The flight from Philadelphia to Seattle was going to be a long one and he
made sure his iPod was fully charged and double checked, for the seventh
time, his pockets for his headphones. He dreaded sitting on a plane for
hours, making small talk and pretending like he was a normal person. It was
too much for him to bear and these headphones and hoddie were the only things
he had to insulate him from humanity.
Too make matters worse, he was seated in a middle row. The man to his right,
a middle aged, balding, visibly drained, dour looking fellow in business
slacks who, luckily, fell asleep reading a financial newspaper shortly after
takeoff. The woman to his left was in her mid-thirties, she had disheveled
auburn hair, downturned blue weary eyes with thin, pressed lips. She was
wearing a wrinkled black turtle sweatshirt, blue jeans and sat staring out
the window of the plane.
Half way through the flight, she nudged the man in the middle seat and
pantomimed her desire to use the restroom. When she returned, he noticed the
smudged eyeliner and the hint of red in her eyes and he knew he wouldn’t be
able to save himself again. He knew he was being pulled to his inevitable
oblivion and he prepared himself once again for what he must do.
As he stood to let her pass, his headphones were so violently ripped from
his ears that his hoddie was pulled back. In his embarrassment, he looked
over at her to see her pained smile, a smile of a mother sitting in her
son’s room, remembering how happy he was when she gave him the toy she held
in her hands, the day after his funeral. A smile that wasn’t a smile at all,
it was utter sorrow with upturned lips and desperate, wet pleading eyes.
When she sat next to him, he turned to look and her and she met his pained
eyes, the eyes of a man much older than the twenty-something they should
have been, eyes much older than anyone she’d ever seen. She apologized about
him having to get up and he smiled and told her not to worry about. Without
another word, he began to tell her about a tragic day in his life, one of
the many he carried around with him that he couldn’t let go. He knew she
needed a human connection, to know that there was another human being out
there that cared about her and understood, that someone knew the pain she
was struggling to carry.
When he finished his story, he looked back at her to see fresh streams
running down her face. The tears of someone who finally began to let
something go, to let everything go. She turned and looked out the window
again, for a minute or two, gathering her thoughts and mustering her courage.
When she turned to him again, he was there waiting for her, knowing that she
was ready to hand over what she knew she could no longer support alone and
that he was somehow there for just that reason and she didn’t even know his
name. She never would.
Her story was one of human tragedy. She was in love with a man who she
couldn’t introduce to her parents. She had a respectable job as a flight
control operator in Los Angeles, but he was an illegal alien who smuggled
drugs inti the country. She loved him so much she couldn’t leave him,
despite the unhealed bruises and the days, she could barely pick herself up
off the floor. She loved him even though he made her get an abortion but
most of all she loved him because she hated herself. She thought about the
child she would have had and told him the names she came up with in secret.
She told him the images she had of son in the park, the birthdays and
Christmas parties and the abortion clinic. She told him that she was sorry
and she wanted him back every day and that she’d do anything, even trade
places with the child she never bore.
When he heard her story and felt her pain, he knew what he had to do, what
he always did. He grabbed her hand and took on all of her pain, all of the
memories that haunted her, the pulled her under. He visibly hunched over,
sobbed uncontrollably waking the man to his right. When he looked back at
the woman, she pulled her hand back in shock and horror at the old man she
was looking at. She didn’t say a word to him the rest of the flight, she
didn’t do anything but stare out the window. He put his headphones and
hoodie back on and closed his eyes and cried the rest of the flight back.
When she stood to retrieve her luggage as the captain announced their
arrival and connecting flights over the intercom, she noticed the man who
had been sitting beside her for the first time. He was young again, but
weather worn beyond his age, hair cropped short, wearing a t-shirt* and open
hoodie*, cargo shorts, leather sandals, and wracked with violent, silent
sobs. Careless and numberless mismatched tattoos tumbled from under his
sleeves, including one so fresh he must have gotten it just before the
flight. There in crisp color, framed in raised red flesh, was what looked
like a child’s painting of a little girl and her father standing next to a
playground just like the one she’d had as a child.
The man had already lived a thousand lives and had already died a thousand
deaths. He was the dead husband hanging from the ceiling, the son killed in
a lonely field in Iraq, the raped and murdered daughter, the wife of fifty
years who lost the fight with cancer, the boy found dead in a playground,
the friend who you never said goodbye to, the boys lost dog, the father who
walked out on his family, the heroin needle, the whiskey bottle, the priest
with the belt, the parents who never understood, the wife who said she love
you forever. He was addiction, abandonment, hate, love, the sense of
longing, misery, death, pain, life, and he didn’t know how much more he
could carry.
He made no move to stand or look up as she shuffled with the other
passengers down the aisle. She made her way to the exit, compelled by a
strange sense of familiarity to look back at the man before she stepped off
the plane. He still had not moved. He sat She should have gone back, or said
something to the steward, or thought to ask him what had happened, but it
was far too late, and she still needed to find a hotel before the funeral.
-Ryan Hidde
Ryan Hiddde is a dedicated career soldier, but in his downtime, he immerses himself in the world of literature. With a passion for storytelling, he crafts short stories that reflect his experiences and imagination, finding solace and fulfillment in the act of writing.
Leave a Reply