La Pista

The sun is setting on an emotional day. Marco stands dressed in an all black suit, gloomy in the doorway to his Grandfather’s, now vacant office. The room he built his rice farming business out of.

As he enters the room he omits turning on the fluorescent lights. The golden sunset, sliced by the shutters are enough to light his way. He walks along the shelfs, loaded with memorabilia. He pets the dust off the replica planes that have sprayed the fields over the years. A large framed photo of his grandfather shaking hands with the former President of Venezuela, Carlos Andres Perez - from his first five year term in 1974 - hangs on the wall.

He takes the seat he always had when visiting his grandfather’s office. Memories of stories from his glory days and personal advancements in farming techniques fill Marco’s heart. This included different types of flight paths and maneuvers to maximize efficiency of low crop insecticide spraying in any given weather conditions. Along with some thrill seeking turn maneuvers like the ‘Immelmann’ and the ‘Split-S’. By all accounts, the man was an adrenaline enthusiast who missed his call to airshow aerobatics.

Marco moves to take his late grandfather's seat at the antique mahogany desk, resting his elbows on it, in a powerful negotiation pose. A plane is taxiing to the runway for takeoff outside the window behind him. He opens the shutters to watch the bright yellow Grumman bi-plane careen down the runway, eager to spray a section of the field before nightfall.

The roar of the air chopping propeller fades into the distance, leaving a void in the room that was once teeming with business and passionate phone calls. Marco rubs his puffy eyes and opens a drawer to his right. In it lay two books. The first, was a large company logbook sectioned into monthly company flight hours, mechanical expenses and amounts of insecticides used. All written in neat cursive by his grandfather’s secretary. The other, was a smaller black leather bound personal log book.

Marco picks it up and bends open it’s worn spine. He reads from an early entry dated November 17th, 1962:

“Flight hours: 3.7

Conditions: Partly cloudy skies, 2kt westerly wind.

Comments: I flew extra low along the East Plot today, the fixed landing gear prevented me from flying lower to spray beneath the canopy. It’s proximity to the river has been giving us particular difficulty in respects to pests, especially because the rainy season has been washing away what we spray. We are refreshing traps tonight… I thought of Verona again, she walks in and out of my mind without regard to what I am focused on in any given moment”

Verona, was not the name of Marco’s grandmother. A low pass by the Grumman over the office ruffles the shutters. There are many entries in the first third of the book, Marco’s grandfather had to do a lot of the flying himself in those days. Exempting employee instances and noteworthy business milestones, none of the entries that follow appear as prolifically personal as that one, until July 27th, 1974:

“Flight hours: 2.3

Conditions: Overcast, Ceilings at 1500’

Comments: Late flying today, I spent most of the morning on the ground with Enzo. The boy wants to fly but has poor eyesight, like his mother. He will never fly as a pilot, of this I am certain.”

Marco searched his memory for this Enzo. He didn’t think too much of it though. Flipping through more pages the dates separating entries become wider and less legible. Toward the end of the book, an entry stands out among the scribbles, September 9th, 1985:

“Flight time: 4

Conditions: Clear skies, Still

Comments: Enzo knows. He is a man, with a likeness and conviction so similar to mine. He had humbled me in accepting my proposal to uphold my public reputation and keep our kinship secret. $20,000 USD to start, an amount I will pay him twice a year for him and Verona to live comfortably. I haven’t slept well in days, the thought of what my wife and family would say keeps me drinking. I’ve betrayed them, unforgivably”.

Two weeks later Marco’s grandfather strapped into his cockpit and took off for the last time. His wing caught a branch of an old tree as he rounded it. The new found context of the crash caused Marco to feel ill. Was he drunk? A lapse of focus from stress? A gust of wind? Perhaps this Enzo character knew more. No amount of money could absolve his conscience, that much was clear.

The real trouble that faced Marco in this moment was what to do with his new information.

“Let him die a hero” a voice called from the doorway.

A man stood there in a mechanics jumpsuit aged by labor. Marco rose from the seat, as he neared him he read the name embroidered on his chest, Lorenzo.

- A fictional story written by Antonio Cordero