It's a vacuum-sealed eternity, this drop--his eardrums stopped popping two thousand feet ago--and in the scintillating silence he realizes you dream about falling all the time, everyone does, but never about why you're falling.
Now he knows why.
When the plane crumpled, the tail erupting into shards of, he doesn't even--fiberglass? Titanium? Whatever it is, it's showering about him like confetti--he remembered a game he used to play as a kid. What you did was, you took an empty Pringles can with the lid on, you laid it on its side, and you stomped the cylinder as hard as you could. And that lid, hoo boy, it would shoot a good four, five feet. Doesn't take much to amuse a kid.
That's how he felt when the tail exploded. Like the lid of that Pringles can.
Now he feels like a dream of himself falling, but--well--here's the thing: in the dream, he's falling, sure, and he's terrified, even though he can never see the ground, or the ocean, or the bed of jagged spikes, or the gaping mouth of hell, whatever, that will inevitably terminate his plummet. Just cloudbank after cloudbank, whoosh whoosh whoosh, like stock Western prairie footage. And he wakes up sweating, gasping, bolt upright--a nice cardio regimen perpetrated on him by his subconscious in his sleep.
But this--he's not terrified, though he wouldn't be so maudlin, so Chicken Soup For the Doomed Soul as to say he feels anything like peaceful, like contented, like a shaft of light is beaming down on him. (It's corny enough, isn't it, to equate the actual sensation of plummeting to one's death to the universal dream of doing same?) Oh, he's afraid, or at least he's manifesting all the physical symptoms of abject fear: his bladder and sphincter dumped all cargo long ago, and his ticker, well, he wouldn't lay odds as to whether he'll splat or die of a heart attack first. This feeling, this feeling, though, it snatched away abject terror, it snuffed the prayer bubbling magmatic on his tongue: Attention, passengers, flight 3:16 will be delayed.
What he feels is--it's strange--as he plunges into and out of dishwater clouds, outplummeting the eighth of an inch of drizzle due to dust… probably, oh, the St. Louis area, sure, he remembers crossing the Mississippi just minutes ago… what he feels isn't terror, or remorse, or rapture, what he feels is the sloppy needle kisses of unborn rain, hissing fetal knives, frozen steam. And he wishes someone else had shot from the rear of the plane, a co-plummeter also on his/her way to the lavatory, someone he could shout to--all of someone, he's seen plenty of parts of someones. They could scream together like kids witnessing the impossible attained, experiencing it, the first time you rode your bike without training wheels, that feeling. Never mind how many times you'd seen it done before, never mind your older brother and his bike, no, the first time you did it, that weightlessness tethered only to a banana seat and petal grit, your body knew implicitly that such an act had never been contemplated, much less attempted, much least accomplished. And when you let go of the bars and soared, wobbling like an albatross taking flight? Forget about it. Virgin territory. Your own little brother in sodden pull-ups, watching in awe. And you there screaming at your parents on the porch, Mom with a hand over her heart, He's not--but he is, he is, and when he settles back and dismounts without spilling, without skinning his knees or busting his skull, she claps and runs into the yard and sweeps him up, so proud. So relieved.
What a feeling--that a man can fall from five miles up! And cynics sneer It's all been done.
That's what he wishes for--someone to share it, scream it, this insistent lapping, these million tickling puppy tongues--even if, sure, no one could possibly hear him up here, even if the words only flitted away to join the rest of the captive hot air melting the icecaps. Still they'd scream: "It's raining up! It's raining up!" Like six-year-olds, hands-free and wobbling. Together alone, for the first time.
Ever.
Now he knows why.
When the plane crumpled, the tail erupting into shards of, he doesn't even--fiberglass? Titanium? Whatever it is, it's showering about him like confetti--he remembered a game he used to play as a kid. What you did was, you took an empty Pringles can with the lid on, you laid it on its side, and you stomped the cylinder as hard as you could. And that lid, hoo boy, it would shoot a good four, five feet. Doesn't take much to amuse a kid.
That's how he felt when the tail exploded. Like the lid of that Pringles can.
Now he feels like a dream of himself falling, but--well--here's the thing: in the dream, he's falling, sure, and he's terrified, even though he can never see the ground, or the ocean, or the bed of jagged spikes, or the gaping mouth of hell, whatever, that will inevitably terminate his plummet. Just cloudbank after cloudbank, whoosh whoosh whoosh, like stock Western prairie footage. And he wakes up sweating, gasping, bolt upright--a nice cardio regimen perpetrated on him by his subconscious in his sleep.
But this--he's not terrified, though he wouldn't be so maudlin, so Chicken Soup For the Doomed Soul as to say he feels anything like peaceful, like contented, like a shaft of light is beaming down on him. (It's corny enough, isn't it, to equate the actual sensation of plummeting to one's death to the universal dream of doing same?) Oh, he's afraid, or at least he's manifesting all the physical symptoms of abject fear: his bladder and sphincter dumped all cargo long ago, and his ticker, well, he wouldn't lay odds as to whether he'll splat or die of a heart attack first. This feeling, this feeling, though, it snatched away abject terror, it snuffed the prayer bubbling magmatic on his tongue: Attention, passengers, flight 3:16 will be delayed.
What he feels is--it's strange--as he plunges into and out of dishwater clouds, outplummeting the eighth of an inch of drizzle due to dust… probably, oh, the St. Louis area, sure, he remembers crossing the Mississippi just minutes ago… what he feels isn't terror, or remorse, or rapture, what he feels is the sloppy needle kisses of unborn rain, hissing fetal knives, frozen steam. And he wishes someone else had shot from the rear of the plane, a co-plummeter also on his/her way to the lavatory, someone he could shout to--all of someone, he's seen plenty of parts of someones. They could scream together like kids witnessing the impossible attained, experiencing it, the first time you rode your bike without training wheels, that feeling. Never mind how many times you'd seen it done before, never mind your older brother and his bike, no, the first time you did it, that weightlessness tethered only to a banana seat and petal grit, your body knew implicitly that such an act had never been contemplated, much less attempted, much least accomplished. And when you let go of the bars and soared, wobbling like an albatross taking flight? Forget about it. Virgin territory. Your own little brother in sodden pull-ups, watching in awe. And you there screaming at your parents on the porch, Mom with a hand over her heart, He's not--but he is, he is, and when he settles back and dismounts without spilling, without skinning his knees or busting his skull, she claps and runs into the yard and sweeps him up, so proud. So relieved.
What a feeling--that a man can fall from five miles up! And cynics sneer It's all been done.
That's what he wishes for--someone to share it, scream it, this insistent lapping, these million tickling puppy tongues--even if, sure, no one could possibly hear him up here, even if the words only flitted away to join the rest of the captive hot air melting the icecaps. Still they'd scream: "It's raining up! It's raining up!" Like six-year-olds, hands-free and wobbling. Together alone, for the first time.
Ever.
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