The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking Read Online Free

Holder boys approached the water’s edge. Roger saw that the girl was around eight years old; the boy appeared to be her little brother. She was pale and slight, with prominent ears and oversize glasses. Roger asked what she and her brother were doing.
    “Catching salamanders,” the girl replied.
    Roger peered at the muddy water inside the girl’s jar and laughed. “Those ain’t salamanders,” he said. “Those are tadpoles, see? Tadpoles—baby frogs.”
    The girl reached into her jar and pulled out one of the minuscule creatures by its tail. She dangled it right in front of Roger’s face, so he could inspect its frilly gills and nascent limbs. “I know a baby salamander when I see one,” she snapped. When Roger could say nothing in reply, the girl broke into a wide grin; she was obviously pleased to have won the argument.
    The girl’s brother tugged at her sleeve—he wanted to head back to the picnic area, where Mom and Dad were waiting. “Well, next time Isee you, I hope you’ve learned more about salamanders,” the grinning girl said to Roger while screwing a brass lid onto her jar. “Bye-bye.”
    “Good luck with them salamanders!” Roger Holder shouted after Cathy Kerkow as she and her brother disappeared into the woods. He was certain that she heard him, though she never did look back.
    Four days later the Holders’ Crown Victoria headed south down Highway 101. The family had been run out of Oregon afterless than three months.
    A S C ATHY K ERKOW entered junior high, her parents’ shaky marriage finally fell apart. Bruce moved north to Seattle to pursue his music, leaving Patricia to care for their four children all by herself. The split was a minor scandal in conservative Coos Bay, where
divorce
was still a dirty word; the consensus was that only the lowest of scoundrels would abandon their kids tochase bohemian dreams. The town rallied behind the much-loved Patricia, who took a full-time secretarial job at Southwestern Oregon Community College (SWOCC) tomake ends meet.
    Because of her demanding work schedule, Patricia relied on Cathy to help run the household. Though barely more than a child herself, Cathy was expected to mend clothes, prepare roasts, and make sure her three younger brothers were dressed for school or church on time. While her friends from the neighborhood were outside on South 10th Street, running footraces between the lampposts or playing games of Truth or Dare, Cathy was often stuck inside her family’s second-floor flat, tending to chores. The sweet and quiet girl never complained about her responsibilities as assistant mom, nor voiced any sadness over her father’s departure. But there was painbeneath her placid surface.
    When she entered Marshfield High School in 1965, Kerkow was going through an awkward phase. The shy and gangly girl threw herself into the sorts of extracurriculars that proper young Coos Bay ladies were supposed to enjoy: chorus, the Latin club, and a Christiangroup that providedmeals to elderly shut-ins. Shemade straight B’s and became close friends with one of her fellow sopranos, Beth Newhouse, the daughter ofthe town’s leading attorney.
    As Kerkow progressed through Marshfield, though, she shed her gawkiness and blossomed into a talented athlete. She took up running, which had long been the biggest sport in Coos Bay—the town’s temperate climate allowed for year-round training, and the surrounding hills were ideal for strengthening young legs. The Marshfield track team was a powerhouse in the late 1960s, led by the best schoolboy miler in the United States, a scrappy carpenter’s son named Steve Prefontaine. Kerkow made the varsity squad as a junior and set a school record in the eighty-yard hurdles, an achievement that earned her special mention in Marshfield’s yearbook alongside herfriend and classmate Prefontaine.
    Junior year was also when Kerkow began to take full advantage of her newfound ability to set male hearts aflutter. Endowed