Chapter 8: The Commander's Sixty Days

Dane sat on the bench at the end of the flight line long after the debrief was over.

Julie had taken Signe home in her own car.

She had not looked at him when she left, and she had not needed to.

The rain had stopped.

Out past the hangar the wind socks hung limp, and the station lights shone on wet concrete.

He took the dented tag off his key ring and held it in his palm.

My father died in his seat, Brooke had said, in front of the whole station.

She had not lied.

Five years ago he had been a young lieutenant with a bad left ear, and a test paper that said so.

The flight surgeon had handed it to him in a sealed envelope.

He had read the number in the parking lot and put the envelope in his flight bag and gone on flying.

Two months later he missed a radio call on a night training run.

It was only a few words from the tower, and the aircraft commander in the right seat had said them again without a flicker.

After the flight the commander had held out his hand and said, "Show me the paper."

Dane gave it to him.

The commander read it standing under the hangar light.

Then he folded it into his breast pocket and said, "You're off the schedule. I'll tell the surgeon you have a cold. We'll fix this quietly."

"Sir, you can't."

"I can for sixty days. That's long enough to get you a second opinion that isn't a career ender."

A cold wind came off the water, and he turned the tag over in his fingers.

The numbers on it had worn smooth under his thumb.

Dane never got that second opinion.

On the thirty-first night there was a medevac call, a fishing boat taking water off the Vineyard in a gale.

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