Fearless (2 page)

You’re going to die, a voice in Max’s head informed him, not his conscience, maybe his God. Anyway it was someone with a lot of authority, no fear, and very little sadness. Consider it over and done with, he was told. He felt the terror leave him, discarded below as inconsequential. Relieved of his own dread, he concentrated on the others. The passengers’ faces still showed fear, but there was hope, desperate and fragile, returning. Max pitied them, because they continued to fight the inevitable and therefore had no peace.

Max stepped over Jeff, careful not to hurt the floundering flight attendant. He helped her up, hooking her by the armpits. The fabric was rough and scratchy. His fingers accidentally grazed the sides of her breasts. Even through the starched material Max had an instantaneous sensation of soft and bouncy flesh, probably a hallucination, and he was sad to think of sex just then. He gently maneuvered her down into an empty seat next to a silent and pale, but calm, elderly male passenger who applied his tiny cocktail napkin to the flight attendant’s cut. No one spoke.

When Max turned back to apologize to Jeff for yelling about soiling his pants (why meet the end on a quarrel?) he saw the senior flight attendant—her name tag read Mary—open the curtain from first class and grab hold of the food cart. It was stuck sideways in the aisle, wedged into the seats. She couldn’t budge it. Max moved up to help her from his side.

The cart was jammed against the armrest of the seat of the boy traveling alone. The boy watched them and pitched in, pushing from his seat with both hands, frowning with a manly seriousness at the effort.

“You okay?” Max asked the boy after they freed the cart. During the roll it must have struck him in the side of the leg.

The boy’s nod was casual, but there was a lonely fright in his eyes, a plea for rescue. At the thought of the loss of this child’s life Max wanted to cry.

“Could you help me stow it?” Mary asked, nodding down at the cart. She was stocky and almost completely gray-haired, cropped short, as if she wished to give a military appearance of neatness.

Max and Mary pushed the cart to the galley. They passed a lot of frightened people but no one was panicky or made any demands of Mary, not even to ask what was happening to the plane. Most of the overhead baggage compartments had opened. A few passengers were out of their seats shutting them; otherwise people sat still, clutching their armrests. There was a smell in the air, not only of rectal fear but of cold sweat. The plane was hot, too, as if the air-conditioning had been shut down. Outside it was sunny. Beams of yellow light streamed in from the windows, bobbing with the plane’s rough bouncing motion. Their touch was warm to the skin, and their glare intrusive and blinding. On the ground it was a hot July day.

Another flight attendant joined them in the kitchen, approaching from the other aisle. She had come up from the back of the plane. She was small and skinny and wore a lot of makeup. She must have slid against something because her lipstick was smeared down one side of her mouth, transforming that half of her face into a clown’s sad paint. Her name tag read Lisa.

“Anyone hurt?” Mary asked.

Lisa shook her head no, but she answered, “I think the man in thirty-three A may be having a heart attack.”

Was that the businessman reading the
Journal?
Max wondered.

“Stay with thirty-three,” Mary told Lisa.

“What about Stacy?” Lisa asked. That must be the flight attendant who had been hit by the food cart, Max assumed. Lisa was young, probably in her twenties, and had lots of freckles on her neck and arms. She had covered up the ones on her face with makeup. Why do that? Max wondered. He liked freckles.

“I’ll check her out,” Mary said. “Get back to thirty-three.”

Lisa moved off right away, scared but obedient.

“I’ll be there soon,” Mary called after her.

The captain was on again. This time the electronics were fine. After some preliminary reassurances he got to the point: “We’ve experienced a loss of power in number three engine. One and two are okay and this plane is designed to fly, if necessary, with only one engine. But we may have some trouble steering because we’ve sustained some damage. That’s why we can’t give you your usual smooth ride. We’re going to make an emergency landing. As a precaution, when we’re cleared for landing, the flight attendants will instruct you to get into crash positions…”

While the captain talked the co-pilot opened the cockpit door and came out.

“What the fuck is going on?” Mary demanded of him. Her obscenity provoked no attention. It seemed natural.

The co-pilot didn’t look her in the eye. “Three blew up. Took out the hydraulics,” he said. He cut himself off from saying more as he became aware of Max’s presence. The co-pilot shook his head at Mary and then mumbled, “Visual check.” Max glanced past him into the cockpit. He saw a man dressed in civilian clothes, kneeling over a panel in the floor that had been opened; the man fussed with something hidden from view.

Before Max could study what he was doing, the co-pilot pulled the door shut and said to Max, “Return to your seat, sir, and fasten your seat belt.”

“Thank you,” Mary added.

They wanted him out of earshot. Max moved off. He would not interfere with them. They had to ignore the fact that they were doomed. That was their employment, the part of it they hoped never to face, but really the best part, a hopeless fight against death.

Max had a sweeping view of all the passengers as he returned. There were so many kids. He saw an Indian sister and brother, about ten and twelve years old, traveling without an adult. They both had shiny black hair and rich, almost purple skin. The girl had put her head on her older brother’s shoulder and had reverted to an old habit, sucking her thumb. She stared fearfully out the plastic porthole window as if she were having a night-terror and saw monsters in her closet. To comfort her the boy caressed his sister’s long hair with his small hand. But he was also scared. He kept his eyes shut and aimed at the ceiling, as if he wanted to be sure, in case he forgot and opened them, that he would see nothing dramatic.

Max touched the brother’s head as he passed, rustling his hair, aware that his casual touch was a cliché and probably would do nothing to calm the boy. The boy didn’t react. Max, however, felt more in command; he believed that because of the contact he knew the child better and could protect him.

Two aisles behind them sat a young black couple with a baby. The mother was calm. She concentrated on rocking the infant seat from side to side to lull her child. The young father had sweated big ovals under the arm of his blue shirt. He was partly out of his seat to get a view of the cockpit. He looked as if he felt inadequate to some internal demand of manhood. He met Max’s eyes and almost seemed to plead: give me something to do.

“Baby okay?” Max shouted at them.

The young father frowned and nodded. The mother smiled her yes.

Across from them were two mothers traveling with four kids, presumably two each, although it was difficult to say who belonged to whom because of their blond sameness. Each child had the same row of yellow bangs and pair of pale blue eyes underneath apparently hairless and yet heavy brows. Three of them were boys, bouncing in their seats with nervous energy and anticipation; they could have been waiting for an amusement park ride. The girl meanwhile shouted, not scared, but angry: “Mommy, my ears are hurting!” Neither mother answered her; they had their eyes on the co-pilot, who moved down the other aisle at a faster pace than Max’s.

“Tell me we’re okay,” one of the mothers said to the co-pilot as he passed.

The co-pilot smiled and winked but he said nothing.

At the co-pilot’s failure to reassure, one mother cursed. The other winced, pulled one of the blond boys to her chest, and hugged him hard.

It was heartbreaking. Max was angry that God had made this choice, when he could have picked out a planeload of rich people, smashed the Concorde into the Savoy Hotel, for example, instead of killing a bunch of kids put on planes by parents meeting a tight budget.

Max copied the co-pilot and used the headrests as crutches, alternately placing a hand on the next forward one as he moved down the aisle. The plane had definitely lost some part that lent it stability, something roughly equivalent to a car’s shock absorbers. Either that or they had turned onto a poorly maintained paved road of the air with nothing but bumps and potholes. Insulation seemed to have been lost all over: the noise from the two remaining engines was fierce. Max’s muscles clenched against the insecure machine, especially his legs: their springs were fully contracted, prepared to make a great leap. Don’t fight it, he lectured his body, and consciously tried to relax them, allowing all his weight to settle into his feet before he took the next step.

Jeff was out of his seat. He had gotten one of the blankets (vomited out of the gaping overhead compartments by the dozens) and wrapped it around his waist. As Max reached him he understood what his partner was doing: Jeff was wriggling out of his soiled underwear and pants.

“Can you find my bag?” Jeff demanded. “Get me the dungarees.”

Max had to open their compartment to get Jeff’s overnight—theirs was one of the few that had remained shut. He dropped Jeff’s bag on the seat. “Get it yourself,” he said, still furious at him for insisting they fly this deathtrap.

“Sir!” the injured flight attendant called out from the seat where Max had put her. She still had a tiny drink napkin, completely soaked with her blood, pressed against the cut on her temple. “Sir!” she insisted sternly to Jeff. “The captain has put on the seat-belt sign. You should be seated.”

“Are you nuts?” Jeff answered her.

“She’s hurt,” the elderly man next to her explained.

Max went past Jeff and stopped at the flight attendant’s seat. He didn’t want to watch Jeff change his clothes, although he wondered what he was going to do with the soiled pants.

“How are you doing?” Max asked Stacy, after checking her badge and verifying that was her name.

“You should be seated, too,” Stacy answered. She removed her hand to take a look at the napkin. Only half of the tissue came away. The rest stuck to her temple. Stacy stared at what she held of the bloody paper, too saturated to be of any further use.

“I don’t have any more,” the older male passenger commented and gestured at several soaked cocktail napkins tossed onto the floor.

“Remove all sharp objects from your clothes. Pens, combs. Also take off your shoes and eyeglasses,” Stacy said, her eyes on the bloody tissue, squinting and blinking, trying to focus. “The flight attendants will gather them.”

“Un huh,” Max said. He picked up a fallen pillow, removing the pale blue cover, and tore it up. The muscular effort of ripping the fabric was satisfying. Activity soothed his nerves: helping with the cart and touching the boy’s head had also made him feel good. He was able to fashion a crude bandanna. He tied it around her head, covering the wound.

While he tied it their eyes were only a few inches apart. He studied the tiny blond hairs of her mustache and wanted to kiss her lips, painted a brilliant red, but again he was sad to be feeling sexy.

“Why doesn’t it stop bleeding?” Stacy asked him.

“I think it is,” he told her.

Out of the corner of his eye Max saw the co-pilot hurrying back to the forward cabin. Because of his haste Max understood that what the co-pilot had been able to discover from his visual check terrified him. Well, what the fuck did you expect? Max argued with him silently. You said yourself that number three blew up and the hydraulics were out. Did you mink you were going to be able to Krazy Glue it back together?

Max knew enough about planes to understand that if they had lost all the hydraulics, not only was there no way to steer, there was never going to be. Unless a runway happened to be directly in their path, where could they land safely? A highway? An empty field? Max wasn’t even certain that a controlled descent would be possible.

A small, cold welling of fearful saliva blocked his throat: the coward come to life. But when he straightened and saw the packed crowd of kids and businessmen and the occasional mother, he felt sorrier for them. After all he deserved death. He had plotted to avoid it, quit cigarettes, forsaken red meat, jogged and power-walked, loaded up on vitamins so that his urine looked almost psychedelic—yet it had stalked him anyway. And into its bland merciless face what did he have to show as his proof that he deserved to live?

Nothing but that he was afraid to die.

2

Carla’s little boy, two-year-old Leonardo, named for Leonardo da Vinci, but called Leo the Lion by his father, and Lenny by his aunts and uncles, and Bubble by his mother (because as a suckling infant, after a meal of Carla’s milk, he manufactured them by the dozens: little shimmering bubbles that slid along his puffy lips), was asleep in the seat next to her when the explosion happened. He had collapsed only minutes after takeoff, his head sagging onto the spongy armrest, the rest of him crumpled up with the spineless compactability of babies—and Bubble was still a baby, even though two. His sleep was so deep that he drooled out of the side of his mouth, darkening a circle of the light blue fabric into navy. The initial jerk of the explosion lifted his unconscious head up—Carla’s eyes went to him immediately—and then bounced it down again on the armrest.

That woke Leonardo with a meow of complaint. Carla twisted in her seat and used her hands like earmuffs to protect the sides of his head. She peered toward the front of the plane and waited for what was next.

It didn’t occur to her that they might crash. She vaguely assumed they had hit unexpected turbulence, something inconvenient, not tragic. She called out in the direction of the cockpit: “What’s going on!” But there was a lot of noise from the engines and the confusion of other passengers and then…

A big fall. Nothing below. She was dropping and Bubble fell also, sliding out from her grip and down through the seat belt until he was caught by the armpits. He seemed, for one horrible second, to be choking: his legs and torso hung from the seat and the belt was taut across his chest and throat, more a noose than a safety device.