Dan Springthorpe squeezes the grips that control the Browning three-oh-threes, and he scans for incoming German fighters, while repeating to himself, “Thirty flights, still alive. Thirty flights, still alive.”
The pilot has pushed the Lancaster all the way up to twenty-five-thousand feet, above the anti-aircraft fire, and the veteran bird is shuddering from the stress of the climb. The sky behind the bomber is thick with smoke and debris, backlit by exploding shells and flashing cannon fire. Just below the tail of the Lancaster, Dan watches Halifaxes and Stirlings bursting into flames and disintegrating in the cloud of flak.
The Merlin engines are screaming as the pilot races away from the flashing chaos in the air behind them, and the burning naval yard beneath them.
A sudden jolt rips through the body of the Lancaster.
Dan’s skull slams against the back of the turret as the tail whips upward; the nose of the plane is pointed down. The pressure of the sudden dive makes his brain feel like it’s going to explode; they are falling fast.
Panicked voices hiss through the intercom: “Pull up! Pull up!”
Dan repeats to himself, “Thirty flights, still alive. Thirty flights, still alive.”
And then, there is a metallic groan. A convulsion ripples through the fuselage, and the Lancaster levels. Somehow, the pilot has managed to pull the injured bird out of its suicide dive.
“Starboard engines are burning!” another voice crackles through the intercom. “Feather engines! Feather engines!”
Flames flash past Dan’s turret. Strips of metal skin peel from the Lancaster’s tail fins, revealing the framework underneath.
“Thirty flights, still alive. Thirty flights, still alive.”
The Lancaster trembles as more bullets pummel its skin.
“Where the hell are you bastards?” Dan hollers. He desperately searches for the attackers, but he can’t see them anywhere; they must be above, below, or beside them. The mid-upper gunner will have to get ’em, if he is still alive.
There is another rattle of machine-gun fire, and the bubble window beside Dan explodes. A sharp, burning sensation cuts into his right arm. Blinded by the Perspex dust in his eyes, he feels around for the electrical cords and disconnects his heating suit before he is electrocuted. He accidentally disconnects his oxygen supply, too, but he cannot see to reconnect it properly.
“Abandon aircraft!” comes the command through the intercom. “Bail out, boys! Bail out! Bail —”
The intercom speaker screeches and dies.
As if the blindness isn’t bad enough, Dan is becoming woozy and disoriented from oxygen deprivation. He manages to reach behind him, and he levers open the armoured door. He rips off his layers of gloves to more easily feel for his parachute.
After seconds that feel like eternity, Dan’s fingers feel it, grab at it greedily, and he manages to snap the parachute onto his harness. Hopefully it hasn’t been damaged in the attack. Hopefully it will open when he needs it to.
Now Dan feels for the controls to rotate his turret to one side so his escape hatch will be facing outward.
Nothing happens. The hydraulic system is damaged. The turret will not rotate.
The tail of the burning Lancaster pitches upward again, and the two remaining live engines scream against the fall.
Broken plastic and twisted metal slash at Dan’s bare hands as he gropes for a hole in the turret big enough to pull himself through. His muscles strain against the force of the crippled bomber falling, but somehow he manages to wriggle his shoulders and hips through the jagged hole in the smashed turret.
And then his foot catches on something inside; he is still blind, he can’t see what’s holding him, but it feels like a cold metal hand is clutching his ankle. It’s probably a cable or cord wrapped around his foot.
The engines shriek as the bomber plummets.
Dan twists and pulls and tugs, but whatever is holding him will not let go. If he had a pistol in his hand right now, he would blast off his own foot just to free himself from the doomed aircraft.
“I guess this is it,” he says to himself.
Then, as he relaxes his toes, his foot slips free from inside the fur-lined boot. It slides right out.
As Dan spirals through the air, it feels for a moment like he is flying free rather than falling fast.
The wind batters his face, and tears stream from his eyes. Everything is dark and blurry, but he can see again. He can see.
He hears Mary’s voice again — “Stay alive for me, Daniel” — which reminds him to tug on the rip cord.
He is grateful when the parachute blossoms open overhead.
He sees the ring of flames as the Lancaster crashes into the black water below.
He flutters downward, acutely aware that he isn’t dead; he feels the blood pumping through the arteries in his wrists, where he clings to the parachute straps.
He sinks feet first into the cold, churning waves.
He releases his connection to the parachute so it can’t drag him under the water.
He hopes that the rest of the crew managed to bail out in time.
He imagines that somehow his mates are still alive.
A wave of cold water washes over him, but also a wave of gratitude.
He feels grateful that Mary insisted on those fur-lined boots, instead of letting him take those fashionable leather lace-ups.
He feels grateful for the Mae West life jacket, which he hugs against him like a lover, like a saviour.
He is overwhelmed with gratitude.
And then he is overcome by the cold. He is shivering, almost convulsing. His teeth chatter against each other with such force he’s afraid they might shatter. He thrashes and kicks against the biting cold.
And as the dark, surging waves batter his body, slap his face, and fill his lungs with stinging salt water, he raises his uninjured arm in the air and hollers defiantly, “Thirty flights, still alive! Thirty flights, still alive!”
As Nurse Sheila wrenches his other arm upward, Dapper Dan sings out, “Thirty flights, still alive! Thirty flights, still alive!”
“You know, mister,” she says, with a nails-across-a-chalkboard screech, “you are one crazy old man. You are just freakin’ batshit crazy.”
“Please,” Dan pleads, “this water is so cold! Please!”
“Oh, stop your whining. We’ll be done soon.”
As the water drains out of the geriatric tub, a shaking, chattering Dan climbs out and wraps himself in a towel, feeling quite the opposite of dapper.
“See?” Nurse Sheila huffs. “It’s over now. You lived.”
It’s Sunday, and Clementine has taken an extra shift at the home; usually Nurse Sheila claims all of the Sunday shifts for herself because they pay double time, but Sheila has been called away at the last minute. The rumour circulating among the other nurses is that, after all this time, the police have finally found Sheila’s late husband’s missing hand, and Sheila has been called in to identify and claim the ring that remained upon one mummified finger.
With Sheila absent, Clementine feels a bit more at ease. She wanders out onto the verandah of the veterans’ wing, where Dan is parked in his wheelchair. Beside him stands a tall, lean-bodied man with dark hair and eyes. He is wearing a windbreaker with a crest on the chest that reads FAIREVILLE MEMORIAL ARENA; the words ARENA MANAGER are embossed on one sleeve. He appears to be about Clementine’s age.
“Aaron,” Dan says, in that rumbling, sage-like voice of his, “here comes the young lady that I’ve been dying for you to meet.”
Aaron extends his hand. “You must be Clementine. Great-Gramps here talks about you all the time.”
As Clementine takes Aaron’s hand, a little jolt of electricity skips through her fingertips and spreads over her skin. She sees the pupils dilate slightly in Aaron’s dark eyes, and she wonder
s if he felt it, too.
“All good things, I hope,” Clementine says.
“All good things, believe me,” Aaron says. His voice sounds the way that Clementine imagines Dapper Dan’s did seventy years ago. “He thinks you’re the reincarnation of the woman he was crazy about during the war.”
“That’s not exactly how I explained it,” Dan protests. “I never said ‘reincarnation.’ You know I don’t believe in that stuff. You live, you die, you’re gone; that’s it, that’s all, that’s everything.”
He shakes his head and shifts in his chair; this is as agitated as Clementine has ever seen him.
“Besides, Mary could still be alive, for all I know. I tried to find her after they let me go, but there are a lot of Mary Browns in the world. She probably has a different name now, anyway. She probably married someone else before they even discharged me.” He shrugs his shoulders and sighs. “I suppose she could have found me, though, if she’d really wanted to. There aren’t so many of us Dan Springthorpes around.”
Aaron and Clementine look at each other. Neither is sure what to say.
“But never mind any of that,” Dan says, his voice returning to its usual steady tone. “If there are two young people in the world who should meet each other, it’s the two of you. Clementine, some folks say that Aaron here is the spitting image of me as a younger man.”
“I see the resemblance,” she says, unable to pull her gaze away from Aaron.
Aaron cannot look away from Clementine, either.
What is going on here? they both wonder. Is this what déjà vu feels like?
“It’s kind of incredible that we’ve never bumped into each other before,” Aaron says.
“You only come on Sundays,” Dan says to Aaron.
“Sunday is my only day off from work.”
“Mine, too,” Clementine says. “The one day you come here is the one day that I don’t. Fate has been working against us, hasn’t it?”
Why did I say that last part? Clementine wonders.
“Well,” Dan says, “fate is about to turn in the opposite direction.” He shakes a handful of twenty-dollar bills in the air. “Tonight the two of you are going to go out on a date. My treat.”
“Oh, Mr. Springthorpe,” Clementine says. She never calls him Mr. Springthorpe, but she somehow feels like she should right now. “I can’t take your money, and I don’t think I can go out on a date with your great-grandson, either. Nurse Sheila would definitely see that as a conflict of interest.”
Dapper Dan rolls his eyes. “Well, what Nurse Sheila doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Or you. And, conflict of interest or not, I see that you two are still holding hands.”
Aaron and Clementine both glance downward. It’s true.
As their fingers release, Clementine’s fingers touch Aaron’s wrist, right where the radial artery runs through, and electricity surges through both of their bodies from that tiny point of contact.
It isn’t like electrocution, though. It isn’t the kind of electricity that hurts or kills. It is stored energy being released, potential energy turning kinetic. It is the kind of electricity that brings people back to life again.
“I don’t suppose it would be the end of the world if we shared a meal together,” Clementine concedes.
Tomorrow Clementine will return to the Faireville Nursing Home, to empty dirty bedpans, to change colostomy bags, to spoon-feed the frail, to help the fragile out of their beds and into their chairs, to listen to Nurse Sheila call her “Clem” and issue screeching commands. And during her rounds tomorrow, Clementine will find Dapper Dan, his final mission completed, his tour of duty finished.
Tomorrow, Aaron will return to his job at the Faireville Memorial Arena, to change the oil in the Zamboni, to mow the grass around the building, to pick up the trash that’s blown onto the parking lot from the high school next door, and to listen to the mayor of Faireville rant over the phone about how the arena “has got to cut its operating budget by twenty percent, or there’ll be hell to pay.” And then the next phone call he takes will be from Clementine.
In the final moments of today, though, a happily inebriated Clementine will lie back on the rug in Aaron’s small living room, and she will convulse with the electricity that surges into her body from Aaron’s hands and mouth. And then, on the sofa, her hands and mouth will return every favour, delightful shock by delightful shock.
And then, on top of his bed, Aaron will fill Clementine with his grandfather’s inheritance, fully and completely, again and again and again. And again atop the kitchen table. And again on the sofa. And again on the rug. And once more on the bed.
And when the explosions from the final run have burned down to embers, Aaron will say to Clementine, “I feel reborn.”
“Or maybe reincarnated,” Clementine will reply.
One of Clementine’s nipples will press into the pulse in Aaron’s wrist as he reaches to slide his finger into the silver ring nestled between Clementine’s breasts, which hangs beside her crucifix on a simple, slender chain.
“I had a ring like this once,” he says. “It had the same inscription inside, too.”
“I thought it was one-of-a-kind,” Clementine says.
“I thought that mine was, too.”
Just before they fall asleep together, Aaron will whisper, “That was the most perfect day I’ve had in a very long time.”
To which Clementine will reply, “You know, Aaron, you can count the number of perfect days in a year on the toes of one foot.”
James Yeo Is Going Away
James is jolted awake by his cellphone, which blares its tinny ring tone version of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” It takes a moment for James to remember where he is.
The first orange sunlight of the day trickles into the waiting area of Pearson International Airport, Terminal One. Attendants gradually appear behind the airline ticket counters. There is the whirr of wheeled luggage and the hum of hushed conversations as the first passengers of the day move through the airport.
James sits up; there is a pain in his neck where it was pitched over the back of the blue-on-chrome chair. The computer is warm atop his lap; the last words he typed are still backlit on the screen:
James Yeo is going away.
“We Are the Champions” continues playing.
James hears Roland Baron’s voice grunting out the tune, and the endless-loop film of Roland thrusting into Sidney replays on his mental viewscreen, over and over and over again. It makes James’s stiff neck itchy and hot. He tugs his leather jacket from the seat beside him and grabs the phone from the inside pocket like he’s trying to suffocate it.
“Shut up!” he says, and he punches the answer button, just to make the song stop playing.
“Jimmy Yeo!” Harry Riskey’s voice crackles from the cellphone speaker. “Where in THE HELL are you? Have you lost your fucking mind? What in THE HELL has gotten into you?”
James just breathes into the phone.
Harry screams again, with evangelical furor, “What in THE HELLLLLLLLLL has gotten INTO YOU?”
James stares out into the white blur of the airport and says evenly, “Maybe you should ask Sidney what’s gotten into her.”
“The cops tried to contact Sidney after they found the car, James. When they couldn’t find her, they came to me, James. What in THE HELL were you thinking? What in THE HELL is the matter with you?”
Oh. Right. The car. James had forgotten about the car.
After his visit to Priya’s place, James stopped for a few drinks at a local bar. Well, more than just a few. He may have blacked out at some point. When he came to, the interior of the Honda Civic was clouded with powder from the airbag deploying. Through the cracked windshield, a slim suburban maple tree seemed to be growing out from under the crumpled hood.
James had to ram the door with his shoulder a
few times to force it open, as the impact had wedged it slightly into the door frame. Then he casually stepped out of the smashed Civic. The car was crumpled, but he was relatively undamaged. He felt fine. Physically, anyway.
Out of habit, James grabbed his briefcase from the passenger seat and then strolled to the nearest main street, where he hailed the first taxi he saw.
And now here he is. YYZ. The song starts playing in his head again, thankfully drowning out “We Are the Champions.” But then Harry Riskey’s voice continues raging through the cellphone speaker: “I do NOT appreciate having my home visited by cops in the middle of the night, Jimmy! That is NOT what I need.”
“Did you think it was a fraud investigation, Harry?”
“What? What did you say? What do you think you know about …”
Harry pauses. James can picture him pacing back and forth across the endangered-species hardwood floor of his den.
“Jimmy,” Harry says, now doing his best imitation of fatherly, “what happened? Why did you abandon the car like that?” His voice becomes almost angelic. “Is there something upsetting you, Jimmy? Did something happen at the doctor’s office? You can talk to me, Jimmy. I’m here for you, Jimmy.”
On the rare occasion that Harry makes a sales call, he is prone to repeating the target’s name over and over like this. James knows the technique too well.
“It’s James, Harry. Not Jimmy. My name is James.”
“Talk to me, James,” he says, practically purring. “I’m here for you, James.”
“Harry,” James says, pausing for some time. He wants to phrase this in just the right way. “I don’t think that Sidney and I are going to be providing you with any heirs.”
“Awwwww, I knew it!” Harry bawls. “I knew you were shooting blanks! I knew it was you! I knew it wasn’t Sidney!”
“No,” James says, “it’s because of Sidney.”
“How could it possibly be her fault? It couldn’t possibly be her fault.”
Rockets Versus Gravity Page 13
