Sitting at the edge of the oval at lunchtime, Spencer chewed his ham and cheese sandwich while Leon slapped his thigh in excitement.
‘Spence, you utter, utter_____’ Leon shook his head, unable to finish.
‘I know,’ Spencer nodded, head down, trying not to smile at them too gleefully. ‘Cool, hey.’
‘You’ve got the wickedest dad,’ Charlie said.
‘Apart from the fact that he has to look at people’s bums the rest of the time,’ Leon said.
Spencer laughed, ‘Leon! He doesn’t do that often. It’s just one of the things doctors have to do. There’s lots of other stuff. Like people with colds, kids with rashes. Allergic reactions. Broken bones.’
‘Yep. And looking at people’s bums.’
‘Leon!’ Spencer said, ‘You gotta cut back on the potty talk. He looks down people’s throats, too, you know, and in their ears. You don’t have to focus on their...’
‘Nether regions?’ Charlie offered.
‘Exactly.’
Leon held up his hand. ‘Well thanks a million for the medical lecture, lads. So, Spence, when will you go out?’
‘Dunno exactly. Afternoon, I think. Depends when the winds are good, when the thermals are reliable, Dad says.’
‘Will you be up the front, in the main cockpit?’
Leon rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, what do you think, Charlie? That Spence’ll be flying the thing while his dad sits back sipping pina coladas?’
‘Well, I dunno, Leo, I haven’t been in a glider before, have I?’
‘Guys, guys,’ Spencer interjected. ‘Settle! You haven’t forgotten who found your library book already have you, Leon? You have to be really nice to us for the rest of the week, mate.’
‘Well ... you didn’t actually find it, Spence.’
‘I know. But ... I was there.’
‘That’s a very weak link, Spence.’
‘I know that too. Now shut up and I’ll tell you about the gliding.’ Spencer took his time finishing the last corner of his sandwich, putting a dry bit of crust back in his lunch box and clicking it shut. ‘Dad’ll be flying the glider—of course. It’s a side-by-sider, so we’ll both be in the front. Enjoying the view. It’s just a joy ride.’
‘Awwwww,’ groaned Leon, falling back on the grass. ‘I can’t bear it, you total_____’ He pushed his hands into his hair, unable to finish his insult.
Spencer was stoked, big-time, when his dad had come into his room the night before to talk to him about going out for a flight.
‘I think you’re old enough,’ he’d said. ‘And I’ve talked to Mum about it. She’s on board with it—so to speak.’
Spencer’s eyes were wide, and he felt his lungs fill with a physical pride. He’d been waiting for a gazillion years to fly with Dad.
He knew Leon and Charlie’d be envious. There was no point asking them to come to the airport for take-off; gliding, unlike skateboarding, just wasn’t a precision sport. A change in the forecast could change the whole day’s flight plan, even whether you flew at all.
The Drifter was a non-motorised fixed-wing glider. It was like a hang-glider but with a fuselage, Dad said. Or, like a small plane with no engine. To get up in the Drifter they needed Dad’s mate Reg or another pilot in a light aircraft to launch it, to get it going, to tow it on a steel cable up as high as the thermals and then he’d release it to the whorls of hot and cooling air.
The Drifter was Dad’s pride and joy. Flying was, as Spencer’s mum sometimes said, with a smile plastered slightly oddly on her face, Dad’s Other Woman. Seven-year-old Pippa would look across at Dad when Mum said that, and wait for the inevitable retort. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he’d say, stealing over to give Mum a squeeze. ‘There could never be anyone else, my darling,’ he’d say in a theatrical voice. ‘Ever.’
‘Errr, Dad, pleeeeeease,’ Pippa would say, covering her eyes. ‘Stop!’
Now, before bed, Spencer ate his way through a bowl of Weet-Bix and yoghurt. Somehow it was a lot yummier at night before bed than it was at breakfast time.
As he looked at Dad reading one of his medical journals on the couch, he wondered what he had been like at twelve. Had he eaten Weet-Bix before bed? Had he created his own Lego designs? Spencer realised, all of a sudden, that he had no idea what sort of a kid his dad had been. He hadn’t even really thought about it before. What he did know was this: Dad was the town doctor, Doctor Rory Gray. The rest of the time he was the glider pilot, and their dad. And, okay: sometimes bum-examiner.
Spencer took a long time to get to sleep that night. He imagined sitting in the Drifter’s cockpit, the paddocks green and yellow squares below them. He imagined flying over Great Southern Primary School—over his very classroom.
Dad called it ‘soaring’, said that’s what glider pilots called their special sort of flight. Dad was a life member of the Skippers Cove Soaring Society. Reg was the secretary.
Eventually, sleep crept over Spencer, as softly as the goosedown doona settled on his tired body. The doona had been a special present from Mum for his tenth birthday. But that night, Spencer’s dreams were with his Dad, and they were from the views of birds.