“Good,” he said. “Great. I’ll be right back, we’ll talk.”
He ushered Holly into row seventeen. He took the aisle seat next to
her.
On the other side of Holly was a grandmotherly tub of a woman in a
flower-print dress, with blue-tinted gray hair in a mass of tight curls.
She was sound asleep, snoring softly. A pair of gold-framed eyeglasses,
suspended around her neck on a bead chain, rested on her matronly bosom,
rising and falling with her steady breathing.
Leaning close to him, keeping her voice so low it could not even carry
across the narrow aisle, but speaking with the conviction of an
impassioned political orator, Holly said, “You can’t let all those
people die.”
“We’ve been through this,” he said restively, matching her nearly
inaudible pitch.
“It’s your responsibility”
“I’m just one man!”
“But one very special man.”
“I’m not God,” he said plaintively.
“Talk to the pilot.”
“Jesus, you’re relentless.”
“Warn the pilot,” she whispered.
“He won’t believe me.”
“Then warn the passengers.”
“There aren’t enough empty seats in this section for all of them to move
here.”
She was furious with him, quiet but so intense that he could not look
away from her or dismiss what she was saying. She put a hand on his
arm, gripping him so tightly that it hurt. “Damn it, maybe they could
do something to save themselves.”
“I’d only cause a panic.”
“If you can save more, but you let them die, it’s murder,” she whispered
insistently, anger flashing in her eyes.
That accusation hit him hard and had something of the effect of a hammer
blow to the chest. For a moment he could not draw his breath.
When he could speak, his voice broke repeatedly: “I hate death, people
dying, I hate it. I want to save people, stop all the suffering, be on
the side of life, but I can only do what I can do.”
“Murder,” she repeated.
What she was doing to him was outrageous. He could not carry the load
of responsibility she wanted to pile on his shoulders. If he could save
the Dubroveks, he would be at working two miracles, mother and child
spared from the early graves that had been their destinies. But Holly
Thorne, in her ignorance about his abilities, was not satisfied with two
miracles; she wanted three, four, five, ten, a hundred. He felt as if
an enormous weight was bearing down on him, the weight of the whole
damned airplane, crushing him into the ground. It was not right of her
to put the blame on him; it wasn’t fair. If she wanted to blame
someone, she should cast her accusations at God, who worked in such
mysterious ways that He had ordained the necessity of the plane crash in
the first place.
“Murder.” She dug her fingers into his arm even harder.
He could feel anger radiating from her like the heat of the sun
reflected off a metal surface. Reflected. Suddenly, he realized that
image was too apt to be anything less than Freudian.
Her anger over his unwillingness to save everyone on the plane was no
greater than his own anger over his inability to do so; her rage was a
reflection of his own.
“Murder,” she repeated, evidently aware of the profound effect that
accusation had on him.
He looked into her beautiful eyes, and he wanted to hit her, punch her
in the face, smash her with all of his strength, knock her unconscious,
so she wouldn’t put his own thoughts into words. She was too
perceptive. He hated her for being right.
Instead of hitting her, he got up.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“To talk to a flight attendant.”
“About what?”
“You win, okay? You win.”
Making his way toward the back of the plane, Jim looked at the people he
passed, chilled by the knowledge that all of them would be dead soon. As
his desperation intensified, so did his imagination, and he saw skulls
beneath their skin, the glowing images of bones shining through their
flesh, for they were the living dead. He was nauseous with fear, not
for himself but for them.
The plane bucked and shimmied as if it had driven over a pothole in the