Sad Man in the Sky
/By Ron Rash
Photo by Cedric Dhaenens
As soon as I see him coming up the road, I’m thinking this fellow could be trouble. I figure he’s hitchhiking but his thumb stays down as the cars pass. He’s wearing a saggy black tank top, blue jeans, and scuffed-up penny loafers. A pillowcase full of God knows what is slung over his shoulder. Homeless, ex-con, druggie, maybe all three. Keep on going, I’m thinking, but the man leaves the road, walks to where I sit on my truck’s tailgate. There’s a tattoo of a padlock on the center of his upper chest. It’s right sized but faded and off-plumb, a prison tat if ever I’ve seen one.
He’s looking at the helicopter behind me in the pasture, maybe figuring the old fellow who owns one would have cash enough to lay a ten or twenty on him. But if he’s thinking of getting money from me he’s dead wrong. I work ten-hour shifts Monday to Thursday. Then I’m here Friday afternoons flying Todd Watson’s chopper to keep the bills paid and help out our two girls. If this guy decides to get feisty, there’s a pipe wrench in the cab to handle that. But when he turns his eyes toward me, he doesn’t look mean or drugged or drunk, just worn down. His whole body sags like even his bones have given up.
“How much?” he asks.
“How much for what?”
“To take me up in that thing.”
It ain’t a quarter so it’s likely outside your price range is what I’m thinking but instead I answer seventy-five each with two or more passengers and a hundred and twenty solo. I expect that to turn his feet back the way he came from but he doesn’t even blink.
“And you’ll take me where I want to go?” he asks.
“It’s supposed to be what it says,” I tell him, pointing at the Smokey Mountain Park Tour sign, “but I’ll take you whatever direction you want as long as we’re back here in thirty minutes.”
He opens his billfold. The plastic photo sleeves are empty. He takes the bills out one at a time, first four twenties, then three tens and two fives. He’s got a few bills left but most look to have George Washington on them.
“Maybe you ought to save that money for something else?” I tell him, though not in a smart-alecky way.
“I reckon not,” he answers, fetching a watch from his pocket.
He doesn’t strike me as someone who needs to worry much about what time it is, but he gives it a careful look before putting it back. I notice it’s 3:05, which tells me I’ve been out here three hours and had just four customers. Some leaf peepers are coming at 5:30 but that may be it for the day. I take his money, eyeballing it good before putting it in my billfold.
“I can lock up your ruck if you want me to,” I tell him.
“I figure to take it with me,” he answers. “It don’t weigh but a few pounds.”
“It’s not the weight,” I answer. “I need to know what’s inside. I don’t let folks bring just anything onboard.”
“Presents,” he says, and opens the pillow case to show four packages wrapped in bright red paper.
“It’s a bit early in the year to play Santa Claus, ain’t it?”
He pulls out his watch again.
“We need to go,” he says.
So we get in and buckle up. I hand him his mic and headphones, disengage the rotor brake, and mash the starter. When the blades get spinning good, I press the pedal and the skids lift free of the earth. As always, memories of long-ago flights tense my stomach. Then I settle myself and am fine. I look over at my passenger and ask where he wants to go.
“Sawyer Ridge,” he says, pointing across the river
It’s like warning signals just lit up on the instrument panel, because Sawyer Ridge is a place most people don’t want anything to do with. Some good folks live there, but so do enough mean ones to fill up the county newspaper’s arrest report. They’re the sort who don’t much like anyone snooping around where they live. To them, the bird would make a dandy target for some rifle practice. I had enough of getting shot at in the Army so I tell him there’s more interesting places to see, but he shakes his head.
A deal’s a deal so I point the nose that way. Soon we are above the town, where the traffic’s picked up since school’s letting out. We fly over the Baptist church’s steeple and then over the courthouse. As we cross the river I see some folks fishing. It’s October so there’s red and yellow leaves lining the big pools where the river slows.
Soon Sawyer Ridge comes into view and the man points at the highest peak. We pass above some trailers and a few small farmhouses. Most folks look to be at work or inside, but we fly over a woman out in her garden, a couple of fellows bent over a car engine. We’re near the ridge top when he points at a small house on the left side of the road.
“I want you to fly right over that house,” he says.
I do what he asks even as I scan the trees for the glint of a rifle barrel. As we get closer, I see where the paint’s peeled off the sides of the house. The front yard is just dirt with a few scabs of grass, in the side yard a swing set and a clothesline. There’s toys scattered around the yard, but no trash and junk. I drift a bit and see a ladder leaning against the back of the house, a fresh coat of white paint on the upper half. Whoever lives here looks to be living hard but they haven’t given up.
“They ain’t home yet,” the man says.
You could have found that out a lot cheaper with a phone call, I’m thinking. He says for me to stay where we are, just nods when I say it still counts on his thirty minutes. So we hover above the house like a big dragonfly. A good five minutes pass before I see a yellow school bus coming up the road. It stops in front of the house and a boy and girl get out, their backpacks near big as they are. The bus chugs on up the road. Only then do the kids hear the copter and look up. They start waving, the way children always do. I look over at the man. He’s got the pillowcase in his lap and he’s sliding down the window.
“What are you doing?” I yell into the mic.
“Throwing these out,” he answers.
“You ain’t throwing anything out that window,” I say, and ease the cyclic forward to make the hover turn. The kids and house are quickly out of sight. I’m headed back toward town. All sorts of thoughts are storming up in my head and none of them good.
“It’s just presents for the kids,” he says as the river appears below us. “Just some things I wanted to give them.”
“Presents?” I say. “How do I know they’re not drugs in those packages?”
“I’d never hurt them kids,” he says. “I can show you they’re just presents. Please, mister, just let me show you.”
“Even if it is just presents, there’s laws against people dropping things out of helicopters.”
“You need to understand,” the man says. “I’ve got to do this. Those children, they’re…”
He stops and I see his eyes getting teary.
“We’re gonna have to talk about this,” I tell him.
I head upstream where there’s a campground with an asphalt parking lot. I don’t see a green ranger Jeep and the lot’s not crowded so I lower the collective and set her down.
“Show me one of those presents,” I say when the big blades still.
“It’s a ball and glove for my boy,” he says, and hands me the package.
It’s a piss-poor wrapping job, a bunch of tape and wrinkled paper. I feel the leather beneath the paper, the baseball’s roundness in the glove’s pocket. I make sure there’s nothing else and hand it back to him.
“Let’s see the others.”
“It’s one of them Cabbage Patch Dolls from down in Georgia,” he says, holding the next present out to me.
This one’s wrapped thicker but I can feel the soft head and body. I check every inch of it to make sure nothing’s sewn inside. The next two gifts are in boxes. He peels back the tape and paper.
“The woman at the store said girls her age were big on these,” he says, opening a white box. Inside is a silver charm bracelet. He opens the last package and holds up a plastic figurine. “It’s called a Power Ranger.”
He re-tapes the presents as best he can and puts them in the pillowcase.
“So you going to take me?”
“You mind me asking you why you don’t take those presents up there yourself?”
“I can’t be around them no more,” he says.
I look at him hard.
“Did you hurt those kids?”
“I’d not deny I hurt them and their momma too, but not the way you’re thinking.”
“How then?” I ask.
“I did something after I promised not to.”
“What was that?”
“Got weak and gave in to the craving.”
“Drugs, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“But if they’re your kids and you’ve served your time…”
“They ain’t mine by blood,” he says. “Their real daddy took off and left them. They was three and five when I moved in. I ain’t done much good in my life but I tried hard to be a good daddy. For a while I was.”
“She got a restraining order against you?”
“No.”
He turns and looks out the window and I figure he’s had his say but not yet.
“After I got out of jail I went over to Tennessee. My uncle’s got a body shop there and gave me work. I’ve been clean for a year so figured she might give me another chance. I called but hardly got a word out before she told me she’s with another man now, that he don’t do drugs or drink and holds down a steady job. She said he treats the kids great and if I really loved them as much as I claimed I’d never come near them again. She told me I’d had my chance and she’s right.”
“You don’t think those kids will know who they’re from?”
“I didn’t put in a card or note, and they won’t see me clear enough in this helicopter. Their mom might know, but she won’t tell them.”
I already know what I’m going to do but it has nothing to with him.
“Okay,” I say.
As we head back to Sawyer Ridge, I try not to think about how many NAB regulations I’m about to violate. The kids aren’t outside when I settle over the house. He drops the ball and glove first. It lands in the front yard, hitting so hard the paper splits open. The doll hits the roof and slides off into the yard. The last gifts land as the boy and girl run out of the house. We watch as they gather up the presents. Then I pivot and head back.
We cross the river and soon pass over the high-stilted water tower and the school. Soon we’re back on the ground. I cut the engine. We sit a while longer, lost in our own thoughts.
“Listen,” I finally say, taking two twenties and a five from my billfold. “I don’t feel right charging you more just because you went solo.”
“I knew the price ahead of time.”
“It’d make me feel better if you took it,” I say.
He puts the cash in his billfold and we get out. No one’s waiting to take a ride so I ask if he needs me to drive him somewhere.
“I’m just down the road at the Super Eight,” he says. “It’ll be good to stretch my legs a bit before the bus ride back to Tennessee.”
“When do you leave?”
“Tonight.”
We stand there a while longer. I try to think of something to say but nothing comes. All the while I’m staring at his tattoo, though I don’t realize it until he lifts a hand and touches it.
“I hoped it might keep things out, but all it seems to do is keep things in.”
He stuffs the pillowcase in his back pocket, walks out to the road and heads back toward town. In a few minutes my first group of leaf peepers come and a while later the second. By the time we land Todd Watson and his oldest boy are waiting. I don’t mention the man and the presents, just hand Todd the checks and bills, tell him I’ve already taken forty-five out of my share already. We settle up for the rest. Then I get in my truck and head home.
Fay’s getting dinner ready so I put the money on my bureau and join her in the kitchen.
“Did the girls call?” I ask.
“Bobby Jo did.”
“Any news?”
“Hal’s got a new line-shift supervisor,” Fay says. “Jessica’s trying out for the basketball team. That’s about it.”
“You didn’t hear from Dena?”
“Got an email,” Fay says. “She told me she’s doing fine, just having to work extra hours on a project.”
It’s Friday night but Fay has to work in the morning so she goes on to bed. I drink a beer and watch a little TV. I’m tired but I know sleep won’t come easy tonight. At eleven I lock the doors and go to bed. I snuggle up close and put my arms around her.
“That alarm goes off early for me,” she says.
“It ain’t about that,” I answer.
Fay’s body settles deeper into mine and she’s soon back asleep, but I’ll be awake a while. Too many memories have gotten stirred up, including times I was in the air wondering if I’d ever see my family again. But that’s not what’s most on my mind. I’m thinking about those two kids and how, unlike all the other children I watched from above, they were running toward, not away from, what rained out of the sky.
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena. His other works include Above the Waterfall in addition to four prizewinning novels — The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.