The Four Corners Of The Sky Read Online Free PDF

of that water, if I’d spotted a little gold statue of the Virgin Mary with million dollar emerald eyes, right there in front of my nose on some fucking coral reef, I wouldn’t have stopped for
two seconds
of my dying breath to get that sucker loose. Not two seconds!”
    “Amy Johnson wouldn’t have stopped for two seconds either.”
    “Damn right,” he agreed. “Amy’s in the fuckin’ English Channel, poor thing, her plane’s down in the fog and all they come back up with was her pocketbook with her goddamn lipstick in it. In real life, you gotta make some choices.”
    The dead World War II pilot Amy Johnson had recently become Annie’s idol. D. K. had told her about the beautiful young British flyer who was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia and who died at only thirty-eight in World War II while ferrying bombers for the RAF . Annie had Amy’s picture on her bedroom wall. D. K. was full of such lore about bygone pilots and their heroic deeds.
    “Courage,” he told her. “That is the only thing worth guano. All the money in the world’s not worth shit.” He slapped her hand again on the panel. “What’s the only thing?”
    “Courage.”
    “That’s right. Give me that toothless smile of yours, Orphan Annie.”
    She frowned, indignant, tightening her lips over her missing front teeth. “I’m not an orphan, I’ve got Sam and Clark. I’ve got parents.”
    D. K. laughed. “You got too many! You got more than you know what to do with.”
    She covered her mouth grinning. “You’re guano.”
    “And love’s a game of give-and-take, baby. Me and your Uncle Clark. We both loved America, we gave it all we had and the U.S. took it all and look at us now.”
    “What’s wrong with you and Clark?”
    “Not a damn thing.” The old vet D. K. banked his plane and they headed home.

Chapter III
Thunder on the Hill
    W hen, at seven years old, Annie first heard her “uncle” Clark Goode calling to her as she hid in the barn beneath the airplane, she had to wipe her eyes on the knees of her jeans in order to see him. A tall, thin man in khakis and plaid shirt stepped through the big doors, closing them against the rain. Crouched on the dark dirt, the child hugged the wheel cover of the Piper single-engine plane, frightened by the sound of the doors and by the lightning that cracked across the sky, as if one of the fairy-tale giants in her father’s stories had broken open heaven with a sledgehammer.
    The tall man ambled over to the lantern and when he saw her he tapped three reassuring pats on the plane’s wing. “Hi there, Annie,” he said. He had sandy hair and wore glasses with round tortoise-shell rims. Offering her a pair of little blue plastic sunglasses, he asked, “These yours? I found them in the yard…”
    She took the glasses but didn’t speak.
    “Sam’s out there looking for you…Want one?” He held out an unopened can of soda.
    Annie, struggling to sound indifferent, quoted her father. “‘Sorry, no silver cup.’”
    “That’s a good one.” The man had a slow soft accent that she later learned to identify as Tidewater. “That’s from an old movie called
Stagecoach
.”
    “I know. My dad says it, ‘no silver cup.’”
    “Your aunt Sam loves movies too, so I watch a lot of them. She’s out there driving up and down the road, calling for you, figuring you ran after your dad.”
    “My dad drove too fast.”
    He nodded. “Always did…Some storm, huh?” There were loud rattles of noise like giants stomping on the barn roof.
    “Is it a hurricane?” She had seen those in movies on TV.
    “Nope.” The man sat on the ground next to the plane, wiping reddish dirt from his hands, looping his arms around his knees, bending his head so it was in line with hers. “It’s hail. Ever seen hail?”
    Worried, she shook her head, watching his face. “Maybe it’ll get my dad?”
    He looked at her, thought about it. “No chance. Jack will be okay. I promise.”