Hostage to Circumstance

By Clayton Taylor

An aging aviator with a troubled past is
confronted with the greatest challenge of his
career. With his best days long in the past, a
group of hijackers attack his crew and disable
his airplane, leaving him alone to navigate the
vast Pacific Ocean from memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663258113

Clayton Taylor

Clayton Taylor’s inspiration for Flying in Circles was born during the many hours he spent piloting wide-body airliners over the Pacific Ocean. He lives in Texas.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

In the Near Future

06:45 a.m. Samoa Standard Time

T he two copilots were dead, and the airplane was on the verge of going out of con trol.

Filled with anger and adrenaline, the captain limped quietly across the threshold of the flight deck. What he saw was a war zone. During his brief absence, death and mayhem had clearly left its calling card.

Aged beyond his years, the seasoned airman was also quite aware that the destruction of his airliner was near at hand. All six instrument display screens were blank. The only light in the darkened cockpit was that of a tiny four-inch standby gauge. He paused, enveloped in emotion. He could hear the echo of the lion’s roar in his mind. He’d beaten back fear many times before, but this time it was different…much different.

The sole battery powered standby gauge emitted a blinding light, forcing him to shield his eyes with his right hand. The captain willed his eyes to adapt, knowing his eyes and that gauge were all that stood between life and certain death, for him and the hundreds of people on board. Each second of delay, and every unplanned move, would count against them all.

Stone’s body was battered and bloody. He struggled to clear the fog from his brain and the dried blood from his eyes. He tightly gripped the cockpit door with his left hand. Though his eyes refused to focus, his body told him what he already knew: He felt it in his feet.

The shifting of the Airbus’s pitch and roll were obvious, and it told him that his airplane was in the early stages of a graveyard spiral. Soon, his widebody airliner would be spinning toward the ocean and there would be virtually no chance of recovery. The right engine was gone. It had departed his airplane in a million pieces. With the forward cargo door either open or missing, the recently thrashed captain knew that it was only a matter of time before the airplane would completely depressurize. Stone knew that the lack of fresh air would, in only a matter of seconds, render everyone on board, including him, completely unconscious!

The captain thrust his arm into the darkness and grabbed one of the flight attendants standing nearby. He pulled hard, hoping he’d chosen wisely. Once Paul was in the cockpit, the captain said, Help me move these bodies into the galley: We can’t leave them here.

As he moved about, the captain’s blood spattered everywhere, but it was dark and Paul was far too stunned to notice.

The two First Officer’s had been manning the cockpit while the captain was on a break in the lower bunkroom. When the two copilots realized that they had a serious problem, one of them managed to send an emergency signal to their Captain. Neither could have known what was happening, let alone mount a defense. Like many aviators before them, they died in the cockpit. It had been their home away from home.

It was both an emotional and physical struggle, but the captain and his aide managed to get the two deceased pilots out of the cockpit. They placed the bodies of their colleagues safely under the forward galley counter. Prior to slamming the entry door behind him, the captain cried out to another flight attendant in the forward galley, Cover these pilots up with some blankets immediately! And leave these galley carts right where they are. We need to keep the entryway blocked, just in case there are any more hijackers on board.

As the door slammed shut, the airplane suddenly lurched right. The captain instantly felt the increase in bank angle. He pushed his tall, husky colleague to the floor and exclaimed, Sit on the floor and hold on tight!

The captain had lost a great deal of blood. He’d battled three men with his bare hands and managed to kill them all. He feared there might still be others on board…waiting. But he could not allow himself to think about them. No, not now, he thought, silently commanding himself. There were far more pressing matters.

Stone was drained, but warned himself to keep his head in the game. It was his airplane, he was the captain, and the people in the back were his passengers. The world rested upon his torn and sagging shoulders. He had never felt so alone.

Without warning, the airplane rolled more severely to the right. Stone could also feel the jet’s nose drop hard. Moments later, he felt the G forces of the spiraling airliner pushing against his weakened body. He bent over and pulled an oxygen mask from the right-side compartment. He then tossed the hissing mask through the darkness into Paul’s lap. Put this on! he ordered.

The tall, lanky, and prematurely gray captain felt his way to the left seat. Once thick with muscles and as strong as an ox, time and the stress of his job had taken its toll. While sitting in his rightful place, there was little that Captain Stone Osborne could not handle. But this was definitely unfamiliar territory. He slid an oxygen mask over his face and struggled in the darkness to find his seatbelt. Once found, he cinched it as tight as it would go, momentarily wondering if it would even matter.

The weary captain looked around, but saw nothing outside. The only certainty in his mind was that they were somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. His internal clock told him that they were somewhere east of Midway Island, but exactly how far east he did not know. The blinding light from the standby gauge provided the only visible light within a thousand miles. He reached up, still shielding his eyes, and pushed the instrument dimmer switch. Agonizing moments passed.

The captain gasped when the tiny gauge came into focus. Either its internal gyros had tumbled, or the airplane was at an attitude that he’d never before witnessed. And it was most certainly never intended by the manufacturer of his widebody Airbus 330.

He leaned forward and squinted deeply, hoping to see something that was not there. Quickly scanning where he believed the horizon to be, he could only see darkness. The noise of the wind slamming against the windshield warned him that they were descending fast. If he didn’t stop their descent soon, the icy-cold water of the Pacific Ocean would!

With fear in his voice, Stone muttered softly to himself, I can’t see the horizon. I’m not sure which way is up. And moments later, in an even softer tone, What should I do?

They were in an uncontrolled descent, yet he hesitated. The captain knew that if he made the wrong input, it would greatly aggravate the situation. Unsure of what to do, he could practically feel death breathing down his neck.

The lone airman had no other choice. He had to do something! With a deep frown on his face, he silently ordered himself to think and act deliberately. But as Stone saw it, regardless of what he did, the situation was about to get even uglier!

CHAPTER TWO

C aptain Stone Osborne was as close to panic as he had ever been in his life. He felt utterly helpless, frozen by fear and unable to act. To look at him, however, one would never know the torment raging wi thin.

Meanwhile, all four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand pounds of the lonely Captain’s Airbus 330 was plummeting toward the water at eight-thousand feet per minute! The airspeed display on the standby gauge was pegged at the top of the red arc, which was something that Stone, nor anyone else for that matter, had ever seen before. The artificial horizon portion of the display indicated that the airplane was banking in excess of eighty degrees! The true bank angle was difficult for him to discern with any accuracy because the nose of the airplane was pitched down so steeply. It was surreal. His mind simply refused to believe what his eyes were telling him.

Stone felt two slight bumps that lasted for only a second. It felt very much like a patch of light turbulence, but he knew better. The bumps meant that parts of the airplane had gone transonic, and his machine was about to break the sound barrier!

He had no idea how much time remained. He knew he had to recover from the dive, but his mind was both overwhelmed with input and completely blank at the same time. Acting on instinct alone, Stone gently pulled back on the speed brake lever. In an instant, three of the twelve panels located on top of the wing tore free from the aircraft. There was no sound associated with the disappearance of the spoiler panels, but the seasoned captain definitely felt their separation in the seat of his pants. His quick scan of the darkened panel to see what equipment might still be working, served only to warn him that the clock was still ticking.

Stone recalled earlier in the flight, moments before he ended the life of the last terrorist he’d done battle with, that he saw the man fumbling with something in his pocket. A flash of time later, he both heard and felt an explosive device activate somewhere beneath his feet. The sound had been more of a rumble than anything else. Not too long afterward, the airplane skidded wildly to the right. Stone had suspected the explosion tore the right engine from the aircraft, but at that point there was no way to be certain. He’d heard a thud and knew right away that if it had indeed been the engine tearing free, then it had not been a clean break.

Stone, still clutching the speed brake lever, continued to slowly extend the panels, hoping the remaining nine would stay attached to the airplane. Then, ever so gently, he tapped the control stick located to the left of his knee, in an attempt to shallow-out the bank. He desperately wanted to pull back on the stick, but even with all of the suffocating fog that was choking his brain, he knew that doing so would tear his airliner to shreds. No, not yet, ordered the faint whisper in his brain.

The aging airman turned his head, squinting to see through the darkness of his cockpit, but could discern practically nothing. He needed to move his right hand, but first wanted to be certain where it would go. He felt for the knobs on top of the thrust levers and was immediately rewarded. He was grateful the engineers that built his airplane had the foresight to design many of the knobs and controls in the cockpit to be a different size or shape, so that a pilot could find each of them by tactile feel alone.

The captain pulled the thrust to idle, uncertain if there actually were any engines still attached to his twin-engine airliner.

The sound of the wind was deafening. All the Captain needed was something, anything, to clue him in on what to do next. With his right hand back on the speed brake lever and his left hand on the control stick, he turned and leered into the black void that existed on the other side of his windshield. What he was searching for was driven strictly by instinct alone, while the rest of his brain was struggling to organize all of the other external inputs.

It took a few agonizing seconds to actually see anything, but Stone finally noticed the stars whizzing past the upper corner of his windshield. His mind paused, wondering if they were indeed stars in the heavens, or ships on the ocean. There were countless times while flying over Asian waters that he’d seen fleets of ships far from land that were so numerous, they actually appeared to be a large city floating on the sea.

In the very aft reaches of the confused captain’s mind, so distant that it was nothing more than a faint whisper, he could hear someone talking. It was not unlike the barely audible warning he’d heard only moments ago. He strained to hear, but the ear-piercing sound of the wind blocked everything else out. It was as if the wind itself was focused on keeping him in the dark. That damned wind! he exclaimed to himself. Then he heard it again.

The struggling airman wondered how he could hear such a faint murmur of words over the hurricane of angry wind that was slamming against the windshield, mere inches from his face.

He heard it a third time. The lesser light will guide you by night.

This time the statement was loud and clear, but it took a second for the words to register. When they did, he blurted out, The moon, look for the moon! He knew the moon would tell him where to point the nose of his airliner.

While still gently working the controls, Stone strained his eyes, but the moon was nowhere to be found. Come on! he exclaimed, with both fear and hope evident in his voice. He had a sense, deep within, that the airplane was about to come apart. He forced his eyes to open wider.

The G forces pushing against the captain’s body were like nothing he’d ever felt before. He knew the intensity of the pressure was telling him that the airplane’s bank angle was too steep. His brain screamed for him to act quickly, and to pull hard on the control stick. But reason once again whispered for him to wait, and to first find the light that would be his savior.

The flight’s Purser was gripping a seat support with every ounce of strength in his body. In all of his twenty-four years as a flight attendant, Paul had never felt so out of control. Sheer panic gushed from his pores. It felt to him as though the airplane had turned upside down. His fear became so absolute, he unwillingly accepted the fact that his life would end at any moment. He held his eyes tightly shut, wishing he could also silence the noise. Then, quite unexpectedly, he heard the captain cry out. The suddenness of his leader’s words momentarily silenced the irate noise of the wind, which in turn caused Paul to flinch. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he assumed the worst.

There it is! shouted Stone.

The giant light in the sky screamed past them in an instant, before disappearing back into the night. But it didn’t matter, Stone’s internal gyros were aligned; he knew where the horizon was. As promised to him so many years earlier, the lesser light had saved them.

Stone pulled hard against the thrust levers, assuring himself that they were indeed at idle. He then gently pulled the speed brake lever until it was against the stop: A sign that they were fully deployed. He knew his main flight control computers were offline, which was actually a good thing. Rather than the flight control computers deciding where to place the control surfaces after receiving a pilot’s input, the captain’s hands and feet told the airplane exactly what he expected.

The anxious captain slowly wound the trim wheel on the center pedestal aft, while gently applying a tiny amount of left rudder and left aileron. The feedback he received from the flight controls in his hands was an utterly alien experience. He noticed that they seemed both limp and ineffective, but seconds later they became heavy. It was as if the flight controls couldn’t make up their minds. Whatever was causing them to cycle in and out of usefulness, he did not know, but he did know that it was not a good sign. He fully understood that if he overdid it now, the wings would likely snap off and flitter down to the sea.

*       *       *

Sitting in seat 37H, John Massey, a man returning home from a sex vacation in Thailand, was reasonably certain that he’d seen something fly off the wing and past his window. He’d had more than a few drinks with dinner, so he told himself that it may have been nothing. Still, he was certain there had been some craziness that had taken place earlier. At first, he heard some loud talking emanating from the mid-galley, but couldn’t quite see what was happening. Then, a few minutes later, he watched one of the pilots emerge from the galley and move briskly toward the back. He knew that most pilots maintained a sharp appearance while in public, but the man he saw was adorned with torn and bloodied clothes. Then, shortly after the disheveled pilot disappeared into the darkened cabin, he felt a rumble under his feet. Seconds later, the airplane began to swerve back and forth. Even in his inebriated state of mind he knew things were not normal, so he guzzled the last of his bourbon and then closed his eyes to await the end. The frightened man knew that it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was coming next.

Fred Singer was halfway to his goal of being fully drunk. Seated in the aft portion of Business Class, he had his shoes off, a comfy blanket warming his legs, and no interest whatsoever in what was going on around him. On his return from the lavatory, he’d heard some commotion in the back and momentarily thought about investigating, but quickly thought better of it. As an aging Vietnam War veteran, he’d long ago lost all interest in any sort of conflict. He did notice one of the pilots walking forward with torn clothes and a bloody face, but he warned himself to not get involved. He also felt the airplane’s awkward bank angle, but convinced himself that everything was normal. He turned the volume up on his music and took another sip of whatever it was he’d been drinking.

Most of the passengers were sound asleep, but there were a handful who were deep into a movie. Kerry, sitting in the very last row of coach, instantly became aggravated when the cabin lights went out and the entire airplane went dark. Small, reddish-looking floor lights came on almost right away, so she assumed the flight attendants had dimmed the lights in order to force everyone to go to sleep. Lazy, she thought, they just don’t want to do any work. But what bothered her most was the blank monitor right in front of her face. It went blank moments before the climax of the movie! She shook her head in anger. She closed her eyes and stewed, having never seen or heard the commotion that had taken place earlier, a mere handful of feet away. Her irritation was so remarkable, she managed to remain completely oblivious to the airplane’s extreme pitch and bank angles.

*       *       *

The irritating noise created by the wind, finally began to lessen. Noting the change from his seat, located nearly one-hundred feet ahead of the wings, and almost two-hundred feet from the tail, Captain Osborne’s ears detected something. Then a moment or two later, he heard the stomach wrenching sound of tearing metal. He knew parts of his airplane were leaving their place and plunging toward the sea. He tried to tune it out, reminding himself to be gentle with the controls. Another part of him, the impatient side, told him to hurry, but he quickly reprimanded himself to work slowly and with purpose. Do as you’ve been taught, he said out loud. His words clear enough that the Purser, with his eyes still frozen shut, heard him.

CHAPTER THREE

Decatur, Texas

A few Decades Earlier

N ine-year-old Ezra sat on the floor in the corner of his tiny, unlit closet. Beset with both fear and pain, he held his knees close to his chest. Tears dripped from his cheek, but they went unnoticed. The welts on his back commanded most of his attention, yet he refused to allow the throbbing, bloodied lumps on his arms and back their due. Though frightened and hurt, he allowed his anger to hold all else at bay. It was not the first time this had happened, and he knew that it would not be the last. The only thing he knew for certain was that one day, when he was older and stronger, he would seek his revenge. But for now, his battered one-hundred-and-ten-pound body was not up to the task. He knew that one day, however, it woul d be.

Ezra held his hands over his eyes, fighting the pain, frustration, and feelings of utter helplessness. On the other side of the door, his twelve-year-old brother, Joshua, lightly tapped on the cheap wooden door and asked in a whispering voice if he was okay. Ezra didn’t respond.

I’m sorry, Ez. Do you need anything? asked Joshua.

Go away, Josh.

Let me in, so we can talk.

I don’t want to talk. Just leave.

Joshua turned and sat with his back against the bedroom door. He was unhurt, yet equally consumed by it all. Doing his best to remain silent, the young man quietly sobbed.

As the older brother, Joshua was guilt-ridden because he believed that it was up to him to protect his younger sibling. He often wished that he too could be brave, just like his brother, but knew deep down that he was better-off simply keeping his mouth shut. Shame and fury, combined as though they were one, raged inside the young boy’s mind. Joshua could not feel Ezra’s physical pain, but shared the emotional pain, perhaps to an even greater extent than his brother. But Joshua was far too frightened to ever intervene. Knowing that he was the favored child, at least for the moment, along with a strong sense of self-preservation, managed to hold him back with invisible chains. He was a prisoner, but he had a secret. There was a truth that only he knew. It was his ace in the hole. He held it close, hoping he’d never have to use it. He could have ended his brother’s torment by declaring what he knew, but was afraid of the pain that would likely be unleashed upon him as retribution. And ultimately, he hated himself for it.

An hour passed before Ezra was ready to once again face the world and its unending series of threats. He was far too young to realize that the hell his life had become was forging him, molding him, and driving him to escape to a world of success and peace. It would be a world where he alone controlled his fate. At nine years of age, however, he was unaware that such a place did not exist. Regardless, somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that one day he would leave all that he knew behind. He would show them all how wrong they’d been. Yes, he would show them. For the present, however, all Ezra had was hope. And even at his age, he was well aware that hope was simply a mere glimmer of light, residing on some distant planet.

CHAPTER FOUR

A week of calm had passed in the house. But Ezra knew well that turmoil existed around every corner, so he had to remain vigilant. Then, at 7 p.m. sharp, moments after the phone rang, tranquility ran for the exit.

From his room, he could hear his mother speak in muffled, short sentences to whomever was at the other end of the conversation. He searched his mind. Nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that day so, perhaps, he hoped, the phone call did not involve him. Yes, there was a small incident where one of the boys on the playground took a classmate’s hat and refused to return it. When the young girl began to cry, Ezra grabbed the hat from the bully, easily twice his size, and without a word, returned it to its rightful owner. Surely, he thought, I can’t be in trouble for that.

Ezra heard his mother hang up the phone. He held his breath, waiting to see if he was off the hook. A moment later, he had his answer.

Ezra! Come here! shrieked his mother.

A wave of fiery heat passed through him. His mouth instantly went dry and his hands began to shake. Ezra glanced at the window. His room was on the first floor and he knew that he had time to get out safely, though he would have to move quickly. But he wasn’t yet prepared to simply run away. He didn’t have enough money saved, and he didn’t have a plan. He knew if he was forced to return, his punishment would be even more severe than what he currently faced. Punishment for what, he did not know, but his mother needed very little prodding to set her youngest son on the straight and narrow.

Ezra slowly made his way toward the kitchen. He could hear his mother strutting toward the landing at the bottom of the stairs in search of her dreaded three-legged, leather strap. Her evil whip hung on a small hook at a convenient location and was always ready for immediate use. A year earlier, Ezra took the strap and tossed it atop their Christmas tree as his father and brother lugged it outside to be burned. At the time, he figured the torment was over, but he was wrong. Once she discovered her instrument of revenge had gone missing, she bought another, and then continued to take all of her anger at the world out on Ezra. He was right to fear the worst.

I got a call from your teacher, Ezra. You know I don’t like it when my evenings are disturbed. Get over here! she screamed, her volume growing louder with each spoken word.

I was only helping, Mom. The boy wasn’t being nice, so I just wanted to help, pleaded Ezra, his voice cracking.

Did I ask you to speak!? she roared. A moment later, her leather strap struck Ezra’s left arm.

Ezra could hear the volume on the television getting louder. He knew without seeing that his father was intending to block the screaming and crying that was about to flood the household. For the first time in his short life, in a moment of enlightenment, Ezra realized that his father was just as afraid of his wife as he. Any respect Ezra previously held for his father instantly left his body, never to return. He loved his dad, and despite his new-found loss of respect, he always would. Ezra’s dad was a kind and gentle soul. But sadly, as Ezra had just concluded, the man was indeed spineless and no longer deserved any respect.

After the first strike, Ezra curled up into a tiny ball of humanity. He held his legs to his chest, while burying his head deep between his knees. He then placed his hands between his ankles, allowing his neck, back and arms to take the brunt. He instantly closed off his mind to the world and went to a place where it was safe and pain free. He was so practiced, once the first blow struck, he no longer felt the bloodied strap smashing against his body, nor could he hear his mother’s senseless rant.

The beating went on for only a minute, but was lengthy enough to draw blood and tears which, ultimately, was all Ezra’s mother wanted. She gave her son a kick with her right foot and then walked back toward the living room.

Joshua, once he was aware that things were about to get ugly, quickly closed his bedroom door and covered his ears. He stood with his back to the door, hoping to hold all evil at bay. Though his tiny hands did their best to block out the horror, his body winced each time the sound of the leather strap striking his brother’s body reached his ears. When it was over, he wept.

Ezra could hear his mother asking his father a question in a completely normal tone. He had no idea what she asked and failed to hear the reply, but he didn’t care. He was numb. Young Ezra wasn’t even aware of the tears in his eyes or the pain in his body. He remained still for a minute, just to make sure. Once he knew it was safe, Ezra returned to his closet and nursed his wounds. It was just another day. Another day where he was alone in the world.

CHAPTER FIVE

N ellie returned to the couch and sat beside her husband. Did I miss anything? she asked, with just a hint of perspiration showing on her fore head.

No, just a couple of commercials, Red calmly replied, as though his son had not just been beaten by the woman sitting beside him.

For the remainder of the evening, Nellie watched television with her husband, though in an unenthusiastic way. She wondered why her husband never bothered to intervene whenever she smacked Ezra around. In fact, regardless of whatever she said or did, nothing, it seemed, troubled him in any way. It’s as if, she thought, he is completely free of emotion.

Ezra was unplanned. If abortion had been a reasonable option in her town, Nellie would have never carried him to term. It was something she screamed many times while beating him with her three-legged, leather strap. Unhappy to be raising two children, she’d convinced herself that God was either punishing her, or testing her, for some unknown reason. She named her son Ezra after the biblical prophet, in hopes of appeasing the Almighty. After all, she had reasoned, it couldn’t hurt. Of course, the Ezra in the Old Testament was not actually a prophet: He was a priest and a scribe. A fact that Nellie would have known had she ever actually bothered to look it up.

Nellie did, on very rare occasions, feel some guilt about taking life’s frustrations out on Ezra. Usually, an hour or so after the wailing died down, she would tell herself to stop doing it. But then, at some point later, something would snap and she could not stop herself.

Nellie didn’t actually dislike Ezra; it was just something about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The answer was hiding behind one of the walls that she had built in her mind and then refused to acknowledge. But the answer was definitely there.

In reality, Ezra represented something that Nellie could not discuss, even with herself. The unspoken truth was that Ezra represented a moment of indiscretion in her life. Nellie had cheated on her faithful husband, and nine months later Ezra was born. The child didn’t look like Joshua, Nellie or Red. No one ever mentioned it, and perhaps they didn’t notice, but as each year passed, Nellie could see that Ezra looked more and more like the man from her brief fling.

From deep inside the darkness of his closet, which had become a metaphor for his life, Ezra asked, Why does she hate me, Josh?

She doesn’t hate you, replied Joshua.

Yes, she does. You should just admit it.

No, I don’t think so. I think it’s just that she might be a little bit nuts in the head. And when things start to bug her, she takes it out on you,

Then why doesn’t she hit you, Josh?

She does hit me! declared Joshua.

No, she slaps you every now and then, but that’s it.

She slaps me across the face when she doesn’t like what I have to say, replied Joshua.

Well, at least you’re not bleeding and sore afterward, like me, declared Ezra.

I know, Brother. I just don’t know what I can do. I feel really bad. Someday, maybe I’ll hit her back, declared Josh.

Now that’s a laugh, Josh. You’re not ever going to hit anybody.

That’s not true. I know I’m not as brave as you, but someday I will be.

I’ll be dead before then, sighed Ezra.

There was a long pause. Joshua cocked his head, fearing that Ezra’s words might one day come true. The guilt he felt inside often overwhelmed him. Why, he wondered, does she take everything out on my brother?

During the silence, Ezra thought about it and decided that he wasn’t going to waste any more time feeling sorry for himself. I think we should go down to Myles Junkyard and get some stuff to build an airplane.

What in the world are you talking about? asked Joshua, snapping back from his thoughts.

I mean it, Josh. We can get some stuff, build an airplane, and fly out of here for good.

First of all, Ezra, you don’t know how to build an airplane. And even if you could figure it out, you don’t know how to fly one. You’d probably kill yourself on your very first flight, replied Joshua.

It would be better than waiting for Nutty Nellie to slowly beat me to death. It was the first time Ezra had used those words to describe their mother. Hearing them, brought a sudden eruption of laughter from both of the boys. It was a shallow laugh, yet one that both boys desperately needed.

What Joshua was completely unaware of, even though the boys were as close as any two brothers could be, was that Ezra had been going to the school library for months and reading about airplanes and how they worked. Daydreaming about flying through the sky and being high above everything, far away from all of the pain and anguish, with the power to look down upon everyone in the world, provided Ezra with the escape that he so much needed. He once asked if he could pin some airplane pictures up on his bedroom wall, but his mother forbade it.

Ezra had never heard the term double standard, but he definitely knew what it meant. His brother had quite a few pictures of cars and girls hanging on his bedroom walls. He also noticed that Joshua’s room was bigger and closer to the bathroom than Ezra’s. There was even a chair in the living room that only Joshua was allowed to sit in. Ezra had no such chair, and was often forced to sit on the floor. Indeed, the younger brother was forced to accept the fact that he was a boy without privilege.

The one-sided rules of the household didn’t much bother Ezra. Things were just the way they were. But years later, when he would reflect upon his childhood, Ezra would recall those rules. He wondered why his sibling never bothered to share, or lobby their mother on his behalf. The bottom line, as far as Ezra was concerned, was that Joshua enjoyed being the favorite.

For years, Joshua told himself that the special treatment he enjoyed was because he was the eldest son. Nonetheless, he always felt a sprig of guilt whenever he watched TV from his special chair, while his younger brother sat on the floor at his mother’s feet.

What Ezra did not know, and Joshua would not share, was that over time those same rules began to drive him crazy with guilt. Joshua often felt overrun with shame because of his seeming inability to defend his brother against their mother’s ever-increasing anger and violence. He believed that as the older brother it was his job to lookout for Ezra, but he was far too frightened of their mother’s three-legged strap to take any action. A few times on the school playground, when Joshua was being threatened by other boys, Ezra stepped in without hesitation and took on the boys who were easily twice his size.

Joshua envied his younger brother’s bravado and wished that he too could be just as strong. He’d even read books about self-defense, and practiced the moves when he was alone in his room. But for some reason, whenever it came time to use the things he’d practiced, he simply could not bring himself to act. Beyond that, though he was loath to admit it, even to himself, he enjoyed getting special treatment at home. However, the resultant shame and chronic guilt that Joshua bore throughout much of his life, built upon itself, day after day after day. It would take years, but eventually the remorse he felt would devour him, and take him to a place that was darker and meaner than anything his mother could have ever dished out.

OK, Ezra. We’ll both go down to the junkyard on Saturday.

Josh, I’ve been reading about it. I think we can do it, said Ezra, with clear excitement in his voice.

Joshua truly believed that nothing would come of it, but he liked hearing the enthusiasm in his brother’s voice, especially after he’d just endured another beating. He decided right then and there that he would go along and help, regardless of the outcome.

What Joshua couldn’t have known was that his brother, for many months, had been dreaming of building an airplane of his own and then flying it as far away from Texas as he possibly could.

It was true. Ezra had run the intricate details of constructing a wing and fuselage of an airplane through his mind many times over. He had also put his plans on paper and then reworked them whenever he discovered new information regarding aircraft construction. Of course, everything related to his dream had to remain hidden. There was no telling what his mother might do if she were to discover his plan to teach himself how to fly. And even though Ezra’s mind had conjured up some seemingly outlandish ideas, his knowledge of an airplane’s many components had become an incredibly well-kept secret from his family and friends alike.

Most nights, while lying in bed, Ezra often dreamed of flying his friends to school in an airplane that he had designed and built himself. The reality of how that might be accomplished, not to mention how and where he would teach himself to operate an airplane on his own, had yet to be worked out. But that was of no matter, he reasoned, because there was plenty of time for that, unless his mother somehow intervened.

Aspiring to build and fly an airplane provided an escape from the realities of his life. Working out the myriad of details regarding construction was one thing that occupied Ezra’s mind, but his ultimate goal was to get away from his hate-filled mother. With each passing day, he knew that he had to get out before it was too late. He had long ago concluded that one day, she would probably kill him. He was a skinny kid and knew his mother could easily overpower him, but he had a plan for that too.

Once the airplane was built, and he’d taught himself how to takeoff and land,