Free Ghosts of Florence Pass by Brian J. Anderson Page B

him in the cockpit because of the way his mother and father were pushed up and blocking his view and then he thought about how the pilot was probably dead as well.
    After he had rested John Parker pushed against the back of his mother’s seat and lifted it from his knees and then pulled himself out from underneath it in a wash of pain and he started to hyperventilate. He turned and swung his legs aside as he let go of the seat and the seat fell to a lower position because John Parker’s leg wasn’t there anymore to stop it and then his mother’s arm swung down to the floor and glanced off John Parker’s leg as it fell making him scream. The pain in his leg and arm and head and neck and insides in concert with the grief made him swoon and he fell to the floor and blacked out again.
    ***
    John Parker and his brother were downstairs watching Zombieland on the computer and eating popcorn and drinking hot Dr. Pepper. Zombie movies had been David’s favorite since their father had taken him to a zombie movie marathon at the point cinema earlier that summer but John Parker was still too young their father had said so he couldn’t go. Now their parents were fighting upstairs and when they were fighting it usually went on all night so for now John Parker could watch all the zombie movies he wanted and they would probably never know and besides he wasn’t too young. They’re just movies.
    You watching the stairs? David said.
    Yeah.
    You get me in trouble and I’m gonna kick your ass.
    Like you could.
    Try me nature boy.
    Stop calling me that.
    What’re you gonna do about it nature boy?
    Can we just watch the movie?
    David didn’t say anything and they watched the movie. From upstairs the muffled fighting of their mother and father came through the ceiling and David turned up the volume against it. For years this. Woody Harrelson shot a zombie through the brain and John Parker thought about the time that he and David and his parents went to Yellowstone in his tenth summer. The bears and moose and buffalo and wolves all living together in balance and having their young in accordance with the natural order of things. He thought about the people in their cars with their snack food and sodas and cameras and phones and their televisions in their winnebagos and pace arrows like in some enormous natural amusement park taking pictures of the animals and sending them to their friends and family through the ether. He thought that maybe that was the last time his mother and father were happy together but then he thought maybe not because you never know what’s going on in people’s heads. He thought about that for a little while and then asked his brother if he thought their mother and father were going to get a divorce.
    Christ how would I know, David said.
    I don’t know because you’re older. And you know more about that stuff.
    Well I don’t.
    John Parker looked up at the ceiling and said I hope they don’t.
    David turned up the volume some more and looked at his brother for a moment and then he looked at the movie.
    If they are, David said, I wish they’d hurry up.
    What?
    Nothing. Go make some more Dr. Pepper nature boy.
    Stop calling me that.
    ***
    John Parker woke up on the floor of the plane in a nest of electrical wire and he was coughing and retching in the cold. His insides hurt when he coughed and his head and leg were throbbing with the pain. He sat up and turned so that his feet were outside the plane through the hole torn in its side during the crash and then he tightened the tourniquet on his leg one turn and secured the handle with the extra wire.
    David, he said.
    The plane rocked and creaked on its moorings on the rocks as John Parker slid himself into the opening and hung his legs outside and looked about. It was cold and foggy outside the plane and he thought that they were probably in the clouds but it was bright and there were patches of blue suggested on the horizon. The rain had stopped and there was a