by James Mathews
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“Remember, if it jams on you, don’t force it.”
Ricky Rose nodded dutifully at the command, which constituted his father’s first words to him that evening. Until that point, the old man had done nothing but scoff and gesture – as he grabbed the car keys clipped to a ring of rattling dog tags, as he patted the pockets of his olive drab flight jacket, no doubt making sure his 8 oz bottle of Evan Williams was there, and finally, as he lumbered out to the crusty ‘74 Ford Ranchero with its mysterious and imposing manual transmission.
From the doorway, Ricky’s mother shouted, “Why aren’t you practicing with the Jetta? You won’t be taking the driver’s test in that old stick.”
Ricky never answered her. Nor did his father. She was right about the test, of course, but Ricky had been pestering his father for over a week to let him drive the truck or, as they all called it, “the stick.”
Sure, Ricky was nervous. He knew his father was a man who didn’t accept any hint of weakness in the family, especially from Ricky. The last thing the teen wanted to do was insist on a course of action that he wasn’t ready for. Worst case was his father taking over and driving back to the house because Ricky couldn’t cut it. Then again, his father always said that life was about taking risks. And, more than anything, Ricky wanted to please his father and assumed risk-taking was the quickest route to understanding him.
Now, as the teen steered the rattling truck down the long gravel driveway of their house, he thought it might not be so bad after all. He felt in control and focused. That is, until he eased the truck to a stop at the end of the driveway and the stick promptly hacked up a sputtering cough and quit.
His father snickered beside him and said in a muted but annoyed tone, “Clutch, key, shift. You know the drill.”
Ricky half expected his father to launch into a lecture about how his own father had taught him to drive with “the back of his hand.” It seemed that everything his father learned in life was similarly instructed – although he had never raised a hand to Ricky. But the old man stayed quiet and watched. The setting sun flickered behind the trees in the distance, its power dimming in the wake of a humid day.
Back on the main road, Ricky trained his eyes forward, never losing sight of the tachometer to guide the timing of his shifts. There was no doubt he was getting the hang of it. Not that he anticipated driving the old thing that much. The truck – its engine running about as smoothly as a shaken coffee can filled with rusty screws – already had three wheels in the grave.
“Drives like a dream,” Ricky said, grinning at his dad. “They don’t make ‘em like—“
“Eyes on the road,” his father snapped. The old man was now also staring straight ahead. “And flip your headlights on.”
Ricky did as he was told. “Want me to take sixty-eight?” he said.
“Sixty-eight,” his father repeated, the word lingering on his lips as if he could taste it. His hand migrated into his flight jacket for the bottle. He carefully unscrewed the cap, took a long pull, then grimaced. “Hang a left at Main,” he said, coughing. “Let’s head out to the airpark.”
“I think they’re still flying. We can’t get on the flight line.”
“I know that.” Again, subdued annoyance.
Ricky followed Main until it dead-ended at the edge of the municipal airpark flight line, which was fenced in and festooned with warning signs about trespassing.
“There,” his father said. “Pull up a little further, cut the engine.” The old man took another drink and said, “Keep an eye out.”
“For what?”
Again, his father didn’t answer. The two sat quietly. The engine tick sounded like a tiny hammer under the hood. To their front, the airpark runway, with its long array of landing lights, extended into the distance until it disappeared at the horizon. Somewhere beyond the glittering control tower on the left, a utility vehicle was backing up and its warning signal of Bamp! Bamp! Bamp! cut across the gathering dark.
Ricky’s father looked down at the bottle in his hand and chuckled, as if surprised to see it there. He shook it and seemed to marvel at the contents. “Don’t ever do this,” he said.
“I promised mom I wouldn’t,” Ricky said. He winced a bit, wondering if that might trigger some reaction.
But his father said, “Good boy.”
They remained silent for a long time. Ricky didn’t want to be there, sitting, doing nothing, his father brooding the way he always did when he started to drink, on the way to becoming so drunk he would sink into whatever chair he was sitting in until the booze finally wore off and seeped from his pores. Ricky considered turning on the radio, but didn’t. At the far end of the runway, a small passenger plane, a Cessna 340 by the looks of it, taxied into position, facing them.
“Listen,” his father said, and they both jumped, startled by the sound. “Your mom and I…we’ve been…”
The Cessna fired its engine and roared down the runway, its tiny silhouette growing larger as it approached until it finally lifted off the earth and whooshed overhead. From their vantage point, it appeared as if the plane had only barely cleared the fence, but Ricky knew from his father that it was merely an optical illusion and the plane had taken off well ahead of the runway’s blue approach lights.
“They’re all praying if they know what’s good for them,” his father said as soon as the plane was snatched from view.
“Who?”
His father gestured with the bottle. “The pilots. The passengers. That’s the time when a plane is most vulnerable. Take off. That’s the time to pray.” He paused long enough to take another swig. Ricky’s father was an Air Force vet, an F-16 pilot who had, for reasons never fully explained but likely tied to his drinking habits, returned from Iraq no longer on flight status. He had deployed overseas several times, the last being when Ricky was eight years old. Ricky wanted to respond to his father now, but he held his tongue. The old man rarely talked about his wartime experiences, at least to Ricky, and Ricky felt that he might do just that if he wasn’t prompted out of it.
As if in response to the pause, his father exhaled roughly and said, “There was this guy in Iraq, a pilot. To this day, I can’t remember his call sign. He took off on a two-ship mission. Got all the way to the end of the runway and cranked it. Pulled a ninety degree vertical, straight up.” The old man held his hand out, palm down, tracing the flight path. “Right up to the heavens. You do that by pulling the stick all the way back and then leveling it out. Believe me, it sounds easy but it’s not like a video game. Doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve got in the seat, your heart feels as flat as a Frisbee. Some guys can take it. Most can’t. They call it the G High. That’s when the G force flattens the heart, in fact, suppressing the beats-per-minute. The high comes from the heart fighting against that resistance. Anyway, the afterburner flames from the engine were the length of a football field. Most beautiful thing you ever saw. If you didn’t know better – and all us pilots watching knew, trust me – this was a serious problem. The controllers in the tower knew too. They were all freaking out. Not the pilots though. We just admired the fireworks because we knew there was nothing we could do. And then the bird exploded.” He took an abrupt swig as if to extinguish some burning in his throat. “That was something to see too.”
Ricky waited for more, but his father did not speak for almost a minute. Finally, Ricky asked, “Did you know him?”
“Who?”
“The pilot.”
“Hmmm…” His father said, before turning to look out the window. Ricky leaned forward. It was dark enough now that he could make out the old man’s reflection in the glass. At first, he thought his father might be crying, but the old man’s brows had simply tightened as he stared intently, as if searching for something, something misplaced, something necessary.
After another short pause, his father turned back and gestured at the airpark flight line again. “One of the tower guys dispatched the fire and rescue even before the sound of the explosion reached us. PJs were in their rides and screaming out there too.”
“PJs?”
“Para-rescue. Bad asses, let me tell you. Anyway, after a second or two, we saw the white plume of pilot’s parachute and we all cheered and hugged and high-fived. You would have thought we’d just won the war or something. Then we heard back from the PJs. The egress chute had deployed but not in time. At the end of it was the dead pilot, charred and smoking to the core. Can you imagine that? A blackened corpse drifting peacefully down from the sky.” Ricky’s father swallowed the last of the whiskey. “God I wish I could remember his call sign.”
Ricky shifted in his seat. He reached out and touched the dog tags on the keys as if to start of the truck, but pulled his hand back. He suddenly wanted to be home more than anything else in the world. For a reason he didn’t fully understand, he felt deeply saddened that he wasn’t home, as if he were miles away instead of minutes.
As if sensing this, his father stuffed the empty bottle back into his field jacket and said, “I need you to be the man of the house for a while.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe a long while.”
“Okay.”
“You think you can do that?”
“I think so.”
“Good boy. Now I want you to drive. Go ahead, start it up. Now reverse. That’s right, get it in there.”
Only after Ricky had angled the truck back toward Main Street did he realize he was crying. He wanted to say something, but he sensed that his father had not noticed the tears and Ricky didn’t want to draw attention to the fact.
When they reached the T-section at Airpark Road, Ricky brought the truck to a smooth idling stop. “Textbook,” his father said approvingly. “Okay, now before we go any further, I need you to listen to me. Very carefully, okay? You listening?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to drive home. Take Main, then sixty-eight. But I’m not going to say anything else while you drive, okay? I need you to pretend I’m not even here. Do you understand?”
This time Ricky had to swallow before he could speak and the words came haltingly. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good boy. You won’t really realize it until later, but this will be the most important lesson of your life. Now go. Drive.”
Ricky shifted gears and eased out onto the road. He was focused again but also calm and confident. Only once did he grind the gear, downshifting from third to second, but even that was barely audible, like the shuffling of cards, something he felt in his fingers rather than heard. He waited for his father to intervene, to correct, but the old man was silent, as promised, letting it all play out as if the teen were all alone in the truck.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ricky saw his father’s dark frame go slack, distorted. And it was only after Ricky wheeled into the driveway, the headlights splashing across the twin stands of white oaks that marked the property entrance, that he caught wind of the smell. It was an acrid burnt smell, a mix of clothing, hair, fuel. Just a whiff and for just a moment, a glimmer of time and scent.
As he pulled to a stop next to the Jetta – clutch, brake, shift –he turned the key and drew it out of the ignition, the dog tag dangling in his fist. He sighed and sniffed at the air, to see if he could catch the odor again, but there was nothing but the scent of sage brush hung up on the warm early evening air. He heard his father’s voice again, more muted than before. “Now lock the stick into first. Good. Now get out and walk into the house. Go on. Keep pretending I’m not here.”
Ricky didn’t move. His hand felt grafted to the wood knob of the gear shift. “I don’t want to,” he said.
“Do as I say.”
Ricky took another deep breath. The tears had long since stopped and were dry on his cheeks. He turned and looked at his father. He didn’t know what he would see in that moment, but the old man looked perfectly normal, not even drunk. Just a mild expression on his thin face, patches of stubble across his chin. “No,” Ricky said to him. “I won’t.”
And that’s when his father said something he had never said before, at least not to Ricky. “Please, son.”
Ricky wanted to cry again. He felt the tears churn up from his chest and into his throat. He felt as though his father wanted him to cry. But Ricky didn’t. Instead, he cranked open the door and stepped out. From the cab, he turned and walked slowly toward the house.
“Don’t turn around,” his father said. “Just keep walking. Remember, I’m not here, but I’m right behind you.”
Ricky took each step on the porch. The wood groaned beneath his feet. The porchlight was on, already clouded with summer insects, and he could hear his mother singing a tune inside, a sad song she always hummed when she cooked. Blocking her from his view was a gold star banner with fringe that hung in the kitchen window.
As he pulled open the screen door, Ricky listened for his father’s footfalls on the porch steps, like distant echoes of his own. But there was nothing but his mother’s sad, weary song.
And that’s when she called out to him, sweetly and without worry or sorrow. “You finally getting the hang of it, huh? I know your dad would be proud.”
I’m not here, but I’m right behind you.
Ricky squeezed the dog tags in his hand and, alone, stepped inside.
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James Mathews is a retired Air Force/Air National Guard Chief Master Sergeant and graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Masters of Arts in Writing Program. He served overseas in many real-world deployments, including two tours in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Florida Review, The Wisconsin Review, The South Carolina Review, The Pacific Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Northwest Review, and many more. His work has also been featured in several literary anthologies, including the 2015 Best American Mystery Stories. His short story collection, Last Known Position, was published by the University of North Texas Press and won the prestigious 2008 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His website is jamesmathewsonline.com
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