Between Heaven and Earth Read Online Free Page B

ashes shifting inside. This cane was such a part of him. Now he was part of it . Here, in my hands.

FIVE
    My eyes jerked open as the plane’s wheels hit the runway. We bounced up and down a few times, and then finally stuck to the ground. We rolled along the runway. It was so rough, I wondered if we’d landed in a field. I looked out the window. The runway was a narrow strip of pavement lined on both sides by dense bush. Probably good that I’d been asleep as we approached the airstrip and hadn’t seen it coming. I was just glad to be back on the ground.
    I really didn’t like flying at all. It wasn’t just about being up high, which I didn’t like. To me, flying was less like science and more like magic. How could a plane hang up there in the air? I knew all about aerodynamics, but it still didn’t feel right to me.
    I’d never told anybody about my fear of flying. Particularly Grandpa. He loved flying almost more than anything else. I remember being up in a plane with him behind the wheel. He loved being up there, and I loved being with him, so I made sure he didn’t know how much I hated flying. He’d put me in the copilot seat when I was so small I could hardly see out through the windscreen. Sometimes he’d even let me put my hands on the rudder—a four-year-old flying a plane.
    While we flew, he told stories: flying in his Lancaster during the war, being a bush pilot in the North, bouncing around Africa. That made me smile. When I thought about the last time he was in the air at the controls of his plane, my smile left. He knew he was getting too old to fly solo, and that wasn’t just his thinking but the government’s. As he’d said, “Regulations are regulations, and I can’t fight them.” So he allowed his pilot’s license to lapse.
    I had been there on the ground, holding my mother’s hand, Steve holding the other, when Grandpa landed that last time. He went up alone, just him and the plane and the sky.
    If I closed my eyes, I could still see him slowly walking away from the plane after he landed. He told me it was one of the saddest days of his life. I was sad for him, but secretly I was grateful I’d never have to go up with him again. And that still made me feel guilty.

    I was now on the third flight of my trip and each plane had gotten smaller and more suspect. Finally we arrived in Moshi, a town near Kilimanjaro. Grandpa would have loved this last plane because it was so tiny. It held only sixteen people and seemed less like a plane than a bus with two propeller-driven engines. Bad enough that it was like a bus, but it wasn’t even a nice bus. The carpeting on the floor was worn and torn, as were the seats. Torn wouldn’t have been bad if my seat hadn’t also been crooked—one of the support legs was busted—and if it had a seat belt that worked. Rather than buckling up, the attendant had helped me tie the two ends together.
    The plane was still bumping along the runway when people started to get up from their seats. They seemed to have no sense of safety or following rules, although I could appreciate wanting to get off this plane as fast as possible. On the ground was good, but feet on the ground was better. I thought the flight attendant would tell them to sit down, but she hadn’t bothered. Passengers held on to seats, swaying while they opened up the overhead compartments and pulled out their bags.
    The plane finally came to a complete stop, and I untied my seat belt and got to my feet, smacking my head loudly against the overhead compartment. The thud was loud enough that people turned to stare. A few looked like they were about to laugh or giggle, and others looked concerned.
    â€œI’m okay,” I said to everybody and nobody. “They just don’t make these big enough for me.”
    I stepped into a gap in the aisle and stood up, almost straight. My head brushed against the