Joy Ride
The sun rolled over the tip of the wing, edging itself into a position that shielded a view to the ground. The sky clear and crisp, Dorothy felt as if she could walk out onto the wing, spread her arms and let the force of the air guide her to her destination. As she daydreamed with the brilliant sun pounding in through her window, and the sun glaring of the wing like still water bouncing the sunshine into her face, the plain dipped on her side, shaking her back into reality. She and the other passengers had only been in the air a manner of ten minutes. The only dipped wing that needed to occur was right after take-off, and when preparing to round for a landing. In all the flights she had taken from D.C. to Fort Wayne, there had only been one other time a pilot had dipped a wing — to veer from a near miss. Granted, she didn’t fly often, and never studied all the terms, but she knew this flight well enough. This flight was a well welcomed addition a few years ago, having to either take a flight to Indy or Chicago, then have a lay over before boarding another flight into Fort Wayne, or renting a car to drive home. Fort Wayne, somehow, had became a popular stop. She remembered the days of Bearfield before Fort Wayne became fancy and changed the name of the airport to Fort Wayne International. Now, the airport services over 5,000 passengers a day, and the community felt that the name had to be more grandiose. What had they named it? The new name always escaped her.
The wing dipped again, and now, a trail of gray streamed from the top of the wing, ever so lightly. She could still see D.C. below. Her heart flooded her throat, her lungs attempted to suck in air. She sat in a static stare with her mouth unable to speak. But someone else did it for her: “Tom? Is that normal?” the lady in front of her pointed, pressing her index finger against the thick glass. Tom, leaning forward to view the wing completely, shook his head and called for the stewardess: “Miss, MISS!” he snapped his fingers in the air. The young lady, who couldn’t have been much more than out of high school, slowly, and a little perturbed, came walking over with a ‘please the customer smile’. Tom pointed. The young lady looked, squinted, then hurriedly left for the cock pit.
Again, the plane dipped, deep and hard, shaking the passengers out of their seats, at least those who had unseatbelted. That was one thing she was never able to do, undo her seatbelt while in flight. She didn’t use the restroom, she didn’t take any drinks except water, and never had a snack. If she was going down, she was going down with some cushion below her, and firmly attached to her.
A few more expressions of aspiration began to break out as the stream of gray thickened. Like fools running to a burning building to watch occupants jump from windows and firemen spray an inferno, the people on the right side of the plane began to plod over to the left to see the river of gray. She yelled out: “Don’t help bring us down, you fools! Back to your seats!” The plane lurched, then the wing dipped, passengers scrambled and screamed for their seats, pushing each other out of the way. It looked like a mass of gnats, and for some reason, Dorothy chuckled, imagining large gnats swarming through the sky in a clear driven plane as it dove for the ground. She slapped herself. What was she thinking, she was on this flight! But nerves always got the better of her, always finding the humor in whatever was happening when everything was going wrong.
The stewardess voice appeared as a luminous sheet of metal: “Please stay calm,” while her voice was anything but calm; “Please return to your seats and seatbelt yourself in. We will be making an emergency landing at (D.C. Airport).” The air mask dropped from above as the engine whined loud, the smoke blocking out the cool bounce of sun that had existed, knocking everyone forward jerkingly. Dorothy imagined the stewardess thrown to her ass, her pretty, petite, uncushioned ass that she wiggled in front to the male passengers as they boarded. It never failed, she was always on the flight with this flippity girl to Fort Wayne. She chuckled again. Why did she even think about that now? It didn’t matter what type of gal she was, the girl was going to die too. But she remembered how the stewardess would ignore the woman, unless she was older, as in elderly. Dorothy never dealt with her because she never asked for anything, she had her water filled immediately upon boarding the plane by stepping into first class and asking the steward there to fill her water. She liked the steward, he was well managed, well managed as in suitably sculpted, and not afraid to show his upbringing of manners. His manners weren’t taught to him by some schooling done for a flight attendant, he learned them from years of guidance. She could always tell the difference. Still, such manners meant that he could also fool you into believing his sincereness. A shame he isn’t on this flight every time I fly. She shook her head, wondering what the possibility was of meeting him somewhere on the ground, but there was no chance of that now, was there?
All of her thinking had managed to keep her from feeling the slow build up of force pressing in on her chest. When the pressure had become great enough, this is when she came out of her wandering mind. Shouldn’t she be thinking about her family, having loving flashes of memories, her life swimming in front of her, swallowing her up as death approached? “Even Bayh International,” she blurted out. Why in the hell do I remember it now! And why did Fort Wayne believe this name was more prestigious than Fort Wayne International? She couldn’t think of a thing that the man did to make him sooooo outstanding.
She hated D.C., she admitted to herself as the force began to take her breath away. She could feel her cheeks being pulled back. Shouldn’t we’ve hit ground by now? Then she felt the thud, or heard the thud, but it felt strange, like a small bump on the head. Everyone was screaming, everyone’s lungs filling up with air after some relief from the pressure pressing in on their chest. Then another thud, a little harder. Her mind went to a skipping stone because the thuds closer and closer together, until the last final jerk forward, her abdomen suck into her back and released, nearly making her puke, the lady next to her doing so.
The plane began to fill up with smoke, seatbelts clicking — coming undone, and passengers stumbling to exits. She kept repeating, “I survived a crash only to be burned alive.” Passengers were walking to exits, but not making it to the exits, most of them joking and loosing oxygen, passing out into the isle way. Dorothy bent to the floor of the plane and reach out in front of her. The seat in front had enough space to crawl under it. She began her progress, only to find that she had to snack her shoulders through the space allotted at the front of the seat. This would take too long. She would choke to death before managing the exit. Then a rather odd sensation engulfed her, she began to sway, as if she was in a rowboat. Passengers screamed; those who had not passed out from lack of oxygen yet. All the voices came from the floor. In the distance, she heard a baby crying. Grabbing the handles of the seat she just crawled under, she managed to place herself in the empty seat, belt herself in, place her head between her knees, and wait. The plane rolled, passengers screamed more, body parts hit her, she heard a creak, then small crackling sounds, some screams became distant, while other screams were of pain, not fear, and finally the cabin was free of smoke from a large gap that appeared three seats before her. Freedom!
Realizing her escape was visible, she noticed that the flames leaped before her as the wing slid before the exit. She wasn’t dying here. She would jump through the flames, she would run through the flames, she would lurch around the edge of the broken plane to escape. Many others had the same idea. She watched as her hands fidgeted with the seatbelt. “Damn this thing!” Pulling and pulling, the belt broke free, her elbow not hitting the wall of the plane, not the window of the plane, but jamming into the space where the window should be. Listening to the screams of passengers as they took the leap, the run, the slithering edge, she began her ascent through the window. About half way out, she felt hands upon her legs, pushing her, pushing faster than she could adjust herself for the fall to the ground. “Wait! Slow up! There’re sharp objects every —” She fell just inches from a broken piece of the wing that had wedged itself into the ground, looking much like Washington Monument. The passenger who had shoved her out was not careful. She watched, seeing the progress like a film in slow motion, her actions just as slow to help deflect his body from the danger, from the death apparatus awaiting him, falling back first onto the steel monument. She heard his skin rip, his ribs being scraped, shattered, and broke. His head rested on her left ankle. His breathing harsh, gurgling; his chest attempting to make him breathe. She gasped just as the wing exploded, metal and bodies flying through the air. Parts of her skin stung like a swarm of bees had attacked her. Then all was gone.
Maybe it was only minutes that she lay next to the dead man. No matter, she could not move. Her arm was pinned to the ground by a large piece of shrapnel. She couldn’t feel her arm, she only knew this by attempting to get up and being unable, looking over to her right to see herself pinned down. In fact, she couldn’t feel much of anything except her skin tingling like millions of bee stings. As she lay, waiting for death, or, she hoped, for help, she inspected what she could see. After some brief exploration of what was in sight, she imagined the decent of the plane, realizing what had happened. The thuds that came as a skipping stone was the plane touching the tops of buildings, skimming the top of them, slowing the speed of the fall to allow the plane to sink, just as a skipping stone. Miracles of miracles, each building was a story or two shorter than the previous. The plane landed at the edge of waterway, a deep waterway that had not been completed yet. The digging had only been done. She knew this trench; she had a part in the planing to alleviate runoff water that would flood low income families living on the first two floors of the buildings which had slowed the decent of the plane. This runoff came from the business district where corporate headquarters for the company she worked for was. She had fought hard, almost loosing her job, but her strategy and stubbornness won her the respect of many people, and gave her the prestige she needed to further help those who are often smashed by the big man’s thumb. As she inspected her perspective even further, she concluded the plane had separated during its roll, the one wing that stayed attached finally severing itself, releasing the balance that had kept the plane at the top of the gully that the passengers now found themselves in. She also concluded that the movement of the people helped the plane to also become unbalanced. She sung with joy as she realized that the sun still shined. She would not drown.
