Flights Read Online Free PDF

why. It was a Saturday afternoon and blankets spotted the slope to the water but an advancing wall of clouds, high up and reaching infinitely higher, black and gray and darkening the expanse of sound beneath, was approaching from the west, from Bridgeport or New York.
    To the east and above them the sky remained clear, the sun warm, as if collaborating in the deception. One or two sailboats rested nose forward on the beach, their masts stripped and topped by multicolored floats, their sails heaped onto the hulls like covering sheets. Other boats cruised smoothly into shore, gently racing the oncoming storm. As they pulled onto the beach, dagger boards were slid up and the hulls made pleasant grinding noises on the sand.
    He sat watching the boats, towel still rolled beneath his arm. The metal fittings on the lines clanged against the hollow, swaying masts, and trailers, squeaky and toylike, were rolled to the water’s edge.
    The wind was sweeping around him, audible in the sea grass and sand. People rose from the blankets with the wariness of birds, gauging the speed of the incoming storm. Bridgeport was dark and vague with a distant scrim of rain.
    Boats rolled by him toward the boat ramp, disassembled masts clanking on the tops of the hulls and wheels rolling heavily through the deeper sand. Bathers, too, were joining the exodus, with lawn chairs and blankets, coolers and small children, falling into line alongside or behind the boats, all streaming past Biddy like tanned and sandy refugees.
    His eye caught one boat, still quite a way out, its red-and-white sail sweeping and flapping as it came about. He knew simply from its inept turn, the sail going limp, the motion jagged and wasteful, that it would not beat the oncoming storm. The darkness was rolling in like a curtain and birds swooped and dove past him, fleeing before the gathering violence.
    It was noticeably cooler. He shivered, and dug a deep hole, leaning forward on his knees and scooping sand with both hands. A last bather went by. “I don’t think you’re gonna finish that, son,” he said. “That’s a helluva storm coming.” Biddy smiled an acknowledgment and the man trundled off, newspaper flapping against a folded sand chair. With the hole a foot deep he dropped his towel into it and covered it over. He found two large stones, and marked the place.
    He was alone on the beach. Bridgeport was gone. A lone gull skimmed by, a shadow along the waterline. His hair lifted from his head. His skin prickled, the tiny hairs on his arm waving.
    He was moving the tips of his fingers along the hairs, absorbed, when the storm hit. The rain came down the beach and along the water toward him in an audible track, the shimmering sound on the water and sea grass gaining in intensity until it swept over him and he was shocked by its iciness and power, drenched in seconds. In the half darkness he could see the boat, buffeted, sweeping high over crests, much closer now, struggling in, the two boys on it frantic. The rain swept wet hair across his cheek and eyes and the side facing the wind grew more and more chilled, and he curled lower into the sand, following the boat’s progress. It crested a whitecap and plunged toward the beach at full speed, the boy in back lying across the rudder to hold it steady, the boy in the bow trying to control the flapping, angry sail, both hands on the boom. It surged onto the shore with the dagger board being lifted out at the last possible moment and ground up onto the slope and the boys were jumping out and pulling it up farther, the sail collapsing and the mast teetering dangerously from side to side. Off in the distance to the right, where the sky was the blackest, white flashes lit the lighthouse marking the midpoint of the Sound.
    â€œLeave it,” one of the boys shouted. “We’ll come back and get it,” and there was another flash, and they pulled the boat still farther up the beach, the