Mayday

by Karen Harrington

  I turned to look back at the class. Maybe everyone was staring at me. I only looked at Sandy. I caught her smile before I slipped out into the hallway.

  “Wayne,” Mom said. I could tell she was biting her lip and trying not to tear up. The sad face. Grandpa hugged me to his chest. My grandfather is a retired army drill sergeant. He is not a hugger.

  Something was seriously wrong.

  Grandpa pushed me away from his chest. He stared me down like I’d done something wrong. Like the hug had been my idea.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Mom?” I thought of something I could say to change her face.

  Did you know that your average tree consumes fifty to one hundred gallons of water per day?

  Grandpa read my mind. “Exercise restraint, son.”

  I restrained.

  Grandpa pushed his hands into his pockets. “Your uncle Reed has died in the line of duty.”

  Grandpa was steady as an oak.

  Mom swayed and trembled like a new branch.

  “Wait. What? What are you saying?”

  “You have an agile mind, son,” Grandpa said. “Don’t make me repeat the words.”

  Sometimes bad news doesn’t stick in my agile mind. I have to hear it twice. Plus, it was all wrong. Grandpa standing in my school hallway? It was out of context. Right behind him there was a giant bin of deodorants and soaps for the school hygiene drive, along with a poster that read AFRAID OF B.O.? DONATE SOME DEO!

  I could have been dreaming.

  “Maybe you’d like to come to my office?” Ms. Peet suggested. “Sign Wayne out for the day?”

  I’d forgotten she was still standing there with us.

  Grandpa said, “Wayne, why don’t you be of use and gather your things on the double!”

  I gathered my things on the double. It was something to do.

  The bad news followed us home. I heard the sad story of how the casualty officers came to Grandpa’s house.

  “They read the news to me and then handed me the printed paper they’d read from,” Grandpa said.

  Casualty officers read the news and give you a copy of the sad news, too. They do this so that their message will be clear and they won’t have to repeat it.

  I’d looked it up later.

  Grandpa held a coffee mug in one hand and told Mom and me this story while he looked up at a picture of his own father. RB Dalton, army captain. My great-grandfather’s picture hung on the hallway wall.

  Did you know my mother bought this house for a wall?

  Yep, she did.

  When I was eight and my dad wasn’t looking, Mom and I moved to this house. It was a neighborhood that wanted to be a forest. At least that was how Mom sold it to me.

  “Every street here is named for a tree,” she said, a little too excited.

  Our house on Cedar Drive was like every other house on the block. Small, brick, and brown. Eight windows and four tiny bedrooms. Chain-link fence. And bonus feature: a hulking white water tower that loomed over our backyard.

  “Well, we always said we wanted a view of the water,” Mom joked. “Now we’ve got it! Come inside and see the best part of this house!”

  The house was small. You could pretty much stand in the living room and give someone a tour just by looking left to right. Hallway with bedrooms to your left. Kitchen and dining room to your right. Garage to the back.

  To her, the best part of the house was the long white wall that ran the length of the hallway.

  “Would you just look at this wall?” Mom said. “It’s perfect!”

  I was fine with the tree-named streets and the “water” view. But when Mom fell in love with a wall, I thought she was nuts.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “You will, honey.”

  So Mom bought the plain brown house in the shadow of a water tower in the wannabe-forest neighborhood for the perfect wall.

  True story.

  Before we’d unpacked a single dish on Cedar Drive, Mom hung a collage of framed photographs on that bright, perfect white wall. The Wall of Honor, she called it. It had been her dream to have all our dead military ancestors gathered in one place. My dad had nixed that idea before. He said it was stupid to hang photos of old dead people on the wall. Mom got the sad face when he said that. Around that time, Mom began referring to my dad as the Flee. (She thought I didn’t know. I knew.)

  It’s been four years now.

  But the main thing to know about the house is that Mom still loves that wall. I guess it’s grown on me, too. I sometimes lined up my face in the eight-by-ten-inch photo with the shiny glass that featured my great-grandfather. I didn’t see any connection between us, even though Mom liked to say I looked a little like him.

  I knew one thing for sure: Not a single one of the photos was or ever would be a Kovok like me.

  Because you had to have four qualities to be featured on that wall.

  Be brave. Be patriotic. Be dead. And carry the last name Dalton. Now Uncle Reed had all four.

  My whole life, I never thought the photos on the wall would mean anything to me. They could have been strangers or people in history books. Do you want to know something? It makes a difference when you can look at a picture of someone and remember you’d once shared a cheeseburger and fries. A huge difference.

  When our doomed plane made its rapid descent from the sky, I thought about the last conversation I’d had with Uncle Reed. I would have done it differently. Not talked about poinsettias. But I couldn’t. You don’t get a do-over. And thinking about it will make you feel stupid. Helpless. You have to force yourself to do something else.

  So I adjusted the frames on the wall to make them straight. Straighter.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was now early December in the land of BEFORE. Grandpa worked for weeks to get Uncle Reed a burial at Arlington National Cemetery. There was a waiting list for the honored dead. That might be one of the saddest facts I’d ever heard. So many soldiers needing burial that families had to wait.

  While I waited I tried to be—what else?—useful. The opposite of helpless. We all did. We continued our tradition of spaghetti Tuesdays. Those were the days Grandpa came over and gave us a progress report.

  “We’re moving up on the list,” he’d say.

  And then we’d all sit around and try to act normal. I admit it was harder for Mom and Grandpa. They wore their grief like gray clothes. Everything reminded them of Reed. I had to choose my topics carefully.

  “Did you know that if Cortés hadn’t transported tomatoes from Mexico into Europe, we might never have had spaghetti sauce?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t know that, Wayne,” Mom said.

  “Good spaghetti tonight,” Grandpa said.

  “Your turn to wash dishes,” Mom said to me.

  “When is the dishwasher getting fixed?” I complained. It had been broken for three months.

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Mom said with a wink. “Now hop to it.”

  I washed dishes.

  “And hey, make yourself useful and get me a cup of coffee,” Grandpa said.

  I got him coffee.

  “Wayne, there’s a video on the computer back there in the office,” Grandpa said. “I want you to watch it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why must you always ask why?” Grandpa said, irritated. “Just go look at it and you’ll understand why.”

  I watched the video. A video featuring a soldier’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. The funeral itself made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And I didn’t even know the deceased soldier. I watched it again. The way the American flag was draped over the casket, then folded to perfection. Folded thirteen times and tucked in before it took the appearance of a cocked hat. That shape is meant to remind us of the soldiers who served under General George Washington.

  I’d looked it up.

  The next week, I was still thinking about that video. Still considering ways I could be useful to my family. I
t struck me like a flash. Something for the Wall of Honor. Something for Uncle Reed. And Mom and Grandpa. My contribution. I watched the video of the service at Arlington National Cemetery again. The flag. Something for Uncle Reed’s honor flag. So I found out where I could buy a display shelf that would hold an official honor burial flag with the dimensions five feet by nine and a half feet.

  Yeah, I’d looked that up, too.

  I found it. A triangular display shelf made of cherry wood. We’d all stare at the Wall of Honor together with Uncle Reed’s picture and honor flag. It was one small thing. The last thing I could do for Uncle Reed. I didn’t know if it would make Mom feel less sad. But it was better than doing nothing.

  There was a small waiting list for the flag case, too. I ordered it anyway. In fact, right at the second I clicked on Confirm Your Order, Grandpa hollered at me.

  “Wayne, can you come to the kitchen?”

  Mom was standing by the stove, rubbing her chin.

  “The date is set. Next weekend,” Grandpa said. He put both hands palm-down on the table.

  Mom went back to washing a dish she’d already washed.

  The doorbell rang. We all froze as if more bad news might be on our doorstep. It wasn’t bad news, though. It was Sandy Showalter. Which was really good news!

  There she was. So happy. So pretty. So in my house.

  “Hola, Señor Kovok. Poinsettia delivery!” she said.

  Poinsettias.

  New topic.

  “Sandy, did you know that the red poinsettia originated in Mexico and is named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States minister to Mexico?”

  “Uh, no, I didn’t know that, Wayne.”

  Don’t say Frankenbuckettia! Don’t say Frankenbuckettia!

  “So, if you think about it, that’s lucky, because what if his last name was Frankenbucket? Then at Christmas everyone would have to say, Here, I brought you this Frankenbuckettia.”

  Sandy shoved the four plants into my arms. “You are so funny, Wayne. I told my dad that chicken fact. See you tomorrow.”

  “Bye.” I closed the door and watched her get into her mom’s silver minivan. I turned around to face Grandpa.

  “Well, Buttercup, you certainly made a square impression on her.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I shoved a poinsettia into his hands.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a plant. A poinsettia I bought for… Never mind.”

  “I’m going home,” Grandpa said, frowning. “I’ll arrange the tickets. We leave on Friday. Pack your good suit. Take care of your mother. No complaining about dishes. Hard work never hurt anyone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On Friday, we flew nonstop to Washington, DC. Our return trip back to Texas would take two flights.

  The first of the two, fine. No problems.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was the last flight that tried to kill us. Just Mom and me.

  After the funeral, Grandpa decided to rent a car and drive back to Texas to clear his head. The day went so fast that he forgot to carry Uncle Reed’s honor flag with him.

  Mom read a magazine. I had a paperback of Steve Jobs’s biography. I tried to read the words on the pages, but they wouldn’t stick. I had to reread every paragraph. The flag was secure in my lap. It distracted me. I was so curious about its folds. It was so perfect. I wished we were driving with Grandpa. How far had he driven? I wondered. When would he get to Texas? I hadn’t even thought to ask him.

  The brown-sweatered woman across the aisle from me in 14A tried to get me to talk about Christmas and did I like the quilt she was making. It was just blocks of red and green. I’d made more creative patterns in Minecraft. I think she said it was a tree skirt. I don’t know. My mind couldn’t settle on anything. I couldn’t even decide if I wanted a snack when the flight attendant offered me one.

  “What a day, right?” Mom asked, her eyes all red and glassy.

  I nodded. The flag case was on its way to Cedar Drive. I thought about telling her that, but I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to wait and see her happy smile as I handed her the case. Maybe it would happen on a spaghetti Tuesday.

  “How’s your book?” she asked.

  “Steve Jobs named his company Apple because it came before Atari in the phone book,” I said.

  “I thought maybe he just liked apples,” she said.

  I was going to say that it was true. Steve Jobs did like apples.

  But then it sounded like a bomb went off. My ears rang.

  At first, it was the plunging feeling when you drop from the highest point of a roller coaster. Only it was worse because I knew it wasn’t a ride. I didn’t know when the falling would stop. And I knew there was Texas ground below us.

  We just kept falling.

  Falling, with wind whistling and roaring past my head for a short eternity, only to bounce my head against the seat in front of me. I coughed, spit, and strained for a breath.

  Mom, terrified. Me, helpless.

  I looked toward the back of the plane.

  Something in the back had broken free, leaving a giant hole in the fuselage.

  I could see the open sky. I could feel the wind and the rain.

  Inside the plane.

  And a huge whistling and sucking sound. Objects flying toward the back.

  Then there was the screaming. A lot of screaming. And not the roller-coaster kind of screaming. The woman in 14A had a scream to break glass.

  Mom gripped the armrest of her seat with one hand. She reached for my hand, too.

  “Say a prayer, sweetie,” she said to me. “Say something to God. Anything.”

  I couldn’t think of a prayer. Grandpa’s voice thundered in my head.

  Take care of your mother.

  Through the screams, I heard some prayers I might have borrowed. Holy Mother, save us. Tell David I love him. I didn’t want to pray. I just waited for God to show up without even asking.

  Maybe that was my prayer. I don’t know. Does it still count if you thought it but didn’t say it out loud?

  Then the plane turned hard to the left. Luggage crashed down on us from the overhead bins to the right. A laptop flew toward me like a Frisbee. It slammed into my throat. It made me cough and choke.

  The woman in 14A stopped screaming. I looked at her terrified face. The oxygen masks had just dropped down, and she struggled with hers.

  Mom said, “Tell me something new, Wayne,” which she’s said to me a million times in my life.

  So I turned to her and even though it hurt to speak, I said, “Did you know that the chameleon has a tongue that is one and a half times the length of its body?”

  And I sort of screamed it because that’s what you have to do when your plane is going to crash. Paper and screaming and loud prayers and falling oxygen masks are spinning all around you, and your mother is squeezing your hand even harder now and it is turning white under her crazy-strong grip that she must have inherited from generations of Daltons. And it was the weirdest thing, saying a chameleon fact to her as we plummeted.

  A flight attendant spoke over the intercom: “For safety reasons, remove your shoes, your glasses, and any pens or items in your pockets.”

  I automatically put my hand to my head to remove my glasses. They weren’t there. I’d started wearing contacts since the fall social. For Sandy. You have pretty blue eyes, Wayne, she’d said. I’d said adios to my glasses the next day.

  The captain spoke then. “We’ve experienced a technical difficulty and are preparing for an emergency landing.”

  His voice was so calm. Too calm.

  The beverage cart rolled down the aisle and crashed into the back. Sharp objects hurtled through the air. My face stung as random pieces of people’s lives cut into it.

  Flight attendants were shouting, “Brace! Brace! Brace!”

  We held tight to the seat backs in front of us.

  Thoughts swirled about chameleon tongues and the fact that it was a really incon
venient time to die since I finally felt comfortable around Sandy Showalter. Will she cry when I’m gone? What will it feel like when this roller-coaster ride stops? When we land emergently? I thought of our dog, Mr. Darcy. I thought he’d be sad if we didn’t come back. He slept by my bed every night.

  Turbulence shook the plane. It felt like we’d hit a speed bump and come crashing down onto something hard and solid.

  The wind fought with everything. Mom’s long brown hair was flying around her face. Papers and books and foam cups and nameless things trailed up and exited the plane. And the flag, too. It had lifted up from my lap, and I grabbed for it by the corner. But that made a corner come untucked. It was tug-of-war. Me versus the wind. The wind was winning.

  Mom unbuckled her seat belt to reach after it.

  “Mom! No!” I let go of the flag’s corner, grabbed her by the waist, pinned her back to her seat.

  But the flag got away. It unfurled and sailed up into the fuselage like a patriotic kite before disappearing out the hungry hole.

  “Oh, no. Reed!” Mom shouted.

  My book fluttered into the wind next. The book took flight like a bird made of pages. And then 14A’s red-and-green tree skirt. It went out, too.

  The wind had taken everything from us.

  It all looked terrifying and beautiful.

  All the lights inside the plane blinked once and went out. It was dark as the inside of a pocket.

  I think I shouted “Steve!” toward my book.

  The flight attendant kept yelling, “Remember to place the oxygen masks on your face and then continue to breathe normally.”

  Continue to breathe normally?

  The plane seemed to level out then. I wondered, was the pilot wrestling with it to stay horizontal? His voice came over the intercom. “Prepare for impact. Prepare for impact!”

  How do you prepare for impact? How?

  I held my breath. I held on to the seat. Fear was bouncing off everyone.

  And then…

  Screams.

  Crash.

  Impact.

  Bounce.

  Slide.

  Slide.

  Slide.

  Silence.

  Smoke.

  So much smoke.

  Fuel.