The Minotaur

2

The airplanes were shiny and brilliant in their bright colors of red, yellow and blue. They hung in the window suspended on wires, frozen in flight, the spring sun- light firing the wings and fuselages and emphasizing the sleek perfection of their forms. -

Jake Grafton stood on the sidewalk and stared. He examined each one carefully, letting his eyes roam from tail to prop to gull- Hke wingtip. After a moment he pushed the door open and went into the warm shop, out of the weak sunshine and the cool breeze coming off the ocean.

As he stood and gazed at another dozen or so planes banging from the ceiling, the shop proprietor behind the glass counter laid aside his newspaper and cleared his throat. “Good morning.”

“Hi.” Jake glanced at the man. He was balding and bearlike and perched on a stool. “You’ve got some nice airplanes here.”

“Sure do. You have a son interested in radio control?”

Jake let his eyes find the swooping, soaring forms above his head. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “Just looking.”

The proprietor began turning the pages of his newspaper as Jake moved deeper into the shop. He wandered slowly, examining the counter displays, fingering balsa from a wire bin, scanning the rack of X-actokmves and miniature drills, looking at the rows and rows of boxes with airplanes and cars on the covers that stood on shelves behind the counter. Finally, back at the door, he muttered his thanks to the shopkeeper and went out onto the sidewalk.

The sea breeze was brisk this morning and tangy with salt. Not many people on the street. This Delaware beach town lived on tourists and summer was a long way off. At least the sun was out after a week of low, scuddy clouds and intermittent drizzle. Stand- ing there, Jake could faintly hear the gulls crying as they soared above the beach and boardwalk a half block away. He looked again at the airplanes in the window, then went back into the shop.

“Sell me an airplane,” he said as the proprietor looked up from his newspaper.

“Delighted to. Which one you want?”

Jake scanned the planes hanging from the ceiling. He began to examine them critically.

“You ever build an RC plane before?”

“Build? You mean I can’t buy one already made?”

“Not any of these, you can’t. My son built all these years ago, before he went to the air force. They’re his.”

“Build one,” Jake said softly, weighing it He hadn’t figured on that. Oh well, the decision was already made. Now he wanted a plane. “Let me see what you have.”

Forty minutes later, with a yellow credit card invoice for $349.52 tucked into bis wallet, Jake Grafton left the hobby store carrying two large sacks and walked the block to his car. He walked purposefully, quickly. For the first time in months he had a task ahead that would be worth doing.

Fifteen minutes later he parked the car in the sand-and-crushed- seashell parking area in front of his house. He could hear the faint ringing of the telephone as he climbed the steps to the little wooden porch. He unlocked the front door, sat one of the paper sacks on the floor and strode across the living room for the phone on the wall by the kitchen table. The ringing stopped just as he reached for the receiver. He went back to the car for the other sack.

The airplane on the tid of the box looked gorgeous, mouth- wateringly gorgeous, but inside the box was sheet after sheet of raw balsa wood. At least the aircraft parts were impressed, stamped, into the wood. All you would have to do was pick them out and maybe trim the pieces. The instruction booklet looked devilishly complicated, with photos and line drawings. Jake studied the pic- tures. After a bit he began laying out the balsa pieces from the box on the kitchen table, referring frequently to the pictures in the booklet. When the box was empty he surveyed the mess and rubbed his temples. This was going to be a big job, even bigger than he thought.

He put coffee and water in the brewer and was waiting for the Pyrex pot to fill when the phone rang again. “Hello.”

“Jake. How are you feeling this morning?” Callie, his wife, called twice a day to check on him, even though she knew iCirri- tatedhim.

“Fine. How’s your morning going?”

“Did you go out?”

“Downtown.”

“Jake,” she said. tension creeping into her voice as she pro- nounced his name firmly. “We need to talk. When are you going to call that admiral?”

“I dunno.”

“You can’t keep loafing like this. You’re well. You’re going to have to go back to work, or retire and find something to do. You can’t just keep loafing like this. It isn’t you. It isn’t good for you, Jake.”

She emphasized the word “good,” Jake noticed listlessly. That’s Callie, instinctively dividing the world into good and evil- “We’ll talk about it this weekend.” She was driving over from Washington when she got off work this evening. Jake had driven over to the beach house two days ago.

“That’s what you said last weekend, and Monday and Tuesday evenings. And then you avoid the subject” Her voice was firm. “The only way I can get your undivided attention is to call you on the phone. So that’s what I’m doing. When, Jake?”

This weekend. We’ll discuss it this weekend. I promise.”

They muttered their goodbyes. Jake poured a cup of coffee and sipped it as he sorted through the piles of balsa again. What had be gotten hinuetf into?

Coffee cup in hand, he went through the front door and walked past UK car to the street He turned toward the beach, which was about a hundred yards away. The house beside hw wu empty, a suaiiBer place that belonged to some doctor in Baltimore. The aext house belonged to a local, a phar» adst whose wife worked sights down at the drugstore. He had seen their son OB the beach flying a radio-controlled airplane, and didnt Callie say this week was spring break for the kids? He went to the door and knocked.

“Captain Grafton. What a pleasant surprise.”

“Hi, Mrs. Brown. Is David around?”

“Sure.” She turned away. “David,” she called, “you have a visi- tor.” She turned back toward him, “Won’t you come in?”

The boy appeared behind her. “Hey, David,” Jake said. He ex- plained his errand. “I need some of your expert advice, if you can come over for a little while.”

Mrs. Brown nodded her approval and told her son to be back for lunch.

As they walked down the street, Jake explained about the plane. The boy smiled broadly when he saw the pile on Jake’s kitchen table- “The Gentle Lady,” David read from the cover of the in- struction booklet. “That’s an excellent airplane for a beginner. Easy to build and fly. You chose a good one. Captain.”

“Yeah, but I can’t tell which parts are which. They aren’t la- beled, as far as I can tell.”

“Hnunm.” David sat at the table and examined the pile. He was about twelve, still elbows and angles, with medium-length brown hair full of cowlicks. His fingers moved swiftly and surely among the parts, identifying each one. “Did you get an engine for this plane?”

“Nope.”

“A glider is more difficult to fly, of course, more challenging, but you’ll get more satisfaction from mastering it.”

“Right,” Jake said, eyeing the youngster at the table.

“Let’s see. You have a knife, and the man at the store — Mr. Swoze, right? — recommended you buy these pins to hold the parts in place while you glue them. This is a good glue, cyanoacrylate. You’re all set, except for a board to spread the diagram on and pin the parts to, and a drill.”

“What kind of board?”

“Oh, I’ll loan you one. I’ve built three airplanes on mine- You spread the diagram on it and position the parts over the diagram, then pin them right to the board. And I’ll loan you my drill if you don’t have one.” Jake nodded. The youngster continued, his fingers still moving restlessly through the parts, “The most important as- pect of assembling this aircraft is getting the same dihedral and washout on the right and left wing components, both inner and outer panels. Be very careful and work slowly.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll run home and get my board and drill. You won’t need the drill for several days, but I might as well bring it over.” He bolted out the door, leaving Jake to refill his coffee cup and stare at the actual-size diagram.

The house was quiet, with only the background murmur of the surf on the beach and the occasional burble of a passing car to break the solitude. The task assumed a life of its own; breaking the pieces out of the balsa boards, assembling them on the diagram, occasionally sanding or trimming with the razor-sharp nobby’knife before pinning them into place. As he worked he occasionally glanced at the picture on the box, visualizing how the airplane would look soaring back and forth above the sand, trying to imag- ine how it would feel to fly it. This would be real flying, he knew. Even though his feet would not leave the ground, the plane would be flying free. and since he would be flying it, so would he. He carefully glued the rudder and vertical stabilizer parts together and began assembling the horizontal stabilizer.

The knock on the door startled him- He had been so intent on his task he had paid no attention to the sound of the car driving up. “Yeah. Come on in.”

He heard the door open. “Captain Grafton.”

“Yep.” Jake looked up.

The man standing there was in his late twenties, slightly above medium height, with short brown hair. ‘Toad Tarkington! Come on in! What a surprise!”

The man’s face split in a wide grin and he crossed the room and pumped Jake’s hand. “It’s great to see you again, CAG. I thought for a while there you were dead.”

Grafton nodded and studied Lieutenant Toad Tarkiagton. today clad in jeans and rugby shirt and windbreaker. He looked… just the same as he did the morning they went after Colonel Qazi in an F-14 five months ago. Last September. And here he was with that grin… quick, energetic, nervous. He was ready to laugh or fly, ready for a prank in the ready room or a night cat shot, fully alive. That’s what Toad Tarkington projected — vibrant, energetic, enthusiastic life.

“I’m not a CAG now. Toad. I’m just a plain ol’ sick-leave cap- tain.” CAG was the title bestowed on an air wing commander, and was pronounced to rhyme with “rag.”

Toad grabbed his hand and held it, that grin splitting his face. “Have we got a lot to talk about! I tried to call you, sir, but your phone wasn’t listed.”

“Yeah. Had to have the number changed. The reporters were driving me nuts.”

Toad pulled one of the kitchen chairs around and sat down. “I was pretty damn happy last fall when I heard you were alive. What happened to you anyway, after we rammed that transport?”

“Some Greek fishermen pulled me out of the water. I don’t re- member a thing. Had a concussion. Lucky for me the life vests inflate automatically nowadays. Anyway, they pulled me out and I made it.”

“How come they didn’t radio someone or head for port?”

“Their radio was broken and they were there to fish,” Jake looked away from Toad. He was back among the ordinary, every- day things, for a moment there… but he was here, at the beach house. “They thought I was gonna die on them any minute and they needed the fish. I was in a coma.” His shoulders moved up and down. “Too damned many Gs. Messed up my eyes. That’s why I wear these glasses now.”

Jake removed the glasses and examined the lenses, as if seeing them for the first time. “It’s 20/100 now. It was 20/500. The Gs almost ripped my eyeballs out.” He placed the glasses back on the bridge of his nose and stared at the pieces of balsa on the kitchen table. “I don’t remember much about it. The docs say some blood vessels popped in the front part of my brain and I had some mem- ory loss.”

“By God, sir, I sure as hell can fill you in.” Toad leaned forward and seized his arm. Jake refocused on that excited, expressive face, “The Gs were something else and I couldn’t get to the ejection handles, and I guess you couldn’t either. Man, our bacon was well and truly fried when she broke up and spit us out. The left wing was gone and I figure most of the left vertical stab, because we were getting pushed around screwy. I—” He continued his tale, his hands automatically moving to show the plane’s position in space. Jake stopped listening to the voice and watched the hands, those practiced, expressive hands.

Tarkington — he was the past turned into a living, breathing per- son. He was every youngster Jake had shared a ready room with for the past twenty years, all those guys now middle-aged … or dead.

Toad was still talking when Jake turned back to the pile of balsa on the table. When he eventually paused for air, Jake said mildly.

“So what we you up to these days?” as he used the X-acto knife to trim a protruding sliver from a balsa rib piece.

“My squadron tour was up,” Toad said slowly. “And when you get a Silver Star you can pretty well call your next set of orders. So I talked it over with the detailer.” He looked around the room, then swiveled back to Jake. “And I told him I wanted to go where you were going.”

Jake laid the knife down and scooted his chair back. “I’m still on convalescent leave.”

“Yessir. I heard. And I hear you’re going to the Pentagon as a division director or something. So I’m reporting there this coming Monday. I’ll be working for you.”

Jake smiled again. “I seem to recall you had had enough of this warrior shit”

“Yeah. Well, what the hell! I decided to stay around for another set of orders. I can always pull the plug. And I’ve got nothing better to do right now anyway.”

Jake snorted and nibbed his fingertips together. The glue had coated his fingertips and wouldn’t come off. “I don’t either. So we’ll go shuffle paper for a while, eh?”

“Yessir,” Toad said, and stood. “Maybe we won’t get underway, but we’ll still be in the navy. That’s something, isn’t it?” He stuck out his hand again, like a cowboy drawing a pistol. “I’ll be seeing you in the office, when you get there,” he said as Jake pumped the outstretched hand. “Say hello to Mrs, Grafton for me.”

Jake accompanied Toad to the door, then out onto the porch. There was a young woman in the car, and she looked at him curi- ously. He nodded at her, then put a hand on Toad’s shoulder and squared around to face him. “Take care of yourself, y’hear?”

“Sure, CAG. Sure.”

“Thanks for coming by.”

As Toad drove away Jake waved, then went back into the house. The place was depressing. It was as if Tarkington brought all the life and energy with him, then took it away when he left. But he was of Jake’s past. Everything was past. The flying, the ready rooms, the sun on the sea as you manned up to fly, all of it was over, gone, finished.

It was after four o’clock. He had forgotten to eat lunch. Oh well, Callie wasn’t going to get here until nine o’clock or so. The Chesa- peake Bay Bridge shouldn’t be crowded on Friday evenings this time of year. He could get some more of this plane assembled, then fix a sandwich or something. Maybe run over to Burger King.

He scratched at the glue caked on his fingertips. The stuff came off in flakes tf you peeled it right. This plane — it was going to be a nice one. It was going to be good to fly it. When flying was all you knew and all you had been, you needed a plane around.

Oh, shit! As he looked at the pieces he felt like a fool. A fucking toy plane! He threw himself on the couch and lay there staring at the ceiling.

Toad Tarkington was silent as he drove from stoplight to stoplight on the main highway through Rehoboth Beach. The woman beside him finally asked, “So how is he?”

“He’s changed,” Toad said. “The official report said he was in a coma for two weeks. It was a week before that Greek fishing boat even made port. It’s a miracle he didn’t die on the boat. He said the fidiermen expected him to and kept fishing.”

“I would have liked to meet him.”

“Well, I was going to mention you were in the car, but he was busy working on a model airplane and he was… Anyway, you can always meet him later.”

The woman reached for the knob to turn the stereo on, then thought better of it. “This new assignment — asking for it just be- cause you like him…”

“It’s not that I like him,” Toad said. “I respect him. He’s… different. There aren’t many men like him left in this day and age. If Congress hadn’t jumped into that incident with both feet and voted him the Medal of Honor, he would probably have been forced to retire. Maybe even a court-martial.” Toad smacked the steering wheel with his hand. “He’s a national hero and he doesn’t give a damn. I’ve never met anyone like him before.” He thought about it “Maybe there aren’t any more like him.”

The woman reached for the knob again and turned the stereo on.

She had known Toad Tarkington for three weeks and she was still trying to figure him out. He was the first military man she had dated and he was modestly famous after the attack last fall on United States. Her friends thought it was so exciting. Still, he was a little weird. Ah well, he made a decent salary and bathed and shaved and looked marvelous at parties. And he was a fine lover. A girl could do a lot worse.

“Where do you want to eat tonight?” she asked.

It was dark and spattering rain when Jake heard Callie’s car pull in. He had completed assembly of the vertical and horizontal stabi- lizers, the rudder, and the wings, and had placed them on top of the bookcase and credenza to cure and was cleaning up the mess on the kitchen table. He raked the rest of it into the box the air- plane had come in and slid the box up on top of the kitchen cabi- nets, then went outside to meet her. She was opening the trunk of her car.

“Hey, good-looking. Welcome home.” He pecked her cheek and lifted her overnight bag out of the trunk.

“Hello.” She followed him into the house, hugging herself against the evening chill. He closed the door behind her and climbed the stairs toward the bedrooms. “What’s this?” Callie called.

“I’m building an airplane,” he boomed as he dropped the bag on the bed. When he reached the foot of the stairs she was examining the wing structure without touching it “It’s dry enough to pick up. How about coffee?”

“Sure.” Callie walked slowly around the living/dining area, her purse still over her shoulder, looking. She opened the door to the screened-in porch and was shivering in the wind, looking at the wicker furniture, when he handed her the coffee cup. “This stuff needs to be painted again.” She slid the door closed and leaned back against it as she sipped the hot liquid.

“What kind of week did you have?”

“So-so.” She was halfway through her first semester as a lan- guage instructor at Georgetown University. “They asked me to teach this summer.”

“What did you say?”

‘That I’d think about it.” She had been planning on spending the summer here at the beach. Kicking her pumps off, she sat on the sofa with her legs under her. “It all depends.”

Jake poured himself coffee and sat down at the kitchen table where he could face her.

“I went to see Dr. Arnold this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh.” Jake had refused to go back to the psychologist

“He says if you don’t get your act together I should leave you.”

“Just what does the soul slicer think my act is?”

“Oh, cut the crap, Jake.” She averted her face. She finished her coffee in silence, then rinsed the cup in the sink. Retrieving her shoes, she went upstairs.

The sound of water running in the shower was audible all over the downstairs. Jake spread the airplane diagram on the table and opened the instruction manual. Finally he threw the manual down in disgust.

He needed a drink. The doctors had told him not to, but fuck them. He rummaged under the sink and found that old bottle of bourbon with several inches of liquid remaining. He poured some in a glass and added ice.

The problem was that he didn’t want to do anything. He didn’t want to retire and sit here and vegetate or find a civilian job. He didn’t want to go to the Pentagon and immerse himself in the bureaucracy. The Pentagon job had been the only one offered when he was finally ready to be discharged from Bethesda Naval Hospital. The politicians had made him a hero and checkmated the naval establishment but the powers that be had still been smarting from the way the official investigation had been derailed. Luckily he had been damn near comatose in the hospital and everyone in uniform knew he had nothing to do with the political maneuvering. So he was still in the navy. But his shot at flag rank had vaporized like a drop of water on a hot stove. Not that he really ever hoped to make admiral or even cared.

He lay down on the couch and sipped at the drink. Maybe the whole problem was that he just didn’t care about any of it any- more. Let the other guys do the sweating- Let them dance on the tifhtrope. Let someone else pick up the bodies of those who fell. pe put the glass on the floor and rolled over on his side. Maybe he — was depressed — that soul doctor, . Yes, depression, that was probably…

When he awoke it was two in the morning and the lights were off. Callie had covered him with a blanket. He went upstairs, un- dressed, and crawled into bed with her.

The wind whipped the occasional raindrops at a steep angle and drove the gray clouds at a furious pace as Jake and Callie strolled on the beach. They were out for their usual morning walk, which they took rain or shine, fair weather or foul. Both wore shorts and were barefoot; they carried the flip-flops they had worn to traverse the crushed-seashell mix that covered the street in front of their house that led to the beach. Both were wearing old sweatshirts over sweaters. Callie’s hair whipped in the wind.

Jake critically examined the contours of sand around the piles that supported a huge house some ignorant optimist had con- structed on the dune facing the beach. The first hurricane, Jake suspected, would have the owner tearing his hair. The sand looked firm now. Shades obscured all the windows. The house was empty. Only three or four other people were visible on the beach.

Birds scurried along the sand, racing after retreating waves and probing furiously for their breakfast. Gulls rode the air currents with their noses pointed out to sea. He watched the gulls and tried to decide if the Gentle Lady could soar with them. The moving air had to have some kind of an upward vector over the sand. Perhaps if he kept the plane above the dune. The dune was low, though. He would see.

Callie’s hand found his and he gave it a squeeze. He led her down into the surf, where the ice-cold water swirled about their feet. “Toad Tarkington said to say hi.”

“He called?”

“Stopped by yesterday afternoon. He’s going to the Pentagon too.”

“Oh.”

“If you teach summer school, we’ll see more of each other this summer,” he said. “We’ll be together every evening at the apart- ment in Washington as well as every weekend here.”

Her hand gripped his fiercely and she turned to face him.

He grinned. “Monday morning, off I go, wearing my uniform, vacation over—“

She hugged him and her lips made it impossible to continue to speak. Her hair played across his cheeks as the ebbing surf tugged at the sand under him.