“He’s not awake.”
“That’s not going to matter. I have to reset his hip.”
Molly dropped to the snow on her knees beside the fallen boy, who was not much older than herself. The boy stank heavily of the sea, and he was soaking wet. He’d come down in the water, she realized, and the waves had brought him back instead of taking him out. She wasn’t sure where to touch him and where not to, so she bent low to his heart and began to sing, voicing the haunting melody of the piano piece she’d started composing in the woods so long ago.
“That’s good, Molly, that’s good,” she heard her father say somewhere above her. “Let him know he’s okay. This is going to hurt some awful.” The boy seemed to be lifting into the music slightly, and she gently placed her hands on his chest and thought, Don’t die, no matter who you are.
As delicately as Adam could, he lifted, turned, and pressed the broken leg back into the boy’s body until he felt the grind and then the pop of the bone returning to the socket. A long scream punched the woods. Adam watched Molly bend her forehead down to the boy’s. “You lived through the bad thing,” she said. “You’re going to be okay.”
Then the boy who had fallen from the sky and survived slipped back into unconsciousness. Adam splinted the leg with saplings and ties cut from the parachute while Molly dressed the wound according to her father’s instructions. Working quickly, he cut more strips from the parachute and folded them repeatedly until he’d created a thick pad like a rolled-up towel. He had Molly gently lift the boy’s head, and then he wrapped the pad around the boy’s neck, using sticks to reinforce the makeshift brace. He was worried about a possible spinal injury, but not knowing what else to do, unable to reach the outside world and unwilling to leave the boy to go for help, he and Molly lifted the boy into their arms.
This was never how they were supposed to leave the peace of their life here. As the sky darkened and the wind cut voices through the trees all about them, Molly saw how little she knew about anything. Her act of destruction had brought them here, and now another tragedy would take them away from this place. Bearing the weight of the boy alongside her father, she thought of flaming meteors and dying bears and what it meant to be a thief and what it meant to be a survivor as they carried Galen Creel home.
The shapes materialized on the edge of the woods. At first Grace Creel thought it was a trick of the frozen mist, or twists of blowing snow lifting from the trees. Then the mist turned human and began to walk. It had not been snowing long, only an hour, but the world had taken on enough of a dusting to alter its composition. The familiar suddenly seemed strange, wondrous. Two figures emerged in the mist. One was a man, much larger than the other, a child. And before them both, cradled across their arms, was a third shape. At first Grace thought it was a bundle of firewood, or perhaps a small deer. Then she realized.
She moved her arm to set her mug on the counter but missed the surface by a clean foot. Clay shattered against the floor. Hot coffee splashed back against her shins. Paralyzed, she watched with horror and fascination as the cradled deer slowly rematerialized into the shape of her son.
By noon, what had happened became clear. Sirens and radio talk buzzed about the bay. Responders went into the sea to search unsuccessfully for my father. An ambulance raced Galen Creel through the snow to Eastern Maine Medical Center. Cal Hayes went looking for Lyman Creel, who hadn’t been seen since his gruff exit from The Fish House the day before. Later that evening, Lyman turned himself in. So did Molly and Adam Greenwind. Before being renovated, the sheriff’s station had once been a Congregational church. The carpenters had left several pews along the edges of the station. The man and his daughter sat on those pews, being interviewed and fed pizza and coffee and hot chocolate long into the night, while Lyman Creel sat at the back of the building, down a narrow staircase leading to the concrete basement, behind a wall of one-and-a-half-inch bars spaced three inches apart. A small ground-level window was at his back. By morning, the snow had eclipsed it completely. There was no justice in any of this. It was simply how things were.
I was shocked that my mother did not immediately know about the crash. We were home having a quiet Saturday together. She had been edgy since she woke up, but no more so than usual lately. Sam and Daphne were circling and whining at the door. After breakfast my mother spent an hour at the kitchen table with a seed catalog. When that failed to hold her attention, she pulled a yellow legal pad close and began outlining a story about the vanishing days of sea-run fish in the river, and what it would take to get rid of the remaining hydroelectric dams spanning the river and blocking fish passage.
As she fell deeper into her notes, she became more and more agitated. She rose repeatedly to fill a mug with coffee. She tore sheets from the pad, mashed them up in fits of rage, burned the discarded ideas in the sink with matches. She kept looking out the windows down the river. We watched her with slight amusement. Simon offered to go to the store for more matches. Link offered to go for more paper. I said nothing. My mother laughed, told our smart asses to be quiet, and went back to pacing about the house and glancing out the windows. Arnoux and the boy were flying together. They had gone up early for a practice run to beat the weather. She trusted her husband would not challenge the storm gathering over the sea. She knew he would come back. He always had.
But sometimes love cannot call love back. Miles away, the steel machine she and Arnoux had brought back to life slipped into the sea.
Grace came to us later that morning, accompanied by Moses Jupiter. Wren was at the hospital with her grandmother. Her brother was stable, thanks to the heroics of Molly and Adam Greenwind.
Grace was standing at our door, looking like she was holding all the sorrow in the world on her back. My mother slapped Grace across the face hard and then screamed at her. Then she was somehow in Grace’s arms.
I don’t remember who tumbled out of the house first, but I was running with the cold snow cutting at my feet and Link was running and Simon was running too. We ran past Moses’s truck. We ran by Cricket in her snowy paddock with her head lifted. We tore into the forest, Sam and Daphne on our heels. Link ripped at snowy branches by the fistful. Simon was moving so fast we could hardly keep up with him. I tugged at my hair and kept swallowing the words Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. We tried to channel the ferocity of monsters, a savagery we were sure could forever hold back loss. But no matter how loudly we yelled, we were just boys.
Our chests heaved as we crashed through the last stretch of woods and rode out into the clearing, understanding where we’d been running. The sky was leaden beyond the rocky edge of the bluff. Black waves rose, crested, and crashed down against the cliff. Cuts from slashing branches lined our faces red. Snow and ice clung to our clothing.
The ghost apple tree stood before us, alone. About its base the bright red fruit, finally fallen, littered the white ground.
With our wrecked hearts and burning lungs, we stood upon the bluff in bafflement.
He was supposed to be here. Running through the woods, my brothers and I had asked for one more miracle. We had asked the sea to return our father to us.
Seventeen
NTSB Crash Report
Event Details
Date:
21-MAR-1994
Time:
10:04
Type:
American Champion 7ECA Citabria
Owner/operator:
Arnoux Ames
Fatalities:
Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 2
Other fatalities:
0
Airplane damage:
Damaged beyond repair
Category:
Accident, sabotage
Location:
Penobscot Bay, ME, USA
Phase:
Approach
Nature:
Private
Departure airport:
Penobscot Regional Airport
Investigating agency:
National
Transport Safety Bureau (NTSB)
Event Narrative
The weather was reported as 10 statute miles of visibility, scattered clouds at 300 feet, and a temperature and dew point of 25 degrees Fahrenheit at flight time from the departure airport. The pilot and passenger reported they were on a training flight. The plane climbed steadily to a reported cruising altitude of roughly 4,000 feet about 25 miles from the runway. Early in the flight, the pilot reported faulty altimeter and airspeed readings but clear visibility still. Heavy fog settled into the area, confusing visibility and terrain considerably. Taking into account malfunction combined with the lack of visual clarity, the pilot reported that he was preparing to return to the departure airport, following standard safety protocols. Moments later the plane’s engine failed unexpectedly. The pilot was able to maintain control, stabilizing the craft. The plane began to lose altitude in a sustained glide before descending into a fog bank. With low visibility to confirm actual altitude or topography for an emergency landing, the pilot banked the plane out over the ocean after having the passenger eject using the craft’s sole parachute, as a glide landing in foggy conditions over the ocean without functioning instruments presented extremely low prospects. With malfunctioning instruments, no idea of his actual altitude or airspeed to adjust the glide path, and heavy fog, the pilot was unable to successfully perform an emergency landing. Shortly after, the aircraft struck the ocean and broke apart against the sea.
Event Probable Cause
Combination of mechanical failure (sabotage) and pilot error. From the beginning of the flight, unbeknownst to the pilot, the plane was operating in a compromised state due to mechanical sabotage. The static port had been plugged, negating accurate airspeed readings, altitude readings, and instrument control. Additionally, diesel fuel had been poured into the off-wing fuel tank. When the pilot switched tanks midflight, diesel fuel was forced into the engine, resulting in a stall that forced the plane into a glide. The pilot maintained control but turned out over the ocean and into a fog bank. In a departure from controlled flight at low altitude with limited instrument functionality or visibility, the pilot failed to manage the energy state of the aircraft and apply proper recovery techniques.
What we knew of the accident was painstakingly pieced together by experts in aviation accidents, connoisseurs of disaster, who investigated the crash and spent hours interviewing Lyman and Galen Creel and Adam and Molly Greenwind. “It was just a bit of putty in the static port and a bit of diesel,” Lyman said in bewilderment, freely confessing to his sabotage. “How didn’t he notice? It was just supposed to be a little shock, an inconvenience . . .” He trailed off, his head sinking into his hands.
Tourists and fisherman found bits of debris as far south as Matinicus Rock and as far east as Blue Hill. For months after the crash we lived with these sporadic reminders of catastrophe coming in on the sea. Among the found items: a modified cockpit voice recorder my father, ever the documentarian, had installed on the small plane for his own research interests and that survived the crash, giving us and investigators a final recording of his voice as it fell through the sky, calmly relaying every bit of terrible information. Once a boy I knew mentioned a bit of wreckage that had come in, calling it flotsam. I wasn’t familiar with the word, and after I looked it up, I wanted to hurt him, but Link dashed across the school gymnasium and wrapped me in his arms. “We’ve done that too much already, Almy,” he said. “Look where it gets us.” The boy had not meant any harm, but in my grief I saw insults and affronts everywhere. The word meant discarded things. My father was not a discarded thing.
They never found my father’s body, but for years I dreamed of its return. In the dreams I was there when they pulled him from the sea, though I was only a child and shouldn’t have been allowed to see such a thing. But in the dreams the sea crept up the river to our house and told me where my father was. Hurry, the sea whispered through my bedroom window, hurry before they stop you. My father lay atop a large, flat rock in an inlet so narrow and tightly forested along its banks that it seemed the sun must never touch it. He was stiff, inert. I thought of driftwood brought back by the sea. I thought of Nigawes and Sanoba and their children. My father was one of those people who are always in motion, spinning from one thing to another, and I could hardly remember him at rest. Oddly enough, it made me think of him as a child, before there was always so much to do. His skin was so blue, it shone almost black. His body was not twisted or flame-scorched at all. In fact, he looked peaceful: a blue slab of flesh resting atop a blue rock in a wash of blue ocean light. But his hair was gone. And his eye sockets were empty. You see, fish had eaten the eyeballs. They had also chewed each of his fingers down to wet, boneless nubs. I bent down over my father’s body with the strongest desire to touch his hands, to somehow put them back together. Every time I reached for his palm, I woke screaming.
If there had been a body, my father’s ashes would have been spread about the ghost apple tree he had loved so much. Instead we gathered on the bluff to say goodbye on a Sunday morning in April. The sun was just coming out from behind the clouds. Soon the dogwoods would bloom, dappling the woods with white flowers. Soon the hyacinths, my father’s favorite flower, would emerge. I remembered him telling me the story of the flower’s sad history. Hyakinthos was a Greek boy adored by both Apollo and Zephyr, the god of the west wind. Apollo set out one day to teach the boy how to throw the discus. In a jealous rage, Zephyr blew the discus back. The discus struck the boy in the head and killed him. His blood soaked the earth, and the hyacinth grew from the boy’s blood. I turned to ask my father if I had remembered all the details correctly, and then I remembered the hole in the world.
People who loved my father and wanted him returned filled the bluff. Together we sang and we wept. When I let myself acknowledge my grief, I felt my breath turning in on itself, swallowing my lungs, threatening to take me from the world as well, and for a very long time after, I chose to feel nothing at all. Near the end of the service, Link came across the clearing with an axe, heading straight for the ghost apple tree. It was Grace Creel who stepped out of the crowd and stood in his path.
“I know you’re scared and angry,” she whispered in that gravelly voice of hers that somehow always brought the comfort of an embrace. “But that isn’t going to happen.”
We could do nothing but watch.
“You’ll have to cut me down first,” Grace said, and crossed her arms.
Link looked about to run at her with the axe. Then he let it fall to the ground and began to scream at us that it was all of our faults. Grace stepped over the axe, now lying on the ground between them, and gathered my brother in her arms. “I know, child,” she whispered. “I know.”
Neither Adam or Molly Greenwind were at the funeral. We had not seen them at all since they rescued Galen Creel. They were in state custody as the battle began over what would next happen with their lives. I knew Moses would be there with them at each turn, and Reggie too, who had already started raising a legal defense fund. The ruins of Loomis Hill were again simply ruins. “People come and people go,” Reggie said. “And sometimes the debt to the departed ones long outlasts their presence.” The sun sank behind the western hills, and another day fell into blackness as our grief continued.
Over the years my mother had planted peach trees all over our property. They struggled, hardly flowering or producing fruit, and she struggled right along with them, fighting to keep them alive. She added sugar to the soil, then coffee grounds. She spent long afternoons simply sitting out with them, often speaking to them or reading aloud to them, sometimes singing. We asked her why she bothered, why she tried so hard. “There’s a Taoist story of a peach tree that produces a single fruit every three thousand years,” she told us. “Whoever eats that fruit receives the gift of immortality.” We let that sit for a moment. And then she said, “And that’s why I try so hard,” as if she had actually answered our question.
The next time we saw Lyman, he was on te
levision wearing prison orange. Throughout the early days of his incarceration and arraignment, a stunned expression had crept over his face, and it seemed he might never escape it. The same question that assaulted all of us—How had this happened?—seemed to haunt him as well. He’d said very little to anyone, but what he had said to authorities and investigators and lawyers and his family was that the plane was not supposed to crash, that Arnoux was not supposed to die, that it had been a prank, choking on the foolishness of the idea now in the aftermath of what he had done.
“They kept it all from me,” Lyman said to the state prosecutor, his voice rising to a plea. “My boy wanted to learn to fly. I didn’t even know it. That’s a beautiful thing to want. I would have let him. I would have driven him a hundred miles to the finest flight instructor we could find. I didn’t even know he wanted it,” he repeated, baffled.
I hated Lyman in his threadbare Sears suit as he stood in that courtroom, but I couldn’t bring myself to disagree with him. Keeping it all from him had been cruel.
“I see,” said the state prosecutor, who was tall and covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, constantly pushing his glasses back up his nose. “But the matter here is not what they did, Mr. Creel, it’s what you did.”
“I know it,” Lyman said. “I know it, but it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
“But it did, Mr. Creel,” said the prosecutor, as Lyman lowered his head to his hands. “It did.”
Grace Creel was not at the courtroom with her husband. Instead she was standing with us by the woodstove in our living room. “Don’t say a thing,” she said. “I’m right where I’m needed.”
The Lowering Days Page 20