The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [55]
Sam hurried over to her. “What in the world’s the matter with you?”
“That was Jack,” Annie said.
“What?” Sam sat down.
“He quoted Shakespeare and some Rosalind Russell movie and then he hung up on me.”
“That was Jack?” Sam bent over, rubbing her arms.
“Daniel Hart calls, Rafael Rook calls, now Dad calls. Is this a set up?”
“How did he sound? Dying?”
Taking slow breaths, Annie walked to the porch, looked out at the still roiled sky. “What does dying sound like? He didn’t sound good. He told me to fly to St. Louis and look for him in the Admirals Club.”
Sam punched at air with a hard jab. “If I hadn’t believed he was really on his deathbed, I never would have given you that FedEx! Why do I fall for him?”
“My question for over a quarter of a century,” said Clark.
“Well, Clark’s right. You can’t fly tonight.” Sam peered out the window. “This storm has stalled.”
“Okay, that’s settled.” Clark held up the sushi platter. “Anybody want some more?”
Sam started pushing the two of them toward the kitchen. “Let’s forget about Jack. People like Jack don’t die.” She sighed, unable to persuade herself. “Let’s eat supper. Who’s for forty pieces of chicken korma? Annie, how about some sushi?”
But Annie was back on the phone to D. K. Destin, asking him if the King of the Sky’s engine was fixed, if he could get it fueled fast and ready to fly. She’d be at the airfield as soon as she could get there. Please make sure she was good to go. Because she was flying to St. Louis.
D. K. gave a loud derisive laugh into the phone, like a man gone melodramatically mad in a horror movie. “What do Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, and Wiley Post have in common?”
Annie knew what he meant but pretended otherwise. “They were all great pilots.”
“And?”
“Their planes crashed.”
“And?”
“They died.”
“Hello baby.”
Chapter 16
So Proudly We Hail
Annie and Clark stood in the kitchen, looking out at the rain. Clark said, “Annie, I wouldn’t count on the truth from Jack.”
Annie shook her head stubbornly. “Either he’ll tell me about my mother or he won’t. He’ll die or he won’t. Either way, it’ll be over.”
From behind Sam’s “Gore 2000” magnet on the refrigerator, Clark took a photograph of Annie at a track meet, sprinting to the finish line, her hair flattened against her face, her face twisted, her smile triumphant. He nodded. “You’re going to St. Louis. I accept it but I don’t like it.” He volunteered to drive Annie the eight hundred miles to Missouri instead.
Annie smiled at her uncle. “Clark, if you drove me, Jack would die of old age before we got there. I’m flying the King.” She had calculated that the Piper Warrior could make it with one stopover to refuel. She could be at Lambert Airport not long after midnight, Central Time. The real question was, would her father even show up? “I’m thinking I should call that detective in Miami, Sergeant Hart.” She started to dial his number from memory on her cell phone.
Sam grabbed the phone, agitated; she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts. “No, please, don’t call the police. They’ll put Jack in jail. He couldn’t stand it. Please!”
A sigh, then Annie relented. “…Okay, okay, I won’t call the police.”
“Just till we sort things out,” Sam pleaded.
Annie took her aunt by the arm and walked with her back and forth in the kitchen, soothing her. “But if he’s really ill, shouldn’t he be in a hospital? If he’s bleeding all over motel bathrooms?”
Sam stopped, pulled away. “You said it was practically nothing!”
Annie backpedaled. “Well, I mean, it’s not that serious or he wouldn’t be on the phone asking me to lend him an airplane, would he? It’s just some little screw up.” From long thinking about how to interpret her father, she knew he would always be experiencing “little screw ups.” Time after time the calamities were a complete surprise to him, as if they’d only by the remotest chance had anything to do with him at all. It dawned on her now that this was a trait he shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband Brad. She recalled how Brad had looked