Comfort & Joy (3 page)

Coughing, I look around for something to hold over my nose and mouth.

There is nothing. The cabin is all darkness and smoke and flames. People are dropping from their seats, landing on what is now the floor. I take off my coat and hold it over my face as I crawl toward the exit—at least I hope it’s an exit. All I know is I hear movement in front of me, coughing and footsteps and whispering. The ceiling is full of seams and bumps that scrape my knees. I bang my head on the overhead bins that have fallen open.

I feel my way through the thick smoke, pushing aside debris, past gaping holes where the side of the plane should be. At each new row, I look for people still in their seats, hanging unconscious, but I find no one.

Finally, after what seems to take hours, I see the opening. A man is there, holding out his hand, helping me out. He doesn’t seem to know that his hair and shirt are matted with blood, that a spike of some kind is lodged in his upper arm. “This way,” he says in a tired, shaking voice.

“You need a doctor,” I say, surprised that I’m crying. The words release something in me, something so big I’m afraid I’ll drown in it and be swept away. I finally stagger to a stand.

He touches my head. The fingers he draws back are stained red. “So do you. Are you the last one?”

“I think so. I was in the last row.” I turn to look back at my seat and see the gaping black and orange mouth that is what’s left of the tail section.

How did I not notice that?

Shaking, my head aching now that I feel the blood leaking down my cheek, I take his hand. It’s calloused and sweaty and makes me feel almost safe.

The darkness outside is absolute, velvet, nothing like the gray haze of the burning cabin.

The ground squishes beneath my feet, giving way beneath my steps. It’s like quicksand, hard to walk in. I look down at my feet. Something feels wrong. As if gravity has been lost or changed somehow. I look for someone to ask, “Where are we?” This isn’t the world we know. The air is harsh, different. The ground is soft. I wonder suddenly if it is blood that has softened the ground—our blood—or maybe it’s gasoline.

Everyone is as dazed as I am. Over by the nearest tree, a group is beginning to form. How can I walk that far and why am I alone?

In the distance, I hear sirens.

I trip on something and fall to my knees. The pain in my head is back, throbbing.

I hear something and look up.

At first, I think it’s the ambulances and police cars driving up, and then I think it’s screaming . . . but that’s past us. We survived.

It seems to take ages, but I climb to my feet once again. I’m upright; I try to hear. My head is pounding.

“Explode . . . Run.”

Words. Someone is yelling. Smoke engulfs me, billowing from the tail.

“Run! It’s going to explode.” I see Riegert running toward me, waving his arms.

A second later his words register. I try to run through the spongy black ground, toward the forest.

But I’m too late, and I know it.

The blast, when it comes, is like nothing I’ve ever known.

One second I’m running for cover; the next I’m airborne, weightless. When I hit the ground it is in a thud of pain. Then everything is dark.

When I open my eyes, I find myself staring up at a Halloween sky, all black and gray with the hint of eerie flickering orange light. Tree tips fringe it all, form a strange circle overhead. They are not ordinary trees; they’re giants. They ring the crash site like gargantuan visitors, whispering among themselves. A lackluster rain is falling; it’s really more of a mist.

At first I can’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart. It’s as if my ears are stuffed with cotton. My heartbeat is a slow, thudding echo of distant sound.

Gradually, though, I hear more.

Sirens, muffled and seemingly far away, but recognizable. Engines purring. Tires crunching through gravel or rock.

Where am I?

The answer comes to me in a rush of images and a surge of adrenaline.

The plane.

Crashed.

My camera strap is strangling me. I wrench it free, gasping for breath.

The gray in the sky is smoke from the plane’s explosion. All around me trees are on fire. That’s the orange in the sky: flames. I can hear the crackling now, feel the heat. My cheeks are coated in blood and sweat.

I try to get up but I can’t move.

I’m paralyzed.

I stare at my feet, trying not to panic. One foot is bare. No sock, no shoe; just dark, muddy toes pointed skyward.

“Wiggle,” I manage to whisper.

My right foot does a spastic little dance.

I’m not paralyzed.
Thank you, God.

It takes forever, but finally I move my arms, wedge them underneath me and sit up. From my hiding place in the trees, I can see the crash site.

The plane is an oblong bullet of fire, wingless. The grass around it is a lake of mud and ash and debris. Trees lay on their sides like giant, broken toothpicks. For the first time, I understand the concept of devastation. Ruin. This land is broken now, as bleeding as we are.

Far away, through the ashy smoke, I can see ambulances and police cars and fire trucks. The survivors are there, clustered in the bright glow of headlights and temporary lighting. I need to take a picture of this, document it, but my hands are shaking uncontrollably.

“I’m over here,” I cry weakly, trying to raise my hand.

But no one is looking over here. No one is looking for me.

Why? I wonder. Then I remember Riegert calling out for me, reaching out, then covering his face at the blast and falling to the ground.

They think I died in the explosion.

But I’m here.

It is my last conscious thought.

I see her standing in the trees, not far away from me. She looks exactly as I remember: tall and thin, with silvery blond hair and eyes the exact color of a robin’s egg. Her skin is pale and unlined still; she is wearing a pink Rocky Mountain Mama T-shirt and her favorite Max Factor lipstick. Strawberries and cream. I wait for her to smile, but she crosses her arms instead and glances away, as if she has another place to be. She is smoking a long, brown cigarette.

“Mom?” I say quietly, wondering if she can hear me. There is a strange cacophony of noise around us—motors running, high pitched wails that sound like sirens, a crackling that sounds like wax paper being balled up. Most of all I can hear my heart, though. It’s running fast, skipping so many beats I feel light-headed.

She moves toward me, almost gliding. As she gets closer, I see her smile—finally—and it releases something in me.

She kneels beside me. “You’re hurt.”

I know she is touching my forehead. I can see her movement, but I can’t feel her touch. I stare into the eyes I love so much. Until now, this moment, I had begun to forget how she looked, the gentleness of her touch, the sound of her voice.

Her hands on my face are so cool, so comforting. “Wake up, Joy. It’s not your time.”

“I’m dead, aren’t I? That’s why you’re here.”

My mother smiles, and in that one expression is my whole childhood, years and years of feeling safe and loved.

I’m crying. I know it even before she wipes my tears away. “Stacey is marrying my husband . . .”

“Shhh.” She kisses my forehead and whispers, “Wake up, Joy. It’s not your time.”

I don’t want to wake up. “No.”

“Wake up, Joy. Now.” It is her mother’s voice, the one I only heard when I was in trouble, and I’m helpless to ignore it, even though I know that when I open my eyes, she’ll be gone. She won’t be beside me, holding my hand and kissing me. The Suave shampoo and menthol cigarette scent of her will be gone again. “I miss you, Mom.”

With a gasp, I’m breathing again. The pain is back, sharp as a piece of glass, throbbing in my skull. The air around me is thick with smoke.

Slowly, I open my eyes. It’s hard to see anything, hard to focus in the falling rain. The sky is gunmetal gray, swollen with clouds and smoke. Raindrops clatter on the fuselage of the demolished plane. In the distance, I can hear sirens and motors and voices and footsteps, but it is all far, far away.

I am deep in the woods, hidden. Huge ferns grow all around me. My shoe is hanging from a branch over my head. It bobs in the breeze.

It is amazing I didn’t hit a tree.

I crawl to my knees, grabbing a nearby nurse log for support. When I finally stand, I am struck by a wave of nausea. The world careens sickenly, then rights itself. I focus on getting my shoe, putting it on, as if I can’t be saved in bare feet.

When I finish, I look up. Across the smoky, debris- and plane-cluttered clearing, I can see the outline of emergency vehicles. A string of people is moving through another part of the dark forest. Their flashlight beams fan out like some giant, glowing cowcatcher in the smoke.

I can get there.

I take one painful, wobbling step, and then another and another. As I approach the edge of the clearing, I wait for them to see me. Any minute they’ll rush to my aid and take me back to my real life.

To the empty house on Madrona Lane where I’ll spend the holidays alone, to the Volvo with the tree strapped on top. To the calendar that will tick off days to my sister’s wedding and the birth of her child.

Don’t go back.

Is that my mother’s voice or the wind?

“No one knows I was on the plane.” I say the words out loud for the first time, and at that, the voicing of it, I glimpse an opportunity.

No one will notice my absence until school starts.

I glance around the forest.

Behind me, the trees are thicker, closer together, but moonlight shows me a path between them. It is almost like a sign, that beam of light. Although I feel shaky, and more than a little light headed, I begin walking away from the crash site.

It isn’t long before I see a break in the trees, and hear the distant roar of cars.

Somewhere up ahead is a road.

I
walk slowly through this dark and ancient forest. My head still hurts, my vision is blurring, and this place is like nowhere I’ve ever seen. It is as if I’m journeying in another dimension. Before me, everything is a labyrinth of shadow and moonlit smoke. Spiderwebs connect it all together; in the uncertain light, the strands seem to be made of colored glass. Mist coats the ground, swallows my feet and the spongy earth.

At last, I come to the end of the woods and the start of civilization. It is a road, old and untended, and I turn to follow it. The dotted yellow line painted down its center is inconsistent, an afterthought, apparently, a suggestion rather than a law. Every few feet a yellow sign warns drivers to watch out for elk.

Every time I hear an approaching engine, I hide in the trees. I don’t want some Good Samaritan to “rescue” me. It’s mostly emergency vehicles, anyway, going too fast to see a lone woman who doesn’t want to be seen.

At last I come to the edge of a town. A brightly painted sign welcomes me to the heart of the rainforest. The sign is splattered with mud and half hidden by a gargantuan fern, so I can’t read the name of the town, but I see the word Washington.

I’m not in Canada.

“But I’m supposed to be in Hope,” I say to the emptiness around me. Trees commiserate, whisper in understanding. They know how it feels to be uprooted, disappointed. It’s bad enough that my one spontaneous decision in life leads to a plane crash; I could at least crash near my destination.

Then again, what difference does it make where I am?

I step out from the veil of trees and follow the ribbon of asphalt into town, smoothing my hair as I go. I have no idea how long I’ve been walking; this place seems too unreal to be tethered by something as scientific as time.

I should be wondering
where
I’m going, but I don’t care. My mind is floating.

The town that isn’t Hope looks like a movie set. Night tucks in around it; what’s left glows in the light of streetlamps and holiday lighting. Santas and snowmen hang from lampposts; strands of white lights frame the windows.

The stores are closed for the day, and I’m glad. I don’t want to see anyone yet.

What I want is a bed. My head is hurting again and I’m beginning to feel the cold. In a small, warm diner I find a wall of pamphlets and one old man drinking coffee at a bar. I see an advertisement for the Comfort Fishing Lodge, and a feeling of destiny settles around me, makes me shiver. It is the pretty little place I read about in
Hunting and Fishing News
. The place that welcomed me to come and stay awhile.

I could use some comfort. And I certainly need a place to stay.

I leave the light and heat of the restaurant and try to follow the map on the brochure.

I am alone again, and cold, and my head is really starting to hurt, but at least I have a destination.

I find Lakeshore Drive and follow it, walking along its crumbling edge, stepping over tire-sized potholes, for so long my feet start to ache. It begins to really bug me that I’m missing a sock. It’s odd; my head hurts, my skin feels raw, my stomach is on fire where the seat belt bit me, I’ve walked away from an accident scene (that has to be illegal), and I’m worried about blisters on my feet.

It is quiet out here in a way I’ve never experienced; it’s not the city way of silence, when folks are asleep and their cars are parked. This is a preternatural kind of quiet, where birdsong can startle you with its volume and a squirrel can be heard scampering up a tree as you approach.

I’m enough of a city girl to wonder what I’m doing in this no-man’s-land.

I find myself glancing back down the road, toward town, wishing I could hear a car. I’m just about to head back, in fact, when I turn the last corner and find myself in a large clearing, with a still, flat lake on my left and the immense forest on my right. The road becomes a driveway, lined on either side by bare-limbed fruit trees. At its end is a rustic—no, run down—log building. The roof is a carpet of moss. The wraparound porch sags tiredly to one side. To the left of the front door is a large chainsaw carving of a trumpeter swan. Beneath it is a hand-painted sign welcoming me to the Comfort Fishing Lodge. Beside this sign is another—one that reminds me of my own life.