The Coffee Cantata

"I'm going to fucking kill the bastard!" he whispered as the old man walked up the Porter and kicked the wheel chocks away. Then he turned and walked back to the terminal building.

"Oh, God damn it all to Hell!"

He flung open the door and undid his seat belt, then climbed down to the ground and stomped off to the terminal building.

"And where are you off to?" he heard Martin ask.

"Get a goddamn Coke."

"They don't have any. I just checked."

"What?"

"Nothing. There's a cart out front, some chap making tea. That's it."

"No fucking water?"

"Nope. We'd better get going. It'll be cooler over the mountains."

Ben wheeled around and stomped back to the cockpit, climbed back in and fastened his seat belt, and waited until Clive was belted in beside him, then he finished the pre-start checklist and started the PT6, watched the gauges while he finished the checklist.

"This seems a nice improvement over the one I borrowed from Air America," Clive said.

"It is. Better avionics, more range. With the external tanks, over a thousand miles."

"We're only going, what? Two hundred?"

"Each way. Is Bao expecting you to show up today?"

"Hardly. We left on bad terms."

"He was expecting you to stay, wasn't he?"

"He was."

"Any idea who you were working for?"

"No, of course not."

It had been, almost to the hour, seven years since he'd flown from the valley, from the monastery where he'd left Bao and Martin. Seven years since he'd promised Colonel Bao he'd return, for his presumed son. But now Asher was full of questions: was Bao even alive? Had he and Mai Ling had a child? What had possessed the colonel to make such impossible demands -- with so little to go on? And why had he agreed to such impossible conditions?

He turned onto the active and ran up to take off power, then adjusted the pitch until the prop bit into the air -- and the Porter began it's less than spirited run down the runway.

"This thing has the aerodynamics of a pickup truck," he groused as he rotated and began his climb out to the northeast.

"I rather think that's what this is, you know? A pickup truck, with wings?"

"At least there's radar now."

"Really? Well, there you have it. Progress. So, where to?"

"VOR near Paro," he said, dialing the VOR/DME to 108.4.

"Any air traffic control?"

"Yup?"

"You going to check in?"

"Nope."

"Good lad. I do believe you're still sweating. Would you care for a Coke?"

"WHAT?" Ben turned and saw Martin pulled two iced Cokes from a small cooler. "Why, you goddamn son of a bitch! Give me two...and I mean right now!"

"My. Crabby when we're warm, aren't we?" Martin took out a Swiss Army knife and popped the cap off, then handed one to Ben -- who slammed to bottle down in one go. "You weren't kidding, were you?"

Ben let slip a long, deep burp, letting the last of the gas seep out between clinched teeth. "Oh, damn, that feels good..."

Martin handed him a second bottle, then started in on his first. "Brings back memories, you know? Flying over this part of the world?"

"Yeah, me too. None of them good."

"How's Becky doing?"

"The miscarriage really hit her hard, Clive. It was touch and go for a while."

"She working again?"

"Yeah, new job. At the medical school's library, something to do with microfilm, or microfiche, I don't know. She seems resigned, like it's fate or something, that she won't have kids."

"I was hoping you two would, well, you know."

"Me too. She's devastated, however."

"How's your other wife?"

Ben turned and looked at Martin. "My...what?"

"Sophie. Your other wife."

"Clive, what makes you even think that?"

"Becky. She and I talk, you know?"

"Do you?"

"We do."

"And she thinks of Sophie as my second wife?"

"As do you, I'm afraid."

Ben turned up the volume of the VOR, tried to pick up the morse identifier...

"Ah, there it is." He turned the compass card, centered the needle and looked at the fuel transfer gauge. "You think so too?"

"I've seen you when you look at Sophie, and Becky isn't blind. So tell me? Do you still love Sophie?"

"I'll always love Sophie. I have since I was ten years old."

"Do you think that's fair?"

"Fair? Do I think that's fair? Well let me see, do I think it's fair I got shot down and the Department of Defense told her I was dead? Do I think it's fair I crawled through the jungle and wound up in your back yard, and the first thing I saw was a, naked, mind you, redhead in a goddamn swimming pool? Do I think it's fair Sophie married a flame-throwing journalist when she learned I was dead? Gee, Martin, let's talk about fair for a while, okay?"

"You shouldn't have married Becky if you still loved her, Ben."

"Is this why you came along? To beat my ass about Sophie?"

"In part, yes."

"Clive? Sorry, but there aren't any parachutes in this crate."

"Do tell."

"Well, one thing I need to say, right now. I've been with Becky for almost seven years, day in, day out, and I love her more now than ever. Simple as that."

"I don't think she knows that, Ben. Maybe she should, but she doesn't."

"Okay, I read you loud and clear."

"What about Sophie?"

"It is what it is, Clive. Not loving Sophie is a little like not breathing. Okay?"

Martin sighed, looked out the window for a while, watched a team of elephants being herded across a jungle clearing by two boys, then he nodded his head. "I fear this will end badly for you, Ben, but I think I understand."

"Don't think I don't think about this, like all the time. I do. It worries the hell out of me."

"Do you...well, I don't quite know how to say this...but are you two intimate?"

"Who am I talking to, Clive? My friend? Or Becky's?"

"Alright. My ears only."

"Yes. We have since I moved back." He shook his head, tried to wash away a memory. "You know, Prentice, her husband..."

"They chap who's a little light in his loafers...?"

"Yup, but the point is, he's a real asshole about it. Expresses zero interest in her, Sophie, physically, brings his boyfriends by for dinner all the time, and likes to flaunt his homosexuality -- is in her face about it. Years ago he asked me to help him work on a travel article, tour a 747, take a look in the cockpit -- and he came on to me. I mean, right up there in the cockpit. Kept calling it the COCK-pit, like it was some sort of gay playroom..."

Martin chuckled, shook his head...

"Then the bastard asked I wanted some head. Right there. I was stunned, but then he started in on Sophie. How she was frigid, how she was no fun to be with, and at one point he told me to have at it with her, 'fuck her all you want,' he said. 'Better you than me.'"

"Sounds like a classic set-up."

"Huh, what?"

"Lot of gay men marry, then entice a straight man to impregnate their wives. Improves their cover, or so they must think. I tend to think that if gay men could just come out of the closet there would no longer be a need for such bullshit -- it's all just an exercise in power and control."

"You sound angry?"

"I am."

"Are you...?"

"As a three dollar bill, as you Yanks are so fond of saying."

"Well goddamn. My best friend is a fag. I will be dipped in shit."

Martin turned to him, looked at him for a long time. "Am I?"

"What?"

"Your best friend?"

"Yeah, ya know? You are. I never thought of it before, that just kind of slipped out, but yes. You are. How does that strike you?"

Martin grinned. "I like the idea, Ben."

The VORs needle swung and Ben looked off to the left, saw a small town carved out of the jungle. "There's Paro," he said as he picked up the chart and read off his new heading. He swung the compass card and came to 0-7-2 degrees, watched the needle center as they flew from the station, then he looked at the altimeter and shook his head. "12,500 feet above sea level, and we're not even a thousand feet above the trees."

"Burma wasn't this high. I flew Spits for a while. Wonderful airplane -- light as a feather at twenty thousand. How much further?"

"Call it fifty five miles to the clearing -- where we landed last time."

"Jungle reclaims land here with remarkable efficiency. Ah, the river is flowing, too. That should prove interesting."

Ben flew lower now, following the river, every bend it took until the hills ahead took on a more familiar feel...

"There it is," Clive said, pointing down to the right.

"Okay. Yeah, the river is bending to the left, okay, I see the cliff ahead. Yeah, there it is..."

+++++

In a place where time had little meaning, this was the day.

Bao woke early to prepare for this auspicious morning; he helped Mai Ling to the kitchen then woke his son. Always slow to rise, he chided the boy before they went out into the pre-dawn darkness to collect wood for the stove, then the two washed their hands in the running cistern. When the first call to prayer echoed across the valley, they made their way into the main building and sat on the creaky old wood floor and waited for the room to fill.

Elders came by after, asked him if the machine he had seen in his vision would come, and Bao said he had seen it again in his sleep, that a man was coming to carry his son to a new home, to a place far away.

So when, a few hours later, in a place where time has little meaning, all the people were not surprised when they heard a strange buzzing noise echoing off the canyon walls, nor were they shocked when the metal bird flew by the monastery.

They were, perhaps, a little surprised when they looked down and saw Bao and his son walking down the trail to the river. They watched him stop for the old snake, but they could not hear the words Bao spoke, they prayer he spoke to the spirit snake, but they watched the two souls disappear into the jungle, and they turned to Mai Ling.

She was very brave, they saw.

Trying not to cry.

Then the elders turned back to the river below, and wondered if he would return, or if he too would fly away to the place far away.

+++++

Ben looked at the clearing, saw that brush had recently been cleared, and stones marking a threshold piled at one end. He dropped flaps and cut pitch a little, then turned on his final approach. He double checked the flaps and looked at the fuel level -- still more than a half -- and he looked the stones on the threshold and adjusted his angle of attack, began his flare well back from them. Working the condition lever, he settled over the rocks at 43 knots and stopped within a hundred feet, then he circled back to the stones and chopped the power. Martin hopped out and chocked the wheels with stones, then scooted into the trees to relieve himself.

Ben climbed down and stretched, then walked over and watered some bushes, keeping an eye out for anything slithering on the ground.

"You know," Martin sighed, "there is nothing more useless than a prostate. I have to take a leak every hour, on the hour."

"But we were up there for almost two hours..."

"And don't I know it...the past sixty minutes have been pure agony."

"You ought to get that looked at."

The air split with the sound of a mighty roar, then a deep, guttural rumble.

"Tiger..." Martin whispered.

"Oh, this is just fucking great. Take a week of vacation and get eaten by a fucking tiger..."

"When did you start cursing so much?"

"You're too fucking much, you know it?"

"Ah, there's Bao..."

And they saw Bao, and, they assumed, his son, walking along the trail -- then Ben pointed to the trees above the trail.

"There it is?"

"What?"

"Big fucking cat," Asher croaked, and they both looked on as the cat roared again, then ran from the trees -- straight at Bao and the boy.

The boy turned, held out a hand and the tiger stopped in front of them, then lay down on it's back. The boy went to the cat and put his arms around it's neck, and as Asher looked at the unfolding scene he had to shake himself, make sure he wasn't dreaming. Then Bao leaned down and talked to the cat, and the boy, rubbing heads and saying, apparently, soothing words, for a moment later the boy stood, crying now, and the three of them turned to face the river.

There was a way across, hopping stones, but one misstep would prove fatal. Asher looked upstream and down, could see no better option, and neither could Martin.

Bao pointed and the cat sprang across space, landed on the first rock then hopped to the second. It turned and watched the boy jump across, and Martin spoke then.

"It's a pet, Ben. The boy has a fucking tiger, for a goddamn pet!"

"Clive?"

"Yes, Ben?"

"You're cursing, Clive."

"Ah. Just so. Right you are."

Bao followed them across, and Ben watched as they walked across the clearing, keeping a close eye on the tiger as it approached. Martin farted, and Ben turned to him.

"Not cool, Amigo."

"I may have just shat myself."

"Shat?"

"To shit, verb, past tense."

"Oh. Learn something new every day."

Bao walked up, wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air, then shook his head. "Seven years," he said to Ben, ignoring Martin. "Promise kept." Bao brought his hands together and nodded his head as if in prayer, then he turned to the boy. "This is my son, his name is Tschering."

"Tschering?"

"Yes, the name means 'Boy who talks to the stars.'"

"And the tiger?" Martin said. "Does he have a name?"

"He is a she," Bao said, still ignoring Martin. "She has no name."

"I take it the cat is staying here?" Ben asked -- hopefully.

"Yes, lieutenant, the cat will stay here with me, and wait."

"And wait?"

"For Tschering's return."

"Wait," Ben said, exasperated now, "I'm supposed to bring him back? In seven years?"

Bao shook his head. "Tschering will know when to return, and you will too."

"I will -- what?"

"You will return."

"Did he bring anything?" Martin asked. "Any clothes? Belongings of any sort?"

"Why are you here?" Bao said now, turning to Martin.

"I came to see Mai Ling. Is she well?"

"Yes."

"Would you tell her I came, that I asked after her?"

Bao nodded, then turned to Ben. "Lieutenant, you must leave now, before I..."

But Ben was watching the cat -- who was watching the interaction between people, then looking at the boy. Tschering turned to the cat and hugged it once again, then turned to Ben, holding out his hand.

"Come, second father, we must go."

Ben recoiled under the weight of words, looked at the boy, then at Bao.

"He is your son now, lieutenant. He will learn your world. He cannot achieve understanding here, with me. My discontent will never leave this place, so he must."

The cat stepped forward, nudged his leg, pushed Ben towards the airplane, and he heard Martin whisper "What the devil's going on here?" -- but Ben planted his legs, faced Bao and spoke.

"Colonel? This is what you want? This is what's in your heart?"

But all he could see was sudden fury in Bao's eyes. The same fury he'd seen seven years before -- when the colonel first saw him -- when Ben was seen as the murderer of Bao's wife. "Do not ask me this, lieutenant," Bao said, now imploringly. "Please go, now, before I break."

Ben turned and picked up Tschering, opened the pilot's door and placed him in the seat beside his, and he turned to see Martin walk up to Bao, his right hand extended.

"Go now, my friend," Bao said, before he turned -- and walked back towards the river. The cat turned and walked off, too, and Martin turned to the Porter, kicked the stones from the wheels before he too climbed inside. He buckled in, looked at Ben up front taking care of the boy's seat belt, then their eyes met.

Ben shook his head, seemed at a loss.

'I know,' Clive wanted to say with his eyes, 'I don't understand, either.'

After he took off, Ben circled the area, then flew upriver to the monastery and back along the river, but Bao had vanished. He banked the Porter into a steep turn over the clearing once again, saw the cat sitting atop an outcropping of golden rock below -- staring up at them, he saw -- and then he saw Tschering, his hand on the glass as the known world passed from his grasp. Then he was wiping away a tear, and he realized it was his own.

+++++

She heard knocking on the door and looked at her words on the screen.

More knocking, and she ignored the sound, tried to finish her thoughts on the page.

Insistent knocking, infuriating.

She pushed back her chair and walked to the door, opened it, saw Bud standing there, crying.

"She's gone," he said, his words tumbling away on a gust of wind.

"Your mother?"

He was nodding his head, shaking like a leaf -- and she opened her arms.

He fell into them, the dam breaking instantly.

She held him close, cupping his head in her hand, whispering soothing sounds until he began to relax, then she looked up, saw Doug and Andrew standing on the patio outside her door, under an umbrella, out of the rain.

"Come in, all of you," she said, and she took Bud by the hand and led him to the little sofa. Andrew came in and looked around the room, his eyes full of latent curiosity, and Doug followed, his eyes evasive, haunted. "Who wants coffee? Tea?" she said.

"Do you have any of that Good Earth tea?" Bud asked.

"Yup. Who else?" It turned out they all did, so she went to the kitchen and put on the water, got four cups down from the cupboard, and she opened a package of Scottish shortbread cookies she kept on hand for such emergencies and put them on a plate. She finished the tea and carried a cup in to Bud, and Andrew carried the others -- without being asked.

"She went easily, I think," Doug said out of the blue, and Andrew nodded his head.

"I've never seen anyone die before," he said. "I thought I'd be scared, but it was kind of peaceful."

"She's not suffering now," Doug sighed, but he was looking at Bud.

Wide-eyed, staring ahead into nothingness, like standing waves of guilt were battering his shore -- and the boy seemed lost, and alone.

Lindsey went to the sofa and sat by his side again, and he instinctively went to her shoulder. She saw Doug in that moment as a tower of strength, these two boys his foundation, and yet the foundation was crumbling beneath his feet.

'But it's not his fault!' she sighed, feeling another wave of grief slipping from Bud's grasp. What had he said once? 'Some mistakes we never stop paying for?' Well, payment had come due this morning, and all three of them were paying now.

She moved down a little, put a little pillow on her lap and Bud lay there, his head on the pillow, and she traced little circles through his hair until she fell asleep; Doug got a blanket out of the linen closet and and covered his son, then looked at her.

"I think he needed that," he whispered.

"I do too," Andrew said. "Got room for another?"

She laughed, silently, then shook her head. "You are a world class character," she whispered, and Doug nodded in agreement. "Any word on Lacy?"

"We were heading up," he said, "but Bud insisted we stop by."

"Would you like me to go with you?"

"Could you? I mean, do you have the time?"

"Of course."

He looked at his watch, then went to the bathroom and washed up, splashed water on his face, then Andrew went in after his father.

"I'm sorry about the other day," she said.

"I think I understand."

"Okay. Do you need to wash up before we go?"

"No, I'm good."

He grinned. "I know you are. I wish I was as strong."

"You will be, when you need to be."

"I'm not sure I can do this, Lacy."

She looked at him, wondered if he knew what he'd just said, but she decided not to correct him. "You were very close, weren't you?"

"In a way."

"There's something strong between fathers and daughters."

"She always wanted a peculiar intimacy, extreme physical proximity, like it was hard-wired into her system, and I couldn't give her that."