Welcome to the second installment of Chase Cooder - Bush Pilot! This one will move a bit slower, at least until the juicy climax! In this chapter we learn more about the hyper-capable Chase, his past, and more! So climb aboard, settle in, and enjoy the ride!
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Chase felt the floats break free from the grip of Snapper Lake and the ride smoothed out as the Beaver climbed through the crisp Canadian air. He reached over to get his iPod from the right seat and carelessly allowed the right wing to dip. When straightening up he overcorrected while plugging in the iPod, and the left wing dipped before he leveled the plane out.
Damn it! I hope Box didn't see that. He'll ride my ass for a week for sloppy flying.
Music piped through the high quality, custom headset. The iPod was set on shuffle play and the songs and artists brought back memories, many of them about the women in his life: Roxy Music's "Avalon" with Barb, a Washington, DC computer consultant; Pink Martini's "Sympathique" with Trina, the Jamaican flight attendant; Frankie Goes to Hollywood with Trish, the surgical scrub nurse; and Morcheeba's "Big Calm" with Wendy, the loopy and fun recording studio executive.
There was also the Cowboy Junkies' "Black Eyed Man" with Connie, the recent divorcee eager to experiment and validate herself - she'd done well; David Gray's "White Ladder" with Sandy, the sultry Chicago bartender; Beck's "Sea Change" with Minda, the exotic Australian art gallery dealer; The Doors' "LA Woman" with the pot-addled Tracy in Amsterdam; Johnny Guitar Watson's "A Real Mother For Ya" with Liz in the indoor pool at the house she was "sitting" in the Washington, DC suburbs; and Sufjan Stevens' "Greetings From Michigan" with Jennie, the British hipster.
Chase happily flew through the clear Canadian sky, enjoying the memories of lusty times until Seals and Crofts came on. At the first strains of "We Will Never Pass This Way Again" he tensed. It had been his high school homecoming theme and song. Upon hearing it, he felt a sadness, an emptiness, but soft, not the molten spike that had pierced his heart for so many years.
Searing pain and white hot anger had propelled him onward for too long a time. One day he realized it was simply gone. Chase quit his job as a prosecuting attorney and traveled. At age thirty-three he had just returned from a year long trip around the globe. He reentered the United States in Seattle, Washington, where he had a chance encounter with a pretty redhead.
Chase and Ruane entered college the same year and were acquaintances, but hadn't really spent any time together. Like two people with nothing better to do for the time being, they had a long dinner in an intimate bistro. Playing softly in the background as they ate and talked, audible over the clinking dishes, the hum of nearby conversation and occasional shouts from the kitchen, was Aimee Mann's "Magnolia" soundtrack, followed by Alejandro Escovedas' "Thirteen Years", followed by other music that faded into so much background noise.
"I remember you from engineering and physics classes. You always looked so intense, like you'd explode if someone poked you with a stick," Ruane recalled.
"Yeah. I had a pretty rough time for awhile."
"What kind of rough time?" Ruane was open, curious and, for some, a bit blunt. Chase wasn't sure if he liked it or not, but was responding to her.
"Well, I don't want to bore you with my tale of woe."
"No, really. I'm interested." Her brow crinkled and she leaned forward in her chair, her arms on the table.
Chase took a deep breath. "Well, after my high school girlfriend was killed in a car wreck..."
"Oh! I'm so sorry."
"...Yeah, thanks. It hurt pretty badly for a long time. I put all my energy into school and sports and work. I felt lost, but driven, if that makes any sense. So after high school I went to college."
"Which is where I met you. What'd you major in?"
"I had a double major in engineering and biology, and a double minor in philosophy and psychology."
She was surprised. "That's impressive. Did you transfer? How come I didn't see you senior year?"
"Well, I ended up graduating in three years."
"Damn. No wonder I never saw you at parties. A fricking braniac!" Ruane laughed and held her drink up in a toast.
Chase chuckled. "Yeah, I worked pretty hard."
"Okay, Einstein, what did you do next?"
"I have an idea, let's talk about you for awhile."
"Feeble effort. Uh-uh. What next."
Chase sighed. Part of him couldn't believe he was telling this near stranger his life history, or most of it at least. He wondered if it was because he might never see her again and had a need to tell, or if there was something else going on here.
"I joined the Army."
"No shit? I mean, really? I joined the Air Force after college. They wanted me to fly the glamour jets, said I done good on tests and stuff. But as much as I love flying planes, I
really
love working on them and they went ahead and let me be a mechanic. What did you do in the Army?"
She was smart, and he smiled at her purposeful goof with language.
"I was advanced infantry for awhile, then with the Rangers. After awhile I was invited to volunteer for Delta Force. They said I done good on tests and stuff," he kidded. Ruane smiled. "So, I trained and went on some counter-terrorism missions."
"Wow. How come you're out?"
