The Runway



  THE RUNWAY

  By

  Michael Naugle

  Copyright © 2010 by Michael Naugle.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  First Printing, 2013

  ISBN 978-1-62890-554-0

  Produced by The Runaway Pen

  THE RUNWAY

  By

  Michael Naugle

  The Runway is a short story from a larger collection, The Summer Pier, available soon!

  “Dwight,” Carolyn said as she opened the door from the Operations room and as she closed it so that the oak door muted the hiss and the spatter of the printers beyond their office. “Here’s your mail. Will you please drop that and take your break with me? Larry’s out there looking for me and I’d rather drop dead than talk to him this morning.”

  “I’ll stop in ten minutes. I’m trying to concentrate on this. Carolyn stared toward him. She was an attractive Asian woman, perhaps thirty, and well dressed. At last she dumped his mail atop his desk and she turned abruptly, and she sat at a desk across from his and she looked exasperated; the Senior Programmers’ office was small and steel bookcases lined it, and hundreds of dark green binders filled all of the bookcases. Several dozen fluorescent panes hummed in the ceiling above them. A blue portable radio was tuned to a classical station. “I’m going down,” Carolyn said at last, “to the cafeteria. You can meet me there when you feel like it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Try to actually do it. We have a lot of things to discuss.”

  “I know that.”

  She pushed outside. He frowned down toward the letters and the numbers that his right hand coded. He was tall and fairly heavy and he had dense brown hair, and he wore a white shirt, a brown tie, and brown pants and brown shoes; he looked to be about twenty-four years old although he might be older, given the severity and the discipline of his chin and his profile. On his right a three-ringed binder was open to a flowchart. He kept glancing back and forth between the flowchart and his coding pad. After eight or ten minutes he shoved back in his chair, and he closed his silver Cross pencil as he looked around the office; he looked vaguely like a bear who wanted to escape, who wanted to break out of some place of hibernation that had become too confining. After a while he swiveled to his left and he looked through his mail. It contained three office memos and one envelope. He ignored the memos completely and he lifted the envelope, and as he read its return address his vague expression vanished; he unsealed the envelope carefully and he unfolded its pages, and as he began to read his face grew paler. He could hear the voices of people in the Operations room. Past them, like the sound of surf, was the rush of traffic on Speedway.

  #

  All of that night as he drove west he kept on drinking coffee, and he stopped at intervals to pick up fresh amounts. In the days before his departure he had not slept well. The program and Carolyn had preoccupied most of his mind. He was the Senior Programmer at Synitron Operations, a Tucson-based facility that designed military software; he had started working there six years ago as a college freshman, during his second semester at the University of Arizona. He had continued to work at Synitron Operations until he had earned his Master’s degree. He had earned his Master’s degree in physics, not in computer science. Although he had aimed at working in physics he had been happy at Synitron Operations, given his love of problem-solving, innovation, and logic; programming, he had thought many times, served him as well as physics did, since it employed that part of his brain that was acknowledgebly gifted. But in the past six months or so he had not been as happy. Being in charge of something, he had learned, was a gigantic headache. Now the bulk of what he did was administration, the hiring and firing of junior programmers and meetings with Systems’ Analysts; he either hated or disliked half of what he did: what he really wanted to do was to design and code programs. Nevertheless he was also proud of his promotion and his position. He was the youngest Senior Programmer that Synitron Operations had ever had. He was also paid very well so he drove a Porsche, and he had purchased a condominium and some other accoutrements; he was also a millionaire and he was in love, and he would probably manage the company before he was thirty years old. These were not the thoughts, however, that occupied him now. As he stared out toward his headlights he saw the lines of the letter. The letter had been from Pamela’s mother in her straightforward hand, and its sentences had explained that Pamela had terminal cancer; she had either several weeks or two months at the most to live, and Pamela had started to tell her mother that she would like to see Dwight. Pamela’s mother and her grandmother lived in Ocean View. Dwight had been born and raised in Ocean View and he and Pamela had gone to high school there. She had been his first girlfriend and his first lover, and in their two years of intimacy something quite tender had blossomed; they had parted at age eighteen and they had remained good friends, after a remarkably amicable and a gentle break-up. They had come to realize that they were too different. They were too different, they had concluded, to be together for a lifetime. She was by far the more impulsive and the more risk-taking one, and that was why she had taken up flying at the age of fifteen; he had had a stolid and a phlegmatic temperament even in high school, and yet during their years together they had balanced each other: each had brought out, he meditated, good things in the other one. He meditated while the Sonoran Desert fled beyond his headlights. He had helped Pamela to plot out a logical path toward her dream, to fly for United Airlines by the age of twenty-six; he had helped her to break her dream down into parts like the symbols in a flowchart, parts that could be linked together so that a task might be completed. In turn she had brought out his playfulness and his sense of adventure. Those were qualities that he had stifled until she had provoked them. She had earned her solo license at the age of sixteen, and she had earned her private’s license at the age of seventeen; they had flown together often in their two years together, and he would never have had such adventures had it not been for her. He had loved to learn about the operation of her two-passenger aircraft. Even more he had loved to watch her fly so expertly. She might be impulsive and impudent but she knew how to fly, and she knew every part of her Cessna and what its function was, she knew more than he did about flight and that was humbling for him, and he recalled how she would teach him and explain things to him. As the miles fled around him he saw one thing most vividly. He saw her inside of her cockpit and he watched her at work. Because he had had so little sleep memories came in pieces, like the insects that occasionally spiraled and splashed across his windshield; but repeatedly he kept on seeing her at the edge of a runway, waiting for clearance from the control tower to take off after she had performed her run-up. She had flown out of Santa Teresa from Montgomery Field. Usually, but not always, they had flown at sunrise. When she had received her clearance she had radioed her reply, and she had pushed the throttle in and she had pulled back on the yoke; she had corrected the yaw of the craft with its rudder pedals, and at exactly fifty-three knots the heavens had sucked the Cessna off the earth. She had been in her element then; she had been fully herself. Her delight had been so intense that it had waved as the sun had. Often when they had taken off early they had created a sunrise, and those times, he had always felt, had been his most treasured times; as the plane had climbed an orange sun had boiled from the eastern horizon, and the sun had kept on climbing as if it had wanted to fly with them. He would never have had such experiences had it not been for Pamela. He would have stayed at home or at school, studying ponderously. Nevertheless the two of them had parted when he h
ad left for Tucson, and they had promised to keep up their friendship and they had done so for a time; but inevitably as time had passed good intentions had passed as well, and their letters and their phone conversations had become shorter and rarer. He had received her last letter over a year ago. She had earned her AFM license and she was flying commercially. He had sent a letter in answer but she had not replied to it. Near the California border he purchased three cups of coffee, knowing that the deadliest stretch of driving lay ahead of him; Arizona had possessed saguaros and mesquite trees to distract him, but what lay ahead of him was a vast and flat emptiness. He had to stop for a produce check and he continued west. He built his speed to over ninety miles an hour and he kept it there. More insects splashed across his windshield but his thoughts became fewer, and he was focused on his one goal of getting to the coast of California; very slowly lights crept around him but always at a distance, as if the earth were a vast black curtain that a few blue stars punctured. Then at last and rather abruptly he had crossed the desert. He climbed steeply amid heaped boulders that were the size of houses. Finally he smelled pine resins through his open windows, and again and rather quickly the terrain altered dramatically; scrub pines and scrub oaks gave way to mature pine trees, ones whose mottled cylinders of bark cast swift shadows in rotation. He passed through a few small villages and the road descended. Soon the lights of Santa Teresa showed far ahead of him. He passed through the Eastern counties and he continued west, while overpasses that supported green signs thickened in a slower rotation; it was nearly five A.M. and the eastern sky glowed, and the sky ahead of him still retained a few stars. Amber lights flashed over green signs that announced the end of the freeway. He downshifted as he signaled left and he entered Ocean View. Pamela’s grandmother lived in a brick house six blocks to the north of the Ocean View pier, a house that was as sturdy and as stubborn as its occupant was; Dwight slowed toward the silhouette of her house and he parked in her driveway, where he sat beside her old black Pontiac as his muffler ticked. He had not changed from his work clothes and his white shirt was damp. He had removed his tie, however, and his collar was open. He sat there for nearly ten minutes as he stared forward, as if he needed a span of time in order to let the journey conclude in him; then he pushed out of his Porsche and he turned and looked west, out toward the familiar sounds of the surf breaking close to the pier. “Hello, Dwight,” Pamela’s grandmother called as Dwight turned toward her voice. She stood in a crack of yellow light.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dolan.”

  “You are early. I expected you at seven or eight o’clock.”

  “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

  “No; I always get up early. Morning mass is at six o’clock.”

  “That’s early.”

  “Come on in. You must be completely exhausted.

  “I am.” He unloaded his suitcase. Then he locked his Porsche and turned and he walked to her porch. “You must have broken,” she observed, “quite a few speed limits. What kind of car do you own now?”

  “A Porsche.”

  “Come on in. You know where the guest room is.”

  “Thanks.” He followed her. They went up two flights of stairs to the guest bedroom. “What do you hear,” she asked him,” from your mother and father? How do they like it up in Hemet?”

  “They’re doing pretty well. They’re getting to know some people.”

  “Would you like breakfast? I could make you some eggs and toast.”

  “No, I’m not hungry. Thanks, though. Can I ask you something?”

  “What?”

  “What’s a good time? I mean to call Pamela’s house?”

  “I should say around seven. Sheila leaves for work at seven-thirty.”

  “All right.”

  “Would you like coffee? I’ve got a fresh pot brewing downstairs.”

  “Sure.” He went with her. They sat at an east-facing table and she proceeded to talk. Although she was eighty-two years old and although she had advanced osteoarthritis, Mrs. Dolan headed a church group that built homes for the impoverished in Tijuana, Mexico; as she described an upcoming project Dwight noticed that she never mentioned Pamela: her monologue, he realized, was a method of avoidance. “I must leave,” she ended abruptly, “and I won’t be back until noon. Take this key. Come and go as you please.”

  “Thanks.”

  He took the key. Then she stood and left the house and her black Pontiac roared. Dwight went upstairs to try to rest but he found that he could not, and he kept on seeing Pamela and instances of his drive across the Anza-Borrego desert; it was as if a veil of some sort were growing thinner inside of him, a veil between his conscious mind and something meaningful that burned beyond it. Although he stretched upon the bed he could not relax. He kept shifting as he listened to some sparrows in a huge tree directly outside his window. There seemed to be a riot of sparrows in the top of the tree, and Dwight shifted irritably because these sparrows sounded cheerful; he kept shifting restlessly and he rubbed at his brow, and he kept on checking his Rolex and he stared toward the ceiling. When it was close to seven o’clock he opened his suitcase. He took out his shaving kit and he went into the bathroom. He flossed and he brushed his teeth and he used some mouthwash, and he hesitated, took off his shirt, shaved, and rinsed his face; He took his shaving kit back into the guest room and he buttoned on a fresh shirt, and he went downstairs into a kitchen that was ablaze with yellow sunlight. Mourning doves called placidly on wires in the back yard. On the table oranges and bananas filled a clear glass bowl. He sat near the telephone and he reached into his pants, and he took out the envelope that had brought him here; after a long time he unfolded the envelope and he tugged out its pages, and he adjusted the old-fashioned black telephone and he slowly dialed. “Hello?” Pamela’s mother said after the third ring. Her voice sounded very weary.

  “Hello, Mrs. Travis. It’s me. Dwight. I just got in.”

  “How was your drive?”

  “All right. I was wondering when I should stop by”

  “Well, I leave at seven-thirty. Pamela’s usually up by eight o’clock.”

  “Is she asleep now?”

  “She is. But I’ll make sure that she knows that you’re here.”

  “I don’t want to push her. Not if she really needs to sleep.”

  “No, she can’t wait to see you. It made her day when I told her yesterday.”

  “Good.”

  “Dwight, just to prepare you. She doesn’t look like you remember her.”

  They talked for five more minutes. After that he sat in a stupor until eight o’clock. As he climbed into his Porsche he noticed the flecks of insects, the flecks and fragments of airborne insects that had broken across his windshield last night; in any other circumstances he would have cleaned off his windshield, but the last thing on his mind now was how his windshield looked. There was no ground fog at all and few vehicles moved. He crossed Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, slowed, and braked up a driveway. Before his engine hummed to a halt Pamela opened her front screen door, and as Dwight climbed out of his Porsche Pamela stepped out onto her porch; she had always been thin and wiry but now she was cadaverous, and a brown wig had replaced her hair and he started to cry. He had traveled six hundred miles in order to comfort her. And yet he, the supposed comforter, was the one who cried. There was a sudden shuddering upward from the pit of his stomach, and they stood and they faced one another and Pamela left the front porch.

  “Sweetheart,” Dwight said as he wrapped his arms and his weight around her. “I am so fucking sorry for you.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you. I want to take it all away from you.”

  “Thank you.” Pamela sniffed. His eyes closed and he rocked her and that was all that he could do. “You came here,” Pamela told him at last and in an attempt at cheerfulness. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me.”

  “Why did you wait so long? Why did you wait this long to tell me?”
/>
  “They thought that I’d be cured. I didn’t want to worry you.” She shifted her head. He could feel the bones of her body as if those bones were wire hoops. “Come on in,” she told him at last, “and let’s go into the backyard. We can talk out by the fish pond.”

  “Okay.” They entered her house. Her house was a modest one, well kept and well furnished. The back yard was as he recalled it from their years of dating, and two tiers of red brick planters supported pine trees and geranium plants; the tiers were mortared to the left of a lot that contained a fish pond, a large pond that her deceased father had constructed out of local stones and concrete. “I’ll be back,” Pamela said as they reached the north edge of the fishpond. “I need to go in and get my medicine.”

  “Sure.”

  She went inside. Dwight looked down toward the koi fish that swirled up toward him. Brilliant colors splattered these fish and their round mouths pocked the surface, as if Dwight might be willing to toss pellets of feed down to them; “I can’t sit,” Pamela explained to him, “on concrete any longer. I have to use this stupid foam pad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So, sit down. Mom said you drove the entire night?”

  “Yes.” He sat beside her. She unzipped a brown hip pack and she took out a plastic cigarette lighter. “Why is your mom working,” he asked her, “if you’re as sick as you are? I don’t like that to be honest.”

  “It makes sense, really. Hold on. Let me get this lighted.” She tapped a Lifesavers tube. It released a marijuana cigarette that she lighted as she squinted. “One nice thing at least about cancer is that you can smoke pot legally. My doctor wrote a prescription for it.”

  “Good.”

  “Want a hit?”

  “No, but thanks. I’m already fuzzy from driving.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Can you tell me? Why your mom isn’t staying here with you?”

  “Oh, a couple of reasons. First we’d drive each other crazy, and we need the money. And dad died of cancer, too.”

  “So?”

  “So, I remind her. I don’t blame her. She’s got her limits.”

  “Well, I still don’t like it. Your dad died a long time ago.”

  “Let’s forget that, okay? I’m so happy that you’re here.”

  “I still wish that I’d known. I need to ask you one more question.”

  “What?”

  “Is it really true? That you’ve exhausted every option?”

  “Yeah.” She let out some smoke. Her eyes were as blue as ever and he looked down from them. “All the chemotherapy did was make me throw up like hell. Now the cancer has metastasized.”

  “To where?”

  “To my lumbars. And to my liver. And to my brain.”

  “What are they doing now? What are they doing for you now?”

  “There’s nothing left to do. Just ease the pain until I die.”

  He sat still.

  “But the worst is over. Getting the chemotherapy was the worst part.” He brushed at a fly. Now and then a fish splashed behind them and the sun was warm. “Could we take a walk,” she asked him, “out onto the pier? I’d feel happier if we got away from here.”

  “Are you up to it?”

  “Sure. Once I have a little more of this.” She smoked for a minute longer. Then she put away her cigarette and she strapped the hip pack to her waist. She and her mother lived two blocks from the Ocean View pier, and she and Dwight decided to walk there without discussing it; “Jesus,” she said as she studied the glistening red Porsche in the driveway. “I didn’t really notice this. How much did it cost you?”

  “You don’t want to know. I don’t want to know, myself.”

  “How much?”

  “One hundred and fifty.”

  “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could buy a house. Down on the south end for that kind of money.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They joined hands. He pulled her against his side and they walked north and west. In silence they took the paths that they had taken as teenagers, while the sound of the surf approaching changed in pitch and in volume; Then the pier stretched out before them to the “T” at its end, and he was startled by how exactly the pier matched his memories of it. The railings on either side of him were as green and as notched. The concrete floor was as wide and the gulls were as white. It was July and the ground fogs of June had vaporized weeks ago, leaving the moderate and green-blue swells that he also remembered; near the bait shop a brown City truck was parked on some errand, and Dwight and Pamela veered to the left and walked out onto the “T”.

  “Let’s sit down,” she told him, “for a little while. I get dizzy when I walk for very long.”

  “Sure.”

  They sat on a bench. She sat and she leaned against his shoulder and he kept an arm around her. “So,” she said to him after a while, “can I tell you a secret? I haven’t even told mom or gramma.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s what I want. The last thing that I want from this life.”

  “What is that?”

  “Dignity. I want to end my life with dignity.”

  “I would too,” he said slowly. “I would feel exactly the same way.”

  “Not like dad, okay? I don’t want to wither away to nothing, snowed-out on morphine in some hospital bed. That scares me. Whenever I think about dad.” Fishermen strolled behind them. They sounded jovial and contented and Dwight resented that. “I understand,” she went on presently, “why people went to that guy. What’s his name? Who used to off people?”

  “Doctor Kevorkian?”

  “Yes. I know exactly why people went to him.” Dwight closed his eyes as she spoke. Her head, so young and so weary, rested against his neck. “There are two places,” she told him, “that I’d like to go to with you. If you think that you have the time.”

  “I have plenty of time. I have as much time as you want.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I told them. I can pretty much write my own schedule.”

  “I’d like to go to Alpine. And back to Montgomery field.”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Though it scares me. Going back to Montgomery field.” He kept his eyes closed as he nodded. That was where it had all started, her love affair with flying. “Could we go there tomorrow,” she asked him, “I mean, to the field? I’d like to see my old instructor.”

  “If you’re up to it. Are you sure that you’re up to it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mentally? That could be quite a strain on you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the memories. I’m just trying to think with you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about that. It’ll help me to see Don, though.”

  “All right.”

  “And my plane. I want to see my first old Cessna.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “So, tomorrow? Let’s say early tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure.”

  “I need you there. I couldn’t go if it wasn’t for you.” She paused for a long time. Dwight could tell that she was thinking about something else. “I need you,” she told him at last, “for another reason. But I don’t know what that is yet.”

  “Oh.”

  Some white gulls cried. Pamela and Dwight lapsed into a silence that felt comfortable to both of them.