Flight (65 page)

Money was requested, but money was denied.
The owners, two-thirds of a Botswan junta once-removed, had other
priorities. The captain of the Roberts, a wild-eyed Gabonese named
Christian Bongo, was ordered to load his cargo of used clothing and
make do. To insure that the captain understood his duties, the
owners made mention of the health of Bongo’s wives and
children.

The Robert’s wallows, but, to Prissi down
below, that movement feels like rocking. Soon that rocking, along
with a dreamy lullaby sounding deep inside her head, sends the girl
into many hours of the deepest of sleeps. It isn’t until a minor
miracle, also below deck, involving an acetylene torch and some
non-traditional and suspect plumbing is accomplished that the
Roberts gets back underway. When Prissi awakes she hears the roar
of the engines and knows she is bound for Africa.

The rested winger keeps her eyes closed and,
at first, only concentrates on the grumbling of the engines and the
thudding of the waves banging on the bow. When those sensations
finally bore her, she imagines flying with a falcon’s swift speed
and sharp sight. Coming up over the hill and down across the soccer
fields and, then, above the Mu and over Potter’s Pond where she can
pick out Nasty Nancy with her frizzy hair and clipped wings hiding
her butt against the low wall outside The Jig. Her hands are waving
as fast as her lips are moving as she tells Adam Lin of all she did
to help Prissi stay out of trouble, of how she misses Prissi,
but…fly on…there’s Joe with his new wings and his alete’s body in
that puffy stage of the newly fledged and the expression on Joe’s
face looks as tentative as his body as he stands alone at the edge
of the pond staring into its waters, but…fly, fly on…there’s Dr.
Smarkzy with a package tucked under his arm and he looks so old and
frail and, he, too, as he makes his way along the path made of
thousands of bricks, each with a graduates name pressed into the
clay, looks tentative in both his walk and thoughts, but,…fly…and
Prissi veers north to Lakeville, but before she even gets to the
edge of the Bissell campus, knowing the smug, self-assured look she
will see on Jack Fflowers face, she turns back and she is so high,
a klik high in the sky that from the ground she must look like no
more than a smudgy dot and she is back and forth over the top of
the building at the bottom of Central Park yet, as hard as she
looks, even though she can see a gorgon and chimera and a massive
centaur, there is no sight of an ancient man in a wheelchair,
but…fly on…seventy blocks north she hovers over Spicetown riding
the thermals and watches and waits until her patience ends and she
dives toward a window defending itself from the world with heavy,
faded red damask curtain and she’s through the glass and she has
the simpering little evil doll man on the floor, but…no…fly, fly
on…to a parking lot that hasn’t held a car in a half-century, high
above the Hudson, where darting, dipping, minnow fast, Jiffy Apithy
brings the soccer ball up field and his bright round black face is
split in two by brighter white teeth and he dribbles the ball from
knee to knee and then to his scarred head and then squatting down
he gathers his strength and just as all his opponents arrive he
snaps upward and the ball sails into the air higher and improbably,
impossibly higher and Prissi reaches out and catches it and looks
down and sees Jiffy laughing and hears a metallic noise and looks
up and sees a door open and a round-faced woman with ritual scars
on her cheeks, looking at her.

“I’m Princy Piety. If this god maddening ship
is gon sink, we gon sink with full bellies.”

Princy Piety steps through the bulkhead with
a battered tray and the smells from the food it holds make Prissi’s
nose explode. Hearing the injured girl’s snort causes a blanketing
laugh from deep in the African’s small strong body.

Prissi gives the slightest twitch to her
wings.

Fly on…….