The Rift

Chapter 1

The low hanging clouds on that dreary November day kept the lumbering airship out of view. No one in the miles leading to the town of Briersville saw it coming. No one heard it either. The silent structure of cloth and steel had crept through the cloud cover. It must have descended gradually, foot after foot until it managed to collide with a newly built office building’s radio tower.

The people in town hardly noticed it there, bobbing up and down, twisting side to side in the breeze. Then a brisk wind picked up, propelling the airship forward. The radio tower’s metal struts whined. A woman on the sidewalk pushing a baby stroller looked up and screamed. People passing by stopped. A young couple rushed to her aid. A police car darted across the street and stopped, it is tires popping up over the curb.

The police officer, Office Doyle, jumped out and came to the woman’s side. She seemed more interested in fleeing than in explaining what was happening. The young woman, dressed in a pressed white shirt and a green sweater kept saying, “Is your baby okay? Is she okay?”

Before the woman answered, though, they all looked up in unison, suddenly aware that the hulking mass of the airship was above them. It cancelled out everything in their immediate view. Stunned, even the woman did not scream. No one moved, other people around them began to stop, wondering what could be so interseting to see. One by one, they looked up and saw the airship there. Soon the sidewalk was crowded with people. Cars were stopping in the road. A train that had left the station, stopped mid-track. As if sprouting from the windows, heads then whole torsos appeared in the windows along its length.

Officer Doyle was stunned as well. Usually one to spring into action, he rubbed the round of the hand across his forehead. He went to run his hand through his thinning hair—his usual response to stress and befuddlement —but pushed his hat off the back of his head and to the ground. The young man who had stopped earlier, bent to pick it up.

“Here, Officer Doyle, here’s your hat?”

“What is that?”

“Your hat, sir. It fell to the ground.”

When the young man passed the rigid, structured hat back to Officer Doyle, the gesture or the hat reignited conscious thought in the officer. He looked around like someone waking up from a dream and realizing, to his horror, that he had sleep walked to the edge of a cliff. With the airship bobbing gleefully with each passing brush of wind, it was only a matter of time before it crash to the ground and exploded. Or exploded outright, he reminded himself.

“Okay, I need everyone to step back.”

Much like the policeman, everyone else seemed too stunned or simply too curious to move. They did not have the benefit of even the cursory training that Office Doyle received in Chicago. They had not imagined themselves gunning down thieves or engaging in high speed chases. Their imaginative reflexes simply weren’t nearly as fine tuned as the policeman’s. And the airship had overtaken his capacities with awe rather quickly.

“People, people. Move away. Cross the street. You…” He waved the young man who had picked up his hat, “Young man, come here. What is your name?”

“My name?” The young man shook his head, still trying to clear the strange image of the airship from his mind. “I am Lonnie, sir.”

“Lonnie, you from around here?”

“No sir, I am…”

The girl, whom he recognized, stepped forward, “He’s my boyfriend. He’s visiting.”

Their bashfulness and hesitation seemed out of place in the current circumstances. Officer Doyle simply did not register it, and merely proceeded on. “Good. Look, son, I need you to get out there and start getting those people in their cars to move. Got anything colorful?”

“I…I do not think so.”

“Here,” the policeman reached into his back pocket. “Take this kerchief. It’s all I’ve got to spare right now. Clear a path. Keep the cars stopped, then we will deal with them.”

Lonnie looked down at the kerchief, then the road. Much like Office Doyle, the presence of these objects brought him back to consciousness. He dashed into the street and began waving the red kerchief.

“Everyone, I need you to cross the street,” she shouted again.

The woman tipped her stroller down off the sidewalk and passed through the gap that Lonnie had managed to make with the help of the drivers. The girl, Lisa, began gently nudging people along too. Fortunately, once a few people started to move, the rest followed. They started circling the block, clearing the area.

It was not long afterwards that the fire department arrived. Three trucks in all. The other police squad cars appeared as well. Eveyone seemed to apepared at once. The men in uniforms jumped and dashed out of their vehicles. Then, one by one, they all came to a dead stop. Head after head tilted up, staring at the airship above them. Huddling happened next. Consultations. Gestures.

The fire chief broke through the crowd on the other side of the street–he had walked from the station. The firefighters parted, letting him into the center of their group.

“Appeared out of nowhere…”

“It could blow any minute”

You could words like “Akron” and “Shendoah” rise from their ranks, those of them that remembered the fantastic crashes and explosions from that earlier era of aviation.

The police chief arrived with the mayor in tow, a woman as it turned out, and her assistant. The two chiefs and the mayor met and broke away, forming a separate group now to “talk this thing over”

“Is it stable? That’s the main thing,” the mayor asserted. “If it is not stable, we have a problem, do not we?”

“No way of knowing best I can tell,” the fire chief explained.

“My man, Doyle, was first on the scene,” the police chief said, apropos of nothing. The fire chief seemed irritated by the passing remark.

“we are ready to go up there, Mayor. It’s your call,” the police chief again.

The fire chief shifted his weight from side to side, looked back at his guys. He was not about to let the police chief upstage him here. He had lived in Briersville long before the police chief arrived on the scene. He knew people. And knowing people meant something.

The mayor interceded, “I do not want anyone going up there that isn’t experienced,” she said, managing to make both men irritated now. She had been a “professional” woman from the city not that long ago. She was more of an upstart than the police chief, as far as the fire chief was concerned. But they both accepted the logic of what she said.

The fire chief rifled through the list of things he knew, of people that he knew. There had to be something or someone that could help out. Then he remembered something, the Plaice boy. He had been a war hero, or at least a veteran. The chief had to turn down his application to be a firefighter for…extenuating circumstance. But he had been a mountaineering solider, and lived in Colorado for some years.

“What about the Plaice boy…” he finally said, kicking at the sidewalk with the tip of his boot, and spitting off into the street.

“He’s just a teenager!” the police chief objected.

“Not the young one. The older one.”

“And why should we ask him,” the mayor asked, leaning back on her left foot, ready for a round of verbal sparing. “Why should we ask a civilian to risk his life for this?”

“Well, he’s a good boy. He will do it.”

“That’s not what I asked,” said the mayor.

“Sounds risky to me. Besides, we would better clear it with the lawyer, ” the police chief said.

“Bernie’s on vacation.”

“Can’t we call him?” the mayor asked.

“Fly fishing…” That ended the discussion about that.

“So, what qualifies him for…whatever it is we are thinking about”

“He’s a war veteran.”

“I do not remember him from any of the parades or celebrations.”

“No, he was too busy drinking and whoring in Colorado.”

“I do not konw a thing about that.”

“You aren’t called out to the Keg every weekend.”

The fire chief nodded at that. “True, true, but he wanted to a fire fighter…” He raised his hands to fend off objections. “And he fought in the mountains, in Italy during the war. He’s a mountaineer. And did that in Colroado if memory serves.”

“So, he can…”

“He can climb, madam Mayor. He can climb. He’s got the gear and the skills.”

“Well we can call the damn…excuse me Mayor…we can call the utility company out here to climb up there. They’ve got gear too.”

“Sure, sure. But what would they do once they get up there?” They all turned to look up at the radio tower, scanning the heights of that gridwork of metal. It had seemed so stable and sturdy only a few hours ago, and now looked as delicate as a fine brocade of lace. You’ve got to gut up that tower, which seems to be hanging by a few bolts from the look of it, then you gotta grapple something onto the frame of that thing, shimmy up like some kind of monkey, get inside and have a look around. And who knows what’s inside that thing!” The fire chief ended on a high note to punctuate his point.

The mayor looked at the police chief. “Chief Nagel, do you have any objections?”

From the mayor’s look and the police chief’s sermon like discourse, the police chief knew that he was beat. He did not have a better plan, and was secretely relieved that he did not have to send one of his guys up there. Besides, the Plaices had always been a pain, so why not send a little something back their way. “No, madam, Mayor. I cannot say that I do.”

“Okay, then. Chief, please send one of your officers to retreive this Mr. Plaice.”

“Nathaniel’s his name, mayor.”

”…to get Nathanial Plaice and inform him that his town kindly requests his help.”

“And if he refuses?”

“I am not sure exactly, chief. Be creative.”

“Let’s try to get these people home. I want downtown blocked off and baricaded. No one in here until we understand the situation better.”

“Yes, mam,” both men said, turning to their respective tasks.

Chapter 2

Nathaniel Plaice wondered where his younger brother was. And his sister for that matter. No one was around, leaving him to finish chores around the house. The house always seemed to be in a state of disrepair. He might have caused some of it himself, but felt obligated to keep the appearance of things going. He learned quickly after moving back home that the appearances of things mattered in a way he didnt’ understand anymore.

He resisted the urge to blame every strange or unsual on being at war. Hardly identified himself as a veteran, and couldn’t much stand talk about units and regiments, fronts and advances. It sickened him all now. Fortunatly people around Briersville seemed to get over their war fever pretty quickly. Once the munitions factory closed down, that settled it for everyone.

A cold cup of coffee straddled the space between the countertop and the floor in the kitchen. He picked it up and immediately spit it out, finding his mouth full of wads of paper. Some queer thing his brother must be up to. Where was his brother? And his sister?

The metalic whine of the screen door followed by a loud thwap sound announced the arrival of someone. His brother? No, two sets of feets. His sister. And her boyfriend, who was staying at the YMCA. “Nat! Nat! Are you here?”

“Yeah!” he shouted, roared really.

The two kids skidded into the kitchen. They look terrified and in awe, like someone who had just survived a bombardment, or ran through a field of machine gun fire untouched.

“Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“About the airship. You did not hear?”

The boyfriend chimed in, “This old airships, at least 50 years old…”

“Maybe 40”, his sister corrected.

“Maybe 40 years old got…”

“Snagged”

“Snagged on the radio tower in town.”

“On top of the office building?”

“That’s the one.”

What were they going on about? He wondered. His sister, Lisa, was pacing the kitchen, full of more nervous energy than he had yet to see in her. She started in on her fingernails, biting and tearing at them. Her boyfriend, Lonnie, watched her. It was clear that his terror and awe all stemmed from her.

With his sister lost in thought about somethign, Nathaniel turned to the boyfriend, “Lonnie? Lonnie…” He snapped his fingers at him. “Tell me what’s going on. I do not understand what you are talking about.”

“Well, it is really peculiar.”

“I get that…”

“I am sorry. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s an airship, a rigid airship…”

“Dirigible…” Lisa inserted.

Lonnie was holding up one hand now, flat like a plane. “And the airship, up here, somehow came drifting down and…” Another hand represented the office building. “Then like that it get’s snagged on the radio tower. And it doesn’t blow up.”

“It has not blown up?” Nathaniel asked.

“Not yet,” Lisa replied, stepping into their conversation now. “But it could at any minute right? It’s just a big gas cloud covered in metal. And even it doesn’t blow up. What it just deflates and just, kind of, drapes itself over the town…”

“Like a blanket!” said Lonnie, though neither Plaice felt the figure quite captured it.

“But, Nathaniel, the realy puzzle is, where did this thing come from. I mean, an airhsip?”

“No one has really built a airship for twenty or thirty years,” he said.

“Exactly. Has it just been floating up there in the sky for all this time, just waiting to come down.”

“And why here, exactly?” asked Lonnie. Being the outsider, he did not take it as a given that an enormous airship would appear anywhere else but Briersville. But he coudl readily imagine his own home town faced with the same circumstances. For all they knew every small town in America was facing the same crisis.

“Well,” Nathaniel finally said, “It’s not our problem, and you are safe, so let’s move on, okay?” As if responding to him, they all turned at the distant sound of police sirens, sirens that came closer and closer to their house. The driver must have killed the sound at their entrance to long driveway that led off of the county road to the farmhouse where they lived.

A knock on the door. Nathaniel went to answer with Lisa and Lonnie trailing behind him. It was Office Doyle again. “Officer Doyle, how can I help you?”

The police officer hardly acknowledged the two kids who had helped him out with the crowd earlier. “Afternoon. Probably heard about the airship in town.”

“I did. My sister just came from there and told me about it. You making sure everyone hears about. Any roads closed.”

“Oh sure. Downtown is barricaded for now. Not much going in and out.”

“Hope that won’t impact the businesses down there too much.”

“Yeah, we will see.”

Officer Doyle seemed to forget the purpose of his visit. Behind him, the can shaped lights on his far rotated furiosuly, even though the sun and sky absorbed most of their light.

“But that’s not the real reason I am calling on you, Nathaniel.”

As he removed his hat, Nathaniel realized that he needed to invite the officer in. “Why do not you come inside then.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“Need anythign to drink, Officer Doyle?” Lisa asked.

“No thank young lady. Oh, you were outside the office building earlier.”

“Yes, sir”

“Big help these two, right in the middle of the action.” Nathaniel reaised an eyebrow at his sister, who deflected his inquisitive, irritated gesture, as she so often did.

“Let’s sit down here in the parlor and talk over…what ever it is you came out here to talk about.”

Officer Doyle turned his hat around and around in his hands. He sat on the edge of the long couch in the front parlor, his feet pitched far apart. He leaned forward with his elbows propped on his knees. “This is kind of a sensitive matter. And, I think speaking for everyone in town…” Nathaniel understood him to mean the mayor and the two chiefs, ”…that it would be best to not go telling everyone what we talk about here.”

Nathaniel nodded his head, not really to indicate that he understood anything, but just the fill the space between his confusion and his reluctance to hear whatever the police officer had to tell him.

“You see we have a…information problem on our hands.”

“You might have more than that,” Nathaniel replied.

“Yes, exactly. But, we do not know. We do not properly know.” The police officer spoke with a far away, almost dreamy quality in his voice. Between his sister and her boyfriend, Nathaniel found fragments of an old poem floating back into his memory:

'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

Apparently these lines had been in his memory for years, though he had not recalled them before today.

“And how can you help with your information problem, Office Doyle?”

“My superiors,” whom Nathaniel knew to be the two chiefs and the mayor, “think you have a special skill that can be or services.”

“Tending a rundown farm? Picking up after adolescent siblings? Or, maybe, being harrassed by the police for having a few drinks?”

“Well as to that last one you know we have certain rules on the books that have to be followed.”

“Fine. But it sounds like you are going to ask me to do something that isn’t a run of the mill request. So, I would apprecitate the courtesy of you just coming out to say it to me.”

The office straightened himself out a bit, either uncomfortable or annoyed, Nathaniel couldn’t say. “Yes, well, that skill involves your time in the army.”

“Oh, so slogging through muddy fields, huddling in frozen mountain caves?”

“That last one. No, I mean your mountaineering skills. That’s what we are talking about.”

Nathaniel leaned back in his chair. “I see. And how exactly will those skills be useful to you?”

“Imagine this. Imagine a seesaw.” Officer Doyle help one hand flat and upright in the air. He placed the other flat across it. “And that seesaw is rocking back and forth. This plank is just balanced on a pin point, nothing at all. Only that plank is metal and fabric and maybe filled with dangerous gas. But we do not know, and there’s not many people who can climb up that pin point, which is really a 30 foot tall pin point that isn’t safely secured anymore.”

“That’s what you are asking me to do, to climb up to this airship and see when and if it will explode over our town?”

“Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“And what if I refuse?”

“My boss’ instructions were to be creative.”

Chapter 3

“Who the hell is there?” The surly voice shot down from a platform high up in the trees above.

“It’s me you asshole,” replied Arthur.

“Got the smokes?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em”

“Then come the hell on up”

A rope dropped and dangled unceremoniously in front of Arthur’s face. He hated climbing up the rope ladder like some kind of army recruit. But he had to deliver the package to Jeff, Charlie, and the other guys.

When he finally scrambled up on to the plaform and stood up, three other guys hunched around him. One of them, Charlie, was stabbing the wood under his feet with a switchblade, then carving dirty words into it. The other two–Jeff and Nick–were laughing and saying “boobs” over and over again.

“You got it?” Charlie looked up from his woodworking.

“Yep,” said Arthur. He took off a stiff green army knapsack. flipped it open, and took out a bundle wrapped in a red bandana. He untied the bandanna and took out two packages of cigarettes.

“Hey that one’s open already!” complained Jeff, who was the tallest of the three.

“So!” said Arthur. He started to put the bundle back in his pack.

“Give it over, Paisley”, their creative transformation of his last name. “That’s not yours to give and take as you want. You owe us.”

“It’s a tithe,” said Nick, who secretly was the smart one, probably as smart as Arthur, maybe as smart as his sister.

“A what?” said the other two.

“Nevermind, here. I could only lay my hands on these two. They’re fresh though.”

“We will be the judge of that,” said Charlie. He retrieved a banged up metal lighter–one that he claimed his father used in the war, and lit up one the cigarrettes. He inhaled and exhaled, brushing off little bits of tobacco left behind on his lips. “Pretty good.” He passed the the pack around. The two other boys did not turn pass on them, open or not.

The pack came back around to Arthur. His slender fingers dug into the pack for a smoke, flimsy now that three had already been taken out. The cigerattes rolled back and forth under his fingers.

“Here.” Charlie grabbed the pack, shook it until the cigarattes all clumped together at the opening, then gave it a quick upwards flick. Like drawing straws, Arthur pulled one out and lit up with the other boys. They all stood silently, taking short drags from cigerattes. Not having to pass it from mouth to mouth felt like a luxury, though Arthur hoped that his brother never found out that he was stealing cigarettes.

In their minds, they posed and modeled as someone they knew or had seen in a movie. Each boy sucked in his cheeks, made his eyes narrow and grim.

“Oh, shit!” Nick said, stamping out his cigarette and making for the rope ladder.

“What is it?” Arhtur asked. Then he heard the whine of police sirens.

“We gotta get out of here!”

“Relax,” said Charlie. “They ain’t coming this way.”

“How do you know?” Arthur asked.

“Because it is already getting fainter.”

“Wonder where it is goin’,” said Jeff.

“Who cares,” said Charlie.

“There’s another one,” Arthur said.

“Whoa, we gotta find out what’s going on.”

“Why!?” said Charlie, clearly upset that his group was hatching plans without him.

“Could be major, like an earthquake or something,” said Jeff. Noone bothered to point out the obvious problems with his theory. One by one, they slid down the rope to the ground.

They assembled around Charlie’s black, banged up car. He sauntered up slowly, as if reminding them that they travelled by virute of grace. He was a few years older and having a car made him a very powerful, and persuasive, figure in the group. Once in the car, Charlie passed the cigarettes around again. Arthur knew that he’d have to figure out a way to get the smoke smell off his clothes at home. The vial of perfume he had lifted from this sister’s room had caused more problems than it solved for him.

Much as they had on the wooden platform in the woods, each boy sat mostly silent, smoking, staring out at the farmlands around Briersville. They were only a few miles away from the center of the town, but the landscape and worlds between here and there could not have been more different. They did not have to travel long, though, before they each saw a enormous thing hovering over their town.

“It’s goddamn aliens!” should Jeff, pitching himself onto to dash board to get a better look.

“What would aliens be doing in Briersville? Think wontcha!” replied Charlie.

“Okay then what is it?” Jeff replied.

“It’s an airship,” said Arthur.

“An old airship,” added Nick.

“See,” Charlie said, thumping Jeff’s arm hard with his first. “Not aliens.”

“But aliens could be driving it.”

“Pilot it,” corrected Nick.

“Since when was everyone a bunch of pointy headed professors around here.”

“did not ever see newsweels of the Hindenberg or the Graf Zeppelin?” Nick asked.

“No!”

“Just because we know what it is, doesn’t make it make sense,” Arthur asserted. “I do not think airships really fly anymore.”

“There’s that blimp over football games sometimes,” Charlie said.

“Sure, but that’s just a big balloon. An airhip is…a lot more complicated,” Arthur said.

“And why is it here? There has not been any planes made around here in years,” Nick said. He stopped himself short. No one said anything, and avoided looking at Arthur. He tried to shrug off the awkwardness as best as he could. It was not even worth going through the feelings anymore. Showing his discomfort would make him weak. Arthur had resolved never to be weak, especially around these guys.

Finally, Charlie said, “Well, boys, let’s go check it out.” He gunned the car and it shot forward down the long strip of road before them.

When they reached the center of the town, a police officer waved them off to the right. They caught his glare as soon as he recognized who was in the car. Charlie flicked a cigarette butt at the offier’s feet. Everyone in the car smirked and laugh. Getting one up on the local cops was an on going matter of their discussions and plans. More ofen than not their best plans failed on some crucial detail.

The fact that Jeff’s father was a fire fighter did not endear their little group to the police either. Each officer on the force seemed to take particular satisfaction in dragging the deliquent son to the father’s front steps.

“Sealed off pretty tight,” Nick said.

“They do not want anyone coming in,” Arthur agreed.

“There aren’t enough cops in town to close every road. We can get in.” Charlie pulled hard to the left and parked on a residential street just out of site of the patrol car blocking the road. They got out and started walking towards the building.

They could see the backside of the airship much more clearly. Arthur studied it intently, almost fell over twice because of it. It did look old. He could see scraps of fabric coming loose from the frame. As he stared up at the huge airship, Arthur automatically followed the boys, who were creeping alongside a building, then turning into an alley.

The alleys weren’t being monitored and they crossed several blocks before needing to retreat out of sight again. Arthur had never seen the town so quiet and still before. He almost imagined himself being the last person on Earth, only he had three people with him.

After creeping and stalking their way through town, they finally arrived at the backside of the office building. Charlie walked up to the rear delivery door and gave it a rough pull. The door swung open, and made Charlie stumble back a few steps before regaining his footing. “Gentlemen,” he said, waving the boys inside the building.

Chapter 4

Somehow her brother had convinced Officer Doyle that he was not fit for the job. The argument hinged on his lack of equipment. “I did not keep and thing. And no one in town would have what I need.”

“Well, let’s talk to the chief. I am sure we can work something out.”

Lisa could tell that Office Doyle did not want to cause a scene, and probably was not being as “creative” as he could have been. She wished he would. She felt irritated that her brother wouldn’t just relent and agree to do it. He would be a hero, after all. She still felt, event being older and understanding a bit more about these things, that he had been cheated out of a hero’s welcome so long ago.

She had just been a little girl, certainly she felt that now, and couldn’t accept that her big brother, whom everyone had been worrying so much about, was not coming home. She kept claiming that he had died, but her parents would quickly correct her in the grocery store aisle or the waiting for an open bank teller. “He’s just staying out in Colorado for awhile.” At that point whatever stranger–stranger to her at least–that they were talking to would politely find some way to end the conversation.

After the policeman left, she stormed into the front parlor, where her brother stood watching squad car disappear in a cloud of dust. “What was that about?”

“What exactly?”

“That!” she pointed out the window.

“That was a police officer.”

“I know that, Nathaniel. You do not have to be smart with me.” She realized that she was speaking to him like a parent.

“Lisa, I do not know what you could mean.”

“Not volunteering to help.”

“Help do what exactly?”

“Go up and invetigate that airship.”

“And why should I?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“According to who?”

“Well…” she realized that she had to think this one through. Her brother was always pining her only little barbs of logic. “According to me, for one thing.”

“It may be hard to understand this, but doing the “right thing” just because it is gratifying doesn’t make it the right thing all the time. Besides, that airship is probably filled with helium. It won’t expldoe.”

“Bit it stil could crash and drap a lot of metal and skin all over everything.”

“Yes, that’s true. But not the end of the world. It’s probably worse that they’ve got everything shut down, down there.”

“Well, there could be people down there.”

“He did not mention anyone calling for help. I mean, if you were stuck in an old airship that just collided with a building, wouldn’t you call for help?”

Lisa had not really considered that point before. As usual, her brother made a strong case. It woudl be difficult to manuever around that one. But they could be hurt and needing help.”

“Or, dead already. Had you considered that?”

“Are you saying it is a ghost ship?”

“Sure, why not. And I try not to go chasing after ghosts, if I can avoid it. I spent enough time doing that already.”

Of course he meant, “in the war”. Whenever he invoked “enough time doing x” it meant the war and was a cue to drop the topic of conversation. Lisa was much more clued into the is than her younger brother. Unlike her, Arthur wouldn’t observe the signs, even if he noticed them at all.

Lisa stomped off through the house, grabbing Lonnie’s hand as she didn. “Where are we going?”

“To the shed,” she said.

The “shed” really was an old barn behind the house. It was not full of animals and hay, though. It had not for as long as Lisa could remember. She forced open the rusty door enough to squeeze through and climbed up into the loft. In one corner were boxes her brother had sent before his move home. The boxes had never been opened. A few years of dust already covered them, which made them less dusty than the other bins, barrels, and boxes in the shed.

She opened the boxes, pulling out books and old clothes. “Lisa, what are we looking for?” Lonnie asked. “It’s really dust…ahchoo…in here.”

“Here it is.” Lisa pulled out large coils of rope, pitons, and other climbing gear. “Here, help me get this stuff into the house.”

“What is all of this?”

“Climbing equipment. My brother used to climb mountains.”

They piled up everything on the kitchen table. Nathaniel came in, shook his head, and turned around, raising his voice as he did, “I expect that to be put away, Lisa.”

Instead of packing everything away, Lisa and Lonnie arranged all of the gear on the table. They gathered today the robes, the climbing aids. Put the worn boots with an equally worn pair of gloves. “There’s a lot of stuff here,” Lonnie commented. Lisa nodded her head.

She decided that leaving the equipment on te table might persuade her brother to take it up and go help out at the site of the airship. In the meantime, she wondered what was going on with back in town. The radio in the parlor was not working–had not worked for a few years now, so they went out to Lonnie’s car to listen.

”…Local authorities advise residents to stay away from the center of town. The airship could be unstable. Officials from the FAA were not able to comments on the situation, not having been advised of any lighter than air craft that might be in the vicinity. Locally, air traffice controllers in the region are puzzled as well. Based on the airship current position and heading, no airports in a 10 mile radius of is flight path detected any abnormal activity.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Lisa said, talking over the steady cadence of the radio announcer.

“The airship, definitely.”

“Not just the airship, but the idea of it too. It’s weird to think about where it came from. Why it is here.”

“Must have blown off course or something.”

“Maybe but you heard what they just said. No one noticed a thing. Dont you think someone would have picked it up on radar or something?”

“Well, that’s just what they’re saying… It’s some kind of cover up?”

“Not exactly. I do not know. But it came from somewhere, right? What if there are more?”

“More airships drifting long with seemingly no one piloting it? Seems unlikey, doesn’t it?”

“I guess, but just imagine that there are hundreds of lost planes and airships and other things just floating along up there, waiting to be sent back down to earth.”

“But everyone inside would be dead!”

“Maybe, but how else do you explain the airship that just crashed in the middle fo our town. It had to have been floating around for years. And something made it finally come down.”

It’s too bad your brother doens’t want to go up and check it out. Sounds pretty exicting.”

“He will come aroudn. It’s just a matter of time.”

Once the news switch to some other story, national politics, legistlators disagreeing with each other, they switched the radio over to a rock and roll station. Instead of agitating them into a teenage frenzy of movement though, the comforting, familiar sounds lulled them both there in the car. They each closed their eyes and nodded off, siting in the front seat of the car.

Lisa work up first, startled awake by a signal test on the radio. She nudged Lonnie who woke up to. “Fell asleep? Uh, I feel terrible. Guess we should go back inside.”

Soups smells filled the house–onions and celelry sauteeing, tomotaoes simmering. Nathaniel was hovering over a tall battered soup pot in the kitchen. Lisa always felt like he looked most like an old soldier when he cooked. There was something grim and quick about his movements. He cooked for them most of the time, but always dead simple things that required one or two pots most.

“Time to eat?” Lonnie asked cheerfully. Nathaniel glared at him.

Lisa stepped in, “Let’s set the table. Then we will take you back to the Y.”

“Lonnie, when are you going home?” Nathaniel asked. Lisa cringed at how rude her brother was being. It was not Lonnie’s fault that he was caught in their squabble.

“His mom and bad are coming back from Europe on WEdnesday.”

“They do not even know he’s here?”

“Well, not exactly,” Lisa said.

“They know I am not home. But they do not know where exactly.”

“Oh great. Well, it is none of my business. Just do not get me involved in any trouble that might happen. I am washing my hands of it.”

“Figures,” Lisa interjected.

Nathaniel tasted the soup slowly and calmly. Not looking at her, he said, “I would advise you to get the hell out of this house right now.”

“Come on Lonnie, we will go into town for supper.”

Lonnie whipsered to her, “I do not have any money to cover it.”

“Don’t worry, I will pay for it. Let’s just get out of here.”

Chapter 5

They sat up on the rooftop bullshitting, smoking, spitting, under the shadow of the airship. Arthur nervously glanced at the radio tower’s creeking base, but tried to downplay his anxiety. The other guys did not seem to notice just how perilous their current situation was. So, just like he usually didn, Arthur imagined himself slipping a mask. It was not a monster’s mask, with mishapen ears and perfectly round holes bored into the eye sockets. It was a perfectly fitting mask that he seemed to wear in a very comfortable way. But just like those cheap drug store masks, this mask made all those everday worries and concerns a little harder to see and hear.

Once the sun went down completely, the temperature droped twenty degrees. The wind picked up again. The airship creaked in a rhyhmic way above them. “I am cold,” Jeff complained. None of them had heavy coats or sweaters on.

”I’ve got something for that,” Charlie said. He produced a scratched up metal flask from his jacket.

“Pass it around!” said Jeff excitedly. Charlie only brought out the flask on special occasions.

They each took turns downing sips of brandy from the flask. It was not good quality, not like what Arthur’s father used to drink. He remembered his father letting him try a sip at a holiday dinner when he was little. He had wrinkled his nose and everyone at the table laughed in a good humored way as the little boy said, “Yuckee daddy!” He shivered. Must be the taste of the brandy and the cold, he thought. But the shivering stopped once the brandy started to make him feel loose and warm.

Charlie was the most animated. He was circling the base of the radio tower, pushing it at random, hoisting himself on it then propelling himself back on the roof. Only a foot or two at a time. Around and around. Suddenly he stopped and turned to the group, huddled together, warming their hands over a lighter. “I have an idea,” he said.

“What is that?” Nick asked, probably trying to get out in front of whatever crazy idea their “leader” was sure to have.

“Well, no one knows why this thing is here, right?”

What makes you say that,” Nick asked.

“No one’s up here. No cops, no investigators. No scientists runnig around with geiger counters or anything. So no one knows what hte make of it.”

“Dumb ashes,” Jeff said in a slur.

“Let’s help them out.”

“How will we do that?” Arthur asked.

“Glad you asked Paisly. ‘Caus you are going to go up there.” Charlie was pointing up at the airship. The twenty or thirty feet between them and the underside of the airship seemed much greater in light of this “idea.”

“Me?”

“Sure, of course you.”

“Why, of course?”

“Well, you are still the new guy. You haven’t passed all of the tests. And this is the mother of all tests.”

Arthur looked wildly at the two other boys. They seemed calm and removed, as if to reinforce the idea that he had not been tested. Arthur wondered whther any of them really had had to climb up an unstable radio tower to climb into a ancient airship that had mysteriously appeared out of thin air. But no one would say anything now. They did not want to accompany him up there.

“And you are brother was some kind of mountain climber or something, right?”

“Yeah, but it is not like he taught me anything.”

“Well, you know more than Nick or Jeff here, besides Jeff is sloshed and Nick is an egghead. He can barely do a pull up in gym.” Nick nodded solemnly. Jeff was rolling side to side on his back, saying, “It’s a long way up there, Paisly.”

“What if I say no?”

“Terrible things will happen I am sure.”

“Sure would be cold to be stuck up here all night,” said Jeff.

Arthur stared at Nick, whom he could count on from time to time to assert some reason into assignements like this. But Nick wouldn’t budge. “Come on, Nick, this is crazy. That thing’s not safe.”

“Nick is, I am sure, very intellectually curious about what’s inside that sirhip.”

“Then why do not you send him up there.”

Charlie in all of this two year older bulk stepped to Arthur, towered over him, and said, “Because I did not tell him to. I told you. Now get up there.” He shoved the flask in his hand. “Screw up your courage.”

There was one swig in the flask left, brandy diluted with their collective spit. Arthur downed it, not even noticing the taste. There were no arguments to be made, no one to back him up. He could bolt for the door. He even tried to shift in that direction, before realizing that Charlie had been slowly backing him against the radio tower without him even noticing.

The only option, it seemed was to climb.

Arthur huffed some hot breaths into his hands to loosen up his cold fingers. He bounced around a few times, shook his head. “Come on Paisly, climb!” Jeff said.

“Get on with it, Paisly. Come back with a full report.”

Arthur grapsed the radio tower with both hands and gave it a shake. It actually seemed more secure that he had expected. He got himself up on the first rows of the tower’s lattice work. The effects of the brandy made him feel more comfortable than he had epected. He kept going and got a few feet off the ground pretty quickly.

He turned to look back and realized that he had come pretty far. The wind felt more severe even a little bit higher up. He also could feel the tower swaying more that it did higher up. He got higher up, and could hear the guys below whooping and hollering, even though they seemd to not be paying attention to him at all.

Arthur had just a few more feet to cover before he reached the airhip. From up here, he got a better view of the tangle of fabric and metal girders wheren it was colided with the radio tower. He figured he could just grabbed one of the girders and hoist himself up. The structure probably would be rigid enough to support his weight. What he would do once inside remained to be seen.

His hands were getting cold and numb now, though. The brandy was not working. The exertion of climbing probably had burned it all up. One by one he huffed again into his hands to warm them. He tried to pull at a little extra length of his shirt to use as golves, but his hand immediately slipped from the tower wrapped in fabric. Not worth the risk at this point.

The tower creaked under his weight not that he was at the narrowest part of it. He could feel it shifting downwards. He would have to move fast. The opening into the airship was not as large as he had thought now that he was touch it.

He shimmied up closer to the top. The airship kept bobbing just out of reach. Finally he grabbed a scrap of the outer fabric that hung down. He gave it a yank, but as he did, the tower lurched dangerously down.

Arthur kept his grip on the fabric, but he had not made the opening any larger. He remembered that he had a small pocketknife in his pocket. He gripped the airship tighter than before, clenched his legs to the point of straining around the tower’s framework and retrieved this knife. He wished that he had Charlie’s switch blade, instead of the single blade knife that needed two hand to open. He settled on using his teeth and his free hand to open it.A few tries and he managed to extract the blade and lock it in place.

The wind was noisy in his ears. Even still the ripping sounds of the fabric sounded louder than he expected. The fabric also was much tougher than expected. To have any effect at all, he had to saw at the tear in the fabric, tug at it forcefully then saw some more.

Even though he was exhausted, Arthur felt a surge of strength and confidence when he realized that the opening was large enough now to climb up. The torn strip of fabric was also long enough for him to climb up like a ragged piece of rope. He could shimmy up and grab the girders and be inside.

As he planned his final ascent, though, he also noticed the the din that the guys below were causing. Would anyone hear them, he wondered. He really did not want to be hauled home for this.

Arthur took a deep breath and grabbed the fabric with both hands. He let one foot go free then another. The fabric began to rip, leaving him dangling hundreds of feet above the street. The tearing stop though, and he worked his way up bit by bit. He could reach the metal frame now and swung a leg up to get inside.

Just then, he could hear shouting below, and just make out, “What is going on up there!?” He heard a loud, “Oh shit” then feet scrambling on the roof top. The roof door slammed. Arthur realized that he was all alone now, hovering above town, in an ancient airship.

Chapter 6

Lisa forgot that Earl’s diner was closed because it sat right near the office building with an airship pinned to it. They got as far as the police barricade before a police officer waved them off. They turned around and drove to the Moonlight, which was a little more rundown and a little more greasy than Earl’s. But they were both hungry and the Moonlight had decent milkshakes.

Figthing with her older brother had made her completley forget about her younger brother. She said outloud as they pulled in front of the diner. “I wonder where Arthur is right now?”

“Probably up to no good,” said Lonnie, forgetting, as he seemed to do, that this was a sensitive subject with her.

Her glare at him bore a striking resemblance to her brother’s glare and she said, “I am sure he’s fine. Let’s eat.”

Their waitress turned out to be the mother of one of Arthur’s new “friends.” Ms. Halloway was a lady with reputation, which generally meant bad things in Briersville. She was a smoking and drinking kind of woman, but in a rougher way that the other smoking and drinking ladies in town did not approve of.

She obviously had just come in from a smoke break because she was coughing as she walked up to them.

“Know what you want yet?”

Lisa looked over the menu. “I would like a breakfast.”

“Just eggs, hashbrowns and toast now. Nothing else.”

“Okay, I will have that.”

“What is your soup?” Lonnie asked.

“Vegetable soup.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s soup.”

“Hmmm… I just cannot decide. Should I get the soup?” He seemed genuinely concerned about the soup. “Okay, I will get the soup. And an order of french fries.”

“Fryer’s broken.”

“Hashbrowns then.”

“Fine.” She scribbled a few things before being called to another table with a brusque, “Lorraine!”

When their food arrived, Lisa decided to ask Ms. Halloway about Arthur. Maybe she saw them. “Ms. Halloway, I am Lisa Plaice. Have you seen my brother around?”

“Why would I have seen your brother?”

“I do not know. He’s been hanging aroudn with your son, Charlie.”

“And why would I have seen him. I am here all day and night it seems. It’s not my job to keep tabs on your brother for you, young lady.”

“I am sorry, I just thought maybe they had come by.”

“Come by here? I am glad they did not.” Another customer was waving her away again. “Just eat your food and stop asking questions about my son.”

“Yes, mam,” was Lisa’s meek reply, even though she was roiling with anger inside.

Lonnie was slurping at his soup, “How’s your food?”

Lisa was picking at her eggs and hashbrowns staring out of the window when a police car pulled up in front of the diner. The flashing lights lit up the counters and booth with red and blue. An old woman covered eyes, complainging about the bright lights. The lights obscured who was in the car. An officer steped out, then a door slammed. The diner door jingled and Ms. Halloway’s son Charlie was pushed through the open door by the police officer.

“Is Lorraine around?” the officer asked the other waitress. Ms. Halloway came out of the kitchen, grabed an order that was ready, and walked past the officer and her son.

“What’d he do now?”

“Well, mam, might be something to discuss in private,” said the officer, scanning the room and all of the eyes that were trained at him. Having an audience like this made the young man uncomfortable. Charlie stood with head down. More because he seemed tired than out of a sense of shame.

Ms. Halloway passed back by, saying brusquely, “Officer, I do not have time for this. You,” she pointed at her son, “take a seat there. My shift is over in an hour.” Her son slunk down in the last booth of the diner, kept his head down and did not look at anyone.

Lisa got up and started walking towards him. “Lisa, where are you going?” Lonnie asked.

“I will be back,” she said. She walked up to Charlie, who did not bother to look up at her. He was pouring salt and pepper into piles on the table.

“What d’you want?” he asked.

“Where’s my brother?”

“How should I know?”

“It’s not an unreasonable question.”

“Buzz off.”

Lisa returned to her booth. Lonnie had finished his soup. “How did it go?”

“Not well.”

“Lisa?”

“Yes, Lonnie?”

”I’ve been thinking…”

“Not now…” Lisa’s attention shifted to the row of police cars that had pulled up and the police chief who was coming in to the dinner now. He sat at the counter top. When he caught Charlie’s mom’s eye he said, “Ms. Halloway, we need to have a word.”

“I am busy chief.”

“No worries about that. I called up Sal and he said you could have a nice long break. So why do not you pour a cup of coffee for me in a to-go cup and let’s step outside.”

Lorainne poured hte coffee and tossed her apron on the counter in defeat, stepping outside with the police chief.

Lisa leaned forward and whispered, “Lonnie, I have to go to the lady’s room.”

He leaned forward and asked, “Why are you whispering?”

She got up anyway, walked to the other side of the diner, passing Charlie as she did. They locked eyes, like hunter and prey, as she crossed him. She stepped into the lady’s room. The window was just large enough to slip through. She scooted the garbage can over and hoisted herselt up. She swung her leg up on to the metal window frame, then rolled to the side and out the window. Hanging on the other side of the window, she let herself drop to the ground.

Lisa felt like a sleuthign detective or a spy, creeping close the diner’s outer wall. She deparately wanted to hear what the chief was saying to Charlie’s mom. Her gut told her that something was a going on, but she did not quite enough pieces for her imagination to figure out what.

At the corner, she slunk down with her back aginst the wall and listened. She could hear the chief say, “I am only going to say it again. If your boy crosses our barricades again, he’s going to be put in jail. I am dead serious about this Lorraine.”

“Then why do not you take him now?”

“Because he’s a kid and I knew your father. Boys will be boys and all that but you have to admit this crosses the line.”

“I still do not understand what you are so upset about,” Charlie’s mother said.

“Lorraine, wake up! Your son is turning into a deliquent. He and those other boys were on top of that building drinking and smoking and doing whatever else. It’s enough that they were trespassing on private property, but given the current situation, they were putting their lives and other people’s lives at risk. What if they had caught that airship on fire. What then?”

Lisa could only hear silence. Apparently Charlie’s mother had so hardened herself against caring about her son’s failings, that even this warning did little to move her. Lisa tried to piece together what exactly had been going on. Arthur’s “friends” were caught hanging out on top of hte building with the airship. She wondered if Arthur had been up there too?

When she heard the door jangle again, she quickly turned the corner and pretended to be calmly walking along to go into the diner. “Chief Carruthers! Chief Carruthers!”

The police chief turned. “Lisa Plaice. What can I do for you?”

“Chief, I was just wondering if you’ve seen my brother.”

“Arhtur? No, not tonight. I’ve got to run, some other places to be tonight.” He got back in the passenger seat of the last remaining squad car and drove away.

Lisa assumed that he had other calls like this one to make. But it was strange that he had not seen Arthur. Would he have told her if her brother was in trouble? He had talked to her before about trying to keep him inline, to make sure that he came in contact with the “right influences.” Once he put that burden on her, wouldn’t he have volunteered information about Arthur to her?

As she tried to go back into the diner, Charlie ran into her as he was bolting out of the diner. “Get out of my way,” he said and started to jog down the street.

Lisa turned to chase him. She ran track in school and quickly overtook him. She grabbed at the loose folds of his jacket and yanked him back. Surprised by her strenth, he stopped. He whipped around, fist raised and ready to hit her, but he yanked his other arm free. “What do you want?”

“I want to know where my brother is.”

“I got nothing to say. Will you leave me alone.”

“I bet you were up on that roof with him. And I want to be sure he’s okay.”

“Oh, he’s okay, just a little light on his feet right now.” He bolted away from her. She decided not to chase after him again.

She walked back to the diner and found Lonnie waiting for her, leaning against the car. “Lisa,” he said as she walked up to him. “I think I better go. And maybe…maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”

“What do you mean, Lonnie?”

“I do not know. Things seem…pretty complicated around here. You’re fighting with your brother. You’re climbing out of bathroom windows and chasing after guys like that.”

“I am just worried about my brother, Lonnie.”

“I get that. I really do. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me. So, I think I better go.”

“Fine, Lonnie. Can you at least drop me off at home.”

“I do not think that’s such a good idea.”

“How the hell am I supposed to get home then?”

“I do not know. I bet someone will give you a ride.”

“You want me to hitch back home?”

“I am not saying that. There seems be a lot of police officers in and out of that diner. I bet one of them will take you home.”

“If that’s the way you feel, then I think you’d better go.” She turned away from him, not wanting to let him see her crying. She did not really know why she was crying, but she was.

“Are you crying?”

“Just leave Lonnie. I am not crying. Not crying for you anyways. And what business is it of your’s anyway.”

“I do not want to be upset.”

“Lonnie, I think my brother’s in trouble and you are the last person I want to tell about it right now.”

She went back inside to the diner and sat at the empty booth. The plates had not been cleared away yet. It seemed like Charlie’s mother was causing some kind of disturbance in the back. The unpaid check still sat on the tablet too. Lonnie had not been kidding when he said that he couldn’t cover the cost of dinner wherever they went.

She pulled out the slim wallet that she kept in her jacket pocket got money to pay for dinner. She decided to leave a little extra tip for Ms. Halloway. She was not sure if this was a kidn gesture or a condescending one. Regardless, Charlie’s mom might ot even register the difference. What mattered, Lisa decided, was how she felt about the gesture. She decided it was done out of kindness and was a way of saying, “It will be okay. And this token is a little bit of proof that I have to show it.”

Chapter 7

A few whiskeys later and Nathaniel was thinking about the past. The kitchen was not perfectly cleaned up. The pot of soup had been cooling for some time now, but Nathaniel was too immersed in his thoughts of days in the past to get up and bother with it.

Their father’s death had been sudden, particularly for him, since he tried not to stay in too close contact with him. It suited Nathaniel just fine being a recluse from his fmaily–from eeryone–in Colorado. When he worked in the mountains, no one expected him to say much of anything that suited him well.

IT was hard now, though, to remember why exactly he went to Colorado. Certainly it was a relief that he wouldn’t have to march in any parades or accept any resouwrds for bravery or valor or whatever.

As he cycled throuhg old thing in his mind, he kept coming back to feeling that he had on the day of his father’s funeral. He had just flown in on a small plane from a small regional airport. He had taken buses and trains and airplanes to get there. Yet despite having travelled for two days and hardly had anything to eat, he could help feeling that his legs had not been built for pews. The rise and fall of the seats always seemed too dramatic. The angle of the back too severe. And his legs–too short by far, not optimized for the kneeling, not suited for the sitting. He had carried this physical discomfort in religious seating for a long time, since at least a time when he was younger and his mother had passed through a phase of religious interest.

The strange thing was that his father had not been a religious man. Nathaniel had not remembered him being that way, at least. He always seemed like a man of the world, very concerned with things in the here and now. But his father’s will had stipulated that he was to have a funeral ceremony in the town’s Episcopal church.

So, Nathaniel had calmly agreed to the setting, to the tone of the service. It was simply a matter of following the letter of the law, the intentions set forth in the will. Intentions he had nodded over at some time. At the service those intentions were made real, his father’s spirit embodied itself in those plans.

He remembered how everyone around him seemed perfectly settled into their places. Distant relatives from his father’s side came from miles away to pay their respects. They all seemed to know their roles, or to pick up perfectly news ones, with little prompting. Everyone sat and stood at the right times. Hymnals opened, pages flipped. Voices raised together. And he could hardly sit still through any of it.

The rebellion his body put up was not done as a conscious rebellion. He was not the sulking teenager that his father had always taken him for. Those feelings had long since been replaced by other ones. The war had seen to that. Now he could launch into action with little thought as to why. S,o, even though he had learned a good deal many “life lessons” and could be called a man with little quibbling over the term, he couldn’t help but feel there was some other intention at work here that made the seats and the temperature in the room and the other people made him uncomfortable.

The only distraction he found was tracing out the patterns in the old worn parquet flooring. The scuffs and scraps did not quite have the poetry of the old pews in Europe, worn by centuries of common people lumbering back and forth between work and church. But he was intent on following the orderly zigzag of the floor, then trace out the chaotic spirals and chopped up lines made countless numbers of heels over the years. He puzzled over the wear and tear, wondering if it was a sign of piety, of boredom, or revolt. Had people shuffled up and down those aisles every weekend. Did they shuffle away finding what they wanted and needed?

The memorial program, which he figured had been tossed into a box somewhere for good keeping, had been tightly rolled up in his hands. He almost seemed to be strangling the thing as his hands clasped it, and kept is suspended between his knees. Fifteen minutes in to the ceremony, and he found that the had to perch at the edge of the pew. This kept his feet firmly planted on the floor, until he started to bounce on the balls of his feet. The roll ed up program jostled up and down as he did. His new brown shoes creaked around the toes as he did.

From across the room, his younger sister made a few glances in his direction, but seemed largely concerned with friends from school and a few distant cousins who were closer to her age.

Outside the church earlier, they all exchanged pleasant condolences. A few small children ran and play outside. They did not understand at all what had just happened. They had just witnessed how fragile life really is, but their energy couldn’t be contained any longer in the stiff stiches of their best outfits. One of his father’s “old friends” corned him outside and talked about his family, his job, and his father in quick succession before tersely asking, “How are you?” before being absorbed into settling an altercation between his children over some toy or another.

“Then no one will have it!” the brother boomed. His voice drained the defiance from the children, and the younger one handed over the toy to his father. The older one turned to her father and said, “But what if something’s broken?” she said.

“It’s not broken!” objected the boy.

“You shouldn’t be carrying around anything that important. I am holding on to this until we get home.”

By the time the conflict defused itself, people began moving on to their cars, or walking home if they lived close enough. The hearse had arrived, and a few members of the congregation materialized to transport his father. Nathaniel took this as a chance to escape inside one of the cars waiting for him and his brother and sister. He was not asked to be a pall bearer, so it was the duty of that strange, strange to him, at least, collection of men in suits of many sizes to carry the plain, black lacquered coffin.

When Lisa came through the door, he was completely drunk and not inclined to reminiscing anymore. “Where’s your brother?”

“He’s not here. Oh, I think something’s really wrong.”

“It’s not that late. He will be back.”

“But what if he doesn’t come back?” His sister was pacing in front of him.

“At least sit down. Have a drink…” he interupted himself with a sputtering laugh.

“Nathaniel, this is serious. Why are you so drunk anyway?”

“I was remembering things.”

“Like what?”

“Dad’s funeral.”

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t matter now. None of it matters.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“None of it. I mean, all of it. You know what I mean.”

Lisa walked over and took the half nearly empty bottle of whiskey from the table and went into the kitchen. He sat there in the dim living room listening to the running water, plates cracking together from being dried and stacked.

In what seemed like mere minutes, his sister reappeared in the door and say, “I am going to bed. I am going to hope that Arthur comes home tonight.”

“Don’t worry he will. He will…”

He sat perfectly still for a while longer then decided to get himself up off the chair and do something. He walked up to the windows and pressed his face against the glass. The fall night had made the glass cold. The cold comforted him, made thing seem simpler. But what was on the other side of that cold glass? Nothing but the pitch black nighttime.

There was no sense of horizon or landscape. Maybe the flocking of a few trees in the distance. Nathaniel stepped back from the window and realized that he was agonizing over the decision whether or not to climb up to the airship. He did not know why he was agonizing over it, but he was.

He heard creaking footsteps upstairs. That was the reason. He look around. And this place too. This was the reason. That rug, the chair, the lamp. The walls. The old pictures. Everything was trying to compell him to do something that he did not want to do. In a fit of anger, he rushed to the sofa and grabbed the pillows, tossing them across the room. He kick at the sofa, sending it spinning across the floor. A lamp broke which sent a picture falling from the wall.

He pitched himself into a wall, bounced across to the other wall, then lunged forward to the front door. It gave way before him and he spilled out onto the front porch. He was coherent enough to get down the steps. From there, he was a drunk man staggering down a narrow country road. Heading who knows where.

Chapter 8

No one left the police station that night. Every officer, on duty and off, stayed around talking about one topic: the airship. Pots after pot of coffee was brewed, thermoses filled and taken to the officers staffing the barricades that night. The police chief assigned one officer to watch the building, be up close and personal with it. “No more kids on the roof top,” he said.

The police chief had been on the phone all day and into the night. Talking to reporters, confering with the state police. He had even gotten a call from the FBI. He doled out pieces of information as he got them. Everyone felt the importance of being the focus of so much attention.

The question on everyone’s mind was, “Where did it come from?” Followed by “Will it blow up?” But after all of the conversation, no one had any answers. The consensus was that they were no under attack. No enemy forces had come pouring from the airship’s cabin. Though why Briersville would be a strategic target was not broached.

The chief wouldn’t comment if this was some kind of military experiment. Certainly no one from the military had shown up. But a few people in the station were convinced that this was an emergency preparedness excercise of some kind. Most of the other officers laughed this off, but everyone felt a twinge of uncertainty. Were they failing the test or not?

Officer Doyle rubbed his eyes at his desk. His desk chair could creak back to an angle that was almost suitable for sleep, but not quite. His head would bob then he would pitch himself forward.

Another police man, a younger fellow named Jim, passed by, “Bob, why do not you go home. You look exhausted.”

“I am fine. I am fine.” Being the first officer “on the scene” gave Doyle a special pride of place, made him something of an expert. He had already conferred with the chief for some time, detailing everything he had seen that morning. Unfortunately, none of it made much sense. He felt a duty, above and beyond that displayed by the other officers, to stay on the scene and see what might happen.

When he jerked awake with the chief standing him over him, he realized it might be time to go home. The chief had his tie undone and his coat thrown over his shoulder. “Bob, you need a rest. It’s been a long one. Even I am packing it in. Darlene threaten to divorce me if I do not get some rest.”

Bob Doyle did not have a Darlene at home to threaten him with legal action, but he took the chief’s point. “No, you are right. It’s been a day.”

“Yep. Go on home Bob and get some shut eye. I asked John to write you out of tomorrow’s schedule.”

“Chief, I will be fine. I will be here tomorrow.”

“Now, I cannot stop you from showing up here, but you better not be in a uniform and you won’t get paid for it. I mean it Bob. Who knows when this thing will end. Best to pace ourselves.”

“Sure, sure.”

He went to the locker room to change back into civilian clothes and headed out to his car. He lived in a boarding house on the western side of town. Getting home would be a bit complicated, though, because of the barricades. Maybe, he though, he’d swing a little wider out and pass by The Big House and get a drink. People at the Big House did not seem to mind a cop from the neighboring town stopping in for a refreshment.

Going that way would take him by the Plaices. He wondered why Nathaniel had been so reluctant to help out with the airship. Seemed strange for a war hero to act that way when everyone in town needed him.

He headed south and connected up with county road A, which was a straight shot to the Big House, a roadhouse that sat just on the border between Briersville and Carlsburg. The road was long and straight and completely dark at this time of night. Not much traffic coming this way at night.

Driving made him realize just how tired he was. He slumped down a bit in the seat and leaned his head to the side on his shoulder. Then there was a man standing in the road ahead of him. Officer Doyle swerved and spun off the road and into a drainage ditch. Fortunately the ditch was dry and he was able to pull out and onto the side of the road.

He got out of the car. The man was still stumbling down the road, coming towards him. Officer Doyle grabbed a flare from his trunk, lit it and set in the middle of the road. He did not want to be run down by another driver.

He ran towards the stumbling man and realized that it was Nathaniel Plaice. “Nathaniel! Nathaniel! Get out of the road!” he shouted. But the Nathaniel did not hear him.

By the time he caught up with him, Nathaniel had veered off into the field near the road. Officer Doyle approached him slowly and said, “Son, you are a little far from home.”

“Am I? Couldn’t tell.”

“Yep. Why do not you come with me.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a friend.”

“Ah, I see you. You’re a cop. Always the cops. One type of cop or another. You got no right coming in here.”

“Coming in where?”

“My house…”

“Nathaniel, we are 5 miles from your house. It’s the middle of the night and it is cold out here.”

“Doesn’t feel cold. It’s not Riva Ridge or Mount Belvedere.”

“No, it is not. Not that cold. But you do not have your gear. So, why do not you come with me.”

“You’re going to take me to jail.”

“Probably.”

“Nah.” He took off running into the field. He ran straight into a fence though, got his clothes barbed on the wire, and tore the front of his shirt open getting loose. He ran back in Officer Doyle’s direction. Officer Doyle squared up and attempted to tackle the drunken man, much as he might have tackled an aggressive corner back in high school.

Of course, that had been some years ago, and when he landed hard on his arm and shoulder taking Nathaniel down, he started to regret his decision. He suffed Nathaniel and led him back to his car. A truck barelled by, scattering the flame from the flare on the road. It sizzled and the car’s headlights lit up the column of smoke that disappated in the sky.

So much for the Big House, he thought. He’d have to take Nathaniel back into town and book him. He was not even sure if he had the jurisdiction to do it, but it seemed unlikely that Nathaniel would argue with him. Nathaniel did not talk during the car ride. Officer Doyle decided not to prod him for any conversation. Better to let this one pass by.

When they arrived at the station, Officer Doyle led him and put him in a cell. “Found him wandering on the side of the road. We will let him sleep it off,” he explained. He glossed over the detail of nearly running him down and spinning off the road. He did not want to crucify the young man though. The other officers agreed with him. There were times when you could bend the rules and times you couldn’t. It seemed clear to all of them that this was one of those times.

Now he really was tired and decided to go straight home. Home was a small room in a boarding house. The landlady, Mrs. Oliver, kept his rent low because she liked have a police officer in the house. She was an older woman, who carried herself the way Officer Doyle remembered his grandmother, a hard working woman who had spent most of her life in service. All that time in upper crust houses had imparted a “way of doing things” on his grandmother.

The other men living in the house weren’t that bad. A few of them were down on their luck, but most were travelling salesmen, a young doctor who had just moved to town. A few factory workers, who had been floor managers. He only had to break up a scuffle once, and that had been over a girl. But Mrs. Oliver believed that his presence made the house more respectable, and doing so meant he could save a little extra money.

He planned to retire to a beach somewhere. Maybe in the Carribbean, maybe Cuba. A little money could go a long way down there. That’s what he thought anyway.

The trade off was that he lived in a cramped room with a bed, a wardrobe, and sink. A few of the other rooms had desks, but Mrs. Oliver put a high school teacher and a librarian in there because they were “scholars.”

“Promoting learning in my house isn’t a bad thing, Officer Doyle.”

“No, mam, I guess it is not.”

“My late father held scholars in great reference. Do you know that he submitted frequently to the Oxford English Dictionary. He also worked on a biography of the early years of this town. I never saw the draft because he burned it. Claimed that his methodology was unsound. I always regret that all of that work went up in smoke. Can you imagine that, Officer Doyle?”

“What is that Mrs. Oliver?”

“Destroying your life’s work like that. Not revising and correcting. But my father was a man of extremes. Take me for instance. I received the education that I have because my father did not do things by halves. I showed an inclination in school and ended up going to a women’s college.”

Being a police officer meant he did not get a desk in his room, but most days he did not care. Especially on night like this. He would be waking up in just a few hours anyway. The chief wouldnt’ keep him away from the station, especially with Nathaniel Plaice there.

Chapter 9

The airship’s cabin was cold, freezing cold. It did not offer much more protection that if he’d been hanging from the side of the thing over the town. Getting into the cabin had been a challenge though. The girders were narrow. His hands and feet were freezing cold. He inched along until he reached the gangway that ran down the center of the ship to a ladder.

He poked his head down into the cabin and looked around. Empty. The cabin had been completely empty. It was not even clear if anyone had been there. But how could anyone have been there. None of it made any sense. If he had not been so cold, Arthur would have assumed that he was dreaming.

Once he made it into the cabin, the airship seemed much more stable than it had when we was crawling along its skeletal frame. The clank of the metal under his feet was reassuring. He studied the primitive controls, really nothing more than ropes and levers stationed in front of a angled bank of windows.

From those windows, he could look down directly to the street below. He felt like he was thousands of feet in the sky, even though he knew it was more like hundreds. What else was there to do up here? A radio would have been nice. He could call someone to rescue him. Surely someone would come to rescue him, eventually. If nothing else, someone would have to come up and figure out what was going on in the airship. What if there had been an injured pilot.

So, he walked around opening the cabin. There really was not much to do up here. So, he sat down, huddled up and waited.

Then the cold came. So much cold that he couldn’t keep out. It seemed like an endless supply of cold would fill that cabin forever until he could see the first glimmerings of the sun off in the east. A few shafts of light colored the sky, then the sun’s hot dome began to peek over the horizon.

Arthur went from side to side, caught up in the beauty of the view. From up here, he could trace out the roads leading in and out of town. The creeks that wound their way through the country side, hunting for a river to connect to. Square patches of fields dotted the landscape like big blocks of paint, like abstract paintings he had seen in class.

Land, land was everywhere he looked. But not just any land, this was the land that he known all of his life. But he had been down in it, or on it for so long, moving here and there without thinking much about everything else around him. Everything below seemed still and calm. The world was at peace with itself. For the first time in the few hours he had been up in the airship, he did not regret taking the dare and climbing up.

Once the sun came up, he started to want something for breakfast. The airship did not seem to have much in it.. It was not as if he had not skipped a meal or two before. That’s what running with Charlie and the guys meant sometimes. Charlie and Jeff really seemed to hold up their disjointed lives as a source of pride and envy. He and Nick were definitely the more “normal” kids, though Arthur did not feel like he belonged in that category and more. At least Charlie and Jeff had parents, even if they did not live up to the name.

“I wish I had a book,” he said out loud. No one answered. He got up and poked around some more. There was a small navigation room behind the main cabin area and a mess behind that. There were a few berths built into the middle of the cabin as well. There was not much in the way of books, but he spent some time stuying the maps on the chart.

Most of the maps were old, places that were mostly cities now only showed up as a meeting place of a few winding roads. Probably highways around them now, Arthur thought.

His grumbling stomach interrupted him. He went back into the galley. It was very tidy. Every surface either had been meticulously cleaned or never used. It was hard to tell whcih was the case. He did find a few ancient looking cans. One seemed suspicously bent of our shape so he put it back. Besides, did did not have a way to open them.

So, he gave up on the cans of food and let the hope that someone would come get him suppress his hunger.

As he sat there, dealing with the creeping feeling of hunger, he thought how funny it was that this was the highest in the sky he had ever been. At least that he remembered. His sister had told him before about a trip they took with their mother to see some distant cousins they had never met before then. They had travelled to a large airport and flown in the largest plane she had ever seen.

He remembered how the story had filled his sister’s teenage with awe and wonder and excitement. But it had left him feeling nothing. He couldn’t remember anything about the trip. It did not help that the awe and wonder and excitement gave way to another key part of the story, the sad ending that followed.

As she told it, this was the last time either of them would see their mother, who dropped them off at their relatives. Then their mother disappeared. Arthur could hardly remember her face anymore. But what did that matter? She had left and gone on somewhere.

Then there was their father. His work as an engineer took him all over the world. But the children did not go with him, at least Arthur and his sister did not. Nathaniel was old enough and got to see the world. Then he left again for the Army and the war. Nathaniel had seen so much and Arthur had seen so little.

It was only fitting now, he thought, that he was the first and, so far, only person to experience being up in the “ghost ship,” which was what he decided to call it.

His parents were nothing but ghosts to him now. Their memory took up such a small part of him. Maybe it made him a bad person, to forget them the way he did. But they stepped back into the shadows, lingering behind heavy drapes that covered over these parts of his life. And it was no good to go and fight to have them uncovered. He flet that all the time.

Maybe this was why he found his borther and sister’s responses to thier parents so odd and frustrating. Nathaniel just seemed to angry all of the time. Lisa was more cheerful, but always referenced some little phrase or a expression that their parents made, particularly their mother. She must have been concerned that he would forget the small things that start to make a person a real person, and not just a collection of observerable facts. No person could be put under a microscope and fully understood, no matter how many pieces you were able to unentangle from the whole and present to someone else as something complete and understandable.

He did not have any of these reference points to go off of, only their extremem responses. He had to find his footing on broken and loose rocks of their own rememberances and relationships. So, he resented the feeling that he was not truly a part of them.

Now that the sun was up and the rush of getting aboard the airship had worn off, Arthur realized how tired he was. He lay down on the hard floor and closed his eyes. With the sun shining through the windows, the cabin grew warmer, which help ease him into sleep.

Chapeter 10

When she woke up and did not hear any sounds in the house, Lisa started to panic and worry. She wrapped herself up in her robe and went downstairs. The house was completely empty, even after wandering about and shouting, “Nathaniel! Arhtur!”

She was worried about Arthur now more than ever. Normally, he would sneak back in late at night. She kept checking his room to see if he was in there, as if she had missed him the first five or six times she looked.

Wandering around the house and the yard this way had half woken her up. She took a hot shower then made herself a proper breakfast. Sitting at the table eating an egg and toast and sipping at a cup of coffee, an indulgence that Nathaniel recenly started to allow her, she planned out what her day would be. She would need to go see the airship again to just make sure it was real and still there. Then she would look for her brothers.

But in the midst of this planning it dawned on her that she needed to go to school. She had a chemistry test and lab today. And there was a short paper due about Turn of the Screw that she needed to turn in today. She immediately felt angry at herself for forgetting about these mundane things, but how could she be expected to remember when there was an enormous airship hovering above town.

In fact, she wondered if school was cancelled. Her high school, the town’s high school, was near downtown. Maybe they had closed the school. There was only one way to find out.

Since Nathaniel was not around to drive her to school, she would have to do it herself. The school bus did not normally come by their house, so there was no sense in waiting around for that. She did not technically have a driver’s license yet, but these were kind of extraordinary circumstances.

Lisa grabbed her school things. She got into their truck and headed down the road.

Everything was cold and crisp that morning. The sun seemed particularly bright too. It was a beautiful morning, which she felt like she should appreciate more, but was too preoccupied with not stripping the shifter in her brother’s green pick up truck.

She saw a police car up ahead, heading towards her. She sat up straight and tall and tried to look like she belonged behind the wheel. She resolved not to make eye contact with the police officer in the car, but as the car passed she couldn’t help but look. It was one of the younger police officers on the force, whome she recognized as being one of her brother’s friends from a long time ago.

The police officer made eye contact with her too. The car did not turn on its lights though, so she assumed she was in the clear. She looked back in the rear view mirror and saw it swing around in a wide circle, kicking up dirt and dust from the side of the road as it did. Then the lights came on and Lisa realized that she was caught.

She pulled off to the side and waited for the car to catch up, which only took a minute. The car stopped and the police officer, whose name was… She couldn’t remember. But when he stood next to her, she thought his name was Todd.

He seemed a little awkward to be a police man. He had every right to pull her over for driving without a license. Lisa nervously started talking, “I left my purse at home.”

“What is that?” There was chatter on his radio.

“My purse. It’s at home.”

“No matter. I am just surprised to have passed you by like this.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I was coming to your house.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s your brother.”

“Arthur, is he okay?”

“No, not Arthur. It’s Nathaniel. And he’s fine. He was taken in to the station last night to get a little clearer.” Lisa did not say anything. “I think you should come down to the station and be there when he wakes up. Seemed pretty out of it from what I heard.”

“What happened?”

“Can’t say exactly. But I do not think he was doing too well last night. Why do not you follow me into town.”

“Oh, but I have to be at school and I have a test.”

“I will radio in and have someone contact the school.”

Lisa wondered if this help was above and beyond Todd’s duty as a police officer. He seemed genuinly concerned about her brother. She hoped that he was not really that bad off. She had seen him in some pretty dark places, particlarly in those early days when he came back home.

She still did not really understand why coming back was such a bad thing. But he made it clear to both of them that he did not want to be there. It made her cry many times. Nathaniel rarely had comforting words for her, and was more likely to say, “I would be crying too if I were you.” Arthur was not much help either. He started running with those deliquent guys and not being around as much as before.

It was strange how alone she had felt in those early days after her father died. He really was never around much, travelling all over the place. Their caretaker, a woman named Constance, lived with them and took care of them, only visiting her family on the weekends. But with more people around than ever, she felt very strongly how thigns had come apart. The people in her life seemed further apart than ever before.

As he followed behind the police car, her confidence behind the wheel surged. She pulled up in an empty parking spot, killed the engine, and hopped down the truck, wondering what lay in store for her inside the police stations.

Chapter 11

When she woke up the morning after the airships’s arrival, Briersville’s mayor found a small gathering of people waiting for her on her front yard. No one noticed here peering down at them from a part in her curtains. PEople here were much too polite to start banging on her down. That had happened numerous times when she held offices in the city.

She scanned the crowd as best as she could. There seemed to be a few shopkeepers, a few memebers of the city council, one of the powerful farmers and landlords in the area, and a few reporters. She couldn’t tell just by watching them if they were waiting on her as a group, or if they had converged on her front porch by change.

She left the window and went to run her bath. While she sat on the edge of the tub letting water run over her hand, the phone rang. It was her assistant. “I think you should call a press conference earlier today. Let’s try to get in front of some of these reporters and cameras that are coming in to town”, the mayor’s assistant said. He had been her campaign manager, in a town where no one had even considered that a mayor might need such a thing, and now was her “right hand.”

He was not always such a great right hand, but having someone there, anyone really, made her look more powerful and that meant something to the mayor.

“We still do not have anything to say. Getting out ahead only to look confused won’t help anyone.”

“That’s true. But not being seen, not talking about will be worse. Besides the police chief is taking over the spotlight. He’s been mentinoed or interviewed in almost every story I’ve seen.”

“There’s people camped out on my front lawn. Seems like the press conference has come to me.”

“We definitely need to schedule something. Don’t go out there and talk to them.”

“Don’t worry, you can trust me to do the right thing.” She knew and her assistant knew what this meant. She was going to go out there and talk to everyone. If nothing else, she liked flouting her handler.

After they got off the phone, she dipped down in the bath. Throughout her busy life she was always careful to relish the small things, to carve out time to do nothing and think of nothing. It certainly would seem that way to anyone observing her. Right now, though, her mind raced through several ideas of how best to proceed.

Not settling on any one course of action, she finished getting ready. Clothed and coiffed she moved to the phone, picked it up and asked for the police station.

“This is Mayor Thornsby. Can I speak to the police chief please? He’s at home. I will try there.” She disconnected then asked for the chief at home. The phone range a few times before she heard a gruff, “Yeah.”

“Chief?”

“Who is this?” He was probably surprised to hear a woman’s voice on the phone.

“This is the mayor, chief.”

“Oh, Mayor Thornsby. Sorry, did not get much sleep last night.”

“I understand. I just have a small request to make of you, chief. A favor. More of an invitation.”

“Yes?”

“Why do not you come to my house for breakfast this morning? My husband is away on business and I have a hankering for pancakes.”

“Pancakes?”

“And coffee, of course.”

The police chief paused. “I can be there in an hour or so.”

“Take you time.”

She hung up the phone and had a similar phone call with the fire chief. She would have to get to work, but fortunately Floria would be at her house soon to help out.

Soon enough the kitchen warmed up from the oven and stove running. The room smelled like bacon and butter and sugar. Floria arrived and helped flip pancakes and stow them in the oven.

The mayor checked in on her visitors in the yard. They seemed to be able to the smell the cooking coming from inside. She went back to brew coffee. By the time the two chiefs showed up at her house, she was ready to set her plan in motion.

When she saw the fire chief approaching, shaking hands in the yard, she opened her doors, strode out onto the porch and greeted everyone. “I have some coffee and breakfast inside if anyone is hungry.”

Everyone from the yard filed into her house. They tipped their hats to her while Floria helped collect the coats. “It will be a little tight, but find a spot.”

She made the rounds through her dinign room and kitchen with a large plate of pancakes. When those were gone, she went through with coffee then more pancakes. She kept herself busy until everyone was served. Then she sat down and started in on her breakfast too.

The din of talking in the room mixed with knives and forks clancking on her flatware. She sat next to the owner of the small department store downtown. He was concered about losing business while everything was shut down in the center of town.

“Can’t we open things up a little bit?”

“Think of the risks right now,” was her reply. “Give me a few more days, just enough time to collect all of the facts.”

One of her guests was a reproter from the local paper. She overheard the reporter asking the chief about kids who had been caught on the roof of the building. The chief wisely said, “It was just a little mix up. We have it under control now.” She had no idea of that was true, having just learned of the incident herself, but it sounded plausible enough.

Everyone talked about the airship in one form or another. The oldest in the room vividly remembered the age of the airship. An owner of a travel agency talked about booking a flight on the Hindenberg before it is last disasterous journey. Another man, who sat on the city council and sold insurance, remembered seeing the Graf Zeppelin when he was a boy.

The consensus in the room, if there could be said to have been one, was that the airship was part of some kind of military exercise. The fire chief seemed convinced of this. The fellows gathered around him nodded in agreement. Everyone had heard of the strange, secret projects that teh military developed. “They developed the bomb and no one knew much about that,” said one of the listeners.

“If it is military,” interjected the police chief, “then why haven’t they come out and claimed it.”

“Can’t,” said the fire chief. “Probably part of the exercise.”

“Maybe we are being tested,” said someone else. “Maybe the miliatary wants to see how we respond to the event.”

“Like some kind of psychological experiment?” someone else asked.

The mayor realized that the conversation would quickly get out of control. It was time for her to assert herself. She tapped her fork against her coffee cup to bring the noise level down. Everyone stopped talking and faced her. Her assistant arrived just then too. He look utterly bewildered by seeing all of these people in the mayor’s house, but realized what was happening and did not lead on just how annoyed with her he was.

She, of course, knew how annoyed he was. She was straying from the plan. But so far, her gut always told her when to stray from the plan and when to stick to it. It had not been wrong yet and was a remarkably perceptive organ.

“Let’s make some room for Ken. Ken, would you like some coffee?” He held up his cup as Floria came around with the warm porcellin pot.

“First, let’s thank Floria for helping to make this wonderful food. And thank you for coming to my house this morning. I know you are here with questions and concerns. Now, understand, I do not have answers for everything. I think we are just getting over the shock of what happened yesterday. I can tell you this. I will do everything that I can working with the police and fire departments to ensure that the area aroudn the airship is safe and secure. I also want to commit to you to doing everything I can to learn what is going on and why the airship appeared in our town. I am also going to to commit to you that within three days we will reopen downtown. Maybe not everything, maybe not the building where the airship is, but 90% will be open in three days.”

Everyone nodded with approval, even the store owners who desperately wanted to reopen their shops.

“I will work to make sure that we are compenstated for the lost business, but I cannot make any promises. The other thing I want confirm is the the fire department will be going up to make sure that everything around the airship is struturally sound. I have real concerns about the stability of the radio town.” OF course, the fire chief had no idea that he would be committed to doing this, but felt he had to smile through.

“Also we have a young man in town who has volunteered to climb up into the airship and inspect it for any potential problems. I won’t give his name right now,” she said, looking at the reporter. “But in a press conference later today, I will say more about him. Now, if you do not have any more questions, there is a little more coffee left. So finish up. I have to take me leave and get some work down. See yourselves out when your done.”

If she had to judge, she would have given the performance an 8 or so. She was not really prepared to sway them any further than she did. But she felt confident that every one of them in the group of visitors was a little more compliant and understanding than before.

She shook a few hands and made a few smiles then turned to go back upstairs. Everyone stood up as she did. The two chiefs followed her to the stairs. “Madam Mayor,” said the police chief.

“Yes, chief?”

“You said some good things. I think they will appreciate it. Just one little problem.”

“What is that?”

“The young you mentioned has not been as cooperative as we had hoped.”

“I did ask you to be creative, did not I chief?”

“Yes you did.”

“Why do not you just take a squad car and pick him up. Don’t they do this in movies all of the time.” REferencing the movies was a sure way to furstrate the chief, but he tried to take it in stride.

“The problem isn’t that we do not have him.”

“Good, then problem solved?”

“Not exactly. He was picked up late last night for drunk and disorderly. One of my men picked him and brough him in to sober up.”

“And this is our shining hero citizen who will save us from our ignorance?”

“Yes, he is.”

“And you still think he’s the only man for the job.”

“At least near by, yes, I think so.”

“Very well then, give him a few hours to sober up, fill him up with black coffee, give him a shower, whatever it takes. We need him going up in that airship no later than tomorrow morning. I can give him jntil this afternon and then after that it is up the tower to the airship with him. You think he will still be able to do it, right?”

The police chief felt a little backed into a corner. “Yes, yes, well of course.”

Chapter 12

Whereever he was, it was bright. And a little bit cold. He hugged himself tighter to keep some warmth in, but it quickly seeped away. He rolled on this side, a position that he normally did not like to sleep in, and faced the darker part of the room. A wall, maybe.

But the light was brighter and brighter. He flipped onto his other side, and realized that someone was watching him. Nathaniel opened his eyes and saw a clerk from one of the gas stations in town, sitting up on a metal bunk. The man started coughing, hacking really, into his shirt. The cough resonated from deep in his chest and soudned like gravel shaking in a bag.

“You ready to get back to it?” the man said. He started to laugh but the laught expired in a wheeze, replaced with more hacking coughing.

“Where am I?” Nathaniel asked.

“Shoot man, you never spent a night in the tank?”

“Jail?”

“Sure, best free breakfast in town and a hot shower too. Nothing beats it.” The policeman on duty on came to retrieve Nathaniel’s cell mate. “Seee you around, partner,” he said while being escorted off from the cell.

Nathaniel tossed back over onto his back. He tried to block as much of the light as he could with his forearm draped across his eyes. It did not do too much good and the additional pressure started to make his head feel worse.

A few minutes later the officer came back for him. Instead of going wherever they took his cell mate, the took him in the opposite direction. The offer led him through a locked door then up stairs. At the top of the stair, half was down the hall, was a door. The officer led him to the door and encouraged him to pass through it.

They went into an office, the police chief’s office, he assumed. Only there was not anyone there. He look at the officer who had escorted him up, “Take a seat,” the officer said.

“Anywhere?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Chief will some along very soon.” So, Nathaniel sat down in the empty office while the officer waited outside.

After a few minutes of waiting, he could hear a rucuks of some kind heading up the stairs towards the office. It sounded like an incredible, furiuos argument was taking place. The argument turned out to be the police chief talking hurriedly to his staff. He also had someone with him, a young woman who was doing what exactly?

Reporter. It was clear she was a reporter. She sat down next to him, hardly acknowledging him and scribbling into to a long notebook. “Nathaniel Place?” she said, bending her head in his direction.

“Yes.”

“That’s p-l-a-c-e?”

“No, it is p-l-a-i-c-e.”

“Unusual name,” she said.

“I guess.”

“What does it mean?”

“If my sister was here, she would tell you.”

The phone on the chief’s desk rank, he picked it up and answered. “SEnd her up,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Looks like she’s here.” The pretty reporter tucked that information away on some corner of her page.

When Lisa came into the office, she hardly acknowledged him either. The issue of their name came up. “No one knows for sure, but it probably relates to the Latin word plectere”

“Plectere, to plait or braid?” the reporter asked.

“Yes, exactly.” Nathaniel watched a spark of recognition pass between the two young women.

“Well, let’s get to it, okay?” the police chief said. “Mr. Plaice, you know why you are here?”

“At the police station or in your office.” This made the reporter smirk, but she quickly masked it.

“Nathaniel, you do not have much room to stand on right now, so do not press your luck. Let’s take both. You’re here in the police station for drunk and disorderly conduct. Your…” he flipped through a cipboard on his desk, ”…third offense in as many months. And you are here in my office because you treated one of my men pretty poorly yesterday.”

“Can she be writing all of this down?” Lisa asked.

“It’s all public record. His arrest file. I’ve got the dates here already,” she said very matter of factly.

“Chief, is this about going up to that thing, that airship?”

“Yes, it is. Now look, I am getting…” The police cheif and the reporter made eye contact. She waited for him to finish his sentence as he seemed to be weighing his next works pretty carefully. He continued on, “I am getting asked about you and whther or not you are going to go up.”

“Look chief, I am not meaning to be difficult.” His sister rolled his eyes at him. “But I am not sure you appreciate how difficult what you are asking is.”

“Nathaniel, have you seen the airship yet?”

“Not really.”

“Then why do not you come here to the window and take a good look.”

He approached the window, peering out over the tops fo the wooden shutters that gave the room an dark earhty feel. Sure enough there was the bulk of the airship, bobbing over the town like some kind fo strange outsized flag. If they only painted an advertisement on it, someone would make a lot of money, he thought. Maybe he should offer to do that.

Even from a distance, he could appreciate how strange it was though, to see the airship hovering above town. To his eyes, it looked absolutely primitive and old. It was impossible to know how it would react to someone climbing board it.

When he sat back down, the chief looked him in the eyes and said, “You see what we have a problem, right.”

Nathaniel nodded, “Yes, it is a big problem. But surely you could get a helicopter or a tall crane or something.”

“Maybe, there’s risks with those too. If we delay much more that might be our only chance, but it would take a few days to get a crane tall enough out here. And who knows how the airship would respond to a heliocopter.”

“That’s true.”

“Nathaniel, let me make this clear, and young lady, this is off the record, so i’d like to see you put that notebook down.” She folded up the notebok and laid her hands over it on her lap. “You’re starting to build up a nice little record of trouble making. So far the judge has been very lenient with you. I happen to know that a few of my men have given you a free pass too, because of who your father was and who you are. I understand and accept that, but even still you persist in causing trouble. Now, I can make some of that just go away, like that,” he said, wiping away the imaginary taint of Nathaniel’s mistakes from his hands. “All of these little infractions and mistakes gone like that. I cannot make any promises about the future. But we can rewrite the past, right here and right now.”

“As long as I?”

“As long as you agree to go up in that airship with the tools and skills that you have.”

“I already told OFficer Doyle that I do not have the equipment. And you do not have time to get it for me, from teh sound of it.”

“I happen to know that’s not true. Lisa mentioned finding a large box of climbing equipment.”

“Yes, there’s some stuff in there, but some of that stuff is 10 years old.”

“It will have to do. I do not know how else to say it.”

“Are we back on record yet?” the reporter asked. The police chief nodded. “So, for the record,” she asked, “Will you or won’t you go up in the airship.”

Nathaniel looked at Lisa. He was used to bearing her mild disappointment in him, but she had a look of absolute disgust, maybe even hatred, that was new to him. He did not like it. As much as he struggled by what he owed his brother and sister and what they owed him, he did not want to create these kinds of feeling bewteen them. He genuinely liked his younger sister. He had not grown up with her or his younger brother, but they were both not that bad, most of the time.

Besides, the chief really had him in a corner. He did not want a record of stupid and petty infractions following him around. He already understood tha the had developed a reputation in town as a little bit irresponsible and a a little bit of a drinker. Some of this was prone to happen. After all, he was not a teetotaler like many people in town. He did not exactly hide his consumption of alchocal the way many others did.

But being out in the open about something that many people were find keeping less visible did discomfort some people. Again, he had grown accustomed to and tolerated a certain amount of visible discomfort from people. But he did not want to disliked or reviled in town.

He stood up and said, “Chief, I will do it. But you have to let me walk out of this office and go home with my sister. I do not want to sign anything or do anything. I leave as a free man, like this night before never happened.”

“Never happened,” the chief said.

“Fine. When do we do it?”

“2pm this afternoon.”

“2pm? Okay. Do I need to go to the building?”

“I will send someone for you. Don’t you worry about that.”

“Chief, I have a few more questions that I would like to ask Mr. Plaice,” said the reporter.

“Sure, go ahead. You can use my office. I have to go talk to my guys then I will be back.” The chief sauntered out of the room. He seemed a little less harried now that Nathaniel had agreed to climb up in the airship.

“Do you want me to leave?” Lisa asked.

Nathaniel motioned her to sit. The reporter said, “No, you can stay. It will make for a better story to talk to both of you.”

Chapter 13

Lisa and Nathaniel did not say much to each other as they drove home. Lisa thought that her brother had been rude to the reporter, who seemed pretty nice, and willing to make her brother look good. She couldn’t grasp, no matter how many times he inarticulatley explained it, why he was unwilling to sit in a spotlight, even for a bit. But it was not up to her; he had made that much very clear.

“I will need your help gathering all of that gear up,” he said.

“Okay.”

“There’s a duffle bag out in the shed. Should have been near those boxes you ransacked.”

“I did not ransack them.”

“Sure. Anyway there’s a duffle bag out there.”

“I wonder what you will find up there.”

“Who care…”

“Everyone does. Isn’t it obvious. This is the most excited thing that’s happened to this town.”

“In a while. But doesn’t say much about this town, does it?”

“What do you mean? A mysterious ship descends from the sky, like…like some kind of god.”

“So, we are supposed to get on our knees and pray to it?”

“That’s not what I mean. But it so…mysterious.”

“It’s just a hollow frame of metal with giant bags of gas inside. It’s like a enormous person. Better not to make a person into a god. That leads to bad things.”

“But it is all of things with absolutely no reason for being here. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“I do not worry about strange things anymore. Everything is strange. The fact that…that I am here and some other guys aren’t is strange. The fact that I am looking after my brother and sister who are almost young enough to be my kids is strange. Everything is strange, Lisa.”

“But that’s all just life, Nathaniel. If you start worrying about that stuff, how can you live? But the airship? That is genuinely strange.”

“I guess,” was his only reply. “It doesn’t change the fact that everyone in this town will pressure me to go up inside it and investigate. I guess they want to see if I will fall through it or something.”

Her brother did not like being pressured to do anything. This much Lisa knew. Relatives and friends of the family had tried to shelter her and her brother from Nathaniel’s reluctance to take over the house and be their guardians. Try as these people did, Lisa and Arthur both knew that Nathaniel had taken them on out of a sense of obligation. To this day, he made it clear that they were a burden on him.

What she could never figure out, thought, was what they were keeping him from doing? From what she could make out, he had lived a very isolated life in Colorado. He rarely spoke of any friends, of any thing he did there. His life before the war seemed to have been wiped away as well. He barely aknowledged anyone in town who used to know him, not that there were many left now. Everyone had gotten used to the fact that Nathaniel Plaice wanted to act like an transplant and outsider.

She looked away from him and started out at the stubble of corn and other crops in the fields, pastures where cows idled in the cool fall day. The funny thing was that being around Nathaniel made her feel like an outsider too. The land around them, the buildings in town, the people who lived there no longer seemed like the things she knew and rememebred from just a few years ago.

Memories of being little seemed more like memories from story book than anything she had ever experienced. It probably did not help that one one in their house ever talked about the days before their father died, and certainly never before their mother left. None of that existed anymore. All they had was the bare life they led day to day, bare like a piece of wood stripped to the grain.

When they reached the house and got inside, Lisa went off the find the duffle bag. It was sitting near the boxes in the shed. She covered her mouth and nose with the end of her sleeve and beat the bag against a post. The air filled with fine dust. The dust ginted and gleamed with sunlight.

She brought the bag back inside and handed it off to Nathaniel. He sat at the kitchen tabled, tugging and pulling at pieces of equipment. He started to load it up and then went upstairs, only saying as he didn, “I am going to change.”

“If only you would,” Lisa muttered as he disappeared upstairs. But when he came back down in thick brown pants with pockets and rivets and a dark green wool shirt, he still looked like her brother. He walked like him, huffed like him, and did not say anything to her like him.

Then he gruffly said, “Come on.”

“Me?”

“You want to see me be a big hero, right? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Isn’t that the think that will make everything better?”

She did not say anything.

“Well, this is your chance to see if it was worth all that hoping and wishing.”

“Fine, Nathaniel,” she said, giving in to his mood and his fixation on destroying her naivety or whatever idea of hers it was he was crusading against. Besides, she was curious to see what was going to happen. She did not think that he’d fall through the airship like it was some kind of spirit or illusion. But it was going to be interesting to watch.

Their trip back to town was much like their trip from town, though mostly more staring out the window than talking. As the bare county road gave way to a residential street with a few houses, he turned to her and said. “There’s a safe in my room. In Dad’s old room. The combination is the day of our birthdays. There is a will in there. And money. Some cash, some stock certificates. Bank information.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“In case I die, Lisa.”

“Why would you die?”

“Because I am going to be climbing up a ricketly 30 foot tall radio tower and climbing into a cumbustible ancient piece of technology that shouldn’t even be flying.”

“Okay, okay. Geesh, you are in a foul mood.”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The point is that I could die doing this. And if I do, you need to know what to do. Open the safe, get the documents. Then call Mr. Harvey, dad’s attorney. It should be pretty clear what will happen.”

Lisa did not want to ask, but couldn’t help herself, “What will happen to us?”

“You’re old enough and the legal process will take long enough that you shouldn’t have to worry about too much. Just hold on to the cash. Don’t let Arthur do anything stupid with it.”

“I am supposed to look after him?”

“There’s no one else to do it?”

“What about Aunt Esther and Uncle Gerry?”

“Maybe, but they’re old now. They were old when I was young. They’re not going to be able to handle things for much longer.”

“I do not want to think about this right now.”

“Neither do I, really, but that doesn’t count for much these days.”

“Nathaniel, look…”

They were nearing the center of town now. Crowds of people were walking along on both sides of the road, heading to town, to the building and to the airship. Some of them waved at their truck as they passed by. Nathaniel honked at a car that was driving slowly in front of them. The people walking misunderstood the honk and started to wave and cheer. The car pulled aside to let them through.

By sheer force of will, the people of Briersville had pushed back the barricade. Crowds were forming in the blocks around the building. When people saw their truck though, they parted. Some people banged on the hood enthusiastically, happily. Lisa stared down at their faces. She felt like a queen or a prophet must feel having so much hope and joy directed at her.

They reached the point where the police reestablished the barricades. A police officer waved them through while another moved aside a barricade. The two or three blocks around the airship were still quarantined and still eerily quiet. Eerie not just because no one was walking about, but the windows were empty, no car rattled by. There weren’t any kids darting into the street, or a man with a suitcase heading to the train station. All of the little incidental actions that made up everday life in town, even the slowest, quietest days, were gone.

Nathaniel drove around to the front of the building with the airship pinned to it. Outside the whole fire company seemed to be on hand every spare police car was parked too. Lights circle and beamed and bounced in every direction. So much light and movement almost made her feel a little sick to her stomach.

Her brother parked the car. “Should I get out too?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess. But I want you to stay close to someone, find a police officer or a firefighter or something.”

“Okay.”

Lisa hopped out of the truck. Her brother grabbed his gear from the back and walked around. They passed in front of the truck. Lisa paused for a moment, expecting him to hug her or acknowledge her. But he walked by with an even harder and more determined look that she had seen before. She lurched forward and then walked briskly towards Office Doyle, whom she saw standing behind his open car door.

Many of the officers were either loitering in small groups or hanging behind their doors. It looked like something halfway between a tailgate party and a seige. Either way Lisa could feel the tension and anticipation radiating from everyone there.

“Officer Doyle!” she said.

“Hello,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came with my brother.” Officer Doyle finally recognized her.

“I see. Is it safe for you here?”

“I did not have anywhere else to go.”

“Of course. We will you can stand here or wait in the car. I’ve got hot coffee in the thermos and a few sandwiches.”

“A few?”

“Well, we could be here a while. Supposed to rain later.”

Lisa looked up. Something did seem to be dampening the brightness of the day. Little by little, she guessed, the wind would start to pick up, then the clouds would stretch themselves over the sky and it would rain. That might complicate things.

“Look, your brother is shaking hands with the mayor.” Indeed he was. She watch the mayor flip her hair, smile. She’s flirting with my brother, she thought. It was not uncommon. She had witnessed a few awkward interactions between her brother and a few women–some younger, some older than himself. She had even seen a few women in tears in and around their house. That had been a while ago, though. Now only interested looks might pass between himself and a woman, then maybe a flash of recognition on the woman’s part, “Oh, that’s not who I thought it was,” she might be thinking. Awkward and slighy embarrassing all around.

The fire chief stepped foward and shook his hand too. He waved two firefighters forward. Her brother shook their hands. It was clear that he knew one of the men, who looked to be about her brother’s age. They all turned to stare up at the airship’s ribbed, dirty, and torn up belly. Lisa looked up with them. This must be what ants feel like staring up at a sick cow, she thought. She felt about as helpless as an ant would if called on the fix up that cow too.

A little pointing and waving of hands before they set off. Her brother hitched up his bag, donned his climbing helmet and they set off towards the building. A police officer opened the front door of the building and let them through. Nods all around. Then her brother disappeared into the empty gloom of the building.

Now all she could do was sit and wait and hope that something truly awful did not happen.

Chapter 14

The firefighters were there to help assist him with the climb. A crew had been there earlier trying to stabilize the radio tower. By all accounts, it was bent, but not dangerous now. They had not put a man’s wight on it, of course, so Nathaniel did not feel too optimistic about they repairs.

He had tried to tell the firechief that he did not need an escort or help of any kind. He wanted to tell him about the solo recon mission he had been sent on during the war. He was used to getting a job done with no one to rely on but himself. But the two chiefs and the mayor were too hard to argue against, so he took the escort.

Luckily for him, they weren’t very talkative right now. One of the firefighers, a guy he had known in high school from the football team named Greg, ran the elevator with his key. The other, guy who was younger and was not familiar, kept his head and eyes pointed upwards. He’s smart to keep looking up, though Nathaniel.

Once the elevator went up 10 stories, they had to get off the elevator and climb up stairs to the roof. When they opened the roof top door and stepped out on to the gravelly surface, Nathaniel was surprised by how bare it seemed. From so high up, there was nothing to see by clouds and sky. He walked closer to the edge and could see the roof top of the town’s olders, shorter buildings. A little farther out the town became dense clumbs of trees and peaks of roof and chimneys then farm land.

The firefighters were radioing down that they were in place. The one he knew, Kevin was his name, motioned to Nathaniel. He stepped closer and he said to him, “They want you to wave from the edge of the building.”

“Wave?”

“To the crowd.”

Nathaniel revolted inwardly at the idea. But he decided to play along anyway. He figured that people were a little on edge about having the airship floating over their town. So, maybe some levity wouldn’t hurt. He walked to the edge and could see the crowd of people that he and Lisa had driven through a little while ago. He waved, a small wave. Nothing triumphant or heroic. People were cheering and clapping anyway. He really hoped tha the airship did not blow up and kill everyone.

He went back and started pulling rope from his bag. He had various locks and fasteners too. He rigged up the younger firefighter with a harness and fed the rope through. He would be the belayer. “Just keep a firm grip here and here, Nathaniel said. “When I call out for slack, you ease more rope through here. Just feed it with your right hand. That’s it.”

“While you keep the rope locked down, I will start climbing and pinning the rope to the tower.”

“Hopefully it is as strong as they said,” Kevin asserted.

“Yeah. Hopefully. Otherwise it is going to be a quick ride down. Much quicker than that fancy new elevator.” He finished with his own gear, chalked his hands to make them dry and said, “Tell them I am ready.”

Kevin radioed down that Nathaniel was about to start his ascent. Nathaniel looked up. The airship seemed really close now. It seemed close enough to touch, even though he knew there were 40 or 50 feet between himself and it. Still he had never been so close to an airship before. A little bit of boyhood curiousity surged within. He had heard stories of the great airship raids during the first world war. He knew about the Graf Zeppeling circumnavigating the globe. He knew about some of the more famous incidents and crashes.

And here he was, about to climb up into the belly of one of these regal machines. It was much more elegant and refined than many of the tanks and planes he had seen during the war. And now, here it was, just silently bobbing in the wind, stuck to a radio tower that he had to climb now.

Nathaniel started up the tower foot following hand across the girders. The rhythm and feel of climbing came back to him instantly. So did a certain stiffness and creakiness in his bones and muscles. He was not nearly as agile as he had been just a few years ago. Time took its toll on him quickly. Should have stretched a bit before climbing, he thought to himself.

But no time to worry about it now. Fortunately there was nothing too complicated about making it up the tower. As it started to taper though, he was surprised by how it swayed under his weight. He looked down and saw the younger fire fighter bracing himself against he base of the tower. Since he had anchored the rope as he climbed, he decided to test just how stable the tower was. He shouted down, “Kevin!”

“Yeah, problem?”

“No, I am going to try something. So get ready.”

“For what?”

Nathaniel rocked back and forth on the tower to test just how secure it really was. The quickening wind carried away the shouts of “Are you crazy” and “Be careful.” Nathaniel could also hear gasps echoing up from below. But he knew that the tower was pretty secure for now at least.

“Okay, it will hold,” he shouted back down.

At this point, he decided to asses the the situation above. He immediately noticed something odd. The gash in the airship’s belly looked strange. There was a tangle of metal, sure, but the tear in the fabric was much more…uniform…than he would have expected. His hand automatically went to his hip, feeling for a pistol. No pistol was there. Luckily he brough his hunting knife. Might come in handy, he thought.

From this vantage point, he tought it looked easy enough to get inside the ship. Now he had more doubts about what he would find inside.

A few more minutes and he could reach out and touch the airship, which he did. His hand did not pass through it, which solved one mystery at least. It was no ghost ship or apparition or collective hallucination. He inched up on the point of the radio tower and reach up for the split girder. He gave it a tug and it seemed secure enough. He pulled up on the second rope he had brought up and passed it through the girder, tying it off in a complicated knot.

Next he took his climbing rope and affixed an anchor to the girder alongside the rope. With a quick hop, he reached up to grab the girder to climb up. He gripped was not good enough though. Nathaniel coudl feel his stomach drop as he started to fall. A ghostly gasp rose up from the crowd. Then came the slight jerk as the slack in the saftey rope gave out and caught him.

He spun in a circle for a second, laid out on his back and spinning over the roof top. Down below the firefighters on the roof seemed to be paniced. He tried to give them a big thumbs up. Then he shouted down, “Give me some length. Let out the rope.”

It took them a second to understand the direction. He wheeled his hand around a few times and pointed down, gave the a tug. After a few minutes, Nathaniel finally felt the rope give and he eased down.

He signaled them to stop and the slack gave out in the rope. He started to swing back and forth until he gained enough momentum to grab onto the radio tower again. Falling was a set back, but he made his way back up to the airship. He needed to be more careful this time. He grabbed his climbing ax and tried to anchor onto the airship. The grip was not good enough and after trying to latch it on and have it fall out a few times, he gave up trying.

He’d just have to jump again and hope that he could hold on tighter. At least the rope would hold. That made him feel pretty confident. He edged up closer to the airship, getting as close as he could. He grabbed on, held tightly, and walked his feet further up the tower. A quick hop and he was inside the airship.

The insides of the airship was much more gloomy and cavernous that he had expected. Overhead the enormous gas bags filled any empty space. Still the maze of metal and fabric was something to behold.

Before venturing further, he untied himself from his rope, tied it to an anchor and affixed it to the airship. Hopefully getting down would not pose too many problems. He steadied himself on the metal and inched along. He did not go too far before he hopped over to the gangway that ran down the center of the ship.

As he walked, he surveyed the insides with his flashlight. Everything glimmering with a fine coating of dust. It was clear that people had not been working on and maintaining the aircraft. But how could it have stayed aloft all of this time, he wondered. Was someone taking it for a ride? The airship seemed more, not less, strange now that he could see it up close.

Up ahead he could see the entrance to the pilot’s cabin. Hopefully he would find answers there.

He climbed down into the cabin. He was surprised by how old fashioned the cabin was. From the metal fixtures and wooden cabinets, there were unexpected examples of ornamentation and design. Little knobs and bends here and there. What looked to be inlay patterns in the floor. Everthing was worn and dusty for sure, but this had once been quite the machine.

He stepped to the pilot’s controls and looked out the windows. He found himself imagining what it must have been like to fly this ship, to go cruising above the land and sea, high enough to survey the land, but far enough above everything to make everything seem a little more remote and removed.

He opened cabinets, peered into the greasy dirty corners. In the navigation room, he flipped through aeronautical charts, topographical maps. There were scraps of notes that referred to the complex business of flying the machine, but nothing that gave any clues as to why it had appeared in town.

He sat down at the table where the navigator had once sat, and took a breath. He was more tired than he had expected that he would be. His muscles were throbbing and vibrating now that some of the stress was leaving his body. Sitting there, he couldn’t decide is his mission had been a success or a failure. He got inside the airship, everything just as it would on an ancient flying craft from the past. But there was no one inside, at least as far as he could tell. And, most importantly, he couldn’t find any clues to help solve the mystery of the airships appearance in town.

Chapter 15

Anna’s beat was not the paranormal or the supernatural. She did not even like Halloween that much. Her last boyfriend had been a connoseuir of pulp fantasy and science fiction novels. She broke up with him in his shabby living room as he tried to argue that his stories had political implications. She wouldn’t hear and did not miss seeing the bright yellow and red spined books around her apartment.

Her editor sent her to Briersville after overriding nearly an hour of argument from her. She was a political reporter, she said. She knew the political beat and would much rather follow up on that city board hearing meeting than go to a podunk town dealing with an elaborate hoax.

“If it is a hoax, then that will make good copy. If it is a hoax, find out who’s doing it and why. Sell a few papers, okay?” her editor said. So, she was dispatched to Briersville, given a few dollars per diem, and full tank of gas to get there.

The town was larger than she had expected, but still seemed more provincial than she was comfortable with. Sure, there was a woman’s college in town, someone in a bar on the county line had tried to tell her, but it was not one she had ever heard of before. Besides, what kind of place still had temperance laws on the book and in effect? Briersville, the seat of Brier county, that’s where.

The day after she got there, she managed to secure an interview with the police chief. She was thrilled to learn that a volunteer had stepped forward to go up into the airship. At least there would be some spectacle to witness. The young man had been a bit more abrasive than she had expected and was pleasantly surprised by the fact. He was not a doe eyed country hero with freckles painted on his cheeks and a gap in his tooth. He did not come in with overalls and a few “gohses” and “shucks” for her to try to gin up into good copy for her editor.

The man, Nathaniel, was his name, was positively annoyed about having to go up there, but did not want to be labelled a drunk for not doing it. Now that was a story.

She followed a large crowd of people who were heading towards the city center to witness the young man’s ascent. She walked with a three families who had brought their kids and picnics. The whole thing reminded her of the Battle of Bull Run or some other event where people’s pleasure seeking and the potential for tragedy seemed oddly set in stride together.

The people she walked with weren’t particularly forthcoming about their feelings, at least their inner feelings, about the airship. They all said, very politely, how strange or odd it was. She had not found anyone who was foaming at the mouth about the anti-Christ or the opposite of that. There was a visible concern, though, about the fate of the man climbing up to explore the airship, and about their town. No one wanted to blow up in a burning cloud of hydrogen.

She tried to remain calm during the young man’s ascent up to the tower and into the airship. She tried to seem somewhat removed and detached from the events unfolding before them. She thought it best not to seem to caught up in the drama of it. She was not a yellow journalist. She did not want to manipulate the masses with emotional thrills. Emotional thrills were just cheap writing masquerading as insights.

But she had cheered when the crowd cheered and gasped when the crowd when the crowd gasped. She made her way through the crowd to get closer to the mayor and the police chiefs. A few of the police officers on the scene recognized her and let her edge through. Standing on the edge of the officials who had gatehred around to watch, Anna could watch the decision makers trying to make sense of what was unfolding in their town.

When Nathaniel fell from the airship, the mayor wanted to send men up when Nathaniel Plaice fell from the airship. She did not want anyone’s blood on her hands. But what woudl they be able to do, the fire chief said. Better to keep all hands on the ground in case something really went wrong. “We can deal with one man dying. What if the whole town goes up in flames?” he said.

When he disappeared inside the airship, the mayor turned to the two chiefs and said, “Now we wait.”

And so they waited. Anna wondered what the report would be. What would Nathaniel find inside the airship? She tried to conjure the strangest vision in her mind of what the answer to this mystery could be, but her imagination failed her. She was too much of a realist to try to dream up an alien race who stole ancient human technology to dominate them. Surely there was someone else in the town doing that already, maybe even writing it up as a cheap pulp. Good for them, but she wanted nothing to do with it.

After twenty or thirty mintues passed, she saw the mayor and two chiefs huddle together. The police chief looked over in her direction. He looked at her, but acted like he did not know her. Then he waved another police officer over and whispered in his ear. That police officer set off straight in her direction.

He motioned towards her and she stepped foward. He leaned over and told her, “Nathaniel’s coming down from the airship now. The mayor wants to do a press conference. The chief wants the reports to be on hand to throw questions to her.”

“Did he find anything?”

“I do not know. No one’s saying.”

She followed the police officer out of the crowd, past the cordone. The local paper’s editor and a few other regional reporters who Anna vaguely recognized assembled together.

“I am telling you now,” the police chief said. “Beacause it is important to get this right. Our man is saying that nothing is up there. And from what he can tell, there is nothing dangerous up there.”

“Nothing too dangerous,” the fire chief added. “We will be on watch to make sure.”

Then the mayor stepped in and shook their hands, particualrly the out of town reporter. “Thank you for visiting our town. I wish this was under other circumstances,” she said. “I think it is important to say a few words to the people here. But I want to be sure that one panics or gets the wrong idea.” Anna saw this for what it was, message control. They do not really know what’s going on, but want to seem more confident than they really are.

She decided to play along. She was not the storyteller they were worried about. What about the local paper editor though? Maybe he had some political enemies to flay? Was this like the old days of newspapers where an editor could destory his foes with a sharply worded editorial?

In the gloom of the empty office building, Anna could see two firerighters walking to the doors. They obscured the real figure of interest. She turned back and could see the crowd craning their necks to see their man. To see if he surivived and how he would come out. Would he look like some kind of horror shocked loon? Like a golden hero? Or somethign else? She secretly hoped that he would say nothing and be nothing. She expected nothing less from him.

What he was, to her surprise, was incredibly tired looking. His shoulders slumped and he seemed to shuffle along after the more bouyant firefighers. One of the firefighers had to be at least his age, but they seemed to be years apart.

The two small groups converged. Anna could see the police chief give Nathaniel a gentle nudge forward. The crowd cheered. He did not wave, but he did crack of meager smile. Not too much to disappoint though.

It was hard to make out, but Nathaniel spoke briefly with the mayor and chiefs. They shook hands. The local paper’s photographer stepped forward to snap a few pictures of them. Then a megaphone apepared in the poice chief’s hand and was passed to the mayor.

The mayor looked out on the crowd and said, “I do not often expect to be surprised by things, but this airsihp leaves me completely surprised. I know that we all want to know what it is and how it got there. I cannot answer these questions quite yet. But I can say that our volunteer, Nathaniel Plaice, explored the airship thoroughly. Based on his initial report, it seems that the airship is quite sturdy and safe. He did not detect any structural problems with. We feel confident in saying that the airship poses no significant threat at this time. We are going to work swiftly to formulate an action plan and do something with it, but we have some time. I am calling a special session of the city council later today to formulate this plan. Tomorrow, my office will release a statement about that plan. Until then, direct your questions to your councilmembers. Thank you for your patience and understanding. And let’s give this brave volunteer a round of applause.”

Once the crowd understood that she had stopped talking and that she wanted them to cheer, they began doing so. The police began pushing back on the crowd. People were leaving the scene, emptying the streets around the building again.

Anna tried to slip into the crowd and get reactions from people there, but most of them were too busy packing up their things to pay her much attention. As she walked back to the police station, where she parked her car, she mulled over why the mayor had not said anything about who might be in the airship. They made it clear that nothing was up there, but they did not say no one. She wondered if this had been a deliberate evasion or a genuine lack of knowledge. Either way, she was had enough to file a story now, maybe two if she could get back to her room and write fast. Then she would sit in on the council meeting, assuming it was not a close door session. But Anna usually found ways into meetings like those.

Chapter 16

All of the people below cheering and clapping sounded like nature sounds to Arthur. He thought it was the ocean at first and worried he had drifted out to sea somehow. He crept over the windows and look down. People were scattered everywhere around the building, several blocks deep. Why had they crowded around the airship. Had they come to worship some god. If there had been a speaker and microphone, he could have had some real fun with them.

He let the fantasy spin out a little further. As a voice from on high, he could summon Charlie and Nick and Jeff. Call them forth as offerings to the great…the great Aereos, god of light and the sky. An angry and wrathful god. Aereos who had been entrapped in a tomb long ago only to find himself freed from that tomb and able to roam the land exacting vengence on the tributes who had turned against him.

He would call forth the guys and subject them to humilation and ridicule. Then he would call forth his brother and sister and tell them…what? That Aereos could not be imprisoned in a tomb. That Aereos wanted to roam freely above the earth like clouds.

But the airship did not have a radio, so his impersonation of a god would have to wait for some other time when an mysterious and ominous craft descended on Briersville. Until then, he could only watch the people below and wonder what was happening.

He was awfully hungry for a god. His grumbling stomach kind of ruined the fantasy. But he was enjoying being up in the airship too much to worry about it now. He’d find a way down when it got darker. With so many people down below, there was no way he could get out now without being noticed. He still had the feeling that being up here was against the law, though he couldn’t say which one. Were there laws about climbing aboard mysterious airships?

He looked around trying to figure out why the crowds were there. Then he saw something. There was a man climbing up the radio tower. His view from the cabin was limited, but he could definitely make out someone coming up. He had pretty elaborate climbing gear. Although he could only see the man’s back, he figured at once that it was his brother.

Arthur crouched down at the windows. He was surprised that someone was just now coming up to the airship. But he did wonder why it was his brother? Did someone know he was up here? Was his brother coming to retrieve him?

He kept watching as hsi brother made his way further up the tower. It amused Arthur to see his brother carefully making his way up with his anchors and rope when Arthur had gone up on his own. But Arthur did gasp when his brother’s grip slipped.

Before his brother could regroup and get inside the airship, Arthur decided that he needed to hide. He was not quite sure why he did not want to be found, but he did not want to be. But where could he hide. There must be somewhere he could sneak off to. Surely there would be a good hiding place aboard the airship.

He might have to go further into the airship. But he would have to hurry before his brother got inside. Before he decided on exactly what to do, he slipped off his shoes so that he did not make too much noise. The tied up the laces together and hung his shoes around his neck.

Arthur climbed up the ladder and looked into the dark expanse of the airships stomach. He could see light streaming in through the big rip in the airship’s fabric. He crept out of the cabin and into the airship. He decided to hear away from the tear in the ship. Maybe towards the engines was the best place to hide.

He could see the place to access the engine car in the distance. When he reached one, though, he did not realize that he would be so exposed climbing down to it. He could only hope that someone did not see him. Down the distance of the airship, he could see the stream of light from the tear go dark, blocked by his brother who stepped into the rift. He could hear his brother clanging around with something. Arthur could only guess that he was tying off his rope.

Before his brother could look too far into the ship, Arthur slipped down the ladder to the engine gondola. The wind coursed aroudn him as he did. Arthur looked around him quickly. He could see the crowds again, but no one seemed to notice that a teenage kid was emerging from the airship.

Maybe it had been the dark the night before, but Arthur realized just how high up he was and felt a bit of vertigo. You’ve got to stop looking around, he told himself. But his hands were already getting clammy and acting up on him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they would just let go at any moment. Fortunately, the ladder was only a few feet long and he slipped into the small opening into the gondola.

Inside the cramped gondola, the smell of dirt and grease overpowerd him. The metal and wood around him oozed with age and use. But the age and use seemed to belong to another time. As he looked around, he rammed his toe into a open tool box on the floor. Wrenches and screwdrivers spilled out around him. Arthur cried out “Shit, that hurts.” He sat down and leaned against the side of the engine car, nursing his foot.

He sat staring at the engine that was seated in the compartment. It was a maze of coolant lines and manifolds. Gaskets and valves and belts jutted out here and there. It look both powerful and extrememly fussy. Arthur imagined the mechanics who spent much of their time down here fussing with these things. They probably tweaked and adjusted its workings to get ever last bit of power out of it.

The thought of that appealed to him. He liked being so in tuned with something that you could hear something awry in the odd harmonics of a piston, or a slighly off key pitch of a wheel. There weren’t many things that he felt that special kind of relationship with. It was something he longed for badly.

He had tried taking apart a car before, but ended up making Nathaniel angry when he couldn’t get the parts back together again. Nathaniel had to call out a mechanic to reasemble the car. “That’s coming out of your account,” his brother had threatened. Arthur had never checked to see if Nathaniel had been true to his word.

Arthur had gone searching after hobby after hobby. Nothing stuck. The longest he had ever kept at anything was writing stories, but he just ended up writing westerns that read like the TV shows he was watching. So, he burned his manuscripts, really just an old folder of messy papers, in a fit of pique. He certainly had never worked up the energy to sustain his interest in writing anything much longer than a short story.

Things reached a point where he gave up on the idea of being a savant at something. Nothing that he tried was inviting him in, making him feel at ease with himself. The closest thing he found was the group of guys who challenged him to climb up into the airship. This left their judgement in question, but Arthur applied himself to most to fitting in with them. Even though the guys iritated him and rubbed him the wrong way, he generally found their devil-may-care attitude to most thing pretty comforting.

It was colder here than in the airship’s cabin. Arthur hugged himself a little tighter. He wondered how long it would be before he could go back inside. His brother would be searching around the cabin, no idea at all that Arthur had been there moments before. The though pleased him. Finally, he was one step ahead of his brother, in a position to know something that he did not know.

There had not been many times in the last year or so when he had felt that way. No matter what he did, his older brother was there intercepting him, overriding him. Even Lisa had pulled away from him. They had been so close when they were younger. He had relied on her so much. And she was just drifting away from him.

Maybe it was bound to happen. It probably was and that’s why he had resolved a long time ago to not feel much about it. He remembered making Lisa cry over his lack of feeling and concern when their father died. He was stubborn about it too. And made her even more angry when he refused to go to the funeral. But at that point, he was old enough to be tired of the concept of parents, particularly his parents who had bandied them about in the pursuit of other things.

But what would he do then? He knew that it was silly to try to stay here for much longer. Eventually someone would come looking for him. Or something worse would happen. Probably best to avoid that. Tonight, he decided. He would venture back down to the group tonight.

Chapter 17

During the car back to her house, the mayor and her assistant dissected her perform that day. Their conclusion was that she had executed perfectly. “You seemed poised and calm,” her assistant said. “In control, but not domineering.”

“You do not think I seemed too stern?” she asked, sounding more like a theater or dance critic commenting on some odd inflexion in a performance, rather than an insecure person asking for validation. If anything, questions like there were more like little tests thrown up to her assistant. He knoew that she probaby had an answered formulated for herself already .

“No, not at all. Not too emotional, just involved. That’s the key, I think.”

“Yes, no need for the mayor to be breaking into hysterics on the sidewalk,” she said. Her voice change, which made it seem like she might be changing the conversation, “There were a lot of people there.”

“Yes, a few thousand, I think”

“Did you do any counting or polling?”

“I was too busy standing on call in case anything happened. But I think everything went very well, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“That we did not learn anything new.”

“That could have been a good or bad thing.”

“Yes…” her assistant said, trailing off.

“No one seemed to mind that we did not have answers to give.”

“I just think that you should be careful later today at the meeting. People could get testy and excited if answers aren’t forthcoming. Right now the airship is novel. Everyone was happy to watch our local hero climb up there and investigate. It satiated them. Tomorrow though? The next day? Who can say…”

“Mmmm, yes you can say? Who is that?” the mayor asked, pointing to someone sitting on her front porch steps. It was a young woman who looked vaguley familiar.

“I think that was one of the reporters who was at the building today.” When they got closer, her assistnat added, “Yes, that’s the one that the police chief called out of crowd.”

“So, she has had access to him already?”

“It would appear so. Do you want me to run interference?”

“Yes, I do,” the mayor said as they pulled past the house to the old garage in the back yard. The garage was bare and empty, but the mayor kept the car parked in front of it to give the impression that it was too full to park the car inside. Her assistant lived in a small room above the garage.

They both went inside. Her assistant walked through the house, opened the front door and said, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I am April Jankowski. I am a reporter from the Big Name Paper. I would like to speak to the mayor?”

“Did you set up an appointment?”

The reporter stood up and shouldered her bag. “No, I did not.”

“Well, you are going to have to let me get my book and find a time to interview her.”

“Well, I assumed that…”

“The mayor is very busy.”

“The police chief did not seem too busy to take an interview this morning.”

“The mayor isn’t the police chief and we have to prepare for today’s emergency meeting.”

“So, the mayor is too busy to tell her side of this story.”

“And what side would that be?” the mayor asked, stepping out onto the porch. She tried to sound as if sunlight and rainbows were emanating from her voice. She smiled as big as she could.

“Not to be too forward, madam mayor, but I see this as being a make or break situation for you. Would you agree?”

“Well, why do not you just step inside and we will find out if I agree or not. Tommy, clear my schedule for the next…”

“30 minutes should do,” the reporter replied.

“30 minutes then. And would you like anything to drink miss?”

“Jankoswki, April Jankowski. No, I am fine.”

“Well, I do not give interviews unless I have something to sip on, so why do not you take a seat in the front parlor and I will be back. You will tolerate water just fine, won’t you?”

“I guess I will,” the repoter replied, stepping inside the mayor’s house.

Her assistant was waiting for her in the kitchen. He whispered to her sharply, “You know who that is, do not you?”

“Yes, I know who that is.”

“Her father…”

“Is the reason why I am here and not in the city anymore. Yes, I know.”

“And you are going to give an interview?”

“She looks like a smart forward looking youg reporter. I am sure she’s just on the hunt for a good story.”

“Well, do not make yourself the center of that story.”

“And why would I do that? I am here to serve the people of Briersville, nothing more.”

“Of course.”

“Well, why do not you stay nearby and keep a close watch on me. Just try to look busy and not too obvious, okay?”

The mayor returned with a glass of water and a glass of orange juice for herself. She sat the glasses down across from each other and sat down herself facing the reporter. “So, what can I help you with?”

“I was asking about…”

“Of course, about this situation we have going on here in town with the airship. It’s a mess, isn’t it? Completely out of teh blue.”

“Do you think that it could negatively affect your standing here in town?”

“Why would it do that?” the mayor asked.

The reporter looked up at her from writing in her notebook, “Because things could go very wrong.”

“That’s true. But I tend to want to look on the positive side of things. Besides I like to deal with what’s in front of me. I do not like to get distracted by things that aren’t relevant or pertinent to the situation at hand. I find people get muddled up when they do that, wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Jankowski?”

“So you do not think there’s anything mysterious about the airship?”

“Mysterious? Of course. That’s why everyone is scared of it and fascinated by it. They do not know what to make of it. But if you are asking if I think it is supernatural? No I do not. After all we just had a man go up there and he returned completely unscathed.”

“Was his report accurate?”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Meaning, do you believe him?”

“Meaning, was I lying, is that what you mean?”

“Maybe that too…”

“Well, I can assure you that there was no manipulation going on. Our volunteer really went up inside and ship and really found nothing to report. This isn’t a game or a show, Ms. Jankowski. No one is trying to grab any attention here. frankly, I am surprised that a paper like the Big City Paper even sent someone here to cover the story.”

It was clear from her body language that the reporter understood the jab. Good, so be it, the mayor thought. She was not going to let the upstart reporter, however nice she might be, leave this interview unscathed. Especially not after she questioned the mayor’s leadership and integrity. “But let’s get back to the airship, why do not we?”

“Of course,” was the reporter’s reply. “So, Madam Mayor, what is your opnion of the airship?”

Well, as I said, I do not think it is supernatural. It’s clearly not a hallucination or an illusion being played on us. Beyond that, I am can only repeat myself and say, ‘I do not know.’”

“What do you plan to do with it?”

“Well this is a matter for the city council to discuss. I would like to see us dismantle it and sell it off for scrap metal. There’s probably a lot of other uses we can put it to. I am looking forward to hearing what the councilmembers think.”

“What if the airship belongs to someone?”

“Have you seen it? It’s enormous. I doubt we will be taking any actions right away. No one has come forward to claim it yet. But maybe once the word gets out.”

The phone rang in the kitchen. The mayor’s assistant got up to answer it. He returned a few moments later saying, “Madam Mayor, that’s your husband on the phone. He need to speak with you.”

“I am afraid that means that our time is up, Ms. Jankowski. Thank you for chatting with me.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“When are you filing your story?”

“I am filing shorter pieces. But I have another long piece in the works.”

“And when will that go out?”

“Oh,” the young report replied in a flip, casual wayt hat only young people can pull off, “soon enough after it is done.”

“I will have my assitant make sure to find a copy for me to read.”

“Of course.”

“Good day, Ms. Jankoswki. Enjoy the rest of yoru stay in Briersville.” The reporter left and got into a small car parked a just past the mayor’s house. She started the car and pulled out into the street. The mayor watched her as she left, and wanted to sit down and rest before hte council meeting later in the day.

Chapter 18

The airship had been in Briersville for just over a day by the time Nathaniel Plaice went up into it, investigated it, and returned down the ground. The massive ship had been hovering there for just over 24 hours. People in town were already starting to joke about saying that if it stayed for much longer, they’d have to declare it to be a monument.

The general mood in town was that the airship was a benign, though strange presence in the town. Some of the panicked, feverish fear that griped people in the first few hours had subsided. People already weren’t doing double takes when they looked out a window and saw it hanging there. Now that it was tied down to the tower on top of the building, people seemed more at ease with it like they would with a leashed dog.

The airship had not attracted too much outside attention. A few radio stations and newspaper reporters from the area, and that was about it. There had not been an influx of people in town to see it. Of course if it had been easier to get to and see up close, then more people would come to see it and bring their money.

Besides the handful of reporters, the only group who had come by to see the airship had been a group from a fundamentalist church out on County Road C. They came to protest the airship. Rather they had come to protest and the airship was their occasion to do so. The small group came to town in a white school bus with a thin band of rust around the wheel wells. The tires were basically bald. The bus belched dark smoke and had a tendency to overheat on the slighest of inclines.

They parked the bus in the parking lot of a grocery story, bullied the manager into letting them stay there, and managed to get a few days worth of food donated to them as well. The man responsible for this, the group’s leader, then led a prayer session outside the grocery store’s entrance declaring that “refrigeration is a modern abomination” and the manager the “king of sinners, wearing his sinner’s vest with vainglory and pride.” The manager had refused to let him take the last carton milk from the cooler.

The protestors harrassed everyone who entered the parking lot and intimiated the police officer who came to break up the disruption by aggressively trying to expel demons from him and shouting about the plague of religious intolerance in the land.

By that afternoon, the group declard much of Briersville’s population to be communists, aethiests, and perverts. The airship, of course, was the visual manifestation, like a “boil on Belial’s nose” that proved it.

One of the group, an elderly woman who was an expert spitter and had spit in the faces of anyone of note in a four or five county area, came back to camp with a good piece of gossip. She had been at a local diner drinking a cup of coffee when she overheard talk about a special city council meeting.

“They’re going to discuss that abomination in the sky there,” she said.

The group’s leader, full of passion and feeling said, “Don’t taint your eyes with that work of the devil.”

“What happened next?” one of the other group members asked.

“Well, I stopped my waitress, a fallen woman if ever I’ve seen one. I put my hand on her arm and I felt the currents of sin tingling and coursing through me. I can still feel the sinfulness in my blodd.” The other members huddled around her. “Well I asked this Bathsheba what was going on with this meeting and she said, to me, ‘Lady, I do not know and I do not care.’ The immorality of her sloth made me jump out of my chair. I kneeled as quick as these old knees would let me. I kneeled before her and tears ran from my eyes, much like they are now, and I said, ‘Out devil. Leave this woman alone!’”

“Then what happened, Mrs. Katherine?”

“The manager asked me to leave, so I did. I did because I did not want the taint of sin on me anymore.” She did not mention that she did not have money to cover her pie and coffee either.

“So, there’s going to be a meeting today about the airship,” their leader said. “I want everyone to pray and seek out the strength and courage that we will need at this meeting. My followers, we are going to the temple and we will show these priests of decadence and debauchery the errors of their ways.”

When the time came, the group had to drive around for a while before they realized that the meeting was being held at the high school on account of the barricades. One of group members nearly leaped out of her bus window wanting to protest the barricades, but the rest of the cohort got her back in the bus.

Traffic was forming around the high school and the parking lot was getting full. People were walking in stray lines this way and that to get to the meeting. Most of Briersville, it would seem, had shown up.

The crush of people did not deter the group’s leader though. He found a low spot on a curb, a break in the traffic, and bounded across a race track and a soccerr field, and parked in the middle of a playground. The group unloaded from the bus and milled about, waiting for the instructions or inspiration. A few of the younger ones stretched and got limber. One young man continually rotated his throwing arm in a circle. It was not clear what his ammunition might be.

The leader, who was praying with his is immediate inner circle, two women in their mid-thirties, emerged from the bus. The group cleared a path around him. “My people, my flock. We have been called here today by a higher power. Not the power of that airship, that beast of the modern world. That is the idol that all of these sinners flock to. We are here at their temple to denounce their ways and to spread the news of the coming world.”

“Lord, give us strength against these sinners,” one of the group said and a chorus of amens followed.

As they convened, a police officer approached them. “Excuse me. I am not sure that you are supposed to be parked there.”

“Brother,” the group’s leader stepped out and towards the officer, “the lord works in mysterious ways. We have been called here today and we were meant to park here.”

“But it is a playground. I am going to have to radio the commander.”

“Then God save you son, you will be heralded in heaven as an agent of fascism and repression. St. Peter himself will cast you out and send you to hellfire and damnation. Don’t be a part of the problem with this decadent country. We have a right and a calling to here and we won’t budge, not even if you put television cameras on us.”

The police officer backed away and returned to controlling traffic in the parking lot. He spoke with another police officer then kept his back turned to the group.

The group opened the back of the bus where they kept a variety of signs and posters ready for any event. They selected signs with more of an “the end is nigh” feel to them. A few of the old ladies in the group held signs that read “Turn back from sin” in large letters. Another old man held a sign that read “Idolators beware”

Armed with their signs, the group pushed through the crowd and occuped a large space around the entrance to the high school gymnasium. They jeered and shouted at everyone who entered. The council members who passed by gave them puzzled looks. Most of the residents ignored them. They shouted and sang and chanted to announce that end times were near and it was time to repent.

They filed into the gymnasium after everyone else and stood along the back wall. A reporter walked up to the leader and started asking questions about the group, where they came from, what their they hoped to achieve. The message was long and rambling. They wanted to achieve so much. These were aspirational protestors and their aspirations never failed to seize an opportunity to do the good work they were called to do.

Chapter 19

The council members assembled together at the front of the gymnasium around a long row of tables. They shook hands, pattd each other on the backs, and made pleasantries. They looked out at the large crowd sitting along the sides of the gym on the old creaking bleachers. The council members weren’t used to crowds like this since hardly anyone but the most cranky or outspoken showed up to their meetings.

But the din in the gym rivaled that of a basketball game, and people in Briersville took basketball very seriously. The protestors in the back of the gym continued to make an even louder racket than before.

“Who are those people?” one of the council members asked.

“I do not know. But they’re causing a scene, why doesn’t someone ask them to leave?” another council member said.

“Litigation,” was all that the mayor said in response. The sensible council members stopped their questions at the sound of that. No one wanted to be responsible for repressing the religious rights of this unique group, so they let them be.

Besides, the mayor thought, it is time to turn our attention to this business of the airship. She motioned everyone to sit, which they did. The mayor looked around the room, nodding and smiling as needed. She saw the young reporter sitting on the floor writing watching and waiting for something newsworthy to happen. The mayor was not sure if supplying something for her to write about would be a success or not.

The mayor banged her gavel and opened the special meeting of the Briersville city council. She asked the police chief and the fire chief to stand up and give a report about the status of things in the town.

“We’ve been watching that thing for the last 24 hours,” the fire chief said. He looked over at the police chief and adjusted his statement. “Between your police and your fire figthers, we haven’t let that thing out of sight. I think all of these brave men deserve a hearty round of applause. They’ve been working non-stop.” Everyone in the auditorium, excepting the protestors, of course, clapped and cheered.

One of the council members spoke up, “Chief, would you recommend lifting the blockade around downtown?”

The mayor stepped in at this point, “We will address this later too. I want to get feedback during public questions.”

“Thank you madam mayor. Speaking for myself, I would recommend that the barricades remain in place for now. At least another week,” the fire chief said. The crowd murmered over this. A few of the men that had been in the mayor’s house earlier that day leaned and whispered to each other.

The police chief stood up too, “I would recommend the same.”

The mayor interjected again, “Please settle down everyone, we will revisit this is in just a moment. Please let Chief Norville finish.”

“From what we have seen the airship seems to be stable. Nathaniel Plaice reported that the airship seemed structurally sound, but empty. Either way, we will continue to monitor it.”

“Chief Gray, have you made any progress in discovering where the airship might have come from?”

“No, we have not madame mayor. I’ve been on the phone since yesterday with every major agency you can imagine. We have a handful of theories, but most of them are more implausible now that we’ve actually been inside the airship.”

“Thank you, Chief Gray,” the mayor said. “I would like to open the floor for comments from our council members. Do you any of you have anything you’d like to say?”

The council member who represented the downtown business district stood up, “Hello everyone. I am very happy to see so many of you here today. I think I speak for everyone when I say how taken aback I was by the news that the airship landed in our town. I’ve been on the phone with the building’s owner and I think there’s some real concerns about things like damages and liability. Now, I know this is a brass tacks kind of issue, and doesn’t get at any of the more…profound questions that have been going around, but we’ve got to consider it.”

He paused and looked over at the huddle of business owners, “And I think I speak for many of our esteemed business owners when I urge us to take a prudent approach here. Whatever we decide today will really affect a lot of people.”

The business owners he represented quietly clapped.

The other council members weren’t as outspoken about their opinions but all talked about the concern that has been addressed to them. One of the council members thought that they should do more to make it into a destination. “It has real historic value,” he said. “We could make it into a real attraction.” This was a popularly held view too and garnered some more claps.

One of the council members represented the far western edge of Briersville where a few freight trains ran through light manufacturing and farms where a number of Latinos had moved in recent years. The councilman’s election had been hotly contested, but most everyone accepted his presence on the council now. He stood up and said, “My only concern is where the salvage will go.”

“If we have salvage…” the last councilman said.

“Yes, if you do. But I want there to be a plan if we do salvage it and I do not want it dumped in my ward. we are still trying to clean up from that fly-by-night chemical factory that closed two years ago.”

“Thank you councilman, Ruiz. That’s worth considering.”

“Now I would like…”

One of the protestors interrupted “You’re condemned! The airship is a sign of your damnation!”

The others chanted “Damnation, damnation, damnation”

“Quiet! Quiet! Come to order!” The mayor shouted. The protestors quieted down.

“It’s time for public comment. You can come forward and say you are peace about the airship.”

An old farmer came forward to speak, “I do not agree with those protestors back there about this being a visitation or anything like that, but I thought that that building was a mistake and I think this proves it. I am not the only farmer here who feels like you city folk are doing things we do not agree with. And this is just one example.”

The mayor responded to the farmer, “So what do you propose we do?”

“Do? I am just a farmer. But I know a mistake when I see it.”

“Thank you,” the mayor said.

One of the business owners came forward next, “I just want to say that while I respect the opinions of our fire chief and our police chief, and you know that I voted for you mayor, I’ve been a big supporter of your’s, I think that keeping the downtown area closed for too long is just too risky. I cannot have my business shut down indefinitely. What am I supposed to do?”

“I appreciate the support, but do not you agree that there are safety issues?” the mayor said.

“I can see that, but everything seems save enough for now. Maybe we open a few streets at a time? Besides who’s to say when a real solution will present itself. Do you remember the issue of the repaitning the train station? It took us seven months to decide how to paint that thing.”

“Chief Norville, Chief Gray, do you have anything to add at this point?”

They both shook their heads no.

Councilman Ruiz stood up and said, “It’s not just a safety issue though. If you are going to have crews getting in there to work to dismantle the airship, you are going to need to give access to trucks and cranes and workers.”

The business owner nodded in agreement, “OF course, of course. That’s a very practical consideration, but we can always block of certain blocks as needed.”

“Let’s not get bogged down in these details. We still do not know what to do with the airship,” said the mayor.

Another business owner stepped forward and said, “But we need to decide sooner rather than later. How much is it costing us to keep that thing around? I haven’t heard anyone ask that yet. I appreciate the efforts of our police and fire fighters, but how much overtime are we paying and will continue to pay. And how much will it cost if we dispose of it ourselves? Renting equipment, hiring men. Even contracting it out. It’s a huge job. Who’s going to pay for it? That’s my question.”

He raised a good point, thought the mayor. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to bankrupt the city trying to deal with the airship. They already had enough problems on their hands. The budget couldn’t handle it. Maybe they could get some support from somewhere, but no one was stepping forward.

More people came up to express their opinion about the airship. Selling it for scrap, or making it a destination for tourists were the most popular answers. A few people expressed concern about raditation, though it was unclear why. All the while the protestors were hissing and stomping and making just enough noise so that no one forgot about them.

Finally the mayor stood up and said, “I want to thank you all for your concern and for coming to this meeting today. We have many things to discuss and decisions to make. Because of this, it is time for this meeting to go to a closed session. That means that the public portion of the meeting is over.”

The mayor wondered if the protestors would cause a scene and not leave, but they were the first to slip outside. They probably were setting up to cause a ruckus out there, she thought.

When the last of the public left, the mayor turned to the remaining council members and said, “So, what do we do?”

Councilman Ruiz jumped in first, “I say we sell it off to whoever will take it. Get it out of here and quickly as possible. That’s my vote.”

The only woman on the council, who was also on the school board, chimed in. “I do not disagree with that, but we still will have to go through the proper channels to dispose of it.”

The mayor considered this, “I guess it is technically an asset. So, yes, we might have to.”

“It’s a stetch to call it an asset though, do not you think?” said another council member. “It just landed in our backyard. This is an emergency situation, all appearances to the contrary.”

“Is there any value to keeping it?” the mayor asked.

The other council members shook their heads, the council member who represented the business interests said, “I cannot see any. It would be a drain on us. We cannot keep it up. Who knows how to anyway?” They all shook their heads in agreement.

“I say that if we find a buyer, we sell it. Who will try to stop us?” councilman Ruiz asserted again.

“But who would buy it?” another council member asked.

Just then the doors to the gym opened. A tall thin man in a white cowboy hat walked in. He wore a brown suit and tassled boots. He looked rough and refined all at the same time. “I will buy it,” he said. “I will take it off your hands, and give you $500,000 dollars for it too.”

“Any you are?” asked the mayor.

“My name is Henry Fontaine. I am a collector of sorts. A collector of the unusual.”

“And you want to do what with it?”

“Pardon me for saying, but that’s really none of your business. My money is good and I can hand it over to you by tomorrow, in cash.”

The council members chatted amongst themselves. One of the council members said, “I think it will be important to the community to know what will done with it. They will want to know and we should be able to tell them.”

“Not for $500,000 in cash.”

“Mr. Fontaine, you do understand that we do not know if we have a right to sell it.”

“I will take my chances.”

The mayor stood up and said, “We will only consider your offer if it is in writing. We will have to consult with our attorney too. we are still trying to reach him. I am sorry to put impediments in your way, Mr. Fontaine, but I have to put at least a few parameters on any potential transaction.”

“Of course. I understand. I will get somethign to you in writign. Since I will have time to reflect on it, I cannot promise that my offer will be as good, but I will get you something in writing.”

“We will look forward to it. Now if you will excuse us, we need to finish up our closed session meeting.”

“Of course, pardon me for the interruption. By the way, I would be careful with those folks you got out there, those visitors of yours, I’ve seen them do some real work on places before. They could have your people here stirred up in a frenzy in a few days. Just sayin’ It was nice to meet you all.”

Mr. Fontaine left the gym. The door slammed shut. The mayor asked the police chief, “Have we been abel to get through to Hank?”

“I sent a man out to find him. He should be back this evening, but I haven’t heard anything. Do you want me to do somethign about those protestors?”

“We will give them until tomorrow. But if they were to be in violation of any particular rule, I wouldn’t be upset, Chief.”

“Understood.”

“Well, folks, this just keeps getting more and more intersting. I will let you know if this Mr. Fontaine makes us an offer we can work with. I will be in touch tomorrow.”

The meeting adjourned and the council members went back to their daily lives, at least for the rest of the day. The mayor sat in the gym with her assistant while the school’s janitors began collapsing the bleachers and moving tables.

“You realize that you are going to have the get the airship into Fontaine’s hand.”

“Yes, I realize that. I just did not think he’d catch wind of this and get here so quickly. I had hoped that we could do something with that thing before he did.”

“He always called himself an avenging angel for a reason.”

“Yes, he did,” the mayor said, as they left the gymnasium too.

Chapter 20

“That’s right. Not since yesterday. Yes, I understand. Yes, mam. Boys will be boys, you are right. No, mam, I did not realize that. He did grow up to be a very nice man. I agree. Thank you for talking with me. And, Mrs. Wheeler, if you hear anything, please let me know right away.”

She got off of the phone with one of Arthur’s more indulgent teachers. He often could be found at her house eating lunch, watching a television show, or just sitting on her back porch in a broken old chaise lounge she had out there. One attraction was the collection of books she kept around. Arthur usually ferried books back and forth between her house and theirs. Usually the classics, sometimes some work of philosophy or a history, but usually old novels, and some poetry too.

Lisa had had Mrs. Wheeler for literature clases. So had Nathaniel, for that matter. They spoke of her fondly, maybe because she had been a refuge of one kind or another for all of the Plaice children. She had the knack of knowing when and what type of book to put in the hands of a reader. Lisa remembered when she tackeld Jane Eyre for the first time. She wandered through the fields around their house imagining that she was on the moors, escaping Rochester’s house to be free at last.

When she realized that even Mrs. Wheeler did not know where Arthur had gone, Lisa worried about her brother. He never disappeared this long without givig some indication of where he might be going. Even if it was just elusive suggestions of going here and there with some people, he always told them that he was not to be expected for the next few hours or more.

But this was different. It was as if he had been lifted right out of reality into some other plane of existence. No one had seen or heard anything. No one had called. There was not even any chatter going around. The only thing she had to go on was seeing Charlie at the diner and knowing that he had gotten into some kind of trouble. His cryptic comments did not help the situatino at the moment.

Lisa felt that this new set of friends knew where her brother might be. But they would be difficult to pin down and wring the truth from. They had all gotten very good at being elusive about their activities. She decided that she might need her brother’s help.

“Nathaniel… Nathaniel, wake up.” Lisa stood right outside Nathaniel’s room trying to rouse him. It was only four in the afternoon and he had been asleep for at least an hour. “Nathaniel!” she shouted.

“What is it? Go back to bed,” he said in a raspy, sleepy voice.

“It’s the middle of the day. I need you to wake up. I need to talk to you.”

“Alright. Just a second.” He stirred in the bed, put on his shirt and wrapped himself up in a robe. He did not like to be half-dressed around her and her brother. “Come on in. What is going on?”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I am worried about Arthur.”

“Why are you still worried about him?”

”I’ve been calling around and no one has seen him.”

“Maybe he’s out hitching or got a bus to go somewhere.”

“And you are not worried about that?”

“Lisa, Arthur is growing up. I cannot control everything he does now.”

“That’s not enough, Nathaniel. That’s just not enough. It’s your job to take care of us, to look after us. Dad made it your job. Why do not you do your job?” Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. Lisa could tell that he did not want to say what he was thinking. But she wanted him to just say it, to be honest about what he was thinking. “Are you going to say something?” she finally asked.

He lay back down in bed. “I am exhausted and do not want to deal with this. I did what you asked. I went up in the airship. It was empty. I came down and stood there while everyone took my picture. Your dream has been fulfilled so can you just drop it now?”

“My dream? This isn’t my dream. My dream… I do not even know what my dream would be. To have mom and dad back, maybe. But I do not even know what that means. You do. You konw. You got to have a mom and a dad. All we got was…you.”

“And that will have to do until you are old enough to do something about it.”

Lisa got up to leave, but before she did she turned around and said, “I understand that you do not want to be here, that this was not your idea of how you wanted to live. But it doesn’t change to fact that Arthur might be in trouble and he needs you to help him. He needs us to help him. If you can live with yourself if something happens, that’s fine too, but I cannot.”

She went to her room and gathered up a few things in a backpack. As she did, she felt so angry and frustrated that she wanted to cry and scream all at the same time. She held back both though. She did not want to give her brother, who did not bother to feel much about her and Arthur, the pleasure of seeing her upset.

But try as she might, she couldn’t hold back her frustration any longer. She walloped her pillow a few times and threw it across the room. She slumped down on the floor with her back against the bed and just stared at the wall.

As she sat there, she tried to grasp the thing, the singular thing, that made Nathaniel act the way he did, and treat her the way he did. He had always seemed so much older, so removed from her live, like he lived in a different world entirely. And in many ways, he did live in a different world. He floated out in distant space, following a different orbit, exerting and inclufed by completely different forces. It baffled her how she could have done anything to affect him at all.

But from the very first days after their father’s funeral, he stomped and stormed through their lives. It took him months to seem comfortable in their house. They were always late for the bus and would have to come running back to the house. She remembered one morning in particular when the temperature had dropped overnight. Her and Arthur had dashed out of the house to catch the bus but forgot their heaviest winter coats. The bus never showed up. They stood shivering in the cold, pounding on the door to get him to answer. Finally, they went to the shed and huddled together there until they went back to try again and Nathaniel answered the door.

She could go through many examples like this. Times when their lives all just clashed and caused problems. Oddly enough things had gotten better recently. Maybe it was because they weren’t needing as much from their older brother. Everyone kept their distance, especially Arthur who kept the most distance of them all.

Through it all, she somehow never lost faith in their older brother. She did not look to him as a father exactly, but always felt that there was something more behind his fuming fits. That other thing came through sometimes. He could be funny and caring from time to time. Just unpredictable. But they never considered going anywhere else, living with another relative. This was their home and their brother the closet thing to a keeper of that home that they knew.

It did not help that their father, while living, had not been the most attentive father. He was always so wrapped up in his ventures. He was always meeting and selling and striving. He always seemed hungry for more and more. It’s part of the reason that they ended up in the old farmhouse where they lived surrounded by land. So much land that was not really cultivated anymore. They had sold off all of the cows and chickens. Until a few years ago, Lisa still had a horse, but he had to put down due to old age.

So maybe the unsettled and uncomfortable state that her brother in seemed completely normal to Lisa. It seemed that Arthur was becoming the same way. She probably wouldn’t be able to save him from himself, but she did not want to give up on her younger brother just yet. She stood up, looking in the mirorr, and put a determined look on her face. She was not exactly sure where she was going and what she would do, but she desperately wanted to find her brother.

When she went to go downstairs, Nathaniel was standing there, waiting for her. “What were you doing in there? I’ve been waiting here for you,” he said, sounding grumpy and not smiling, but standing there nonetheless.

Chapter 21

It bothered Anna that she had to drive so far out just for a drink. But sometimes she did her best writing in bars. Fortunately it was easy enough to ignore whatever looks and suggestions were passed her way. She was not so good looking that it was a real problem, but enough that she knew how to keep the wolves at bay.

She had enough notes and thoughts that she wanted someplace to hunker down and write. A rye or two on the rocks wouldn’t hurt loosen the words up a bit. The story that unfolded through the day was not the kind of story that she longed to write, but there was enough happening to make it not a completely painful experience.

In some ways, she felt that her challenge was the roll back some of the extremes at the edge of the story. The religious protestors, the wacky theories, the local in-fighting and power struggles. She felt it was her job to distill these things down to their essence, to only present the kernel of the story in the most accurate way possible. All while hitting her word count, of course.

As she sat and sifted through her notes, she decided to focus on the tensions between the business community and the police and fire chief. The mayor seemed stuck in the middle of these two powerful forces. It was not clear to her what hte people in Briersville necessarily wanted. They seemed to want to follow the strongest leader. Typical people, she thought.

She had the notes from her interview with the mayor. That presented its own problems. The mutual recognition went unspoken between them. Anna was certain though that the mayor knew whose daughter she was. She was sure that the mayor realized that her cover, such as it was, was blown. Not that she was an escaped convict, but certainly she was a disgraced politician with some serious questions hanging over her head.

Maybe it was the rye, that made her generally more lax towards all forms of iniquity and injustice, but Anna decided that she could spare the mayor this time around. She actually felt some sympathy for the woman and did not think she was doing a terrible job as mayor. She could imagine any number of the people she met in the last few days doing a much worse job.

She positioned herself at the end of the bar far away from the door. She set up her portable typewriter and started flipping through her notebook. She had not caught the name of the religious protestor that she spoke with at the meeting. She did not know the name of their leader either, so she might have to leave out those quotes. She did find a few useful statements from folks who had strong opinions about whether the airship should stay or go.

She she sat chewing on the end of her pen (she had given up smoking only a month earlier), she couldn’t help but overhear two men further down the bar talking. At least, one was talking excitedly while the other listened and nodded and sipped his drink. She leaned a bit more and tried to listen carefully.

“I am telling you, I saw someone up there,” the talkative man said.

“Harry, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“I am not, Pete. I swear that I am not.”

“Tell me how it happened again?”

“You know that pair of binoculars that Sally got for me last Christmas.”

“Sure the real nice pair.”

“Yes, the nice pair. They’re real powerful and strong. Nothing’s busted inside of them. Besides, I had never even taken them out of the package, but do not tell Sally.”

“Of course.”

“I decided to do some bird watching in the neighborhood, been hearing some interesting calls with the change in teh weather. WEll, I get over to the Chess Park and I am walking around. I find a nice spot to settle in. I am watching the bird fly in and out fo the trees. There were some geese flying overhead. I followed them for a while, they were heading in the direction of the downtown. So, I am tracking them with my binoculars. And then all I can see is that airship.”

“So, I start obverserving it, looking it over. It’s quite a piece of work. And from where I am, I can really make out the engine sitting in the engine car and the propeller. I kind of got transfixed by it and by how well built it is. I could make out the grain of the wood and see how nicely it had been lathed and sanded down. So, I am looking at the propellor and the engine car when what do you think I see? I see someone poking their face out of the engine car. Then I see a kid standing there. I can even make out his hair whipping around in the breeze.”

“So, you saw a kid standing there? How old?”

“I do not, maybe 13 years old or so. So, the kid stand there for a few minutes. My heart is pounding, because he looks to be standig on nothing but a rod of metal from where I am. It looks like he’s hovering up there with hardly anything under him. Then he darts into the airship. Looks like he leapt into it. My heart nearly stopped. You know how I feel about heights.”

“Mmmhmmm. So, what happened next?”

“Next? Nothing. I just sat there dumbfounded in the park. I wandered home in a daze.”

“That’s quite a story, Harry. Do you think…do you think it is real?”

”I’ve got nothing to prove to the contrary. Do I seem of sound mind to you?”

“Sure, I guess so.

“But, Pete, do you want to know the strangest thing?”

“What is that?”

“I think I recognized the boy.”

“How so?”

“I think I know who was up there.”

“According to the mayor no one is up there.”

“Well, that cuts right to the heart of the matter. I think it was William Plaice’s son that was up there.”

“But we all watched him go up there.”

“Not the older one. The younger one. Austin was his name, I think.”

“No you mean Arthur. I caught him and his friends on my land with a air rifle shooting at my cattle not too far back. He’s turning out to be a trouble maker.”

“Looks like he got himself in a king sized heap of trouble then, because I believe, and I would testify in court, that it was Arthur Plaice that was up in that airship.”

Anna tuned out at this point. She wondered what this story meant. This man seemed completely confident that he had seen a teenage boy, the brother of the man she interviewed, up in that airship. But through binoculars. Was it possible?

Also, was it possible that this boy’s older brother had lied to the entire town about not seeing anything in the airship. She did not get the sense that he was shifty, if anything he seemed overly straightforward, almost aggressively so. She couldn’t believe that he was lying, which meant that he did not know that his brother was up there, which could mean…a whole number of things.

She surprised herself with the welling feeling of concern she had over this boy she had never meant and a man she had spoken to as the subject of an interview. She normally held her subjects at more than arms length, look upon them in a kind of clinical way. But Nathaniel Plaice had seemed so at odds with everything around him that she felt sympathy for him.

His sister also seemed bright and sensitive. They might be worried sick about what was going on. Anna decided that she needed to tell them about their brother and try to help somehow. At least this storyline did not involve gods or aliens or spirits or anything like that. That was reason enough to seize the story line and propel it along.

Chapter 22

“Nathaniel,” Lisa said. “There’s a car following us.” He turned around and sure enough there was a small car darting up towards them. “I noticed it after we left the house. Now it is acting weird isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is acting weird. Let’s see whats going on,” he said. He swerved sharply and turned the truck around. As the car passed, he looked down and saw the reporter he spoke with earlier looking straight at him. The car drove on, then braked suddenly and stopped in the middle of the road. “It’s that reporter,” he told Lisa.

“The one from the police station?”

“Yep.”

“What does she want?”

“Dont know. But she’s just sitting there in the middle of the road.”

Lisa turned back and looked out the back of the truck. “Just like us. No, she just got out of the car. She’s waving at us. What are you going to do?”

“See what she wants, I guess.” He turned the truck around and pulled off the road near her. The reporter jumped back in her car and pulled off in front of them.

He opened up the door to get out. “You coming too?” he asked. Lisa slid out of the truck into the thin dying grass along the side of the road.

The weather had been getting worse as the day went on and afternoon drizzle started to become a slick icy rain. Nathaniel could feel the hot cold of the rain as it brushed his face.

“You’re Anna, right?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“What are you doing Anna? I thought a criminal was after us.”

“No, just a reporter.”

“Very funny.”

“Did somethign bad happen?” Lisa asked.

“I hope not. Not yet anyway. Let’s… Let’s sit in your truck, okay. It’s getting cold out here.”

They walked back to their pickup truck and slid in from the passenger side. By the time Lisa got in behind him and the reporter, they were pressed pretty tightly together. He felt a bit uncomfortable about it at first, but she did not seem to notice at all. That almost made him feel more self-conscous, so he decided to not let it bother him either.

“I am dying to know what’s going on,” said Lisa.

“It’s a litle involved and strange and I do not exactly know what to make of the story. So bear with me. I just though you needed to know.”

“Can’t wait to find out,” Nathaniel said.

“I was set up at that bar a ways out of town. The Big House, I think it is called.”

“That sounds right,” Nathaniel said.

“I was going to work on some writing then I overheard two older fellows talking. At first I did not pay much attention, but the one guy started to talk about something really strange that had happeened to him earlier. Naturally, I paid a little more attention.”

“Naturally,” he replied. But the reporter did not seem to notice the sarcasm at all.

“Anyway, he started to talk about going bird watching and having a pair of binoculars with him. Then he started looking at the airship, studying it. Then he tells his friend that he saw someone up in the airship.”

“That’s impossible. I searched everywhere in that thing. You saw me go up.”

“Sure. I am not doubting you one way or the other. But get this. He is convinced that it was your brother up there.”

“Arthur!” Lisa nearly jumped up and out of the windshield. “We were just…”

“We were just out for a drive.”

“Nathaniel…” Lisa said.

“What?”

“Just tell her.”

“Tell me what,” the reporter said.

“Fine. Arthur’s been missing since yesterday. No one knows where he is.”

“Do the police know?”

“Not unless you’ve told them,” he said.

Lisa chimed in again, “We were just going to look for him, to make sure that nothing bad happened to him. See, Nathaniel, I told you something was not right. Oh…” she said, reaching across the reporter and hitting him on the arm. “It all makes so much sense now!”

“What does?” he asked.

“What Charlie said…Charlie is Arthur’s, pal I guess you would say. When I saw him at the diner last night he said that Arthur was a little light on his feet. And he had just gotten in trouble for being up on the rooftop of that building.”

“So, you think his friends dared him to go up there?”

“I know that’s what happened. That’s what had to have happeened.”

“Okay, this is all good detective work. But there’s one problem.”

“What is that,” his sister asked.

“I was just up in that thing today. Nearly got myself killed going up there. So, why did not he come out and say something?”

“Nathaniel, it is not like you and Arthur have been getting along so well. Besides, maybe he was hurt.”

“The man at the bar said he saw him going from one of the engine cars to the airship.”

“He must have been hiding from me. He did not want to be helped.”

“Nathaniel, we have to help him.”

“How, Lisa? How will we do that exactly?”

“Go up there and get him!” His sister was growing passionate about the issue.

“Look,” the reporter said. “I did not mean to get in the middle of something here.”

“You’re not in the middle of anything,” Lisa said. “My brother is being stubborn and selfish.”

“I am not selfish. That is the most ridiculous thing…”

“Can I make a point here?” the reporter said.

“Sure, why not,” Nathaniel said.

“It’s getting colder out there. And icy. The ice could easily start to weigh down the airship. Who knows what could happen then. Do you really want to take a chance that you are brother will be on board if that thing crashes?”

“You make a good point. But the counter point is that we do not have any hard evidence that he’s up there. Going up there won’t be very safe because of the same reasons you gave.”

“Let’s get proof then,” Lisa said.

“How?”

“Let’s go ask Arthur’s friends. They will give us the proof we need.”

He contempated this for a moment. He did not mean to be so hard on his younger brother. It was not as if he was demanding more time or attention from Nathaniel. If anything, Lisa was more demanding, made her needs clearly known. Maybe this was why they had more of an understanding. Even though he reacted strongly to her, he always what her demands were.

Arthur was completely different. Nathaniel felt this outpouring of disappointment and expectation coming from his youngest brother. The demands from him were unspoken, unmeasurable. His approval was unattainable. Nathaniel liked things to be much more clearcut and straightforward. He felt like his reserve of energy was very limited these days and his brother acted like he wanted to use it all up, and maybe ask for more.

Would saving Arthur from the freezing airship help this at all? Was this the silent demand being made. Imagining his thirteen year old brother evading him, sneaking off into the engine comparment of the airship infuriated him. What did he expect to have happen? How many people were going to go up there after him?

This was to say nothing of the fact that he was up there in the first place. Probably another damn dare from his friends that he was too weak to resist. Nathaniel had seen the work of people like that on a massive scale and couldn’t tolerate people who did not stand up for themselves.

But none of this changed the fact that his brother was probably stuck in a mysterious flying ship from another time. This was not exactly like getting in trouble for being drunk at high school football game, or driving a car on the railroad tracks. The distance between those trivial, even mundance trangressions, and this was pretty great.

As Nathaniel imagined his brother up there, cold and probably hungry, he knew that he would have to do somethign to help him.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s go ask those friends of his what’s going on.”

Chapter 23

Like some kind of secret society, it was their custom to meet in the woods in the evenings. Charlie came around to pick them up and they drove up with their small stash of booze and cigarettes. It was starting to get cold out, though, and Nick, for one, did not was not eager about going out with the guys.

But he knew that he would have to go when the dark car pulled up in front of his house and honked. Nick’s father was working the late shift at the factory where he worked and his mother was passed out in the living room. So he was pretty much free to go off as he pleased.

When got in the back seat of the car, he felt bad that Arthur was not there. In fact, he felt crummy about the whole situation. It was really messed up that they had made him go up there. Even though none of the guys in their group would have called each other friends, Nick considered Arthur to be the closet thing to a friend he could remember.

At least when Arthur was in the back, they could roll their eyes at one antoher and give each other exapsterated looks when the other two members of their cohort said ridiculous things, which was not infrequent.

Nick actually liked Arthur and would have tried to be his friend, a real friend, if there weren’t appearances to maintain in the group. The equilibrium between the four of them depended on each one sharing a perfect balance of antagonism and mistrust. They functioned more like a cabal or a cell than group or a club.

But he got in the back seat of the car, took a cigarette that was handed to him and took a swig from the flask that came around. Routines like these could ease over the pangs of conscience surprisingly well. So that by the time they got to the woods and their “tree house.” Nick did not think too much about Arthur at all.

Their talked focused instead on a girl that Charlie had tried to make a pass for that day. Her boyfriend, a letter jacket jock type, had stepped in at the last minute. “I was this close to pulling my blade on him,” he said, taking out his switchblade, “and jamming it into his stomach,” as he pretended to do in their pal Jeff.

“What happeneed,” the newly decesased Jeff asked.

“Ah, the cops rolled by and flashed their sirens. Besides she was not much.”

“Who Katie?” Nick asked. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I am sayin’ that and that’s that,” Charlie said. The others did not have much say in these decisions, so, indeed, that was that.

Nick hugged himself tighter and wished that he had worn a heavier jacket.

“You cold, you sissy?” Jeff taunted him.

“No!”

“Here, there’s only one way to warm yourself up in the woods,” said Charlie. He thrust the flask in Nick’s face. Nick took a big swig and he did feel a little warmer for a while.

The talk then turned to cars, which Nick also foudn to be kind of boring. He would much rather have talked about…something. He did not actually know what he would have rather talked about. History, maybe. Certainly the airship was something he had spent a lot of time thinking about and drawing. He felt bad for Arthur that one of his drawings did involve the airship crashing nose first onto the street and sending the town up in flames. But you win some and you lose some.

He gazed off into the darkness, getting colder and colder. From their vantage point, he could just make out the highway. A car or truck was heading their way. It pulled off the road. The lights disappeared. No, there they were again. He could hear the sound of the engine getting louder and louder. “Uh, guys, I think someone is coming this way.”

“No, way who’d be crazy to do that after what we did to that one poindexter kid…”

“I do not know but that’s a truck and it is getting closer.”

The truck rammed into the back of Charlie’s car. “Hey, what the hell!” Charlie slipped down the rope to the ground. He landed with a thud and brandished his knife. He started swining it in the glare of the headlamps. Three people stepped out. Nick could just make out their faces. It was Athur’s sister for sure. Maybe his older brother and someone else. He was not sure who.

“Come on motherfucker! That’s my car. Come on!” Charlie shouted.

Arthur’s brother stayed a safe distance away. Jeff turned to Nick and said, “No way in hell I am going down there.”

But then a commanding voice said, “Come on down boys, we’ve got to talk.”

They reluctantly slid down the rope to the group. Charlie was still brandishing his knife, but did not seem as eager to fight now. “Go ahead and drop that knife Charlie before you hurt someone.” The knife slid to the ground.

“Alright, so let’s start from the beginning. Someone care to tell me how my brother ended up in that airship?”

None of them talked. “we are not saying squat you jackass,” said Charlie. “You’re just chicken shit. You’re not going to do anything to me. Anyone can see that.”

“That may be. That may be. But this chicken shit can get you in a world of trouble if you are not careful. After all, I am a town hero now, remember.”

“He’s got a point, Charlie,” advised Jeff.

“Shut it you idiot,” Charlie snapped.

“Hey man, no need to get angry with me. You’re the ring leader. You take the fall, man.” Jeff stood up and cross over to the other side.

Nick saw this as his opportunity. He started to cross over and leave Charlie behind. Charlie grabbed him and held the knife to his throat. “Whoa, Charlie, what are you doing, man?” yelled Jeff.

“I am show you who’s the boss here.”

“Charlie, why do not you drop the knife. There’s no reason to act like a maniac,” Arthur’s brother said.

Nick wrestled with Charlie, but Charlie kept the blade close to his throat. He tried to stomp his foot and wriggled an elbow into the right angle to hit him in the gut, but nothing quite worked.

Then they heard a click sound. “Put down the knife, Charlie. I am so sick of you.” It was Arthur’s sister. She had a hunting rifle aimed at them with the hammer pulled back.

“Lisa, that’s not going to be necessary.”

“Like hell it won’t Nathaniel. These guys just do whatever they want. They do not care who they hurt. They do not care if Arthur gets hurt.”

“Hey, I care!” shouted Jeff. Lisa trained the gun on him. “Okay, okay” he said as he backed away.

“Charlie, I am serious put down that knife right now.”

“Or what little girl? You gonna shoot? I do not think so.”

She held the gun on them for a second. She’s really going to shoot me, Nick thought. This is crazy. Instead though, she pivoted and aimed the gun at Charlie’s car. She fired the gun and with a load roar the back windshield of Charlie’s car shattered in a thousand pieces.

Charlie dropped the knife. “My car, what did you do to my car?”

“What did you do to my brother?” she said in return.

Now that Charlie had let him go, Nick pounced on him quickly. Tackling him to the ground. Before he knew it, Arthur’s brother was there too, pinning Charlie to the ground. He wrestled the knife away and threw it into the bushes. In a few quick flicks and flips, he had Charlie up on his feet and pressed hard against his shattered car.

“Look, kid, I do not like to talk about it much, but I used to get a lot more information out of guys that had been living in ditches in snow with nothing to eat by rats. So, do not think that I know how to make you talk if I need to. You can either cooperate or we can go talk things out with the police.”

“Too bad your sister shot up my car,” was his reponse. Arthur’s brother cranked his arm hard. Charlie winced and cried. “Owww, owww, okay. I will talk. Geez. Why do not you ask these guys. Those saints were up on that roof too.”

“What happened on the roof?” Arthur’s brother asked.

“Well…” started Jeff.

Nick decided that he needed to step in, if nothing else to minimize his involvement in the whole affair. “We went up to the roof the same night that the airship crashed. We did it on a lark, just to mess around and have fun. And somehow, I do not really remember how Charlie dared Arthur to climb up to the airship.”

“And he did it?” his sister asked.

“Yeah, he did it. I do not know. I wouldn’t have. I guess he felt like he did not have a choice.”

“That’s ridiculous,” his brother said.

“I do not know. I do not know what he was thinking. Who ever knows what Arthur is thinking exactly. All I know is that I regretted it to minute it happened.”

“Why did not you do something then?”

“I do not know. I do not know.”

“The cops showed up,” croaked a defeated Charlie. “The cops showed up and hauled us off.”

“And you did not tell them?” asked Arhtur’s sister.

“It just happened so fast. We tired to scramble down the stairs, but we were caught. And then rushed out to police cars. I just…I just forgot about it.”

“So you think he’s really still up there in the airship?”

Charlie did not say a word. Nick nodded his head. “I think so. He hasn’t gotten in touch with us. And I haven’t seen him since that night.”

“Then we would better go find him,”” said the other woman with them. “Before someone else does.”

By now the icy rain was coming at a continual and relentless pace. They were all soaking wet. The icy rain shimmered on the shards of broken glass on the back of the car.

“I suggest you boys get home sooner rather than later,” Arthur’s brother said. “The weather isn’t going to be getting much nicer.”

Chapter 24

As they drove into town, Lisa felt a few pangs of regret over how they treated Nick and Jeff and Charlie. She couldn’t help but feel that they were the ones of the losing end of things who had banded together. They had their little secret club in the remains of a tree house that her brother hadn helped build a long time ago. And for whatever reason they clung to one another in that tree house.

She remembered the first time that Arthur told her that he was going to hang with those guys. Her jaw dropped to the floor. She couldn’t believe it. “Nick and Jeff and Charlie?” she asked in disbelief.

“It’s not like their the antichrist of something?”

“No, but there just so…opposite of everything.”

“So what. Maybe I’m opposite of everythign too.”

“Arthur, you’re being dramatic. You are not the opposite of things. You’re not an outcast with no one cling to.”

“I feel like that someones.”

“Sure. This is has a rough spell. But wait it out. Be patient. Let things run their course.”

“Run where, Lisa? Where are things running to? I just can not see right now.”

“But we are young. we are practically kids. It’s kind of unrealistic for us to know isn’t it. That kind of the whole point.”

“That’s the problem. The point of what?”

“Of living, Arthur. Of existing. Living means watching things unfold around you. If you already knew, would you really be living?”

“I do not think that would be so bad, to know what was in store of you in the future.”

Lisa had responded with a simple, “Maybe.”

That’s how they left so many of their conversation, with a “maybe” trailing off, leaving the disagreement between them unsettled and unresolved. Arthur would walk away seemed dissatisfied with the interaction.

But how could she really be expected to answer these question for him. She already felt like she was barely keeping her own head above water. It wasn’t an easy thing to make sense of their life up to now. Their mother and father had both been erratic on their won way. The only thing that helped settle things a bit was the healthy estate that their father had left behind. There was the land and the house and enough money to ensure a level of comfort that was still probably a bit more than they really expected.

It was nice to not have to worry about were their next meal would come from. She could only imagine what they may be like, especially in the relatively properous area where they lived. Even the day laborers and more temporary workers were reasonably well off. There weren’t many open disagrements between groups of people in town.

Maybe Nathaniel’s dissatisfaction had worn off on him somehow. Some days she felt trapped between her two brother’s restless irritation. She could only hope, as they raced towards downtown, that the airship would somehow settle things between them. She wasn’t exactly sure how it would happen, but maybe it could heal the rift between them, between all of them.

The rain caused more immediate problems. It was falling heavier now. Icy chunks accumulated on the car windows. The headlights lit up the rain as it fell. If things got much worse, getting up to Arthur could be a problem.

Nathaniel parked the car. We will have to walk the rest of the way from here,” he said. They each tried to stay as warm as possible. But just getting the few blocks from the car to the building where the airship sat froze them all fairly well.

The police presence had lightened up since the day before. It ended up not being hard at all to through to the building. A block away from it, the reporter, Anna, stopped them and said, “Is there a back way inside?”

“Had not really thought about that. I guess so.”

“I bet that’s how Arthur and the guys got inside,” Lisa said.

“Well, let’s find it.”

They crept around the building. Unfortunatley, the police were doing a better job of guarding the entrances to the building. A police officer stood in his trench coat and hat. He huffed warm breath into his hands and paced back and forth a few times.

“Now we need to distract him,” Nathaniel said.

“I have an idea,” Anna said.

“What’s…” but she had already started walking straight toward the officer.

They could hear the police officer shouting, “Uh, excuse me, I need to ask you to stop right there. You’re not allowed to be here.”

“It’s okay. I’m a reporter. See I have a press badge.” She held up her press badge in the beam form the officer’s flash light.

“Uh, okay. But what are you doing here?”

“Well…” she looked up at the airship. “I heard some rumors that the airship was unstable. Thought I would check it out.”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

“Well, this person was really specific.” She flipped open and note book. It looked like she was reading from it. “Yeah, it says here. North side of the buidling. The airship is sliding off. Will imapct any minute now.”

“No one called the police?”

“Maybe, I just came out here. No time to waste. I think we should check it out.”

The officer scanned the wet darkness around them. “Okay, but we got to make it quick.” Anna led him to the other side of the building.

“Come on, now’s our chance,” Nathaniel said. They dashed out into the alley to get to the door. Lisa slipped on the wet pavement, but Nathaniel grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “No time for that now. Let’s go.”

They got to the door. The lock was pretty shattered and had not been repaird. They were able to walk right inside.

They stood in a dark storage room. The door opposite them had been left open. Lisa could just make out elevators and the front lobby of the building. “Be careful. And be quiet,” her brother whispered. “We will have to find the stairs. The elevators were shut off earlier today. I think the door is around the corner from the elevators.”

“We will be standing right in front of the building there. They’ll see us.”

“Hopefully it will be dark enough that no one will notice. Are you ready?” He looked very intently at her. “Lisa, are you ready for this. It’s going to be a slog getting up there and getting to Arthur.”

She nodded. ”I’m ready.”

“Okay, let’s go then.” They crept out of the storage room, past the elevators. Nathaniel stopped and hugged the corner tightly. He nudged her and pointed out the windows. The rain had made the windows frosty and opaque. They could make out the back of the other police officer standing guard there. Nathaniel look around both corners. He pointed behind him. That’s where the stairs were.

He started to creep out in teh open space of the building’s lobby. The police officer still had his back to him. Lisa shifted from watching her brother to the watching the police officer. Her hear raced when she saw Anna and the other police officer come into view. Anna was trying to sneak a look inside the building. Their eyes met and Lisa pointed to her brother. Anna nodded in response and stepped out and away from the polcie officer. They had to turn their backs to windows and to Nathaniel who was slowly opening the door.

Lisa watched him open the door and wave him towards her. She checked the windows one more time and dashed along the wall to the open door. Nathaniel stepped into the stairwell after them. The door started to slam shut. Lisa shoved her foot out and caught it right before it slammed with the tip of her toe. Nathaniel grabbed the handle and eased it shut.

The stairway was even darker than the buidling. A few emergency signs gave the stairs an eerie glow. “You okay in the dark?”

“Yep.”

“We’ve got some stairs to climb, so let’s get started.”

As they climbed each flight of stairs, Lisa remembered her feeling of disappointment after this building was opened. She remembered hearing how people were upset tha ta tall building was “invading” Briersville. “It’ll look like it fell out the sky,” people said. But when the final panes of glass were put in place, the building did not seem so tall to her. She had expected to be overwhelmed by its scale and immensity. She had seen tall buildings in other cities before. She did not understand what the fuss was all about.

Now that she had to climb each and every stair that made up its height, she had a better appreciation for how tall the building really was. She also surprised by how quickly she felt tired and worn out. Nathaniel, on the other hand, just kept going up and up without breaking a sweat. Or so it seemed. He seemed to be driven to surmount those stairs.

Sometimes they were walking in complete darkness. Lisa had to trust the mechanical rhythm of her footsteps, one after the other. And she held on tightly to the hand rail.

Twenty minutes or so must have passed before Nathaniel said ahead of her, “Okay, I think we are almost there.” And soon enough they were huddled under the glow of another emergency exit light above the door to the roof. “This is it. Let’s hope it’s not too miserable out there,” he said.

He opened the door and a howl of wind overtook them. Lisa could feel ice cutting at her face. There was a thick sludge of ice on the roof. Everything was cold and slick. She looked up and stared at the airship. It was breathtaking being so close to it. It was much larger than she had realized. She also realized how much it was swaying and rocking in the wind. She could tell too that ice was accumulating on it. Suddenly the task of retrieving her brother seemed a bit more impossible than it had before.

It took her a minute to realize that they weren’t the only ones on the rooftop.

Chapter 25

Arthur’s heart sank when he saw the first rain drops hitting the airship’s windows. The pitter patter of the rain echoed above too. This would make getting down very interesting. But he realized it was time to come down and get back to regular life. His little escapade on the airship had been interesting, but it was starting to get boring being stuck up there.

Guilt also gnawed at him over the course of the day. He started to feel annoyed with himself for hiding from his brother. A few hours on and it started to seem like a childish thing to do. Of course, hiding from the world in a mysterious airship, wasn’t exactly a grownup thing to do either.

Had he proven anything to anyone by taking the dare so far. He had already resolved that he wasn’t going to share his exploits with the gang. The gang needed to disband after the affair on the rooftop. He secretly hoped that they had all landed in jail, not thinking about what that might mean for him when he came down. The longer he had been up there in the airship though, the separation between life before the airship and after the airship seemed to grow greater and greater.

Coming down meant getting off to a fresh start, in his mind at least. There were so many things that he could not differently just by virtue of having disappeared from the world for the last day and half.

Arthur made his way back into the airship to the rip in it’s belly where the tip of the antenna poked through. The belly of the airship flashed an eerie red from one of the signal lights on top of the antenna. As he inched along the girders, he could feel the airship swaying more than it had before.

He edged himself to the point where he could need to climb down. He peered down the length of the antenna. It look much taller and more daunting than it had the other night. This wasn’t what made him start to feel panicked though. It was the sound of voices coming from the rooftop that worried him the most.

Who is up here, he wondered. His first thought was that it must be more firefighters and police officers. Maybe another work crew to inspect the airship. But what he heard did not really fit that explanation. The voices seemed very rhythmic, almost like chanting or singing. It was faint though. Maybe the wind was playing tricks on him.

He peered down through the tears in the airship’s covering. He couldn’t make it out clearly but there appeared to be a group of people huddled on the rooftop. Were they on their knees? Praying? Suddenly his fancy of pretending to be a god seemed very real, but not in a helpful way.

He could make out one person who was moving back and forth down below. It looked be a man who was waving his arms and talking over the praying and chanting. He was saying typically religious things about damnation and hellfire and sinners. But who was playing what role wasn’t entirely clear to him.

Arthur decided that now wasn’t a good time for introducing himself to this very fervent and focused group of people. So, he went back to the cabin. Fortunately, being back in the cabin gave him a chance to warm up a bit. His right index finger had gone bloodless and cold. He ribbed it to get some feeling back, but it was too far gone for now.

Arthur positioned himself by the windows where he could see the group. It seemed like the bottom window pane could open. Arthur pushed at it gently, opening it enought that he could hear more and see more from his vantage point.

As he sat there watching and listening to the people on the rooftop, he couldn’t believe how tireless they were. How devoted they were. Maybe that’s what it takes to be devoted to something, he thought, to really have faith and belief in something. Arthur couldn’t think of many things that he felt that way about, even at the age of thirteen. Everything seemed to muddled around him all of the time. What would it be like to feel that way about anything.

The funny thing, he realized, was that he had ended up on the rooftop of the building just like those…worshippers. Maybe they weren’t so different. Was this a comforting thing or not? Arthur decided that it wasn’t. From his current vantage point, the people praying under an airship on a rooftop in a freezing rain seemed almost entirely to be fanatics.

Right now these fanatics had another mark against them. They were impedding his plan of coming down from the airship. He could just risk it and go down anyway. But maybe like the Dionysian cults he had read about in history class, they would tear him apart in frenzy. The thought made impersonating a god seem even less appealing.

Then something even more unexpected than a group of religious fanatics being huddled on the roof under the airship happened. Arthur saw two more people step out on to the roof top. He couldn’t be sure at first, but he thought it was his brother and his sister. What was Lisa doing up here too.

Seeing his sister there, huffing cloudy puffs of breath in the cold, frozen in the path of the prayers, made that creeping guilt he had been feeling even stronger than before. Arthur knew that his sister was the reason that Nathaniel and herself were up there to rescue him. He just wondered how they had figured it out.

He watched as the leader of the group circled around his brother. They were squaring off down there. Arthur wondered what they were arguing about. Whatever it was, it was getting intense.

He decided that he needed to go back to the opening in the airship. Maybe he could call down to them. By the time, he was peering down from the opening, he could hear shouting. His brother was shouting something about needing to go up in the airship. The group’s leader was saying that the airship needed to return from whence it came, or something like that.

His sister was being held by two of the group’s leader, little old lady’s who were exhibiting the ferocity of prison guards all of a sudden. Arthur poked his head down and shouted as loud as he could, “Nathaniel! Lisa!”

He could just make out his sister shouting back, “Arthur! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“These nut jobs are trying to stop us from getting up to you.”

He watched his sister struggled with the two little old ladies. She managed to know one of them down and dragged the other one a few feet before she fell too. Now that she was free of them, Lisa dashed to the tower. Without hesitating, she started to climb up the tower. “Lisa, do not it’s too dangerous!” Arthur yelled. But she kept coming up.

“Lisa! What are you doing?” Nathaniel shouted too. Arthur watched in amazement as his sister scaled the tower with no effort whatsoever. Before he realized it, he was reaching down for her hand and helping her up.

“Arthur!” she said, hugging him tightly around the neck.

“Oww, you’re hurting me, sis.”

”I’m just so relieved that you’re okay.”

”I’m fine.”

“What have you been doing up here?”

“Just…nothing really.”

“I just do not…”

“It doesn’t matter why. The guys put me up to it, so I did it. Then I was up here. Then I kind of liked it. It felt like something completely…different. I just needed to get away from all of that,” he said, waving his hand over all of Briersville.

“Why did you hide from Nathaniel?”

“Is he mad?”

“I think he’s more angry with that preacher down there.” They both started to laught a tired and stressed giggling kind of laugh.

“So what’ now?” he said.

“I do not know. I guess we did not really think this through. we are just making it up as we go along.”

“I can tell.”

The airship lurched forward suddenly. Lisa almost fell back down through the opening. Arthur still had a good enough grip on her that he pulled her back from the edge. “What was that?” she said.

They both looked down and saw that the religious group was standing around the base of the radio tower. Nathaniel had started to climb up it. He was dangling from one of the tower’s braces. The group was pushing on the tower. There were enough of them pushing together that the tower was shaking lose from its supports.

“Are they nuts?” Arthur said.

“Apparently so.”

“What’s going to happen to Nathaniel? They’ll kill him if they keep it up.”

“Can we stop them?”

“I do not see how.” The airship lurched forward again. “Lisa, hold on tight. I’m going to go down.”

But before he could, a strong gust of wind propelled the airship up and forward. It separated from the tower. Only the rope was keeping the airship tied down to the building. The religious group gave another heave and the tower crumpled over from it’s base. They watched as Nathaniel held on for his life as the tower bent and started to roll. He had a tight grip on the rope that he had tied off on the airship. With a quck guesture, he cut the rope.

Free of the tower and the rope, the airship started to drift away from the building with their brother hanging thrity feet below it from a rope. “Nathaniel! Nathaniel!” They shouted.

“We have to try to pull up the rope,” Arthur said. They braced themselves against the airships framework and pulled with all their strength on the rope. Down below, Briersville’s geography quickly gave way to the open fields and farms that surrounded the town. Nathaniel was inching his way up the rope bit by bit. Arthur and Lisa kept pulling and pulling until they were helping their brother up into the airship too.

“Let’s get back to the cabin,” Nathaniel said. Once they were back surrounded by the relative safety of wood and glass they realized the danger of their situation. The airship was drifting steadily along, not at a incredible speed, but fast enough to be some cause for concern.

“Can we fly this thing?” Lisa asked. Arthur and Nathaniel both stared back at her dumstruck.

“I think we would be lucky to even get the engine going, much less steer this thing.”

“How high are we off the ground?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe a few hundred feet. I can not really tell,” said Nathaniel. “But I think the best we can ask for is to somehow land the thing.”

“It could explode,” said Arthur.

“It will explode if we crash into something too,” said Nathaniel.

“It’s hyrodgen that makes the airship bouyant, right?” Lisa asked.

“Sure,” said Nathaniel.

“Well, what if there was less hydrogen?”

“Maybe there’s valves or something. We could open them up and let the hydrogen out,” Arthur said.

Nathaniel stood thinking for a moment. “It might be our only choice. If we can get the airship low enough we can go down the rope and try to hop off.”

“Okay,” said Lisa. But it was clear to all of them that this was their best chance to get off of the airship.

“There must a control around here somewhere to control the hydrogen,” Nathaniel said. He walked over to the panel of knobs and dials. Most of the instruments there were covered in grime and dust. He started to twist and turn a few but nothing happened. Arthur and Lisa looked them over as well.

“Look at these,” Lisa said. There were ten knobs lined up in a row. “I bet these coorespond to the hydrogen cells.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Arthur. “Let’s try it out.” They turned a few of the knobs and waited. “I do not hear anyting,” Arthur added.

“Wait, I can hear something,” Lisa said. Sure enough there was the faint hiss coming from the airship.

“Let’s open them up then,” said Nathaniel. One by one they turned the knobs as far as they could. The hiss grew louder and louder. At first though, they did not really feel anything. But after a few minutes, it felt like the airship was losing altitude.

“I think it’s working,” Lisa said.

“We better get to the rope if this is going to work.”

“Hopefully we do not end up over water,” Arthur said, not trying to be pessimisstic, but the thought did occur to him.

“We will just have to take our chances. Come on.”

They made it back to the rope. Looking down, land was getting closer and closer to the airship. “We do not have much time,” Arthur said.

“You go first Lisa,” Nathaniel said. “But be careful. Don’t jump until you’re sure you can land safely. And try to roll when you fall to absorb some of the impact.”

“Will our weight affect the airship at all?” Arthur asked.

“Don’t know. Only one way to find out.” Nathaniel tied off the the end of the rope with a handle from one of the levers in the airship’s cabin. He pitched the rope back down and it swung wildly below the airship. “Alright, get going, Lisa.”

Arthur watched her sister slide slowly down the rope until she was dangling from the end of it. She couldn’t have been more than 20 or 30 feet from the ground, but it still seem very dangrous from where they were. It was his turn to go down the rope now. Before he did, he turned to his older brother and said, ”I’m sorry, Nathaniel.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, I mean it. I did not mean for any of this to happen.”

“I know, Arthur. None of us did. We just have to do the best we can. And right now, that means getting down that rope.”

He lowered himself down until he was just a few feet above Lisa. Looking back up at his brother, Arthur was seized with the idea that Nathaniel might do something crazy like stay on teh ship and try to pilot it or something. His brother had a determined look on his face that put these kind of crazy ideas in Arthur’s head.

He was relieved when Nathaniel started down after them.

Chapter 26

Three siblings dangling from a rope tied to an old drifting airship wasn’t exactly how Nathaniel had imagined family reconciliation. But for the time being, this might be as close as it could get. Certainly, they were all focused on one thing: getting off of the airship alive.

The airship has sunk low enough now that they could hop off without too much risk of injury. Besides, Nathaniel could see a stand of trees in the distance. At this rate, the airship would crash into the trees before they could jump. What might happen then was anyone’s guess.

“Lisa! Lisa!” he shouted down. “It’s time. Are you ready?” His sister look ahead and saw the trees. She looked back up at him and nodded. She lowered herself even further to the poitn that she was just barely holding on to the end of the rope. Her toes seemed to be mere inches from the ground. She let go and went into a wild roll on the ground.

“Arthur, you’re next,” Nathaniel said. His brother followed suit, ending up ten or twelve feet away from Lisa.

Now it was his turn to make the jump. The airship was getting close and close tot he ground. Nathaniel hoped that enough hydrogen was vented to prevent a major explostion. The trees seemed far enough away that it wouldn’t cause a serious problem if it did, though he couldn’t imagine that the trees would be surive the impact very well.

By the time he got to the end of the rope, his feet were touching the ground. He ran along for several feet holding the rope with the airship attached to it above. He felt like a kid running through a park with an enormous balloon. Unlike a kid that clings desperately to the balloon only to experience the crush of disappointment when it clips away, Nathaniel gladly let go of the airship. Behind him, Arthur and Lisa were racing to catch up with him. They were all wet and soaking and freezing. The rain had not let up.

The airship continued to fall. It was low enough now that it seemed inevitable that it would crash into the trees. Before it did though, a gust of wind caught the tail and swung the airship around then pushed it sideways into the trees. The airship hit the trees, started to roll, then flipped up. It rolled over long ways once then crashed back down into the ground.

When it finally crashed, the airship caught on fire. There wasn’t much hydrogen, but enough to combust when the gas bags broke and the air came rushing in. The trees smoldered and smoked but were wet enough that they did not erupt into a full blaze.

In the distance they could hear sirens. Actually the sirens came from two directions. They came from Briersville and from the next closet town.

The field where Nathaniel, Lisa, and Arthur were standing lit up in red and blue lights. Fire fighters were working to clear brush and stifle the fire. Men in uniforms ran back and forth. An ambulance showed up and a police officer led the three siblings over to the ambulance.

A paramedic was talking to them when another police car pulled up. Officer Doyle and Anna, the reporter, got out of the car. Officer Doyle consulted with one of the fire fighters on the scene and was directed to where they were sitting and being tended to. Anna followed behind them.

When she saw them, she rushed to them and said, “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

“What happened back there?” asked Nathaniel.

“I was down with the police officers. We started to hear shouting, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from. Before we knew it, the airship was taking off and flying away. The biggest fear was that it would crash into something.”

“How did you realize we were on it?” Lisa asked.

“More police came and when they got to the roof, they arrested and started to lead down that religious group. I managed to get an interview with their leader and he said that people were on the airship.” At this point Anna looked at Arthur and asked, “Were you really up there this whole time?”

Arthur sheepishly nodded his head. “Yeah,” he answered.

“Huh, how strange.”

“What’s strange about it?” Nathaniel asked.

“I do not know. Just to think that when we were all crowded around the airship watching you go up there, there was someone up there looking down on us.”

“It wasn’t exactly like playing the part of a god. I mostly just sat up there and thought.” said Arthur.

“But still. We just did not know.”

Arthur then turned to them. “How did you realize I was up there?”

Lisa pointed to Anna, “From her.”

“REally?” he asked.

“I overheard someone talking in a bar about seeing someone up in the airship.”

“Somone saw me?”

“Evidently. He saw you when you were leaving the engine car and going back into the airship.”

“Now it’s time turn to find it weird. I can not believe that someone actually saw me. I thought that I had disappeared completely.”

“Not completely,” said Nathaniel.

Officer Doyle walked up to them next. “Well, this has been quite an adventure for everyone, hasn’t it?”

“Indeed,” said Nathaniel.

“I think the chief will want to have a long conversation about this?”

“Am I in trouble?” asked Arthur.

“I do not know son. Everything about that thing appearing in town was out of the ordinary. I just do not know. There’s sure to be some upset people in town, but people being upset isn’t exactly against the law.”

“Upset? Why?” asked Lisa.

“A fair number of people were scheming how to make money off of that airship. Tours, exhibits, scrap metal. You name it. I bet there’s someone right now who doesn’t listne to pplice scanner radio feverishly planning their next move. Yep, you’ve probably upset a few number of people.” Arthur seemed a little defeated by this speech. The officer went on the say, “On the other hand, you’re sure to find a few people to thank you for destroying that thing.”

“We did not do that on purpose.” Lisa added. Nathaniel wasn’t sure if she was tyrgin to keep her brother ouf of trouble, but he wished that she would exercise a bit more discretion.

“But either way it happened,” added Nathaniel.

“Sure, either way. But it means that stores will be able to open again downtown. Maybe life can get back to normal again.” Nathaniel thought that Officer Doyle seemed relieved by the thought of that.

“What about us?” Nathaniel asked.

“Well, I can take you back to town. Then we just need you to show up at the police station tomorrow morning.”

“Officer Doyle?” Lisa interjected.

“Yes?”

“What’s going to happen to those religious people from teh rooftop?”

“I do not know yet, Lisa,” replied Officer Doyle. “I haven’t heard much chatter about them on the radio.”

“I think this isn’t the groups first brush with the law,” said Anna.

“No, probably not. But…”

“What is it?” asked Nathaniel.

“There’s some conflict reports about what happened on that rooftop.”

Arthur chimed in, “Those people were trying to kill us. What’s confusing about that?”

“I understand, son. But that’s not the way the law works. We’ve got to hear those people out.”

“It seems like they’re really good at being heard,” Lisa commented.

“Well, that’s not for us to decide,” replied Officer Doyle. “Why do not you folks get in the car and I’ll take you back to town.” They piled into the back of Officer Doyle’s police car. It was warm inside and the chatter from the radio made everyone feel sleepy.

When Nathaniel snapped back awake, they were pulling up in front of the house. “Here we are,” said Officer Doyle.

“Home,” Nathaniel muttered. They got out and he tapped on Anna’s window. She rolled down the window. “Thanks,” he said. “You were a big help back there.”

“Anything to get the story,” she smiled.

“You want to come inside. I think we’ve got some stale bread for sandwiches. Maybe some old soup.”

“Sure, that would be fine.”

They waved good night to Officer Doyle as he turned and drove back out to the road. ”I’m starving,” Arthur said. What’s for dinner.”

“Let’s get inside and find out,” Nathaniel said.

Chapter 27

Lisa fell asleep as soon as she lay down in bed. As she got ready for bed, she assumed that tonight would be another restless night. She even stared up at the ceiling for a moment before closing her eyes. The last thing she remembered was the sound of laughter from downstairs as Nathaniel, Arthur, and Anna talked and joked.

It must have been hours later but she woke up to a tapping sound on her window. She woke up confused. She felt light and weightless. Was she back in the airship floating above the ground? No, it was her bedroom. The familiarity of things around her started to come into focus. And there was the tapping again at the window.

She rolled on her side and looked at the window. Given everything that had happened and how strange everything had seemed recently, she expected to see some kind of nympth or fairy or troll hunched on the window sill staring in at her. Maybe there would be a crowd of spirits there calling out for her with some mysterious request that she couldn’t decipher.

There was nothing there at the window sill, just a dark empty window. But more tapping.

Lisa threw back her covers and slid out of bed. She opened the window. Lonnie was standing below her window. She poked her head out jsut as he lobbed another rock. The rock clinked against he glass just shy of the top of her head. “Lonnie! What are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

The rain and sleet had made it much colder outside. Lonnie’s breath materialized in rolling clouds of smoke, almost obscuring him. Lisa could see her own breath too.

“Can we talk?” he said. He was obviously cold and hopped side to side.

“Okay, I’ll be right down.” She crept downstairs quietly. Anna was asleep on the couch under three blankets. She tossed around and looked up as Lisa sneaked past her. Lisa held up her finger to her lips and pointed to the door. Anna disappeared behind the sofa.

Lisa opened the front door. The cold bit her face and made thick robe feel thin as rags. Lonnie was standing by his car. She darted across the yard and jumped in his car. Inside it was still warm and the windows were frosting up. “What are you doing here, Lonnie?”

“I just felt so bad about leaving. There’s so much going on with the airship and your brother. I just felt like I should come back and help out.” Lisa started laughing. “Why are you laughing?” he asked.

”I’m laughing because…I do not know why. It’s just that…so much has happened since you left. The airship isn’t there anymore.”

“Where did it go?”

“It blew up!”

“Over the town? Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone is fine. It blew up in a field to the west of here. We were on it, Lonnie, right before it blew up.”

“You were? Are you serious?”

“Yes! Arthur had climbed up inside the airship yesterday. That’s why he was missing. Then Nathaniel went up there with all of that climbing gear.”

“So he finally came around?”

“Sort of, yes. He went up. Only Arthur hid form him.”

“Why?”

“I think…I think Arthur liked being up there oddly enough.” Lonnie nodded as if he understood. “Then there was this reporter who came to town and he found out that ARthur was up there. She’s sleeping inside right now. And so we had to sneak into the building. But there were these relgious protestors up on the roof.”

“What were they doing up there?”

“Praying for the end fo the world, it seemed. I went up in the airship. Then Nathaniel started up. But the protestors knocked over the radio tower. So the airship slipped off the building started the fly away. Only Nathaniel was hanging from the rope.”

“Right over everything, just hanging there? Oh man.”

“Yeah, so Arthur and I had to pull him up and then we had to vent all of the gas in the airship to get close enough to teh ground to get out.”

“And then it crashed?”

“Yep.”

“Wow, so I missed everything.”

“Pretty much.”

“I feel kind of dumb for coming back.”

Lisa leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s okay. It’s kind of sweet. Why do not you come inside get some rest.”

“Your brother won’t mind.”

“After what we just went through, I think it’s the least of his worries.” Lisa set him up with a few blankets and pillows on the floor inside. “Good night, Lonnie,” she said.

“Good night, Lisa. I’m glad everything turned out okay,” he replied.

As she went back upstairs, Lisa weighed in her mind whether or not everything had turned out okay. She guessed it was the best that things could have turned out. She did wonder about what Officer Doyle said about poeple being upset with how things had turned out with the airship. Would anyone hold it against them that they had blown up the airship?

It seemed like a strange thing to worry about given how close they came to dying. But for the space of a few days, the airship had hung over all of their heads. The airship, just floating up there the way that it did, had held out the possibility to affect any single person or every person in town. It dangled there on that tower like a die in slow motion mid roll.

Somehow they had gotten entangled in it in a way no one else had, and so a certain part of it belonged to them and their experience. She would always think back on teh airship and might even think of it as being “their airship,” however right or wrong that might be.

Chapter 28

When she heard the sirens whirl and whine and saw the flashing lights outside her house, the mayor jumped out of bed. Fear rushed over her. Are they coming for me, she wondered. Her more conscious and rational mind took over. She threw on her house coat and her slippers and went downstairs.

She opened her front door and found the police chief and the fire chief standing there. They both looked exhausted but not anxious or panicked. They certainly did not seem like they were going to take her to jail. This set the mayor much more at ease. Her public face took over and she said, “Gentleman, what has you out at this time of night.”

“CAn we step inside?” the fire chief asked.

“Of course,” she said. She stepped back and opened the door wider. The two chiefs removed their hats and stepped inside. “Let me turn the heat up a bit. Got chilly tonight.”

“Yes, mayor it did,” said the police chief.

It occured to the mayor that they might have been speaking in metaphor and she did not realize it. If it was a code or a metaphor what did it mean. Coldness, winter, the end of things, dying. Maybe they were coming to relieve her from power. Spring and thaw and warm weather would mean something better, of course.

But it was cold outside. So, it could just be that they were talking about the weather. Being pleasant. So, the mayor turned up the heat. The radiators in the house started to hiss as the hot water streamed through them.

The two chiefs were sitting in the front room. They weren’t saying much. The fire chief was closing his eyes. He was just starting to snore when the mayor came back in and said, “Coffee? Something else hot?”

”I’m fine,” said the police chief.

“Uh, me too,” the fire chief said. He rubbed at his eyes.

“So what business do we need to tend to at this late hour in my house?”

“It’s about the airship,” the police chief said.

“Nothing bad, I hope,” said the mayor.

“Not great, but not terrible,” said the police chief.

“It crashed about an hour ago.”

“In town? I did not hear anything.”

“Not in town,” said the fire chief. “About ten miles outside of town, closer to Valesburg. Just past Nickle Creek. There’s some woods there. The airship crashed there.”

“Any damage?”

“Some burned trees. Nothing too bad. We sent men out to help with fire containment.”

“A few of my men were on the scene too. They weren’t too far behind the airship.”

“What happened exactly?”

“we are still trying to sort out the details,” the police chief said.

“Was anyone injured? Anything we need to worry about?”

“It’s strange, but the Plaices were on board the airship when it broke away from the tower. That religious group…”

“The one from the meeting?”

“Yes, they were all involved in some kind of confrontation on the building’s roof. The Plaices ended up in the airship as it drifted along. They’re the ones that crashed the airship.”

“Were they arrested?”

“No, nothing to arrest them for, far as I can tell at this time.”

“They may have made the crash much less worse,” explained the fire chief. “They vented a lot of the airship’s hydrogen.”

“Well, this is interesting news indeed,” the mayor said. As she sat there, she tried to figure out what these events meant for the town and for her. It certainly did not help her situation with Fontaine. That was one little silver lining that had appeared since the airship showed up in town. She was holding on the hope that she could settle her debts with Fontaine.

“Is there anything left of the airship?”

“We can not tell right now. The fire did not get too hot. It’s pretty wet and icy out there. That also helped dampened the fire down,” the fire chief said.

“Let’s try to be there on the scene when things have settled down. I would like to know what exactly is left there.”

“The airship kind of left our jurisdiction,” said the police chief. we are just lending a hand at this point. It’s really Claremont County’s problem since that’s county land, not incorporated.”

“But it’s the subject of our investigation, correct? Potentially a criminal investigation?”

“Potentially…”

“Let’s try to sort the facts about this story as quickly as we can. I would like to know if your men need to invesitage the crash sight for any additional evidence for their case. I think Bernie is finally back in town, so we can talk to him about what the prosecution might need too…”

“Pardon me, madam mayor, but prosecute what exactly?” asked the police chief.

“The case, the criminals, the perpetrators.”

“But we are not sure if there is any case.”

The mayor set back in her chair. She did not need to overplay her hand. Everyone in that room was tired and moods could swing wildly. She could tell that the two chiefs took themselves to be staring at the end of the case and were relieved for it. She couldn’t push them too hard just yet. Just plant the suggestions and move on, she said to herself.

“Of course. Maybe I’m thinking too far ahead. Let’s just try to get this situation with the airship settled as quickly as we can. We do not want it to get to be the end of the month and we’er still scrambling to put together the pieces of a case, if there is one before to put together.”

The two chiefs nodded. The fire chief’s yawn signalled that it was time to leave. They both got up and went out to cars and the tired officers waiting for them outside.

The mayor watched them drive away, almost more worried now that the airship was gone than she had been when it was there hovering above Briersville.

Chapter 29

Officer Doyle had to hear his land lady complain for at least fifteen or twenty minutes that he had been coming and going at all hours of the day and night recently. “It’s not good for you health,” she told him. “The body needs regular sleep. My father always recommended at least eight and prefereabbly nine hours a night. Whatever could be so important to make you rush around like you have been. You’ll wear yourself out, Officer Doyle. Then where would I be. Where would this house be without you?”

While his land lady shuttered at the thought, Officer Doyle wasn’t too concerned. He was able to come home that night and sleep soundly and well into the morning. He wasn’t on duty again for another day. The chief had instructed many of them to take some extra time off.

Somehow the two days that the airship had been in their town felt like a whole month. It felt as if for every day in November there had been the airship looming over them all, demanding action from them. And so they rushed around just as the airship had demanded.

But now that it over, Officer Doyle looked forward to a day to just relax and not worry about an mysterious and ancient piece of technology exploding over his town and causing unspeakable damage in the process.

He was able to sleep to about nine in the morning. He prepared himself a cup of instant coffee just to get himself going. He decided that he wanted to pick up a book from the library, something that he hadn’t done in a while. On the way out his land lady cornered him and lectured him on the value of sleep.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate her concner, he certainly did. But he never could quite tell wehre her concern for him and her concern for herself began and end. Maybe she was just one of those people that mixed the two up together so much that you couldn’t separate out one from the other like an egg from a yolk.

The thought of eggs and yolks made him hungry. He realized the the diner downtown might be repopened. They always had better service there. The waitresses were much friendlier. Or so it seemed to him.

He drove downtown, half expecting to encounter police cars and barricades. But there was none of that now. Cars and trucks eased their way along the streets. People were walking on the sidewalk. Everyone seemed ready to move on from the last few days.

At the diner though, the airship and its fate was all that anyone could talk about. People were recounting bits and pieces of what had happened last night. The consensus tended to be that the religous group and released the airship and caused it to crash. The group had not generated much good will towards itself since yesterday. Their bad image in town already bore fruit in the general, pervasive hostility towards them.

A few people sitting for countertop service like himself nodded to him and then asked him for his opinion. He was circumspect about what really happened. Eventually, he figured, the full story with all of the particular ins and outs would get told and retold. Putting together a story with so many parts sometimes took people a while. A good story wasn’t something that you just put together in a few days.

As he ate his simple two eggs and toast breakfast, he was relieved that people mostly left him alone and out of the swirling conversations about the airship. He knew that he hadn’t heard the last of it. Probably better to measure out how much airship talk he would get.

After paying up for breakfast, Officer Doyle drove to the library, which had also been closed because of the airship. The small stone library ringed around the outside with columns, had only opened a few minutes before he got there. The library staff inside were starting to settle in to their daily jobs, sorting things, opening up their desks.

He browsed through the fiction books and then non-fiction. He always appreciated a good biography. Maybe someone like Lincoln or a Civil War general would be a good read. He also appreciated stories about inventors, explorers, and researchers. People that brought something to light intruiged him.

He found a few good picks and strolled around the library. A few mothers had brought their children to the library. The building was bright with the morning sun and cheery from the bubbling voices of children.

When he passed by teh library’s research room, he found himself eyeing the large cabinets of microfilm. He smiled at the librarian who staffed the desk just outside the research room and starting scanning the drawel labels more closely. There were many, many years of local and regional papers in there. They even had a few national papers.

He went up to the librarian at the desk and asked, “How hard is it to use the microfilm?”

“It depends on what you’re looking for. Did you have a particular date that you wanted to look up, a birthyday or a famous event?”

“No, I’m more interested in a subject. How hard would that be?”

“Depends on the topic. We have indexes for some of the local papers. The national papers and pretty thorough. The real question is how much time and patience do you have for the work. There would be a fair amount of sifting and scannning to find what you want.”

He considered coming back at some other time. But curiosity got the best of him. “How about I take a look at one of the indexes you talked about. Maybe I can start there.”

“That’s an excellent idea. Do you want to start locally or nationally?”

“Locally, I guess.”

The librarian led him over to a wooden table with a a series of small shelves mounted to the table top. Across the shelves were thick bound volumes numbered and dated. She pulled out a volume wrapped in a heavy brown covering and opened it up. The pages were columns and columns and narrowly typed entries. The librarian ran her finger up and down the page.

“Here are subject terms here,” she said, pointing to a column on the left. “And here at the dates where it appears. Over here you get page and section.”

“What do these numbers mean?” he asked pointed to a seemingly random set of numbers and letters after each article.

“That a notation that the creator of this index used to indicate where on the page the reference is located. It’s idyosyncratic at best. I wouldn’t reply on it too heavily. The real secret to using these successfully is the plan out your research first. Do you know how to do that?”

Officer Doyle gave a non-commital response. She went to her desk and returned with a form. “I suggest you start with this form. List all of the terms that you are interested in. Then try to group them together. This will help you with the index. If you don’t find a term, try one of the variations and so on. Being a little bit systematic now will save you a great deal of headache later in the process.”

“Well, this is a lot to absordb. Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome. Just let me know if you need assistance.”

Officer Doyle hung is coat on the back of the wooden chair at the table. He was down and started to fill out the workship. Then he flipped back open one of the indexes and hunched over it. He started flipping and running his fingers up and down the page. He started with the most obvious term, “airship”, and started to write down every date and page where an airship was mentioned.

This way, little by the little, Officer Doyle might just be able to fill in a little more detail about why the airship appeared in Briersville. It wouldn’t really impact the story as it happened and as people were telling it to one another, but having a little more understanding about the airship could come in handy later on.

Chapter 30

Anna woke up early before anyone else in the house was up. She almost tripped on a boy sleeping in blankets on the floor, but saved herself from crashing into the coffee table. The boy groaned a bit and kept sleeping.

In the kitchen, she rummaged around in the cabinets and found some coffee. They only had a stove top percolator, which needed a bit of cleaning. But she needed coffee to get on with her day. She emptied and scrubbed out the percolator. Soon enough after the water started to boil, she had a decent enough cup of coffee.

The warm coffee woke her up enough for her to work on her story. She didn’t have all of her equipment with her, so she made do with a a few scraps of paper she found in a kitchen drawer. She didn’t go anywhere without her notepad and pen, a graduation gift from her parents, and started to work.

She did her best to sketch out the details of what had happened since yesterday. She managed to fit in the meeting and the protestors and the relgious group getting arrested on the roof. And the airship. She wasn’t there and didn’t the see what happened, but Anna felt that she needed to be sensitive when she portrayed what happened on that building roof top.

She wasn’t going to censor the story. She would have to write about how a boy had been found in the airship. An attempt to rescue him was hindered by a group of relgious protestors. Hindered? Maybe “complicated”? she wondered. Well, she’d leave it for her editor to decide. So far none of this was unture, but she couldn’t say whether or not it accurately portrayed the confrontation that ook place on the rooftop, the way the group pushed and pushed the tower until it broke.

She didn’t include her own sense of powerlessness and fear as she looked up and saw the tower rocking and heard the faint shouts in the cold and dark night sky. She didn’t include her concern that the Plaices would be killed, or how she convinced the two police officers she was with the radio in the disturbance, hoping that the Nathaniel and Lisa would figure out something to do.

They certainly had figured something out. She just did not expect it to involve flying away in teh airship. At first, she wondered if it was planned in any way. But after the airship started to descend just outside of town, she realized that it was all an accident. The Plaices were desperately trying to figure their way out of the complicated business with the airship.

She had enough to file a story. She picked up the Plaices’ phone and didn’t get a dial tone.

“Phone’s not working,” Nathaniel said, standing in the back door way into the kitchen.

“I just figured that out.”

“Need to make a call?”

“I do. I need to file my story.”

“I can drive you to a phone.”

“That’ll be swell,” she said.

“Okay then. Ready?”

“Right now?”

“Sure, why not?”

“No reason. Let me get my coat.”

They drove to a gas station just on the edge of town. As they drove, Nathaniel said that the phone had not worked in several months. “I never bothered to fix it. Now, I guess I should.”

“Why now?”

“Just doesn’t seem right to leave it the way that it was. It needs some attention. It’s good to have a working phone, right?”

“If there’s ever a fire…”

“Or a giant airship overhead…”

“Or aliens or time travellers,” she added laughing.

“Well, a telephone would certainly be effective against time travellers. Are we talking about visitors from the past or the future?”

“Both, at the same time.”

“So not only are they technologically superior, but their confused too. Sounds like a dangerous combination to me.”

“Yes, deadly.”

“And the phone would be effective against this muddled threat from the the past and the future?”

“Indeed. It’s in all of the handbooks about this sort of thing.”

“You mean stories.”

“Yes, of coures. But don’t tell any of the writers that. The gospel of those stories is that they are are true to life as can be.”

“With a few notable exceptions like time travel or interdimensional space travel…”

“I didn’t take you for a science fiction fan?” she said, trying to not soudn too disappointed.

“No, I’ve just picked up a book here and there in my spare time.”

“I see.”

“We’re here. There’s the phone. It’s a pay phone. Got any change?”

“Ill call my editor collect.”

She hopped down from the truck and set up by the pay phone. Unforutnatley it was outside and although the weather was better and the sun was out, it iwas still early enough int eh morning to be cold outside.

Her editor accepted the collect call. “Anna, you still in Briersville with the airship?”

“I am. I have a story to file.”

“No need.”

“No need, why?”

“We were scooped. Another paper ran a full story about it including a exclusive interview with a group who was trying ot get rid fo teh airship.”

“Religious group?”

“That’s the one. Anyway, all of teh air has been let out of the story now. I’m bored with it. So I need you to come back. There are some oversight hearing todays that could be valuable fo us.”

Anna hung up the phone. How had she been scooped? Who else had been aroudn to tell this story. Stranger things had happened. She didn’t feel ready to leave Briersville just yet, but work was calling her away. Maybe she could play hooky for just one day.

She got back in the truck. “Got it done?” Nathaniel asked.

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nevermind, no need to worry about. Can we head back though? I think that I need to head back home.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah, well, duty calls. A good reporter doesn’t sleep.”

“Too worried about getting scooped?”

“Something like that.”

When they got back to the house, Anna collected her things from inside. She hugged Lisa nd shook Arthur’s hand. She even shook hands with the awkward young man who had been in asleep in the living room when she left.

“Come and see us again,” Lisa said.

“Yeah, come spend some time with our brother. Get him to relax a litte,” Arthur teased.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. But I’m glad that I got to meet all of you.”

They all stood silently in the living room for a moment, looking at each other. The others didn’t seem to be sure why she wasn’t leaving. Did they really not realize that she didn’t have a car? But no one was moving, so she said, “I need someone to drive me back into town so that I can go home.”

“Of coures,” said Nathaniel. “I didn’t think about the fact that your car’s not here. Let’s get going right away.”

Nathaniel dropped her off by her car. As she got out, he stopped her and asked, “Will I see you again?”

“I don’t know. I might be able to come back by here soon.”

”I’d like that.”

“I know. I would too. I’m just not sure.”

“I understand. My life is not the simplest arrangement. It feels too complicated for me sometimes, but I have to make it work. You don’t.”

“It’s not that…”

“What is it then?”

“It’s just that I have to go where the story is. There was a story here in Briersville so I’m here. Maybe I’ll be somewhere else in a few days. I like it that way. I like things being up in the air and little unsettled.”

“And things seem too settled here?”

“I think so. But you never know. Let’s just not commit to anything right now, okay?”

“Sure, that’s fine. Well, good luck to you. It’s been a heck of a few days.”

“It has,” she replied.

She waved goodbye to him as he drove off. She settled her bill inside and got her things together to head back to the city. As she left Briersville, she wondered if she would in fact ever see Nathaniel Plaice and his brother and sister again. She could imagine there being serveral more twists and turns in their story in the months ahead. But she also knew that once she sat down the story, other duties would call. There would be new things to distract her from the happenings in Briersville.

Chapter 31

In the days after the airship crash, Arthur tried to resume a normal life. Try as he might, though, normal life wasn’t quite ready to resume. He had to spend a fair amount of time with the police talking about his time in the airship. It remained to be seen if he would be in any real trouble. It clearly had been trespassing to sneak up on top of the building, but the airship itself. No one knew who that belonged to.

A hearing was scheduled before the judge. Arthur and Nathaniel and Lisa showed up at the appointed time. The judge heard the case, which really amounted to filling in details that he didn’t know from word of mouth and the local paper already. The judge ordered one hundred hours of community service for him. He also lectured Arthur about the mounting number of little transgressions he had committed. Arthur swore to the judge that he would not cause any more trouble.

The judge didn’t end there. He also reprimanded Nathaniel.

“Your father’s will made you the guardian and care taker of your siblings. You have some part to blame in all of this, as far as I can tell.”

“Yes, your honor,” Nathaniel said.

Arthur knew that the judge was right, even though the lesson came with a heap of humilitation for his brother. He felt bad for Nathaniel for the first time since their father died. The airship had made them all seem a little smaller, made their arguments and fights seem a little ridiculous.

They left the courthouse that afternoon, ate lunch, and went home. School had started back up but Arthur had not been able to attend regularly. He had a pile of homework to finish, tests to prepare for. He and Lisa set up their work at the kitchen table. Nathaniel sat in the living room reading a book.

“Everyone has been talking about you,” Lisa said.

“Oh yeah?” Arthur said, looking up from his poetry assignment.

“I can’t stop answering questions about you. It’s kind of annoying. And kind of okay too,” she said.

“Well, that’s something, I guess.”

“Are you nervous?”

“About what?”

“About going back to school. About seeing Charlie and Jeff and Nick. Speaking of which, I talked to Nick yesterday.”

“He has a crush on you,” Arthur said.

“He’s a freshman!”

“And you’re a junior. I don’t think much of it.”

“Anyway, he asked if you were okay.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said that you were fine. I thanked him for helping us. He does seem like a nice guy.”

“Yeah, Nick was never the problem.”

“Maybe you can start a new group. You and Nick the leaders.”

“The leaders of what? Brainy outcasts, one half of which spent two days in a phantom airship and nearly died a few times?”

“Sure, something like that.”

”I’ll write up the plan as soon as I finish this poem.”

They went back to studying. They were quiet for a few more minutes then Lisa looked up again. “Arthur, do you ever wonder why the airship landed here?”

“Not really.”

“Not even when you were up there?”

“It just happened. It just got stuck here.”

“Like maybe it wasn’t supposed to?”

“Maybe not. I don’t know. It’s not like it came here to teach us a lesson or something.”

“I wonder if it ever went anywhere else.”

“What like the Ancient Mariner?” Nathaniel shouted form the living room. “Telling his story to anyone who would listen?”

“Maybe,” said Lisa. “But it does seem kind of silly to think that doesn’t it.”

“I don’t know, Lisa,” Arthur said. “It almost felt like it was sent there for me, for a little while when I was up there and could see over everything. It seemed like that was how it was supposed to be for me. Looking at everythign from the ground had not been the right spot for me to see the world. But when it floated away with us inside of it, I guess I realized that it was just a huge machine, just pieces of metal and fabric.”

“It’s not so magical when it could burn you up in a cloud of gas and fame,” Lisa said.

“Exactly.”

Nathaniel walked in to the kitchen witha folded up paper. He tossed it on the table. “Another interested development in our story,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Lisa.

“According to this, the leader of that religiuos group had a number of warrants out for his arrest. It appears that he had led a few different lives. Fraud doctor, embezzeler, sham religious leader, ambulance chasing attorney have been a few of his occupations.”

“I wonder if his followers are upset,” said Lisa.

“Why’s that?” asked Arthur.

“Their whole world just got crumbled up in their faces.”

“Maybe, but poeple like that have a way of riding out these challenges. For all we know, he has spun the whole ordeal into yet another sign and portent of the sinfulness of modern times. The establishment’s after him. I’m sure that he has everything tied up in a tidy package, every insinutation about him, every aberation in his story. He’s got it all spun out in a tale to tell.”

“And he has an audience,” said Arthur.

“Yes, who has no motivation to believe otherwise,” said Nathaniel.

“It’s too bad they don’t know the truth.”

“Maybe,” replied Nathaniel. “None of it really matters though because it sounds like he’s going to jail one way or another.”

“I wonder if he regrets coming to protest the airship,” Lisa said.

“I guess it will depend on how many followers he picks up in prison,” Arthur said.

“I wonder too. I guess the idea of an ancient airship floating over a town was just too much for his imagination to resist. How could he not come here and try to make something of it?”

Author’s Note

Several years ago, I was very interested in airships. I developed two stories that featured airships prominently. One of them was a mashup with T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land. I wrote that story using a text to speech program (mind you this was well before the days of Siri and Google Now).

The other story idea involved a family, just two brothers and a sister, who found their life altered when an airship mysteriously appeared in the town where they lived. In the earliest version of this, I wrote the story like a Hardy Boy’s adventures. The siblings were prodigies who travelled the world, invented things, and had precociuos insights about science, art and the world at large. I think that early version featured something called the Arrow Brigade, who would be the arch villans of the series. The kids and the Arrow Brigade would first confront one another over the airship.

Once I scrapped that story, I redeveloped the concept around the image of a airship snagged on a building. It’s lost to time now, but there was an email list devoted to airships that I subscribed to at the time. I remember posting a quesiton to the list about this concept and how feasible it would be. The idea wasn’t shot down completly.

The siblings stayed in teh story, but they were a little more ordinary. The older brother would be the caretaker, an arrangment preciptated by their father’s death. The older son was going to run a stationary story or a hardware store depending on which version I was working on at the time.

At this point, the airship had a mysterious pilot, a spectral Ancient Mariner like figure. The younger brother and sister would discover the pilot and find that he was dying. He was British and the pilot would be too. The airship would be a WWI vintage British airship. The pilot had been scouring the world looking for the woman he loved, the woman who presumed him to be dead.

The woman, it would turn out, was the kids’ high school english teacher. Their favorite teacher and, it would turn, out a lover of Romantic era poetry. The kids would reconnect the pilot with the woman, who was well into her seventies at this point, even though he seemed like a haggard younger version of himself.

Then I started to dismiss this concept as being a bit too contrived. I reworkd the story one more time but with the youngest brother going through rebellious phase. He would get into trouble vis-a-vis the airship. Lessons would ensue.

The story sat there, in an imaginative stasis for several years.

Then I picked it back up for NaNoWriMo. The tentative title, “The Rift”, pointed to a more fantastical mood for the story. There would still be a pilot aboard the airship, trying to return the airship to a rift that existed in a small town. The siblings would remain, not realizing that their father had been hiding the existence of the rift from them. Their house would be filled with interesting antiques and treasures, all brought back from their father’s trips through the rift.

For some reason, this story gave way to what I ended up writing, which is a more straight forward “literary fictional” rendering of this image of the airship snagged on a building.

The problem that I wrestled with the most writing this story was what to do with teh airship. Put another way, “What does the airship mean?” As I worked through this question, I struggled with literary criticism like Leo Bersani’s Culture of Redemption that calls into question the “redemptive power of art.”

Ultimately, I settled on some redemption in this novel, but held fast to the idea that the airship is a netural enigma, a signifier from the Real to use the language of psychoanalysis and literary criticm (these terms and modes of thoughts are like my own mental airship floating in from another time).

I don’t know if you can have “a little bit of redemption” in a story, but meting it out in a small dose like this is a concession to the need for dramatic arc and tension, and the ultimate concession that moralizing, even anti-moralizing moralizing can cause you to run adrift.

I bothered to write any of this down for a few reasons. First and foremost I’m trying to meet my final word count for NaNoWriMo. The other reason is to document some of the twists and turns that this story took from the central image of an airship showing up in these characters lives to actually getting it down in a readable form.

I make a point of never planning for NaNoWriMo. No notes, no outlines. I don’t even cheat by leaving comments. I start at the beginning and end at the end. Looking back at some point, I’m sure that the beginning won’t seem like the beginning and the end won’t seem like the end. The ending as it exists now is kind of pathetic, but I couldn’t resist trying to wrap up the fate of the religious leader.

The winding and happenstance nature of getting all of this down does make it a bit more interesting to note how the story evolved. If you didn’t catch it in the story, I am interested in whteher ot not the airship will forever float out of my imagination now that I have “done something with it.” Maybe it deserves the be revisted in one of these other versions, maybe the characters will leap out of this story and appear in another.

The open ended nature of these question and the fact that I don’t even really know the answers or understand them in advance makes writing stories down interesting and worthwhile at all.