14
Rockaway.
The Air Show is definitely underway, in progress, going on at this very moment.
I wake up to it, when a fighter jet starts the show with a sonic boom.
As danger continues to swirl with turbulence above my building, I jump out of bed. I dress fast, without thinking, without matching my socks.
This morning I catch my mother’s boyfriend, John Penrose, looking at the newspaper. Strange thing is, John can’t read. So he’s probably just looking at the comics.
I’m eating cereal at the breakfast table, across from John, when I notice the headline on the front page: Plane Crash Kills Six. There’s a full color photo of the plane standing upside down, tail end in the air, crushed against a small white house. The plane hit the house on the opposite side of the airport, near Rockaway. Neighbors gave their eye witness accounts to the report. They said they watched a plane struggle to stay in flight, heard the engine choke out, saw it come spiral spinning down. The newspaper article ends with irony. A family member of the dead pilot is quoted as saying, “… the pilot was very down to earth”.
The phone rings.
It’s Carl Busby.
He says, “Come quick!”
“Where?” I ask.
“The sand dunes. Come now!”
“It happened again,” I say.
“Hurry!”
I say, “All this time, I’ve been telling everyone in Rockaway planes keep crashing, that another plane will crash. Our neighbors just ignore it.”
“I know all about it,” Carl says. “But there’s more. So come now. Run, boy, run. Now speed, boy, speed. Now gun it. Now rush. Now go and get swift. Make a bolt for it. Dash on. Dart out. Keep chase. Sprint. Fling yourself into a gallop. Flash forward. Push the tempo. Just whisk yourself here and —”
I cut him off, saying, “Whoa, whoa, fucking, whoa. I’m coming. I’m coming. Be right there.”
“Right,” Carl says. “And bring eggs.”
“Eggs?”
But the old man hangs up.
Running into the living room, I stop just short of my mother. She sits legs crossed in the rocking chair, smoking a cigarette with a long dangled ash. Everything about her looks shot of nerves. Even her hair is frazzled to a split end.
John Penrose, her boyfriend, lay stretched on the couch, watching cartoons, eating ice cream from the box.
My mother, Janice Miller, says this is the loudest day she’s ever known to experience. She tells me she’d prefer the steady sound of a vacuum cleaner or a blender, anything to cancel out the sound of those airplane engines. She has cotton balls wedged inside her ear canals. This disturbs me, so I run straight for the door. I fumble with the locks and chains.
My mother stands up to pester me, traying her cigarette ash. “Where are you going?” she wants to know. “What are you doing with my eggs?”
I run out the door with my mother yelling after me that I forgot to take out the trash.
The Air Show is in full swing.
All along the sidewalks there are clusters of people who keep their heads cocked to the sky, shading their eyes, looking up at the remnants of engine exhaust that makes whites stripes and patterns against the blue.
One plane takes off from the airport, while another comes in for a landing, almost colliding.
As I pass a black elderly couple, I stop to quiz them.
I say, “Excuse me. Did you know planes have been crashing around this airport at an alarming rate?”
Constantly smiling, still looking up, the old woman says, “I just like the planes.”
The old husband says, “How about those old war planes, huh? Aren’t they something?
So I say, “Crashing planes, crashing all the time. Nobody holds the airport accountable. Pilots are dying.”
The old woman, still smiling and sky watching, says, “The planes just look nice.”
I remembered right then that I must still meet with Busby, so I run, carrying two dozen eggs.
The river next to the apartment complex is called Meadow Brook, but local cab drivers call it Ghetto-Brook. I cross a shallow part of the river without taking my shoes and socks off. I come to a fence that states no trespassing, threatens a fine, signed by a judge.
Jumping over the fence into the sand dunes, I’m quick to spot Carl Busby. He’s waving frantically at the planes, luring them in, then throwing eggs at them when they dip in close. He calls the pilot a “scum-sucker”.
I join the old man at the bottom of the pit.
The carnival music, plus the planes, plus the crowd, force us to shout back and forth.
Busby says, “This mission calls for timing, and you, young sir, are late.”
“Sorry,” I say, “I tried to sleep through this whole horrible thing. The noise of all the planes at once, it shocks the nerves.”
Busby says, “Hear those sounds? Those are the rumbling sounds of the belly of the beast.”
I say, “Another plane crashed. Hit a house this time.”
Busby says, “I know. That’s why I took refuge in the sand dunes this weekend. Less of a target.”
I say, “But why the eggs?”
I point at the carton dozen he requested I bring.
Busby says, “Oh, I suppose you’d rather throw rocks, instead, is that it?”
“No, no, nevermind. I just want the unpleasant event to end. Another plane crashes and this is how they celebrate.”
“I know, and let me tell you, it really boggles the mind,” says Busby.
Then he says, “I think now is the time for you to quit your job. Get out while you can. While you’re still intact.”
I say, “Quit? What? Why? I need to pay rent, medical bills for my mother.”
Busby says, “I used to work for Edison. So I know the danger he poses to you.”
I say, “Edison?”
Carl Busby, the eccentric old man answers with, “Edison. Full name, Edison Bard Kingman. Your boss. E.B. Kingman. Kingman Corporation. Ring a bell? He’s your other boss.”
Kids on four-wheelers and motor bikes race around the sandpit, fishtailing dust.
Planes do tricks, flips, spins, dropping with gravity. Thousands in airport attendance can be heard as an uproar, clapping. It sounds of disorder, confusion, commotion, an upheaval of sorts, mayhem all around, madness at every corner. My mind’s in a frenzy. The times are turbulent.
I say, “You know my boss? God, everyone knows my boss.”
And Carl Busby says, “Correction. He happens to know everyone. And all this random plane crashing, it isn’t so random. Kingman knows a little something about that, too.”
He takes an egg from one of my cartons, ready to chuck it.
He says, “The plane crashes have all been planned, intended, the entire sequence of them.”
“You mean to say, on purpose?
“Yes, in a carefully orchestrated attempt to kill off certain rival businessmen, who fly in for meetings, negotiations.”
“Killed? By who?”
“By the man who has 51 percent part ownership in airport operations. By the only local man capable of such a thing. Kingman.”
“How come nobody ever notices these businessmen are being murdered?”
“Because the airport remains open to the public. Sometimes the planes flown by your regular citizen are sabotaged, too. This way, with so many plane crashes, it appears like an unlucky fluke. The National Transportation Safety Board is usually paid off by Kingman, so the investigations are poorly handled.”
“Wow,” I say, stunned.
Carl Busby continues, “Only the tip of the dirty iceberg, my friend. There’s more.”
“More?”
“Kingman has contracts with the government to build spy planes that circle Painesville and Central Heights. These planes are loaded with such high-tech equipment, they can see through houses and listen to conversations at ground level. There are several of these contracts throughout the United States. More than you might imagine.”
Carl Busby goes on explaining all the various ways our privacy gets invaded, how our actions are caught on cameras, how our most intimate discussions get logged onto digital recorders that sort, analyze, and locate key words.
I listen to him, wondering whether any of this is true or not. Upon closer inspection, I look the old man over to see that he wears a weightlifting belt around his waist. Busby also has what looks like a pigeon feather tucked into his fishing cap. When I ask about his belt, he says he carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders. When I mention the pigeon feather, Busby tells me it’s meant to be a symbol of personal freedom. The string necklace around his neck displays several shark teeth. Eccentric as he is, the spy tech stuff he rambles on about sounds logical.
I ask about his days working with Frank Benzino.
“Experiment gone haywire,” says Busby. “I was his chief scientist. Inventor, if you will. Cutting edge mathematics and such. We had a falling out. Curious business, I tell you. Curious indeed. If I told you how curious, it would boggle your mind. Now I’m a janitor and part-time beekeeper. Which reminds me, we should go ice-fishing some time.”
Planes fill the sky. Some planes loop back to barrel in, while other planes air duel, dodging each other at the final second. Planes of all types perform upside down antics. The noise is incredible.
Busby says, “But we must not let them see us talking.”
“Who?” I say.
Busby: “The ones conducting this air raid, of course. The ones who watch the watchmen.”
I say, “I don’t see what you mean by that.”
Busby says, “It doesn’t matter what you see. Only what he sees.”
Again I ask, “Who are you talking about? Kingman?”
Busby says, “Yes! Who else? The voyeur himself. Kingman.”
I say, “Prove it.”
Busby says, “You want proof? Here, take this. Go see for yourself.”
He hands me a business card that prints the address of the Kingman Mansion, where my boss lives.
“We better split up. From monks and bells to the nanosecond, now, rise up, boy, rise!”
He turns a shoulder to me, headed for the shade of his tarp bunker, muttering under his breath for me to “pick a side.”
So I jog away, up the massive side of that sand dune hill.
Out of breath, I look back when I get to the top.
The old man waves from his campsite, then he starts to stir what looks like a campfire pot of screwball stew.