Fringeville #211: From the Sky - New Introduction. (A gift for Bridget)

On my defunct Desktop Dynamo site, I posted segments of a novella, From the Sky which was never finished. Actually, that's not quite true. The ending was written long ago, it's just waiting for the middle to catch up.

I wrote a new introduction for it, and it is a gift for my friend Bridget who puts up with me for reasons I cannot fathom. I am working on finishing this novella, as well as other projects.

The main character narrating this scene is deaf. The person she mourns is her uncle, Gio. Enjoy.

I promise to finish the project (I swear, Bridget).

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Apparecchiare la Tavola

From the stories I’ve read, it was a middle-aged man from Cleveland who first knew something was wrong. He had a starboard window seat. He was watching the clouds far below, waiting for the occasional gap that let him get a glimpse of the terrain beneath. He saw a puff of smoke burst from the wing. Before he could say anything to his wife, there was a tremendous bang. His mouth dropped in horror and his wife grabbed his arm.

“What was that?” she asked as the plane started to roll.

“The goddamned engine just fell off.”

People were screaming, of course. The 737 came close to inverting but gradually rolled back to level flight. The captain announced a “mechanical problem” and ordered everyone to return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts. There was an elderly woman in the aisle, and the man from Cleveland could see something was wrong with her leg. It was tucked up under her in an odd way. He looked away from the woman and back out his window. They were in the clouds now, and he wondered how fast they were losing altitude. And then the clouds were above them and he could see the farmland far below. He could tell they were still going down, but he could also see that they were leveling off. The 737 was shuddering. His wife was crying, and he held her hand.

The captain said they were diverting to an alternate airfield. The flight attendant then began reviewing emergency landing procedures. When she said, “…in the event of a water landing…” he glanced out the window and saw Lake Erie far ahead. He couldn’t swim, was in fact terrified of water, and hoped they’d simply hit the ground and die instantly. He didn’t want a slow death drowning. He needn’t have worried; he was in good hands. Some would say in God’s hands. The jet banked and he saw they were turning south. He guessed correctly that they were headed to Pittsburgh.

The plane was badly wounded. It took all of the pilot’s considerable skills to limp the plane to Pittsburgh International Airport. The passengers were calm as they descended to the runway. Prayers in several languages could be heard. They landed very, very hard, and there was a fresh round of screams. The 737 slowed gradually as the end of the runway approached. It came to a stop with a dozen feet to spare. Rescue vehicles arrived in seconds.

The accounts I’ve read on this near disaster laud the pilot for his actions. There were no fatalities on the jet, only a handful of mostly minor injuries. The elderly woman who fell in the aisle on her way back from the restroom broke her hip. It was by far the worst injury, but she recovered. I saw her on CNN. She was interviewed in her hospital bed, and I read the closed captions as she told the interviewer how terrified she was.

None of what she said affected me.

Please don’t think poorly of me. I’m glad they all survived. I think the pilot and crew were all heroes. But it was the last thing the news anchor said, his words in white text on black background rolling across the bottom of my television screen, that crushed my heart: “…miraculously, there was just one fatality: an elderly Pennsylvania man killed by falling debris.”

What miracle? It was a tragedy. My aunts would say it was the inevitable result of an imprecation uttered decades earlier. I can’t quite make that leap. It was simply a one-in-a-zillion bit of horribly bad luck. You see, the good Lord does play dice with the Universe after all. I’m sorry, Mr. Einstein, but He does. It’s not cruelty, it is necessity. Unless chance is built into the very fabric of our existence then we’re all powerless. Everything would be predetermined. Let my aunts lay blame wherever they wish. I don’t care about any of that. I only know that I will never again hear a voice as rich as his. My husband and children will never know him. God rolled his dice, nothing more, and I mourned.

You’d like to hear more?

Well, I suppose we have time. Our boys are going to be playing on those monkey bars for a while. Usually they say you start at the beginning. I’m just not sure where that is. So instead I’ll start with where I began and the rest will come…

 

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...be good to each other.

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