Takeoffs and Landings(5)

He could almost remember feeling proud, wanting to go around bragging, Hey, that’s my mom.

But then some of the kids at school had seen the article.

“Your mother’s a motivational speaker?” Cassandra Dennis had asked. “Why can’t she motivate you?”

The whole English class had heard, and laughed.

Now just thinking about that article made his face hot with shame.

Lots of thoughts did that for him.

He stumbled following Mom and Lori toward the lady taking tickets. Horrified at the thought of falling—he pictured a giant tree crashing in a forest, a beached whale flopping on the shore—he stomped squarely on Lori’s foot as he tried to regain his balance.

Lori flashed him an outraged, pained look.

“Watch it!” she hissed.

She even had tears in her eyes. So one of Chuck’s last acts would be hurting his sister.

Again.

Chuck watched his feet, heading toward the plane. Toward his doom, probably. He had sympathy suddenly for the hogs that tried to run backward down the loading chute when they were being sent off to slaughter. Chuck hated sorting hogs, anyway—Pop always yelling at him, “Don’t let that one past you! He’s not ready for market!” and Joey and Mike tattling, “Chuck’s not helping!” It was a relief, at the end, when the hogs were all headed up the chute onto the truck. But some hog always balked. He’d turn the wrong way and try to run against the pack. The backward hog would squeal, and the others would squeal, and no matter how much Pop and Chuck and Joey and Mike pushed, the dang hog wouldn’t turn around.

More than once, Chuck had seen Pop flip a 250-pound hog end over end, just to get him on the truck.

If Chuck were a hog being sent to slaughter, he wouldn’t have the nerve to turn around. He wouldn’t have the nerve to squeal. He’d go quietly.

Mom handed a packet to the airline attendant beside the door out to the plane.

“There’s, um, three of us,” she said.

“Family vacation, eh?” the woman said.

“Sort of,” Mom said.

The woman ripped out three tickets and handed the packet back to Mom.

“Have fun!” she said cheerily.

Mom led them through a door and down a hallway. Then they were in the plane, and Chuck had another attack of panic. Everything was too flimsy looking—he felt like he could reach over and crumple the tin of the door with his bare hands. He glanced to the left, and shouldn’t have, because that was the cockpit, all those important-looking dials and gauges. But they looked fake, like children’s toys. He didn’t know what he’d expected the inside of an airplane to look like, but it wasn’t this. This was supposed to fly?

He looked at Mom, walking confidently down the aisle ahead of him. But that was a mistake, too, because she was tiny and fit easily between the rows of seats. She moved like she belonged on a plane—it wasn’t too hard to believe she could be lifted off the ground. Chuck felt like Godzilla trampling behind her. He knocked one man’s jacket to the floor and accidentally kicked another man’s luggage.

“Excuse me. Sorry,” he muttered.

“Who wants the window seat?” Mom asked when they reached their row.

Silently, Chuck shook his head. What? And have to look out?

“I don’t care,” Lori said, though she usually had an opinion about everything. “You can have it, Mom.”

A woman behind them cleared her throat impatiently.

“No, you take it, Lori,” Mom decreed. “So you can see out during takeoff and landing. Those are the best parts. Then you and Chuck can switch the next time, so he gets a turn.”

Chuck had no intention of switching. He wondered if Gram and Pop were right—that being away from Pickford County so much had made Mom lose a lot of common sense. How could takeoffs and landings be the best parts, when those were the times you were most likely to die?

Chuck eased into his seat. The side of his leg hung over onto Mom’s seat. She scooted a little closer to Lori. She was just making room for him, but Chuck felt a stab of self-pity. Here I am, about to die, and my own mother is trying to get away from me.

Why should she be any different from anyone else?





Lori decided she was going to read a magazine during both takeoff and landing. That would show Mom: the last thing Lori cared about right now was scenery out some tiny window. She just couldn’t face this trip. The world of Seventeen, where everyone had good tans and clear skin and perfect clothes, was her only escape.

But somehow, when the engine began to rumble, and the pilot said in his clipped, official-sounding voice, “Cabin crew, prepare for takeoff,” she couldn’t help sneaking peeks out the window, just to see what was going on. The pilot revved the engine and then floored it, just like Dan Stephens drag racing on Cuthbert Road. Men—they were all the same, right?