Witness
by Carol Fischbach
Soumya Netrabile, The Succession of the Banished, 24 x 30 inches, oil on canvas, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
WITNESS
CAROL FISCHBACH / OCT 2021 / ISSUE 10
[Jul 24 2004]
[based on a real event]
Entry phase of an aircraft into a spin
Bill and two friends buckle themselves into a Beechcraft 58P Baron, a twin-engine private plane, tail number N69CL.
Air traffic control issues clearance for takeoff.
[is there ever just one thing that defines a beginning?]
Bicycles and luggage stowed in cargo area. Helmets strapped to handlebars. The flight begins on runway 33 from [mile high] Fort Collins/Loveland airport en route to Eppley Field in Omaha. The closest point to begin The Des Moines Register’s Great Annual Bike Ride across [sea-level] Iowa.
Luggage balanced. Weight evenly distributed.
12:02pm. Ascent above overcast clouds into calm blue. Before scattered light breaks through layers of gray.
How does pizza sound? A father in a house on Stonehaven Drive asks his children. A boy. A girl. A Saturday for a dad and his kids while his wife catches up at the office. Ice cream at Walrus they say. Dad laughs and reminds them Lunch first.
[None of them know Bill.]
Maybe Bill sits in the front passenger seat of the plane or maybe his back is to the pilot in a club seat. Maybe during takeoff he thinks of lyrics for a new song, thinks of his guitar stowed with his luggage. Next to his bicycle. Maybe he thinks back to when he got married in 1967. Is life everything he ever wanted? Maybe he wants another chance. At something. Maybe he is just ready to enjoy a weekend bicycling with friends. Finishing the 468 mile bike race. [High altitude training helps at sea level.]
I only met Bill once or twice.
On my entry into any given day, bumpy words skid around my skull. Out of balance. Brain pathways cluttered with harsh messages passed along neurons. Neurons that control muscles. Arthritic joints. Levels of pain. Neurons that seek a higher altitude while jumbles of letters tumble over jagged points in veins scarred from scathing words. [Self-administered toxins.] Words stick to arterial walls before leaving deep slashes in the axis of the heart. Slashes that leak an inert life. Thorns embrace an aging skeleton. Turned to ash in a firestorm of regrets. Blown away through scarred wrinkled lips from lungs no longer at capacity at any level. [Silence.]
If only I could have another chance.
Five minutes. Eight thousand feet. Then none.
Incipient phase of a spin
[Stall. And spin.]
12:05pm. Pilot acknowledges instructions to climb to eight thousand feet and maintain.
The plane, at a level pitch, perfectly balanced.
Until the stall.
It enters a vertical axis spin.
On its belly.
The roar of one engine.
The silence of the other.
[Cause unknown.]
After the kids and their dad pile into the car in the garage, just as he reaches up to press the button to open the garage door, before he starts the car, backs into the driveway, backs into the street on the way to take the kids out to lunch, he stops. He forgot his phone. His wife might call. He leaves the key unturned in the ignition. The kids in the car arguing over pizza. Or burgers. Or Walrus Ice Cream. The dad goes back into the house. Car still inside. Garage door closed. A barrier to the street.
[Just before it all happens]
Was Bill in the middle of a laugh? Maybe he remembered a moment from last year’s bicycle race or felt a bubble of excitement about meeting up with friends in Iowa, or was Bill looking down wondering where his house sat beneath the strata of gray below the blue, when, in an instant, an engine sputtered? Did time stop for Bill? Did his belly creep up his chest? Did he look out the tiny windows at the splintered fabric of spinning sky? A sky that became a screen forged in pictures stowed in memory. His two children. A boy. A girl. Did he regret that someone else was the pilot? A pilot who completed another 5.3 hours of lessons the day before the flight to the bike race.
Me in a body in a perfectly balanced life. A husband. A job. A house 2.8 miles away from Stonehaven Drive. Things unwanted stowed away out of sight. Empty spaces filled with clutter. My sputtering life distorted by perceptions of a body spinning in circles. Life rotating in rings.
Rings on fingers. Rings around tired eyes. Rotation on a vertical axis. A pencil with a lead point bores through my center to the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus where thoughts form into memories. The pencil rewrites them. Holds me responsible. Criticizes me at every rotation.
[I don’t want to be responsible.]
[I don’t want to be the cause.]
Is Bill afraid?
Developed phase of a spin
[Mayday! Mayday!]
The flat spin of the plane is in equilibrium. Like a pencil burst through its belly and the plane rotates flat on a vertical axis. Rudder useless. Airspeed and rotation stabilize within the spin.
12:06pm. Last transmission reported by the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB. We have got some sort of malfunction going on here.
Witness 7: Erratic revving of a plane motor.
Witness 5: The engines were missing, sputtering, cutting to silence, then sputtering again.
Witness 3: An abrupt decrease in engine noise.
Witness 4: One engine dead…prop not spinning on starboard side.
The father, phone in hand, climbs back into the car, boy demanding pepperoni at Old Chicago Pizza, girl insisting veggie pizza at Beau Jo’s. The children laugh and their father smiles when he looks at their faces in the rearview mirror, seems like yesterday when he had to strap them into car seats, he turns to make sure they are buckled in. He wants them to be safe. No one knows what is happening above them. Above their two-story house in their cozy little neighborhood where a Colorado state bird, a magpie, sits on the roof then squawks and flies away.
Did Bill watch time in reverse while centrifugal force stuck his body to the seat and the sky revolved around him? Retinas splashing images in front of him. Brain ingesting them trying to stabilize. A spinning planet of his life.
Hopes.
Realities.
Regrets.
Did hope sputter and turn then
decrease and
die?
At the closest point of dying
did he regret his final breath
even as it escaped?
I’m held hostage, glued to the spiral stickiness of staying in the same seat. No forward movement as [Flat spin] scenery changes and repeats and regrets roar in my ears. A [Rudderless] body with malfunctions I do not understand. The pilot has no control and I cannot stop the spin and the centrifugal force of aging presses itself into my skin and into my belly and into those I love and I can’t stop the spin and I know we’re all going to crash and I can’t stop the spin.
Is Bill ready to die?
Recovery phase of a spin
[Crash]
[In erect or inverted spins the pilot engages the rudder and retakes control.]
[Flat spins are almost always fatal.]
Witnesses 1, 7: The airplane was spinning counterclockwise. [Against time.]
Witnesses 1, 6, 10, 16: The airplane fell straight down. [On its belly.]
Witness 10: With no forward motion.
Witness 7: Erratic revving of a plane motor…sputtered four times before dying.
NTSB: The airplane was seen to emerge from the overcast in a flat spin.
12:07pm. Hard landing. Zero elevation. Zero speed. The airplane impacted the street and
driveway of house on Stonehaven Drive.
A neighbor, a witness, runs to the plane. He inches towards the crash site, feels heat, smells fuel,
hears the clinks of engine and metal, sees passengers still strapped in seats.
Still upright.
Heads down.
Eyes closed.
Blood seeps from lids, noses, lips.
Bodies unmoving.
Spinning stopped.
The neighbor backs away, knees bent, shoulders hunched, eyes that cannot unsee.
Fuel spills into the street.
Into the sewers.
Fuel ignites.
Fire engulfs the airplane.
Bill and his two friends,
scorched by flames.
Fire explodes in the sewers and four manhole covers burst into the air.
There would have been four on board that small plane but at the last minute, Mark decided against flying with his three friends and, instead, drove by himself.
Family still in the car in the garage. Pizza forgotten with the sound of a crash, the shaking of a
house, the splintering of a door. A plane flat on its belly. Just on the other side of that garage
door. In that driveway. An explosion. Barely far enough away.
The boy’s eyes wide, mouth open.
The girl screams, covers her ears.
The father, still holding the phone, doesn’t yet know retrieving it saved them. Doesn’t yet know what is on the other side of the door. In their driveway.
Landing gear never released, still inside the body of the plane, its belly slammed into the driveway of a family home, pieces embedded in the garage door. Rudder marks on the pavement. Five of the eight propeller blades lay broken in the street. Three still attached to the plane.
Dad gets his kids out of the car, they rush into the house, to the front door where they see the plane. Now in flames. Dad, phone still in hand, dials 911.
Maybe Bill had that feeling when your body slams down and your stomach rises up to your lungs and you breathe invisible toxins and your heart slams into the bottom of your shoulder, the shoulder that bears the burdens you carried all your life. The shoulder you always thought had enough room to carry more.
If I had a second chance, I would fly away with a magpie. Into the Rocky Mountains. Up to high altitude with the thinnest air to find my breath. Be my own pilot. Sputter and fly. Choose to be the retina and not the brain. Hear the silence and not the explosion. Choose the blue instead of the blood. The forward path instead of the spin. A boy. A girl. [Instead of childless.] Leave an inheritance. [Instead of an empty space.] [At sea level.]
I am not ready to die.
Carol Fischbach is a writer, nurse, and student archetype—a collector of degrees. At age sixty-four, she became an RN and was the oldest person in her class. She then went on to earn an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Now at seventy-two, she isn’t done yet but limits herself to lifting words instead of people. Writing is the portal through which she remembers, reframes, and releases memories. She continues to challenge herself by taking workshops that defy writing norms so she can find new ways to appear on the page.
Carol continues to add to her writing workshop portfolio with Lidia Yuknavitch and many other writers. She writes with a group of badass women writers and is also a member of Pinewood Table. Most recently, she stretched her creative muscles to include monologue performances in company with other writers and performers directed by Beth Bornstein Dunnington. Carol has been published in Propeller, Nailed Magazine, Oregon East, Tide Pools, the Port Townsend Leader, and has done past performances at ROAR, a platform for fierce feminine storytelling. She lives in Vancouver, WA with her husband, brother, and two kitties.
Soumya Netrabile (American, b. 1966 in Bangalore, India) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Netrabile received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BSEE in engineering from Rutgers University. Her current and recent solo exhibitions include Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL); Pt.2 Gallery (Oakland, CA); and Terra Incognito (Oak Park, IL). Recent group exhibitions include Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, CA); Trinta Gallery (Santiago de Compostela, Spain); PRACTISE (Oak Park, IL); and KARMA (New York, NY). Her work is included in both public and private collections.