A Pair of Wings for Christmas Read online

  “It makes sense. What about the wings?” Kendrick asked. The lesson was turning out to be quite interesting.

  “When we talked about the purple martin, I mentioned how its wings spread across its body. The situation is similar for an airplane. The wing area contributes substantially to the final lift.”

  “Oh, but now I remember what Derozier said at the end of one of his classes. ‘Remember: area, shape and tilt.’ A second factor is the wing’s shape—a bit round at the front, sharper at the rear like in the birds. And the final factor is that the wing is tilted so that the air particles move faster on top of it.” Kendrick paused. “The wing is sucked up, sort of.”

  Xiao laughed. “That’s a curious way of saying it. But basically that’s what happens.”

  “Now you got me curious, professor. Explain what happens when an airplane flies upside down.”

  It was then that the captain’s voice resounded sharply throughout the cabin. “Flight attendants, prepare passengers for emergency landing. Our landing gear is malfunctioning and, because of the strong wind, we have used all our fuel. We need to land.”

  “It appears lesson number two has to wait,” Xiao said. “We’ll think about it later, on our return trip.” He rose, rearranged the belt around Mateo and went to sit close to him.

  Kendrick looked out of the window trying to distinguish, amidst fog and rain, what was below. Fire trucks with lights flashing were positioned along the runway; ambulances were moving in from all sides.

  Then there was a scraping of metal, followed by a sudden stop that shook the entire aircraft. Passengers screamed and objects were propelled forward…Kendrick closed his eyes, losing awareness.

  Borgobello, Michigan

  December 2003

  Why was he in bed? Why was he in a hospital? Would-be angels don’t get sick! Kendrick blinked his eyes many times, wondering at the sights around him. The room was spacious, with colorful pictures hanging on the walls; the vertical blinds, bright blue, let a few rays peep inside; the bedspread was green with yellow flowers…What was this place, and what was going on?

  Seated in front of him was Mateo, swinging his short legs back and forth, while with his right arm he tapped the top of a huge bag. The bag seemed to wiggle. Kendrick closed his eyes trying to get his bearings; he reached to touch his shoulders. There was no trace of any growth that could be mistaken for wings. He opened his eyes as a strong smell hit his nostrils. Attila! Attila was somewhere in the room!

  Mateo jumped from the settee and neared his bed. “Hi,” he said. “Finally, you’re back!” He smiled at him—his two front teeth missing. “You’ve been away, to a place called coma, right?” He sat on the bed. The huge bag moved close and assumed an upright position. “I have my dog with me.” Mateo lifted a flap on the front of the bag, and a familiar black muzzle with two red eyes appeared. “They wouldn’t let me bring him in. I got my grandma’s knitting bag and put him inside.” He freed the dog from the bag and let him lick his face. “He’s a good dog. He’s my friend.” The dog whined. “Shush,” Mateo said, and the dog instantly quieted.

  The sound of Christmas bells resounded in the hall, followed by the familiar “Ho, Ho, Ho.” A Santa Claus of majestic proportions drifted in sight, as Mateo quickly pushed the dog under the bed. “Stay!” he ordered.

  Santa deposited a shiny package onto Kendrick’s night table. When he spotted Mateo, he took his huge bag off his shoulders and dropped it onto the floor. He rummaged in it, then extracted a reindeer with an enormous red nose. “Take care of Rudolph Junior,” he said to Mateo. As the reindeer touched the floor, it began jumping up, down, and sideways. In no time Attila was out from under the bed, barking loudly and chasing the toy.

  “What’s going on in here?” said a voice from the corridor. Kendrick closed his eyes halfway when he heard steps entering his room. A nurse stood in front of Santa. “Another of your tricks, eh? I told you, this is a hospital, not a circus! You cannot create disturbances. You cannot bring in stinky toys! Take the dog and the deer and get out of the building. Now!” She reinforced her order with a gesture toward the door. When Santa didn’t move, she pushed him out of the room.

  The barking quickly subsided. Mateo hadn’t moved an inch; he was laughing hard, though, both of his hands covering his mouth.

  Kendrick feigned a look of disapproval. “You should go get your dog,” he said. “Poor Santa is in trouble because of you.”

  “I’ll give him a big hug,” Mateo promised, and leaped out of the room.

  He was going to be dismissed from the hospital. That was good news, but the recovery would take time. With three surgical interventions and two prostheses, the doctors had managed to reconstruct his left arm and leg, and with time and physiotherapy he’d be able to walk normally again. Strange how things turned out. Before the accident, he hated walking, now he’d be very happy if he could trudge a few hundred feet without pain.

  “Hi, Kenny.” Mateo spoke from behind him. “This is grandma.”

  Kendrick turned around and looked at the woman in front of him. She wasn’t more than five-feet tall, and her gray hair framed her face with short curls. She was heavily leaning on the cane she held in her hand. “Louise Lockhart. Delighted to see you’re up and in good spirits. As soon as I was out of the hospital, Mateo and I came to see you every other day. Mateo would sit on your bed, calling your name, softly but insistently. He wanted to wake you up, he said.”

  “He did wake me up!” Kendrick gave Mateo a high-five and Mateo promptly responded. “He’s a good kid.”

  “I’d like you to know that you’re welcome to stay at my house until you are fully recovered from your accident.” She shot a loving look at the kid. “You saved Mateo’s life, and he is the only family I have left.”

  Mateo cringed against Kendrick’s legs. “You will stay, right?”

  “For a while, sure,” he said, and patted Mateo’s dark, unruly hair.

  Mateo jumped high and then slid across the room, tipping over the floor lamp. “Oops,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Kendrick grabbed the kid on his way back. “We have to think of some safe games,” he said.

  “You know what? We’ll go home and catch the skunk. Attila wants to play with her, but she gets mad. She makes him dirty and stinky.”

  Snow covered the grounds in front of the Lockhart house; the branches of a pine tree, on the left, were loaded with flickering lights of all colors; a gigantic snowman with slanted eyes stood on the right. It held a green dragon in its arms; from the dragon’s mouth bluish flames emerged at intermittent intervals. Impressed by this sight, Kendrick moved close for a better look.

  A young man appeared in the doorway; he swiftly descended the steps and offered his arm to Mrs. Lockhart. “Everything is in order,” he said, and then shot a look at Kendrick. “I’ll be back right away,” he said.

  For a moment Kendrick stood mesmerized: the man looked like…he was Xiao!

  The young man took Louise Lockhart inside. When he was back, he introduced himself. “My name is Xiao Chang. My father is the cook here. Mrs. Lockhart invited me to spend the Christmas holiday at the house.”

  “Have we met before?” Kendrick asked. He had to be careful about what he was going to ask or say—he didn’t want to pass for a nutcase.

  “Yes and no. You see, I was coming back from school when I saw Mateo walking toward the road outside the Lockhart’s property. Mateo didn’t like Adria. She wasn’t patient enough with him, so he took off any chance he got—with Attila of course. The two are inseparable. I rushed to the crossing, but I was too late. I saw your brave action, though. I got the truck driver out of the cabin before the truck exploded. He wasn’t seriously injured. Then I called for an ambulance. You didn’t conk out right away. At first you kept mumbling about the kid, asking whether he was safe. Mateo was safe, of course. Not a scratch on him.” He got Kendrick’s small bag and escorted him into the house.

  Xiao continued, “Mateo and I
came to visit you often. For a long time you only blinked and articulated a few sounds. But three weeks ago you became more active, especially when Mateo and I chatted around your bed. Then, one day, Mateo hit you with his miniature biplane. You’d made an attempt to protect yourself. The doctors thought that was an excellent sign.” He smiled at him. “And here you are, alive and well. We’re planning a big celebration in your honor.” He opened the door of a room off the corridor, and took Kendrick’s bag inside. “This is your room. Call me if you need anything. I like to make myself useful around the house.” He neared the window and parted the sheers. “See that big snowman with the dragon? I worked on it for two full days. At first I couldn’t get the flames going without melting the snowman. But then I got it.” He paused. “Christmas is the season of magic, right? People expect and accept something different…” He winked at Kendrick “I cheated a little. I built the snowman’s arms with white plastic, so that they could take the heat of the alcohol burning inside the dragon’s mouth.”

  “What are you, an inventor?” Kendrick asked, then immediately added, “Don’t answer; let me guess. You’re in college—engineering.”

  Xiao looked at him with curiosity. “How did you know?”

  It was Kendrick’s turn to wink. “A magic guess. Isn’t that in tune with the Christmas season?”

  The End

  Acknowledgments. The author wishes to thank Bob Colwell, author of Leave Bernoulli out of this (IEEE Computer, May 2003, 10-12), and John McMasters of The Boeing Company, for their criticism and help.

  and other books available at www. Amazon.com.

  Rene Natan also has a book trailer about her latest thriller, The Bricklayer.

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyI3-Yg9Td0

  What are Rene Natan’s novels all about? Here are some snapshots of her plots.

  Mountains of Dawn is about an orphan who wanders from foster home to foster home with no place she can call home. Suddenly she comes into money—but the people who killed her parents are now after her.

  The Collage describes the anguish of a young woman accused of a murder she hardly remembers having committed.

  Cross of Sapphires is centered on the life and tribulations of a man of the law who falls in love with the wrong woman: a female athlete on the run.

  Operation Woman in Black is dedicated to all parents of handicapped children. Its aim is to entertain the reader while portraying the hardship of coping with a mentally retarded girl who becomes a mother.

  The Jungfrau Watch is a political thriller. A young man is raised to believe that communism is the panacea for all the world’s problems. Then the Soviet Union collapses, exposing all its crimes. What chances has a person like that to redeem himself? The answer is at the very end of the story!

  The Red Manor is about family bonds that stretch over two continents and where love overcomes both greed and cleverly engineered criminal plots.

  In Fire Underneath the Ice (a novella coauthored by Sharon Crawford under the pen name Natanevin) revenge is supposed to be sweet, but when Michael Hamming decides to take it out on the daughter of his nemesis, he finds love instead.

  The Blackpox Threat is a spy story. Her country threatened by a deadly epidemic, Tamara Smith moves from her comfort zone to a world filled with deception, treachery and life-threatening danger.

  In The Bricklayer everything is going well for Frederick Dalton, until he hires a female engineer in his construction company.

  The author in brief.

  Rene Natan is a retired professor of computer science who reverted to the passion of her youth: storytelling. She wrote eight novels and co-authored a novella, their genre varying from romantic suspense to thriller.

  Honours

  First place, 2012 Five Star Dragonfly Award for the Blackpox Threat

  Finalist in the 2011 Indie Book Award for the Blackpox Threat

  Honorary Mention, 2012 San Francisco Book competition for the Bricklayer