Chapter Three is a reversal.  Roy Ray has been going in one direction--now he's turned around.  His mentor appears.  Almost every fantasy hero has one: Harry Potter has Dumbledore, Percy Jackson has Chiron, Arthur has Merlyn.  And so on.  The mentor will set him on the path of self-discipline, draw out his special capacities and hint at his destiny.  What kind of mentor would a Bird Boy have?  You'd expect him to be different, but might not suspect how different.  The last few lines of this chapter will give you a clue.  What's his secret?

Roy Ray begins his training in this chapter, and the training follows a pattern you'll recognize from other stories: difficulty, discouragement, and doubt.  Learning to fly is tougher than he expects, and besides there's an inner argument going on in his mind.  You'll find it spoken it in the disagreement between his father and Mr. G.  Roy Ray's dad insists that he's an ordinary kid, except for the, well, you know.  Mr. G is equally certain that Roy Ray is not an ordinary kid, either inside or out.  What's the meaning of his statement that the wings are "A mystery, not an accident"?

One other thing that's important about this chapter: the idea of particularity. Training for flight with wings is not like training for flight in a plane, or learning to hang glide or parasail or ski.  There are some similarities, but also particular differences.  I had to imagine what these would be, and set up a training program based on my ideas.  Can you think of anything I should add?  Anything else that Roy Ray should learn right at the beginning?

I've asked several questions already, and I hope you'll answer some of them.  Here's the last, most important one?  Is this chapter too long?  Do I go into too much detail, or did you find at least some of it interesting?  Let me know here.

:    

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Chapter 3

THE HIGH CALLING OF FLIGHT

E. Ponymous Godwit seemed to be put together wrong, with his legs too short and his arms too long and his spine curved like a hunchback's, which made his face jut forward alarmingly.  Not a bad face, though: tanned and lined, with warm brown eyes and broad nose and a small busy mouth set in a salt-and-pepper beard.  For someone who only came to Mrs. Rappaport's eyebrows, his voice was surprisingly deep.

            "Not to beat about the bush, ma'am," he went on in that curious accent.  "I've come to see the boy."

            "What boy?" snapped Mrs. Rappaport, who was having one of those days. 

            "Young Roy Ray, of course," replied Mr. Godwit.  "He of the, er, feathered appendages."

            "No thanks," began Mrs. Rappaport, closing the door. "We're not--" 

The lower corner of the door trembled as it slammed on the stranger's foot.  "Half a sec.  I'm the world's foremost--if I say so myself--expert on mammalian flight.  If you please?"

He reached into the inside pocket of his worn tweed jacket to produce a business card.  She read:

E. Ponimous Godwit

Flight Coach

Feathered mammals of all sizes and shapes

"Well," said she.  "That's very interesting, Mr.--uh--Godwit, but Roy Ray can already fly.  We'd rather he didn't.  Now--"

The man bounced on his toes and a hint of impatience crept into his voice.  "But might I see the boy, Mrs. Rappaport?"

"Afraid not, Mr. . . . uh . . . Godwit.  Roy Ray is grounded just now and he's not allowed to see anybody."

"Grounded" was only a figure of speech.  At that moment Roy Ray was actually six feet off the ground, flapping around his little brother Davy in the living room.  They were playing raincloud; Roy Ray was the cloud and the spray bottle in his hand was the rain.  Davy scampered all over the living room with his ducky umbrella, squealing while his brother tried to score points on him.

Glancing around their mom's shoulder, Mr. Godwit caught glimpses of a wing tip and a floating sneaker.  "I see," he said.  "An appointment, then?  This p.m., when--"

A scream from the living room interrupted him, and with an exasperated sigh Mrs. Rappaport seemed to disappear from the doorway.  After a moment Mr. Godwit stepped into the living room, where he found a winged boy sitting sulkily on the floor, a frustrated mom, and a wet, screaming little brother.  A spray bottle with the lid off lay near Davy.  Empty, because most of the water was on Davy.

"He wanted to get wet," Roy Ray was saying.  "So I got him wet!"

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you!" Mrs. Rappaport was saying.  "If I can't leave you alone for one minute--"

"Wahhhh!" the little brother was saying.

"Ahem," said Mr. Godwit.

All three wheeled around to look at him.  "Sir--!" began Mrs. Rappaport, while Roy Ray rudely asked, "Who are you?"

"Someone to teach you long-neglected manners," he said.

"I already know some manners," said the boy, and childishly stuck out his tongue. 

"Roy Ray!" his mother exclaimed.  "I'm sorry, Mr. Godwit; he's always cranky when he's molting--"

The man took three steps over to where the boy sat.  Then he pinched him on the wing, just under the joint of the humorous and radius bones.  Roy Ray opened his mouth but nothing came out except a dry gaspy sound.

"Mr. Godwit!" exclaimed his mother.  "How dare you--"

Mr. Godwit released his grip.  "First rule of teaching: get the little bugger's attention."

Startled, both Roy Ray and his mother asked, "Teaching what?"

The man folded his arms and thrust out his head.  "The high calling of flight."

"Roy Ray already knows how to fly," Mr. Rappaport said later that evening, after he'd come home and cleaned up and heard the unwelcome news about a visitor.  But now that the visitor was here, he was trying to be polite and get rid of the man sooner.  "Thanks anyway."

"But he doesn't know the high calling, Ray," his wife explained.  Her opinion of Mr. Godwit had changed in an afternoon, after she'd poured out her fears that Roy Ray would crash to his doom and he had assured her that flying was as safe as walking if properly taught.  And he was the proper teacher, having instructed famous feathered mammals of the globe, including Princess Katarina and Spargo the Wonder Dog.  Flight Coach to the Stars, he might be called, with no exaggeration.

"'High calling'?" echoed Mr. Rappaport.  "That's a joke, right?"  He was in a hurry to finish this up so he could catch a baseball game on TV that had started half an hour ago.  "Roy Ray's just an ordinary kid, and we want to keep him that way, remember?  Much as possible." 

Mr. Godwit's eyes turned hard as buttons.  "Roy Ray is not an ordinary kid," he said.  "The sooner he knows that, the better."

He pinned them with the kind of look that makes you squirm in your seat if you're ten years old in Mrs. Pringle's one o'clock science class.  But instead of squirming, Mr. Rappaport got a little ticked.  "Inside, I mean.  Except for those . . . you-know-whats, he's as normal as me, right, pal?"  Roy Ray nodded, a little doubtfully.  "If you want to teach him circus tricks, forget it."

"Now Ray, that's not at all--" his wife began.

Mr. Godwit's eyes softened, but didn't waver.  "And what is ordinary?  The sunrise?  The wind?  What isn't, at the heart of it all, a great mystery?  My aim is to see the boy doesn't waste his wings."  They all heard the stress he put on the word.  "They're a mystery, but not an accident."

"What's in it for you?"  This came out rude, but Mr. Rappaport really wanted to know.

The man pasted on a little smile, as though remembering he was supposed to charm.  "I'm an artist in my humble way, sir.  The art of flight and the satisfaction of a job well done is all the, er, remuneration I expect."

"So you're saying we don't have to pay you anything?" asked Mr. Rappaport, who hadn't followed to the artist part but always wanted to know what something would cost him.

"All I require," said the man, "is room and board."

"Huh," said Mr. Rappaport, meaning he was thinking about it.

"The board isn't a problem," said his wife.  "We have plenty of food.  But we don't have any extra room."

"Your garage--may I take a peek?" asked Mr. Godwit.  He pronounced it garage, so they weren't sure at first what he meant.

Much to their surprise, after looking over the garage, with Davy's two tricycles and Radio Flier wagon and Roy Ray's beat-up bike and their dad's old 1978 Dodge Charger that didn't run and tools and motorcycle and a broken dinette set and storage loft and a big oil spot on the floor, Mr. Godwit said it would do just fine.

"But . . . where will you sleep?" Mrs. Rappaport asked.  "And where will you keep your things?"

Mr. Godwit turned his head sideways to look up at the ceiling, which came to a peak over a row of rafters.  "What 'things'?"

He said all he needed was a cot and a hot plate.  All he had by way of "things" seemed to be a brown suitcase, almost half of which was taken up by an old-timey wooden radio.  He moved in that very night, in spite of Mrs. Rappaport's protests about the mess, and slept on an old camp cot Mr. Rappaport brought down from the loft.

That is how, much to his and his family's surprise, Roy Ray found himself in training.

Actually, ever since his aunt Agnes had mentioned it, he thought it might be cool to have a flight coach.  If he could really fly, nobody would ever mess with him.  But he'd never considered what flight training might be like.  By 6:30 the next morning he began to get an idea--that's when the coach dragged him out of bed with a "Rise and shine!  The early bird gets the jump, hey?  Get dressed and come to the garage." 

Shortly after, Roy Ray stood in a cleared space between the cot and the Charger, shivering in the early-morning chill.  "Let's peruse the apparatus, hey?" said Mr. Godwit.  "Pull off your shirt and stand up straight at half-lift."

The boy yawned.  "What?"

"What, sir.  Raise your wings just free of your back . . . Like that, but your posture is atrocious.  Tips should never drag, never.  It's all in the back--stand straight!  What's your current span?"

Roy Ray popped his bubblegum.  "I dunno."

Mr. Godwit pointed to the wastebasket.  "Out with the gum.  It unbalances your stroke.  Every avial should know his wingspan--"

"Every what?  Alien?"

"Avial; feathered mammal.  The rare species of which you find yourself.  Full lift!"

This meant wings spread as far as they would stretch.  It's like holding both arms straight out with a full gallon of milk in each hand: harder than it looks. 

Mr. Godwit took a tape measure from one pocket and a notebook from another.  "Hmm," he remarked while measuring from each shoulder.  "Eight feet, nine and a half inches, tip to tip.  One-quarter inch longer on the left--that's normal.  Going from your height, final span won't pass ten feet--Did I say down?  Keep 'em up!"

"I'm tired!"

"Where's your muscle tone?"  With a sigh, Mr. Godwit reached forward and yanked the wings up with both hands.  ("Ouch!" said Roy Ray.)  "Hold 'em there, my little chickadee.  Half a sec."

While Roy Ray held out his trembling wings, the man walked all the way around them slowly.  "High-lifters," he remarked from the back.  Nicely convex, good volume, not the speediest but unmatched for endurance.  In time you should be able to fly for an hour without breaking a sweat."

Roy Ray would have swallowed his gum, if he still had it.  "No kidding!?"

A finger jabbed him in the back.  "Stay up!"  Completing the circle, Mr. Godwit looked him in the eye.  "At ease.  We begin with breathing." 

"I already know how to breathe."

"Let me clarify one small point at the outset, hey?" Mr. Godwit said.  "We do not start sentences with 'I already know.'"

"You may not," Roy Ray began, "but I just--"  He broke off, seeing a thumb and forefinger headed toward his humorous joint.  "Okay, okay.  Maybe I don't."

"Too right.  I cannot overstress the importance of breathing.  Breath is the spirit of flight; flight begins in the lungs.  You must learn to fill them to the limit, like so . . ."  With narrowed eyes and lips slightly parted, the coach pulled in a stream of air, and kept pulling until Roy Ray couldn't figure out where he was putting it.  "Now," he said, laying a hand on Roy Ray's chest, "you try."

The boy breathed in exactly as his coach had, or so he thought.  But the man refused to let him stop: at every pause, Mr. Godwit shouted "More! More!" until he felt his toes turning inside out.  Even after stopping, he had to hold on to all that air until his lungs were stretched tight as a basketball. 

When he was finally allowed to let go, indignation poured out with the wind: "Waddyatryinadokillme!?"

"Not bad for a first try," his teacher remarked.  "Now, again."

Roy Ray breathed for an hour.  He breathed lying down and standing up, as well as sitting and squatting and hanging upside-down from the garage rafters.  While he breathed the coach lectured on wing anatomy, starting with the skeleton: humerous, radius and ulna, fingerbones.  When Roy Ray was beginning to wonder if he'd ever move beyond breathing, Mr. Godwit said, "Enough.  Let's go out and see what you can do, hey?"

Roy Ray thought he could do a lot--except, as it turned out, the first thing he was asked.  "Take off from the ground?  I can't!"

"Can't?"  Mr. Godwit's little mouth pursed like a Cheerio.  "Are you saying the magnificent Bird Boy can't get the lift of a lowly sparrow?  Kindly find a perch."

Sulkily Roy Ray climbed to the garage roof, and soon discovered he didn't know squat about lift, leverage, bank, glide: "And you call that thrust?" the coach sputtered.  "You look like a levitating brick."

"I don't call it anything!  I'm just trying to stay up!"

"That's your problem, boy.  Wings are more than feathered parachutes--"

"I'll say; they're a pain."  Roy Ray plopped to the ground and shook out two loose secondaries.  "They're always in the way, and they draw bugs and I can't hide 'em and never know where to put 'em and they make me seem really different even though I'm not, and they're not good for anything--"

"Except flying," Mr. Godwit interrupted, while scribbling in his notebook.  At that moment, Roy Ray was thinking that flying wasn't all that hot, but he managed not to say it.  "Your style is a disaster."  (Snap! went the notebook.)  "You're a cyclone of wasted energy--you flail like a chicken in the barnyard."

"I'm molting," Roy Ray muttered.  Which was true: twice a year he shed feathers while new ones were growing in, and his dad griped about the shower drain getting plugged with down.

"No excuse.  Do falcons hang signs outside their rooks that say 'Closed for maintenance?'  Do gulls take vacations?  We must have a tutorial on proper wing care; your primaries are disgraceful.  For now: back straight, cross your tips, smooth line along the ulna, tuck in your fingerbones . . ."

After all this fuss over wing posture, the coach had him raise both arms--arms?!--and move them forward and back in a figure-8 pattern, again and again and again:  " . . . Twenty-seven!  Twenty-eight!  Twenty-nine!  Stop slouching!"

"How long do I have to do this?"

"Bk-bk-bk-bwaaaak!" Mr. Godwit clucked meaningfully. 

Roy Ray straightened up and completed one hundred rotations before he was allowed to stop.  "My shoulders are falling off!  What's up with the arms?  I don't fly with arms."

"No but you think with them, in a way."  The teacher tapped his forehead.  "Though you have birdlike quirks, your brain is all human.  It records the habits your body picks up, and those are terrible habits.  We're setting the stroke pattern with your arms and on the ground so your wings will pick it up faster in the air."

"How come you know all this stuff?"

Mr. Godwit's eyebrows leapt.  "Coaches have to know this stuff."

"But I mean, how'd you learn it?"

"By a series of providences, of which you'll know more anon."

"Huh?"

"Manners, Roy Ray."

            "Huh, sir?"

"For that, fifty extra figure-8's.  Stand tall: One! Two! . . ."

Mr. Godwit practically ate his weight at lunch, which was tuna salad with fresh tomato-basil soup and cornbread.  Then he showed Roy Ray and his mother how to preen.  "The feathers must be combed regular to keep them zipped up, you might say.  Therefore--yes?"

Mrs. Rappaport was holding up her hand, like she was in class.  "Dr. Lemke showed us that at the University.  I use a bleach bottle."

"Beg pardon?"

She showed him the empty bottle she'd cut at an angle in a beaky shape.  She even called it an artificial beak, which always made Roy Ray cringe.

"Clever," said the coach, trying to be tactful.  "But a bit awkward for the lad to use by himself, hey?  Therefore I present my patented preener, often imitated but never surpassed." 

The preener was a piece of hand-carved oak shaped like a rowboat with a grip at the wide end, small enough to tuck in a back pocket.  "Keep it with you always," he told Roy Ray, then showed them how to press oil from uropygial glands at the base of his wings (which always tickled) and spread it over his primaries and secondaries.  "A week of proper preening will get the apparatus in top-flight condition: feathers aligned, waxed, airtight."

"Cool," said Roy Ray.  "Can I go hang out?"

Not until an hour of knee bends, wing stretches and more breathing.  Then, after the shortest one-hour break ever, he finished the afternoon launching from the garage roof, with an emphasis on fluttering over flapping.

He was so tired at the end of the day that he barely managed to stay awake for dinner and one round of Spike with his dad.  It wasn't even dark when his head hit the pillow.

That meant he was awake at two a.m. because he had to go to the bathroom.  And after that, of course, he was thirsty, so he padded barefoot to the kitchen to pour some orange juice.  But there was no o.j. made up.  His mother kept extra cans in the garage freezer, but Roy Ray hesitated to go out there. 

Because of Mr. Godwit.  He was a tiny bit afraid of the man, maybe.  His whole back ached; ever since noon, he'd been doubtful about the high calling of flight.  Or whether it called for him.  He wasn't a hero or mythical character or anything.  Whatever he looked like outside, inside he was just an ordinary kid.  But what if his coach pushed him to the limit, only to find out how limited he really was?

He tried to convince himself that water or milk would do.  But when you want o.j., water or milk will not do.  So after a minute he crept to the door and opened it, very quietly.

The garage was filled with the sound of slow, steady breathing.  The freezer, a chest kind that opened from the top, stood just beside the door.  Roy Ray opened the lid and a ray of light shot from inside.  He couldn't help glancing over his shoulder at the cot.

The cot was empty: Mr. Godwit was nowhere in sight.  At the same moment Roy Ray saw--or maybe felt--a dark, broody shape overhead.  Where, come to think of it, the breathy sound was coming from.

Startled, he lunged to the light switch and flipped it.  Blinded by the glare, he couldn't see anything.  But he heard a sharp cry, followed by a loud thump, very near.

 On to Chapter Four.