Flightsuit

  FLIGHTSUIT

  By

  Tom Deaderick

  1

  A family lived here once, long ago. The metal skeleton of a tricycle, overgrown by weeds and nearly hidden, rusted in the sunlight. Like the other houses on Iron Mountain, the house had been abandoned fifty years ago.

  Now, the buildings were falling down and forgotten, but once children played here. Small tin and rough metal toys with lingering faint traces of long-faded paint were scattered around wooden frames. Once filled with sand or flowers, the frames were now boxes around grass and weeds. Leo looked for patches of thicker weeds that sometimes marked objects. There wasn't anything in particular that he looked for. It was a preoccupation, something to do. Wandering the deserted mining village both piqued and temporarily satisfied his curiosity.

  He'd learned to watch for certain colors that were out of place in the green-saturated forest that first crept into and now overgrew the deserted wood-frame houses. Dark orange-brown usually indicated something metallic. There were many old bikes and tricycle frames, the village was once filled with children riding all over dirt roads that connected the houses and the storage buildings for the iron mines.

  White or faded gray was usually an old board or some kind of handmade furniture, like a chair. The bright reds, blues and yellows of plastic furniture and toys that littered the houses along the river were absent here. Everything was from a matching palette. Even the rusted orange pieces of metal seemed to belong with the trees and vines now, as if they'd been leeched of human craft and were slowly being pulled back by nature.

  Sometimes the houses were gone entirely, leaving only smooth brown river stones stacked to form a house's crude foundations. Each spring daffodils bloomed. They marked boundaries of porch and path between the little houses where mothers and daughters planted them. They'd not realized all their hands went to would be left behind and forgotten. The wood and stones that had sheltered them from freezing cold winters and the deluge downpours of Tennessee summer rains crumbled without human attention, but the most fragile efforts they'd laid their hands to, the flowers, outlasted all. The flowers bloomed every year, with none to admire them.

  The houses had been home to families of the men who mined the mountains of Bumpas Cove as far back as 1896. Originally named "Bumpass Cove" referring to steep hillsides which caused travelers to bump heels to backsides on steep descents, the embarrassing name was officially changed to "Bumpas Cove" in 1949.

  Bumpas Cove is surrounded by the Nolichucky River and the high, forested Appalachian Mountains. The mountains pile so closely together that flat ground is rare in Eastern Tennessee. Bumpas Cove is, in common terms a "wide place in the road" assuming that "wide" could, in any way be used to describe a cramped and narrow two-lane road with mountain on one side and the river's edge on the other. The mountains grudgingly give way, with steep gray-green sandstone walls rising up within feet of the road in several places. The river yields no more space on its side of the road. Frequent heavy summer rains bring the river higher and occasionally make the road impassible.

  Small, frame houses climb the hillsides in the cove with lot gardens occupying any flat ground.

  Around twenty families live in the small houses within Bumpas Cove. Leo had lived in one of them for all of his fourteen years. His father left as a soldier and never came back. Not killed, or even hurt – just moved on. Leo knew from overheard conversations there was another family somewhere else. It made his mother angry. Leo didn't really miss him. He missed the idea, the concept, of a father that he pieced together from characteristics of his friend's dads, but didn't miss his actual father at all anymore.

  He connected only superficially with classmates and no better with the few from outside his school that he met in Sunday school. Their interests were outside his experiences. They talked excitedly about new gaming systems, and the latest first-person shooters.

  He lived in a generation that increasingly meshed virtual and real environments. Almost everything was flexible in the virtual environment. People wanted to feel the pleasure of flight and the virtual environment's gravity rules could be easily changed. Encounter too great a challenge and a character could simply "respawn" and try again. In the virtual environment, Leo and the other children grew into, everything was flexible except access. Money granted access. Each dawn in the virtual world saw the privileged leaving the sons of misfortune like Leo further behind. It was a desperate feeling to watch everyone else move forward.

  When a small knot of boys gathered to tout their adventures and discoveries in simulated environments, Leo attentively listened. He stored away details that he could later relate to a different group as his own experience. All he knew about the games were the stories and ads he'd seen on TV. He had an old game system that his mother bought at a yard sale. It worked for a couple months. No one talked about the two games that he had for it, so he didn't mention it to anyone.

  They didn't reject him in obvious ways, no one ever realized he didn't even have the games they were talking about – they just didn't care what Leo said, what he thought or if he was there or not. If asked, they'd say Leo was an "ok" guy, but no one had ever invited him over and certainly Leo had never considered inviting them to the small house he shared with his mother.

  If Leo had been born twenty or thirty years earlier he wouldn't have been so isolated. Then, boys were outside, playing in woods, wading streams, riding bikes and exploring. Now all activity centered on devices, gadgets and high-speed internet, all too expensive for his family's means. They had food, they had simple and small gifts at Christmas, but no extras. None of his classmate's "essential" entertainments.

  Leo's exploration of the old mining village began part out of boredom and part from an amorphous hope that he might find something valuable left behind.

  Getting to the mining village was a challenge. A chain that hung between two steel posts blocked the mine road and the county no longer maintained past that point. Beyond the chain, the old asphalt was cracked and shot through with weeds and even trees in places.

  Stepping past the chain onto the old, long abandoned asphalt was Leo's favorite adventure. The isolated woods and hills were his green kingdom. The isolation he felt when surrounded by classmates dissipated when he walked into actual physical isolation. There was no one here, but this place made him feel like he was supposed to be alone with it.

  The wasted road seemed out of place in the narrow valley, as if transported into a place it didn't belong. The trees and briars slowly strangled it to reclaim the open valley sunlight that was only available in morning or evening on the hillsides. A small stream ran alongside the road, sometimes coming close and sometimes hidden by bushes and trees, always hemmed in by the mountains. Traveling through the valley Leo felt exposed, knowing he could be seen clearly by animals on the mountains while they remained concealed. Tall grasses on all sides could also hide anything. Even after hundreds of trips to the village, Leo always suspected something was just waiting in the overgrown, eye-level weeds to spring out at him. Surrounded by mountains all his life, he felt uneasy seeing so much open sky. He wasted no time in the valley.

  After a half mile the road deteriorated into a path. The path was kept worn by occasional hikers, teenagers looking for a place to drink and by animals, mostly deer.

  The worn path through high grass wound close to one of the surrounding hills to become a forest trail. There was no sign of the original road into the village, the animals and hikers preferred a more direct route than the villager's road and an expanse of briars blocked the valley floor.

  What arose from boredom became something Leo eagerly anticipated. He'd head out several times a week if the weather permitted. Mrs. Reese, the librarian, introduced Leo to the Tarzan boo
ks of Edgar Rice Burroughs after she'd asked what kinds of things he liked to do on the weekends. She was concerned with Leo's isolation. Leo read all the school library's Tarzan books. He found an old knife in a drawer in the basement that had a belt-strap sheath and he took it with him on his excursions.

  It felt much better to have the knife. He'd once seen a black bear leaving the grassy valley path that he normally traveled. He'd been shocked to stillness. He stood open-mouthed and wide-eyed as he waited for the bear to shuffle off. After a few minutes, he could no longer hear the bear's footsteps. He turned and made his way back home. He hadn't gone back out for a couple days after seeing the bear. He often thought he heard it afterward but it usually turned out to be squirrels and birds. They surprisingly made more noise in the leaves than the larger bear.

  2

  There were once twenty houses along the hillsides, hilltops and valleys surrounding the mining community of Iron Mountain. The mining company built and leased them to workers and managers. Most of the workers lived in the surrounding communities of Embreeville, Lamar and the town of Erwin.

  The mines were opened in 1912. Through the years, over 30 deposits on Iron Mountain and the surrounding hills and valleys were discovered. The iron, lead and zinc mined from the valley slowed after the Second World War and the families moved from the small homes one by one from 1948 to 1960.

  In 1972, a Pennsylvania company acquired the land and began using the mines as dumps. Drum and liquid containers were hauled to the mines, past dozens of homes along the narrow river road where children played and small gardens grew.

  State officials inspecting the dumping operations assured residents that toxic materials were not being dumped in the 1,200 acre site, but were forced to backtrack when hundreds of 55 gallon drums of toxic materials were discovered. The landfill supervisor was a former state employee.

  After the toxic materials were revealed, a representative of the state's health department Division of Solid Waste Management admitted to a reporter, "These people don't trust the state, they don't trust the EPA, and they don't trust the company. And to be quite frank, I don't really blame them. We have a real credibility problem here. We made a mistake and now we are paying for it."

  Trucks rolled on however until eight-month-old Dana Love Townsend died in her crib with skin ulcers on August 22, 1980. Both baby and her 19 year-old pregnant mother drank from a contaminated well. Members of the community took turns standing in the road to block waste trucks until the company finally abandoned operations.

  By 1980, the site was listed as one of the EPA's "100 Most Dangerous Landfills".

  A landfill employee said that he rarely knew what he was hauling in the liquid tanker trucks. He just opened the valves and released the chemicals onto the ground.

  3

  Leo waded the stream that ran alongside the old deserted road watching for crawdads. He caught and sold them to the fishermen who came down the river road to fish in the Nolichucky.

  The river was a local favorite for trout fishing with distinctive water-smoothed brown rocks and clear water – provided it didn't rain. Rainstorms turned the water rust-brown, like chocolate. Northeast Tennessee had plenty of rain during hot summer days, giving rise to the name "The Muddy Nolichucky".

  As Leo approached the paved remnants where he normally switched over to the path, he stopped. Maybe, he thought, looking at the way the long sloping briar branches left an opening over the stream, almost a tunnel. If I walk through the stream and don't try to keep my feet dry, I could duck underneath and go that way. He hadn't explored this part of the briar-covered valley before. He liked the way the briars draped together like a tunnel entrance. It reminded him of Tarzan's winding tunnels down to Pellucidar. He touched his knife hilt to make sure it was ready. The tunnel tightened quickly and required him to crab forward on all fours. I'll be pretty much soaked after this, not just my shoes, but it's ok. The sun was hot and would dry him before he made it home. At least it would once he came out of the briar tunnel. Inside, it was cool and wet, with only scratches of sunlight reaching the stream.

  Leo estimated he'd traveled about halfway through the briar patch when he noticed the corner of a shining pipe sticking out of the muddy stream bank. Under the scattered shadows of the briars, it shown like white glass.

  Leo expected a sharp glass edge, but it was smooth. He pulled to see if it would come free of the mud and was surprised when it slid too-easily free. He fell backward in the stream. Instinctively, he jumped back up to avoid getting soaked through only to catch his head on the overhanging briars. Pinching the briar stalk between two fingers and gingerly pulling the thorns off his scalp, he looked down at the pipe.

  The stream's flow washed it almost perfectly clear of mud. It glistened smooth and shining. It was over three feet long, with two tubes connected by a metallic banded section. Leo pulled the tubes up to look at them. As the other end came out of the stream, he saw that it wasn't a pipe.

  At the other end there was a glove. It had long fingers, two inches longer than Leo's. The fingers were wide. Leo held his own fingers alongside the glove for comparison. Much longer than his own and three times as wide. He could probably get two or three of his fingers into the glove. They were about the same thickness as his own fingers, making the glove look like a giant hammer had flattened it. The thumb wasn't in the right place. He could probably wear it but it wouldn't be too comfortable with the glove's thumb in the center of the palm.

  He flipped it over to look at the arm end, surprised by how light the sleeve was. He looked into the sleeve's opening to make sure there wasn't anything nasty down there, but the briar's laced shadows made it too dark. He turned it upside down and shook. On the second shake, mud and muck flopped in a pile onto the smooth stones of the stream.

  Leo lowered the sleeve into the stream, directing water to wash the inside out. He upended it several times until the water coming out was clear.

  He couldn't stand up straight without getting more briars in his head, so he found a mossy smooth rock on the bank where he could give the sleeve a closer inspection. Once seated, he looked more closely at it. Empty of muck and water, it was amazingly light. Tapping it with his fingernail, Leo decided that it wasn't glass after all, it had more of a metallic ring. Never seen anything made of metal that was as light as plastic. He looked around him and found a rock and scratched it against the sleeve. No mark at all. Now that's cool.

  It was so smooth it resembled polished glass more than metal. It had depth like a heavy-lacquered floor. The surface under the clear shine was pearlescent white with shiny, reflecting flecks. As he looked at the upper part of the sleeve, he noticed very faint surface marks. Running his finger along them, they weren't indented – they were below the glassy surface with a visual depth that gave an impression of engraved rather than painted lines.

  The marks made curls and shapes in the surface. Leo thought they looked a little like Chinese writing, not random but also not recognizable as any meaningful shapes. He traced a line with his finger.

  He put his hand around the glove's fingers and they flexed freely. He was used to finding things that were rusty and immovable. The sleeve seemed almost new. For some reason, this made him want to look around, to make sure there wasn't someone watching him. Someone that might be looking for this. Someone that might want it back.

  Leo looked into the open sleeve again but still couldn't see down into it. He reached in, feeling carefully with his fingers for any obstruction or anything disgusting. Sliding his fingertips along the inside, he reached further in. It felt smooth. He stretched his fingers, meaning to reach into the glove, but the sleeve was too long. It felt like his fingers reached only to the wrist. He couldn't feel the curve of the palm with his fingertips, so he was short of that. His elbow aligned with the sleeve's bend though. He flexed his arm back and forth.

  Leo raised the sleeve on his arm into the sunlight splintering through briar branches. Water dripped from the inside down hi
s arm, but he barely noticed. The shiny flecks shone in the sunlight. Leo was amazed. He considered what he might do with the sleeve. It's got to be worth something, he thought. There might be another sleeve around here. If there is, I could carry two of them, they're not heavy at all. I should find as many pieces myself as I can. When I show it to other people, they'll all come out here and find the rest. Maybe I should hide it while I look around for more pieces.

  He heard a sharp "click!"

  He looked around for the noise just as he felt a sting under his upper arm. He thought a bee had stung him and reached up quickly to pull the sleeve off. As he touched the upper sleeve he felt the sting again and tucked his chin to look at his bare shirt-sleeved arm inside the sleeve.

  A spike of some kind extended near the sleeve's rim and it was sticking into his arm. It felt as if it was actually scraping the bone of his arm. It was deeply embedded, Leo saw with queasy horror. He tugged cautiously at the sleeve but when he did the pain was intense. He jerked his hand away, staring at the spike. The sliced sunlight coming into the briar tunnel instantly drew back and darkness filled in. Leo's limp body rolled over on the stream bank.

  The stream washed over his shoes. It flowed over the brown stones, drawing every small particle around the stones away. The pile of muck poured from the sleeve was carried away in the gentle, insistent current. As water washed away the mire, sunlight shone on grey bones of an arm, with a long thumb and two long flat fingers.

  4

  Five hundred miles away and three years earlier Hack Samuels set events in motion that would later bring Leo and himself atop a high mountain cliff with a dead man below.

  There are easier things to do, Hack decided, thinking to himself, than casually creeping closer to a bomb. It's the casual part that's the problem. Hard to be sure what emotions should be on the face of someone so enthralled that they forget a truckload of explosive fertilizer is ten feet away.