Sammy locked his gaze backward at the F-15 Eagle as his F-16 screamed downhill. While he was fixated over his left shoulder, he crossed the river and the slope on the northern bank rose.

Check rocks. It’s the first thing they teach you about low altitude flying. Sammy finally remembered to do this, spun his head forward, and realized he was screwed. He pulled back on the stick. The approaching spruces and stones tried to claw him down, but he stayed in the air. His obsession with a pretend opponent had almost delivered him to the dirt.

Jesus, he thought. That was close.

After several days in a cabin, Sammy was glad to clean the wood smoke out of his clothes. The laundry spun and he decided to call one of his squadron mates to get him at the airport when he went back to work.
“Dude, can you pick me up?”
“Sure,” said his buddy, “Uh…Has anybody talked to you lately?”
“No. What’s up?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
“There’s been an accident, Sammy. Joe hit the ground. He didn’t get out.”

He kept it together long enough to arrange his ride. He walked from the Laundromat payphone down the strip mall. There was a liquor store. Good, he thought. He picked Johnnie Walker Black for insurance. Brain shut-off insurance.

Back at the cabin, Sammy slouched down the crooked stone steps to the water. The bottle felt heavy in his hand. The little lake was surrounded by pines, towering stately sentinels. He squatted, leaned to the side, put out a hand and plopped down to his seat. Squinting up at the bland overcast, he ground his feet into the sand to get a solid purchase. There was a reassuring crink as he unscrewed the cap. He held the bottle to the sky.

“To Joe,” he said and poured whisky on the ground between his feet.
He grimaced after his first swallow. Then, he saw the loon.

He pulled on the bottle and watched the loon glide across the lake. Perfect black silhouette. The outline ending at the pointed, razor sharp tip of its beak. A strange bird with crimson eyes that give it good underwater vision. Then, bloop, it was gone. In all his years at the lake, he’d never seen a loon there before. He thought it was odd, but was grateful for the distraction as the warmth of the whisky started to spread.

Maybe you’re my damn spirit guide, Sammy thought. Perfect.
Loons are part of the Ojibwa creation myth. There was a flood. A loon offered to swim to the bottom of the sea to find soil to help build the world. He failed. As a totem animal, the loon is supposedly uncaring, unsympathetic, and even judgmental. Sammy timed his gulps to follow the cyclical rise and fall of the diving loon. He was down to the label. He didn’t let himself think of what a whole bottle of liquor might do to him. One swig at a time.

Joe was dead. An empathetic person would’ve thought of Joe’s family. Instead, Sammy imagined the abstract idea of his own family; a wife and children mourning his own passing. You could argue this was a type of concern for Joe’s family, but it was just a cartoonish fantasy on Sammy’s part. He was single, and imagined his own fictional weeping widow throwing herself over his casket.

He thought of what it might’ve been like in Joe’s cockpit, chased by a different friendly aircraft pretending to be a bad guy. He would’ve spun his head from looking over his shoulder at some enemy to suddenly see the earth rushing up to swallow him. The dirt was the true adversary and dragged Joe down while he yanked back desperately on the stick.

Loons wail long ghostly moans in the middle of the night to commune with other loons in the neighborhood. They also make nut-job trills. This made sense to Sammy. His loon spirit guide was lonely and crazy. He vaguely suspected that a real vision quest didn’t involve blinding yourself with alcohol.

Joe was the best pilot in the squadron. Sammy was brand new. Untested. If Joe was gone, Sammy figured he wouldn’t be far behind. The whispers grew louder. He felt sand pressing the back of his head. There was a black web of branches in front of him.

I’m looking at the sky, he thought. He had collapsed onto his back.
He thought he was in mourning. Maybe, but not for Joe.

Where was the loon? Panicky, he rolled up to an elbow, blearily looking for the loon that was momentarily out of sight. He crumpled back to the sand and mumbled, “He can’t stay down there.”

His new spirit guide went where it didn’t belong. But it always came back up. Sammy was afraid he’d go where he didn’t belong. And never return. He felt the smooth neck of the bottle in his hand. He couldn’t feel anything else. He was on his back in the sand, one with the dirt, passing out, adrift in fear.

The loon’s red eyes took in a motionless shape on the shore. The loon coasted along in the black robes of a judge. It reached a verdict. Then it submerged, comfortably swimming in a place where it couldn’t stay.