“What are you doing?” he said.
She didn’t move, her eyes remaining on the ladder. He glanced toward the house. The dog’s tail wagged, stirring mosquitoes. His father banged out of the back door and walked over, dropping tools on the pavement near the ladder with a musical noise. He sorted through them, choosing two.
Biddy was as bored as Kristi was, and feeling resentful besides. How far would he fall? Ten feet? Twelve feet? He watched his father mount the ladder and begin to climb. Halfway up he reached the point where the two halves were joined by the clamps and Biddy saw clearly the strain suddenly exerted on the lone remaining one.
“Dad,” he called sharply. His father stopped, surprised by the tone. His sister looked at him.
“One of the things is undone.” He pointed. His father looked, and hastened down the ladder.
“Thanks,” he said, peering at the clamp. “I set both of them. How the hell’d that happen?”
Kristi looked away. “It popped off while you were climbing,” Biddy said.
His father looked unconvinced. “I never heard of that before.” Biddy shrugged. He reset the clamp and climbed carefully up to the roof.
“Jerk,” Kristi whispered. “Fool.”
He went over to the dog, who curled onto his back with his paws in the air at his approach. “We don’t care, do we, Stupid,” he said, scratching its belly just under the rib cage. Its rear paw began to thump against the ground. Abruptly it twisted to its feet and trotted to the garden, sniffing with concentration along the fence, having seen or imagined something. Biddy followed. He collapsed into his chair in boredom and it folded up jerkily around him, banging the back of his head and tipping him backward over the fence into the garden. His head lay in the soft turned earth near a tomato plant. Stupid barked and leaped about the wreckage, startled. His sister had half folded his chair while he was scratching the dog. He started to disentangle himself, one thigh scratched and his hair full of dirt. His sister was still laughing and his father was standing on the roof, peering over at him. “Are you all right?” he called.
He nodded, still trying to climb out. The chair seemed to be holding him down, trapping him in its folding mechanism like a mousetrap or a crab’s claw.
“Now we need lessons on how to sit in a chair,” his father said. “Mr. Abbott, meet Mr. Costello.”
His father held the phone in his direction as though it were for him. “Mr. Rotondo wants to know why you’re not going out for Little League this year,” he said.
“Tell him because I don’t want to,” Biddy said.
His father returned the phone to his ear. “Paulie?” he said. “He’s not showing much interest this year.” He listened for a moment. “I’ll tell him.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “He says they really need good people this year and all the positions are wide open.”
Biddy shook his head.
“Still can’t sell him on it, Paulie. I know, I know. He was getting better and better.” He covered the phone again. “He says you’re a little Doug DeCinces at third.”
Biddy left the room.
“He may come around later,” he heard his father say. “Thanks for calling.”
They sat in the den watching Jason and the Argonauts. He had seen it before and liked the harpies.
“If that isn’t a bite in the ass,” his father said. “All last summer you wanted to be on the team, wanted me to work with you. All those hours Dom and I took you guys over to the dump and worked out. And here I am telling Paulie Rotondo all year you can’t wait.”
He refused to feel guilty.
“You’re losing interest in everything. What’re you going to do, hang around the house the rest of your life? Maybe your mother’s been right all along. Maybe we should be worried.”
“Maybe I’m depressed,” Biddy said.
“Yeah, you’re depressed. Twelve years old. You’re depressed.”
“Thirteen.”
His father didn’t respond. He answered a knock at the back door and returned to the den and stood by the television, ready to turn it off. “Your friend’s here,” he said. “Go out and do something.”
“Where we goin’?” Teddy asked.
“The airport,” Biddy said.
“The airport? Why the airport? You want to build a fort?”
Biddy said no, and denied he was intending to play guns or look for rats, either. They reached the hurricane fence at the end of Birch Street and knelt at the hole underneath it. Weeds surged up through the metal links. He held the fence up but Teddy refused to budge until he knew why they were going.
“I want to look at some stuff,” Biddy said, still holding the fence, considerable tension on his arm. “We can look at airplanes.”
“Look at airplanes?”
“Are you coming or not?” His tone surprised him.
“No, I’m not coming,” Teddy said. “Why do we always gotta do what you want to do?”
Biddy crouched low and slipped under the fence. Teddy followed.
They cantered down the slope to the basin of the airport, moving quickly and efficiently along paths they knew well. At the base they followed the perimeter west, skirting hillocks and standing marsh water. They worked their way through a thin path in the cattails, the reeds underfoot cracking crisply with each step. At points brown water oozed over the reed mat of the path, touching their sneakers. It filled the air with a musty smell.
“Where we goin’?” Teddy said. “There’s nothing over here but the runway.”
“I told you. The airport,” Biddy said.
“The real airport?” Usually when they spoke of “the airport” they meant the marshes and flatlands surrounding it, not the actual installation. “We’ll get in trouble.”
“No, we won’t.” The last thing he wanted was trouble. The reeds parted and the runway lay before him, the tarmac gray, smooth, and wide.
“We have to cross it,” he said.
“Cross it?”
He was already away from the cattails, checking the sky for incoming planes. Satisfied, he started to run, low to the ground, the heat off the paved surface dry and intense. On the other side he ducked into the weeds, crashing through the fragile yellow stalks. Teddy was right behind him.
“If you wanted to come over here, why didn’t you have your father drive you around?” he said, panting. Biddy ignored the question and struck out for the access road to the terminal.
The Bridgeport terminal was small and resembled a longish restaurant with a two-story tower. It was not very impressive on the best of days, and was even less so from their angle, surrounded by dark pavement and swimming in the heat waves of the afternoon. With the tower in sight Teddy grew appreciably more restive and lagged behind. By the time Biddy had reached the tower, Teddy had been lured off by a side attraction and was no longer visible. Biddy tested the door leading to the tower, but it was locked. A moment later, a man in white shirtsleeves opened it from the inside and asked what he could do for him.
“Could I go up in the tower for just a second?” Biddy said.
The man said no, and then changed his mind and said yes, what the heck, and led him up the stairs. At the top a man at a console, also in shirtsleeves, smiled at him. A fan whirred behind them. The man indicated to his friend that they’d better get him out. Biddy looked north to the hangars where he’d been with his mother and confirmed the blind spot. He pointed. “What’s over there?” he said. Just beyond the hangar he could make out the very tip of Mr. Carver’s Cessna, a sliver of white and blue.