just snapped a random photograph and, at the very same instant, the Maggot swore and banked and rammed the throttles hard forward.
We were side-slipping, starboard wing down, falling to earth with our engines howling. I flailed for support as the camera flew up to the padded ceiling. The Maggot whooped, dragged the stick back and our earthwards wing lifted and suddenly we were screaming just above the palm trees, close to the tiled roofs and at a speed that seemed to be doubled because of our proximity to the ground. The camera, re-entering the world of normal gravity, dropped hard beside my shoes. Beer bottles were everywhere. One broke, shattering liquid across the side windows. I had a glimpse of a fair-haired girl staring wide-eyed and terrified from a tennis court, her racket held loose by her side and tennis balls scattered at her feet and, though the trees and buildings and gardens were nothing but a high-speed blur, my mind nevertheless registered with a startling clarity that the girl had been completely naked. The plane’s engines were screaming. We whipped over the northernmost house, across the beach, and thus out to sea again. “What the hell?” I managed to ask.
“They fired at us! goddamn tracer bullets! Jesus!” The Maggot did not seem scared, but rather stung by the challenge. We were over the lagoon now, racing towards the northern strands of the Devil’s Necklace, but low enough so that the wash of our twin propellers was whipping the blue water into a wake of white-hazed foam. “Shee-it!” The Maggot said with inappropriate exultation, then twisted his head to stare back at the island. “Let’s go see them again!”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked, but I might as well have saved my breath because the plane suddenly climbed, banked, then began descending fast towards the island again. The Maggot was growling to himself, relishing the confrontation. Sunlight reflected from a window among the palm trees to lance a sliver of dazzling light at our cockpit, then the reflection was gone and we were at sea level, engines screaming, and I fumbled for the camera, prayed it had not broken when it fell from the ceiling, and took another picture just before Maggot lifted the aircraft’s nose so that we swooped up and over the palm trees that edged the beach.
He jinked left, then right, throwing the plane into such steep and sudden turns that I was alternately jerked hard against the cockpit’s side window and then against his broad shoulder. The Maggot was not taking evasive action but quartering the ground in search of our enemy. “There!” he said abruptly and threw the plane straight again, but this time dropping the nose, and I saw a jeep churning dust from the dirt road which ran the length of the island’s long shank, between the golf course and the houses, and just as I saw the jeep so the red tracer bullets began climbing from a machine-gun mounted in the back of the vehicle.
“Oh, Jesus wept,” I said, snapped a last picture, then ducked down in momentary expectation of the windscreen shattering into a million bright scraps.
“Fuck you,” the Maggot screamed at whoever fired at him and I looked out of the Beechcraft’s side window to see palm trees going past at over 150 miles an hour and above us. Above us. Truly. And I thought it really had been a very good life, a fun life, despite Ellen never having gone to bed with me, and I wondered if my father would even notice my death, then the Maggot whooped with glee, hauled back on the stick, and our plane was screaming up into the wide blue lovely bullet-free sky and the Maggot was laughing and slapping my shoulder. “Wasn’t that just the best goddamned fun you can have this side of a blanket?”
“Was it?”
“You missed it?” He sounded aggrieved and astonished.
“Missed what?”
“I ran that turkey clean off the road! Shit, but I gave that bastard a headache!”
“I think you gave me one too,” I said, then,
We were side-slipping, starboard wing down, falling to earth with our engines howling. I flailed for support as the camera flew up to the padded ceiling. The Maggot whooped, dragged the stick back and our earthwards wing lifted and suddenly we were screaming just above the palm trees, close to the tiled roofs and at a speed that seemed to be doubled because of our proximity to the ground. The camera, re-entering the world of normal gravity, dropped hard beside my shoes. Beer bottles were everywhere. One broke, shattering liquid across the side windows. I had a glimpse of a fair-haired girl staring wide-eyed and terrified from a tennis court, her racket held loose by her side and tennis balls scattered at her feet and, though the trees and buildings and gardens were nothing but a high-speed blur, my mind nevertheless registered with a startling clarity that the girl had been completely naked. The plane’s engines were screaming. We whipped over the northernmost house, across the beach, and thus out to sea again. “What the hell?” I managed to ask.
“They fired at us! goddamn tracer bullets! Jesus!” The Maggot did not seem scared, but rather stung by the challenge. We were over the lagoon now, racing towards the northern strands of the Devil’s Necklace, but low enough so that the wash of our twin propellers was whipping the blue water into a wake of white-hazed foam. “Shee-it!” The Maggot said with inappropriate exultation, then twisted his head to stare back at the island. “Let’s go see them again!”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked, but I might as well have saved my breath because the plane suddenly climbed, banked, then began descending fast towards the island again. The Maggot was growling to himself, relishing the confrontation. Sunlight reflected from a window among the palm trees to lance a sliver of dazzling light at our cockpit, then the reflection was gone and we were at sea level, engines screaming, and I fumbled for the camera, prayed it had not broken when it fell from the ceiling, and took another picture just before Maggot lifted the aircraft’s nose so that we swooped up and over the palm trees that edged the beach.
He jinked left, then right, throwing the plane into such steep and sudden turns that I was alternately jerked hard against the cockpit’s side window and then against his broad shoulder. The Maggot was not taking evasive action but quartering the ground in search of our enemy. “There!” he said abruptly and threw the plane straight again, but this time dropping the nose, and I saw a jeep churning dust from the dirt road which ran the length of the island’s long shank, between the golf course and the houses, and just as I saw the jeep so the red tracer bullets began climbing from a machine-gun mounted in the back of the vehicle.
“Oh, Jesus wept,” I said, snapped a last picture, then ducked down in momentary expectation of the windscreen shattering into a million bright scraps.
“Fuck you,” the Maggot screamed at whoever fired at him and I looked out of the Beechcraft’s side window to see palm trees going past at over 150 miles an hour and above us. Above us. Truly. And I thought it really had been a very good life, a fun life, despite Ellen never having gone to bed with me, and I wondered if my father would even notice my death, then the Maggot whooped with glee, hauled back on the stick, and our plane was screaming up into the wide blue lovely bullet-free sky and the Maggot was laughing and slapping my shoulder. “Wasn’t that just the best goddamned fun you can have this side of a blanket?”
“Was it?”
“You missed it?” He sounded aggrieved and astonished.
“Missed what?”
“I ran that turkey clean off the road! Shit, but I gave that bastard a headache!”
“I think you gave me one too,” I said, then,
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