Leonard said nothing. Finally he turned to Robbie. Unexpectedly, he smiled.
“I have no clue. But you saw it, right?” Robbie nodded. “And you saw her fly. The Bellerophon.”
Leonard took another step, heedless of the waves at his feet. “She flew.” His voice was barely a whisper. “She really flew.”
THAT NIGHT NOBODY SLEPT. Emery drove Zach, Tyler, and Leonard to a Dunkin’ Donuts where the boys got a cell-phone signal and sent their movie footage to Leonard’s laptop. Back at the house, he disappeared while the others sat on the deck and discussed, over and over again, what they had seen. The boys wanted to return to the beach, but Robbie refused to let them go. As a peace offering, he gave them each a beer. By the time Leonard emerged from his room with the laptop, it was after three A.M.
He set the computer on a table in the living room. “See what you think.” When the others had assembled, he hit Play.
Blotched letters filled the screen: “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon.” The familiar tipsy horizon appeared, sepia and amber, silvery flashes from the sea below. Robbie held his breath.
And there was the Bellerophon with its flickering wheels and wings propelled by a steadfast pilot, until the brilliant light struck from below and the clip abruptly ended, at exactly seventeen seconds. Nothing betrayed the figure as Maggie rather than McCauley; nothing seemed any different at all, no matter how many times Leonard played it back.
“So that’s it,” he said at last, and closed his laptop.
“Are you going to put it on YouTube?” asked Zach.
“No,” he replied wearily. The boys exchanged a look, but for once remained silent.
“Well.” Emery stood and stretched his arms, yawning. “Time to pack.”
Two hours later they were on the road.
The hospice was a few miles outside town, a rambling old white house surrounded by neatly kept azaleas and rhododendrons. The boys were turned loose to wander the neighborhood. The others walked up to the veranda, Leonard carrying his laptop. He looked terrible, his gray eyes bloodshot and his face unshaven. Emery put an arm over his shoulder and Leonard nodded stiffly.
A nurse met them at the door, a trim blond woman in chinos and a yellow blouse.
“I told her you were coming,” she said as she showed them into a sunlit room with wicker furniture and a low table covered with books and magazines. “She’s the only one here now, though we expect someone tomorrow.”
“How is she?” asked Leonard.
“She sleeps most of the time. And she’s on morphine for the pain, so she’s not very lucid. Her body’s shutting down. But she’s conscious.”
“Has she had many visitors?” asked Emery.
“Not since she’s been here. In the hospital a few neighbors dropped by. I gather there’s no family. It’s a shame.” She shook her head sadly. “She’s a lovely woman.”
“Can I see her?” Leonard glanced at a closed door at the end of the bright room.
“Of course.”
Robbie and Emery watched them go, then settled into the wicker chairs.
“God, this is depressing,” said Emery.
“It’s better than a hospital,” said Robbie. “Anna was going to go into a hospice, but she died before she could.”
Emery winced. “Sorry. Of course, I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay.”
Robbie leaned back and shut his eyes. He saw Anna sitting on the grass with azaleas all around her, bees in the flowers and Zach laughing as he opened his hands to release a green moth that lit momentarily upon her head, then drifted into the sky.
“Robbie.” He started awake. Emery sat beside him, shaking him gently. “Hey—I’m going in now. Go back to sleep if you want, I’ll wake you when I come out.”
Robbie looked around blearily. “Where’s Leonard?”
“He went for a walk. He’s pretty broken up. He wanted to be alone for a while.”
“Sure, sure.” Robbie rubbed his eyes. “I’ll just wait.”
When Emery was gone he stood and paced the room. After a few minutes he sighed and sank back into his chair, then idly flipped through the magazines and books on the table. Tricycle, Newsweek, the Utne Reader; some pamphlets on end-of-life issues; works by Viktor Frankl and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
And, underneath yesterday’s newspaper, a familiar sky blue dust jacket emblazoned with the garish image of a naked man and woman, hands linked as they floated above a vast abyss, surrounded by a glowing purple sphere. Beneath them the title appeared in embossed green letters.
Wings for Humanity!
The Next Step is OURS!
by Margaret S. Blevin, PhD
Robbie picked it up. On the back was a photograph of the younger Maggie in a white, embroidered tunic, her hair a bright corona around her piquant face. She stood in the Hall of Flight beside a mock-up of the Apollo lunar module, the Wright Flyer high above her head. She was laughing, her hands raised in welcome. He opened it to a random page.
…that time has come: with the dawn of the Golden Millennium we will welcome their return, meeting them at last as equals to share in the glory that is the birthright of our species.
He glanced at the frontispiece and title page, and then the dedication.
For Leonard, who never doubted
“Isn’t that an amazing book?”
Robbie looked up to see the nurse smiling down at him.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, and set it on the table.
“It’s incredible she predicted so much stuff.” The nurse shook her head. “Like the Hubble telescope, and that caveman they found in the glacier, the guy with the lens? And those turbines that can make energy in the jet stream? I never even heard of that, but my husband said they’re real. Everything she says, it’s all so hopeful. You know?”
Robbie stared at her, then quickly nodded. Behind her the door opened. Emery stepped out.
“She’s kind of drifting,” he said.
“Morning’s her good time. She usually fades around now.” The nurse glanced at her watch, then at Robbie. “You go ahead. Don’t be surprised if she nods off.”
He stood. “Sure. Thanks.”
The room was small, its walls painted a soft lavender-gray. The bed faced a large window overlooking a garden. Goldfinches and tiny green wrens darted between a bird feeder and a small pool lined with flat white stones. For a moment Robbie thought the bed was empty. Then he saw that an emaciated figure had slipped down between the white sheets, dwarfed by pillows and a bolster.
“Maggie?”
The figure turned its head. Hairless, skin white as paper, mottled with bruises like spilled ink. Her lips and fingernails were violet, her face so pale and lined it was like gazing at a cracked egg. Only the eyes were recognizably Maggie’s, huge, the deep slatey blue of an infant’s. As she stared at him, she drew her wizened arms up, slowly, until her fingers grazed her shoulders. She reminded Robbie disturbingly of a praying mantis.
“I don’t know if you remember me.” He sat in a chair beside the bed. “I’m Robbie. I worked with Leonard. At the museum.”
“He told me.” Her voice was so soft he had to lean close to hear her. “I’m glad they got here. I expected them yesterday, when it was still snowing.”
Robbie recalled Anna in her hospital bed, doped to the gills and talking to herself. “Sure,” he said.
Maggie shot him a glance that might have held annoyance, then gazed past him into the garden. Her eyes widened as she struggled to lift her hand, fingers twitching. Robbie realized she was waving. He turned to stare out the window, but there was no one there. Maggie looked at him, then gestured at the door.
“You can go now,” she said. “I have guests.”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry.”
He stood awkwardly, then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Her skin was as smooth and cold as metal. “’Bye, Maggie.”
At the door he looked back, and saw her gazing with a rapt expression at the window, head cocked sl
ightly and her hands open, as though to catch the sunlight.
TWO DAYS AFTER THEY got home, Robbie received an e-mail from Leonard.
Dear Robbie,
Maggie died this morning. The nurse said she became unconscious early yesterday, seemed to be in pain but at least it didn’t last long. She had arranged to be cremated. No memorial service or anything like that. I will do something, probably not till the fall, and let you know.
Yours,
Leonard
Robbie sighed. Already the week on Cowana seemed long ago and faintly dreamlike, like the memory of a childhood vacation. He wrote Leonard a note of condolence, then left for work.
Weeks passed. Zach and Tyler posted their clips of the Bellerophon online. Robbie met Emery for drinks ever week or two, and saw Leonard once, at Emery’s Fourth of July barbecue. By the end of summer, Tyler’s footage had been viewed 347,623 times, and Zach’s 347,401. Both provided a link to the Captain Marvo site, where Emery had a free download of the entire text of Wings for Humanity! There were now over a thousand Google hits for Margaret Blevin, and Emery added a Bellerophon T-shirt to his merchandise: organic cotton with a silk-screened image of the baroque aircraft and its bowler-hatted pilot.
Early in September, Leonard called Robbie.
“Can you meet me at the museum tomorrow, around eight thirty? I’m having a memorial for Maggie, just you and me and Emery. After hours, I’ll sign you in.”
“Sure,” said Robbie. “Can I bring something?”
“Just yourself. See you then.”
He drove in with Emery. They walked across the twilit Mall, the museum a white cube that glowed against a sky swiftly darkening to indigo. Leonard waited for them by the side door. He wore an embroidered tunic, sky blue, his white hair loose upon his shoulders, and held a cardboard box with a small printed label.
“Come on,” he said. The museum had been closed since five, but a guard opened the door for them. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Hedges sat at the security desk, bald and even more imposing than when Robbie last saw him, decades ago. He signed them in, eyeing Robbie curiously then grinning when he read his signature.
“I remember you—Opie, right?”
Robbie winced at the nickname, then nodded. Hedges handed Leonard a slip of paper. “Be quick.”
“Thanks. I will.”
They walked to the staff elevator, the empty museum eerie and blue lit. High above them the silent aircraft seemed smaller than they had been in the past, battered and oddly toylike. Robbie noticed a crack in the Gemini VII space capsule, and strands of dust clinging to the Wright Flyer. When they reached the third floor, Leonard led them down the corridor, past the photo lab, past the staff cafeteria, past the library where the Nut Files used to be. Finally he stopped at a door near some open ductwork. He looked at the slip of paper Hedges had given him, punched a series of numbers into the lock, opened it then reached in to switch on the light. Inside was a narrow room with a metal ladder fixed to one wall.
“Where are we going?” asked Robbie.
“The roof,” said Leonard. “If we get caught, Hedges and I are screwed. Actually, we’re all screwed. So we have to make this fast.”
He tucked the cardboard box against his chest, then began to climb the ladder. Emery and Robbie followed him, to a small metal platform and another door. Leonard punched in another code and pushed it open. They stepped out into the night.
It was like being atop an ocean liner. The museum’s roof was flat, nearly a block long. Hot air blasted from huge exhaust vents, and Leonard motioned the others to move away, toward the far end of the building.
The air was cooler here, a breeze that smelled sweet and rainwashed, despite the cloudless sky. Beneath them stretched the Mall, a vast green game board, with the other museums and monuments huge game pieces, ivory and onyx and glass. The spire of the Washington Monument rose in the distance, and beyond that the glittering reaches of Roslyn and Crystal City.
“I’ve never been here,” said Robbie, stepping beside Leonard.
Emery shook his head. “Me neither.”
“I have,” said Leonard, and smiled. “Just once, with Maggie.”
Above the Capitol’s dome hung the full moon, so bright against the starless sky that Robbie could read what was printed on Leonard’s box.
MARGARET BLEVIN
“These are her ashes.” Leonard set the box down and removed the top, revealing a ziplocked bag. He opened the bag, picked up the box again, and stood. “She wanted me to scatter them here. I wanted both of you to be with me.”
He dipped his hand into the bag and withdrew a clenched fist; held the box out to Emery, who nodded silently and did the same; then turned to Robbie.
“You too,” he said.
Robbie hesitated, then put his hand into the box. What was inside felt gritty, more like sand than ash. When he looked up, he saw that Leonard had stepped forward, head thrown back so that he gazed at the moon. He drew his arm back, flung the ashes into the sky, and stooped to grab more.
Emery glanced at Robbie, and the two of them opened their hands.
Robbie watched the ashes stream from between his fingers, like a flight of tiny moths. Then he turned and gathered more, the three of them tossing handful after handful into the sky.
When the box was finally empty, Robbie straightened, breathing hard, and ran a hand across his eyes. He didn’t know if it was some trick of the moonlight or the freshening wind, but everywhere around them, everywhere he looked, the air was filled with wings.
The Devil on the Staircase
by Joe Hill
I was
born in
Sulle Scale
the child of a
common bricklayer.
The
village
of my birth
nested in the
highest sharpest
ridges, high above
Positano, and in the
cold spring the clouds
crawled along the streets
like a procession of ghosts.
It was eight hundred and twenty
steps from Sulle Scale to the world
below. I know. I walked them again and
again with my father, following his tread,
from our home in the sky, and then back again.
After his death I walked them often enough alone.
The
cliffs
were mazed
with crooked
staircases, made
from brick in some
places, granite in others.
Marble here, limestone there,
clay tiles, or beams of lumber.
When there were stairs to build my
father built them. When the steps were
washed out by spring rains it fell to him
to repair them. For years he had a donkey to
carry his stone. After it fell dead, he had me.
I
hated
him of
course.
He had his
cats and he
sang to them
and poured them
saucers of milk and
told them foolish stories
and stroked them in his lap
and when one time I kicked one—
I do not remember why—he kicked me to
the floor and said not to touch his babies.
So I
carried
his rocks
when I should
have been carrying
schoolbooks, but I cannot
pretend I hated him for that.
I had no use for school, hated to
study, hated to read, felt acutely the
stifling heat of the single room schoolhouse,
the only good thing in it my cousin, Lithodora, who
read to the little children, sitting on a stool with her
back erect, chin lifted high, and her whit
e throat showing.
I
often
imagined
her throat
was as cool as
the marble altar
in our church and I
wanted to rest my brow
upon it as I had the altar.
How she read in her low steady
voice, the very voice you dream of
calling to you when you’re sick, saying
you will be healthy again and know only the
sweet fever of her body. I could’ve loved books
if I had her to read them to me, beside me in my bed.
I
knew
every
step of
the stairs
between Sulle
Scale and Positano,
long flights that dropped
through canyons and descended
into tunnels bored in the limestone,
past orchards and the ruins of derelict
paper mills, past waterfalls and green pools.
I walked those stairs when I slept, in my dreams.
The
trail
my father
and I walked
most often led
past a painted red
gate, barring the way
to a crooked staircase.
I thought those steps led to
a private villa and paid the gate
no mind until the day I paused on the
way down with a load of marble and leaned
on it to rest and it swung open to my touch.
My
father,
he lagged
thirty or so
stairs behind me.
I stepped through the
gate onto the landing to
see where these stairs led.
I saw no villa or vineyard below,
only the staircase falling away from
me down among the sheerest of sheer cliffs.
“Father,”
I called out
as he came near,
the slap of his feet
echoing off the rocks and
his breath whistling out of him.
“Have you ever taken these stairs?”
When
he saw
me standing
inside the gate
he paled and had my
shoulder in an instant