Necessity

22

“A little more aileron. Left foot,” Charlie Reid says. Then in exasperation: “Your other left, my beauty.”

“Sorry.”

She depresses the pedal. The plane has been sliding; now it banks and continues to turn.

She attempts to line up the nose with the mountain pass twenty miles away-she’s learned by now that it is called the Grapevine-and the plane skitters disobediently. She still isn’t comfortable with the unfamiliar feel of the controls.

Whoever said it’s just like learning to drive a car is an imbecile.

Charlie is talking into the radio mike and she hears the tower grant clearance; at least she assumes that is what is being discussed. There’s so much crackling noise in the headset earphones that she can make out barely one word in five. They all sound alike and they all seem to understand one another perfectly but to her it is as much of a foreign tongue as it was on the first day.

Charlie says something to her.

She peels one earphone away. “What?”

“We’re cleared to land. Go ahead.”

She stretches her body up to lean to her left and peer down through the window. Where the hell’s the Goddamned airport?

Everything looks alike. Cars and trucks are toys moving slowly along the monotonous grid of streets; the roofs, the yards, the trees, the bright blue swimming pools-thousands of them, all identical, and you never see anyone swimming in them.

She tells herself that’s because the inhabitants are indoors struggling with their own strife-ripped dualities of darkness and light. Never mind the bright landscape from the air. Cowering inside the boulevard shops and tract houses are creatures of despair, seducing and beseeching and murdering one another. She’s thinking: Count your blessings, Jennifer Hartman. You think you’ve got it bad? Look down there.

That’s the sort of pep talk she’s been inflicting on herself lately. It doesn’t do a very good job of persuading her. It’s hard to sympathize with strangers when you’re only one or two jumps ahead of the men with guns.

Wouldn’t it be funny, she thinks, if they weren’t after me at all? What if they’ve given up and written me off?

Suppose nobody’s looking for me?

After all, there’s no evidence they’re there.

Suppose it’s all in my imagination.

All this effort …

But she knows them better than that.

By the time she finds the airport she is nearly above it. She’s forced to go around in a wide circle and try again. Charlie is on the microphone apologizing, explaining things to the tower.

The runway moves from side to side within the frame of the windshield. It is coming up at her and the angle looks all wrong. She feels disoriented.

“Easy now,” he says. “Gentle down. You’re all over the sky. Just point the plane like a rifle. Honey child, you ever done any shooting?”

“Yes.”

“Aim it then.”

“I wasn’t very good at it.”

He says drily, “Bring the nose up now and cut your power back.”

She pulls the wheel toward her and is relieved when the angle of glide flattens out: it no longer has quite the feeling of going into the ground like a falling coconut. She reaches for the throttle.

“Slowly,” he admonishes. “We don’t want to stall, do we, dear.”

The runway keeps wavering from one side to the other. The buzz of the engine throbs in her every bone; she can barely hear him when he says, “A little bit less throttle now. Put your nose down just a hair.”

She endeavors to earn his approval but the dreadful machine fails to cooperate.

“Baby doll, try to straighten out. You’re flying like some kind of pendulum. I’m getting seasick. Bet you forgot what I told you, didn’t you. Pretend the runway’s a road and you’re driving your car down a ramp to it.”

The plane tilts. She tries to right it. It tilts the other way.

Charlie says, “Easy. For God’s sake.”

The ground is coming up fast again; she realizes it’s too fast-the angle just isn’t shallow enough-and then the airplane lurches into a trough that feels bottomless: her stomach pops right up into her throat and she hears his groan and then she feels the controls move under her hands and feet when he takes over.

Halfway down the runway the wheels touch and then he is slamming the throttle forward and the yoke comes back toward her and the acceleration presses her back in the seat. The plane bounces and roars. A quick red haze slides down over her eyes.

She feels it soar. Down out of her side window she sees the earth pirouette, spinning as it drops away.

He levels it off. “You want to try again now?”

Something comes up into her throat and she has to swallow.

He says, “In other words you don’t want to do it again right now.”

“Give me a minute to catch my breath.”

“Darling, you can have all afternoon. You’re paying by the hour.” Then he speaks sotto voce to himself but she hears him distinctly enough; she is meant to: “And I can’t imagine a bigger waste of time and money.”

“I’m going to learn to fly this thing if it kills me.”

“No,” he says. “You mean if it kills me.”

She draws a long breath. “Okay Charlie. Let’s do it again.”

“Shee-yit.”