Authors: David Gilbert
Kate nodded.
"Hey, I'm just telling you, that's all. No big deal."
Norman said that the end was near. The human cycle had reached its culmination and now, after rescue breathing and choking,
they had to learn how to save an adult from a heart attack. The manikins were claimed by a member of each team. "Here we go,"
Shauna said. "A real hard guy, like on
Baywatch."
"Yes," Kate said.
His red jogging suit was in tatters, the sleeves frayed, the polyester stained, the zipper broken so that a perfectly sculpted
torso was revealed with a level of immodesty popular in the 1960s. This false man was not a prime candidate for a heart attack.
This was a man who cared about his body. This was a man who didn't know hope because events always turned out for the best.
This was a man who swam laps in the ocean and lay on the beach without a towel.
Look at me, oh pretty girls,
this man seemed to say, as the beads of water dissolved into a briny tan. And the pretty girls, lined shoulder to shoulder,
watched him, each imagining a possible match.
Look at him, just look at him, if only I could be sand.
But maybe thirty years later, this man would convert into an unhealthy, tense version of his youthful self, a man clinging
to his own failed invention no matter the circumstances, a man shunning the vulnerability of anything shared. And at some
point, after so much divestment, this man would sneak up into the attic and shuffle through old love letters, picking out
those he once wrote in a state of exuberance, letters too embarrassing, too revealing, too weak, scrawled in a cold barracks.
No, these letters had nothing to do with him now, this man would tell you without the slightest trace of contrition, and yes,
these letters were balled up and thrown out with the other stuff of a finished day.
Shauna said, "You go first, honey."
"You sure?"
"I can give you tips."
"All right." Kate tied her hair with an elastic, then she shook the manikin and asked, "Are you okay?" She called out for
someone to help. She checked for all she had to check. She dialed 911. She knelt next to him, the heel of her hand on his
breastbone. She numbered each compression, "One and two and three . . ." until she hit fifteen. She bent over his face. She
titled his head upward. She pinched his nose and sealed her lips over his mouth. Two full breaths. She looked for his chest
to rise and fall; listened and felt for escaping air; searched for a pulse. She did everything by the book, hoping it was
enough to restart a life. "One and two and three. . . . " All around her she heard people counting and exhaling in a rounding
rhythm. Two full breaths. She concentrated on her own work and focused on rote memory. "One and two and three. . . ." Of course
nothing was happening, nothing would happen, this was make-believe, but then again, the world of melodrama did not observe
the laws of cause and effect. Two full breaths. Maybe at some point a faint pulse would push against her fingers, and this
young man would stir, and he would smile. "One and two and three. . . . " And he would tell her all those near-death cliches,
the white light, the tunnel, and she would pretend that they were new and wonderful, like a husband and wife walking down
the beach, the surf crashing, the water a silver-white mercury, the sun dipping into the horizon, the sky showing them, just
briefly, what was hidden inside clouds. Two full breaths.
I WENT TO Mississippi to kill a turkey, it being April and the time to kill turkeys. Not that I'm much of a hunter, just a
dabbler in such manly pursuits. Once or twice a year I go to a sporting reserve in upstate New York and shoot pen-raised birds,
pheasant and chucker mostly. These birds are set out in the morning, hidden within the brush like Easter eggs for bloodthirsty
children. Hours later you walk through fields with a guide, a few springer spaniels up ahead sniffing and pissing and squirting
a constant skid of diarrhea. The guide tells you, "I think they're on to something," pretending that a wildness is involved
instead of a hand-placed precision. Soon the dogs freeze, tails stiff, paws lifted and limp—no matter the circumstances, a
beautiful thing to behold. The guide whispers, "Okay, okay, okay," and arranges you for a clear shot. The overall scene is
briefly spoiled when he's forced to flush the tame birds by kicking and yelling at them, but when you put the gun to your
shoulder and pull the trigger and see the immediate effect—a pheasant freezes, then tumbles to the ground—well, it is satisfying.
So I packed a duffel bag for the trip south, breaking down my 12-gauge shotgun and slipping the separate bits into old athletic
socks, like some sort of assassin on a secret mission. I surrounded these cotton-encased sausages with innocuous polo shirts
and khaki pants, the condiments of a law-abiding citizen. Gretchen, my wife of two years, my second in six years, watched
me as I did this.
"You're so serious," she said.
"How's that?"
"Your face, it's like this is a science." She sat at the end of the bed, her face far from scientific though she benefited
from a certain pharmaceutical science. You really noticed it in her eyes. They wanted to be nervous, constantly scanning details
and questioning their particular relevance, but something in the pills held them from panic, kept them steady like hands restraining
a small wild animal.
I said to her, "Well, it's illegal. You know what happens if I
get
busted with this thing in an airport?"
"No."
"It's a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine and a few months in jail. Or something like that."
"Really?"
"Yes." Then I realized that this information might strain the limits of her medication, so I added, "But no one ever gets
caught.
Never. Not if you're careful."
"Oh."
"So don't worry."
"Okay." She picked up two pairs of socks, each tightly balled within itself. She weighed them with utmost concentration, her
upper lip curled and tucked over her lower teeth, an expression I recognized from her tennis-playing days. She used to have
a very nasty spin serve, a left-handed slice, and on ad points she would force you into the fence. But this was when her killer
instinct was aimed at others. She made a few juggling pantomimes, trying to figure out the basic mechanics between object
and air and self. I went to the bureau and grabbed some other socks.
"You sure you're going to be all right for the weekend?" I asked.
"What?"
"This weekend, are you going to be all right?"
"Oh, I've got things to do."
"Good. The plantation number is by the phone, just in case." I zipped up the duffel, feeling like a surgeon when he turns
a wound into a scar, then leaves the recovering patient behind. "Well, I'm off," I said.
"You sure are."
You shoot turkeys on the ground, in the head, as they strut in front of a replica of a hen, the hot blood of desire shading
their necks purple, drowning out all reason for the hope of a thrill. Sitting in the airport bar, my flight to Atlanta an
hour from boarding, a brief vision of blow-up sex toys played in my head, of lonely men, young and old, seeing a group of
helpless naked women lounging by the highway, their mouths finishing the perfect O of hello, their breasts better than saline
implants, their vaginas shaved. Of course these men would lock up their brakes and sprint for introductions, no matter if
married or not. And they'd never notice the lack of movement in the bodies or the ridge where the two plastic halves collide.
They'd probably be shot in the head as well. The clean kill of the lusty stupid.
I ordered another drink, rationalizing a double whiskey with a general fear of flying, not my fear, but the fear of the people
around me. Anxiety lit their faces with an ashen neon glow, the noble gas flickering thoughts of
We might die.
They treated the booths like the trenches of Verdun, and I was almost ready for a rendition of "La Marseillaise" before a
charge toward the gate. Maybe I'd sing "Wacht am Rhein" as historical counterpoint.
I rechecked my plane tickets: New York to Atlanta; Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi. During the layover I'd meet Wilson Plagett,
my host for the weekend, a college friend whose uncle owned a plantation teeming with wild turkeys. I had convinced Wilson
that a little hunting would do us both some good. "Blast the hell out of something," I told him on the phone.
"You think?" he said.
"Why not? I mean, why not?"
Wilson said, "Okay," his response so quick and casual that it briefly deflated my excitement and left me feeling small with
my idea of fun.
Over a loudspeaker a female voice announced the preboarding of my flight, for the clumsy young and the senior frail and the
privileged few. Some people reluctantly rose, strapping on their gear and tamping out their cigarettes, finishing their drinks.
The first wave. I waited for the third wave of final boarding.
I was sitting in the way back of the airplane, in the seats that can't recline, across from the bank of narrow bathroom stalls,
a sweet odor of antiseptic blue water wafting out with each entry and exit. A very bad situation. Now add babies. A slew of
them surrounded me, all newborns, wrapped so that they resembled linen props in a Broadway play. Their crying was incredible.
I could hear them in first class, but from that distance and in that atmosphere of civilized travel, I mistook them for some
sort of pneumatic device employed to restock the galley. As I got closer, I recognized the baldly human quality in the noise.
I trudged forward, my boarding pass held out in front of me, and I stared at its high number like a gambler who knows his
horse is a loser after the first furlong. I said, "Shit," just above a whisper, envying those in front of me who broke left
or right, cashing out, while I continued forward, busted. 46C. I stopped. The eight women who held the eight babies smiled
at me.
I found the nearest flight attendant and pleaded, "I can't sit back there, I mean, no way, it's a nightmare, almost a bad
joke, ha ha ha, but really I just can't."
"I'm sorry, sir, but it's a full flight." She was an older flight attendant, in her youth probably a stewardess, and she carried
the washed-out, overly made-up, seen-everything sheen of a service-industry veteran. These are women you don't fuck with.
Their dreams of being whisked off by executives have been dashed years ago, and their routes are no longer European hot spots
but East Coast hubs, and now they must wait on inelegant passengers while they yearn for a minor disaster to break the boredom
of the day.
I asked, "Is there anything in first class?"
"No. This is a full flight."
"Please. Anything."
"Sir, you're going to have to sit down. We're in our crosscheck." "Well I'm in the goddamn penalty box."
She almost grabbed me by the lapels in a shakedown of what's what. "Listen. If you don't want your seat, we have plenty of
standbys who'd kill to get on this flight. Okay?"
Heads on either side upturned as if a bride and groom were having a spat at the altar. Their discomfort subdued me. "I'm sorry,"
I said.
"That's all right. Just sit down."
"I will."
"Good."
"But I want to put in my order early for some whiskey. That's the least you can do."
And she smiled and showed me her wrinkles, along her eyes and mouth, and I knew I was with someone who understood desperation.
"I will make your flight as comfortable as possible."
"Thank you," I said.
Back at row 46 the baby-holding women still smiled, and I settled into the colic and tried to meditate, to breathe in and
out, to find transcendence in a hum, a loving mantra. No dice. So I took refuge in earthly distractions. I glanced at the
emergency pamphlet—the cartoon people with impossible cartoon composure—then at the in-flight magazine with its inane articles
on travel—"St. Louis: Gateway to Dreams"—and then at the book I had lugged with me, a history of warfare aptly titled
A History of
Warfare.
For the last month I'd been stuck on the Battle of Actium, the bookmark a flag of surrender. When the plane started to lumber
down the runway, I stopped reading and began concentrating on aerodynamics, on airfoil and the physical certainty of lift
and drag, a principle of science, no less, a goddamn rule, a fucking law! Even the babies briefly quieted with profound recognition.
Together, we waited for these precepts to kick in, and of course they did, and soon we were above New York, banking over Queens,
climbing past New Jersey and leveling off under God knows where. The "Fasten Seat Belt" symbol dinged dim. A few people immediately
rose to their feet as if freed from the chains of enslavement. And eventually the flight attendant dumped six tiny bottles
of Jack Daniels on my lap. "Now be good," she told me. I nodded, a five-year-old with his new blocks, and I proceeded to build
a castle on my tray table, a feudal estate with turrets, and like Alice, I grew smaller as I drank, but in the end there wasn't
enough booze to make me a lord of anything.
When the plane touched in Atlanta and pulled into the gate, and the aisle filled with people, I stayed in my seat, happy to
be last, a position I've cherished since high school. Not much of a limerick, no rhymes, no bawdiness, but a lack of effort
is the best revenge against forced meter. Once everyone had deplaned, movement came over me. I said good-bye to the flight
crew who stood by the cockpit in a thanks-for-flying tableau. "Nice landing," I said to the pilot as if I were Chuck Yeager.
And after the solitary walk through the jetway, the colon of transportation, I was flushed into the swirl of the terminal,
not the usual combination of activity and passivity, but something different, something blunt and jarring and frightening—sobs
of joy, from men and women cradling babies, my babies, in their arms. A banner spelled WELCOME. Balloons were tethered to
anything that could take a knot, though some had escaped and were sadly stuck to the ceiling.
"Hey, Tom." Wilson Plagett patted me on the back. "I thought maybe you missed your flight."
"Nope. I was in the tail with the screaming babies."
"Ouch," Wilson said, his well-managed face smiling. I'd last seen him at our tenth reunion, where I found myself naked in
a lake at three in the morning, trying to convince everyone else to
just loosen up.
Wilson was the only one who joined me, a new party compatriot, having held off at college for the sake of a future public
life that never panned out. Instead of governor, he was now an insurance executive who played a ton of business golf. "Some
guy told me that these are orphans from China. All girls. They do awful things to girls over there."
"China's a cruel place."
"I've heard that. Anyway, these folks are adopting them."
"Brave."
"Sure is. I couldn't do it." Wilson checked his watch, a huge Rolex that could sink a drowning man. "We've got time to kill.
A drink, maybe?"
"If you insist."
Now I'm not Southern, but when I'm around Southerners or down South or just plain drunk, this weird accent inflects my speech,
and I become broad and expansive, convinced that this is the most natural thing in the world, almost authentic, though I've
been told I sound more like Big Daddy as played by Dustin Hoffman. So by the time Wilson and I landed in Mississippi and rented
a car for the two-hour drive and took advantage of the wonderful convenience of a drive-thru liquor store, I was feeling good
and Southern, eating a stick of beef jerky and wondering why I didn't eat a stick every day.
"Fucking good," I said while chawing.
"What?"
"This."
"Stuff 11 kill you." Wilson's eyes were intent on the road. It was late dusk, a difficult light that turned passing shadows
into phantom dogs who jumped out in front of the car. Wilson was quick on the brake, his body hunched over the wheel, and
in my inflated state of Southern charm, I began recollecting past drunken behavior.
"Did I ever tell you about my crazed trip to the Bahamas with some woman I met at a bar? No?" So I told him. It happened almost
three years ago, during a cold New York winter, when I was married to the other woman, a high school sweetheart, and I went
out for a drink after a half-day of work, a few friends joining me, and soon those drinks compiled like a late payment on
a loan, and we found ourselves at another bar, and another bar, running from debt until I met this woman. She was quite beautiful,
her nose sharp with cartilage which created a ridge. This one physiological feature seemed to define her face, like a hilltop
cathedral in a small European village, the outlying lips and eyes and cheekbones and chin modeled with a similar devotion.
Think of Chartres with breasts, a mysterious presence imbued with a conflicted history of worship. But I was drunk at the
time.
We started talking about the weather and tennis—she was an ardent player—and how this weather made tennis impossible, which
was too bad because she could kick my ass. I didn't doubt it. She let me feel the muscle in her left forearm. Quite impressive.
And when she moved, little air was displaced, as if she were designed for speed. The afternoon turned to tequila shots—she
insisted—and warmer weather entered our discussion, of tropics, of beaches, of sun-baked clay courts, and we began leaning
into each other until we had leaned into a taxi and leaned into an airport and leaned into a flight to Great Abaco Island,
an awful place in the Bahamas, where we continued the night, drinking frothy fruity drinks and hitching in a cheap motel,
the next day buying tacky clothes, playing absurd tennis, napping but never really sleeping. The hangover was all-encompassing,
the physical spilling into the psychological so that you questioned your life and your decisions and your behavior. To avoid
such thoughts, and to cool down and feel weightless, I went snorkeling on my own, leaving Gretchen—yes, Gretchen—to recover
in the shade. As I swam out into the cay, I saw no signs of aquatic life, no coral, no fish, only sand and murky water. My
stomach started to unsettle, and my mouth filled with acidy saliva, and within seconds I was retching into my snorkel, shooting
out a stream of vomit like some Bowery whale. It was a very low moment, throwing up into the ocean, until these fish, I think
they were parrot fish, with small puckered mouths, suddenly appeared and proceeded to eat the lowly species of my puke.