Page 12 of Protecting the Flame

Chapter 7

In retrospect?

They should’ve missed the damn plane.

On takeoff,the way ahead had been relatively clear, but things went south about an hour into the flight. Anvils of glowering clouds pressed down as the turbulence built, morphing from gentle swells to a fast, stomach-churning slalom. There was no escape, either. The clouds towered too high for them to clear, so the pilot had been forced to go lower, which sucked because that meant the mountains, which before had been distinct snowy ridges and crinkles in the Earth and no more consequential than a rumpled bed, suddenly grew fangs.

There was a roar and then a shimmy as another huge wave of turbulence broke against the plane. The fuselage shook, the window to Emma’s left buzzed, something overhead bawled, and her seat creaked.

“Holy…!” It was Scott. Of course, it was Scott. It would be just her dumb luck that Scott, Rachel, Mattie’s grandfather, and Mattie were on the same charter. The seats were odd, too, with the two immediately behind the cockpit facing out and so, because Scott was strapped in behind the copilot, she and he had no choice but to actually make eye contact. (Earlier, when she and Will wandered up, Scott’s face had screwed into a murderous clench. If looks were daggers, she ought to have bled out on the spot. His hostility was so obvious Will had turned her a puzzled look.)

“Jesus!” Scot shouted as the plane stuttered, so the word came out Gee-hee-hee-hee-sus. “You trying to crash us or what?”

“It’s only air.” Mattie was across the sliver of aisle to Emma’s right. The pilot had put her and Emma in the last two seats in front of a locker and the rear cargo hold because they were both lightweights. As the plane swooped again, the girl pressed her book to her chest and closed her eyes. “It’s just bad air, Scott. Bad air can’t hurt you.”

“Hell you say.” Already sickly, Scott’s pallor had gone fish-belly white with a touch of green under the gills. One hand gripping an air-sickness bag, Scott leaned against his headrest and swallowed, the knuckle of his Adam’s apple rolling up and down his throat. “Blows hard enough, we’re gonna end up pancakes.”

“Flew worse in ’Nam. This isn’t anything worth getting worked up about. Besides, I’m almost positive the pilot would like to get there in one piece.” It was Mattie’s grandfather, who hunkered in a seat behind the pilot and directly opposite Rachel’s mother. His breath came in chuffs because, while Burke kept the windshield clear, he hadn’t wanted to tax the engines by pulling heat away for the cabin. Like the rest of them, the old man was swaddled in cold-weather gear—in his case, an olive-green parka with a fur-trimmed snorkel he’d pulled up and then zipped as soon as Burke took off. In the cabin’s gloom, his face was a pale, indistinct glimmer, something from a bad detective novel where the body’s found floating face-up at the bottom of a well. “Take it from me, complaining won’t do a damn bit of good or get us there faster. You’d do best to relax there, Scott.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll relax when I got both feet on the ground again.” Leaning forward with a groan, Scott let his head hang between his knees. “I should never have let you people talk me into this.”

Out of the corner of an eye, Emma saw Mattie open her mouth but then closed it as if thinking better of whatever she’d been about to say as Rachel, whose seat was in front of Emma’s, shot her daughter a warning frown. Rolling her eyes, Mattie flopped back in her seat and returned to her book.

Having finished her Times and decided trying to drink her tea meant she’d likely be wearing it, Emma was bored. She’d considered Ben’s much-read, dog-eared copy of The Waste Land. Yes, she was being morbid, but somehow Eliot’s poem felt so right. She hadn’t taken out the book, though. The book was a talisman, really, and how would she explain if someone…Will, for example, who was a row up and immediately in front of Mattie…asked? Well, yes, it’s all about fear and people caught in limbo, neither here nor there, and you know, the way Eliot says April is cruel because that’s when life springs forth only for death to follow? Well, three guesses when Ben died…uhm, when he killed himself…er…when he was murdered to make sure he stayed quiet and his investigation went nowhere, the investigation that was my fault because I suggested it. I sniffed out a nugget of a story that everyone says isn’t true.

Yeah. That would’ve gone over like a lead balloon.

Instead, cinching her shoulder harness down another notch, she pushed aside one half of a set of blue fabric curtains attached to brass rods top and bottom in front of her window then gasped as the twin-engine Chieftain suddenly porpoised, rising and then dipping then rising again. Listen to Mattie,Emma thought as her stomach dropped to her toes. Her butt tried levitating for the ceiling, and she grew momentarily weightless. Her hands hooked her armrests in a death grip. It’s only air, bad air. Air can’t hurt you.

For a giddy second, there was the disorienting sensation of having nothing but air beneath her feet. Her shoulder strap dug as the plane fell the way a car plunges from the top of a rollercoaster. Rivets squealed; the entire fuselage squeaked; the prop’s grumbles swooped in a decrescendo. If there’d been interior lights, they’d probably have winked. She heard the slosh of avgas stored in two inflatable bladders which were secured, along with their luggage in the cargo hold behind her seat. There was a third empty bladder and, when she asked about it, Burke tipped her a wink: Well, if we get stuck and we maybe want a bunch of hot water for a bath or something. A second later, the twin engines surged as the plane rebounded and they leveled.

Man. Slamming back down into her seat, Emma let out a grunt. Maybe it was a good thing she didn’t have anything on her stomach. On the one hand, this still wasn’t as bad as a chopper ride she’d taken in Afghanistan when, on his approach to base, the pilot had violently jinked the helicopter right and then left and then right again before diving because, as she later discovered, the insurgents who lay in wait with Stingers were really, really good.

“Okay.” Mattie flicked a tongue over her lips. “Even I’m impressed. That was pretty bad.”

“See? S’what I’m saying.” Scott’s head still hung between his knees. “Man, I should never have had those eggs.”

“It might help if you stopped talking about all the food you wish you weren’t going to throw up,” said Mattie.

Her mother shot her another look of warning. “Maybe we should switch places, Scott?” Rachel’s hand was on her buckle. “Facing forward might help—”

“Mom!” Mattie shouted at the same time that a hand shot across the aisle and gripped Rachel’s wrist.

“Bad idea in turbulence,” Will observed. He’d dragged on a watch cap, neck warmer, and pop-top mittens along with a dark blue parka. “You won’t make anything better if you get tossed, Rachel, and in this turbulence…” He paused as another blast buffeted the plane. “In this turbulence,” he continued, “you will lose your balance and you will get tossed.” Relinquishing his grip, Will cast a significant look at Rachel’s swollen belly straining against a rust-red parka. “You’ve got someone else depending on you to make the right choices. Scott’s an adult. He’ll be fine.”

“Who the fuck asked you?” Scott flared. “What makes you such an authority, huh?”

“On which? The fact that your wife is really pregnant or that you’re supposed to be an adult?”

“Real smart guy, aren’t you?” The tip of Scott’s nose twitched. “We crash and then we’ll see how smart you—”

“Hey, you mind putting a lid on it?” It was Hunter, the co-pilot, on the righthand side of the cockpit. Snatching a quick look over his left shoulder, Hunter snapped, “Look, I get the ride’s rough, but none of this jawing is making things any better. Everyone calm down.”

“We’re calm,” Will said, mildly. “Emma, are you calm?”

“Uh.” No. “Sure.”

Mattie’s grandfather gave a thumbs up. “Aces.”

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