Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Esc

Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Esc - By James Van Pelt


Dedication



To Ed Low, Bonnie Slack, Mrs. Smith, and every hardworking

English teacher who loves literature, writing, and students equally.





Introduction

by Brenda Cooper



Some of us in the Northwest are lucky. Once every year, James Van Pelt comes to the Rainforest Writer’s Village, and we get to hear him teach. He is an educator by trade, and good at it. If we’re extra lucky, we join him on a walk through the amazing Cascade rainforest, with its cedar overstory and fern and water and moss understory. Sometimes we sit huddled together by a blazing hot fireplace insert in a bar that the entire group of us takes over for the cold, rainy days, and we write fiction while he writes fiction.

This is the context in which I first met James. He is one of our best writers. He mostly does short fiction, so what you are holding in your hand is some of the best current science fiction and fantasy available. Really. You don’t have to believe me. Just go visit his webpage and peruse his bibliography and notice how many of his short stories ended up in Year’s Best anthologies of one kind or another, or gained honorable mentions in them.

The thing I love the most about Jim’s writing is that it’s smart. The stories are true to their speculative roots, redolent with wonder, but they’ve also been touched by the literary brush. They contain well-crafted sentences and well-placed commas, solid workable structure, and confident prose.

The thing I love the next-most about Jim’s writing is that it’s varied. In this collection you’ll find a wide array of characters in different situations, times, and settings and with different problems. After reading at least forty or fifty of his stories, I’m pretty confident that Jim can pull off anything. I happen to know he has now sold over a hundred stories, and I’m sure they are very different one from another. This particular collection shows more of Jim’s range than any of his others; I was regularly surprised by the stories as I read through them.

When Jim asked me to write this introduction, I said “yes” in spite of the fact that there was no way I had time to read it all. But it felt like an honor to be asked. I had read all of his last collection, The Radio Magician and Other Stories, and provided a blurb for it. So I could do this. I would simply read a few of these stories, comment on those, and it would all be well.

I should have known better.

Despite my lack of time, I read the whole damned thing. Jim’s just that good a writer. Here are a few of my favorites:

The title story, “Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille,” is just magic. From the opening paragraph, I’m there with Jim’s character.

“Just Before Recess” is short and magical and strange. Good strange. I’m going to give you the opening line, just so you don’t miss this little gem. “Parker kept a sun in his desk.” Wow. Don’t you just have to go read that?

“Night Sweats” is the most subtle ghost story I have ever read.

My favorite story in the whole collection is “Howl Above the Din.” It’s incredibly bitter-sweet and evocative, and the tiniest bit sexy.

Closely in second place, this collection also includes the quirky commentary on the human heart called “Plant Life.”

I shall stop now. I could say something nice about every story in this book. But I think I should get out of the way so that you can start reading. Enjoy!





Flying in the Heart

of the Lafayette Escadrille





At 14,000 feet the November air rushes from the prop and buffets my head. Even with goggles, a thick, fur-lined leather cap and a layer of protective grease on my face, I am freezing. My cheeks tingle, my hands ache, and my knees crack with stiffness. My elbows clamp my ribs to hold in a little warmth as I admire the rising sun’s broad, lovely light shafts through the clouds and the long shadows across the Verdun sector’s snow-covered fields. I don’t mind the cold. Everything is white or purple except my brown and tan pursuit ship and my black twin Vickers machine guns.

The 110 horse power Le Rhone engine’s roar deafens me but is so steady that I have to concentrate to hear it. I fly, then, in a kind of silence. The clean air, the sun-bathed countryside, the two toned clouds cut into irregular halves of light and dark, and the Nieuport 17, an old and reliable partner now of three months, are my only company. I fly solo. Dawn patrol. I hunt an enemy, a specific ship, a blue and silver Fokker D-2 with a red cowling.

The plane responds to my thoughts. I think left and the horizon tilts; I scan the air below. At this height I am unlikely to be surprised from above. The Boche send flights from Colmar and Habsheim, but they fly lower, relying on the cover of archie from the ground to protect them, and they seldom cross the lines.

A stream glints like a mirrored ribbon and cuts a diagonal through the trenches. An infantryman could put a note in a bottle and float it to the other line. Maybe he could write about his family back home, or invite whoever reads it to share a drink with him, if whoever picks it up could read it that is, if he could understand the language.

I think right and the world rotates for me. Three two-seaters several thousand feet lower than I fly south, but they are British observers, their wings’ bull’s-eye insignias obvious. I don’t believe they know I pass above them. They must be young. At twenty-nine, I am not. I lied about my age to the French, although they might have let me fly anyway—they want the American volunteers to fight for them. They even brought us together into one unit and called us the Americaine Escadrille, but the Heinies complained—America is neutral—and now we are the Lafayette Escadrille. They’ve told us to say, viv le France. God bless America, and to hell with the Hun!





“I love this place, Eddie. Don’t you? You got to love this place,” Brian, the bar-ace, yelled over the rock-and-roll din of the Lafayette Escadrille Bar and Grill. “Look at that,” he said as a waitress walked by in a French maid’s uniform, beer pitcher and three mugs in one hand, black fish-net stockings emphasizing the curve of her calves and the aerobicized tone of her thighs. “Makes me want to roll around in the dirt.”

“Yeah, she’s okay,” I said. I balanced the stool on two legs and rested my back on the sandbag wall. The blue runway lights of Stapleton International Airport backlit the filled dance floor. A 737, its jets cranked for take-off, rushed by and rattled the heavy, insulated glass. Even through the music, the engines pushed a subsonic vibration into the bar. Glasses and change buzzed for a second on dark oak table tops.

The Lafayette Escadrille opened a year ago when a group of Denver stock-brokers pooled their money and invested in a “high concept” singles joint; they turned a barn on the edge of the north-south runway into a World War I French chalet. In front of the building, pointing skyward at a ridiculously phallic angle, are a pair of anti-aircraft guns; on the wall inside the door hang black and white photos: a fuzzy shot of Kaiser Wilhelm II visiting an airdrome; a crowd of officers standing around the wreckage of Max Immelmann’s plane; George Guynemer, France’s leading ace, facing the camera with his hands behind his back; Baron Manfred von Richthofen standing for inspection with the pilots of Jagdgeschwader No. 2. I’ve stood in the foyer and studied these pictures when the noise and smoke and disgust have driven me out of the bar. I’ve looked at their gray and grainy faces for some clue as to what they felt when they climbed in their planes. How could they go up every day? No parachutes. No early warning radar. No way to talk to each other.

Inside, the stockbrokers had mounted on the walls propellers, machine guns, flight jackets, leather boots, more pictures and other paraphenalia. The real coup though, held by cables above the dance floor, the most distinctive decoration, is a completely restored Nieuport 17. Its fifteen coats of hand-buffed varnish reflect the runway lights so the plane looks like it’s floating in blue air. When I drink too much I want to climb up to her, to start her engine and fly through the windows. Two months ago—I don’t remember this, but they say it’s true—they pulled me off the access ladder leading to the catwalk above the plane. The only way to get to the ladder is to jump on the bar. I don’t believe them when they say I did that. I stare at the plane for long periods some time.

Brian’s right, it’s a great bar. I go every week, sometimes with him, sometimes by myself. Lots of stewardesses looking for fun on a layover and nurses from Fitzsimmons. Good bands.

A short brunette wearing a fur coat brushed the edge of our table as she walked by.

“Scuse me!” Brian yelled. I’ve seen this approach before. He says the key to scoring is getting their attention, that it doesn’t matter what you say as long as they look at you. He said to me once, “Get them into a rhythm, a call and response thing, and you’re half way home.” She turned her head, looked at him and slowed down. Brian’s One-Stop-Sun-Shop tan and hair is so blond, its white gets most of them.

“Nice jacket. Does that have buttons or a zipper?” He smiled. His teeth are a little crooked and one of the top front ones is turning black from a bad root canal, but he talks so fast and smiles so often that women never seem to mind.

She pulled the edges of the coat closed and hurried towards the bar as if she’d just seen someone she knew.

“Frigid or a lesbo. If they won’t talk, they’re one or the other.” He rested his hand on his beer. The band kicked into a heavily drummed tune that sounded good to dance to.

He pushed his elbows off the table and scanned the room. The late flights were all in and unaccompanied women sipping from wine coolers or spritzers sat together in small groups around the tables. So few men were in the place that women were dancing with each other. They looked like they were having a good time. The Lafayette is an undiscovered resource in Denver. Most guys head for After the Gold Rush or Confetti’s where the ratio is three to one the wrong way.

“I’m going to the aviator,” he said. “Prime time.”

Lafayette’s bathrooms are labled “aviator” and “aviatrix.” When Brian’s on the hunt he will leave once an hour, lock himself in a stall, take a wad of tobacco laced with coke, and come out ready to fly. “Just a pinch between my cheek and gum is the real thing,” he’d say. I’d tried it once, but I got sick. No buzz.

Another bar-ace I know named Quinn, when I asked him what he did to make connections at singles joints, told me, “I plant seeds. I strike up a conversation; maybe dance, buy them a drink. I always make sure they know my name and I know theirs. Two or three weeks later I see them again. We’re friends. They know who I am; I remember them. But I never go home with anyone unless it’s her idea. I’ve learned that it doesn’t do me any good to suggest it. I plant seeds and I wait for the harvest.”

I’m no bar-ace with silhouettes of kills recorded on the headboard. I’m an observer. I want to touch, but not like Brian and Quinn. I mean I like sex just like the next guy, but it doesn’t seem like really being with someone. When I’m through with sex and we’re lying there I secretly grip the pillow, make a fist and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, because it never goes far enough.

A portrait of Raoul Lufbery, the leading ace of the Lafayette Escadrille hangs in the foyer with the other World War I pictures. He’s facing the camera, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a cigarette between his thumb and index finger. The caption underneath is a quote, “There are only two kinds of combat pilots: those who shoot and those who get shot.” I guess there is something to that.





I’ve been shot down twice. The first time was only a few miles from the Luxeuil-les-Bains airdrome. An all white Halberstadt appeared out of the sun and fired one burst that destroyed my engine and blew oil into my face, blinding me. The wind whined in the wires as I side-slipped hard to the left and started a flat spin to convince him I was dead. German pilots will sometimes continue firing into a crippled plane so that they can report a clean kill. A spinning plane is impossible to get a good shot at. I tore my goggles off when I was convinced that he was not following and landed in a corn field where a French farmer and his wife fed me wine, cheese and coarse bread until the ambulance from Luxeuil came and picked me up.

I bank my plane east now and head deeper into Boche air. Nearly an hour has passed and I will have to turn back soon. The sun glares directly in front of me through the prop’s thin shadow. Subtle currents bump my craft. My wing tips seem to move of their own accord as I balance in the air. I make tiny adjustments with the rudder pedals and the stick. A Nieuport is nothing like the broad-winged Jennies they trained us on. This is an unforgiving machine. A mistake, a moment’s inattention, and the plane is out of control.

I lean the mixture and retard the spark to extend my flying time. The engine begins to miss and I nudge the levers until it runs smoothly again.

The second time was over Cachy Wood near the Somme front. We were returning to Bar-le-Duc airdrome with a squadron of the new British Handley-Page bombers from a mission to destroy a supply dump deep in German territory when I became separated from the others in a cloud. Clouds are always dangerous when planes fly in formations because the visibility drops to zero, so commonly pilots increase the distance between themselves as they enter mist. When the other planes vanished, and I was alone, the solitude, the soft edge of my wingtips and the drops of water streaming off the wires comforted me.

Finally I popped out of the gray darkness and I searched the sky for my squadron. They were gone, but thirty yards to my right and at my altitude flew a blue and silver Fokker D-2 with a red cowling. The black crosses on the fuselage confirmed that I was facing the enemy. We stared at each other across the distance. His goggles reflected pure glisters of sun as we flew side by side like migrating birds. After we had flown together for a moment, he did an odd thing that has burdened me since, a thing I have told no one, not even the other pilots when we drink and laugh and sing each night to forget the days sorties: he waved.

I wasn’t stunned then, only later as I thought about the image of him facing me, hand extended, palm outward, waving. What I did was I dove right, then pulled the stick up hard hoping to get a shot at his underbelly before he moved, but when I got into position, he was gone. Bullets splintered my left wing V-spar. I snapped a hard barrel roll into a vertical loop, but I didn’t shake him, and another shower of lead found my plane, turning the aileron canvas into fragments of flapping cloth.

Turn after turn he hung to my tail, and though I tried every move I knew, he continued to successfully place shots into my ship. Never have I seen flying of this caliber. We fell 10,000 feet during the maneuvering, and then there was no place to dive to. I hugged the ground hoping that the French troops would shoot at him and not at me. His finishing blast should have caught me the instant I quit dodging, but I flew for thirty seconds and no more tracers streaked by my head; I looked behind. He had pulled his plane to the side and out of position to fire, but he was less than twenty yards away. He pointed to his deadly Spandau guns, shrugged his shoulders and turned his ship to the east. He must have run out of ammunition or suffered a jam in the mechanism. I crashed in Cachy Wood and walked away from the wreckage uninjured.

I never had a chance to fire my guns. I am a clumsy flyer, a technician. My commander says, “You must be a flyer in the heart.” I have never shot down an enemy plane.

I am now deep behind the lines and my neck hurts from craning it left and right looking for the blue and silver Fokker D-2. Captain Thenault would not approve this mission, this search for a single ship, and I could not explain it to him had I asked.

I rub frost off my chronometer. I must turn back soon. I have lost altitude to find warmer air. Now, at 8,000 feet, I see the country below has not been touched by the war. The fields are not pockmarked with craters. There are no black trench lines. A thread of smoke comes from a farmhouse chimney.

Why did he wave to me?





Brian came back from the bathroom wired and began a search and destroy circuit of the bar. He approached two women sitting at a table, borrowed a cigarette, talked to them for a few minutes, went to the next table, asked for a light and talked some more. He danced with one of them, moved to another table and started the cycle over again by borrowing a second cigarette. He calls them “pick-up sticks.” It took him forty minutes to hit on all the tables. I finished a pitcher by myself.

A woman sat alone two tables over, her elbows on the table, holding an empty wine glass by its rim. I thought about sitting next to her and talking. She saw me looking; I turned away.

Brian sat down heavily, his chest sweaty, dark stains down the sides of his shirt.

“You’ve got to dance, Eddie. There’s witch wool all over the place, but it’s not going to flop down in front of you.”

“I don’t see anybody I like.”

“So you’re going to drink and feel sorry for yourself. I don’t want to pull you off the ladder again.”

“If I see somebody, I’ll ask. I don’t know what I want just yet.”

His fingers drummed the table. “What do you want?”

He had me there. What did I want? I’d been thinking about it all night. I’d been thinking about it while I studied that Nieuport 17 suspended over the dancers. I’d been thinking about it while men and women moved around the room in separate little flight paths, never really touching each other. I’d been thinking about it while my hands cupped around the beer mug, while my butt flattened against the wooden stool, and while my feet went to sleep in my fashionable cowboy boots that were too tight.

“How close have you ever been to somebody?” I asked.

“Skin close.”

“Is that all?”

“You mean, have I been in love? Sure. I’ve been in love lots of times. I’m in love every night. Do you mean close like in let’s get married close? Yeah, I even did that once. I know all about close. How close do you want?” He dabbed a beer-soaked napkin on his chest.

“Closer than all that. I want to be in a woman.” There, I had said it.

He laughed. “That’s the best way.”

“No! That’s not what I mean. It’s not sexual. Like, when I kiss a woman, I just kiss her outside. I’m not kissing her.” I paused. I didn’t know if I could tell him this. How would he take it? “I want our lips to touch and . . .”

“What?”

Maybe if I rushed it out it wouldn’t sound so crazy. “I want our lips to meld together. I want to push our faces into each other, have our skin melt and flow and mix so that we’re one head, and I want to feel each molecule swapping electrons inside so there’s no telling who is who.

“I want to fill her up, to be smoke and seep inside her skin so that my smoke legs step into her legs, and my smoke belly presses against the inside of her belly, and my smoke arms slide all the way down the inside of her arms until my fingers fill her fingers like a glove.” Brian moved his stool back a few inches from the table.

“And at the same time I want her to be filling me up. I want her to pry off the top of my head and pour herself inside of me, blood and guts and living liquid bone so I can feel her sloshing around behind my eyes, pushing herself into my tongue, running down the inside of my throat. I want to feel her pooling in my feet, creeping up the insides of my legs, spilling over into my genitals like some smooth, heavy, golden lotion.

“But we can’t ever do that. Every time I reach out to touch her, she flies away or she attacks. And it’s not just her, it’s anybody. It’s you and me. All people. We got this war mentality about each other. I see it in terms of her, but it applies all the way around. I’m flying solo, man, and no one can get in my plane. I can’t get in theirs. I touch only the surface.” Brian sat silent. “You asked,” I said.

Finally, he said, “What’s with all the flying shit?”





I must turn back now. I bank my French machine to the west. Already I have cut my reserve too close and will have to chance the archie as I cross the lines. The angry black and yellow puffs of explosive will seek out my fragile wood and canvas craft.

To amuse myself and to take my mind off missing the blue and silver Boche, I sing a song that I heard in the billet last night:





The young aviator went Hun hunting,

And now ’neath the wreckage he lay—he lay,

To the mechanics there standing around him,

These last dying words he did say—did say.



Take the cylinders out of my kidneys,

The connecting rod out of my brain—my brain.

From the small of my back take the crankshaft,

And assemble the engine again—again.





A hint of movement below stops my voice. Sometimes I see motion when there is nothing, but this is another plane, black Iron Crosses readily visible on the top wing, flying a thousand feet below and in my direction. I drop the nose and start a shallow descent into the blind spot above and behind the German.

Heat rushes to my face. The tail and wings are blue, the fusalage silver, and the cowling red. The head of the consummate pilot who shot me down over Cachy Wood stays still. Perhaps this distance from the lines he feels safe.

The firing sights of my guns center on his neck. The distance closes from a hundred yards to fifty and his wings stretch farther and farther. At twenty-five yards I place my hand on the lever that will send a fusilade of bright tracers and lead into his cockpit. From this range I will surely pierce his petrol tanks and send him flaming to the ground. I can see where the bullets will strike, imagine his surprise and panic in the second before the heavy slugs pound out his heart and lungs, and invision the initial hint of fire as the left wing tips up and the plane begins its final spiral into an unmarked, snow-covered German field. He will be my first kill.

A sudden turbulence hits our planes, and I have to fight to keep the sights steady. He makes the same corrections, but his handling of the Fokker is so sure, so graceful. The fighter snaps to his attentions. He waggles his wings. I see no reason for him to do this. He doesn’t turn or change altitude. He waggles them again, like a big dog shaking water from his ears, and I understand that he is playing. His plane sweeps broadly to the left and then broadly to the right; I match the movements. Still, he does not look behind. I believe he thinks he’s alone and he is reveling in his ability to fly. I take my hand from the lever.

I should peel off, dive away so he will never know that I have seen him, so that we will not have to fight in the pure November air above the virgin fields, so that neither of us will have to die.

Instead I pull my plane next to his. He looks at me from fifty feet away as we fly once again side by side. He must be startled by my sudden appearance. He must know that I could have shot him down. I raise my hand; I wave. The wind catches my arm and makes it hard to keep above the windscreen. It seems a long time before he waves back. We continue on our course, but we must separate soon. No one would understand our private armistice. He flies well in his beautiful blue and silver Fokker D-2 with the red cowling. I try to learn from him how to be so in place in the air. I wish the war were over soon.





Brian started to help me with the next pitcher, but he spotted the girl I’d seen earlier. The music overpowered any chance that she would hear even the loudest “Scuse me!” that he could holler, so he wadded up wet napkins and threw them at her until she looked at him. As soon as he caught her eyes he pulled his shirt open and started pointing at his chest while mouthing the words, “You and me, baby. It can happen.” This was a new low in pick-up technique for him, but I wasn’t surprised when she got up, walked over and asked him to dance. I could tell by the way they were talking as they moved to the floor that he would have company going home again.

All the tables were empty. Everybody was dancing, a fast song. I couldn’t tell who was dancing with who. That close together, and from my angle above the floor, they looked like a solid mass, bouncing and waving to the music.

I finished the pitcher by myself while noticing some things: the surface of the bar is slick, and it’s a pretty good jump to that access ladder. A guy would have to have secure traction if he was thinking about climbing the ladder, walking across the catwalk and lowering himself into the cockpit of the Nieuport 17.

I reached under the table and started the difficult process of pulling off my boots.





Father’s Dragon





Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I shot a dragon in the garden with the video camera!”

Thomas winced at the word “dragon,” and then, when he shifted his shoulders to get a better angle with the wrench, he clunked his cheekbone against the kitchen sink’s U-joint. He thought, not the dragon again. The cabinet edge dug into his back while the cold, rough underside of the sink pinched his elbow against a copper tube. He couldn’t see his seven-year-old. “The camera’s not a toy, Dolby.” Trapped by the plumbing, Thomas’ voice sounded stupidly hollow to him.

“Mom said I could use it.”

“Tell Mom I said it’s not a toy.”

“I’m filming your feet, Daddy.”

Thomas tried to pull himself out of the cabinet, but when he turned, his elbow forced the copper tube to bend, starting a fine mist from where it joined the faucet deep in the dark gap behind the sink. “Oh, damn.”

“Louder, Daddy. I don’t think I got that.”

Holding his temper, Thomas said, “Hand me the pliers, son.” With his free hand, Thomas bent the tube back, but the mist kept falling. Since he was lying flat, looking up into the workings of the sink, the water sprayed straight into his eyes. He blinked rapidly, as if clearing tears, then leaned his head to the side. His ear filled and the wet pressure on his eardrum throbbed with his pulse. “The pliers in the tool box. Get me the pliers.” He stretched, felt the nut that held the tube flush to the underside of the faucet and put his finger over the leak. A trickle ran down his arm and into his shirt. His other arm ached from holding the wrench in place; its handle felt huge and unwieldy, and he couldn’t help thinking it was his father’s wrench, that he shouldn’t have it. Thomas’ most vivid memory of his father was of a huge man bending over him, hand raised, screaming, “Don’t mess with the tools,” and then the slap. Thomas’s dad disappeared when Thomas was six. Now that he was a dad himself, he thought about his own father a lot. Even though the tools belonged to Thomas, he seldom took them out.

Thomas waited. Water pooled between his shoulder blades and crept along his backbone. “Dolby?” The back screen door slapped shut.

“Ah, hell.” Pulling his hand out of the gap increased the spray and shifted the wrench on the sink trap. An ooze of black slime slipped out of the joint, hung from the bottom of the pipe and dropped into his mouth. He spit hard as he extricated himself from the cabinet.

The shut-off valve spun freely when he twisted it. Flicked with his finger, it whirred like a propeller. Water dripped onto the green tile his wife loved, but only reminded him of his kitchen when he was a child, the place of many arguments between his father and mom. Thomas had warned his wife that old country homes like this were maintenance nightmares, but she hadn’t cared. Leaky pipes the first month we live here, he thought. Heaven help us in the winter. He pushed a towel against the cabinet base to soak up the water.

Thomas picked up the tool box and headed for the cellar. In the living room, his wife lay under a fuzzy, blue and yellow afghan, a washcloth folded over her eyes. Thomas said, “I’m going to have to find the main water cut-off.”

She nodded slowly.

He said, “Another headache?”

“Little one.”

“What about our dinner?”

“I called the sitter.”

Thomas slumped. “I was looking forward to getting out together. The two of us.”

She lifted her hand, waved it languidly like a handkerchief towards him. “My head.”

The tool box’s handle was cutting off the circulation to his fingers; their tips tingled. He shifted it to the other hand. “Maybe we ought to see somebody. You got one of these the last time we were going out.”

She sat up; the washcloth dropped off her eyes leaving a red stripe across her face like a broad swath of Indian war paint. “If you really want to, we’ll go.”

“No, no. I’m just saying you get a lot of headaches.”

She pressed the washcloth to her eyes and sank back to the pillow. Thomas started to speak but didn’t. She was motionless, absolutely rigid, frozen.

He asked, “Did you tell Dolby he could play with the camera?”

“He said he wanted to film a dragon. I can’t talk to him.”

Thomas said, “That’s a thousand dollar piece of equipment,” and it sounded to him like his father speaking.

She sighed from under the washcloth.





Thomas shined the flashlight up into the floor joists. He had only been into the cellar twice, first when the realtor showed them the water heater was new and second when he carried the love seat they didn’t have room for down the rickety wooden steps. He thought the cellar was a creepy and ugly place. In the cobwebs dozens of pipes and wires went every direction. Some pipes were obviously old plumbing that hadn’t been removed when new ones were installed, and it looked like new plumbing had replaced old several times. He thought some of the pipes must be for gas, but there was no way to tell immediately what did what, what went to what, and what was functional. He tracked an insulated pipe from the water heater to a junction where one pipe veered towards the bathroom and another disappeared under the kitchen with several other pipes into a hole that was dripping steadily. He couldn’t tell which pipe carried unheated water.

Dolby’s behavior preyed on Thomas’s thoughts, but more than that, his reaction to his son bothered him. Nothing he said ever seemed to penetrate, like the boy purposefully ignored him when he spoke. And what worried Thomas was he believed he behaved that way when he was a child. He remembered Dad talking to him, but remembered little he said. Like Dolby, he had lived by his own agenda. After Dad had left, Thomas had a dragon of his own. He had to have one. No one ever listened to him, he had thought. Now Dolby was fascinated with them.

He played his light around. Except for the love seat, this end of the long, narrow cellar was almost empty. The old water heater, a huge, rusting tank with a grate for coals under it stood next to the new heater, a gleaming white eighty-gallon Sears model that seemed out of place.

At the other end, against a rough stone wall with chunks of mortar missing, a ladder stood in a broad pool of water that covered a third of the cellar. He shined his light on the rippleless surface, wondering how deep it was and if there might be snakes or rats. He guessed there must be a way to drain the cellar. After a few minutes of opening and closing the many fuse boxes cluttered with knife switches and fuses as big around as shotgun shells, most that didn’t seem to be connected to anything, their wires hanging loose, he found a button marked “sump,” and without much hope, pressed it. In the lowest corner of the uneven floor, a low gurgle showed the pump worked, and immediately water began sliding towards it. He set the ladder under the kitchen and climbed carefully to the pipes.

Lines of yellow drops marched away from the hole in the floor down the pipes to release one by one several feet away. The plink of dripping water and the heavy, humid air made the cellar seem subterranean, like he was hundreds of feet underground instead of a few steps from his kitchen. He braced his hand on one of the joists and an inch of rotten wood sloughed off. The splinters felt spongy and weightless in his fingers. He dug his screwdriver deeply into the joist. He figured, at least here, only the sheer mass of the thick timbers kept the house from collapsing into its own foundation. He gazed sourly at the other joists and wondered how much more damage he would find as he searched for the main valve.

Two pipes rattled loosely when he shook them. A rusty iron one he guessed was the gas, and a slightly newer pipe he hoped was the water line. He followed it with his light as it went through joist after joist until it ran down the wall and into a wooden hatch set into the floor next to the old water heater.

A leather strap served as a handle. He wrapped it around his hand and grunted as he pulled the water-logged door open. A moist, vegetable smell floated against his face when he lay on the floor to look into the hole. Green and black fungus coated all eight of the valves within. Fortunately, the new valve was on top of the old ones. Thomas reached down, spreading his legs for leverage, and he twisted it. The valve creaked, but didn’t move. His fingers slipped.

He slid more of his chest over the hole, bracing himself with one hand against a wet pipe. He heard someone on the stairs.

“Daddy, I’m filming your feet.” The camera’s bright light filled the top quarter of the hole, but the contrast made Thomas’s hand invisible. He couldn’t tell what he was holding onto.

“Dolby, come shine the light for me.”

“I can’t. I just wanted another blank tape. I’m recording the dragon.”

“Tapes are in the TV cabinet, but come hold the light first.”

The light blinked out. Dolby’s feet pounded across the kitchen. Thomas sighed and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light from his flashlight that was on the edge of the hole. He twisted again with no result. The valve was too slippery.





Thomas rummaged through the drawers in the kitchen looking for a rag. His wife mopped water off the tile.

“Why don’t you turn the water off?” she said.

“The valve’s stuck.” He picked up a cloth placemat and held it up to her.

“That’s our wedding present from Aunt Mary.”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“I’m waiting for a special occasion.”

He put it back in the drawer and opened another filled with plastic spoons and forks. He shut it.

“What do you need?” she asked.

“An old towel or something.”

“I threw them out when we moved.”

“What can I use?”

She dropped the mop—its handle bounced—dug impatiently into a laundry basket and tossed him one of his older shirts. “There.” The shirt landed at his feet, a sleeve draped over his left foot.

“How’s your head?” he asked.

“Wonderful. I can stand it. A flood in the kitchen doesn’t help. I thought men were supposed to know about plumbing.”

“My dad never taught me,” he said.

“Fine, then, blame your dad.”

“Sorry,” he said, and felt awkward because “sorry” wasn’t really the right response. He picked up the shirt. “It’ll be dark soon. Don’t you think Dolby should come in?”

She sat in a kitchen chair, massaged her eyebrows with her thumbs. “He says he’s found a dragon. Have you been telling him stories again? If he wakes up screaming tonight . . .”

Thomas squeezed the shirt into a ball. “One dragon story months ago. If he ignores it, it will go away.”

“The dragon or the nightmare?”

“Yeah,” said Thomas.

“You call him.”

Thomas put the shirt on the table and opened the back door screen. His wife rested her face in her hands. He saw just her nose and a slice of her lips.

The last edge of the sun setting behind him, Dolby stood on a stump in the back yard pointing the bulky camera at the roof. Thomas called him.

“I can’t come now, Daddy. He’s right above you.”

Thomas resisted the urge to look up. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Dolby jumped down and stomped into the house, the camera slapping awkwardly against his legs. Thomas turned sideways to let him in.

“Did you see him?” said Dolby, his face red and angry. “Is it the same one?”

“No,” said Thomas.

“Don’t you want to see him?”

“What I want is for you to get ready for bed.”

“I’m going to watch my tape.”

“It’s after your bedtime. No TV after bedtime, son.” Thomas let the door swing shut behind him. The screen pressed against his palms like coarse sandpaper.

“I want to watch this, though. I filmed it.”

“No.”

Dolby glared at him and then at his mother, her hands still over her face. “It’s not fair!” He threw the heavy camera on the floor. Something delicate crunched inside; a lens rolled across the tile and under the refrigerator.

All of Thomas’s muscles locked. For a second he could see himself stepping forward, bringing his hand around and slapping his son, a full body weight swing that would take his head off. So Thomas didn’t move. He knew he couldn’t move.

The boy, crying, ran out of the room. His feet drummed on the stairs, and then his bedroom door slammed shut.

Water hissed out of the leak under the sink; a new peninsula of wetness formed on the recently mopped floor.

Thomas exhaled and realized he’d been holding his breath, then said, “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll pick it up.”

“About Dolby. What are we going to do about him?”

His wife bent stiffly, as if her back hurt too, and lifted the camera by its strap from the floor. Broken parts shifted inside. “He’s your son.”

“Our son.”

“I didn’t tell him about dragons.” She dropped the camera in the trash can.

“Maybe it can be fixed.”

She snorted. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll turn the water off, and then be up.”

She paused at the doorway, rested her hand on the door frame. “Don’t bother.” Her head leaned against her arm. “I’ll be asleep.”





In the cellar, the flashlight flickered. Thomas slapped it angrily against his palm and the light brightened to a dull yellow. He shined it the length of the cellar towards the sump where the floor glistened, but the pool was gone. The pump’s motor whined. Black algae covered the stone floor. He wondered how long it had been since the pump had been turned on and how algae could grow without light. He discovered the float valve on the sump was missing. If he hadn’t come downstairs, he figured, the bearing would have burned out by morning. He pressed the button on the wall, and the motor’s noise dropped into the silence of dripping. Water stained the rough stone walls. How often did the cellar need to be pumped?

At the trap door, he dropped onto his chest, reached into the hole and wrapped the shirt around the valve. It turned stiffly, and the constricted water shrieked at the end of the last rotation. Thomas rolled to a sitting position, suddenly exhausted.

Gradually, the flashlight dimmed, then winked out, and he lowered his head to his forearms.

He thought about his father who had never taught him anything, except maybe that you can always run away. He didn’t know much about him. A few photographs and a box full of tools were all he had, and now Thomas had to raise a son. Thomas remembered one evening a week after Dad had left. He sat dry-eyed but desperately alone on his kitchen porch step. The horizon glowed faintly orange. The dragon came to him, flying out of the sunset, then landed in the yard and consoled him. For a year after whenever he was most alone, the dragon came. When the hurt faded away, when Thomas found other friends, the dragon quit coming. Thomas hardly missed him. But now, he thought, he would rather have had a father. What does a father do? he thought. What does a father do when his son doesn’t listen to him and his wife is so distant that when they are in the same bed late at night the father is afraid to breathe because she may hear him? Thomas’s father had taken the magic escape. He had ridden the dragon and never returned.

Thomas sat in the dark with his eyes closed until his back and thighs ached from the cold floor.

When he looked up, he saw the cellar was not unlit. The hot water heater’s blue-flamed pilot washed a cool and steady light the length of the room. Shadows were deep, black and long. The wet floor glistened like a still ocean under the moon, and from floor to ceiling, tiny mirrors of quartz or mica in the stones reflected stars of pure blue. His cellar suddenly seemed to him the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He imagined he could form constellations from the reflected points, name them anything he wanted, after his dad, his wife, his son, himself.

His back cracked when he stood, and all the stars changed. His own shadow blocked out half the room. He picked up his tools and climbed the stairs.

Under the sink, the steady hiss of escaping water was silenced. Thomas mopped the floor again, squeezing the mop dry after each pass across the tile, filling a bucket half way. When he was done, he stored the mop and bucket, rung out the towel he’d placed under the sink, hung it to dry, and, after making sure the kitchen was in order, opened the screen door and walked into his back yard.

His neighbor’s cornfield on the other side of the fence rustled like a thousand sheets of paper rubbing against each other, and the moon glowed in the tassels. Thomas faced his home; light from the kitchen streamed through the door and windows. His bedroom window on the second floor was dark. Dolby’s was lit. On the roof the dragon lay, straddling the apex. As long as the house, its tail looped around and under its front paw.

Graceful as a cat, the dragon came down and stretched itself at Thomas’s feet. He could hear its breathing, low and rumbling, and when the dragon turned his head toward him, its eye was big as a manhole cover. A clear membrane flicked over the eye from below, changing it from green to milky gray for an instant and then back. Then the dragon turned its head away and lowered its shoulder. Thomas saw the flat place behind its head and in front of the wings. A place where a man could mount and hold on.

Thomas stepped forward and stroked the dragon’s neck. The skin was warm and the scales finely textured like silk. Thomas said, “I know why you came back, but I can’t go with you. That was my father’s choice.”

Under the moon, in the night, in Thomas’s back yard, the dragon raised his head and looked down at him. Thomas said, “I have to fix the plumbing.” The dragon’s breath growled. Thomas added, “I have work to do.”

Thomas walked inside and started to shut the door. The dragon’s eyes followed him. Thomas lifted a hand to wave. “I’m sorry,” he said.

In the kitchen, he waited until he heard noises like gusts of wind, the huge wings flapping. He listened until he couldn’t hear them anymore, and then he headed up the stairs.

At the top, he paused. The house was quite. No dripping. The pressure was off. Thomas knocked on his son’s door. “Dolby, we need to talk.”





Just Before Recess





Parker kept a sun in his desk. He fed it gravel and twigs, and once his gum when it lost its flavor. The warm varnished desktop felt good against his forearms, and the desk’s toasty metal bottom kept the chill off his legs.

Today Mr. Earl was grading papers at the front of the class, every once in a while glancing up at the 3rd graders to make sure none of them were talking or passing notes or looking out the window. Parker would quickly shift his gaze down to his textbook so Mr. Earl wouldn’t give him the glare, a sure sign that Parker’s name would soon go up on the board with the other kids who had lost their lunch privileges for the day. He could feel Mr. Earl’s attention pass over him like a search light.

Slipping a pebble out of his pocket, Parker carefully lifted his desktop a quarter of an inch and slipped the rock in. It made a tiny clink when it dropped to the bottom. He leaned the desk away from him until he heard the pebble roll toward the sun, followed by the tiny hiss that meant the rock had vanished into it.

Two days ago he’d opened his desk to put his lunch in, but instead of the pencil box and tissue box and books he expected to see, a cloud swirled in the space, at its center, a dull, pulsing red glow. He shut the desk and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. An hour later, the dusty swirl in his desk had contracted to a bright spot in the middle. He cautiously moved his hand toward it. At first he felt only the heat, but when he got within a few inches, the skin on his palm began to sting, like the flesh was pulling away. He snatched his hand back, then tried a pencil. When the point moved close enough, the pencil tugged toward the sun, then snapped out of his fingers into the tiny light, brightening it slightly in the process.

Now the sun was as large as a golf ball. When Parker rolled a marble across his desk, its path would curve toward the sun within, sometimes circling several times before resting exactly above it.

“Parker,” Mr. Earl said. “Your reading group is waiting for you.”

In the back of the class, his three reading partners sat on the mats, their books on their laps. Parker pushed away from his desk and joined them.

“Where’s your book?” Mr. Earl said, his eyebrows contracting into a single line above his eyes.

Parker shrugged. Mr. Earl growled. “You need to be more responsible, young man. Go get your book.”

The other students looked on, relieved that Mr. Earl’s attention was on Parker and not on them.

“I don’t have it, sir,” said Parker. It had disappeared into the sun along with everything else.

Mr. Earl’s hands clenched slightly. Parker cringed as his teacher pushed away from his desk. Mr. Earl almost never left his desk. Students came to him. He didn’t go to students unless the infraction was terribly, terribly bad.

“You, young man, are irresponsible. Remember our talk about responsibility on the first day of school?” He looked at each of his students who nodded in turn. “Isn’t your book in your desk where it belongs?”

“No, sir,” said Parker. How could he explain about the swirling dust, the pulsing red glow, the sun’s pinpoint of light?

“Of course it is. That is where your books should always be. Everything in its place. A place for everything. Isn’t that right?” His question sounded like an accusation.

Parker nodded. “But my book isn’t there, Mr. Earl.”

The teacher took two long strides and stood beside Parker’s desk. Before the boy could speak, Mr. Earl threw the desktop open. For a second, he stared into it. A white glow reflected off his face. “What is this?” he said, as he reached toward the brightness.

“Careful, Mr. Earl,” Parker started to say, but it was too late.

The teacher screeched before lurching against the desk. He went down quickly, his feet vanishing into the desk last.

A long silence filled the room. Parker stood, walked back to his desk. The sun within had grown, its heat baking like a tiny oven. He closed the top, which snapped down hard on its own at the last moment.

The other students hadn’t moved. Parker looked at them. They looked at him. Over the intercom, a bell softly chimed.

“Recess,” said Parker, and they all ran outside to play.





O Tannenbaum





Christmas is about friends. You have to believe this and not get discouraged. Look around you. Everyone here is poor—some poorer than you—some are crazy, but look at them, eating turkey generous people donated, opening baskets full of clothes that are meant for them. All gifts of love. All symbols of human kindness. Today, of all days, you can’t give up.

Here, pull up a chair. Grab a plate of turkey. Go ahead. Fill it up with dressing too. Everybody always shares. As long as I’ve lived, people have been kind. Maybe today I can give you a little in return for all that’s been given me.

So there won’t be any surprises, let me tell you something straight up front about me as an explanation. This Christmas Day, I turned twenty-one—it’s my birthday, I think, but not for sure. It’s different for me. Lots of people don’t know for certain when they’re born. They’re abandoned at birth, so a birthday is assigned to them, probably one pretty close too. A baby, you can tell within a month or two how old they are, but that doesn’t work for me. See, I have to count days, because for me, it’s always Christmas.

Well, that’s not exactly true. Lately it’s been Christmas—the last five years ago or so, and for the five years before that, it was the last day of the Saturnalia. And before that, one kind of winter solstice celebration or another as far back as I can remember. My years, of course. Not your years. Really, for me, it’s always Christmas.

Like this morning, I woke up in this shelter. The cot felt solid under my back, and the bed roll was worn but clean. Smelled old, you know, but not bad. Some folks were already stirring.

Guy next to me sat up coughing. Young looking fellow. Maybe my age, but a real dry cough that doesn’t bring up anything, and he kept going for a couple of minutes.

“Got to quit these coffin nails,” he finally said, lighting one up, tears still streaming down his cheeks. He took a deep drag. “Gonna be a good one today. I can tell,” and he offered me a smoke. See, first thing that happened to me today was an act of generosity.

I shook my head. People moving all around. Elderly ones, or the touched ones, talking to themselves. Bundled up, mostly. Like that guy over there—three trashed coats and two grimy scarves. Hat pulled over the ears. It’s warm in here, but homeless folk hold their clothes tight.

Gina entered my head then. I hadn’t thought of her at first, and that made me sad, you know, ’cause every time we talk now it’s probably the last. Without a miss for two-and-a-half months I’ve called her in the morning to say hi, to see how she is.

My months, that is, not yours. Like I said, every day is Christmas for me, and for me, two-and-one half months ago was 1915 when this soldier I met, Humphrey, asked me to call Gina. He sat next to me in the trench; I’d found out earlier in the day that we were twenty miles south of Verdun. German trenches were a hundred yards to the east, but you couldn’t see them. Broken spirals of barbed wire, torn up dirt, a busted ambulance were all I could see. Night had fallen, and it had gotten very cold. A sentry walking by, head low, broke through a layer of fresh ice that had formed over the mud, so every step crackled, then squished. We had to pull our feet back to let him pass. The soldier’s boots made a silly little squeaking sound when they pulled free.

Humphrey laughed. He was tired and scared, an eighteen-yearold Brit with a downy, blonde moustache and bloodshot eyes. He laughed at the ridiculous sound though, and then he started telling me about his family and his girlfriend, Gina. He talked for an hour, low and passioned and non-stop. He made me swear to contact her if he didn’t make it home.

“It’s Christmas,” he said, and he didn’t say anything about where we were or what we were doing. He leaned his head against his gun and shut his eyes and by the light of the winter moon told me about Christmas in Lancashire, where he was born. I wish you could have heard his voice, kind of low and broken. He was a lot more down than you. “They’re roasting chestnuts,” he said. “And eating quince pudding, and telling each other stories. My Uncle Charles will bring out a cask of stout—he makes it himself—and they’ll tap it open. He’ll pour pints all around. Charles and Aunt Edna will be pie-eyed and toasting to the King’s good health. Gina will be with them.” Humphrey paused for a long time at that. No other sounds up and down the trenches, just cold, milky light pouring down on us, and the air like ice razors pressing against our cheeks. Finally, he breathed, “Oh, Gina, my good girl, my black-eyed girl.”

“Do they sing carols?” I asked. It had been a good day for me. Everyone clapped me on the shoulder. Ruddy faced fellows, mostly young, like myself, like you. “Merry Christmas, old sport,” they’d say. “Separated from your company, are you?” and they’d offer me stiff shots of warm brandy from hip flasks that suddenly appeared.

“Yes,” said Humphrey. “They sing ‘O Christmas Tree.’” and he started to sing it, very softly, and I could tell he was crying. His voice, clean and clear, carried in that icy air, and it seemed like the only sound in the world, all tied up in the night sky and the moon and the barbed wire, and when he got to the part that goes, “They’re green when summer days are bright; they’re green when winter snow is white,” his voice cracked and he could go no further.

It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life: Humphrey slumped down in the bottom of the trench, lost and far from his home, from his Gina, the marvelous dark-eyed Gina who was hanging popcorn strings on a Christmas tree in a fire-lit room surrounded by Humphrey’s parents and sisters and brothers and Uncle Charles and the homemade stout a million miles away.

And the echo of Humphrey’s Christmas carol still rang in my ears, and I realized it wasn’t an echo. It was the same tune, but the words had changed. Humphrey looked up too. He canted his head to one side and listened. Clear, so clear, as if the singer was in the trench with us, we heard a voice singing Humphrey’s song. It sang, “O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum . . .”

Humphrey hopped up then, and so did I, and looked across the no man’s land. A face looked back. A German face under a pointy helmet, and he waved a tiny, white handkerchief at us. Humphrey dug into his back pocket and waved his own handkerchief. I don’t know who climbed out of the trench first, the German or Humphrey, but I followed Humphrey across the cratered ground to the broken lines of barb wire in the middle.

Humphrey didn’t even pause at the wire. He stepped over it, his hand out, “Merry Christmas, old chap,” he said.

“Frohliche Weihnachten, mein freund,” the German said back, and they shook hands.

I stood behind them, arms wrapped around me against the cold. The moon, bright as any flare. All the way up and down the lines, as far as I could see, men were tentatively climbing out of trenches, walking toward the enemy, embracing, pulling out pictures to show each other.

Humphrey handed me a flask, his eyes shiny, his face alive with merriment. “It’s Schnapps,” he said. “It’s Christmas Schnapps.”

I fell asleep that night in the trenches, and I woke up the next day, a year later on Christmas in a hospital in London. Called Gina on the telephone. Told her I was a friend of Humphrey’s. Found out he had died in January, but she was so glad to hear from me. Asked me if I was the “Yank” Humphrey had written to her about.

We talked a long time. It was another good day. In the hospital they brought in big baked hams. Cut them up in the wards. Even the sickest of the sick. Even the amputees and fellows who’d been gassed in the battle who couldn’t hardly breathe, were happy. I made sure they sang “O Christmas Tree,” because I knew I’d made a friend. For the first time in my life I could talk to one person from day to day. Gina told me to keep in touch. With the telephone, I could. No matter where I was on Christmas Day, I could call her.

So when I woke this morning, the man in the cot next to me offered me a smoke. A fellow from the kitchen told me that they’d be serving turkey and all the fixings in a couple of hours. Some kids from the high school were coming over later to carol with us. I asked him where the phone was. Yesterday—last year—Gina wasn’t doing so good. Her heart, she said, was weak. “But you’re sounding good,” she had said.

“Yeah,” I said. “The years have treated me well.”

I made the call. She’s in a nursing home in San Francisco. Moved to America in ’57. I was afraid. The phone rang for a long time. Not many nurses on Christmas morning, and then someone answered.

I asked for Gina. Gina who, she said, and I told her. “I’m new here,” she said. “I don’t know that patient.” Papers shuffled around on her end. She put the phone down, and someone mumbled to her in the background.

You’ve got to understand. I’ve never known anyone for more than a day. A day is all I get. I don’t understand why. When the morning comes, I wake up, and it’s Christmas. Sometimes I won’t sleep for a couple of days, but everyone sleeps. It can’t be avoided. Maybe I vanish in the night. Maybe a year later I appear when no one is looking. Who can tell? I always wake up in a place where a stranger could go unremarked, an army, a hospital, a festival, a flop house and soup kitchen like this one. I don’t know if it’s a curse—there’s lots I don’t know—but all I get is a day a year, and I’m a stranger that no one knows.

Then Gina came on the line. It was her voice. I’ve heard her grow old. “Hello, old friend,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

Each year she’s been there. Each year. She’s ninety-six now. I’m twenty-one today. It’s my birthday. In three-hundred and sixty-five years for you, I’ll be twenty-two, but I want to tell you something. It’s important I think.

I hear rumors of bad things in the world. I hear about wars; I’ve even seen some, but in my experience, human beings are good. They’re generous. They share with strangers, and they reach out to someone they’ve only talked to on the phone once a year for eighty years. If you could just see things from my perspective, you’d understand, even without friends, people are good. There are reasons to hope.

You shouldn’t give up. People will help.

And you know what else? I wonder if you could do me a favor. You could? Great. I wonder—would you mind if I phoned you next year, here? Do you think you could find your way back here on Christmas to take my phone call? It would mean a lot to me.