The forgotten pilot

The forgotten Pilot

By Jennifer Anne

 

At the hospital Alistair leaned against the cool, stark white walls. He hated this place. He felt the death, the sickness, the pain. It was the smell. It burned in his lungs, and gave him a headache.                                 

He watched a small boy in the waiting room, the child’s mother reading an old and tattered magazine. The child wound himself around her feet, making a quiet vroom sound as he twirled a tiny plastic plane in his pink hands. Alistair watched smiling to himself as the small plane flew higher and higher, diving and ducking around the small boy and his blonde curls. His light blue eyes dancing in the same delight that Alistair knew all too well.  

It was safe to say the ever since he was knee high to a grass hopper he’d wanted to fly. His father had been a pilot, or so his mother said. Alistair never knew him. But still, the idea of walking in his father’s unknown footsteps made him feel closer to the man he’d never meet. He’d often lie in the grass of the school yard, stare up into the clouds and dream the dream of birds, watching the planes over head, barely hearing their roar.  He had a friend at the time, Sammy, who would lie in the dew with him, and point to the clouds. He was Maverick, Sammy Goose. Brothers together in dreams of flight.   

The small plane dive bombed then, flying low, around the child’s ruddy knees, small scars and bumps ridged. The plane spun then, around a sneaker, performing a slightly haphazard loop-de-loop. Alistair sighed, resting his head against the wall, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

His mates had taken him out last night. They were his good friends, his best mates. It was safe to say he loved the buggers, but he really hadn’t wanted to have had to deal with them. They had practically dragged him out of the building as soon as they heard his mother was spending a night in hospital. It wouldn’t do to sit alone all day man, come on, have a bit of fun, come down to the pub, get your mind off things. Relax had been the word of the day. 
            They’d played poker half the night, and drank the rest. He remembered the cards shuffling, warm in his hands, changing the order of the symbols, like the changing of the guards. He knew how to set the odds, count the cards; it was a gift he’d discovered early on in life, a talent he cultivated during sleepless nights. The rhythm of shuffling helped him breathe. You could control cards.

The toy was rising again.

He remembered dealing the cards, and watching the faces of his terribly unsubtle friends distort. Not a decent poker face in the lot. That was lucky for him. He’d taught his muscles when not to twitch, not to contort, when to stay blank and strong. This helps when you have to tell your supervisor that your flight needs - not to be rescheduled, but canceled, your apprenticeship left unfulfilled. 
           It also helped to mask the realization that the night was winding down.
The dread he’d felt from being pulled out the bowels of the apartment was nothing compared to the sadness of returning. He had stomped up the stairs, the smell of mildew and decay filling his nostrils. Inane chatter from neighbors leaked through the thin walls, yet the voyeur in him liked it, to be able to pry and pick at other people’s lives, listen to their arguments, their simple conversations. It’s interesting what you miss when it no longer is a factor.  
             His mother had had the ability to talk your ear right off, chatter, chatter, chatter. When he was young, it infuriated him, now he missed it.  He had flung himself onto the couch, rolling onto his side and pulled his knees to his chest, the voices from next door rising. He had shut his eyes, so tight small explosions of stars filled his vision and he crumpled further into the confines of the furniture.
              It was the phone which woke him. The ringing stung deeply into his no longer remembered dreams, bringing him back into the world in a sleep laden haze. He had stumbled over to the wall, grabbing, dropping, and picking up the phone, holding it against his ear, the plastic cool. He’d mumbled a greeting.   
                After a quiet crackle of a voice, the sleep plummeted from his brain. His surroundings blurring as the man spoke with the airily still, detached yet pitying voice that only seasoned bearers of bad news can muster.  Slamming down the phone, he’d raced, stumbling out of the apartment.

He had forgotten his coat.

The child gasped. The toy had slipped in his sweaty little hands. His fingers too pudgy, too weak to hold on as the plane climbed far too high. It fell to the ground in a silent cascade. Alistair stared as the little boy looked down, lying on the hard carpeted floor, the shiny little plastic plane sat on its roof by his left foot.

Alistair’s name was called out. A man walked up to him, stating that he was the one who called. A doctor, a face to the voice he’d heard. They spoke quietly, though quickly, in hushed tones. Alistair was ushered towards an office.

The little boy shrugged, rolling over onto his belly, reaching towards the communal box, grabbing another toy, the plastic plane kicked under the seat his mother occupied, resting now, in the shadows.

by wavinghello