Flightsuit (11 page)

Leo didn't like the way the adult-child role felt reversed now.  Seeing Ethan confused only made him feel more afraid.  He wanted to bring back the confident Ethan who was going to take care of him.  He said, "Its ok.  Listen there's nothing bad about it, right?"  And before Ethan could answer something else, he said "Right.  It's just a funny dream you had."

"A few weeks ago, I dreamed that the people of a village came to me to help them save the village.  In the dream they were sheep farmers.  I told them they should mow a checkerboard pattern into one of their hills and use black and white sheep for chess pieces.  The players would
be shepherds.  They had to get the right sheep to move to the right square by voice only," Ethan said.  He paused, watching Leo's eyes.  "But that's probably not related," Ethan finished.

Leo stared, trying to read Ethan's serious face.  When Ethan suddenly laughed, Leo felt such a rush of relief that he laughed loudly too.  For some reason, even though none of his circumstances had changed, Leo felt relieved.  He didn't think that a crazy person would laugh at
himself.  As bad as his situation was, it would definitely be much worse if Ethan was some kind of nut job.

Ethan shoved some peanut candy bars into the pack
, and then sat down on the edge of the wooden chair to be eye-to-eye with the boy.  He'd always had a rapport with children, even before Ray was born.  He knew it was cliché to think of children as innocents, but it was cliché for good reason – it was usually true.  Kids would do mischief, and they'd try to get around the boundaries of any restriction placed on them.  They weren't angels.  But he'd never met one who consciously worked to harm another either. 

He'd read the Bible
, gone to church, and he believed in God.  Alone and lonely, having lost everyone he loved long ago, God was still real for Ethan, and he waited for purpose to come back into his life.  There were times he felt close to Him and times that he felt very distant and disconnected.  The greatest connection he ever felt with God was when he held his baby son, humming through the same tune over and again.  Softly bouncing with Ray in his arms and the setting sun shafting light through the trees, he felt Ray's little struggles relax into sleep.  He never felt God was greater than in those moments.  All creation, the mountains, the seas, unseen planets – all were less evidence of God, for Ethan, than Ray.

"I don't understand what's happening either," he told Leo, smiling reassurance.  "I see what's happening, but I don't know why.  I've spent a long time putting one foot in front of the
other, and getting up every day without being able to find answers to all of the 'why' questions I have.  We might not be able to find out why this is happening, but we can work through it together anyway."

It was as if a breath passed through Leo and calmed his fear.  Since finding the sleeve, everything had happened too quickly to process.  He'd just been falling from step to step without thinking through his situation.  At first everything seemed happenstance, but being found by a person who had somehow dreamed of the…creature?  Alien?  Seeing that Ethan h
ad dreamed of the creature whose sleeve he was wearing made Leo believe that rather than just a series of chance events, he was part of some plan that fit together in some, as yet, unknowable way – that made him feel a little better.  It would be even more terrifying to think that things just happened for no reason at all.

As Ethan turned around to collect the pack, Leo looked at the crouching figure again.  It's long, muscular arms joined thick shoulders.  The head was squat
, tight against the body with a round forehead and heavy brows.   Behind its head, from the crown of its squat head down to its shoulders, the neck stepped down.  It was strange to see such square geometric shapes on a creature.  There seemed no neck at all, but the eyes bulged like a chameleon so it probably didn't need to turn its head to see sideways.  It had a rock-slab jawline that looked like it might be able to bite hard into something, like a snapping turtle or alligator.  The bony upper lip covered just the top of the bottom one with two big tusks jutting up from the lower jaw.  It looked fearsome, Leo decided.  It wasn't hard to believe other creatures might fear it. 

He looked into its tiny wooden glaring eyes and thought,
it wants its sleeve back
.

Ethan turned back around.  He gently took the figure from Leo and put it on the table.  "Do you think you can walk ok Leo?"

"Yes, it doesn't hurt me unless I try to lift my arm."

They stepped outside.  Ethan locked the door with a key that he put back into his pocket. 

"Stay here Oscar," Ethan told the dog, although the dog didn't seem inclined to go anyway.  Oscar walked arthritically over to lay under the windowsill.

The house looked little differen
t from the deserted houses Leo usually explored.  The paint was almost totally peeled off the gray boards.  As Leo stepped off the wooden porch onto large stones stacked as steps, he looked back at the house.  The tin roof didn't have any holes or ripped sections like some of the houses did, but the roof was still rusted red-brown.

The grass
was shorter around the house. 

"I have one of those mowers with blades that spin as the wheel turns," Ethan told him.  I mow the yard every couple of weeks, so it looks like it used to, but if I miss a few weeks it gets away from me." 

A wooden box frame surrounded a thin layer of sand with weeds sprouting through.  Weeds grew high around the edges of the frame.  A rusted toy construction grader with "TONKA" imprinted sat partially buried along with other unrecognizable pieces of rusted and buried toys.

Leo looked at the toys, imagining a little boy who looked like an old man playing in the sandbox, with those same toys. 
I guess
, he thought,
playing out here by himself he was just like a normal kid, building roads and houses in the sand
.  Listening to Ethan talk about the boy, Ray, in the house, Leo kept imagining him as a kid that died a few years ago.  As Ethan talked, he pictured Ray playing with electronic toys, things that he'd play with himself, but seeing the sandbox made Leo wonder just how long ago the boy had last played here. 
Clearly, a long time
. 
What was it that Ethan said about his wife?  How long ago did she leave?  He said he wasn't even sure she was still alive.
  At the time, Leo just assumed he was exaggerating or being sarcastic like adults do almost all the time.  But looking at the rusty toys, he thought it might not have been sarcasm after all. 

He looked back at Ethan staring at the sandbox, probably remembering Ray playing there.  His hair was brown with only a little bit of gray in it.  His skin looked thick and healthy, not paper-thin like
Leo's grandfather's skin.  The backpack straps binding in the t-shirt pulled tight around his shoulders.  He looked strong and fit to Leo.  Although it had been years since he'd seen his father, he thought Ethan looked like a stronger, and nicer, man than he was.  Ethan came up behind him and gently lifted the sleeve up to look at the map on his forearm.  He asked, "You ok Leo?"  Leo nodded and smiled back.  "I just wanted to see if the map was changing as we walked".

Looking at the map reminded Leo that
another piece of the sleeve was nearby.  Ethan was looking at the map intently, but hadn't yet worked out what the other orange blip might be. 

"That orange pinpoint of light is where I think the other piece of the sleeve, or whatever, is," he told Ethan.  "I think we should look for it.  Look how close
we are."

Ethan thought about it.  Leo didn't seem to be in immediate danger
, and he was curious to see how he'd missed spotting something that was as shiny and white as the glass-metal sleeve so close to his house. 

"Ok," Ethan said, "If you start to feel dizzy or anything though we'll give up and just get you home.  Wait here
.  I'll get a shovel in case we need to dig."

He came back with the shovel
, and Oscar following. 

"Looks like he decided to join our treasure hunt," Ethan said smiling.  "I'll send him back once we get on our way."

"How old is he?" asked Leo.

"Two," Ethan told him.

The marker brought them to a pile of old boards and rusted tin sheets.

Ethan looked at it and then at the map Leo held up.  "This was a sheep pen.  I had a couple sheep.  The boards were rotting, and it collapsed five or six years ago," Ethan informed him.  "Try walking around the pen, and see if your orange marker completes a circle around the pen as you go.  That will tell us for sure we're in the right place."  Leo walked slowly around the collapsed pen, watching the sleeve's map.  Returning to his starting point, he nodded to Ethan.

Ethan stepped on top of the old tin roof and pulled a loose piece aside.  T
he screeching metal against old nails made a horrible racket in the otherwise quiet woods.  Leo looked around the clearing, nervous about making so much noise.  He wasn't sure why, but he always tried to be quiet in the woods.  On usual explorations of his green kingdom, he avoided dry branches or the rock scrabble that made surprisingly loud tumbling sounds if his step dislodged it.  When he made noises, it ruined the natural feel as if the presence of even one person disrupted the forest's quiet contemplation.  He liked the woods to forget he was there.

Underneath the top pieces of the tin roof, they noticed that the sheets
comprising the western face of the roof had a large hole, four feet in diameter.  The edges all turned down. Ethan thought this would make sense if something fell out of the sky and crashed through the roof. 

Good thing it hit here
, he thought,
and not directly over my bed
.

"Judging by the hole," Ethan framed his thoughts, "I guess whatever it is must have fallen out of the sky.  I thought there was some chance it had been hidden here by someone, but that hole's a dead giveaway."

Leo nodded.

Ethan stepped into opening and looked around. 

"I don't see anything on the surface.  Let me dig down a bit.  Be best if you just sit under the shade right there.  If you need some water, be sure to drink.  You probably need to try, even if you're not thirsty," Ethan told him.

Ethan used the shovel, trying to avoid using full force with it so whatever was down there wouldn't be broken or cracked
by it.

"Ethan?" Leo caught his attention. 

Ethan stopped digging and looked over at the boy.  "Yeah?  Are you ok?" 

"Yes, I'm fine," Leo reassured him, "I just noticed something."

"What is it?"

Leo pointed at the top of a tree twenty feet behind Ethan.  The large tree had full branches covered in green leaves
, and looked the same as all the other trees, except for its height.  It was much shorter.  Ethan said, "That's west.  The hole and the broken tree make a perfect line to the west."

They looked at each other, then Ethan continued digging.

Taylor sat in his car, parked between the two-lane road and the river's edge as his world unraveled.  His eyes darted between random points of focus as he tried to reel his mind back in. 

There was a piece of something blue near the base of a tree close to where lapping waves rolled against the coarse sand at the river's edge.  Possibly it was a piece of tarp, or a broken fishing lure. 

Foamy bubbles curled around in a pool created by the shelter of a large rock.

Flying nymphs flicked around each other in the sunlight as the river flowed over smooth rocks below the surface.

Haze rose from the hood of his car as river-cooled air pulled the heat away.

The yellow legal page with the checklist shook in his hand as he looked back down at it.

What was I doing?  It doesn't make any sense.  How could I have written this and read it dozens of times and thought that it made sense? 

He read the checklist again.  

"13. Keep Sowyer calm.  He is inclined toward anger and has tendencies toward solving problems with violence – do not argue with him about anything!" 

"14. Get artifact from Sowyer.  Feel it, hold it in hands make sure it's the real thing.  Give him the money.  If he balks, give him more money – as much as he needs to make it happen.  If there's a problem, kill him and take it." 
Kill him and take it?  Would I have really killed him for this? 

Taylor looked at the artifact.  He held it in one hand and the checklist in the other.  Turning it over in his hand, he had no idea why he'd wanted it so desperately in the first place.  From the moment he learned of its existence, it became his ultimate objective.  His head went
back and forth in disbelief.  
I was building the company into a revenue engine to support retirement in the Bahamas, socking away a fortune.  What made me drop my good plans for this?
  He remembered reading the checklist he'd developed to blackmail Sowyer into stealing the artifact.  He remembered coming back to his list several times a day thinking that maybe there was something he needed to think about, that maybe he was forgetting something.  But as he'd read through the tasks, he'd felt relaxed again.  He was on track. 
On track?
He wondered now,
on track with what?
 
What the hell kind of crazy plan is this?  I read this over and over and imagined sitting in a deck chair on the beach with my house in the jungle behind me, as if I was working some kind of plan that was going to pay for everything I wanted.  How does that even work?  How the hell does this damned artifact tie to paying for an island retirement? It doesn't. It doesn't tie together at all.

It's just a piece of metal, for God's sake.  It's nothing remotely useful.   Might be a piece of something, maybe, but without the something it doesn't do anything
.  Maybe I should get rid of it.  Maybe if I don't have it the police won't be able to pin it on me.  They are going to question anyone who ever touched the thing, to find out who swapped it.  They'll probably be looking for me.  I should throw it in the river and go straight to the airport before it's too late. 

Taylor opened the door and swapped the artifact into his right hand
as he prepared to throw it. 
Its deep enough here, no one would ever find it.
  He drew his hand back, meaning to throw it far out into the water, and stopped.  The image of himself splashing frantically around the river with his arms shoulder deep as he tried to find the artifact amidst the smooth river stones came to his mind. 
I'll only have to go find it
, he realized.  He leaned back on the car and stared at the artifact, relieved that he hadn't thrown it.  That would have been a big mistake.  He'd be able to exchange it for another duffle bag full of cash stacks. 

Wait, what?  It's happening again
, he thought. 

Clearly, there's no way I'm going to be able to sell this thing when the NSA is looking everywhere for it.  Who would I be selling it to anyway?  Where's that part of the plan?  Oh God, I'm going crazy.  

The checklist was still in his left hand.  He snatched it up to read it again for the thousandth time, like a man looking at a watch who couldn't recall the time when asked afterward.  He read line #15.

"15. Drive to Bumpas Cove in Tennessee." 

He'd driven for seven hours, pulled over on the roadside, parked by the river, and fell asleep listening to the water splashing over and around smooth river stones.  The moon was up by then, and the river wound like cold quicksilver from the mountains down to the irrigated fields he'd passed on the way.  He'd been exhausted.  He wasn't sure how long he'd been up without sleeping.  The last hour of the drive, he'd been drifting asleep every few minutes.  He was relieved to reach the river.

He
awoke with a start, looking around frantically trying to figure out where he was.  He hadn't seen detail in the dark, and had fallen asleep so quickly that he had no idea.  The checklist was crunched in his hand.  He opened it and read.

"15. Drive to Bumpas Cove in Tennessee." 

Ok
, he'd thought. 
That's complete
.  As he read the next line, he remembered switching on the interior light to read it last night.  It said…

"16. Wait in the car."

Last night, he'd read it and let himself fall asleep waiting.  Something was different this morning though.  When he awoke and read "16. Wait in the car." He'd realized that it was the last instruction on the list.  There was nothing else.  No further instruction.  No tie to another list or connection to a greater plan.  That's when everything unraveled.