Matt stretches his imagination for a way to take care of his mother.
“I can’t be with her all day, every day,” he says. “I have my paper route and my sister to find.”
“I can fill in around you,” Bruce says eagerly. “Happy to.”
Something gut-level, protective and suspicious, jumps up in Matt. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad.”
Julie’s voice rings from her room:
“That’s not going to happen!”
Bruce manages an embarrassed smile.
“We can keep her another day or two,” says the doctor.
45
After the hospital, Matt and his father get donuts at Dave’s. Bruce tells Dave to be a good boy and pour more half-and-half into that coffee. Matt can’t wait to get back outside.
They trudge up and down the steep, winding streets of Laguna, east of Coast Highway. The morning is hotter than yesterday and the usual onshore breeze is barely moving.
By midmorning, Bruce has lost his charm. They’re getting spooked looks, refusals, closing doors.
It’s almost noon and they’ve only made eighteen full searches. They’ve come down a nearly vertical Upland Road to Pacific Coast Highway and are heading north for the next street up the hill.
There’s a gaggle of war protesters up ahead at Moss Street, waving signs at the drivers, many of whom are honking back and flashing their headlights on and off.
Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?
I Don’t Give a Damn for Uncle Sam!
Another Mad Jew for Peace!
“Your mother is right. I’d hate it here. It’s the new Sodom. Look at those people. Weak, materialistic. Plump, pleasure-seeking, end-of-empire Romans. Ignorant of the Soviet world threat, ignorant of Christian-American history. Ignorant of self-defense, oblivious to the responsibility of owning firearms. But they’re against a necessary war they don’t understand. Well, isn’t that just great? Kyle over there in the tunnels and these pathetic hippie homos are waving signs before they head home to get stoned and watch Let’s Make a Deal.”
Matt sees his English teachers, Marybeth Benson and Londa Jones, raising their big signs up and down: Draft Beer Not Students! Bring the Troops Home Now!
“Look,” says Matt. “My teachers are there! They want beer and Kyle to be home.”
“That’s an insult to a boy whose life is on the line.”
“Would you rather have him home or in the tunnels, Dad?”
“Home from the tunnels, Matt! After killing every wretched communist he could find. And maybe a few extra. And if, in a couple of years, our country is still in this war — or some other war — I’d want you to be over there, fighting for freedom and America. I know you would. I think you would.”
A sharp glance Matt’s way, then Bruce tugs the brim of his Stetson down lower.
“That’s what I would want for you, son. Your mother does not feel that way, as you probably remember from Kyle enlisting. Nor Jazz. You, of course, are entitled to your own opinion. I pray that it be an informed and patriotic opinion — not a product of this immoral time and city. The queers are of the devil, not God.”
Matt doesn’t know what to say to that.
For what seems like the hundredth time since last night, Matt thinks of Sara. He wonders if male homos ever miss girls. Probably not or they’d change. Can they change? Lesbians must not miss guys, either. Who knows what’s inside you when you’re born, or for that matter, what grows inside you over time? His sophomore biology teacher said people can be born with their sexuality different than their biology, and that some undergo surgery to change their gender. Not for me, thinks Matt, not after last night’s drive.
“So, son, if you ever have thoughts like that, I mean along the lines of what we’ve just been discussing, please talk to a minister or other trusted adult. Based on Laurel, and your friend in the Porsche, I don’t foresee a problem.”
“God, Dad. Me neither.”
“Look at these freaks. Public schoolteachers among them. Disgusting.”
By then Matt and his father are surrounded by protesters as they wait to cross at Moss Street. Matt waves at Marybeth and Londa, who smile and aim their signs at him and his father. Bruce doffs his cowboy hat theatrically and flips them off, which draws a band of young people into a chanting circle around them, John Wayne, You’re a Pain! John Wayne, You’re a Pain! Bruce shoves a young man, sends him skidding onto the sidewalk. Marybeth and Londa pick him up and hold him back while Bruce strides across Moss, away from the crowd. Matt watches his father in stunned amazement — embarrassed and saddened. If it weren’t for Jazz, Matt wouldn’t want to be spending time with him at all. So much snarling anger in him, so much wounded pride.
By one o’clock, quitting time, Bruce’s brusque requests have turned off many of the homeowners, only ten of whom consent to a full house search for Jasmine.
While Bruce searches their last home of the morning shift — a neat glass-and-beam modern on Gainsborough Drive — Matt talks to Arnold Service, a mild-mannered old guy of at least fifty.
Matt answers his questions about Jasmine and her abduction. The man has no idea a local girl has been abducted in front of her very own home.
“Jasmine is an unforgettable name,” says Service.
Out of sight, Bruce clomps from hall to bedroom, bedroom to hall, calling out hello!
Service carefully studies the pictures of Jasmine — Matt’s sketch, her senior portrait. He sheepishly admits to not following the news or even leaving the house much.
“And you say she plays ukulele?” Arnold Service asks.
“Yes, very well.”
“I do, too.”
“And she writes her own songs.”
Service’s pale blue eyes scan Matt’s face. “You wait right here.”
He goes into a small dining room, takes something off the top of a china hutch, brings it to Matt.
Who recognizes it immediately from his boyhood: a Little Wing. It’s a paper airplane, one of the boxy, up-tipped-wing ones that float forever in any kind of breeze. It’s got small, precisely folded elevators along the rear edge of the wings, which gives the nose lift. Bruce Anthony himself came up with the design after much trial and error. Taught his kids how to make them — simple really, he explained — the secret was getting the wings wide and long enough to sustain flight, but short enough for rigidity. The elevators were his innovation. The heavier the paper the better the glider, until the paper was too heavy. If a Little Wing got into a good breeze, like a canyon thermal or an updraft at the beach, it could go forever. An incredible paper airplane. Kyle’s always stayed in the air the longest because he had a strong arm. Jasmine had named the aircraft Little Wing, long before the song came out.
But what is most interesting to Matt is obviously what was most interesting to Arnold Service.