Hypnotizing Maria

whoever it was that had done the writing.



CHAPTER TWENTY
    A irborne southbound from Marianna, the afternoon thunderstorms were lighting off in earnest. His airborne GPS showed tops to 42,000 feet, pools of crimson warnings splashed along the course ahead.
    Jamie Forbes forgot about suggestions for a while. Hypnotized or not, when flying small airplanes one doesn’t mess with thunderstorms, and the monsters had his attention.
    Unable to climb high enough to clear the tops, he chose a thousand feet for his altitude, moving fast, the little airplane weaving between dark columns of rain.
    Heavy drops spattered then pounded the aircraft, pressure-washing wings and windshield clean and bright while he turned back toward clear air.
    No instrument flying today, he thought. It’s a fine little GPS, but fly on instruments near thunderstorms, let the display screen pick this time to go dark . . . that would not be fun.
    Why is it that airplane instruments almost never fail on nice days when you don’t need them? It isn’t that you can count on ’em to fail when the weather’s awful, just that it happens often enough that you want to be ready, you’ve got to have backups.
    He was running low on backups, just now. This far along, wide forests of scrub pine below, the way back to Marianna closed in curtains of silver chainmail from the clouds. Not all of it violent, but here and there visibility down to a mile—legal to fly but not safe in a fast airplane.
    He reached the map from the floor, found his position. Nearest airport six miles southwest. He looked that direction, saw the place smothered in buckshot rain.
    Having tried landing in the middle of a thunderstorm as a young pilot, he had declined the suggestion ever to try again.
    Next nearest airport is Cross City, fifteen miles southeast, sky broken to overcast, thunderstorm closing from the west. He turned that direction, having abandoned his straight-line course for zigzags from airport to airport, a frog on lily pads.
    When all the airports ahead go down in storms, he had decided, I’ll land at the last one open, wait on the ground till the wild moves on. That time would be now.
    Ten miles from Cross City he saw the storm, approximately as black as midnight. You’ll make it if you're fast.
    He pushed the engine to full power, lowered the nose and the little airplane leaped ahead, airspeed winding toward 190.
    He said it aloud in the cockpit, unsmiling: “My highest self is cutting this one a little fine ...”
    Eighty seconds later he saw the runways at Cross City, a wall of water like a thousand-foot tidal wave thundering in from the west. Beneath it, lightning glittered and forked in the dark.
    “Cross City traffic, Beech Three Four Charlie is one mile northeast initial for a three-sixty overhead Runway Two One Cross City traffic permitting.”
    Traffic permitting.As if there’d be any traffic landing just now. Somebody’d have to be crazy, to be in the pattern with the storm seconds from strike.
    Uh-oh, he thought, that's me! The ’34 flashed down the runway a hundred feet up flying just this side of 200 knots.
    Throttle to idle, pitch up and turn to downwind, airspeed falling with the climb, gear handle Down, flap lever Down, dump the nose and steep turn to final, the end of the runway whirling softly up to meet him, going gray in rain. A few seconds after Wheels-Down showed in the landing gear position indicators, tires splashed on wet pavement.
    One minute later, taxiing to the parking ramp, Jamie Forbes became a goldfish in an air-bowl, cloudburst roaring torrents on the canopy so he couldn’t tell the engine was running except the propeller still turned. Farther than that he couldn’t see.
    He braked to stop on the taxiway, deluge roaring unchecked, carefully folded his map as lightning bolted near, thunder jolting the airplane on its wheels.
    At the edge of the chart, in bold letters:
    I am deeply grateful, on my journey , for the parenting and guidance of my highest self
    Safe in the midst of violence was the first he noticed parenting.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    T hanks to the Southeast Horseperson's Convention in Gainesville, every motel in Cross City was sold out. Each clerk was polite (People shall be as kind to me as I am to them), each told him there was no room, no suite, no broom closet, no doghouse available till Monday.
    He decided that he’d unroll his survival blanket under the wing tonight, pray for dry, and press on south in the