Flight Risk

by Jennifer Fenn

  He tried to jerk the nose back up, regain altitude, but he was too late. Branches snapped against the windshield. The moon was swallowed by the woods’ dense darkness. Metal groaned, and a wave of dirt and grass and pine needles rose and coated the windshield as Robert threw down the wheels, though the move was futile, he knew. The plane rocked left, then right, then left again. Robert braced himself, afraid it would tip.

  He had not buckled his seat belt. One more forgotten detail, the last directions he’d ever forget. Finally, his wandering mind would kill him.

  N2008SC shuddered to a shaky stop. The sudden silence echoed with the cacophony he’d created.

  Robert smelled gasoline.

  He leaned over and retched, throwing up on the passenger seat. Purple and sour, tinted by the Now and Later.

  Robert pushed open the door, immediately tripped in the brush, then rolled away from the wrecked plane. Broken tree limbs dangled from the twisted propeller. The cowling hung open, bent, revealing the engine’s coiling intestines. Cracks webbed the windshield, and scratches exposed the silver aluminum beneath the plane’s paint.

  Robert lay on the ground. He couldn’t feel his legs or hands, and he wondered if he’d broken his spine. Then invisible pins and needles pricked his limbs, and he slowly rose to his feet. Sweat drenched his clothes, and he shivered in the misty woods. He looked left and right for a trail, a break in the trees. The sky was the color of a fresh bruise, the pine branches sutures across the moon’s flesh.

  He staggered in a circle around the N2008SC, mouth agape at the damage. The crumpled nose dipped to the forest floor. A chunk of the left wing had been thrown a few feet into the brush. The plane’s back end tottered into the branches, like the tip of a seesaw. Ribbons of sheared paint waved from the rudder like forgotten party streamers, curling up the plane’s underbelly.

  Robert limped back around to the pilot’s hatch. He reached in and grabbed the manuals, shaking bits of glass from the pages. He wasn’t about to lose them like his stupid Greens.

  Then he heard a rustling from a patch of shadow in the forest that somehow seemed darker than the rest.

  A rustling that exhaled steaming clouds.

  A bear stood up on two legs, his mouth open and nostrils flaring with great pungent puffs of breath. His inky black ears pricked the air. A white fur crescent moon bloomed over the bear’s chest. He was taller than Robert, at least six and a half feet, with broad paws.

  They stared at each other, neither making a sound.

  A triangular chunk was missing from the bear’s right ear.

  He knew what he was supposed to do if he encountered a bear. Mr. Drew had told them: avoid eye contact, clap his hands above his head, back away slowly. As a last resort, play dead.

  But Robert and the bear had locked eyes, and instead of aggression, Robert saw a single word in those dark, still pools. Run. Even though Mr. Drew had said not to, even though Mr. Drew had said that to try to outrun a bear was certain suicide.

  In that instant, Robert saw his father turning from the bedroom window and running, running, running into the forest, shedding the cops and the trailer and Deb.

  Robert’s every nerve crackled.

  Blood crashed through his veins, his heart a bass drum.

  He turned and ran, and in between heaving breaths he laughed, panic burbling from his throat. Crashing through the brush, briars scraping his skin, not looking back for fear of seeing a raised paw and bared teeth, until he reached the sand. He collapsed on his knees, his chest heaving.

  Robert was already half a mile down the beach when he realized he’d left his stash from the house in the glass-dusted passenger seat.

  Just a bunch of candy. He wouldn’t go back.

  * * *

  He wasted who-knew-how-long trying to figure out where he was. Robert searched the sky for the stars and signs Mr. Drew had told them about, the navigational touchstones he’d been taught to find. But clouds shrouded the stars and the pine-edged streets all looked the same, and soon he found himself back on the beach.

  Suddenly, like a key clicking into a lock, he realized his location exactly. A pin pushed into his mental map.

  The same sandy stretch he’d spent his boyhood surfing. The dim house he stood in front of was the one that those teenagers had commandeered for so many long, hot days, ambling between it and the waves. The place he swore he’d never return to.

  The dark combined with his inexperience had led to a serious navigational error.

  Robert cursed and kicked sand at the sea. He pulled at his dirty hair.

  He was back on Yannatok.

  ACT II

  A ZONE OF TURBULENCE

  From The Beginning Pilot’s Flight Guide (p. 28):

  Students complete their lessons in aircrafts equipped with two sets of controls: one to be used by the instructor and one to be used by the student. In an emergency, the instructor can and should take control of the plane. There should never be any question as to who is flying the airplane at any time. Numerous accidents have been caused due to a miscommunication about who actually has control of the aircraft.

  FEBRUARY 9, 2010

  Robert shimmied up the house’s piling and swung onto the back deck. Eagles swooped and squawked over rolling, gray waves. The distant spruces gave no hint as to the secret they now contained.

  He tugged on the screen door until its rickety frame bent enough for him to slip his hand through. He tugged on the sliding glass door’s knob, rattling the lock. Another Dalton trick: shaking those things hard enough jimmies the lock.

  Robert let himself in and closed the door behind him.

  He half expected to discover the remnants of a keg party, but the house’s former teenage inhabitants hadn’t left a trace. He rinsed off in the shower. Dirt and blood swirled down the drain. He borrowed a fluffy towel and a pair of khaki shorts a size too big; they hung loosely off his hips. He assessed his injuries and found nothing too severe. Scrapes, bumps, bruises, and aches, more of which seemed to be from his rampage through the brush than the actual crash. Then he stretched out on the sectional, carefully moving a half dozen or so taupe throw pillows onto the floor. He was sore enough from his escapade that sleeping on the floor was out.

  The remote was nestled in the cushions. Buttons rioted over the black rectangle: oval ones, yellow ones, two different sets of numbers. Of course these people had digital cable. The trailer had twenty channels.

  He could fly a plane, but he couldn’t work the television.

  He rummaged around in the fridge and cracked open a Pepsi, then toyed with the remote until the TV flickered to life.

  He wondered if he would see his adventure on the news. Robert flipped through the channels, but within fifteen minutes he was restless and found himself back out on the deck. He watched eagles dip and dive, finished his soda, and relived his flight. In the pilot’s seat, his rushing brain had finally been in sync. He’d always been told to slow down, calm down, focus. When he was flying, the world had finally caught up to him, accelerated to match his pace. He was itching to do it again. If he had another chance, Robert knew he could land a plane.

  From the Yannatok Tide: “Stolen Plane Crashed in Woods,” February 10, 2010

  YANNATOK—A Cessna 182 was stolen from North County Airport early last night and crash-landed in the woods near Highway 41 on Yannatok Island sometime before dawn Tuesday morning.

  The plane is owned by Gary Stanton of Overlook Township.

  “I heard a loud crash around two, two fifteen,” Conrad Porter of Portland reported to local authorities. “I’m just glad no one got hurt.”

  Porter owns a vacation home near the crash site.

  No other witnesses have come forward, but physical evidence left at the scene, including vomit found in the cockpit, is being investigated.

  “Drug cartels are often behind the theft of smaller planes,” Sheriff Holt of the Yannatok Sheriff’s Department commented. “We are looking into every possibility, and tha
t includes heroin running into Seattle. But the way the plane was left doesn’t fit that pattern. This would be the work of a very inexperienced drug runner.”

  He added, “The trees are so dense out here, it’s lucky no one was killed.”

  Sheriff Holt encouraged the community to report any suspicious activity witnessed in the area near the scene.

  Interview with Gary Stanton, North County Airport, October 19, 2010

  From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story

  “I had always dreamed of flying. When I was growing up, airports were shopping centers. You could finesse a business deal over a round of drinks, meet your lady with flowers, put your nose to the glass and watch those giants take off. I collected miniature bombers and jets. I even slept on sheets patterned with planes. But I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, so the air force was out for me. I became a history professor instead. The military buffs, the boys who watched the History Channel, would linger after class and we’d talk about the real story of the Red Baron, look at Raptors and F-16s on the computer. And I played around with simulators, too, the same ones I read the Kelley kid learned from.

  “My dad was a carpenter. Built his own house. All the furniture, too. Then he got arthritis. His hands started to look like old trees, all gnarled and swollen. Had to retire. And I feel it in my joints, too. Scary, when the stiffness, the pain starts to set in. Then my wife surprised me with flight lessons for my sixtieth birthday. Behind the controls, my fingers felt loose again. And I admit it, I whooped like a boy when I first took the controls. Nothing like it. For the kid to want to experience that, well, I understand. I don’t condone what he did, but I understand it. I pulled money out of my retirement savings to buy that plane, thinking my wife and I would fly on the weekend. Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, even.

  “And then Robert Jackson Kelley crashed my plane.”

  FEBRUARY 10, 2010

  Deb drove and waited, drove and waited. For the call that Robert had been found, to come get him at the hospital, the trailer, the county lockup.

  But she didn’t see so much as a cruiser. She was the only one looking.

  She spent an afternoon watching the line for the ferry to Seattle twist down the docks. Behind her sunglasses she checked every face. A group of kids boarded, the girls in high leather boots over their tight jeans. Like riding boots. Deb bet at least one of these glossy-haired girls kept a horse at the stables where Deb traded three hours of scooping dirty hay for an hour of riding. Sweating and wrecking her back on her day off. The boys slouched in their hoodies, and every one of them tapped on their phones and didn’t even look up as the ferry pushed away from the shore.

  And she knew, as the ferry shrank, the kids blurring, that her phone would only ring when her son had been arrested.

  It’d be for something petty, like trespassing, she reassured herself. And if Robert was in one piece, even in handcuffs, she’d be relieved. A present for them both.

  She’d even wish him a happy birthday.

  * * *

  Back at the house, Robert rounded up his belongings, which weren’t much: the flight manuals, the stolen navy hoodie and gray shorts, his waterlogged sneakers. He rummaged around the garage for anything that would come in handy and scored a tent. He borrowed that and whatever food he could carry.

  He might get lucky, and the home’s owners might not show up for months. Years, even. But Robert couldn’t count on it. He had to skip town before he was caught by the owners of the plane or the house. Yannatok was one small island.

  He had to disappear.

  Robert pushed into the forest along the road and walked until he could only see furrowed bark and spiky green needles in every direction. He started clearing out an area to pitch the tent, snapping off branches and hurling them into the woods. He wished he had a hatchet. Thunder rumbled, and soon rain streamed down his face. The tent was harder to set up than Robert had bargained. He tried to remember the steps he’d practiced back at Sea Brook, when he’d been assembling these things in record time, but ended up crouching beneath a sagging nylon roof. Holes in the tent had been patched with peeling duct tape. He stared at the blue tarp as raindrops spattered the tent, and pondered his own stupidity. Why hadn’t he grabbed matches? A knife? A blanket? A flashlight?

  Sometimes Robert had to wonder if he really did have a mental disorder.

  Water dripped onto his flight manuals. He should have sealed them in baggies. Once the sun set, the already dim woods were plunged into pitch-black darkness. Thick branches blocked any moonlight.

  Robert remembered the bear.

  He tried to stay dry while he thought about his next maneuver. He had to figure out a way off the island. Tomorrow he could abandon his campsite and try to hitchhike to the ferry. In Seattle, he’d be able to blend in, and he could stake his claim on a more hospitable patch of wilderness somewhere near the shore. He’d lie low for a while, then return home to pick up Hulk.

  He slept fitfully, tossing and turning. He might have been asleep five hours or five minutes when the crunch of branches snapping beneath an invading army of boots ripped open the night. Hunters? A gang of stoners searching for a place to get high? Robert bolted up. His neck ached, a reminder of his airborne misadventure.

  A walkie-talkie’s crackle. Cops? More lumbering footsteps. Definitely cops. The only question was how many.

  Robert’s tent would give him away. He was trapped there unless he made a run for it. Once he was in the thickets, disappearing would be easy.

  He rose to his knees, crouched, and unzipped the tent. He rolled the flight manuals into a loose, thick tube and stuffed them into his pants.

  If the police mistook him for a bear, would they shoot him?

  Robert took a deep breath and crashed into the woods. The tent collapsed, and he shook the nylon from his foot. He could hear the police trampling the brush behind him.

  He leaped over a rotting log, caught his toe in the splintered pulp, stumbled, and kept running. The slick pine needle carpet stuck to his sneakers.

  He glanced back just long enough to see an arm, a leg, a boot clad in brown and black. The cops were tangled in green spruce needles, slowing as the boughs snagged their clothes, tore at their skin. Robert let the branches lash against his face, scratch his arms, claw his clothes. Each scratch, each slash widened the distance between him and his pursuers. He plowed ahead, blood smearing his forehead, dripping into his eyebrows.

  The cops were running for their reputations; Robert was running for his freedom.

  You’re a natural athlete, Mr. Drew had said. This race through the woods was the track meet he’d never run in. His feet slid over the needles, barely seeming to touch the ground. Would there be a finish line? Would he know when he reached it?

  After a few minutes, Robert’s own thundering, ragged breath deafened him to the noise of the cops. He had to pause at a clearing, clutching his knees, to see if they were still behind him, and if so, how far.

  Stillness, not even a bird’s rustle. Scattered raindrops still fell, mingling with the blood on his forehead. He wiped his eyes.

  He had lost them. For now.

  The plane must have been found, or at least reported missing. What he didn’t know was if the police were looking for him, or just looking.

  The ferry could be crawling with cops. Set like a trap. He’d have to dodge the eyes of the other passengers, the crew. He’d have to wait in line, standing still. The ferry would crawl over the water like a bug trapped in thickening sap.

  Might as well paint a target on his back.

  He had to get off the island. And how could he do that on the ground?

  Robert started for the house. He had studying to do.

  Interview with Mira Wohl, Willamette University cafeteria, October 2, 2010

  From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story

  “So Robert was out there roughin’ it, serious survivor stuff. Like catching fish with his bare hands and building fires with st
icks. Wearing camo and infrared goggles like special ops do. Blending into the trees so that bears would just walk by him. Cops would stomp around where he was hiding, and half the time he was right there, a couple of feet away. One time the cops all stop. They can smell the candy on his breath. Sour apple. So they’re sniffin’ away like drug dogs, trying to figure out where it’s comin’ from. They’re craning their necks, looking in the trees.

  “Then a cop steps in a wad of gum from a Blow Pop. Bright green, shiny little bits of lollipop still stuck to it. Cop’s cursing, dirt’s sticking to his shoe. And Robert’s ghosted again.”

  FEBRUARY 11, 2010

  Holt was beginning to wonder if the trailer park and the woods creeping behind it were cursed. He swore that since he’d been here looking for Rob Kelley the trees had snaked closer to the trailers, reaching for the yards, the porches, the front doors. One day, these folks would wake up to tree branches rapping on their windows, nudging their way inside.

  The trailer hadn’t changed a bit. These lots were landscaped with beer cans and cigarette butts. Gravel driveways dissolved into stumpy porches. If Holt lived here, he’d be looking for a flight out, too.

  Sure, the park looked down on its luck, but Robert Jackson Kelley had gotten very lucky. Who walked away from a crash like that? And then to outrun three men! Ragged scabs still dotted Holt’s own face from their race through the woods. After that, Holt had ordered his department not to speak to anyone about the case.

  But the kid was no master criminal. His fingerprints were on the plane’s controls. He’d puked in the cockpit. And he’d left a bag of candy, of all things, in the passenger seat, from which they’d been able to lift even more prints.

  But still, when Holt had opened the email from the technician at the crime lab and started scrolling down the list of possible print matches, and there, right there, had been Robert Jackson Kelley’s name, his birthday, a link to his record, Holt had been sure there’d been a mistake.