CHAPTER 20
It was Friday night and Mom had a date with Tim LeMoot, the Texas Boot.
Denny had texted me: Provide pictorial evidence and let me know if LeMoot wears black cowboy boots on a date.
I spied him as he came up our front walk. To me, LeMoot looked like he’d walked right out of his own commercial. Shiny gray suit. Slicked-back hair. And black cowboy boots. He held pink flowers in his hands and rang the doorbell.
He said, “Hi, Jennifer, how do you feel about Italian food?”
I didn’t know about Mom, but I, Wayne Kovok, had lots of feelings about food.
Lots.
My feelings were that I missed food. I dreamed about food. I had to leave the room when certain foods were around. It felt like food was an ex-girlfriend I couldn’t talk to anymore without drooling.
So yeah, I had food feelings.
The Boot smiled at Mom with his Call me NOW, I’m waiting smile. She had done her hair in a way that covered the left side of her face to disguise her missing eyebrow. She had to keep her head tilted so that her hair would fall across the empty space. (I wondered how she was going to pull that off all night.)
There was no sales pitch at all from LeMoot. No TV-volume voice. No I’ll kick money in your wallet kind of stuff. Still, I worried that he might be a loser. So what if they’d dated before the accident? He might be a rat. Well, maybe that was an unfortunate choice of words considering my recent rat debacle.
“Thanks for the flowers,” Mom said. “I’ll put them in some water.” She let him stand there in the entryway on the YOU ARE HERE rug. All of a sudden, that rug embarrassed the beans out of me, so I waited in the kitchen. You can see right to the front door from where our kitchen sink is, so I pretended to wipe down the counter so that I could keep an eye on the Texas Boot.
Tim LeMoot said, “Nice little place you got here.”
As Mom arranged the pink flowers, I shoved a note in front of her: MONEY IN YOUR WALLET RIGHT NOW!
“Wayne, shush.”
“Is that your son in there?” Tim LeMoot said.
“Wayne, this is Tim LeMoot,” Mom said.
“Nice to meet you, Wayne.” He held out his hand to shake mine. I didn’t want to touch the Texas Boot, but I did anyway because I knew Mom would pinch me later. Grandpa barreled into the kitchen and went straight to the teapot.
“How do, sir?” Tim LeMoot said to Grandpa.
Tim LeMoot tried to shake Grandpa’s hand, too. Grandpa held his mug like a shield. Then he walked back to the big chair in the living room.
“Well, all right. How about we head out?” Tim LeMoot said. He rubbed his palms together and then smoothed his suit, which didn’t need smoothing. He spun around on his boot heel so fast that one of his arms knocked the vase of pink flowers right off the counter.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “So sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Mom said.
“I’ll get you more,” the Boot said. “Flowers, I mean. Flowers.”
Mom smiled her pretty smile at him.
It was weird that LeMoot was nervous. I hadn’t expected that at all. So I snapped a quick picture of him as he knelt down to collect the vase and the flowers. I knew Denny would love that. Maybe the Texas Boot wasn’t going to be all bad. Maybe it was about time that Mom was happy, too.
But as the Boot and Mom headed out the front door to go eat Italian food, you know who was outside, tapping his shoe on the sidewalk?
The Flee.
“What in the name of Sam Hill are you doing here, Doug?” Mom asked.
“I’m returning your call,” the Flee said. I kept the front door cracked open so that I could hear what they were saying.
“You return calls via the phone,” she said.
“Well, this one is an in-person response,” he said. “You were supposed to consult with me before making the airline decision.”
“No, not really,” she answered. “And stop acting like this all happened to you. It didn’t. The accident happened to me and your son. I think we can pretty well make up our own minds.”
She cut him off. “I don’t care what Stephanie’s dad says.”
I noticed the Boot standing there, wondering what was going on. And then I wasn’t just embarrassed about the rug in our entry. I was embarrassed all the way to the front curb.
“Mind if I ask who this is?” Tim LeMoot asked.
“This is Wayne’s father, Doug Kovok,” she said. “Doug, this is Tim LeMoot.”
“I know who this fancy-pants lawyer is,” the Flee said.
Mom twisted her hair, exposing her missing eyebrow.
“It’s time for you to go, Doug,” Mom said.
“I have business with my son,” the Flee said. “I got him a concert T-shirt.” It was then that I saw he had a shirt in his hand.
“I’ll give it to him,” Mom said.
The Flee stood out there in his faded Beatles T-shirt. He looked like a kid who’d gotten called to the office. And Tim LeMoot, in his nice suit, looked like a school principal who’d caught him doing something wrong.
What was the word for feeling embarrassed for someone else? Was there a word?
I needed to look it up.
Because I felt embarrassed for the Flee. But it didn’t look like he cared how ridiculous he was acting, arms waving, mouth hollering so loud that the neighbors with the still-deflated snowman flipped on their porch light.
So I went to the living room to get reinforcements. I had to stand in front of the TV to block the stupid Military Channel show.
I put my arms out to show my annoyance.
“Remove your blockade,” Grandpa shouted.
I wrote super fast: FRONT YARD THE FLEE WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
“Nothing. Not going to do anything. It’s not my fight.”
I wrote: MOM!!!!?????
Unfortunately for me, there is no volume control on what you write down on a piece of paper. I wish there were, but all you can do is add exclamation points, and that is also not very effective, because if you really know the origin of this symbol, you know that its fifteenth-century meaning was to show admiration or joy.
And I wasn’t showing admiration or joy.
Grandpa said, “Listen, you want some advice? Here it is. Prepare to be amazed.”
I prepared.
“Before you go taking the bull by the horns, make sure it’s your bull,” he said.
I can’t even tell you what my expression was then, but I can tell you it compromised my left eyebrow growth.
I guess he read my confusion because he said, “Wayne, that means you figure out which fights are yours to fight. That bull out there is not ours. This is your mother’s bull. Let her take it on. Besides, your mother must learn to take care of herself, because…” Grandpa trailed off. He left me hanging, wondering if he was about to share information. Information that I definitely didn’t want to be a fact.
“Now, stop talking, Wayne, and enjoy this show.”
News alert: I’d stopped talking weeks ago.
Still, I plopped down on the stupid flowery sofa and watched the military show on tank construction. But I didn’t enjoy it. By the time a tank had its caterpillar tracks installed, we heard the front door slam, followed by the click of Mom’s heels on the tile floor. Then she plopped down next to me and tossed the concert T-shirt onto my lap. The Bruh. He’d gone to the Bruh concert without me.
We all watched the next show about the history of camouflage.
I learned that the horned lizards of North America evolved ways to flatten their bodies to eliminate shadow.
After a little while, the doorbell rang. Why couldn’t he stop messing with our lives? So I got up to answer the door.
“Leave it, Wayne,” Mom said, but I brushed past her. Not that I had any idea what to say, because, you know, I was unable to actually say anything. Somehow, I was going to let him know that he could keep his stupid T-shirt.
I got to the door, and do you know what I saw?
Tim LeMoot with pizzas.
“Anybody order an Italian dinner?” he asked.
I guess I just stood there feeling stunned. Stupefied. Bewildered, even. I didn’t let him in the door until he spoke again.
“I promised an Italian dinner and I intend to deliver, if that’s okay with you, Wayne?”
So I let him inside and led him to the living room. Mom smiled. And she forgot to keep her head tilted to the right to cover up her missing eyebrow, too.
Tim LeMoot put the pizza boxes on the coffee table.
“Again, just wanted to say it was really nice to meet you, sir,” the Boot said, and extended his hand toward Grandpa. Grandpa just gave him a nod. “Hope that little dustup in the front yard didn’t ruin everyone’s evening.”
“Well, it’s not your fault that old boy is, um, what’s that saying?” he said, snapping his fingers. “Dumber than a…” Grandpa paused, trying to grab onto a word. But the Boot grabbed onto the silent space and ran with it.
“Dumber than a post, sir?”
The Boot actually said that. True story.
Grandpa raised an eyebrow. A thought was forming in his mind. “Dumber than a barrel of hair.” He’d taken the Boot’s bold statement as a challenge.
“Dumber than a wagon wheel?”
“That one’s good.” Grandpa stood up. “How about, so dumb he can’t ride and chew at the same time?”
“If dumb was dirt, he’d cover about an acre.” Man, I had to laugh at that one. The Boot was funny.
“He could fall up a tree.”
“He’s got a big hole in his screen door.”
“He’s got horns holding up his halo,” Grandpa said.
Grandpa put his hands in his belt loops and squared off in front of the Boot. The Boot took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Mom and I shared a look. Something I couldn’t begin to name had just happened between Grandpa and the Boot, but it seemed like a good thing. Like something had been settled. Mom shrugged her shoulders and half smiled. This was bound to be more entertaining than any TV show about camouflage. In fact, the more we watched, the more I thought it could be a TV show: Drill Sergeant vs. TV Lawyer. Tonight at ten!
“If he was bacon, he wouldn’t sizzle.”
“He carries his brains in his back pocket.”
“He’s so crooked that if he swallowed a nail, it would come out a corkscrew.”
Grandpa paused again. We waited for his next volley. “So, you’re a lawyer, then.”
“Where do you think I collected all those insults?” the Boot said. “Sir.”
“Is that so?” Grandpa asked. “I collected mine training new recruits.”
“Just yesterday, someone said that if a duck had my brains, it’d fly north for the winter,” the Boot said with a smile. “I’m keeping that phrase for later.”
“I could have used that one back in the day.” Grandpa laughed. “Boy, Reed would have laughed at that phrase, yes, sir. He loved collecting those.”
I froze. I watched and waited for Uncle Reed’s ghost to flash in front of Grandpa. For a nanosecond, I saw it. Grandpa paused and remembered. His face looked pained. He twisted his mouth and he squinted his eyes. No one else saw it but me. I could tell he’d steadied himself by taking a deep breath and then clearing his throat. “Now, this pizza for all gathered here, then?”
He’d changed the topic.
“Yes, sir,” Tim LeMoot said.
Everyone dug in. Except me. The pizza smelled delicious. My taste buds were in agony. Grandpa and Tim LeMoot and Mom ate it all up. Sometimes I don’t think they knew how they tortured me with their meals. I was forced to suck on a piece of crust like it was a baby’s pacifier. All my feelings about pizza surfaced all over again.
True story.
When they all forgot I was in the room and began talking about places they’d like to travel, I snapped another stealth picture of the Texas Boot and sent it to Denny.
Boot eats pepperoni pizza!
I’d become a fan of the Boot. I admit it. In the hour I’d known him, he’d already kept a promise. He made my mother smile and not wear her I need to watch English movies face. And he even stood boot-to-boot with Grandpa.
It occurred to me that things might be looking up for Mom. We hadn’t talked about the crash since New Year’s Eve. We were getting distance from it. My face and throat were healing, and I was going to school. She’d just gotten her arm brace removed, was back at work, and was now going on dates! I was even beginning to wonder if Grandpa was going to move back to his house. I didn’t really want to know, so I didn’t ask.
Pretty soon, there wouldn’t be any obvious evidence that we’d been in a plane crash. Except for a brand-new dishwasher and the blank space up on the Wall of Honor where the burial flag should have gone. A space that seemed to get larger. I mean, it just seemed like the land of AFTER was going on and on and on. And people could tell jokes in your living room and eat pizza. And no one was remembering BEFORE the way Grandpa did. The way he had memories of Uncle Reed that would stop him on a dime. I wondered if pretty soon anyone would remember that much of how it was before. When Uncle Reed was here. Before everything happened.
I went to my room, sat down on the floor of my closet, and opened the cardboard box that contained the display case for an American flag. Had it been a dumb idea to buy it? Sometimes I thought that was true. Sometimes I thought the case was my own personal elephant in my own room. I put the case on my carpet floor and touched the glass. It made me think back to Uncle Reed’s funeral.
Did you know that Arlington National Cemetery is located on Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s confiscated estate? The government seized the property in 1864 after a tax bill of $92.07 went unpaid. The first military man to be buried there was Private William Christman, a twenty-one-year-old private whose soldier’s pay was only $13.41 per month. Soldiers from every single war in US history were now buried there. There were an estimated four hundred thousand graves at Arlington.
That day, it was four hundred thousand plus one.
Four enlisted men in uniform and white gloves lifted the American flag above Uncle Reed’s coffin. They folded it over and over until it formed the shape of a triangle and the white stars were on top.
I’d looked it up.
I remembered sitting there at the cemetery and looking over at Grandpa, watching him keep it together. Watching him move his fingers behind his aviator sunglasses and wipe away a tear. I told myself I hadn’t seen that. So I looked down, stared at my suit jacket, and focused on the buttons. Navy blue with gold on the edges.
They presented the folded honor flag to Grandpa. He passed it to Mom while he shook hands with soldiers who’d served with Reed. She placed the flag in her lap and reached for my hand and squeezed it. I remember praying she wouldn’t look at me, either.
I understood something. Something I didn’t really want to understand, but the realization forced itself into my brain uninvited. How tough had it been for Grandpa to bury his only son?
Pretty tough.
And then we’d almost died on the way home. What if everyone had perished? Grandpa would have been left behind.
Mom knocked on my door. Quickly, I covered the empty flag case with bubble wrap.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I opened the door, then sat down on my bed and picked at a loose string on my comforter.
“You know, maybe it wasn’t very nice to make those jokes about your father.”
Yes. There should be a rule. Only a family member can make fun of a family member.
“You probably have the idea that there’s nothing good about him, Wayne. But he had some good qualities.”
Yeah, like setting off explosives inside his house. Genius!
She sat down next to me and touched my hair the way moms do.
“Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are at first. That’s how it was for me and your dad. I had to speak up for myself. And for you. But he’s maturing, I think.”
You wouldn’t think he was mature if you knew about that day he came over and hit me and Grandpa chased him off.
“Just be careful about expecting too much from him, okay?”
“The best thing he ever did was to give me you,” she said. “What I’m trying to say is that even a flower can grow in the desert. You know, something beautiful can come from something… dry.”
Dry?
“You know what I mean. Something good from an unexpected source.”
I sort of understood what she meant about my dad. Even if she was comparing me to a flower and the Flee to an uninhabitable climate.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
No. I stared hard at the carpet on my floor.
Then she saw what I was looking at. The flag display case.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, her voice full of surprise. Hello, elephant in my room.
I’ve been looking for the flag.
She put her hands to her mouth. She was trying to hide her face. The sad face. We stared at the empty case.
Weeks ago, I’d told Denny that I was certain the flag would be found by the time the investigators announced the initial findings and cause of our crash. Why had I been so certain?
The report was due out on Monday.
DATA
NTSB initial report on Flight 56 released two months following the crash:
32 people died, including passengers and flight crew.
Severe winds were a factor in the crash.
During an earlier scheduled inspection, it was noted that there were fatigue cracks along the seam of the aircraft.
The cracks had not been repaired.
The fatigue cracks, coupled with wind shear, ripped open the hole in the plane.
Therefore, a human error, or failure to adequately maintain the aircraft, was listed as the primary cause.