The Hummingbird

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Finally he capitulated: “Aw, what the hell.” Reaching in, he undid the holster altogether and tugged it out. The pistol clunked against the cockpit floor. Donny squinted at Soga, who took a long appraisal of the gun, then returned to scanning the switches and dials.

  “What do you make of that?” Donny asked.

  “In my flight years, I too carried a weapon always. Against my left leg.”

  Donny dropped the pistol in the cubby behind his fuel selector valve, on top of some pencils and a little notebook. As they each buckled in, he flicked switches, and the engine growled to life. Soga’s grin was visible from outside the aircraft.

  “That’s right,” Donny said, putting on aviator sunglasses. “Ain’t a man alive doesn’t love that sound. Two hundred and thirty horses, climb rate better than nine hundred feet a minute.”

  He slid on headphones and motioned for Soga to do the same. They idled while Donny reviewed his preflight checklist. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Soga surveyed the cockpit, the instruments and indicators, and held his hands wide. “No stick.”

  “This yoke here does the same thing.” He moved the wheel forward and back. “Elevators, yaw control. Pedals are the same too.”

  As Soga nodded in understanding, Donny raised the idle and the plane began to roll. “There’s my six-­pack,” he said, tapping a cluster of indicators. “But I bet you have no clue what that means. Do they even have them in Japan?”

  “Six-­packs?”

  “It’s an indicator array, Soga. Look.” He tapped each of the dials with his fingertip, two rows of three. “Air speed, attitude, altimeter on top, then vertical speed, turn coordinator, and gyro—­that’s like a super compass.”

  Soga nodded. “Most excellent.” However, he stretched upward in his seat.

  Donny noticed with a scowl. “Can you even see anything?”

  Soga shook his head. “Six-­pack is most excellent.”

  “Hang on a damn second.” Donny applied the brakes and reached over between Soga’s legs. “Should have done this before you got in, but I didn’t figure you’d be shorter than my wife. Now hoist yourself up, if you can.” He pulled forward the seat crank. “Up, up, let’s go. I can’t lift you all by myself.”

  Soga pulled on the overhead handle, straightening his legs till his bottom rose off the seat, while Donny turned the crank as high as it would go. “How’s that? Can you see over the dashboard now?”

  “Excellent view,” Soga said, lowering himself. “Many trees.”

  “You are high maintenance, buster,” Donny said, shaking his head.

  They taxied to the runway with redwoods to clear. But that choice presented no difficulties: Donny goosed the throttles, the engine roared, and by the time they passed over the trees, the aircraft was well aloft and headed out to sea.

  Donny Baker III kept meticulous flight logs. Papers he later filed indicate that initially they flew west. Then he chose a course of north-­northwest, into the prevailing wind, following the coast.

  That shoreline provides dramatic views as huge monoliths of stone rise from the sea. Soga leaned forward to peer out the window. From time to time he commented on some landmark, but Donny made no reply. Eventually they reached a stretch of shoreline where there were no houses, no settlements.

  Without warning, Donny pulled the yoke to the left. At the same time, he stepped hard on the right rudder—­not unlike deliberately making a car fishtail. The plane skidded in the air, loose items in back tumbling across the cabin.

  With identical controls right in front of him, Soga knew precisely what was happening. The aircraft was in an intentional yaw, one set of controls making a left turn while another set banked to the right. But he did not protest, nor speak at all. He simply reached up and, to keep from falling out of his seat, he clasped the overhand handle with both hands.

  Donny saw this reaction and reversed direction, the yoke pulled right and the left rudder pedal lowered. The Cessna shuddered and leaned, things sliding in back again. Soga held on as he was pinned against his door.

  “Hell with it,” Donny growled, levelling off. “Never mind.”

  At Gold Beach, Donny arced the 182 southward, putting Soga on the ocean side of the view. With a tailwind they made quick mileage. Donny increased their altitude, the altimeter dial slowly turning clockwise as they navigated eastward toward the Cape Blanco Lighthouse.

  “They say you used that as a landmark.”

  “Towns were all blackout. It was navigation beacon.”

  Donny snorted. “Kind of defeats the blackout, right?”

  “Mission was never about city or ­people. Was about forest.”

  “I helped put your goddam fire out, you know.”

  “Truly? Did not know that, sir.”

  “Yeah,” Donny groused. “I led the team that found the site, put it out fast, showed the army who was boss of the woods, and got repaid with a friggin’ demotion. Plus they took my gun—­and the bomb fragments I found.”

  He maintained an eastward heading, continuing to climb. Soon they reached four thousand feet, pointing straight at Mount Emily. The timberlands provided a view entirely of green. Suddenly Donny shoved the wheel away, and the nose dropped. Both men rose against their seatbelts as the aircraft plummeted. Pencils flew out of the cubby. The pistol rattled in its place.

  “Vertical speed?” Soga asked, tapping one indicator.

  “Yup.” The needle had rushed from white into yellow, and was now pinned at the outer extreme of red—­a loss of 1,500 feet per minute. A start at four thousand feet meant two minutes and forty seconds till impact.

  As if in confirmation, the altimeter spun down counterclockwise. The attitude indicator showed a 30-­degree rate of fall, and its bobbing globe, normally half white for sky, was all brown. In fact the view out the windshield revealed all forest and no sky. The Cessna plunged like a stone.

  “What if we bought it right here?” Donny said. “Huh? What if I just augured us right the hell into Mount Emily?”

  Thirty-­three hundred feet. Three thousand. The plane was tilting over onto its right wing. The engine whined.

  Soga placed a finger on the altimeter. Twenty-­seven hundred. “Your daughter would feel the loss of you, sir, for many years.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But what about you, mister bomber pilot? What if I just spread you all over this forest right now?”

  Twenty-­two hundred feet. Eighteen hundred. The dive was accelerating.

  Soga bowed. “With respect, sir, I thought to die here fifty years ago.”

  “Should I pull us out?”

  Twelve hundred feet. The engine began overspeeding, revving on nothing as air rushed past the fuselage with a high shrill note. Both men’s ears began to ache.

  “Maybe this was where everything was supposed to wind up,” Donny said. “Maybe we both got on this flight fifty years ago.”

  Soga gripped his overhead handle again. “You have a great deal more to lose today than do I.”

  “You mean Heather.”

  Nine hundred feet.

  “Also your wife and home. Also respectful community and prosperous life.”

  Six hundred feet.

  “Much loss in order to kill an old man who will not live long anyway.”

  Four hundred. The Cessna was shaking from nose to tail.

  “You clever bastard,” Donny said. “Check this out.”

  He balanced the wings with his feet, then pulled the yoke hard against his belly. The nose began to curve away from the ground, and Donny jammed the throttle forward, the engine pulling them horizontal. The air speed indicator zoomed into red as they roared through the curve, passing two hundred miles an hour as the aircraft curved, and strained, and leveled off at four hundred feet.

  The G forces of arresting the fall pinned both men hard in t
heir seats. Outside, the sky came back into view. Soga pinched his nose and swallowed to ease the pressure in his ears.

  “Yee-­haw,” Donny yelled, slamming the dashboard with his hand. “What the hell do you make of that?”

  “From thirty degrees of slope to level? At that speed? I have never flown an aircraft that could recover from such a dive.”

  “What?” Donny laughed. “You thought we’d already bought it?”

  Soga adjusted his eyeglasses. “Most excellent aircraft.”

  “I should say the hell so,” Donny continued laughing. “But if you thought we were going to crash, why didn’t you grab the gun? You could have shot me and saved yourself. Or pointed the pistol and forced me to pull up.”

  Soga shook his head. “Force is no longer my way.”

  Donny pondered that as he navigated south, easing the throttle back, starting a fresh climb. For several miles, neither man spoke. Soga relaxed his grip on the handle. Soon they were droning down the coast again. Off the left wing, the northern edge of Brookings came into view. Donny banked eastward, inland. The ocean fell away behind them. The world below lay all in green.

  “You know my daughter admires you,” he said at last.

  Soga bowed his head. “As I admire her.”

  “You and me, we’re old guys. From a different time.”

  “With respect, sir, you are still young man.”

  “Naw,” Donny said. “But look here.” He pointed. “That’s where you dropped those goddam bombs of yours.”

  Soga leaned toward the window again. “Appears most different.”

  “The trees are fifty years taller. But I want you to listen a second.”

  Soga sat back. Donny stared ahead, into the sun’s glare.

  “Yes?” Soga said.

  Donny chewed his upper lip. “Aw, hell.”

  “There is a problem, sir?”

  Donny removed his sunglasses. “It’s Heather giving you that damn hug.”

  “Most excellent young woman.”

  “Hell, I know that,” Donny said. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “No, sir. Of course.”

  “It’s just that if you can become a peacenik, you of all ­people, after we whipped your country’s ass to China and back, not to mention burning Tokyo and blasting the shit out of two other cities, and yet you come here all these times, and then my daughter can hug you like that, do you get it? Goddamn it, do you get it?”

  “So sorry,” Soga replied. “I do not understand.”

  “Do you think you’re better than me, somehow?”

  Soga shook his head. “Never.”

  “Well, that’s my point exactly. If you can do it, and she can do it, what in the hell does it mean if I can’t do it?” He banged his fist on the armrest. “Goddamn it.”

  Soga made no reply.

  Donny glared at him, then put his sunglasses back on. He faced forward, wringing the steering handles. All at once he laughed loudly. “Fine. Fine.” He lifted his hands from the controls. “Your aircraft, mister.”

  “I do not understand, sir.”

  “We’re over your old route. We’ll pass the memorial any second. Fly it again now.”

  “Truly?”

  “Before I change my mind.”

  “Has been many years.”

  Donny folded his hands in his lap. “We ain’t on autopilot, bub.”

  Soga straightened in his seat and took the wheel, checking the air speed and altitude. He squeezed the handles, testing their feel. Then he eased to starboard, heading southeast, leveling off as they passed deeper over the forest.

  “Hah,” Ichiro Soga said. “Most excellent.”

  “Yeah.” Donny Baker III interlaced his hands behind his head. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 17

  MOSTLY HE SLEPT. But that was good news, because it meant the cancer was gentle. No need to stupefy him with pain meds, just maintain the anti-­nausea drugs—­which were working well. He did not toss in bed, and never objected when two hours had passed and I needed to turn him again. As a result he had no sores, zero. Clinically, his case was one of the better ones.

  The hard part for me—­and of course I had the easier job by far—­was experiencing the decline of the Professor’s mind. During a long doze, he would mutter strange phrases and random thoughts. “Tenure review. . . . De Gaulle Airport . . . cumulo-­nimbus.”

  But then something recognizable would emerge that told me he was doing some kind of mind-­work, some processing task, and his intellect was still functioning. “Elevation above sea level. . . . No stick.”

  Yes, I was still reading The Sword to him. He seemed to find pleasure in it, even when asleep. His breathing eased. He spent less time tugging on that tuft of hair.

  Now and then he would come fully awake, launching into a discussion midway as if we had been talking for hours. Those conversations were jewels.

  “Nurse Birch, you said it enlarges ­people and I disagreed. I have now changed my opinion.”

  It was noon on a Friday in high summer, and those were his first words of the day. “What does?”

  “Suffering. You asserted it on the bridge. You used the word ‘enlarge.’ ”

  “Oh. I probably did. What changed your mind?”

  “Contemplating Deirdre.”

  I drew my chair closer to his bed. “I’m listening.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  “Well, what you think is more important right now.”

  He threw up his hands. “Will you ever desist from being evasive?”

  “All right. I was surprised at how you signed your letter.”

  “Barclay instead of Dad or Father?”

  “No. That you didn’t say love. As in: love, Barclay.”

  “We are not a family that expresses affection overtly. But that is exactly the point I want to make about suffering, and how it is enlarging me: I have realized that Deirdre will experience her father’s love for many years.”

  “Through an untrue letter?”

  “Through inheritance.” He sniffed. “My daughter will receive this house and all its contents. Oswego Lake has grown so posh, the proceeds will make her relatively rich. Thus I will have provided for her, in spite of her spite.”

  “Sounds less like generosity and more like revenge.”

  “Not one bit,” he said. “As I allow myself to imagine, her benefits will be free of any fatherly vindictiveness.”

  The Professor had begun using his lecture voice, and I sat back, pleased to hear it once again. “Help me understand.”

  “Consider the effect, when she’s living in a nicer house. Or driving a nicer car. I imagine her sipping a cappuccino by a fountain in Rome. Or no. Strolling a side street in Paris—­with a lover, for her sake I hope so. Finding a petit parfumerie, and she enters with a little tinkle of the clochette.”

  He shook two fingers as if to ring an imaginary bell.

  “Deirdre will not be thinking of me in the least,” he continued. “But I can sit here with you today, and know that I will be giving her that moment in the future, and feel keen pleasure in it. Money is not love, quite possibly the opposite. But if my years of mortgage payments provide her with middle-­aged comfort, I confess to a wry kind of contentment.”

  I waited a moment before replying. “Isn’t healing amazing?”

  “You find my reasoning to be healing in nature?”

  “I do.”

  “Then yes, Nurse Birch. It is.”

  We fell into a long silence. Even in his awake spells, the silences were getting longer every time. We were preparing ourselves.

  “At any rate,” he said at last, “as I am disposing of my estate, one item remains in question.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “As well you should, giv
en that it concerns you.” He pushed the rolling tray toward me. The black binder lay on top.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Sword. I want you to have it.”

  “Professor, I can’t possibly accept—­”

  “Editors are not going to change their minds about my credibility. It will never see print. But to me the book signifies this whole ordeal we have undertaken together.”

  “Thank you very much, but I can’t.”

  He thumbed the binder forward, inching it off the table. “If you refuse to catch it, my book will fall to the floor.”

  “I am serious, Professor.”

  But he kept pushing. When the binder tipped off, I grabbed it in one hand. “Too many ­people at the end of their lives show excessive generosity to their caregivers. I am here because it is my job.”

  He sneered. “You mean to suggest that your experience in my home has at no time transcended the professional?”

  “Of course not, Professor. I just—­”

  “Here is a concrete manifestation of that truth. And it is something no other person on earth would comprehend. Only we understand.”

  He was right. Deirdre insisted the book was a fiction. I hadn’t made up my mind yet, and the Professor wasn’t helping. About two things, though, there were no questions: The Sword was helping me with Michael. And reading it with Barclay Reed was establishing a relationship unique in my experience.

  I sat back. “How about if I keep this here until you don’t need it anymore? Then I would love to have it.”

  “That would please me.”

  I held the binder to my chest. “In that case, thank you.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, relaxing back into the pillow. “I should be thanking you. I have labored whole days working up the courage to offer it to you. I imagined you would refuse it. Thus I am immensely gratified that you accepted.”

  What a notion. The main thing that giving a big gift required was courage.

  Did I have the nerve to give Michael what he needed? And if I managed to figure out what that was, could I have faith that he would accept it? Was I capable of behaving as boldly as the Professor? In that instant, an idea occurred to me—­the smartest, riskiest idea of my entire married life.