Love and Hydrogen (7 page)

Within minutes, two men came after me, with little masks on their faces and breathing tubes in their mouths. Bubbles bubbled from their heads. Back in the deep reeds, I watched them churn by overhead, a body's length away, and then swam the other direction. I backstroked through the weeds. They seemed to have trouble following. I did an underwater plié. They spotted me. Their legs thrashed and pounded inefficiently. More bubbles bubbled. This went on for some time.

AND AGAIN THE NEXT DAY they went about their business.

I kept being
drawn
to them and their leaking hippo-belly of a boat.

This whole thing had affected me. My eye glands were secreting. I rubbed my face on tree bark. I urinated on my feet.

Normally for me the geologic periods came and went, and normally I had the tender melancholic patience of a floodplain, but with them in the lagoon I found myself foolish and hopeful, carp-toothed. I was a creature of two minds, one of them as unteachable as the swamp. I wanted to make this signal event a signal event. I wanted to
become
something.

TO THEM I WAS the unknown Amazon embodied—who knew what lay undiscovered in those hidden back waters?—and still they lounged and chatted. They flirted. They acted as if they were home.

At midday, one wilted crewmember stood guard. He exchanged vacant stares with a cotton-topped tamarin eating its stew of bugs and tree gum on a shoreline branch. The rest of the group squab-bled below deck.

I hauled myself back up the rope—why didn't they just
pull up
the rope?—and schlumped past the porthole while they argued. I was dripping all over the planking. I grabbed the crewmember by both sides of his head and toppled us over the rail.

His internal workings ran down on shore later that night. I sat with him with my elbows on my knees. Every so often he got his breath back. A yellow tree boa angled forward from a branch but I waved it away. He called out to the boat. They called back.

They built a cage. Bamboo.

THEY ROWED AROUND in their smaller boat dumping powder all over their section of the lagoon. It paralyzed the fish, which floated to the surface. A few eyed me dazedly on the way up.

While they worked, I waited under their larger boat. It seemed safer there.

That night they lined the deck stem to stern under their lanterns, their rifles nosed out toward the darkness. I bobbed under the curve of the bow. Off in the distance, a giant tree fell, shearing its way through canyons of canopy, opening up new opportunities.

“Do you suppose he remembers being chased and intends to take revenge?” Kay asked.

“I've got a hunch this creature remembers the past and more,” her favorite male answered. He watched his own arms whenever he moved so I named him Baby Sloth.

I floated and listened while they tried to get under the rock of my primitive reasons. How sly was it possible I was? How instinctual? “Just what do you think we're dealing with here, Doctor?” I heard Baby Sloth ask.

I cleared my throat. I cleaned bone bits from my talons. Hours passed. I listened to the quiet crunch of beetle larvae chewing through the boat's hull. One by one, the talkers above me ran out of words and announced they were going to sleep. There were dull, resonant sounds of them settling in below. I sank, my neck back, only my face above the dark water. For some reason I thought of scorpions, those brainless aggravations who went back as far as I did.

Back up into the night air tiptoed Kay, with Baby Sloth. They whispered. The sound carried. “How much more time do you think you'll need?” I heard her tease. “From where I'm sitting, a lifetime,” I heard him answer. One more time, I hauled myself up the rope.

I slipped and tumbled over the railing, sending the shock of my greeting across the deck. Kay shrieked. She was within arm's reach. Baby Sloth swung, whonking me with his rifle butt. I knocked him overboard. Others came stumbling up from below. They ringed me as if everyone was ready to charge but no one harbored any unreasonable expectations.

I grabbed Kay and tilted us over the rope and into the water.

I surfaced to let her fill her lungs. There was splashing behind me. I dove and towed her through my secret underwater passageway. Particles of their powder were suspended in the water even at this depth and I could feel them befuddling me.

In my hidden cavern, I rose from the water and lugged her around. “Kay!” Baby Sloth called, hoarse from held breath. I splotched along in the shallow water puddling the rocks. “Kay!
”
he called again. I bellowed some response.

I had no stamina. Everything was too much work. I laid her out on a shelf and then, once he knelt next to her, surfaced from a convenient nearby pool. I approached him woozily, planning mayhem. He bounced a head-sized rock off my face. He stabbed at my chest. I lifted him up and started working my talons into his ribs. Gunshots, from all those rifles, made little fire tunnels through my back and shoulders. The others had found the land entrance to my lair. A headache came on. I put him down.

I turned from him. Kay gave another shriek, for someone's benefit. They all fired again. I staggered past them to the land entrance and out into the warmer air. “That's enough,” I heard Baby Sloth tell the others. “Let him go.”

Lianas patted and dabbed at my face. Day or night? I couldn't tell. I walked along bleeding and gaping. The path was greasy with mud. My feet were scuffling buckets filling with stones. I hallucinated friends. I could hear them all cautiously following. I headed for the lagoon.

What was less saddening, finally, than a narcissist's solitude? I'd been drawn to Kay the way insects singled out the younger shoots or leaves not yet toughened or toxic. I'd added nothing but judgment and violence to the world. If their law, like the lagoon's, was grim and casual, they at least took what they found and tried to make the best of it.

So they liked to disassemble their surroundings and tinker with them. Was it such a shame that they didn't save all the parts?

Once in the water I sank to my knees down a slope, the muck giving way in clouds. I was happy they'd turned me out. I was rooting against me. I was less their shadow side than an oafish variant on a theme. Extinction was pouring over me like a warm flood, history swirling and eddying one last time before moving on, and I was like the pain of a needle frond in the foot: I filled the moment entirely, and then vanished.

RUNWAY

He often wondered, sitting at the window watching Billy and Theophilus play in the street, what he would do if one of them were hit by a car. Billy sat against the telephone pole, where he always did, near the end of the driveway, throwing a chewed-up tennis ball off the tire of a parked car. The ball perpetually fooled Theophilus with its change of direction. Depending on how Billy threw it, the ball would ricochet or arc softly back, and the dog, sprinting at the first motion of his arm, was endlessly surprised by all trajectories. One ricochet caught the dog squarely in the forehead, and it wobbled comically and flopped over onto the pavement.

WITH A SON LIKE BILLY you don't wonder things like that, Jay would find himself saying while shaving. He would peer at his image in the mirror.

And in the living room, nights, watching television with Billy on the floor in front of him, he'd think, Has the boy ever come close to doing anything reckless? Has the boy been anything less than all he should be?

He sat before the TV and clasped and unclasped the arms of his chair. He nudged his son with his foot.

“Quit it,” Billy said.

“This is a good show,” Jay said. “In case you didn't notice.”

Billy made a small dismissive noise.

“By the way,” Jay said. “Has anyone ever given you high praise? Anybody ever tell you you were the greatest?”

“You did,” Billy said. “Yesterday.”

Their eyes went back to the TV, and Jay drummed his fingers on his knee.

“Oh,” Anne said, on the sofa. It was her terminal boredom voice. She had a film book, a big coffee table thing, on her lap. She'd gotten it on a good deal from a publisher's clearinghouse. He could see Garbo upside down, regarding them.

David Janssen was squinting at the street through some venetian blinds. Jay had lost the story for a second. What was he doing inside the house?

“So where do you go on these walks of yours?” Anne asked.

“I'm watching,” Jay said.

“He won't tell you,” Billy said.

Anne flipped a few more pages in her film book. She closed it with a thump.

There was a commercial and Jay stood up. He saw Anne looking at him and crossed to her and leaned over, his hands on his thighs, as if examining her face microscopically.

“You didn't answer my question,” Anne finally said.

“You're very beautiful,” Jay said. He said it as if after much debate as to how to put it.

“I know,” Anne said. “I'm gorgeous. Where're you going?”

He kissed her, and held the kiss longer than she expected. Then he straightened up.

“Where are you
go
ing?” she said.

“You sound tired,” he said.

“I
am
tired.” She switched off the lamp and looked back at the television. She was eighteen in its light. “This is over. I'll turn it off.”

“No, it's all right. I'll be back in a little while.” He touched his wife's ear, for a good-bye, and slipped away.

THEOPHILUS HAD almost been hit once, by an old Le Sabre. Jay heard the screech but no body sound and no horn, and he reacted, he remembered later, like he was underwater, swimming futilely toward the front door and the yard in time to see Anne already crouching over the dog, making sure it was all right, with another arm on Billy's shoulder. Billy was lifting and dropping Theo's front paw in a rudimentary medical exam and the driver was waiting for Jay to get there to exchange apologies before leaving. Jay hadn't had anything to say and the guy had gotten into his Le Sabre and waved like he'd enjoyed the visit. Anne had said on the way back to the house, What were you, asleep? and he hadn't been able to shake the feeling of being underwater until hours later, watching television.

BEHIND HIM ANNE SURFED channels in frustration with her remote, and Billy said, “Ma. Leave it on one.” Jay eased past the dog asleep on the floor in the kitchen. He opened the door softly. The dog was immediately on its feet but too late to get to the door. It stood with its front paws on the windowsill, backlit by the kitchen light. Jay stretched in the driveway, rubbing his forearms against the chill. August, and the nights were already cool. He left the dog panting silently behind the glass and crossed the yard to the street, conjuring up Anne's face in the light of the television. He was away from the lights of his house quickly, and then he left the streetlights, off-white and quiet, behind him as well.

The lights receded and the darkness and quiet increased. His street was a dead end. He was heading for the fence on the grassy bluff beyond the pavement, and for the airport beyond the fence.

THEY HAD AN ARRANGEMENT for Thursday nights: he got to see his shows, Anne got to see hers, and Billy got to see his. The times lined up. They had a VCR but only used it for rental movies. On other nights when shows competed, Jay sometimes stuck it out and sometimes didn't. When he didn't he sat by the window in the kitchen with the lights out. Anne would say to Billy, “Your father's in there communing with the darkness.”

THE SIEBERTS' DOG, an Irish setter/beagle mix, barked at the rattle of the chain link every time Jay reached the fence, and kept barking until he slid underneath it and got down to the base of the bluffs. He tried not to let the dog hurry him, picking his way through the brambles and fallen birches in the moonlight. He was off his usual path—here was some splintered and ragged sumac, where he expected a small clearing—but it was no problem; he knew his way around.

BILLY WAS NINE and Theophilus was four and Anne was thirty-five, and Jay spent as much time as he could with them, watching. They were all happy. When he thought of his family he thought of the dog snuffing under the azalea, sprinting in bursts after squirrels and birds, barking and leaping splay-legged at the tennis ball. Anne was happy. She loved her job and concentrated on it at home in a knit-browed, serious way that he admired; she loved her books, her cooking, her landscaping. Billy was happy. He had his father and mother and Theo. Theo was happy. Everybody was happy.

AS HE EXPECTED, once on the bottom, at runway level, he had no problems. He headed for the four red threshold lights spanning diagonally away from him. He kept an eye out for security vehicles. He moved through the high groundcover the way he moved through his own darkened house. He found the huge chevrons of the overrun area, and then his feet were on the landing threshold and the hard surface of the runway itself.

He stood between the central red lights. They seemed attentive, obedient and waiting. He crossed to one and held his hand over it, the red glowing up through his skin and between his fingers, creating a pleasing, instant X-ray. He held on to the thick, warm glass and leaned back, squeezing, staring out into the darkness and stars in the direction of the approach pattern of the planes.

He pulled away from the lights, finally, moving toward the center of the runway, the circling beam of the tower in the distance calming him. He crossed the nonprecision approach markings, great, white parallel squares, and stood over the sweeping number of the runway designation. The number was twenty-eight. It was probably the compass bearing, as well. He sat down. He turned back to the four red lights, still silent and waiting. Then he lay back, spread-eagle, and looked up into the darkness.

It wasn't long before he heard the first plane. It was a light, far-off buzzing, starting out beyond his left arm and circling quietly, slowly, around him until it was coming, harder and louder, from below his heels. He told himself he wouldn't look, he'd keep his eyes straight up, but when it got so loud it seemed already on him he jerked his head up, his chin hitting his chest, and caught the landing lights full in the face. They passed over him in an instant, streaking up the runway far ahead of the plane, leaving him momentarily blinded, but everything reappeared immediately, and right overhead swinging toward him like a great pendulum were the red and white running lights, spread out unevenly in a line and gleaming on the smooth underside of the wings and fuselage, the wheels swaying low beneath them. He rolled, face pressed against the pavement, as the noise rushed over him in a wave, shaking him, and was gone.

He rose to his elbows and lay on his belly, watching the plane skirt into the darkness, the lights slowly joining the concentration of lights around the tower.

He marked the spot in his mind and computed how far into the runway the next spot should be. Then he left, heading for the bluff at a good speed, because the airport security wasn't that bad.

THERE WAS NO PATTERN to the runway visits. He varied their frequency to baffle airport security. He was certainly reported each time by the incoming pilot. Sometimes he waited as much as three months to go out, watching the security jeeps on their rounds through the chain-link fence at the end of the street. Sometimes he went as often as once a week. This week he was going twice: Thursday and Saturday.

SATURDAY NIGHT he heard a twin-engine, it sounded like, even before he'd found his spot. He went to his knees and scuttled forward, approximating, and turned around. The lights were banking, slowly coming around to level, parallel now to the threshold lights beyond the runway's edge. The noise increased, and he picked up the landing lights slipping slowly along the ground, suddenly speeding up and flashing over him as the roar grew louder and the lights sank closer, and at the last moment he flattened out as much as he could on the surface of the tarmac, turning his face as his ears filled with sound and his clothing shook and he felt it touch down hard behind him, the shock traveling through him, and he knew, as he got up, running for the bluff, that the next time, farther out onto the runway, might be the last time.

He remembered a movie he'd seen some years ago called
The
Magnificent Seven.
In it, Steve McQueen, one of a group of gun-fighters who have banded together for no apparent reason to protect a poor Mexican town from bandits, is asked by the bandit chief why they stay and fight against insurmountable odds for no reward. He replies, “Well, it's like a guy I once knew in Waco. Took off all his clothes one day and jumped into a cactus. I asked him why he did it.”

And the bandit chief says impatiently, “Well? What did he say?”

And McQueen replies, “He said it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

WHEN HE GOT BACK Billy and Theo were in the sunroom, Theo still nose to the window. Had the dog been like that the whole time? Billy was sitting in the lawn chair they kept inside and was shelling peanuts on his lap. Billy said, “So where'd you go, Dad?”

He realized he was still wired and flushed and he put his hand over the top of Billy's head and mussed his hair, though he never did that. He said, “I went for a walk. What're you, a cop?”

But Billy held his ground, staring up at him, and he was forced to turn to Anne, who came around the corner from the kitchen, the phone to her ear and the cord stretched taut. She nodded hello and said, “Moth
er.
He just came in.”

She gave him a stern look and he kissed her until she had to pull away to say, “Yes, Mother, yes, I'm listening.”

“Mr. Mystery,” Billy said behind him. Jay crossed the kitchen, ducking while Anne held the cord up, and dropped onto the sofa in the living room, casting around for the remote. Billy had left it turned around atop the TV, the electric eye facing him.

SOMETIMES HE THOUGHT, You're a responsible young man, you need to consider this, but nothing coherent or plausible came to him when he did. Nothing made him do it, he realized, mowing the first summer grass or piling clippings into the trunk to take to the dump. Part of the reason, he knew, was the way it felt that first split second when he heard a Cessna or an Allegheny or something make that distant turn, start that faint buzz way off in the night.

HE'D BEEN OUT nine times. He was six-one and each time he went out he moved six feet and an inch farther down the runway, each time coming closer to the touchdown point of most aircraft. Of course, there'd always been the chance that someone would touch down early, as well.

HE BUSTLED AROUND the house after supper for a week, cleaning, fixing, storing, and straightening, and Anne watched him happily and took him aside and said, smiling, “You're a real dynamo this week, know it?” When he started to pull away, hedge clippers in hand, she got serious and added, “You're wonderful, you know that?”

He settled his affairs at work, getting the last shipments of the week out two days early and working with such efficiency even for him that his fellow workers were sure something was up. He made sure before he left on Friday that someone could cover for him Monday if he was late or couldn't make it.

The guys at Sikorsky knew he was a good worker. And they knew he was crazy.

He wasn't inclined to believe them.

He didn't feel wild or out of control when he did the things he did.

When he was five, every Sunday night for a week he jumped off the roof of the porch of the old house on Spruce Street. He was practicing landing and rolling.

When he was seventeen he and a friend raced twin Kawasakis off a dock and into the Housatonic River. The Kawasakis had taken two weeks to clean and get back into shape. When he was twenty-five, ten years ago, he climbed the roof of the main hangar at Sikorsky on his lunch break. It was his first year on the job.

Two years after that he'd found himself on his belly behind the forklift in Hangar 6, out of reach of the light drizzle slicking the helicopter pad, thirty-three yards away from him, and the HH-52 warming up on it.

He'd measured the thirty-three yards. He'd measured everything, including the time it would take to cross them and the time from the first revving of its turbines that it would take the HH-52 to get airborne and out of reach. He'd figured out the best day (Saturday), the best weather conditions (rainy), and the best copter (the 52, with its massive pods surrounding the landing gear) for what he planned. The landing gear would be his handholds, and the pods would shield him initially from the tower's view.