visible, in the high-backed seat, and Beckman, who alternated between staring out his window and then at the instrument panel, but now had become careful about looking at Spurgeon, and the ashen-jawed Comstock, with his stricken eyesâall these should have had another significance for a Crews not so dehumanized: say at sixteen, when he got several Aâs in his studies, ran cross-country, and had a living mother. But the contemporary specimen was not wont to make any but malicious observations of his fellows, and so far as he was superficially concerned, the airplane was cruising confidently along the highway of sky (which he still preferred not to look out at), and even the sound of the engines, so noisy earlier, had gone. Then too he was preoccupied by the stress on his bladder.
It took a while before he realized that the diminution of noise was due to the apparent fact that the engines were no longer operating. But not even then did he assume that the craft was in terminal trouble. He had finally made the decision that if he could not soon urinate, he would get his mind off the matter by having more to drink, had unfastened the seat belt and risen to go for the bottle in the duffel bag at the rear.
By chance he noticed Comstockâs face as he went past him: retroactively, days later, he recognized that the man was looking at death and was blind to all else. In the next instant Crews was pressed against the back of the seat he had only just left.
The airplane was plunging. Contrary to legend, a crisis does not bring immediate sobriety. Terror reduced to nil his already diminished capacities. He prayed at the top of his voice, but could not hear himself. There were no sounds inside the cabin, and even the rushing air outside had gone mute. His head felt an internal pressure that under other conditions might have made him scream, yet even when he discovered that it was surely due to the index finger pushed into each ear, he could not withdraw them and listen to the noise of his dying. In previous thoughts on methods of suicide (a routine subject of his musings), he had wondered what took place in the minds of those who leaped off buildings so high that many seconds passed before the impact with the earth. Or did consciousness quickly go to black? His own situation was different: he had not made the decision to take his life, nor was he falling on his own, naked to the air.
He was now concentrated on what would happen to his body when the plane reached earth. He kept his ears plugged and squeezed his eyelids shut and locked his jaws. He brought his knees against his chest. He incessantly cried out to God.
The descent could not be measured by the means available to his impaired sensesâit was both interminable and begun and finished between two heartbeatsâbut simultaneous with its completion, existence converged on him centripetally. He was simply and instantly extinguished, with only a millisecond in which to wonder gratefully at the total lack of pain.
2
H E WAS CRUELLY RECALLED FROM THE comfort of the void. His need for breathing had returned, but he could not breathe with a nose and mouth that failed to function. His head hurt badly, and something had happened to one of the fingers that had been in his ears. He struggled to free his ankle from unreasonable bonds.
⦠The reason he could not breathe was that he was under water: the cabin of the airplane was filled with it, a truth at which he arrived by using senses other than sight, for it was too dark there to see anything but dim shapes, unidentifiable blobs. He tried to rise above a preoccupation with exhausted lungs and remember where he had been in relation to a possible exit. There had been the door up front, but was there an emergency exit? The window, through which he had avoided looking once they were in the air, with his dread of heights: where was it now? Had the plane turned on its side? He could identify nothing. He groped and pushed