Aerialists by Mark Mayer

Author:Mark Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Monday, Javier was tardy to World Cultures. “I think I figured it out!” he whispered when he came in.

“What did you figure out?”

“Parker,” said Mr. Mracek, “sheket b’vakasha.” We were in the middle of Monday Newsreel. By the time he’d shushed you in three languages, it was detention.

I got out a piece of paper, wrote What did you figure out? and folded it with our secret fold.

I talked to my dad and he thinks he knows the problem, he wrote back. I just don’t know what to do about it yet.

Mr. Mracek spent his evenings recording three news channels with three VCRs and over the weekends compiled his notion of the highlights onto a single tape to play in our Monday class. Most kids thought it was dull, but we didn’t have a TV, so I had to take what I could get. There was something about Bill Clinton’s inaugural speech cribbing from JFK’s, something about Dateline NBC apologizing for rigging test-drives to light on fire—there wasn’t going to be a quiz or anything.

Well?????? I wrote, the question marks hastening into exclamation points. My worst theory was coma: He hadn’t really talked to her, just to a highway patrolman and some doctors. He was waiting till things were more certain before he told me the whole story. Probably they were moving her up from Taos in an ambulance, so she could recover at home. My dad might have talked to Javier’s. He slid the note back.

It read, My dad thinks Goldbond and Sheila are neutered.

“Parker and Javier.” Mr. Mracek knelt between us with an elbow on each of our desks. “I gather you don’t care about the plight of the Alaskan pony?”

The TV at the front of the class swept over a small hockey rink, full of large men in tough work coats, then settled on Gale, my dad’s yellow-bearded partner at Collaborative Solutions. “Gale Young, a ‘mediator,’ was hired to facilitate the summit,” the newscaster said. I craned my neck, as if I might look around the rink and find my dad, but only Gale was there.

The video cut to some stock footage of Icelandic ponies swishing their bangs through the snowy pines, grinding down the chunky snow. A chubby man with a bean-shaped goatee and sunburned cheeks spoke a few nervous sentences about controlling the caribou population. A woman with a fleece vest and what looked like a talking stick shouted about cruelty while a small crowd clapped behind her. My dad was nowhere to be seen.

I looked at Javier. He shrugged. “It’s quite a complex situation,” Gale said.

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