Last Witch Standing (Mountain Witch Saga) (3 page)

“We’re gonna go there,” Katie announced.

“No, dear. I don’t think we are. Not for a long while,” her
mother said.

“I’m going there!” Katie turned to her parents. “Me!”

“Well, that settles that. Bring me back a few rocks, would
you, please, Katie.” Her father smiled down on her and held his hands out. She
walked to the couch and sat beside him. He put his arm around her and they
continued watching.

“Well, no canals, no green men. Too bad,” Patricia said.

“It looks a lot like the moon.” Dan sat on his haunches by
the side of the television opposite Katie.

“Let’s go flying,” Dan said when the news segment ended and
the screen turned to a picture of a tank with soldiers, rifles at the ready,
following behind, entering a city, while the television anchor gave commentary
on the state of the war in Vietnam.

Katie jumped up. “Let’s go.”

“Ok, kids, but be back for supper,” their mother said.

Dan loaded his toolbox and Katie grabbed the plane. They
had a routine going now. He could carry more stuff in his box if she carried
the model. He trusted her with it. Heck, she flew it better than he did now. It
had become as much her project as his.

“Let’s take the thermometer off this time.” Dan gestured
towards the baby thermometer they had taped to the fuselage at Katie’s
suggestion. She had read somewhere that temperature drops at higher elevations
and wanted to test it out. So far, they hadn’t found this, but their device was
crude and they probably didn’t fly high enough. Also, as the craft descended
the thermometer would return to ground temperature. Katie was working on a
modification that would capture the temperature at maximum elevation. Dan
couldn’t see how they could do this, but he wasn’t about to bet against his
little sister’s ingenuity.

“I want to try something new.” Katie held the thermometer
and a roll of electrical tape in her hands. “If we put it up like this.” She
held it vertically for Dan to see. “It may not change so quickly when it lands.
You can land it quickly and I can run and check the temperature before it
changes.”

“Why do you want to do that, anyway? Who cares what
temperature it is fifty feet up?” Jimmie stood between them, hands on his hips.
“Let’s just fly it. I want to try a barrel roll.”

“I don’t know if that would work, Katie,” Dan said,
ignoring Jimmie’s comments.

Katie picked up the plane and started rolling tape around
the fuselage. It started buckling in the center from the tightness.

“
She’s gonna break it.” Jimmie
pushed Katie away and she stumbled and landed on the pavement.

Dan hit him. They both stared at each other, then Jimmie
picked himself up and walked away without saying a word, got on his bike and
rode home.

Dan looked up at the sky. “We’d better go, Katie, it’s
getting late. We will try your idea with the thermometer tomorrow. Promise.”

Katie picked herself off the ground and wiped the back of
her yellow dress.

Dan took her hand and they walked home together, him
carrying the toolbox in his left hand, Katie’s hand in his right. She held the
airplane.

***

“Eat one more, Katie,” Patricia said at dinner.

Katie nodded no and pushed the dish away from her and laid
her head on the table.

“Somebody needs a nap?”

“I think so,” Katie mumbled, but did not raise her head.

“Then you’re excused.” Patricia walked her daughter
upstairs and tucked her into bed.

“Not feeling well, sweetie?” Keith Edwards knelt by her bed
when he returned from work that evening. He put the back of his hand against
her forehead. “A little hot. I think you’re coming down with a cold.”

“No. I can’t be sick, I have things I want to do,” Katie
whispered.

“We can’t always choose such things, Katie. You’ll feel
better soon and whatever projects you’re working on will be waiting for you.”
He patted her shoulder and moved her blanket up.

Downstairs, Dan watched
Columbo
– a show about an
unassuming detective who solved murder mysteries by intelligence and cunning – the
kind of series his little sister would like when she was old enough to watch it.

“Is she feeling better?” Dan asked his mother when she came
downstairs.

“She’s sleeping.”

“I’m going to make a surprise for her. She wants to hook
the thermometer up to the plane. I think I’m going to get a dowel and hook it
up for her vertically, as she wants.”

“That would be very nice. It will give her something to
look forward to when she gets better.” Patricia went into the kitchen and Dan
finished watching the show.

It wasn’t a school night, and he could stay up later and
watch more television, but he went to his room anyway. He wanted to work on the
thermometer for Katie.

An hour and a half later, tired, but filled with a sense of
accomplishment, Dan Edwards attached the contraption to the P-51. He made a
halter from an old backpack strap with a tripod at the top to fit the dowel in.
Instead of being taped to the side, it would be securely fastened in the center
of the fuselage, towards the front of the plane so balance would not suffer. He
couldn’t wait to show Katie. This would perk her up.

He put his tools away, turned the lights off, and got into
bed. Tomorrow, early in the morning, he would test the device out and smooth
out any bugs. Then present it to his sister. Then there was Jimmie. He’d have
to make up with his friend, but better to let a day or two pass first. Maybe he
shouldn’t have hit him, but the guy couldn’t push Katie around like that.

Sleep came quickly and Dan dreamed. He was preparing to fly
the P-51 when he looked up. His little sister was waving down at him from the woven
basket of a car-sized hot air balloon. Dan waved back, wondering where his
sister had gotten such a neat craft.

Dan awoke to screaming. First it was at the periphery of
his consciousness that someone was yelling and he had to find out what it was,
then a second, earsplitting scream jolted him awake.

He sat up in bed. Someone was screaming down the hall. In
the crack underneath his door, the hall lights were on.

He got out of bed. At the door, another shriek pierced the
air, and Dan fumbled at the knob. It was his sister. What was happening? Should
he grab his baseball bat? Was there an intruder tormenting her?

A figure passed by his door; he could tell from the
footfalls it was his mother. Dan made another attempt at the knob and the door
opened. He only caught the back of his mother’s nightdress as she entered
Katie’s room.

“Mom! What’s going on?”

When she didn’t answer, Dan followed her into his sister’s
bedroom. Katie lay on the bed, drenched in sweat. Her father was holding her
and attempting to reassure her.

Katie’s eyes were wide and Dan knew she didn’t see him or
register the environment in her room.

Keith turned to his son. “Your sister is very sick. Your
mother and I are going to take her to the hospital. You will need to stay here.
Grandma is on her way to sit with you.”

Dan didn’t answer – he just stared at his sister who lay in
agony, prostrate on the bed.

The next moments were a blur; Dan’s father hustling him out
of Katie’s room and into his own, their mother taking Keith’s place at their
daughter’s bedside.

Dan stared out the window. He could hear his grandmother
stirring downstairs. Their station wagon was gone, loaded up with his little
sister and on its way to the hospital. Dan’s grandmother had told him not to
worry and try to sleep, but he wouldn’t sleep until he knew Katie was all
right. What on earth had happened? He knew she hadn’t been feeling well that night,
but this went far beyond sick. Nobody told him this, but Dan knew his sister was
in moral peril, in a fight for her life.

The dark turned to early morning and the sun rose as Dan
paced by his window. There had been only one call from the hospital – by his
aunt who said they didn’t know anything yet.

He didn’t eat breakfast. The smell of pancakes and bacon
repelled him. Still, he should talk to his grandmother, help comfort her as
well, but he couldn’t do it. Thoughts of Katie in her little yellow dress
chasing after his P-51 Mustang clouded out all other thoughts.

At ten that morning, the family’s station wagon pulled up.
He ran outside. His father was helping their mother out of the car. Katie
wasn’t with them. Dan knew his mother well enough to know she would not have
left Katie alone at the hospital. They didn’t have to tell him. He ran to his
mother and the three of them hugged.

Friday, May 5, 1972

Earth

Though it was only 8:30 and the funeral wasn’t until 11:00,
cars were already parked by the curb by the Edward’s house as Dan exited
carrying his airplane.

One foot in front of the other. You can make it
to the park.

He knew what he had to do. The model had been just as much Katie’s
as his. Never again could he fly it; simply looking at it brought him to tears.

A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the trees in the yards
as he made his way to the park. The sky was a cool cerulean blue. Somewhere, a
bird was singing.

What could he do now? Was she really gone?
Forever?

Meningitis. One moment she was playing at the park with
him, then she was screaming in agony. Then she was dead.

Though it was a Saturday morning, Dan had to wait at the
crosswalk as one after another car passed – each going too fast on the usually
quiet street for him to get through. Finally, a pedestrian pressed the Walk
button further up the street and the resulting red light enabled Dan to finally
cross.

Dan hesitated at the corner before the park. It was not
visible from there, but the moment he turned, the large expanse would open up
before him and it would be there in all its glory. Swings, slides, parking lot,
fields of freshly mowed, viridian green grass.

Finally, he took a breath and turned. The park was empty.
Dan set the plane on the concrete, placed his thumb over the carburetor and
turned the propeller counter-clockwise until it was primed. Then he set the
starter plug over the engine and pressed down and turned. The engine jumped,
and the props turned, before it sputtered. Again he tried. And failed.

This couldn’t happen. It was the only time it
really mattered. He had to get it in the air. Concentrate. Prime it again and
work carefully. You are too hurried.

Dan placed his thumb over the carburetor once more and
turned the props counter-clockwise. Then he let it set for a moment before
applying the starter. This time, as he turned the device, the engine roared to
life. Good. It must not have been primed well enough the first time.

He let it idle for a few minutes before engaging the
propeller and gunning it. The plane taxied across the lot, picking up speed as
it went. Dan raised the elevators and it eased into the air. His movements at
the controls were now smooth, well-practiced and efficient, the task at hand
blotting out the images of his little sister chasing after it, her golden hair
billowing in the wind.

As the P-51 gained altitude, Dan breathed in the fresh,
morning air. It steadied him enough to focus on the final task.

Four times he circled the park. One pass for each of the
years of his little sister’s life.

He remembered staying with his grandparents when his mother
went to the hospital. How he was not allowed to see his new sister until days
later – hospital rules – when she came home. Katie’s first words. How she
grabbed his collar and giggled when she was only a year old.

What things she could have done! Grandma and Grandpa called
her their “little Madame Curie” after the Nobel Prize winning physicist. At
four and a half, she was brilliant. What would she be like as a high school
student, had she lived? An adult? He had no doubt she would have won her own
Nobel Prize – perhaps dozens.

Dan circled the park with the craft a fifth time for the
birthday she would not have. He even had her birthday present picked out – a
chemistry set their parents agreed he could buy her if she only used it under
supervision. It lay under his bed, unopened, not yet wrapped.

As the P-51 completed the final revolution, he pushed back
the controls. It jumped upward, now climbing at a forty-five degree angle.
Further, and further it rose, as he held the controls. Finally, it was only a
speck in the distance, nearing Lake Thompson and the forests that surrounded
that large body of water. There was just enough gas in the plane to reach the
lake before stalling. Good, he didn’t want it to go down anywhere else, didn’t
want it to be salvaged.

Dan stood in the grass, his hand to his face, breathing in
short breaths, the dew soaking into his shoes, and watched until the plane was
only a distant speck. Then he turned back towards the parking lot and home.