Leaving on a Jet Plane

By Ed Staskus

   “Mom told me dad is taking you to Lithuania next week,” Emma said. It was Monday morning, two weeks before the end of school and the start of summer. Emma was at the breakfast table and had a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats in front of her. Oliver had a PB&J sandwich on a dessert plate in front of him.

   “That’s right, we’re leaving on Friday after this Friday, as soon as the last day of school is over,” Oliver said.

   “What about me?” 

   “What about you?”

   “What about me going?”

   “You’re going somewhere the next day, on Saturday, except you’re going to piano camp.”

   “Piano camp?”

   “It’s in Oberlin, not too far away. Tommy One Shoe said it’s a nice drive. Didn’t mom tell you?”

   “No, she hasn’t said anything about it. How do you and Tommy know about it and I don’t?”

   “Maybe mom wants to surprise you.” 

   “Surprise me? I don’t like surprises. I don’t even like the piano anymore, either. I’ve been playing the clarinet in the school band all year. I like the clarinet. It’s my thing.” She had been listening to Benny Goodman on iTunes on their mother’s cell phone. Neither she nor Oliver were allowed to have their own cell phones.

   “Maybe she will send you to a clarinet camp next.”

   “What? I don’t want to go to any old music camp. I want to go with you and dad.”

   Oliver was the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. He was nine and a half years old. Emma was his sister. She was his right-hand man when it came to hunting monsters. She would be twelve years old a few weeks before summer ended. 

   Their mother had been a corporate lawyer, but after Oliver and Emma were born she became a homemaker. Their father was an electrical engineer. Oliver and Emma were part Lithuanian and part Transylvanian Saxon on their father’s side. They were part German and Scottish on their mother’s side. 

   Their father was going to Lithuania as part of a three-man team to inspect  and recommend improvements at the Heat and Power Plant in Kaunas. His company had developed new software for the job. He was an excellent electrical engineer and a fair speaker of the Lithuanian language, which was why he had been chosen for the job. He had plenty of frequent flier miles and when he asked Oliver if he wanted to go with him, Oliver jumped at the chance.

   Emma complained long and loud about having to go to piano camp. She complained even more about not going to Lithuania. She complained bitterly about Oliver going instead of her. After all, she was older and smarter than him. She loved history. She loved culture. She should be the one going to Europe. Oliver wouldn’t know culture if he tripped over it. Even he admitted she was the brains behind their monster hunting. Oliver had true grit, but she had the brain cells.

   Their father finally sat her down. “I can only take one of you, bunny,” he said. “Besides, your mother has her heart set on you going to the piano camp, which is at the same time. I have good news, though. We have been thinking about going to Prince Edward Island for two weeks before school starts. Would you like that?”

   “Yes dad, I really would.”

   Emma had read “Anne of Green Gables” that winter and liked it so much she had read two more of the Green Gable books.

   “Can we go to Cavendish where Anne lived?”

   “That’s exactly where your mother and I are thinking of renting a cottage.”

   “Oh, that would be so great,” Emma said.

   Oliver had never flown on a jet. He was excited about it. He sang “Leaving On a Jet Plane” all the way to the airport.  “All my bags are packed. I’m ready to go, “cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.”  Those were the only lyrics he knew. He sang them again and again until his father asked him to stop.

    His father and he flew United Airlines from Cleveland Hopkins Airport to Washington, D. C. and from there to Denmark. Goo Goo Godzilla, who was the grandson of Godzilla, rode shotgun, hitching a ride on top of the plane. The monster and  Oliver had gone nose to nose at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant three years earlier when Oliver was six and just getting started in monster hunting. The power plant was within bicycle distance of where they lived in Perry. He had saved the day by convincing Goo Goo it was in his best interest to leave it alone rather than destroying it.  When Oliver looked out his porthole he could see Goo Goo’s shadow on the wing. He knew the kaiju was watching out for him.

   It took ten hours to get to Denmark. They landed in Copenhagen. Goo Goo took off for Paris where he was going to be the Grand Marshall of a Godzilla Day Parade on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Oliver and his father had chicken sandwiches at C***s & Cows near Gate B. After they ate they walked from one end of the terminal to the other until they realized their flight to Vilnius was leaving soon. They had to run to make it. 

   The flight to Lithuania was going to take an hour and a half. Vilnius was the capital of the country. Oliver sat at the porthole and his father sat in the aisle seat. The middle seat was empty. When a young girl with long black hair, her ponytail held in place not by an elastic tie or a barrette but by a swan’s feather, asked if she could sit in the middle seat, Oliver gestured at the seat in a friendly way. She sat down.

   “You look familiar,” Oliver said. “Are you the Marsh King’s daughter?”

   “Yes, I am,” she said.

   “I’m happy to meet you,” Oliver said putting his hand out to shake hands. They shook hands.

   “I heard about how you saved your father when he was turned into a tree stump,” Oliver said. The Marsh King ruled the underground realm beneath the moorlands in the north of Jutland. The moorlands extended for many miles. It used to be overrun with wolves and was still overrun by damp mist. It was surrounded by swamps and marshy ground. Anybody stepping on the wrong spot sank and went down to the Marsh King.

   “He had come up from beneath the moorlands to find bilberry to cure his diarrhea,” the Marsh King’s daughter said. “The three moorland witches saw him and cast a spell. They transformed him onto a tree stump. He tried to push himself back  down into the slime, but couldn’t.”

   The Marsh King’s daughter was standing at the base of the tree stump wondering what to do when a flock of storks darkened the sky and landed all round her. The stork parents rested while the stork girls strutted and caught small snakes with their beaks. The stork boys looked for frogs and swallowed them whole. They started quarreling, batting each other with their wings and pecking.

   “When I saw that I collected a basket full of frogs and emptied it on top of the tree stump. The stork boys rushed to the tree stump and fought for the frogs. Before long blood was dripping all over the tree stump. While the blood was still warm I said the magic words my mother had taught me.” 

   “What are those words?” Oliver asked.

   “Out of dislocation and into realignment, out of disorder and into order, bone to bone, joint to joint, as it was best when it was whole.”

   “What happened then?”

   “The tree stump shook itself violently until arms and legs pushed themselves out from it. I saw my father’s face come to life. His head twisted itself out of the top of the stump. The storks backed away. In a minute the tree stump was gone and my father was alive and well again. We held hands and went back together, back to our home beneath the moorlands.”

   “Are you going to Lithuania like me?”

   “Yes, my sister invited me to visit her. She has a cottage on the Corinthian Spit. She said I could stay all summer and get some sun. We don’t see much sun under the moorlands.”

   Oliver felt the jet plane turn and tilt towards the Vilnius airport. “I’m going to be in Lithuania for two weeks. Maybe we’ll meet again,” he said.

   “I have a spell for that, to make it happen,” the Marsh King’s daughter said, looking impish.

   “That’s OK.” Oliver said. “Wherever I am is where I am. I’m not a big fan of spells, unless it’s an emergency. If I see a sign for the Curonian Spit I’ll stop  by.” He waved goodbye to the Marsh Princess as he joined his father and stepped on Lithuanian soil for the first time in his life.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A big story in a small town.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes,” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A satchel of stolen counterfeit money. Two contract killers from Montreal. A gravel road cop stands in their way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication