Flight #116 Is Down (17 page)

Daniel.

Tuck.

Were they scared? Did they know what was happening? Did it hurt? Did they feel themselves fall? How many minutes or seconds did they have, feeling it, knowing it, being terrified?

He thought of falling. Falling thousands and thousands of feet. What if you did not lose consciousness? What if you were alive to see the earth rushing toward you? What if you had time to know what was happening?

My baby boys, he thought, seeing them blindly, seeing them at all their ages at the same time: from birth to death; from sleeping to baseball pitching.

Not my sons, he thought. Not Tuck. Not Daniel.

Saturday: 9:01
P.M.

The plane, Teddie’s mother told herself, had to land in some other city. Developed engine trouble. They’ve landed safely hundreds of miles from here and alternative arrangements are being made. Teddie is sitting right now in some stewardess’s lap, having ice cream, being silly, having fun, being spoiled.

The plane is fine.

It has to be fine.

Teddie is on it.

So it’s fine.

I won’t listen to what that woman is saying. She’s wrong. They’re all wrong. They’re making it up. My daughter is fine.

Something dripped onto her chest.

She looked down, surprised to be wet. They weren’t outdoors. Was something leaking? Was—

She was crying, silently, effortlessly; her face was wet, her own tears were coming like rain, multiplying, like terror.

Saturday: 9:02
P.M.

In the hotel ballroom, folding chairs had been brought out. The chairs had metal frames and indigo blue backs and seats. Nobody had been willing to sit. Sitting was casual. They could not sit for this news.

“We have,” said the neutrally voiced woman, “a partial list of survivors.”

Several hundred people in the ballroom froze, or shuddered, or trembled. They did not speak or moan.

They leaned toward her, willing their sons or daughters, their mothers or fathers, their wives or husbands, their lovers or roommates, to be on the survivor list.

“If you do not hear the name you are waiting for,” said the woman, “it does not necessarily mean anything.”

It means everything, thought Mr. MacArthur. It means death. That’s what you are when you’re not a survivor. You’re dead.

He could not believe this.

Daniel. Tuck.

No.

Their names would be spoken right away, he’d phone them, he’d drive anywhere on earth to get them, they were fine. Probably hungry.

“Harrison, Tanya. Wysocki, Brad. Rochette, Valerie.”

They’d get a pizza together. He and Daniel and Tuck. That’s what they would do. He and his sons.

“DiNolica, Karen. Fitch, George. Serra, Richard. Gutierrez, Janet.”

Little moans spurted out around him like blood from wounds. People began crying out. “Where are they? Where do we go? Are they in hospitals? Are they hurt at all? How do we—”

Stop talking! his heart screamed. I can’t hear the list! Don’t you understand, my sons’ names are coming up! Stop talking!

But the talking had begun, and now everybody was talking, calling out the name they cared about: names, names, names, being shouted.

Because that’s all that’s left, he thought.

Names.

The voice was endless.

He prayed it would really be endless.

That the list of survivors would be the entire list of passengers.

The plane had not really crashed, just came down in the wrong place.

Everybody had walked away.

“Belter, Shannon. Fazzolo, Maria. MacArthur, Tucker.”

“Tuck,” he said out loud.

“Tuck!” he said again.

He grabbed the arm of the person near him. It was an airline person; he recognized that uniform. “Tuck,” shouted Mr. MacArthur. He shook the airline man’s arm vigorously. “Tuck survived!” he yelled. He could not understand why the entire room was not celebrating. Why were they telling him to be quiet? Didn’t they understand?
Tuck had survived.

The person walked Mr. MacArthur to the edge of the room. “Sir, could you tell me your relationship to Tucker MacArthur?” He had steered Mr. MacArthur so that they were facing the wall. There was flocked wallpaper on the wall: a sort of seasick blue, with icy velvetine flowers.

“I’m his father,” he whispered. He had lost his voice. He cleared his throat several times, but his voice did not come back. The boys had been sitting together. And if you were not on the survivor list … Daniel was not on the survivor list … then … you were …

“Yes, sir.” The man wrote on a legal pad.

“I have another son.”

“Sir?”

“On the flight.”

“Sir?”

“Daniel. Daniel MacArthur. They were sitting next to each other.”

The man said, “We’ll have to wait on that, sir. We have no information on that yet, sir.”

He had not been called sir this many times in his life.

He studied the pattern of the seasick-blue wallpaper.

That’s what they do when your kid dies, he thought. They call you sir.

Saturday: 9:20
P.M.

“That is the incomplete,” said the neutral woman, “let me stress …
incomplete
… list of survivors. Remember … that rescue … is ongoing,” said the neutral woman. She paused even longer. She turned a little to the left and then a little to the right, taking them all into her gaze. Then she returned to her clipboard. She said, “Now I am going to ask the family of Bart Chase … if they will join this officer.” She pointed to another neutral man, holding the same clipboard, the same list.

The family of Bart Chase did not appear. Nobody had been waiting for Bart Chase.

Saturday: 9:21
P.M.

Shirl thought, Bart Chase was probably going on a business trip. Bart Chase probably has a Monday morning appointment and won’t be missed until then. Bart Chase probably has a wife and kids back home, but they rented a video, and they just finished popping popcorn, and they don’t know.

O Family of Bart Chase, Shirl thought, tears stabbing her eyes, you’ll know in the morning, they’ll tell you in the morning.

She said to herself, It was an incomplete list of survivors.

Very incomplete.

Because my sister …

“Family of Carly Foyle,” said the woman.

Shirley could feel her own hair. It was so odd, the way she could feel her hair: the extra hairspray, the heavy curls, the different part, so that she would look just right to see Carly.

It seemed pointless to walk through the crowd, greet the neutral woman, hear the neutral announcement.

There would be no reunion.

No forgiveness.

No more fights.

No more anything.

Because there was no more Carly.

And yet Shirl was moving. She stepped forward. She made progress. Around her, people moved out of her way. People stepped back for her as if she were a celebrity.

Nobody in the entire room seemed to be talking.

Shirl meant to say, “You made a mistake. You have Carly Foyle on the wrong list.” But she said, “Did it hurt? Was she scared? What happened?” Shirl’s voice crept up and up and up. “What happened? Was my sister scared?” screamed Shirl. “Where is she?”

She heard herself screaming, she knew she was hysterical, she knew this was not polite. She should not subject people to this.

She thought, Carly would behave better.

She thought, Carly is dead.

“Carly is dead?” she whispered to the neutral man.

He said, “I’m so sorry, miss.”

S
ATURDAY: 10:48 P.M.

In the courtyard, a fight was going on.

The fire chief from Nearing River, who had taken charge from Patrick’s father, was outraged because the FAA had arrived, and the inspectors were trying to take control of the scene away from him. The men were actually duking it out, sparring as if the pretty courtyard were a stone boxing ring. Patrick stared at them. Had he really wanted to do exactly the same thing himself only a few hours ago?

He did not want to act like that—the moron wasting time fighting somebody on his own team, especially when there was still work to be done.

Patrick walked away.

The place was ablaze with lights: lights that flashed in rows, spun in circles, whipped in blinding patterns: blue for firemen, yellow for tow trucks, green for ambulance responders, white strobes for the fire chief, red pulses for the police. His vision throbbed. Everywhere he turned were screaming sirens and leaping lights. It was hard to think or hear or see.

His scanner talked continually, but he could not both decipher the static-y messages and think, so he ignored the scanner and struggled on his own.

The biggest problem now was sightseers.

People had come from miles around, parking all along the narrow, inaccessible roads, hiking through the woods, poking over the scene, as if they wanted souvenirs, memories, participation.

The police had a man at each door to Dove House to keep the people inside safe from intrusion and to prevent the souvenir takers from starting on Heidi’s family possessions.

The food in Dove House was long ago consumed. Eventually even the coleslaw found takers. When the Red Cross arrived with a truck of sandwiches, coffee, and orange juice, they were stormed. There was nothing like a rescue to make you hungry.

Patrick was tired.

So tired. He liked to work out; a couple of hours of weights, treadmill, and rowing machine was nothing.

But he had never ever been this tired. Tired like old people, thought Patrick. This must be what it’s like to be Granddad. He can hardly get his foot high enough for a stair tread. That’s how I feel.

Heidi was coming up the hill. It must be her thousandth trip. She looked as if she needed a tow rope this time. She was carrying her own blankets back from the helicopter, having traded them for the blankets on board. She had obviously fallen in the mud. Both she and her blankets looked as if they had been mining for coal.

Patrick found himself grinning. Possessively, as if Heidi were part of him, and he of her.

Patrick’s father said to him, “You could do worse.”

“Huh?”

“The girl. She’s a cutie.”

“You just think that because she doesn’t fall apart in a crisis.”

“I like that in a person,” said his father. Slowly he took off his gear, stretched, let out a huge puff of exhaustion, and ate another doughnut. “I’m proud of you, son,” said Patrick’s father.

They looked at each other. Patrick felt sober and awed.

Then he laughed. “I loved it, Dad.”

His father nodded. “We all do. There’s an excitement to rescue that nothing else has. You don’t want an accident, but if there is one, you sure want to be in on it.”

They both headed for Heidi, but they weren’t first in line. An FAA official stopped her. Sternly, as if he were her truant officer. “It is my understanding that you both heard and saw the plane crash, Miss Landseth,” said the official. “Tell me about it. What exactly happened? Precisely.” He had a large clipboard and was poised to take down everything useful that she said.

Heidi shrugged with both her hands and her shoulders, apologizing with her posture. “I don’t know.”

Patrick hated how she apologized for herself. It was a habit he definitely wanted her to quit.

“What time was it?” said the FAA official. “Exactly? Do you know?”

We weren’t in that time zone, thought Patrick, we weren’t in a place where time is exact. Some of it raced past, time in which people were dying. But the very same time gathered slowly, when our hands struggled, our feet slipped, and no progress was made.

What progress had they made?

How many people had they saved and how many had they lost?

How many had died on impact? How many were doing well at hospitals across the state? Would he ever know what had happened to them? Or would his part in this operation be yet a third sort of time? A stranded, unattached time, with no past and no future: just a motion, setting people on stretchers and watching them leave.

Saturday: 10:49
P.M.

They loaded Daniel into the helicopter.

“You’re last, kid,” said the attendant, grinning, putting a blood-pressure cuff around his arm.

“That was pretty lousy of you,” said Daniel. “I wanted to go first.”

“You should have,” said the doctor, or the paramedic, or whoever he was. Probably just a passerby, thought Daniel. Probably they used up all the real ones with the first trips. This guy just picked up a white coat and climbed in.

“They had to cut you out, huh?” said the attendant.

Daniel meant to say yes, but he was getting woozy again, he’d been woozy all through the cutting out, although Mrs. Jemmison said he was doing fine, everything was fine, the whole thing was coming along just fine; he’d wanted to say, Mrs. Jemmison, are you on drugs? This is not fine.

Daniel felt the helicopter lift, felt himself lifting at a different pace, his soul and his inner organs shifting position, as if trying to decide whether to stick together. Or maybe it was the helicopter shifting. It would really be the pits if the helicopter crashed.

He thought, I’ll make a joke; tell these guys we all need a laugh about now.

But his lips didn’t go along with it. They didn’t say anything.

The colors of his enclosed world flashed for a moment like sunlight on the beach and then faded.

Saturday: 10:50
P.M.

Heidi looked down at her watch. I used to know what time it happened, she thought. I was clocking those first few minutes. But I don’t know anymore. It was a hundred years ago.

The weird thing was, it had not crossed her mind to wonder what had caused the crash.

The inspector seemed not to believe this. “You’ve been working here for hours,” he said, “you must have thought back on what you first heard and saw.”

But she had not thought back at all. She had only thought ahead, trying to guess the right thing to do next. “Doesn’t the radar tell you that?” she said. “Don’t you find a little black box somewhere that records what happened?”