Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  They hopscotched over Texas and spent the night on a lonely, deserted airstrip in a rural area on the other side of Toledo Bend Reservoir. The reservoir was a long stretch of the Sabine River that had been transformed into a winding, marshy, artificial lake in the sixties. It ran down the border of Texas and Louisiana for some sixty-five miles, making itself 186,000 acres of play and recreation for both Texans and Louisianans. It also provided hydroelectric power and general water supply for the peoples of both states. It appeared green at dusk, and even in August the air around the lake was warm and humid with abundant mosquitoes and gnats.

  Teddy stared down at the lake’s mirror like reflection and didn’t even complain when the plane landed, bumping down a rough landing strip that was a pair of ruts. They built a fire beside the lake and had eaten the remains of the pizza, gnawing on the crusts as a last resort.

  Jerry, AKA the Jumpmaster, commented sarcastically, “Some hardened criminals you turned out to be.” And winningly produced the cooler with the remaining sandwiches, Pepsis, and brownies, a feast for the travel-weary and even Teddy was pleased for the moment.

  Teddy slept inside the plane with the door open to allow a breeze to circulate the humid Texas air, and Fitch behaved like the best of gentlemen, covering her up with a blanket that Jumpmaster had produced, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead without making a single flip remark. She stared at him as he turned away, contemplating that she had only known him for mere days. He was the one person that she had been most close to since her parents had died. She wondered if he possibly could be aware of this.

  The following morning the three of them pored over some of Jerry’s aeronautical maps, selecting the most likely spot to land the Fairchild so that he could rid himself of his illegal passenger load in the most inconspicuous manner.

  Again, Teddy attempted to dissuade both of them. “You could leave me here. It’s probably only a few miles to the highway and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve hitched a ride...”

  “Forget it,” rumbled Fitch. He reached up with lanky fingers and rubbed them through her scarlet hair, saying to the Jumpmaster, “She thinks she’s running the show.”

  Even the Jumpmaster didn’t want to drop them so far away from their destination. “You don’t know the Feds, man,” he said, pointing to the area. “They’re going to be looking at all the airports. Calling it in. Tracking us from Salt Lake City to Bumfuck, Texas where we landed for fuel. Sure, they don’t know I’m using Sheila’s credit cards, but you can assume that they will soon enough, if they don’t already, and you children need to get in, get what you’re after, and get out.”

  Teddy hadn’t told him anything. Jerry had simply come to the same conclusion that Fitch and his father had. Why would anyone in his right mind return to the place he’d escaped from, unless there was something he desperately needed. The Jumpmaster shrugged at them with a wry expression. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? There’s something there. You can be certain that once Captain Flash and the Marines come to the conclusion that the prodigal child is in the vicinity, and they will, they’ll set up a reception for you. Unless you can beat them to the punch.”

  “You need to fly in the most opposite direction you can,” Fitch said. “Deny that you knew anything about us being fugitives. Say you dropped us off in Montana. Head east.”

  “I’ve had a real hankering for some real New England clam chowder,” said the Jumpmaster. “Besides I think Nantucket has Jumpfest happening right now. A gaggle of whacked out jumpmasters doing their thing at cloud top level. Believe I’ll do that. Sure you kids wouldn’t want to get jiggy with a Massachusetts beach and a little clambake?”

  “Good idea,” agreed Fitch with a grin. “But no.”

  “You should go with him,” said Teddy. She sighed. “You should try to separate yourself from this. Maybe you could...”

  “God,” he erupted and grabbed her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “Enough of that. Would you please knock that shit off? You think I’m gonna up and leave you now? Jesus, Jerry. I made her climb a cliff in the dark. Went four-wheeling in an SUV. There was a chase on a dirt bike. Took a dive off a cliff in Suttle Lake. Stole a boat. Stole a police car. Made her get into a small plane. And now she wants to dump me. What am I going to do with her?”

  “Dunno, man. But you really dive off a cliff into Suttle?”

  Teddy nodded solemnly. “Truck. Motorcycle. Lots of cops. Sirens. The whole deal.”

  Jerry stared at them, only coming to the conclusion that the pair weren’t just hot, they were really hot. They were like rocks left too close to a fire. They were like meteorites that had just fallen from the sky. He said, “Boy, does Bob owe me, big time.”

  Minutes later, they re-boarded the Fairchild 24 and both passengers watched as he expertly taxied down an overgrown strip of dirt and gunned the engine. Teddy shivered and Fitch put a hand on hers, reaching behind him to touch her. She grasped his hand as if she couldn’t let go and squeezed her eyes shut. The Fairchild took off like a dream, turning due east, and negotiated the winds like a bird.

  After a while, Jerry looked back and saw that Teddy had fallen asleep again. The picture of an overwrought child, she appeared as if she were a prepubescent child.

  “I’m not sure how she can sleep like that, if she’s so damned frightened of planes,” said the Jumpmaster. Only twenty minutes from where they had spent the night the Fairchild was coming in for a landing, on a southerly heading into Coushatta Regional Airport. It was a small Louisiana town southeast of Shreveport and some thirty miles from their goal. It was hardly more than a place where someone would wind a rubber band up on a set of balsa wood wings and call it an airplane. They had circled in over several large lakes and reservoirs, and approached the small landing strip with caution. There weren’t any law enforcement vehicles present. There was only a crop duster who waggled his wings at them as he passed, having just taken off himself.

  Fitch sat in the passenger seat and glanced back at Teddy, concerned. Propped against a duffel bag, she rested her head over her arms and her eyes were shut. Her perfectly shaped bow-like lips were slightly open and her breathing was slow and regular. He stared at her and said, “Well, if the last time you were in a plane, it got blown up, maybe you’d be a little reserved, too.”

  The Jumpmaster considered that. “Maybe. I don’t think so. I’d have a chute on.”

  Fitch rolled his eyes. He looked forward again and scanned the area. There didn’t seem to be anyone about in the early morning. Only an old truck sat by one of the buildings. That was the extent of the landing strip. Some Quonset huts on one end that looked like they could have dated from WWII. A windsock on the other. A tractor with a grader blade on the front to keep the strip straight and level.

  “How you children going to get there?”

  Fitch shook his head. “Hoof it. Steal it. Borrow it. Ride an alligator if we have to.”

  Jerry passed over Sheila’s MasterCard and a wad of cash, even while he expertly flew the plane. “Here you go, kid. She’s gonna be mad about the charges, but I’ll pay her back. I’ll start using mine when I get out of the south.”

  “Uh, thanks, big J., but it’s not like there’s an Avis or a Hertz around here,” said Fitch.

  “Well, you can use it to pry open somebody’s door,” Jumpmaster said. “Start with that old truck down there. If I were that fella who just took off in the ‘duster, I wouldn’t be inclined to think someone would steal my truck, my old piece of shit truck, while I was gone, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t be thinking that, no,” agreed Fitch, who already had his eye on the old Chevy.

  The wheels kissed the earth like the smooth lips of a woman bussing the cheek of a beloved friend. “Touchdown!” yelled Jerry. “We’re still alive!”

  Teddy mumbled from the back, “Do you have to do that every time we land?”

  “Hey! You’re making me a criminal, Teddy-Weddy. Let me yell it, if I feel like it.” Jerry cast her a
quick grin. “Better hurry up or the fella with the ‘duster will see his truck up and driving off by itself. Then he might get it into his mind to follow you.”

  “Goodbye, Jumpy,” Fitch said as the Fairchild came to a stop not ten feet from the rusted pick-up truck. “I’ll swear in court that you didn’t know shit.”

  “Gee thanks,” muttered Jerry.

  Teddy climbed out and then looked back at the older man. “It’s hard to trust anyone,” she said it solemnly.

  The older man knew that she would have a hard time trusting anyone, much less thanking them. He understood it, but the days to come would be a trial because he suspected that F-Bob would try that diaphanous trust. However, Jerry couldn’t tell her that. His face contorted. “Go on, little girl. You can explain it all to me, one day. Maybe sitting under an umbrella at Banjo Bob’s place when the heat is off. You be careful out there. I hear Louisiana ain’t the kind of place someone likes to go do illegal things after dark. And remember the Jumpmaster’s quote of the day: Birds of a feather flock together...and then they crap all over your freshly washed plane.”

  The door of the Fairchild shut firmly and the Jumpmaster looked forward again. The pair backed away and watched as he taxied the plane out onto the runway again and the plane took off, banking to one side and headed due north.

  Fitch watched as the plane disappeared to the north and said out of the corner of his mouth, “When he says things like that, I don’t know what to say.”

  They quickly made their way to the ancient looking truck and surveyed it cautiously. Fitch opened the rusting door and listened to it wail with protest. The keys weren’t in the ignition. He pursed his lips and glanced at Teddy.

  Teddy shrugged. “Sun visor?”

  Fitch checked. “Nope. You hear a plane?”

  She looked. The Jumpmaster had come around for another pass, waggling his wings once and then disappeared north. They could see him waving. “On top of the tires?”

  “Nope. Nope. Nope. And hell, nope. You don’t suppose that we ran into the only rural Louisianan who thought someone might steal his beloved pick-em-up-truck?”

  Teddy was studying the truck. “Pop the hood,” she said. Fitch leaned inside the cab and released the hood mechanism. She went around the front and lifted the large cover, looking inside.

  Fitch almost laughed. “Along with shooting guns and security systems, and knowing famous dress designers, which I understand now, by the way, the dress designers part, did you forget that you don’t know how to drive, sweet cheeks?”

  She stuck her head around the side of the hood and momentarily glared at him, gray eyes flashing. He winked at her. Then Teddy said patiently, “No, I didn’t forget that. But an engine is still an engine, no matter what kind of package it comes in. There wouldn’t be a screwdriver in there? A knife?”

  He called back, “Voilà, a gutting knife. Smells well used.”

  “Try sticking the knife into the ignition, like a key.”

  Fitch was surprised when he tried it. It easily turned the ignition. “Look at that.”

  “Can you start it?” She slammed the hood down.

  He pulled himself into the cab and pushed the clutch down with his left foot. He pumped the gas pedal with his right. The stick was on the wheel and he fumbled for a minute looking for the gear pattern. Then he turned the knife in the ignition and the Chevy rumbled into life. A cloud of blue-black smoke puffed out from the exhaust pipe and it sounded as though it had a dead miss, but it was running and he was happy to find that it had three-quarters of a tank of gasoline. Teddy climbed into the passenger’s seat and wrinkled her nose. “Smells like he’s been gutting fish in here.”

  “You don’t smell that much better, sweetie bum.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Love to. So how’d you know that the ignition was so worn out that anything would work turning the ignition switch?”

  “I didn’t. It’s a common problem with older cars. Keys get worn out all the time. There was this time in Idaho, where I worked on this huge potato farm and...” she trailed off as she observed how Fitch was barely suppressing laughter. “What?”

  “You worked on a potato farm?”

  “Yes,” she replied testily. “A buck is a buck, when you don’t have any.”

  “But that’s not exactly true is it?”

  “I may not be poor, but I certainly don’t have access to my parents’ money, Fitch. So yes, a buck is a buck.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And we should leave, before the other guy comes back and sees that we’re borrowing his old, smelly vehicle.”

  “For three years you’ve been working places like that? A courier for some guy in El Paso. On a fishing boat? On a potato farm? And that’s how you survived?”

  Fitch pulled out of the tiny airport and she pointed south on the highway, Louisiana State Highway 71. She muttered, “We’re going to have to cut across to Natchitoches to get to St. Germaine Parish. No way around it.”

  “Better take a direct route,” he said. “This truck isn’t exactly the most reliable vehicle.”

  “And yes, I’ve survived by working in places where the owners don’t pay social security to their employees and they don’t care to report cash flow to the IRS. You’d be surprised how many places there are like that.” She considered. “Runaways cater to them. They have a system. All you have to do is hook up. They’ll do almost anything to survive.”

  Fitch was suddenly troubled. He was thinking about what she had been saying, what information she had imparted to him. “You did this since you were fifteen?”

  “Yes. Don’t speed through here, Fitch. Parish deputies make a lot of revenue from speeders and we can’t afford to get caught by a local cop.”

  Fitch adjusted his speed, his brow furrowed. “Is that...all you did?”

  Taking a deep breath Teddy’s chin went up. “That’s all I did, Fitch. I didn’t do what you’re suggesting. And sometimes I didn’t eat because I didn’t want to sink that low. Sometimes I begged on the streets, though, and I’ve wondered if that was worse. Two men who were Viet Nam veterans taught me how to beg, how to look like a disheveled urchin to get more money, and then one of them decided that the reward was worth more to him.”

  Fitch stiffened in his seat. “So you haven’t trusted anyone since.”

  “I trust you,” she said softly. She stared forward at the passing scenery and could have winced at how that sentence had sounded, as if she were a small child and she was giving her newest, bestest friend the only thing of value that she could: a vote of confidence.

  If anything Fitch stiffened more and he let out a constrained sigh. “Listen, Teddy, I have to tell you that...”

  She looked at him then and the words caught in his throat. Those lovely gray eyes fixed on his and anything that had been coming out of his throat stopped abruptly. Finally, she prompted him, “Yes? Tell me what?”

  He gave a little laugh. “I guess I’m not the kind of person someone trusts right away. You trusted me right after you saved my life. You trusted me to get you down that cliff face in absolute blackness. Even my father doesn’t trust me to do the right thing. I guess I wanted to tell you that. I’m glad you trust me. It means a lot to me. More than I can say.”

  They were passing green farmland. Run down houses came every half mile or so. Hounds lay on porches. Old trucks were parked in driveways, and tractors made their way across fields. There were horses and cattle and pecan farms. Both went quiet, listening to the muted sound of the truck’s engine, watching the land go by them.

  Finally, Fitch said, “I hope you remember that.”

  “What? That I trust you?” She laughed a little. “Why wouldn’t I remember that?”

  Fitch shrugged. “No particular reason,” he said, but he was lying through his teeth.

  They passed through Natchitoches, the oldest town in the Louisiana Purchase, the beginning of the Spanish Trail, and full of antebellum homes that dripped with southern atmosphere and
gentility. The heavily traveled main streets were cobbled stones and bordered a river that a log flow had stopped up years before. It had been left as a makeshift lake and now homes had boat docks on the edge, enjoying the Cane River’s closeness.

  Several miles later, with Teddy directing their way, the old Chevy passed into St. Germaine Parish and Fitch saw that her hands were trembling. “Keep calm,” he told her gently. “This will be over soon. You can come back with me to Oregon. I’ll teach you how to drive.”

  A smile quivered on her lips. “I’m not sure I want to drive like you, Fitch.”

  “Then I’ll teach you how to drive like my grandmother.” Fitch chuckled. “Fifteen miles an hour, tops, and she signals for turns a full mile ahead of time.”

  There was a sign ahead of them and Teddy pointed at it. “That’s the place,” she said.

  When Fitch saw the sign he pulled the truck to the side of the road and turned halfway in the seat. “You sure, Teddy?”

  “Yeah. That’s how I got out.” She looked at the sign and remembered the last time she’d seen it. She had glanced over her shoulder in the growing light of a morning three years before and seen it with excited eyes, knowing that she was escaping. She had thought she would never come back to this place.