BAE BOY

3-5

"There you go! Incredible view, innit?" Brian said.

He was kicking back, enjoying that view because he'd let me take over the cyclic, the little joystick of the chopper, for my first real "solo" stretch.

And it felt like we were just floating on air. I wasn't nervous at all. I swear, it felt like I was born to do it. A major revelation, that had been. I was thinking that I'd like to maybe do rescues for real, if there was some sort of volunteer thing I could join.

I knew they had a foot patrol one that climbed all up in the mountains and got people stretchered and ready for helicopters, when they fell or got sick on some remote trail or something. But I wanted to do the copter part. Swoop in and take 'em away.

Of course, Brian kept his foot on the pedals on his side, just in case. Like a high school driving instructor does, on that first day out in the car.

But even so, he was a "hands-off" kinda teacher. If I did something weird, instead of taking over again, he'd give me verbal instructions and make me work my way through it. He called that the "you fucked it, you fix it" method.

And it worked for me, given my "authority" issues. I prefer to be trusted and respected that way. If you boss me, I go into my limbic brain and I don't retain anything. I just get pissed off.

So when things got a little wonky, he looked over and said, "Remember if you're movin' that cyclic a lot, you're workin' too hard. That's when you get that wobble."

I was making what they call "pilot induced oscillation." The technical term for "wobbling." So I smiled and eased up on the cyclic. Held it like he did, kind of between thumb and forefinger, instead of gripping it for dear life. And it was smooth as silk after that.

From the back seat, Kendall said, "It looks so complicated at first."

"It feels complicated at first," Brian told her. "You have to retrain your brain to think about what each control does. But once you feel the thing start moving, it's almost intuitive. So you start dancing with it, you know? For you, it'd be kinda like following him on the dance floor, I guess. He leans, you lean..."

"In the opposite direction," I said.

"Like Ginger Rogers dancing backwards in heels?" she teased us.

"It's not even that hard," Brian said.

"Oh, I beg to differ," I said.

But I was only joking. I was loving every minute. Flew us over I-10 feeling like king of the world. And feeling sorry for all the suckers down there driving. It would take those cars hours to get where most of them were headed. We'd be home in minutes. Six hundred miles in no time flat.

"Got an interesting little shimmy goin' on," Brian said.

And right after that, the first panel light went on.

And then I said, "What's--whoa, what the fuck?"

Because the engine had started to sputter a little bit. And then, it started to sputter a lot. Horrible sound, like it was about to run out of gas or something.

Kendall went, "Dad?"

And he said, "Yeah, hang on, baby," and started checking gauges and fiddling with things.