The Triggerman's Dance(10)

His mother waved after she settled into the cockpit, and Lew helped them latch down. The propellor was a yellow, red-tipped blur. Accelerating down the runway, the little Piper emitted a determined, rising moan. It finally wobbled off the ground, looking to John as if it was lifting all the weight of the world.



For the hour they were gone, John threw his glider out on the tarmac, wondering if with just the right conditions it could rise high, ease into the slipstream of the Piper, and follow it wherever it might go. He decided the idea was dumb. It was hard enough just to get the foam ailerons to stay adjusted from one flight to the next.



So he sat on a bench and waited for the plane to return. He saw it when it was just a bright speck in the western sky, tilting its way down. After it landed he positioned himself on the tarmac and waved it in with the curt, martial motions of the ground-crews he much admired. His father smiled at him through the little side window, radio set still clamped to his head. The Piper rolled to a stop.



His mother climbed out, helped by Lew, and gave John a hug. Her face was warm against his and the silk scarf puffedlightly against his cheek. She smelled as always like her perfume—Chanel No. 5—and the leather of her jacket. She stood back as Lew helped John into the cockpit, where his father was assiduously making flight notes in a small book. His father extended his hand and John shook it.



"Off we go, son."



"Into the wild blue yonder."



"Get that shoulder strap nice and tight. Don't want my copilot falling out."



The radio burped non-stop static which his father, amazingly, seemed to understand.



Five minutes later they were lifting up into the sky. John was surprised how the airplane moved not only up and down and went left and right, but kind of twisted, too, as if pivoting on its belly. The engine worked hard, he thought, and the view was not as good as it could be because the windows were a little high up.



Looking down on Orange County, John noted that all of the tracts and lots and groves seemed a lot more organized than they did from the ground. From above, they were all part of a grand design. He saw a kidney-shaped swimming pool and wondered if you jumped and managed to land in the deep end of the pool— feet first, body stiff, arms to the side—would you live or not.



His father guided the plane out over the Pacific. John was sure that if you jumped and did all the right things you could land in that and live. He looked down and saw the two jetties at Balboa, and the Wedge, where he had spent hours watching the bodysurfers ride the neck-snapping waves that build and lurch off the jetty rocks.



For a few moments he studied nothing but his father's forearms—one of John's favorite parts—and admired once again the stout arm emerging from the rolled-up shirt sleeve, the abundant hair that grew all the way down to where the wrist began, then reappeared behind the first knuckle of each of his father's fingers. Did it grow under the skin for a ways? He watched the wrist tendons flex when his father adjusted their course back around to the east. He casually ran a hand over his own wrist, assessing the wispy golden fuzz.



"What do you think, Johnny?"



"It's fine. Would you live if you landed in one of those swimming pools, but feet first and stayed real stiff?"



"I wouldn't want to try."





"The wind would blow you onto a roof or something, probably."



"Probably. Look down on that county, son. It's yours. That's a nice thought, isn't it?"



"It's not really mine, dad."



"No. It is. It belongs to whoever puts down his roots there. Your mother and I have. You will. When you look down on it from up here, you see that it's not really such a big place at all. It's like a back yard. It's yours to play in and live on and take care of. Look at that ocean. Look at the mountains. It's a good place, John—you're lucky to grow up here."



"I'll bet you could live if you landed in the ocean."



"Maybe you could. Just maybe."



John sat back, felt the drone of the engine and looked out at the sky. He listened to his father talking with ground control on the radio. He felt good being up here with his father, sitting beside him, a part of his world. A father was someone who controls things, he thought: a plane, a county, the sky.



John looked down at his thin dark legs, his feet, his shorts. Then he looked at his dad. He saw all the changes he would have to go through to become like his father, but he couldn't imagine them taking place soon enough. Everything grew so slowly, just a few inches a year. He tried to imagine himself as big as his father, with all the hair and the rough chin and the way air opens up easier around you when you're bigger. For a while he pretended he was his father's age, his father's brother, in fact. He relaxed into the seat with one knee lifted and his arm draped casually over that knee.