“The pay is good. The amenities are good. I like to travel…or did, anyway; after five or ten years, all places start to look the same. But mostly…” He leaned forward and took one of her hands in both of his. He thought she might pull away, but she didn’t. She was looking at him, fascinated. “It’s saving lives. There were over a hundred and fifty people on that airplane tonight. Only the airlines don’t just call them people, they call them souls, and that’s the right way to put it. I saved a hundred and fifty souls tonight. And since I’ve been doing this job I’ve saved thousands.” He shook his head. “No, tens of thousands.”
“But you’re terrified each time. I saw you tonight, Craig. You were in mortal terror. So was I. Unlike Mr. Freeman, who only threw up because he was airsick.”
“Mr. Freeman could never do this job,” Dixon said. “You can’t do the job unless you’re convinced each time the turbulence starts that you are going to die. You’re convinced of that even though you know you’re the one making sure that won’t happen.”
The driver spoke quietly from the intercom. “Five minutes, Mr. Dixon.”
“I must say this has been a fascinating discussion,” Mary Worth said. “May I ask how you got this unique job in the first place?”
“I was recruited,” Dixon said. “As I am recruiting you, right now.”
She smiled, but this time she didn’t laugh. “All right, I’ll play. Suppose you did recruit me? What would you get out of it? A bonus?”
“Yes,” Dixon said. Two years of his future service forgiven, that was the bonus. Two years closer to retirement. He had told the truth about having altruistic motives—saving lives, saving souls—but he had also told the truth about how travel eventually became wearying. The same was true of saving souls, when the price of doing so was endless moments of terror high above the earth.
Should he tell her that once you were in, you couldn’t get out? That it was your basic deal with the devil? He should. But he wouldn’t.
They swung into the circular drive of a beachfront condo. Two ladies—undoubtedly Mary Worth’s chums—were waiting there.
“Would you give me your phone number?” Dixon asked.
“What? So you can call me? Or so you can pass it on to your boss? Your facilitator?”
“That,” Dixon said. “Nice as it’s been, Mary, you and I will probably never see each other again.”
She paused, thinking. The chums-in-waiting were almost dancing with excitement. Then Mary opened her purse and took out a card. She handed it to Dixon. “This is my cell number. You can also reach me at the Boston Public Library.”
Dixon laughed. “I knew you were a librarian.”
“Everyone does,” she said. “It’s a bit boring, but it pays the rent, as they say.” She opened the door. The chums squealed like rock show groupies when they saw her.
“There are more exciting occupations,” Dixon said.
She looked at him gravely. “There’s a big difference between temporary excitement and mortal fear, Craig. As I think we both know.”
He couldn’t argue with her on that score, but got out and helped the driver with her bags while Mary Worth hugged two of the widows she had met in an Internet chat room.
7
Mary was back in Boston, and had almost forgotten Craig Dixon, when her phone rang one night. Her caller was a man with a very slight lisp. They talked for quite awhile.
The following day, Mary Worth was on Jetway Flight 694, nonstop from Boston to Dallas, sitting in coach, just aft of the starboard wing. Middle seat. She refused anything to eat or drink.
The turbulence struck over Oklahoma.
Falling
James Dickey
Before you groan, shake your head, and say “I don’t read poetry,” you should remember that James Dickey wasn’t just a poet; he also wrote the classic novel of survival, Deliverance, and the less-read To the White Sea, about a B-29 gunner forced to parachute into enemy territory. Dickey wrote from experience; he was a combat flier in both World War II and Korea. “Falling” has the same narrative drive and gorgeously controlled language as Deliverance. Once read, it is impossible to forget. An interesting footnote: Dickey admitted in a self-interview that the poem’s central conceit was unlikely (a woman falling from that height would be flash-frozen, he said), but in fact it did happen: in 1972, stewardess Vesna Vulovic fell 33,000 feet in a DC-9 that was probably blown apart by a bomb…and she survived. The text quoted at the beginning of the poem comes from an October 29, 1962, NYT article about an incident involving an Allegheny Airlines twin-engine Convair 440 approaching Bradley Field in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Two other stewardesses had been killed in similar incidents the previous month.
A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that suddenly sprang open ... The body ... was found ... three hours after the accident.
—New York Times
The states when they black out and lie there rollingwhen they turn
To something transcontinentalmove bydrawing moonlight out of the great
One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtipsome sleeper next to
An engine is groaning for coffeeand there is faintly coming in
Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks
Of traysshe rummages for a blanketand moves in her slim tailored
Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew
The door down with a silent blast from her lungsfrozenshe is black
Out finding herselfwith the plane nowhere and her body taken by the throat
The undying cry of the voidfallinglivingbeginning to be something
That no one has ever been and lived throughscreaming without enough air
Still neatlipstickedstockingedgirdled by regulationher hat
Still onher arms and legs in no worldand yet spaced also strangely
With utter placid rightness on thin airtaking her timeshe holds it
In many placesand now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems
To slowshe develops interestshe turns in her maneuverable body
To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her
Selfin low body-whistling wrapped intenselyin all her dark dance-weight
Coming down from a marvellous leapwith the delaying, dumfounding ease
Of a dream of being drawnlike endless moonlight to the harvest soil
Of a central state of one’s countrywith a great gradual warmth coming
Over herfloatingfinding more and more breath in what she has been using
For breathas the levels become more humanseeing clouds placed honestly
Below her left and rightriding slowly toward themshe clasps it all
To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar waysand
Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as widewider and suck
All the heat from the cornfieldscan go down on her back with a feeling
Of stupendous pillows stacked under herand can turnturn as to someone
In bedsmile, understood in darknesscan go awayslantslide
Off tumblinginto the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread
Or whirl madly on herselfin endless gymnastics in the growing warmth
Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon.There is time to live
In superhuman healthseeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing
An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing itarriving
In a square townand off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches
The moon by its one shaken sidescaled, roaming silverMy God it is good
And evillying in one after another of all the positions for love
; Makingdancingsleepingand now cloud wisps at her no
Raincoatno matterall small towns brokenly brighter from inside
Cloudshe walks over them like rainbursts out to behold a Greyhound
Bus shooting light through its sidesit is the signal to go straight
Down like a glorious diverthen feet firsther skirt stripped beautifully
Upher face in fear-scented clothsher legs deliriously barethen
Arms outshe slow-rolls oversteadies outwaits for something great
To take control of hertrembles near feathersplanes head-down
The quick movements of bird-necks turning her headgold eyes the insight-
eyesight of owls blazing into the hencoopsa taste for chicken overwhelming
Herthe long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars
Freight trainslooped bridgesenlarging the moon racing slowly
Through all the curves of a riverall the darks of the midwest blazing
From above. A rabbit in a bush turns whitethe smothering chickens
Huddlefor over them there is still time for something to live
With the streaming half-idea of a long stoopa hurtlinga fall
That is controlledthat plummets as it willsturns gravity
Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moonshining
New Powersthere is still time to live on a breath made of nothing
But the whole nighttime for her to remember to arrange her skirt
Like a diagram of a battightly it guides hershe has this flying-skin
Made of garmentsand there are also those sky-divers on tvsailing
In sunlightsmiling under their gogglesswapping batons back and forth
And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving
Buddy. She looks for her grinning companionwhite teethnowhere
She is screamingsinging hymnsher thin human wings spread out
From her neat shouldersthe air beast-crooning to herwarbling
And she can no longer behold the huge partial form of the worldnow
She is watching her country lose its evoked master shapewatching it lose
And gainget back its houses and peopleswatching it bring up
Its local lightssingle homeslamps on barn roofsif she fell
Into water she might livelike a divercleavingperfectplunge
Into anotherheavy silverunbreathableslowingsaving
Element: there is waterthere is time to perfect all the fine
Points of divingfeet togethertoes pointedhands shaped right
To insert her into water like a needleto come out healthily dripping
And be handed a Coca-Colathere they arethere are the waters
Of lifethe moon packed and coiled in a reservoirso let me begin
To plane across the night air of Kansasopening my eyes superhumanly
Brightto the damned moonopening the natural wings of my jacket
By Don Lopermoving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water
One cannot just falljust tumble screaming all that timeone must use
Itshe is now through with allthrough allcloudsdamphair
Straightenedthe last wisp of fog pulled apart on her face like wool revealing
New darksnew progressions of headlights along dirt roads from chaos
And nighta gradual warminga new-made, inevitable world of one’s own
Countrya great stone of light in its waiting watersholdhold out
For water: who knows when what correct young woman must take up her body
And flyand head for the moon-crazed inner eye of midwest imprisoned
Waterstored up for her for yearsthe arms of her jacket slipping
Air up her sleeves to goall over her? What final things can be said
Of one who starts her sheerly in her body in the high middle of night
Airto track down water like a rabbit where it lies like life itself
Off to the right in Kansas? She goes towardthe blazing-bare lake
Her skirts neather hands and face warmed more and more by the air
Rising from pastures of beansand under herunder chenille bedspreads
The farm girls are feeling the goddess in them struggle and rise brooding
On the scratch-shining posts of the beddreaming of female signs
Of the moonmale blood like ironof what is really said by the moan
Of airliners passing over them at dead of midwest midnightpassing
Over brush firesburning out in silence on little hillsand will wake
To see the woman they should bestruggling on the rooftree to become
Stars: for her the ground is closerwater is nearershe passes
Itthen banksturnsher sleeves fluttering differently as she rolls
Out to face the east, where the sun shall come up from wheatfields she must
Do something with waterfly to itfall in itdrink itrise
From itbut there is none left upon earththe clouds have drunk it back
The plants have sucked it downthere are standing toward her only
The common fields of deathshe comes back from flying to falling
Returns to a powerful crythe silent scream with which she blew down
The coupled door of the airlinernearlynearly losing hold
Of what she has doneremembersremembers the shape at the heart
Of cloudfashionably swirlingremembers she still has time to die
Beyond explanation. Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour
Of cornfieldsand have enough time to kick off her one remaining
Shoe with the toesof the other footto unhook her stockings
With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair
Near deathwhen the body will assume without effort any position
Except the one that will sustain itenable it to riselive
Not dienine farms hover closewideneight of them separate, leaving
One in the middlethen the fields of that farm do the samethere is no
Way to back offfrom her chosen groundbut she sheds the jacket
With its silver sad impotent wingssheds the bat’s guiding tailpiece
Of her skirtthe lightning-charged clinging of her blousethe intimate
Inner flying-garment of her slip in which she rides like the holy ghost
Of a virginsheds the long windsocks of her stockingsabsurd
Brassierethen feels the girdle required by regulations squirming
Off her: no longer monobuttockedshe feels the girdle fluttershake
In her handand floatupwardher clothes rising off her ascending
Into cloudand fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe
Like a dumb birdand now will drop insoonnow will drop
In like thisthe greatest thing that ever came to Kansasdown from all
Heightsall levels of American breathlayered in the lungs from the frail
Chill of space to the loam where extinction slumbers in corn tassels thickly
And breathes like rich farmers counting: will come along them after
Her last superhuman actthe last slow careful passing of her hands
All over her unharmed bodydesired by every sleeper in his dream:
Boys finding for the first time their loins filled with heart’s blood
Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find themselves
Arisen at sunrisethe splendid position of blood unearthly drawn
Toward cloudsall feel somethingpass over them as she passes
Her palms over her long legsher small breastsand deeply between
Her thighsher hair shot loose from all pinsstreaming in the wind
On her backThis is itthis
All those who find her impressed
In the soft loamgone downdriven well into the image of her body
The furrows for miles flowing in upon her where she lies very deep
In her mortal outlinein the earth as it is in cloudcan tell nothing
But that she is thereinexplicableunquestionableand remember
That something broke in them as welland began to live and die more
When they walked for no reason into their fields to where the whole earth
Caught herinterrupted her maiden flighttold her how to lie she cannot
Turngo awaycannot movecannot slide off it and assume another
Positionno sky-diver with any grin could save herhold her in his arms
Plummet with herunfold above her his wedding silksshe can no longer
Mark the rain with whirling women that take the place of a dead wife
Or the goddess in Norwegian farm girlsor all the back-breaking whores
Of Wichita. All the known air above her is not giving up quite one
Breathit is all goneand yet not deadnot anywhere else
Quitelying still in the field on her backsensing the smells
Of incessant growth try to lift hera little sight left in the corner
Of one eyefadingseeing something wavelies believing
That she could have made itat the best part of her brief goddess
Stateto watergone in headfirstcome out smilinginvulnerable
Girl in a bathing-suit adbut she is lying like a sunbather at the last
Of moonlighthalf-buried in her impact on the earthnot far
From a railroad trestlea water tankshe could see if she could
Raise her head from her modest holewith her clothes beginning
To come down all over Kansasinto busheson the dewy sixth green
Of a golf courseone shoeher girdle coming down fantastically
On a clothesline, where it belongsher blouse on a lightning rod:
Lies in the fieldsin this fieldon her broken back as though on
A cloud she cannot drop throughwhile farmers sleepwalk without
Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales Page 28