Last Witch Standing

chapter 6



Friday, May 5, 1972

Earth



Though it was only 8:30 and the funeral wasn’t until 11:00, cars were already parked by the curb by the Edward’s house as Dan exited carrying his airplane.

One foot in front of the other. You can make it to the park.

He knew what he had to do. The model had been just as much Katie’s as his. Never again could he fly it; simply looking at it brought him to tears.

A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the trees in the yards as he made his way to the park. The sky was a cool cerulean blue. Somewhere, a bird was singing.

What could he do now? Was she really gone? Forever?

Meningitis. One moment she was playing at the park with him, then she was screaming in agony. Then she was dead.

Though it was a Saturday morning, Dan had to wait at the crosswalk as one after another car passed – each going too fast on the usually quiet street for him to get through. Finally, a pedestrian pressed the Walk button further up the street and the resulting red light enabled Dan to finally cross.

Dan hesitated at the corner before the park. It was not visible from there, but the moment he turned, the large expanse would open up before him and it would be there in all its glory. Swings, slides, parking lot, fields of freshly mowed, viridian green grass.

Finally, he took a breath and turned. The park was empty. Dan set the plane on the concrete, placed his thumb over the carburetor and turned the propeller counter-clockwise until it was primed. Then he set the starter plug over the engine and pressed down and turned. The engine jumped, and the props turned, before it sputtered. Again he tried. And failed.

This couldn’t happen. It was the only time it really mattered. He had to get it in the air. Concentrate. Prime it again and work carefully. You are too hurried.

Dan placed his thumb over the carburetor once more and turned the props counter-clockwise. Then he let it set for a moment before applying the starter. This time, as he turned the device, the engine roared to life. Good. It must not have been primed well enough the first time.

He let it idle for a few minutes before engaging the propeller and gunning it. The plane taxied across the lot, picking up speed as it went. Dan raised the elevators and it eased into the air. His movements at the controls were now smooth, well-practiced and efficient, the task at hand blotting out the images of his little sister chasing after it, her golden hair billowing in the wind.

As the P-51 gained altitude, Dan breathed in the fresh, morning air. It steadied him enough to focus on the final task.

Four times he circled the park. One pass for each of the years of his little sister’s life.

He remembered staying with his grandparents when his mother went to the hospital. How he was not allowed to see his new sister until days later – hospital rules – when she came home. Katie’s first words. How she grabbed his collar and giggled when she was only a year old.

What things she could have done! Grandma and Grandpa called her their “little Madame Curie” after the Nobel Prize winning physicist. At four and a half, she was brilliant. What would she be like as a high school student, had she lived? An adult? He had no doubt she would have won her own Nobel Prize – perhaps dozens.

Dan circled the park with the craft a fifth time for the birthday she would not have. He even had her birthday present picked out – a chemistry set their parents agreed he could buy her if she only used it under supervision. It lay under his bed, unopened, not yet wrapped.

As the P-51 completed the final revolution, he pushed back the controls. It jumped upward, now climbing at a forty-five degree angle. Further, and further it rose, as he held the controls. Finally, it was only a speck in the distance, nearing Lake Thompson and the forests that surrounded that large body of water. There was just enough gas in the plane to reach the lake before stalling. Good, he didn’t want it to go down anywhere else, didn’t want it to be salvaged.

Dan stood in the grass, his hand to his face, breathing in short breaths, the dew soaking into his shoes, and watched until the plane was only a distant speck. Then he turned back towards the parking lot and home.

He dropped the control into a garbage can at the edge of the park, as he passed.