PART ONE
PREPARATIONS

CHAPTER ONE
"THEY'RE EXTINCT."

Clara drove a motorcycle. Rick's junker was down for the count and his mom wouldn't let him use her car. Marie, despite her pilot's license, didn't drive, and Joey, the idiot, had his license suspended for DWI. So I drove. I didn't even want to go, but there you have it, Charlie to the rescue, one more time.

That week Dad was flying the DFW-DC-Boston route, so Mom said I could take the big Lincoln Town Car. I dressed like a chauffeur, in a black suit and billed hat.

Rick was sitting on the porch steps when I pulled up. He was wearing a tux, a plastic florist's box in his big hands. I jumped out of the car and held the rear door open. He laughed, but stopped almost immediately with a nervous look over his shoulder.

"Come off it," he said. "I'll ride in front."

"Nope."

He shrugged. "Okay. Let's get out of here, before my mom starts up again." He folded himself into the backseat. The Town Car was huge, but Rick, though thin, was over six feet four. With him in it, the seat looked only adequate instead of luxurious.

When we were moving I asked, "You want to talk about it?"

He met my eyes for a moment in the rearview mirror, then looked away. "No," he said. "I don't."

I dropped him at Clara's, so he could do the P.P.P.O., the pre-prom-parental-ordeal, and drove on.

I had to go up to the house to get Joey. His father let me in.

"Nice outfit, Charlie."

"Thank you, Mr. Maloney. Where's Joey?"

Someone said, "Ow!" from the back of the house. Mr. Maloney pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "They're in the kitchen, but be warned, it's not a pretty sight."

Tiny Mrs. Maloney, standing on a step stool, was pinning a white rose boutonniere on Joey's tux jacket while Joey's older sister, Lisa, was putting on the silver-and-ebony cuff links. "Why didn't you do this before you put on the jacket, you idiot?"

Joey wiggled. "Well, excuuuuuuuuse me. I don't wear a tux every day, you know." He saw me. "Ah, thank God. Help me Charlie Ben Kenobi, you're my only hope."

"Hold still!" said his mother.

Mr. Maloney went to the refrigerator. "You want a beer, Charlie?" Mrs. Maloney started to say something, but clamped her mouth shut.

"No thanks, Mr. Maloney. I'm driving."

Mr. Maloney blinked. "Ah, good point." He looked at Joey. "Very good point."

Joey blushed.

Mr. Maloney took a beer for himself, then, with the refrigerator still open, said, "Coke? Sugared, I'm afraid. Er, we don't have any diet Coke."

It was my turn to blush. "No thanks, Mr. Maloney. Gives me zits." Not to mention adding to my already hefty waistline.

Joey's torturers released him and we fled. Good-natured injunctions about "having a good time" floated after us. In the car, Joey said, "Sorry about Dad. He means well."

"It's okay."

Marie lived only two blocks from Joey. "I'll wait," I said. He nodded, swallowing nervously. Marie's father knew about Joey's DWI incident. I got out and leaned against the car, visible from the house, proof to Marie's father that Joey wasn't driving.

They didn't stay inside long, but Marie's father escorted them to the car and shook my hand. "Hello, Charles." He always called me Charles. He and Marie left Vietnam in ‘75 and his English, though quite good, never lost the accent.

"Hello, Mr. Nguyen. How are you?"

"I am fine, Charles. I've let Joseph know that if you weren't driving, he would not be taking Marie to the prom. I depend on you to bring her home safely." He paused. "To bring all of them home safely."

"Daddy!" Marie exhaled sharply. She looked gorgeous. She was wearing something low-cut and tight in white, with a black silk shawl. In flat shoes she was my height, exactly, but tonight she was taller. "Show some tact."

Joey stared at the ground.

I held the back door open and winked at Marie. "Certainly, Mr. Nguyen. You can count on me."

On the way to Clara's, Joey ragged me, his voice pitched in a nasal whine, "Certainly, Mr. Nguyen. You can count on me."

"Shut up, Joey," Marie said. "It's not Charlie's fault, now is it?"

I looked into Marie's eyes in the rearview mirror. She looked back, worried.

"S'okay," I said.

Joey shrugged and looked out the window for a moment, then said, "Sorry, Charlie. And thanks for driving us."

Marie kissed him and I felt knives in my gut. "You're welcome."

At Clara's house we had to go in for pictures. I held my hat to my chest and wore sunglasses and my black leather flying gloves.

Clara, tall and blonde, was wearing a strapless black gown with ruffles, and her mother kept tugging it up even though it really didn't seem to be slipping. "Mom, enough all ready!" She usually wore unisex clothes—men's shirts, jeans.

"Leave her be, Margaret," said Mr. Prentice. "How can I take the picture if you're in the way?"

We stood still and faced the lightning in groups and pairs. Then I took a shot of the two couples with Mr. and Mrs. Prentice.

In the car Clara said, "What took you so long, Charlie? I thought I'd die!"

I was surprised and pleased when Joey said, "My fault. Trouble with the tux." He didn't mention Mr. Nguyen.

Next stop was the Texan, perhaps the best restaurant in town. I dropped them and went home to wait for their call. They'd offered to treat me, collectively, as payment, but I'd said I'd take payment another way.

I also didn't want to see Joey and Marie together any more than I could help it.

I'd eaten earlier though I wouldn't have minded something more. Mom and I were on a diet together and it seemed my stomach never stopped rumbling.

I spent the time reviewing the FAA Instrument Flight Rules. Mom was watching another nature documentary on TV, so I read in my room, as far from the refrigerator as possible. The phone call came after an hour and forty minutes.

"We just asked for the check," Marie said.

"What did you have?"

"Lobster. Heart-of-palm salad. Raspberry mousse for dessert."

"Aaaaaggghh. Okay, okay. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"You should've been here, Charlie. It wasn't as fun without you."

"Um. See you in a few."

In the living room, Mom was looking at the screen with the perpetually surprised and intent expression with which she watched all things. "I'm going now—I'll be back late, so don't wait up."

She put down her notepad on a stack of wildlife journals and walked across to me. "Drive carefully. Mrs. Paige tells me that prom night is a time of increased consumption of alcoholic beverages by underage drivers." She reached out and adjusted my tie. "Don't let one of them crash into you."

"Okay, Mom." I kissed her on the cheek. "Don't fry your brains on too much TV."

She laughed, then sobered. "After this, it's a Nova on extinctions."

"Oh, goody."

I picked the guys up two at a time, so I could walk around, open the door, and hand them out in front of the Hilton, where the prom was. Marie protested, but I said, "Let's do it right." Most of the kids had driven themselves and were walking in from the parking lot, so both couples had a decent audience when I did the act.

Joey made a big show of tipping me with a twenty, but I'd promised ahead of time to give it back later. Marie squeezed my hand as I helped her out. Nobody seemed to recognize me, which was good, I guess.

This time I parked the car and waited in the lobby. The tuxedos and gowns drifted by, like some musical. There was a chair in the corner, screened by a potted palm. I settled there, my FAA regs for company, but I didn't read. Instead I watched them flow by, like I watched them in the hallways at school. In-groups and out-groups, nervous singles, girls in stag groups, and popular jocks with beautiful girls. Most of them tried to act older, to fit the clothes. Some of them tried being pompous. A few of them were even natural, acting no differently than they did in jeans.

But, as usual, I watched from outside.

The music drifted from the ballroom, a slow number. I thought of Joey's arms around Marie and I got up, went into the hotel restaurant, and had a second supper.

Someone shared their flask of whiskey with Joey during the prom and he was a little loud, a little clumsy. He wasn't obnoxious, though—he just smiled a lot. Marie, Rick, and I consulted and decided coffee was in order. Besides, none of them wanted to go home yet. What was the point in being home before midnight? I had my own agenda.

"Come on," I said. "We'll get coffee from Jack-In-the-Box and go out to my place."

"Your place?" said Clara. "What about your mom?"

 I shook my head. "Not my parents'. My place." Only Marie knew what I was talking about. We'd done touch-and-go practice landings on the grass strip there, but we'd never stopped. 

"He means the ranch—the ranch his uncle left him."

"Where is it?" asked Rick.

"West," I said. "Over by the Brazos. Twenty minutes." 

Joey spoke. "We could go dancing instead. Over to Parrot's." 

All four of them were in the back. Clara, plastered to Rick's side, said, "My feet hurt enough. I'm not used to heels. What's out there?"

I tried to control my breathing, to keep my voice calm, to make it seem as if I didn't care. "A house. A barn. A hangar. An airstrip. A lot of trees."

"Anybody live there?"

"Me," I said. "After graduation."

"Whoa. Really? Your parents are okay about that?"

"Pretty much. My dad would like to hangar his plane there, that's why we put in the hangar. Better than Easterwood, cause it would save the hangar fees, but he's not willing unless somebody lives out there. Too much chance of vandalism."

"So, like he'll pay you instead? Since it's your land?"

"Ha. He'll continue to let me fly the plane. That's payment enough."

We reached CrackIn-the-Jack and I ordered four coffees and one hot tea to go. "Try not to spill it, guys. Or I'll hear about it."

I paused at the end of the driveway. "So, my place?"

"Sounds boring," said Joey.

Rick shrugged. Clara whispered something in Rick's ear, and he crossed his legs, then said, "Let's do it."

Marie looked from me to Joey. "Sure. I've wanted to see what the place looks like from the ground."

Joey looked stubborn and I said, "Come on, Joey. I've got a surprise for you out there. I've got a surprise for all of you."

He relented. "Oh? Sure, why not. If there's a surprise."

"Let's just say it'll be worth your while."

Joey threw up halfway there, but gave us enough warning that Marie got the electric window open. He got it all outside, thank God.

"I don't feel so good," he said.

Marie was frosty. "Imagine my surprise."

I handed him my tea, untasted. "Here—rinse your mouth out with this."

 

There was a combination padlock on the gate. I closed it behind us—there weren't any cattle on the place, but I didn't want anybody to wander in. We drove on a gravel road through the live oaks, down a hill, then came to the cluster of house, barn, and hangar. I stopped the car before the barn in the light from a mercury vapor light mounted on the barn that lit the grass and dirt patch between the buildings. I killed the car and we piled out.

"How you feel, Joey?" Marie asked.

"Okay. Thirsty."

I unlocked the house and turned on the living room light. Then went into the kitchen and bathroom, before returning to the living room with a big plastic glass.

"It'll taste a little funny. It's well water. Here's some aspirin, too."

He took three aspirin and drained most of the glass.

Clara and Rick were on the couch. They stopped necking when I spoke to Joey. "Nice place," said Clara. "Was this your uncle's stuff?"

It was old furniture, not quite old enough to be antique, but old enough to be "vintage." Some of the chairs were patched. It was neat and uncluttered, like Uncle Max left it. I tried to keep it that way. "Yeah. I like it."

"Did I see a second floor?" she asked.

"Yeah. There's three bedrooms up there, but it gets really hot. Uncle Max's room is on this floor, at the back."

I couldn't stand to wait anymore. The tension was building, had been building, for over a week. The evening had made it worse. "What are you doing this summer, Clara?" I asked. My voice was ragged and anxious. All four looked at me, surprised.

Clara tilted her head to one side and looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Uh, I was going to work part-time at the stables, to pay for the feed and board on Impossible, and I was going to get at least one other job. We don't all have scholarships." She glanced sideways at Marie as she said this.

Marie shrugged. "Scholarship isn't going to help that much. I've got a job interview with Dillard's the week after graduation."

"Rick?" Some of the tension was still there, and I took a deep breath. Then, more calmly, I continued, "What about you? This summer, I mean."

The corners of his mouth tightened. "Dad wants me to spend it in Dallas working for his company. I don't want to, but if I don't find a job here that pays well enough, I'll have to." More reluctantly he said, "Child support payments stopped last February, when I turned eighteen. Even with your coaching in calculus, Charlie, I didn't qualify for any of the scholarships I applied for."

I turned to Joey. Before I asked the question he said, "I'm going to join the army."

"What?" Marie was as surprised as any of us. "What do you mean?"

"You know. Go down to the recruiting office at Northgate, walk in, sign up. That's what. Do you think I'm going to get to college any other way with my grades? I've got four sisters and a little brother; Dad was laid off six months ago, so all we've got is the money from Mom's secretarial work. Lisa is talking about dropping out of A&M so she can get another job. No way I'm going to make it on my own." He sipped from the last of his water, his eyes on the floor. "To be honest, I'm not sure I want to go to college. Sure didn't do Dad any good."

Marie shrugged helplessly and put her arm around Joey's waist. He kept his eyes down, but leaned into her.

The silence was like a still pond and I dropped my pebble with great care. "Payback time," I said.

Joey looked up. "Huh?"

"You guys owe me for tonight, right? For driving you around."

Marie said, "Sure." Joey nodded, his eyes narrowing, wondering what the cost would be. Rick just said, "For other things, too." Clara's reaction was more like Joey's.

"Here's the deal. I've got a secret. It's not illegal. It's not immoral. Some might say it's not even possible. But it's a secret and I want it kept that way. You promise not to tell anyone what I'm about to show you. Not your friends, your brothers, your sisters, your parents, your priest." I looked at Joey when I said priest. "That's the payment I want. To give me your word and keep it."

"I haven't been to confession in four years, Charlie. And if it's not immoral, why should it matter?"

"Just promise."

Marie said, "Okay, Charlie." She looked a little hurt. She was my best friend, and she didn't know what I was talking about. Well, I didn't tell her everything since she started going out with Joey.

Joey looked relieved. The cost, it seemed, was acceptable to him. "Sure, Charlie. It's a deal."

Rick said, "I promise."

Clara licked her lips. "Well, if what you said about it not being illegal or immoral is true, then I promise as well. If it turns out that you're lying about that, then all deals are off."

I gritted my teeth together. "Of course."

There was a set of barrister bookshelves next to the door. I lifted the glass door on one shelf and pulled a book from it. The place was marked with a reddish brown feather. "Look at this." I put the book down on the coffee table, open, facing the couch. Marie and Joey came over and looked down. Clara and Rick leaned forward.

Joey said, "Mourning doves, aren't they?" Joey and his father hunted.

Clara read from the caption. "Ectopistes migratortus. Mate and Female Passenger Pigeon, see Pigeons—Columbidae, order Columbiformes."

Marie said, "Passenger pigeons? They're extinct. Wiped out by hunting in the late 1800s, right?"

"That's right," I said. "Though technically, the last one died in captivity in 1914. Her name was Martha. Bring the book. Follow me."

I led them back outside, to the barn. It was set partially back into the hill. The first story was mortared fieldstone with wood siding on the hayloft above. I unlocked the padlock and swung open one side of the large double door, found the light switch, and pulled the door shut behind us.

The barn was square, about thirty feet by thirty feet, with a hard dirt floor. There were five stalls on the right-hand side and an ancient gasoline tractor parked on the left along with various attachments: a plow, a disker, a small utility trailer, and an old rotary hay mower. At the back left-hand corner, a worktable stood with all of Uncle Max's tools hung in neat rows on the wall above. A table saw beside the bench stood under a canvas tarp.

I glanced at the back of the barn, where several hay bales were stacked nearly to the ceiling and felt a sharp stab of grief. I looked away quickly and led the guys to the back corner stall. The pigeons started cooing when I opened the door.

There were sixteen cages, handmade of chicken wire with wood framing. They were stacked four by four, one bird per cage.

Marie and Rick looked at the book, then back at the cages. Then back at the book again. Clara grabbed the book from them and flipped to the textual description. She read, "Grayish blue above, reddish fawn below, resembling Old World turtledoves, but larger, thirty-two to forty-three centimeters in length, with a longer pointed tail and a greater wingspread. Males have a pinkish body and a blue-gray head."

Halfway through the description, Joey backed out of the stall and began looking around. He climbed up the ladder to the loft, but all he found was hay. By the time he lifted the tarp on the table saw and looked beneath it, the other three had emerged from the pigeon stall.

"What are you looking for?" asked Marie.

Joey was frowning, his lips pursed. "A time machine," he said.

All four of them looked at me. They seemed a little afraid.

"Wait a minute," said Rick. "These don't have to be passenger pigeons. Didn't the description say they were similar to turtledoves in coloration?"

"These are much bigger," said Marie.

"Back breeding. Selecting for size. Breeding for larger and larger turtledoves. Is that what was done, Charlie?"

"No."

Marie took a stab at it. "Then what about cloning? Didn't you say that the last passenger pigeon died in 1914? They had refrigeration, then. Did they freeze some tissue and did somebody done these, using doves or pigeons as host mothers?"

I shook my head.

Finally Joey just asked, "What are they, Charlie? What are those birds in the corner?"

"They're passenger pigeons."

He digested that. They all did. Finally he said, "So, where's the time machine?"

"There isn't one."

Clara almost shouted. "Then how did you get them?"

I folded my arms. "I'm not going to tell you. Not yet, anyway."

Rick smiled, then, and the others looked at him, puzzled. "So, what are you going to tell us, Charlie?" I could see that some of the possibilities were occurring to him.

"How'd you like enough money for college, without working for your dad in Dallas this summer? All of you. How'd you like enough money for college at any school in the country? Full board and tuition without any jobs on the side?" I paused, a bubble of hysterical laughter breaking out. "Hell. If it works out, enough money for the rest of your lives."

 

---

CHAPTER TWO
"IT'S LOADED SO BE CAREFUL."

Graduation was an ordeal. Marie's valedictory speech was okay—I'd helped her with it—but the last thing I wanted to do was listen to the Reverend Bates and the president of the school board as they tried to simultaneously prepare us for the future and immerse us in our past "happy days" at Bryan High.

It was so far from my experience that I was beginning to know how Joey felt after the prom.

Luckily I brought a book.

Dad surprised me by swapping shifts with another pilot so he could be there. That morning, for graduation, my parents gave me a leather flight bag, a Blackhawk headset with liquid cushion pads on the earphones, and an AVS flight computer.

I'd been using Dad's headset and flight computer unless he was Pilot-In-Command, then I wore a cheap crew headset that hurt the ears after twenty minutes.

There was mingling, after, and my hand was shaken by kids who never even noticed me while we were in school. Mom stood and talked with Mr. and Mrs. Prentice and Mr. Nguyen, watching everything with wide eyes. At least she left the notepad at home… this time. I saw Dad hang up the pay phone in the hall and come back into the auditorium.

Joey was tugging at his collar and wanting to go, but his parents were having a great time. "I'd just as soon never see this place again," he told me just before Dad came up.

"I know what you mean," I said.

"Congratulations, Joey," said Dad, shaking Joey's hand. "What are your plans?"

"Thanks, Captain Newell. For the summer, I'm going to work in, uh, wildlife management." He shot a look at me.

I'll kill you, I mouthed.

Dad nodded amiably, then turned to me. "I took the standby spot to get free for this and my number just came up. A pilot failed his physical and I have to replace him on the DFW-KC-O'Hare run tonight. You want to fly me up?" He spread his hands. "Only if you want to. If you've got plans or a party or something, I can take the commuter."

I was surprised. I had over 360 hours, but I didn't think Dad trusted my flying. In fact, when I'd gotten my Instrument Flight Rules ticket two months before, he'd acted more surprised than pleased.

"What's the weather?" I asked cautiously.

"Marginal VFR here—ceiling at fourteen hundred. It's socked in at Dallas—nine-hundred-foot ceiling. No cells." No thunderstorms, he meant. "Supposed to get better, not worse."

"Okay." I paused. "Uh, we should get going. The Mooney's empty."

"You didn't fill it last time?" Irritation.

"She was still hot. You can get more in her if you fill her cold."

He shrugged. "True, but you could've waited for her to cool down."

I looked down. You could get water condensation in the tanks if you left it empty. "Sorry," I mumbled.

Mom drove us home and we changed and Dad packed an overnight. I drove us in my truck, a used and battered Mazda, to Easterwood and left it. I'd be coming back. Dad filed an IFR flight plan into DFW while I got the Mooney fueled and did the preflight. Then Dad came over to the plane and did it all over again.

The flight was tense. I fumbled my response to the Fort Worth Traffic Control Center and received Dad's standard lecture on keeping radio communications short and to the point, there's a lot of people up in the air gotta use the same frequency, don't you know? Then I had thirteen-knot crosswind component on the landing and bounced the plane, something I haven't done in months, not even for the IFR examiner who'd made me pretty nervous.

I offered to pick Dad up when he was done with the next series of flights but he said, "No. That's okay. I'll take the commuter down."

On the way back everything went right. I handled my clearance, ground control, tower, and departure communications with brevity and clarity, my radio navigation brought me right into the landing pattern for Easterwood, and the landing was smooth as silk, one faint "chirp" from the tires as they spun up to speed.

Of course Dad wasn't there to see it.

I put the plane in the hangar, cleaned the bugs off, and went home.

 

The Monday after graduation, Joey, Rick, and I drove down to Houston in my pickup and shipped four male passenger pigeons to four different addresses. We used a freight company that routinely handled live animals. I paid cash for the freight and I lied about my name, address, and phone number.

One week later, we drove back to Houston, bought twenty dollars in quarters from a bank, and made a few calls. The first phone booth we used was at the Galleria, the huge mall on the west loop. Rick stayed with the truck; Joey and I took the quarters in.

It was a weekday morning, the mall just open. On the ice rink on the bottom level, a girl was doing axels while her instructor counted aloud. We found a phone in a quiet alcove and I dialed the first number, then put in four dollars as directed by the computerized voice.

The phone rang twice and was answered, "National Zoo."

"Dr. David Eisner, please."

"Who shall I say is calling?"

"The Lazarus Company."

She put me on hold and then a man's voice said, "This is David Eisner." He sounded wary.

"Did the pigeon arrive all right?"

"Who is this?"

"I'm the one who sent you the pigeon. The Passenger pigeon. You know, Ectopistes migratornts?"

"All right. Yes, the pigeon seems to be fine." His voice lowered and became very intense. "Where did you get it?"

"Well—that's my secret. I'm pleased that he arrived okay." I paused. "Pity that they're extinct—they're such pretty birds."

His voice got louder. "Where did you get it? Don't you know it's illegal to traffic in endangered species?"

I winced and gritted my teeth. "Passenger pigeons are not on the endangered species list, Dr. Eisner. I'm not doing anything illegal."

"Well, they will be if they survive as a species! Are there any others?"

"I was just coming to that."

"Ah."

"I have four females for sale."

"We'll take th—uh, how much?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars each."

"What! A hundred thousand dollars?"

"Yes."

"That's outrageous!"

I paused. Was it? I'd thought about it a lot, but I didn't have anything to compare it to. In fact, I thought it was cheap, considering. "You're absolutely right, Dr. Eisner. It's outrageous. You should go to another supplier."

"What? What other supplier?"

The computer voice asked for more money. I shoved quarters in.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Eisner. I didn't quite hear that."

"What other supplier?"

"Of extinct species? Well, there's uh… gee, I don't know of any other suppliers."

His voice was grim. "I see. You know, if you're capturing these in the wild, you are endangering the species. The population has to be tiny."

"I'm pleased to tell you that this is not the case."

"What's not the case? That you aren't taking them from the wild? Or that the population isn't tiny?"

He was digging as hard as he could.

"Sorry. I take it you're not interested in purchasing the birds?"

"Uh—I have to talk to the acquisition board. Can you give me two weeks?"

"There are other zoos. I'll give you until the day after tomorrow. I'll call you at the same time. Good-bye."

"No, wait a—"

I hung up.

We moved to a different pay phone on Westheimer, just inside a supermarket, and called the Nature Conservancy. The conversation was similar to the first one, a mix of desperation and hostility. "We buy land—habitats—not animals!"

"So, you're not interested?"

"I didn't say that."

I gave them the same two days.

From a phone on West Gray I called the San Diego Zoo. They definitely wanted the females and they had authorization to proceed. I looked around to make sure the guys were out of earshot. "Here's our bank account. Electronically transfer the hundred thousand within the next two days and we'll ship the birds to you."

"What? No contract? No paperwork? How do we know you have them?"

"I already delivered my evidence of good faith. Remember? It eats pigeon feed and shits."

"How about half before delivery, half after?"

"There are other zoos."

They agreed that there were other zoos. They also agreed to my terms.

The next phone was on the Northwest Freeway, on our way back out of town.

"Sierra Club."

"I'd like to speak with Mr. Saunderson."

"May I have your name?"

"The Lazarus Company."

"Uh, your name please?"

"John Smith."

"One moment please."

I listened to classical music as she put me on hold. My watch read 3:02.I started the stopwatch function. At forty-five seconds I hung up.

"Another phone," I said. "Somewhere else."

We drove away from the freeway and stopped at a 7-Eleven.

"Sierra Club."

"This is John Smith of the Lazarus Company, again. Your phone system hung up on me. I need to talk to Mr. Saunderson." I started the stopwatch again. The hold music stretched on and on. I hung up.

Rick looked at me, his eyebrows raised. Joey looked annoyed. "How are we going to sell them the pigeons if you keep hanging up on them?"

"I could be wrong, but I think they're trying to trace the call."

Rick said, "On what grounds? Don't they have to get the police involved to do that? We didn't do anything illegal." He stood beside me at the phone. Joey was leaning against the hood of my truck.

"I don't know. I don't like it, though." I got back into the truck. "We'll give it one more try. If he isn't on the line in under a minute, I say we blow off the Sierra Club."

Joey and Rick climbed in the other side, Joey straddling the stick shift, Rick with his knees pulled up to fit in the seat.

Joey said, "Blow off a hundred thousand dollars?"

"Which would you prefer? Losing the hundred thousand or three hundred thousand?"

He didn't answer.

"Sierra Club."

"I want to talk to Mr. Saunderson right now."

"He's very busy. Can't you wait a minute?"

"No."

"Perhaps you could call back later."

"Perhaps you could connect me now or Mr. Saunderson will never hear from me again. I'm pretty sure that's not what he wants. You have fifteen seconds." I held the watch next to the mouthpiece and started the stopwatch. It chirped loudly into the phone.

There was no music this time. Another voice came onto the phone. "This is James Saunderson."

"One hundred thousand dollars for four female passenger pigeons. Are you interested?"

"Uh, that's a lot of money."

"Four females of an extinct species is quite a lot of bird. You have two days to think it over."

"How do I know—"

"Two days." I hung up.

We drove back to Bryan.

After dropping Rick and Joey off, I drove out University to the mostly empty strip mall across from the Hilton. In one corner, next to a pool hall, the strip's only other tenant was a small office. The sign on the door said, Luis Cervantes, Attorney.

I pushed in through a mirrored glass door. Sylvia, Luis's paralegal, was typing on a computer.

"Hello, Charlie. He's next door."

"Business is that good?"

She shrugged. "We were busy this morning. It's enough."

"Thanks."

I went next door to the pool hall. The tables were crowded together and, when it's busy, you can hardly take a shot without hitting other players. It was early, though, and there were only a few people in the place. Luis was in the corner, playing eight ball against himself.

"Hey, Charlie, grab a cue. Or would you rather go flying?" Luis was a small man, my height, but where I'm big boned and overweight, he's trim and perfectly proportioned. If you don't have anything to scale against, he doesn't look short at all. He makes me feel even fatter than usual.

I said, "Thunderstorm coming in."

He grinned. "Good IFR weather."

"For idiots."

Luis was working on his Instrument rating. I met him in instrument ground school and, later, flew with him as a safety pilot when he flew "under the hood" to simulate instrument conditions.

I took a cue from the wall and leaned on it while he sank all the balls.

"So, what's happening?"

"Incoming money."

He raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"A wire transfer into the account."

He banked the six ball into the side pocket, then set up on the seven. "How much?"

"One hundred K."

The cue scraped across the felt and the cue ball hopped sideways. He swore and rubbed at the blue mark on the green. "One hundred thousand? Who from?"

"The San Diego Zoo."

He scratched at his head. "I didn't believe it. I'm still not sure I do. You sold them pigeons?"

"Yeah."

"And you didn't steal these birds, right? Or illegally import them?"

"Right. Really. But they're still going to want to know where I got them and I can't tell them. So that's why we set up the Austin account, right?"

He took another shot. "Right. How much do we transfer to the private account and how much do you want to hold back for taxes?"

"We're going to declare a loss the first year. Expenses."

"Expenses? Expenses?" He put the cue down on the table and leaned forward, his hands on the felt. "How much money are you expecting in?"

"Well, I expect either one, two, three, or four hundred K. I hope we're talking four hundred—it's not that unlikely. That's within the month, but it's really start-up money. We won't see the real money until next year."

"Real money? Four hundred K isn't real money? What kind of expenses are you talking?"

"Better you shouldn't know."

He got a pained look on his face. "Come on. No bullshit. You're sure this isn't illegal? You've got to tell me. I'm your lawyer, but I won't be if you're not straight with me. What sort of expenses?"

I took a deep breath and licked my lips. "Building materials. Aircraft. Fuel. Advanced flight instruction for five people. Radio and weather equipment." I didn't mention the weapons.

"Weather-monitoring equipment?"

"Yeah."

"Weather-monitoring equipment." He shook his head. "I don't believe this. Look—just shoot pool. We'll talk about this if the money comes in."

"When."

"Huh?"

"When the money comes in."

He got a pained expression on his face. "Rack ‘em."

 

The Five moved me the next day, descending on my parents' house to help me box stuff. I didn't know what else to call us—Lazarus Company was a fictional front for dealing with the zoos, the Austin account was in the "Lazarus Company" name, and the corporation was called, "Wildside Investments." Maybe later we'd be the Wildsiders.

The probationary period on Joey's DWI conviction was over and his dad let him use his full-size pickup. I left the bed and dresser, but took my desk, computer, and bookshelves.

Mom was strangely quiet as we packed the two vehicles. When we were ready to leave she gave me a small cooler with sandwiches and sodas, for us to eat out at the ranch. There were tears in her eyes.

"Mom. I'm coming home for supper, remember?"

She shook her head. "I know. That's not the point. Never mind. You can bring your laundry home if you want."

"There's a washer and dryer on the ranch—it'd be silly."

"You'll wash something in hot and ruin it."

"I won't wash anything in hot. Don't worry. See you at supper." I kissed her on the cheek. She started crying in earnest. I was glad the others were outside, by the trucks.

We drove out, Marie with me, Rick and Clara with Joey.

"Your mom is sad about you moving out, isn't she?" Marie asked, in the truck.

"Yeah," I said. "It's a pain."

She just looked at me and didn't say anything. I remembered that she'd barely known her mother and felt stupid.

I moved my stuff into Uncle Max's room. Mom mothballed his stuff to the attic a couple of years ago, after he'd been missing for five years already, so the closet and dresser were empty. It felt weird putting my things in there.

Then we gathered on the front porch to eat Mom's sandwiches.

"What now, Boss?" said Joey. He pulled an insulated bag from behind the seat of his dad's pickup. "Anybody want a beer?"

Marie glared at him.

Rick said, "I'll take one."

Clara had one as well.

"Charlie? You want a Bud?"

"No, thank you."

Joey popped his top and drank a large swallow. "Well, Boss, what now?"

"We wait."

"What for?"

I started to answer, but the phone rang inside. I went and picked it up. It was Luis.

"All right—when."

"What do you mean?"

"It was ‘when.' The bank called half an hour ago—the transfer is in. My associate in Austin transferred it and I put ninety thousand in the working account." The public account was opened originally by Richard Madigan, an Austin lawyer who went to law school with Luis. He knew about Luis, but he didn't know about us. He received two percent for his trouble. Luis received eight percent.

Something felt odd in my stomach and the bite of sandwich in my mouth seemed dry. "Good."

"Is that all you can say? Good?"

"Very good."

I heard his hair brush the phone as he shook his head. "Keep good receipts, dammit."

"I will. Thanks, Luis."

I hung up the phone, then took a small notebook out of my shirt pocket. From the third page, I dialed a nonlocal number. A voice answered, "Texas Institute of Aviation. Jack speaking."

"Mr. Reed? This is Charles Newell. I've got those three students I told you about."

"For the combined IFR, starting Monday?"

"Yeah."

"And payment?"

"They'll have a cashier's check when they arrive."

"For the whole amount?"

"Yes."

"Certainly—that would be fine. Give me their names?"

I gave him Joey's, Rick's, and Clara's full names. He gave me registration information, and we said good-bye.

Out on the porch, Joey had started on his second beer. "Well, Boss. You were going to tell us what we're waiting for?"

"Don't call me that. And we're not waiting anymore."

He put his beer down. Clara, Rick, and Marie stopped eating.

"We've got the first money. I've enrolled Rick, Clara, and Joey in flight school at the Texas Institute of Aviation at Brenham. It starts Monday and runs six days a week for the next three months. When you're done, you'll have an IFR ticket."

They all started talking at once.

"Whoa! Who goes first?"

Marie, with uncharacteristic vigor, said, "How come they get the flight training? I'm almost there now."

"Exactly—you get different training. Don't sweat it—you'll also get an IFR ticket out of it, trust me."

Joey was scowling. "Don't we have any say in this? You just enroll us? What if we don't want to learn to fly?"

I was stunned. The thought had never occurred to me. How could they not want to fly? It was like not wanting to breathe. "Uh, well, what do you want? Wouldn't you like to fly? The instruction and flight time cost over eight grand for each of you. Lots of people would jump at it."

Joey blinked. "For eight grand I could go to college."

"It's peanuts, Joey. You'll get lots more if you do it my way. But I need the pilots. I thought you liked the idea of flying."

He shrugged.

Clara broke in. "Well I'd like to do it. I've always wanted to learn to fly. Two things, though. What's an IFR ticket, and who's gonna take care of Impossible and pay for his stable and feed?"

Marie told her. "IFR stands for Instrument Flight Rules—it means you can fly in limited visibility, on instruments."

I nodded. "Also, as of Monday, we're all on salary. Five hundred a week to start—will that cover Impossible?"

"It sure will!"

"What about you, Rick?"

He was smiling. "I'm with Clara."

I turned back to Joey. "Well, Joey?"

"Why?"

I didn't say anything.

"Why the flying? What's it for? Sure, I'd love to learn to fly. I've been crazy about planes for years—you've seen my radio control models—but why do you want to pay for it? What are we going to do that requires five pilots? Start an airline?"

I looked down at the porch and said, "I can't tell you. Not yet."

"Can't or won't?"

I looked him in the eye. "Won't."

"What if we won't do it? What if we wash out of flight school? Why should you spend the money if it isn't going to do what you want?"

I shook my head. "The money isn't important. It's nothing. Not compared to the secret." I raised my hands, palms up. "I don't blame you for being pissed off. I don't blame you for feeling not trusted. But in a way, it's not my secret. It's not mine to share!"

Marie scooted over by Joey and took his hand. "So when, Charlie? Aren't you going to have to share it anyway, eventually?"

I thought about Uncle Max. What would he want? What I planned to do would probably not please him, regardless of whom I told.

"Okay. You're right. I'll show you. Wait here."

I went into the house, unlocked Uncle Max's gun cabinet, and took out the thirty-ought-six with the five-shot clip and the Mossberg twenty-gauge pump shotgun. I double-checked that they were loaded, and took an army surplus shoulder bag holding a pair of binoculars and more ammo.

When I walked back on the porch with the two weapons, Joey's eyes got wide. Everybody was watching me very carefully.

"Here," I said. I handed Joey the thirty-ought-six. "It's loaded so be careful. Anybody else hunt?"

Rick and Marie shook their heads, but Clara said, "I shoot skeet with a gun just like that."

I gave her the Mossberg. "It's also loaded. Follow me."

I walked toward the barn.

 

---

CHAPTER THREE
"SO, YOU THINK HE WENT THROUGH AND GOT MUNCHED?"

I unlocked the padlock and swung the door open. When they'd trooped in, I shut it behind us. The afternoon sun shone through cracks between boards, pushing long rays of light across the suddenly dark place and making floating motes of dust glitter like stars. I flipped the light switch on, then closed the padlock on an inside hasp, locking the door from within.

Joey rolled his eyes and let out his breath. Marie watched me carefully, her face still. Clara and Rick raised their eyebrows at each other.

"Help me move this hay," I said, moving to the back wall and pulling down a bale from the top row. I had to stand on tiptoe to snag the wire and caught it as it fell.

"All of it?" asked Clara. She leaned the shotgun into the corner, carefully. Joey copied her.

"Just this center section," I said, pointing. We stacked it to the side, in front of the empty stalls, passing it bucket brigade fashion. When we'd pulled the top two rows off, they could see the doorframe. Things went faster, then, and we soon uncovered the entire thing.

It was a double door set firmly into the back wall, with a heavy wooden frame mortared into the fieldstone. The door wasn't as old as the barn and was mounted with large chromed hinges and reinforcing straps. The door was closed with a three-foot-long, four-by-four drop bar set into steel brackets. In addition, there was a padlock hasp, very large, mounted to the door with round-head bolts. A large security padlock, the kind with a barrel cylinder, secured the hasp.

"Jesus," said Joey. "You'd think it was Fort Knox."

I smiled. "Interesting choice of words." I lifted the bar and set it to the side. "Get the guns. There's another door on the other side of this, but I don't know if anything's gotten past it."

"Anything? What sort of 'anything'?" asked Clara. She wiped her hands on her jeans before picking up the shotgun.

"Animals. It could be anything. Wolves. Wild dogs. American lion." I gritted my teeth. "Mammoths."

"What are you talking about?" Joey said.

"Passenger pigeons." I unlocked the padlock but left it in place. "Joey and Clara, stand about ten feet back from the door. Marie, get that big flashlight from the workbench and stand behind them. Rick, get the other side of the door."

Joey moved to his spot, but kept shifting back and forth. "This is ridiculous. What are we doing this for?"

I snarled at him. "You want to know, don't you? I didn't want to show you this yet, but you insisted! Or should we just go back and finish lunch?" I was sweating more than shifting the hay should account for, and my stomach didn't like the thought of food at all.

Joey shrugged. "Okay, already. But when this turns out to be some gag…"

He and Clara stood next to each other, guns at the ready, pointed high. Marie flicked the flashlight on and shined it on the door. I took the padlock off the hasp and said, "Safeties off?"

Clara said, "Yes."

Joey said, "Oops. Now it is."

I looked across at Rick.

Rick said, "Fast or slow?"

"Slow."

The hinges screeched and I made a mental note to oil them. We kept pushing until the doors stopped against the inner wall. I peered into darkness. That it was dark was a good sign. It meant the far door, at least, was closed. Marie's light showed a packed dirt floor and rocky walls and ceiling. There were timbers bracing the ceiling. About a hundred feet down the tunnel, a thin vertical line of light could be seen.

There didn't seem to be anything in the tunnel. "May I have the shotgun, please?"

Clara hesitated, frowning. I said, "Doesn't matter. If you're more comfortable with it, by all means."

"I'd rather keep it," she said.

I wondered if she was more worried about what was in the tunnel or about me with a shotgun? I smiled at her. It occurred to me that I gained everything by involving her, by involving them all. "You and Marie check out the tunnel all the way to the far door, please. Especially the floor."

"The floor?" asked Marie?

"Snakes," I said.

Marie stepped backward involuntarily and Joey started to laugh. "Get stuffed," she said to him, and walked forward again. "Come on, Clara." They walked six feet in front of us, searching the floor with occasional sweeps of the ceiling and walls. We stopped two yards from the door.

"No snakes," said Marie.

This door was just like the last one, a double steel-banded door, set in a timber frame that was mortared into fieldstone. There was a hinged drop bar on this side, with a wire loop that threaded through a hole in the door so the bar could be lifted from outside as well. Rick pointed at that and said, "How come this door doesn't lock?"

I looked at him for a moment, then said, "You don't want to be locked out on the other side of this door."

He blinked and licked his lips. "Well, if I'm picturing this right, this door should open onto the other side of that small hill your barn backs up against. If that's the case, we'll be facing nothing more dangerous than your airstrip."

I put my hand on the catch. "Safeties off?"

"Yes," said Clara. Joey nodded.

I pulled against the door. It hadn't been opened in a while and it took effort to pull the two sides open. We blinked in the bright sunlight.

When we'd gone into the barn, it had been overcast. The sky outside this door was so blue it hurt the eyes.

I held my hand out for the shotgun. This time Clara didn't protest, clicking the safety on before handing it to me. I eased out the door, checking both sides, and then looked up, to check above the door. It seemed clear.

"Come on out," I said.

We were standing on the side of a small hill in knee-high golden grass. Before us, the grass stretched level for a while, then dropped away into a valley where huge cottonwoods lined an unseen river. The wind blew gently and the grass shifted like the surface of water. A large flock of birds flew to the south in a sky so cloud free that it seemed as if someone had dropped a giant porcelain bowl over this place, a bowl so big that its edges were hidden behind the hills and the trees.

I pushed the door shut behind us and used the wire to raise the bar so it dropped back into its brackets.

Marie was the first to speak. "Where's the airstrip? There's the Brazos, but I don't remember those trees. And where are those cotton fields that we line up on to land at your strip?"

Rick said, "There aren't any telephone poles. You have a major power line south of your place. I don't see the towers. I don't see any cattle. The place to the east of you runs cattle, right?"

Joey pointed. "Look, those black spots on that hill over there. Those are cattle."

I took the binoculars out of the bag and handed them to Joey. "Look again."

While he held the field glasses to his face, I scanned our perimeter again.

"I don't believe it!"

"What, Joey?" Marie said.

He handed the binoculars to her. "Tell me I'm seeing things," he said.

Marie looked through the binoculars at the opposite hill. "Buffalo?"

"Let me see that!" Clara said. Marie reluctantly gave up the binoculars.

Clara stared. "They are buffalo. Big buffalo." She swung the glasses slowly across the herd. "Uh, they're upset about something—^:they're starting to move."

We could all see the dust that rose up from the moving black dots. Rick took his turn with the binoculars. "They're coming this way."

The edge of the herd grew closer, the forerunners dropping out of sight for a moment in the shallow valley before us. We could hear them now, a surprising sound, low and deep, hundreds of hooves pounding the ground. On the far hill, more dark dots kept coming over the ridge, and dust rose above them like smoke. We'd seen only a part of the herd before.

I said, "Technically, they're bison. Back up. We'll watch from the doorway."

They moved back with me, without question, because the sound was now a pounding that we could feel with our feet. I kept my eyes on our rear, especially the hillside above the door. It could be I was overcautious, but I didn't care.

Uncle Max hadn't been cautious enough.

We reached the doorway. Marie opened it and we backed in, keeping our eyes on the valley below. Three, four, six buffalo came into sight, then a steady stream, following the rising hill into the meadow that corresponded to my airstrip on the other side. About a hundred yards in front of us, they swerved to our left, to the low point of the ridge, to run into the next valley.

Marie said something to Joey, but he shook his head, unable to hear her over the wave of noise. She shouted, "They're huge!"

They were taller at the head than any of us, with the possible exception of Rick. At the shoulder, they towered far above us. I yelled to be heard. "I believe these are woods bison. They're bigger than plains bison."

A cow, running with a half-grown calf, swung wider than the rest, coming closer to us. The calf was laboring, unable to keep to the pace of the adults. A bull swung wider still and came between us and the calf. It peered at us, turning its head left, then right. It shook its head and bellowed, its long beard flapping below its chin. Its short curved horns seemed longer and sharper than before.

I edged closer to Marie's ear and said, "Hold still. If he charges, we shut the door. Nobody shoots. Pass it on." Moving slowly, she told Joey, who told Clara and Rick.

Suddenly the bull spun away from us and charged to the left, bellowing. I saw something tawny streak through the grass, then rear up, screaming, clawed paws raised, lips drawn back from huge curved teeth. The bull charged forward and the cat jumped to the right, racing around the bull for the calf, but by now other bulls charged out of the black rolling mass, between the cow and the cat. With a higher-pitched bawling sound, the calf found hidden reserves of strength and ran back toward the herd, its mother beside it.

The cat turned aside and streaked away from the charging bulls, vanishing back into the grass.

Joey shut his mouth and shifted his grip on the thirty-ought-six. "We're going to need bigger guns," he shouted.

I shrugged, nonchalant. When he looked back at the bison, I carefully wiped my sweating hands off on my jeans and checked the safety on the shotgun again.

The herd took another five minutes to pass and, by the time they did, the dust was dimming the sun and making us breathe carefully through our noses. There were wolves following the stragglers. Big wolves trotting through the dust like ghosts in fog. I shut the door before they got near us, secured the bar, and we went back through the tunnel to the barn.

This time, nobody made fun of the way I locked the door in the back wall. Joey even gave the lock an extra tug. We stacked the hay back where it had been and locked up the barn. The sky was still overcast but not with dust—just ordinary clouds. Joey and Rick walked over the top of the hill, lining up on the barn, to satisfy themselves that there wasn't a herd of bison on the other side of it.

They were back in five minutes, quiet and thoughtful. Joey flopped down on the edge of the porch. Rick stood on the porch steps, his arms crossed.

"Well?" said Clara.

"It's not the same place," said Rick. "Just what it should be. The ranch next door and the other end of the runway. No buffalo. No wolves." He paused for a moment, then said, "No sabertooths."

I took another sandwich from the cooler and didn't say anything.

"So that's the secret?" said Joey.

I nodded.

"What's happening, Charlie?" Marie asked.

"I'm eating lunch."

Clara raised her voice, "You know what she means! Is it a time machine? What's that stuff on the other side? Did we just go back in time? Those were ice age mammals, weren't they?"

I put the sandwich down, "that's what I first thought, too, but I don't think so."

Rick uncrossed his arms and sat down, leaning back against the porch post. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Charlie. We know about the door in the barn—we might as well know the rest."

I looked at each of them in turn, waiting. Joey looked as if he was angry about something he couldn't understand. Marie's eyes were wide and she kept moistening her lips as if they were dry. Rick's face was blank, as if his mind was a universe away. Clara looked downright excited.

I cleared my throat and began. "Okay. It starts when I was seven. My dad was still active duty air force and stationed at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. During the summer break, they shipped me out here to spend a month with Uncle Max and Aunt Jo."

"Well, Uncle Max took me hunting with him. I use the term loosely—he'd take a rifle and a pistol and we'd go through the tunnel and walk. He never shot anything, though once he fired in the air to turn away this hairy elephant."

"Mammoth?" said Clara.

"I don't know. I was only seven. Mammoth or mastodon, I'm not sure. Had a wonderful time, though. Until I went back to school." The corners of my mouth turned down and I frowned. "I tried to tell my classmates about the stuff I saw and they said I lied. The teachers weren't too hard on me—they suggested I had an ‘overactive' imagination. No one believed me and eventually, I came to doubt it myself."

"The next time we came here was when my Aunt Jo died, when I was nine. We were living in Atlanta—Dad had left the air force and was working for the airlines then—and we flew into Houston and drove up. We stayed in town, in a hotel, and the services and reception were at the Methodist Church, so we never got out here. I thought about the door during the funeral, but the memory was like memories of pretend games you play when you're a kid and it was all tangled up with memories of Aunt Jo alive."

"Uncle Max visited us a few times after that, but we never talked about the door. Seven years ago, he disappeared."

"Disappeared? I thought he was dead," said Marie.

"He probably is."

Joey said, "So you think he went through and got munched?"

I lowered my head and stared at Joey over the tops of my glasses.

Marie hit him on the arm. "What a thing to say!"

"When did you discover the door again, Charlie?" Rick asked.

"When Dad was transferred to DFW, Mom didn't want to live in the metroplex—she and Uncle Max are from here, so Dad decided to commute. Mom came back several times to try and find out what happened to Max and to make sure the place was okay. He left a will naming her executor and a power of attorney in her name. The power of attorney was in effect, but the will didn't go into effect until he was finally declared dead three months ago. That's when I inherited formally."

"What about the rest of your mom's family?"

"There isn't any. Their parents died before Dad and Mom were married. My dad's side of the family goes on and on, but it was always just Uncle Max on Mom's side." I blinked. "Maybe that's why Mom took my moving so hard. I'm her only blood kin."

"And the door?" Joey said, impatient.

"I'm getting to it. We knew all along that the farm came to me in the will, so I was ‘allowed' to do most of the upkeep on the place. Mow the place with the tractor, rake, cut up the dead trees, paint. Fix the fences. I was standing in the barn one day, and the memory of going hunting with Uncle Max came back, very strong."

"The hay was stacked like it is now—but it was older hay, years old and dry, and it kept cracking and falling to the floor. Every week or so I'd rake up the pieces and put them in the compost heap, but one day I decided that it would make more sense to get rid of all the hay, once and for all.

"As you might imagine, I found the door then. The locking brackets were empty and I found the bar just inside the door. I figure Uncle Max expected to be gone long enough that he didn't want someone finding the door, so he restacked the hay behind him before closing the doors."

I paused to take a breath and Rick said, "Didn't they look for him? I mean, the county sheriffs department? Didn't they come out here and search? Why didn't they find the door?"

"Apparently they spent most of their efforts interviewing his neighbors, his friends, and places like his bank. By the time they started asking around, he'd been missing about a month—that is, they found a month-old bank record of a small cash withdrawal that was done in person at a teller and the utility bills had been paid by checks dated from that same week. One theory was that he had an accident away from the house so they had dogs out in the woods all around and down by the river. Another theory was that he was fishing the river and he fell in."

Joey shook his head. "The sheriff’s department couldn't find its ass with both hands." Joey's DWI arrest had been by a county deputy, so the statement didn't make much sense—they'd found him after all.

I continued. "Anyway, I stuck my head out the far door and confirmed that it wasn't just a tunnel through the hill. I thought about telling my parents about it, and I thought about telling the police, but I didn't."

Marie asked, "Why not, Charlie?"

"Because Uncle Max had already been gone for five years. And he'd kept it a secret for as long as I'd known him. And it was mine. Or it was going to be. I wanted to know what it was before I handed it over to anybody else."

"How the hell did you catch those pigeons with buffalo stampeding all over the place? I wouldn't think any pigeons would land," Rick said.

"To be honest, you don't see something like that very often. It was a freak. I'm glad it happened because it showed you how different the other side can be, but it took me a week of walking around the other side before I saw any buffalo. Lots of tracks, but no buffalo, no sabertooths. Did see some wild dogs, maybe some wolves. And passenger pigeons. So many they darkened the sky and their shit made the ground white."

"Well I wouldn't have told anybody," said Joey. "The government would be all over your ass." He looked a little sheepish. "I hate to say it, but I understand why you didn't want to tell us."

"You guys were right," I said. "I had to tell you sometime. I'm going to be even more honest with you—what I want to do is dangerous. If we don't trust each other—if you don't trust me—it won't work. Worse, it could get some or all of us killed."

They were quiet for a moment, staring at me. I wondered if what I'd said was too melodramatic, but after that buffalo stampede, I doubted it would be taken that way. Clara asked the next question.

"What is it, Charlie, that you want to do? That you want us to do?"

"Well, to know that, you have to know what the other side is."

"Do you know?" Rick asked. "It's driving me crazy. We wiped out most of the buffalo and we wiped out the passenger pigeons. Did we wipe out the sabertooths? Anyway, does the tunnel go back in time?"

I shook my head. "No. I'm pretty sure it doesn't—if we were to go back through the tunnel in another six hours, do you know what we'd see?"

"Well," said Marie, "it would be dark."

"Yes. And if it weren't cloudy you could look up and see the positions of the planets and the moon and the stars. No satellites, though."

"So?" said Joey.

Clara turned to him, "It could tell you what year it was. The moon was closer to the earth in the past, the planets line up in particular patterns. Even the constellations change positions over a great enough time." She faced me. I'd never seen her like this; she was excited and, even better, she was excited about what I had to say. I smiled in spite of myself. "What would we see, Charlie?"

I paused. "Exactly the same sky you're used to. The moon would be the same size and it would be in the same phase. The constellations would be where you expected them to be and they'd be the shape you're used to. The planets would be in the same place."

"So it's the same time," Clara said, beating me to it. "It's not the past or the future."

"So what is it?" asked Marie.

They waited for me and I drew it out for a moment. I wasn't used to this much attention. It felt good.

"It's the same time, but it's a different earth." I paused. "It's probably a different universe."

"Different but parallel," said Joey.

Rick looked at Joey with new respect. "Whoa, Einstein. Pretty quick there."

Joey flushed. "I've seen Star Trek. What else accounts for the same landscape, the same biology?"

"Well, not completely the same," Clara said. "We don't exactly have bison roaming the streets of College Station."

"So why are there bison there? Why are there passenger pigeons?" Rick said.

It was Clara who said, "Because there aren't any men, er, humans. At least not in this area, perhaps not in this hemisphere." She turned to me. "Am I right?"

I nodded. "Let me put it this way—I haven't seen any sign of humans and when I took a portable radio far enough away from the tunnel to avoid leakage, I don't get any radio broadcasts. Not FM, not AM, not shortwave. I've checked several times during day and night. If there are humans on the other side, they don't broadcast and they haven't made it into this area."

"And that's why there are all these extinct species, right?" Clara leaned forward, still excited. I looked into her eyes for a moment and smiled.

"That's certainly what I think," I said.

"So what's the plan, Charlie," Joey said, leaning back. "Are we going to sell more extinct species? Mastodons for sale, mammoths for rent? Anybody for a sabertoothed tiger? They make excellent pets—warn the mailman, though."

I shook my head. "We're going to have a hard enough time keeping the secret with the pigeons we're selling now. If we continued to sell extinct species, someone would think what you did, Joey—that someone has a time machine. Don't you think the government would be interested in that? Want to win a war? Wipe out the country before it was ever formed. Eliminate the fathers of tyrants. Kill Hitler as a teenager."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Joey. "We've all seen Terminator. We've all seen Star Trek. But it isn't a time machine, so they can't do that."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "Who's going to tell them? Who are they going to believe? Besides, there's plenty of reasons for them to want the secret. You want the best bomb shelter there ever was? You want a place to put all the radioactive waste there is without endangering humans? All the toxic waste? They'll want to do on a very large scale what I want to do on a small one."

"And what's that?" said Clara.

"If man hasn't been on this planet, or at least in this hemisphere, then he hasn't drilled out the oil that's there, he hasn't lumbered all the forests, and he hasn't mined out all the minerals."

"You want us to drill for oil?" asked Clara.

I shook my head. "Uh, uh."

"Lumber?" asked Marie. "There's plenty of trees over there."

I shook my head again.

Rick said, "You don't need to fly anywhere to go for lumber or oil. There would be plenty in a Texas never visited by man. Which is it, Charlie?" He paused. "Gold or silver?"

I sketched a salute at Rick with one finger.

"Gold." I said.

 

---

CHAPTER FOUR
"WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE ANY PREDATORS."

Marie and I flew the Mooney to San Antonio the next day. We took four female pigeons with us, their cages strapped into the backseats. I let Marie get some simulated instrument time in, "under the hood," as I flew as safety pilot. This entailed her wearing a baseball cap with an aluminum screen that blocked her view out the windshield, but let her see the instruments.

We walked the pigeons half a mile to an air freight company that handled live cargo, and shipped them to the San Diego Zoo using the same fake return address. I hoped they'd arrive all right.

Then we walked over to the main passenger terminal and did the pay telephone thing again, calling the National Zoo, first.

"David Eisner here."

"Have you decided about the pigeons?"

"Which pigeons?"

"The passenger pigeons—what did you think I was asking about?"

"I wasn't sure it was you. We haven't gone public with their existence—for all I knew, you were calling about one of the zoo's carrier pigeons."

"Well, now you know. What did you decide?"

"We'll take them."

I gave him the account number. Like the San Diego Zoo he kicked a bit about the payment up front, but I remained firm. "You send the money, we'll send the pigeons."

"I'll see what I can do," he said., I called the Nature Conservancy next. The woman there threw me a curve ball. "We'll give you a million dollars for all you have. Provided, of course, that they're the real thing."

I paused, seriously tempted.

Into the gap she asked, "How many do you have?"

I flinched. "I have four. One hundred thousand as previously indicated. You already know they're the real thing." One million dollars? "Perhaps we can discuss more pigeons after delivery of these."

She started to argue.

"Look. Right now I'm selling these four. I don't have to sell them to you. They could be sold elsewhere. Since you already have the male, that'd be a pity."

Quickly, she said, "Agreed. How do we pay you?"

I gave her the account number. She noted it down, then said, "We'll transfer 125,000."

"Why? The price is 100K for the four."

"Twenty-five thousand more as a fee that you will talk to us later."

"I said maybe I'd sell you more pigeons."

"Just to talk. It doesn't obligate you to anything more than that." She paused and I heard her moisten her lips. "My father saw the last passenger pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo when he was a young boy. You know, the human race doesn't often get a second chance like this."

"You don't know the half of it," I said, then hung up.

I leaned my head against the wall by the phone kiosk.

"What's wrong?" Marie asked.

"You want something to eat?"

"Give me a break. Aren't they paying the money?"

I started walking down the terminal, toward a concession area. "Softer. Do you want the whole world to know? Yes, they're paying the money. They're doing their best to make me feel guilty, too."

"About the money?"

"About endangering a species."

She rolled her eyes. "But you're not. How many are there on the other side?"

I inhaled, long and deep, then exhaled slowly. "Millions. You're right. It makes me feel bad, though."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. It's hard to keep it secret. My father's bought the corporate internship story. He's pleased that I'll make more money than Dillard's will pay, but it's very hard not to tell him the truth."

I swallowed. "Don't."

She shook her head. "Of course not. But it's still hard and it must be harder for you, talking to those people who want to know so badly."

"Oh. Yeah, speaking of which—" I turned back from the concession stand and went to another phone kiosk.

Mr. Saunderson of the Sierra Club was ready to pay. I gave him the account number with some misgiving, remembering the trouble I'd had the first time I talked to him. Still, I gave it to him and got off quickly.

"What next?" Marie asked.

"Let's go see a man about a plane."

We flew north to a small municipal field at San Marcos. In the pilots' lounge at the fueling station we found a short, dumpy man with muttonchop sideburns and a baseball cap with fake military markings.

"Mr. Vail?" I asked.

"That's me. You Charlie Newell?"

"Yessir."

He pointed at the door. "Osprey's this way."

We followed him out and around the corner. There was a small yellow-and-white airplane. It was a fiber and foam composite seaplane, with the engine mounted above and behind the two-seater cockpit. It had streamlined floats below the wings and they cleared the ground on extended landing gear.

"It's cute," said Marie.

The man looked at her and smiled indulgently. "It's a beaut, isn't it?"

I looked at it dubiously. "What's its cruise speed?"

"One-thirty. Top is one-forty. Stalls at sixty-three."

"Range?"

"Three hundred and fifty, at cruise, with reserves."

I winced inwardly. It was too small and too slow, but the price was right and it was a kit. It could be built on the other side, if we had to.

Vail pointed his finger in the air. "Shall we take a ride?"

"Uh. I'd like to see the inspection papers, if I could, and your license and logbook."

He looked insulted.

"No offense. My dad flies for the airlines. He'd kill me if I ever got in a plane without inspecting the paperwork. Besides—if I buy it, I'll be looking at this stuff first anyway, right?"

He shrugged and dug the paperwork out of the plane. It was in order, right down to the last engine service. His pilot log was okay. To ease things, I gave him my log and license to examine while I went over his.

He had half the hours that I did and didn't have his Instrument Flight rating. Humph.

We preflighted it together. The cockpit canopy hinged at the rear, latching at the very front of the plane. When I saw that, I almost backed out, but the latch was doubled. If it failed in flight, it would flip right back into the engine and prop. More and more, this seemed like a poor choice.

Twenty minutes later, I knew it was.

"What'd you think?" he asked, once we were back on the ground.

"Honestly?"

He winced. "Don't like it, eh?"

"It's too small. Every time you change engine settings it dives or pitches up because the line of thrust is above the plane. If you reduced power abruptly while landing, you could pitch up and stall the airplane well above the ground. Not good. It's also too stiff and heavy in the ailerons. And it might land okay on water in still air, but I'd hate to see what it would do in a heavy chop. Sorry. It's too small for us."

He looked unhappy. "Well, now you know why I want to sell it."

I offered to pay him for his gas, but he shook his head. "Nah. Didn't use that much."

Marie and I left. "Was it really that bad?" she asked, once we were in the air flying back to Bryan.

"You could get used to the handling weirdness. But it doesn't have the range, it doesn't have the capacity, it doesn't have the landing gear for a rough field. The only thing it has going for it is its price. I thought we might be able to get it through the door, but that one-piece composite construction means we'd practically have to rebuild it if we took the wings off. It's just not right for our needs." I smiled. "You know what Rusty says about flying boats, don't you?" Rusty was one of the flight instructors at the Brazos flying club.

She nodded and we said in unison, "They're not really boats. And they're not really planes."

We made one more stop, at Easterwood, to top off the tanks, then flew on to the ranch. The rent on the T-hangar was up in two days and Dad wasn't going to renew it.

Marie handled the landing, floating the plane on the ground effect until the last possible mph of air speed was bled off, then set it gently down. It rolled to a stop quickly on the soft field. We hand pushed it backward into the hangar, cleaned the bugs off, and locked it up.

Joey met the truck from the lumberyard at the ranch gate and let them in, riding back to the barnyard on the running board. The rest of us were waiting by the open barn door.

"Got a bill of materials for Charles Newell," said the driver, climbing down with a clipboard in his hand.

"That's me," I said.

He handed me the clipboard. "If you'll check them off while we unload, it'll go more quickly." He looked up at the barn. "Great barn. You going to extend it?"

I looked up from the clipboard. "Something like that."

They used the truck's hoist and began unloading bundles of wood, plywood siding, roofing materials, bags of dry premixed concrete, and fasteners. Last off were five forty-foot-long steel I beams, for the roof expanse.

“All there,” I said, and signed it off. Joey followed them back to the gate, to secure it, and we got busy.

While Joey, Clara, and Rick moved, the hay, I started up the tractor and moved it out into the yard, pointing back at the barn. Then Marie and I made a sledge out of a one-inch sheet of plywood by hammering two four-by-fours lengthwise along its edges, then screwing two heavy eye bolts near the end of each four-by-four. We left the flat side down and hooked it to the back of the tractor with chain.

Clara and Joey took up the shotgun and rifle and checked the tunnel, then opened the far side.

"All clear," Joey shouted down the passageway.

I was very nervous. All three doors to the other side were open; the barn door and both sides of the tunnel. The air pressure was obviously lower on the other side, too—a brisk wind pulled pieces of hay down the floor of the tunnel.

Rick, Marie, and I began throwing lumber onto the sledge. When it was piled to the point of instability, I dragged it down the tunnel with the tractor, Rick riding atop the sledge and steadying the load. I slowed at the far doorway until Joey waved me ahead. He and Clara stood guard outside, facing different directions. I pulled the sledge off to the side, then Rick and I spilled the material off and dashed back for another load.

It took an hour to move everything. The steel I beams were too long for the sledge, so we dragged them two at a time, with more chain.

At the end of the hour, I was exhausted. If we'd been able to switch places, things would've been better, but I was the only other person with firearms experience, and nobody else had driven the tractor. This would have to change.

We closed up the tunnel, restacked the hay, then Clara and Joey swept away the tire and drag marks in the barnyard and barn interior.

Thirty minutes later, my dad and mom drove up to find the five of us in front of the hangar "waxing" the Mooney. Actually, we'd waxed it in the morning before the lumber arrived but we had cans of wax open and were buffing it with clean rags.

"Hi," I said as they got out of the car.

"What a nice surprise," said Mom. She picked up the can of wax and peered at the contents list, squinting at the fine print.

Dad walked up, then pointed to a section of the wing I was buffing. "Missed a spot."

"Ah." I rubbed a bit of dried wax from the crack between the wing and the flap. It was the kind of thing Dad did, always pointing out the defects, and, normally, it would bug the shit out of me.

This time, however, I'd put that wax there twenty minutes before for just that purpose. I guess I'd hoped to be able to "discover" it myself. Ah well.

"Are the bags in the trunk?" I asked, polishing the last spot.

"Yes." He handed me the car keys.

Joey cupped his hands and I tossed them to him. He and Rick went to the car while I opened the Mooney's baggage compartment.

"We fueled it at Easterwood, then topped it from cans when we got back here."

"We?" he asked.

"Marie and I did some cross-country IFR work yesterday."

He nodded, turning to Marie. "How'd it go?"

"Great."

"So, how's this summer program working out, that your mother told me about?" he said, turning back to me.

"Good, so far, though it doesn't really start until Monday."

"That's good." He started to preflight the plane.

Rick and Joey returned with their luggage and I stowed it, putting Dad's flight bag in the front.

Dad completed the exterior check, double-checked the door on the luggage compartment, and climbed in to get to the left-hand seat. The Mooney has one door on the right, so the pilot has to enter before the passenger in the right-hand seat. I helped Mom up to the wing step. She buckled in and I said, "Have a great vacation. Don't bring me back one of those T-shirts that says, ‘My parents went to Colorado and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.' "

Mom blinked and, after a beat, laughed. "Time will tell."

Dad said, "We'll be back next Tuesday—be sure and mow the strip."

"Right. Fly safe." I backed away without closing the door. In this heat they'd taxi to the end of the runway with it open. Dad shouted out "Clear!" and we moved over by the car. He started up the power plant, moved the props to coarse, and started taxiing away.

He did his engine run-up at the end of the runway, then, after Mom shut the door, he put the throttle to the firewall, accelerated smoothly, and lifted off. As he started his climbing turn to the north, he wagged his wings.

I lifted my hand involuntarily to wave back, even though they wouldn't be able to see me. I turned away, angrily.

"Come on, guys. Let's get back to the other side."

The temperature on the wildside was in the upper sixties and dry, a welcome change from our side's eighty-nine degrees and ninety percent humidity. The wind was from the south and it waved the buffalo grass like water. There were a few dots of black to the east that might be buffalo, but nothing close.

The air was clean in a way that surprised the nose, the mouth, and the lungs. I mean, the ranch was out in the country, but I had neighbors with propane and diesel tractors, pickup trucks, irrigation pumps. There was a coal-fired power plant forty miles away. And those neighbors who grew cotton used insecticides and fertilizers.

There were no neighbors on this side. It seemed like a sin to run the tractor here—each puff of exhaust a profane act.

This time I stood guard, circling slowly on the hillside above the doorway, while Rick and Joey stacked the materials, using four-by-fours to keep them off the ground. Marie took a tape measure and a compass and started laying out the walls, directing Clara, who marked the corners with wooden stakes, then strung string three feet off the ground.

Rick and Joey finished organizing the supplies and joined me on the hillside.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

Joey shrugged tiredly without saying anything and Rick said, "I could use a break. How much sunlight do we have?"

I looked at my watch. "Five hours, though we don't want to push it. We want to be able to see any predators."

"So," said Joey, "what do you want to do first?"

I knew exactly what should be done first, but said instead, "You're the only one of us who's worked in construction. Why don't you supervise this job?"

"Oh, yeah?" He wiped sweat from his face.

"Keep in mind that we need to get the big stuff done by Sunday afternoon, the stuff that takes all of us. You guys start flight school on Monday and Marie and I will be working on the rest off and on."

He straightened. "Where are those plans?" He walked off toward Marie.

Rick waited until he was out of earshot and laughed softly. "He bitched and bitched about this work the whole time we were stacking stuff. You made him want to do it."

I smiled. "Look out. He'll work us hard."

Want power in another universe? Use an extension cord. Want water? Run a hose.

Okay, so I had to send Rick into town to buy enough heavy duty extension cord and industrial water hose to reach, but it worked. I had my doubts. First time I drove the tractor into the tunnel, to see if it would fit, I'd expected it to stop working halfway down the tunnel.

After all, if it's a different universe, who says it has to have the same laws?

I think I've read too much science fiction.

We set the uprights in concrete, in holes at least four feet deep. I say "at least" because the ground closest to the door was higher than the farthest ground, and we had to dig the holes deeper to keep the roof line at the proper slant (high in front, low in back). We didn't worry about leveling the floor inside, but we did keep the walls horizontally square by digging an appropriate trench in the high ground.

The concrete was set by Saturday night, and Sunday morning we raised the I-beams, using the tractor as the muscle for a pulley. We installed four-by-fours as roof joists and started covering them with one-inch sheets of plywood.

"Jesus," Joey asked, taking a break from boosting panels up to Rick. "Why'd you go with one-inch? We gonna be walking around up there?"

"Maybe," I said. "But it's a sure bet that even if we don't, something will. I'd just as soon not have one of those sabertooths come crashing in on me."

"Ah! Good point, that. Very good point. What are we going to do about the walls, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Some predators dig."

"Uh. I hadn't thought about that. What do you suggest?"

"Uh, well, we can dig a trench, before we put the walls in, and pour a concrete foot."

"Ow. Take too long. Look, we have to berm it in back, to blend with the hillside around the door, right?" I pointed to where the walls would enclose the doorway so that it opened into our hangar.

"Yeah."

"Why don't we berm it all the way around? Except at the doors, of course. We can pour a concrete foot there."

Joey looked at the plans. "As long as we seal the walls with plastic before we pile the dirt, that should work. But that's a lot of dirt. Wouldn't it be easier to do it my way?"

I shook my head. "I'll rent one of those minibulldozers." I pointed out at the grass. "See that bump there, and that one? That's where the airstrip goes. Gotta smooth it out. There's also a buffalo wallow to fill."

"What's a buffalo wallow?"

"Well, it starts out as a puddle, then buffalo roll in it and it gets deeper. So, next time it rains, it collects more water and it becomes even more popular. Over and over, deeper and deeper." I pointed to where the edges of a depression could be seen about 150 feet away. "The one that's over there is six feet lower than the surrounding ground."

"Where does the dirt go?"

"It goes away with the buffalo, caked in their hides."

We went back to working on the roof. We saw wolves or maybe coyotes that afternoon. Though they came as close as two hundred yards, they seemed disinclined to come closer, especially after we resumed hammering.

We quit at five, all the plywood panels in place, the first row of tar paper tacked down, and the rest of the building materials moved under the roof. We had three more hours of good light, but Joey, Clara, and Rick had to be up early.

All of us were sore. We caravaned back into town and ate at Pepe's Tacos.

"Ask him," Clara said to Rick.

Rick exhaled sharply and put his burrito down, then looked at me.

"Ask me what?" I asked.

Rick exchanged glances with Joey, then said, "What would you think about a roommate?"

"At the ranch?"

"Yeah. You have those rooms upstairs and I'm really anxious to get out of my place. My mom is about to drive me crazy."

I bit my lip. I'd thought about asking Rick and Joey if they wanted to stay out there, but I didn't think they'd want to, so I hadn't asked.

He saw me hesitate. "You don't have to, of course. At the rate I'm being paid, I could afford a small apartment, but I'd rather save the money. Of course I'd pay you rent."

"Don't be silly. It makes sense, for the project. How about you, Joey?"

Joey looked surprised. "You mean it?"

"Why not? Don't you share a room with your little brother?"

"Yeah, the little twerp. But it's air-conditioned."

"Oh." I pushed a fragment of taco shell across the linoleum. "I think the project can come up with some window air conditioners."

Marie put her diet Coke down so hard it splashed out onto the tabletop. "It's not fair!"

"What isn't?" said Clara.

"It's not fair that you guys get to move out, and we don't."

I spread my hands. "You're welcome, too. All of you are."

She rolled her eyes. "Like my father is going to let me move in with three guys."

"Complain to him, not us. You're eighteen, aren't you?" I looked at Clara, who was frowning thoughtfully.

"It's not that easy, Charlie," Clara said. "You know things are different for girls."

It was Rick's turn to put his drink down hard. "You just screamed at me the other day for saying ‘girls' instead of women. Is it different for women?"

"It is. It is if we ever want to deal with our families again. Besides, how would your mother react if she thought I'd moved in with you? It's bad enough that she hates me and doesn't want you to see me. What do you think she'd be like then?"

Rick raised his hands. "You're right. Guys moving in with guys is not the same things as guys moving in with girls, er, women."

I leaned forward. "Well, then, why don't you and Marie get an apartment together? There's that complex just this side of the west bypass that's a lot closer to the ranch than town. They have really low rent, don't they, cause they're so far from the university?" I scribbled some figures on a napkin. "I think we could budget the rent into the project without too much trouble."

Clara blinked. "That's closer to the stable, too."

Marie looked down at the table. "I'm not sure my father would let me. I mean, I'm all he has."

Joey scowled. "You can ask. Be sure and mention that it's with Clara. He likes her."

"I'll try," said Marie.

And Clara said, "Me, too."

 

---

CHAPTER FIVE
"GET OUT OF MY LIFE!"

I taught Marie how to drive the tractor the next day, which was a challenge, since she doesn't drive a car. Some of the concepts from flying carried over, though, since the tractor's throttle was a lever you set and left alone, like an airplane's. She practiced by mowing the airstrip.

When she finished, it was noon and hot. We took a break for lunch, then filled up the tractor and took it through the tunnel to the wildside.

I rode shotgun, literally, perched beside Marie on the rear fender, as she mowed the area under and around our unwalled roof, cutting the grass back in a hundred-foot radius.

It was cooler on this side, though the sky was clear and the sun high. It seemed like it was always cooler. When we took a break, I mentioned it to her.

"Maybe they're right about global warming. I read somewhere that if you followed the geologic record of temperature change, our earth should be in a small ice age. Maybe this side is. It's also drier here—did you notice? When a lot of water gets tied up in glacier ice, things dry out."

"That would explain why the Brazos is so much smaller on this side."

"Oh, is it? We haven't been down there yet."

"I've explored that far. The floodplain is just as big, but the river itself looks more like the Little Brazos."

We mowed the grass for this side's landing strip next, making it extra wide. We spooked rabbits, birds, and some small deer from our path, then some thin-legged red wolves. The noise from the diesel tractor seemed to puzzle them, and I relaxed a bit, not quite as worried about being jumped by something.

After a while, it became clear that the wildside landing strip couldn't go in the exact same location as its tame counterpart. Besides the buffalo wallow and the bumps I'd discovered before, a gully cut through one part, hidden by the grass.

Fortunately, many of the obstacles that were on the tame side weren't on this one. We mowed two wide strips at ninety degrees to each other, so we wouldn't be as constrained in bad crosswinds. Zero one five/one nine five and one oh five/two ninety five.

This took most of the afternoon. Afterward, I walked over the ground. It was hard soil and very dry, and, if it drained well enough, we could use it year-round.

Against my better judgment, I asked Marie if she wanted to go see a movie, or something.

"No, Charlie." She looked troubled, and added gently, "Joey and the others will be back from school in an hour."

"Right. Don't know what I was thinking." We put the tractor back in the barn and I drove her into town.

And so the week went.

 

Dad and Mom arrived back, as planned, on Tuesday afternoon. Mom brought me a large geode, saying, "This is not a self-referential T-shirt." She showed me a book she'd bought herself: The Effect of Ozone Layer Depletion on Transalpine Ecosystems.

"Great. I like the geode." She seemed pleased, then I told them about Joey and Rick moving in. Dad was okay about it once I said they were paying rent, then rushed off to make a commuter flight to DFW.

Evenings, the Five gathered in town or the ranch and, with ritual-like regularity, recounted the deeds of the day. First the students, with a steadily growing excitement about flying that Marie and I could both remember and envy. Then Marie and I would talk about the progress we'd made on the hangar.

By Friday, we'd finished the walls and had assembled the doors, large sliding panels that hung on rails. When open, they'd stick out to each side of the building, opening nearly the entire front of the hangar.

That night, at Pepe's, we met again. Rick and Joey were mock-sulking. Clara had soloed that day, after ten hours' instruction. Marie gave her a high five, followed by a hug.

"So, lunkheads, what's taking you so long?" I asked. Before either of them answered, I added, "Ten hours is really soon. It took me twenty and Marie did it in seventeen."

Joey abandoned the sulk and said, "My instructor said early next week, probably."

"Mine, too," said Rick.

We toasted Clara and talked about the weekend—we planned to move Rick and Joey into my place. I'd picked up two window air conditioners from Sears the day before. Joey was going to install them.

Marie told us, then, that her father had said yes. She looked a little troubled.

"What's the matter—didn't you want him to?"

She looked down at the table. "He's thinking of returning to Vietnam—to look for family. He was grateful that I wouldn't be here alone."

"Well, great… I think," said Joey. "Are you okay?"

She shrugged and the corners of her mouth turned down suddenly. "I've gotta go to the bathroom." She stood abruptly and walked off, stiff-legged.

Without saying anything, Clara rose and followed her.

Joey looked baffled. "What was it?"

I was a little angry with him. I knew what was the matter—why didn't he? He was the one involved with her after all.

Rick said, "You've got a big family, Joey. Marie only has her father and it might not be that safe for him to go back to Vietnam. They might not let him leave again."

"Oh." Joey said, and looked back toward the bathroom, brow furrowed. My anger lessened somewhat.

We talked in a subdued fashion about moving the guys that weekend. After a while, Clara and Marie came back.

"We'll go look at the apartments tomorrow morning while you guys are packing," Clara announced. She pointed at Rick and said, "He hasn't packed anything yet."

"I have too! All my records and all my videotapes," said Rick.

"…and no clothes and no books and no toiletries," added Clara.

Joey laughed. "Hell, my brother's been helping me pack. He can't wait. I tell him what's going and he puts it in boxes. He'll do anything to get his own room." He didn't look at Marie, but he sidled next to her and put his arm around her and pulled her close.

Marie didn't look at him either, but she put her hand on his leg.

Peace, of sorts. Inside, I bled.

Clara, Marie, and I checked out the apartments the next morning. They picked a two-bath, two-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen and a decent-sized living room. I used the business checkbook to pay the deposit and three months' rent. They arranged to move in the first of the month, in two weeks. The manager asked what "Wildside Investments" was.

"We're an autonomous collective," I said, and left.

From there we went to the ranch and swept and dusted Joey's and Rick's rooms. Clara dragged the mattresses downstairs and beat them with a broom.

"I didn't think they were so bad," I told her.

"Well I'm not sleeping on it unless this dust is dealt with," she said.

"But you're not…" I felt my ears go hot. "Oh."

She blushed, also. "You might as well know. It's going to be obvious once Rick is living with you."

I was having trouble talking. "Y-your business," I finally managed.

She smiled and slammed the broom into the mattress.

We were under instructions to come for Rick when he called—no sooner. We didn't move Joey—he arrived with his entire family. Joey and his dad were in the lead, with Joey's belongings in his father's pickup. The rest of the crowd followed in the station wagon and when they unloaded, it seemed like a clown car from a circus, an improbably large number of persons climbing forth to stand in the barnyard looking about.

There were so many of them that it only took one trip to carry Joey's stuff up to his room. He gave them a quick tour and I offered ice tea in the kitchen. I had to resort to mason jars when the glasses gave out, and Marie chased children away from the barn and hangar.

When they left, the silence was palpable. "Whew!" said Clara. "I can't imagine that much noise around all the time."

Joey blinked. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

Rick called then and we drove out to his place in my truck, Marie and Joey in back. He had most of the stuff stacked on the porch or already loaded in his junker, a ‘78 Camaro with broad swaths of primer brown streaked across it. I say junker but now that the project had paid for some mechanical work, it ran fine. Joey, Clara, and he used it to get to flight school every day.

"Let's go!" he said, lifting three boxes at once and heading for the truck.

"Whoa, Samson," said Joey. "We can help too."

"Well, do it then," Rick snapped.

"Your mom home?" asked Clara, frowning.

He shook his head, dumped the boxes in the truck, and went back for more. Marie took a stack of clothes on hangers that were draped over the porch rail and I grabbed his boxed stereo.

"I'm going to get a glass of water," Joey said, and started to open the front door.

"No!" shouted Rick. "Uh, I mean, we'll go by Pepe's and get something on the way, okay?" Rick's voice pitched high, and he was licking his lips.

"Joey," I said. "I think we better grab the stuff and get going."

"Why?" asked Marie.

" ‘Cause I don't think Rick's mom knows he's moving out."

Clara dropped her box on the lawn. "You said you asked her!"

"I did," said Rick. "She said no. I left a note. She gets off work soon, guys. Can. We. Go?"

We loaded up so fast that I was afraid the neighbors would think we were robbing the place and call the cops.

The next day the Five went to the mall, crowding into Rick's junker. We'd been issued the paychecks on Wednesday, direct deposited to our personal accounts. Luis had a local accountant handling that, as well as withholding, social security, and insurance payments. We'd found an okay insurance plan through the Chamber of Commerce. Of course this meant Wildside Investments had to join the Chamber. I did not go to any of their lunches.

Anyway, what with flight school, work on the hangar, and moving the day before, none of us had had a chance to spend some "mad money."

I ended up with a few shirts picked out with Clara and Marie's help. They bought some jewelry and some house stuff for their apartment-to-be. Joey and Rick spent their time in the record store.

We did the food court thing and a movie, then went back to the ranch, where the two couples vanished upstairs. Two different stereos played different music through closed doors.

For a while I tried to work on my lists, things to be done, materials to be purchased. My imagination, though, was too concerned with what was going on up in Joey's room, so I grabbed my flight bag, pushed the Mooney out of the hangar, and went flying.

The wind was slightly from the south and east, so I did a left climbing turn on takeoff, glancing around for other traffic and following the dirt road from the gate. That's when I saw her.

I didn't realize it was a "her" at first. There was a vaguely familiar white Volkswagen Rabbit parked at the padlocked gate, just off the main road, and a figure was climbing over the gate. I throttled back and trimmed for level flight and took a closer look. Not only was it a "her," but a "her" I recognized.

I popped the landing gear down, engaged three-quarter flaps, and did an abbreviated landing checklist while completing a very tight rectangular pattern. I turned final in a thirty-degree bank, watching my airspeed to keep from stalling, chopped most of my throttle, engaged the last notch of flaps, and put it down, quicker than I would've thought possible, straight and smooth, slipping automatically to handle the crosswind.

I shut down, jumped out of the plane, and ran for the house. I figured I had five minutes before the woman finished the mile walk from the gate.

"Rick!" I shouted as I pounded up the stairs. His door was shut and I could hear music from both rooms. I pounded on the door. "Rick!"

After about ten long seconds the stereo was turned down, then the door opened a crack. Rick, apparently wearing no clothes, was standing with the door shielding most of his body. Behind him I could see the corner of his bed. Clara's bare foot stuck out from under a sheet. "What is it?" He sounded very annoyed.

"Your mother is walking up the road from the gate."

His eyes widened. "She's what? Here?"

"Yeah," I said. "I suggest you put on a tie."

"How do you know?" he said. Clara's foot disappeared and I heard the rustle of sheets.

"I went flying. I saw her. I landed quick."

"Uh, I'll get dressed. Uh, do me a favor and hide Clara's motorcycle, okay? It'll be bad enough, but if she finds her here…"

"Okay." I didn't wait for him to finish.

Clara's motorcycle, a 550 dirt bike, was by the front porch, and luckily she'd left the steering unlocked—I held the clutch in and pushed it across to the hangar. It was heavy—I nearly dropped it as I turned the corner and strained for a moment to hold it up. Then it was balanced with the kickstand down and I went outside and shut the hangar doors. I could see Mrs. Bockrath, then, coming around the turn in the road, past the live oak trees that shield the house and barn from the road.

I went back to the Mooney and double-checked the switches and settings. Normally I'd roll it back into the hangar at this point, but I didn't want to open the doors.

My movement in the plane attracted Mrs. Bockworth and she came straight to the plane, arriving after I'd finished the checklist.

"Hello, Charlie," she said. Beads of sweat covered her forehead and made circles on her blouse under her arms. She was an attractive woman with heavy thighs and a lined forehead. She was a registered nurse and worked in geriatrics at St. Joseph's. Her hair was dark, without a touch of gray. I wondered if it was dyed.

I pretended to be surprised. "Mrs. Bockrath! Did you climb the gate? If we'd known you were coming, we would've unlocked it."

"Why do you lock it? Especially with y'all here?"

"Insurance. This airplane costs over a hundred thousand dollars. That's why the lock and the no trespassing signs."

She shrugged. "It didn't hurt me to walk—I don't get near enough exercise." She nodded at Rick's car. "I see Rick is here. Is he inside?"

The front screen door slammed and we both turned to see Rick on the porch. He was barefooted, in jeans and a T-shirt.

"Excuse me," she said, and walked across the yard to him. He held the door for her and they entered the house.

After looking at the sky for imminent disaster, I decided I could leave the plane alone. Imminent disaster was more likely to come from inside the house.

They were talking in the kitchen, but their voices stopped when the screen door shut behind me. I walked down the hallway and paused in the kitchen door. Rick was pouring her a glass of tea as she sat at the table. He looked up at me with desperate eyes.

"Don't mind me," I said. "Just passing through. Off to my room to hit the books."

Mrs. Bockrath looked up, a stiff smile on her face. I went on down the hall and into my room, shutting the door behind me. Normally, I'd turn on the A/C, but I left it off and stood against the door, listening, sweating.

"Thank you," she said, for the tea.

Rick didn't say anything. I imagined him shrugging.

"How can you stand this heat?"

Rick answered her, sounding defensive. "I've got A/C in my room. And the window unit in the living room will cool the kitchen if necessary."

"It's not like central air, though."

"It's fine," Rick said, his voice tight.

"I want you to come home," she said.

"No."

"I insist." She sounded like she was talking to a child, firm, taking no nonsense.

"Not relevant," Rick said.

"Don't you take that tone of voice with me, young man! I didn't carry you in my body for nine months, raise you for eighteen years, to have you behave that way with me! I'm your mother and you'll do as I say!" Her voice got louder and louder.

My heart was racing and I wanted to put my fingers in my ears, to shut her out. Poor Rick. I wouldn't want to hear that from my mother.

She went on. "I want you to go upstairs and start bringing your things down right now!"

I was surprised at how quiet Rick's voice was when he answered. "Time for you to leave, Mom. I'll drive you back to the gate."

"Did you hear what I said, young man!"

The dam broke and Rick shouted back. "Yes! I heard every stupid word."

The intake of air as Mrs. Bockrath gasped was audible. "Who do you think you're talking't—"

He cut her off, outshouting her. "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm not a child. I'm not your little boy anymore. I'm eighteen, and I'm not living with you, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it." I heard her chair scrape back and her feet scuff as she stood, then Rick said in a softer voice, "I'm sorry Dad left you, Mom, but he did, and I can't be him. Get somebody else in your life." He paused. "Get a life."

She started crying. "It's that Prentice girl. You're living with her, aren't you?"

"No, Mom. Clara is living at home, though she's moving into an apartment soon."

"With you!"

"No. With Marie Nguyen."

"But you still see her!"

There was a creak from the stairway and Clara's voice said, "Yes, Mrs. Bockrath. He still sees me."

Mrs. Bockrath's tears turned back to rage. "What are you doing here?"

Clara, with more accuracy than good sense, said, "I was invited."

"You slut! How dare you try to sink your claws into my—"

"Mother, that's enough!" Rick was very loud. "Get out of this house!"

"Well, I never!"

"Now! Out! Out! Out!" He kept repeating it, louder and louder.

I opened the door to see him backing her into the hallway, past Clara, to the front door. "OUT!" He didn't touch her, but his voice and expression kept her moving backward. "OUT!" He backed her through the screen door. "Get out of my life!" he finished, and slammed the door and locked it.

He turned, a horrible lost look on his face, and stood for a moment, his back to the door. Then, with an angry shrug, he walked woodenly up the stairs. Clara looked from me to his retreating back with wide eyes, then followed him up the stairs.

I unlocked the door and went through it—Rick's mother was walking stiffly across the yard. I didn't call to her, but instead got in my pickup, started it up, and drove up beside her.

She looked at me, through the passenger side window, as if she didn't know what or who I was. Twin streaks of water cut her cheeks. I leaned across and pushed the door open.

"I'll give you a ride to the gate."

She bit her lip, then climbed in. "His room was empty. I came home and it was empty, like he'd never been there."

I didn't know what to say.

She went on. "His father did the same thing. I came home and his things were gone, packed. It was the same."

She didn't say anything else until we got to the gate and I unlocked it for her, then waited until she started her car and drove away.

She thanked me, but her face was frozen and her eyes were dead.

 

---

CHAPTER SIX
"HE'S GONNA STALL."

As soon as I got back to the house, I called my mom.

"What'ch doing?"

"Cataloging my journals. I'm thinking of putting some shelves in your room—is that okay?" She sounded anxious.

"It makes sense, Mom. They're overflowing the living room, after all. Make it into a library. It'd be nice to walk around the house without knocking a pile over." Then I told her the entire saga of Rick and his mother.

"That must have been very distressing," she said. "Did you know he hadn't told his mother that he was moving in?"

"Not when we arranged it. Besides, Mom, he's eighteen. He's already said he'd get an apartment rather than live at home. Better he should live here with me and Joey."

"I suppose," she said. "What'll I do if she calls me?"

"Why do you think I'm telling you this?"

"Oh. Your father handles this sort of thing much better than I. He doesn't seem to be as disturbed by irrational behavior. Perhaps it was all that time in the military. I wish he was home."

I didn't.

She sighed. "I suppose it will work out okay. Time will tell."

The next morning Marie and I hung the hangar doors, using the tractor and a pulley to lift them into place. Pulled shut, the interior of the hangar was cavelike, lit by a thin slit of light coming between the doors.

I pounded two four-foot lengths of two-inch pipe into the dirt until they were flush with the surface of the ground, then mounted drop bolts to the doors above them. With the bolts dropped into place, we could set our guns down for once and work inside without fear of cats and wolves.

The rental company delivered the Mini-Cat, the miniature bulldozer, at noon. The driver went over the controls, fuel, and lubrication with us, then drove away. We secured the gate behind him and drove back to the house.

Marie didn't even wait for the pickup to roll to a stop before she was out and into the Mini-Cat.

"Hey!" I said, smiling. "You don't even drive!"

She fastened the safety belt and started it up. "I'm learning," she shouted over the engine.

After driving it around the yard until she got the hang of steering, she learned how to use the blade by cleaning up the dirt road that led out to the gate, filling holes and scraping bumps.

I spent the time rigging the wildside hangar with fluorescent shop lights, stringing extension cords along the rafters from a power strip near the tunnel door. I hoped we wouldn't blow a fuse. The barn was on a hefty 30-amp breaker because of Uncle Max's power tools, but I could see using more than that before we were done.

I switched on the power strip and the lights flickered before brightening to a steady light. The new lumber and the steel roof beams contrasted strangely with the grass-covered, uneven ground below.

Marie brought the Mini-Cat in and started to change all of that. Shortly after she started, we had to open the doors to let out exhaust fumes, so I stood guard outside the door with the shotgun. She piled the excess dirt outside, along the walls. Later, after covering the lower walls in heavy plastic, we pushed it against the walls and packed it down.

I hoped the torn up buffalo grass would take and decided to water the dirt banks regularly.

The promised electronic fund transfers (including the Nature Conservancy's extra twenty-five thousand) came in and, rather than make three different flights to different locations, Marie and I drove my pickup up to Waco and shipped pigeon brides off to their lovelorn future grooms.

I was nervous—it would be a lot of trouble for them, but I was afraid the "customers" might be watching all the shipping outfits in Texas that handled live freight. Because of this, I stopped short of the freight office and pulled into a coin-op car wash.

"What are you doing?" asked Marie.

"Cammo."

I reached for a bucket from the back of the truck. The pigeons were cooing and some fluttered in the cages as I scraped the bucket across the truck bed.

"I wondered what that was for," said Marie.

The bucket had four inches of mud in it with a gardening trowel sticking up. I crouched at the front and back of the truck and plastered the license plates, careful to leave bare spots and parts of numbers uncovered. I added more to the bumpers and to the fenders behind the wheels to make it look plausible. There'd been thunderstorms off and on all week.

When we unloaded the birds at the freight office, we both wore baseball caps and sunglasses. The clerk followed us out, after I paid, making small talk, but I just said "Thank you," got into the car, and drove away, as if he wasn't saying a thing. He stared after us in the rearview mirror until we turned the corner.

I took side roads out of town, washing the mud off with a gas station hose in Mexea.

"Am I crazy, or was he suspicious?"

Marie bought pop from the machine. "You're crazy—but he was acting weird. I'm glad we don't have to ship any more birds."

I watched the rearview mirror but it was clear all the way home.

 

One Wednesday, Marie and I bought a small plane, accent on "small."

It was a Rans Coyote S6, a homebuilt two-seater, practically an ultralight, with a little sixty-five-horsepower engine—no electronics, no radio, no nav except for a magnetic compass. The wings and fuselage were covered with dacron sailcloth and, empty, the plane only weighed 435 pounds. It didn't have the range we needed, but it was a good start since it cruised at 100 mph, climbed at a respectable thousand feet a minute, became airborne in less than 150 feet, and, most important, the wings folded back so it would just fit through the tunnel.

During the demo, the owner and builder, a local flight instructor I knew slightly, turned the engine off at five thousand feet, glided east to a freshly plowed field, and actually gained altitude over the next several minutes, circling slowly in the thermals. I drove into town and returned with a cashier's check for twelve thousand dollars.

Marie and I spent the afternoon getting tail dragger and type qualified, making several takeoff and landings apiece.

We weren't used to taxiing in a tail dragger. Since the third wheel is in the very back, the plane tilts up on the ground, making it impossible to see directly forward when all three wheels are on the ground. So you do serpentine S-turns as you taxi, to get some sense of what's ahead. Takeoff and landing were different, too, a tail dragger requiring more of a three-point landing.

At the end of the afternoon, though, we'd had the additional type sign-offs added to our logbooks and, because Marie didn't drive, she got to fly the plane back to my place, while I drove the truck home.

Also, that day, both Rick and Joey soloed, to the relief of Clara. "Thought they'd never do it," she said.

She was spritzed with ice tea for her comment.

The new plane, wings folded demurely and resting out of sight in the barn, was admired.

"We should take it out this weekend," said Joey.

"Oh?" I said. "You have your private license all ready? And you've been type certified for this aircraft?"

"Hey, I can fly a plane," said Joey. "Just did." He stuck his head in the cockpit. "Hey, somebody stole the steering yokes."

"They're control sticks," said Marie. "Another reason why you're not flying this plane until you get more hours in. Besides, we're building the control tower this weekend, remember?"

"Work, work, work. If it's not school it's build, build, build. Don't we ever get a break?"

I patted the side of the plane. "If we get the tower done, Marie and I can take turns flying with you guys on Sunday."

"All right!" Joey said.

"If."

***

Thursday morning, Marie and I flew the Coyote, running through basic and emergency procedures, drilling with simulated forced landings. After four hours of this, including a stop to refill—the plane only held eighteen gallons—we landed back at the grass strip, taxied into the barnyard, and shut down. While Marie topped off the tanks, I folded the wings back, then we started to push it through the tunnel.

"Damn! Hold it!" I'd been steering from behind, by lifting the tail end of the plane by the tail wheel assembly. Marie was pulling from the front. The prop had to be turned forty-five degrees to clear the top of the door, but the folded wings cleared both sides of the door just fine. However, the tail section was too wide.

Marie squeezed back past the plane and I set the tail down.

"What's the prob—oh. Shit."

Fortunately, the tail spar was not one piece. It took us an hour to take one half of the horizontal stabilizer off, which let us get the thing all the way into the wildside hangar. I could've pulled it off in less than fifteen minutes, but I wanted it to go back on exactly like it came off, so we labeled all the fasteners and Marie did a sketch. Working under the fluorescents, we reassembled and double-checked the tail assembly and unfolded the wings.

If the grass hadn't grown too fast on our wildside runways, we could just open the doors and go.

We peeked out into the wildside. A gentle breeze blew from the north and the sky had scattered cumulus about ten thousand feet.

"What do you say? Shall we take it up?" Marie had a wistful expression on her face.

I licked my lips, seriously tempted. If we were right about the wildside, no human had ever flown there. I'd been limited to the distance I could walk or drive the tractor.

"I don't think we should," I said.

She said, "Ah, come on, Charlie. What's all this for, if not that?" She took my arm. "Pretty please?"

I winced and pulled away from her. "Save it for Joey." Even I was appalled by the bitterness in my voice.

She frowned and turned away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean it."

"No, Charlie. I knew how you felt about me. I just didn't realize you still did."

She turned back toward me, but I couldn't face her. I re-examined the fasteners on the horizontal stabilizer. In a lighter tone, she asked, "So, why do you think it's a bad idea to go flying?"

I didn't say anything for a moment. "Who you going to file our flight plan with?"

"We go flying from the grass strip all the time without filing."

I smiled without humor. "Sure, on the tame side. If we go down in Brazos County, don't you think somebody's going to see us? Especially when we land in their pasture or parking lot? If we go down in Brazos County on the tame side, do you think something's going to eat us?"

"Oh."

"We need radios and somebody here who can come after us. Christ, I almost think we need another plane."

"Why?"

I walked to the crack between the hangar doors and peered through. "You want to drive my truck across the river? There aren't any bridges. I don't think it'd get past that stream at the end of the runway."

"So we don't go over the river. We stay right here, over the field. And only one of us flies it, so the other can come get them if they're forced down."

I thought about it.

"Okay, I want to get the wind sock from the other strip."

We went back to the other side and got the wind sock and guns. In addition, I hooked our makeshift sledge to the tractor and drove it through the tunnel.

"Why?" asked Marie.

"If I have to come get you, because you crashed, I don't want to carry you back. Also, I'm pretty sure," I said, patting my belly, "that you couldn't carry me back, but you can drive the tractor."

We had to do one more thing before I'd consider flying. We opened the hangar doors cautiously, Marie doing the pushing, while I stood by with the rifle. Then I took two old broom handles and some cardboard out across to the other side of the runway and pounded the broomsticks into the ground and, by poking holes in the cardboard, mounted the cardboard vertically.

Then I went back and handed the shotgun to Marie. She took it very carefully, respectfully, and, I think, fearfully.

"This is the safety. If this little red thing is sticking out, it's ready to fire. If it's in, it can't fire. You pump a shell into the chamber with that, just like the movies." She worked the action, pointing the barrel in the air. "That's right. That leaves three in the magazine." I nodded at the target. "Go to it."

"Do I have to?" She didn't look happy.

"Let's play it out. I crash out there in the tall grass and you get the tractor and come for me. On the way there, a sabertooth decides the noise from the tractor is more interesting than scary. Or, you get to the plane and I'm disabled and the wolves are pulling at my unconscious body. Or—you crash, are not unconscious, but before I can get to you, a sabertooth does?"

"Isn't this a little paranoid? Every predator we've encountered has avoided us."

I bit my lip. "I've thought about this a lot. Doesn't mean I'm right, but consider the consequences of being underprepared, rather than overprepared. If we walk a little wary, ready for trouble, the worse that can happen is what we expect." I used my most telling argument. "We don't know what happened to Uncle Max."

"Ah, I see your point." She pulled the gun to her shoulder, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The right fringe of the right target disintegrated and Marie jumped at the noise. She fired again, but flinched away in anticipation of the bang and the shot missed completely.

"There were guns at the border when we left Vietnam," she said, almost to herself. Then she aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. The cardboard target on the right flopped to the ground, the pole cut in half. She shifted to the other target and put a burst into its top central portion.

She turned back to me. "Satisfied?"

"Yeah." I showed her how to reload. "Fire in the air first. Loud noises are scary. You might not have to hit anything."

I offered to flip a coin to see who would go first, but she shook her head. "You discovered it, Charlie. You should go first."

I wasn't going to argue. We preflighted the Coyote, strapping the thirty-ought-six in the right-hand seat. I put an extra clip in my pocket. Marie shut the doors, then took the shotgun up the hill at the back of the hangar, where she could climb up onto the roof. When she was on top, I climbed in, strapped in, squeezed the primer bulb, turned on the ignition, and hit the starter button.

I did the run-up and magneto check while taxiing. If there was anything in the high grass waiting to pounce, the noise of the little Rotax engine probably scared the shit out of it. I reached the downwind end of zero-one-five, used the flap handle between the seats to extend full flaps, and pushed the throttle all the way to the instrument panel. Even in the soft grass, the wheels came off the ground in under 150 feet. I kept the plane down in the ground effect until it reached seventy miles per hour, then climbed at a thousand feet a minute until I was fifteen hundred feet above the field.

I flew a basic rectangular traffic pattern, then, keeping clear of the Brazos and watching my wind drift so I stayed over the hangar.

We've marked our planet, so much, we humans. I didn't realize how much until I looked out over the wildside. No buildings, no roads, no telephone and power lines, no plowed or unplowed fields with nice straight lines. The hangar, below, looked alien, and even the Brazos, longtime aerial landmark, was different, smaller, with a slightly different path.

From fifteen hundred feet I could see for fifty miles. Strange to see so far without seeing a trace of human activity. Saw a dust cloud to the east, so large I thought it might be a grass fire, but it was buffalo. In the reeds lining the river, I saw something larger even than buffalo, with a long, mobile nose that tore at the tree branches. I was tempted to buzz it, to get a closer look, but we'd agreed to stay away from the river. I did one more circuit, then drifted down under minimum power and full flaps to land safely in the grass.

Marie met me in front of the hangar and traded places, taking the shotgun with her, instead of the rifle.

"There's a small group of mammoth in the river bottom," I told her, and described what they were doing and where, then I backed away and took up a perch on the roof.

She was up for thirty minutes and the only thing she said, after landing, was, "It makes me feel so small."

"Yeah."

We put the plane away in silence.

***

The control tower was really the "Richardson Prefab Deluxe Deer Blind," a thirty-foot bolt-together galvanized steel tower with a small shack at the top. "Comes complete with icebox, gun stand, lightning rod, and bench seats for four hunters." A truck dropped it off in bundles and boxes late Friday, and Marie and I moved it into the wildside hangar with the tractor.

It was designed to set up out in the woods, on unprepared, uneven ground. After some discussion with Joey, I decided to mount it at the back of the hangar, with two of its legs shortened and mounted on the roof, and its other two legs resting on the hill behind, four feet lower.

Joey cut and framed a square hole with a raised lip in the roof, then built a ladder inside, against the back wall, so the hole opened beneath the tower. While the rest of us were assembling the tower, he built a tar paper-covered hatch.

When we were done, we covered the outside framework of the tower with hardware cloth, heavy wire mesh with half-inch-square holes. This let us climb from inside the hangar to inside the control shack without exposing ourselves to predation.

"Think this stuff would really stop one of those sabertooths?" Clara asked.

"It'd slow ‘em down," I said.

When we were done, late Saturday, we crowded into the top, opened all four upward-swinging panels that were the "windows," and watched the sun go down. Joey, last through the hatch in the middle of the floor, handed up a small cooler.

"Anybody want a beer?" he asked.

I looked at my watch—it was eight-thirty. "If you want to fly tomorrow morning, no beer after midnight."

"Good grief, don't be such a prick, Charlie. Didn't I bust my ass all day? Don't I deserve to relax now?"

I held up my hands. "Sure. Relax away. Just don't drink past midnight, okay?"

He shook his head. "I know the drill. They go over it in ground school several times and we've even been tested on it."

I thought, but didn't say, and they told you about DWI in Driver's Ed. "Sorry. I'll take one."

He blinked. "A beer? You?"

"Sure. We all worked hard today. The trapdoor is great."

"I'll take one," said Rick.

"Me, too," said Clara.

Joey looked at Marie and she said, "Oh, what the hell."

"Wow, two firsts." Joey handed out the cans.

"Where'd you get the beer, Joey?" asked Marie.

Texas drinking age was twenty-one. We were all still eighteen. Marie, in fact, had only just turned eighteen.

"Rick got it," Joey said. "He's so tall, nobody cards him."

I sipped slowly at the beer. I didn't like it. Neither, apparently, did Marie. When Joey reached for another, she said, "Here—I'm not going to finish this one."

Joey crunched the can he was holding into a compact clump and started to pitch it out of the tower.

"Don't! Uh, please." I held out my hand for it. "We don't leave trash around. That's what people do on the other side. This place is clean—let's keep it that way."

He shrugged and handed it to me.

"Besides, if we leave trash around—food trash—we'll attract scavengers. Let's keep the animals from associating this place—or us—with supper."

The sun went down and a million stars shone like diamonds. We closed up the tower and went back to the tame side.

Early Sunday morning I went over to the airport pilot's store and dropped a thousand dollars on a portable intercom station powered by a nine-volt battery, and two handheld aviation transceivers. On the way back I picked up Marie. Clara drove out on her motorcycle and was cooking breakfast for Rick when we got back.

I went over to the wildside and mounted the intercom box and the handheld radio between the seats, behind the flap handle. Later, I'd add an external antenna to improve range, but the two radios would handle anything we did today and the intercom set would let us plug in two command sets and talk normally over the noise of the Rotax engine.

Clara and Rick showed up, next, so I sent Clara up into the control tower with one transceiver, and Rick and I preflighted the Coyote.

"You take the left-hand seat," I said. "I'll probably land it—the Cessnas you've been flying are a lot heavier, but you can take it off, if you promise to let go of the controls if I tell you to."

"Gee, I left my logbook in my room."

I shook my head. "I'm not an instructor—you can't log it as instruction time and you can't log it as solo time. And even if you could—we're not in Texas anymore, Toto."

We started it up and I showed him how to do S-turns as he taxied, to avoid buffalo and other obstacles. He got the hang of it after a few wild swings back and forth. Luckily, we didn't have to worry about other aircraft or running off the runways—we'd mowed them very wide.

At the end of the runway, he lingered over the checklist, spending a lot of time trying to get the feel of the stick. The Cessna he'd been taking instruction on had a steering wheel-like control yoke. We did the engine run-up, checked both magnetos, then set flaps and pushed the throttle all the way in.

In just the two days since we'd flown it, the grass had grown enough to add another fifty feet to the takeoff run. I watched Rick carefully, ready to shove the stick forward if he pulled it back far enough to stall the plane, but he got it right, letting just a little stick lift the nose and start us on up.

"Climb at seventy," I told him. "A little more back stick. Level off at fifteen hundred—you can take the engine back to 1800 rpm. That should give you about ninety miles per hour of indicated airspeed."

He left it a little late, leveling off initially at 1570, then yo-yoing between 1575 and 1450. "We're getting too far from the field. Leave it for a second and do a standard left one-eighty."

He complied, managing to trim it at fifteen hundred. Back over the field we did a spiral climb to five thousand, where I took him through low-speed stalls and standard left and right turns.

"It's quicker than the Cessna," Rick said. "To respond, I mean."

"It's a thousand pounds lighter."

I left him in control all the way to the base leg and took over at five hundred feet. He'd been training with a tricycle landing gear and I didn't want to confuse him with a different landing technique.

Clara was next. She really seemed to have a knack for flying, getting the feel of the controls almost immediately. Rick's turns, while competent, had been slightly uncoordinated, the stick moving before or after the rudder. Clara's turns were precise and when I told her to level off at fifteen hundred, she hit 1495 and smoothly edged up the last few feet. I saw why she soloed after only ten hours. We went through the same turns, climbs, and stalls before Joey's voice came on the radio. "Hey! There are people waiting, you know."

"Asshole," Clara said on the intercom.

"Hold your water, Joey," I transmitted. "You'll get your turn."

We stayed up another fifteen minutes. Clara took it all the way to final approach before I took over.

The tanks, two nine-gallon tanks in the wings, were down a third, so we topped off with a jerry can and I turned it over to Marie and Joey after describing what we'd done.

Joey started to climb into the left-hand seat but Marie hooked his collar and said, "Hold it, Hotshot."

He turned, annoyed. "What? You want the left-hand seat?"

"Preflight, Joey. Preflight."

He looked at me. "Didn't you guys preflight?"

"Sure," I said. "So?"

"They're not going up in it," Marie said. "We are. And, even if things were perfect when it was checked over, it's been through two landings since then."

Joey grumbled, but involved himself in the preflight, looking at the oil level and draining gas into a jar to check for water. Clara and I climbed into the tower to join Rick.

"Joey taxis too fast in the Cessna, too," Rick was saying as I followed Clara up through the hatch. I stood up in time to see the Coyote turn too fast at the end of the runway and spin sideways 270 degrees. The tail wheel plowed a furrow in the grass.

I picked up the radio and transmitted, "Having a little trouble out there?"

Marie's voice came back. "Just practicing a few S-turns." Her voice was tight.

"Are those printed esses or cursive?" I said, but I kept my thumb off the transmit button.

The Coyote, at a more sedate pace, straightened, then accelerated down the field, lifting off sharply.

Too sharply.

"He's gonna stall," said Clara, but the nose dropped abruptly, before too much airspeed was lost, and the plane settled into a shallow climb to build up airspeed. When it turned, the bank was clean and sharp and I knew that Marie was at the controls.

We went down to meet them when they landed, thirty minutes later. Joey jumped out of the Coyote before it stopped rolling and walked past us, stiff-legged. Marie leaned out the engine fuel mixture, then, when it died, switched off the magnetos and went through the rest of the engine shutdown checklist.

I walked up to her door and swung it up.

She was crying.

I stood there frozen, helpless, then Clara pushed the rifle into my hands and shoved me aside. She unbuckled Marie's restraining harness, helped her out of the Coyote, and walked her past Rick and me, into the hangar.

I looked at Rick and he shook his head, a distant expression on his face.

"Shit," I said.

We refueled the plane and put the control locks in place. When we rolled it back into the hangar, Marie and Clara were sitting by the control tower ladder. Marie wasn't crying anymore, but the corners of her mouth turned down sharply.

I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. I wanted to fire Joey, to kick him off the project, but doubted very much that the secret would stay a secret if I did. Maybe they'd break up and I'd have my chance with Marie. Maybe I should give him a raise.

"You okay?" I asked Marie.

She shrugged.

"What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh." I stood there awkwardly for a moment, then went through the tunnel to the tame side. I found Joey sitting in the kitchen drinking a beer.

He didn't look happy.

I tried again. "What happened?"

"I fucked up. I wanted to show Marie what a great pilot I am and I screwed up. Didn't taxi right, nearly stalled us on takeoff—she took over until we were at altitude—and she didn't say anything about it, just ‘I have control' when she took the stick." He lifted the beer again and drank in large swallows. "I shouted at her—I've never shouted at her before. She didn't deserve that."

I leaned against the doorway, my arms crossed. "Well, I don't think so. It's not her fault that she does something better than you do. She's been at it longer, after all."

He looked down at the tabletop. "I know I was wrong—give me a break."

"Don't tell me. She was crying when she got out of the Coyote."

He winced. "Oh, shit."

I stood aside for him as he got up and went out, heading for the front door. He left his beer can on the kitchen table. I hefted it—it was almost empty. I drained what was left into the sink and then stomped it repeatedly until it was flat—and then some.

 

---

CHAPTER SEVEN
"DO YOU HAVE THE MOSSBERG STAINLESS STEEL TWELVE-GAUGE PUMP WITH THE OPTIONAL PISTOL GRIP?"

Luis Cervantes called me Monday morning. "Let's go flying."

"Okay."

It was our code phrase for "let's talk and not on the phone." I met him at Easterwood airport, in the pilots' lounge. He took coffee and I took tea in paper cups, dropped our money into the can, and walked outside to stand in the shade.

"There are inquiries," he said.

"Who is asking who?"

"The public account in Austin has had inquiries about the account ownership. They didn't find out—but Richard did arrange to be told if it happened."

I turned my head to watch a twin-engine plane do its takeoff run. "Who did the asking?"

"The San Diego Commercial Bank and the People's Bank of San Francisco."

I licked my lips. "The San Diego Zoo and the Sierra Club."

"Well, those are the banks their payments came from."

The plane rose off the pavement smoothly. The landing gear came up. "What's their next step?"

Luis was watching the plane also. "Um. They'll probably check the Austin city records to see who's doing business as ‘The Lazarus Company.' "

"What will that show?"

"Nothing—we didn't file a D.B.A. So, they'll go back to the bank and try again, more subtly this time. The information is private, but you'd be amazed how easy it is to get. If you pose as an IRS agent, for instance, and phone in and say something like ‘I need to send a copy of their paperwork to the company but all we have is their account number—could you give me that address?' "

"Will that work?" I asked, worried.

"Usually. But we arranged for extra care on this account. If the IRS calls, the bank will wait for a subpoena and identification before they release any information. Ditto any other inquiries, no matter who they pose as." He shrugged. "We used the bank most of the Texas legislature uses. They're used to spotting unauthorized inquiries—the press is after that stuff all the time."

"So they won't find out?"

Luis turned his attention to the passenger terminal on the other side of the airport. An American Eagle turboprop was whining up to speed. "They'll find out… eventually. But then it'll just point to him and he's a lawyer acting for a client. They'll have to involve the authorities and make some sort of claim at criminal activity to get the information out of him." The ground crew pulled the chocks away from the turboprop's wheels and it began to roll.

I said, "So, for a while, we're safe."

The plane reached the end of the taxiway and turned onto the active runway. Without stopping, the turbines increased to one hundred percent and it took off, climbing steeply, more steeply than any plane I'd ever flown.

"For a while," said Luis.

 

On Monday, Marie and I went to Triangle Sporting Goods, a store that sold guns and hunting supplies but also specialized in "home security" products. They have a giant plastic moose on the roof that the university fraternities are always stealing.

Business was slow—deer and duck season didn't start for months—but a man was browsing the fishing lures. We walked up to the gun counter.

"What can I do you for, today?" asked the clerk, a balding man with thick glasses whose Lacoste sports shirt covered a slight potbelly.

I took a list from my pocket. I'd prepared it after going through the gun magazines with Joey and Clara. "Do you have the Mossberg stainless steel twelve-gauge pump with the optional pistol grip?"

"Sure." He turned and took a pump shotgun from the shelf behind him. Instead of a stock it had a black plastic pistol grip. "Eighteen-inch barrel. Uses three-inch or two-and-three-quarter-inch shells, adjustable choke—"

"Okay," I said, before he got warmed up. "I'll take five."

"Five? Five shotguns?"

"To start with. You have them in stock?"

"Uh, yeah. We've got six in stock."

"Great. I also need vehicle mounting clips for the shotguns, the vertical kind. Like those used in police cars."

"Ah, the locking kind."

I thought about it. "Do they hold the gun securely when they're unlocked?" I didn't want to have to fumble for a key when a sabertooth charged.

"Yeah, but anybody can grab them out of the car, then. Kids."

"Ah. I understand." No kids where we were going—very few cars, though I intended one of the clips for my truck. "I'll need eight of the clips. I'll also need shoulder straps for the shotguns."

"Hold up, there. Let me start gathering this stuff together. How're you going to pay?"

"When we have the total, I'll go get a cashier's check—how's that?"

He blinked. "Fine. Just fine. What else do you need?"

I looked at the list. "Cap-Stun gas in the eight-ounce cans."

"You're not going hunting, are you? Not with this pepper Mace stuff."

I shook my head. "Home security. I'll take ten of those air horns and twenty replacement air cartridges."

"The boating horns?"

"Yeah." These were very loud compressed gas horns used on small power and sailboats. They were loud enough to hurt—I hoped animals would think so.

He began piling the merchandise behind the counter, running a tape on the adding machine as he went along. For a moment I looked down at the 9-mm automatic handguns in the glass case, but you have to be over twenty-one in Texas to buy a handgun. To buy a shotgun or rifle you only had to be eighteen. I added ten pads of tear-off targets, five sets of hearing protectors, five sets of wraparound shooting glasses, a wall mount gun rack with ammo drawers, a case of shells with bird shot, a case of three-inch shotgun shells with number three buckshot, and a case of shotgun shells with rifled slugs.

"I think that's it. What's the damage?"

"With tax, it comes to twenty-three-sixteen and sixty-three cents."

I wrote it down, went over to my bank, and came back with the check. I filled out the registration papers and we packed everything in the truck, stacking the ammo on the floor and the guns behind the seat. I didn't think it would be a good idea to leave them in the pickup bed in back with everything else.

We installed the wall rack on the back wall of the wildside hangar, hung the guns, and stored the ammo.

 

On Tuesday morning, Marie and I rode over to the Texas Institute of Aviation with the rest of the gang to start an Airframe & Power course, i.e., how to be an aircraft mechanic. While the three of them were flying, the two of us had classroom in the morning and lab in the afternoon. We'd be doing it for six weeks, three days a week, and we'd finish up about the time they finished their flight courses.

We also signed Marie up on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule so that she'd finish up her IFR and commercial ratings at the same time.

On the way home that afternoon, I said, "There's a skydiving class on Sunday. Four hours classroom and practice in the morning and two static line jumps in the afternoon."

"Why would anyone want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" said Rick. He was driving, Clara beside him. I was also in the front seat—Joey and Marie were fondling each other in the back.

"Well, suppose you ended up in a plane that decided to stop working? However, my reasons have more to do with runway preparation. There's a lot of flat land out there, but unless we walk over it, inspect it up close, we're gonna miss some of the holes and rocks and logs. If we jump people in, before we land, they can inspect and mark a runway."

"And if it's totally unsuitable for a runway?"

I shrugged. "We walk to where the terrain is suitable."

Joey leaned forward. "We're moving the girls on Saturday. Aren't we ever going to have a weekend off?"

"Probably not," I said. "Everybody in for Sunday? I have to reserve space in the class."

They all agreed, though Clara seemed less enthusiastic about it. "Whatever you do," she said, "don't tell my parents. The flying thing is freaking them out as it is. My mom'd have a cow."

"Um. Perhaps you shouldn't tell my father, either," said Marie.

Rick, with a wooden expression, said, "Well, you can tell my mom. I don't care if she has a cow."

Rick's mom called him every evening. Rick no longer answered the phone at the ranch, either screening it with the answering machine or making us get it. As I was tired of lying to his mother, I also screened calls. Joey didn't care, though. Even if Rick was sitting right in front of him, Joey cheerfully told her, "Rick's not in, Mrs. Bockrath, can I take a message?"

My mom received a call from Mrs. Bockrath, as well. She reported the conversation to me.

"I was very distressed when Charlie moved out, too. It's hard to let go, isn't it?"

"He's too young!"

"This culture doesn't handle teens very well, does it? Young or not, he's legally an adult. What do you expect me to do?"

I'd spent an anxious week worrying about what my father would think, but last week, when I'd had supper with my parents, Mom told Dad about it. He'd shaken his head and said, "Woman has a screw loose. Keep the gate locked." Sometimes Dad is okay.

Anyway, Clara said, "No need to tell your mother anything. She's called my mother several times and said horrible things about me. Last time my mother hung up on her."

Rick's wooden expression became a grimace, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Let's not talk about her, okay?" Clara glanced sideways at him. "Sorry."

I set up a target range on the wildside, using bales of hay for the targets and the hill by the hangar as a backstop, but it was Clara who taught everyone how to shoot.

"Look," she said. "Without the stock it's not really designed to fire like a rifle. You don't hold it up to your cheek and sight down the barrel. Instead, hold it like this." She held her right hand, gripping the pistol grip, to her side just below the ribs. Her left hand was on the pump, supporting the barrel. "Be consistent. Pivot at the waist to adjust your aim right and left. Raise and lower your left hand, uh, that is your non-trigger hand, to raise or lower your aim."

We all put our ear protectors on and then she turned abruptly to fire, not at the target before her, but the one on the end. Then she shot at each target in turn, as fast as she could work the pump.

Five shots and five targets. We were shooting at thirty feet with bird shot and the targets were large enough that the grouping was visible. She was slightly high and slightly to the left of dead center, but it was the same on each target.

She turned back to us. "Not too bad. I'm used to a twenty-gauge." She looked at the sun—it was after seven. "We got another half hour. Let's make some noise."

We set up group target practice for twice a week, after that, with individuals practicing whenever they wanted.

Whenever we were carrying the shotguns for protection, we loaded them with buckshot and rifled slugs, alternating every shell. We were also carrying the Cap-Stun gas, the air horns, and extra ammo hung on a nylon harness.

"Charlie's Rangers," Joey said.

"Give me a break," I said. "More like a street gang." But I wasn't unhappy with the thought.

Money drained out of the account at an alarming rate. Sure, there was still more than three hundred thousand dollars, but the insurance payments and the withholding and Luis's cut and the bookkeeper's fees and the instruction fees and our weekly salaries steadily pulled the balance down.

And I bought things.

I bought a ground station for Wildside Base, several thousand dollars' worth of radios and antennas. One transceiver for voice traffic, one transmitter to broadcast a continuous AM homing signal (Morse "W" for wildside), and a transmitter for AXIS. AXIS stands for Automatic Terminal Information Service, a continuous loop broadcast of local weather and airport procedures.

Normally a human would record this info every half hour or so onto a tape loop, but we were not exactly overstaffed. My next purchase was a PC-based automated weather station which took input from externally mounted sensors and logged it and used a voice board to transmit the information on the ATIS transmitter, using a clear but mechanical tenor voice. It sounded something like the voices used by the phone company's directory information. "Time One Zero Four Five. Temperature Seven Five. Wind One Two Knots at Three Zero Five. Barometric Pressure Two Nine Point Three. Precipitation Zero." Pause. "Time One Zero Four Six. Temp—" You get the idea.

By the time I finished mounting antennas, rain gauge, wind vane, and anemometer on the roof of our control tower, it looked more like some scientific outpost than a deer blind. I ended up mounting the wind sock on the front edge of the hangar roof, to keep it from fouling on the antennas.

More money—I had another phone line run to the house with an extension to the barn. The phone company charged me twelve hundred dollars to run the extra line from the road. When they were done, we ran phone line through the tunnel and put extensions in the hangar and control tower.

Had an electrician run a 220 line from the meter at the house to a new breaker box in the barn. When he was done, Joey and Marie replaced the extension cord with fixed wiring, replacing the power strips with permanent outlets. More money.

Bought a voice-activated recorder for the tower to record incoming transmissions when there wasn't anyone to hear them. More money.

Had a security firm install an electric eye across the dirt road on the inside of the gate. If anybody drove or walked across it, it set off a buzzer in the house, barn, and (after we wired it) the wildside hangar. More money.

Bought a small tank-trailer, four feet around and six and a half feet long which held six hundred gallons of aviation gasoline. The company that serviced Easterwood and Coulter field agreed to come by and fill it as needed. If we lowered it four inches by letting air out of its tires, we could pull it through the tunnel with the tractor.

Bought parachutes (parasails, actually), bought four more portable aviation transceivers, bought wilderness survival kits, bought a thousand-dollar celestial sextant. More money.

The account dropped below three hundred thousand.

Joey jumped but admitted later that he didn't particularly like it. Marie jumped without hesitation, landing with a huge grin on her face. Clara wanted to go again, right now. Rick froze in the doorway.

"You don't have to," I shouted into his ear over the noise of the engine and the wind in our faces. "Nobody will blame you for good sense." Then, with a twinge of guilt, I added, "Your mother would probably prefer it."

That did it. His clenched hands released the doorframe and he thrust himself convulsively out into the void.

I'd been so worried about who would jump and who wouldn't that I hadn't realized how terrified I was. I had to close my eyes to jump and didn't open them until after the chute opened.

At that point it was fine. After all, it was just another aircraft, right? Steerable, with excellent stalling characteristics. I turned into the wind and ended up bringing the chute down twenty feet away from Clara, flaring as much as I could and falling in the fashion we'd practiced all morning. It was a halfhearted effort, though. My downward speed was almost nil.

The second jump was better all around. Knowing what was going to happen eliminated most of Rick's fear. Joey still didn't like it, but expected he could do it. Marie and Clara wanted more free fall, and I was able to keep my eyes open.

We signed up for tandem free fall sessions the following Sunday, weather permitting.

***

The fourth week of my A&P course, I took delivery on a two-year-old Maule M-7-235 Super Rocket. Contrary to its name, it wasn't a rocket, but an airplane—a STOL single-engine tail dragger that, with the optional jump seat in the baggage area, could seat five. This particular plane had been used by a West Texas rancher and flown off of dirt strips on his ranch. It cost us eighty thousand and had minimum IFR avionics.

Once insurance had been arranged, we used it to commute to T.I.A. for classes, all five of us jammed in, Marie stuck in the jump seat because she was lightest and Rick in the right-hand seat because he was longest.

On days of the week when I wasn't along, Marie was Pilot-In-Command and the others took turns in the right-hand seat. We also received a significant reduction in the T.I.A. course fees by providing the Maule as a teaching aircraft. Marie, Joey, Rick, and Clara took some of their instruction and solo practice time in it, once they’d been type certified.

"It makes you lazy," said Clara. "I go back to the Cessna Sky-lane and my rudder work suffers."

In most planes, a turn is executed by banking with the control yoke while giving an appropriate amount of right or left rudder with the rudder pedals. On the Maule, the ailerons were spring linked to the rudder servo tab, making normal balanced turns possible even if one's feet were completely off the rudder pedals.

Of course you still had to use rudder for slipping sideways on crosswind landings, or spin recovery, and other maneuvers. Still, the Maule was a pleasant and forgiving plane to fly as well as being tough as nails.

We also did the periodic maintenance in our A&P lab, having it signed off by our instructor, who was not only A&P certified, but also an Aircraft Inspector, the next level up.

Later, we went back to driving, while the Maule sat in the A&P hangar and, under our instructor's guidance, Marie and I removed and refastened the wings, did rivet work, and completely overhauled the engine, even though it wasn't due for another two hundred hours. We also added Maule Air's optional auxiliary fuel tanks in the outer wing to extend the range.

By the time we finished the course, I was confident of our ability to do scheduled maintenance ourselves, and, most importantly, get the Maule through the tunnel and flying on the other side.

It was easy to arrange the surprise—after all, I had three more days a week out of class. We were flying the Maule home from T.I.A., having completed written and practical exams. We were done, carrying certificates, licenses, and in general, good feelings.

Marie had the jump seat in back, while Clara and I sat in the middle. Joey and Rick were at the controls, with Rick calling the shots.

Scary. It was the first time that we'd flown with them when neither Marie nor I were within reach of the controls.

They did fine. If they flew by the numbers more than by feel, they at least knew the numbers. This pitch attitude at this power setting results in this rate of climb. An approach speed of 1.3 times full-flap-stall speed results from this power setting and this pitch attitude. V sub x, best angle of climb, is achieved at this airspeed. V sub y, best rate of climb, is achieved at that airspeed.

Joey put the Maule down on the grass at a slightly higher speed than I would've, but I didn't feel in danger, and the grass stopped the plane without undue wear on the brakes.

"Pretty good," I said, when they finished the engine shutdown.

Marie hit my arm from behind. "Pretty good? It was great! You guys are good pilots and don't let anybody tell you differently!"

Everybody piled out. Unlike the Mooney, the Maule had plenty of doors—pilots' doors port and starboard and a double door starboard rear that let large loads be stowed.

"Well," Joey asked, "how do we celebrate?"

It was the first time we talked about it. By common consent we'd avoided the subject since it was possible that one of us could fail our exams at first attempt.

However, I'd talked privately to their instructors and they'd been confident.

"Why don't we get out of the sun and then decide," I said.

I held back and entered the house last.

"What's this?" said Marie, the first one in.

There were four large boxes, wrapped, with each of their names writ large upon. They looked from them to me as I came in the door, curious.

Joey said, "That's why you went back into the house this morning!"

"I'm just glad none of you failed. I would've had to dash in here ahead of you and hide them." I grinned. "Congratulations, guys." They still looked at me. "Go on! Open ‘em."

There was a great rending of paper. I stepped into the kitchen and pulled the bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and the glasses from the cabinet.

"Utterly cool!" said Clara.

The boxes held flight jackets, G-1 navy goatskin, with lamb fur collar made by Cooper, the company that makes them for the navy. The guys' last names were embroidered on the left breast, and on the back was embroidered a sabertooth's head in profile, mouth open, snarling and the words WILDSIDE INVESTMENTS below.

I opened the champagne and the cork ricocheted off the ceiling. Clara caught foam in one of the glasses. I poured for all.

"Don't you get a jacket, Charlie?" asked Rick.

I put down the now-empty bottle and opened the closet. Another flight jacket with NEWELL on the front hung there. Even though it was too warm for it, I put it on, like the others, and took my glass from Clara.

"What do we toast?" said Rick.

"Finishing flight school!" said Joey. "The end of all that work."

I shook my head. "I'll toast the end of flight school," I said. "And I'll toast new pilots and techs. But it's not the end of ‘all that work.' " I raised my glass. "To the beginning."

---