“The rear engine blew up. There are no hydraulics. They can’t steer.”
For a moment he had no reaction. Then Jeff nodded and his great eyes were dulled by a film of something, not tears, but a kind of liquid glass, a protection against pain. “What about manually? Can’t they—?”
“Not in something this big.”
Jeff accepted it, nodding again. His attitude was much braver than Max had expected. No whining, just curiosity. Max felt ashamed of himself for his desire to torment Jeff and now wanted to comfort him. “You know, there’ll be plenty of money for Nan and Debby and the kids. The average settlement on a plane crash is three quarters of a million dollars. And we have the business partnership insurance, which goes to them if we both die while conducting business. That’s another quarter of a million each—”
“Are you sure?” Jeff’s interest was intense. That’s why they were partners, after all. They had peculiar attitudes, more concerned with the structure and mechanisms than the feelings and philosophy. It was almost as if their debate over whether they could afford to die was as significant as the pilot’s efforts to land. “I thought the business policy was only for the surviving partner.”
“No. There’s a provision—”
Max stopped because he noticed that Mary and Lisa and the other flight attendants were tossing the shoes into the lavatories. That answered a question which had worried him, namely where could they stow them so they wouldn’t become missiles. With the shoes put away, the flight attendants began their final surveillance of belts, their chant of emergency procedures, first illustrating the crash position, and then arms akimbo to point out the exits. The teenager continued unsuccessfully to pull at his boot.
Jeff banged Max again. “Go on!”
“—if we die on a business trip, the widows get the money. And also—” Max smiled at Jeff. But his partner wasn’t looking. The greyhound head had fallen back against the seat, its eyes shut. “—we paid for the tickets on the gold American Express card—”
Jeff twisted his head abruptly and interrupted: “What difference does that make?”
“Automatic flight insurance. That’s another half a million for each of them. They’ll end up with one point five million apiece.”
“Jesus,” Jeff mumbled, upset. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Max asked.
Jeff hesitated, his narrow dog’s mouth hanging open. Then he barked: “We’re worth more dead than alive.”
With a shudder and an alarming whine, the landing gear was lowered. It felt and sounded as though the floor were being removed. Jeff cursed into the noise:
“Fuck! God damn it! I can’t take this! Fuck! Hurry up!”
“It’s the wheels,” Max tried to calm him. But they had made an unusually loud and terrible sound. Was that an illusion? Max wanted to know much more about the how of his death. He envied all those people who would spend tomorrow morning secure at home, sipping coffee and enjoying their superior knowledge about the cause. He pictured the spate of newspaper articles based on leaks from the investigation until months later, when the final judgment of the National Transportation Safety Board would be followed by orders for the defect that produced this fatality to be repaired in all the DC-10s, luring passengers onto more planes which would fail in some other insidious way. As an architect he had come to understand that most things were made shabbily and more so with each passing day. The deterioration was first in their look; now it was in their fundamental engineering.
Mary and her helpmates were done. She returned to get Stacy, guiding her up to the front, to the jump seats by the bulkheads. That put them beside one of the emergency exits. While they made this maneuver someone shouted:
“Look! The airport!”
All heads turned together in a uniform movement of hope that Max pitied.
Jeff stabbed Max’s biceps with his elbow. “Hey! He did it!”
Max hunkered down to get a better angle on his side view of the landing strip. Sure enough they were heading straight for a medium-sized airport. He saw spinning red lights atop a row of tiny trucks, miniaturized into toys by the perspective of their height. The presence of rescue equipment wasn’t a clue to their chance of survival: fire trucks were a standard precaution for any unusual landing. Instead of being dismayed by the sight of this wary welcome, for a moment Max believed in the continuation of his life.
But then the captain lost control again. This time the plane tilted instead of dropped. The right wing disappeared below and their bodies followed. All the passengers were unwillingly linked on this wild ride and they moaned together in dismay…
The right wing reappeared with a sickening jolt and then continued past the horizon, rising to the heavens. The seesaw now pulled everything the opposite way, tilting down to the left, and Max was unnerved to see the ground pass vertically, as if the floor he wanted in a department store had just gone by, lost forever, and he tried to cry out, to tell everyone—I’m sorry we aren’t going to live anymore. I’m sorry we don’t have time to change—but no sound came out of his mouth into the horrible roar…
And they were abruptly level, everyone’s stomachs arriving late, jarring into place.
The teenager threw up on the pink boot which he still hadn’t gotten off.
“He’s doing it, Max,” Jeff’s voice said faintly. The engines were screaming at this point, howling with pain as the jet descended in jerks, as if they were bumping down a flight of stairs on their ass.
Max checked what he could through the windows. The plane did seem lined up properly with the runway and it was close to touching down, moving fast at the ground. But they were rushing to an earth that wouldn’t forgive airborne clumsiness.
Max unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m going to sit with the boy,” he said to Jeff, more sure than ever, after that awkward maneuver with the wings, that they were going to crash. He expected Jeff to plead, to beg him to stay.
“What?” Jeff called, bewildered instead. Max had no time to answer. He was frightened to be up and walking on the breakable floor. He stumbled his way forward three aisles, found the boy seated alone, waved a casual goodbye to his partner, and fell into the empty seat.
“Hi,” he said and buckled himself in. He put his hand on the boy’s neck. “Head in your lap.” The child obeyed, dutiful, concealing his loneliness and fright to the last. Max thought of how proud this child’s parents would be of their son’s bravery and he wanted to weep.
Max bent over as well, turning his head so he could look at the boy. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
“Byron,” he said, also placing his head sideways to see Max. There was something comforting about their huddled position, as if they were lying in a bed and chatting intimately. As recently as a year ago Max used to do that with his son at bedtime, listening to stories of boyhood quarrels and contests, providing advice that only a child would think wise.
Max thought he had misheard. “What did you say?”
“Byron,” he repeated. “Like the poet.”
There was a sudden lull, the engines cutting as they were about to touch ground. Max had succeeded in distracting Byron for a second; unfortunately the change in sound refocused the boy on his terror.
“Everything is wonderful,” Max said into Byron’s worried face. “Are you scared?”
Byron nodded; with that admission his lips trembled.
They were floating just above the earth, gliding in their big ungainly airship. The back wheels touched pavement—
Max gently pushed Byron’s head flush to his knees. “We made it,” he said, lying.
On the right they banged into something. Max felt the error. All the passengers did, as if they had stretched their nervous systems to the machine, growing into the skin of the plane. Fear flashed in Byron’s eyes and Max tried to comfort him before the roar of impact reached them:
“It’ll be over—”
But he never finished that sentence. Everything was on t
he move: their seats, the floor, he saw something black and heavy spin into a part of a person, he thought he was sideways and he shut his eyes and he melted to nothing except for his eyes, he was alive inside his blinded eyes until the crash engulfed him and Max was alone in his brain, cornered.
Goodbye, he whispered to life.
4
Carla dodged her bobbing son’s head to keep what she could see of the airport in sight. Bubble was excited, although she couldn’t imagine by what, since he faced the back of the seat in front of him, a dull sight made less interesting by its empty pocket. Both the plastic card which illustrated emergency procedures and the airline magazine had long ago been taken out. Bubble had used the card as a sword until he swiped her across the cheek. Carla retaliated with confiscation. Then he tore up the magazine until there were so many bits of paper all over the place that Lisa, in passing, embarrassed Carla by asking if she could throw the magazine away for her. Both removals provoked fits, two of three quarrels that were resolved only when Bubble passed out shortly after takeoff. He had been tired, poor baby. His strong will degenerated into petulance when his body was exhausted; otherwise he was demanding, not whiny; charming and manipulative, not sulky and a complainer.
While they came down toward the airport his post-nap energy was comforting. She needed encouragement because after first seeing the runway and enjoying a moment of complete relief, Carla lost some of that hope at the additional sighting of the fire trucks and ambulances waiting for them. And her fear came back completely when the jet, which had seemed to be going smoothly as it went lower and lower, suddenly rocked back and forth. It swayed so far to the right that Bubble’s head went below the seat level and then jerked him back with such violence that she had to restrain him with all her might to prevent his skull from colliding with the curved window frame.
This isn’t safe.
She decided the aisle seat was better because of the cleared space on both sides. “Come on, Bubble, we’re going to move.” She fumbled between his back and her lap to release the seat belt with one hand, while she clutched her baby with the other.
When she made the short hop over to the aisle seat, Bubble resisted. Only his lower half came with her. He had hooked the pouch with both hands and clung to it, stretching the elastic band to the limit.
“You’re going to break it!” Carla shouted, ridiculously she knew. You sound like Mama, she mocked herself.
The bottom of her seat hummed, her feet rumbled.
“Jesus!” she yelled, frightened by the noise and vibration, and worse, panicked at their vulnerability. She was unbuckled and Bubble was stretched out as if he were a diver frozen in midair.
A loud mechanical whine overwhelmed her shout and even the noise of the engines. What was happening? It sounded as if her part of the plane were coming apart.
Carla yanked hard and Bubble lost his grip on the pouch. They were flung back into the aisle seat. His head struck her chin and she was stunned.
For a moment she made no move and watched the passengers. It was surprising that they all faced forward, ignoring her area. No one seemed to care about the noise she had just heard. Also it confused her that the sound was gone and the trembling had been stilled yet there hadn’t been any result.
Bubble was complaining. “Mommy hurt me,” he said. He tried to reach around to touch the back of his head, but his arms were too short.
“Sorry,” she whispered and kissed his black head of hair. She glanced out the window. They were almost down. The earth scared her: huge and clumsy and gray like a whale, the runway filled her porthole. It seemed in the way.
She hurried, fastening her seat belt. She opened her legs wide until Bubble slipped down onto the cushion and then squeezed them together, wedging her baby between her thighs. He squirmed and complained. She put her arms over his shoulders and crossed them in front, imitating the secure style of Bubble’s car seat. She was proud of her invention.
The engines were quiet. They must have touched the ground, she assumed. Everything felt smooth and the sound was gentle.
Bubble bumped his head back and then forward, rocking his body to gain momentum to break her grip while making noises of protest.
Carla glanced at the middle rows of the plane and across to the far rows on the right side. Most people were bent all the way over. Very few were sitting up like her—
Beneath her there was a bump.
The wheels had touched the ground!
“Yay!” she called to all those huddled people. She wanted to lead the cheers. They were safe!
She released her fingers from their entanglement in front of Bubble’s stomach just enough to free the tips. She clapped them together delicately.
A woman screamed.
A shudder went through her right side and her row of seats rose up above the others. She hung there for a weird second, twisting. The middle rows moved by her as if they were a car passing hers on a freeway, passengers’ profiles zooming out of sight until a man’s head and shoulders flopped like a doll and were squashed by something and she knew that what she was seeing was horrible and her brain went numb.
Her eyes shut. She heard and sensed the rest of the crash—
The tigers roared. She was spinning up and around and over, like a sock in a washer, and she prayed hard—
Please God, please God, please God, at last filling her mind with Him and longing for life and wishing herself away from this…
Something hit her legs. Then her back. A hand was burned.
It was over. The tigers had gone and she smelled their rage: everything stung her nostrils and only then did she remember Bubble. She clasped her arms tight. She touched nothing but herself. Her baby was gone.
Carla screamed, opened her eyes and couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. Her face fell free. She had been inside the ceiling. Only it wasn’t the ceiling anymore. It was foam rubber. Also the floor wasn’t beneath her—the blue carpet was to her right. Where was the aisle? The windows?
A cloud of smoke washed over her face. She reached around for Bubble and called to him.
Somebody passed her, breathing hard, and she remembered her seat belt. That’s why she couldn’t move. And the smoke meant fine…coming at her.
Panicked, she released the buckle and tumbled sideways onto a lump. It was the middle of someone’s body. She felt liquid on her bare wrist that she realized was blood. “Help me!” a voice cried. There were lots of sounds she didn’t recognize. She smelled things burning; she feared to know what. Terror was alive in her bones and she screamed, rolling off the corpse. She crawled away and got up as best she could with the space so squashed. Behind her, the other way, were light and voices. People called and pleaded.
Flames appeared ahead in the dark. She turned to the sunlight behind her and ran for it. She passed a lifeless face staring upward. She ignored a man digging for something in the foam. He yelled at her for running but she couldn’t stop, she had to get out from the horror, the torn-apart world, and the fire.
Max was alive. He knew that first. And so was Byron. He knew that when he opened his eyes. He did not understand much else, especially what he was seeing: Byron’s hair floated in a burst of yellow light.
That was the sun.
The hair wasn’t floating—the boy was upside down.
Facts gathered speed, catching up to each other in his head, and soon he could make sense again.
The plane is on fire. He smelled the acrid fumes of plastic and synthetic fabric burning. It’s poisonous. We’re both upside down and strapped into our seats. He released his belt and dropped right onto his knees. He knew that the fall must have hurt them, but he felt nothing. He wasn’t numb, yet he felt no pain. You’re in shock, he told himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman compressed between what must have been two or three rows jumbled together. She was dead, of course, but what sickened him was the irrational look of her body, squashed into a shape that he couldn’t comprehend.
He
reached up and unbuckled Byron, catching the boy’s legs as he dropped. Lowering himself to cushion the fall he saw another incredible sight—
A newborn baby nested in an infant seat. The upper edge of its cradle had been caught and was suspended in a mass of wires and twisted metal. The baby was no more than a few weeks old. It was untouched and untroubled; its little fingers played in the air.
Byron was talking; he seemed to be hitting Max in the side. Max ignored him and reached for the infant. Smoke covered him. He inhaled some of it and felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He got dizzy…The death tide pulled at him, wanting him to linger…
Go Max, hurry!
He sprang out of the morass. He had the infant seat and a part of Byron, hand or arm or foot, he didn’t know what.
There was light off to the side where it shouldn’t be. But he pushed Byron that way.
They passed unforgettable nightmares: bodies smashed or impaled. He shouted at Byron—“Don’t look!”—and it was then that Max saw the worst of all:
Jeff’s greyhound face, eyes filled with blood, lying on its side without a body.
Max looked no more and pushed Byron at the light. Everything, inside and out, screamed at him: Hurry! The yellow cloud filled their vision. They ran right into it and fell out of the plane…
As he dropped, Max let go of Byron in order to hang on to the baby. He twisted while they went down, his back to the ground. He expected to be broken by it…
He landed on straw. No. A sharp green leaf stuck him in the cheek. It was a cornfield. He faced where they had come from, a severed portion of the plane, gaping with torn wires, insulation and destroyed seats. A body was splattered against one edge, merged into the metal.
They were out! They were alive!
The joy of this knowledge coursed through him, electrifying his body with power.
The jet could blow up, he realized, smelling its kerosene fuel and feeling heat from the ruins.
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