{ The mis sion} When I worried aloud to a friend


who teaches middle school about this love affair with fire, she laughed at me: “Yeah, him and every other 12- and 13-year-old boy I’ve ever met.” I remember 13, but I recall the time


before my father’s death as though I am watching events taking place behind a scrim that blurs the edges and blunts details. That was the year I decided not to talk in school. At all. Ever. I was awkward and shy, and my lips felt pleasant resting closed against each other, because they


smart — so life’s lessons have to come at him sideways to not be rejected outright. “Flying is dangerous business” would be dismissed with a roll of the eyes; perhaps I am hoping that the sight of a grave might linger in his subconscious. Or maybe it’s because my son has grown moody — reminding me of myself in 1977 and bringing that whole troubled period back. Maybe, I think tonight, as I pack our supper leftovers into the cooler and zip up the tent flaps, it is because it is hard for me to separate who I was at 13,


of the question. On a whim, my mother decided to bury my father in Selma. We had spent three happy years stationed at nearby Craig Air Force Base and had taken long walks through a stately old Selma cemetery, huge live oaks drip- ping with Spanish moss, and thought it peaceful. The military treated us well. It


shipped the body back to the United States, flew my family back from Bel- gium on a private jet, immediately activated veterans benefits, covered all


My son is hunched forward with his skinny arms wrapped around his skinny legs — a bony pterodactyl poised for flight.


were clearly not up to the task of keeping pace with my flurry of confused thoughts — which came to rest only fleetingly on the topics of class discussion. Though this was not my purpose, I wondered vaguely whether anyone would notice. They did not. I got all A’s. My father inquired after my studies


that year the same way he did every day of my life; I responded in kind. “How was school?” “Fine.” “What’d you learn?” “Things.” “What kind of things?” “All sorts of things.” Then silence would fill the car. Or,


if I thought he was being too nosy, I’d counter. “How was work?” “Fine.” “What’d you do?” “Things.” And then our day would be behind


us — tidily wrapped up in ambiguity; no lies, no truths. Tomorrow, we will visit his grave,


which I haven’t been to since his burial in 1977, a week after his plane crashed. We are camping and road-tripping to Pensacola, Fla., for spring break, and Selma is just a quick detour off Interstate 65, as I have told my family. In truth, my dad has been on my mind lately. Maybe because I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach every time Zack announces that he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. He is a contrary child — and


relentlessly independent by force of cir- cumstance, from my son at 13, pushing away from his reluctant parents. I settle on a log across from Zack. I


study the backdrop, a full moon light- ing the sky as it slips above the dark tree line, a trail of moonlight gliding across the lake to our campsite, and then I give up my night vision to join him, finally, in staring into the fire.


were stationed at the time. I was in eighth grade. He was a 35-year-old fighter pilot on a “routine mission.” The Air Force told us only that he had died immediately. Within days of his death my mother, Patricia, suddenly a 36-year-old widow with three daugh- ters, was asked by the military to sign a sheaf of standard forms regarding my father’s burial, his life insurance policy, the distribution of his veterans benefits. My mother signed. “Where would you like his remains


o 20 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | june 20, 2010


shipped?” someone asked. My mother scrambled. We had lived


in nine different cities, six different states, two different countries in the past 13 years. Home was Detroit, where they’d both grown up — but joining the Air Force had been a conscious decision by my dad to escape Michigan. Sending him back there — even dead — was out


n June 13, 1977, my father’s plane burst into flames as it crashed into a potato field outside Brussels, where we


funeral expenses, organized a 21-gun salute and a flyby, and paid for a Belgian Air Force officer to serve as our escort. But it never told us what happened.


And because it was so sudden — “The Hurts called about babysitting. Don’t forget to walk the dog” were his final words, scrawled on a notepad for us to find on the table — I never really be- lieved he died. My parents had been fighting a lot


before the crash, so I figured my father wanted to leave us. Maybe those men in blue who notified us thought he died when his T-33 went down. But he slipped out. He trotted across the potato field and disappeared into the woods. Then he began a parallel life, moved to Paris, hooked up with a French woman, had more children. That’s why we never saw a body. My


sister, Judy, 15, speculated it was because he was “burned beyond recognition.” I knew better. But I had the sense not to talk about it and kept this other truth in my head. For years, it breezed along par- allel to reality: two shiny T-birds in for- mation, dangerously close but never con- verging. A tricky maneuver for a fighter pilot — or a fighter pilot’s daughter.


in our Baltimore rowhouse. We don’t have a lot of silence in our lives. Even


t


he first night of camping, our tent on the lake seems eerily quiet af- ter the sirens and garbage trucks and bus brakes that lull us to sleep


PREVIOUS PAGE: ORIGINAL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: THE AUTHOR WITH HER PARENTS AND SIBLINGS ON THE FLIGHT LINE; HER FATHER AT A 1969 SWEARING-IN; THE AUTHOR AND HER SON DURING THEIR RECENT TRIP; HER SON AT THE CEMETERY. PAGE 21: THE AUTHOR AND HER SON DURING THEIR TRIP.


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