Free Running Dark by Joseph Heywood Page A

to make love, but kept breaking into laughter and finally gave up. Mehegen went to sleep in the crook of Grady Service’s arm as he lay there wondering if his ride on the Percheron had permanently removed a layer of his skin.

9
    TRENARY, DECEMBER 28, 1975
    â€œI watched da whole sad parade.”
    It had taken several telephone calls to track down Joe Flap’s current address. Apparently the pilot didn’t stay put too long in any one place and moved from rental to rental. For the moment he was living in Alger County on a farm northeast of Trenary on Trout Lake Road.
    Christmas Eve with Brigid Mehegen and her daffy grandfather had been memorable to say the least, but what stuck in Service’s mind most was her T-shirt and homemade movie: naked skydivers go down faster. Late Christmas Day he’d begun trying to track down Joe Flap.
    Service grinned when he saw an airplane tail poking out of a barn-turned-hangar. There was a faded yellow windsock on the silo attached to the barn. A flatbed truck with a snowplow was parked next to the two-storied house, half of which was unpainted with exposed pink insulation. The other half was painted aquamarine blue, and not recently by the looks of it.
    Another five inches of snow had fallen, and the temperature had dropped nearly to zero for the third consecutive night. Lake surfaces had gone from skiff ice to the real thing, and if it remained cold it wouldn’t be long before ice-fishing fanatics would be hauling their shanties onto lakes.
    There were fresh footprints from the house to the barn.
    Service found Joe Flap sitting on a bar stool. He wore a sleeveless gray sweatshirt streaked with grease, military flight coveralls turned down to the waist, a green John Deere ball cap, and his traditional Errol Flynn pencil ’stache. His old horseblanket coat was hung from a peg and it was as greasy and stained as everything else around the man. Service saw that the engine cowling was open and the pilot had some sort of device with protruding wires held in his lap. Flap was a short, wiry man who shaved his head and had a scar that ran from the center of his skull down to his left eyebrow, a memento of one of his numerous crashes. Service had never known the man’s age; he hadn’t seen him in years, and now he looked a lot younger than he remembered.
    Service plopped a case of Old Milwaukee on a workbench.
    The pilot stared at the beer, then at Service. “You got youse a pretty good memory,” he said. “Heard you joined da green,” the pilot added, “and got da Mosquito, too.”
    â€œI haven’t been there that long,” Service said.
    â€œLong enough ta make some of da dirtballs whine.”
    Flap got up, opened two cans of beer, and handed one to Service.
    â€œGlad you made it home in one piece,” he said with a crooked grin. “Dat Vietnam was one serious clusterfuck.”
    Service raised a can in salute. “There it is.”
    They both lit cigarettes.
    â€œYou’ve been flying the Garden,” Service said.
    â€œWhen dey need me.”
    â€œIs there an airfield down there?”
    â€œSkis out on da ice,” Flap said.
    â€œAn inland strip?”
    â€œIf dere was, da ratfucks down dere would turn it into a flak trap.”
    â€œNo place to let down?”
    â€œCouple places, mebbe in an emergency, but only if I was plumb-out-of-IOUs-desperate—and even den I’d have second thoughts.” Flap studied him. “You got somepin’ in mind?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
    Thoughts too amorphous to share yet, Service reminded himself. “I heard you on the radio last month.”
    Flap looked at him. “You know,” he said, “our people never went to da slip where I spotted dat white boat.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œDis time our guys were willing, but da Troops wit’ dem were new and a little shaky, which isn’t unusual, eh. Dey made one ceremonial loop