Kingdomtide. Rye Curtis

      All was quiet. Then I heard a whistle that could have been a kettle. I opened my eyes. I am not certain that I was ever unconscious, but it is my understanding that it is often hard to know about that sort of thing. A bright red suitcase, not one I recognized, pinned my shoulder. My guess was that it was Terry’s. I heaved it off. Where my window had been there was now a wide gash in the fuselage, as if someone had pried open a can of peas. I undid my seatbelt.

      I had come to the end of a world in that little airplane, and in such a terrible calm I climbed through that gash and was born again into another. The airplane had stopped on an escarpment of granite up near the peak of a high rocky mountain, the nose not three yards from the edge where a jungle of tall conifers rose from below, nodding. All about were mountains. Two big ones flanked ours and farther out a snow-capped range repeated into the blue distance like all there were and all there had ever been in the history of the world were mountains.

      I touched my forehead. Blood. My face was covered with it and in a piece of broken glass I saw that I had a small cut over my eyebrow. I looked like an Indian brave in warpaint. I hollered for Richard loud as I could. I only ever used Mr. Waldrip’s Christian name when addressing him directly, a habit I learned from Mother.

      The sun was out and the day was warm. It is a strange thing that such a pleasant and beautiful place can seem so mean-spirited. The mountain was high up, but no snow was on the ground and all about hairy plants with mighty pretty scarlet flowers grew from the rock. I later learned they are called mountainside paintbrushes. The airplane had been halved down the middle. The tail of it was gone.

      I looked back at Mr. Waldrip’s empty seat. I hollered for him again. My eyes returned to the treetops below the escarpment. One of Mr. Waldrip’s alligator-skin boots was right side up at the edge. I started for it. As I went I looked back at the little airplane and saw the nose of the cockpit had been shorn away. Most of the flight controls were gone and Terry sat there in the open air still in his seatbelt. He was slumped over. I was sure he had passed.

      When I reached the edge of the escarpment Mr. Waldrip was some half a dozen yards down, splayed out prone across the top of a large spruce. He was mighty high up off the ground. I hollered at him if he was all right but I ought to have already had the answer to that. He did not move and I could see blood was welling in the seat of his blue jeans. I hollered his name again. I worried he was hung there paralyzed and could not answer me. There was not a thing in the world I could do. I could not reach him, and if I had been able to reach him, what good would it have done? That was when it first occurred to me to pray. I knelt down at the edge of that escarpment and looked out over an immense valley and I prayed: Our Father, who art in heaven, Mr. Waldrip is down there in a tree, and he is badly hurt. Please help us, please help us, please save us, Lord … Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet from out the net.

      I prayed that way for some time until Mr. Waldrip’s blue jeans had gone plum-colored. I doubtless would still be knelt there in prayer had it not been that behind me there was such a scream like I had never heard before. It was a high-pitched sort of cry, very wet and moronic. Best way I know to describe it, and it is a distasteful notion for which I hope to be forgiven, is that it was how I imagine a simple person would holler if they were immolated.

      Well, I hollered too and threw my hands up over my face. Finally I turned and lowered my fingers. My dear! Terry had come to and was chewing the blood in his mouth, screeching that awful way in repeat. One of the residents in my building here at River Bend Assisted Living in Brattleboro, Vermont, has a son, Jacob, who is in a wheelchair and cannot move his body, not even his eyelids. It is awful. His eyes must be shut at night and opened come morning by a caretaker, who is a stout large-headed woman in white with a little squirt bottle of saline on her belt that she uses to mist his eyeballs at two-minute intervals throughout the day. Jacob might not blink, but he sure can scream. That is about all he can do. When I hear him in the halls I am reminded of Terry.

      I took some steps forward. Terry was not in a good way at all. He had spit up a segment of his jaw which yet held several of his teeth in it and it had dropped into his shirt collar. One of his blue eyes was black entirely. He did not act like he could see out of either of them. He kept up his crazed screaming, and I matched each one. My hands shook and my heart jumped like a jackrabbit. There we were, just hollering at each other. In some better world the whole performance might have been comical.

      Terry was upright some several feet off the ground, belted in his chair, exalted like a terrible overseer of terrible doings. I stood before him, continuing to holler myself silly, without the wildest notion as to what to do. I could just have about reached his shins to comfort him, but I did not want to touch him, and I sure felt bad about that. My whole family were Methodists and I was taught to keep charity and compassion in my heart, but there was not a thing in the world I could have done for that man.

      After an awful spell, like a baby he calmed on his own accord and was cooing. He raised up his arm such as to issue an edict and said sweet as can be: Is it over?

      Pardon? I said.

      Excuse me, I’ve always been honest with my dentist. Am I at the dentist? Just a minute. Are we dead yet?

      My husband is in a tree, I said, pointing behind.

      Good for him, Terry said. He was always climbing that tree.

      After that he said the word waitress some twenty times and soiled himself. Then he bawled and asked for his mailman so that he could post a letter to a relative for whom he had forgotten the name and address. He was carrying on like he believed he was having a tooth pulled on gas at his dentist’s office. I took a notion to ask him what we ought to do but decided against it. Poor man.

      He said: Waitress, bathtime, waitress, bathtime for Samantha. I’ve carried a torch for my mailman for years, but it was never going to work out. He’s late. Late. Pull the tooth already, this gas is making me sick. I want to go home.

      The rest of the day I sat bewildered with my back to a wall of limestone and my legs stretched out in a place of sun, turning my wedding ring on my finger. Mr. Waldrip’s grandmother Sarah Louise Waldrip had bequeathed him the ring, and she used to tell a mighty tall story about how her husband had traded it off a gypsy for a sack of flour and a flintlock pistol. The story goes that the gypsy came back in the night and shot to death the sheepdog they had and stole every other single thing in the house, even the curtains, but left the ring. If I had been a superstitious person I might have been worried some about that.

      I was not injured in any serious way far as I could tell. I had the cut on my forehead and the arthritis in my knees was acting up. I had wet myself and was mighty embarrassed about that, but this account should tell the whole of the story, even the unpleasant parts I would rather leave out. Perhaps especially the unpleasant parts. I could not see Terry from where I sat behind the little airplane, but bless you, I listened to him holler and jabber all day about people I did not know doing things I could not reconcile with logic. Often I looked down the escarpment at Mr. Waldrip’s boot. I endeavored to will myself back to the edge where his body lay in the treetop below, but I could not.

      How did I not shed a single tear then? I do not know. It is funny the way our minds put themselves at ease in times of distress. I do not recall having a complete thought for some time. Different physicians have offered the same opinion that I was in shock. They may be right. Could be I still am.

      When the mountains began to go dark I appealed to the heavens. Dear Lord, I said, please do not let me die on this mountain in the dark. Please save me, Lord.

      Gracious, was there ever a more selfish woman born?

      Then Terry lowered his voice and said, You? Yes! A boy? I don’t think so. There are two of me in every bathtub. Pardon me, excuse me, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out. Are you finished, Dr. Kessler? This gas is scary. I can’t move. I’m tripping that I’m on a mountain.

      I went to the airplane and kept around the side so I would not have to look at Terry. I could only see his legs dangling from the seat and I could smell him. I asked him how he was feeling.

      Grown up,