Albatross

I’d noticed them since I was a child, the scars on my father’s neck, though I never contemplated when or where he may have acquired them. They were a part of him, that was all. I never realized there might be a story about my father that I didn’t know, that I hadn’t witnessed. It’s hard for children, teenagers even, to understand how much life existed before they came into being. Harder, still, to know that adults were once children, too. In photos from his youth, he looks the same to me as he does now. His eyes, so focused, so vigilant, as if he were waiting for something to happen, something to overcome. The real difference is his hair. I’ve watched some of his old friends and acquaintances, all of whom are from the time before me, stop him on the street, shake his hand, and say, “Good God, you’ve gone pretty gray, haven’t you?” It’s then that I look up at him, smile at my father just to make sure his feelings aren’t too hurt by this recurring comment, and wonder what it is that people see. Even now when I look at him, it’s that coppery glint of red I see. The same red that shines so fiercely in those old photos of him. He used to shine like a penny on the pavement, a torch among men. Presidential. This is how I see my father. This is how easily I forget the scars.
***
COTTAGE GROVE - Federal Aviation Administration investigators have not yet determined the cause of the plane crash that claimed the lives of two brothers here Tuesday.

The two men had taken off from the small airport apparently just minutes before they crashed at 12:15 p.m. in the pasture just north of the runway, witnesses say.

The pasture is part of George Moliter’s farm at Rte. 1 Box 644, Cottage Grove.
***
I like to imagine that the boy I’m with is as tall as my grandfather was. Just as handsome, too. I have it in my head that my grandmother will only accept a potential boyfriend of mine if he’s as handsome as her husband was, though no one ever really could be. Not to her. It’s hard for me to tell, though, just how handsome and tall this boy really is in comparison. I’ve only ever seen a couple photos of my grandfather, and the one I’m thinking of wouldn’t exactly help in solving this predicament. I hide it in a manilla folder beneath my bed. It’s a copy of the real photo, covering the entire sheet of printer paper in faded shades of black and white. He couldn’t have been more than 8 years old in the portrait. His front tooth is missing. He has a crew cut, which I'm told he had for most of his life. He has a cowboy hat on, too, one that I believe is red and white though it’s impossible to tell for sure. I remember the day my father printed it off the computer. One of his cousins must’ve sent it to him over email. He told me to come over to where he sat at his desk and held the picture up next to my face. I was 12. With the other hand, he covered the lower half of my face, hiding my smile and the tip of my nose. Twins, he said. You two could be twins, except for the smile. That’s all your mother.
The boy I’m with walks just ahead of me. We’re on our way to the county fair, taking a shortcut through a nearby parking lot. I watch his shoulders, broad and strong, weaving their way through rows of trucks and cars and motorcycles. His hair, so short. I want to rush up behind him, reach up, trace my initials on the nape of his neck. But I don’t. I stay back. I keep watching, following him and his shoulders. There’s a strip of yellow tape ahead, marking off a small section of the lot that is off limits for what looks like future repavement. Chunks of asphalt lay in crumbly little heaps no higher than a person’s ankles. So he pushes on. He doesn’t care, the boy. He does what he wants and that’s what I like about him. He’s been in a couple car accidents, too, but I don’t care. He drove us here and I didn’t even mind the speed, the jerks, the curb checks. Lifting the tape for himself, he slides underneath, and knowing how close I’m following behind, he lets the tape go just in time to catch me by the neck. Snap, like a ponytail or a slingshot. It was a joke, really, we both knew that, and it didn’t hurt. It was surprising, that’s all. Something a sibling would do to tease you. And we both laugh at how silly I looked there for a second, the tape’s sudden tension taut against my throat. But now I lift the tape, slip under, scurry up behind him and shove him in the back like I’m his girlfriend, because I want to be. We’re teenagers still, and he’s all I think about. We walk on, weaving our way through the rest of the lot until we finally reach the fairgrounds. While he’s paying for our tickets, lying about my age because he doesn’t have enough money, I lift my fingers and begin searching for a mark that isn’t there. No, it didn’t hurt, I think, but it could’ve. It could’ve hurt if I had cried.
***
Thomas William Pitcher, 31, of Rte. 1 Box 11, Cottage Grove, formerly of Pacific, Wash., and his younger brother, Gary Wayne Pitcher, 19, of 414 Thornton Lane, Cottage Grove, died when their single-engine Luscombe plane crashed and burned in a pasture about a mile south of the Saginaw interchange on Interstate 5.

The two were sons of Cottage Grove State Airport Manager Alpha O. Pitcher. The younger brother had been living at his parents’ home at the airport on Thornton Lane, according to state police.
***
My father has brought us to Fairchild Air Force Base for the air show, the same one we go to each summer. We love it here, my sisters and I, my mom, too, but dad loves it the most. Loves the sound, the excitement, the planes. All the airmen walking around in their uniforms and aviator sunglasses must remind my father of who he used to be. He’d been in the air force, once upon a time. Entered the service right after high school and stayed for only four years, the minimum. Still, he says it’s the best job he ever had. I didn’t fly the planes, he reminds me. I only worked on them. He wanted to take things apart and put them back together. He likes to know how everything works. He’s great at puzzles, too, likes to do a couple of them on Christmas Eve.
Dad tells me more stories about the Air Force as we walk, pointing at different aircrafts. Supposedly, he was temporarily deaf due to wax build-up brought on by putting his earplugs in everyday. He shows me, making a circle with his forefinger and thumb, just how much wax the doctor had to pull out of his ears before he could hear again. He tells me about the Russian aircrafts they were shown in a very hush hush sort of way. I think of different scenes from Top Gun multiple times all the while. I remember reaching out, pointing my finger at a small, funny looking plane and asking him what it was. That is a Rutan Long-EZ, he said. It’s the kind John Denver was flying when he crashed. Flying when he crashed, I whispered to myself. John Denver. Ritchie Valens. JFK Jr. Ricky Nelson. Jim Reeves. You can ask him and he’ll tell you everything about how they died, every detail: the plane, the year, the malfunction, the other passengers, the wreckage, the intended destination.
At some point, while we’re still walking around, waiting for the show to officially start, I ask him what he misses the most about his time in the Air Force. He thinks for a couple seconds, only a couple, before he says, Probably my motorcycle.
***
I imagine she was standing somewhere in the kitchen, mixing something in a bowl. There’s a baby girl on her hip. Her hair, chippewa black and short, as if she were already in mourning, with two more kids and their toys sprawled out on a blanket in the next room. Elvis, “Always on My Mind” spilling out of the yellow radio on the kitchen counter.
Her body is young and strong. She is young and strong, just twenty-seven years old. But then the phone rings, and adjusting the baby to sit on her other hip, she walks over to where it hangs on the wall near the backdoor. It’s a new house, a new home. They’ve only just settled in. She shushes the boys in the other room before taking the phone off the hook and lifting it up to her ear. Hello?
And I wonder how they told her. I wonder who told her, or maybe that part doesn’t matter much. Not anymore.
It’s not a long conversation. It’s not a conversation at all, really. She listens, and her heart stops. Stops and starts, then stops again. It’s a heavy stone inside her. It’s all heavy, everything. The phone in her hand is too heavy. She doesn’t even put it back on the receiver before running her babies over to the neighbor’s house. She can’t stay, she’s got to go. The police say there’s been an accident.
***
The plane broke apart and burned on impact. The plane’s nose and cabin were smashed into a shapeless mass, and one wing split off, landing several yards away from the wreckage. Only the wings and tail remained somewhat intact.

The plane had been recently purchased by Thomas Pitcher, according to state police.
***
The flock of men hovering our table are inebriated. A bachelor party in Deadwood, South Dakota, at the same time as my spring break. Fancy that. The man nearest to me learns that I’m an English major so he keeps saying stupid things he thinks sound sophisticated, like Fancy that. There must’ve been at least six of them. Six men, three girls–my roommates, my best friends. One of the men, the drunkest, has already taken it upon himself to let me know just how unamused my facial expression is. It’s bringing the mood down, he says. Cheer up, syrup. That’s a saying my dad always uses, a saying I love until I hear it coming out of this stranger’s mouth. This same man is breathing down my best friend’s neck but when I lock eyes with her, she assures me she’s not in need of saving. She’s got this. I nod my head and take another sip of my rum and coke. I’m already drunk, so drunk I can’t feel my arms and legs, but that doesn’t matter much. I’m good at hiding it, or so I like to believe. I’m better at hiding my drunkenness than these men are, at least. They’re older than us, that’s obvious, but I don’t know how much older, so I use my trick. My trick is this: Instead of asking them outright how old they are, ask them if they remember 9/11. They’re less likely to lie when they believe they have an important story to tell you. Yeah, I do, the man to my left replies. I was in the fourth grade. Ms. Cartwright’s class. He says more but by then I’m yelling at my friend. Yo, T! T! Listen to this! This guy was alive for 9/11, I shout. So were we! she reminds me. We were in our cribs, T, our cribs, I laughed, banging my fist on the table. The man’s face drops with shock, fear even, when he learns we’re only 21.
Later that night, I learned he was once in the Army, so I took it upon myself to tell him that my grandfather was a military man, too. That’s where he learned to fly planes, I said, in the Navy! If I’d been born a boy, I would’ve been named after him! The man just nodded. In fact, I don’t remember him saying anything in response. His eyes were uninterested, a little wary. And his neck, that was the other thing. He took a sip of his beer and I watched his Adam's apple go bobbing up and down, a trickle of Bud Light escaping the corner of his mouth, slinking down his chin and neck.
***
The FAA officials were still investigating the cause of the crash Wednesday, police said. State police added they had not determined the pair’s destination.

The bodies were taken to Smith-Lund Funeral Chapel in Cottage Grove.
***
Who looked at the other last, before the crash? Was it the older brother to the younger? Did he try to protect him, save him with a final, regretful glance? Or was it the other way around? Did the teenager look up at his older brother, expecting some sort of quick resolve that never came?
Why were they flying so low? Why didn’t the powerline snap beneath the rush of their force and weight and mistake? I am all questions, and I guess that’s grief. Do questions double when you’re a granddaughter? Do they double when the grief is passed down like an old family pocket watch?
It all went black and red and white. I don’t picture any words being spoken. I don’t hear anything except the engine, moaning like a cow in labor. It’s all fear, all pain. And that final breath, like that sudden tug on a loose baby tooth. All that fuss, and then it’s over.
***
Washington to Montana. It’s a drive I know well, and after hours spent in the same car, and about two decades spent looking up at my father, I finally ask. How’d you get those scars, Dad? He coughs, shifts in his seat, and, remembering these old details of his life, he begins his story. I wanna say I was in Medicine Lake, coming back home for something, he says. I had some time off so I decided to go back home. And, grandma’s house at the time was sort of out in the middle of nowhere. There was a bunch of livestock around and stuff and you had to take this backroad to get to her place. And so, there was this wire crossing the trail to her house. It was so small you could barely see it, and I’m surprised I saw it when I was driving in. It’s when I left that I forgot it was there, drove right into it. Caught me by the neck. Your grandma went pale as a ghost seeing all the blood I had on me. Hell, I had to walk back to the house and when I burst through the front door, the first thing your uncle says to me is, ‘Where’s the bike?’ Didn’t even care about the fact that I was bleeding out, he laughs.
I laugh, too, and gasp at all the right moments, my eyes as big as can be. In one sense, I can see it all so clearly, but in another sense, it’s hard to believe any of it. My father, the safest thing I know, in a motorcycle wreck? But he wasn’t my father, not then. He was just him. Him before me. I think about this, replay it in my head, each detail. I try to picture grandma, younger and afraid. I try to picture Uncle Scott, too, whose hair had always been as red as my father’s, all while gazing out the window at the verdure enveloping our car. We’re in the part of this country where mountains become valleys before becoming mountains again, the power lines playing hide and seek. At times, it’s only the visibility balls, the colorful spheres that look like floating gumballs, that announce the power lines’ presence.
***
Molitor’s 13-year-old daughter, Sally, told police she was mending a fence when she saw the plane crash. She said it had been flying north about 60 feet off the ground when it suddenly looped on its back, went into a tailspin and dropped almost straight down near a herd of cattle.

She said she ran and got her father who was the first person at the crash site. Molitor pulled the two men from the burning plane, but they were already dead, she said.
***
Conner, the sweetest. That’s what he is. I’m sitting with him at the bar we met just yesterday. Here, I say, this is him, my grandfather. Thomas. I push the picture across the sticky table, a small 1inch x 1inch photo of my grandfather, grandmother, father, and Uncle Scott that I keep in my wallet. It’s the second photo I have of my grandfather.
We just had dinner at the nicest restaurant in my small, small hometown and now we’re out here drinking beer, because, as far as I can tell, he’s the nicest man I’ve ever met and I don’t want the date to end. He’s a fireman, the kind that wears bright yellow shirts and chops down trees and takes a helicopter to work everyday. All I know about helicopters is that they’re unreliable, worse than planes.
Good lookin' guy, he says, holding the photo in his hands. Tall too. Is that your Dad, he asks. Yeah, I say, yeah, it is. He hands it back to me and I don’t look at it before stuffing it back into my wallet. My grandfather, he died, I explain, in 1973. My dad was only five. Conner’s eyes, expectant. He’s just looking at me, and he’s quiet, too, waiting to hear more. I’m not drunk, not even close, so I’m surprised I brought Thomas up at all, and I’m surprised I’m able to keep talking. It’s silly, though, I begin to think, needing to be drunk in order to talk about someone you’ve never even met. You know, I’m really proud of my dad, I say. I mean, he never had a dad. Not really. Not one he can truly remember. He never had anyone to teach him how to be a dad and somehow he became the best dad in the world. I love him. He’s the best. It’s then that Conner nods, smiles, too, not so much with his mouth but with his eyes. I decide that he’s kind. I decide that I like looking at him, and I don’t mind so much when he looks at me.
***
I see her in overalls, red or green galoshes, with braids hanging down on either side of her freckled face. I can even feel the painted white fence beneath her small hands, the lightest breeze brushing her shoulder. She saw it all, but she still jumps at the sound. It shakes the ground beneath her and for some reason it reminds her of a tree that was felled just last week; a slow, labored whimper turned toward the earth. But she’s quick, she doesn’t hesitate. Dad! Daddy! And he comes running. He’s quick, too, turning toward the smoke rising from this piece of earth he knows so well.
And I want to say “salt of the earth” when I describe these people. I want to say they are the type of people God loves, the ones that pulled those two brothers out of a heap of broken, burning metal. Strangers’ blood stained the farmer’s clothes that day.
Her father must’ve turned to her at some point. She must’ve seen his eyes, his face, the worry. Was he afraid, too? He must’ve been. But I can’t picture him, this stranger. I can’t picture him at all. How can anyone have a father other than my own? I can’t picture a father without my father’s worried, expectant eyes, and that red hair that, I’m told, isn’t red at all. Not anymore.
***
You know you have a few grays, right, he says, organizing my hair into three strands. We’re at a going away party, a surprise party, for me. I’m leaving home for Texas and my last year of grad school. I’m leaving before anyone can leave me. I know, I know, I say to him. It’s genetic.
We’re plopped down on my best friend's front steps where we can hear the crickets chirping and an old train chugging through town. Moths flutter overhead before hurling themselves, again and again, against the front porch light. My hands are resting on his knees while he sits right behind me. I’m leaning into him like he’s a lawn chair and he has to keep telling me to sit up, bow my head. He begins to braid and I’m glad he doesn’t ask me if I want him to pull the grays out, because I don’t. Conner made a point of telling me he learned how to braid on the off chance that he’d have a daughter one day. I’m hesitant to believe this, jaded as I am. It’s more likely that an ex-girlfriend taught him, I think to myself. But I don’t want to be cynical when I’m with him. I just want to be with him. I just want to be his.
So, I say nothing when he tells me about having a daughter someday. I only smile. When he finishes braiding my hair, Conner bends down to kiss me on the neck. I go stiff before I realize I’ve reacted at all, and he’s quick to respond, quick to ask if I’m alright or if he’s done something wrong. I reassure him, nodding quickly, a tear or two building up in the inner corners of my eyes. I don’t know why I react like this. I was just surprised, is all I tell him and he settles. Reaching up, I place my hand on the space his lips had been, and I hold it. I hold the feeling in place, knowing it won’t last, but wishing it would.