The weekend had Roy Fokker beat. After two days of shows in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he was ready to be home again, in his bed, and not move for a week. He yawned as the dusty New Mexican desert gave way to the scrubby brush of Texas. Could he really imagine a lifetime of this, he asked himself sleepily, as he tried to find a comfortable position in the Hunter Bros. traveling bus; Uncle Joe was flying his Fokker airplane back in the morning. Roy was supposed to be back tomorrow in time to start classes at the local junior college, like his mother wanted. All Roy wanted to do was fly, but Sandy was determined her son would have more than just 'airplanes on the brain' for the rest of his life.
"I got my education," Sandy had said when Roy protested, "why do you think Pop and Delia had me around to keep the books."
"You wash dishes, Mom," Roy had pointed out, earning a pop at his head from a well-aimed dishtowel. Sandy glared at her son.
"You don't have to do what I did, Roy. You could…go into engineering! Uncle Joe says you love working on the planes and are always thinking of modifying them. And look how you fixed up your Dad's plane." She smiled softly as she recalled her long-lost husband. She had never remarried, and never wanted to. Despite her handsome looks, she had devoted herself to her son, and to the Hunters, and hadn't regretted it.
"I suppose I could," Roy shrugged. Admittedly he was good at engineering, and had taken several classes in high school on it. Math and science classes had been his favorites, as well as history, at least all the military bits of it. But the idea of more boring classes all day, rather than flying, was particularly disinteresting.
"What's up, Roy," Rick plopped down on the seat in front of Roy, causing the young man to rouse from his thoughts. It was Rick's last weekend before starting 5th grade, and the boy was about as eager to return to school as Roy.
"Not much," Roy shrugged. "Just thinking about things," he shrugged, as Rick fiddled with a portable radio and headphones, trying to pick up stations through it.
"Wish I had a CD player," Rick grumbled. Roy knew this was a pointed remark; Rick had envied his own CD player on every trip they had made all summer.
"Tell you what, squirt, I'll let you have mine, if you promise to do well in school this year and not goof off like you did last year."
"I didn't goof off, I tried," Rick grumbled in self-defense. "I got C's in everything, didn't I?"
"Yeah, well C's don't get you into college someday," Roy quoted his mother's often-used phrase. Roy himself had done well in school for the most part, mostly A's and B's, and mostly because of his mother's often quoted phrase. Rick had been resistant, however, and drug his feet in school.
"Who's going to college, frat boy," Rick snorted impishly. "I don't want to go; I want to fly, like Pop and Uncle Joe."
"Yeah, but both of them graduated high school," Roy pointed out.
"And then they enlisted in the Air Force," Rick shrugged. "Only I don't want to ever do the military. Pop says it's only for warmongers and killing people. He says it's what made Uncle Joe so sad sometimes. And I don't want to kill people."
Both the Hunter brothers had served, though Mitch, the younger, hadn't made it to Vietnam like his brother Joe. Joe had served with Roy's father. Roy hadn't gotten to know his old man enough to learn the horrors of the war for him, but he did know something of the ones for Joe. He understood why both the Hunter brothers would be against war in any form, and especially for young Rick. Mitch had no desire for his son to see the things that his brother had to face.
Yet Roy couldn't be so sure on where his decisions lay. His own father had served, and had served honorably. He'd gone to Vietnam because, as his mother had said, he wished to defend his country, no matter whether the war was right or wrong. He had taken a duty to defend those he loved, and he would live with it. For Jim Fokker, serving in the military had never been about flying, as Roy suspected it had been for Joe and for Mitch. It had been about defending those he loved. The flying was only an added benefit.
"Anyway, Pop said I can start flying in competition here in a couple of years if I want," Rick prattled on, fumbling with his radio controls. "He said he'd help me get a racing plane if I want!"
"That's a big deal," Roy grinned at the dark head, reaching a hand to tousle the impossibly messy hair. It never stayed brushed, and Roy suspected Rick gave up on that long ago. "You want to fly in competition, ehh? Think you can handle it with the big boys?" Rick was just turning ten soon, and already he was a prodigious flyer. Pop Hunter had balked at the idea of his son going up so young, and had nearly beaten Roy's hide when the older boy had taken Rick up in his own Fokker plane when it was completed two years earlier. But seeing that he couldn't keep his son on the ground, Pop himself had taken up the teaching of Rick. He'd learned quickly and well, faster than Roy even at his age. Not that he was nearly as good as Roy now. Already at nearly nineteen, Roy was the air circus's star attraction and best pilot. He had a lot of potential according to Pop.
"I think I can handle it, if you can," Rick's pride always got the better of him. He stuck his thin, pointed chin in the air, causing Roy to laugh at him.
"We'll see, little brother, wait till you get there, huh."
"You'll see, I'll win, and when I do, I'll not have to go to school again."
"I wouldn't say that," Roy cautioned lightly. "You might want to finish high school first.
"Well, OK, but no more after that," Rick shrugged. "Besides, you're the smart one going to college.
"Yeah, something like that," Roy sighed.
"Don't you want to go?" Rick looked puzzled.
"It couldn't hurt, I guess," Roy shrugged. "Besides, what else would I do? I can't just fly around in planes forever, can I?"
"That's what I want to do," Rick seemed to be confused as to why a person couldn't.
"Yeah," Roy lapsed into silence. What was he going to do with himself, he wondered, degree or not?
"Ahhh, here's something," Rick was triumphant as he fiddled with his radio, but then his face fell. "Oh, news, who cares…" but he stopped just as his thumb was reaching for the dial again. His freckled, sunburned face was still, causing Roy to look at him with alarm.
"What's up," Roy asked, frowning at the boy, who only waved a hand at him to be quiet.
"I don't know, it sounds like…." He shook his head, then pulled one of the headphone buds from his own ear and handed it to Roy, wordlessly.
Roy took it and held it to his ear, as bits and pieces of a news report filtered in. The crisp accent was nothing like the twang of the local news he expected to hear, and it took him a moment to realize the person was from one of the large news stations based out of New York, probably CNN from the sound of it. The excitement seemed to center on some sort of explosion or crash landing in the Pacific Ocean.
"What is it," Roy looked at Rick, who shook his head in confusion.
"They don't know if it's terrorists or something from space," Rick murmured, listening. "Whatever it was, it was huge, and it nearly took out a small island."
"Holy…" Roy breathed, as the news reporter broke in with reports from naval ships stating it was not a nuclear device, and that they suspect it was space debris that had fallen to earth. He continued on with chatter about how NASA did not inform the public of this, and whether NASA even knew about it, what this could mean about the space program, and how terrorist cells across the world were denying that this was an attack on their part.
"You think it could be aliens, Roy," Rick whispered softly, his blue eyes wide.
"What, little green men decided to say hello then," Roy snorted. "It's probably just nothing, Rick, just a satellite that fell from the sky."