She saw the crash occur from above, roughly two thousand feet in the air. After several flips, the mangled car came to a stop, frozen in an inch of empty space on the highway. She stood up awkwardly in her window seat and looked around the plane cabin hoping someone else had seen it.
“Did anyone,” she muttered.
But everyone was busy listening to the charming voice of a young attendant pulsing through the plane.
“We promise to do our best to do our duty to provide you with an elite experience on today’s flight,” the smooth, disembodied voice said. “You will find further information on our in-flight offerings in the pamphlet located in the seatback pouch pressing against your knees. Do please let us know if you have any problems or complaints, or if you are suffering in any way. Soon we will begin passing—”
The voice showed no sign of relenting, and this was an emergency, so the woman took the forbidden leap of requesting assistance via her personal help-me button.
“Stop pressing that damn button and listen,” said the old man seated beside her. “We just took off.”
“But I need help,” she said. She pressed the button again. And then again. A faint dinging could be heard in the front and rear of the craft, which seemed to cause the charming, pulsing voice to stumble over his lines, for the woman was pressing the button rather frantically.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” the old man said, counting each time the woman pressed the button.
“Can you believe her?” he said to a neighbor in leopard print across the aisle. But the woman in leopard print was wearing massive, noise cancelling headphones, and did not respond.
The old man turned back to the woman. “Can you just wait a little? Is it really that urgent?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just witnessed something horrible down below.” She pressed her button one more time.
He scoffed. “Join the club,” he said.
He wasn’t being very understanding.
Perhaps he was suffering from dementia, she thought sympathetically. She tried not to become angry.
“Listen,” she said. “There’s no need to be so dramatic.”
“Me be dramatic? Ha!” he said. “You do know there are wars going on, species are going extinct, my sister has breast cancer. But you, you need help minutes into a flight?” The old man looked around for allies, or perhaps he was checking for a vacant seat to flee to.
But tragically, the plane was packed full.
She turned away from the man and looked back out the window. The highway, the scene of the accident, the mangled wreck. They were nearly gone.
And then an attendant arrived.
“How can I assist you, miss?” he asked. It was the man with the charming voice that had been pulsing overhead. He had a trim goatee and thick lips, like two long slugs. He was suspiciously handsome, but his voice was less charming in person. Still, he looked very capable and friendly and instantly gave the woman hope that something could be done.
“I’ve just seen a horrible car crash down below,” she said, in a whisper, for she was worried her observation would be met with alarm. “I think it might have been fatal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” the old man said.
“If you’d like, I can report the incident to the pilot to radio down,” offered the attendant.
“That would be great,” she said, instantly relieved. “Tell them it was bad, really bad. Tell them an ambulance is needed immediately.” Things would be okay. Authorities would be notified of the accident, the proper people dispatched, the driver attended to.
The attendant left.
Her concern, now stored in the attendant’s mind, would soon leave the attendant’s plump lips, slip into the pilot’s mind, then through the pilot’s lips it would make its way to the air traffic controller, who would know just what to do. The driver would be saved, or at least their body would be dealt with quickly, and humanely.
Perhaps they would all make the news, she thought.
Woman Saves Driver’s Life From Window Seat of Plane
But, a moment later the attendant returned, grinning, his eyes beaming friendly warmth. He was holding a small scrap of paper, which he handed to her, along with a blue pen.
“If you’ll just write down all the information about the incident you observed, I will pass the information along to the pilot.”
“A car crashed on the highway a minute after takeoff. That’s all the information I have.”
“What color was the car?” the attendant asked.
“Red!” she said.
“Good,” the attendant said. “Now, write down everything else. I’ll come back to collect your report in fifteen.” He turned to go.
“Fifteen? Can I just tell the pilot now? It’ll be faster. There’s no need to write it down.”
“Can I tell the pilot?” the old man pantomimed. “What are you, a moron?”
Don’t get mad. Don’t get mad. One day you’ll have dementia too, she thought.
“No,” the attendant said, looking at her sternly now. “You may not. No one is allowed to speak with the pilot.”
“You are!” she said.
“Well,” said the attendant. “Yes. That is true.”
“Can’t you just tell him what I told you and see what he thinks?” she asked.
“We know what he thinks,” said the old man. “Gotta keep this plane level. Gotta keep these people in the air. Gotta watch out for that skein of geese.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the attendant said. “In the meantime, please remain seated.”
He bowed adieu, but then he started towards the rear of the cabin.
She heard him muttering something, about her request. She immediately stood up and turned around, struggling within her cramped allotment of Economy space. She peered over her seatback, hoping to see what was going on.
There was a small pack of attendants huddled up, whispering, all dressed in their Delta blues. They took turns looking up towards the woman wearing similarly puzzled expressions. Then one of the attendants hurriedly split from the group.
The released attendant was adorned with a blue scarf with a lovely gold frill. She walked up the aisle with a performed grace, as if she were imitating an angel or a ballerina. To the woman’s surprise the scarved attendant passed by her without pause, continuing on to the front of the cabin, where she dutifully took up the intercom phone. She took one quivering breath, then, of all things, told a joke.
The cabin, a captive audience if there ever was one, immediately filled with raucous laughter.
The woman was confused. Her deep and real concern about the horrific car crash had for some reason led directly to this.
Plus, the joke was not funny. She herself was not laughing at all. She was focused on, What has become of my very real concern? It had once seemed bound for the pilot, who was going to beam it down to earth and save the day. And now?
“No, no, no, no, no,” she muttered under her breath, frustrated by her own brief contemplative apathy. She was thinking too much. Take action, she thought.
“Don’t you all—” she tried to call out, but the sentence evaporated before it reached a single ear. The attention of the cabin, which was still bubbling with laughter, was too scattered.
Once the cabin phone had been returned to its holster, the scarved attendant curtsied. Then she walked down the aisle, directly to the woman.
“Are you feeling better now?” the scarved attendant asked.
“No! I’m still very worried about the crash. As I told your colleague, it was potentially fatal. Doesn’t the word fatal mean anything to anyone? Can we not do something to help?” the woman asked her new attendant.
“I understand,” said the scarved attendant. “I just thought I’d try and lighten the mood with a joke, considering the circumstances. But we do understand your concern. Unfortunately, we are of the opinion that nothing can be done. So, unless you require further assistance, I must return to my duties in the rear of the cabin.”
“So, you won’t help?” the woman said, more to herself than anyone else.
“But how can we possibly help?”
At this point, the source of the woman’s worry had begun to shift. The new source of her worry was that no one else seemed to be worried. What was wrong with these people? Surely if they’d seen what she’d seen, if they knew what she knew.
“I’ll give the specifics,” the woman said. “I’ll write all of it down. Right now. In excruciating detail.”
The steward looked at her suspiciously. “Will that help you?”
“This is not about me,” said the woman.
“Relax,” a passenger across the aisle pleaded. “You don’t want them to turn the flight around, do you?”
“Yeah, relax,” said a passenger next to the first.
“Stop crying like a cry baby,” said a squeaky boy a row ahead of her, who had until then been busy smashing two plastic dinosaurs together.
The scarved attendant leaned over the old man beside her to speak with the woman more privately. “Miss, please stop riling them up. Listen, we’re all sympathetic. But as I’m sure you can imagine, people see all sorts of things out of their windows.” The beautiful scarf dangled from the attendant’s neck, right in front of the woman’s nose. “Now, I need you to calm down a bit. You’re stirring up the cabin.”
No, thought the woman, no, I saw what I saw and I saw it very clearly. Tumbling, totaled. She resisted yanking the shiny scarf. But she wanted to. She wanted to snatch it away in anger. Dangling right in front of her. She couldn’t resist. She tried to grab for it. The attendant lurched back. The passengers watching from nearby gasped.
“My scarf!” the attendant said.
The woman looked at the attendant hatefully.
“If you would like a scarf of your own,” the attendant said, “there are several similar ones for sale in Sky Mall. On page forty or so.”
Unbelievable. This profiteering little vixen. “I’d like to speak with someone in charge. If not the pilot, then your manager,” the woman said. “Please.”
“We don’t have managers,” said the scarved attendant. “If you’d like, I can send another attendant. But we all have the same title.”
The intercom clicked on. The original attendant, the one with a charming voice, stood before the cabin with the phone in his hand.
“Delta would like to take this opportunity to give you some Sky Mall recommendations,” he began. He then proceeded to list several items in the magazine in the seat pouch in front of her, in front of them all. He offered detailed instructions on how to sign up for a Delta credit card. Passengers who signed up would instantly receive twenty thousand points and a free Delta travel pouch. “When you are ready to make a purchase just indicate your desire with the help-me button above your seat and an attendant will be with you shortly.”
A sea, a veritable sea of help-me lights clicked on, filling the cabin with a reddish glow.
Distracted by this tragic spectacle of consumer surrender, the woman didn’t notice a new attendant arriving beside her. An older woman wearing one of those lovely stewardess hats.
“Miss, you wanted to speak with a manager?” the older attendant said.
“Oh,” the woman said, startled. “Yes. Desperately. Are you one?”
“From a titular perspective, no. No one here can make such a claim. But I’m the most senior so to speak.”
“Someone around here must have some kind of authority,” said the woman.
“Not in the way you might think,” said the older attendant. “We operate in a rule-based environment. We receive the rules, we recite the rules, then you all get to interpret and, ideally, adhere to them. What I can do though is offer you this form. It’s a very good form. An important form for us. The Feedback Form. Very comprehensive. We use it to make adjustments all the time. After the flight, of course. Now—I must notify you that while we are openminded regarding feedback, if your feedback is going to relate solely to events occurring outside the aircraft, it’s unlikely it will be of use to us, and thus, of little use to you or your fellow travelers. However, if you have feedback on our addressment of your concerns about this vague, supposedly fatal event you claim to have witnessed, that is, if you find we are at fault in any way for the aftermath of said event, please do explain how we might better address such—”
But before the older attendant could finish her soaring speech, she froze, her eyes wide open, as if she’d just realized something awful, then dropped to the floor, dead. The forms she’d been holding fell, rocking back and forth like leaves or spiraling down like fat confetti.
“Oh no!” the woman cried out. She looked at the first and second attendant, who had been listening raptly to the senior attendant’s speech. They looked down at their supine coworker, stunned.
“Now look what you’ve done,” said the old man beside her. “We told you to be quiet.”
The woman had heard of such things happening on planes. Something to do with air pressure, blood clots, mixed medicines, planar fluctuations. But here and now, under these circumstances?
“What do we do?” the woman asked the attendants. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Just, bear with us,” said the first attendant. “This happens sometimes.”
“What do you mean?” the woman asked him.
“It just happens,” said the attendant. “Sometimes.”
Three more attendants came from the back so that there were now five attendants around the body. They looked down at it with attendanty concern. After a brief but moving moment of silence, one attendant took hold of the body’s arms while another took hold of its legs, and together, they dragged the dead attendant down the aisle and nearly out of sight.
“Don’t take it personally,” said the scarved attendant. Then she left the woman, who was still in shock, to join her compatriots in the rear.
The woman looked at the passengers around her. Some were looking back to see what had become of the attendant, others whispered amongst themselves. The old man was staring directly at her. Somehow, in the midst of the furor, he had procured what appeared to be a gin and tonic.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” the woman asked him.
He sipped his drink, meditatively. The clear liquid sopped his thick, brown mustache.
“No,” he said. “She’s a goner.”
The woman was on the verge of a great panic now. So, she did the only thing she could think to do. She started pressing the help-me button again.
“Here,” the old man said, handing her his crystal plastic glass. “Why don’t we let them have a moment to regroup.”
She looked at the glass uncertainly, then took it from him.
“Thank you,” she said, warily. She sipped his offering. It was good. “What’s in this?”
“Gin and tonic,” he said. “And lime. Would you like some Xanax too? I have a few. You can have as many as you need.”
“No,” said the woman. “Or, well, just one.”
He nodded dutifully and produced a white pill.
She took the pill from him and swallowed it, then took another sip. A drop of the drink escaped her lips, rolled over her chin, down her neck, and traced a wet line from the middle of her chest to her stomach. She sighed. She passed the drink back to the old man.
For the first time the old man smiled at her.
A tremor passed through her body. She grabbed hold of the arm rests and looked out the window. The old man started to hum, something pretty and sad. The woman listened to his song and watched the clouds pass below while she tried to recall what the accident had looked like. She was already forgetting. It had been so small, the size of her thumb. And it was so far away now. How could she find it, describe it, and to what use?
“How long is this flight?” she asked the old man.
“I’m not sure, actually,” he said.
A delegate of flight attendants arrived. The one with the scarf in the lead. She pressed her palms together while the rest of the delegation stood behind her. It appeared they had bad news. The scarved attendant was searching for words. She was visibly thinking.
The smell of the man’s drink slithered into the woman’s nose.
Then the plane began to shake. The fasten seatbelt lights dinged on. The delegation grabbed hold of the seats, bracing themselves. Seatbelts buckled, emitting their satisfying clicks. The squeaky boy with the dinosaurs started to cry. Shouldn’t the pilot issue a warning? But the turbulence soon subsided. The plane proceeded forward.
The woman looked at the old man then up at the attendants. The old man was looking at her. The attendants were too. Everyone seemed frozen, besides the boy, who continued to cry.
And then suddenly everyone was yelling at her, all of them, yelling at her fiercely.
My god, she thought. They really were of no help. She turned away. She looked out of her window at the precarious world in all its great complexity. She looked out of her window as they yelled, and the boy cried, and the plane soared at its miraculous speed above clouds that obscured the planet the woman had always called home. What a peculiar feeling. She felt suddenly as if she were taking part in a play in which she was the principal actor, but of which she could not recall the scene previous to or the scene ensuing from the scene unfolding around her. And so, she decided. She would lower her portshade. She pried the plastic shade from its recess above the window, slid it shut, and the cabin went dark.
SAM SCHIEREN is a writer from Valley Cottage, New York. He received his MFA from the University of California, Davis. His work has been published in Gulf Coast, Bellevue Literary Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among other journals. He has previously taught at UC Davis and Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. He currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches at VCU.
The art that appears alongside this piece is by GRANT RAUN.
