know . Jesus Christ.”

Biddy stood up and went into the den. Someone was shooting at an apartment building on the news and Kristi was still up. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“I don’t know.” He put his hand under her armpit, lifting. “C’mon. Let’s go to bed. I think she’s over Aunt Sandy’s.”

“I wish I was over Aunt Sandy’s,” she said.

“No you don’t,” he said. “Come on.”

Later, studying the color of his feet in the bright moonlight, he heard a noise in the living room, and then another, a clinking, and he got up and tiptoed down the stairs. His father was sitting in the dark. “What’re you doing up?” he said. “Go to bed.”

“What’re you doing,” Biddy said, not knowing what to say.

His father took his foot down from the sill of the picture window. “I wish I knew, guy,” he said. “I wish I knew. Sittin’ in the dark.” They looked out the window together at the quiet street under the moon. A small animal crossed the street under the light.

“You don’t have to worry,” Biddy said.

“Nobody has to worry,” his father said. “C’mon, champ. Bed.”

A car turned down the street and continued past the house.

Biddy stopped halfway up the stairs. “Dad,” he said. “You can go to bed.”

“Don’t worry about me,” his father said, and some ice clinked in the dark.

He lay under the covering sheet, straining to hear, his eyes on the ceiling. His father’s voice drifted up from below. He was talking to himself, his words muffled, faint. Biddy lay motionless for a short time, but the silence was filled with distant noise now that he concentrated, and he could make out nothing. He got up and crept into Kristi’s room. He knelt by the bed, and she turned and made a noise, asleep. Her hair smelled of straw and the sun on a hot day.

“I love you, Kristi,” he whispered, and got out of her room before she woke up.

That morning he rose early, everything cold and quiet, the house making small sounds and Lady still asleep in the hall. He got into his bathing suit shivering a little and put on his old sneakers and a sweat shirt and went downstairs, yawning, trailing a towel on the rug. He opened the cellar door and eased the dog’s leash off the hook so it wouldn’t rattle. He let her outside, following with the towel draped around his neck. He let her urinate in selected spots and then stooped and put her on the leash. The foghorn sounded down by the beach.

It was four blocks away and she strained against the leash all the way there. When they got down the bluffs onto the sand he released her to run back and forth from driftwood to shore, from kelp to old shoe.

He squatted by the water, keeping an eye on her, his fingers poking around for smooth, skippable stones. He was already too late: the sun was above the horizon and the fog was burning off as things warmed up. It wasn’t as he’d pictured it the night before, when he’d conceived of being at the edge of the Sound in the extreme early morning; he’d imagined it as long and low and empty, everything gray and smooth, the two of them away from the land, on a sandbar, perhaps, connected to the beach by a narrow spit that disappeared as the tide came in. The possibility of being away from the land, released, lost in the fog, attracted him. Or on the beach itself, gently sloping into the chilled water and damp with sand that had the granular clumpiness of brown sugar. The fog would have misted in from the sea, obscuring everything but the closest birds, standing dully along the waterline.

He’d imagined a sanctuary and had tried to find its equivalent in Lordship. He’d imagined dozing and waking to the foghorn and not knowing where he was; he’d imagined a rose color mixing with the gray in the east as the sun began to assert itself. He’d imagined the foghorn coming back like God the Father to reorient him in the silence.

The wind coursed along the sand behind him, very low, dipping smoothly through depressions and lifting and twirling the cockleburs and sea grass. This was a nice beach, and in places a beautiful beach, but not the one he’d imagined.

A gull came in, skimming, and swooped away. Lady followed it with her eyes.

“This beach isn’t right either,” he said. She watched the gull, wheeling in the distance. He stared out to sea. “Sometimes I don’t think I can do anything right,” he said finally.

Dent topped it again, and again McGregor missed it, falling, perhaps, or leaning the wrong way, and DeCinces yelled Turn two! and with a man on third and one out Biddy knew he had to prevent the run from scoring and he broke to cover second and took Dauer’s flip, and bobbled it, his fingers frantically pulling it in and controlling it in time to have Winfield catch him low sliding in hard, but he couldn’t accept that, and through sheer force of will his mind’s eye got it right, his hand caught it firmly, and he spun and threw, pulling his legs up, but his throw was wild, too much across his body, skipping once in the dirt and into the dugout, and he said No no no and did it again, taking the flip, releasing the ball, his eyes watching its flight, too low, and again, too wide, and again.

Lady came back, circling; he’d scared her. He reached out a hand and she lowered her head to it. He pulled her in and stuck his face in her muzzle, feeling her whiskers.

“I can’t even imagine it right,” he said. “Oh God, Lady, I can’t even imagine it right.”

When he got back his mother was home, crawling around the garden and ripping at weeds with a little three-pronged weeder. Dom was there for the second day in a row, sitting with Biddy’s father, Mickey, and Louis on the steps to the back porch. He let Lady go as he came up the driveway. His father said, “Here he is. The early bird.”

“Grab your glove, pal,” Dom said. “We’re going to the field.”

Upstairs he put on his better sneakers and found his glove, and when he came down they were all gone, waiting for him in the car out front. He crossed the backyard to the garden.

His mother dug a neat row, creeping forward on her knees.

“Hey, Mom,” he said.

“Good morning. You were up early.”

He nodded but she didn’t see him.

“Something to do?”

“Uh-huh.” The car honked in the front and he put his glove on. “Cindy or Ginnie didn’t come?”

“No.” She caught part of a tomato plant with the weeder. “Where you going now? You have breakfast?”

“I’ll get something when I get back.” He stepped toward the driveway. “You want me to stay around?”

She looked up, surprised, and shook her head. He popped his fist into his glove and jogged around front.

They got into a game with others at the field and played late into the afternoon. He played badly. While someone was retrieving a foul ball that had gone into the street, Dom left his position and walked over to him at second base.