Ghosts of Florence Pass (3 page)

He set the cap on a rock beside him and sniffed the contents of the bottle and then lowered the bottle to his lap and thought. It smelled of alcohol and he wondered if the bottle wasn’t meant for drinking at all but was intended for some purpose of the plane’s operation but then he smelled it again and he knew it was the smell of whiskey which was what his father mixed with water sometimes and drank. He thought about this.

He was drunk David, he said. The pilot was drunk and flew us into a mountain and killed our mother and father the son of a bitch.

John Parker started to cry and he screamed and cursed the pilot and he held the bottle out from his body and his hand was shaking and he looked at the bottle like it was a bomb going to explode. He set the bottle down and crawled across the rocks and snow to where the pilot had been killed by being smashed inside the cockpit.

You killed them you killed them, he screamed at the tissue and blood and bone that used to be the pilot. You fucking drunk asshole.

He rose to his knees and picked up a stone from the mountain and threw it into the cockpit and it bounced off the crumpled metal there and fell to the floor. He threw another stone and it struck the place where the pilot’s stomach had been but was now an empty cavity because the pilot’s viscera had come out and hung uncoiled to the floor and so the stone was swallowed by the cavity and disappeared.

Fuck you you drunk piece of shit, John Parker screamed. 

He threw stones at the pilot and screamed and cursed him until his strength failed and he fell crumpled onto the flattened surface of the boulder he was on. He lay there crying and his leg and arm and insides and head were all in pain from the exertion of throwing stones and cursing the dead pilot. John Parker pressed against his stomach with his hand and sat up and turned his back to the pilot that had been drunk and killed his mother and father and made his brother unconscious when he crashed the plane. He ate some snow and then he crawled to his brother and rubbed snow over his dried lips and he let some of it melt and run into his brother’s mouth and then he pressed some more of it against his brother’s head which was still warm.

John Parker sat against the plane and groaned with the effort because his insides hurt more than his leg or his arm or his neck or his head. He looked at his brother thinking.

You’re lucky, he said. You get to sleep until they come.

He thought some more and then told his brother that he didn’t think that he would be able to get the first aid kit from the wreckage and that even if he could there probably wouldn’t be anything in it that would help much. He said he was sorry for using up his energy by throwing stones at the pilot and yelling at him and that when he got his strength back he would look for their phones but he couldn’t right now. He said the best thing to do now would probably be to stay calm and wait for the rescuers to come that would be able to fix what was wrong with them and then he said that they would surely be here before he could find their phones anyway.

John Parker closed his eyes and thought about the time his mother was yelling at his father for having sex with her sister and about how his father had been drunk during the fight and how he got so mad at his mother that he punched his fist through the plaster of the kitchen wall. He had broken some bones in his hand and the skin was torn away in spots but he didn’t seem to notice and just kept on yelling.

Why are they still married, he said to his brother who was lying on the mountain before him with a bump on his head and black and blue eyes.

He thought about this question and about what his brother would say if he wasn’t mute with unconsciousness and then figured he would say it was for them. So they wouldn’t come from a broken home and have to live on regulated schedules in shitty apartments. Then John Parker thought about what he would say in response to that which would probably be something like it would be better to come from a broken home than to come from a home where people scream and cry and fight with each other all night and punch holes in walls and have sex with people they’re not supposed to. He figured his brother would respond to this by saying that there was more to it than meets the eye and that it has to do with rumors and appearances and such and that they were probably going to wait until their kids were grown and out of the house before getting a divorce and that he should stop being a nancy and just suck it up because he only has to wait four more years. The thought of his brother saying that made John Parker angry with him and he wanted to say to him that none of this made any sense and that it was all stupid and nobody should have to live like that and that it sounded like he was giving up but he didn’t say any of this because his brother hadn’t actually said anything because he was unconscious.

He thought about all of this as he picked up the pilot’s bottle of whiskey and smelled it. He took a sip because it wasn’t the whiskey that was bad it was the pilot that was bad and he thought that maybe it could make his insides hurt less like it had made his father’s hand not hurt when he punched the wall. It tasted terrible and burned on the way down and it made him cough but after a time he took a bigger drink and then set the bottle down.

They’ll be here soon David, he said.

He looked at his leg and there was no blood coming from his wound anymore and he wondered what would happen if he took the tourniquet off because Mr. Frederickson had said that when you put tourniquets on you sometimes lose the part below them and he didn’t want to lose a part of his leg. Then he thought about how the wound was still open and deep and wet and that if he took off the pressure he would be in trouble so he tightened the tourniquet by one turn instead which hurt so he took another drink of whiskey.

He rolled up his sleeve and looked at his arm and felt sick from the appearance of it. This didn’t make much sense since he had seen the pilot’s body turned inside out and that should be a lot worse but he thought that maybe since he was looking at himself it was different. This made sense he thought and he took another drink. He touched the bone where it had been forced through the flesh of his arm and thought about the novelty of that. Touching a part of your body that was never meant to be looked at let alone touched. He thought about that and laughed a little because it sounded like the time sister Helen told her Sunday school class at saint bernard’s about the sins of playing with yourself and how you could be blinded and grow hair on your palms and how you shouldn’t do it or even think about doing it unless you want to be cursed with eternal and burning damnation in hell. He laughed some more about that because he found the memory of it quite funny and when he touched the bone in his arm again he found that funny as well but when he thought about it he couldn’t figure why that would be funny but he didn’t care so he took another drink of whiskey to which he said blood of christ and then he set the bottle between his thighs and held it there laughing.

The sun was behind the plane in its arc over the world and John Parker was in the shade where he sat drinking and laughing and he thought that he should be cold but he wasn’t. What he was was tired and so he screwed the cap back onto the bottle with the scrap of tubing for leverage and then he put it in the rocks and rested his head against the plane and closed his eyes.

Getting late, he said. We better go David. We’ll be late for supper.

He laughed at that because there was nothing else he could think of to do. He opened his eyes and looked at his brother lying there under his sleeping bag on the side of a mountain and his head was spinning and he was dizzy but that was okay because it didn’t hurt anymore and neither did his arm or his leg and his insides only hurt a little and then he closed his eyes again.

Nighty night, he said. Then he fell asleep.

***

John Parker opened his eyes and it was dark and cold and his head and arm and leg hurt and his insides ached unbearably. He could see his brother lying there because the moon had risen in the night and was casting a glow on the green nylon fabric of his brother’s sleeping bag and his face was visible as well and it was outlined and discernible. His mother and father stood by his brother one on each end of him and John Parker could make out their features as well and they were unbroken and free of any marks of injury from the crash and they smiled at him. He knew that they were ghosts and he knew that they were going away and he knew that they were going to take his brother David with them and so John Parker screamed at them.

No, he said. You can’t take him! Please don’t take him!

He cried and shook with grief in the cold and his breath showed in the moonlight as he pleaded with his mother and father.

You’re a brave young man, his father said. He was lucky to have you.

No. Please.

You took care of him the best you could, his mother said. We’re so proud of you.

No.

We love you.

No. Please leave him, John Parker said.

***

The sun was rising and it was clear and cold on the mountain and a helicopter was circling in the valley below. It followed a wandering and methodical course up the side of the mountain and then it crested the pass where the plane was and hovered there for a moment and then broke away. At a flat spot in the pass covered with crushed rock and moss the helicopter set down and the pilot cut the engine and two men stepped out carrying large plastic boxes that were their medical kits and they took a litter from the helicopter and carried it with them each man to an end. They stepped and hopped among the scree and boulders and snow on the pass transporting their burdens with caution to guard against a fall. When they reached the place on the mountain where the plane had crashed they stood for a moment in the sun and the cold looking at the situation and thinking about what had happened and they looked at each other as if neither one of them could believe his eyes and then they put down the litter and set to their work.

I’ll check these two, one of the men said. You take inside the plane.

Right.

The man that had been assigned to the plane went first to the cockpit and saw the pilot and his condition resulting from the crash and he saw that there were stones in the plane and in the remains of the pilot’s body and he stepped back.

Jesus, he said.

What?

Pilot’s DOA.

The man that had been assigned to the plane looked behind the pilot but he couldn’t see into the cabin because of the tangle of metal and wires and debris that was piled up and because of how the floor had buckled up there and blocked his view. He went back to the hole in the side of the plane and he had been carrying his medical kit and so he set it on the floor inside and looked around before lifting himself in. The two passengers were dead in their seats with their seatbelts still attached and their bodies were frozen in the attitudes of their final passing. He checked them for signs in the manner of his profession though he knew what he would find and in doing so he looked at their faces and saw that their eyes were open as if in reaction to the ambush of some specter in the dark. He closed their eyes and shook his head at the tragedy of the situation and hoped for the best regarding the two outside whatever the best outcome in this situation was.

Parents are DOA, he said. What about the kids?

The man assigned to the plane stepped outside and the plane rocked and creaked on the rocks with his shifting weight and he took his kit from inside and went to where his partner was. The partner was bent over the one that was lying on a sleeping pad by the canoe and the partner had placed a mask over his nose and mouth that was attached to a canister of gas and the partner had pulled the sleeping bag away that had covered him and was putting a needle into his arm.

This one’s still with us, the partner said. But his vitals are weak. We’ve gotta move. The other one’s DOA.

The man assigned to the plane looked at the one that was DOA and sitting up against the side of the plane. He saw that he was holding a metal bottle that was open and that he had a tourniquet around his leg and that his arm was broken with a compound fracture and he thought about what had happened and tried to comprehend it. He went to where they had set the litter on the snow by the upright and broken pontoon and he picked it up and carried it over to his partner and by then the one assigned to the plane had worked out that the one that was DOA and sitting against the plane had saved the life of the one that was still alive.

Christ this is something isn’t it, he said.

Hell of a thing, the partner said.

Is he responsive?

No, the partner said. The coma probably saved his life.

Among other things.

Among other things, the partner said.

The partner looked at the one that was DOA and sitting against the plane for a moment and then he looked at the one that was still alive and went back to work on him and spoke to the man he had assigned to the plane in a low voice.

You believe in ghosts?

What?

I asked if you believe in ghosts.

The man assigned to the plane thought about that and said I guess a man has to believe in something now and then.

The partner nodded and said that he concurred on the point.

While the partner attached a bag of intravenous fluid to the needle he had inserted the man assigned to the plane saw that there were tears coming from the corners of the eyes of the one that was still alive and they were running down the side of his face and then he sat back on his heels and said oh fuck.