Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  The chewing stopped. Pate’s mouth became a tight line as he eased air out through his nose. Then he drew another breath. “As long as we’re getting things cleared up—” His voice was low now, and seemed to come from deep inside, through smoke and booze, or sand and gravel, whatever filled him. He faced Boyd again. “You got it right—I’m lucky I wasn’t one of the copilots you put on the street. They lost everything. I only lost twenty-three years to you. Twelve in that seat. You think it wasn’t your fault? Dead wrong, pardner. You made it happen. Jack Farraday never could’ve done it—”

  Pate quit talking, his mouth clamping shut, the jaw muscles shivering under the strain. His eyes narrowed in fury. “Ruined a lot of good men,” he said through his teeth. He had clenched a fist. For a moment Boyd thought he might actually lose all control, take a swing. And for his age Pate still looked tough. Inwardly Boyd cringed. But then abruptly Pate turned away, folding his arms again, at once as solemn as before.

  For another moment Boyd watched him, wondering if he might still lose it, throw a sudden punch. He had seemed that angry. Let him try it, Boyd thought. He’d have Pate grounded so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him. Pate was the one who didn’t understand. He didn’t know that before the New World strike, before Farraday’s call for replacements, Boyd had been working for a dinky little commuter line out of Milwaukee—Milwaukee, for Christ’s sake!—flying turboprops for a measly couple grand a month. Or that he’d been doing it for nearly two years, bumping and grinding around at low altitude, dodging storms, driving his toy airplane past all those big jets every time he landed, aching with envy for the guys who were flying the “big iron.” He’d hated that. Who wouldn’t have jumped when Jack Farraday offered a quick ticket out? That’s what Pate could never understand. But Pate could be dealt with.

  “I could report you,” he said quietly. Wanting it to be a convincing threat.

  “Do it,” Pate answered, not looking at him.

  Boyd opened his mouth to say he would, that it was exactly what Pate deserved. But no, having him called in now might open a whole can of worms about how Boyd had handled the emergency. No, he had a better idea. He’d get on the phone, make a few calls, work a couple of trip trades. Find some other poor bastards to finish out the month with Emil Pate. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be worth the effort.

  The tug had arrived. Ignoring Pate, plotting his trip-trading strategy, Boyd watched the maintenance crew attach the tow bar. A few minutes later they were moving slowly across the snow-packed tarmac to the terminal. When they were finally in the gate, Boyd set the brakes and switched on the cockpit’s overhead lights. Pate had already pulled the flight log to his lap and started filling in the times and fuel figures. Boyd reached back and released the lock on the cockpit door and slid it open. As the passengers filed off, several leaned in to congratulate them on the safe arrival. Boyd nodded and smiled, but he felt no elation no sense of victory. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He was too tired; he just wanted to go straight to his apartment and get to bed.

  Pate made a final note in the log and shut it. Methodically he gathered his charts and approach book and stuffed them into his worn, black leather kit bag. Then he worked himself out of his seat, pulled his overcoat from the hook, and stepped out of the cockpit.

  Boyd waited until he had left the plane before opening the log. In the discrepancy blocks Pate had written:

  “DURING DESCENT, ATAPPROX. 28000 FT, 1.25 EPR, NO. 2 ENG. FIRE INDICATED—ENG. SHUTDOWN PER C/L —FIRE LIGHT WENT OUT APPROX. 8 SEC. AFTER ENG. SHUTDOWN. GND CREW CONFIRMED FIRE OUT AFTER LANDING.”

  Oddly, seeing the whole event reduced to such dry terms made Boyd sharply aware of his breathing, his pulse, the quiet humming of the fans. He read through the notes again, sensing something more this time, a feeling that he had made some mistake far greater than any he’d thought. For a moment the feeling frustrated him, made him sad, as if he had missed something, an opportunity.

  But he shook it off. His nose was clean. Pate hadn’t written a word to suggest otherwise. Boyd packed his kit and got out of his seat. Two mechanics had come into the galleyway, and he handed them the log. “It’s pretty much all in there.”

  “Sounds like a bleed air leak,” said one, reading over the other’s shoulder.

  Boyd didn’t care what it was. He put on his overcoat and retrieved his suitcase from the first-class overhead. At most—he told himself as he walked up the chilly jetbridge to the terminal—he might have to fly one more trip with Emil Pate.

  TWO

  Cleveland, Ohio

  26:42 GMT/21:42 EST

  There was a wind that sometimes gusted from the Idaho prairie down into the deep canyon of the Clearwater where Emil Pate had grown up. What he remembered most clearly about the wind was that you could hear it before it arrived. Out of the chill morning silence would start the keen, whistling whine, then roar, rising as the wind rolled down the ravines. It sliced through the lodge pole and spruce and ponderosa, and spilled over the black bluffs of basalt. It was the breath of Monster, so he was told by his grandmother, Louise Yellow Wolf. Gi’mi’ta, she called it, using the Nez Perce word. Monster who had once swallowed the world and all the animals except Coyote.

  Pate had lived with her for eight years at Lapwai on the reservation. Not the best time in his life. “Reservation mutts,” the whites had called the halfbreed orphan kids like Pate. He’d grown up fast, learning to take care of himself. The Nez Perce wouldn’t allow prolonged grief, and he remembered none, nor any talk of the accident that killed his parents. Such deaths were common on the reservation. Louise Yellow Wolf had lost her husband to booze and a narrow road. And the Nez Perce didn’t speak directly of such things. Instead, sitting out under the trees at the parade ground on summer evenings, the grandmothers told hardship stories about Eagle and Musk-rat and Skunk, the Bear Sisters and Curlew the Crane. About Coyote losing his wife, stealing Curlew’s eyes, visiting the Shadow People.

  And the story of Monster and Coyote. Monster, his grandmother had said, was so huge its body filled the entire Clearwater Canyon, from Lapwai to Kamiah. “Monster,” she’d simply called it, as if that were its name. This was before the coming of the People, she would tell him, before Coyote created the Nez Perce from Monster’s blood. “Itsa-ya’-ya,” she had called Coyote. Why hadn’t Coyote simply run away, though? Why had he stayed, let Monster swallow him?

  Pate had never thought much about Louise Yellow Wolf’s old Indian stories, not since leaving the reservation. Especially her stories of disaster. Lately, though, he’d thought of this one again and again. Because Monster had stalked him, caught him. He had made a terrible mistake, signing the merger agreement. He had let Jack Farraday swallow him.

  More than three years had passed since that wintry, late-fall day in Albuquerque. In the afternoon, when the votes were due, he and Katherine had driven down to Westar’s old headquarters building, the eight-page agreement folded on the dash, still unsigned.

  They’d sat in the car a long time, watching other Westar pilots go into the building, coats turned up against the wind, walking fast—furtively it had seemed to Pate, each carrying the single sheet of paper—and then coming out again, moving slowly, the look of defeat in their eyes.

  He wondered over and over how all of this could have happened. How could Jack Farraday have done it—broken the New World strike, declared bankrupcy, and kept going, until he had brought Westar to its knees, forced this merger? How could they have let him do it? Chuck Thornton, his old friend at New World, had been right—the New World pilots never should have struck. They hadn’t done their homework, but Jack Farraday had. Thornton had been close to tears the night the strike vote came in, he and Pate hashing it out over beers in Pate’s kitchen. “I know the sonofabitch is going to win,” Thornton had said. “He’ll bust the union. But what can I do? I can’t be a scab, Emil. I can’t cross the line.”

  Almost half the New World pilots had crossed the picket line within th
e first few days, and then scabs like Boyd had scrambled across to steal the jobs of the rest. That was how Farraday had won, with his new hires. Thornton had ended up on the street with nothing—forced to start all over again,at the bottom. Pate had felt terrible for him but glad it hadn’t happened to Westar.

  Then, like a nightmare becoming real, Farraday had gone after Westar. The bankruptcy court let him write off all debts and stay in business, cut fares in half, drive Westar down—in less than two years. Not quite believing it had happened, the Westar people found themselves in the same corner the New World strikers had been backed into. Vote for this merger or lose it all. What would they have to give up? Would their seniority be preserved? Pate had thought so, the night he and Deke Keller and Tom Locke, both of them captains with as much to lose, had sat discussing the deal at the same kitchen table Chuck had cried at years before.

  “It’s there in black and white,” Tom said. “I don’t see how he can screw us.” And what were the alternatives, they asked each other. Non-scheds, night freight, or cropdusting? How could they ask their families to accept such risky dead ends just so they could keep their pride? No, that didn’t make sense. So finally, believing it was the best of a bad situation, they made their decision.

  Four days later, outside the old headquarters with only a few minutes to spare. Pate and his wife sat in the new car they would soon have to sell. Pate tore the last sheet off the agreement and signed quickly in the three required spaces. He had done it for Kate and the girls. Then in the awful silence, saying nothing, Kate saying nothing, he got out of the car and made his own trip inside. The others had all come and gone by then. He was surprised to find their documents simply piled in a discarded paper box on a small table set up in the hallway, a single disinterested clerk looking on. Even as he slipped the paper in, avoiding the clerk’s eyes, he had thought, This is a mistake.

  His mistake had lived with him ever since. It had tormented him as much as the double-cross that had allowed Farraday to steal his captaincy and give it to scabs like Boyd, who hadn’t earned it, who weren’t even qualified. Pate’s rage made him drink more and take up smoking again. He had turned into something he himself couldn’t stand. That was why he had finally quit commuting, left Albuquerque, moved up to the base at Cleveland. To spare Kate and Carrie and Melissa any more pain. He could hardly take any more of it either.

  Boyd was one more kick in the head, he thought with a tired, black anger, as he drove home through the storm, past the dingy-looking strip malls northeast of the airport. A few more blows and he’d go down. Tonight, the situation didn’t even seem worth fighting against anymore.

  The snow still fell in a thick, swirling cascade, lamps along the street shedding swaggering cones of it down onto the wet pavement. Warm snow, his grandmother would have called it, as if there could be such a thing. But she had toughed it through enough winters to believe anything. The old Chevy skidded when he swerved into the lot behind the apartment building—then rocked on its bad shocks going over potholes. The nearest slots were all taken. He found one at the back.

  For a few minutes he sat in the car, finishing his second cigarette, watching the flickering of TV light leaking through curtained windows on the second floor. The shabby building was dark brick, featureless behind the contorted, pale limbs of sycamores. He hated the place, but it was cheap so he could send more money to Katherine. Strange people lived there—older women with tinted hair in nets, white-boy hoods hanging out during the day, coming and going at night. Lone men like himself, on their way down. He only slept there, drank there, prowled his three rooms waiting to fly again.

  The snow had almost covered the windshield. It was slowly burying him as the air in the car turned cold. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered. What still mattered, he thought, was nerve. What Boyd didn’t have. Experience under pressure. So when engines caught fire, you didn’t lose your nerve, space the checklist, fall behind. You did your job. You toughed out whatever came.

  But each exhale of smoke left a flat vacancy in his chest. A second or more would pass before he felt like breathing again. By itself, his hand found the door handle, and he made his way out into the snow. Trudging through the slush, he thought once again of the landing, feeling again a certain, clean truth beyond doubt. Beyond fear. But then the feeling sank again into the pit of his stomach.

  As he climbed the front steps, he heard the throbbing noise: the kid in the apartment next door blasting his stereo again. Pate stood in the cold hallway, listening to the steady, heavy thump of the bass, the monotonous jabber of the song.

  “Damn it,” he said quietly.

  But he unlocked his door and stepped inside and closed it behind him. Stood still again, blinking in the darkness at the stale, sweet smell of rotten food.

  Now the thumping came dully through the wall. It went right into his head.

  “Countdown,” he said aloud and let go the handles of his kit. Then he shrugged off his overcoat, slid off the undone tie, added it and the uniform jacket to the pile. He flicked on the light, then flicked it off again because the mess scared him.

  He needed water. The high altitude air had parched him. From the kitchen tap he filled a glass and drank it down. Then he went into the dark bathroom and peed and returned to the kitchen and drank another glass. A new song had started. The bass-thump was the same, or maybe heavier, driving pegs into his skull. Sharp, prickling anger burned his chest, and he leaned against the counter and breathed a few times, letting his lungs collapse entirely and stay that way even longer before he drew another breath. Breathe each other in, he thought. Hearing his grandmother’s voice, mimicking Coyote. Calling out to Monster. Let’s breathe each other in, he thought quietly, knowing Monster would inhale him fast. To allow himself such defeat was stupid, but then again, what if you had no choice? Pate turned to watch a streak of light, thrown from passing traffic, knife through the curtains at the other end of the room, sliding, angling like a blade across the littered floor. And then, in the throbbing darkness, he felt a presence, as if there were another person in the room. Crazy, he thought, but the sense remained. And he moved suddenly, to the wall, which seemed to vibrate with each whomp of percussion. There was no respect for anything anymore, none. That was the problem. With the heel of his hand, he hammered back, out of synch so the kid would hear it. Maybe. This one dealt drugs, pumped iron. Parked his new Altima at an angle across two spaces. Once Pate had tried asking for quiet, some respect. The stupid kid had come at him marble-eyed and mean, flexing macho. Expecting him to shrink. Pate hammered at the wall again, but the beat went on as before. Or louder, it seemed.

  He had merely asked the kid to keep quiet, that was the problem. Now the kid simply ignored him. What did it take to make people listen?

  Pate pounded again, thinking maybe he’d call the cops. But this time the thumping beat stopped abruptly.

  “Hey, asshole!” the kid yelled through the wall. “Quit that fucking pounding, will ya?”

  Pate heard muffled laughter. Then the thumping beat resumed, louder than ever. It vibrated his eye sockets. Heartbeat taking off now, he drew back his fist, wanting to drive it right through the wall. Wouldn’t be smart, he thought. You had to think of consequences. But who had told him that? The idea only made him tired, and suddenly he had a sensation of space opening around him—flat, empty space. Horizonless space—and his anger seemed to spread out on it, getting thin and shallow. It wouldn’t drown him, he thought.

  The thumping surrounded him again. Battered him. He needed to call Katherine, or something bad was going to happen. But another impulse moved him away from the wall. He went into the bedroom and slid open the bottom drawer of the dresser and got out the Ruger.22 automatic he kept there. I’ve owned this a long time, he thought with mild surprise. It occurred to him to remove the clip, but he didn’t. Don’t do this, a voice inside him kept repeating, but he answered it, saying, “I’ve got it under control.”

  Did he? He gulped air and doubted.
But it had to be done. Give in once, they only wanted more. Didn’t he know this, after three days? Boyd stealing his job—his whole life—and wanting him to forget it? Pate stepped into the hallway, the cold air attacking his damp, hot face. The kid’s door was plastered over with posters—heavy-metal rockers holding guitars like machine guns. He pounded on it, then stood waiting, pistol at his side, heavy now, like something of solid lead. He pounded again, and the throbbing music scaled down.

  ”Yeah?” a voice said through the door.

  “Open up.” Pate stared at the spyhole.

  The kid mumbled something. Bolts slid back. Then in a rush the door swung wide, noise swelling, and the kid filled the frame, barefoot, in a sleeveless tee-shirt and old jeans. His blond square head was shaved bald on the sides and looked small on his swollen shoulders. Steroid freak, Pate thought. Behind him, a girl’s bare feet tucked up suddenly. In the kid’s right hand was a blue metal baseball bat, and his smirk said he thought this all too comical.

  “Want some trouble?” he asked with mock innocence, acting tough for the girl, Pate knew.

  “Just keep it down!” Pate shouted. He had to shout to be heard over the thunderous concussions of noise.

  The kid rolled his eyes. “Fucking shit, man—” Then he saw the pistol, still at Pate’s side, pointing down. His smirk collapsed, his eyes went stark.

  “Oh, fuck,” he croaked. “Don’t—”

  So that was all it took? Pate raised the gun. still not pointing it, as he backed the kid into the room. Had to be eighty degrees in there, and stinking of pot smoke. Now the girl’s face appeared in his periphery, a stunned, blanching moon.

  “Listen, man,” the kid said, trying to reason.

  “Turn it down!” Pate shouted.