Hard Landing (11 page)

I walked down the corridor past the door labeled men's locker room. The second door had no designation, just two flat globs of hardened putty where the ready room sign might have been at one time. I could hear masculine voices inside.

For as many years as I'd worked in the field, it still wasn't easy for me to walk into a ready room. Some airports were better than others, but for the most part, the ramp was dominated by men and the ready room was where they congregated to do what men in packs do. I took a moment to gather myself, then pushed through the door.

There were eight guys in there, all in various stages of readiness-eating, reading the newspaper, playing cards. One was sleeping. All conversation ceased abruptly with my arrival, leaving an old color TV set to provide the soundtrack. I felt as if I was trespassing in the boys' secret clubhouse.

"Gentlemen," I said, concentrating on keeping my voice strong and steady, which wasn't easy, the way they were staring. "I haven't had a chance to meet most of you. I'm Alex Shanahan, the new general manager, and I'm looking for the assignment crew chief."

Most of them went back to what they'd been doing. A few stared with a bored expression that was probably reserved just for management. Since it was an evening shift, most of the men were on the younger side, some just out of high school. They had that pale, hardened look of kids who had grown up in the dark spaces of big cities. I had no friends in this room.

I was really wishing I'd worn a skirt with pockets because I couldn't decide what to do with my hands. That I was even aware of my hands was a bad sign. "Let me ask you again-"

"He ain't here." The voice floated up from the other side of a La-Z-Boy recliner.

I walked around and found a man with a dark, curly beard, a bald head, and a prodigious belly. He seemed right at home reclining in front of a TV.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Could be anywhere."

"I guess that means he could be in here."

"He's not in here."

He tapped his fingers on the cracked Naugahyde armrest. I searched the concrete walls. "Why isn't the assignment sheet for this shift posted?"

The response came from behind me, and it was a voice I recognized. "Because everybody on my shift knows their job." Big Pete leaned against the wall next to what appeared to be an inside entrance to the men's locker room. He must have just come in, because if he'd been back there the whole time, I would have felt his presence.

"Someone
doesn't
know their job," I said. "We have a Majestic Express flight that's been in for twenty minutes. No one met the trip, the bags are still onboard, and the passengers are down in claim waiting."

"There's no one in here who's on the clock," he said without even so much as a perfunctory check around the room. "One of us goes out there, you're going to pay double-time. Your shift supervisor would know that. Or Danny."

Dan was at a meeting off the field, and my shift supervisor was stuck with a customer down at the freight house-probably the forwarder with the lobsters, or without the lobsters, as the case may be-but I saw no reason to explain all that. "I think you and I can resolve this."

"We could," he said, "but as you can see, I'm not on the clock yet." He was dressed in street clothes and completely relaxed, a man in full command of his environment. We were on his turf now.

"If the contract says double-time, then I'll pay double-time. And I will also take the name of the ramper who didn't cover the flight."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man at the far end of the room stand and pull on his jacket. "I'm on the clock." he said. "I'll work it?"

I turned to look at him. He was probably in his early forties, with the sturdy legs and all-over thickness that develop naturally from a lifetime of hard physical labor. His manner was brusque-rough even-but there was gentleness in his face that had somehow managed to survive even in this unforgiving place.

"Johnny, you're not on the clock." Pete stared at him, firing a couple of poison darts intended to shut him down. It probably worked on everyone else.

"I am on the clock." Johnny's manner toward Big Pete was polite and entirely dismissive. "You don't have to pay double-time," he said to me. "I'll work it myself."

"That's against procedures, Johnny. The union ain't responsible if you get hurt."

The big man turned and faced Big Pete, his massive arms stacked like firewood across his chest. "The union ain't responsible for my safety," he said, "and thank God for that."

Pete turned and crossed his arms also. Now the two men were face-to-face. "You pay dues like everyone else here, John."

"That don't make you my representative, Peter."

Someone had killed the volume on the TV, so the only sound came from a guy sitting at a wooden table munching potato chips. Another had stopped in the middle of tying his shoe and was still bent over his knee, watching the drama unfold. John wasn't moving a muscle, and Big Pete was no longer leaning against the wall. The way they looked at each other made it clear that whatever was between these two had not started that day, and wasn't going to end there.

Big Pete, as calculating as a cockroach, must have figured the same thing because with a slight nod of his head and a fleeting smile he defused the tension. The moment passed and everyone resumed normal activities. Without another word, John was out the door, pulling his hood over his head. I watched through the window as he lumbered across the ramp, climbed into a tug, and drove away.

There was a swinging door where Big Pete had been standing. I made a management decision not to follow him into the men's locker room. Instead, I walked out of the boys' clubhouse and went to see Kevin, as much to see his friendly face as anything else.

"Who is this guy John or Johnny?" I asked when the Operations office had cleared out and Kevin and I were the only ones left in the room.

"Mr. John McTavish, one of your better employees." He turned his chair around and stretched his legs straight out. "He and his brother both. Between the two of them they do the work of six men."

"I don't know about his brother, but John doesn't seem to be afraid of Big Pete."

"Johnny's not afraid of much. Did they go at it, those two?"

"There was some testosterone present."

"Not surprising. There's bad blood there. They were on opposite sides of a contract vote a few years back. Johnny Mac for, and the Dwyers against. It was bitter."

"What contract vote?"

"The IBG vote. It was on the last Nor'easter contract proposal, the one just before the merger. And a seminal moment it was in the long and lively history of this grand operation. For the IBG, too, you could say. It split the Brotherhood right down the middle."

I smiled. I did enjoy Kevin's hyperbole. "A labor contract that was a seminal moment? Do tell."

"Three years ago when the IBG contract came up for negotiation, Nor'easter was in dire straits, as I'm sure you're aware. The company made a proposal to the union asking for what amounted to a laundry list of concessions and give-backs. When the proposal came up for a vote, some of the brothers took one side, the rest took the other."

"I'm guessing Big Pete Dwyer would be a hardliner."

"Right you are. No concessions to management, ever, no matter what. Johnny McTavish was on the other side. His feeling was, if they didn't help bail the company out, there would be no more company. And he was right. The contract lost by the slimmest of margins, and that's the reason Nor'easter is gone today, may she rest in peace."

"At least you guys didn't go bankrupt."

"Tell that to the four thousand people Majestic laid off. That was over two years ago, and most of us still haven't gotten over the shock."

"It doesn't appear that John and Big Pete have buried the hatchet, either."

"No. I don't think they ever will. Dwyers and McTavishes, they are cut from different cloth."

From my vantage point at the window, I could see John unloading the bags from the stranded Majestic Express. "How is it no one showed up to work this flight?"

"The kid who usually works it called in sick. That's what I was told."

"Okay, but any one of forty or fifty rampers on shift could have covered."

"Sure, they could have, the problem being, in this station most rampers won't work the Express."

"What does that mean? We have seven Expresses every day. You're saying they refuse to work them at all?"

"It's not the Express so much as they won't work prop jets. Won't go near 'em, especially the senior men. Usually the junior guy on shift gets stuck with the trip."

"Okay, I give up. Why won't they work the props?"

"It's because of the crash."

"What cra-" I stopped for a moment. "The Baltimore crash?'

He nodded. "Nor'easter Express flight 1704. Went down on approach just outside of Baltimore, which is why most people remember it that way. What they don't remember is that the flight originated in Boston."

"Which means it was loaded here."

"Precisely. Rampers are a superstitious lot. And it's not just them. You won't find many in this station that will talk about The Incident. Bad luck. That's how we refer to it, 'The Incident,' just so you'll know."

"When was that? Ninety-four? Ninety-five?"

"Twenty-two hundred hours on the evening of March 15, 1995. Easy to remember."

"The Ides of March," I said. "Not to be indelicate or disrespectful in any way because I know it must have been extremely difficult for everyone here, but that was years ago. You're not even the same airline, and furthermore, if I remember right, the cause of that crash was pilot error. It had nothing to do with the ground operation."

"Ah, but that's the nature of superstition, isn't it? It's neither rational nor reasonable."

"Is it possible this superstition can be explained by the fact that rampers simply don't like to work these little airplanes because they're a pain in the ass to load?"

His coy smile said it all.

I reached up to rub my temples because my head was throbbing, and as soon as I realized that, it occurred to me my legs were aching, and when I noticed that, I couldn't help but feel the stiffness in my neck. I'd been in this station nine days, and every day had been longer than the one before.

"Kevin, I came into this job under the impression that I was supposed to be in charge of this operation at Logan. How come I can't find anything that I'm in charge of?"

He laughed. "We do have a unique way of doing things here. It takes a little getting used to."

"Has anyone ever tried to take action with the union on this issue?" Just contemplating the idea made me want to go to the hotel, get in bed, and pull the covers over my head. But that was probably just what they wanted.

"It's so ingrained now, most of the boys would rather lose their job than work a prop. You'd have to fire them all."

Big Pete was making his way across the ramp, in uniform now and apparently on the clock.

"I don't think so," I said. "You'd just have to fire the right one."

According to Ellen's running log, the Esplanade along the Charles River had been one of her favorite haunts. It was in the heart of the city, nowhere near Marblehead, yet she'd gone back to it over and over. I understood why when I tried it myself. With the skyline of Boston to the south, Cambridge to the north, and the Charles in between, there was something dazzling to gaze at from every angle, especially on a night like this when the clear winter air brought the lights of the city so close.

It felt good to run, to be outside and not cooped up in my hotel room watching videos. I'd made a decision not to feel threatened every minute of every day, to take charge of my life again, and it felt good.

I'd left my cell phone in the car, which didn't help much when my beeper went off somewhere around the Harvard Bridge. I had to run around Cambridge until I found a pay phone. The number on the beeper wasn't one I recognized, and when I dialed, it didn't even ring once.

"Shanahan?"

"Dan?"

"I've been beeping you for twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes, huh?" It was ten minutes, at most.

"What's that noise?" he asked. "Where are you?"

"I'm out running. Is this your car phone number?"

"Yeah. I'm on my way to the airport. If we get cut off, it's because I'm in the tunnel."

"Why don't you tell me why you called
before
you go into the tunnel?"

"There was a fight tonight at the airport. Two rampers got into it. They called me about a half hour ago from the hospital."

"Who's hurt and how bad?"

"It was Little Pete Dwyer and Terry McTavish. Little Pete's at the hospital. Cuts and lacerations. I don't know about Terry."

"Is Terry McTavish John's brother?"

"Yep."

"That's a coincidence."

"That two guys with the same name are brothers?"

"No, no. We had a stare-down last night between John McTavish and Big Pete. It was when you were at that sales meeting."

"Shocked the shit out of me," he said. "Terry's not a guy who causes trouble."

"Do you know what the fight was about?"

"No idea. I'm on my way in to do the investigation."

"Do you want help? I can be there in an hour."

"No. I want you to hear the grievance, so you need to stay out of the action. That way it never has to go out of the station."

"You don't want it to go to Lenny."

"When Lenny hears our grievances, he always finds for the union. Or he makes some deal. There's nothing they can do bad enough that Lenny won't cut a deal and bring 'em back to work."

"That sounds like an exaggeration."

"You can check the record."

"All right. What time is it? I don't have a watch on."

"It's just after nine." The connection was starting to break up. "What are you doing out so late?"

"Call me when you're finished and give me the details," I said, ignoring the question. He sounded like my mother.

"You gonna be at the hotel?"

Before I could answer, the line went dead. He must have gone into the tunnel.

A United B767 under tow crept along the outer taxi-way toward the maintenance hangar. I could see it from my hotel window. Except for anti-collision lights, the aircraft was dark, all engines off. Moving like that through the night, it looked like a submarine running in deep water.

It had been almost three hours since Dan had called about the fight. I imagined him down there, interviewing closed-mouth rampers, trying to conduct an investigation, trying to figure out who had done what to whom. It was hard waiting. I could have beeped him, but I knew he'd call when he had something.

The Celtics were on TV keeping me company. Listening with one ear, I knew it was late in the campaign and the Celts were out on the West Coast getting clobbered by Golden State, of all teams. I came away from the window, stood in the light of the TV, and stared blankly. Someone in the hometown team's shamrock green uniform had just been called for goal-tending. I started to turn it off, but then sat on the bed instead and watched.

My father had loved basketball. And football. And baseball most of all. His hometown Cubs were his favorite, but he'd watch any team. He'd sit by the hour in front of the TV, which is what he used to do instead of engaging with the rest of the world, including my brothers, my sister, and me. I started sitting and watching with him, and pretty soon he started teaching me all the rules, all the teams, and all the players. I was a good student. He'd quiz me, and when I knew one he didn't expect, his face would light up and he'd be so proud. And when he'd fall asleep, I'd still be watching, trying to learn more names, to memorize more stats so that when he woke up, I could make his face light up again. I began to love the thing he loved, which was as close as I ever got to him.

The Warriors were on a 12-0 run, and there didn't seem to be much hope. Besides, I'd lost the thread. I didn't know any of these players. I reached up with the remote and clicked it off.

For a while I sat on the bed and stared at the phone. Eventually, I was staring not at the phone but into the corner of my room where I'd left Ellen's box of personal momentos. I hadn't touched it since the night we'd bolted from her house. I'd started to a couple of times-Dan asked about it almost once a day-but over the weekend I hadn't wanted to be reminded. After Lenny's call on Monday, I wasn't sure I wanted to open it up at all. I knew that if I did, I'd find out all kinds of details about Ellen, the odd and unique ones that would turn her into a person to me. If I opened that box, Ellen would come out and sit in the room next to me and talk to me and I'd get to know her and pretty soon I wouldn't be able to put her back.

I stared at the phone a little longer. Stood up. Paced around. Wished I had brought work home with me. The second time I looked at the box, it was already too late. I went to the corner, picked it up, and hoisted it onto the bed. Before opening it, I laid my hand over it, palm flat, pausing for a moment before disturbing the contents. Then I lifted the lid and began.

Dan had tossed in the mail he'd found at the house, and it was right on top. It was a large stack until I took out all the coupon flyers and catalogues. What was left was a couple of bills and a plain postcard.

Not much different from my own mail. According to her bills, Ellen had paid a fortune to heat that big house, and she was a frequent purchaser of cable pay-per-view movies, the single woman's best friend. At the Marblehead Athletic Club she'd charged the same bagel and cream cheese at the juice bar three days a week, every week, in December. Four times in the month, once a week on Mondays, she'd been charged fifty dollars for something coded PT, which I took to mean personal trainer. I started to put it back into the envelope when I noticed the date of her last session- January 5. It was the day she died. Seemed strange to work out, then go home and hang yourself. A phone number was provided on the invoice. I put it aside to call sometime when it wasn't the middle of the night.

The last item, the postcard, had looked like junk mail because of the computer-generated address label, but the single line of type across the back identified it as something far more interesting. "Have been unable to contact you by phone," it read. "Please call me." And it was signed by none other than Julia Milholland, the mystery woman with the old-Boston name. Whoever she was, she was persistent. And discreet. Not only had she never left a clue in her multiple phone messages, the front of the card was blank. No title, affiliation, or company name, but there was a return address on Charles Street. I put it with the health club invoice.

The rest of the box was filled with Ellen's ubiquitous hanging files with colored labels, which is not how I stored anything personal. I thought the one labeled letters was promising, but I didn't get too far into the newsy notes from Aunt Jo and chatty letters from high school and college chums before realizing that what I needed was a box of letters
from
Ellen.

She'd kept a stack of photo ID's, mostly from school, work, and health clubs. I remembered seeing Ellen at a few company functions and meetings. I knew what she had looked like, but this was the first time I'd seen a picture of her. She had chin-length red hair and hazel eyes. She had high cheekbones that came down to a rather square jaw. She wasn't pretty in the classic fashion model sense, but she was attractive in an unusual way. She didn't smile much, it seemed, at least not in the photos. I lined them up in chronological order and watched her age all the way up to the last one taken in Boston. The first was a Florida State driver's license issued on her sixteenth birthday. I stared at it for a long time before I was satisfied there was nothing in her smile, nothing in her eyes to portend a life already almost half over.

If people can be defined by the things they keep and the things they let drift away, for Ellen, so specific in everything she did, it would be particularly true. Nothing was in that box that hadn't meant something to her. What surprised me was that they meant something to me, too. Mass cards for the deceased, some with the last name Shepard, reminded me of a worn leather box my mother had kept in the basement, filled with old family photos, black-and-white, stiff with age. It reminded me of a picture I'd found in that box of my mother on her graduation day from a Catholic grade school in St. Louis. She was squinting into the camera, wearing a shy smile. It was the first time I'd ever seen my mother as a girl. I stared at that picture forever. She'd looked hopeful, something I'd never seen in her in real life. It was the first time I'd understood that she had been young once, that she had lived a life before me, one that didn't include me.

Ellen's rosary was in a velvet pouch with a First Holy Communion label stitched in gold. I hadn't thrown mine away, but I hadn't kept it, either. I didn't know what had happened to it. This one was tiny and delicate, made for eight-year-old hands with mother of pearl beads and a simple gold crucifix. I hadn't held a rosary in so long, I'd forgotten what it felt like.

Her birth certificate was there from a hospital in Dade County, Florida. When I pulled out an unlabeled file in the back, a news clip fell onto the cotton sheets. When I turned it over, I was confused for a moment because the woman staring back from the brittle, yellowed newsprint could have been a seamless addition to the chronology of Ellen's ID photos. It could have been Ellen in middle age. But it was a photo of her mother, and this was her obituary.

Anna Bache Shepard had died when she was forty-eight years old. She'd been survived by Joseph T. Shepard, her husband of nineteen years, and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Ellen. Services were held at Christ the King Catholic Church in Miami Shores. I read the clipping a second time, wondering why she'd died so young, but there was no cause given. I understood why after I'd read the only other document in the file, her death certificate. Ellen's mother had committed suicide. She'd hanged herself.