The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (8 page)

“I’m a mapmaker.”

“Oh.”

“I map out where they can bomb the commies, when the time is right.”

“Really?” Brick’s eyes were wide. “Who?”

“Our guys. They go up in the big planes and find the targets with my maps.”

“How?”

“You know I’m not supposed to tell you any of this. It’s classified. You know what that means?”

“Huh-uh.”

“Secret. Means it’s secret. Folks think we’re not at war—cause we’re outta Nam. But we’re always at war. Long as those commies are there, we’re gonna find a way to get them. When the time’s right, we’re gonna get them. Let me show you.”

The man stood and moved the chair away from the girl’s bed. “We’ll make you the pilot,” the man said. “And I’ll call you Charles.”

He motioned for Brick to sit and handed him a chart from the rolling table. He put his hat on Brick’s head.

“Pretend that chart’s the map I made,” the man said, and he took a long sip from his flask and set it beneath the chair. Then he extended his hand to Brick, his fingers slightly bent as if he was holding something.

The boy took from the man what was only air, but Brick was careful to mimic the shape of his hand. In his hand, the man explained, Brick held a walkie-talkie. The man had one too.

With the words “take off,” the man sent the boy flying high above the German air base, over water and mountains, over Soviet enemy ground. “Do you see the target?” he asked.

The boy consulted his map. “Yes, sir.”

“Shoot, anytime.”

Brick let go of the controls and pushed the button.

The man made the sound of an exploding bomb in a stage whisper.

“Okay, got it!” Brick raised his arms for victory.

“No, no, no . . . you say something like . . . the Eagle has landed. Remember! It’s classified. It’s all secret. It has to be in code,” the man said.

“The Eagle has landed.”

“We copy you. Come on back down,” the man said. He drank again from the flask.

Brick smiled. Mission accomplished. The alarm bells suddenly went off as they often did, and a nurse entered the room to check.

The nurse, seeing the boy’s stricken face, said, “Don’t worry. If it does that, everything’s working well.”

The man adjusted his hat on the boy’s head. He saluted him.

“Want to be like your daddy, huh?” the nurse asked and turned to check on the girl.

“Okay, now what do you want to play?” the man asked after the nurse had left the room. The flask was in his hand again. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Brick shrugged. He was holding onto the walkie-talkie, the chart map, the feeling of being worthy of a salute.

“Well. What?” Another long drink.

“I don’t know.” Brick didn’t know games.

“Hide and seek. You want to play hide and seek?” the man said like a tickle.

Brick laughed.

“Hide and seek? Hide and seek?” The man did tickle him, lassoing Brick at the waist with heavy arms. Brick squealed. He thought he had stopped his body from needing this—touch that equaled joy. But then the tickles became jabs. The man’s hold was not a lasso but a noose.

“Let me tell you something, Charles. I tried to find you. I did try!”

The man had a sad faraway look in his eyes. Brick was shaking.

“You okay? I didn’t mean that, okay?” the man said. Suddenly he was weeping again, and Brick moved away, across the room.

He looked at the man from the safety of the doorway. “I know.”

“G
OING OUTSIDE
,” B
RICK
called to his mother the next day. He walked downstairs. The wind thumped the courtyard seesaw against the ground again and again.

Brick sat on a swing wet from the morning rain. He pushed hard enough to swing past the puddle below him, but he let his feet drag through the mud just because he was big enough now to reach. He imagined himself back in the cockpit, each splash through the puddle a direct hit on enemy ground.

“The Eagle has landed. The Eagle has landed. The Eagle has landed.” But it wasn’t the same.

Brick swung back and forth slowly to a stop. His reflection waved in the muddy puddle beneath him. And then the water suddenly splashed.

“What you tell them, Shorty?”

Brick was silent and shaking.

“Huh?” said the man, grabbing his arm. Brick hadn’t seen the man who raised pigeons on the roof in weeks. Brick had stopped visiting him when the man’s large ring bruised Brick’s thigh. He didn’t want to be called Shorty, and he didn’t want
the man to call him pretty. Besides, Brick liked a fancier bird than a pigeon.

“You told them I was up there? If I wanted to I could fix your pretty little ass.”

Brick had no words.

“Look, yo. Only a crazy bitch would kill her kids. That bitch looked crazy for real. I ain’t no criminal. The cops let all my pigeons go. They smashed the cages. You know how much money I lost because of your shit, Shorty?”

Brick stayed silent.

“Now you got nothing to say, huh?” The man held his arm tighter, and Brick could feel the ring press into his flesh. “Yo, Shorty. Anybody ask again you tell them the truth. Tell them what I’m telling you. I didn’t see nothing. Yeah, I was on that roof scoping out new places for my cages. And maybe I’m the one who broke the lock. But that was months ago, and that crazy bitch was gonna jump anyhow.”

Muddy and wet, Brick sat still even after the pigeon man let him go. He sat still even after the pigeon man walked away. Since the moment Brick said his new name he had not thought of the story that created it. He thought of it now.

Roger

“I hope she’s gonna get better.” The boy’s voice startled him awake. Roger had been sleeping with his head bent over Rachel’s bed. He looked up and then stood and saluted the boy.

“How’s it going?” Roger ushered Brick into the room. The mud was still wet on the boy’s jeans.

“Little wet outside, huh?” Roger said. “Here.” He took his jacket from the back of the chair and wrapped it around Brick like a cape. “Better?”

Roger wanted to erase yesterday. He wanted to hug the boy, but instead he patted his arm and said, “They say she’s doing better.”

“Maybe it’s the song that’s making her better,” Brick said.

Roger swallowed audibly and turned away.

“Sir?” Brick asked.

Roger’s stare into space was unbroken.

“I didn’t see a man,” Brick said.

“What? Where?”

“On the roof.” Brick took from his pocket the newspaper folded in neat squares. He handed it to Roger, who read only as far as the headline.

“I don’t want to read that shit.” Roger thrust the paper back at Brick.

“I said I saw a man,” Brick said. “But I didn’t. But I think maybe there was a man there.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what you think,” Roger said. “You a detective now? You think some man did it? Maybe you did it. Maybe I did it. Maybe I was the man. The police came here asking me the same shit. You know what I care about?” He paused. “I care about my little girl getting better—if she gets out of here—keeping her safe from everything. Including me.”

R
OGER AND
N
ELLA
held their wedding on a Saturday at a brick red Lutheran church in her Danish hometown, where it was legal for coloreds and whites to marry. Not much later they had a son. Charles. Roger felt like he’d done something. Taken hold of something in the world even if it wasn’t himself. He loved that boy. But the Little Man, as Roger called him, was broken. There was nothing exactly wrong with him. Ten fingers. Ten toes. He had the necessary parts and his mind was alert. But he was always sick. His stomach hurt. His nose bled without reason. His palms were always sweaty since he ran
three degrees hotter than everyone else. And his eyes had the dark circles of a thirty-five-year-old man.

At first Roger thought he could talk Little Man into being stronger. “Wasn’t it just you and the goose?” He held Little Man on his lap.

“N-n-no, Pop,” Little Man would say, pretending to struggle to get away.

“Now, you don’t even remember being there, do you? I remember. I remember that night you were born. Your mother was eating and drinking like no tomorrow. You see she never lost those pounds you put on her, don’t you? You’re the one gave your mama a nice black girl’s ass.”

“Roger? What are you saying?” Nella would call to “the boys” from the kitchen, her accent still heavy.

“Yeah, now you, Little Man, you stronger than you think. Now, as I recall, it was you or that goose your mother was eating. So you came right on out. Feet first.”

“N-n-no, Pop,” Little Man would giggle and try to tickle Roger at the waist.

“Now, you remember. You’re a Morse. The Morse men are a strong bunch.” Roger would pick up Little Man then and hold him in the air, jostling him.

“Put me down. P-p-put me down.” Little Man would laugh.

“Roger, stop the horseplaying. His nose will start to bleed again.”

“Will it Little Man? Will it?” Roger would toss Little Man into the air a bit higher each time he asked.

Little Man would laugh hysterically until Nella came into the room to stop it. Roger thought if he could will some strength
into that small body, Little Man would overcome the nosebleeds, and the colds and stomach pains that no doctor could ever cure. But Roger grew tired of Little Man being sick, of Little Man’s sickness. Roger got tired of being careful, of seeing how weak his son really was. Roger would beat him when his nose bled. His hands would twist the tender yellow skin on his son’s arm. Roger would use his military voice. “Stop that. Boy, you better quit.” He loved that boy. He could kill him.

R
OGER TOLD
B
RICK
that in the seventies the best thing to be was black. The white people thought you had moves. They thought you knew music better and deeper than anybody else.

As the only black boy in a family of Danes—and because he got the discount on liquor with his military ID—Roger was always the center of the party. They’d play some Stevie Wonder, drink some beer, drink some Seagram’s, and then some schnapps to top off the night.

That’s how they spent all their holidays. Roger, Nella and the boy would drive north to Denmark to see her sister’s family, or her sister’s family would come visit them on base in Germany. This visit Nella’s sister, Solvej came without her husband, a seaman.

“Watch out now, Nella,” Roger said. “We gonna have to move tonight.” Roger had never moved so good. Go on, Stevie, sing! Roger loved the harmonica interludes. He put his hands to his mouth like he was holding one.

Roger moved. He danced—and damn if he didn’t start to sing too. Solvej joined in. She was a choir girl and a woman without her man around. She was cutting loose.

Roger’s duet and slow dance with Solvej ended the night. But then there was the kiss good-night that lasted a little too long. It was the first time Roger had heard Nella raise her voice. She called her own sister a whore. It was also the first time Roger hit a woman—really. No, really. He didn’t know how it happened. But Nella fell into her sister’s arms crying, and she left with her sister. Roger was silent and drunk and watched them go.

Roger grabbed a cigarette and sat down. “My little Danish girl will come back. Won’t she? Won’t she, Little Man?” he said. Little Man stood behind the couch.

“Come here, boy,” Roger used his cotton voice. But Little Man just stood there. “Boy, I said come here!” Roger’s voice was all gravel. With that the boy sat by his father, made his father’s arm around him not a noose but a wing. “We just gonna wait. My little Danish girl will come home soon. She’ll come home.”

It was late, so late and the music was gone. The man and the boy fell asleep together on the couch, waiting, the cigarette still lit in Roger’s hand. Burning.

Roger didn’t know how much time had passed when he woke coughing from the fire’s smoke. Where was Little Man? He’d wriggled out from Roger’s hold. Roger kept yelling into the flames. Little Man was small for his age. He could hide good. He could hide anywhere. Where was he?

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The fire licked through the walls and inhaled the back of the wooden house in a quick blaze. Little Man was nowhere to be found, Roger told Brick. Still, he kept screaming his son’s name into the flames.

“NOOO!” R
OGER SCREAMED
as if he were reliving that night.

The nurse rushed in, faster than she did when the alarms would ring. She checked the tubes and looked at the lines on the monitor above the bed. “What’s the matter?”

Roger was holding the flask in his hand and looked at her blankly, unsteady on his feet.

“I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to go now,” the nurse said. “You’ll have to go.”

Roger stuffed the flask, now empty, in his duffel bag and placed his hat on his head. He put on the jacket that was keeping the boy warm and lifted the bag to his shoulder. Roger paused for a moment before the boy, then handed him the harmonica.

“This is for you, a gift.”

He turned and kissed Rachel’s forehead.

“You tell her,” he said, pointing a finger at the boy like it was a gun. “She’ll want to know that story. Tell her what she never knew. She needs to understand. Her mother and me, we wanted to be together again. Had to be after Charles. No one else could of understood. That hole inside. Nella and me, we made a promise. We were gonna make a family . . . safe. Now that promise’s broke. When Nella left with the kids in May . . . three months they’d been gone. Now they’re gone forever. Tell Rachel—,” he paused. “Tell Rachel now I’m sure she’ll be safe.”

Rachel

Grandma wants me in the church choir so I won’t be runnin the streets. Someone shot through the glass at the Wonder Bread factory store two weeks ago. It happened on a Friday night. On the news they said gang members did it. Not gangs on TV but real gangs from California. Hearing that must have scared Grandma because that’s when she said I couldn’t be out alone after dark—not even for school activities. At first when she said that, I thought she had learned about the secret Anthony Miller and kissing in the vestibule. But it’s been almost a year since the last time. Now Anthony Miller’s going with another girl. But if he said he wanted to meet me there again, I would.