Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility Read online

  As Henry drifted back out into the open, someone jumping from the dock landed on him, sending him under. Henry swallowed a large gulp of lake water, panic springing through his body as he flailed to get to the surface. A foot hit him in the side of the head. He reached out to grasp onto something and felt a body in front of him. His fingers clutched at the loose cloth of a pair of swimming trunks that floated around someone’s skinny legs. Henry yanked on them to pull himself out of the water, but the shorts came down, so he grabbed at one of the arms pushing at him and brought himself to the surface, gasping and rubbing the water out of his eyes.

  “You pulled my shorts off,” the boy screamed, shoving Henry back under the water.

  When Henry surfaced again, all the boys were screaming and swimming away from him farther out into the lake or climbing up onto the dock. The boy scowled at Henry as he climbed up the ladder, hanging onto the back of his swimming trunks as though Henry might try to pull them off again. Henry sunk down until only his nose was above the surface. “Sorry,” he said, but the word was trapped underwater. He could hear the syllables lose themselves in the bubbles. His father glided through the water and scooped him up over his shoulder, the way he used to when Henry was little, carrying him back to the picnic tables. As they walked across the sand, Henry heard someone say pantywaist. At first he thought the word came from his father, but then he realized it was only his mind playing tricks on him. By the time he was back sitting at the picnic tables, the boys were all standing in a line again at the end of the dock, taking turns doing cannonballs.

  IN THE KITCHEN, THE moonlight came slanting through the window and made the countertops glow. Henry drank a glass of water, sitting cross-legged on the table in case the spider came alive and escaped its jar, but then he remembered the spider was in Victoria. On the fridge, the white page burned around the lines of Ben’s drawing. Henry stared at the picture of the spider until his eyes started to wobble and its legs started to move.

  Earlier that evening, Henry and Ben were brushing their teeth together at the sink when Ben spat and turned to Henry and said, “All my friends think you’re weird.” Henry shrugged and then, with his mouth still rabid with foamy toothpaste, bit Ben on the shoulder.

  Eli cried again that night and kept Henry awake. Henry wanted to be in bed with his parents, but he couldn’t ask because their father was angry at him for biting Ben. Instead he hung over the top bunk, watching Ben sleep and thinking about the cave. He thought about how it would be a good place for hiding, how if it was sealed properly nothing could get in.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS Sunday, so Henry and Ben headed down to the bunkhouses. They collected bottles at the mill every Sunday and Thursday, storing them in crates under the cabins. Every two weeks they loaded the empties onto the Uchuck that arrived in Tahsis to drop off produce and other supplies. They would receive a cheque made out to their father that he would cash and divide between the two of them. On a good week they made four dollars each. Usually it took them the whole afternoon, because they liked to peer in the windows at the kitchenettes and the beds with untucked blankets. If they were lucky there were dirty clothes on the floor or food left on the tables — egg shells or half-eaten crusts sticky with jam — that hinted to what kind of person might live there. When they had time, they looked in the garbage bins for anything interesting, but today Ben moved quickly, the crate of bottles rattling as he jogged from porch to porch.

  “Why are you going so fast?” Henry said.

  “I have target practice.”

  “With who?”

  “The birds.”

  At the next cabin something made Ben slow his pace. He bent down and pulled a magazine from the garbage can and tucked it into the back of his pants. Henry followed him around the back of the bunkhouse and they sat side by side on a log. Ben pulled out the magazine. “Wanna see something?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said.

  Ben turned the colour pages slowly, each one with a naked woman, sometimes several naked women crouching or snarling like animals.

  “Which one do you like best?” Ben said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to pick one.” Ben handed him the magazine.

  Henry flipped through the pages until they were a pink blur. “I can’t.”

  Ben rolled his eyes and grabbed the magazine out of Henry’s hands.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Henry said.

  “Keep it.” Ben rolled it up and stuck it back in his pants. “You don’t even know what it is, so what do you care.”

  “I know what it is.”

  When they got back to the house, Ben ran up the steps and came back out with his BB gun. “Can I come?” Henry called after him. Ben strutted right by Henry and headed for the trees. Henry walked back into the house, letting the screen door slam, and went to the washroom to look at himself in the mirror. His eye was getting better, the edges of the bruise yellowing like an overripe pear. He walked around the house listlessly for half an hour then headed outside.

  The forest was alive with noise, sun streaming straight down through the arms of the trees and heating the forest floor, making the air smell green and lush. The birds talked to Henry in such loud chatter, he felt confused about the direction of the cave and kept stopping to wonder if Ben was behind a tree up ahead, aiming the BB gun in his direction.

  Henry had a can of gasoline from the garage and under Ben’s bed he had found the matches they’d stolen. The creek bubbled around the stones as Henry crossed to the other side. He knew the gasoline had to be poured in the middle of the cave for the fire to get big enough. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled slowly through the tunnel so he wouldn’t drop the can. His nose filled with the mossy smell of the rock as the cave opened around him and the temperature dropped. He held his breath and kept his head lowered, not wanting to glimpse the hundreds of sleeping bodies above him. Everything was still — the only sound came from the gentle slosh of gasoline in the metal can and soon that stopped too. All the urgency drained from his body and his muscles went slack the way they did when he stood at the edge of a lake. He sat cross-legged in the centre of the cave and after a while he felt peaceful. The spiders minded their own business and nothing bothered him. His arms and legs took a sharp-angled shape and the hair along the nape of his neck stood up in rows of bristles. His fingertips tingled with imaginary gossamer threads.

  He tipped the can and the sweet metallic smell spilled out over the cave floor. The sound made everything come to life, a thousand legs rustling above his head. He scurried out, leaving a trail as the can clanged between his knees, the smell following him into the overwhelming green. He shook the can to make sure it was empty and tilted the spout to sprinkle the remaining drops around his feet. The knees of his pants were soaked in gasoline. He pulled out the box of matches with the wild red bird on the front and got down on his belly to better judge the snaking wet trajectory across the dirt, and the distance between himself and the cave entrance. Wiggling backwards on his stomach like a lizard, he sniffed at the ground. His fingers fiddled with the matches, a few spilling before he managed to strike one and light the line. The trail sparked and he leapt to his feet.

  When the fire hit the cave a boom pushed the air out of his lungs and sucked the sound out of the world around him. He hit the ground, sunlight through the trees blinding him briefly before a thud of darkness swallowed him.

  When he opened his eyes Ben was there, his mouth wide open like a fish gasping at the bottom of a boat. Face wild with delight, he danced around Henry’s head before yanking him up and slapping the dirt off his back. The blast had thrown Henry several feet. A grin spread across Henry’s face and Ben laughed even harder, the muted sound reaching Henry’s ears as though he were approaching the surface of a lake from a great depth. He could hear Ben’s muffled voice repeating over and over, “You’re okay.” On the way home, Ben leane
d toward him, an arm around his shoulder and yelled into Henry’s ear, “You flew like a bird.”

  THE ENTIRE TOWN HEARD the explosion. It woke Eli from his nap and sent their mother running down the front steps. It made windows shake all over the neighborhood and shot birds into the air. In town, people froze in intersections, covered their heads, or looked skyward. Everyone wondered where the blast had come from. Henry’s mother and father discussed it over dinner while Ben and Henry kept their eyes on their plates and ate quietly.

  A letter came from Victoria, but the jar was never returned. They classified the spider as a common house spider, or Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Ben turned the uninhabited cave into a fort with a canvas door and camping lanterns lighting its insides. Henry almost never went back to the cave and when he did he felt uneasy there, as though he didn’t belong. He thought about the explosion often though, but only at night when he was alone in bed. Sometimes he’d see a trail of fire coming from his fingertips and radiating out into the world. Sometimes he’d hear Ben’s voice saying you’re okay. You’re okay.

  CLEAR SKIES, NO WIND,

  100% VISIBILITY

  WHEN THE MAYDAY COMES over the radio, my mind is elsewhere and in a distant enough place — up the trail that leads to the telecommunications tower, where the hawk perched on the steel lattice watches over the entire Kamloops valley — that it takes me seconds longer than it should to respond to the emergency call.

  Temperatures were hitting the high thirties when I drove to the station earlier in the afternoon, leaving Angie sprawled out in a cool bath with the baby, a glass of red wine with an ice cube floating in it sitting on the edge of tub. Other than the heat, everything else about my day has been normal the way normal should be, routine leading me through another shift lost in small individual tasks — weather briefings, setting up voice switches, organizing flight management systems — the kind of duties you’ve forgotten before they’ve even been accomplished, the mind see-sawing away on that silky edge of boredom. Time has a strange way of unfolding in a dark room of blue monitors and blinking lights, a roomful of dead-eyed drones watching the sky on screens, the fickleness of clouds, the unpredictability of wind and electricity. Weather data is transfigured into notifications disseminated back into the sky, anything pertinent to an airman’s safe travel: turbulence, icing, lines of thunderstorms, wind shear, funnel clouds, fireworks displays, mine blasts, avalanche artillery. Information endlessly reviewed.

  On winter days when storms keep the planes grounded, we pass the time between weather updates reading, doing crosswords, arguing current events that seem worlds away. No cellphones, no laptops or electronic distractions of any kind allowed on the Floor. It’s the idleness that gets me agitated and picking at my thumb cuticles while others around here delight in the boredom, tilt their chairs back, kick their feet up and brush the potato chip crumbs off their shirts, enjoying the blur around the margins of their lives. It’s no exaggeration to say I work with some lazy slugs. John breathes through his mouth for Christ’s sake, like a sick person. When I pack my bag for the day I don’t stuff it with car magazines or fishing tackle catalogues or porn. (I’ve seen John with the porn.) I’m not about to let my brain go to mush, all that brilliant fatty matter oozing out of my ears onto this glowing console. When I pack my bag I throw in some Chaucer, I stuff it with some Kant or Thoreau or some dry history shit from my student days, the thick annals of lives lived, the stuff Thom and I used to deliberate sitting under autumn maples on the frigid stone walls of the university campus. I let all that language rattle around in there while I wait on the glowing buttons and flickering screens of shifting stats that — if you allow them — get abstract real quick. I let the words percolate and it makes me feel good. It makes me feel better, at least.

  “They could switch it up, put in something new,” John says, coming back from the row of vending machines.

  “I don’t know, John. I don’t eat that shit.”

  John plops down on his chair and wheels himself over to my desk as I issue squawk codes that transform into flashing dots as the radar sweeps past. Today is the last of a five-day run of graveyard shifts and I’ve lost track of time. John forces us to keep the heavy grey blinds drawn because of his “migraines” and the only hint of early evening is the bright sliver of light fighting through the edge of the window. I feel tired in a way I don’t trust, as though the lack of sleep has split my mind from its body; I’ve abandoned ship to watch over my physical self like watching over an irresponsible sibling.

  “Something healthy.” John says as he paws through a bag of potato chips like he’s searching for a carrot stick in there. “Like popcorn.”

  The hawk is an exercise of sorts, a meditation — something I’ve been trying more and more frequently — to take me out of this creaky swivel chair and away from the stuffy control room. My supervisor walks past in a polo shirt and black slacks cinched tight with a belt below the bulge of his waistline. I nod hello. I think about heart attacks. Their suddenness. The thump, whir of the struggling air conditioner. Back to the hawk. Sleep deprivation has a way of making you think in circles. John keeps distracting me by brushing crumbs off his belly, and I have to refocus — wingspan, hooked beak, talons — before he finds another scattering somewhere on his body and I have to start all over again. Sometimes I have the urge to pound John on the chest, right in the left quadrant, see what’ll happen, get a little colour into those cheeks. The truth is, at the moment when the hawk takes flight into the grey sky, gliding down the mountain above the treetops, I realize that I’ve never seen anything quite like this bird’s trajectory, and what a damn shame that is, and how nice it is to see something like this alone and from a great height.

  And it’s at this exact moment the call comes in from the water bomber.

  “Golf Foxtrot Victor Bravo. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

  I’m aware of the pause — a mere second and a half — even as I’m responding to the mayday. The lapse is a weakness I didn’t realize I had in me. Static fills my head as my heart starts to pump faster.

  “Golf Foxtrot Victor Bravo.” I say, “Pacific Radio received mayday, state the nature of your emergency.”

  John slides the binder with our emergency protocol across the desk toward me and I begin flipping through the pages. Suddenly I feel wide awake, my heart a stopwatch tick-tocking and the air rushing through my chest. Voice procedure shrinks the Floor to an airless box: language reduced until there is no room for interpretation. There are very specific things I need to say and do written in clear detail on the pages of this binder. All I need to do is follow them in a straight line, top of the page to bottom.

  “We’re losing fuel fast.” The pilot’s words escape between short gasps of breath. “We need to land now.”

  “Can you give me your position?” Beside me John is mobilizing everyone: ambulance, RCMP, JRCC. I watch him move across the room to let the supervisor know I have an emergency.

  I’ve spoken to this pilot once already today, earlier in my shift. The recollection comes back all at once: The pilot reporting an engine indication, a small leak in the gas tank he attributed to a possible rupture after picking up his load. He told me he planned to drop the water before heading back to the airport. I wished him safe travels, stepped away from procedure and let my voice drop like a newscaster from the fifties. It was a small indulgence. A lapse caused by boredom.

  “We are . . . We are currently fifteen kilometres west of Fintry Park.” The pilot’s voice has changed since the first call. When I spoke to him earlier he sounded confident. Now his voice is whittled to a thin edge. “We need crash and fire rescue.”

  “Roger.” My finger scans lines in the binder. “What are your intentions?” I know the question is meant to shift the pilot’s state of mind. It’s one of the most important lines we learn during voice procedure training. It’s like hitting a reset button — it reminds the pilot he’s the
only one in control of the aircraft.

  “My intentions?” I can hear the strain in his voice as he tries to handle the plane.

  “Crash and fire are on their way.”

  “There’s nothing but trees out here. I need a beach, a highway, something.” His voice splits, comes unravelled like the end of a frayed rope. “We’re dropping. Jesus Christ.”

  At the back of my mind, beyond the static, the hawk is still soaring, nothing but wings and air — the quietest descent. The radio goes dark.

  “Golf Foxtrot Victor Bravo, this is Pacific Radio. Do you copy?”

  A heavy blanket of electricity is filling the room, storm clouds piling. All the slugs are coming to life — animating — no longer slumped over their consoles staring into middle space. John is watching me carefully, but I won’t look over at him.

  “Golf Foxtrot Victor Bravo, this is Pacific Radio. Do you copy?”

  There are several more moments of silence before the high pitched tone of the emergency transmitter comes whining through the 121.5.

  “Shit.” I slam my hand flat on the desk. Seconds later the radio fills with other pilots in the area calling to report the crash. The language is like a force field helping me keep my distance from all the voices. There’s panic in all of them, but most keep it controlled well enough that I can understand what they’re saying, well enough that I can call them professionals.