Before the Fall(28)
And so, even as other paintings call to you, you can’t help but stand there and help her look.
Chapter 11
Storm Clouds
The life vest is so tight it’s hard to breathe, but Scott reaches up and pulls the straps again. It is an unconscious gesture. One he’s been doing every few moments since they got on the helicopter. Gus Franklin sits across from him, studying his face. Beside him is Petty Officer Berkman in an orange jumpsuit and glassy black helmet. They are in a Coast Guard MH-65C Dolphin racing over the wave caps of the Atlantic. In the distance Scott can just make out the cliffs of Martha’s Vineyard. Home. But this is not where they’re going. Not yet. Sneeze, the three-legged dog, will have to wait. Scott thinks of her now, a white mutt with one black eye. An eater of horse shit, a connoisseur of long grass, who lost her back right leg to cancer last year and was climbing stairs again within two days. Scott checked in with his neighbor after he got off the phone with Gus this morning. The dog was fine, his neighbor told him. She was lying on the porch panting at the sun. Scott thanked her again for watching the dog. He said he should be home in a couple of days.
“Take your time,” his neighbor said. “You’ve been through a lot. And good for you. What you did for that boy. Good for you.”
He thinks of the dog now, missing a limb. If she can bounce back, why can’t I?
The helicopter bucks through chunky air, each drop like a hand slapping a jar, trying to dislodge the last peanut. Except in this case Scott is the peanut. He grips his seat with his right hand, his left arm still in a sling. The trip from the coast takes twenty minutes. Looking out the window at the miles of ocean, Scott can’t believe how far he swam.
Scott was at the barbecue joint sipping water for an hour before Gus arrived. He drove up in a white sedan—company car, he told Scott—and entered the restaurant with a change of clothes in hand.
“I took a guess at the size,” he said and threw the clothes to Scott.
“I’m sure they’ll be great. Thanks,” said Scott and went into the bathroom to change. Cargo pants and a sweatshirt. The pants were too big in the waist and the sweatshirt too tight in the shoulders—the dislocated shoulder made changing clothes a challenge—but at least he felt like a normal person again. He washed his hands and pushed the scrubs deep into the garbage.
On the helicopter, Gus points out the starboard side. Scott follows his finger to the Coast Guard Cutter Willow, a gleaming white ship anchored in the sea below.
“You ever been on a helicopter before?” Gus yells.
Scott shakes his head. He is a painter. Who would bring a painter on a helicopter? But then again, that’s what he thought about private planes, and look how that turned out.
Looking down, Scott sees the cutter has company. Half a dozen ships are spread out on the ocean. The plane, they believe, has crashed into an especially deep part of the sea. The something trench. That means, Gus tells him, it may take weeks to locate the submerged wreckage.
“This is a joint search-and-recovery operation,” Gus says. “We’ve got ships from the navy, the Coast Guard, and the NOAA.”
“The what?”
“National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
Gus smiles.
“Sea nerds,” he says, “with multibeam and side scan sonar. Also the air force lent us a couple of HC-130s, and we’ve got thirty navy divers and twenty from the Massachusetts State Police ready to go into the water if and when we find the wreckage.”
Scott thinks about this.
“Is that normal when a small plane goes down?” he asks.
“No,” says Gus. “Definitely a VIP package. This is what happens when the president of the United States makes a phone call.”
The helicopter banks right and circles the cutter. The only thing keeping Scott from falling out the open door and into the sea is his seat belt.
“You said there was wreckage on the surface when you came up,” yells Gus.
“What?”
“Wreckage in the sea.”
Scott nods. “There were flames on the water.”
“Jet fuel,” says Gus. “Which means the fuel tanks ruptured. It’s lucky you weren’t burned.”
Scott nods, remembering.
“I saw,” he says, “I don’t know, part of a wing? Maybe some other debris. It was dark.”
Gus nods. The helicopter drops with another quick jerk. Scott’s stomach is in his throat.
“A fishing boat found pieces of wing near Philbin Beach yesterday morning,” Gus tells him. “A metal tray from the galley, a headrest, toilet seat. It’s clear we’re not looking for an intact aircraft. Sounds like the whole thing came apart. We may see more wash up in the next few days, depending on the current. The question is, did it break up on impact or in midair?”
“Sorry. I wish I could say more. But, like I said, at a certain point I hit my head.”
Scott looks out at the ocean, endless miles of open water as far as his eye can see. For the first time he thinks, Maybe it was good that it was dark. If he had been able to see the vastness around him, the epic emptiness, he may never have made it.
Across from him, Gus eats almonds from a ziplock bag. Where the average person appreciates the beauty of surf and waves, Gus, an engineer, sees only practical design. Gravity, plus ocean current, plus wind. Poetry to the common man is a unicorn viewed from the corner of an eye—an unexpected glimpse of the intangible. To an engineer, only the ingenuity of pragmatic solutions is poetic. Function over form. It’s not a question of optimism or pessimism, a glass half full or half empty.