Tyrel Kessinger
Pase lo que pase
We’re still up, humming through the air in a 767 bound for El Paso. I say “we,” but it’s only myself as far as I can tell. I check, double check.
Yeah. Just me. The fifty, maybe sixty-some other people onboard have somehow up and vamoosed. Craziest thing, really. Not their belongings, though. That’s all still here, scattered around as pitiful as a three-legged dog. Bad novels and cheap magazines lay open like dead birds. Neck pillows still warm to the touch. Cell phones, tablets, laptops. Left behind as if they were nothing special. There’s a few stuffed animals: a grimy unicorn with one eye, a pink kitty cat whose name is Sprinkles, according to the plastic name tag on its collar. Had they seen what happened, or had they been as asleep as me, nestled snug in some sticky-fingered kid’s death grip of love?
I wander the plane, absorb the thrum of the engines. The cockpit is open and I peek in, hoping to see at least one pilot. No pilots. Though I do see the autopilot light is on, as big and red as you might see in an old cartoon, so at least I have that going for me. I flick through the radio, but all I get is hiss. Worry begins to nibble at me, just a bit. Up until now I had reckoned that somehow the other passengers had gotten off the plane somewhere and they’d just overlooked me. But the whole no-pilots thing thoroughly destroys that theory. I also realize: hey, dummy, of course that’s not what happened. Think! People don’t just up and leave their cell phones behind for no good reason. Kids don’t leave behind toys they guard like sacred treasure. People can’t live without their lifeblood.
It crosses my mind that this might be the Rapture I’ve heard so much about. It would explain a lot of things, especially since I don’t believe in God. Or is it god? Never figured out what set a big-G God and a little-g god apart, though I can’t say that it matters now. I’d like to know how people muster up the will to believe, anyway. Up in the plane, this close to heaven and the only thing I can see is a sky full of cold, dark clouds that have as much of an idea as to how they got here as I do. Most likely, I figure, this is all some dumb dream and I’m still knee-deep in a sleep fueled by the preflight Bud Heavies. But when I slap myself to check, all I get for my troubles is a throbbing jaw.
At some point I decide that the only thing there is to do is to get used to the idea. I mean, people have been leaving me all my life. Or maybe I left them. Depends on who you talk to, I guess. We all have our reasons for why we do what we do. Could be that love isn’t all you really need, or it could be that looks and charm can only get you so far down the road before you run out of money to fill the tank back up. Best if you just ask one of my three ex-wives. Can’t ask my first wife, though. She died not a year after we were married. Plowed right into by a drunk driver on Highway 70, just a little outside Junction City, right down the street from the bowling alley where I had proposed to her after scoring a personal best of 206.
I decide it’s time to raid the food and drinks. No need to go through this ghost flight hungry—or sober. I find one of the beverage carts in the back of the plane, pour myself a whiskey and Diet Coke and knock back two bags of peanuts and some of those 100-calorie-pack Lorna Doone cookies. Since I’m not worried about being conservative at the moment, I take a couple of sloppy pulls from the bottle and dash out a little on the ground as a show of respect to all those no longer aboard, and because it’s fun to sometimes pretend to believe in something. If that makes sense. Which I’m not sure it does.
Four drinks and two more bags of Lorna Doones in I dial up the plane’s mic system, just in case someone is hiding somewhere and wants to come out and surprise me. Or maybe I just want to hear a voice out loud. “Now, don’t be scared,” I say. “My name’s Jacob Greenfeld. Most people I know call me Jakey, but feel free to call me Jakey too even though we don’t know each other. You’re probably as goosed as I am, but I think everything’s gonna be OK, all right? Just look at me. I’m on an empty plane with a cartoon-style autopilot button and I’m fine, aren’t I?” No answer. I have a hunch that my slurred announcement is giving off that creepy drunk-uncle-at-Thanksgiving-dinner vibe. “Oh yeah,” I add, “and all the free booze and Lorna Doones you could ever want.” I shake the bottle around and crinkle a package of cookies like I’m trying to coax a cat out from under a car. Still nothing. Only the quiet drone of jet engines. Guess maybe I really am all alone. Or maybe I sound more drunk uncle-y than I think.
Boredom comes. Which might be hard to imagine, being trapped on a ninety-ton flying coffin, but it does. I rifle through some of the stuff left behind. One carry-on filled with nothing but crotchless panties, another with several dog-eared copies of Voluptuous magazine. There’s a half-pack of Winstons in a scuffed-up red purse. I would smoke them if I were a smoker, though I bet I’ll never live through a finer time to take it up. I thought I’d find the best stuff in first class, but I forgot how boring rich people can be. No cash, either, just credit cards and fancy leather computer bags. They might have access to all that extra legroom, but that doesn’t make them any more interesting. One bag yields a few rolls of various breath mints. I choose orangeberry simply for the fact that I’ve never had an orangeberry breath mint. I wonder: are orangeberries real and I just don’t know about them? Because it seems like the world is always cooking up something I don’t know about.
I pocket what cash I find, maybe three hundred bucks or so. Sure, I feel guilty, but it’s not like those poor lost bastards need it anymore. Not to mention I’m saving up to buy a car for my daughter, my only child by my second wife. She looks like her mother, the same copper hair and the same round face and the same quiet brown eyes settling on me when I’ve been a disappointment. I’ve had a feeling for some time now that I’m someone she doesn’t really love. Likes me, maybe, but not loves. And while I’m not sure that I even deserve her love or that I’ve ever worked hard enough to earn it, I want it all the same. And if giving someone a car can’t make them love you, then I imagine nothing will.
I head to the cockpit and pretend to be a drunk captain. Then I switch seats and pretend to be a drunk co-captain. No wonder pilots always smile at you when you get off the plane. Watching the space of the whole world palmed out for you is a bit more enlightening than being shoehorned into a window seat with only those gritty portholes to look out of where all you can see is plane wing. “Ten-four,” I say to no one and salute. Although I doubt anyone would mistake a doughy, scruff-faced middle-aged man wearing a Bass Pro sweatshirt for a captain of anything, I now feel more drunk captain-y than drunk uncle-y, which, I’m here to tell you, is a superior way to feel.
The booze starts to wear off, and so does my lack of concern around my situation. Logistics and practical matters are worth considering. Like, how much longer can the plane stay up in the air? Should I expect to take a nosedive dirt nap anytime soon? The passengers and crew might have magicked themselves away, but I’m curious how magic the fuel is. And—even if I could—how do I land? Where do I land? I decide that the best course of action is to stay drunk until something happens one way or the other, which is when I hear a voice squawk from the cockpit radio.
“¡Auxilio!”
“Hello?” I fumble with the buttons and pray that it works. “Hello? Do you read? Jakey Greenfeld here.”
A pause. “¿Inglés?” a woman asks.
“Sí. Inglés.” She was lucky I’d picked up a bit of Spanish from the guys at work—enough to get the point, anyway.
“You’ve come! ¡Gracias a Dios! I’ve been calling out for hours. My son and I, we’re in La Chaveña, we need help. ¿Nos puede ayudar? ¿Cuál es su ubicación?”
Good question. “Your guess is as good as mine. Trapped on un avión somewhere in the sky.”
“You have an airplane?”
I smile. Why, yes, I guess I do have an airplane.
“You are the captain, then?”
I don’t think it’s a good time to mention my earlier stint as both captain and co-captain. “Nah. Not me. I’m un nadie.”
She’s quiet. I worry something’s happened to her until I hear her sigh, obviously wondering what deity she must have angered to bring someone as useless as me into her life. Take a number, I’d tell her, if the situation wasn’t what it is.
“Can you land the plane, though? If you had to? There’s an airport nearby.
I think we could make it there.”
Oh, sure, that’s not a tall order. Why don’t I pull a rabbit out my butt, too.
“Well, I’ll be real honest with you, lady. That’s a big negatory. There’s so many buttons and switches here I wouldn’t know which one would set the tires down and which one would make me a pot of coffee.”
More quiet. Then: “My son and I . . . we need a way out of this place. No es seguro. They’re all gone.”
The worry in her voice sours me with guilt. Here I am, living it up as if I were some kind of Hugh Hefner playboy type—getting drunk, eating a buffet of Lorna Doones and honey-roasted peanuts, lining my pockets with the cash of some poor vanished souls in the hope that I could later buy my daughter’s love. The absurdity of it all finally strikes me at full force. If this is real, is it happening everywhere? I realize that in the throes of my drunken pity party I had forgotten to worry about my family. Are they OK? My ex-wives? My soon-to-be ex-wife? My daughter who likes me but doesn’t love me? Is god/God real and has he left me behind, or vice versa? Did I drink too much?
I pick up the mic. “Look. I’m just an old maintenance hound. I work for a company that sent me to help close down a factory in Juárez because I was the only one who was willing to go, on account of all the kidnappings and whatnot that’s been happening down there. I need the money. For my daughter. I don’t think she really loves me. Likes me, maybe, but not loves. Anyway, I thought buying her a car might change that.” Yeah. I’d drank too much.
Silence comes. I can’t even hear the quiet roar of the engines at this point. It’s all a part of me now, I realize, the thrum, the turbulence, the open sky, the Lorna Doones. “What I mean is that I really want to help you. But I don’t think I’m able to. I’m likely to die myself here real soon, when this puppy runs out of juice.”
“Entiendo,” the woman said, her voice wavering. “We will find another way, then. I hope you make it back to your home, Jakey Greenfeld. I think you’re probably a good man. I hope that you can still somehow make it back to your daughter and get her that new car.” I wince at that one. I don’t see any good reason to tell her it’s most likely going to have to be a used vehicle. A nice one, sure—Bluetooth, low mileage—but still used.
I cradle the receiver and look out the window. I see the sky yawning from the captain’s chair and I think about how life hasn’t stopped coming at me just yet, and how I suppose I’d rather it keep on coming. I survey the cockpit again, this time more critically. Buttons on top of buttons. Levers galore. A mess of switches. I consider: I’d figured out how to operate the machines at the plant with all their fancy doodaddery, hadn’t I? Frank Horton had hired me nearly thirty years ago, right out of high school, as a janitor. My second day, Bob Arlington, the head maintenance guy, stroked out and fell into one of the machines he’d been working on. Came out looking like he’d picked a fight with a grizzly bear. Next thing I knew Frank was telling me that it was my lucky day, whisked me to the maintenance room and handed me a thirteen-pound ring of keys. “Well, Jakey,” he said, arm around my shoulder as if I were an old war buddy and not some clueless idiot, “she’s all yours. I know you won’t let us down.” I never was sure if I let Frank down or not, but I managed to not get myself killed like Ol’ Bob, and that’s a fact that speaks for itself.
“Hey. You still there?” I ask.
“Sí, Jakey. Estoy aquí.”
“I just wanna know one thing. What’s Spanish for ‘hell or high water’?”
“Pase lo que pase.”
“All right, then,” I say. “Pase lo que pase it is.”
I start clicking away, pushing gizmos, flicking switches marked with words that might help me do what I want. Surely I’ve seen enough movies to get a general idea of how this all works. “Well, Jakey, she’s all yours,” I hear someone say. “I know you won’t let us down.” The sky is a perfect blue, like some kid’s just finished coloring it in. Way ahead I can make out what are probably the landing strips of the airport the woman had told me about. I take two slugs from the whiskey bottle. A third and a fourth, just to be safe. I use my teeth to rip open a bag of Lorna Doones and wolf them down. I think: when I get back, first thing, I’m taking my daughter car shopping. And not for some used—though still real nice—clunker, either. It’ll be brand-spankin’ new. All shiny and red. No dents or dings. Just like how love is supposed to be.