Jim Shepard - Flights

He left while his mother was in the den. His bicycle was piled along the wall in the garage behind some fencing and the lawn mower, and he pulled it out, new cobwebs drifting across his arms. He’d checked the bike three days before and had found that, beyond some grinding and rattling noises, everything worked as well as ever. He’d stopped using it more than a year ago because it was too small, a child’s bike with its long handlebars and banana seat, embarrassing in a neighborhood of statuesque racing frames, but now it was invaluable because of that very lack of size. He swung onto the seat and pushed off, pedaling out of the gloom into the sunlight, and stopped to pick up the Hefty bag he’d left near the door.

Kristi appeared at the screen. “What are you doing?” she asked.

He flinched, determined to look nonchalant. “Taking some stuff over Teddy’s.” She watched him tie the bag securely to the handle on the back of the banana seat, positioning it on top so that it would rest behind him.

“Biddy’s running away, Mom,” she announced.

He remained motionless.

“I would too if I were him,” his mother said from the other room.

He kept his eyes on Kristi, meeting her even gaze.

“Where you gonna go?” she said.

He gave his head a perceptible shake. “Don’t say anything.” His sister was a shadow on the sunlit screen, impossible to interpret. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Take care.” He pressed his hand to the screen.

“You too,” she said.

He surged forward on the pedals, building speed quickly down the driveway and out into the street. Sikorsky was four miles away. He had measured it. He had ridden it the previous week. He turned left onto Prospect Drive, and again, onto Stratford Road, grateful for the shade trees lining its edge. It was still very sunny, with patches of thick white clouds, and already sweat tickled his breastbone under his shirt. In the bag behind him on the banana seat, he carried extra pairs of underwear, shorts, and sneakers, a pair of jeans, an extra shirt, a lightweight poncho, his mess kit, tent, flashlight, compass, the pages from The Lore of Flight, the Cessna manual, and thirty-seven dollars in savings. He was going to steal Mr. Carver’s Cessna 152 and fly it to East Hampton, Long Island.

He followed Stratford Road in a great lazy curve to the north around runway 29 and flew along the straightaway between Avco and the fenced-in hangars and planes on his left. Avco’s outbuildings and parking lots stretched for blocks as an irregular series of flat ugly buildings and pavement, which finally gave way to the shade of the heavy oaks and hemlocks of Ferry Boulevard, the air cooling him as it rushed past. He swooped by the entrance to the Shakespeare Theatre no longer noting landmarks, maintaining his speed despite the pressure that fatigue was building on his thigh muscles; he was on the final leg, Route 110, before he finally realized it. The road was a narrow blacktop twisting along the Housatonic, with the river on one side and a state park, a green hedge of young trees and aggressive understory, on the other. As he swept around curves he caught glimpses of the arched Merritt Parkway bridge spanning the river, cluttered and glittering in the sun, with Sikorsky Aircraft, A Division of United Technologies, right behind it.

At the outer guardhouse, a security officer was gazing into the middle distance and seemed not to see or care that he went by. He cruised down the long ramp to the visitors’ parking area, finally resting, his feet light on the pedals. At the front doors he got off, took a breath, let down his kickstand, and went inside, soaked with sweat.

A uniformed guard waited opposite the door at a desk. He smiled. “Well. Just swim over?” he said.

Biddy swallowed, trying to subdue his panting and chilled by the air conditioner. “I’m Biddy Siebert,” he said. “Mr. Siebert’s son. Could I see my father a minute?”

The guard made a mock serious face. “I think we could arrange that,” he said. He punched three buttons on the phone before him. “Who’s this? Shirley?” he said suddenly. “Shirley, is Walt Siebert in? Where is he?”

He was at lunch, Biddy knew. He ate lunch early, almost always in the cafeteria.

The guard hung up. “Out of luck, guy. She says he’s at lunch.”

“I think I know where he might be,” Biddy said. “I could go get him.”

“I can’t let you wander around alone, sport. You’re welcome to wait, though. If it’s an emergency maybe we can page him.”

Biddy assured him it was no emergency.

“Well, here, I can give you your security badge while you’re waiting.” He held out a yellow-and-white plastic card, with a clip on the end of it, that read GUEST — SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT. Biddy hung it from the neck of his T-shirt.

“And you can fill out this visitor’s card, too.”

He filled in the information hurriedly. Under “Reason for Visit” he wrote “Social,” and sat back in the chair, fidgeting, while the guard returned to the skimpy paperwork in front of him. The lobby was very plain: a few chairs, a table with some worn magazines, a plant in the corner. Spaced along the room evenly were framed 8″ x 10″ photographs of Sikorsky helicopters in action, carrying logs over fir forests, recovering astronauts, ferrying infantry and jeeps. In one a man remarkably like his father stepped from a smallish corporate S-76 with elegant red and black stripes running its length.

Biddy tapped his foot and wiped his head with his hands. Every so often men in short-sleeved shirts with jackets over their arms came by in groups of twos or threes, laughing and heading to lunch. He stood and wandered to the interior door to the plant.

“Oh, there he is,” he said, and opened it. “I see him,” and he glanced back and saw the guard’s startled face before slipping through. He turned an immediate corner, rushed up the stairs lightly on the balls of his feet to keep the noise down, and followed the hallway to Marketing, opening the door to find himself face to face with a woman, blonde and pretty, her hair pulled away from her face.

“What’re you looking for, honey?” she said. “Lose your way?”

“No, my father’s right over here,” he said, maneuvering past and gesturing down the corridor vaguely. He didn’t look back. The rooms to his left were all part of one great room, which had been divided into smaller units by high beige partitions, and he passed offices on his right, his eyes skimming the nameplates on the doors. He turned in to the fifth office and knocked as he entered.

“Mr. Carver?” he said.

Carver glanced up from his desk, surprised. “Biddy. How are you. What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” he said, trying not to rush. “Just visiting my father.” He held his breath. “He asked me to ask you if he could borrow your keys to the IFA file. He can’t find his or something.”

“What the hell is the IFA file?” he said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Biddy hesitated. “I don’t know either, but he said you had them. He said they were the same key as something else.”

Carver made a disgusted noise, pulled out his key ring, and began to search through it. Biddy froze.

“Here, take the whole thing,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. So much stuff comes and goes around here — And tell your father not to hang on to them all day. I’m going to lunch soon and my car keys are on there.”

Biddy thanked him and backed swiftly out the door, mentioning as well that it was nice to see him again, and swept back down the corridor and through the Marketing door, fearing the return of the blonde woman. He rounded a corner and ran head on into his father.