Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Her co-pilot said, ‘Five hundred feet, on airspeed, and sinking seven hundred feet per minute. Looks good, Carrie.’

  She blinked her eyes. Damn woolgathering.

  ‘Yep.’

  One last scan of the instruments: everything looked good, airspeed at 135 knots on glide slope, flaps down, wheels down and locked, the yoke in her hands trembling just a bit as she imagined she could feel the entire vibration of the cargo jet, letting her know through the sense of touch and her other senses what was going on. And what was going on was a nice, normal landing, and . . .

  Here we go, she thought.

  The last few seconds, it seemed like the runway surface was on a giant elevator, rising right up, fast and fast and fast, and—

  Slight bang.

  Main gear down and . . .

  Nose gear down.

  Sean next to her, calling out the decreasing airspeed as she reversed the engines: ‘One hundred knots, eighty knots,’ and Carrie applied the brakes, and ‘Sixty knots.’

  Good. Now they were at taxiing speed, no longer an aircraft, just a big old bus on the ground, and in her earphones Memphis Tower said, ‘AirBox Twelve, switch to ground control, point nine, on Yankee one.’

  ‘Memphis, ground,’ Carrie said, toggling the radio switch on the yoke. ‘AirBox Twelve is clear on Yankee one.’

  A different voice now: ‘AirBox Twelve, proceed to ramp AB12.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Now the jet felt heavy and slow, like an overweight Greyhound bus, waddling its way into the Port Authority terminal. With gravity now in control and working its magic touch, Carrie felt like she was driving a luxury car whose power steering had just cut off.

  She made the left turn, headed to the processing terminals up ahead. She switched on the number two radio on the center console, allowing her now to talk to the AirBox dispatcher.

  ‘AirBox center, this is AirBox twelve,’ she called out.

  ‘Evenin’, Twelve,’ came the soft twang of the dispatcher working tonight. Hank something-or-other.

  ‘Where do you want us tonight?’

  ‘Ramp four,’ came the reply.

  ‘Ramp four it is, thank you kindly,’ she said.

  A chuckle. ‘Not a problem, Splash.’

  Her hands tightened on the nose-wheel-steering tiller bar. She could sense Sean stiffen up in his seat, decided not to say anything about that crack. Okay. Carrie turned and said, ‘Got that? Ramp four.’

  Sean had the post-flight checklist already in hand. ‘Ramp four, boss. And we’re five minutes ahead of schedule. The General will love that. Get a jump on getting all those letters and packages on their merry way.’

  ‘It’s what we do, Sean. It’s what we do.’

  Now that they were nearing the ramp, fatigue started setting in, especially around Carrie’s shoulders and hips. With only one other crew member, there wasn’t much down time flying from San Jose to Memphis, and with most of the cabin space back there taken up with cargo there also wasn’t much room to walk around. There were rumors that General Bocks was considering expanding his reach to the Pacific Rim countries, which made perfect business sense, but Carrie knew that something would have to change before she’d be up to make that kind of grueling flight.

  There. Halted and everything else was on auto, and in a matter of minutes she and Sean had de-planed, carrying their heavy kit bags full of manuals and charts. Both were now wearing the uniform caps of AirBox. Sean didn’t seem to mind the uniform - he had flown C-141 Starlifters for the Air Force and was still in the Reserves - but it was too Air Force for Carrie’s taste. She preferred the old Navy flight suit, which reminded her of something . . .

  They walked to the entranceway leading to the inside of the AirBox terminal system. Around them workers in AirBox jumpsuits were hustling to unload their flight, and Carrie spared a glance back to where the scissors-cargo unloaders were sidling up the fuselage. With the way they worked, the damn plane would be empty in less than twenty minutes. A hell of a system. Still had to give the General credit, though the damn penny-pinching during the last quarter had been a royal pain in the ass. Everything from reduced fuel burn and landing reserves to the per diem being cut back - there were struggles going on out there, and she hoped the General would win this one without too much of a fight. She really needed to fly, and with her record she really needed the job.

  Then she spotted another man out there in the unloading crew, with a jumpsuit that looked cleaned and ironed. This guy wasn’t manhandling pallets of freight off the MD-11. He was standing there, holding something in his hand, wearing a set of earphones that connected to the wandlike piece of equipment in his grasp. Every now and then he went over to one of the passing pallets. The other crew members ignored him.

  Sean saw where she was looking and said, ‘Homeland Security on the job again.’

  ‘Yeah, but it still gives me the creeps.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Afraid we slipped a suitcase nuke into Memphis, on its way to Manhattan?’

  ‘Nothing to joke about,’ Carrie said, and she walked across the tarmac, her co-pilot at her side. She knew she had been snippy but she was tired and she was in no mood for jokes about terrorism.

  As they climbed up the stairs to the main floor of the freight terminal, she said, ‘Sean, see you in a bit.’ Sean looked over, a bit surprised.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Got to see a man about something.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Dispatch.’

  He frowned. ‘Be careful.’

  Carrie smiled at him. ‘There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots, and I’m not feeling too bold. Just a tad cranky. But I’ll be careful.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and added: ‘I like flying with you, Carrie. Don’t screw anything up.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Sean went on, while Carrie kept walking down the hallway, noticing with her mom’s eyes how untidy parts of the building were beginning to look. Despite the cheery commercials on television and the media’s continuing love affair with the General and his somewhat unorthodox way of doing business, AirBox was barely hanging on. And when you’re hanging on from a cliff by your fingernails, worrying whether your hair was combed was way the hell down on your list of concerns.

  Down the hallway, up two flights of stairs, and she was outside the dispatch center. There was a row of light orange plastic chairs - and why in hell did these chairs always have to be light orange? Why not blue? Or yellow? - and she took one, placing her kit bag down by her feet. In front of her was a door marked Dispatch with a keypad by the doorknob, and she waited. She should have been checking out with Sean. She should have been getting ready to get home and spend some time with Susan before her daughter went off to school. She should have been doing something else instead of sitting here, but instead she waited.

  Carrie hoped that she wouldn’t have to wait long.

  And what the hell, her hopes came true.

  The door clicked open and two people came out, a heavyset woman and a tall, thin guy with a stringy mustache. Hank, the soft-spoken dispatcher. He must have just cracked a joke because the woman was laughing as they stepped through the door, which snapped shut behind them. Either they didn’t see Carrie or didn’t care. Just another pilot. Down the hallway they went, to the restrooms, and as the guy went into the one marked Gentlemen Carrie stood up and went down the hallway, carrying her kit bag.

  She caught Hank as he stood in front of the sink, a comb in his hand. She noted the look of shock on his face as she came through the door. Then he gave her a brief glance of recognition, and started out with a little joke. ‘Hey, Carrie, didn’t you notice the sign outside, the one that—’

  Not a word from her side. She stepped up and swung her black leather case at the back of his legs, hitting him hard, and followed that up with a kick to the ankles. Hank yelped and fell down in a tangle and then she was on him, her knees slamming down on his chest, h
er hand now on his throat.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ he called out. ‘What the hell do you think—’

  Carrie grasped his thin throat and squeezed, making him squawk.

  ‘You shut the fuck up and listen,’ she said, leaning down to him. ‘Shut the fuck up. Got it?’

  A muffled squawk, his eyes wide.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Listen and listen well, pal. You call me Splash one more time, either over the air, in private, or in your home while you’re whacking off in the bathroom, then I’m gonna come back and tear your balls off and feed ‘em to the catfish. You got it?’

  Yet another squawk that she figured was an affirmative signal, and she relaxed her grip, got up. Her legs were shaking. She hoped he didn’t notice.

  Hank sat up, face mottled red, his hand to his throat. ‘You...you crazy bitch! I’ll have you fired! Today!’

  Carrie bent down again and he tried to scramble away, like a crab with broken legs, and she was sure that she surprised him when she kissed his forehead. ‘Sure, Hank. You do that. You tell everyone how a girl beat you up in the boys’ bathroom. Just like high school, right? You go on and do that, and just remember what I said. No more Splash. Ever.’

  Carrie picked up her bag and walked out, and within two minutes had joined Sean in the checkout process. He kept silent as they signed and processed forms, and then he said, ‘You okay?’

  ‘Never been better.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  He didn’t seem to believe her. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give you a ride home?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  The ride home took about twenty minutes, ten of which were spent nodding in sleep against the passenger’s-side door of Sean’s Ford Explorer. He kept the music low and his mouth shut, a perfect co-pilot. At the northern end of Memphis’s sprawl, where there were pleasant neighborhoods with one- and two-family duplexes, Sean stopped to let Carrie out as the sun was coming up.

  He looked over to her and then leaned over and gave her a kiss. She kissed him back and said, ‘Knock it off. You know the rules about fraternization.’

  ‘Screw the rules.’

  ‘Another kiss and you’ll be wanting to screw something else. Later, co-pilot man.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  She smiled. ‘Call me and we’ll work something out.’

  ‘I want to raise Topic A again, you know.’

  ‘Raise it and we’ll talk. Honest.’

  Another kiss. ‘All right, then’

  She got out and Sean drove off. It looked to be a beautiful day. She let herself in the side door and let her bag drop in the kitchen. Dishes piled in the sink, and she felt a flash of anger. Work all night and come home to dirty dishes and...

  Carrie was tired, but she also tried to remember what it had been like when she was nineteen. Somewhere in this duplex two young girls were still slumbering. Her seven-year-old daughter Susan and her cousin Marilyn. Poor Marilyn. The young girl was struggling to make it through her sophomore year at the University of Memphis, and Carrie recalled her own times, joining the Navy ROTC to get a degree in history - like that was going to do anything for her - and then, after graduating from ROTC, finding out that she actually thrived in the Navy. Hard to believe but there it was. One of her heroes when she was younger had been Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and through her aviation training at Pensacola that had been one thought at the back of her mind: that she would someday take Sally Ride’s place up there in the cosmos. Maybe the first woman on the moon. That would have been something.

  Carrie went out of the kitchen and into the small living room, and then to the bathroom. Washed her hands and then her face. Looked at the tired eyes, the short blonde hair. Hat hair again, and she recalled the really vicious helmet hair she’d get out on deployment, flying her S-3 Viking jet, off and on the USS Enterprise . . .

  And there you go. From Smash to Splash.

  For ‘Smash’ had been her call sign, indicating who she was in the pantheon of aircraft carrier pilots. The real gods of this particular pantheon were the fighter jocks - and just a few jockettes - who wrestled F-14 Tomcats up into the air and down onto the deck with vim, vigor, and a few touches of arrogance. She hadn’t quite made it to F-14s but had done all right with the S-3 Viking. That little jewel of a four-seater had originally been designed for ASW work -anti-submarine warfare - for if there was one thing that the admirals overseeing carrier task forces were terrified of, it was some sub sneaking its way into the defensive cordon around an aircraft carrier and sinking the damn thing. But with the Cold War over and what was left of the USSR submarine force rusting and sinking at the dockside, the Viking went through a few changes to make it a new aircraft. There was the airborne-surveillance Viking and the cargo Viking and the airborne-refueling Viking, and one humid night, in the Sea of Japan, Smash was doing a routine landing after a routine mission - topping off a number of F-14s - when that evening’s landing quickly became everything but routine, as she slammed the aircraft down and powered up the throttle, as the tailhook snagged one of the arresting wires, and there was a movement to her right, as her co-pilot, one Tom McGrew, jerked against his shoulder harness.

  And with the sound and the lights and the force and everything else, there was a thump and trouble, my God, the trouble in River City for - as Carrie later found out - that damn tailhook had snapped clean off so instead of coming to a nice and abrupt halt, the Viking bolted on the deck and started tilting off the port side, and slamming the throttles to full power didn’t do a damn thing, as the Viking slewed off and both her gloved hands reached down and she tugged the lower ejection handles, and maybe she yelled, ‘Eject, eject, eject’ and maybe she didn’t - depended on what day the remembering was going on — and she and her co-pilot, Lieutenant Tom McGrew of Seattle, Washington, blew out of the doomed aircraft. Carrie had been plucked out of the water, legs and arms bruised, coughing up sea water, to find out that her multimillion dollar aircraft was now several thousand feet below them in the water, and that her copilot had actually drifted under the damn bow of the Enterprise, steaming ahead, where he was either drowned, crushed, or shredded into pieces by one of the four twirling propellers.

  Well.

  There were investigations and a hearing and eventually Carrie was returned to flight status, but her little steps up on the way to the top of the female flying pyramid were faltering. She would shake and tremble during each landing. More and more times, she would miss the very last arresting wire and would have to bolt from the carrier deck and come around for another approach. Soon enough, she was under the spotlight as a possible candidate for grounding and while this was going on her well-earned and hard-earned call sign had mutated, thanks to the rough humor of carrier pilots, from the proud ‘Smash’ to the shameful ‘Splash’. A pilot who couldn’t make it, a pilot who didn’t have what it took to take a hit and keep on flying. A pilot — God forgive them for using such a cliché - who didn’t have what that writer had called the Right Stuff. Though she was never grounded, her flying reputation was permanently blackened.

  Soon afterwards, Carrie left the Navy. And trying to get a regular airline job, flying passengers...well, the airline industry was still grinding along in its recession - isolated from the rest of the goddamn US economy, it seemed - but she was finally able to get a job for the General, flying for AirBox, for the General had a soft spot for all ex-military pilots, male or female, perfect records or not. She was lucky, she knew, even though she never flew into any exotic locales, and she grew intimately aware of which motels were safe enough around some of the places she flew into -AirBox pilots never could afford to stay at a regular chain motel — and the hours sucked. Especially around Christmas, where a young girl always wanted to know why mommy couldn’t attend those special parties or recitals ...

  Carrie walked to the rear of the house, down a narrow hallway. Past the first door, and through that door she could hear the snoring of her cousin Marily
n and the soft droning of a television set. Marilyn had this awful habit of falling asleep while leaving the television on all night, and since it didn’t keep Susan awake Carrie put up with the waste of having the damn thing suck electricity all night.

  Now to the second door. She opened it gently and then stepped in, taking a breath, enjoying the scent of her little girl and her little-girl things. There. A little routine she did, whenever coming back from a flight, was to step into this little cocoon, this little-girl universe, and just let the stress and tension ease on right out of her. She walked to the bed where Susan slept, and knelt down, barely seeing her light blonde hair spread over the pillow. The bedroom was neat and orderly, nothing like her own room down the hallway, and nothing like how Carrie had treated her own things when she’d been a child. That little piece of Susan’s genetic makeup must have come from her father, one Robert Francis O’Connor, another pilot from UPS and with whom she had had a brief and satisfactory affair six years ago, an affair that had produced some wonderful pleasures, some good times, a quick and harsh break-up, and this little bundle of joy beside her.