and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.
What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.
Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmering waves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place.
Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the ribs.
“Wake up,” says Ricky.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.”
Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you watching for, Roy?”
“Like you said. A plane.”
Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips. “Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.”
“Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions.
“Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your retarded brother.”
“Dug ain’t retarded.”
“Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You got the Glock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off, rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?”
Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.
“Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the safety on, how not to fire it.”
“What’re you saying?” Roy asks.
“I’m saying the gun is for show. Don’t shoot nobody is what I’m saying.”
“Okay,” says Roy. “I won’t.”
“Good. Little while, the aircraft will circle the field. It will land from the east, over there,” Ricky says, indicating where the long runway blends into the low scrub pine. “It will taxi to us. First thing you do, when the engines shut down, you come around from behind and put the chocks under the wheels. Think you can do that?”
“I guess.”
“Make sure you come at it from the back of the plane, behind the wing, so you don’t get your fool head cut off by the props.”
“Okay.” Roy files it away, the propellers are dangerous, watch out for the props.
“You just follow my lead,” Ricky says. “Wheels chocked, okay? Next, we get the passengers out of the aircraft. There’s a little door unfolds in the tail, that’s where they’ll exit. Don’t show the gun till their feet’re on the ground.”
“How many passengers?” Roy asks, just to show that he’s always thinking.
“One or two,” Ricky says, indifferent to the question. “Whatever, you just hold the Glock on ‘em. Don’t say nothing, just look like you mean it. Don’t let ‘em go back in the plane but don’t shoot ‘em. I’m doing all the shooting.”
Roy follows Ricky to his BMW, parked nearby. Dirt adheres to the lower panels, fouling the hubs, probably messing up the brakes, too. Waste of a good car, Roy thinks, not meant for the backcountry. And then Ricky Lang, his scary new boss, Ricky the crazy damn injun who is going to change Roy’s life, he pops open the BMW trunk, produces an oversize, odd-looking rifle. Almost a crossbow look to it, fitted out with some sort of dartlike powerhead.
“What’s that?” Roy wants to know.
“Animal tranquilizers,” Ricky explains. Showing his white teeth in a killer grin. “Works on people, too.”
8. Jumping Into The Bare Blue Sky
There are some things your eyes refuse to see. Sights unimaginable, or so out of context your brain can’t make sense of them. That’s how it is with Kelly’s secret photo album. I’m looking right at the pictures and still it doesn’t make any sense. What would my daughter be doing on a runway, near a small airplane? Why is she grinning so mischievously? What is she holding up to the camera, some sort of backpack?
I know what it is but find it hard to even think the word, let alone speak it aloud.
Parachute.
Must be a joke. She’s kidding around. Like those old trick photos on Coney Island, where you stick your head through a hole in the canvas and pretend to be a cowboy on a painted horse. Like that.
More photos. Kelly climbing into the little airplane, wearing a baggy jumpsuit and what looks like a crash helmet. Kelly crouching inside the plane, giving a thumbs-up. Kelly buddied-up with a handsome pilot, a young man with dark, soulful eyes, gorgeous hair and white, white teeth. I didn’t really get a good look at the guy on the motorcycle, but something about the way this young man holds himself erect, good posture even sitting down, something makes me think this might be Seth.
If so, he’s way too old for a girl of
