Roy takes a big step forward in this chapter--and a half-step back   It may seem odd to you that once he's off the ground (so to speak! In his training, he would make a silly mistake like the one in the second half of the chapter.  But I think this is true to life: When I finally published my first novel for instance, I thought I'd reached a point where the hard work was behind me.  DUH!  Not true--every new book is just as challenging as the first.  Roy Ray's discouragement during the first days of his training is nothing to what he feels now. 

I'm introducing an element of suspense here: what happened to the other bird-people?  Mr. G clearly knows more than he's willing to tell.  Also, an important character appears in this chapter--or at least an important "thing."  Do you notice when?

We're about one/fourth into the story now.  I have a feeling it's moving too slow.  Does more need to be happening, or does it need to be happening faster?  My "problem" (if it is a problem) is that I get interested in the people and what makes them work, and perhaps don't pay enough attention to the action. What do you think?  Let me know here.

Chapter 6

PROGRESS

Bill didn't have a time in mind for his plan.  "I'll let you know.  I've got other stuff going on--always an eye for the main chance."

Roy Ray went back to table strokes and launching and fluttering, and by the time Mr. G took him out to the pasture again he could feel it in every muscle.  "So here we are," his coach said.  "See if you can reach that pine tree on the back side of the field.  Without touching the ground, of course."

Half an hour later, Mr. G was saying things like, "I admire the way you're managing your crashes.  However, the object is not actually to crash, but to stay up in the air after you've launched.  Just a reminder."

Roy Ray was so mad he forgot to add "sir" to his reply.  But Mr. G let the rudeness pass this time; he even seemed to understand when, after the thirteenth rough landing, Roy Ray absolutely, double-doggedly refused to launch again.  "Break time, then.  I filched a handful of your mum's delectable oatmeal bixies on our way out."

He'd also brought a couple of water bottles.  They found a patch of grass under a scrap of shade, and after finishing off the cookies, Mr. G sat with his ankles crossed while Roy Ray lay on his stomach, wings spread.  "Don't stay struck for long," the coach warned.  "You'll pick up mites."

"Was your training this hard?"

"Much harder.  When I was your age no one understood thing number one about avial training.  Mrs. Simms only worked me up to a bare performance standard.  Dr. Pettibone dug into the why and how, which paid out in time, but I was a guinea pig--or guinea bird.  You're the, er, beneficiary of a long road of trial and error, most of it practiced on yours truly.  Excruciating at times, 'specially since I was older than you when we started.  Right set in my bad ways.  You're a good age--not too spoiled, but old enough to apply yourself."

Roy Ray groaned at the phrase apply yourself.  "Are the others older than me?" 

"'Others'?"

"You know--like Gunther and Kwame, and Princess what's-her-face."

"Princess Katarina."

"Uh-huh.  Is she a real princess?"

"Nah.  Her show title.  Her dad was dead-set on making a spectacle of her, though she was too young for serious training.  But he wouldn't listen, until she disappeared--"

"Disappeared?"  Roy Ray had been watching a pair of columbines nod madly on the breeze, but at this interrupted thought he rolled over on his side, one wing flopping clumsily over the other.  He gulped in surprise to see Mr. G lighting a cigarette.  The gold lighter had a bird's head on top, and the cigarette trembled: Roy Ray noticed these things in a flash. 

"I didn't know you smoked!" he burst out. 

"I don't, much.  Terrible for human lungs, even worse for avials.   Don't ever start."

Somehow Roy Ray suspected the man was trying to distract him.  That, together with his frustrating afternoon, wound him tight enough to tick.  "What happened to Princess Katarina that you won't talk about?  And why'd you lose touch with Gunther and Kwame?  And what happened between you and Dr. Petty-whatever, so you don't talk to him anymore?"

"Anybody ever mentioned you can be a demanding kid?"

"I don't care!"  Roy Ray bounced to his feet so energetically his head brushed the tree's low branches.  "There's some big fat secret going on here.  Where did you come from?  What are you hiding?"

Mr. G leapt to his feet also.  "Hiding?  From you?"  He looked around behind him and up in the tree, then lifted each foot to look under the shoe leather.  "Why, nothing at all, unless--"  He reached into the sprung pocket of his jacket and took out the last oatmeal cookie.  "You've caught me out."

Roy Ray discovered he was still a little hungry. 

"Now that you're up and refueled," Mr. G said after a moment, "let's make another stab at a transverse, hey?"  Roy Ray sighed deeply, but followed his teacher to one side of the pasture, from which the other side looked very far away. 

While staring at a single pine tree in the distance, he felt hands resting on his shoulders, feather-light and surprisingly warm.  "There is a secret, you know.  And here it is: everybody has wings."

Roy Ray brushed at a fly beside his ear, not sure he'd heard correctly.  "What?"

"And everybody can fly--invisibly.  You however have the privilege and burden of doing it visibly.  So stop fooling about, hey?  Do it."

At a slap between his shoulder blades, Roy Ray took off.

He felt a difference as soon as he was in the air.  He felt everything: the wind speeding up as it streamed over him, the lift under his feathers, the thrust as his toes skimmed the grass.  With powerful strokes his wings scooped out a place in the air for him: down, up and back, down, up and back.  He broke the cross breezes and found the current.  It was almost like he'd sprouted fingers along the leading edges, combing the air to find its nervous energy and eager eddies.  His element, like water to a fish--Yeah! 

He was shocked when the pine tree on the far side of the pasture lunged at him.  For a few tense seconds, he expected to wrap around the trunk like a wet noodle.  But then instinct took over; he kicked back and flapped madly on the updraft, giving himself just enough time to tuck his sneakered feet onto a low branch.  Regaining his balance, he hopped around to face Mr. G, who was already bounding his way. 

An "Attaboy!" would have been nice, but his coach was fiercely concentrated on the follow-up.  "Come down," he demanded.  "Launch posture, please.  Full lift and stroke--harder.  Lift . . . Yes!  Yes, that's what we've been waiting for!  Now light down again--"

Roy Ray ran a few steps to break his fall after an abrupt landing.  "What have we been waiting for?"

"Your alula," Mr. G declared triumphantly.  "Full lift again.  Now stroke--there!  See it?  You have a little set of feathers right there at the carpal joint."

Roy Ray twisted his head to the right and stroked again, and this time saw a tuft of feathers quivering at the curve of his wing.  "Holy cow!  So I did grow some extra fingers!"

"Felt it, did you?  One usually does.  Those little digits will be your indispensable tools for feeling the wind, especially at takeoff and landing."  Mr. G rubbed his hands together, bouncing on his toes.  "Always a great moment, when the alula pop out."

"Does this mean I can take an afternoon off?"

"Oh, no.  Now is when the training really starts."

Roy Ray was so sore next morning he could barely lift his wing tips, but his coach had him up even earlier than usual doing stretches from the rafters.  "Lift, out, up, out!" he called, while pacing in a circle around Roy Ray, snapping his fingers. 

Mr. Rappaport emerged from the kitchen, lunch box in hand.  Mr. G nodded at him, but went right on with "Breathe . . . stretch!"

"I'm dropping!" Roy Ray cried.

"Keep breathing--Oh, and Ray--You really should get this car fixed.  What good is a Charger that won't charge, hey?"

Mr. Rappaport, not a morning person, just shook his head as he pulled the garage door open, then straddled his bike and roared away. 

Mrs. Rappaport was the next to open the kitchen door.  "Good heavens, Roy Ray, I thought you were still in bed."

"I'm falling!" said the boy, doing it.

"One sec, Christine," said Mr. G with his pasted smile.  "After breakfast, I need your clothesline.  Unless it's washday?"       

"No, but . . . I forgot to mention, could we skip training for this morning?"

"Skip training?"  The coach's tone rose to a squawk.          

"Because there's a sale at Stuff-For-Less?  I heard they got a shipment of odd-size shoes in, and Roy Ray is so hard to fit--"

"My dear lady . . . Of course you understand . . . The demands of total dedication . . ."  Mr. G's smile never changed, even while his voice grew thinner and higher.  Mrs. Rappaport found this confusing.

"Well I suppose . . . if you put it like that."  (Like what? Roy Ray wondered.)  "But if we wait too long all the shoes will be gone."

Mr. G snatched a sheet of paper and pencil off his makeshift desk, stuck the paper under Roy Ray's foot and traced around it.  "Here," he said, thrusting the paper at his mother.  "Match the shoes to the outline, and don't bother with the difficult boy attached."

Roy Ray groaned, "I think I broke my ankle."

"All the more reason to get off it!"  Mr. G remarked brightly.  "I look forward            to breakfast, Mrs. Rappaport.  Smells delectable.  Now we must stop caging your valuable time, hey?  Thanks for lobbing by."  With that, he nearly shut the door in her face.

From the floor, Roy Ray whined, "What's wrong with a day off?"

"What's wrong with pulling in your legs like a turtle?  What's wrong with chucking along the dust trailing slime like a snail?"

"Nothing . . . if you're a turtle or a snail."

"And is that what you are?"

"No."  Roy Ray couldn't keep the sulkiness out of his voice.  "I'm an avial."

"Glad we cleared that up.  Now the question is, what kind?  The kind who, once he's barely gained the air, lays off and coasts like Steve Balco?  Or the kind who springs from that low board to greater heights, like his sister Shirley?  Hm?"

Roy Ray's ears perked up.  "Are Steve and Shirley Americans?"  So far, all avials besides himself sounded like foreigners.

"In a way.  Canadians, from northeast Alberta.  As to where they are now, Shirl is probably organizing benefit quiddich games while Steve works up to the next level of Inferno or some other video timewaster.  Firmly ensconced on the couch.  Now, thirty table strokes before breakfast, in groups of ten.  Ready, up!"

After breakfast he tied a long piece of wire to an eyehook attached to Mrs. Rappaport's clothesline.  The other end of the wire he tied to Roy Ray's belt.  "Now that your alula are in play, we can begin fine-tuning.  Sprint-and-stall is the basic technique behind Sudden Death and other predatory maneuvers.  First you will perch on the crossbar of this pole.  You will launch, gather some lift, and sprint to the other pole.  The trick is to stall just before you get to the pole, so you can land spot on it.  Ready?"

"What's the wire for?"

"You'll find out.  Now go!"

If a sprint-and-stall sounds easy, it wasn't.  When the coach yelled, "Stall!" Roy Ray had to slant his wings, fluttering just enough to keep him airborne while he centered over the perch.  The alula were supposed to help stabilize him, but the first several tries he overshot the pole by a lot, and the wire brought him to a literal screeching halt.  Then he undershot for several more tries, and the wire tripped him: on one occasion he ended upside-down.

"Mr. Godwit," his mother said at dinner that night.  "I really have to wonder if you might be pushing Roy Ray a little too hard."

"Why would you think that?" Mr. G asked, even while the boy's head was nodding dangerously low over his mashed potatoes.         

"Well . . . Ray, do you think constant exhaustion is good for an eleven-year-old?"

Mr. Rappaport, a studious eater though he never gained a pound, paused long enough to watch his son's head dip a little lower.  "Keeps him off the street."

"Training is often rigorous, Christine," said the coach.  Suppose, two years from now, he were trying out for the football team."

"Right!" said Mr. Rappaport.  "I remember falling asleep in my car during the pre-season.  Too beat to get out of it."

"Oh, you men," sighed his wife, as Roy Ray lost his battle with gravity.  "Davy!  Stop eating mashed potatoes off your brother!"

When he had time to think about it during the next few days, Roy Ray wondered why he wasn't allowed to have a little fun with his progress, instead of work work work every waking moment.  Why the push?  What was the hurry?  That's why Bill's note, attached to the forsythia branch outside his window on Tuesday morning, was more welcome than it might have been otherwise. 

"Okay flyboy," Bill called hoarsely from sixteen feet below.  "Let's see what you can do.

Roy Ray's left hand sweatily gripped the sides of the ladder while the other slipped a coil of rope up his arm.  His head bumped a mesh platform with a locked trap door.  Over the mesh loomed the aluminum bulk of the Tomahawk Chop water tower.  Bill and the Punks used to climb the water tower and paint colorful sayings on its surface but the town council finally got tired of cleaning the paint off.  Hence the trap door, and the lock.

"What are you waiting for?" Bill called.

Roy Ray carefully turned on the ladder until he was facing out and filled his lungs completely, as he'd been taught.  Then he hooked his fingers into the mesh overhead and flipped himself into the air.  His wings opened on the upswing, and he dropped a few feet before bringing the involuntary flapping under control.  For a couple of seconds he hung loose (Whomph! Whomph!), fingering the breeze with his alula. 

"Awesome!" Bill called, in genuine admiration.

Roy Ray had to admit it was pretty cool.  Because he wasn't too good at turns yet, he jacked himself upward by a series of pumps, feeling the power in his muscles and figuring those table-strokes were good for something after all.  Though he was pretty winded when he got to the top.

"I made it!" he called down, once his sneakers brushed the smooth curved top of the water tower.

"Great," Bill's voice drifted upward.  "Now secure the rope."

Roy Ray had learned to how make a half-hitch knot before dropping out of Boy Scouts.  He tied one end of the nylon line to the steel rail that ran around the top of the tank, and dropped it.  In minutes, Bill had rappelled up beside him.

He brought along a quart of paint and two brushes, but when Roy Ray tried to balance on one of the maintenance steps and paint his share, he had to quit.  For a curious reason.

"What?" Bill demanded.  "Scared of heights?"

"Not exactly, but . . . I've never been this high before.  It makes me dizzy.  Maybe I'm not used to it.  Maybe it'll get better in a minute.  Maybe if I--whoops, no.  Better not."  He'd thought about taking a sprint-and-stall off the top for confidence, but a glance at the utility shack sixty feet below made his stomach turn over. 

"You're hopeless, Rappaport," Bill remarked in a not-unfriendly way.  Sitting in a sling he'd made by tying a loop in the rope, he began painting his message in three-foot letters.  It was supposed to be THIS TOWN IS CONDEMMED, but due to Roy Ray's wimping out he shortened it to T. CHOP SUX.  Nobody was going to keep him off a dang water tower without some payback.

Meanwhile Roy Ray lay flat on his back with wings spread and gazed at the stars.  It was kind of nice up here.  Or at least it was until a mass of cold air rolled in and settled beside him.  The cold was so distinct he could almost feel around it--creepy.  He shivered, and wondered if the icy presence was his own fear.  "I've just gotta get used to this," he said.  "It's probably a balance thing.  Or a confidence thing.  Yeah, that's it. I need more confidence.  More practice, and then . . ."

"Who are you talking to?" Bill called, while putting the final slash on the X.

"Uh . . . nobody."

"When did he show up?"  Bill tossed the bucket, splattering yellow paint on the hood of the county commissioner's pickup.  Then he tossed the brush.  "That's enough for one night."  Balancing on the maintenance ladder he untied his sling and shook out the rope.  "I'm going down.  Untie the rope soon's I land and toss it to me."

Roy Ray crept to the edge of the tank in time to see Bill drop down and swing himself over to the ladder.  One thing about the Lizard: he didn't seem to lack for confidence.  As for Roy Ray--was he a bird or a bug?

"Throw me the rope, Rappaport!  I haven't got all day."               

It was actually night, but that was beside the point.  Roy Ray started to untie the rope but couldn't help thinking how this was his only way down except, well, flying, but he'd never flown from such a height and maybe that was something he'd have to work up to and this probably wasn't the right time and besides Rome wasn't built in a day.

"Whatcha waiting for, Rappaport--a bus?"

In the end, Roy Ray used the rope to climb down, to Bill's everlasting disgust because he didn't get his rope back.  But that turned out to be not his problem because, when the commissioner's yellow-spattered pickup and the T. C. SUX were discovered the next day, there was a large secondary feather stuck in the paint which was not Bill's.  And because he didn't have to admit anything--he denied everything.  Which was kind of typical.

The Tomahawk Chop Peacemaker ran a picture and a story under the headline, "Vandalism Linked to Local Youth."  Mr. Rappaport was furious enough, but nothing compared to Mr. G.

"What were thinking?" the coach demanded.  Roy Ray shrugged.  "That's not a rhetorical question, boy: what could possibly have been going on in your head that led you to the conclusion that a silly prank, also illegal, might be a good way to spend a Tuesday evening?"

"It sounded like fun."

"Fun," Mr. G repeated, his voice stomping on the word and squishing it like a worm.

"Yeah, fun.  Like I haven't had any since I can't remember.  Like I'm supposed to be having because I'm still a kid, but I'm behind on my share 'cause I don't have any friends because of being so weird but Bill don't mind because he says he's weird too only it's all inside--the weirdness--except maybe for the eye patch, that's kind of weird.  And he's the only one who likes me because of the wings and not just in spite of 'em and that's cool because I can't do anything about 'em to I may just as well take advantage.  Like Bill says."

Mr. G paused to process this.  ". . . And Bill is an expert?"

"He's a player.  He's got an eye for the main chance."

"Aha!  But that's his only eye.  So he may lack some depth perception, hey?"

"I dunno about that," Roy Ray sulked.  "I'd just as soon cut the wings off sometimes, but as long as I'm stuck--"

Mr. G rounded on him, so fiercely the boy jumped.  "Don't ever let me hear you say that again.  'Cut them off'--what else would you like to do without, your thumbs?  Your nose?  An ear or two?"

"Well . . ."

"P'raps I'm wasting my time here.  Should we go on with the training or should I plod off into the sunset?"

"No!  I mean, we can go on."  The thought the alternative stunned him.  He sure wanted to learn the Sudden Death maneuver.

"Will I have your undivided attention and no extra-curricular hijinks?"  Roy Ray nodded, a little shakily.  "Can I hear that?"

"Yes sir."

"Then prove your good faith: on the floor, fifty."

If he hadn't been so busy feeling sorry for himself, Roy Ray would have been amazed that he could do fifty table strokes in a row.  Mr. G noticed, and it pleased him more than he let on.

On to Chapter Seven.

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