CHAPTER 10

Sam Latta,

Marietta, Georgia, Thursday, May 20, 1948:

“Is she going to go to hell, Daddy?”

Nathan Latta sat on the edge of his son’s bed. He was home from work early, because it was the boy’s birthday. There had been news, more bad news. It was nearly summer again, and the window was wide open, letting in the sound of insects drowsing in the afternoon heat. The day was green and gold and flooded with sunshine, but the room felt dark.

“No, son. She was a sad woman. She suffered more than she should for a thing that wasn’t her doing. God doesn’t punish that. He doesn’t lay on more weight than someone can bear and then send them to hell because they can’t do it.”

“How do people hang themselves?” the boy asked. “She was way up high in the rafters in the store. How did she get up there?”

The father looked up at his son, annoyed and alarmed by degrees. “Who told you that? Who you been talking to?”

“I seen Wanda--that’s her girl. She told me she woke up this morning and her ma wasn’t in the house, so she crossed over to the store and found her hanging from a rope up by the roof. She said the face was black. She said the eyes and tongue were sticking out and it was wearing her mama’s dress. She didn’t know it was her mama until it started talking.”

The man stared at the boy. “What do you mean, talking?”

“Her mouth was all swole up, Daddy,” the boy said, “but she was still talking. She told Wanda it was her own fault that her daddy was dead, and Wanda should come up there and hang, too. She said Wanda was bad. Just really a bad girl. Wanda ran away.”

“Hogwash, son. Hogwash. She didn’t talk. I promise you that. I don’t want to hear another word about this, y’hear?”

“She was dead but she could talk, and that’s why I thought she was going to hell.”

“Dead people don’t talk,” the man said. “That poor girl’s in shock, is all. I feel bad for her, seeing a thing like that, her own mama that way, but I don’t want you with her anymore.”

The boy sat beside his father on the small bed and thought about it for a minute, looking at the floor. There was a rag rug on the wood, multicolored, and he liked looking at it, seeing the different designs and patterns in it. He looked sideways, up at his father’s face. “She’s glad her mother’s dead. She says it was her mama’s doing that boy got killed, that her mama made her daddy do it. Killing the boy was her mama’s idea.”

“Son, you haven’t seen my hand on you much, but if I find you’ve been talking with that girl again, you’ll feel my belt on your behind and that’s a promise.” The man stood up and went to the door. “Stay away from her, son. That’s final. I don’t like to talk to you this way on your birthday, but those people have poisoned my house enough, and I’m done with it. Listen to me, now. Your mother has a cake for you, and there might be a package beside your plate. Come downstairs.”

***

Present Day:

I sat in the window seat and looked out, into the night. Atop the white fuselage of the plane parked next to ours a strobe pulsed, drowning the area in red. The windows of that jet were lit, and I could see people moving around inside, a mirror of what was happening in our own cabin. Yellow lights on the fuel trucks and baggage carts spun madly in the darkness as they hurried around the apron.

I had looked for my father’s casket being loaded in beneath me, but hadn’t seen it. I supposed they camouflaged them. People on board might see an occupied coffin as an albatross if they spotted it being put aboard their flight. I pictured a stampede for the exit and smiled wearily. If it happened, I’d have first-class to myself.

Almost all the people on my flight were busy with cell phones. They sent final texts before the order to turn them off. A nervous few checked the seat pockets in front of them, searching for reassurance in the routine presence of flight magazines and sick bags that had ventured into the sky and returned safely. Stragglers onto the plane smiled vaguely at the head of the aisle, as if in apology, while attendants slammed overhead bin doors with nearly excessive force.

It was ten o’ clock, and the day weighed heavily on me. The coach seat was thinly padded but comfortable, and I closed my eyes and listened to the murmuring of the aircraft readying itself. I felt the gentle thump of large outside cargo doors being closed and latched. The round vent over my head puffed air softly into my face. There was a tiny bump and then we were pushed back. Jet engines began to whistle almost imperceptibly.

Now that I was on board, I realized how much I dreaded this trip. I didn’t want to return to Georgia, I didn’t want to face this funeral, and I wished I were on the island getting ready for bed. My thoughts drifted.

“Sir,” the woman’s voice said. “Sir! Excuse me.”

I opened my eyes. With one hand on the seat backs in front of us, the flight attendant leaned across the two women who were my seatmates to address me. Older, she was probably senior on the flight crew. Her blue eyes were slightly puffy, and she appeared harried even before the flight was underway. Her front tooth showed a fleck of lipstick.

“You shouldn’t be on this flight,” she said. “You should get off now.”

I sat upright, fully awake. “Isn’t this for Atlanta?” I asked, alarmed. “The doors are already closed.”

“You should get off,” she repeated. She straightened and looked toward the front of the aircraft, her hand still resting on the seat back in front of us. She cocked her head and looked at me. “There’s something not right,” she said. “Can’t you hear it?”

Another stewardess came down the aisle to us, and I waited for what would develop, but she continued past us toward the rear without pausing. The attendant was increasingly agitated as she looked up the aisle. She squeezed the headrest in front of me, and I saw that her hand was dirty. Three of her fingernails were broken off at the quick.

“I have to go. I can’t do this again,” she said and moved forward, shaking her head.

I twisted around to face my seatmate, an overweight woman in glasses. “Is this not going to Atlanta?”

“Yes. Where do you think?” she drawled. “A little late to be asking now.”

I sat back and buckled myself in.

“He wants to know where we’re going,” she smirked to the woman on the other side of her.

A voice came over the speakers overhead.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Pam and I’m your chief flight attendant. On behalf of Captain Richardson and the entire crew, welcome aboard Canadian flight 1306, non-stop service from Toronto to Atlanta.”

I sat forward, ready to stand up. The plane began to roll forward in its slow and clumsy search for the runway, an old fat dog following a scent. I unlatched my lap belt and turned in the seat, looking for direction, and realized that it was too late. I was going wherever the plane was going.

“At this time, make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Also make sure your seat belt is correctly fastened. Also, we advise you that as of this moment, any electronic equipment must be turned off. Thank you.”

The cabin went dark, and the plane left the commotion of the terminal behind and began to wander through the blackness of the airfield. We drifted past occasional blue lights that sat lonely in the grass beside the cement.

“Cabin crew; prepare for take-off.”

The jet collected itself. The wing gleamed dully outside my window. The whistle of engines spooled up and up, into a shriek, and we began to roll. After the first hesitation, the jetliner gained momentum and I was pressed into my seat back. Lights on the runway went by faster and faster, and the wheels thudded a staccato beat on seams in the cement. The lighted terminal building came back into view far off to the right. As we passed it, the ranks of white aircraft on its flanks reminded me of nursing puppies.

The aircraft hunkered down and began to lift its nose. Unexpectedly, my window lit up from the outside. A huge flash of light was accompanied by a bang that shook the cabin. We skidded sideways into the air. My seat dipped and I threw out a hand to brace myself as the aircraft seemed to roll and yaw, threatening to turn its belly to the sky. The shuddering noise was deafening. We seemed to be aboard a freight train that was off the rails, its wheels rolling at speed across gravel and railway ties.

In unison, a hundred voices began to scream, a choir singing its complete terror, barely heard above the airplane’s thrashing agony. The seat under me dropped hard. I was forced up against the belt and then back down, smashing my elbows on the armrests. Seat belt lights above our heads flickered and flashed, a rank of warnings stretching all the way to the front of the compartment. I focused on them. If they went dark, I knew we would lose our grip on the sky and fall.

Another explosion thudded against my window and the plane lurched. I looked out and back and saw flames expelled from the engine. The screams rose. The woman next to me gripped the top of my hand so hard that the bones ground together, and I struggled to free myself from her.

We passed strangely low and slow over a freeway, and I wondered if we would roll and drop into the river of headlights and orange sodium below us. I envied the people below. They were nearly close enough to touch, but worlds away from us, on their way home from dinner and headed to parties and factory night shifts. All the lost chances from my life gathered in the chaos, and I was nearly overwhelmed with sadness. I was going to die with a group of strangers.

By degrees, the plane steadied itself, and although the vibration continued, it was somewhat lessened. We soared low over the lights of the city, and I imagined people in houses and apartments below looking up at the unaccustomed harsh sound of a jet engine laboring over their neighborhoods. Voices in the cabin dropped off, with only an occasional loud sob or raised voice audible over the general throbbing of the distressed plane.

We stayed low, the wounded airplane struggling to maintain altitude. Beneath me, the city lights disappeared and it was completely black. I knew that the pilot had taken us out over Lake Ontario. I looked at the tops of heads above the seat backs in front of me. Three hundred people were packed into this small space. We were sitting close together, yet most were rigidly alone with what was happening.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Captain Richardson. I am not completely satisfied with the performance of one of our engines, so we are going to head back to the airport and have it looked at. Please follow your flight crew’s instructions. You can expect a safe landing.”

Liar, I thought.

A stewardess stood in the aisle and scanned the rows of seats. She fell heavily into the passengers sitting beside her as the plane tilted and dropped into a crippled turn. A few isolated screams rose, but generally the cabin felt smothered with a crushing paralysis.

“Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

The fallen attendant got to her feet. She made her way shakily to an empty seat, sat down, and began to shout. “Heads down, stay down, brace, brace! Heads down, stay down, brace, brace, brace!”

From behind us and forward in first class, the voices of other crew members joined the chant, like a group of nuns performing a strange liturgy in the dark cabin, shouting the same words, over and over. People looked at their neighbors and then heads disappeared as they hunched over and stared at the floor. I felt the back of my seat shift when the person sitting behind me grabbed it.

“Brace, brace brace! Heads down, stay down, brace, brace! Heads down, stay down, brace, brace, brace!”

Noise from the remaining engine rose as we dropped lower, and the flight attendants were accordingly louder, sounding as though they were willing us to stay in the air. I risked sitting up, and looked out my window.

The lights of the city reappeared, even closer than they had been. We seemed to be far too low. Lit rooftops came up to meet us and then disappeared as we suddenly floated into the dark space over the airfield. The wheels touched and rolled. We were down.

I didn’t hear the flurry of announcements after we came to a stop and were met by a flotilla of red and blue lights. Stairs were brought and we walked through the gathering of emergency vehicles and began the long walk back to the terminal building. It seemed that every muscle in my body hurt, as though I had badly overused them.

I numbly followed the line of people into the building, up a flight of stairs, and then down a long fluorescent-lit hallway. Noises were strange and muted. My ears seemed to be packed with cotton. A set of glass doors opened at the end, and we were back in the warm and quiet commotion of the concourse. Groups of airline employees stood, stopped in mid-conversation, and stared at us almost furtively.

The people in front of me headed vaguely for seats in the lounge or toward the information counter. I walked past them. A young couple sat on the vinyl seats with two small children; the parents stared straight ahead at the floor, not touching each other. There was no question that they had been with me. We were marked.

Leaving my luggage behind, I headed for Canadian Customs and re-entered the country, then headed outside to find a taxi and a hotel. I seemed to move in a zone of absolute silence, and I wondered if I were in some kind of shock. When I had checked into a room near the airport, I called Angela.

“Where are you?” she demanded.

“Still in Toronto. The plane had some kind of problem. We got turned around. I’ll leave in the morning.”

“Damn it, Mike. You need to be here. I’m down here alone. Have you even arranged a service yet?”

“There’s a funeral home that’s meeting the plane. I’m letting them make the arrangements.”

When we hung up, I undressed and lay in the dark. After a while, fear came creeping in, and I got up and turned on a light. I was in a strange bed, in a strange room, in a building full of strangers that I would never see again. It was not a night that I wanted to be alone.

I turned the unfamiliar pillow and felt myself slide toward sleep. The flight attendant who had warned me showed me that spirits still moved around me. It didn’t occur to me that her warning may not have been about the troubled flight, but what waited on the other end of it.