Voodoo Ridge

by David Freed

  He opened up the vent.

  “A little more air, Stefan. There ya go. Just relax now. See? Nothing to worry about.”

  I reached into the storage pocket of my seat back and pulled out a paper airsick bag. When I looked over at him again, my student was the color of the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day.

  “Here, buddy, take this.”

  Stefan reached for the bag—a half second too late. He opened his mouth and yodeled a torrent of half-digested nastiness that somehow missed me while splattering him and much of the instrument panel. For a small man, he hurled a prodigious amount of vomit.

  “I’m really sorry,” Stefan said, wiping his mouth, embarrassed. “I probably should’ve said something earlier.”

  “No worries. Happens to the best of us. We probably should head back.”

  He nodded glumly.

  We were on approach to the airport, on base leg, when the Duck’s over-voltage red warning light suddenly came on. I knew from prior experience that when the light illuminated, there was a problem with the electrical system—a sensor or maybe the master switch. Larry would have to do some trouble-shooting, and that would take time. It would also take money I didn’t have. Fortunately, Stefan didn’t notice the light. He didn’t seem to notice anything except the noteworthy amount of rejected breakfast in his lap.

  After we landed, he offered to help clean up the Duck. I told him I appreciated the gesture, but that it really wasn’t necessary. He wrote me a fifty dollar check and said he’d give thought to the notion of additional lessons. I knew he wouldn’t be back. Nobody in the history of general aviation has ever wolfed their cookies on an introductory flight and come back for more.

  The sky was virtually cloudless, the breeze nary a whisper. Another perfect, room-temperature day in paradise. Larry loaned me a pair of rubber gloves, rags, and a spray bottle of cleaner, and said he’d take a look at the electrical system after I de-vomited the Duck. He didn’t ask how the lesson had gone. He could see and smell the result.

  It took me more than an hour to wipe down the inside of the plane. In a weird way, I didn’t mind; it kept my thoughts from Savannah, if only for a while. I was tempted to give Streeter up in Lake Tahoe a call after I finished, but I knew he would’ve called me if there were any worthwhile developments in his investigation.

  I watched a gray Cobra gunship come thundering in to settle gingerly down on the tarmac near the Hippo Grill on the field’s east side, followed seconds later by another Cobra. The two attack helicopters were up from the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. They flew into Rancho Bonita frequently, ostensibly on training missions that not coincidentally also afforded ample opportunity to flirt with the Hippo’s many comely waitresses.

  “Thought you could use a cold drink,” Larry said, walking up from behind me with a Coke in his hand.

  I thanked him, opened the can, and sipped. We stood and watched the four marine crewmen in their tailored flight suits and cool-guy sunglasses stroll toward the Hippo.

  “Those guys get all the chicks,” Larry said, stroking his Grizzly Adams beard. “Tell ya what. If I dropped a hundred pounds, got Lasik on my eyes and a full Brazilian, I’d give those leathernecks a run for their money.”

  “I’m sure you would, Larry.”

  He looked over at me, his brow furrowed.

  “No witty retort, Logan? No, ‘The day you get girls is the day congress gets anything done?’ ”

  “Not today, Larry.”

  He nodded like he understood. “I gotta run out for a while. The wife wants me to go carpet shopping. You lemme know if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  I lingered for a few minutes, buffing dead bugs off the leading edges of the Duck’s wings, then gathered up the cleaning supplies, dropped the rags in a covered trash can in Larry’s hangar and walked back to my cramped, depressing, windowless office. The pile of paperwork atop my government surplus desk demanded to be culled and filed, but I couldn’t muster the energy.

  I sat down, put my feet up, and stared into space for the better part of an hour. I guess you could call it meditating, though it was really more like trying to put my brain in neutral and not think about anything. After that, I drove home and told my landlady about what had happened. About the wrecked Twin Beech and the dead pilot at the controls. About the young man lying dead beside the wreckage. But mostly about Savannah.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz listened with her right hand clasped over her mouth, and wept.

  THE GIANTS were playing the Bears that night. Mrs. Schmulowitz served her usual excellent brisket with green beans in cream sauce, which we ate off metal TV trays, while she offered her usual play-by-play commentary on the game, broadcast on her ancient Magnavox console.

  “God forbid this guy should actually hold on to the ball,” she complained after the Giant’s tight end muffed an easy pass. “That schmegegge couldn’t catch the common cold if his life depended on it.”

  She was garbed in a blue New York Giants hoodie that was about five sizes too big, an oversized Giants baseball cap, a pair of blue Giants sweatpants, and fuzzy pink bedroom slippers that looked like bunnies.

  “It’s just a game, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  “A game? A game?” Sitting beside her on her blue mohair sofa, she looked over at me like it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. “Football’s not a game, bubby. Football is life.”

  I didn’t argue her point. Mrs. Schmulowitz came from gridiron nobility—her late uncle was NFL Hall of Fame quarter-back Sid Luckman. She certainly knew more about football than any old lady I ever met.

  “More brisket, bubby?”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “How ’bout beans? I got plenty.”

  “Not for me, Mrs. Schmulowitz. I couldn’t eat another bite. It was all delicious. Thank you.” I stood and headed for the kitchen. “Can I get you anything while I’m up?”

  “No, nothing, not a thing. I eat one more bite myself, you’ll have to call those cute paramedics to come give me mouth-to-mouth. Come to think of it, maybe I will have more brisket. Then you can give ’em a call for me, OK?”

  “Whatever you say, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  I knew she was kidding about more brisket, trying to cheer me up. I deposited my plate and silverware in the sink without offering to help clean up because I knew she’d only take offense, as she had after previous offers. Back in the living room, the Giants running back got stuffed for a two-yard loss.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz threw up her hands in exasperation.

  “Can you believe this interior line play? Oy gevalt It’s a horror! Even I can trap block better than that.”

  “Just wanted to say good night, and thanks again for dinner.”

  She gave me a disconcerted look. “It’s not even the fourth quarter yet.”

  “I’m thinking of turning in a little early, doing some reading.”

  The old lady’s cataract-clouded eyes pooled with tears. She said she knew what I was going through, and that her heart ached for me. She told me how one of her brothers had joined the army, gone off to fight in North Africa, and been declared missing in action. Nearly a year transpired before the family received a letter via the Red Cross saying he’d been captured and was in a German POW camp, homesick but otherwise well.

  “In the words of Tom Petty,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “the waiting is the hardest part.”

  “How do you know Tom Petty?” I asked her.

  “How do I know Tom Petty? I know Tom Petty because he’s older than I am.” She got up and turned off the TV. “Listen, before you go, there’s something I need you to do for me, a big favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “I need you to come with me to my watercolor class tomorrow.”

  “I’m not much of a painter, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  “Like anybody in the class is a painter? They’re relics, old as dirt, everybody in there. Half the people, their brains have turned to Crea
m of Wheat. The point’s not to paint, bubby. The point is, I just want you to come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? It’s a surprise, that’s why.”

  “I don’t like surprises, Mrs. Schmulowitz. And I’ve had more than my share recently.”

  She put her arms around my waist. I could feel most of the bones in her body.

  “You have an obligation to go on living, Cordell. For her. For you. Regardless of where she is right now. The sooner you start doing that, the better off you’ll both be.”

  She promised the painting class would do me good.

  “I’m an old lady, bubeleh. Humor me.”

  Mrs. Schmulowitz was a force of nature. What choice did I have?

  KIDDIOT SLEPT on his back at the foot of my bed that night with all four paws up and his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, while I stared at the ceiling, anguishing over the choices I’d made, replaying on a continuous loop the hours leading up to Savannah’s disappearance and my attempts to find her in the hours afterward. What could I have done, short of never spotting that airplane in the first place, that would have let me roll over and find Savannah sleeping contentedly beside me? What clues had I missed? The guilt, incompetence, and helplessness I felt were palpable, weights that pressed like concrete on my heart. I thought I might vomit, but didn’t. I got up, drawing a disapproving sneeze from Kiddiot who didn’t appreciate being disturbed, and went outside.

  The night was still. No moon. I gazed up at the southern sky, through the dark, outlying branches of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s oak tree, to the three stars of Orion’s Belt. To their right was a V-shaped pattern of stars—the face of Taurus the Bull—and, slightly beyond the bull’s face, the star cluster known as Seven Sisters.

  To the average eye, the Sisters look like a small, blurry cloud of light. But if your vision is keen, you can discern all seven stars. For centuries, Native Americans used the star cluster as an eye test of sorts; only those would-be fighting men with the acuity of vision to see all seven stars were allowed to join the most elite warrior sects. Often, when I was at the academy, I would walk onto the parade grounds at night, lie down and gaze up at the Sisters, if only to reassure myself that I had the right stuff to be a pilot. Inspiration often followed my stargazing. But as I stared into the heavens that night from my landlady’s tidy, postage-stamp backyard, all I felt was lost, adrift amid the cosmos.

  More than anything, I felt alone.

  FIFTEEN

  Mrs. Schmulowitz drove a banana yellow Shelby Mustang with an automatic transmission and a vanity plate that read, “BRISKET.” She had to sit on two volumes of the 1966 Encyclopedia Britannica to see over the steering wheel, but that didn’t stop her from racing down San Miguel Boulevard like she was trying to outrun the zombie apocalypse, garbed in some sort of weird, Annie Hall-like outfit.

  We roared past Rancho Bonita’s majestic, Spanish-style county courthouse doing fifteen over the posted speed limit.

  “You’re gonna really enjoy this painting class, bubby,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said.

  “Assuming we get there alive,” I said, bracing myself against the dashboard.

  She whipped a sharp left onto Vespucci Street and through the crosswalk, nearly creaming a pair of portly businessmen who literally had to leap for their lives.

  “Will you look at that? A parking space, right in front of the rec center. This must be my lucky day.”

  “Did you not see those guys, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

  “Did I see them? Of course, I saw them. I also saw they could definitely use some exercise. If public schools still had physical education, we wouldn’t have this problem! They can thank me later.”

  The space was impossibly tight, sandwiched between a white Volvo sedan and a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Mrs. Schmulowitz parallel parked like one would expect a nearly ninety-year-old woman to parallel park. She played bumper cars, pounding her way in.

  “Perfect,” she announced when we were wedged squarely against the curb. “C’mon, bubeleh let’s get you some culture.”

  The weekly painting class was held on the second floor of the Rancho Bonita Parks and Recreation Department’s Vespucci Community Center, a stately, two-story red brick building that had once served as a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers returning from the Great War. The classroom was filled with mostly elderly women, some tethered to oxygen tanks, others reliant on wheelchairs or walkers, all sitting around long tables, glumly slapping thin, wet paint on pieces of watercolor paper.

  “Hello, good people,” Mrs. Schmulowitz announced as we walked in. “Welcome to Tuesday.”

  Nobody bothered to look up.

  The class instructor, who Mrs. Schmulowitz introduced me to as Meredith Crisp, touted the fact that he’d studied under the late Thomas Kinkade, America’s self-proclaimed “Painter of Light.” I didn’t know squat about fine art, but what I’d seen of Kinkade’s saccharine fairy tale villages convinced me that whatever artistic technique Crisp had to teach, I wasn’t interested in learning. Not that I had any illusions of becoming the next da Vinci. Far from it. I was only there to keep my landlady happy.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Schmulowitz, he’s really not allowed in here,” Crisp said, taking her aside, glancing at me, and whispering a little too loudly with a catty smile that really wasn’t a smile. “This is a seniors-only class.”

  “Who’s to know? The geriatric Gestapo? Lighten up, Meredith.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Schmulowitz. Those are the rules. I really didn’t make them up.”

  He was well past sixty but trying hard not to look it. Flip-flops, too-tight jeans, a Coldplay T-shirt under a fringed leather vest, leather bracelets, a long, beaded earring dangling from one lobe, and purposefully mussed, Rod Stewart-like head of blond, thinning hair that was among the worst dye jobs I’d ever seen.

  “I wouldn’t bother anybody,” I said.

  “I’m not sure you understand.” Crisp rubbed a hand over his face in exasperation. “I already have thirty-three students in this class, which is ten more than what I was supposed to have. I simply don’t have enough supplies for everyone.”

  “He can use some of my stuff. What’s the big deal?”

  “The ‘big deal,’ Mrs. Schmulowitz, is that I’m afraid your friend will distract those of my students who are actually serious about their painting.”

  “Serious about their painting? Listen, the only thing these relics are serious about is where they can get a good deal on adult diapers. Don’t be such a nudnik, Meredith. It’ll take years off your life.”

  Crisp knew there was no use arguing with her. He exhaled melodramatically, said, “Fine,” and moved off to supervise his other students.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz waited until he was out of earshot, then said, “So, I have a confession to make.”

  Her confession was she’d wanted me to accompany her to class so that she could introduce me to one of her fellow students, a retired psychologist.

  “He’s a real mensch, this guy. And, between you, me and the wall, about the only person in this class with a brain that still works. I thought he could help you get through what you’re dealing with,” she said, looking around, “only he isn’t here yet.”

  I told her I appreciated her concern, but that I wasn’t inclined to spill my guts to a headshrinker, let alone one I didn’t know. She patted my cheek and said she understood.

  “Just talk to the guy. Ten minutes. He doesn’t help you? Fine. Whatever. I tried.”

  “OK, Mrs. Schmulowitz. For you? Ten minutes.”

  The psychologist never showed up. For the next half hour or so, I sat with Mrs. Schmulowitz and tried to paint watercolor trees and mountains per Meredith Crisp’s direction while the instructor patrolled us, critiquing our work like he actually knew something about art.

  “A rather avant-garde use of pigment,” Crisp said, assessing my artistic offering with his arms folded and the tip of one index finger tapping his pursed lips. “But I must say, the placement
of your seagulls seems perhaps just a tad random.”

  “Those aren’t seagulls. Those are splatters.”

  “I see.”

  I needed a break.

  There was a wooden bench outside under a big leafy tree. I sat down, spread my arms across the back of the bench, and watched the world go by. The tree was a jacaranda—“jacks,” as the locals called them. They produced profusions of delicate, bell-shaped flowers that, for a few weeks in late spring, bathed Rancho Bonita in a violet-colored haze. Many residents condemned them as “messy.” They disliked jacks for their tendency to drop sticky blossoms on the freshly waxed Porsches and Benzes of the town’s moneyed minions. If for no other reason, they were among my favorite trees.

  People came and went: office workers in business suits; tourists clutching guidebooks, with cameras slung around their necks. A shirtless dude of about twenty in grimy jeans, with tattoos covering his toothpick arms and scrawny chest, rolled up on his skateboard to ask if I had any spare change.

  “I was about to ask you for some,” I said.

  He rolled on without a word.

  The sun felt good on my face. A middle-aged redhead strutted past me in stiletto boots, wearing too much makeup and some sort of gauzy, gypsy skirt-blouse combo. She gave me a little smile. I didn’t notice her, however, as much as I did what she was toting in her right hand: a big brown shopping bag from the Nordstrom department store over on California Street, in the swanky, open-air, Casa Grande mall.

  Nordstrom.

  My brain flashed back on Chad Lovejoy and what he’d mentioned after Savannah and I landed at the Tahoe airport. Wasn’t Nordstrom where he said his ex-girlfriend sold jewelry, the one he maintained an open dialogue with? What did he say her name was? It took me a few seconds to remember: Cherry.

  The mall was two blocks to the west. I walked it.

  I’D NEVER been inside the Nordstrom in downtown Rancho Bonita. Or any Nordstrom, for that matter. When fashion and wardrobe are as personally relevant to you as the weather on Venus or who wins the annual World Adult Kickball Association championship, you tend not to do your clothes shopping at such places. Like I said, Sears is more my speed. Only I wasn’t shopping.