Jumper 1 - Jumper (22 page)

"Weak, but my ear doesn't hurt now."

"And is there any pain in the chest?"

"No."

"Well, I am thinking that we caught it in time. Be sure and complete the full course of antibiotics. You may take or leave the antihistamines and cough medicine as your symptoms require, but, to be on the safe side, keep up the eardrops for two more days. If the pain does not return, you may discontinue application."

I thanked him and paid for the visit.

Back in Stillwater I wandered aimlessly about the apartment, restless. I tried to pick up several different books but found it difficult to concentrate. Finally, I spent some time hooking up the entertainment center, running all the cables from VCR to TV to stereo to 8-mm videotape player (for the camera's tapes) to the wall cable outlet.

I watched the last half of an old movie classic on one of the movie channels, then flipped around, looking for something interesting. There were several soap operas, a few game shows, and movies that I'd already seen or thought were stupid. Then I hit CNN and paused.

"The hostage crisis at Algiers Airport is over, leaving one hostage dead and several others wounded. The three hijackers and fourteen of the hostages were driven from the airport in a truck and passed through Algerian Army checkpoints. Five hours later, a bus with the hostages aboard pulled up outside the Swiss consulate. The fourteen hostages taken from the aircraft were the only Americans aboard after the death of Mary Niles."
What...?

"There has been no response to American and British demands that Algeria arrest and try the hijackers. We go now to Athens Airport, where the hijacking of Pan Am flight 932 began."

The screen switched from the female news anchor to a blond male reporter standing in an airport concourse. He said, "Luggage crew on the ground saw three men carrying duffel bags board the Pan Am 727 from a food service truck, shortly before the plane taxied away from the gate. According to one of the British passengers, these men hid themselves in the aft lavatories, bursting out, after the plane was airborne, with grenades and Uzi submachine guns. They made all passengers put their hands behind their heads and their heads between their knees. Those in first class heard one of the hijackers screaming into the cockpit intercom in broken English that he would start killing the flight attendants if the cockpit door was not opened.

"Captain Lawrence Johnson, pilot of flight 932, reported the hijacking to Athens radar control and changed his transponder code to read 7500, the international signal for hijacking. Then he had his copilot open the door."

The scene on the TV changed to an exterior control tower while a voice-over, heavy with radio static, said, "This is Pan Am 932. We have a hijacking and are diverting to Beirut." A message that said recording appeared at the bottom of the screen.

The scene changed back to the CNN news anchor. "Four hours later, Pan Am 932 attempted to land at Beirut Airport, but Syrian Army forces in control of western Beirut refused permission to land, blocking the runway with fire trucks and airline buses. After threatening to crash the plane or land in the sea, they were told, 'Doesn't matter to us. You will not land here.'

"The hijackers then diverted the plane to Nicosia Airport in Cyprus, which also refused permission to land, but, in consideration of fuel problems, allowed the hijackers to land in Larnaca, where the hijackers demanded the plane be fueled. Cypriot authorities refused, but relented when the hijackers threatened to kill passengers one by one, until they received fuel. During fueling, airport antiterrorist personnel, dressed as fueling crew, affixed small radio-controlled charges to the landing-gear tires."

The camera showed the aircraft taxiing away from the fuel pits, and then, when it was in the middle of the taxiway and almost to the runway, small puffs of vapor came from each of the wheels and the aircraft shuddered to a halt.

The next scene was of a woman in a hospital bed. Her face was swollen and there was a dressing covering one cheek. A voice-over explained that this was Linda Matthews, flight attendant on Pan Am 932. She began talking.

"When the tires blew the hijackers started screaming, very angry. They began beating the copilot and screaming at Captain Johnson to 'Take off, take off!' He tried to get the aircraft moving twice more, but the airframe just shook. Finally he said, 'I can't. The landing gear is gone.' They opened the door, then, and had some of the passengers hang me out the door to look at the landing gear. I told them that all the tires were flat. I told them there was no way the aircraft could take off. That's when he began hitting me with the barrel of his gun. That's when they started hitting Captain Johnson, too."

The screen switched back to the anchor. "The hijackers demanded a new aircraft then, immediately. Authorities refused. Negotiations stretched out for seven hours. During this time, the hijackers demanded the release of several Shiite Muslims being held in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Italy. Finally, in the first apparent breakthrough, the hijackers said they would release all but the American passengers in return for a new plane. Authorities countered with an offer of a new plane if all hostages were released. The hijackers said, 'Wait for our answer.' "

The screen switched back to Linda Matthews, flight attendant.

"During the flight from Athens they moved everybody out of first class and put them in empty seats in coach. The flight wasn't very full, so this wasn't a problem. The leader, the hijacker who always made the demands, came out of the cockpit. He looked very angry. I'd been moved to a seat at the back of first class where I pretended to be unconscious. I didn't want them hitting me again. The leader called out to the hijacker standing at the back of coach in Arabic. The man at the back of coach brought a briefcase forward. On his way I could hear him hitting at anybody who wasn't completely bent forward, face on their lap. They pulled a female passenger from the first aisle seat in coach and handcuffed the briefcase to her wrist. Then I heard the leader say, 'Take message to Americans.' The woman, the one they'd pulled from coach, she looked very frightened, hardly able to stand. I heard the leader say to her, 'You are much luck. You leave plane.' "

The scene changed to an exterior view of the aircraft, zooming in on the door as somebody kicked out the yellow inflatable emergency slide. Then somebody was pushed from the door, almost ejected, to fall onto the chute sideways. They slid down and ended up sprawled on the concrete.

It was Mom.

She picked herself up with difficulty and limped as she walked away from the plane. The case was apparently heavy and she tried to shift it to her other hand, but the handcuff wouldn't let her, so she held it with both hands on the handle, hanging to one side and bumping her knee as she walked.

The scene shifted back to Linda Matthews, in her hospital bed.

"All three of the terrorists were looking out the window. The leader had this box in his hand. I thought it was a radio. It had an antenna, anyway. He pushed a button on it."

The scene shifted back to the tarmac and Mom, now several hundred feet away from the aircraft. An airport jeep in the foreground had just started moving forward to pick her up when the suitcase blew up in a blast of fire and smoke.

Mom was blown several feet away and ended up in a heap, like a pile of bloody rags, one arm flung out to the side, one arm missing. Just before the camera cut back to the news anchor, there was a voice in the background, probably the cameraman's, saying, "Oh my God! Oh my God!"

The news anchor continued, a grim expression on her face. "Shortly after the bloody death of Mary Niles, Cypriot authorities delivered a fueled 727 to the terrorists. Herding the fourteen American passengers and crewmen ahead of them, they boarded the plane and flew to Algeria. Once in Algeria, negotiations with a joint team of Algerian, PLO, and Saudi representatives continued for fifteen hours. At the end of this time, the hostages were released and the terrorists were taken from the airport under army escort."

The camera changed to a different angle on the anchor. She said, "In the European Community today, talks between..."

I turned the TV off with the remote control.

"I can't stand to sit in the middle or at the window."

I let the remote control drop through limp fingers.
I guess she couldn't teleport—I wish she could. I wish I'd been there. I
should
have been there!

Well, you got your aisle seat, Mom.

In the corner of the apartment I came back to myself, seated on the floor, wedged between the end of the couch and a bookshelf. There was a book on the floor, with half the pages torn out and crumpled, individually, into tightly packed balls. My hand was in the process of tearing out yet another page when I realized what I was doing.

Mom...

I looked at the book,
Pudd'nhead Wilson,
from the Twain collection Mom gave me. I felt terrible. Dad tore up books. I didn't want to be like Dad. I threw the book across the living room and pulled myself up on the couch armrest. I felt like there should be tears and there weren't any.

It didn't happen. It was fever. It was delirium.

I turned on the evening news and the camera footage was there again, on ABC. I turned the TV off quickly, before the explosion.

Millie... Millie has to help me.

It was too much for one person to stand. Too much to stand alone. I walked out of the apartment and around the corner, intending to make her listen to me, to tell her about Mom, but I paused at the corner, uncertain.

Two different images—the explosion and Millie's face as she told me to go away and never bother her again—those images flipped back and forth in my mind, jostling for my attention, struggling against each other, sometimes merging to stab twice as deep.

The exterior of the apartment was red brick. I leaned against it, the brick cold and rough against my face. The wind was cold, out of the north, the sky clear with tiny, cold stars, like pieces of flint, like shards of broken glass.

There were footsteps on the walk and I turned, hunched over in the shadow of the hedge that lined the walk. A man passed by without seeing me, heading down the walk toward Millie's building. He passed into the direct glare of the streetlight and I saw his face.

It was Mark, Millie's old boyfriend, the man I'd jumped a hundred miles and left on the observation deck of Will Rogers World Airport.

Has he come to bother Millie again?

I could be a hero again, wait until he started bothering Millie, then jump him to Brooklyn, to Minnesota, far away, where he wouldn't bother her. Would she listen to me then?

Mark knocked firmly on her door. I jumped to the side of her walkway, behind an evergreen bush that was chest high. My hands flexed and unflexed, anxious to have something to grab, something to hit at. I thought of the walkway at Battery Park, of the railing between land and cold, cold water.

How easy just to jump him to the edge....

The door opened and I gathered myself to jump, to grab, to hurt. I listened carefully, waiting for the angry words to come, but though I heard Millie's voice, there was no anger, no outrage in it.

"Ah, Mark. Thanks for coming," she said.

The door swung wide, Mark stepped inside, and the door shut. The door shut. The door shut.

Oh, God!
I felt like a fool, like an idiot. I flinched away, jumped back to my apartment several hundred feet away.
Oh, God!
I saw my antibiotics on the counter and, by reflex, glanced at my watch. It was time to take another pill and put the eardrops in. I leaned against the counter for a moment, my eyes shut tight, thinking,
Where are the tears? Where are the goddamned tears?

The cap on the antibiotics was childproof, requiring more of my attention to open it than I felt like giving. I finally managed the lid and tried to swallow a pill dry. It stuck in my throat, like a piece of bone, like a stiff and stale piece of bread. I pulled open the nearest cabinet and revealed the dishes, the wonderful handmade dishes. The glasses were at the other end of the cabinet and I couldn't be bothered.

I took a large mug, filled it with water from the tap, and washed the pill farther down my throat, but not far enough. It seemed stuck still, at the bottom of my esophagus, uncomfortable and unpalatable. I filled the mug again, angry at the pill, angry at Millie, angry at Mark, angry at myself.

The second cup of water pushed the pill on down and I set the mug on the edge of the sink, carelessly. It toppled over and fell, handle first. The handle snapped with a noise like a dry stick broken between one's hands.

God damn it all to hell!

I picked up the two fragments and started to piece them together, but it seemed so pointless. I threw the cup back into the sink with great force and it shattered, the noise both startling and pleasing me, a piece of the ceramic flying past my ear to hit the refrigerator.

I picked another mug out of the cabinet and threw it even harder.

The tears came then, great racking sobs that didn't stop until long after I'd smashed every dish in the set.

Leo Silverstein told me over the phone that it would be a closed coffin, and it was.

I arrived an hour early, jumping to the airport and taking the airport car service. It was Walt Steiger's station wagon but the driver was younger. "Where's Walt," I'd asked. "He's got a funeral" was the answer.

Inside the Calloway-Jones Funeral Parlor a grave-faced man with white hair and a dark suit glided up to me quietly and asked my relation to the deceased.

"I'm her son."

"Ah, you'd be Mr. David Rice? Mr. Silverstein told us to expect you. I am Mr. Jones. Through here, please."

He led the way through a pair of double doors to a churchlike room with stained-glass windows. Her coffin was at the front of the room, on the right. A man stood facing it, his head bowed, his back to us. When he heard us enter he took out a tissue and blew his nose before turning around. I'd never seen him before.