“Touch and Go”
William Auten
Copyright © William Auten
During the descent, her father stretches supine in the clouds—the wings carving out his wrist, elbow, and arm and the bed sheets wrapped around him before breaking down into seams when the plane touches down with summer baking the tarmac. Margo fidgets in the doorway, the sun noon-high, but smiles her best and clears her throat, telling passengers goodbye, safe travels, fly with us again. Is this your final destination?
The head flight attendant and captain excuse her from her post-arrival tasks, relaying the crew’s hopes and prayers—the navigator passing along the name of the airport chaplain—and she snatches her luggage and sprints the jetway, passing an elderly couple and their grandkids she helped find their seats. Taxis snake in and out of loading zones; none of them stop as she waves. A line lengthens at the payphone by the information desk; the one by Capital Gifts, on her way from the gates, was out-of-order, its line ripped out and lost among the crowd buying the holiday specials.
“Dad!” a woman yells from the passenger window of a tan Plymouth idling at the curb.
The shout stuns Margo. The elderly man, his balding head and scraps of white hair shaded by a hat emblazoned with VFW, pivots on his cane and limps forward, his bag slapping his leg. Her father emerges from the man’s stride and looks over his shoulder at Margo before disappearing when the elderly man slides into the car.
“Are you OK?” the woman asks.
“Yes.” Margo blinks, wipes her eyes at the woman capped in an Uncle Sam hat and cotton puffs on her chin. “Actually…no. I can’t catch a ride when I need it most.”
“We’re headed to the Mall. You?”
Margo glances at the man driving, his faded Army jacket, and in the backseat, two kids, a mutt, and the elderly man, his bag over his lap. “Reston.”
“We got room for you. We’ll drop you off on our way.”
Car and truck tires and planes screech the hot air as Margo looks around: traffic growing with honks, brake squeals, and exhaust swirling under the canopy; pedestrians thickening on sidewalks and boarding shuttles; her father’s hospital and room number. “Hurry,” he said to her on her hotel room’s phone. “He’s slipping and may not be here much longer.” Another string of taxis bypass her for riders flashing cash. “If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. We’d be happy to.”
“Thank you.”
The younger man gets out and shakes her hand. “Dennis.”
“Margo.”
“My wife Gale.”
The woman smiles.
“Terry and Tammy. My father-in-law from Miami. And Mr. Bojangles.”
The boy and girl in the backseat wave as they eat their snacks and drink from a canteen, their lips stained purple. The dog’s ragged ears perk up. The elderly man falls asleep.
After opening the trunk, Dennis slides around picnic blankets, a cooler, lawn chairs, and a box of sparklers and stuffs Margo’s suitcase next to American flags stenciled with HAPPY 200TH BIRTHDAY.