MOONEY IN FLIGHT
Runner-up for the Colorado Best Book Award
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MOONEY IN FLIGHT
Leonard
Mooney hits what
many might consider the fantasy jackpot: inheriting a deserted
tropical island and a chance at a fresh life. Armed with time,
scenery, and a healthy ration of rum, Mooney wrestles the ghosts
who follow him, amuse him, hector him.
Dark
and comic, Mooney in Flight follows
a disaffected, drunk, and bewildered man who has removed himself
from the lives of his two children and the ex-wife he adores. He
is alone with his thoughts, relentless sand fleas, and unanswered
questions. When an airplane lands on his island, an exotic couple
disembark and bring to his solitude both danger and opportunity
for change.
The
reader of Mooney in Flight may
glimpse the escape act of so many American males who disappear
into drink or fantasy or work, into anything but responsibility
and empathy.
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MOONEY IN FLIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
What
the ocean offered was nothing, no people, no Stace or Tommy, no home, no kid named Dog.
And all
you felt, as the speeding dinghy slipped the surface on every wave,
your insides ballooning out ahead and your weight rising to hammer height
and then—bam—back to the seat on your sit bones, all you
felt was terror and a sore butt.
Each leg
of the trip got worse. It would make a cartoon, the centipede complaining
to the chiropodist, each leg is worse than the last. I started by airplane
from my hometown in the middle of the country, changed for the Bahamas
to a plane the size of an elevator, engines that gagged like they ran
on unfiltered Camels. First stop Nassau, then on to Providenciales,
they call it Provo, the capital of these islands, then to sea. I traded
my fear of heights for a fear of spaces. By launch over a washboard
chop to the last inhabited key, and finally this, a rowboat twelve feet
dent to dent, my worldly possessions sloshing in two inches of cloudy
bilge.
Two inches
and rising.
The sulky
black man I hired to ferry me over stood in the stern and took his hand
from the outboard's handle only to light a cigarette or flick one overboard.
Once to tuck another roll in his trouser legs, a sign I took to mean
we'd be taking on more water.
Pills for
motion sickness had made me drowsy. In the patches where the water flattened
out, my head flopped to my chest. The drone of the engine, the clop-clop
of the waves, the clammy air. Then we would hit a speed bump that God
had forgotten in the middle of the sea, and my neck would snap. The
boatman kept squinting into the glare, a look of doubt on his face like
he was sailing with Columbus and had forgotten the location of the hospital
corner where the earth ended.
I must
have been dozing when the island, my island, came on us. The outboard
slowed to a grind, the forward shift of my body startled me awake and
my grip tightened on the rail. When I looked up the bow was pointing
at a scruffy line of sand broken by mangrove and stunted pine.
A floating
dock jutted out from the beach. Isaac—he had told me his name,
said I might need it—tied us fast to a rusty cleat. I sat useless
while he heaved my bags onto the dock. The two canvas duffels held a
toilet kit, a few books, the three-ring binders that were my stamp albums,
and all my clothes. Plastic sacks full of canned goods, mostly soups
and meats and a case of creamed corn. Two weeks' supply of fresh produce,
okra, lettuce, blotchy yellow tomatoes. An open carton the butcher in
Provo had begrudged me to carry meat that had been sliced and decked
into white paper packets, neatly bundled for freezing.
Should
he tote them in? The way he asked, he wanted me to understand he thought
me a loony, a misplaced white man who didn't belong here and who wouldn't
last long.
He asked
a second time. “You want I carry the shit in, man?” He wasn't
black, any more than I was white, but the colors of eggplant and motor
oil.
“No
need.”
There were
few enough chores, nothing other than settling in, storing gear, putting
things in their place. I sat in the middle of the boat—he had
scolded me about where to sit to keep from upsetting things. Now I stuck
like a dog to the curb, and when he realized I needed a command to move,
he flapped his hand to release me. I stood unsteadily and climbed out.
Isaac hopped
between dock and boat, swinging the packages up. His sleek seal color
reached down to just above the soles of his feet, and there like the
rim on a pair of sneakers it turned into a gummy pink fringe. Days of
standing in the bilge had washed out the browns and purples.
He was
lining up the bags in neat rows. The afternoon wind had come up strong
ahead of a front, Isaac agreed to ferry me so long as he could be back
before the front blew in. Wavelets popped against the sides of his metal
dinghy, and against the hull of a second boat, a Boston Whaler that
came with the house. It was moored fast on the far side of the dilapidated
boards. I recognized it from the estate agent's pictures, and even there
it looked sorry, its motor pulled clear of the water and covered in
torn orange jacket. The Whaler too had taken on water, and I peered
in to see a plastic margarine tub floated about. I don't like boats.
For that matter, movement.
Perfect
weather for my adopted life. Gray mournful clouds bunted across a gray
sky. Far out in crusted seas, a sun lighted pools of blues and blacks,
a sun miles away shining on somebody else's planet. Not the Caribbean
of the back-cover ads where tanned people in pastels chat and drink
highballs, here skies were fat with moisture and the air smelled of
dead fish and rain.
“We
get a second wet season now,” the estate agent in Provo had said.
“You will find it quite short, quite refreshing. Rain and sand
fleas through June, then heat and sand fleas to the autumn, then hurricane
and sand fleas. The winter is pleasant, Mr. Mooney, our loveliest season.
Merely sand fleas. That is your selling time. If you desire to try to
live on Penniel Key for a little while, Mr. Mooney, that is fine. But
if you desire to introduce this house into the marketplace, don't miss
your selling time. The Hofstadter House is not a property that will
easily gain access into the marketplace.”
Not my
concern. I reached into my pocket and fngered the two keys she had given
me. Identical, tied by white twine to a paper disc on which “Hofstadter
House” was neatly printed. When I'm gone will she, I wondered,
buy a new disc? Will it become the Mooney House? Paid her past due invoices
for plumbing, propane delivery, and security. And so bought a double-slice
of time, extra cheese. Time and solitude, both as useless as the cement-foam
water around me.
I could
hear Hofstadter: Don't get mad and don't even get even. Just get out.
Isaac swung
the last sack to the boards and stared at me. One of his eyes, the right,
showed a color you didn't want to look at. Red the meat of a clam. It
pushed out the white. He balanced himself in the boat, silent, waiting
for me to understand he was through. I opened my wallet so he could
see in. Watched him watch my thumb graze over the blue and purple Bahamian
dollars. He breathed through his nose, you could hear it. Behind those
exotic bills, a smaller, neat file, I riffled the green U.S. currency.
Slid out two twenties and handed them over. Thirty-five dollars had
been quoted. He rubbed his dangerous eye over me and made no move toward
change.
“What
if I want you?” The extra five bought me a dumb question.
“You
got no radio here. You can't call.”
We studied
each other. I wondered if his eye was sick, maybe in Provo he could
have it examined.
“Hoist
sometin'.” He said at last and nodded toward the house. “A
towel in the window. I pass by every week to Mayaguana. If I see a towel
or sometin' I stop. You leave a note, I bring you shit.”
Isaac stepped
over the broken plank serving for the stern seat, put his foot on the
engine housing, his first two toes around the starter cord. He yanked
and the motor fired. He walked forward and loosed the line from its
cleat, jumped in. He steered slowly around the floating debris that
was the dock. When he was clear he looked over his shoulder—a
last chance? Maybe the lunatic will come to his senses—and wrenched
the throttle. The boat carved through the water.
I watched
the dot disappear into bands of color. You would have thought the sounds
would leave, too, but after the rattling tin boat was swallowed up there
was no quiet. The static of the water, the rasp of the sand, the wind
that flapped against my trouser leg. At my feet lay bags of provisions
in rows. They were the army of enemy. I picked out the first carton
box, Carnation condensed milk—why the hell had I bought that?
I don't drink milk—hefted it to my hip, and began the walk.
The dock
went halfway up the beach to account for tides. Its boards, doused in
salt and dried by the sun, had been nailed to a frame and the frame
set on caulked oilcans. An anchor rope pointed the walkway into the
sea, and the oilcans buoyed the whole assembly. It shook and slid around
when I walked over it to the beach.
A sand
path ran through the yellow sea grasses of the dunes. A hundred yards
up sat the house. I realized I was standing on the spot where the agent
shot the file photo, from the start of the dock, to catch the dunes
and the house at its best, its elevation, a clear sky. The photograph
was honest, showing a dilapidated cottage, unpainted shingles grayed
near to silver from neglect. A dozen blown-down shingles lay where they
fell. A few were replaced, I could see the catalogue-brown stain on
the new wood, they loooked like missing teeth. A double window sat in
the front dormer of a partial second story. Penniel Key it was called,
although it couldn't be the key to anything. Penniel Lost in the Ocean,
Penniel Birdshit-on-the-rocks.
I went
up the three outside steps. Once the porch was screened in, but the
occasional guest, maybe even Hofstadter, had clipped random squares
so there was more air than mesh. The door to the porch lolled open on
its hinges. I set down the carton of cans, grasped the handle to the
inner door and gave a twist. The tongue engaged the gears, the latch
gave, if you take care of moving parts they don't let you down, and
I went in.
Where the
heart is. Home sweet home, ever so humble. Inside, on either side of
the door sat two chrome straight chairs with seats of flecked red plastic.
A daybed sofa, a half-upholstered easy chair, and across on the long
wall to my right a small fireplace. Where to find wood on this smear
of land? But a hearth nonetheless.
I am a
sucker for fireplaces, for all sites romantic. Even the two women I
married would have admitted that. When Alice and I decided to wed, her
first time not counting an annulment and about four thousand live-ins
and my second, resolving that our pasts were just that, past, to be
blazed to ashes, we commited an eternal and romantic act. It was my
suggestion, right after I proposed or she did, I never really understood
how it came about, we were finishing a bottle of red wine after a spaghetti
supper, so we took pens and wrote on a pad of slate blue paper, hidden
from the other, the names of every lover we could remember. Wrote out
our lists and crumpled the pages into a ball. And I, her eyes aglimmer
in the light, her face beaming with just the expression of devotion
you'd want if you were directing a school play, then I tossed both balls
of paper onto the logs and we watched our new life flare up in the flames.
Very effective, very eternal.
Perhaps
I would have a fire. Perhaps there was a grove of hardwood behind the
house, and perhaps there was more on this tiny fishhook of an island
than the estate agent had let on. The agent was angry with me. When
she heard of Hofstadter's death, she went to the expense of preparing
a brochure to sell the property. It looked to be an easy commission.
But Hofstadter tricked her by leaving the house and island to some Statie,
some inland, pallid crackpot who showed up in Provo and declared he
was going to move in. “People vacation there,” the agent
told me over the phone and again in person, in that particular blend
of Bahamian courtesy and disdain. “We get a few rentals in season,
Mr. Mooney, though not many. It's too remote. You must understand, there
is no source of supply, your only electricity is from a generator. You
will be quite alone. Propane lamps, a two-hour open-boat ride to the
nearest inhabited island. People simply don't live there.”
I banged
through the first floor. Behind the main room connected by a pantry
were a 1940s kitchen, gas burners and electric refrigerator. The cabinets
at eye level had what I'd need. Jam-jar glasses, chipped china. One
setting would do. Above all sorts of crap to make it a cutesy home,
straw place mats, candles, a hardwood salad bowl. Uncharacteristic of
Hofstadter—they must have been spoils from a former owner.
The rest
of the first floor consisted of a small room with a dilapidated double
bed, iron headboard painted white. A bathroom where the toilet and sink
functioned despite the rust scars. The medicine cabinet over the sink
had a mirror facing out. I looked at its sorry view, wished it wasn't
there. I checked the closet: old, gray linens, and on the top shelves
games for a rainy day. Upstairs the one room, windowed on three sides,
and a single army bed tented between the eaves. The mattress was ancient,
the cover lined in blue ticking. someone had folded linens and an unraveling
wool blanket and piled them on the dresser. Welcome home.
I suppose,
to give Alice her due, we had no real chance. You need a certain momentum
to get on with life, like leaping across a stream. It's harder to do
from a standing start, and when we married I had no momentum. I tried
to gather some speed—why else that evening of movie drama, the
list, the crumpled ball, the names of past loves firing up the chimney?
Of course, I started and ended my list with Reba. If we had thought
to set out rules for the exercise, we'd have excluded departed spouses.
But I thought this was the right way, I wanted to list them all, I'd
made my list before, and lovers—love—always started and
ended with Reba.
I finished
my tour. Behind the house a healthy sedge grew over the sands, marking
the boundaries, I only later realized, of the leaching field for the
septic tank. At the far edge a knobbled, pygmy pine. Attached to the
back of the house and coming up by the kitchen window was a metal locker
that housed the tools I might need to get on here. A fishing rod, a
spade and pitchfork, various rakes. A scythe, of all things. Maybe I'd
give a costume party, I'd wear the scythe and the sheets from the bed
and come as the Grim Reaper. Several sizes of linoleum cutters. Boxes
of spare shingles, a stack of flagstone, though I hadn't seen any installed,
piping joints, wires, small jars of nuts and fasteners and eyelets.
I was not interested in maintenance. Does the condemned man shine his
shoes?
Against
the back wall of the house, by a rear door that wouldn't latch, a small
pile of wood. Nothing more than the cuttings of old bush, each branch
the diameter of a woman's wrist. I brought an armful inside and arranged
it to the side of the fireplace.
Then I
went about my task of stocking the house. Don't some birds store gorge
in their gullet and just cough it up for their young? I made several
trips. The place was what I anticipated, just rummier.
The stand-up
freezer swallowed my supply without a burp. On the porch I watched darkness
seep into the horizon. There was nothing else in it, just dark and water.
The rains started, only a spit but sweet-smelling and soft. I went indoors.
Checked to make sure the flue was open and stacked a few logs in a square,
like building a model outpost on some frontier. Paper would be at a
premium—why hadn't I thought to ask for paper sacks? I unwrapped
a tin of Norwegian sardines and used the label. It was enough and the
sticks caught fire. They burned in blue and yellow flames, colors of
the chemicals of the sea.
Seven,
eight trips down the path in a light drizzle. Monotonous. Again I stowed
the food that needed putting away. The crabs, Mr. Mooney, the agent
said. If you leave the bread out the crabs will come through the walls
and take the bread. Then I sat down and watched the fire. It burned
too quickly to enjoy. I was alone at last, and, now two hours into my
exile, I was lonely. Two hours into my plan of giving up a life that
had nothing in it, I was bored.
When I
left Alice that last day, after we talked about my departure like our
lives were different movies, we are deciding which channel to watch,
we discussed who kept what. There was no argument. I told her to tag
whatever she wanted and sell the rest. Hofstadter's house came furnished.
Besides I wanted to leave all that stuff behind. Even though I hadn't
seen the house I was hoping that it was beyond the reach of her magazine
racks and potholders in the shape of kittens. Before I left, I set the
ball of paper on the mantel. Of course I had palmed her list of lovers,
stuck it in my pocket and threw into the fire a blank page I had in
my hand. So I placed her list on the mantel. Not that I'm proud of this,
I know it is cranky and cloddish, but there are times, and birth and
death are among them and maybe this one too, a man and a woman leaving
their marriage, that cranky doesn't count. I smoothed it out and centered
it on the mantel. With a black ballpoint pen that bears an unfurling
U.S. flag and the name and telephone number of Alice's real estate company,
Miramonte Farms, I printed clearly across the top, ONE TOO MANY.
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MOONEY IN FLIGHT
REVIEWS
“Brilliantly written, with
the cool aplomb and attention to detail of a private eye. This is a
book about being grown up and the world that suggests.”
—James
Salter
"Bruce Ducker has managed
to create a character that inspires hope rather than pity. Mooney
in Flight is a satisfying and touching story...."
—The
Denver Post
"A compelling, sometimes
dark read...a great screenplay. A gripping and imaginative read."
—Rocky
Mountain News
Mooney in Flight: A Novel,
"Mooney in Flight is a special and rare book, one about adult life
as it is lived. While Leonard Mooney's wrecked life might seem a dark
and depressing subject, in the author's hand it is anything but. You'll
be engrossed, entertained, and humored as Mooney slouches toward the
outcome. Witty and knowing, this book is one you won't want to end."
—Stephen Longstreet
“As he sorts through his past and its series of missteps, some grander than others, Mooney becomes a character that the reader cares about and ultimately cheers.”
—The
Denver Post
Amazon.com
Website— FIVE STARS!!
Holiday pick, Tattered Cover.
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MOONEY IN FLIGHT
ARTICLES
DESPERATION
OF MIDLIFE CRISIS SHOWS IN 'FLIGHT'
By
Ashley Simpson Shires,
Special To
The Rocky Mountain News
December 19, 2003
A mysteriously
absent wife, a buxom Realtor, an unexpected benefactor and a deserted
tropical island—these are the main ingredients for Bruce Ducker's
new novel, Mooney in Flight.
It's a
good set-up for a story about a man in a mid-life crisis. And Ducker
follows through, developing his character, Leonard Mooney, in first-class
midlife crisis form. Mooney's mantra is "Don't get mad, don't get
even, just get out."
The novel
begins with Mooney arriving at his remote tropical inheritance. It is
an isolated affair—he flies from middle America to the Bahamas,
takes a launch to the last inhabited key and finally boards a leaky
rowboat to his remote island.
It is from this island that he narrates his story. And the story is
a compelling, sometimes dark read.
Ducker's writing style effectively evokes the desperation of Mooney's
situation. The physical landscape reflects Mooney's emotional one. It
is the rainy season; the skies are mostly gray and the sand fleas are
inescapable.
The descriptions
set the tone as Ducker slips between Mooney's rum-dazed, self-destructive
existence on the island and the past that haunts him. He describes the
painful loss of Mooney's son and then his first wife. He documents his
dismal job at the Office of the Clerk of the Municipal Court, his petty
feud with a co-worker, the inevitable divorce of his second wife.
Even Mooney's
benefactor, Hofstadter, the man who leaves him the remote island, is
described as a miserable character. Hofstadter has lost his larynx to
throat cancer. "Every so often," Ducker writes, "he removed
the apparatus that hooked his mechanical box to the muscles in his throat,
exposing the dressed O in his neck, and plugged in a cigarette."
Just when it seems that Mooney's life is too depressing to bear, a young
woman enters the picture. It is a midlife crisis, after all. And Mooney
admits that she's probably younger than his own daughter.
I won't
give away too much, but the young woman, Arden, is a breath of fresh
air in the story. A slightly flaky Bohemian adventurer, she becomes
the catalyst Mooney needs to change. And man, do things begin to change.
This is
the hard part of any review: assessing a book without giving away the
ending. I'll just say that Ducker builds the story to a fantastic crisis
that forces Mooney to question his mantra, "Don't get mad, don't
get even, just get out." The novel would make a great screenplay
(a cross between Cast Away and Barfly). Mooney
is a powerful character in that his passivity and his depression are
real. His faults are revealed not only in his own estimation, but also
in the way the other characters (especially his wives and children)
relate to him.
Overall,
the story is a gripping, imaginative read. The key players—Mooney's
missing family, his strange benefactor and the tropical island—come
together in intriguing ways. I found myself, at the end of the book,
rooting for Mooney to get on out there and face his life fully, possibly
for the first time.
©Copyright
2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved
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Mooney
in Flight
Bruce Ducker
By
DeGrassi, Robin
Published: Wednesday,
January 21, 2004
Denver Post
Mooney
in Flight, by Colorado Book Award-winning author
Bruce Ducker, is about a man who is unable to cope with his life, a
seemingly familiar ailment among middle-aged men. This story is not
your typical mid-life crisis saga, however. For example, most people
trying to escape the shambles of their lives might choose to drink themselves
into oblivion in the comfort of their own home. But why drink yourself
to death at home when you can do it on your own private island?
The main
character, Leonard Mooney, stumbles upon this perfect opportunity to
leave his troubles behind in a kind of self-imposed exile when his friend
dies and leaves him a deserted island somewhere in the Caribbean. Through
flashbacks, Mooney's past slowly and mysteriously develops until we
can see straight to the root of his extreme emotional detachment. However,
in his present situation on the island, Mooney experiences a slightly
hallucinatory life—slowly becoming nocturnal, living on rum, talking
to plants and inexplicably deciding to carve a landing strip out of
the sand.
In time, something
comes along to shake up his hermitage. This disruption arrives in the
form of two people who see his landing strip from the air and, being
the type to avoid documentation at commercial airports, take advantage
of the safe haven that Mooney has inadvertently offered. The couple's
presence adds a good amount of paranoia and drama to Mooney's life and
ultimately forces him to reevaluate the decisions that have brought
him to the island. The events that follow are entertaining and suspenseful,
but not as rich and meaningful as the story of his first wife and children
that is threaded throughout the book.
It's hard
to admire a man like Leonard Mooney, but Bruce Ducker has managed to
create a character that inspires hope rather than pity. Mooney
in Flight is a satisfying and touching story from this
local author.
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MOONEY IN FLIGHT PRESS RELEASE
MacAdam/Cage
Publishing
SAN FRANCISCO * DENVER
NEW
TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: September 2003
Contact:
Tasha Kepler
Phone: 303-753-7565
Email: tasha@macadamcage.com
---------------------------------------------
Mooney
in Flight
By Bruce Ducker
SAN
FRANCISCO, CA— MacAdam/Cage
is pleased to announce the publication Mooney
In Flight by Bruce Ducker (MacAdam/Cage, October
2003, Hardcover $22.00). He is the author of several other novels: Bloodlines,
Marital Assets and Lead
Us Not Into Penn Station.
Much like
life, the story of Mooney In Flight walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Leonard Mooney has
decamped to a deserted island willed to him by a friend. While this
may seem like a dream come true to the most of us, for Mooney armed
with time, scenery and one too many bottles of rum, the island turns
into a boxing ring for the army of personal ghosts that have accompanied
him on the trip. Alone with his thoughts on his adored ex-wife and alienation
from his children, Mooney is clearly a bewildered man. As he is on the
verge of insanity a plane breaks his solitude and delivers not only
a couple of extra inhabitants, but also an opportunity for him to change.
Mooney
In Flight takes a dark and comic look at the middle
aged male and the escape that so many of them seek in drink, fantasy
or work, into anything but responsibility and empathy.
The
Los Angeles Times commenting on Ducker's writing has said,
“who'd have thought an attorney could write so lyrically, so allusively,
so in tune with the quotidian...…a fine piece of work. Ducker
brings [the landscape] singularly, almost cinematically alive...”
Bruce
Ducker was born in New York City. He has practiced corporate
law for most of his career and is the founding partner of a Denver law
firm. He has authored seven novels, including Bloodlines,
Marital Assets and Lead
Us Not Into Penn Station. The last was the winner
of the Colorado Book Award.
MacAdam/Cage
Publishing was founded as an independent trade publisher in 1998 with
the aim of publishing new books of quality fiction and non-fiction.
The company is committed to bringing new and talented voices to the
literary marketplace. Mooney In Flight is one of sixteen titles from MacAdam/Cage's fall 2003
releases.
-----------------------------
Mooney in
Flight
by Bruce Ducker
October 2003
Hardcover, $22.00
ISBN: 1-931561-52-4 |
