Cliff Hanger

by Mary Feliz

  We pushed open the door to a lobby filled with furniture fashioned from aircraft aluminum and leather-covered cockpit seats.

  “Here for the Young Eagles flight? You’ll have a blast,” said the young woman behind the counter. Her ginger-colored long hair was nearly a match for Belle’s golden-red fur. I held up Belle’s leash and was about to ask if it was okay to bring her inside when the woman rose on tiptoes to peer over the top of the reception desk. “Bring her on in,” she said, waving enthusiastically. “As long as she’s well behaved, she’s welcome.” Belle thumped her tail.

  In a similar gesture, the desk clerk flipped her long braid over her shoulder. She handed me a pen with a tiny propeller on one end, and a clipboard with permission slips and liability waivers. “Got sunglasses?”

  Max pulled his sunglasses off his forehead and passed them to Brian, along with his favorite Giants baseball cap.

  “I’ll call over to Susie,” said the ginger-haired woman who’d introduced herself as Kelly. “She’s your pilot. Should be ready to go in a few minutes.” Kelly smiled at Brian and then glanced at Max and me. “Susie will take you and your nervous parents through her safety checks.”

  Brian lowered the sunglasses and squinted at me. “Is it safe to let you near the plane, or do I need to make you stay here?” he asked. “Are you going to change your mind?”

  Belle’s tail swished tentatively against my leg. It was a hopeful and nervous tail wag. She was having trouble reading my mood and was expressing her hope that any fear I experienced was nothing serious.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Kelly. “Your mom already signed the paperwork. I’ll give it to you to keep safe. Susie will need it. You can head out as soon as you’re ready. It’s the red and white Piper…” She glanced out the window and pointed as she counted softly. “It’s the one, two, fourth one in that row just outside the gate. Follow the yellow line for safety.”

  Brian’s hand shot out to grab the proffered document, rolled it in a tube, then stuffed it inside his hoodie, zipping it for extra security.

  Together, we trooped outside toward the windy taxiway. “Hold up,” said Max as Brian reached for the latch on the gate in the chain-link fence that served as the only barrier between the parking lot and the tie-down area for small planes. “If you two are okay here, David wants to check out the flight school and maintenance shed.” He pointed to a sign and hangar on the far side of the parking lot. “I thought I’d go with him.”

  I nodded. Brian tapped at my foot with his crutch. “Mom, come on. Susie’s waiting.”

  “See what you can find out about what happened to Jake’s ultralight,” I called after Max and David, unsure they’d be able to hear me over the rush of the wind. “See if they have any theories.” I searched my jacket pocket for a scrunchie and brushed the hair from my face with my hand as I hurried to catch up with my youngest. I was both proud and apprehensive. On one hand, he seemed to be coping well with the wrench thrown into his summer plans. He’d spotted this opportunity and put a plan in motion to pursue it, all on his own. On the other, I couldn’t protect him from unseen dangers while my feet were on the ground and his were hundreds of feet in the air and out of sight. I frowned. I’d better get used to the mixed feelings this stage of motherhood engendered. This trip represented only one brief stop on our high-speed journey into the future as both boys became independent young men beyond our direct influence. Bittersweet didn’t begin to describe my mood.

  After dealing with the bureaucratic details and supervising the safety check, I waved to the red and white plane as it taxied the short distance to the runway and took off in a northeasterly direction toward the mountains. It banked left and headed out over the ocean. I shielded my eyes from the glare with my hand and watched as the tiny aircraft disappeared into the distance. Susie had said they’d be back in twenty minutes, so Belle and I walked back inside and I ordered a latte at the bar.

  “My son’s up with Susie,” I told the bartender. “On a Young Eagles flight.”

  “Lucky kid. It’s a great program. Most of the pilots out here caught the flying bug on one of those flights.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I took the steaming mug he placed on the counter.

  “Do you need something stronger?” he asked, waving to the array of alcoholic beverages behind the bar.

  “Sorry to be so grumpy. My fledglings are making ready to fly.” I straightened my back and shoulders when I realized how much my posture reflected my dejected mood.

  “I get it. I’ve got four kids of my own. All in their twenties. Much as I love the fact that they’re all independently pursuing their dreams, my heart still hurts a bit when they set off without a backward glance.” He reached out his hand. “Lindstrom. Mace. This gig is my retirement job. Keeps me out of trouble and out in the world, meeting new people.” His name tickled a memory, but I couldn’t retrieve it. My brain was too busy trying not to worry about Brian.

  I shook his hand. “Maggie McDonald.” I admired the artwork on the surface of the foam. An airplane. “Cute.”

  “Thanks. I had to take a three-week class to learn how to operate that beast,” he said, pointing to the gleaming steel espresso machine, which squatted, hissed, and sighed on the back counter. “I learned to make those airplane designs, but don’t ask for anything else. It’s amazing how many ways a simple attempt to make a heart or a flower can turn pornographic in the wrong hands.” He shuddered.

  Either Mace didn’t recognize me or he didn’t consume local print or broadcast media or maybe he was just being polite. In any case, he avoided mentioning Jake Peterson and his parents. I was grateful.

  “You’re distracting me,” I said, turning to peer through the windows at the runway.

  “Not to worry. I’ll let you know when they land.”

  “Do you work here every day?”

  “Afternoons, weekends. I let the college kids take the later shifts and the bigger tips. I can’t take that pace.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Yo, Zeke.” He waved his towel in the air like a fan at a sporting match. “If you wait a sec you can take the lunch orders over to the gearheads in the shed.” Mace disappeared through the doors to the kitchen.

  I turned and spotted a young man leaning on the front counter chatting with Kelly, who twirled her braid and blushed. He loped into the bar and hopped onto a nearby stool, spinning it one way and then another in a way that made me queasy. In an effort to stop him, I held out my hand. “Maggie McDonald.”

  “Zeke Havers.” As he reached toward me to shake my hand, the sleeve of his hoodie rode up, revealing a heavily tattooed arm. I winced involuntarily, empathizing with the pain involved in covering so much skin with ink. But the boy didn’t look old enough to be tattooed. I was sure that you needed to be at least eighteen, though I wasn’t up on all the details.

  Zeke reddened, looked away, and covered the tattoos. I reached for my latte.

  Mace saved us from our awkwardness as he burst back though the swinging doors holding several white paper sacks. “Lunch is ready, Zeke. Thanks for delivering it.”

  “No prob, Mr. L.” He grabbed hold of the bags, but Mace didn’t let go. He spoke softly but sternly to the boy. “You stay away from Kelly. She’s too young. You can tell Joe I kept you here to deliver the sandwiches, but this is the last time I’ll cover for you. If you want to keep that job, be on time.”

  Zeke took the bags and nodded. He turned toward me, made eye contact, and said, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. McDonald.” Then he raced out the door without a backward glance.

  Mace watched him, then shook his head, picked up a glass, and polished it with a flour-sack towel, like the bartenders in every movie I’d ever seen. “The energy of the young. Wish I could harness it for myself.”

  “Troublemaker?” I asked. “Ladies man?”

  “Zeke?
No, he’s okay. A good kid, mostly. Needs a little sheepdogging from time to time. Joe, the manager over at the machine shed, and I are keeping an eye on him. Too smart for his own good. Gets bored, you know.”

  “I know the type,” I said. “I have four older brothers. Seems like they all went through that phase. Them, and all their friends.”

  Mace polished the already clean glass. “Four years I’ve worked here. Almost everyone in the area comes through at one time or another, whether they’re pilots, passengers, or just here for the food, which is pretty good, by the way. Our new chef moved here from Silicon Valley so he could afford a house, but his résumé includes some of the trendiest restaurants in the Bay Area. He put down the glass and folded the towel. “Sorry. Lost in my thoughts. A lot of kids work here. Most turn out okay, eventually. Some seem to have to learn their lessons the hardest ways possible.”

  “Did you know Jake Peterson?” I tried to sip my drink and watch his face at the same time, succeeding only in spilling coffee down the front of my once-white T-shirt. Mace passed me a clean towel.

  “Friend of my kids. The younger ones, anyway.”

  “Terrible thing.”

  Mace didn’t have anything to add, so after a moment I prompted him. “Do ultralights fly out of here? Do they need airports?”

  He polished the bar top. “Here they do, I think. A complicated combination of state, local, and federal regulations covers ultralights. Officially, you don’t need a pilot’s license to fly one for recreational purposes. The exception is if you’re flying in a congested area.”

  I looked out the window, past the runway to strawberry fields that extended as far as I could see.

  Mace must have read my thoughts.

  “Oh, there’s lots of debate over what constitutes a congested area, but the club here requires at least a safety certification for the pilot and the machine.”

  “So I couldn’t buy myself an ultralight tomorrow and fling myself into the wind off the nearest cliff?”

  “You’re thinking of hang gliders. No motors.”

  “Jake had a license?”

  Mace nodded. “As far as I know. A mechanic’s license too.” He shook his head. “Took a course at Cabrillo College. He and Zeke might have been in the same program, though Zeke is several years younger.”

  “Cabrillo?” I asked, repeating the name of a local community college. “I thought Jake was in a graduate program at UC Santa Cruz.”

  “He’s doing something academic in environmental science now. I mean, he was, before…”

  “But he knew his way around aircraft, sounds like.” I spoke quickly to relieve Mace’s obvious discomfort over getting tangled up in the verb tenses he was using to refer to the recently deceased young man.

  “Absolutely. Jake was out here all the time since he was a freshman in high school. Watching the planes, doing an internship, picking up hours to pay for tuition. Then he bought that used ultralight, fixed it up, and was out here even more. First for fun and then he figured out a way to use it in his research.”

  “Do you know what he was studying?”

  Mace tilted his head and stared into the distance as if searching the past. “Someone must have told me, but I can’t remember.”

  “But he took maintenance seriously? You don’t think he would have skimped on safety checks, for example?”

  “No way. His boss, Joe Fowler, used to tease him about how painstaking he was. Said it cost him money.”

  “Would Joe have encouraged Jake to cut corners?”

  “I don’t think so. That whole group eats here most Fridays. They get a little rowdy, but no one minds. Least of all me. They’d rag on each other. Teasing. But, no matter how sharp Joe’s criticisms were, Jake would lift his chin, straighten his back, and speak clearly and very slowly: ‘Not one of my planes has ever had an equipment-related malfunction. Not one.’” Mace had adopted the posture he described and looked like an aging Captain America. He rapped his knuckles on the wooden bar top.

  I glanced over my shoulder, squinting into the sky above the airport. I wondered who was responsible for the maintenance on Susie’s plane. I hoped it had been Jake.

  “That’s them coming back in now,” Mace said, pointing his towel toward the runway. “Give ‘em a few minutes. Susie likes to talk to the kids about taking more lessons and joining Civil Air Patrol.”

  It sounded much like a drug pushing scheme. The first flight was free to plant the seed, then came gentle pressure for a second trip, fanning the flames into a full-fledged addiction. My clichés and metaphors were hopelessly muddled, but I didn’t care. I thanked Mace, left him a generous tip, and struggled to pull on my jacket without threading Belle’s leash through the sleeve. I headed for the door. Brian burst through before I could open it.

  Chapter 12

  If you’re flying to a vacation resort where you’ll be grocery shopping, pack easily compactable fabric tote bags. They’ll be handy for transporting purchases, picnics, and other items.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Thursday, June 20, Afternoon

  “How was it?” I asked.

  “Awesome,” Brian said, shifting his weight from one crutch to the other as though he were expending all available energy trying to be still. Trying and failing. “Were you bored waiting?”

  “Not at all. I made a friend and learned a lot.” I waved to Mace. “Tell me all about it while we look for Dad and David.” How had I missed Brian’s enthusiasm for aircraft? Why had we not done this years before? I bit the inside of my lip and struggled to stay in the moment rather than berate myself for a past I had no power to change.

  “Oh my god! It’s so beautiful. Incredible. Awesome. Like, the whole valley is laid out. Hay bales look like croutons, scattered across the fields. And the ocean? We saw whales. Whales! From a plane. The waves, they’re like this lacy edge, and the water is so many different colors.” Brian blushed and stopped to catch his breath and reorganize his crutches. All it took to turn my youngest son into a poet was one trip in a small plane. Who knew?

  He traced an arc in the sky with the tip of his right crutch. “At take-off, the engine is so loud, but once you get up there…” He gazed at the horizon, awestruck. “For a moment, Susie shut the engine off—”

  “Off? She shut the engine off?”

  “Only for a minute. It started right up again. But that’s not the point.”

  I thought it was exactly the point, but Brian chattered on. “It was so quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so completely silent. No wind noise. No people sounds like traffic or construction or radios. Just…silence. And me, breathing. Almost like I was breathing in the world, and I was just one cell within it, but part of it, all at the same time. Susie says that’s what it’s like to be in a glider, lifted by a thermal.” He stared at me, waiting for a comment, desperate to hear what I thought.

  “Wow,” was as eloquent a word as I could summon. Brian’s face fell.

  “What? You expected me to turn around and buy a plane this afternoon?”

  Brian smiled and nearly tripped. “Of course not. But…I wouldn’t say no to going up again with you and Dad and David,” he said, after regaining his balance. “These crutches are trickier than they look. I get my rhythm, and then I get going too fast and have to stop and start over.” He glared at the crutches and the bandage-wrapped splint on his foot. “You’d think I could figure out how to just slow down.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, referring to the suggested family trip into the wild blue yonder. He rolled his eyes.

  “No, seriously. Sounds like fun. But I need to talk to Dad and work it into our schedule. And check the weather forecast. Wouldn’t do to plan an excursion and then discover the airport was socked in.” It wasn’t an idle deflection on my part. Early summer on
the coast of Northern California had its own moniker: June Gloom. The bluebird sky people tended to associate with the surf cities was more common in September and January than it was at the height of vacation season.

  Movement on the far side of the parking lot near a group of industrial buildings and hangars caught my attention. Max and David waved and walked toward us. Brian and I moved into the shadow of a parched and scraggly tree.

  “Susie told me some other stuff,” Brian said. “Like about the strawberry workers and Jake.”

  “Did Susie have any idea what could have happened with Jake and his ultralight?” I asked.

  “Not really. She took Jake up on his first flight.”

  “Did Susie feel bad about it?”

  “About Jake dying? Why wouldn’t she? She knew the guy.”

  I stopped in my tracks, horrified that Brian would think I could be so insensitive. “No, of course not. Certainly she’d be saddened by Jake’s death. I meant, did she feel responsible because she’d introduced Jake to the sport that killed him?”

  Brian chewed his lip, frowned, and his face took on a vacant expression. I knew he was replaying, like a movie, the scene inside the cockpit when Susie had talked about taking Jake up for the first time. “No way. Susie’s proud of what she does. Says some huge percentage of pilots were in the cockpit for the first time on an Eagle flight. Cool, huh?”

  I wasn’t too sure about that, but I didn’t respond. Apparently, I didn’t have to. Brian had heard my thoughts as though I’d shouted them from the rooftops.

  “Mo-om,” he protested. “Come on. It’s safe. Twenty times safer than in a car, Susie says.”

  Tell that to Jake’s mom.

  “Do you want to hear what Susie told me about Jake or not?” Brian said, stopping to adjust his grip on his recalcitrant crutches. “She says Jake was a great mechanic. He heard changes in engine sounds that helped him diagnose problems.”