Gospel (113 page)

Lucy repeated the name, “Rudolph.”

“We called him Rudy. You'da liked him, Luce.”

Hoping to lighten the mood, she flirted in absentia. “Was he good-looking?”

O'Hanrahan mumbled, “An acquired taste perhaps, but I would say so.” He scooted forward and edged out his wallet from the back pocket. Deeply enfolded within was a photo, the photo Gabriel must have seen. He held it up and looked at it but not intensely, not to make eye contact with the eyes in the photo.

Lucy gingerly held it.

Indeed, Lucy thought there was a resemblance between Gabriel and Rudolph. Or maybe mostly it was the monastic haircut. It was a senior high school official photo, the one that went in the yearbook, circa 1971 or so, with wide lapels on a corduroy jacket, a wide brown tie, too much hair. In contrast to the yellowing photo and the pale, unsmiling face staring back at her, perhaps unhappy with the photo being taken, O'Hanrahan was forcing a cheery spiel:

“A bit unathletic perhaps, but that's because he read all the time. He was a scholar like his old man. Sure do miss the talks—I mean we used to … sure do miss the long talks we used to have. If he'd lived he'd have probably done something in academia, against my sternest warnings.”

“What subject?”

“Of course, theology.” He closed his eyes, fighting nausea. Where was this stuff coming from? “A real ladies' man,” he heard himself say. “You'da had to watch yourself, I think. Sister Lucy.”

“I was a real nothing in high school,” she said, handing the photo back, “so he would've steered clear of me.”

“Oh I doubt that. You remind me a bit of one of his girlfriends, really…” He mopped his brow, wondering if he had lost his mind. He was talking about his son with no more reality than if he were a TV-advertised product … But he was inexpert at this. For the mourners of Beatrice he had a prepared set piece: what a good wife she was, how he missed her, what a splendid woman, and that satisfied all parties. But for Rudolph he was flailing, he had no patter to throw as a sop to the world, who would not leave his injuries alone!

But did you hear me, Rudy? Hm, did you hear your father there? All right, so I took a few liberties but I owned up to you, didn't I? All the approval you were looking for, all the love—did you hear it? And yet … yet in the pit of my bowels I feel something has been torn out and a great emptiness put back in its place.

(The truth will set you free, Patrick.)

At the dilapidated airstrip, Lucy and O'Hanrahan joined the line of sleepy travelers, mostly Arab and a few refugee Ethiopians. They were guided to a desk where no one presided, then to a counter where a woman insisted she had nothing to do with anything, then they were led outside in the cool morning shade of the hangar to await the authorities.

“Maybe,” suggested O'Hanrahan, ever ready to figure out a route overland, “we could go down to Kassala and get the Red Cross to take us in by jeep…”

He trailed off as he saw the 1950s Soviet-built propeller plane bouncing along the tarmac to the terminal. Black smoke plumed from one of the propellers, not that anyone official-looking on the field found this alarming. Religious designs, the intricate weaving of holy phrases in Arabic into geometric shapes, graced the exterior on faded decals.

“Insha'allah Airways,” O'Hanrahan said almost in a whisper. “If God wills it.”

There was a cardtable desperately leaning to one side, where a fat Sudanese army officer and a bureaucrat of some sort in a dirty
galabiyya
sat organizing passports, papers, and tickets, arguing with whomever was brought before the table. A toothless man raged vehemently with the officials, showering them with little sprays of spit that made them wince, stamp his passport and wave him on—but not before demanding his knife. The man reached into his boot and produced a shockingly long dagger and put it on the table. Guns, knives, sabers, stilettos, one by one the passengers disarmed themselves and the army officer swept them into a ratty suitcase for distribution after they landed.

Lucy swallowed with difficulty. “At least there's some security.”

O'Hanrahan was stricken.

Then there was a pop and two men emerged from behind the plane to yell at one another, while there appeared another man in a uniform … My God, thought O'Hanrahan, that shambling man with khaki pants from one uniform and a blue jacket from another is the
pilot.
The pilot ordered the two men to the garage and soon it became apparent that one of the plane's wheels had gone flat. A steady hiss underscored the workmen's conversation as the plane slowly tilted toward the leak.

“I'm sure,” said Lucy, horrified herself now, “that in order to fly they must have been in the Sudanese Air Force. I mean, you can't just
be
a pilot with no qualifications, can you?”

O'Hanrahan laughed darkly. “You're handing me the Sudanese Air Force? That sure makes me feel a whole goddam lot better.”

Soon a group was waved through and O'Hanrahan found himself at the leaning cardtable with the heavily mustached army officer, who looked like a browner Saddam Hussein. He disinterestedly examined their passports and visas and set them aside. “You go to Gonder?” he asked in Arabic.

“Insha'allah,”
O'Hanrahan said.

“Indeed,” the officer nodded, reverting to English. “No is safe Ethiopia. Very bad, very bad. You daughter?” he asked, meaning Lucy.

“Yes,” he said.

“Two names not the same name.”

“She is a widow,” O'Hanrahan invented.

“Ah,” he said, then mumbled a blessing upon widows from the Quran. He stamped their passports.

Takeoff would be as bad as feared. The plane rumbled and bumped along to a
dirt
runway, though no reason for avoiding the paved one was given by the pilot. Each announcement deteriorated into a crackle of static because of a broken public-address system. O'Hanrahan and Lucy were buckled up, grimly preparing for death. O'Hanrahan noticed the
fellahin
on board were doing the same, prayers, mutterings, tears, hands outstretched imploring Allah. The round-faced African man in the dashiki across the aisle smiled at him however, impossibly serene.

The plane sped down the gravel road, leaned to the right, then the left, then nosed up, then touched back down, all at a leisurely speed that seemed to defy attaining lift. Finally they were off, though they hovered close to the ground for what seemed ages before gaining any altitude; O'Hanrahan wondered briefly if the pilot intended to bounce all the way to Ethiopia, touching down every one hundred yards.

Lucy crossed herself.

They were airborne.

Khartoum looked like a junkyard from the air with two swaths of green near the mud-colored rivers and beyond that an endless void of soft yellow sand. It was not long until a range of reddish-brown, sunbaked mountains appeared. The mountains, thought O'Hanrahan, that kept the Romans out of Ethiopia. It was not until the 19th Century that an overland route was found through these mountains. Strange emissaries periodically escaped—like Prester John, the legendary Ethiopian king who rode in the Crusades bedecked in gold and silver armor, leaving rock-sized gems in his wake, who no sooner appeared than disappeared again, back to this inscrutable land of Jews the world's Jews barely recognize and Christians the world's Christians have forgotten. Yes, down below the mountains and canyons that warped this land, the peaks two miles high, the chasms impossible to traverse, the terrain that allowed Ethiopia to fall off the earth, the land of abysses, Abyssinia.

Just as a modicum of ease had begun to set in, there was turbulence and the plane rapidly raised and lowered itself, rattling and creaking. This set off a new round of supplications to Allah.

“God,” said O'Hanrahan, sweat pouring off his forehead, his silver matted hair hanging in his face distressfully, “this is how it was in the days before jets. I went over to Korea in a bigger version of this.”

“And you survived.” Lucy was grasping at any assurance.

The plane swooped up and down and all the fastened seats and tray tables seemed as if they might detach themselves. Lucy, who had bravely undone her seat belt, fastened it again with bloodless hands.

O'Hanrahan: “Lotta good that will do.”

Then there was a sound like a siren, a high-pitched arc of noise.

O'Hanrahan speculated, “Probably a warning sound meaning the tail section's fallen off.”

On the left side of the aisle many of the men were agitated and pointing out the windows, raising their voices. O'Hanrahan disbelievingly watched one man leave his seat and abase himself in the aisle, feet twisted in prayer position, bowing his head to the floor over and over …

“Uh-oh,” said Lucy, afraid to seek more information.

Then another 4th-of-July-noisemaker sound, this time from behind them on the right. Lucy looked out the window to see what looked like a child's smoke bomb falling down into the canyons below.

“What on earth?” said O'Hanrahan, crowding her at the window.

“Did that fall off the plane, sir?”

Then they heard the sound of marbles and ball bearings being loosed on a sheet of tin. Something was scattering itself under the floor in the belly of the plane.

O'Hanrahan, resigned, fell back in his seat and said quietly, “Speaking of Korea. We're being shot at.”

It was the end, Lucy thought absolutely.

O'Hanrahan was not merely a doctor of the faith, he was a prophet—he said they would die, and now they were going to die. Thanks to the Sudanese Civil War or the Tigrean resistance or the Eritrean rebels or the Loyalist forces of Mengistu or, since this is Africa, maybe someone is just using the plane as target practice—

“Jesus,” said O'Hanrahan, clinching the armrests as the plane received a thwack on its underside. He noticed the plane was ascending as well as it could in the turbulence. The Moslem passengers were keening and howling prayers now—Allah is good, Allah is merciful, Allah is all-powerful! The professor listened and thought with coldness: I don't know, boys. Allah is pretty tough on you people in this part of the world. Not exactly your hands-on deity.

(It would be much worse than it is, if not for Us.)

I suppose, thought O'Hanrahan, thanks are in order, Lord, for this quick death. I can say it'll be a helluva lot better than what would have happened had I never left my armchair back in Forest Park. There's some justice to all this that must please You. Dying in a plane crash, like my son. An equivalence. If Rudy could endure it, then I can endure it. I don't know if he was brave or in a panic or maybe never knew what hit him, but in case he's watching from up above, I'll meet the end with dignity. I dedicate this death to my son.

(Gestures of love are for the living, Patrick.)

O'Hanrahan glanced at Lucy who was tensed in prayer, reciting Hail Mary's over and over. Not me. I'll meet the end eyes open.

The propeller out the right window that had been putting out black exhaust now was slowing, having been hit by anti-aircraft fire. White smoke now joined the black, thickening smoke. The plane was descending, angling to the right, toward an expanse of desert. O'Hanrahan decided not to look for villages or landing strips. What was going to happen was going to happen—infected, sighed O'Hanrahan, in his final moments by Arab fatalism.

Lucy reached over and grasped his hand.

My God! It hadn't occurred to him. Lucy! Would she be here if not for you and your stupid quest?
Her death is on your head!
O'Hanrahan felt tears well in his eyes. This young life sacrificed to my follies!

He pressed her hand back.

Oh, forgive me! Your youth and the life ahead of you, the loves and triumphs of Lucy Dantan snuffed out in this … Ah, now that could get me Hell, after all. Good going, old man. Taking everyone down with you! O'Hanrahan prayed, earnestly and determinedly for the first time in seventeen years: let me die if You Guys want—but
not Lucy, for the love of God!
As for me, Lord, I don't, even now, feel any need to beg for forgiveness! I adore and venerate my sins! Unrepentant to the end, O God! But if You have one little shred of decency, save this girl!

(You've had plenty of chances to look out for her safety.)

He raised his head and saw Lucy looking over at him.

“It's going to be all right,” she said. “Whatever happens.”

The rocky hills were window level. Down, down …

“Even if it's not I want to say…” She was fearless with a calm from deep within. “Thank you for allowing me this trip.”

“Please,” he wailed, “if you hadn't come with me—”

She cut him off with a sharp squeeze of his hand. “I love you, sir.”

The valley floor or scrub and hard-baked earth was feet below.

(And you can't even respond in kind, can you, Patrick?)

“Yeah,” he said, wiping his brow, hyperventilating. Ah, the feared words! The magic, mystical name of God that he was too scared to speak! What couldn't be said in twenty years of married life or eighteen years of fatherhood, nor be said to sister or father or mother or colleague or friend—not that simply and nobly as Lucy had said it—

KA-THUDDDD … With bouncing and rumbling, the plane touched down, lifted up again slightly, came down with a greater thud and it occurred to everyone in the plane who had made their peace with death that perhaps, in this one second, the possibility of living had been revived. Now the passengers were united in an almost bemused anticipation: will the plane crash or flip or turn over or just slow down and give us our lives again? They decelerated crushingly, and O'Hanrahan leaned over to the window to see a ditch parallel to the plane's course. They were landing on a gravel road.

They slowed, and slowed some more …

And then they stopped.