back      

Soon as my dad pulled the car up the ramp I could see them: all the airline workers on the sidewalk, taking everybody's bag. One of them was a big guy and he had a thick black mustache.

          "Can't you come with me to the gate?" I asked.

          "Billy, where am I supposed to park?" He pointed to the line of limos and yellow taxis.

          "I'm afraid they're going to stop me with these things," I said, patting the bright-green backpack I had sitting on my lap. Inside was the box with The Ninja, The Maverick and The Alpha II.

          "What, those little rockets?"

          I didn't like the way he said little and the way his pale lips pressed together. He reminded me of Donna Paul, how she'd stared over the fence yesterday while I was gluing and painting everything on the picnic table. "Aren't you like five years too old to be playing with model rockets?" she said, flipping her brown hair back and forth. Donna wears Danskins and you can see her tits growing beneath them. A lot of guys think she's hot. The other week, at her thirteenth birthday party, I was supposed to tongue-kiss her for thirty seconds in spin the bottle and got disqualified when I stopped too soon. Ever since then she's been trying to make it seem like I'm so much younger than she is, when the truth is my birthday's a couple months before hers. Anyway, she didn't even have a point about the rockets because I wasn't playing with them, I was making them for my nieces, Jenny and Terri, and I told her that. "What do Jenny and Terri want with little boys' rockets?" she said then. "I thought they might like them," I said. But she said they wouldn't, that it was boys liked boys' rockets, and I had better spend my time making them something girls liked. "What's your point, Donna?" I said, "What's your point?" and she said, "Just what I said, Billy," and now here I thought maybe my dad was saying the same thing.

          "It says you're not supposed to bring them near an airport. Right on the box it says that."

          "Aah, Billy," he laughed, "they're not worried about you exploding anything."

          That's when I pictured a big roaring hole in the side of the plane, dinner trays and carry-ons flying right through. I pictured people clinging to the backs of their seats with their hair flagging toward the hole, and then somebody wouldn't be able to hold on any longer--he'd be sucked right out like a little piece of nothing, arms groping all around. So I said to my dad, "Maybe I should leave them home."

          "No, Billy, just bring them. They say that about the airport because of all the low-flying planes. If you send up a rocket near an airport, you could distract a pilot trying to land a plane."

          I'd never thought of that. "That’s true," I said. But then right away his big hand reached out, trying to ruffle up my hair, the way you do a kid. Luckily I saw it coming and was able to duck in time--I'd just finished fixing it before I left the house. I like my hair; it’s a light, Corn Flakes-color, and I fix it up nice when I go somewhere special like Florida.

          "Just don't go setting any off inside," he said, laughing again. But by then I was opening the door and all the loud sounds were rushing in, ruining the quiet: cars rushing and doors opening and closing and people yelling things and boot heels clacking and little black wagon wheels rolling over the concrete. I don't like places that ruin the quiet. If there's a place that ruins the quiet between you and a person, they live too far away.

          "Now make sure you give a ring when you get to Justin's," he shouted over the noise, and I stood with my bags, watching the long silver Oldsmobile pull away. I watched his far-off shadow-hand wave across the sunlight. Then I turned for the airport, holding my backpack tight to my shoulder. I wouldn't let the sidewalk guy who took my other stuff have it; I told him I'd carry it on the plane. I told the same thing to the counter lady who stamped my ticket, and she smiled at me and said, "What lovely blond hair." But I was very nervous about approaching the checkpoint. I thought the X-ray lady would see through to the engines and wave over the big-armed guard. Would you take a look at this?

          Explosives? The guard would say. He’d go through my bag and make me leave the rockets at the airport.

          But they're for my nieces, I’d say. I spent all week making them so we could fly them in the field behind their house. You have to let me take them through. You have to let me take them.

          But the X-ray lady, she hardly blinked at the screen when my bag was going under, and it just got spit out the back like there wasn't anything dangerous in it. So I slung it over my shoulder again and walked for the gate.

          It was funny what happened there. Because while I was sitting around waiting, I looked over all the people in the area and decided the one I didn’t want to be seated next to most was the skinny man with the glasses and the brown suit. He was slouching way down in his seat so his legs stuck out and people had to step over them to get by. At the same time he had his pants hiked up so you could see his striped tube socks and bits of his skinny shins: they were shock-white with black fuzz across. And this man didn't care about having nice hair to go to Florida with--his was all dark and clumped-up and greasy-looking. The color reminded me of olives, the shiny black kind I’ve seen my mom scoop out of a can.

          But then wouldn't you know, right when they started getting people on the plane and I was stowing my backpack under the seat in front of mine, I looked up and the skinny man was sitting down next to me. He didn’t bother saying hi, so I didn’t, either. And he didn’t have any bags he was carrying on the plane; he looked like he didn't have a thing except for himself and his suit.

           When I leaned back I had to tuck my right elbow in close to my side because he was taking up the armrest. His long skinny hand was dangling off the end of it, same chalky-white as his shins. I thought the man smelled. He didn't smell like olives exactly, but he smelled like he'd been sealed up somewhere for a while. And he started to hum something that didn't sound like a song, but just a hum that wasn't going anywhere and not trying to make itself anything. And so I looked out the window for a while, at the big metal wing and the bright beams of light spiking off the top; it’s good to have something to look at when you don’t want to look at something else. The plane hummed, too; it made a loud sucking sound like it was breathing in forever. After a while you got used to the breathing and that became the quiet.

          Then the girl came, her hair sticking out sharp like knives all around, one knife brown and the next knife white. She had black lipstick on and her eyes were edged with thick lines, like coloring-book eyes. She wore a black-leather jacket that was ripped in places, and a jeans skirt that looked like somebody'd drawn on it with magic markers--swirls and zigzags and words--and there were pins on it, too, and little hanging-things, and she had belts around her waist all kinds of silvers and blacks, and she wore her pair of stereo earphones so the metal connector was under her chin. She definitely didn’t look like anyone else.

          As she was sitting down in the seat on the other side of the man, she looked at me like she was surprised about something. “Hi,” she said, very loud, and some of the people in the seats around us looked up at her and at her hair. I nodded because I figured words would've been stupid.

          Soon as we were rolling I saw her hand reach up to the air vent--it had long black fingernails with white streaks and blotches; it moved the vent toward the man. Then I noticed the man's smell drifting to me more, so I reached up and turned mine toward the man. I thought if both of them were blowing at him from either side maybe the smell would stay put, but you could still smell it.

          Once the plane started going up the man's shoe near me started tapping. It was a huge black shoe with pinholes over the top and the sides in a kind of design. The sole was thick and hard-looking. I noticed the man's glasses were very thick, also, and that his eyes behind them were brown and buggy. They were staring at the emergency instructions card that was sticking out of the magazine pouch in front of me. It showed a guy putting on a life jacket in one frame and a plane floating in water in the next. The huge shoe kept tapping and so I kept looking out the window.

          Our own plane was going through a cloud. It was very pretty, like shreds of cotton blowing past, and I wished the window was like a car's you could roll down and stick your arm out of. I imagined the cloud-shreds blowing over me, and in between my fingers, smooth and cool. Then we were above the cloud and all below were clouds never-ending, like a giant white field. It seemed like you could've stepped down onto them and run across the bright tops.

          The plane rose even higher, and the breathing got louder, and I had to gulp and pop my ears. Then the seatbelt lights blinked off, and I undid mine. I saw the man had removed his already, and that he was all hunched over with his head on his chalky hand. Meanwhile his left knee was cutting into the space for my legs, so I had to twist myself more to the wall. But I'd hardly done that before I felt someone clap my right shoulder--it was the girl.

          "Bamm-Bamm," she said, leaning over the man's back, "you ever listen to The Smiths before?" She handed me her earphones, blaring tinny from black pads. Inside a guy was singing with a voice that stretched and moaned. I understood him to say, "Now I know how Joan of Arc felt," but I couldn't remember who she ever was. So I passed them back and shook my head, and she laughed and waved her black fingernails at me. "Bamm-Bamm, where you from?" she asked, slinging the earphones around her neck.

          "Lindenhurst," I said.

          "Lindenhurst? Where's that?"

          "On Long Island. It's near Babylon."

          "Babylon." She laughed. I guess it was a friendly laugh, but I wasn’t crazy about it. "That's out in Suffolk County, isn't it?"

          "Not too far."

          "Far enough. I should've known."

          "Why?"

          "You got a country look." Then she looked down at the man. "Hey, Bozley," she said to him, "Bamm-Bamm and I would like to talk. Why don’t you switch seats with me?" But the man just stayed hunched over, with his head on his hand. "You speak some other language I don't know about?" The man didn't answer; he didn't even stir. "Asshole, you deaf? I'm asking you to switch seats with me. Switch. Seats with me." She crossed her arms and wiggled her fingernails in opposite directions, but it was no use because people don’t have eyes in the back of their heads. "You here, me there." The man stayed put. "Ignorant shithead. Lean over more, then." She pushed at his back and the man's elbow slipped off his knee. But after a second, he just propped it back up again and laid his chin back on his hand.

          "My name's D," the girl said, "spelled D. No double E." She patted my shoulder and her nails grazed my back in a way that made me shiver.

          "That's not a name," I said.

          "Sure it is. People call me D."

          "Why do they call you a letter?"

          "Why not?"

          "Most people have more than one letter in their name."

          "So."

          "What's your whole name?"

          "Denise."

          "What's wrong with that?"

          "There's too many Denises."

          "I like Denise."

          D looked up the aisle. A stewardess and a steward were handing out drinks a couple rows up from ours. The stewardess had short brown hair and a long thin neck, and the hair before her ears curved to a point, like the sideburns they have on Star Trek.

          "You drink?" D asked me.

          "I'm not old enough."

          She rolled her lip out, slithery pink where the lipstick ended. "So. Neither am I."

          The steward had his back to me, but I could see the side of his tan face when he turned to look down on the passengers. He had bright white teeth and feathery brown hair that fell over his forehead. I watched his back move beneath the white shirt as he passed out cups of soda--it was wide and sectioned. His shoulders were wide, too, and you could see his arm muscles pushing out against his sleeves. Some of the ladies smiled up at him as they took their sodas, and I wondered if they thought he was good-looking. I wondered if D did.

           Then they were getting to us; they were closing in with their narrow cart crowded with bottles and cans and pitchers. I pushed my backpack underneath the seat more with my foot. The steward walked backwards till he was standing beside D. He was wearing brown, pleated pants and a thin brown belt with a gold buckle.

          "Would you care for a complimentary beverage?" he asked her. He stared at her hair-knives when he said it.

          "I'm going to buy Bamm-Bamm here a drink," D said, and the steward looked at me and smirked, I don't know why. Maybe because of The Flintstones name she called me, or because of my Corn-Flakes color hair. But all of the sudden I felt like a jerk and looked down at my bag.

          "What kind of drink did you have in mind?" I heard him ask.

          "A drink like Chivas."

          The stewardess finished serving the passengers in the row before us. She looked from D to me and then she squinted at the skinny man, still holding his head. "You better get some ID," she told the steward.

          "That's a good idea. Could I see some identification, please, miss?" He held out his hand; it was smooth and tan like his face.

          "Rupert, don't ruin my party," D said.

          "Rupert?"

          "Just give me two Chivases and a can of club soda."

          "Show me you're twenty-one and I'll be happy to give you two Chivas and a club soda."

          "Don't I look twenty-one to you?"

          "Honestly, I haven't the slightest idea what--"

          D spread her nails in the air. You wouldn’t have wanted to be too close to them, the way she did it. "Okay, fine," she said, and went rummaging through a black leather bag that had a lot of fringe hanging from the bottom of it, and little silver spearheads tied to the fringe. She handed the steward a beat-up card and his forehead wrinkled as he read it. He handed the card to the stewardess and her forehead wrinkled, too. Then she shrugged and said, "I guess," and handed the card back to D.

          "And I'll need identification from the young man," the steward said. "Young man?"

          But I wouldn't look up at him. I didn't know why he'd smirked at me the way he did. He must've thought who he was.

           "Look, Rupert--"

          "I don't know why you think my name is--"

          "The young man will have a club soda and give me a double."

          "A double."

          "Right."

          "And these are both for you."

          "Of course they are." The stewardess and the steward eyed each other. "Do I look like someone who would corrupt a minor?"

          "Do what you like," the steward said, nasty. And he shook his head all the while he was giving her the miniature bottles and the can--"And a cup with ice," D said--and all the while he was taking her money.

          "Excuse me, sir," the stewardess said to the skinny man, but he wouldn't budge his head from his hand. "Sir, can I get you something to drink?" Then she laid her normal-nailed hand on his shoulder, and he jumped right up, long arms flying all around and the left one hitting into me. "Oh!" the stewardess said, touching her hand to her heart.

          "Boz is feeling a little skittish today," D said. "You better stand clear."

          The man looked up at the stewardess like she was another part of the air--"Would you care for a drink, sir?"--then he hunched over again and put his head in both his hands.

          "Is he okay?" I heard the steward ask.

          D shrugged. "I'm not with that freak."

          "He's okay," I said, pretty loud.

          The steward looked at me and I looked right back. He batted his blue-gray eyes. I could hear the blood in my ears.

          "Would he care for a drink?" the stewardess asked me.

          "I don't think he wants to drink anything right now," I told them, and they rolled on.

          I breathed out, and D opened the can of soda and poured some of it into the cup with the ice. Then she poured one of the miniature bottles into the cup and the other into the can. She passed the can to me over the man's back, and it splashed a little and a couple of drops soaked into his brown suit.

          "Banzai, Bamm-Bamm," D said, raising her cup.

          There was a smell rising from the can like Listerine. "What kind of drink is this?" I asked.

          "Scotch. Scotch and soda. You spend a lot of time in your little house in Lindenhurst, don't you, Bamm-Bamm?"

          I didn't like the way she said that, either. "I guess so," I told her, sipping from the can. It sent a sharp burning down my throat and made the inside of my nose tingle. When I opened my eyes again, D was smiling, bright and sharp. I forced myself to take another sip, and that wasn't so bad as the first one, still I was pretty sure I didn't like Scotch and soda. But I drank it for a while, and D and I talked some more, about the movies we’d seen and the places we hung out in, and at one point I told her I didn't like the steward too much, and she waved her hand and called him a wasp, and I figured that couldn't be anything too great because wasps are pretty annoying and ugly, and so, "Good," I said, and then D ordered more Scotch, but from the stewardess, and we drank some of that, too, and I was beginning to feel a little laughy and fuzzy by the time the thing happened with the man. It didn't happen all at once: first his hands started rubbing over his face and his legs started twisting back and forth and his huge black shoe started tapping, tapping all around, and then it just struck right out and hit my backpack.

          "Hey!" I yelled. I didn't mean to yell so loud. I snatched up my bag and looked at the side of the man's face the way it twitched.

          "What do you have in there?" D asked, right away. But I shook my head. D straightened up in her seat then, squinting her black-lined eyes. "Tell me what you have in there."

          I leaned over the man's back. "Rockets," I whispered.

          "What kind of rockets?" She said it loud as loud could be.

          "Shhh. Model rockets. I brought them for my nieces. They live in Florida."

          "Do they fly?"

          "Well, yeah, they fly very far up. It says right on the box you're not supposed to launch them near an airport because--"

          "Let me see one."

          I shook my head and giggled a little. I didn't mean to giggle because I was very serious about not wanting to show them to her. "I don't think I ought to take them out."

          "Why not?"

          "I don't know if I'm allowed to have them with me." I giggled again.

          "Keep 'em low." D was smiling, too, now.

          "No, I--"

          "Bamm-Bamm, let me see your rockets."

          I looked around as I unzipped my bag and took out the long white box. I could feel the man's buggy eyes staring at my hands as I lifted off the cover and took the top rocket out of its tissue paper. It was The Ninja, all black and thin with a long pointy nosecone and long pointy fins, and on the side was a decal with letters made of orange sword blades. The back of my neck tingled as I passed the rocket to D and I noticed the man's head turning and looking at it in her hands. It made me very nervous to have someone else holding the rocket and I was hoping D would just pass it right back. But she examined it for a while, and then the man's legs started swinging again and his head started trembling a little.

          "But Bamm-Bamm, this is only plastic and cardboard. Why wouldn't they let you bring on plastic and cardboard?"

          "No, it's not the rockets, it's these." I fished into the bottom of the box for one of the engines, like a small piece of yellow-brown pipe. She took that in her hand, too.

          "So?"

          The man's knee hit mine. "Look in at the bottom. It's got gunpowder inside."

          "Oh, I see. So what does this do, then, explode?"

          The man made a loud cracking sound. We looked right at him.

           "Oh my God, it speaks!" D said. Then his legs swung really fast. He hunched over, straightened up, hunched over, straightened up. D leaned away from him, nose flaring. "Is there something wrong with you?" she asked. But the man kept twisting and hunching and straightening. "Are you some type of epileptic?" He shook his head from side to side and kept on shaking it. "Are you sure? Because I once met an epileptic and he was acting just like you're acting right now." He shook his head faster, he hunched and straightened faster, he swung his legs faster. "You want me to call the steward?"

          All at once the man went still. Then he spread his long arms out, slow and straight, till his left hand was nearly touching my window and the right one was pointing into the aisle. "No one can help us now," he whispered.

          "What did you say?" D asked.

          "No one can help us now."

          "Bozley, what makes you say such a thing?"

          "This plane--" the man said, and he stood up. He was very tall, he was taller than anyone. Heads in the middle aisle looked up; heads in the seats in front of us looked up and around. "This plane--" he said louder.

          "What about this plane, Bozley?" D was grinning.

          "This plane--is--going--to--"

          "What is that man saying?" a lady asked.

          "Daddy!" a boy said.

          "This plane--is--going--to--"

          "Crash!" the boy screamed, and then someone else said, "Crash?" and then the word shot around the cabin--“Crash!” “Crash?”--and one by one passengers started standing up and talking loud. “What’s going on?” “Is there a problem with the plane?” I didn't see any reason for them to be doing that: we were still just coasting along, calm as could be; it was all so sunny and normal still, out the windows. But the passengers, they didn’t seem to need a reason; they just kept talking louder and asking what the problem was; they kept threatening the man and yelling for someone to get the captain and pressing like crazy on the orange call buttons. Then all at once the steward and the stewardess came bursting into the cabin, wide-eyed and darting row to row, and sometimes they pressed down on people's shoulders, trying to get them to sit back down. D and I were the only ones near us who stayed calm; we were an island of quiet with waves crashing all around. And the man standing between us, he had his hands over high, conducting the waves: "This plane-- This plane--"

          D nodded to herself as she watched it all happen, a black-nailed finger to her lips. I took the chance to snatch The Ninja and the engine off her lap and put them back in the box and the box back in the bag, and just in time--because then the stewardess was at our row, trying to reason with the man. "Please sit down, sir; there's nothing wrong with this plane." D reached over and squeezed my fingers; her hand was warmer than I expected. "Bamm-Bamm, come on," she said. Then she let go and got out into the aisle.

          "Where?" I asked.

          She felt inside her jacket pocket. "I got something I want to show you."

          I grabbed my backpack and climbed over the seats and the armrests, trying not to touch the man or the stewardess. D took my hand again in the aisle and she pushed people aside as we walked down to the end of the plane where all the bathrooms were. None of them was occupied. I guess if a person’s expecting a plane to crash, the last thing they think about is needing to go--or maybe they’ve done that already, down their leg. D opened one of the middle doors. "Gimme that thing," she said, taking my backpack and tossing it on the floor. She wouldn't let me pick it back up; she kept pushing on my shoulder for me to go inside. There was hardly any room in there for us, and once she slid the latch closed she was leaning right into me with her leather jacket and her black lips. I smelled the Scotch on her breath and I saw the wet point of her tongue and then I could feel it in my mouth. I felt her teeth beneath her lips; her lips were smearing over me; they tasted like wax. She undid my fly. Her fingernails dug into the skin beneath my balls, then she pushed me so I was sitting on the bowl and my dick was standing out in the open air. I closed my eyes and a voice came out of the ceiling: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. This aircraft is operating under very normal conditions. There's no reason to suspect any malfunction whatsoever. Kindly be seated and we'll clear this matter up ASAP." Then I heard something shaking like a little can of spray paint, and there was a strong smell that reminded me of rubber cement. D was standing over me sniffing from a little brown bottle with a yellow label; just above her finger was the red word RUSH. She held the bottle under my nose and then the smell was so strong my stomach turned.

          "Breathe in deep and hold your breath," she said.

          It wasn't rubber cement; it was a liquid, and I could see clear through it to the bottom of the bottle. I felt the liquid mist up my nose. At first I thought nothing was happening to me, but then I felt my heart--it started pumping alarmed and loud; it pumped and it rose up, knocking at my ribs, like it wanted to be let out of my chest, there was something coming after it fast. I breathed out, and it was like all the blood in me came racing up to my face, filling my head, and my cheeks were swelling and thumping hot and in my ears the blood was hissing and echoing and my heart was drumming bur-rum bur-rum and D's face was coming loose in long wet streaks--long black smiling lips, long black eyes with wiggling black tails--the walls were wheeling all silver and white and flecked, the dots on the ceiling were buzzing in circles like crazy gnats to the bur-rum bur-rum bur-rum and I wondered if I would stay that way and never be normal again, if my heart would burst and I would die.

          In a while it slowed, and I felt a weird sliding feeling and I realized D was sitting on top of me and that my dick was going right up her underneath the skirt and the pins. She had the little bottle to her nose and she was staring blank at the wall above my head and she was coming down faster and faster. Then all at once the payload came shooting up through me and my head was aching and there was no place to put my knees. When the shooting stopped I closed my eyes again and felt myself rolling back, as if from the edge of a cliff. I saw the steward's face. I tried to make the face go away; I tried to concentrate on D and on the sliding feeling, and I tried to think of Donna Paul and of how pretty she was supposed to be and of the soft, powder-smell that had surrounded me while I was kissing her. But the face didn't want to go away; it wanted to keep staring at me with its blue-gray eyes and its smooth-tan skin; it wanted me to imagine that my dick was his dick, and that the inside of D was the inside of me, and that he was smiling and saying, Billy.

          "Okay," she said.

          "What?"

          "Come. Come now."

          "What?"

          Then she made a raspy, groaning sound, and said, "Fuck me, white bread; fuck me, farm boy," and dropped the bottle, and then the whole room smelled of rubber cement and she was standing up in it and pulling on the hem of her skirt. I yanked up my pants and jumped for the door. "Bamm-Bamm, where you running to?" Then I was in the bathroom across the hall, leaning on the sink and waiting for the walls to stop spinning; and just before they did I heaved up, but nothing came out except spit. I breathed through my mouth and pulled my pants down again and looked at my dick; it was damp and red and shrunken-up and it had just been in a girl. I leaned against the sink and splashed water on it and cleaned it off with the little bar of soap and thick paper towels. I took more towels and wetted them and wiped the black off my lips. Then once I finished everything I went to smooth my hair down in the mirror, but my eyes were there and they kept staring at me like there was something they knew now. Bil-ly, they said, lispy and mocking-like, Billy-boy.

          Outside the smell hung in the aisle. I could feel it landing like poison drops on my tongue; I felt it dirtying my just-washed hands. D was still in the bathroom where it had happened. She had the door closed again and the occupied light was lit. I looked for my backpack. It was lying half inside the bathroom across the way, half on the orange-brown carpet. It seemed thrown there and forgotten. I slung it on my shoulder and hurried up the aisle.

          Everyone was in his seat now, eating fruit and cheese. And when I got to our row, the skinny man in the brown suit was gone--there was nothing on our three seats but D's earphones. I looked at the lady in the seat behind D's and started saying all these things, I don't why: "Wasn't there a man just here? Wasn't he screaming and saying the plane was going to crash? Wasn't there a man just here?"

          The lady put her pear down on the tray. She reminded me of my Aunt Sarina, the way her hair flipped up at the ends. "Well, sure there was; you didn't see him? That was some struggle they had getting him up to the front cabin. I heard someone say he was a Vietnam veteran. His plane went down in the war."

          The man beside her rolled his eyes. "He wasn't any Vietnam veteran."

          "Now that man over there said--"

          "I don't care what that man over there said. I'll tell you what he is, he's a . . . "

          I walked to the front of the plane. Past the curtains, the man was sitting on a roomy seat near a window, and the stewardess was sitting beside him saying soft things. She looked just the way she did before, with her short brown hair and her pointy sideburns and her long thin neck. And the man still had his glasses and his brown suit and he was holding his head in his chalky hand. And when I walked back to my seat, I saw the steward pushing the silver cart up the aisle, and he had his tan face and his nice hair and his wide shoulders; he had all that still. And the plane was still flying. And the clouds outside the windows were still bright white. It was everything looking up at me saying, Nothing ever goes away.

"Rush" was first published in Southwest Review.