Love and Hydrogen

by Jim Shepard

  SATURDAY NIGHT he heard a twin-engine, it sounded like, even before he’d found his spot. He went to his knees and scuttled forward, approximating, and turned around. The lights were banking, slowly coming around to level, parallel now to the threshold lights beyond the runway’s edge. The noise increased, and he picked up the landing lights slipping slowly along the ground, suddenly speeding up and flashing over him as the roar grew louder and the lights sank closer, and at the last moment he flattened out as much as he could on the surface of the tarmac, turning his face as his ears filled with sound and his clothing shook and he felt it touch down hard behind him, the shock traveling through him, and he knew, as he got up, running for the bluff, that the next time, farther out onto the runway, might be the last time.

  He remembered a movie he’d seen some years ago called The Magnificent Seven. In it, Steve McQueen, one of a group of gun-fighters who have banded together for no apparent reason to protect a poor Mexican town from bandits, is asked by the bandit chief why they stay and fight against insurmountable odds for no reward. He replies, “Well, it’s like a guy I once knew in Waco. Took off all his clothes one day and jumped into a cactus. I asked him why he did it.”

  And the bandit chief says impatiently, “Well? What did he say?”

  And McQueen replies, “He said it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  WHEN HE GOT BACK Billy and Theo were in the sunroom, Theo still nose to the window. Had the dog been like that the whole time? Billy was sitting in the lawn chair they kept inside and was shelling peanuts on his lap. Billy said, “So where’d you go, Dad?”

  He realized he was still wired and flushed and he put his hand over the top of Billy’s head and mussed his hair, though he never did that. He said, “I went for a walk. What’re you, a cop?”

  But Billy held his ground, staring up at him, and he was forced to turn to Anne, who came around the corner from the kitchen, the phone to her ear and the cord stretched taut. She nodded hello and said, “Mother. He just came in.”

  She gave him a stern look and he kissed her until she had to pull away to say, “Yes, Mother, yes, I’m listening.”

  “Mr. Mystery,” Billy said behind him. Jay crossed the kitchen, ducking while Anne held the cord up, and dropped onto the sofa in the living room, casting around for the remote. Billy had left it turned around atop the TV, the electric eye facing him.

  SOMETIMES HE THOUGHT, You’re a responsible young man, you need to consider this, but nothing coherent or plausible came to him when he did. Nothing made him do it, he realized, mowing the first summer grass or piling clippings into the trunk to take to the dump. Part of the reason, he knew, was the way it felt that first split second when he heard a Cessna or an Allegheny or something make that distant turn, start that faint buzz way off in the night.

  HE’D BEEN OUT nine times. He was six-one and each time he went out he moved six feet and an inch farther down the runway, each time coming closer to the touchdown point of most aircraft. Of course, there’d always been the chance that someone would touch down early, as well.

  HE BUSTLED AROUND the house after supper for a week, cleaning, fixing, storing, and straightening, and Anne watched him happily and took him aside and said, smiling, “You’re a real dynamo this week, know it?” When he started to pull away, hedge clippers in hand, she got serious and added, “You’re wonderful, you know that?”

  He settled his affairs at work, getting the last shipments of the week out two days early and working with such efficiency even for him that his fellow workers were sure something was up. He made sure before he left on Friday that someone could cover for him Monday if he was late or couldn’t make it.

  The guys at Sikorsky knew he was a good worker. And they knew he was crazy.

  He wasn’t inclined to believe them.

  He didn’t feel wild or out of control when he did the things he did.

  When he was five, every Sunday night for a week he jumped off the roof of the porch of the old house on Spruce Street. He was practicing landing and rolling.

  When he was seventeen he and a friend raced twin Kawasakis off a dock and into the Housatonic River. The Kawasakis had taken two weeks to clean and get back into shape. When he was twenty-five, ten years ago, he climbed the roof of the main hangar at Sikorsky on his lunch break. It was his first year on the job.

  Two years after that he’d found himself on his belly behind the forklift in Hangar 6, out of reach of the light drizzle slicking the helicopter pad, thirty-three yards away from him, and the HH-52 warming up on it.

  He’d measured the thirty-three yards. He’d measured everything, including the time it would take to cross them and the time from the first revving of its turbines that it would take the HH-52 to get airborne and out of reach. He’d figured out the best day (Saturday), the best weather conditions (rainy), and the best copter (the 52, with its massive pods surrounding the landing gear) for what he planned. The landing gear would be his handholds, and the pods would shield him initially from the tower’s view.

  The turbines went into their high metallic rush and the blades of the big ship pitched and he counted one, two, three, and broke for the copter, spattering across the gleaming blacktop and into the rotor wash, approaching from the rear diagonally to avoid pilot detection and the tail rotor, and he jumped as the landing gear was lifting up and swaying away from him. He caught one arm around the inside strut and pulled himself up and around, banging his head on the undercarriage. There was no hesitation in the climb so he knew he was okay, and the copter immediately banked out over the Housatonic, and with his head throbbing he swung his legs down, looking past them to the water spinning away below, and then let go, the noise of the rotors filling his ears all the way down.

  SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE he decided to go back to the runway Sunday night. He asked Anne if she wanted to go out to dinner Saturday. Get a sitter for Billy. She loved the idea. When she left the bathroom Saturday night, ready to go, he thought her beauty must increase in some way proportionate to her happiness.

  HE’D FIRST THOUGHT of the runway on a Christmas Day. It came to him as a visual image while he was stuffing scattered wrapping paper into a brown grocery bag. Billy was confusing Theo with an orange Nerf basketball by compressing it and hiding it in his fist. Anne was on the phone, in her blue nightgown with the tiny embroidery on the shoulders. He got up, got dressed, kissed her on the cheek, and headed out into the snow. It was very cold. It occurred to him before he reached the airport that they wouldn’t have had time to plow yet, but he kept going. Out over the runway the snow had drifted into little ridges that reminded him of the roof of a dog’s mouth. There was a bright glare over everything from the morning light. He crossed to where he judged the center of the runway must be, and lay down, sinking and looking up at the sky.

  SUNDAY MORNING he bought the papers. He played catch with Billy down the length of the driveway, enjoying the feel of the old Rawlings. He threw Billy grounders, soft line drives, pop-ups.

  He had drinks in the backyard with Anne. He helped her with the pork chops for supper. He helped Billy with his homework.

  When that was over they joined Anne in the den. She was catching the end of Moby Dick. Gregory Peck was nailing a gold coin to the masthead and making speeches.

  Anne looked over at him and gave him a smile. He was starting to get fidgety. He said he was going to take a look around. He poured some cranberry juice from the refrigerator and drank it. He washed out the glass in the sink. He took Theo out to let him take a leak, jingling change in his pockets while the dog decided on a bush. Then he let it back in, closed the door behind it, and went down the driveway, enjoying the summer smells and heading down the street at a jog.

  ANNE NEVER FOUND OUT about the copter ride, though it had been in the papers (a UPI photographer there to cover another test flight had happened to get a shot of him on the way down, a tiny figure, grainy and blurred; it had caused a minor sensation at Sikorsky security). She knew about
other things, including the hangar roof, and when he did things like that she told him she wanted to understand. She also asked if he ever thought about her and Billy. Things like that she expected more from the kind of kids she hoped to keep Billy away from.

  He didn’t answer because he loved her and wanted to protect her, and also because he didn’t know how to explain it without sounding as if he were refusing to explain it.

  HE TOOK HIS TIME on the bluffs. The Sieberts’ dog kicked up a racket. He imagined he heard another dog answering. He ran his fingers over the chain link of the fence before slipping under it, sliding through the damp smooth hole scuffed in the dirt. Halfway down he stopped and surveyed the runway. Then he leaned out over the slope and cantered down, every step sure, digging his heels in the gravel and slaloming around the bushes and larger stones.

  At the bottom he heard the rumble of something big, and a four-engine Allegheny came thundering over the bluffs to his right, close enough that he could see heads in the windows. It swept over the runway, its rear wheels slamming down with a tremendous, murderous screech, right, he estimated as he hurried toward the overrun area in its wake, where he would momentarily be lying.

  He stopped at the markings and crouched, looking for security activity, and then crossed to the middle. He found his old mark, measured out from it, and set his new one. He lay back on his elbows, made one last check of the runway around him, and settled in, looking up at the stars. Something rustled in the high grass. He waited.

  Far off he could hear cars moving, beyond the tower on the other side of the airport. From that grew another sound.

  He looked back for the tower and caught in the gleam of one of its circling beams a Pilgrim Airlines twin-engine banking slowly around toward his strip.

  He lay back, trying to keep still, the plane circling gradually in the darkness off to the left, disappearing beyond the bluff as it made its final gliding bank into its approach, its engines still audible. He could feel them getting higher in pitch. He watched the section of bluff visible over his feet, waiting for the red and white lights to explode over it toward him, but felt vibration coming from the opposite direction as well, and twisted around and there were the headlights of the security jeep down by the tower, bouncing along the shoulder of the runway. He got up in a crouch but then hesitated, and turned to face the bluff, the Pilgrim’s engines roaring behind it now, and lay back down.

  Then he saw Theo.

  He picked up movement in his peripheral vision and turned as the dog reached the runway. He shouted something as Billy piled out of the darkness onto the tarmac, too, slipping to his knees. He shot a look back at the jeep while trying to push the dog away, and Billy was shouting something and running toward them, and then the dog cringed and there was a roar as the Pilgrim twin-engine burst over the bluffs. Billy froze looking up at the huge lighted dark shape swinging down toward him, screaming, maybe; Jay couldn’t hear. He grabbed Theo by the skin and hair of his neck and dove at Billy, throwing the dog as far as he could, sending him sprawling and skidding off the runway, and hitting Billy in the midsection and driving him hard onto his back as the twin-engine hit beside them, the wing sweeping over, and was gone.

  Billy was crying and twisting around in his arms as the jeep pulled up alongside, becoming audible only as the plane taxied farther down the runway. Men in blue vinyl jackets grabbed them. One was chasing Theo around the scrub nearby. Even then and there they were asking questions, which he waved off, trying to indicate he’d answer everything soon. His voice was coming back to him with his hearing. Someone shook him, and he nodded, yes. He was watching Theo, who was all right. He was concentrating on Anne, and on not letting go of Billy.

  AJAX IS ALL ABOUT ATTACK

  The acoustics of empty stadiums were very beautiful. When a single bird called out, you heard it from wherever you were. In the early morning, or after matches, when the lights were out and the sky was black, from the bench, you heard the wind in the grass. In the Dutch leagues then, the stadium superstructures were skeletal and intimate. The advertising panels were like old friends and smelled of wet wood. The empty balconies overhung the stands so that stray papers blown from above were snared by seat-backs below.

  When you took a ball out to the middle of the pitch and struck it once, the thump filled the entire space. The thump seized something in your chest.

  My name is Velibor Vasovic and for eleven years I played football, first for Partizan Belgrade and my national team, and then for Ajax. For eleven years I played for money, I should say; football I played my entire life. My brother played with his friends, and when I was old enough to stand I started joining in. I began in goal but could never stay there, and was always running after the ball and upsetting everyone and ruining the game, and eventually they made someone else goalie. We played every day. This was just after the war. When it rained, we played in the cowshed. The cow stood in the rain and watched. Six or so kids in three square meters: you learned precise passing.

  We played with anything that was round. Mostly tennis balls; one boy’s family had an old box of tennis balls. You developed great technique trying to dribble tennis balls.

  At the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland in the group matches my brother played against the immortal Hungarians with their bright red shirts—Puskas, Kocsis, Hidegkuti—the team that had humiliated England 6–3 and 7–1 just months before.

  “What was it like?” we asked upon his return. We had followed the match on the radio but the announcer had been at a loss to describe what he was seeing. Crowded around the countertop of the local bar, we’d been informed that Kocsis had entered the penalty area, and stopped, and turned. Then God had been invoked, at a high volume. Followed by a tinny roar. So when my brother returned, one of the heroes of our 2–8 loss, it was as if we had and hadn’t been there; as if we did and didn’t know what brilliant football was truly like.

  After the game, he’d traded shirts with Puskas. He showed the shirt around the bar. It passed from person to person like Achilles’ shield. An old man wiped his hands before taking it.

  We had to ask my brother our questions many times. Everyone had their own theories as to the secret of the Hungarians’ game. Was it their skills? Their tactics? Their size? Their speed? And what was it like in the West?

  I thought about his answers when I first came to Amsterdam and saw Johan Cruyff play a thirty-yard cross on a dead run so that the trajectory bent away from the stunned goalie’s attempt at a deflection and dropped the ball lightly in front of the right-winger’s boot. The right-winger put it in the back of the net as though he’d just happened by. This was in 1966. Ajax’s coach and club president both had seen me score our only goal in Partizan’s loss to Real Madrid in that May’s European Cup final. I was to be the rock around which Ajax would build its defense.

  Understand: it was quite a change from Zagubica to Amsterdam in 1966. What was rebelliousness in Zagubica then? Old farmers fondling their donkeys in public. Civil disobedience was refusing to roll out of the lane once you fell over drunk. I arrived in Amsterdam soon after their Liberation Day and thought on the ride in from the airport that there’d been a coup. A revolution. An invasion from space. Thousands of young people were surging about the center of town, arm in arm, singing and shouting something. My interpreter, the Yugoslav wife of a Dutchman, explained that they were shouting, “We want our Bolletjes!” Bolletjes turned out to be a breakfast snack. It was an advertising slogan. Why were they shouting this? They were bored, she told me. Thousands of young people chanting this absurdity! Groups shouted it back and forth to one another. The police stood by, polite, their hands clasped in front of them.

  We were imprisoned by the sheer numbers in a large plaza called the Leidseplein. My interpreter apologized for not having anticipated this, but seemed serene about the delay. The taxi driver rested his forearms on the wheel and every so often shouted something good-naturedly to those who stood on his car’s bonnet. When our taxi was stopped, youn
g girls pressed their cheeks to my window glass as if the car were an infant relative. Atop a statue of a civic leader, a man dressed as a shaman performed antismoking rituals—he crushed packs of cigarettes, or put cigarettes in his mouth and then broke them and threw them away with wild gestures— while the crowd chanted, “Bram bram! Ugga ugga! Bram bram!”

  What did “Bram bram! Ugga ugga!” mean? I wanted to know.

  My interpreter shrugged. “Bram bram. Ugga ugga,” she said.

  She identified a small man atop a flagpole as Johnny the Self-kicker, who talked himself into a trance and threw himself from high places. Many of the people in white, she explained, were the Provos, anarchists who looked upon playfulness as the key to a better world.

  “Playfulness,” I repeated, and she answered, with some defensiveness, “Well, you needn’t say it like that.”

  Understand: I am not political. Everywhere I’ve gone, people have nodded when those words have emerged from my mouth, as though they understood. And then they’ve gone right on with plebiscite this and student movement that. “Vasovic doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything,” Michels, Ajax’s coach, used to say to the reporters and my teammates. It was his highest praise. He meant other than football.

  My interpreter that day had been proud of her adopted country. Her face suggested that I was like a visit from a backward relative. She asked about my hometown: what was life like in those hills? It all seemed so wild and remote.

  “That was a quiet shithole,” I told her. “This is a noisy shithole.”

  The taxi driver asked her a question and she answered with the word for “Welcome,” in my language. “Welcome,” he said to me.

  “He’s speaking to you,” my interpreter told me. I lit a cigarette. I don’t like being scolded.

  “This is a time of great change in Holland,” she told me, as if that should affect my smoking.