Solo

By Gerald Prueitt

Getting through life is a lot like learning to fly a plane - any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483531366

Book preview

9781483531366

SOLO

A novel

by Gerald Prueitt

1

Somewhere, wild in the blue yonder, between outer space and terra-firma there is magic. Ask anyone who learns to fly. Somewhere else up there, maybe inside heaven, there are stories like rhapsodies of marriages that were meant to be. And somewhere, high and outside of heaven, hover legions of love stories that were probably meant to be, of happy lovers living together for eternity.

There is, caught eternally in the sound of wind, every lover's whisper and every damnable curse. It's true. Ailerons and airfoils, hurricanes and hail stones, and global warming have chopped them up and spliced them back together again; sounds that rip the silence of flight with the jabber of lost emotions; little random pieces like thoughts that only fit together later. You can hear them sometimes on a high crag away from the censure of tree, the confused passions and pains that nag to be remembered and work against other concentrations. Sometimes it's hard not to hear them or put them in order.

Alone in the cabin of the small plane, submerged in the steady drone of one small engine, Lucy Aberdeen checks the altimeter, the compass, and the directional gyro. Below, she can see the Interstate.

Tower this is Whisky-Foxtrot-Zulu seven - four - niner, radio check please.

Lucy banked to follow the highway, adjusted the trim of the plane and corrected for wind drift. The little airplane lowered her nose slightly and cut through the wind whispers that lifted the span of her wings and seduced her pilot into remembering faded sighs of long ago.

Fountain Fairy Park remembered, was a make-believe place to live. 1974 was a make-believe time to enter the world. The real world was kept out of Lucy Aberdeen's too sweet life until the eighties. Her world was devil-dogs in lunch boxes; Coca Cola-peanut floats with tattletale friends on honeysuckle front porches, triple trouble banana splits dripping butterscotch at the drugstore after double dates - and home before nine o'clock. There was no stress in her world. There was nothing to worry about except the Sadie Hawkins Day race. That was the biggest gossip-generating event in school, next to the prom, because it only happened every four years. It really decided what girl was chasing what boy and what boy was willing to be run down by what girl.

Lucy grew up surrounded by picture-book suburbia: manicured gardens with pedicured footpaths, golf-club tennis at night, swimming pool parties on the weekend, perfect DDT homogenized lawns, artfully shaped shrubs, pure white magnolia blossoms that engulf deep green lollipop trees whose perfume intoxicated the warm night air with the light scent of enchantment and a hint of lemon. Mary Tyler Moore evenings dripped sweetness with pineapple upside-down cakes and sweet iced tea nights that comforted sitters on second floor porches listening to distant music of Fountain Fairy's Ferris wheel.

Echoes called softly over the lake while sparkling turns of reflected lights were broken slowly by the dark rim-lit shapes of lovers in rowboats. At night, after the gold of sunset, there was the soft glow of Fountain Fairy's multi-color lights. Sometimes summer rain reflected its own aurora borealis of carnival lights off the bottoms of low clouds and falling rain-shine. Winter closed the rides but left white mounds of ice-veiled crystal shrines.

It was a perfectly protected time when Walter Cronkite would not allow the world to lie. President Carter lulled the worries of working America, Norman Rockwell pictured life the way he wanted to remember, and America wanted desperately to believe those memories.

Lucy grew up in a world sheltered from hunger, pain, and national socialistic lies. She had Mommy, Daddy and home; Jimmy, the boy next door, and the Girl Scouts of America. Venturing out of that portcullis onto the campuses of the nineties churned up more than a few minds. It shocked a new generation with ideas advertised like soap. Basketball and football were big business, the rest of college was up for grabs. Football was for winning. Who knew what the rest of college was for. Students who had no idea of what they wanted to be were demanding the right to draw up their own curriculum founded on what they didn't know. They said history lied. Morality couldn't be taught. Business was dirty. Military was evil. College was chaos, except to Jimmy, who was going to be a pilot in the Air Force. He knew that he was going to be a pilot in the Air Force ever since he was six years old. Lucy, who was two years younger than Jimmy, wanted to be an anthropologist, and knew she was going to marry Jimmy since she was six years old. She had convinced him of it early on.

To Lucy Iraq had always been just a picket sign carried around campus by a bunch of grubby looking students. How could any of that matter at home in Kentucky in Lucy's life? It came to matter to thousands of families. Iraq came to matter to Lucy. Suddenly to Lucy all the lives of all those people killed were not worth the death of one pilot. James.

James never had a doubt, or a question. He was the right man in the right place doing the right thing. Everyone knew the sky belonged to James; he was the best. But accidents happen even to the best.

The world whispered and moved lazily below Lucy as she reached for her flight map. Lucy had worried every day for two weeks over her first flight plan. She'd worked on it at lunch, at the office with compass and compass, protractors and calculators, maps and charts, call numbers and emergency field; on the train in the morning and back at night, and at the kitchen table until one in the morning.

The day of her first solo. Rupert, the ever-patient flight instructor, took her flight plan as she was climbing into the cabin and said he would double check it. He closed the door behind her. Then as she was buckling her seat belt, he rolled up her charts and notes with his comic book, and stuck them in his flight jacket. Instead of walking around to the other side of the plane and getting in, he winked, smiled his weather-beaten smile, pointed down the runway and said: Ok, solo!

What! What did he say? The airplane's radio was blaring at Lucy. The receiver speaker overhead had been a great source of distraction for her first four or five hours in the plane. The tower was always broadcasting traffic information around the field. It had taken time for Lucy to separate the noise from the information. By the second day its intrusions were noted and added to the list of all the other things, past and present, that were demanding Lucy's attention. That's all he said: Ok, solo. For a flight instructor he was the most taciturn person Lucy had ever met. He just walked away, left her sitting alone on the runway. He was crazy. She had only been flying for twelve days! How could he just walk away from her like that.

When she first started flying, Rupert had always been there to say something when the whispers became too pushy, too demanding.

Now, after two weeks of flying, landing, and taking off, flying was easy, taking off was not so bad; however breathing was still difficult while landing. After the first two weeks of sitting next to Lucy and explaining what to do to lift a fueled two thousand pounds of plane off the ground, Rupert listened. Lucy's father had been a listener and James was a listener. Rupert was a listener, a nodder, and occasionally when Lucy needed to do something to keep the two thousand pounds in the air… Rupert would point at the dash or the trim or the throttle or the airfield and say something that generally disappeared into engine noise. When you're in a small place with a listener the natural thing to do is talk. So Lucy talked. After just two weeks, Rupert knew Lucy all of her life.

For Lucy, to talk about flying was to talk about James. James was so much a part of flying to Lucy that it was like talking about living and not mentioning breathing; you couldn't separate the two.

Lucy could remember when James had his first solo, where it was, what kind of airplane, and how he described it to her. James was the spirit of flying to her. It was the first time in months she had spoken to anyone about James. It was a trip in time, and time opened up for Lucy who had been without a listener for so long. But like a person who had his own whispers to battle, Rupert watched, and was always there to bring her back with a point to the radio or compass.

Lucy is on her own now. Not just solo, but away from home flying cross country for the first time. In control. Cross country is: picking two other airfields, charting the flight with landmarks, weather, emergency landing areas, then finding them, landing, taking off, finding the next airfield, and doing the same again.

Flight instructor Rupert was sitting in the coffee shop a hundred miles away.

Her first solo is such an adrenalin surge that the FDA, not the FAA, should have licensed the flight. Lucy is hooked, addicted.

This is Lucy's coming out. Although, she thought, when debutantes come out they didn't get dropped three thousand feet if they made a faux-pas. It would certainly add an interesting dimension to the cotillion social swirl if a debutante panicked, stalled out, and plummeted a mile.

2

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrr!

Wha!

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The ill-tempered alarm shattered the morning, every morning; yet Harry Blum lurched for the clock every morning as if it were the first time it had ever happened and the last act he would ever commit.

Ouch damn!

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Shit!

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

"Jesus! Oh! Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!

Rrrrrrrr

Oooossssssssssssssssssssshit! You left your spikes in the middle of the goddamn floor!

Rrrrrrrrrr.

The floor?

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

What?

Rrrrrrrrrr.

"Your goddamn steel spike shoes on the floor.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnkkkk!

Aha! Harry slapped the back of the alarm.

What time is it? Lucy asked through a yawn.

What time would it be? It's the same time the alarm goes off every morning.

What?

Lucy had been warm and in the past, a dream of home and music and laughter, Uncle Hill with his fiddle and grin as wide as a bow. She did not want to return to now. She shifted and felt the sound of stiff clean sheets. Oh yes, this is where she was. The empty place was still there, James was gone. Harry was hopping on one foot into the bathroom holding onto the wall.

It's five thirty.

Harry leaned back into the open doorway to hurl a glance at Lucy. The house was cold. Lucy frugally kept the thermostat at fifty eight degrees after dropping twelve grand to have ecologically sound insulation pumped into the walls. The contractor insisted the old house was so tight now they could heat it with a Zippo.

Why don't you put the clock on the table by the bed instead of on the dresser across the room Harry? That way you wouldn't have to get up and struggle across the room to turn it off… every morning.

I thought We'd been over all this before.

Well dear, don't complain about my shoes being on the floor.

Shoe rack, shoes belong in shoe racks. Ties belong in tie racks. Socks belong in the sock drawer, underwear does not belong on the shower rod, underwear in the underwear drawer, makeup in the cabinet. Everything has it's place…

Lucy threw the covers off, stretched long along the edge of the bed. She dropped her pajama top under her pillow and advanced naked into the bathroom as Harry continued his monologue into the depths of his closet, staggered by the magnitude of the decision before him… which shirt?

And God is in his glory Lucy sighed before Harry could say … and a place for everything.

Lucy reached a hand into the shower and turned on the water. As she waited for the hot to come up she sat down on the john. Harry rambled into the bathroom, fumbled inside the sliding mirrored doors for his toothbrush, exercised his smile and frown muscles, then looked over at Lucy sitting on the john. She smiled.

How can you pee now, he said, I mean… I'm brushing my teeth for god's sake. It's gross. It's just not…

Not good form? How can you talk about underwear drawers at five in the morning dear. Do you find it more stimulating than bodily functions, are you advancing from your anal phase… into a drawer phase? You were saying?

Lucy stepped into the shower as rolls of steam poured out over the top of the curtain and down onto the mirror.

Harry looked to the heavens for solace and futilely wiped steam from the mirror.

I can't see a damn thing

What dear?

I can't see a thing.

What?

The steam, I can't see.

She slid back the shower curtain.

You know I can't hear you when the water's on.

Volumes more steam escaped.

The steam…

Wouldn't it be better if you used the other bathroom, there's nothing in it to upset you. What were you saying?

Electromagnetic fields. He shouted into the steam. They stir the brain up. Look at America. Everyone sleeps with an electric clock by his bed under an electric blanket in pajamas.

I never sleep with an electric blanket over my pajamaed clock.

They're all screwed up.

America? Maybe… just maybe if you wore pajamas, put your clock by the bed, you wouldn't be cold now. Tell me again why we don't have a wind-up clock?

Lucy reached the heavy towel from the back of the door and roughly toweled herself as Harry smiled behind his toothbrush and turned to watch the naked wet Lucy show. He thought Lucy had a magnificent ass. He had spent several hours describing it on their fourth or fifth date. To Harry, hers was the perfect nectarine ass. Not a peach, not a plum, a perfect nectarine ass. It was something that no one would guess just looking at her. Harry prided himself on knowing such things. He was not just an ass man, he thought. He was a man of many parts. But here was the ass of asses. He sighed.

Lucy was almost ten years older than Harry. Yet in all of his travels… he had never seen anything to match it. For shape, texture, movement, bounce, feel, color. Yes. It was to assdom what Mozart was to music. It was set off by a thin waist, and long legs. Lucy did not have perfect breasts, a little small for perfect; champagne glass size, but their shape was… well, really good. Sort of teenage, like a new wine, he thought, full of promise. Firm.

Strawberry pubic hair that shined like gold, fresh toweled, caught the morning light of the window. Mmmmmmmm. Harry started to reach for her. She opened the door and steamed from the bathroom into the fifty-eight-degree bedroom.

Is it the spring that does things to your brain, Harry?

Through the froth of a vigorous toothbrushing, Harry impatiently explained again. It's the tick-tock.

Lucy sat on the bed, raised one leg and pulled on her underalls as she talked to the figure in the steaming doorway.

The tick-tock? Oh yes, you have mentioned that the syncopation throws you off.

It's subliminal, I know, but a pianist has a built-in metronome. It's a sensitive instrument. A pianist has to be able to tune in without any interference, like cable TV, you know. You can't mess with these things.

Lucy marched into the bathroom and removed one of Victoria's film-like bras from the curtain rod.

That's why you have a dozen odd old clocks all over the house?

"Investments. Antique clocks are sensitive mechanisms.

They're all handmade, by hand, by artists: they're investments."

Speaking of sensitivity today's the day I'm having lunch with Nick, you're still coming?

Ahh, little Nick, no… anything but that.

Harry slid the mirror open in front of Lucy; she blinked as her image disappeared and a profusion of powder boxes, bottles, nail kit, cotton balls, perfumes and colognes stared back. She waited for her reflection to return but Harry was counting the hairs in his brush. He sighed, then started to brush his hair. What was it that caused him to do that, he wondered to himself.

Hmm, free lunch at Tartine, a hangout for the agency. Ever since he could remember, if anyone offered him something he said no. That's just unnatural.

Where 'd I get that from? he wondered. Old Tanta used to wag her finger at him and screw up her eyes, Don't look a gift in the mouth, unless its from a stranger cause you're a kid, then it's OK.

But he knew what she meant. But what did Harry mean? Why? Tanta wagged her finger at seven-year-old Harry. The old woman screwed up her eyes. Grandpa was on the phone in the background saying No twenty times; in twenty tones.

Tanta ranted on, Why'd you do that? Ever since I can remember, if anyone wants ta give you something you say no. That's supernatural, strange! Where d' ya get dat? You're not getting from my side the family.

I dunno? was eight year old Harry's stock answer for life.

Don't look a gift in the mouth, unless it's from a stranger cause you're a kid, then you should look in the mouth.

But Harry understood what she meant.

You know what she means Harry?

I know what she means ma.

No. he doesn't.

What Tanta means.

What did I mean Harry?

If she doesn't know how should Harry know?

Don't take stuff? Don't take stuff? That's unconstitutional!

Father looks around from the La-Z-Boy, shakes his beer.

Harry your ol' man'l take anything, hoard everything else, and tries to get everyone else's - whatever it is. A Fascist.

Fascist, I'll give you fascist! You commie pinko – yellow checkered bum driver.

Harry's father scowled, reached into the case by the La-Z-Boy and - Phhht another Blatz opened.

Whatever.

Lucy moved to the mirrored cabinet over the other sink.

Well, Nick's your boyfriend. she said.

Lucy! One doesn't say boyfriend to men. It's amigo, buddy, pal, boyhood chum, or old friend.

Harry moved over to Lucy's cabinet, reached in front of her, took out the hairspray, looked into her mirror and released a heavy front of chemicals. Lucy moved back for protection as Harry spray-fixed his head and managed to talk as he exhaled and walked to the doorway. He inhaled fifty-eight-degree fresh air from the bedroom, and stepped back into the bathroom's gaseous envelope.

Lucy, I know women say girlfriend, but the sex switch, ah, gender usage doesn't work. I knew him in high school. You know, when you say it that way, it doesn't sound… you know, not that I'm sensitive.

Of course not. she said.

Harry shifted to the right and reached past Lucy to the other cabinet, Harry took out the underarm spray and maneuvered like LeBron, with elbows out ready to jump and dunk; he reached for the ceiling. Lucy moved back to the other sink and closed the mirror as Harry lifted his arm and freoned his pit.

Lucy sidestepped, You're worried about your reputation?

Sigh, no. Well, it's just that; well, artists… you know appearances. I mean, you and I know what you mean, but, well, never mind. Times are changing. He's such a drupe.

Dupe?

"Drupe. With a pit instead of