Flights by Jim Shepard

him looking down at me when I was little and honking and scaring me,” she finally said. Biddy made a face and she added, “He honks when he talks.”
    His father came out and sat next to them, drink in hand.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Biddy asked.
    â€œMilk of Magnesia,” his father said. “What’re you, a cop?”
    They were quiet as it got darker, and Kristi slapped at another mosquito. Her father said, “You guys’re going to get eaten alive out here. Why don’t you sit in the porch?”
    â€œHow come Louis plays with little kids?” Kristi asked.
    â€œAre you a little kid?” her father teased. She ignored the comment and he cleared his throat. “Well, you know Louis doesn’t always get along that great with kids his own age.”
    â€œHe’s retarded,” she said.
    â€œNow I don’t want you throwing those words around. Either of you. Do you say that to him? Are you mean to him?” He looked at Biddy. “Is she mean to him?”
    â€œNo,” Biddy said.
    â€œI don’t want you being mean to him, now. The poor son of a bitch’s got enough problems. He’s a good kid.”
    â€œDoes everybody make fun of him?”
    â€œIt isn’t easy for him. You should feel sorry for him.”
    Kristi collected her cards into a pile. She’d gotten a little sun at the game and her nose and cheeks were pink.
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with him playing with you guys. Or with all of us.”
    The house was becoming simply a shape in the gloom. Biddy sat staring into the darkness beyond it, trying to imagine what it would be like to be Louis.
    â€œHe’s a good kid,” his father repeated, getting up to go. “That Mickey’s harder to take than he is. I don’t want you kids bothering him.”
    Biddy shook his head to agree not to, his eyes still focused out into the distance, but in the gloom all but the most emphatic gestures were lost.
    The next few days were spent in preparation for school as much as for the Air Show. Biddy was fitting into a new uniform, Kristi had outgrown her shoes, and they both needed school supplies and enough other shit to choke a horse, as his father put it. So the announcement that they were flying to the Hamptons for the weekend, getting a free ride with a friend who commuted to Sikorsky by Cessna, surprised everyone, and excited only Biddy.
    â€œWhat’re we going to do in the Hamptons,” his mother said, spooning out peas.
    â€œNothing. Hold our hand on our ass,” his father said. “The vacation spot of the East, and she wants to know what we’re going to do there.”
    â€œWhere’re we going to stay?”
    â€œWe’ll stay with the Carvers. Look, if you don’t want to go—”
    â€œI’d love to go. I have my heart set on going. Your friends are my friends,” his mother said.
    His father took the spoon from her hand and piled more peas onto his plate. “You bring a lot to the party, you know it?” he said.
    â€œI know it,” his mother said. “Sometimes I’m not all I’m supposed to be. I know that, too.”
    Late that Friday afternoon they drove around Lordship to Bridgeport Airport. It took, he thought as they drove through the main gate, longer than it would have had they just walked to the end of their street and gone under the hurricane fence.
    Mr. Carver pulled up in a little Datsun and hurried over, a short heavy man in a white shirt with a dirty collar. He switched hands with his briefcase and gave Biddy’s hand a firm single shake. He did not look like Biddy’s idea of a pilot, but the very idea of that much spatial freedom—the ability to go, almost literally, in any direction one wanted, to be free of the confining limits of even roads or tracks—excited Biddy so that he could not keep back his desire to want to admire this man, peering at his physical exterior