The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 06

part one

chapter six

Life was like riding his bike home from school, even in high school. Or running home, because running always felt so good. Getting home felt good, most of the time, anyway, because after all the chores were done there was an hour on the piano. Because that time on the piano always felt like the best time of all.

Beyond the best, even. There was always something new waiting.

There was color in music, explosions in new chords that felt like silvery shivers when he found them. Like shining a flashlight in the darkest corner and finding a shiny new puppy, something alive and bright with playful possibilities. His mother had shown him Chopin and Debussy, but then he had found Gershwin on his own and that had changed everything.

So many explosions, so much color!

And ever since fourth grade, when the Eversons moved in next door, there was June. The other constant in his life.

She was a kind, odd flower, too; from those first moments steeped in light and color. Not the color of music. No, the first time he saw her she was on the front porch of her father's house, standing behind an easel, lost in the moment with a paint brush in her hand. She was looking at a hummingbird, fascinated by the bird's motionless grace as it supped from flowers growing up one of the columns supporting the front of their house, her huge blue eyes visible from across the yard.

Was it possible to notice anything else about her?

It was the middle of summer, deep within all those other middle-moments before school started, when the sun was high in the sky, the breeze coming off the bay fresh and cool, the memories still so sharp now that they still hurt.

He stood inside that moment lost in her eyes, lost in time even then, watching her as if he was meant to do just that.

Their first moment together never really went away, did it. That frozen slice of time was the foundation upon which all the rest was built.

Sun-glints in her red hair, shallow waves of freckles on her nose and just under her eyes; but always those eyes! He stepped into the light, stepped closer to the moment and he saw her look his way...

"What are you looking at?" she always asked, even now. Even today.

"The hummingbird," he lied, never turning away.

"It's amazing," she said, suddenly her voice a faint whisper. "I've never seen green like this before...it shimmers in the light..."

He walked ever so slowly to the porch and came up to her, and even then the movement - this coming together - felt so natural. He was drawn to her like a tidal surge, and it was as simple as that; what was so strange was her tacit acceptance of him even then, but how can you deny the tides?

They belonged together, and it was strange because everyone could see it happening, even from the beginning. Even her father knew what was happening, despite all his misgivings.

Soon enough she heard his playing in the afternoon and came to the door of the Callahan house, peeked inside - looking for the source of all this new color, color she couldn't quite see yet. Within days she was on the inside looking out for the first time in her life, standing behind him lost in an otherworldly trance as she watched his fingers dance within all those strange new colors.

From the first she was fascinated by his hands, by the movement of his long fingers, and soon enough she would stand there, sketchbook in hand as she studied his every sinew. When school started that autumn they walked there and back home together, even had the same teacher so they were hardly ever apart, and even there she would watch his hands as he doodled on paper; there were even times when she drew those errant currents, too, recording those moves for some purpose hidden by the future.

While she loved birds and flowers most of all, and then Harry's hands, in time she loved to sit and listen as he played - then she would disappear for hours, usually for the rest of the day, and what she did in those stolen moments hidden from view was a mystery.

Harry's feelings for June went through diurnal phases that seemed keyed to the way his mother reacted to June's presence; on some days his mother doted over June and so Harry almost detested the sight of the girl next door, while on others his mother seemed loath at the sight of June. Of course, on those days Harry doted over June.

So consider if you will that over the years these tidal swings exacted a staggering toll; on Harry certainly, but also on both June and his mother, yet no one really seemed to understand where and when these deeper fault lines emerged. Perhaps it was in Harry's music or something within June's painting, but no one, absolutely no one seemed to understand the true nature of the music Imogen Callahan created when storms approached, when lightning danced overhead and as thunder rolled across the bay. When the music that filled the Callahan house danced and rolled into the deeper registers, as memory and experience carried them all towards the eighty-eighth key...

+++++

Callahan was bunked-out in the bowels of the ship, waiting for the Huey to be rearmed and refueled so they could make the flight back to - where? Phu Bai was still closed, though Danang was reportedly reopening now, and word had filtered-down overnight that C-Med had been overrun at one point and the facility retaken at great cost after an intense firefight that had lasted hours. Parish was beside himself too, seemingly desperate to get back to his work, and Callahan was surprised by this obtuse transformation.

So by early morning it was time to round up anyone headed 'back to the beach'; Callahan made his way to the hanger deck and did his usual walk-around in very strange company indeed. Here, down below the flight deck, his Huey was surrounded by Phantoms and Corsairs, and crews were loading huge bombs on ordnance racks on a line of A-6 Intruders. Then his Huey was hauled to one of the massive elevators for the ride up to the flight deck, then muscled into a spot just aft of the island - the tail rotor hanging out over the churning sea maybe forty feet below.

Parish was up on the main deck already, so were the medics and Don McCall - though he wouldn't be flying today - as well as a bunch of Army types that needed to be repatriated to their units ashore. Everyone clambered in the Huey and a crew chief came out and gave Callahan the hand signals he'd need to get off the ship, then signaled engine start before he walked a safe distance away.

A few minutes later Kilo Bravo -6 was headed for the beach and deep into the heart of the Tet Offensive...

+++++

The Jetstar taxied to a secure spot on a ramp dedicated to small jets and, after the engines spooled-down, Avi led Harry down to a waiting staff car; they left the airport and drove into the sleeping city, the streets now almost devoid of traffic. A few minutes later they came to a small cluster of new houses located behind a formidable stone wall, and a soldier opened the iron gate guarding a vast interior courtyard. Callahan looked at the security detail surrounding the homes and shook his head, then remembered this was Israel, not Miami Beach - though the climate felt similar enough.

Avi led him to a house deep within the cluster and up a brightly lighted entry courtyard overgrown with miniature palm trees, and another sentry opened the door - from the inside! - greeting Avi deferentially before eyeing Callahan with frank suspicion.

"Is she up," Avi whispered to the sentry.

"Yessir, though she seems quite agitated."

Avi nodded then turned to Callahan: "Follow me."

And Avi turned, led him back out to the main courtyard and across a walkway to another, smaller bungalow. Again, a sentry opened the door from inside and Avi led the way into the living room. Where Frank Bullitt and his girlfriend Cathy were sitting there, looking more than a little put out...so Avi and the guard quietly retreated.

Bullitt stood when Harry walked into the room, then walked over to him: "You okay?"

Callahan nodded. "Yeah, you? Have a nice flight?"

"You mean aside from worrying about you? Were you on that little jet?"

Callahan nodded. "Saw yours being pushed back as we took off. How long have you been here?"

"'Bout an hour, I guess. Called Bennett when we got here and he's frantic, already lodged some kind of complaint with the Israeli embassy in D.C. Someone from our embassy is on the way out here right now, but as far as anyone knows you were abducted by persons unknown."

Callahan shook his head. "Swell," he said, settling into one of the comfortable room's overstuffed aqua-colored leather chairs.

"Someone told us Nixon stayed in this place when he visited last year," Cathy said from the sofa. "Harry, what did you get mixed-up in?"

"My mom," Callahan sighed. "My mom leads another life, or something like that."

"Like what?" Bullitt asked.

"Well, she's married to something like the minister for scientific security, and I guess when she's not busy having psychotic breaks she designs hydrogen bombs."

Bullitt looked at him now, his lips bunched-up in a deep scowl and his brow deeply furrowed, then his face split into that wide grin of his. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Yup."

"Minister of Scientific Security?"

"He thinks Egypt and Syria are planning an attack. He's trying to convince their government to get ready."

"And what about you? Why do they want you here right now?"

"Well, that's the fun part, Frank. Seems they lost a bomb, and they want me to find it."

"A bomb?" Cathy asked, her eyes wide. "You mean..."

"Yeah," Bullitt smirked, "our Harry is full of all kinds of interesting surprises these days."

Callahan shook his head then stood and walked over to a vast wall of sliding glass doors; he looked to the southwest, to Orion settling over the western horizon, then to the east - where rosy fingered Dawn was just beginning to show-off her handiwork.

The morning calm was shattered when a flight of Phantoms took off from a nearby air base, and he watched them climb almost vertically before all four turned to the northeast, their dual afterburners trailing in the night sky like the eyes of angry dragons. He felt Bullitt by his side a moment later, then Cathy joined them as they all looked up into the fading night.

"When's this war of theirs supposed to start?" Cathy asked.

"Soon," Harry said with a sigh. "He's not sure, but soon."

"Swell," Frank Bullitt growled as the fighters disappeared into a pink sky. "That's just fucking swell."

+++++

"Kilo Bravo -6, Phu Bai reports now open. Expedite return and pick up supplies for C-Med."

"-6 received."

"What's up?" Parish asked.

"Gotta pick up supplies before we head up-valley. Doubt we'll be on the ground five minutes." Parish nodded his head but he seemed agitated. Real agitated. "What's wrong?" Callahan asked.

Parish turned away, then looked back. "I gotta girl up there. Lives in a village maybe a mile away. She came round, asked if she could do little things, ya know? Like our laundry, shit like that. Would've been fine but she's a looker and, ya know, I was horny and one thing led to another."

"Don't tell me. You asked her to marry you."

Parish looked way, shook his head.

"You do know you're a fuckin' hypocrite, you fucking asshole."

"Yup."

"But why?"

"Misery loves company, I guess."

"Misery?"

"Yeah, man. I love the hell out of her but that's just it. Can't take her stateside, ya know? So this can only end one way, and I don't like the way it's gonna play out, ya know? I just don't dig unhappy endings, ya know?"

"What do you mean you can't take her home? Why not?"

"Against the rules, man. No fuckin' way the Man would let something good come out of this fucked up war, ya know?"

"There's gotta be a way. You'll find it, so don't sweat it. Besides..."

"Besides what, man?"

"If it's meant to be, it will be."

"Ya know, Callahan, I didn't take you for a religious nut-job."

And years later it hit Callahan exactly what he'd said, and he'd wondered at the time and ever since if he'd really meant it. He'd dreamt of his Looney-Junes the night before, and it had felt in his sleep as if she'd never passed on, that they'd had the baby and settled down in their own house overlooking the bay and life had played out the way he'd always hoped it would...the way he'd thought it was meant to...

And so, the logical conclusion was all that had never really been meant to be, right? That she'd gone to that fucking butcher over in Oakland and he'd simply killed her out of neglect, so that was meant to be, too. Meant to be? How could something so right be so swiftly snuffed out, erased from life's ledger so completely? That just didn't make sense, and the whole notion that her death was a part of somebody's plan left him cold, left him not wanting to know a god like that.

But now he understood what was eating Parish.

They were on the ground at Phu Bai for maybe a half hour, on a hold while the Air Force pounded the area between C-Med and Hué City, mainly because Callahan didn't feel like flying around the area looking for a safe route through. Better to wait it out and fly there direct and, besides, the longer wait gave them more time to load supplies.

When they did get off the ground they did so in a flight of six Hueys, and they flew direct in line-formation, and with a dozen Cobra gunships escorting. Callahan's was the last Huey to land and unload on the little pad and Parish said his goodbyes this time, shaking Harry's hand before he jumped out and ran towards surgery.

"Kilo Bravo -6, RTB and expedite."

"-6, RTB."

Most Return To Base calls were rare, and in the middle of a resupply even more so, and so inwardly Callahan figured he'd done something wrong.

Though of course he couldn't have been more wrong.

+++++

By the time junior high rolled around everyone knew Callahan and that weird red-haired girl had done it. They had to have, right? Because they were together all the time, sometimes night and day. Her old man was a freak, too, playing with doves all the time, or pigeons, or whatever...! And all she did was paint his hands. Too weird...

But everyone couldn't have been more wrong.

By the time Callahan was fourteen the whole contrapuntal thing with June and his mom had gotten a little out of hand. When Mrs C said she liked June Harry still hated the girl next door and he stopped seeing her after school, and when Mrs C told Harry the girl was trouble all of sudden he couldn't get enough of her. The really odd thing was the color of his music, because the quality seemed to ebb and flow on these tides, with Harry boldly experimenting when his mother castigated him for associating with the girl to his expressing complete disinterest in music when his mother seemed to adore her. And again, perhaps the greater point lost here is the net effect this evolving tug-of-war had on the little red-haired girl next door, because she never knew from one day to the next what Harry's feeling for her really were.

But sometime in high school her father gave her a Nikon, a real honest to god Nikon F, the real pro model with the brick-like Photomic finder, and June's artistic interests turned on a dime as she flew off on this new tangent with unbelievable passion. JFK had barely been in office a month but all of a sudden photography was the new thing, and magazines like Life and National Geographic became the new focus of her artistic interests. Even so, she still loved to watch Harry's hands on the keyboard, and she would fire off a roll then disappear, dash to her basement and develop her latest studies. Harry grew fascinated with this stuff too and asked his dad to check on Nikon prices during his next trip to Japan; he came back a few months later with an identical Nikon, as well as several new lenses.

And these new pieces of glass fascinated June, expanded her view of the world like nothing Harry could have imagined. They walked the waterfront taking pictures of mollusks when the tides were out, and on Saturday nights they took the streetcar into the city and went to coffee-houses, photographing folk singers into the wee hours. She wanted to go to an airshow over in Oakland once, and Harry saw a helicopter in action for the first time, even talked to an Army recruiter about it, then they stood in open-mouthed wonder when the Blue Angels performed, ducking low when the jets roared by just overhead. They walked past the train station and up to Jack London Square, and they'd called her dad that night because they finally realized how far away from home they'd roamed.

And they learned about life that way, through the lens and one picture at a time. They'd walk up to strangers and ask to take their picture. They went to art galleries and museums, taking pictures of everything then rushing home to develop what they'd found - and then they'd relive the day while they talked each other's work.

And this idyllic bliss would go on until Harry's mom experienced another psychotic break and Harry ricocheted off her emotional walls again.

After a really bad one June sat on her front porch crying like a broken angel, and when Harry saw her sitting there all of a sudden he figured everything out and ran to her, held her and promised he'd never let her go and that nothing like this would ever happen again.

But the damage was by then real and lasting; June knew the only way she could break free of the cycle was to break free of Harry, and she tried more than once to follow through with her decision and make a break for it. Yet somehow she never could.

She thought about her dad mostly, during those times when she questioned her resolve, thought about him sitting in the backyard with his doves, still lost and alone.

Ever since her mother passed, she couldn't help thinking that the worst thing you could do was walk away from your destiny, and if she knew one thing at all in this world it was that Harry Callahan was her's.

+++++

"You Callahan?" the three-star general stated more than asked.

"Yessir."

"Assigned to a RAM team out of Bamburg in '65?" using the common abbreviation for the Radiation Assessment and Monitoring squadron he'd been assigned to when he was stationed in Germany.

"Yessir."

"Well Callahan, we've got a Broken Arrow over in Laos or Cambodia and we've got to get it out. There are only two Wizard-equipped Hueys over here, and only one qualified pilot. You. When can you be ready to go?"

"As soon as you show me the bird, sir, and any reconnaissance there is."

"It's on the ramp at Danang," a full-bird colonel said as he handed over an envelope full of the latest recon imagery. "An EH-1H prototype, we were using it for a project we're working on and it happens to be Wizard-equipped. You ever flown the -H?"

"No sir, but if it's a Huey I can fly it."

"We know you can, son," the general said. "I know you're reserves, so I tell you what. If you do this for us how'd you like to go home early?"

"Not very much, sir. The fight's here. I'm needed here."

The officers in the room looked at one another, then nodded. He had passed this last test, the most important test of all.

The general stood and held out his right hand and Callahan took it. "Good luck, son."

"Yessir." Callahan saluted and executed a crisp 'about-face,' then stepped out of the room and waited in the ante-room at 'parade-rest,' as he'd been forewarned. The colonel came out a moment later, said "Follow me" to Callahan as he strode from the room. They rode out to the flight line and the colonel passed Callahan off to an Air Force captain in a light gray flight-suit; the captain looked at Callahan's blood-splattered helmet and gear then shook his head before walking over to an OV-10, pointing to the back seat. "Been in one of these before?" the captain asked.