Rooms - James L. Rubart [70]
“Good prayer, mate!” the Australian yelled, all his teeth showing. “All right, I’m going to count to three and on three we jump. I want you to push off with everything you have. Then arms out, legs out, and we fly like a gonzo eagle shot out of a cannon.”
Micah nodded. He imagined hearing his heart over the roar of the engines, pounding out a beat in triple time.
“One. Two. Three. Go!”
He pushed off hard. In that instant his heart changed. Control vanished. Only faith remained; faith that the rivets securing him to the Aussie would hold, that the parachute would open. That jumping was the right choice.
The world turned upside down like being on a monstrous roller coaster somersaulting through the sky. The wind tore into his face and clothes, and his stomach surged with a double shot of adrenaline as the ultimate thrill ride started.
Fear vanished. There was no room for it. The speed intoxicated him, and the rush of nothing above or below for thousands of feet grabbed him, shook him, then released him only to grab him again seconds later harder than before.
“Whoooohoooo!” He let the scream out with abandon. Micah flew 120 miles per hour straight down.
The chute snapped open, and he floated down with nothing but three thousand feet of empty air between the soles of his Nikes and the lush green carpet of spring wheat below. He gazed at Mount Rainier lying before him like a gigantic, white mud pie.
He had done it.
The quietness surprised him—the noise of the airplane, the rush of the wind now gone.
“Well?” His instructor clapped him on the shoulder.
“Never felt more alive.”
“Chuting will do that for you. What else makes you come alive, risk it all?”
Coming to Cannon Beach made him feel alive. Starting RimSoft had made him come alive. That had been a huge risk. Actually it wasn’t true. He’d been young with nothing to lose. Now? He had everything to lose. And he had little desire to risk what he’d gained.
“You’re not taking anything with you, so you might as well store up some treasures in heaven,” the Australian said. “Gotta risk your life to save it.”
A parachuting preacher, Micah mused.
“Enough theology, Micah. The ground is coming up quick to say hello, so let’s get prepped.”
After landing they joined the other jumper for a group picture, then walked toward Micah’s car. The Aussie threw his arm around Micah’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “I’m proud of you. You did well . . .”
During the last three words the Australian’s accent faded, and Micah turned to face the man. He was gone. The only thing around his shoulders was a heavy blanket as he sat in his leather chair in front of the Mariners game that played softly on the big-screen TV in his bedroom.
He threw the blanket aside and raced back to the little door. It opened on silk hinges. There was no plane, no roar, nothing but a small closet with a cloth wrapped around something rectangular. Pictures wrapped with a rubber band. He gasped at the first one. A group of men stood in front of a plane holding a sign that said: WE FLEW LIKE EAGLES! September 2, 1996. Micah was one of the men.
He looked down at the T-shirt he had on right then and grabbed a handful. It was the same shirt as the one in the picture. A memory flooded his mind. A few months before his sixteenth birthday his three best friends bought him an early present: a skydiving certificate. But when the day came, his fear of heights emerged victorious and he’d stayed home. He’d always regretted it.
Now, somehow, the house had made the day happen.
This room brought a different kind of healing, a wound of lament healed through the idiotic act of jumping out of an airplane. But it wasn’t idiotic. It was the physical form of a long-buried desire.
It was time for another jump.
He walked into the mahogany-rich den that served as his office in Cannon Beach and called Shannon at home. He asked her to put together a meeting with the board as soon as possible.
Micah was about to jump out of another plane.
CHAPTER 27
Four