The Amish Spaceman

Tracklist:

  Learning To Fly – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

  Run-Around – Blues Traveler

  The Joker – Steve Miller Band

  12

  After a much-needed but perhaps too-long break, they splashed to the shore. Emerson held Dean’s hand to keep from slipping on the caramel-colored mud. The dress shirt clinging to her body had become soaked with water and therefore transparent. Dean distracted himself by trying to remember the list of vice presidents backwards.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it,” he asked, keeping his eyes high and tight.

  “Yes, it was,” said Emerson. “Oh, look at that pretty car!”

  Dean followed her finger to a red Corvette driving along the lakeshore road. He pulled Emerson over the muddy bank at a run.

  “Quick! That’s my father!”

  They sprinted across the grass to the parking lot.

  “I need to change clothes,” said Emerson. “Maybe it’s not even him.”

  Dean shook his head and helped her into the car. He slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and the Impala roared to life.

  “Believe me, I can tell that red Corvette from miles away,” he said. “Where Steve Dubrowski is, my father isn’t far behind.”

  Lin and Fanta continued to slumber peacefully in the rear seat as Dean spun gravel out of the parking lot and toward the interstate.

  “I’m confused,” said Emerson. “If it’s your father, why are we driving away? Maybe he can help us.”

  Dean laughed. “It’s hard to explain without meeting him in person. Let’s just say that meeting him will cause more problems that it’ll solve.”

  Tires squealed behind them as they zoomed up the highway on-ramp. Emerson glanced in the rear mirror.

  “If that’s your father, he really wants to talk to you.”

  The red Corvette filled the entire mirror. Emerson saw a blonde man in the driver’s seat and a woman in a white coat.

  “Your father is very blonde and good-looking.”

  “He’d be pleased to hear that,” said Dean. “I didn’t know he’d dyed his hair, though.”

  Lin rose up from the back seat. “What’s going on?”

  “Thank the gods you’re awake! Fran’s caught up to us,” said Dean.

  “Keep your foot on the gas,” shouted Lin. “Highway speeds, Dean! Highway speeds!”

  She pushed Dean to the right and squirmed over the front seat to take the wheel. Under Lin’s expert control, the old Impala accelerated and the red line of the odometer pushed closer to triple digits. The windows rattled and the engine roared into high gear.

  “Buckle up!” shouted Lin.

  The sports car swerved into the lane beside them. Through the window, Dean saw his father waving frantically at them. He wore a very stylish scarf over his hair and a white jacket, both of which would have been very attractive on an older woman who didn’t just happen to be his father in drag.

  The Corvette was Steve Dubrowski’s, so he was driving, of course. He looked as fit and perfect as always. Steve shook his head in an emphatic negative to repeated requests and pointed fingers from Dean’s father. It was a stroke of luck, thought Dean, that Steve wasn’t driving his H2, Ferrari, or any of the dozens of cars he owned that were less precious to him than the Corvette, because he’d have sideswiped them in a flash.

  Dean cupped his hand over Lin’s ear. “You can’t outrun a Corvette!”

  “I don’t have to,” she yelled. “Hold on!”

  She stood on the brake pedal with all the weight in her trim-Asian-lady-who-works-out-on-an-elliptical legs. The Corvette shot by like a rocket while the Impala skidded across the rumble strip and stopped on the shoulder.

  Dean looked down at Lin’s arm across his chest, an arm that kept him from flying through the windshield. For her part, Emerson had wisely buckled her seat belt.

  Lin pointed forward. “Look.”

  A hundred feet down the road, the tan car of a state trooper pulled out from behind a billboard for “Tony’s Helicopter Tours” and flashed red-and-blue behind the Corvette.

  Dean shook his head. “How did you know?”

  Lin pulled back onto the interstate. “Woman’s intuition. Also, I saw his bumper.”

  Something groaned, guttural and desperate like a wounded buffalo. Dean peered into the back and saw Fanta down in the footwell, wedged between the front and back seats.

  “We might have a problem,” he said.

  Emerson exchanged a few words in Russian with the large woman. “She says her neck and back are painful.”

  Dean opened the glove compartment. “I think there’s some Tylenol here.”

  “Neck pain is serious,” said Lin. “We should stop at a hospital.”

  “There’s no time for that!”

  “First of all,” said Lin, “we have to get off the freeway, because Daddy and Corvette Boy will be back on the road in fifteen minutes. And second, you had time to splash in the lake with your new girlfriend, but you can’t spare a minute for this poor woman with spinal injuries?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my wife!”

  “Speaking of that, we left so quickly that your ‘wife’ is shivering wet. She needs to dry off and change.”

  Dean sighed. “Lin, why are you always right about everything?”

  Salt Lake City spread before them, an oasis of shopping centers and cathedrals in the desert. Lin took an exit marked with a blue-and-white hospital sign, and shortly pulled into the parking lot of the four-story “Merciful Sisters of Saint Patrick.”

  With help of a pair of nurses and accompanied by a storm of pitiful bleating from Fanta, they extracted the large woman from the back of the Impala and deposited her in a hospital wheelchair.

  Inside the emergency department, Lin translated for the nurses. When Emerson left to change into her wedding dress, Dean realized he was still in his boxer shorts. He sheepishly trotted out of the hospital, but saw a Corvette cruising the parking lot like a cherry-red shark in a school of mackerel.

  Dean burst into the hospital room where a nurse had just fitted a protective brace around Fanta’s neck.

  “Sir, put on some clothes,” said the nurse. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “I don’t have time. My father’s here!”

  “Let’s go,” said Lin.

  She pulled Fanta off the hospital bed as the nurse stared in disbelief.

  “You can’t leave yet. She hasn’t been seen by a doctor!”

  “Explain it to my father,” said Dean. “He’ll be the one in the miniskirt.”

  Emerson walked out of a restroom in her red wedding dress. Dean grabbed the bewildered girl and all four ran full-tilt through a maze of hospital corridors.

  He stopped to catch his breath in front of an exit covered in red warnings. An electronic siren was bolted to the door handle.

  “Why are we running?” asked Emerson.

  “My father,” Dean gasped.

  Lin trotted up, pulling the neck-braced and sweaty Fanta behind her. “What are you waiting for? Open the door.”

  “It’s a fire exit. The alarm will go off.”

  “So? Everybody running out will stop your father from running in.”

  “Right. Exactly what I was thinking, Lin.”

  Dean punched the glass of a nearby alarm and pulled down the white lever. A mechanical clanging filled the hallway, and when Dean pushed open the fire exit, an electronic siren began to squeal.

  He and Emerson ran hand-in-hand through a loading dock and across a grassy field. Beyond a chain-link fence lay hangars and the runway for a small community airport.

  Dean squeezed under part of the fence, covering himself with dirt in the process, and held up the metal links so the other three could crawl through. With the hospital alarms and the sirens of approaching fire engines providing a distant soundtrack, they ran toward a white hangar labeled “Tony’s Sightseeing Tours.”

  The spacious hangar was empt
y, apart from a helicopter with an old, glass-bubble cockpit and a huge twin-engine plane painted olive green with twin tail rudders.

  Dean gasped and stepped backwards, mashing Fanta’s foot. The large woman yelled in pain and despite her injuries, shoved him back into the hangar.

  “Sorry! That’s a B-25 Mitchell. An old bomber from World War II.”

  Lin frowned. “So?”

  “Do you know how many of these are left? This is the same plane that probably bombed your people, Lin.”

  “My people? I was born in San Jose!”

  “The B-25 Mitchell flew in the famous Doolittle Raid, when the U.S. bombed Tokyo from aircraft carriers only five months after Pearl Harbor. It was widely used in the Pacific as a medium bomber and for strafing. If you look at the nose you can tell it’s a B-25G variant, which carried heavy machine guns for ground attack.”

  “I don’t see any guns,” said Lin.

  “Of course not, they were probably removed to save weight.” Dean raised his voice. “Hello? Anyone here?”

  Lin grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I need to get to Charleston. There’s no reason I can’t pay a private pilot to fly there.”

  “One reason: Unless you’ve found a magical hiding spot in those boxer shorts, your wallet and phone are still in the car. And look at that pile of junk you call a bomber! I bet it hasn’t flown since Roosevelt!”

  “You’d lose that bet,” boomed a voice from across the hangar.

  A short Native American in twin black braids and a red flight suit walked around the tail of the plane.

  “This year, Soaring Dove has spent more time in the sky than any of you have spent watching the sunset, teaching a child to craft a leather belt, or stalking a deer through the forest. Think on that and tell me who’s a pile of junk.”

  “Soaring Dove?”

  “That’s her name, lady. This plane right here? The one I’m pointing at? The one I’m standing under and now pointing at? The one with the white dove painted on the nose?”

  “Yes, we see,” said Dean. “It’s just an odd name for a bomber.”

  “It’s a better name than Farty the Jedi or Honky-Donkey or anything you white people come up with.”

  “I’m not white,” said Lin.

  The Native American spread his arms. “Thank you for this special Kodak moment, ladies and gentlemen, and please show yourselves out. Tours are cancelled today and for the rest of the week.”

  “I’ve seen your face somewhere,” said Dean.

  “Probably on a billboard.”

  “No, not there. Are you Tony?”

  “Who else would I be? Why is everyone looking at me like that? I’m not the one in boxer shorts.”

  “It’s just ... you look exactly like your brothers,” said Dean.

  “Of course I do,” said Tony. “My parents prayed night and day to the sky spirits, hoping against hope that a baby with handsome good looks would be given to them. They aspired for a child with the beauty of George Raft or Alan Ladd, but due to the strange magic of the white man’s fertility drugs, received six identical twins, each one with a face like Jackie Mason. That’s life, or as the French say––that’s life.”

  “You have to admit it’s a shock,” said Dean. “Meeting three of you in two days.”

  Tony sighed. “I don’t have to admit anything, other than I’ve got a plane to load and a long flight after that. Sightseeing tours are canceled, as I said, so if you could please show yourselves out, I’d appreciate it.”

  “But we need your help!”

  Tony clapped his hands together and laughed. “What is it now? Missed your flight to the Bahamas? Faked your own death and on the run from an ex-Marine ex-wife? Or accused of a crime you didn’t commit by a secret government agency?”

  “It’s not that complicated,” said Dean. “This young woman and I were just married to escape a murderous Kamchatkan mafia boss who collects women’s socks, my cross-dressing father and mother want to throw me a birthday party that will inevitably be a complete disaster, and if I don’t speak at a conference in two days for the motivational speaking industry in Charleston, West Virginia, I’ll never work in the motivational speaking industry again.”

  Tony raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  “Can you help us get to Charleston?”

  “Try JetBlue. I hear it’s a great airline.”

  Tony spun on his heel and walked back to the old bomber.

  “That’s too bad,” yelled Lin. “You’re gonna break up two newlyweds that your brother just married yesterday!”

  “Congratulations,” Tony yelled over his shoulder. “Most of them don’t last ninety minutes! Hope you pre-ordered the divorce.”

  “We can pay you,” shouted Dean. “Half now and half when we reach Charleston.”

  Tony stopped and turned slowly, a frown below his hooded eyes.

  “How much?”

  “My personal assistant has an American Express Platinum card with a ten-thousand-dollar maximum. We’ll give you half now and half in Charleston.”

  “I’m only going as far as Cincinnati.”

  “That’s close enough, I guess.”

  Tony walked up and shook Dean’s hand. “You got a deal, mister. Show me the money, or as we say in the Kickapoo tribe, ‘Show me the moanaaaay!’”

  Dean heard Lin rummage around in her purse. After a strange metallic snip, she dropped half of a silver credit card in Tony’s outstretched hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “The first half of your payment,” said Lin. “Like we agreed.”

  “Are you from the Moon? I can’t use this!”

  Dean spread his arms. “Do we look German? To answer your second question, yes, of course you can use it, with a bit of plastic cement and the other half we’ll give you in Cincinnati.”

  “You’ll just cancel the card when we get there!”

  Dean bowed. “You have my word as a fellow Native American––one-sixteenth Cherokee, San Jose Lodge 462.”

  “This is unbelievable,” said Tony. “All right, fine. Here we come to the next fly in the sunscreen. I need everyone to help me pack the rest of the cocaine––I mean, baking powder––into the aircraft, so we can leave pronto. Aaaand ... only two of you can go.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Dean. “Why not all of us?”

  “If you must know, Cherokee, it’s because I can’t fight off more than two people at once. These hands are deadly but not that deadly. Another serious concern is that you might lose your marbles and get ‘sky sickness.’ It’s a condition that affects the white people when they have not flown above the clouds and seen the deepest blue of the sky spirits. Many round-eyes will jump through the windows to join the spirits, or even chew through galvanized steel doors. It has happened before, sadly.”

  Lin held up a hand. “Hello? I’m still not white.”

  “More importantly,” said Tony, “The plane is packed to the brim with three tons of extremely valuable Columbian baking powder which absolutely has to go with me no matter how much you pay. Two passengers are all I can fit.”

  “Why does baking powder have to be flown by plane to Cincinnati?” asked Lin.

  “The people of Ohio are very large and eat bread for every meal,” said Tony. “They wear clothes made of bread and live in strange houses built of bread that didn’t pass quality control.”

  “I really don’t think that’s true,” said Dean. “Anyway, you could just ship it by truck.”

  Tony shook his head. “This is the finest Columbian baking powder, and so strong that it is, sadly, illegal. I, of course, am just a transporter and don’t use the stuff. I know it must arrive fresh and with as little interference by the baking powder inspectors as possible. Soaring Dove will fly under their radar, so to speak. Also, literally.”

  Dean rubbed his chin. “Smuggling baking powder into Ohio ... it sounds dangerous.”

  “It’s a living. Which two o
f you are going?”

  Dean looked at his small traveling party: Lin, black hair in a bun and always prepared like an Eagle Scout, Fanta in a neck brace, flushed and sweaty from the escape, and Emerson, lovely in her scarlet wedding dress even though her hair was wet and probably crawling with Sea Monkeys. Dean thought back to the swim in the Great Salt Lake and her remark about a boy in West Virginia. Somehow he felt rejected.

  Dean pointed at Lin. “I think that––”

  “––you and the girl should go, of course.” Lin pressed the other half of her credit card in his hand. “Take her and fly east. I’ve got another card. Fanta and I’ll rent a car or something and meet up with you in West Virginia. It doesn’t matter if we’re late.”

  “But, Lin––”

  “Don’t worry, we can handle ourselves. I’m wearing my big-girl panties and so is Fanta. Especially Fanta. You have to speak at this conference, no matter what.”

  Dean hugged her. “Thank you, Lin. Remember to keep your receipts––I’m not made of money and expense forms have to be filled out properly.”

  All four sweated and strained to load the old B-25 bomber with heavy bricks of baking powder wrapped in black plastic and duct tape. Tony gave Dean a flight suit to wear over his boxers. The scarlet jumpsuit had “Tony” stitched above a chest pocket and “Tony’s Sightseeing Tours” on the back.

  As they taxied out of the hangar and onto the runway, Dean and Emerson waved at the tiny figure of Lin and the almost-tiny figure of Fanta. Dean realized that one of these people had helped him through almost every problem in his life during the last ten years, and he didn’t know when he would see her again. The other could break him and any other man in half, but who’s to say this Russian female bear wasn’t as scared of Dean inside as he was of her? Any neutral observer, he thought. The twin-engine bomber roared into the wide Utah sky, and Dean felt something moist in his eyes, but it was probably just allergies. He hoped it wasn’t sky sickness.

  When the olive-green plane reached a stable cruising altitude Dean unbuckled his seat harness, intending to have a wander around the old bomber, but Emerson grabbed his hand with a look of such pitiful fear that he immediately sat down and put his arm around the pale-faced girl.

  They wore the headsets Tony had given them which muffled some of the noise. Even so, the air whistling past the fuselage and the loud drone of the twin engines made conversation impossible, so Dean and Emerson passed the hours by writing messages to each other with a pencil and notepad Dean had found under a seat. Having exhausted various games of Hangman (which Dean won handily), Russian Hangman (which Dean lost handily), and Battleship, they moved into a relaxing pattern of drawing pictures and having the other person guess what it was. Dean had a talent for drawing women as long as they wore glasses and nothing else. He took quite a bit of time on a full-body sketch of Emerson, even though her beautiful brown eyes and the bridge of her perfect nose had never felt the weight of prescription lenses. Upon seeing the drawing, Emerson turned red and smiled.

  At last they ran out of things to say and women to draw. Emerson rested her head on Dean’s arm somewhere over Colorado, and the heavy drone of the engines lulled both to sleep.