The Orphan

A Novel

Harold Hansen

© Copyright 2006  Harold Hansen
All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I always wanted to be an orphan…
could have been if it hadn’t been for my parents.

Joe Orton

Chapter 1
Mountain Air

	There must be some kind of Murphy's Law for air travel that says the tighter the connection you're trying to make, the farther your departure gate will be from the one where you just arrived. My plane from Dallas was late, and I can only hope that the flight to Aspen is running a little late too, so I'm jogging through the crowded terminal with my carry-on bag in one hand and my briefcase in the other; rudely using them to elbow past anybody who gets in my way. At least the gates are in the same concourse, so I don't have to wait on the bloody tram, but another 747 must have just unloaded, and the place is a madhouse. Then all of a sudden I find my way blocked by a string of nine or ten year old cub scouts; cute little buggers in cute little blue uniforms, each obediently hanging on to the one ahead as they snake their way through the crowd in the wake of a tall formidable looking den mother, but I just pry two of the boys apart and plow right through the line.
	“Sir!” the woman calls out indignantly.
	“I'm sorry,” I call back over my shoulder as she stands there glaring at me. I feel guilty about being such a clod, but I have just got to make that flight to Aspen.
	Fortunately I've made this trip before, so I know where to go, but when I finally get to the Aspen Airways departure lounge, it's empty; the flight has already boarded. My first impulse is to look out the windows to see if the plane is still there, but it's so dark out that all I can see is my own reflection. Then, with a sinking feeling, I realize that the boarding gate has been closed.
	“Can I help you?” asks a young man standing at the desk sorting through some paperwork.
	“It looks like I've missed the flight,” I say dejectedly.
	“Your name?” he asks with a smile, momentarily making me think that there still might be some hope.
	“Barnett... Lincoln Barnett.”
	“Oh, Doctor Barnett,” he grins when he finds my name on his list, “yes... I'm sorry... when you didn't show up, we gave your seat to someone on standby.”
	“I'm so happy you were able to fill the seat,” I say sarcastically, “but how am I going to get to Aspen? I'm supposed to give a lecture at an engineering meeting at ten o'clock tomorrow morning.”
	“Our ticket counter will be open for another hour or so,” he says with a forced smile, “I'm sure one of the agents there will be able to help you.”

	I haven't been able to smoke a cigarette all goddamn afternoon, and I'm tempted to find an exit and go outdoors so I can grab a smoke first, but if I don't get to Aspen in time to give that paper tomorrow morning, my ass is really going to be in a sling. My boss was convinced that this conference is just some kind of boondoggle. If my paper on Supercritical Helium hadn't been accepted for the cryogenics symposium, there's no way he would have let me come out here. As it is, they put me in the very first session when all the least important papers are given, and I doubt if they'll be willing to reschedule it for a later session if I don't get there in time.
	And then as if Murphy has a law about this too, those damned little cub scouts all crowd into my tram car as I head back to the main concourse. Some of them apparently recognize me and point and giggle, but I just try to ignore them. Then as I stand back to let the little monsters get off the tram ahead of me, the den mother catches my eye and nods approval, making me blush all over again.
	The only person at the Aspen Airways ticket counter is a pert little brunette who flashes what appears to be a really genuine smile when she sees me approaching.
	“I'm afraid I've missed my flight to Aspen,” I say, handing her my ticket.
	“That was our last flight for today,” she says, shaking her head, “but I can give you a seat on the morning flight.”
	“What time does that get into Aspen?”
	“Eleven fifteen... it leaves here at ten thirty.”
	“I need to be there in time for a ten o'clock meeting... I'm supposed to be one of the speakers... it's an engineering conference.”
	“I'm awfully sorry, uh... Doctor Barnett,” she says after glancing down at my ticket to find my name, “we don't have anything until that flight in the morning.”
	“Doesn't anybody else fly into Aspen?”
	“Not this time of night...”
	“What about the train... isn't there an overnight train?”
	“No,” she says, opening a big three ring notebook, “the Amtrak has already left... let me check the bus schedule,” she turns a page in her notebook, “there is a midnight bus to Glenwood Springs, but you'd have to take a taxi up to Aspen, and...”
	“I could do that,” I interrupt.
	“No,” she shakes her head, “that bus must stop at every little town, it doesn't even get into Glenwood until after ten... you'd be better off taking our morning flight.”
	“I'm really going to be in hot water if I don't make that ten o'clock meeting,” I moan.
	“There is one other possibility,” the girl says, “let me check,” and she picks up the phone and makes a call, but they keep her waiting, and for a long time she just stands there with the phone glued to her ear. She even takes care of a ticket change for another customer with the phone propped up on her shoulder, while I shift impatiently from foot to foot; fingering an unlighted cigarette.
	The girl's not bad looking; about twenty-five, I would guess, rather tall for a girl and yet not as tall as I am. Her face is a little too round, with a pudgy nose that doesn't seem to belong to the face, though the way she has her dark hair sort of framing her face like a couple of parentheses makes it seem not only natural but rather attractive. The guy at the gate said this counter was only going to be open for another hour, so she just might be willing to have a drink with me somewhere. I mean, if I'm going to have to spend the goddamn night here in Denver, it would be nice to have some company. But then when she reaches up to adjust the phone perched on her shoulder, I see a wedding band on her left hand, and I let out a sigh and go back to sucking on my unlit cigarette.
	“Okay,” she smiles after finally talking to someone at the other end of the line, “there's a charter flight ready to leave for Aspen right away, they only have one seat available, but they said they'll hold the flight for you if you hurry right over... you don't have to pick up any luggage, do you?”
	“No, all I have is this one,” I say, holding up my carry-on bag. Then she tells the person on the phone my name and promises I will be right there.
	“Okay, go down to the next level, take a hard left at the foot of the escalator, and head for the nearest exit,” she says, pointing at the escalators, “grab a cab and tell him to take you to Mountain Air, the driver will know where it is, it's on the other side of the field.”
	“What about a ticket, do I have to change it?”
	“No, Mountain Air will honor the one you already have... now go,” she laughs, “hurry, hurry, fly like the wind... they're holding the plane for you.”

	So I literally run down the escalator two steps at a time. Then when I turn towards the exit, there is that same long blue line of cub scouts; gawking up at the funky circus-tent ceiling as they continue their tour of the passenger terminal. I wonder if I am going to have to make a clod of myself all over again, but the boys see me coming, and the tail end of the line starts jogging so that the last boy passes by just in time to let me dash through the exit. A chorus of boyish cheers echoes out of the vaulted concourse as the doors close behind me, but I don't even look back, I just throw my briefcase and bag into the back seat of the nearest taxi and jump in after them.
	“I have to go to a place called Mountain Air,” I tell the driver, “and hurry, they're holding a plane for me.”
	“Sure thing, meester,” he says with a Mexican accent, “but it's gonna take a few minutes, I gotta go all the way roun' the fuckin' airport.”
	“Is it all right if I smoke?” I ask, though I'm already lighting up; the beat-up old cab stinks of tobacco so bad that I almost don't need the cigarette.
	“No problemo,” he says, “you got another one? I ran out a couple hours ago... I'm 'bout to fuckin' die of fresh air poisonin'.”
	“Sure,” I laugh, “here, take the rest of the pack, I won't be able to smoke on the plane anyway... I can pick up another pack when I get to Aspen.”
	The taxi actually leaves the airport and I wonder if the guy really knows where he's going, but then he gets off the freeway and heads back to the airport on another highway. It doesn't take as long as I expected, and I don't even have time to finish my cigarette. The place isn't very imposing; just a little one-story concrete block building, but it must be the right one, there's a faded sign over the door that says: “MOUNTAIN AIR SERVICES.”
	I stand around outside for just a minute to take a couple more drags on the cigarette, and then after I grind it out on the sidewalk, I pull open the door and go on in to a little waiting room with painted concrete block walls and dozens of cheap plastic chairs scattered haphazardly about. The place is empty except for a heavyset woman at the ticket counter, but it still smells of sweat and perfume.
	“Doctor Barnett?” the woman asks. “Go right on out,” she says when I nod, “just go ahead and board the plane,” so I continue on across the waiting room and out the other doors to the flight ramp.
	The plane is a twin engine turboprop that reminds me of NASA-4, the Kennedy Space Center executive plane, but this is obviously bigger than NASA-4, though it still looks awfully small after getting off a 747. Light is shining out of the oval windows, and the wingtip lights and a flashing beacon on the tail are operating, but there aren't any other lights on the ramp, and the plane looks kind of spooky sitting there all by itself in a dark swirl of ground fog. A noisy airconditioning cart is still running down under the wing, so it doesn't look like they were about to leave without me, and I'm tempted to light up another cigarette and take a couple more puffs before I get on the plane. But then as I bring my hand up to my empty shirt pocket, I remember that I gave my cigarettes to the cab driver.

	“Doctor Barnett?” asks a fight attendant standing just inside the open door, and again I nod, “Welcome aboard,” she smiles, “glad you could make it.”
	“So am I,” I laugh self-consciously as I hand her my ticket, “I thought I was going to be stuck here in Denver all night... my flight from Dallas was late, and I missed the connecting flight to Aspen, so I really appreciate you people letting me... uh, you know, having a seat available on this flight.” The girl is short and chubby and looks awfully young to be an airline stewardess, but she has a really nice warm smile. Her uniform is made out of faded blue denim, giving it a western look as if she ought to be wearing a cowboy hat, and her name tag, I notice, says: “VICKI.”
	“What kind of plane is this?” I ask as she checks out my ticket.
	“This is a Brasilia Forty,” she answers, apparently deciding that my ticket is okay, “at least that's what we call it,” she smiles, “it's a Brazilian made forty passenger airliner with Rolls Royce turbine engines. It's not as fast as a regular jet, but it's a very safe airplane, especially for this mountain terrain.” She sounds very knowledgeable, and yet I suppose that's just a canned speech she's been trained to say. The interior certainly doesn't look anything like the spacious layout of the NASA executive aircraft even though it's much bigger. There are only two seats on each side of the aisle, of course, but even so, they appear to be awfully narrow seats; once again making the plane seem positively tiny compared to the big widebody jets.
	The other passengers must have just boarded; a few of them still standing around in the narrow aisle, putting things in the overhead rack. There is a lot of talking and even shouting and laughter, more than you would expect from ordinary airline passengers, and then I remember that this is a charter flight and these people must all know each other.
	“They sound like a happy bunch,” I comment.
	“Uh-huh,” Vicki nods, “Baptist missionaries on their way to some kind of retreat in Aspen.”
	“All the way from the wilds of Africa?”
	“All the way from the wilds of Dallas Fort Worth,” she laughs.
	I just assume there is a vacant seat for me up there with the rest of the passengers, but she takes me back into the tail of the plane, past the toilet cubicle and a small galley to a tiny compartment where the fuselage narrows. This contains two more passenger seats crammed in next to some storage lockers. A ten or eleven year old boy is sitting in the window seat wearing a pair of earphones and fiddling with a compact disk player, and the other seat, apparently, is mine.
	“That center armrest pulls out if you want a little more room,” the girl says, but I just shake my head. The seats are awfully narrow, but the implication that my butt might be too wide for the seat embarrasses me. “These two seats were originally meant for the flight attendants,” she goes on, “but since we don't serve meals on these short flights, I'm the only flight attendant, and we can seat two more passengers back here.”
	“Then where do you sit?” I blurt out.
	“I have a seat in the crew compartment during take off,” she smiles, “after that I'm much too busy to sit down.”
	She puts my carry-on bag in one of the storage lockers; right next, I notice, to a dark red backpack that probably belongs to the boy.
	“Hey Miss Vicki,” the boy calls out in a reedy high-pitched voice as I slide into my seat, “what're you gonna serve for dinner on this flight?”
	“Here you go, Billy,” she laughs, reaching into one of the galley cupboards and tossing a package of crackers to him. The boy is quick and catches the package in mid air, but I don't even see mine coming until it lands in my lap.
	“Do I get a beer with this?” he asks.
	“We don't have any beer,” she says, in a perfectly serious voice, “wait 'til we take off, and I'll bring you a martini,” then she disappears. I can't see much of the passenger cabin from my seat, but I can tell that they haven't closed the rear door yet.

	I give the boy a little better looking over now. He's awfully skinny and has scruffy looking shaggy blond hair; not stylishly long, just looking like he needs a haircut. His bluejeans are faded and torn at the knees, and his tee shirt has a faded picture of some rock band and a red ketchup stain down the front. I can readily understand why some people want to dress down when they travel, but this is ridiculous; he certainly doesn't seem to fit in with those well-dressed missionaries. But then, I've gone to the opposite extreme; wearing my suit and tie rather than take the chance of having a checked bag not make it to Aspen in time for that morning meeting.
	“Compliments of Mountain Air Services... big fuckin' deal,” the kid says sarcastically in his reedy voice as he looks at the printing on the package of crackers, but he tears it open and begins eating them right away. I put mine in my shirt pocket where the cigarettes would normally have been; I figure it might be nice to have something to nibble on when the urge to smoke starts to get to me again. Meanwhile, I open my briefcase and pull out my laptop computer. I want to go over the presentation I'm going to make at the meeting one more time tonight, and if I do it now, I can hit the hotel bar for a drink or two before turning in.
	“Hey man,” the boy asks when he sees me open the briefcase, “you got any double A batteries?... this fuckin' thing is dead as a fuckin' doornail,” he adds, holding up the CD player.
	“No, I'm afraid not,” I answer as I open the computer.
	“Don't that thing run on batteries?”
	“Not on double A batteries,” and I can't help laughing at the kid's temerity in expecting me to let him have the batteries right out of my computer.
	“This sucks,” he grumbles, “stuck here half the night without a fuckin' thing to listen to.”
	“You want me to whistle for you?” I ask sarcastically, but he just laughs, and I can't help noticing that he has a deceptively innocent smile for such a foul mouthed little son-of-a-bitch.
	“What's your name?” he asks then.
	“Jason,” I answer, “Jason Barnett,” but he doesn't offer to shake hands, he doesn't even tell me his own name, though, of course, I heard the stewardess call him Billy.
	“You with the holy rollers?” he asks, nodding towards the passenger compartment.
	“No,” I answer without further explanation, “are you?”
	“Fat fuckin' chance,” he laughs.
	“Aren't your parents...”
	“Oh hell yes,” he interrupts before I can finish the question, “they're up there in fuckin' first class with the rest of chosen ones.”
	“So how'd you end up back here all by yourself?”
	“Ain't that fuckin' obvious,” he laughs, “you think they'd want me embarrassing them right there in front of all the hoi paloi?”
	I'm not about to pursue a conversation like that, so I turn back to my computer and call up the slides that I plan to use with my talk. The first one is just a view of the launch pad with a shuttle taking off, and I go over in my mind again the explanation of the many different ways we use cryogenic fluids in the space program.
	“Oh wow,” the boy says, for once forgetting to use the word fuck, “are you an astronaut?”
	“Don't I wish,” I laugh, “those guys make out like bandits... no, I'm just an engineer, I work for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center... I'm supposed to speak at an engineering conference in Aspen tomorrow... at the cryogenics symposium... uh, cryogenics is the study of extremely cold fluids, like...”
	“I know what cryogenics means,” he interrupts in an exasperated tone of voice, “like liquid oxygen and stuff.”
	“Uh, right,” I say, “but a lot people don't know that... uh, I usually have to explain it.”
	“Yeah, but I'm not fuckin' stupid.”
	I just try to ignore that last crack and show him the rest of the slides without even trying to go over my talk. There are a couple more shots of the orbiter in the hanger and on the launch pad, but most of the pictures are of Dewars and vacuum jacketed lines and cryogenic compressors, and, of course, that's no where near as interesting to a kid as the picture of the liftoff.
	“Mostly my talk is going to be about the handling of Supercritical Helium,” I drone on, “Supercritical Helium is...”
	“Like when you pressurize liquid Helium and then it collapses into a denser state,” he interrupts, absolutely astounding me. I wasn't all that surprised when the boy said he knew what cryogenics meant, but you probably won't find more than a handful of people who know what Supercritical Helium is.
	“Where did you learn that?” I ask, my mouth still hanging open in surprise.
	“I go to a special school for smart-ass little bastards like me,” he shrugs with a surprisingly shy self-conscious expression.
	“How old are you?” I ask then.
	“Eighteen... how old are you?”
	“Thirty-two...”
	“Are you married?”
	“No.”
	“Why not,” he persists, “don't you like girls?”
	“Yes, of course,” I respond defensively in spite of the fact that I realize he is deliberately badgering me, “what I don't like are smart-ass little boys,” but he just laughs.
	“You and I'll get along okay, Jason,” he grins, holding up his hand for a high-five, and I can't help grinning too as I slap the palm of his hand with mine.

	“So tell me, Billy, are you an eighteen year old midget or a ten year old liar?” I ask quietly.
	“Well, actually,” he answers, “I'm twelve... I'm almost thirteen... I'll be thirteen in a few months.”
	“Really, how many months?”
	“Not many,” he shrugs, “just a few...”
	“How many?” I persist loudly, figuring I finally have the little son-of-a-bitch on the defensive.
	“Well, actually,” he squirms, “it's a little more than a few...”
	“How many?” I can't help laughing.
	“Almost eleven,” he giggles girlishly, “I just turned twelve last month.”
	“You're right, Billy,” I laugh, holding up my hand for another high-five, “you and I'll get along just fine.”
	“So where do you live,” Billy asks, “in Cocoa Beach?”
	“Yeah, I have an apartment right on the ocean... just a few blocks south of the pier.”
	“You surf?”
	“Sure do, every chance I get.”
	“I heard they don't have very big waves in Cocoa Beach.”
	“No,” I shrug, “they're not as big as California... five or six foot waves are pretty big for us... mostly they're only three or four...”
	“Piddly little waves,” Billy laughs.
	“Not necessarily... small waves are really good to learn on, and once you learn how to stay on your feet on a small wave, you know how to surf the big ones... a lot of world champion surfers started in Cocoa Beach... haven't you ever heard of Kelly Slater?”
	“Yeah, sure, do you know him?”
	“No, he's always off surfing at some big contest somewhere... he's got a younger brother... I've seen him at the pier, but I don't really know him either.”
	“You ever surf any really big waves?” Billy asks.
	“Yeah, out in California... some ten twelve foot ones... I went to Hawaii once just to surf the big waves, but the whole week I was there, they were no bigger than the ones we have in Cocoa Beach.”
	“Bummer!”
	“Yeah, Cocoa Beach has pretty good waves about three hundred days a year... California and Hawaii might go for months without any decent waves... sometimes when the surf's up out in California, everybody takes a day off from work just so they won't miss out on it... do you surf?” I ask.
	“Naw,” he shakes his head, “I was gonna try it once when we were at the beach... on Galveston Island... we were there a whole week, but there never were any waves.”
	“Yeah,” I nod, “the Gulf doesn't have waves like we do on the East Coast...”
	“Unless there's a hurricane,” he breaks in with a silly giggle.
	“Not the best time to go surfing,” I laugh.
	“Some guys do, though, I've seen it on TV.”
	“Yeah, but if a hurricane's coming, you want to get the hell out of there... especially in a place like Galveston Island... or Cocoa Beach, for that matter.”
	“You have hurricanes in Cocoa Beach?”
	“Oh yeah,” I laugh, “well... actually not many... there's only been two since I lived there, Hurricane Erin a couple of years ago and Hurricane Floyd last year.”
	“I heard about Floyd... wasn't that the one where a million people had to evacuate?”
	“Yeah... that was a mess... and the hurricane never did come anywhere near Cocoa Beach.”
	“But you evacuated anyway?”
	“I sure did,” I chuckle, “that was a hell of a big storm, if it had hit Cocoa Beach head on, it could have washed the island right off the map... as it was, it did more damage than Hurricane Erin which did hit head on... both of them blew off some roofing, but Floyd blew two inches of sand up onto my second floor balcony.”
	“Where'd you go... I mean, when you evacuated?”
	“Orlando... I mean for Floyd I went to Orlando... when we had to evacuate for Erin, I went over to Cocoa and stayed in a shelter set up in some school gymnasium... that was a real bummer, kids screaming all night... nobody got any sleep...”
	“Yeah... bummer!” Billy laughs.
	“So when it looked like Floyd might not turn north the way they kept saying, I left early and was lucky enough to get a room in one of the old hotels in downtown Orlando... it was right next to a nightclub, so it was just one big party.”
	“And you had your own room?”
	“Yeah,” I nod.
	“So you didn't have to sleep alone,” he giggles.
	“Mind your own business,” I laugh, giving him a poke on the shoulder, but I can feel myself blushing a little.

	About this time the tail end of the plane bobs up and down slightly as the two pilots come aboard. One of them, a slim fortyish man wearing a rumpled uniform, heads back into our little compartment, nods at us, and then puts a small flight bag into the storage locker next to my bag and Billy's backpack. Then I hear him closing the passenger door and feel my ears pop with the change in pressure.
	“Looks like the fuckin' plane is finally gonna take off,” Billy says, “we been sitting here for a fuckin' hour.”
	“I've been wondering what happened to the fuckin' this and the fuckin' that,” I chuckle, realizing that he hasn't been using that expletive for a while.
	“I don't always talk like that,” he says, dropping his eyes bashfully.
	“Why do you talk that way at all?”
	“It pisses people off.”
	“And you like to piss people off?”
	“Sometimes.”
	“You think you can piss me off?” I laugh, but he just laughs too.
	The plane finally starts to taxi out to the runway, and the stewardess looks into our compartment to make sure we have our seat belts fastened.
	“You like her?” Billy asks after she leaves.
	“She seems very nice.”
	“Kind of big in the butt, don't you think?”
	“Hey,” I laugh, “nobody ever accused me of being prejudiced against fat-ass girls.”
	“Just smart-ass boys,” Billy grins.
	“That's right, just smart-ass boys.”
	“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot says over the loudspeakers, “we're sorry about the delay, but we took a little longer checking the weather... there's a nasty storm between here and Aspen, but we plan to go around it, so that shouldn't cause any discomfort... and we expect to be on the ground in Aspen in about... uh, forty-five minutes.”
	Billy has his head stuck in the window during most of the takeoff. Then when the seat belt light goes out, he unbuckles his belt and glances out of the window one more time.
	“What do you see?” I chuckle.
	“Can't see shit any more,” he shrugs, “we're up in the soup now... you ever been to Aspen?” he asks as an afterthought.
	“Sure, in the winter, for skiing, have you?”
	“Oh yeah, that's where we live.”
	“Oh? I had the idea you were from the Dallas Fort Worth area.”
	“Yeah, sometimes, but mostly we live in Aspen... that's where I go to school.”
	“That special school for smart-ass kids?” I chuckle.
	“Yeah,” he actually blushes.
	“Then you must be a pretty good skier.”
	“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugs, “I mean, everybody in Aspen skis.”
	“I know,” I laugh, “the first time I went to Aspen I spent the whole week flopping in the snow and filling my sitzmarks... then one afternoon they let the kids out of school to ski, and these little twerps no more than six or seven years old were skiing rings around the rest of us.”
	“Hadn't you ever skied before?”
	“Oh sure,” I laugh, “I've been skiing ever since I was a kid... but I'd never skied in the mountains... I mean, the little ski area we had in Michigan back then had a hill about a hundred feet high... rope tows... and good ski conditions were three or four inches of manmade snow with weeds and rocks sticking up through it... whenever you fell down, you didn't leave a sitzmark, you got a big black and blue mark on your butt... I thought I knew how to ski when I came out here the first time, but I soon found out that I really didn't know diddly squat!”
	“So are you still just a beginner?” Billy laughs.
	“No, but I'm no expert yet either... last year I was here for two weeks, and I managed to ski the intermediate slopes pretty well, but when I tried one of the expert runs, I liked to scare the shit out of myself.”
	We're still laughing when a chime sounds and the seat belt light comes back on, but Billy just ignores it. I never did unfasten mine; I've flown enough to know that turbulence can catch the pilots by surprise, and you're better off leaving the belt fastened unless you really need to get up for some reason.
	“Fasten your seat belts, guys,” the stewardess says as she pokes her head around the partition that separates us from the galley, but Billy still doesn't fasten his belt.
	“You'd better fasten your seat belt,” I tell him, “sometimes rough weather can be...”
	“I ain't afraid of no fuckin' weather,” he interrupts belligerently, and just as Billy himself has predicted, that pisses me off.
	“Now you listen to me,” I shout angrily, “I've flown in weather where people were bouncing off the ceiling and throwing up all over the place, and if you think I'm just going to sit here and let you puke all over my best suit, you've got another think coming... now fasten that goddamn seat belt!” He gives me a sullen look, but he fastens his seat belt, and that ends the conversation for a while. He just sulks and occasionally looks out the window, and I go back to reviewing the slides for my presentation.

	But after a quick once-over, I lose interest; I know what I want to say, and I know that I'm not going to have any trouble saying it. I've given talks like this before, and I've never had any trouble with stage fright. So my mind drifts, and I think about how lucky I am to have gotten the last seat on this charter flight. I almost screwed up big time by not taking the earlier plane out of Orlando. If I'd done that, I would have had plenty of time to make the connecting flight to Aspen. And not getting to Aspen in time to give my talk at the morning session tomorrow would have really made me look bad after having wheedled my boss into sending me on what he's probably still convinced is just a boondoggle.
	As a matter of fact, I originally booked the early flight, but then Donna wanted us to go to that party at her church on Saturday night. I figured she'd be willing to spend the night with me again, and getting up at four-thirty to make a seven o'clock flight out of Orlando is no way to end a romantic evening, so I rescheduled the flight knowing full well that it involved a tight connection here in Denver. Thirty-two years old, and I'm still young and foolish! I can't help chuckling out loud, and Billy gives me a quizzical look, but he doesn't say anything.
	As long as I get to Aspen in time for that ten o'clock meeting, though, everything's going to be all right. It was worth taking a chance; we had a good time at the party and an even better time afterwards at my place. Donna is a lot like the stewardess; a little older, of course, but like the boy said, “kind of big in the butt.” She's a real nice girl, though, and after all, who am I to be choosy. All that surfing has helped me get my weight down, and I've even built up a little more muscle, though I'm still no Arnold Schwarzenegger. And my hair is getting thin already; I'm probably going to be bald by the time I'm in my forties. Even so, I don't really have any trouble getting dates.
	This was only the second time Donna and I have been to bed together, and it was a lot more relaxing than the other time. But I'm still not sure where the relationship is going; last night she asked me to go to church with her the Sunday after I get back. Not that I object to going to church, maybe a little religion will do me some good, but the next thing you know, she'll be wanting me to meet her mother, for Christ's sake! I mean, I'm not the kind of guy who's just out for sex, I want to have a meaningful relationship too, but I'm not all that anxious to jump right into the marriage thing.
	I keep thinking that I'm still too young to get married, though that is kind of silly, I suppose; most guys are married by the time they're thirty-two. But I spent so much time going to school, and it's only the last few years that I've had the money and a place of my own so that I could...

	“I see trees,” Billy says quietly, interrupting my train of thought.
	“Oh, has the weather cleared that much?” I nod without really thinking about what he said. There have been a few mild bumps, but nothing you could call turbulence, and I feel a little embarrassed for having made such an issue of it.
	“No,” he says more urgently, “right outside the fuckin' window,” but then before I can tell him that he must be seeing things, there is a loud scraping sound down underneath the floor. The engines suddenly rev up to full power, and the plane lurches into a steep climb, but only a few seconds later, there is a shuddering crash, and the lights go out.

Chapter 2
Survival

	Billy is screaming hysterically, I suppose I am too, and we're spinning around so violently that my computer is torn right out of my hands by the centrifugal force. Then there is a deafening noise like big sledge hammers beating on sheet metal as we crash and bounce and slam into rocks and trees; bits of dirt and snow flying into our faces. It seems to go on and on forever, though I doubt if it can be more than a matter of seconds, and then with a final jarring crash that shoves me back into the seat with enough force to knock the wind right out of me, we come to a stop.
	The silence is deafening; a phrase I've often heard but never before experienced. It's a moment before Billy and I can get our breath and start screaming again, though I think I get myself back under control before he does; Billy just keeps on screaming. I can see flickering red lights glistening in the snow splattered across the window, and for just an instant, I think that emergency vehicles have already arrived, but then I realize that the flickering light is coming from a fire, and I start to feel panicky again.
	I get my seat belt unfastened and try to stand up, but I fall right back into the seat; the floor must be tilted up at some crazy angle. Getting up more carefully, I start to move towards the front of the plane and then suddenly freeze; shocked to realize that the rest of the airplane isn't there anymore. There is nothing beyond the galley but rocks and snow and splintered trees.
	Now Billy is screaming even more hysterically; maybe he thinks I am going to abandon him. I don't know, maybe I was, but I realize that wherever that firelight is coming from, it's far enough away that it isn't any threat to us, so I go back and help the boy get his seat belt unbuckled and stand up. He's still blubbering incoherently, and I take hold of him to try to calm him down.
	“Are we dead now?” he sobs, looking up at me with wide-open panic-stricken eyes.
	“No, we're alive... are you hurt?” I ask, but he just looks at me dumbly as if he can't imagine what I'm talking about. “Move your right foot,” I say, holding him up, “does it hurt?” I ask when he finally lifts his knee up a little.
	“No, I don't think so,” he mumbles between sobs.
	“Okay,” I try to sound calm, though I really don't feel very calm, “now try the other foot,” then I have him move each arm, and when that doesn't seem to cause any pain, I help him climb down out of the wreckage.

	The first thing we see is the fire. There is no way you can not look at the fire; it absolutely commands attention. It is both the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. The air is cold and it's snowing lightly, giving the fire an eerie halo, and yet the heat of the fire is strangely comforting. It's hard to tell how far away it is, but the way the flames are boiling up in a weird sort of slow motion and the stunning silence tell me that it must be a long way from where we are standing.
	All of a sudden Billy lets out a gasp and an agonizing scream.
	“Where is everybody,” he cries, “where is everybody else... are they dead... is everybody else dead?” he chokes, staring at the billowing fire, but it's painfully obvious that he already knows the answer. All I can do is hold him and let him bury his face in my chest while shuddering sobs rack his skinny little body.
	“They didn't suffer,” I tell him, “they never felt a thing... it happened so fast they never felt a thing.”
	I'm concerned for the boy, of course; suddenly losing his mother and father like this. I can't even imagine what horror he must be going through. But I'm also very realistically concerned about what is going to happen to us now. We're obviously at a very high elevation, it's cold and snowing, and God only knows when a rescue team is going to find us. The tail section that we were in is the only large piece of wreckage I can see, but it's pretty firmly wedged in against some sturdy trees and doesn't look like it's about to slide any farther down the hillside. So the logical thing to do is to get back inside out of the weather.
	I realize as I help Billy climb back up into the plane that there is light shining out of the compartment where we were sitting, and when we get inside, I can see that there is a battery powered emergency light fastened to the aft bulkhead. It just has a little bulb, but it provides enough light. It must have been on all along, but in the panic, I guess I didn't notice.
	I help Billy over to the seats, but he just perches on the edge of one seat with that terrified glassy-eyed look still on his face. I figure he must be in shock, but I don't know what to do about that except to try to quiet him down and reassure him and hope that he pulls out of it on his own. I wonder if I'm in shock too, but I know that if we're going to survive this, it's going to be up to me to make it happen; I can't count on much help from a terrified twelve-year-old.
	What's left of the aircraft does offer some protection from the weather, though it's not going to be much. I try to stay calm, and take an inventory of what else we've got. The doors on the storage lockers all stayed fastened, and I see that we still have our luggage. And when I open the other lockers, I find some paper towels and toilet paper in one and a big stack of blankets in another. There must be at least a dozen blankets, and for the first time, I begin to feel some encouragement. Then I remember the peanut butter and cheese crackers the flight attendant gave us, and when I look in the galley cupboards, I find a big box of those crackers. There's no other food in the galley, but that box of crackers must contain at least a hundred packages. Now I can't help letting out a sigh of relief; we can survive for days if necessary. We have shelter here in the wreckage of the tail compartment, we have blankets and food, and the snow will provide water.
	I gradually become aware of the fact that it's just as cold in here as it was outside. Half the toilet cubicle and everything on the other side of the galley partition is gone, and the space between the two is wide open to the outdoors. The door from the wrecked toilet is hanging free and, in fact, was in our way as we climbed back into the plane, so I swing it in to cover as much of the opening as possible, and then I hang a couple of the blankets over it and hook them to a latch on one of the galley cupboards with a coat hanger I find in what's left of the toilet cubicle. This pretty much shrouds the opening to our compartment and gives us a lot more protection from the weather.
	Billy is still sitting there in a daze, but I get him to stand up out of the way while I try to make the seats into something more suitable for sleeping. The back rests don't go back very far before they hit the wall, but I shove them back as far as I can and then pull out the center armrest to make the seats into a bed. It's awfully low in the middle, but I fill in the center with a couple more blankets to help even it out. Then I spread another blanket over the seats and arrange a couple more to put over us and motion for Billy to get into the bed.
	“I'm wet,” he bawls, starting to cry again, “I wet my fuckin' pants.”
	“That's no big deal,” I try to keep my voice calm, “don't you have some more clothes in your backpack?”
	“No, jes' my jacket.”
	“Here,” I say, opening my carry-on bag, “take off your wet things and put these on,” and I pull out a pair of my knit undershorts and the bluejeans I brought along for casual wear. “You can wipe yourself off with these,” I add, handing him some paper towels. Then while Billy puts on my underwear and jeans, I hang his wet clothes in the galley to dry.
	In addition to the jeans, I've brought a pair of sneakers and a fleece-lined sweatshirt with the big blue “NASA Meatball” logo on the front. I take off my suit coat and necktie and put them in one of the lockers and pull on the sweatshirt, and then I put on the sneakers. They aren't going to be much warmer in this weather than the loafers I was wearing, but at least they won't be as likely to come off in the snow.
	After I get Billy tucked into the bed, I reach up to see if the emergency light has an on-off switch.
	“I'm going to turn the light off to save the battery,” I tell him after I find the little toggle switch, “but I can turn it right back on again if we need it,” and then after I switch off the light, I get under the blankets next to Billy. It's almost impossible to lie there in any position other than on your back, but I put an arm around him as best I can, and he presses his face down against my shoulder and starts crying again. I don't know whether that's good for him or not; all I can do is hold the boy and hope for the best.

	I sleep fitfully, but I'm surprised that I get any sleep at all. Billy manages to cry himself to sleep, but for a long time, I just lie there still wide awake. After having been relatively calm and in command of myself, I'm suddenly terrified. The full magnitude of what has happened is finally sinking in, and it scares the shit out of me. My mind races with all sorts of even more terrible things that can yet happen, and all I can do is tell myself to calm down and try to get some sleep. That doesn't work, of course, though sheer exhaustion eventually does.
	But each time I wake up, I think that being in the wreckage of an airplane must be some kind of weird dream, and it takes a minute or so for me to realize that anything else would have to be the dream. One of the times I wake up, it's pitch black, and I am so convinced that the plane crash was just a dream that I can't figure out where I am or who that is lying next to me. Finally as I recognize the feel of the armrest pressing against my ribs, I remember that I am indeed still in the airplane and the reason it's so dark is that there is no longer any light from the fire flickering through our little window.
	Billy is still sleeping when I finally get up, so I try not to disturb him. Standing up on the tilted floor is still tricky, and now it's even worse; I'm stiff as a board. Every single muscle hurts; my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, my arms and legs hurt, even my fingers hurt. I want to just sink back into the makeshift bed, but I get up and climb down out of the plane because I really have to empty my bladder.
	The sky is still cloudy, but it has stopped snowing. I can see now that we're on one side of a rocky valley, and the blackened wreckage of the rest of the plane is on the other side; at maybe a little higher elevation and at least a half or three quarters of a mile away. Turning around and looking up this side of the valley, I can see the path of debris and smashed trees that the tail section made as it slid down here where it is now; leaning against a couple of the larger trees. We seem to be at a pretty high elevation; right at the timberline. There's only a scattering of scrawny little trees above us, and much larger ones down in the lower part of the valley. Up here they look like aspens; the bigger ones further down mostly pines. There is a shallow coating of snow on the ground, the air has that clean wonderful mountain smell, and the little valley is so peaceful that it's hard to believe it is the scene of such an awful disaster.
	I can't help wondering if there could be some more survivors after all, but I don't see any other piece of wreckage large enough to have survivors in it. The plane must have struck that ridge above us and broke in two; the tail section ending up down here, and the rest of the plane continuing through the air across the valley and then plowing into the cliff on the other side. And the crash site over there doesn't appear to contain anything that even looks like part of an airplane; just blackened wreckage at the foot of the cliff the plane crashed into.
	Turboprops cruise at a little over 400 miles an hour, which is five or six hundred feet per second, so it would have taken the plane a good ten seconds to go the mile or so from the ridge where the tail section broke off to the cliff where it crashed. So what I told the boy last night was not strictly true; those people must have gone through the same terror that he and I did after the plane broke apart. Some of the passengers in the rear seats might even have tumbled out, though, of course, they would have been killed instantly when they hit the ground at that speed; just as the others were ten seconds later when they slammed into the cliff. That the two of us survived at all – much less able to walk away – has to be some kind of a fluke; the fact that the tail section didn't hit anything really solid until it had already slowed down quite a bit, and that we were facing backwards when it finally did. Having our seat belts fastened, of course, was the crucial factor, and to think that I actually felt guilty over making such an issue about that!
	While I'm still looking around, Billy comes stumbling out of the plane wearing his own bluejeans again.
	“Are those dry?”
	“They're dry enough,” he shrugs, “but I'm still wearing your jockey shorts.”
	“That's okay, I've got a couple more,” and then I just stand there feeling kind of self-conscious; wondering if he's still in shock. I want to ask him if he's going to be all right, but I'm afraid to say that in so many words. I'm afraid to ask the poor kid anything; I'm afraid that whatever I say will only remind him about his parents and send him even deeper into God only knows what kind of emotional hell he must be going through.
	Billy is probably as stiff and sore as I am, but he doesn't complain; he just takes his piss and then shivers a little and climbs back into the plane. I climb in after him and take off my good pants and carefully fold them up with the suit jacket and put on the jeans. Then I start looking through the galley cupboards for something to melt snow in.
	I look all through the galley again just in case there might be some food I overlooked last night, but there isn't anything but that box of crackers. There's plenty of crackers, though, and I figure we're lucky to have anything at all. The rest of the things in the cupboards are just miscellaneous stuff they would use for serving light snacks; plastic cups, a couple of jugs for serving coffee, and various sized baskets and trays.
	“What are you going to do with that?” Billy asks when I pull out a metal tray and the two coffee jugs.
	“Melt some snow... for drinking water.”
	“You gonna build a fire?”
	“Yeah, if I can.”
	“I'll come out and help you,” and he takes a thick quilted jacket out of his backpack and puts it on.

	“Deadfall will burn better than that stuff,” I tell him as he starts to pick up some of the green branches that broke off during the crash.
	“It's pretty wet,” he shrugs, kicking his foot through the snow to expose the older sticks lying on the ground.
	“Lets try it anyway,” I say as I clear a spot between some rocks to build the fire. Then I wad up a bunch of paper towels and light them with my cigarette lighter while Billy digs up more sticks and feeds them into the flames one by one. The wet wood just sizzles at first, but before long we've got a pretty good fire going, so I fill the tray with snow and prop it up on the rocks over the fire.
	“How much snow you gonna melt?” Billy asks.
	“Enough to fill up those two jugs... that ought to give us enough drinking water to last a while.”
	“How long a while... I mean, when do you think they're gonna find us?” he asks in a hoarse whisper.
	“I don't know, Billy,” I answer quietly, “if the sun burns these clouds off, there might be some search planes up here yet today.”
	“Will they be able to see us?”
	“They'll be able to see that big black spot on the other side of the valley for sure,” I say without thinking; the last thing I want to do is remind the boy of that awful funeral pyre.
	“Yeah, but will they be able to see us?”
	“They'll bring a search party up here even if they don't see us... it might take a little longer, but we can wait it out, we've got a place to get in out of the weather, we've got food and water, and...”
	“What food?” he interrupts.
	“Those peanut butter crackers...”
	“Peanut butter crackers!” he interrupts again, “Jesus Christ, is that all there is in there?”
	“Hey, we're lucky to have anything, and there's a great big box of them... there must be a hundred packages in that box.”
	“Shit!” and for just a second, I think I am going to see a little smile, but he just shuffles his feet in the snow self-consciously.
	“Why can't we hike down out of here... how far can it be for Christ's sake?”
	“It could be quite a ways... we're right at the timberline... we must be about ten thousand feet up... it would be like walking down off Aspen Mountain.”
	“I could walk down off Aspen Mountain...”
	“Without following any of the cleared ski trails... like going down the back side... through country you've never seen before?” But he doesn't try to argue with me. And by the time we finish filling the jugs with water, the clouds are getting darker instead of burning off, the ceiling is down below the tops of the rocky ridges, and it's beginning to snow again. So we let the sputtering fire die out and climb back into the plane.
	“God, I'd give anything for a cup of coffee and a cigarette right now,” I say after breakfast; a package of crackers and a cup of water.
	“Is that all you think about, for Christ's sake, your fuckin' caffeine and nicotine addictions,” Billy snarls and then crawls back into bed and pulls the blankets up over his head.
	“I'm sorry,” I mumble apologetically, but then I can't think of anything else to say, so I sit down next to him and put my hand lightly on his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” I repeat softly, “I'm not being very good at this... I've never been through anything like this before either.”

	There isn't anything to do, so we just lie there in the bed. Billy still has his head under the covers, and for a while he seems to be shaking like he might be crying, but he finally quiets down. Then about mid-morning, I get up and fetch a roll of toilet paper out of the supply cabinet.
	“Where are you going?” he asks as I start to push out through the blankets shrouding our entrance.
	“I've got to take a crap.”
	“That toilet isn't working, is it?”
	“No, we can't use that... I'll just have to squat down out there and do it in the snow.”
	“I guess I'd better do that too,” Billy says when I come back in, “where'd you go?”
	“Down the hill, under that big pine tree,” I say, handing him the roll of toilet paper, “be careful you don't step in mine.”
	“You think I'm fuckin' stupid?” he snaps.
	When he comes back, Billy digs into his backpack and pulls out a scruffy looking little teddy bear. It's only about ten inches long, a black and white panda filled with plastic beads to make it feel like a bean bag, but what was once white is now a dirty gray, one glass eye is missing, and some of the plastic beads are leaking out of a torn seam.
	“Don't you fuckin' laugh at me,” he says belligerently as he stuffs the little bear inside his quilted jacket and crawls back into the bed.
	“I'm not laughing,” I say with complete honesty, “there's nothing to laugh about up here.”
	He pulls the blanket up over his head and appears to go back to sleep, but I just lie there next to him with my hands clasped behind my head. There isn't even anything to read, and tired as I am, I can't sleep, so I just lie there trying not to think about the predicament we're in, but, of course, that's all I can think about. If it doesn't stop snowing pretty soon, we could be in really big trouble. At this elevation the snow could get so deep that we couldn't even get out of what's left of this old airplane. We could get snowed in for the winter and our bodies never found until the snow melts off in the spring. I really don't think that's likely to happen this early in the fall, but I'm not as sure as I'd like to be.
	“I hear an airplane!” Billy shouts, suddenly flinging his blanket over on top of me. By the time I get out from under the blanket, he's bolting out the door, and, of course, I jump right up and follow him. But when I get outside, he's just standing there staring up into the gloom. There isn't even a ceiling; we seem to be right in the clouds with big white snowflakes swirling around us.
	“What did you hear?” I ask quietly after realizing how deathly still it is.
	“I thought I heard an airplane engine,” he mumbles, “it was real loud... I'm sure I heard a fuckin' airplane engine,” his voice trails off as he turns and climbs back into the plane.
	“You might have dreamed it,” I say when we get back inside.
	“It wasn't no fuckin' dream, I heard it,” he says angrily, throwing himself onto the bed and pulling the blanket back up over his head.
	“It could have been a dream,” I go on quietly, “they can be awfully real... one time a year or so ago, I heard the lady who manages the apartments calling my name in the middle of the night... it sounded terribly urgent, like the place was on fire or something, and I jumped right out of bed and went to the door... but when I opened the door, there wasn't anybody there... I looked out into the courtyard, but it was empty... there wasn't a soul anywhere, and then I realized that I was standing there in the open doorway bare ass naked,” and I can't help chuckling a little when I think about it, but Billy isn't laughing, he doesn't even seem to be listening to me, “so it had to have been a dream,” I finish lamely.

	I don't want to go back to worrying about being snowbound in a mountain wilderness, so I just lie there looking around the tiny compartment and wonder how I would describe it to somebody if we ever manage to get out of this mess. No, I tell myself, not “if” but “when.” When we get rescued; how will I describe this little sanctuary we've created here in what's left of the plane. The first word that comes to mind is “cozy,” and that surprises me; that's about the last thing I would have thought I would say about this crazy tilted piece of wreckage.
	And yet it is cozy; surprisingly cozy, I suddenly realize. There hasn't been much wind, so the blankets are doing a good job of sealing the entrance. And though it's still snowing at a pretty good rate, it's a wet snow, so the outside temperature can't be much below freezing, and our own body heat has been enough to keep the temperature inside our little cabin at a reasonable level. A nice warm fireplace would be even better, but considering the circumstances, it's a hell of a lot better than huddling out there in the snow. So the word cozy is appropriate.
	And even the word “comfortable” isn't altogether inappropriate. This bed leaves a lot to be desired; it would be nice to be able to stretch out flat and not have your feet hang out over the end, but even so, it's not bad. Being able to remove the center armrest helped a lot. That must be a standard feature on planes with such narrow seats. The old hipbone is pretty inflexible, and if you can't squeeze it between two armrests, then something has to give. I've heard that when really heavy people travel in these little planes, they seat them next to a child or very skinny person and pull out the center armrest. I guess that's what bothered me when the flight attendant mentioned pulling out the armrest; I used to be heavy, though I never actually had that happen.
	And these seats are pretty flimsy. The back is just a curved piece of pipe with the fabric stretched over it; the kind where if you lean back, the person behind you pokes his knees right into your kidneys. I wouldn't say that the upholstery is tattered, though it's pretty worn. But then the plane is old; about fifteen or twenty years old, I would guess. That's not awfully old for an airplane, of course, but this one has probably got a lot of hours on it. You can see where the paint is worn around the handles on the galley cupboards, and some of the lettering on those cupboard doors still appears to be in Portuguese!
	At the aft bulkhead, our little bedroom is only about five feet wide; just wide enough for the two seats now made into a bed and a tall column of storage cabinets. The decor, you could say, is late twentieth century airline modern. The walls and cabinets are painted in autumnal colors; maroon below the window and beige above. There's only one window; on the side next to the seats. It is a small oval window with little red and yellow flowery curtains tied back in the middle. And the blankets, of course, are a pale burnt orange that fits the rest of the color scheme. Even Billy's worn muddy mountain boots sticking out from under the blanket next to me seem to fit the color scheme.
	The fuselage is wider up towards the galley which is partially hidden from my view by the partition that separates our bedroom from the kitchen with its useless refrigerator and microwave ovens. Forward of the galley there used to be a little toilet cubicle and an open area in front of the passenger door. That is all gone now; only the back half of the toilet is still there. Outside of the blanket-covered doorway, there is still a foot or two of floor, and then a drop of nearly two feet to the snow-covered ground. Except for part of the frame for the passenger door, everything is sharp jagged aluminum and torn wiring harnesses hanging out like eviscerated innards.
	In a way, it seems too improbable that we would just happen to have such a cozy little shelter to help us survive the elements. On the other hand, we wouldn't even be alive if the tail section of the airplane hadn't managed to remain in one piece. Maybe that's just another one of Murphy's laws; that if you manage to get through the crash alive, you'll find a way to survive the rest.

	The day drags on. Billy still appears to be sleeping, and I find myself envying the way he can do that. Just to have something to do, I get up and try to straighten out the blankets. While I'm reaching down under the seats, I find a compact disk. Actually, it's just the plastic case; there's no disk in it. But I'm intrigued by the title on the liner; Piano Sonata number 23 by Beethoven, the “Appassionata,” whatever that means. The disk itself is probably in Billy's compact disk player which must have gone flying out along with my briefcase and computer. What intrigues me is that I can't help wondering if he really was listening to a Beethoven sonata or if he had some obscene rap recording hidden in that innocent looking classical music case. I'm not about to wake him up to ask, of course; it's none of my business what kind of music the kid listens to.
	In fact, I still can't ask him much of anything without taking the chance of reminding him that he has just lost his mother and father; I haven't the faintest idea how to help the boy deal with something like that. And yet he is sort of an enigma. The other passengers on the plane were well-dressed respectable looking people that Billy with his scroungy clothes and foul-mouthed attitude doesn't seem to fit in with. Maybe those people weren't really missionaries, but they were apparently some kind of religious group; good churchgoing family people. And Billy himself said that was the reason he was sitting here in the back of the plane; that he would just embarrass them. If that is so, then why did they bring him along at all, much less dressed like that?
	But then maybe his parents weren't with the church group. Maybe they were just on the plane because seats were available; the same way I was. Actually that makes a lot more sense, considering that they lived right there in Aspen. They would hardly be with a group going to some kind of religious meeting in Aspen if they already lived there. That could also account for Billy not having any extra clothes in his backpack, though his things might well have been packed in his parents' suitcases. In any event, they must have been on their way back home to Aspen.
	Come to think of it, Billy implied that they also lived in the Dallas Fort Worth area; as I remember, he said “sometimes.” And he said that he goes to a “special school” of some kind there in Aspen. So the implication is that his parents must have been pretty well off, though that still doesn't jibe with the fact that Billy looks and talks like some punk street kid. Unless, of course, his parents were really wealthy; then, I guess, their children can act any way they want.

	About the middle of the afternoon, Billy suddenly flings the blanket off again.
	“Fuck this shit,” he shouts loudly, “I'm outa here,” and then he grabs his backpack and disappears through the blankets hanging in our doorway. At first I just think he must have to go to the bathroom again, but then I wonder why he took his backpack, and I get up and put my shoes back on to go see what he's up to. By the time I get outside, he has disappeared, and all I can do is follow the footprints he's left in the fresh snow as he took off down through the woods into the valley. He has such a head start that I'm tempted to just let the little son-of-a-bitch go, but I can't bring myself to do that.
	“Billy!” I call out repeatedly, but he doesn't answer. A couple of hundred yards down the hill I see a big splotch in the snow where he apparently slipped or tripped on something and fell down, but I don't catch up with him until he has fallen again about another hundred yards farther on. This time he hasn't even tried to get up; he is just sprawled in the snow crying.
	“Are you hurt?” I ask as I help him up, but he shakes his head and keeps on crying. I start to take him back up the hill, but then I spot something out of the corner of my eye and turn back to where he fell down. There, half buried in the snow, is his little teddy bear. When I pick it up and hand it to him, Billy lets out an anguished sob and stuffs it back inside his jacket.

	“That was a damn fool thing to do,” I tell him when we are back inside. As much as I feel sorry for the boy, I can't help being angry. “Just what the hell did you think you were doing... running off in a snowstorm at this elevation for Christ's sake, you'd have been dead by midnight...”
	“What fuckin' difference does it make?” he bawls. “we're gonna die anyway...”
	“The hell we are,” I shout back angrily.
	“The fuckin' snow's gonna bury us and we're gonna freeze to death,” he wails.
	“That's nonsense,” I argue, “it's way too early for that much snow... it's only September, this storm won't last.”
	“How do you know?”
	“I'm a physicist, I've studied meteorology... I know what I'm talking about. Now don't try anything that stupid again... I just might decide to let you go on out there and get yourself killed... are you listening to me?” I shout.
	“Yes Sir,” he mumbles from under the blankets.

	Neither of us is very hungry, and we each only eat a couple of packages of crackers the rest of the day. We almost finish off the water though, and I get an ice bucket out of the galley and set it in the corner so we can piss without having to go outdoors. But by the time it starts to get dark, I'm beginning to feel nauseous. My stomach has been grumbling all day, and my bowel movements have been awfully runny, but I just attribute that to the stress I've been under; anything stressful has always caused me to have a little bit of stomach upset. But then all of a sudden as we're trying to get settled for the night, I jump out of bed and just barely make it out through the blanketed doorway before I start throwing up. All I can do is hang onto what's left of the door frame in the shattered fuselage and lean out over the snow covered ground and let it fly; retching my guts out until my stomach is empty and I feel like a limp washrag.
	“That's all we fuckin' need!” Billy exclaims in a disgusted tone of voice.
	“I'll be all right,” I manage to whisper, “I think it's just something I ate.”
	“Those fuckin' cheese crackers,” he interrupts.
	“No, it was a sandwich... a chicken sandwich I bought from a vending machine in Dallas... it didn't taste very good... like maybe it was spoiled... I should have known better, but I was in a hurry, and I ate it anyway...”
	“Might be salmonella... or maybe even schistosomiasis,” he comments matter-of-factly.
	“I'll be all right,” I say again, but when I try to drink a little water, it comes right back up, and it's another hour or so before I finally crawl back into the bed.

	I wake up sometime during the night shivering with cold and think I might be coming down with a fever, but then when I get up and turn on the emergency light, I can see that Billy is shivering too, so I get another blanket out of the storage locker to put over us. The next time I wake up, it's light out; the window over our bed is covered with frost, and bright sunlight is casting patterns of tree branches on the white coating. I still feel weak, but the fact that the weather has cleared up is such good news that I almost forget about my churning stomach.
	“Billy,” I say, shaking him, “wake up, wake up.”
	“Huh, What's the matter?”
	“It's stopped snowing... the sun is out,” and then he sits up and excitedly starts scraping frost off the window with his bare fingernails.
	When we go out to melt some more snow, the sky is clear and blue, and the sun has risen above the treetops down in the lower end of the valley. With fresh snow on the ground and bright sunshine, the mountain scenery is spectacular, which somehow seems to enhance our optimistic hopes of being rescued. But the air is really cold, so I go right back inside and get my suit jacket and put it on over the sweatshirt.
	“How soon do you think they'll be here?” Billy asks eagerly when I come back outside.
	“Don't get your hopes up too high,” I caution, “they might not get here at all today, but they'll have search planes out for sure, now that the weather is clear.”
	“If they have search planes out, why wouldn't they be searching here... I mean, won't they be looking along the route we were flying?”
	“They'll be searching the route we were supposed to be flying,” I say as we clear snow out of our fireplace, “but I doubt if they know where we were actually flying... I think those pilots were lost... I don't think there was anything wrong with the plane... the reason we hit that ridge is because the pilots didn't know it was there... they didn't know where the hell they were.”
	“But wouldn't somebody have been tracking us with radar or something?”
	“Regular ground tracking radar can't see much in the mountains... and besides, if the flight controllers had been tracking us, they would have told the pilots they were off course.”
	“Are you saying that they might never find us?”
	“Of course they'll find us,” I try to sound more confident than I feel, “all I'm saying is that it could take a little more time... they'll start looking along the route the pilots filed in their flight plan, then they'll gradually widen the search... sooner or later somebody will see that big black...” but I never complete the sentence. Just then I happen to look across the valley at the place where the rest of the plane crashed and realize that the big black spot has disappeared under a blanket of snow.
	“They won't be able to see shit, will they,” Billy says glumly, staring across the valley too.
	“Oh yes they will,” I blurt out defiantly, “they'll see us... they'll see us, because we're going to make damn sure that they see us... we're going to do whatever we have to do to make sure this place can be seen from the air.”
	“We could tramp out the word HELP in the snow,” Billy says, picking up on my enthusiasm.
	“Maybe,” I nod, “though I'm not sure that will be very effective here amongst all these trees.”
	“There's a clearing further up the hill.”
	“Yeah, but we have to be careful climbing around on these rocks. If one of us breaks an ankle or something, we could really be in trouble... one thing we can do is make sure we keep this fire going... even a little smoke is real easy to see from the air, and smoke is one of the things they'll be looking for anyway... and we can clear the snow off the aircraft... that shiny aluminum will really show up once the sun gets high enough to shine down through the trees.”
	“I saw a movie once where some guys stranded in a lifeboat used a mirror to signal the planes that were looking for them,” Billy adds excitedly.
	“That's a hell of a good idea, Billy, I'll see if I can get that mirror out of the toilet compartment... but first, we need to gather some more firewood and find some long tree branches that we can use to sweep the snow off the airplane.”

	We spend an hour or so pawing around in the snow to find wood for the fire, and by the time we get some more snow melted for drinking water, I'm exhausted and have to sit down for a while.
	“You didn't eat any breakfast,” Billy says.
	“No,” I shrug, “but I drank some water, and that stayed down all right... I'm still a little woozy, but I'll live.”
	“I'm sure glad to hear that,” he says, and I look at him, expecting to see a laugh or, at least, a little smile, but he's quite serious.
	Clearing the snow off what is left of the tail surfaces isn't too difficult. They're only about three feet off the ground, and Billy climbs right up onto them. and sweeps the surfaces clean with a handful of thick pine branches.
	“I can do this,” he says when I try to help, so I sit back down by the fire and watch. Then when he has finished, he sits there with his feet hanging off the leading edge of the tail plane. “What's this called,” he asks, “isn't it the horizontal something or other?”
	“Right,” I nod, “the Horizontal Stabilizer.”
	“And then that's the Vertical Stabilizer,” he says pointing up at the tail fin.
	“Uh huh... the Horizontal Stabilizer stabilizes the aircraft in pitch and the Vertical Stabilizer stabilizes it in yaw.” I don't bother to explain what pitch and yaw are; I'm not about to ask for another “I ain't fuckin' stupid” remark.
	“What stabilizes the plane in roll then, the wings?”
	“Right, and the Ailerons allow you to bank the plane when you turn.”
	“They work opposite to each other then?”
	“Uh huh.”
	“What about the flaps on the back of these... uh, I mean, the flaps that used to be on the back of these things,” he says, looking behind himself.
	“The ones on the Horizontal Stabilizers are called the Elevators, and the movable part of the Vertical Stabilizer is the Rudder.”
	“Do the Elevators ever work in opposite direction like the Ailerons?”
	“Not on this kind of a plane... on the delta wing planes where there aren't any Horizontal Stabilizers, the control surfaces are called Elevons and serve as both Ailerons and Elevators, so they might move together or in opposition.”
	“You up to helping me reach the snow up on the top of the fuselage?” Billy asks as he hops down off the tail.
	“Sure,” I say, picking up the longest pine branch that Billy was using, but even with that, I can't reach high enough to sweep off much of the snow.
	“If you hold me up, I could reach most of that stuff,” he says, “I mean, if you feel up to it.” So I squat down and let Billy climb up onto my shoulders, and then I struggle to my feet, hanging onto the boy's legs while he straddles my neck and tries to sweep the snow off the top of the fuselage.
	“I still can't reach very high,” he says, “how about if I stand up?” Then before I can even say anything, he tries to get one of his boots up onto my shoulder, but that just pushes me away from the aircraft which he is leaning against, and it's all I can do to keep him from falling headfirst into snow-covered rocks. My big concern, of course is that he might get hurt, and yet the whole thing turns into such a comical fiasco that we can't help laughing.
	“We're wasting our fucking time,” I grunt as I help him back down onto the ground, “that snow's all going to melt off in another couple of hours anyway.”
	“I thought you didn't use that kind of language,” Billy giggles, “you trying to get me pissed off or something?” It's good to finally hear him laugh again, but I'm afraid to say so right out loud.

	By this time the sun is higher in the sky, and the air is getting warmer, so I take off my jacket. There is some mud on the shoulder from Billy's boot, but even though this is the expensive suit jacket that I carefully folded up and put in the storage locker after the crash, I just wad it up in a ball and fling onto a big rock; my perception of what is important has really changed over the past thirty-six hours or so.
	I'm still not hungry, but I manage to eat a package of crackers and drink some more water for lunch, and it feels like I'm going to be all right now. While we're sitting there by the fire having lunch, I try putting some green pine needles in the fire to see what will happen, but the stuff just sizzles and smokes and doesn't even catch fire.
	“That shit won't burn,” Billy shakes his head.
	“No, but look at all that smoke,” I laugh, “we can shove one of these branches in the fire as soon as we hear an airplane engine... they'll damn sure see that.”
	“You think we won't need the mirror then?”
	“Oh yeah, we need to use everything we can... whatever might help get their attention,” so I climb up into the wreckage of the toilet cubicle to pry the mirror off the wall. It is just held in place by thin wooden molding fastened to the wall with phillips head screws. If I had a screwdriver or even a claw hammer, it would be simple to remove the moldings, but all I have to pry with is another piece of metal wreckage, and I end up breaking the mirror in two. But that's all right; now we have one for each of us. So we spend much of the afternoon basking in the warm sun, gathering firewood, and playing tag with reflected light spots on the side of the airplane.
	“Looks like they aren't going to come today,” Billy sighs as the sun slides down behind the rocky ridge on the other side of the valley.
	“It's still early,” I shrug, “it won't get dark for a couple of hours yet.”
	“But they're not gonna fuckin' come, are they.”
	“No, probably not today.”
	“Tomorrow?”
	“Tomorrow for sure,” I say confidently.
	“How do you know?”
	“Because I'm getting tired peanut butter crackers,” I say, trying to make Billy laugh again, but he just sits there staring into the fire.

	Without the sun, the temperature drops quickly, and it gets too cold to sit outside even with the fire, so we go to bed early.
	“What do you do there in Cocoa Beach... I mean when you're not surfing?” Billy asks quietly as we're lying side by side in the gathering darkness.
	“Oh, there's lots of things... boating, water skiing, stuff like that...”
	“Ain't you got a girlfriend?”
	“Yeah, lots of them.”
	“But no one special?”
	“I've always got one special... I tried water skiing once,” I say, deliberately changing the subject, “but I didn't do too good...”
	“You couldn't get up on the skis?”
	“Oh, I got up all right, but then I made the mistake of leaning into them the way you do on snow skis... oh man, was that a mistake, I went down like a submarine... actually, I made three mistakes, the first was leaning into the skis, the second was not letting go of the rope, and the third was forgetting to close my mouth!” I'm shamelessly exaggerating, of course, but it gets Billy laughing again.
	“Why don't you want to tell me about your girlfriend?” he asks quietly a little later.
	“I didn't say that,” I object.
	“You sure changed the subject awful fast.”
	“I just happened to be thinking about that time I went water skiing.”
	“What's her name?”
	“Donna.”
	“Has she got a big butt?”
	“What the hell kind of a question is that?”
	“Well, you said you weren't prejudiced against fat-assed girls, so I figured maybe you like them,” he giggles.
	“What I said was I'm prejudiced against smart-ass boys,” I laugh, giving him a poke in the ribs.
	“Where'd you meet her?”
	“At a church group that I sometimes...”
	“You go to church?” he interrupts.
	“No... not really... I mean, it's a singles group that's sponsored by the church... uh, the Riverside Presbyterian Church there in Cocoa Beach... I don't go to the church, but sometimes I go to the meetings of the singles group... it's just a social thing, you don't have to be a member of the church or anything.”
	“You just go there to pick up girls,” he giggles.
	“No, I don't just go there to pick up girls... I go there to make friends and have a good time...”
	“And pick up girls!”
	“You're hopeless,” I laugh, shoving his head back down under the blankets.
	“You have a chess club there in Cocoa Beach?” Billy asks when he finally stops giggling.
	“I don't know if there's one right in Cocoa Beach, but I know there's a chess club somewhere in the area... I remember seeing a newspaper article about a tournament they sponsored a while ago... why, do you play chess?”
	“Yeah, don't you?”
	“Not really, I tried to learn how a while back, but I never got very good at it... are you pretty good?”
	“Sometimes,” he shrugs.
	“Only sometimes?”
	“Sometimes I'm pretty good,” he giggles, “and then sometimes I'm fuckin' good!”

	It gets really dark before I remember that I haven't emptied the piss bucket, so I get up and turn on the light.
	“What're you doing?” Billy asks.
	“I forgot to empty the bucket.”
	“I can do that,” he says, “you don't even have any shoes on.”
	“I guess that's the advantage of sleeping with somebody who wears his boots in bed,” I chuckle while Billy picks up the bucket and takes it outside.
	“Hey Jason,” Billy calls out excitedly a few minutes later, “come out here... come out and look at this,” and can't help thinking that a rescue helicopter must be about to land, though I know that can't be true; not unless somebody has invented a perfectly silent helicopter that can land in the dark. But I get up, pull on my shoes and jacket, and squeeze out through the blanket covered doorway.
	“Look at that sky,” Billy says from somewhere over by the smoldering embers of our fire, “did you ever see so fuckin' many stars?” It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the almost total darkness, but when I look up, I'm every bit as impressed as Billy. The sky is a black velvet blanket studded with sparkling diamonds; millions and millions of them.
	“My God!” I exclaim, “I've never seen anything like this.”
	“Look,” he points excitedly, “there's Pegasus and Cepheus and over there behind that tree is Aquarius... and Lyra, the one with the bright star, that's Vega... and there's Altair and Denab...”
	He goes on like that for several minutes, pointing out the various constellations and some of their brighter stars, but it's too cold to stand around out there even with a little warmth from the dying fire, so we finally go inside and get back under our blankets.
	“You really know your astronomy,” I tell Billy, “I'm impressed.”
	“Astronauts have to know a lot about astronomy, don't they?”
	“Yeah, is that what you want to be, an astronaut?”
	“Maybe, maybe not... I don't have to think about shit like that for a while yet,” he answers matter of factly.
	“Jason,” he whispers quietly just as I'm about to drift off to sleep, “are we gonna get rescued tomorrow?”
	“I don't know, Billy... I just don't know.”
	“You said you didn't think they'd find us today, so I figured they would tomorrow for sure.”
	“I don't know,” I repeat, “but I have to admit that I'm disappointed... I thought sure we'd at least see or hear an airplane today, but we haven't seen a goddamn thing, not even the contrail of a passing jet... we must not even be on any of the routes they usually fly... so I don't know what to think about tomorrow... you'd think that with such good weather they'd have all kinds of planes out looking for us, national guard, civil air patrol... whatever, but I just don't know.”
	“What if they don't,” he asks in a hoarse whisper, “I mean tomorrow... what if they don't find us tomorrow?”
	“Then they'll find us the next day,” I snap back, though even I don't believe that.
	“Fuckin' bullshit,” Billy blurts out, sounding like he's going to cry.
	“You're right, that's bullshit,” I admit, “if this sunny weather lasts much longer, all the snow's going to melt off, and we won't have any more drinking water... on the other hand, if another storm moves in, we could be snowbound for weeks...”
	“And by then they might have abandoned the fuckin' search,” Billy adds bitterly.
	“Yeah, that could happen.”
	“So why don't we climb down the fuckin' mountain while we still got decent weather... how long could it take for Christ's sake?”
	“I don't know, Billy... it might only be a few miles, it might be twenty or thirty, and it could be pretty dangerous... climbing over rocks, maybe down steep cliffs... one nasty fall, one of us break a leg or something, and then we'd really be in deep shit...”
	“We're in deep fuckin' shit right now... up on the fuckin' timberline, about to run out of food and water... at least we could get down to a lower elevation before the fuckin' winter sets in.”
	“Okay,” I say, “then let's give them one more day... if they don't find us tomorrow, we'll start down the mountain the next morning.”
	“Yeah,” he says, snuggling against my chest, “I like that... at least we won't be just sitting around hoping that somebody will find us some fuckin' day.”
	“Okay, we'll spend tomorrow getting ready to hike down the mountain... and there's one more thing,” I say.
	“What's that?”
	“If we ever get back to civilization, you're going to have to clean up your fucking language,” but he just giggles and gives me a hug.

	There's no frost on the window in the morning, just a lot of condensation, but it still seems awfully cold when we get outside. We get a fire going and then sit there eating our peanut butter crackers and drinking the last of yesterday's water.
	“They're gonna show up today,” Billy says, looking up at the clear blue sky, “we won't have to climb down the mountain after all.”
	“I sure hope so.”
	“They're gonna land a big fuckin' helicopter right up there in that clearing.”
	“Oh, I wouldn't count on that,” I laugh, “that isn't all that big a clearing... and it's probably too steep a slope to land a helicopter on anyway.”
	“How are they gonna get us out of here then?”
	“I don't know... I really don't care, the important thing is that they find us... once they know we're here, that somebody survived the crash, they'll figure out a way to get us out,” I say confidently.
	While Billy picks up more firewood, I go looking for clean snow. The only places where there is still much snow are deep in the woods, so it takes me a while. Then when I get back to the fireplace, Billy is sitting there on a rock outcropping; laughing merrily as he feeds crackers to a couple of playful chipmunks.
	“I see you've made some friends,” I can't help laughing too.
	“They're so tame they'll climb right up on your lap,” he giggles.
	“They're plump little buggers, I bet we could cook them up into a tasty stew...”
	“You wouldn't!” he says, looking horrified.
	“Well,” I laugh, “if you're going to give them all our crackers, we might have to.”
	“I wouldn't let you... I'd fuckin' starve first,” and I think he's serious.
	“You know I wouldn't do that,” I laugh, ruffling his shaggy hair.
	We sit around the fire most of the day playing with the chipmunks; the first two must have gone home and told all their cousins about the two guys giving away free crackers, so we always seem to have a half a dozen or more running around and chattering noisily. We give them a lot more crackers than we probably should, but they're such comical little creatures, and we're so starved for any kind of distraction, that it doesn't seem all that important. That big box of crackers is still more than half full, and one way or another, this is going to be our last day up here in this valley.
	“What do we have to do to get ready to hike down the mountain?” Billy asks.
	“Not much, really,” I shrug, “just get rested up and decide what to take with us.”
	“What are we going to take with us?”
	“Mainly just a couple of blankets and the food.”
	“Why blankets... don't you think we can make it down in one day?”
	“I don't know, I'm sure as hell not going to count on it.”
	“How much of the food should we take?”
	“All of it.”
	“All of it! There's ten fuckin' pounds of crackers left in that box... enough to last us a fuckin' week at least.”
	“I know,” I nod, “and it might have to... it's no big deal to carry ten pounds of crackers, but it could be one hell of a big deal if we get stuck half way down and run out of food.”
	“What about water?”
	“That's no problem, there'll be water in the creek.”
	“What creek?”
	“The one we're going to follow down the mountain.”
	“How do you know there's gonna be a creek?”
	“Where do you think all this snow is going when it melts?” I ask rhetorically.
	“And we're gonna drink that?”
	“Of course.”
	“That's the same snow we've been pissing and shitting in, for Christ's sake!”
	“That's okay,” I laugh, “we won't drink any water until we make sure it tastes all right.”
	“And who's gonna be the official fuckin' water taster?” Billy giggles.
	“Guess who,” I laugh.

	We keep watching the sky, half expecting to see an airplane suddenly appear. I notice a couple of large birds circling over the ridge behind us, and then when I peer across the valley, I can see some more flying around the crash site. I know what they are, of course, but I figure it's better not to say anything to Billy about it.
	“Oh shit!” he suddenly shouts out loud about the middle of the afternoon. “Those are fuckin' buzzards,” he screams, “there's fuckin' buzzards over there,” he points across the valley, “I think I'm gonna puke... I'm gonna puke my fuckin' guts out,” and then he gets up and goes into the airplane. I almost get up and go in after him. As late as yesterday I would have, but I'm getting to know Billy a little better now, and I think that this is something he needs to handle on his own, so I stay out here by the fire.
	I just try to ignore the circling buzzards, feed the fire and keep some green pine needles handy to make smoke in case I hear an airplane coming. I play with the chipmunks for a while, but then the little ingrates run off when they realize I'm not going to give them any more crackers. I'm still tempted to skin a couple of them to roast over the fire, but in spite of my boy scout training, I don't have the faintest idea how to go about it. And then too, the boy would probably get hysterical, and that's the last thing I need right now.
	When the long afternoon shadow creeping across the valley finally catches up to me, I go inside the plane to find Billy curled up with his teddy bear and reading a Playboy magazine.
	“Where in the hell did you get that magazine... have you had that all along?”
	“No,” he laughs, “I found it... it was in that bag the pilot left there next to our stuff... I thought you already looked in there.”
	“I did, but all I saw were some shoes and gym stuff... I figured it was just his workout clothes... I didn't see any magazines... is that the only one?”
	“Yeah, but you can read it if you want... it's an old one... I've already seen it,” he says, handing it to me.
	“You read Playboy magazine all the time?” I laugh as I flip through the pages.
	“Sometimes,” he shrugs, “we have a subscription.”
	“And they let you read it?”
	“I read whatever the fuck I want.”
	“Wow!” I say, letting out a low whistle when I see the centerfold.
	“Is that for Miss July?” Billy asks.
	“Yeah, she's got a lot of... uh...”
	“Big tits,” he giggles.
	“You like girls with big tits?”
	“Not yet,” he answers quite seriously, “maybe I will when I get older... oh, by the way,” he adds, “there's a bottle of whiskey in that bag too.”
	“What?” I look in the pilot's bag, and sure enough, I find a little flat pint flask about half full of Dewar's scotch. “Did you drink some?” I can't help asking.
	“No, but I took the cap off and smelled of it... it smells like burnt piss.”
	“It must be real scotch then,” I chuckle.

	We go out and sit by the fire a while, but it's too dark to expect anybody to still be looking for us.
	“So we're gonna hike out in the morning,” Billy says.
	“Yeah, the sky's already showing some thin cirrus... another weather front will be coming through in a day or two... it's time to get the hell out of here.”
	“What's the first thing you're gonna do when we get back to town?”
	“Get some decent food, I guess... I think that's what I miss the most.”
	“What do you consider decent food?” he asks.
	“Anything but peanut butter crackers,” I laugh.
	“What else?”
	“A cup of good coffee and a cigarette.”
	“I thought you quit the fuckin' cigarettes,” Billy says sharply.
	“I didn't exactly quit voluntarily, you know.”
	“So what... what fuckin' difference does it make why you quit... the important thing is that you're not smoking anymore, so why would you want to fuckin' start again?”
	“I don't know, Billy, I'm not sure it's really that simple.
	“Why'd you ever start in the first place?” he asks, “You knew it wasn't good for you.”
	“You said you started swearing because it pissed people off... I guess that's why I started smoking...”
	“Just to piss somebody off?” Billy laughs.
	“Well,” I chuckle, “not really, but it was a way of rebelling against authority... which is what you're doing.”
	“Yeah, but my fuckin' swearing isn't gonna give me lung cancer,” he laughs.
	“That's true,” I concede, “but swearing isn't all that addictive either... you can stop swearing a lot easier than I can stop smoking.”
	“Oh, I don't know,” Billy chuckles, “here we are breathing all this clean fuckin' mountain air, and you've quit smoking and I'm still swearing like a son-of-a-bitch!”
	“Maybe what you need is a good spanking,” I laugh, giving him a playful swat on the behind as we climb back into the plane.
	“You're a stinky little guy,” I say as we're getting ready to go to bed.“
	“You're no bouquet of roses yourself, you know.”
	“Don't you ever take those boots off?”
	“No, I wouldn't dare.”
	“Why not?”
	“The smell would fuckin' knock you out,” he giggles.

	“Thank you for going down there after me... when I ran off that first day,” Billy whispers after I turn off the light and get in bed, and I impulsively reach over and give him a hug. “I didn't mean for you to fuckin' make love to me,” he says then, but he keeps his arm around me and nestles his head on my chest.
	“You gonna call your mom when we get back?” he asks quietly after a while.
	“Oh, of course... though I'm not sure they even know I'm missing... I probably don't call home as often as I should, and I never bothered to tell my family that I was coming to Aspen,” and then I lie there wondering quite how to ask the questions I've been trying to avoid all this time, “and, uh... we'll have to get hold of your grandparents... or, uh...”
	“I don't have any grandparents either,” Billy says quietly.
	“Well then... uh, an aunt or uncle... or, uh...”
	“My grandparents died a long time ago, way before I was even born... and my mother and father never had any brothers or sisters, so I don't have any aunts or uncles or cousins or anything.”
	“Don't you have any family at all?”
	“Just you,” he answers in a quiet whisper, and I'm thankful that it's too dark for Billy to see the look on my face.

Chapter 3
Hiking Down

	We are up at first light, and after breakfast, I dutifully carry the bucket out and empty it as usual. I don't really know why; it just doesn't seem right to leave a bucket of piss there in the airplane for somebody to find. Then we start getting ready for our hike down the mountain. I roll up two blankets in a long tubular roll and tie the ends with a pair of my socks, then I sling it over my shoulder and tie it to my waist with the necktie I was wearing when I got on the plane.
	“You gonna leave your suitcase behind?” Billy asks, “with the pants to your suit and everything?”
	“Yeah,” I shrug, “this jacket is already a mess, it'll be ruined for sure by the time we get down there.”
	“You oughta try on those shoes in the pilot's bag, they're a lot tougher looking than those flimsy things you're wearing.”
	“Yeah, that's a good idea,” I say, and I dig the shoes out of the bag and try them on. They're a little loose, but that's better than too tight, and they've got nice thick soles, so I leave them on.
	“What should I put in my backpack?” he asks.
	“Just the crackers and a roll of toilet paper... we need to travel light... take only what's absolutely essential,” but then I notice that he happens to be holding his teddy bear, and I realize why he asked the question. “I'm sure there's room for your teddy bear in the bottom of the pack as long as he doesn't eat up our crackers,” I chuckle, “but put the toilet paper on top, I don't want to have to dig down through ten pounds of crackers every time I need to take a crap.”
	We almost forget cups, but at the last minute, I get a couple of plastic coffee cups to carry in our jacket pockets.
	“I'm the most important guy on this expedition,” Billy laughs nervously, “I've got all the food as well as the toilet paper.”
	“Yeah, but only until nightfall,” I say, “then you're going to be glad I'm lugging these blankets.”
	“We'll be back to civilization by then,” Billy says confidently.
	“I hope so.”

	“Do you think we ought to... uh, I don't know... say goodbye or something?” Billy asks as we are about to set out. He's standing there staring at the wreckage on the other side of the valley. It's no longer covered by snow, though much of the blackness appears to have been washed away when it melted. You can still see some black spots, and shiny pieces of metal, but the buzzards, thankfully, are not out yet.
	“I don't know either,” I say, worried that the boy may have another breakdown, “I've never gone to church much... I don't know what would be appropriate.”
	“Me neither,” he says quietly, still standing there staring across the valley.
	“Maybe just a moment of silence would be the best thing,” I suggest.
	“Yeah,” he nods, so we just stand there for a while, several minutes, actually, and then he turns towards the hazy sunshine peeking up from the low end of the valley, and we head down through the pine trees. I see him wipe a tear from his face as we start out, but then just a few minutes later, I see a fleeting smile as he looks up at me.
	“It's going to rain,” I say.
	“When... today?”
	“Probably not today, but soon... that sky's not as clear as it was yesterday, a front's moving in, but we might make it down before it gets too bad... we should be able to get down below the snow line anyway.”
	Instead of going straight down the hill like Billy did when he ran away, we angle our way down the hillside, so it's not as steep, and yet it's still rough going. At first it's so rocky that you wonder how so many trees can be growing up out of all these rocks. Then when we get down where there is more topsoil, there's a lot of undergrowth, and that seems to make it even worse. Now we pretty much have to go single file, and for a while I lead the way. But then I keep inadvertently swatting Billy in the face with tree branches that I've pushed out of my way, so I let him go first. He's short enough to duck under most of those low hanging branches, and I don't have any trouble dealing with the few that do swing back.
	We're quite a way down the valley by the time we come to the bottom, and sure enough, there is a little stream of clear water trickling through some rocks and gravel.
	“Do you think it's all right to drink this?” Billy asks hesitantly.
	“I don't know,” I can't help chuckling, “why don't you taste it and see?” He gives me a funny look, but then he scoops up a cupful and tastes it.
	“It tastes all right to me,” he says, looking me straight in the eye, “now you drink some,” so I get my cup out and take a long drink.
	“I'm sure any water up here in the mountains gets filtered through enough sand and gravel that it's safe to drink,” I say seriously, “unless, of course, there are some bears around.”
	“Bears, what about the bears?”
	“Doesn't the bear shit in the woods?” I laugh. Billy just laughs too, but I can't help wondering if there might not be some contamination from all those dead bodies up on the ridge.
	The ground is still rocky, but the trees are taller when we get farther down the valley, so there isn't as much underbrush, and then as the sun rises higher, thin beams of sunlight begin to filter down through the overhead branches. There is a pungent smell of growing things; fresh pine scent and decomposing humus. It's so reminiscent of summer camp and outdoor picnics that it is hard to believe we almost lost our lives up here; that our lives are still in danger.
	“It feels good to be doing something,” I tell Billy, “I mean, taking things into our own hands like this instead of just sitting around up there waiting for somebody to find us.”
	“Yeah,” he grins, “I was thinking the same thing... like in the poem Invictus where he says, ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,’”
	“I'm not familiar with the poem,” I nod, “but I've heard that line.”
	“It's by William Henley... he was a cripple, you know... he lost one of his legs when he was just a kid about my age.”
	“Yeah... that could make somebody pretty determined, I guess.”
	The ground is so rocky and uneven that I doubt if we're making more than a half a mile an hour, but I'm more concerned about one of us getting hurt than I am about making time. So whenever Billy gets rambunctious, I tell him to slow down. Then he looks back at me and grins sheepishly, but he slows down.
	“How come the creek keeps getting bigger?” he asks after we've gone a mile or so.
	“From water coming down the sides of the valley, I guess.”
	“I haven't seen any water coming down the sides.”
	“It must be just trickling down through the rocks,” I shrug.
	“It must do a lot of fuckin' tricklin', then,.. that creek wasn't more than a foot wide when we first saw it, now look at it... three or four feet wide and half a foot deep!”

	Then after a couple more hours, we come to a place where the creek empties into a little mountain lake about four or five hundred yards across. The water is crystal clear and reflects the tall pine trees on the other shore and the blue sky and puffy white clouds. It's nothing less than a breathtaking alpine jewel, and for a few minutes, we just stand there staring at it.
	“Oh, fuckin' beautiful,” Billy gasps.
	“I'm not sure that's the adjective I would use,” I laugh, “but it's beautiful all right.”
	“We should'a brought a boat,” he giggles.
	“That wouldn't get us down off this mountain,” I laugh, “unless you're good at riding down waterfalls.”
	“You think there's a waterfall at the other side of the lake?” Billy asks with a frown.
	“All this water has got to go somewhere... I imagine there's a ridge over there that holds it back to form this lake, and at some point the water spills over the ridge.”
	“That doesn't have to be a waterfall, does it?”
	“No, but it's possible... it just depends on what's on the other side of the ridge.”
	“You mean the water could be pouring off a big fuckin' cliff like out at Yosemite?”
	“Let's hope not,” I shrug.
	“Where do you think the water flows out of the lake?” Billy asks, “I don't see anything that looks like an opening... the whole fuckin' lake seems to be in a bowl.”
	“There's an opening somewhere... the water level here doesn't look like it's ever gone up or down much, so it's got to drain out someplace... maybe over there along the left shore by those big rocks.”
	“Then I guess that's the way we go, huh?”
	“Those rocks don't look awfully big from here, but the mountainside is pretty steep over there... we might not be able to get by them without getting wet... I think we ought to cross the creek and go around the other side at least far enough to look across the lake and see where the water flows out.”
	“Then we're fuckin' gonna get wet anyway,” he laughs, “cause that creek is a fuckin' foot deep now.”
	“It's not that deep... eight or ten inches maybe... and the water isn't flowing very fast here... we can take our shoes and pants off and wade across barefoot... the bottom is just gravel.”
	“Whoop-de-fuckin'-do,” Billy squeals gleefully, “we're gonna take our fuckin' pants off right out here in public.”
	“I wish there were some people here to be shocked,” I can't help laughing too. Then after we cross the creek and get dressed again, we continue along the lake shore. It's essentially the same kind of terrain as we have been used to, and in another half hour or so we reach a point where we can see a narrow notch in the ridge on the other side of the lake where the sky seems to come right down to the water.
	“What do you think, Eagle Eye,” I ask as we sit on a rock outcropping and peer across the lake.
	“It doesn't look very big.”
	“It's a couple of hundred yards away... I'd say it's eight or ten feet across.”
	“And there ain't nothin' on the other side but fuckin' sky.”
	“That doesn't mean it's a cliff.”
	“It doesn't mean there's a fuckin' stairway either.”
	“No... we won't know that until we can get over there and see for ourselves.”

	We rest up and have our lunch there and then continue on around the right hand shore of the lake until we are close enough to hear the water gurgling down through the opening between the rocks.
	“I hear a fuckin' waterfall,” Billy moans.
	“Whatever that water is falling on isn't very far below us, though,” I say, but then as we work our way closer, all we can see through the opening is blue sky and another mountain ridge way off in the distance. And the inevitable impression is that we are at the top of a high cliff that is hundreds or maybe thousands of feet above the land we are trying to get down to.
	“Oh shit!” Billy moans, and I can't help but agree with him.
	“Lets climb up onto that big flat rock over there... we might be able to get a better look at what's down below.”
	“What's the fuckin' difference if we can't get down there?”
	“We won't know whether we can get down or not until we see what's there,” I say, a little annoyed.
	We circle back so we can climb up onto the flat rock overlooking the waterfall, and by the time we get up there, we have a fantastic view of a broad wooded valley spread out below us for miles and miles.
	“Jesus!” Billy exclaims, “it's like being on top of one of those big fuckin' buildings in downtown Dallas.”
	“That's what I was thinking,” I laugh nervously, “like being on the roof of the VAB, looking out over the wildlife refuge there at the Kennedy Space Center.”
	“I've heard of the VAB... you actually been up on the roof?”
	“Yeah, a couple of times.”
	“You look right down over the fuckin' edge?”
	“Oh no... there's a railing about ten feet back from the edge, and...” I almost mention that there are usually a few buzzards perched on the edge of the roof, but then I change my mind; it's better not to remind him of the buzzards.
	“Couldn't you climb over the railing and walk over to the edge?”
	“Yeah, you could,” I chuckle, “but like you say, Billy, I'm not fuckin' stupid,” and that makes him laugh too.
	“How high is it... the VAB, I mean?” he asks then.
	“Five hundred and twenty-five feet.”
	“How high do you think we are above that valley down there?”
	“At least that high,” I answer quietly.
	We still can't see what's immediately below us, so I take off the blanket roll and get down on my belly and squirm over to where I can peer over the edge. I hadn't meant for Billy to do the same, but all of a sudden he is lying there next to me.
	“Be careful,” I say instinctively; fully expecting him to come back with, “I ain't fuckin' stupid,” but he just lies there quietly looking down into the rocky gorge the stream has cut through the ridge.
	“It's not much of a fuckin' waterfall,” Billy says.
	“No, not this time of the year, but I bet it is during the spring runoff.”
	“Just a trickle running down between a lot of big rocks.”
	“It's more than a trickle, but it's the rocks I'm worried about, not the water... God, I wish we had a rope... some of those rocks are as big as a house... and we might yet come to some kind of a cliff.”
	The gorge doesn't look awfully steep; we should be able to climb down through it if we're willing to get our feet wet. But we can only see a few hundred feet of it, and we still don't know whether or not that's just going to lead us to the top of some cliff. Anything higher than eight or ten feet would be almost impossible to climb down without a rope.
	“You think we can get down through that?” Billy asks in a worried tone of voice.
	“Oh yeah... what we can see of it... but there's no telling what we're going to run into farther down.”
	“Like a big fuckin' cliff or something?”
	“That's what I'm worried about.”
	“What would we do then?”
	“Climb back up, I guess.”
	“What for,” he groans, “there ain't no other way down, is there?”
	“No,” I sigh, “so lets keep on going and try to be careful... that's the only thing I'm worried about, that one of us might get hurt.”
	“If I fall and break a leg, would you carry me the rest of the way?” Billy asks, trying to make it sound like a joke.
	“I wouldn't go off and leave you here,” I say seriously, “but I wouldn't give either of us much of a chance of survival if I had to carry you.”
	“Well, I'm not gonna fuckin' break any legs,” he says firmly.
	“The tricky part is going to be getting over the lip where the water is emptying out of the lake... it's flowing pretty fast there,” I say as we back away from the edge of the rock and put our packs back on, “we'll have to stay close to the side and hang onto the rocks... keep our feet out of the water as much as we can.”
	“You think we should take our shoes and pants off again?”
	“Oh no... I'm not worried about getting our shoes wet... they're going to get wet no matter what we do... but that water's moving awfully fast... it could wash your feet right out from under you and send you tumbling down into those rocks before you know what's happening,” I lecture pompously, “fast flowing water has a lot of kinetic energy...”
	“Oh yeah,” he nods, “I forgot... the energy in a moving object is proportional to the mass of the object and the square of the velocity.”
	“You're studying physics already?”
	“Yeah, some,” he answers shyly, “just Newtonian physics though.”
	“Let me know when you get to quantum mechanics,” I chuckle.

	“Let me go first,” I say as we start down through jumble of rocks.
	“That's a great fuckin' idea,” he says sarcastically, “then if I fall, I'll have something soft to land on.”
	“Would you rather have me land on you?” I laugh. “God, I wish we had some rope,” I say again as we slowly climb down through the gorge, though it isn't as bad as I'd feared. We manage to find a way around the larger rocks so that we don't have to negotiate any drops more than three or four feet. What we really need rather than rope is heavy gloves. Before we've gone more than a few hundred feet, my hands are bleeding, and the sleeves of my good suit jacket are scuffed and torn. I try to help Billy over the rough spots as much as I can, but before long I see that his hands are getting scraped up too.
	Then I get my shoe caught between two rocks and end up having to pull my foot out of it.
	“Whose idea was it to wear those big fuckin' shoes?” Billy laughs. I swear, the kid is actually enjoying this!
	“Shit!” I exclaim when I try to retrieve the shoe, “I can't reach it.”
	“Let me try,” Billy says, taking off his backpack. Then he gets down on his belly and tries to reach down between the rocks to free my shoe. “Hang on to me,” he cries out when he starts to slide down farther into the crevasse, and I have to hold him by the ankles while he works the shoe loose. It slips out of his grasp and is washed away by the running water, but it hangs up again a few yards farther down. Then by the time I pull Billy back up out of the crack between the rocks and retrieve my shoe, we're both exhausted.
	“Jesus!” I say, “we've barely started down through this thing, and already we're pooped.”
	After resting a while, we get going again. It's hard work, but not as dangerous as I had feared. We take our time, always assessing the route ahead as far as we can see. Then when we have to lower ourselves down off some big rock, we follow a set routine; I take off the blanket roll and then Billy helps me keep my balance while I slide off the rock to the next level. Then Billy hands down the blanket roll and backpack, and I help him down.
	I slowly begin to realize that the gorge is getting less steep than it was when we started and the going is gradually getting a little easier. There is still a possibility that we could come to something we can't get past, but the probability of that happening seems to be getting smaller, and that is encouraging. Then the gorge begins to widen out and become more of a canyon with a few trees and even some grassy spots. One place is a regular oasis with a little waterfall feeding a deep clear pool, and we stop to rest and have some lunch on a grassy bank under some shade trees.
	“That pool looks so inviting I'm tempted to strip down and take a bath,” I say.
	“You think it's warm enough?”
	“No way,” I laugh, “that water's liquid ice,” but Billy gets up and goes over to the edge and puts his hand in the water to feel the temperature anyway.
	“Oh shit,” he laughs, “you'd freeze your fuckin' balls off before you could get back out.”
	“Be careful what you say about my balls,” I object, but Billy just laughs.
	“What did you mean when you said you could see some wildlife refuge from the top of the VAB?” Billy asks while we're resting.
	“The Kennedy Space Center is right in the middle of a big federal wildlife refuge... well, actually, it's the other way around... the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge is located on the Kennedy Space Center... that and the Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral and the Canaveral National Seashore...”
	“I thought the space center was right on the beach,” he interrupts.
	“The launch pads are, but most of it is on a big island between the beach and the mainland... the NASA and Air Force property alone is over three hundred square miles, and the National Seashore extends almost all the way up to Daytona Beach... and it's all a pristine wilderness full of all kinds of wildlife... the Space Center facilities... uh, launch pads, buildings, parking lots, and so forth only occupy a total of maybe five or ten square miles, and the rest is all wilderness... mostly wetlands...”
	“Alligator country,” Billy giggles.
	“Oh yeah... alligators everywhere... I've seen some fifteen twenty footers out there by Pad thirty-nine.”
	“Do they ever chase after you or anything?”
	“Oh no... most everybody has sense enough to leave them alone.”
	“What about the tourists on the bus tours?”
	“They stop the busses at a place where they can take pictures of them, but they don't let anybody get close enough to get hurt... but it isn't just alligators,” I go on, “there are all kinds of animals in the refuge... deer, wild pigs, foxes, otters, armadillos, possums... and, of course, every kind of migratory bird you can think of... the refuge is a major stopping point on the Atlantic flyway.”
	“I always wanted to visit the Space Center... you know, take the bus tour and see the launch pads,” Billy says wistfully.
	“I can do you one better than that,” I say, “I can get you a pass to come on the center so I can give you a personalized tour.”
	“Oh wow!” he exclaims excitedly, “Would I be able to get inside one of the shuttles?”
	“Oh, I don't think I could arrange that,” I laugh, “but I know I could take you through the VAB and into the Launch Control Center firing rooms.”
	“Would you really do that for me?” he grins.
	“Sure,” I say, ruffling his shaggy blond hair.

	I think we both realize that we've managed to get past the worst of it, so we continue on down through the canyon in a pretty good mood. There are still a few steep drops to negotiate, but nothing as bad as we encountered in the upper part of the gorge. And by midafternoon, we come out of the canyon into that broad forested valley we'd been able to see from our rocky perch by the lake. So we spend an hour or so sprawled on the grassy bank of the stream letting the warm sunshine heal our aching muscles.
	“Why are you limping?” Billy asks when we finally get under way again.
	“I don't know, I must have strained something while we were playing hopscotch on those rocks,” I answer, trying to make light of it. But I'm getting a sharp shooting pain up the right sciatic nerve every once in a while, and it's enough to worry me. The going is easy now, but even though the pain moderates, it doesn't go away.
	The valley seems relatively flat, and yet you can tell that we're walking down hill. The creek is getting wider and deeper and is full of huge boulders that the water swirls around like a miniature rapids. Since getting out of the canyon, we've been trudging along the left bank, but there is so much undergrowth on this side that when we come to a chain of rocks that we can use as stepping stones, we decide to cross over to the other side of the creek. As we are stepping from rock to rock, however, Billy slips and takes a nasty spill.
	I manage to catch him, though I almost fall myself in the process. As it is, I end up in the creek; thoroughly soaked from the waist down.
	“You okay?” I ask; standing in the ice cold water; hanging on to him as best I can.
	“You tryin' to save me or the fuckin' crackers?” he complains.
	“Both,” I can't help laughing, but then I notice a bloody bruise on his left cheek. “Come on,” I say more tenderly, physically carrying him to the bank, “you're bleeding.”
	“No shit, what was your first clue?”
	I get the toilet paper out of his backpack and press a wad of dry paper to the bruise until the bleeding stops.
	“Does it hurt?”
	“You're fuckin' right it hurts,” he's almost crying, but I can see that he's making an effort not to.
	“I'm afraid I have to make it hurt even more,” I say, taking the little bottle of whiskey out of my inside coat pocket and daubing alcohol on the wound with some more tissue.
	“Jesus that smarts,” he yells out, “what the fuck did you have to go and do that for?”
	“You don't want it to get infected...”
	“Shit,” he exclaims, “you're making me smell like a fuckin' drunk!”
	“Do you hurt anywhere else?” I ask, pulling him up onto his feet.
	“I don't think so,” he shrugs.
	“Move your right foot.”
	“What the fuck for?”
	“Just move it... lift it up... now the left one... okay, move your arms... does anything hurt?”
	“That's what you made me do right after the crash, isn't it, I just now remembered that... you made me move each of my arms and legs to make sure I was okay,” and then he impulsively puts his arms around me and gives me a hug.
	“Well, all right,” I say self-consciously, “that doesn't mean you have to make love to me.”

	By this time, the sun has gone down behind the high mountain range, and it's starting to get dark and a lot colder. I'm still limping a little, and Billy isn't walking too gingerly either, so we start looking for a good place to spend the night.
	“We're not gonna find a fuckin' motel, you know,” Billy grumbles, apparently more tired than he wants to admit.
	“I know,” I say wearily, “but it could rain... we ought to try to get under some kind of protection if we can.”
	“Like a nice dry cave?”
	“Fat chance of finding that here in the woods.”
	“Even if we did, there'd be a fuckin' bear in it!”
	The best we can manage is a little bower in a thicket of young pine trees. The ground is covered with needles, and the branches overhead look like they might ward off the worst of the rain if it happens. So we spread one of the blankets on the soft pine needles and take off our wet shoes and socks. There's nothing we can do about the shoes, but with the socks I used to tie up the blanket roll, we have two pair that are relatively dry.
	“You want to build a fire?” Billy asks as we eat our peanut butter crackers.
	“I don't see any point in having a fire,” I shrug, “it's a lot of work, and we'd have to build it out there by the creek... we wouldn't be any warmer out there by the fire than we are in here under the trees.”

	I don't think either of us sleeps very well, but we huddle together as close as we can under that one blanket and at least try to get a little rest. My sciatic nerve is still bothering me, and Billy is so restless that I can tell that he's hurting too. And yet I'm still sleeping when it starts to get light, and he has to wake me.
	“Today for sure,” Billy says optimistically while we're having breakfast.
	“Are you saying that because you think we'll get back to civilization today or because you think we'll be dead by sundown,” I laugh bitterly.
	“Does it fuckin' matter?” he laughs, picking up on my mood.
	We're both awfully stiff, but we get packed up and on our way by the time feeble sunlight is filtering down through the trees.
	“Look at the creek,” Billy exclaims, “it looks like it's running faster this morning.”
	“Yeah... more water... it must have rained somewhere higher up the mountain.”
	“How long will that last?”
	“I don't know,” I shrug, “it might even get worse... I just hope it doesn't rain down here.”
	“You could use a fuckin' bath.”
	“So could you, Stinky.”
	But the lighthearted banter is all bravado; we're both hurting. My sciatic pain is just as bad as it was yesterday; I'm just thankful that it hasn't gotten worse. And the bruise on Billy's face still looks pretty bad. It's turned black and blue, of course, and the abrasion is scabbing over, though there doesn't appear to be any sign of infection. I think he has as many aches and pains as I have, but he's not complaining; Billy's a tough little guy.
	And the going is a lot rougher this morning. The valley is still nice and wide, but the stream is running along the right hand side pushing us closer and closer to the steep rocky mountainside. It would be a lot easier if we had stayed on the other side of the creek, but now the water is much too deep and swift to risk trying to get back across; we would almost certainly be swept off our feet and dashed against the rocks. So we just keep slogging along; the absolute confidence that we're going to see a highway bridge over the creek any minute now is the only thing keeping us going.
	Then as we are working our way single file through the trees growing along the bank of the creek, Billy, who is a few feet ahead of me suddenly freezes and puts out his hand to caution me, so I freeze too. I can't imagine what he's seen that has frightened him so; the talk about bears being in the woods is the only thing that comes to mind.
	“Be very quiet,” he whispers as he slowly sits down on the ground right where he is. I get down on all fours and, as quietly as I can, crawl up behind him. Then when I peer over his shoulder, I see two deer, a doe and her fawn, ambling gracefully down to the water almost directly across the creek from us. So I slowly settle down to a sitting position and put a hand on Billy's shoulder while we watch them get their morning drink.
	“Fuckin' beautiful,” Billy giggles when the deer go back up into the woods, and I can't help feeling a kind of wonder that this boy doesn't hesitate to delay our rescue from a fatal airplane crash so a deer can bring her fawn down to the creek for a drink.

	The idea that we still might come to an obstacle that we can't get past seems inconceivable, and yet it isn't even time for lunch when that is exactly what happens. We come to a narrow canyon where our side of the creek runs right up against a sheer rock face as it makes a sharp turn to the left. The little cliff isn't very high, only about ten feet, but the creek has undercut the rock making it lean out over the water, and the steep rocky hillside above it would be suicide to try to climb around on. There are some pretty big rocks in the creek, but they're too far apart to use as stepping stones, and the creek is an honest-to-God white water rapids at this point; deep and fast with whitecapped standing waves.
	“Oh shit!” Billy moans as we reach a point were we can look ahead and see the cliff, and I'm so discouraged that I don't even bother to say that much. “Do you think we can climb around?” he asks tentatively.
	“No way,” I shake my head, “even if we had mountain climbing gear, it would be too dangerous... that's just loose shale up there.
	“It's that or cross the creek,” he says dejectedly, staring down at the swirling water.
	“Yeah,” I nod, “but we can't cross here... not in this goddamn rapids.”
	“Maybe if we wait a while, the water will go down some.”
	“It's more likely to get worse,” I say, looking back up at the gray clouds shrouding the mountains.
	“So what are we going to do then... go back up the fuckin' creek?”
	“Yeah, we'll have to... back far enough to find a place where we can get over to the other side.”
	“I don't remember seeing anything like that,” Billy says glumly.
	“Back where you fell on the rocks,” I suggest, “we still might be able to get across there even if the water is higher.”
	“That's way back past where we spent the fuckin' night for Christ's sake,” he moans.
	“Yeah, and it's all up hill... but we can't go any farther here, so we might as well start back... maybe we'll find a place we can cross over before that.”
	But we don't; the creek is running even higher and faster than it was this morning, and we have to stop and rest so often that it takes us twice as long to get back to last night's camping place than it did to go downhill. By this time it's getting dark and starting to rain, so we don't even have to talk about what to do, we just crawl into the evergreen bower and spread out our blankets for the night.
	“The fuckin roof leaks,” Billy grumbles, as we huddle under the wet blanket eating our crackers.
	“You still have some water in your cup,” I ask.
	“Yeah, you want it?”
	“No, just hold it there a second,” and then I open the bottle of whiskey and pour a little into his cup and then some into mine.
	“You tryin' to get me drunk or something?”
	“That's not enough to get you drunk, but it'll warm you up a little.”
	“It even tastes like burnt piss,” he complains, but he drinks it.
	I had hoped the whiskey would help us get to sleep, but it doesn't. Billy lies quietly snuggled up in my arms, but I can tell that he's not sleeping, and then after a while, he starts to cry.
	“We're going to make it, Billy,” I whisper in his ear, hugging the boy even more tightly, “once we get to the other side of the creek, we're home free.”
	“What home?” he sobs, “I ain't got no fuckin' home... I ain't got nobody...”
	“You've got me, Billy... you know I'm not going to just run off and leave you... not after all we've been through.”
	“Are you gonna be my dad then?”
	“Something like that... I don't know what it takes... you know, there's legal stuff that has to be considered... I don't know whether or not I'd be allowed... you know, to adopt you or whatever... but I'll look after you... I'll be there for you no matter what.”
	“Can I come live with you in Cocoa Beach?”
	“Yeah... maybe, I mean, if we can work it out,” then Billy seems to quiet down, and I lie there wondering just what the hell I'm letting myself in for.

	It's still raining in the morning; only a light rain, but it's a nuisance anyway. A wet blanket makes a lousy tent; if you hold it up with your hand, water runs down your arm, and if you support it with your head, it runs down your neck. And then even though we try to wring the water out of the blankets before rolling them up, they're still a lot heavier than when they were dry. I'm tempted to just leave them, but I'm still not all that confident that we're “home free.”
	“Wiping your ass with cold wet toilet paper is no fuckin' treat either,” Billy grumbles when I complain about the wet blankets.
	The rocky ford is farther up the creek than I thought, and it takes us more than an hour to reach it, but the water doesn't look much higher than it was yesterday; barring another accident, we can get across okay.
	“Just take it slow and easy,” I tell Billy.
	“I ain't fuckin' stupid, you know,” he snaps, “well, not as stupid as I was yesterday,” he adds with a grim kind of chuckle. We steady each other as best we can as we step from rock to rock, but there's no way we can get up onto the other bank without stepping in the water, so we end up with wet feet after all. And we don't have any more dry socks, so we just slog along with squishy shoes.
	And there's still all that undergrowth on this side of the creek, which was the reason we crossed over in the first place, so it's slow going. But by midafternoon, we reach the place where we had to turn back yesterday, and then we descend into an even wider valley with tall pine trees, and the way gets much easier.
	“We've got it made now,” I say, hopefully.
	“Yeah? I don't see no fuckin' bridge with no fuckin' highway on it.”
	“We'll come to it... from here on it's just an easy stroll through the woods.”
	“A fuckin' stroll in the rain, you mean.”

	It is raining harder, and it's getting noticeably colder too. I even begin to worry that the rain might turn to snow, though I think we're down to a low enough elevation that it won't. And I certainly don't want to have to spend another night out in the open in this kind of weather even if it doesn't snow. But that elusive bridge over the creek still doesn't show up. Every time we come around a bend where we can see a little way down the stream, we peer off into the rainy mist looking for that bridge, and then, disappointed, trudge on.
	“A house... a fuckin' house,” Billy shouts excitedly, “I see a fuckin' house,” and I look where he is pointing through the trees and see a building not a hundred yards away. He starts running up the slope towards the place, but I don't have the energy; I just trudge along after him.

Chapter 4
Shelter

	It's just a weathered old shack about twelve or fifteen feet square with a couple of grimy little windows and a padlocked wooden door on the front side overlooking the creek.
	“There must be a road here somewhere,” I say, looking around, “they couldn't have lugged all this lumber up here on their backs.”
	“Maybe they had horses,” Billy shrugs.
	“No, look there,” I point down along the creek, “There's a little two-track driveway... that's got to lead to a road.”
	“It must be quite a ways though,” Billy shrugs, “you can see from here there ain't no bridge across that creek... least not anywhere close.”
	“No, let's stay here tonight... at least we'll be in out of the rain.”
	“The fuckin' door is locked!”
	“We'll break in.”
	“We'll get arrested,” Billy laughs.
	“Good!” I can't help laughing too.

	But we don't have to break in. When we go around behind the cabin, we find the lock to the back door has already been pried off. Next to the door, a rain barrel propped up on a stack of cement blocks is brimming with water pouring down off the sheet metal roof through a galvanized trough. There's also a little one-hole outhouse back there, but its door, if it ever had one, is missing.
	“Not much fuckin' privacy,” Billy comments, looking at the outhouse.
	“That's still more than we're used to,” I chuckle.
	As we enter the cabin, we're greeted with a musty smell, but the place is dry.
	“Oh, fantastic,” Billy squeals, “a fuckin' roof that doesn't leak.”
	“And an honest-to-God bed,” I add enthusiastically; after sleeping outdoors in the rain, I feel like we've found a palace. In addition to the bed, there's a table and a couple of chairs, a rusty old cast-iron cook stove with a stack of firewood next to it, and a jerrybuilt kitchen cabinet containing a sink and water faucet. “All the comforts of home,” I laugh when I turn the handle on the faucet and water from the rain barrel flows into the sink. The shelves over the kitchen cabinet contain assorted cups and dishes and pots and pans, though there doesn't appear to be any food.
	“I don't think anybody's living here,” Billy says.
	“I didn't think there would be... judging from all the shrubbery growing in that driveway, I doubt if any vehicles have been up here for a couple of years, at least.”
	“Somebody's been here... it looks like they ransacked the place,” Billy says, pointing out the paper and trash littering the floor.“
	“Yeah, whoever pried open that door was probably just looking for valuables... maybe some hunters,” I say as I pick up some old newspaper and cardboard to start a fire in the stove. There's no chimney, the stovepipe just goes out through a hole in a piece of sheet metal covering one of the back windows, so I don't expect to have any trouble getting it to draw. The place does get a little smoky at first, but the wood is dry, and the fire takes off nicely once I get the vents adjusted properly.
	Billy finds a broom and starts sweeping up the trash, and I unroll our blankets and hang them on a clothesline rope that stretches across the ceiling not far from the stove.
	“With any luck, we'll even have dry blankets to sleep in tonight.”
	“Yeah, but that mattress looks like it's really filthy,” Billy says.
	“We can turn it over and see what the other side looks like.” Flopping the mattress over stirs up a big cloud of dust, but the other side does appear to be a lot cleaner.
	“It still stinks,” Billy complains.
	“You can sleep on the floor if you want.”
	“No fuckin' way,” he laughs.
	“We can even have a bath,” I say as I fill a bucket with water and set it on the stove to heat.
	“Do you think that tub's big enough?” Billy laughs, pointing at the kitchen sink.
	“Hey, even a sponge bath is better than nothing.” There is an almost petrified bar of soap on the sink, but it looks like it's still usable. And the towel hanging next to the sink is pretty musty, but at least it doesn't smell as bad as the mattress.
	“Holy fuckin' Christ,” Billy exclaims loudly, “look what I found!”
	“Goddamnit, Billy, I thought you were going to clean up your language... I'm getting tired of hearing fuckin' this and fuckin' that,” but then all of a sudden I see that he's holding up a can of Campbell's vegetable soup. “Holy shit!” I say, not setting a very good example, “where'd you find that?”
	“Right here in this box of trash,” he giggles gleefully.
	“Are there any more cans of...”
	“Nah,” he shakes his head, “just this one... do you suppose it's still any good,” he asks, handing it to me.
	“Oh hell yes,” I laugh, “the can's not even rusty or dented or anything... we can have a feast tonight... soup and crackers... what kind of crackers do you think we should serve with the soup?”
	“How about peanut butter and cheese crackers,” he laughs.
	“I can't find a fuckin' can opener,” Billy complains, rummaging through the drawer of kitchen utensils,“uh... I mean, I don't think there is a can opener here amongst this stuff,” he says, blushing a little.
	“That does sound better,” I smile and then reach into the drawer and pull out an old-fashioned can opener with a corkscrew in the handle.
	“That's just a bottle opener, isn't it?”
	“No it's a can opener too,” and then I pierce the can and work the opener around, nibbling the top away a half an inch at a time.
	“Hey, that's fu... uh, that's really neat,” Billy laughs.
	We wash out a small pan and empty the soup and a can full of water into it and put it on the stove to heat, and then we wash up some dishes and silverware and wipe the dirt off the table and chairs. We're so anxious that I don't even bring the soup to a boil; as soon as it looks hot enough, I pour it into a couple of large mugs and set them on the table.
	“Oh man this is good!” Billy exclaims as he tastes his first spoonful.
	“Fit for the Gods,” I agree, “who would have thought that good old Campbell's vegetable soup would taste better than anything they've ever served at the best restaurants in Aspen,” and then I notice a momentary frown on Billy's face and wonder if maybe I shouldn't have reminded him of his home.
	“That was really good,” I say after licking the last possible drop of soup out of the cup, “I don't know what else I could possibly want unless it's a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee.”
	“And a fuckin' cigarette,” Billy adds sarcastically.
	“No, like you said, I've quit...”
	“For good?” he asks skeptically.
	“I hope so,” I shrug.
	“Is that a promise?”
	“No, just a prediction... time will tell...”
	“I'll give up swearing if you'll give up smoking,” he says earnestly.
	“I've already given up smoking,” I laugh.
	“I mean forever.”
	“I can no more promise that than you can promise to never say another swear word.”
	“We could each make the promise...”
	“I know,” I interrupt, “but promises like that are meaningless... forever's a long time... things happen... times change... you can't predict what you might do in the future... right now I have all the good intentions in the world, but I'm only human... I'll try not to start smoking again, but that's all I can promise.”

	By this time it's starting to get dark, and the only light we're going to have is what little shines through the mica windows in the stove, so we hurry to get undressed and wash ourselves with the bucket of water that's been heating. I don't think anything of standing there naked, but Billy leaves his undershorts on while he washes most of his skinny little body and then bashfully goes off to a dark corner to wash the rest. I almost laugh out loud, but then all of a sudden I remember what it was like to be twelve years old, so I turn away from him and do my best to keep a straight face.
	After getting dressed, we sit around the warm stove listening to the rain on the sheet metal roof and wait for our blankets to dry.
	“Do you think they've found the wreckage of the plane yet?” Billy asks.
	“No,” I shake my head, “I'm sure they haven't.”
	“How can you be so sure?”
	“We can't be all that far away... we'd have heard the planes if...”
	“What do you mean,” he objects, “we been hiking for three goddamn days, for Christ's sake.”
	“Yeah but we spent most of the first day just getting down through that rocky gorge, and the second day was a complete waste, we ended up right back where we started out, so we were really only hiking for about a day and a half, and that was rough going... I doubt if we're more than six or eight miles away from the crash site right now.
	“It seems like more than that... like we hiked fifty miles at least... you think it's snowing up there tonight?”
	“Oh yeah, we're at least a couple thousand feet lower... maybe three... considering how much rain we're getting down here, I'd bet that it's snowing real hard up there.”
	“So if we'd stayed, we'd be snowed in up there for the fuckin' winter.”
	“Maybe not for the whole winter, but we'd be in big trouble, that's for sure.
	“But we're safe now,” I go on quietly, getting up to put another piece of wood on the fire, “we've made it... we're back in civilization now.”
	“Some civilization,” Billy laughs, “a wood stove, a smelly bed, and an outhouse where your fuckin' ass freezes off before you can take a shit.”
	“It sure beats last night though,” I can't help laughing too.
	“Yeah, I gotta admit that,” Billy acknowledges, “I was feeling pretty bad last night.”
	“We both were, but that was the low point... from here on we've got it made... there's got to be some kind of road near by, and even if there isn't any traffic to flag down, we're bound to find a house or some place where we can call for help... tomorrow's the day... tomorrow we'll really get back to civilization.”
	“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” Billy laughs, “you sound like little fuckin' Orphan Annie.”
	By the time the blankets are dry enough to put on the bed, it sounds like the rain has let up, but when I look out the back door, I see that the rain has just turned to snow.
	“Oh shit,” I say, “it's snowing!”
	For all his tough talk, I think Billy's a fragile child deep down inside, and when we get under the blankets, he snuggles up to me, so I put my arm around him and give him a reassuring hug. As I do, my hand suddenly encounters his bean bag teddy bear.
	“Good night Billy and Teddy,” I say.
	“It's Oliver,” he mumbles.
	“What's Oliver?”
	“His name... it's Oliver... like in Oliver Twist... he's an orphan too... I mean, he was until I found him... I found him in a dumpster... somebody'd thrown him away.”

	When we get up in the morning, the fire has gone out, and the cabin is chilly.
	“I thought you banked it so it wouldn't go out,” Billy grumbles as he wraps one of the blankets around himself.
	“I tried,” I shrug, “but I don't know much about wood stoves.”
	“You're a fuckin' Rocket Scientist, aren't you... you're supposed to know every fuckin' thing.”
	“You're starting the day out on the wrong foot, little buddy,” I say quietly but in a tone of voice that will let him know I mean it.
	Then when I go out to the outhouse, I see that it's still snowing. There isn't much on the ground, it's apparently melting as fast as it falls, but it makes me wonder whether or not we should try to hike the rest of the way down the mountain in this kind of weather. The snow isn't all that much worse than the rain we were hiking in yesterday, and yet the fact that it is snow instead of rain makes it seem a lot more ominous. If the temperature were to drop and the wind pick up, this could turn into a regular blizzard, and I've read enough about mountain blizzards to know that they can be lethal even when you're dressed for winter weather.
	But the little cabin warms up quickly once we get the fire roaring again, and in addition to a delicious breakfast of peanut butter and cheese crackers, we have the luxury of drinking a cup of hot water spiked with the last of the scotch whiskey.
	“This still tastes like burnt piss,” Billy complains.
	“You don't have to drink it if you don't like it.”
	“I didn't say I didn't like it,” he giggles.
	We've still got twenty or thirty packages of those crackers, and we've only used about half of the fire wood, so the logical thing to do is to wait out the storm here in the cabin. On the other hand, we're both pretty anxious to get this ordeal over with.
	“What do you think?” Billy asks as I stare out the window at the snow.
	“I don't know,” I say, “it can't be much farther... I think we could make it in spite of the snow...”
	“I think so too,” Billy chimes in quickly, “let's go do it then.”
	“No,” I shake my head, “it's too dangerous... weather in the mountains can change awfully fast, and we don't have any idea how far we've still got to go... it might only be a half mile or so, or it might be ten or twenty miles... if we knew exactly how far it was, we could make a rational risk assessment, but there's just too much uncertainty... the safe thing to do is to wait it out here in the cabin.”
	“We might get fuckin' snowed in,” he objects.
	“All the more reason to stay... better to get snowed in here in this little cabin than out in the open... we've made it this far, Billy, let's not screw it up now.”

	And so for the first time since we left the crash site, we have time on our hands with nothing to do. Billy and his teddy bear go back to bed for a morning nap, and I sit by the stove wishing I still had my laptop computer. Not that there would be any point in going over the talk I had intended to give at the cryogenics conference; that's long since over with. Well, actually, it's just now ending, and the other members of the group will be heading home. Have they been told, I wonder, why I never showed up to give my talk? It hasn't even been one whole week since I got on that plane! My God, it seems like an eternity, and yet we still haven't quite made it back down the mountain. And even though the air traffic control authorities must realize that the plane has crashed, they apparently still don't know where.
	I wonder if anybody even knows that I am missing. That lady at the counter in the Mountain Air building knew my name, and they must have issued a list of who all was on the plane. Would my parents have been notified? That doesn't seem likely, somehow; I mean, how would the airline or whoever is investigating the crash know how to get hold of my family? And there's no way Donna is going to know. She'll be expecting me to be back home by tonight. What's she going to think when she doesn't hear from me? Will she think I've given her the brush off? Or maybe think I've found another girl out here at the Aspen conference? But all of that will work out okay once I can get to a telephone.
	I put a little more wood on the fire and then take my shoes off and sit there with my bare feet propped up on the other chair so I can warm them by the fire. For the first time in days, I can really feel relaxed. The worst of this ordeal is over. There's no danger anymore; there's no longer any reason to worry about getting back to civilization. I don't even have to worry about having missed the chance to present my paper at the conference; I have the perfect excuse for not getting there in time. Other than being a little tired of peanut butter and cheese crackers, I don't have a worry in the world.

	“What happens to people when they die,” Billy asks quietly from under the blanket, “do they really go to heaven?” and the hairs on the back of my neck bristle as I realize that the boy has brought up the one subject I have been so desperately trying to avoid all this time.
	“Uh... I don't know, Billy,” I say finally, “I'm just a scientist... I don't know much about philosophy.”
	“Yeah,” he mumbles quietly, “I guess that's a dumb question... like asking where the light goes when you turn off the switch.”
	“Now that I can answer,” I say then, “light is energy... it has real physical existence... in one form or another, it lasts forever...
	“You remember how clear the night sky was when we were up on the mountain?” I go on, still feeling my way but gradually gaining confidence, “If you were to shine a flashlight up at the sky on a night like that... say you held the button for ten seconds and then let it go, there'd be a beam of light two million miles long...”
	“One point eight six million,” Billy corrects me.
	“That's right,” I can't help chuckling, “and ten seconds after you turned off the light, that beam would be another one point eight six million miles farther out in space... still travelling at a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second...”
	“Sooner or later it's gonna run into something,” he interrupts.
	“It's going to run into a lot of things... dust, planets, other stars... and it's going to be either reflected or absorbed, but everything it touches is going to be changed...”
	“Not by much... not by one fuckin' flashlight beam.”
	“No, not by much, but changed nevertheless... and for the rest of eternity, the Universe will be different just because you shined that flashlight up into the sky.”
	“And you're saying that life is like that... that your life goes on changing everything even after you die?”
	“I don't know, Billy... I told you I wasn't much of a philosopher.” Then he just lies there quietly under the blanket for a long while, and I don't know whether I've helped him or not.
	“Were you really listening to a Beethoven sonata on that headset?” I ask just to change the subject.
	“Yeah,” he says, “the Appassionata... how'd you know that?”
	“I found the compact disk case under the seat... I figured you had some rap music or something and just kept the disk in that case so nobody would know what you were listening to.”
	“No, it was the Appassionata... I wouldn't waste my time listening to that rap shit.”
	“You like Beethoven, huh?” I can't help chuckling a little.
	“Yeah,” he answers quietly, “I like all the Beethoven I've heard so far, but the Appassionata is my favorite... are you familiar with it?”
	“No... I'm afraid I'm not much of a classical music fan.”
	“It's real cool,” he goes on, “it starts out soft and gentle... like he's tryin' to lull you to sleep, and then all of a sudden he fuckin' wakes you up... Beethoven likes to piss people off sometimes, I can't help admiring that.”
	“Yeah,” I laugh, “that does seem to be your style.”

	“What's Cocoa Beach like?” Billy asks as we're having a hot lunch; peanut butter crackers and a kind of tea that we made by soaking some bark from the firewood in hot water. It doesn't taste very good, but it's different.
	“It's a typical Florida beach town... on a barrier island separated from the mainland by a saltwater lagoon.”
	“Like Galveston?”
	“Yeah... but I don't think it's that big... I've never been to Galveston, but it looks like a pretty big city on the map.”
	“I didn't think it was very big... I mean, not like Dallas or Houston.”
	“Oh,” I chuckle, “I didn't mean that big... but Cocoa Beach is more like a sand bar than an island... in places it's only a few hundred feet wide... there's only one road that goes the whole length of the city... that's Highway A1A... Atlantic Avenue... and even though there's a lot of high-rise condominiums, the population is less than ten thousand or so.”
	“I heard it's just a big tourist trap,” he says.
	“Not really... there are only a half-dozen hotels... I mean, it's not like Daytona where the beach is lined with hotels.”
	“But all you ever hear about Cocoa Beach is Ron Jon's surf shop... like it's the next best thing to Disney World.”
	“Well,” I laugh, “Ron Jon's is a tourist trap, that's for sure... it's a big store, and they've got a lot of nice stuff... as a matter of fact, that's where I bought this NASA sweat shirt... but it's strictly for tourists, the real surfers hang out at the smaller surf shops.”
	“Didn't you say you live near the beach?” Billy asks.
	“I live right on the beach... you go out the door to my apartment, down the steps, across the sand dunes, and right into the surf.”
	“Way cool,” he grins, “is it a two bedroom apartment?”
	“Yeah, I use the other...”
	“Way cool, he says again, ”then I'll have my own bedroom.“
	“Uh... as, uh... I started to say,” I stammer, “I use the other bedroom as a study... you know, for my computer and...”
	“That's even better... I'll need a computer in my room... do you have broadband?”
	“Well... I guess I could get a bed and a dresser to put in that room... I mean, if that's what we decide to do... and there's no reason you couldn't have your own computer, though I think I'll want to put mine in my own room...”
	“Why,” he giggles, “you got some dirty pictures on it you don't want me to see?”
	“I don't have any dirty pictures on my computer,” I object heatedly.
	“You don't have any pictures of girls?”
	“Well, nothing you could call dirty pictures...”
	“No pictures of naked girls?”
	“Well, a few of them might be... uh, you know... uh, what you could call nude poses, but...”
	“Like I said,” Billy laughs, “dirty pictures.”
	“Certainly not, they're called artistic images,” but I can't help laughing too.

	“Are you gay?” Billy asks suddenly in what strikes me as a calculatedly offhand way.
	“No, of course not,” I snap back, “are you?”
	“How would I know,” he shrugs, “I'm only twelve years old... I can't even jack off yet,” and I don't know what the hell to say to that, so I don't say anything. Either he's awfully precocious, or kids have changed a lot since I was that age.
	“Where you from?” Billy asks just as offhandedly, “I mean, like where you grew up.”
	“Michigan... in a little town called Corunna... it's the county seat of Shiawassee County.”
	“Never heard of it.”
	“Corunna's not very big, only a few thousand people, but it's only three miles from Owosso, and that's at least four or five times as big.”
	“Whoop-de-fuckin'-do,” Billy laughs, “so you're a big city boy.”
	“Well,” I laugh, “it's only about thirty miles from Lansing, the state capital... and maybe sixty or seventy miles from Detroit.”
	“What do people do in little towns like that?”
	“The same things they do in the big cities,” I shrug, “I went to school and worked in my dad's hardware store.”
	“Where'd you go to school?”
	“In Corunna, the regular grade school... then I went to high school in Owosso.”
	“How about college?”
	“U of M... at Ann Arbor... I got my Bachelor's in electrical engineering and my Master's and Ph.D in physics.”
	“What did you write your dissertation on?”
	“Cryogenics... in fact, that's what got me my job with NASA.”
	“U of M's supposed to be a pretty good school for the sciences,” Billy says thoughtfully, “though not as good as MIT, of course.”
	“It's not as expensive as MIT, either,” I chuckle, “is that where you're planning to go?”
	“Maybe,” he shrugs, and I can't help wondering if I'm ever going to understand this kid. At times he sounds more intelligent than some of my friends with college degrees, at other times he talks like some punk from a big city ghetto, and then every once in a while he's just a scared little twelve-year-old.
	“Where will I go to school in Cocoa Beach?”
	“Well, uh, you're in what... seventh grade?”
	“They don't have grades in the school I go to, but I'm doing high school level work... I'll probably graduate next year.”
	“At thirteen?” I find that hard to believe.
	“Yeah,” he shrugs so matter-of-factly that I think maybe it is true after all.
	“Well, if you were going to school in Cocoa Beach, I suppose they would make some kind of evaluation to decide what grade to put you in... it would be either Roosevelt middle school or Cocoa Beach High... they're both out by the golf course.”
	“Are they pretty good schools?”
	“Uh, I guess so,” I shrug, “to tell you the truth, I don't really know much about them... I don't think that Florida has the best schools in the country, but...”
	“That's a fuckin' understatement,” Billy interrupts, “Florida schools rank lower than just about every state but Mississippi!”
	“Yeah, but Cocoa Beach is a pretty well to do town... I would think the schools there are probably a lot better than in some other parts of the state... Florida's not all tourist resorts, you know, most of the state is still like the rest of the old south.”
	“You mean they have segregation and shit like that?”
	“No, of course not... they used to, but the schools were all integrated way back in the sixties.”
	“So I might have black kids in my classes?”
	“Yeah, I mean, you probably would if you... uh, you know, if you were going to go to school there in Cocoa Beach.”
	“What's all this ‘if’ shit,” he bursts out angrily, “are you going to be my fuckin' dad or aren't you?”
	“No, I'm not going to be your ‘fucking’ dad” I snap back just as angrily, “I don't fuck boys,” and then Billy throws himself on the bed and pulls the blankets up over his head, and I storm out the back door.

	I don't really need to, but I go into the outhouse and sit there for a long time. The snow is all gone now, and the rain isn't even as bad as yesterday, so there's not much doubt that we can safely make it out to some highway tomorrow. In fact, we could have made it today, though I'm not sorry that I decided to play it safe and wait out the storm here in the cabin. Maybe I would have gone on if I was alone, but I do feel responsible for Billy; I feel very strongly that it's up to me to get him safely back to whatever home he has left. What I'm having trouble with is how much responsibility I have for him after that. On the one hand, I've got a lot of reservations about taking on such a long term commitment, but on the other hand, to just abandon the kid after all we've been though is downright unthinkable.
	I go back into the cabin and fiddle with the fire and wash up and then just sit around trying to figure out what to do after we get back down off this goddamn mountain; going over all the logical reasons why I should or should not be responsible for the boy's future. But it doesn't do any good, it's all just a lot of rationalization; what my old psychology professor used to call “mind fucking!”
	Finally, I go over to the bed and put my hand on Billy's bony little shoulder. He doesn't even stick his head out from under the blankets, but I can tell that he's awake.
	“Okay,” I say firmly, “here's what we're going to do... tomorrow morning we're going to get somebody to take us back to Denver, and then after we've cleaned up and get some decent clothes, we'll go see a lawyer and find out what we have to do to arrange for you to come live with me in Cocoa Beach... I know I've got a lot to learn about being a father, but it's going to be up to you to help make it work... like you're going to have to clean up your act... you're a very intelligent boy, Billy, you know better than to use all that gutter language... okay?”
	“Yes Sir,” he answers quietly.
	“It isn't just the swearing,” I go on, “you've got a really big attitude problem... you seem to think that your smart-ass attitude makes you look grown up, but it doesn't... it just makes you look all that much more like some snot-nosed little kid... if you keep on with this childishness, I just might have to take you over my knee and paddle your ass as if you really were just a little kid... is that clear?”
	“Yes Sir,” and then after a few seconds, “are you really my dad now?” he asks plaintively.
	“I let you use my toothbrush, don't I?” I say, giving him a swat on the butt.
	“Jason?” he calls out as I turn to go back to the table.
	“What?” I bark more sharply than I mean to.
	“I love you,” he says softly.
	“You know I wouldn't even care how you behave if I didn't have a lot of feelings for you too, Billy,” I say quietly, “but this isn't easy for me... I guess I've been a bachelor too long... but we'll work it out.”

	Billy appears to go back to sleep, and I heat some water and try making some more tea. This time I use a different kind of bark, but it still doesn't taste very good. Even so, it keeps me busy for a while, and then I sit there at the table for a long time letting the impact of what I've just done sink in. Letting Billy come live with me is obviously going to require some fundamental changes in the way I have been living, and yet I haven't really thought about it enough to even begin to realize just what those changes are going to mean.
	He'll have to have his own room, of course. Maybe I ought to get a bigger apartment, or maybe even buy a house. For the time being, though, I can move my desk and computer into my own room and get some bedroom furniture to put in the other bedroom for Billy. That way we'll each have some privacy, though I still can't imagine being able to bring a girlfriend home for the night with him right there across the hall listening to everything that's going on.
	And then I suddenly wonder what Donna is going to think about all this. Will she still want to date a man who has a twelve year old kid? And even if she does, won't that be all the more reason to expect me to be thinking about marriage? Maybe I should be thinking more about marriage if I'm going to try to raise Billy, though just taking care of him seems like more responsibility than I want to begin with. Adding marriage to that is out of the question; at least for now.
	The more I think about it, the more I realize there is to think about. The kid is going to have to go to school; to Cocoa Beach High, I suppose. I've seen school busses on Ocean Beach Boulevard, so I guess he'll be able to take a bus to school and back. And I suppose he's old enough to take care of himself until I get home from work, though if I have to make a trip up to Huntsville or some such place, I'll have to get somebody to take care of him while I'm gone. This is beginning to look a lot more complicated than I would have thought. I wonder if I'll even have to join the goddamn PTA!
	And I wonder what my parents are going to think. My dad will laugh; not at me, but with me, and I instinctively smile when I think about it. He'll think it's a great idea. But my mother will have a fit. Oh, she won't disapprove; in fact, she'll also think it's a wonderful thing, but even so, she'll worry and fuss and bring up all the things I don't know about raising children. She might even want to come down to Cocoa Beach for a while and keep house for us. It'll probably be a good idea to not even mention the idea to her until we get everything settled.

	I sit there so long just thinking about all this that I feel a little dizzy, so when it starts to get dark, I bank the fire and then take off my shoes and go to bed. I give my sleeping son a little hug and just lie there still thinking about the mind boggling change of direction my life has suddenly taken.

Chapter 5
Rescued

	The weather isn't much better in the morning. It isn't actually raining, though there's still a low gloomy overcast, and water is dripping from the trees. So we take our time, but we get ready to go anyway.
	“What're you bringing the blankets for?” Billy asks when he sees me rolling them up and tying the ends with my spare socks, “I can't believe you think we're gonna spend another night in the fu... I mean, out there in the woods.”
	“I really don't think we'll have to,” I shrug, “but then I didn't think we were going to need the blankets again after that night we slept in the rain either... they're not all that much trouble to bring along, especially now that they're dry... and if it turns out that we don't need them after all, well... that'll be just fine with me.”
	We follow the two-track drive along the creek, but the ground is more clay than rocks down here, and with all this rain it's pretty slippery. Every now and then one or the other of us slips and falls in the mud, but we just laugh it off. We're so certain we're almost there that nothing can spoil our good mood, and sure enough, after following the tire tracks less than half a mile, we can see a little bridge across the creek up ahead.
	“I see it,” I laugh when Billy lets out a whoop, but we don't try to run; we just keep slogging along.
	It's only a narrow gravel road; hardly wide enough for two cars to get by each other. It comes down the hill from one side, crosses the creek, and then goes back up the hill on the other.
	“Oh shit,” Billy says, “whoops, I'm sorry... I mean how do we know which way to go... it's uphill either way.”
	“The tire tracks turn in from the right,” I point out, “whoever lived in that cabin came in from the other side of the creek,” so we cross the bridge and then continue on up the road. But it's a long climb to the top of the next ridge, and we have to stop every once in a while to catch our breath.“
	“Maybe this is not as low an elevation as I thought,” I laugh.
	When we finally crest the ridge, we can look down into another wooded valley.
	“It doesn't look any different than the one we just climbed out of,” Billy says.
	“Yeah it does,” I laugh, “look over there,” I point down the valley, “there's a paved highway.”
	“Jesus, that's a long ways away though.”
	“What we can see of it is, but that highway comes up this valley, so it's got to be right down there in the woods below us... all we have to do is keep following this road and we'll come to it.” And sure enough, about a half hour later, after a nice easy downhill walk, we come around a bend and see a stop sign where the gravel road ends at a well-kept two-lane pavement.
	“Look, a gas station!” Billy calls out excitedly when we get to the highway, and there, not a hundred yards away, is a Texaco sign at the edge of a blacktopped parking area. A big eighteen wheeler is just starting to head out in the other direction, and after it pulls away, we can see a barn-red wood frame building with some gas pumps and a sign that says: “MABEL'S DINER”
	“And it's a restaurant!” I shout.
	“Oh God, I hope it's open,” Billy laughs gleefully.

	There aren't any more vehicles parked out front, but there's an old man sweeping up leaves and pine needles around the gas pumps. He does a kind of double take when he sees us walking across the blacktop parking apron, and then he just stands there leaning on his push broom; staring at us as we approach. All of a sudden I become conscious of what a spectacle we must present; disheveled, unshaven, and smeared with mud.
	“Where the bejesus did you two come from?” he blurts out.
	“We've come down off the mountain,” I answer, waving my hand at the high country behind us.
	“We were in an airplane crash,” Billy chimes in.
	“Airplane crash... ain't heard of no airplane crash 'round here,” the man says, scratching his head.
	“Mountain Air,” I say, “a twin engine turboprop with forty some people on board... we're the only survivors.”
	“Oh, that one... that was almost a week ago...”
	“Yeah, eight days, as a matter of fact.”
	“They's lookin' for that over on the Sawatch range... ain't nobody been lookin' round here...
	“Elroy Bedwell,” he grins, holding out his hand.
	“Lincoln Barnett,” I say, shaking hands, “and this is my boy Billy.”
	“Well, now,” he booms, “eight days... you two had anything to eat?”
	“Just some crackers.”
	“Well, you come on in and we'll get the missus to fix you some dinner.”
	He holds the door open, and I start to let Billy walk in ahead of me, but then when I get a look at the spotlessly clean vinyl floor, I grab Billy by his backpack and pull him right back out so we can clean the worst of the mud off our shoes. Then we take off the muddy backpack and blanket roll and brush them off as well as we can and then set them on the floor just inside the door. The place isn't very big; a sales counter on one side of the room and four or five tables with bright red and white checkered plastic tablecloths on the other.
	Mrs. Bedwell is every bit as surprised as her husband was, and she gasps and tsk-tsks as we explain what happened and how all we've had to eat is peanut butter crackers.
	“I just took a meat loaf out'n the oven,” she says, “I'll put some biscuits in while it's still hot, and I can fry up some potatoes and... well aren't you two just the awfulest mess I've ever seen,” she laughs, interrupting herself, “now you just go on into the men's room and get yourselves cleaned up, and I'll have some food on the table by the time you get back.”
	“Uh... we ought to call somebody and let them know we're here,” I say, “I don't think they even know where the plane went down.”
	“You go ahead and wash up so's you can get somethin' to eat,” Elroy says, “I'll call the sheriff... he'll know what to do.”

	“I thought you said your name was Jason,” Billy says when we're alone in the bathroom.
	“It is, Lincoln is my first name, it's what I go by at work, but my middle name is Jason... my dad's name is Lincoln too, so they always called me Jason, and that's what I still tell my friends to call me.”
	“You're Lincoln Barnett Junior then?” he asks.
	“No... my dad's middle name is George, so I'm not really Lincoln Junior... sometimes I used to call him ‘George’ when I wanted to piss him off, though,” I chuckle.
	“So you used to like to piss people off too,” Billy giggles.
	“Sometimes,” I say as I start running hot water into the sink.
	“Oh Christ,” I exclaim, looking at the quarter inch growth of beard on my face in the mirror, “I didn't realize how bad I looked... I'm surprised these people even let us in the door... I should have brought my razor along as well as the toothbrush.”
	“Maybe you could borrow one,” Billy suggests.
	“What!” I laugh, “and stay in here scraping my face while you're out there eating dinner? No way!” But Billy just laughs as he happily splashes warm water all over his face.

	“I ain't fuckin' stupid, you know,” Elroy is shouting into the telephone as we come out of the men's room.
	“You watch your language, Elroy Bedwell,” his wife calls out from the kitchen, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself saying things like that in front of this little boy,” but Billy just giggles when I look down at him and wink.
	“These sons-of-bitches won't believe what I'm tryin' to tell 'em,” he complains, not even bothering to hold his hand over the mouthpiece, “they think you're tryin' to play some kind of a joke on me,” but I just go over to where Billy dropped his backpack on the floor and hand Elroy a package of crackers; pointing out the Mountain Air logo. Then he starts describing the package to whomever he's been talking to on the phone, and Billy and I sit down to the feast that Mrs. Bedwell is starting to bring out from the kitchen.
	“They gonna send somebody over,” Elroy says after he hangs up the phone, “but it'll take a while, he's gotta come over the pass.” I couldn't care less, though, I am enjoying the most fabulous meal of my life; the most delicious meatloaf I've ever tasted, home fries cooked just right, tender green beans, a fresh salad, and hot biscuits that just melt in your mouth. Needless to say, Billy and I are literally making pigs of ourselves, but Mrs. Bedwell just beams.
	“You want milk or coffee?” she asks me as she brings Billy a glass of milk without even asking.
	“Both... uh, if I may,” I answer between mouthfuls.
	“May I have some coffee too,” Billy asks, but she frowns and then looks at me.
	“I think it'll be all right this once,” I tell her, “considering all he's been through.”
	“Don't you dare tell her I let you drink whiskey,” I whisper to Billy after Mrs. Bedwell goes back into the kitchen.
	The telephone rings about the time Billy and I are digging into big pieces of homemade chocolate cake, and Elroy stands there looking out the front window; describing his parking lot to someone.
	“They want to land a big goddamn helicopter right here in front of my gas station,” he says excitedly after he hangs up.
	“Who, the sheriff?” I ask.
	“No, the National Guard, that was somebody said he was with the Colorado Air National Guard... he's gonna fly a helicopter up here from Denver, said he needs a place a hundred feet square to land it... sure must be a big motherfucker.”
	“Elroy, you stop using that kind of language in front of this poor child,” Mrs. Bedwell tells him again.
	“Billy's just been through an experience that would be pretty tough for any grown man,” I say, “I don't think a few swear words are going to hurt him... as long as he doesn't start saying things like that himself,” I add, looking at Billy, but he just drops his eyes bashfully.
	While we're waiting for the helicopter, Billy has another piece of chocolate cake, and I describe the cabin where we've spent the past two nights.
	“That's Pete Olson's place,” Elroy nods.
	“Well we sure appreciate his hospitality even though we didn't exactly have an invitation... I'm afraid we used up all his firewood, but I'll be glad to pay him...”
	“No need,” Elroy interrupts, “old Pete's in a nursing home up in Leadville... he ain't gonna use that cabin no more.”
	“Well,” I shrug, “whoever it belongs to now, then.”
	“Don't belong to nobody, Pete was what they call a squatter... that cabin's in the Pike National Forest... ain't nobody allowed to build cabins up there, soon as you do, the rangers tear it down, but they been pretty good about leavin' the old timer's places alone... I mean they knew Pete's place was there, of course, but old Pete was usin' that cabin since before some of them rangers was even born, so they left it alone, but they'll be tearing it down now, I suppose... now that old Pete ain't coming back.”
	“Well,” I say, “we're sure glad they hadn't torn it down yet... we'd been sleeping out in the rain, and we sure were glad to find that cabin.”

	We hear the helicopter coming long before it lands, and Elroy and I go outside to watch; Billy is apparently still more interested in chocolate cake. The weather is clearing up nicely; the cloudy overcast has turned into puffy white cumulus with stretches of incredibly blue sky letting in some occasional sunshine. I just can't help having the feeling that this has got to be the most wonderful day of my life.
	And that helicopter is big all right; one of those double-rotor jobs like the President uses to take off from the White House. This one isn't as pretty, it's painted with drab camouflage colors, and yet the thing is every bit as impressive when it drops down onto the blacktop a stone's throw from where we're standing. Then as the rotors wind down, the hatch drops open forming a stairway, and two men climb down; one is a civilian in a business suit, the other is wearing regulation flight gear like the astronauts do and has a major's gold oak leaves on his shoulders.
	“Doctor Barnett?” the major smiles, walking right up to me holding out his hand, “Major Sheldon, Bob Sheldon,” he says as we shake hands, “and this is John Stevens of the National Transportation Safety Board,” he adds. Then Stevens and I shake hands too.
	“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” Stevens smiles, “it isn't very often that we have a plane missing for a whole week like this without any idea where it is... you can't imagine the pressure we've been under.”
	“Well, I don't know about the pressure you've been under,” I laugh, “but I'll guarantee it isn't anything compared to what Billy and I have been through.”
	“Oh, believe me, I didn't mean to imply that it was... the fact that anybody would survive a crash in these mountains is nothing short of a miracle, and then climbing back down on your own like you have is almost unbelievable,” and though he sounds perfectly sincere, I can't help wondering if he isn't using the word “unbelievable” in a more literal sense.
	“How did you manage to survive the crash?” he asks bluntly; making me feel even more strongly that the man really does suspect that this is some kind of hoax.
	“We were sitting way back in the tail end of the plane,” I tell him quietly, “and when it hit that ridge, the plane broke in two... the tail compartment we were in slid down the mountainside and ended up in some trees, and the rest of the plane exploded and burned when it crashed into the cliff on the other side of the valley.”
	“So that's why you don't think there were any other survivors?” he asks. “I mean,” he adds quickly, “the report we got said that you told someone here that you and the boy were the only survivors.”
	“I don't believe anybody else could have survived the crash,” I say quietly but firmly.
	“Did you go look at the rest of the wreckage?”
	“No... it was too far away, but even so, you could see from where we were that there wasn't anything big enough to have people in it, even if they could have survived the crash and the fire,” but he just nods.

	“Where is young Armitage?” Stevens asks and then suddenly seems to notice the puzzled look on my face, “the boy,” he adds.
	“Oh Billy,” I laugh, “for some reason I never got around to asking him his last name... he's inside... still filling his face with chocolate cake.”
	As a matter of fact, when we go inside, I find him in the men's room throwing up in the toilet.
	“I guess I ate too much,” he admits sheepishly as he washes his face.
	“I was afraid that would happen...”
	“That's okay,” he shrugs, “I feel all right now... I've even got room for some more cake,” he laughs.
	“You'd better just drink a little milk, give your stomach a chance to settle... we'll have plenty to eat when we get back to Denver.”
	“Yes, Daddy,” he giggles.
	When we get back out into the dining room, Stevens has unrolled our blankets and is examining one.
	“These do appear to be the same kind of blankets that airlines use,” he says sheepishly when he sees me staring at him.
	“Didn't you think they would be?” I ask.
	“I'm an investigator,” he shrugs, “it's my job to investigate.”
	“Here,” I laugh, “investigate this,” and I toss him a package of peanut butter cheese crackers.
	“How many of these do you have,” he asks as he reads the printing on the package.
	“There's a dozen or more there in Billy's backpack.”
	“I mean, how many were there...”
	“The box we found on the plane was almost full... I think it must have held a gross to begin with, so there were more than a hundred... that's all we had to eat except for a can of vegetable soup we found in an abandoned cabin.”

	“We're awfully anxious to find that crash site yet this afternoon if we can,” Major Sheldon says. He and Elroy Bedwell are sitting at one of the tables poring over a map, so Stevens and I sit down with them.
	“Okay,” I say, looking down at the map, “where are we now?” and Elroy uses a pencil to point at a little red line representing the highway, “and where's that gravel road we came down?” then I take the pencil and run it lightly along the gravel road until I come to the bridge and then follow the creek.
	“There's where old Pete Olson's cabin is,” Elroy says as I trace the pencil up the creek.
	“Okay,” I say, “we just follow this creek all the way up to it's origin,” but the little blue creek stops at a point where the contour lines converge sharply. “This must be the gorge where we had to climb down all those rocks... above that is a little lake, not very big, maybe a few hundred yards across... now right above the lake you can see a kind of U shaped bowl,” I point at the contour lines, “that's where the plane crashed... it hit this ridge here and broke apart, and the tail section with me and Billy in it slid down the hill into the woods while the rest of the plane continued on across this little valley and then plowed into the cliff on the other side.”
	“Do you think there is any possibility there could other survivors, Doctor Barnett?” Stevens asks quietly.
	“No,” I shake my head, looking around to see if Billy is listening, but he's gone out into the kitchen with Mrs. Bedwell, “we scraped some tree tops a few seconds before the crash... that must have been on this ridge over here, and then the pilot pulled up in a steep climb... so when we hit this ridge, the plane would have been mushing through the air with the tail quite a bit lower than the rest of the fuselage... I think that's why it broke apart the way it did... it came apart right at the rear entry door... the galley and about half of the toilet cubicle stayed with the tail compartment.”
	“Do you suppose any passengers might have tumbled out when the aircraft broke apart?” Stevens asks.
	“That's possible,” I answer, looking around again to make sure Billy is not listening, “I did see some buzzards circling the ridge above us.”
	“How far down from the ridge is the wreckage of the tail compartment?” Major Sheldon asks.
	“I would say about a quarter mile... we were right on the tree line... the ridge above us was just rock... I guess that's what saved us, the tail compartment was sliding down that rocky slope tail first and then got slowed down by the trees.”
	“That must have been a wild ride,” Stevens says.
	“Oh yeah, I don't think it could have lasted more than a matter of seconds, and yet it seemed like an eternity while it was happening.”
	“And neither of you were injured in the crash?”
	“No... we were awfully sore and stiff the next day, but nothing serious.”
	“How long did you stay there with the plane?”
	“Three days... the first day it was so cloudy that we knew there wasn't any chance of anybody seeing us, but the next two days were clear and sunny... we kept a fire going so there would be some smoke for somebody to see, but then when we didn't even  see or hear a single plane for two days, we decided to walk down the mountain on our own.”
	“And that took four days?” Sheldon frowns, “it's only about ten miles.”
	“I know,” I can't help laughing, “but we're not exactly experienced mountaineers... we had to climb down through that rocky gorge, and then we wasted a whole day because we were on the wrong side of the creek and had to climb back up to find a place where we could get across... we spent two nights sleeping in the woods, one of them in the rain... and then we found the cabin, so we stayed there an extra day waiting for the rain to let up.”

	“Well,” Major Sheldon says, suddenly standing up, “I'll radio this position back to Buckley so they can get a search plane up here, and if you and the boy are ready to leave, we'll take you back to Denver.”
	“Believe me, we're ready,” I laugh, “though I am going to miss all this good home cooking,” I say loud enough for Mrs. Bedwell to hear.
	“I could give you some of that chocolate cake to take with you,” she beams.
	“I didn't think there was any left,” I laugh. Then when I try to pay for our dinner, Elroy won't take my money.
	“This is the most exciting thing's happened up here since the blizzard of sixty-two,” he says, “I wouldn't think of letting you pay for it.”
	“Well, you can't stop me from leaving a tip for that beautiful waitress,” I say as I tuck a fifty dollar bill under one of the plates where Billy and I were eating.

	When we board the helicopter, I am surprised to see that the interior is every bit as luxurious as I would have expected the President's to be; with thick plush carpet and big executive style swivel chairs.
	“We borrowed General Myers' aircraft for you,” Major Sheldon chuckles. Then he goes forward into the cockpit where the other pilot is waiting, and a moment later I can hear him giving the crash site coordinates to someone over the radio.
	“Here's what we're going to do,” Stevens tells us as we get settled, “they're going to fly us directly to Denver General Hospital and land at their heliport... then you'll be taken right into the emergency room...”
	“Is that really necessary?” I interrupt.
	“Hear me out, please,” he smiles, “we have a set routine we follow with crash survivors... I know you think you're in perfectly good shape, surely what you had to do to climb down that mountain proves that, and I know you're anxious to get back to your families, that's only natural, but the families have already been notified, and I'm sure they'll understand,” I try to avoid looking at Billy when he mentions families, “however it's vitally important that our crash investigators get a chance to talk to you before anybody else... we need to hear your stories first hand before anything has had a chance to... uh, confuse your memories...”
	“Before we start remembering things that didn't even happen,” I chuckle.
	“Exactly,” he smiles, “so our NTSB people will be talking to each of you while the doctors are giving you an examination to make sure you're all right, and that will also give you a chance to get cleaned up and make yourselves presentable...
	“Oh, and there's another thing you should be aware of,” he goes on, speaking more loudly because the pilots are starting the engines, “as I told you earlier, it's not often that we have a passenger aircraft missing for this length of time, so it's become quite a big news story... by the time we land at the hospital, the place is going to be crawling with television cameras and news people, and at least you,” he says, pointing at me, “are going to have speak to them, though the photographers, of course will want pictures of you both.”

	“Are you comfortable with this,” I ask Billy as the engines begin to wind up, “uh... I mean flying again?”
	“Yeah,” he nods, but he isn't smiling.
	“I see you fastened your seat belt,” I say, trying to make a little joke of it.
	“I learned that fuckin' lesson... whoops, sorry,” he adds with a grim smile.
	“Are you cold?” I ask when I notice he's wearing his quilted jacket.
	“Not really,” he says quietly, and then he opens the jacket just enough for me to catch a glimpse of one-eyed Oliver peeking out.
	“That's good,” I smile, squeezing his shoulder affectionately.
	The flight to Denver is beautiful, but then I'm so excited that it would be just as beautiful if we were flying in a pouring rain. I've never been in a helicopter before, and I'm surprised how smooth it is; noisy but smooth. I'm about to point out the Denver skyline to Billy, but then I notice that he's sitting there with his eyes closed, so I just reach over between the seats and take his hand in mine. He clenches it so tightly that it almost hurts, but I just squeeze back. Then when the aircraft finally settles on the roof of one of the hospital buildings, Billy opens his eyes and gives me a wan little smile. It isn't until the engines are winding down that I realize Stevens has been sitting there watching this little drama, but he just gives me a friendly smile and gets up and heads for the door.
	I expect to see crowds of reporters and cameramen, but as we climb down out of the helicopter there are only a pair of attendants with two wheelchairs waiting for us.
	“No way!” I burst out laughing, “there's no way you're going to get me into one of those contraptions,” but Stevens waves off the attendants and they just stand there grinning at us as we walk past them to the elevator.
	The elevator lets us out in the crowded busy emergency area, and then all of a sudden everybody is cheering and applauding us; hospital staff and patients alike. It's strangely embarrassing, and I can't help blushing.
	“Welcome to Denver General,” a short chubby man with dark curly hair says, holding out his hand for me to shake, “I'm Doctor Joseph Battaglia, everybody just calls me Doctor Joe... it doesn't look like we really have much of an emergency situation with you two, but just let me give you a quick once-over, and then we can take you to a little quieter area... do either of you have any aches or pains?... no?... oh, that looks kind of nasty,” he says, looking at the bruise on Billy's left cheek, “does it hurt?”
	“Not any more,” Billy answers, “I just fell on some rocks,” he adds with a shrug.
	“That's good, it's not infected... did you put something on it?”
	“Yeah,” I answer, “I put some alcohol on it right after it happened.”
	“What kind of alcohol?”
	“Dewar's scotch,” I chuckle.
	“Oh God,” Dr. Joe laughs, “I hope you had a little left over to drink.”
	“We did,” I laugh; Billy can't help giggling too.
	“I imagine you've glutted yourselves on food today,” Dr. Joe goes on, “but you don't look like you've been starving... what have you been eating?” and Billy takes a package of crackers out of his backpack and hands it to the doctor. “Terrific!” he beams, “and you must have had plenty of these if you still have some left over.”
	“Yeah,” I say, “we found a big box of them on the plane.”
	“And what have you been drinking besides scotch... just water?”
	“Yeah, at first we melted some snow, but after we started down the mountain, we drank water from the creek.”
	“That's what I figured, so we'll want to run some tests to make sure that you haven't picked up any nasty parasites.”
	“Like schistosomiasis?” Billy asks in a matter of fact tone of voice. I know Billy better than to let something like that surprise me, but Dr. Joe's chin almost drops off.
	“Well, uh... yeah,” he stammers, “it's not very likely that we'd find schistosomiasis in this part of the country, but that is the sort of thing we'll be looking for.”
	“On account of the bears,” Billy says.
	“What bears?” Dr. Joe seems puzzled.
	“The bears that crap in the woods,” Billy says, “isn't that where these parasites come from?”
	“Uh... yeah, I guess,” Dr. Joe shakes his head.
	“You can see what I've had to put up with,” I laugh, “a smart-ass twelve-year-old who knows all about things like schistosomiasis and Supercritical Helium.”
	“What's Supercritical Helium?” Dr. Joe asks, sending Billy into a giggling fit.

	Dr. Joe turns us over to an orderly named Benny, and he takes us on a long walk through hospital corridors to a place where he says we can get cleaned up. On the way we keep running into doctors and nurses who stop us to shake hands, and Billy gives away souvenir packages of Mountain Air crackers.
	“This is a staff lounge area we've commandeered for the afternoon,” Benny tells us as we enter a large room with easy chairs and a television set. Even as I notice the television, it happens to be showing the arrival of our helicopter, and then it suddenly switches to Billy and me climbing down the steps; the big blue NASA logo on my sweatshirt standing out in full color. No wonder everybody here seems to recognize us.
	“Look! We're on TV,” Billy squeals.
	“I didn't know they were televising our arrival, what station is that?” I ask Benny.
	“CNN,” he chuckles, “you guys are world famous already.”
	I notice Mr. Stevens and several other men and women sitting around the lounge obviously waiting for us, but Benny leads us on through the room to a door marked “MEN” that opens into a locker room with showers, toilet cubicles, and a washing machine and dryer.
	“I'll need urine and fecal samples from each of you,” Benny says, writing our names on some paper cups, “just pee in one of the cups... about half full,” he goes on mostly for Billy's benefit, “and as for the fecal sample... uh, that's just a fancy word for...”
	“I know what it means,” Billy interrupts irritably.
	“Well, uh,” Benny goes on, “we don't need much... a thick smear on a piece toilet paper is enough... just leave the cups here on the counter, then you can go ahead and get cleaned up, and I'll run your clothes through the washer for you while you're talking to the NTSB people... here's some stuff to wear while I'm washing your clothes,” he adds, taking some pale green scrubs like he's wearing out of a cabinet.
	But then Benny makes the innocent mistake of trying to take Billy's mud-encrusted jacket out of his hands to put in the washer, and Billy lets out an angry cry and grabs it right back. Poor Benny doesn't seem to know quite what to think as Billy backs away from him like a cornered animal.
	“Why don't you just leave us here alone while we get cleaned up... you can put this stuff through the washer later,” I tell Benny.
	“It would save a lot of time if...”
	“I know,” I interrupt, “but we've got time, this is all pretty overwhelming after being all by ourselves for eight days, you know, so why don't you wait out in the lounge for a few minutes, we won't be long,” and then he leaves, but I can see that he doesn't really understand.
	“Why don't you put Oliver in your backpack under the crackers,” I say, guessing that the reason Billy was so upset is that he doesn't want anyone to know that he has a teddy bear.
	“I gave all the crackers away,” he shrugs, but he takes Oliver out of his folded jacket and shoves him into the backpack.
	“It's your backpack, nobody else has any business poking around in it... you can take the things out of your pockets and put them in the backpack too.”
	After he empties his pockets, Billy starts to take off his tee shirt, but then he suddenly hesitates, looking kind of self-conscious.
	“Here,” I say, handing him one of the towels that Benny laid out, “you can get undressed in the shower... toss your clothes out on the floor, and then after you shower you can wrap the towel around your waist until you put the scrubs on.”
	“You've seen my bare butt before,” he shrugs, but he goes into the shower to undress, and I lather my face up at one of the wash basins to try to get my beard soft enough to shave off the eight days of growth.
	Billy is still showering by the time I go into one of the other shower cubicles, and I sure can't blame him; the feeling of all that hot water pouring down my back seems like the most luxurious sensation I have ever known. Long after I've finished washing, I finally have to force myself to shut off the water.
	“God that felt good!” I tell Billy when I step out of the shower. He's sitting on a bench trying to fold up the pantlegs of the green scrubs he is wearing; the crotch of the pants is down by his knees, and the jacket hangs halfway to the floor. “A little big are they?” I laugh, but Billy just giggles.
	All of a sudden Dr. Joe bursts into the locker room followed by Benny who still looks a little apprehensive.
	“Well,” Dr. Joe booms out, “I see you're all clean and sweet smelling now, so I guess it's safe to do a more thorough examination.” Then he goes through the motions of listening to our chests through his stethoscope and peering down our throats, but it really isn't much of an examination. “I see you haven't left me any presents yet,” he goes on, motioning towards the little paper cups Benny set out on the counter. So I take my cups into one of the toilet booths and produce the samples. “Do you need any help?” Dr. Joe calls out when Billy seems to be taking longer than I did.
	“No, I don't need any fu... uh, help,” Billy calls back, but Dr. Joe just laughs. Billy is blushing when he brings his cups out and sets them on the counter, but he doesn't look too upset.

	We go back out into the lounge wearing our baggy green scrubs; even the ones I have on are way too big.
	“You look a lot better now,” Mr. Stevens says as he comes over to greet us.
	“I bet we smell better too,” I say, grinning.
	“I wasn't going to mention that,” he laughs. Then he introduces six or seven people by name that he says he wants us to talk to. “Don't try to tell the story of what happened,” he says, “just answer their questions as briefly and accurately as you can... with any luck, we'll be all done with you by the time they finish washing your clothes.”
	They put me in a comfortable chair on one side of the room and Billy on the other side, and then one by one the various investigators ask questions. As I expected, each one is only interested in a very narrow part of the investigation. The first one, for example, just wants me to describe the sound of the engines during the last few seconds before the crash.
	“They sounded perfectly normal...”
	“That's because you don't think there was anything wrong with the engines,” he interrupts.
	“No... the pilots just didn't know that ridge was there, the engines didn't have anything to do with it...”
	“Let us be the judge of that,” he smiles, and then he has me describe the sounds in minute detail before we hit the trees, when the plane started climbing, and then right up to the instant of the crash.
	“Do you think the engines were still running after the plane broke apart?”
	“I have no idea,” I shake my head, “we were spinning around, and then bouncing off the rocks... there's no way I could have told whether or not the engines were still running.”
	The next one is a structures engineer who is only interested in what the tail compartment half of the fuselage looked like where it broke apart. I would have thought I could describe that pretty well, and yet he asks for much more detail than I can give him, and I keep having to apologize for not being able to answer.
	“That's all right,” the investigator says, “we realize that we ask for more than anyone can possibly be expected to know, but that's the way we work... every once in a while people surprise us by how much they remember.”
	“Oh, look at the TV,” someone calls out a while later, and when I look over at the television set, I can see that they must be showing an aerial view of the crash site, though all I can see is white snow and dark trees. But then the camera zooms in on something that I realize is the tail compartment wedged between the trees and almost buried in snow. As it zooms in closer, I can make out the wrecked toilet compartment and the blankets hanging over the toilet compartment door.
	“The entrance to our bedroom,” I chuckle.
	“My God,” Stevens says, “was there that much snow when you were up there?”
	“Oh no, that looks like a couple feet of snow... we only had five or six inches at the most, and that had all melted off by the time we left... in fact, that was one of the main reasons we decided to get the hell out of there, we were running out of snow to melt for drinking water.”
	“You'd have plenty now,” someone comments.
	“Yeah, but we wouldn't be able to build a fire to melt it,” I answer grimly.

	At some point I see Billy coming out of the locker room wearing his own clothes, so when I finish with the investigator I'm talking to, I go put on the nice clean clothing that Benny has laid out for me. And then when I come back into the lounge wearing my sweatshirt with its bright red white and blue NASA “meatball” logo, there is a spontaneous round of applause that again makes me blush self-consciously.
	Then just when I figure I'm all done with the investigators, Stevens comes over with a worried look on his face.
	“What's this the doctor tells me about you guys having a bottle of whiskey up there?”
	“Yeah,” I shrug, “we found a little pint bottle of Dewar's scotch...”
	“Where, in that cabin?”
	“No, on the plane... in a little flight bag that one of the pilots put in the same locker with our baggage.”
	“Which pilot?”
	“I don't know,” I shrug, “but I'm wearing his shoes, I took those out of the same bag... they looked like they were tougher than the ones I was wearing,” and then I have to take my shoes off so he can look them over and make some notes about them in his notebook.“
	“What else was in that bag?”
	“Just some gym clothes, you know, like you'd use for a workout... oh, and a Playboy magazine.”
	“The bottle hadn't been opened, had it?” he frowns.
	“Yeah, it wasn't even half full... I put some on Billy's cheek when he fell down and got that bruise, and we drank the rest that night we had to sleep out in the rain.”
	“Okay,” Stevens says in a low serious tone of voice, “I want you to know that this information will definitely become part of the investigation... we're not going to cover anything up, but I'm going to ask you not to mention it to the press just yet... linking the words ‘pilot’ and ‘whiskey’ will just cause a feeding frenzy, and the Mountain Air people have been having a pretty rough time with this as it is... it also might be a good idea not to mention that you gave hard liquor to a twelve year old boy...”
	“Oh, for christ's sake, we were trying to sleep in wet blankets in a pouring rain at temperatures just barely above freezing...”
	“Hey, I know that... nobody in his right mind is going to criticize you for that, but if it gets out to the public, you're going to have every crackpot in the country accusing you of child abuse.”

	A few minutes later, Stevens hands me a wireless telephone.
	“Your mother,” he smiles, “she's been waiting very patiently to talk to you.”
	“Hello,” I say, “Mom?”
	“Jason! Oh thank God, it's so good to hear your voice... we watched you get off that helicopter on television, you looked awful, are you all right?”
	“Of course I'm all right,” I laugh.
	“Well you didn't look it, you looked just awful.”
	“I'm fine, I just needed a bath and a shave, that's all, I hadn't shaved in eight days... even I thought that I looked awful, but I'm fine, honest I am.”
	“They said you and that little boy were wandering around in the mountains for a week, they said it was just a miracle that somebody finally found you.”
	“Well, it's not like we were lost, Mom, we knew what we were doing... we stayed with the wreckage of the airplane for three days, and then when it didn't look like they were going to come get us, we decided to hike down the mountain... we had to sleep out in the open a couple of nights, but it wasn't all that bad, and...”
	“What did you have to eat?” she interrupts.
	“Peanut butter crackers,” I laugh, “we found a huge box of peanut butter crackers on the plane, so we had plenty to eat.”
	“Well, that doesn't sound like very good nutrition to me,” she says emphatically. “Well, of course,” she goes on, “your father and I have just been through a living hell this past week... I didn't even believe them when those government people called and said you were on some plane that was missing out there in Colorado... I mean, I didn't know you were planning to go out there, not this time of year, I know you go to Aspen in the winter, but I didn't think there would be any snow out there this time of year, so I tried to call you down in Cocoa Beach, but, of course, there wasn't any answer...”
	“Where is Dad?” I interrupt.
	“Where do you think? He's at the store, of course... I tried to get him to stay home today when we heard that you'd been rescued, so he closed the store and came on home... we watched you get off the helicopter there at that hospital, and then somebody called and said that they would get you on the phone in a little while but that I should be patient... well, who ever heard of a mother being patient when her only child has been in an airplane crash and missing for a whole week and all but given up for dead...”
	“But where is Dad?” I interrupt again.
	“At the store... when they said it was going to be a while before we could talk to you, he decided to go back and open the store... you know your father, somebody might need some pipe fittings or something... I swear to God that man is going to postpone his own funeral just because somebody might need some pipe fittings.”

	I finally realize that Mom just needs to unwind, so I let her talk; saying “uh-huh” or whatever is appropriate from time to time. My eyes wander back to the television screen when they start showing some more scenes from the crash site, and then I begin to worry that this might upset Billy. But when I look over where Billy has been sitting, I see him with a man and woman I don't recognize. The man is just standing there, but the woman is hugging Billy and obviously making a big fuss over him. Even as I motion to Stevens to ask him who they are, I begin to have a sinking feeling that I already know.
	“Mister and Missus Armitage,” he says casually, “Billy's parents.”

Chapter 6
All In The Family

	My responses to my mother become even more perfunctory as I sit there watching Billy and his mother. I don't know what the hell to think. She's a tall very well-dressed woman who appears to be quite a bit older than the man, and I can't help wondering if he's really Billy's father. Stevens did refer to them as Mr. and Mrs. Armitage, and he's the one who told me that Billy's last name is Armitage. But I guess it doesn't matter whether the guy is Billy's biological father or not; the cold hard fact is that Billy does have parents. Considering how reluctant I was to even think about adopting the little son-of-a-bitch, I suppose I should be relieved to find out that he's not an orphan after all, and yet the wonderful mood I've been enjoying all day has suddenly turned to bitter anger and resentment. I can't help thinking that I've been taken advantage of; used and then callously tossed aside. Dumped by a goddamn little twelve year old kid!
	It's the mother who is making a big fuss over the boy, while his father or stepfather or whatever just stands there like a bump on a log. Billy is obviously a mama's boy; a spoiled little brat who's used to getting his own way. He must have known why I never asked him anything about his parents; because I thought they had been killed, and I was scared to death I might say something that would just stir up his grief. And the little son-of-a-bitch used that to get his way with me. He played me like a fiddle, and I fell for it hook line and sinker. That's me, good old Dudley Do-Right; Billy must have been laughing his little ass off the way I was hemming and hawing about letting him come down and live with me in Cocoa Beach.
	Now I'm really getting pissed, and the more I think about it, the madder I get. The kid's parents look like they're made of money, and Billy goes to this fancy private school in Aspen, and yet he wanted to know all about the schools in Cocoa Beach; knowing damn well that he was never going to actually go to school there. The little bastard was just playing a game with me; a game called “Lets Put One Over On Stupid Old Jason Barnett!” It doesn't look like they're even going to come over to meet me, and I can't imagine what I would say if they did. I don't even want to talk to Billy any more. There's nothing to keep me here; I might just as well be on my way, find a hotel room for the night, buy some new clothes to travel in, make some plane reservations, and, while I'm at it, maybe get a little drunk. But then I remember that I told Stevens I would talk to the news people. That's all I need right now; to let the whole goddamn world find out how I let a goddamn twelve year old boy make a fool out of me.
	“Would you like some coffee?” Some woman I don't recognize is standing there holding a tray with a pot of coffee, a cup and saucer, cream and sugar, and everything.
	“Oh my God yes,” I can't help grinning, “you've no idea what a luxury it is just to be able to have a cup of coffee.”
	“I can imagine,” she smiles as she sets the tray down on the table next to my chair.
	“Who can imagine what?” my mother says.
	“Coffee,” I say into the phone, “a nice young lady just brought me a cup of coffee... this is only the second cup of coffee I've had since I left Cocoa Beach over a week ago!”
	“Well,” she chuckles, “it's nice to know that you're not overdoing it... I always said you shouldn't drink so much coffee...

	“I'll call your father and let him know that I've talked to you,” Mom says as she finally begins to wind up the call.
	“Oh, don't do that,” I say, “I want to talk to him myself, so let me call first.
	“Can I put through a call to my father too?” I ask Stevens after Mom hangs up.“
	“Sure... you know the number?”
	“Yeah.”
	“Just go ahead and dial it then.”
	“Corunna Hardware,” Dad answers.
	“Hi, is this George?” I say using his middle name just for the hell of it.
	“Jason!” he literally shouts, “God it's good to hear your voice... you gave us an awful scare, Son.”
	“I sure didn't mean to... I felt guilty about not having told you I was going to Aspen, though I don't suppose that would have made you feel any better once you found out the plane was missing... but I thought you might not even know I was on that plane, it wasn't the one I was scheduled to fly on... I'd missed the connection in Denver and thought I was lucky to get a seat on that charter flight.”
	“Well, of course, we didn't know anything about it until Monday... the airline or somebody must have called your boss down in Florida, and he called us... he told us the number for relatives to call out there in Denver, and they've kept us informed... a Mister Stevens with the FAA or something... he's been really helpful.”
	“Yeah, I've met him... he and some major from the National Guard brought me and Billy back to Denver in a big helicopter...”
	“Yeah, we saw that on television,” Dad chuckles.
	“And he's been helping us with the procedures they have to put people through as part of their crash investigation.”
	“I guess you were lucky after all,” he says quietly, “they said on television that there were forty-five people on the plane and you and the little boy were the only survivors.”
	“Yeah... we were sitting way back in the tail end of the plane, and when we hit the mountain, the tail broke off and went sliding down the mountainside with me and Billy in it, and then the rest of the plane plowed into a cliff and exploded.”
	“It sounds pretty awful, and yet it must have been quite an adventure too... you can tell us all about it when you get home... are you planning to come up here on your way back from Aspen?”
	“I won't be going to Aspen, that conference is all over with now, but I'm sure my boss won't mind if I take some more time off, so I'll come on up there on my way back... probably tomorrow, or maybe the next day... that would be what... wednesday? I'll try to get a flight into Bishop... I'll let you know.”
	“We can pick you up in Detroit if you can't get a flight into Flint.”
	“As I remember, there's a flight out of Chicago that goes non stop into Bishop... I should be able to make a connection from here... I'll call tomorrow and let you know.”

	After I finish talking to Dad, I look over at Billy; his mother is still making a fuss over him. Yeah, he's a mama's boy all right. I never was; I guess I was more of a daddy's boy. When I was Billy's age, my father was the greatest man in the whole world. He could do anything, knew everything. The store was only a couple of blocks from the house, and as far as I was concerned, it was as much a part of the house as the living room or kitchen. I could walk in and out of the store any time I wanted to, and long before I was anywhere near as old as Billy, I had learned to tell the difference between a sixpenny finishing nail and a four-penny box nail. Even before I formally started working in the store, the customers would think nothing of asking me to fetch them some number six pan-head sheet metal screws or, perhaps, a couple of half-inch flare nuts.
	When I started getting interested in tools, Dad not only let me have new tools from the store, he showed me which ones were better for a particular job, and he made sure that I learned how to take care of them. When the kids in my cub scout pack built pinewood race cars, Dad showed me what to do and how to do it, but he refused to touch the race car itself; expecting me to do it all by myself like the rules said. My racer wasn't nearly as elegant as most of the other boys' cars, and it didn't win a single race, but Dad didn't have to point out that the other boys had cheated; that it was their fathers who had done most of the work, giving the cars those glossy finishes and hand balancing the wheels. At first I was disappointed that my dad hadn't helped me build a faster car too – after all, who would be in a better position to produce a real winner than the owner of the local hardware store – but it didn't take long for the lesson to sink in; those boys whose cars won the races didn't get any credit, their fathers got it all.
	And even though Dad almost never closed the store early, he did the night of the cub scout Father-and-Son Banquet. A lot of the other boys didn't even go to it because their fathers were “too busy.”
	Dad never did have much interest in baseball, but when I started playing in Little League, he came to the games. He never catcalled the umpire or argued with the coaches the way a lot of fathers did. He never once criticized my playing, in fact he always had a good word for me and my team as we walked home together after the game.
	For a while when I was a teenager, my father didn't seem so smart any more. And even being the owner of the town's one and only hardware store didn't seem to be very important; not like being a doctor or lawyer or something. Now I had to work in the store after school and on weekends, and even though Dad was paying me a pretty good hourly rate, it seemed like a pain in the ass to be tied down like that.
	I finally did grow up, of course. I stopped being such a know-it-all, and Dad seemed to get a lot smarter as I got a little older. And even though he hadn't been to college himself, he continually impressed on me the value of a college education. The work ethic he had taught me by example all my life paid off even in grade school and high school, so I managed to get good enough grades to qualify for scholarships and grants to not only get an engineering degree but my master's and doctorate. Dad was so proud of me that he almost burst, and I was proud of the fact that I could make my father so proud.

	“This is Einar Gunderson,” Stevens says as he introduces a fiftyish heavyset man with thinning gray hair, “the owner of Mountain Air Services.”
	“I just wanted to meet you,” Gunderson says as we shake hands, “I wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you and the boy were able to survive the accident... a plane that size going down in mountain terrain... it's nothing less than a miracle that anybody survived.”
	“I felt that too,” I say quietly, noticing the tears streaming down his cheeks.
	“My daughter Victoria...” he starts to say, and then he has to take out a handkerchief and wipe his eyes and blow his nose, and I feel a knot in the pit of my stomach as I realize that he's talking about the stewardess.
	“I'm so sorry,” I mumble and then just stand there not knowing what else to say.
	“It's all right,” he says, forcing a smile, “we've had a week to absorb the fact that... we knew, of course... we knew by the next morning that there weren't going to be any survivors... I mean that we couldn't count on it.”
	“Oh my God,” I blurt out, “if I hadn't been on that flight, Vicki probably would have been sitting back there with Billy.”
	“Don't blame yourself for that,” Gunderson shakes his head, “I was the one who said you could have that seat... it was a perfectly logical business decision... it didn't have anything to do with the accident.”
	“I know, but...” I shrug, and then I don't know what else the say.
	“John and Ronnie... the pilots,” he goes on, “were like family too... John had been with us twelve thirteen years... back when all we had was the Cessna... then Ronnie came aboard a little over ten years ago when we got the Brazilian Wonder... that's what we called it,” he smiles, “those sweet Rolls Royce engines... short take-off roll... ideal for climbing in and out of these mountain airports... I hear you told the investigators you thought the plane was off course,” he says suddenly.
	“Well... uh, I'm not really an expert,” I say defensively.
	“Oh, no... no,” he smiles, putting a hand on my shoulder, “I didn't mean to accuse you of anything... I agree with you... considering where it went down, they had to be off course... the only thing we don't know is why...
	“I was with John and Ronnie in the weather shack,” he goes on, “there was a really nasty line of thunder storms hanging along the east side of the divide up near Leadville, so we decided to fly due south towards Colorado Springs, turn west this side of Pikes Peak, and then climb to altitude and cross the Sawatch over by Cottonwood Pass... but that wouldn't even have taken them over the Front Range, much less into that high country there the other side of Deckers.”
	“Could they have been on the wrong heading?”
	“Yeah... that's one possibility,” he shrugs, “but we had a gyro compass, a mag compass, and radio beacons... it's hard to believe they didn't know what heading they were flying... and they were IFR, of course... so Air Traffic Control should have known they were off course.”
	“I had the definite impression they didn't know they were in high country,” I say, nodding agreement, “the way they suddenly tried to pull up after we brushed those trees.”
	“Yeah,” he shrugs, “that's what Stevens and his people are going to have to figure out,” he motions towards Stevens who has gone over to the other side of the room to talk to Mrs. Armitage, “but I've got a lot of funerals to go to... the wife and I have decided to go to every one of those funerals if we can... we never lost a passenger before... never thought we ever would.”
	“If you'll let me know,” I say, giving him one of my business cards, “I'll try to come back for your daughter's funeral... I didn't hardly have a chance to get to know her, but she seemed like an awfully sweet girl... please let me know... I'd like to be there.”

	After Mr. Gunderson leaves, I look across the room and see that Stevens and Mrs. Armitage are apparently having a rather heated argument. Their voices are not quite loud enough for me to hear what they are saying, but I get the definite impression that Stevens is pretty upset about something. Then, all of a sudden, Billy starts to come over to my side of the room.
	“We really need to be going,” Billy's mother calls after him, but he just ignores her.
	“Billy!” she calls out more loudly.
	“I wanna say goodbye to Jason,” he shouts back, continuing on over towards me. Then he just stands there in front of me hanging his head.
	“I lied,” he says quietly.
	“No shit?” I say sarcastically.
	“I didn't mean to,” he goes on, staring down at the floor, “I mean, it was just a little lie.”
	“Little!” I exclaim so loudly that his mother looks over at us.
	“At first,” he mumbles, “I mean, it was just a little lie at first, telling you they were on the plane...”
	“Up in first class with the holy rollers.”
	“Yeah, I didn't want you to know that I was... you know, like the stewardess was my baby sitter... they wanted to stay in town, but I had to be back for school Monday morning, so they arranged for me to go home on the Mountain Air flight... and Miss Vicki was supposed to be looking after me... I didn't want you to think I had to have a fuckin' baby sitter, for Christ's sake.”
	“You could have told me after the crash, but no, you let me go right on thinking that your mother and father had been killed... I couldn't imagine what kind of horror you must be going through... I was scared to death that I might say something that would upset you.”
	“I'm sorry,” he hangs his head.
	“I don't believe you,” I say angrily.
	“I was pretty freaked out too... I mean, Vicki and all those other people getting killed... and thinking that we were going to die too.”
	“Even after we got down to the cabin, you were still talking about how you were just a poor little orphan with nobody to go home to... and how the hell do you think you made me feel when you asked me what happens to people when they die... God, I felt terrible, and yet you knew that you were just stringing me along... playing some kind of gruesome mind game...”
	“I'm sorry,” he mumbles again.
	“You deliberately let me go on thinking you were an orphan... you even told me you didn't have any other relatives...”
	“I don't... I mean, that part was true.”
	“You just led me on, making me think you didn't have any family at all, telling me I was going to be your father now, and...”
	“You are,” he interrupts.
	“I am what?”
	“You're my father.”
	“Cut the bullshit, Billy,” I shout angrily, once again attracting his mother's attention.
	“I just wanted to know what it would be like to have a real dad,” Billy says in a quiet whisper, hanging his head.
	“What about...” I start to say, looking over at his parents standing on the other side of the room.
	“Oh, he's not my dad,” Billy shrugs, “he's just the husband du jour... he's only been around a few months... he'll be gone in another year or so.”
	“Well, what about your real father?”
	“I never had a real father... I mean, before you...”
	“All children have real fathers...”
	“I know what you're gonna say,” he snaps back, “but I didn't, at least as far as I ever knew... she won't tell me anything about him, I don't even know his name...”
	“Isn't it Armitage?”
	“No, that's her name... she makes all her husbands change their name to hers... this is the fourth one she's had since I was born, and none of them has ever even tried to be a real father to me... not like you have... you don't know what it's like to never have had a real father,” he whispers as tears begin to run down his cheeks. And I have to admit that's true.

	Maybe Billy's just a good little actor, but I can't stay angry with him; I don't want to believe he was just trying to put something over on me, though the situation certainly isn't what we talked about up there on the mountain.
	“Well,” I tell him. “I don't see how I can get involved... she doesn't even seem to want to meet me.”
	“She's just pissed,” Billy shrugs, “she doesn't think you did a very good job of taking care of me,” he says pointing at the bruise on his cheek.
	“I fell up to my waist myself in that goddamn creek trying to catch you,” I object.
	“I know, I told her that... but you know how it is with women, sometimes you can't argue with them.”
	“Well, you can't expect me to stick my nose in where it's not wanted,” I say emphatically.
	“She'll get over it,” Billy shrugs, “and I still want you to be my dad,” he goes on with a beseeching look on his face.
	“I just don't see how I can do anything...”
	“We can email each other, and talk on the phone, and we can ski together this winter, and then maybe next summer I can come visit you in Cocoa Beach... we're moving next summer anyway... we're gonna move to Boston so I can go to MIT...”
	“You're really going to go to MIT?” I can't help wondering if he's stringing me along again.
	“Yeah... next fall,” he shrugs, “it's already set up... she wanted me to go to Harvard, but I talked her into letting me go to MIT.”
	“You'll only be thirteen years old!”
	“Yeah,” he shrugs again, “that's why we're moving to Boston... Cambridge, actually... I wanted to live in the dorm like the other students, but she wouldn't hear of it... she doesn't think I can be trusted...”
	“She's got a point there... but I'm not going to do anything behind your mother's back,” I say finally.
	“She'll come around, she spoils me rotten... she usually lets me do anything I want.”
	“Maybe that's part of your problem,” I can't help observing.
	“We can still be friends,” he implores, “she'll go along with that, I know she will.”
	“Well, Billy,” I say quietly, “like I told you up there in the cabin, if you want us to be friends, you're going to have to clean up your act...”
	“I'll quit swearing, honest.”
	“Not just that, and not just when you're with me, all of the time... you've got to stop trying to piss people off... you've got to start showing some respect for adults...”
	“That's hard to do with some adults,” he complains, motioning towards his stepfather.
	“This has nothing to do with what kind of people the adults are,” I lecture sternly, “what I'm talking about is what kind of person you should be... you're not going to be the kind of boy who doesn't show the proper respect for other people... whether they deserve it or not... is that clear?”
	“Yes Sir,” he answers with a shy smile.

	Just then I notice Mrs. Armitage walking across the room towards us; Mr. Armitage trailing along a few steps behind her like an obedient puppy dog.
	“Doctor Barnett,” she says flashing a warm smile and holding out her hand.
	“Missus Armitage,” I say, shaking her hand. And then I shake hands with the husband too, though he just nods and then steps back a little. He apparently knows his place.
	“I want you to know how much I appreciate all you've done for Billy,” she says quite sincerely, “I'm sure he's right when he says that you literally saved his life.”
	“We saved each other's lives... believe me, it was a team effort... for all his immaturity, Billy's a tough little guy... he helped me every bit as much as I helped him.”
	“I'm sure that in the long run it will have been a growth experience for him,” she smiles, “and quite naturally, he's developed a rather strong emotional attachment to you... he apparently thinks of you as some kind of father figure, and he's even talking about wanting to go to Florida next summer to visit you, though...”
	“I've told Billy that's out of the question,” I interrupt, “there's no way I'm going to put up with his foul-mouthed childish behavior,” and I can't help noticing a smirk on the young husband's face, though Billy himself doesn't appear to be too shocked by what I'm saying.
	“Oh... that's just a phase he's going through,” his mother says, instinctively coming to her precious little boy's defense.
	“And it's a phase he's old enough to grow out of,” I charge on, “I've told him time and time again that he's acting like a spoiled brat... that it's time he grew up and started taking some responsibility for his own behavior...”
	“Well, he's only twelve years old, and I don't...”
	“There's no excuse for a twelve-year-old using the kind of language he uses and treating adults without the least sign of respect...”
	“Well,” she interrupts a little haughtily, “I suppose that being a doctor, you feel you know all you need to know about raising children, but...”
	“My doctorate is in Physics,” I interrupt again, “and I'll admit that I don't know a damn thing about raising children, but that's not what we're talking about here... what I'm talking about is what I will or will not put up with if Billy still wants me to be his friend,” I say, carefully avoiding the word “father.”
	“I do still want you to be my friend,” Billy adds plaintively.
	“Then you know what you have to do,” I say to him though really for his mother's benefit, “you've got to clean up your act... stop this childish swearing... show the proper respect for adults... say ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’... and that means all the time, not just when you're trying to impress somebody... can you do that?”
	“Yes Sir,” he nods.
	“I told Mister Gunderson that I would come back to Denver for Vicky's funeral... I think it might be a good chance for you to show some respect by attending Vicky's funeral too.”
	“Oh, I don't think we can...” Mrs. Armitage starts to say.
	“That girl is the person who really saved your son's life,” I interrupt angrily, “if she hadn't come back there and made him fasten his seat belt, Billy would have been thrown out of the plane with the rest of the baggage.”
	“Well, perhaps we can,” Mrs. Armitage relents.
	“See that you do,” I snap back, and the look on her face tells me that she's not used to being spoken to like that, but she doesn't say anything.
	“These are my phone numbers and email addresses,” I say as I give Billy and his mother each one of my cards, “I'm going to go to Michigan to visit my family for a few days, and then I'll probably be back here for Vicky's funeral before I go down to Cocoa Beach,” I say, looking right at Billy, “and I expect to hear some honest reports on how you're doing.”
	“Yes Sir,” he mumbles.
	“And I'll be in Aspen in March for a couple weeks of skiing,” I go on, still talking directly to Billy, “if you're still sincere about changing your ways, then we can talk about asking your mother whether or not you can come down to Cocoa Beach next summer.”
	“Well, Doctor Barnett,” Mrs. Armitage says rather stiffly, “I do appreciate your interest in my son, and I hope that your influence can bring about the reforms you expect... meanwhile... well, we'll see.”
	“I hope so too,” I say sincerely, “but, as you say, we'll see.”
	“Come along,” she says to Billy, “we want to try to get over the passes before dark... and as I said,” she goes on, turning to me, “I'm really grateful for all you have done, Doctor.”
	I shake hands again with Mrs. Armitage and then with Mr. Armitage. I hold out my hand for Billy to shake too, but he ignores that and throws his arms around me, giving me a tight hug and a little peck on the cheek. Then as they're going out the door, Billy turns around and holds up his hand for a symbolic high-five.

	All of a sudden I realize that Stevens has been sitting there watching and probably even listening to all this, and I feel myself blushing.
	“Well,” he smiles, “are you ready to go out and face the press?”
	“As ready as I'll ever be,” I shrug.
	“Would you like me to have someone make a hotel reservation for you?”
	“Yeah,” I laugh, “it's going to be a treat to sleep in a bed with real sheets and everything... and then, of course, I'll have to get some clothes...”
	“Do you need any money?”
	“No,” I shake my head.
	“Gunderson has offered to pick up all your bills.”
	“No, I can take care of it... he's got enough to worry about without that.”
	“I'll see that you get a car and some place to stay,” he says as we walk back through the hospital corridors, “I hope you're used to public speaking,” he chuckles, “those television reporters can be quite intimidating.”
	“I've given talks to large groups before,” I shrug, “but I've never been on television.”
	“Just try to ignore the cameras and speak directly to the person asking the question.”
	“What should I tell them?”
	“Tell the whole story... how you and the boy survived the crash back there in the tail compartment... tell them about eating crackers and melting snow for drinking water... describe your trip down the mountain, sleeping out in the rain, finding that old cabin... it's a great story, they'll eat it up,” he chuckles.
	“What if they ask me why the plane crashed?”
	“Tell them what you know from your own experience, but avoid speculation.”
	“Should I tell them the plane as off course?”
	“Why not,” he shrugs, “they know that already... and they also know that we wasted a whole week searching the wrong goddamn mountainside, but don't let yourself get sucked into a discussion of that... that's my problem.”
	“Mister Gunderson told me the plane had a magnetic compass, a gyro compass, and was using radio navigation beacons, and he also said that the Air Traffic Control radar systems should have known where the plane was.”
	“Yeah,” Stevens sighs, “that's the whole crux of our investigation right now... but, again, don't let yourself get dragged into that.”
	“Oh, don't worry, I won't, but... you know, being in the aerospace field myself, I find it hard to understand how we could have been so far off course that we actually flew into a mountain we didn't even know was there.”
	“Unfortunately that happens more often than you might think, and it's always due to human error.”
	“Pilot error?”
	“Not necessarily, but in this case, probably... as you pointed out, there were a number of ways the pilots had of knowing they were off course... the failure of one or even two of those systems should not in itself have caused an accident, but sometimes there are multiple failures... or, more often, what you might call virtual failures...”
	“Virtual failures?”
	“Airliners nowadays are a lot like your spaceships down there at Cape Canaveral... they have multiple backup systems so that if something fails, you still have another way of accomplishing your mission... but astronauts spend most of their time training and only occasionally actually flying...”
	“And with airline pilots,” I chime in, “it's just the other way around?”
	“Right... and it's not that they don't get enough training, but that they get so used to flying that they fall into the habit of relying on certain indicators that they're most familiar with.”
	“So what you're calling a virtual failure is a system that might well be reading true, but that doesn't matter because nobody's looking at it?”
	“Yeah... and that, of course, applies to Air Traffic Control as well as the pilots.”
	“Was Air Traffic Control tracking the flight?”
	“Supposedly, but there are no recordings of the radar plots, and so far, our interviews with the controllers haven't produced anything substantive.”
	“What about the systems on the plane?”
	“They had relatively modern equipment for an aircraft that old, but the gyro compass has to be set before you engage the flight control system, and those settings could have been wrong... I know of cases where a pilot has set a number into the system, then checked and double checked it without realizing that he had copied the wrong goddamn number off the flight plan... but stay away from stuff like that... tell them the story of you and the boy climbing down off the mountain all by yourselves... like I said,” he chuckles, “they'll eat it up.”

	We go out the front entrance of the hospital where a speaker's stand with a cluster of microphones has been set up, and the scene is even more overwhelming than I expected; literally hundreds of people, dozens of television cameras, and huge vans with satellite dishes on their roofs. Somebody in a military uniform is already speaking, but the instant we come out the door, several of the cameras swing around and train on me, and a spontaneous cheer rises up from the crowd.
	“They're not going to like it when they find out the boy's not here,” Stevens says.
	“I guess they didn't want to stay for this,” I shrug.
	“No... we asked them to, of course, but Missus Armitage is a very... uh, determined woman,” he laughs.
	A man standing just outside the door is smoking a cigarette, and the instant I smell the smoke, I automatically think about bumming one off him, but I don't. Half of those television cameras are still pointing right at me, and I can't very well just light up a cigarette on national television; Billy would be fuckin' pissed!

	Harold Hansen is a retired NASA Senior Project Engineer who helped pioneer the Manned Space Program at the Kennedy Space Center. He was born and raised in Flint Michigan, is a World War II Veteran, and received his engineering degree from Wayne University in Detroit. He has two children and two grandchildren and currently lives in Tallahassee.