The airline service trolley is finally just a few rows away. I can’t make out whether the flight attendant is giving passengers whole cans of pop or if all we’re going to get is what fits in the squat disposable cup. I always ask for tonic water when I fly. I never touch the stuff on the ground: it’s bitter, but somehow has just as much sugar as cola. Something about flying makes me crave it, though. It looks like the flight attendant isn’t putting any ice in the cups. That doesn’t bode well. No ice almost always means you don’t get the whole can of pop. I hate trying to drink around those cumbersome ice cubes, but I’d rather suck my tonic through those cold obstacles than be cheated out of the whole refreshment. It’s rude, and wasteful, of the airline. I don’t imagine anyone else is going to ask for tonic water besides me. The flight crew will probably just end up tossing the can after we land, once it goes flat. Although, maybe the airline makes a killing on gin and tonics and they don’t want to waste too much on freeloaders like me. I’ve never bought a drink on a plane, I don’t get the impulse.
ArrauRRF! RoufRoufRouf! ARouPGH! “Oh god, I am so sorry, sorry about that, sorry, sorry everyone, Josephine here doesn’t usually do that kind of thing. Bad girl! Bad! Bad girl! Shh,” says a woman sitting in the row in front of me. She says it publicly, on behalf of her gooey-eyed little dog, to no one in particular. I sense the man sitting on my left looking at me, looking for an incredulous comrade. I rest my head against the closed plastic window cover. It feels hot on my bald head. Something about the heat makes me think the plastic shield is dangerous. Carcinogenic, maybe, or pathogenic, could be. I can’t decide which.I loosen my tie. rrrGRRuFF! ARFARFARF! We made it from St. Paul to– where are we? The flight map says we’re over the Michigan mitten’s thumb. Funny time for that dog to start yapping. Something must be in the air.
“A real service animal would never behave that way,” the man next to me says while staring through the seatback in front of him.
“Excuse me, sir,” a hazel eye appears in the crack between the window and middle seats, between the man and myself, “but you do know I can hear you, don’t you? It’s very disturbing.”
“And I am disturbed by your,” he pauses, loads, “emotional support animal.” I hope he drops this whole dog thing soon.
I turn back to the flight map. There’s a lot of flight left before we land in New York, four hundred and ninety seven miles to cover before– GRRRRrrrr… GRrRrRrR… HmHHm… HmHHmmm… HmmHmHmHm…GRRrrr… “Lady, are you going to do something about that dog or will I ha–” the plane lurches, the man’s head smacks against the unstowed seat back tray table, I’m weightless, there’s suddenly an extra dimension to move in, I’m out of my seat, I don’t know where, just up, somewhere in midair, really midair, like I’ve never been before, my head hits the roof, and I plummet back down, and rocket back up, and hit my head again. I feel woozy, maybe just from the impact, but it doesn’t feel like– the wall of the cabin comes out of nowhere and flanks me, the armrest and my hip-bone collide painfully. Is this turbulence? My stomach is cramping, it’s not just motion sickness, this is– I slam against the side of the cabin again, again, right on my hip, this can’t be turbulence, I’ve never been in turbulence like– “Hey, hey! Here! Hey! Here, here! Hey!” The man next to me is pawing at me, what’s he– his hands are around my shoulders, he’s holding something, what’s he– it’s yellow, an airmask, no, we can’t be– “Put this on!” He helps stabilize me in my seat while I adjust the mask to my face.
I quickly suck down a couple breaths, but the bitter flavor makes me reluctant to keep inhaling. I torque my seatbelt as hard as I can. The turbulence has died down to a more ordinary intensity, a mere rocking, it’s nothing to worry about now. *CrrCKBRzZZ* “Uhhhhh… Ladies and gentlemen this is your…uhhhhh… Captain? Should I say the captain part? Yes? Ok. Yeah, so this is your captain speaking. We are now at a safe altitude to breathe freely and, uhhhhh… Just now, in the cockpit, the window, windows… There was a breach of the, uh, some kind of object caused a breach and… We, uhhhhh… It’s been our pleasure to be your airline of choice today, thank you for choosing to fly with us… We’re… Yeah, uhhhhh… Ladies and gentlemen don’t be alarmed, we are… Stop it, no, shush, I’m telling them, get that airline script out of my face– Ladies and gentlemen we’re crashing, something went wrong, something must have gone wrong on the ground, or there was some kind of a severe bird strike, the cockpit windows were breached and because of– what does it say in the script? – because of explosive decompression the captain was, was sucked out of the airplane. In his efforts to, to, to I don’t know what– Ok. OKAY! – In his efforts to, to bring us to a safe altitude and, and to initiate a controlled descent, the co-captain put us in a downward trajectory, but he, he sustained mortal wounds and has peri– and is dead now, died. He died. The damage from the, the uh, the explosive decompression and, well there’s all this water coming out from under the cockpit door now, we must have hit a cloud after the windows blew out, the radios, nothing is working. Nothing is working. Nothing is working nothing is working nothing is workingnothingis…” *CrrCKBRzZZ*
It doesn’t seem like the plane is crashing. Sure, I feel a little pitched, a little pointed downwards, but only a little, only ever so slightly, I don’t– *tBIIIinGH!* *tBIIIinGH!* – The fasten seatbelt and no smoking lights both go out. ARoUph! RUPH! GRRufF! All the cabin lights go out, too. “Oh my God!” It’s a woman in the exit row on the opposite side of the plane. “Oh my God! OhmyGodohmyGod!” She’s screaming, but she sounds very far away, like she’s still on the ground. “Everyone with a window seat, o-o-o-open your– ouch!” She stands to address the entire cabin and bumps her head– “windows! O-open your w-windows!” I’m not sure what I want to do, would it maybe be better to– my neighbor leans over me and roughly pushes the plastic window cover up, breaking off a solid chunk as he does so. All I can see is a plume of smoke billowing from further up the plane; A few streaks of light sneak through the blackness. They look soft and distorted, slightly kaleidoscopic.
“Jesus! We must have sucked in a bird!”
“A goose!” ARouPGH!
“But it’s both sides!”
“Both engines!”
“It must have been a whole flock!”
“Those damned geese!”
“Those damned, silly geese!” It’s a young man’s voice, coming from a few rows back. Nobody laughs.
“You think– ouch!– You think this is funny, kid?” My neighbor stands and turns to address the joker. He’s tall, but his height does not help him appear intimidating here: His head hangs at a funny angle because of the overhead storage compartment’s protrusion.
“We’re not gonna die, man, there’s gotta be an airstrip or a lake or a river for us to land on. Like in Sully, man. You know, panic never–”
“But we don’t have a Sully!” a woman from somewhere on the left side of the plane interjects. “Weren’t you listening? The pilots, both of the pilots, the pilot and the co-pilot–”
“You don’t think there’s a protocol for this?” The young man digs in. “There’s gotta be a protocol for this. A company that does as much business, that has as much to lose as, this would be, like, a major controversy if this happened, there has to be a protocol–”
“What are you talking about?” A voice from further up the plane “planes go down literally all the time! Don’t you watch the news, kid?” A woman gets up and starts to make her way towards the back of the plane. She sashays accidentally because of the plane’s swaying. She tries one bathroom door, then the other. Both are locked. She turns around, she’s looking for something, she turns again, bends over, and vomits.
Her retching releases the entire plane. Wailing and crying and– HHHHmmm… HmmHmmHmmH… GrRrRrR… ARRoupfarrOUPH! – more vomiting and screaming commence en masse, all at once, in a great flying outpouring. “Literally all the time.” It might be the demise people, in general, are the most prepared for. Any of us could have seen this coming; at least one of us– rrrGRRuFF! AhRF! – must have. If anyone did, there’s no way they could have imagined the experience correctly, you can’t make this kind of thing up. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about dying in a plane crash. Dozens of times, probably. Dozens at least. I’ve never pictured it like this. My head is throbbing, my hip is killing me. I hear some mild clamoring in the aisle. The line for the bathroom stretches as far as I can see. I wonder what everyone plans on doing in there, and how much longer they’ll all be willing to wait.
“Excuse me? Do you have any peanuts?” It’s a dissonant voice, clearly filtered through adolescent shyness, addressing the row in front of me.
“Thanks–” ARFARF ARF! ARFARFARF! – “anyways,” a deep, textured voice responds to the silence. “C’mon princess.” I see the man wedge himself up in the order of the crowded aisle. His shirt doesn’t fit. It must be a relic from when he was bigger. It’s boxy and faded, the frayed glow of the checkered fabric gives away its age. Whether the shirt’s been elevated or relegated to travel duties now, I don’t know. A little girl clings to one of his empty belt loops. She can’t be more than eight, a little ball of tulle and taffeta– she’s wearing a fairy princess Halloween costume whose bottom hem is rough and ready.
“Excuse me?” The little girl repeats her question for our row. “Do you have any peanuts?” All three of us silently shake our heads, the action stresses my neck and I grimace. The girl looks up at her dad and smushes the heel of her free hand into one eye. She hangs her head, examines her palm, and lifts up a shorn eyelash for closer inspection. Her dad doesn’t look at her, but he tussles her hair and fills the legumeless vacuum, “don’t worry princess, I’ll get you some peanuts if it’s the la– I’ll find you some peanuts, I promise.” They turn their backs on us. Ragged elastic wings criss-cross the girl’s shoulders, and I see an epipen protruding from her dad’s back pocket.
*Ding!* ARF! ArrauRRF! RRrrrAuRPH! ARFARF ARF! ARouPGH!
*Ding!* ARF! ArrauRRF! RRrrrAuRPH! ARFARF ARF! ARouPGH!
“Is there an air marshal on the flight?!”
*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING!* ARF! ArrauRRF! RRrrrAuRPH! ARFARF ARF! ARouPGH! “Get his, get him– Ah! Just get him off of me!” The commotion is coming from first class, they must really be yelling up there if I can hear them.
“Get your hands off me, man! We’ve been making eyes at each other since the security line– Hey, c’mon, c’mon, this has– Hey, hey! I said get off of me, man! Stay out of this, this is just between me and her! Baby come on, tell them to leave us alone, c’mon.”
“Get him away from me!”
“Oh come on, look, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s going to be fine. Want me to leave some money to someone on the ground for you? Whatever you want, c’mon, c’mon. I’ll leave a voice memo, I’ll write an IOU and swallow it, or put it wherever, whatever you want, look, look at my watch, Yachtmaster two, Rolex, I’m good for the money, I’m good, I’m a good– Hey I said leave us alone! Look at me, c’mon, you could do a lot worse, what else could you want? Hey, I said get off me man, get off of me! Get–”
“Does anyone have rope?”
“Ties! Can we get some ties up here at the front?”
“Gag that creep, there are kids on this flight!”
“Pervert!”
“Lock him in the bathroom!” The commentary is coming from all around the cabin.
“Beat his ass!”
“Let her beat his ass!”
“Let her knock him out!”
“Let her throw him out!” ARouPGH!
“Hey, yeah!”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah, throw him out!”
“Throw him out!”
“Throw him out, throw him out, throw him out…” My neighbor is screaming the mantra, practically foaming at the mouth. He turns towards me.
“Throw him out, throw him out, right? Right? Right?” He says, mouth and eyes wide and wet.
“Th-throw, throw him out, throw him out…” I offer meekly, and cough– aghm-ACK!-hgm! The man sticks a finger into my chest.
“You don’t need that anymore, do you?” His finger’s on my tie.
“O-of course not,” I say, “I’ll just go drop it off up front, mind if I squeeze past you?”
“I’ll pass it up for you.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.” I pull the tail all the way through and hand him the undone knot.
“Hey,” he pushes on the seatback in front of him, “dog-lady, pass this up front, will yah?” She doesn’t respond.
“Hey,” he pushes again, a little harder, “it’s bad enough we have to listen to that little monster of yours, just pass this up will you? Make amends for your bringing that untrained, annoying–”
“Fine, finefinefine, just,” her hazel eye appears again, now red and puffy, “fine, just leave us in peace, please.” GRRRrrARph!
The chanting dies down, but almost a dozen people have migrated over to my row, no doubt attracted by my neighbor’s fervor and volume. “Something has to be done,” my neighbor is saying, “about that guy. We can’t go down as bystanders, we have to…” he’s blustering loudly. It hurts my head. I try to tune him out; I check the window, not much doing out there, just the occasional fuzzy shaft of sunlight penetrating the smokescreen. I mash the seatback infotainment screen controls on my armrest: The flight map flickers on for a few moments, but not long enough for me to get a picture of where we are. I rest my head against the broken shield again, it’s gone cold, and the jagged plastic bothers me now. I try to reposition, but my neck is stiff and everything is uncomfortable. I try a few more angles, and catch the whispers of the woman sitting behind me: “…and, and cousin Carol, I just want to say that I’ve always been jealous of that hot dip you make for Easter every year, and I’d be just honored if you would serve it at my funeral, and, and Jenny, dear sweet Jenny, if you could arrange for your special friend, that lovely girl who you brought to the barbecue who sang Candle in The Wind– RRrrrAuRPH! RRrrrF! rrrRRPH!– on the karaoke, if you could arrange for her to sing I Will Survive that would just be…” she must be leaving a voice memo. I scan the cabin again. Several more people have come over to listen to my neighbor. The crowd around us is now completely clotting the aisle.
There’s no cell service, and if the in-flight wifi ever worked it doesn’t anymore. I’ve got nothing to do. By the time my ticket was scanned at the gate, all the overhead compartments were filled, so I had to check my carry-on. I didn’t fuss, I didn’t mind; I figured, since it was a short flight, I wouldn’t need any distractions. I figured I’d just nap. I’m usually a good sleeper. I’ve slept through this particular flight path more than once. I fly–HmHmHmHmHm… GrgRGrRgGrRg… aRfARouph! – flew, used to fly a lot for work. I was a NAGPRA coordinator. Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. I’m not Indigenous, not even a little, I’m pretty sure I’m Polish, mostly. I was a few years into a PhD in Anthropology before I learned what a weird and problematic discipline that was, but by then it was too late and too expensive to switch fields. Given the circumstances of my qualifications, being a NAGPRA coordinator seemed like the best gig I was going to get. The pay is good enough, and, because it’s a government job, the benefits are great. I’m just grateful not to be teaching. Most people with Anthropology PhDs just end up teaching slightly younger people who want slightly more specialized Anthropology PhDs. The NAGPRA work can be tedious, though, and as sad as anything. Depressing, really. So few objects ever get back where they belong, to say nothing of the human remains squirreled away in private collections.
I was flying to New York to arbitrate the return of a moccasin. The Lenapehoking of Delaware used to play a game called The Moccasin Game at funerals. There’s a source that claims they’ve found a moccasin used in the last game ever played in the tribe’s original territory, at Billie Weston’s funeral in 1894. Weston’s descendants want the moccasin returned to them, but they were relocated to Minnesota before the turn of the twentieth century, which means the moccasin would need to be moved from the local museum where it’s currently being held on Long Island to Minnesota, which is a massive insurance liability that nobody involved can afford to cover. Plus, the family can’t adequately preserve the object, so they need to find a museum willing to take it, but most museums don’t want to touch it: they don’t want to move it so far away from where it’s supposed to be, so the family isn’t having any luck. My role in all of this is, well I never quite figured– ARF! ArrauRRF! RRrrrAuRPH! ARFARF ARF! ARouPGH!
“Enough is enough!” My neighbor bellows and pushes the seat back in front of him. “We are trying to work out what to do about that pervert up there, what kind of people we’re going to be here at the end, and we cannot think straight with that mutt yapping! Are you going to shut it up, or am I going to have to?”
“Please, just, leave us alone, she’s not hurting anyone, are you Josephine? No, see you’re just, she’s just doing the most natural thing in the–”
“Well it’s not natural for her to be flying it all, which is why real service animals are supposed to be trained. I mean, for God’s sake lady, don’t you feel any shame? That you’re subjecting us, in our final moments, to that dog’s yapping, when it’s not even a real service animal? God, you are one selfish, selfish, selfish–”
“Selfish what?”
“Bitch.”
“Oh, there it is, you know–”
“You, and that dog too, literally!”
“Well! I will have you know that, despite your, your merely loud insistence that Josephine here is not a real service animal–”
“She isn’t!”
“She is!”
“Then why is she so poorly trained?”
“Wha– the plane is going down, she was obviously trying to warn us! Weren’t you Josephine? Weren’t you trying to warn us? She could tell, couldn’t you baby doll, couldn’t you tell something bad was going to happen, that’s why you started barking, that’s–”
“She’s not fucking Lassie she’s–” ahROUPH! ROUPHROUPHAHROUPH! ahhRouPH! GrGrGrGrrrRRR… GGGrrRR! – “you know what? I’ve had it. I don’t have time for this. We,” he looks around at the sweaty faces which surround him, “don’t have time for this,” the crowd nods and murmurs its assent impatiently. The man stands and steps over the guy sitting in the aisle seat. He lords over the row in front of us, ratcheting his spine to its full length under the aisle’s higher ceiling. “Give me the dog.” Nobody says anything. “Give me–” GRRRRrrrr… GRrRrRrR… “that dog, lady.” She sits up and looks around. Some gentle coughing intrudes from further back in the cabin and gives me an excuse to avoid her hazel gaze. A juvenile gasp follows, coupled with some gravelly cooing, and now everyone has an excuse to ignore what’s happening in front of us.
“Feel okay, princess?”
“Mhm, my throat’s still a little scratchy though.”
“Worth it?
“Yeah! That was the tastiest thing I’ve ever had!”
“What do we say to the nice lady?”
“Thank you for sharing your Reese’s Pieces.”
“Reese’s Pieces, honey, Reese’s.”
“Reese’s Pieces?”
“Yep, just like that, so it rhymes.”
“Thank you for sharing your Reese’sPieces.”
“What, hey–” the diversion doesn’t last for long– “no, no, hey, get your, stop, stop!” ARF!ARF!ARF!ARF!ARF!ARF!ARF! “No! No, no, nonono, stop it!” The man is already trudging down the aisle, holding the dog by the scruff of its neck.
“Gah! Little shit bit me! Service animal my ass…” He grumbles out of earshot.
“Stop him! She’ll behave! Somebody stop him!” ARF!ARf!arf!arf!arf!arf… *WHooOOooSH!* *BPTNCK!* Silence. Dead silence. The man walks back towards us, his gait wobbly.
“Anyways, like I was saying, before,” the guy in the aisle seat of our row evacuates so the man can retake his seat, then scampers off. My neighbor retakes his middle seat. Nobody moves in on the empty seat beside him. “Like I was saying, this is a grave issue, and we’ve got to,” the edges of the crowd have thinned, and the faces in the center of the clot are no longer focused on my neighbor, they’re swiveling, surveying, looking for something. “We’ve got this opportunity here, this chance, to do the right thing, to march up through that curtain and prove,” he keeps tugging at his collar, his hands are shaking, the crowd starts to disperse, he doesn’t seem to notice, he just goes on rambling, “what kind of people we are in these, in these trying times, this high pressure moment. We can’t be bystanders, we can’t let that that pervert think he,” he looks up, he’s been almost completely abandoned, it’s unclear if the few straggles are still with him or have just lost their seats, “he has to answer for what he’s,” his voice is beginning to quaver, “this is our last, our last chance to show, to prove, to be,” nobody’s listening to him anymore. “I’m, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’msorryI’msorryI’m–” he stands and leans over the seat in front of him, awkwardly swiping at the woman, whose face is now buried deep in her knees. “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” he tries to grab her hands, tears falling from of his stoic face onto the freshly bleached roots of her cowlick, “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI…” he says, his words directed indiscriminately, his apology directed at everyone. “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI…” it seems like he’ll be apologizing for the rest of his life.
I check the window again. Whatever was smoking must have burnt up, because I can see clearly now: We’re coming in hot, we’re thrillingly low, passing over some marshland, maybe the edge of a lake, we’ll clear the water, which is good, the last thing I want is to drown, nice and quick, that’s how I want it to go, that’s how I want to go, nice and quick, our angle seems aggressive now, we’re really pointed down, I think I can make out where we’ll hit, maybe in the middle of some fields, the rows of crops are all neatly arranged, I think they’re grape vines, and there, right at the edge, where the ordered plots give way to the trees, in the clearing, some coyotes, they must be coyotes, are waiting patiently, some are even laying on their bellies, wildly nonchalant, this really must happen all the time.