it is the nature and pleasure of townspeople to distrust the city. all the guiding principles that might flow from acenter of ideas and cultural energies are regarded as corrupt, one or another kind of pornography. this is how it iswith towns.
but blacksmith is nowhere near a large city. we don't feel threatened and aggrieved in quite the same way othertowns do. we're not smack in the path of history and its contaminations. if our complaints have a focal point, itwould have to be the tv set, where the outer torment lurks, causing fears and secret desires. certainly little or noresentment attaches to the college-on-the-hill as an emblem of ruinous influence. the school occupies an everserene edge of the townscape, semidetached, more or less scenic, suspended in political calm. not a place designedto aggravate suspicions.
in light snow i drove to the airport outside iron city, a large town sunk in confusion, a center of abandonment andbroken glass rather than a place of fully realized urban decay. bee, my twelve-year-old, was due in on a flight fromwashington, with two stops and one change of planes along the way. but it was her mother, tweedy browner, whoshowed up in the arrivals area, a small dusty third-world place in a state of halted renovation. for a moment i thoughtbee was dead and tweedy had come to tell me in person.
"where is bee?""she's flying in later today. that's why i'm here. to spend some time with her. i have to go to boston tomorrow.
family business.""but where is she?""with her father.""i'm her father, tweedy.""malcolm hunt, stupid. my husband.""he's your husband, he's not her father.""do you still love me, tuck?" she said.
she called me tuck, which is what her mother used to call her father. all the male browners were called tuck. whenthe line began to pale, producing a series of aesthetes and incompetents, they gave the name to any man who marriedinto the family, within reason. i was the first of these and kept expecting to hear a note of overrefined irony in theirvoices when they called me by that name. i thought that when tradition becomes too flexible, irony enters the voice.
nasality, sarcasm, self-caricature and so on. they would punish me by mocking themselves. but they were sweetabout it, entirely sincere, even grateful to me for allowing them to carry on.
she wore a shetland sweater, tweed skirt, knee socks and penny loafers. there was a sense of protestant disrepairabout her, a collapsed aura in which her body struggled to survive. the fair and angular face, the slightly bulgingeyes, the signs of strain and complaint that showed about the mouth and around the eyes, the pulsing at the temple,the raised veins in the hands and neck. cigarette ash clung to the loose weave of her sweater.
"for the third time. where is she?""indonesia, more or less. malcolm's working in deep cover, sponsoring a communist revival. it's part of an elegantscheme designed to topple castro. let's get out of here, tuck, before children come swarming around to beg.""is she coming alone?""why wouldn't she be?""from the far east to iron city can't be that simple.""bee can cope when she has to. she wants to be a travel writer as a matter of actual fact. sits a horse well."she took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled smoke in rapid expert streams from nose and mouth, a routine sheused when she wanted to express impatience with her immediate surroundings. there were no bars or restaurants atthe airport—just a stand with prepackaged sandwiches, presided over by a man with sect marks on his face. we gottweedy's luggage, went out to the car and drove through iron city, past deserted factories, on mainly desertedavenues, a city of hills, occasional cobbled streets, fine old homes here and there, holiday wreaths in the windows.
"tuck, i'm not happy.""why not?""i thought you'd love me forever, frankly. i depend on you for that. malcolm's away so much.""we get a divorce, you take all my money, you marry a well-to-do, well-connected, well-tailored diplomat whosecretly runs agents in and out of sensitive and inaccessible areas.""malcolm has always been drawn to jungly places."we were traveling parallel to railroad tracks. the weeds were full of styrofoam cups, tossed from train windows orwind-blown north from the depot.
"janet has been drawn to montana, to an ashram," i said.
"janet savory? good god, whatever for?""her name is mother devi now. she operates the ashram's business activities. investments, real estate, tax shelters.
it's what janet has always wanted. peace of mind in a profit-oriented context.""marvelous bone structure, janet.""she had a talent for stealth.""you say that with such bitterness. i've never known you to be bitter, tuck.""stupid but not bitter.""what do you mean by stealth? was she covert, like malcolm?""she wouldn't tell me how much money she made. i think she used to read my mail. right after heinrich was born,she got me involved in a complex investment scheme with a bunch of multilingual people. she said she hadinformation.""but she was wrong and you lost vast sums.""we made vast sums. i was entangled, enmeshed. she was always maneuvering. my security was threatened. mysense of a long and uneventful life. she wanted to incorporate us. we got phone calls from liechtenstein, thehebrides. fictional places, plot devices."'that doesn't sound like the janet savory i spent a delightful half hour with. the janet with the high cheekbones andwry voice.""you all had high cheekbones. every one of you. marvelous bone structure. thank god for babette and her longfleshy face.""isn't there somewhere we can get a civilized meal?" tweedy said. "a tableclothy place with icy pats of butter.
malcolm and i once took tea with colonel qaddafí. a charming and ruthless man, one of the few terrorists we've metwho lives up to his public billing."the snow had stopped falling. we drove through a warehouse district, more deserted streets, a bleakness andanonymity that registered in the mind as a ghostly longing for something that was far beyond retrieval. there werelonely cafes, another stretch of track, freight cars paused at a siding. tweedy chain-smoked extra-longs, shootingexasperated streams of smoke in every direction.
"god, tuck, we were good together.""good at what?""fool, you're supposed to look at me in a fond and nostalgic way, smiling ruefully.""you wore gloves to bed.""i still do.""gloves, eyeshades and socks.""you know my flaws. you always did. i'm ultrasensitive to many things.""sunlight, air, food, water, sex.""carcinogenic, every one of them.""what's the family business in boston all about?""i have to reassure my mother that malcolm isn't dead. she's taken quite a shine to him, for whatever reason.""why does she think he's dead?""when malcolm goes into deep cover, it's as though he never existed. he disappears not only here and now butretroactively. no trace of the man remains. i sometimes wonder if the man i'm married to is in fact malcolm hunt ora completely different person who is himself operating under deep cover. it's frankly worrisome. i don't know whichhalf of malcolm's life is real, which half is intelligence. i'm hoping bee can shed some light."traffic lights swayed on cables in a sudden gust. this was the city's main street, a series of discount stores,check-cashing places, wholesale outlets. a tall old moorish movie theater, now remarkably a mosque. blankstructures called the terminal building, the packer building, the commerce building. how close this was to aclassic photography of regret.
"a gray day in iron city," i said. "we may as well go back to the airport.""how is hitler?'!
"fine, solid, dependable.""you look good, tuck.""i don't feel good.""you never felt good. you're the old tuck. you were always the old tuck. we loved each other, didn't we? we toldeach other everything, within the limits of one's preoccupation with breeding and tact. malcolm tells me nothing.
who is he? what does he do?"she sat with her legs tucked under her, facing me, and flicked ashes into her shoes, which sat on the rubber mat.
"wasn't it marvelous to grow up tall and straight, among geldings and mares, with a daddy who wore blue blazersand crisp gray flannels?""don't ask me.""mother used to stand in the arbor with an armful of cut flowers. just stand there, being what she was."at the airport we waited in a mist of plaster dust, among exposed wires, mounds of rubble. half an hour before beewas due to arrive, the passengers from another flight began filing through a drafty tunnel into the arrivals area. theywere gray and stricken, they were stooped over in weariness and shock, dragging their hand luggage across the floor.
twenty, thirty, forty people came out, without a word or look, keeping their eyes to the ground.
some limped, some wept. more came through the tunnel, adults with whimpering children, old people trembling, ablack minister with his collar askew, one shoe missing. tweedy helped a woman with two small kids. i approached ayoung man, a stocky fellow with a mailman's cap and beer belly, wearing a down vest, and he looked at me as if ididn't belong in his space-time dimension but had crossed over illegally, made a rude incursion. i forced him to stopand face me, asked him what had happened up there. as people kept filing past, he exhaled wearily. then he nodded,his eyes steady on mine, full of a gentle resignation.
the plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet.
something like four miles. when the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. then theserious screaming and moaning began. almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom:
"we're falling out of the sky! we're going down! we're a silver gleaming death machine!" this outburst struck thepassengers as an all but total breakdown of authority, competence and command presence and it brought on a roundof fresh and desperate wailing.
objects were rolling out of the galley, the aisles were full of drinking glasses, utensils, coats and blankets. astewardess pinned to the bulkhead by the sharp angle of descent was trying to find the relevant passage in ahandbook titled "manual of disasters." then there was a second male voice from the flight deck, this one remarkablycalm and precise, making the passengers believe there was someone in charge after all, an element of hope: "this isamerican two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. now we know what it's like. it is worse than we'd everimagined. they didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in denver. our fear is pure, so totally stripped ofdistractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. in less than three minutes we will touch down,so to speak. they will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. i love you,lance." this time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. lance? what kind of people werein control of this aircraft? the crying took on a bitter and disillusioned tone.
as the man in the down vest told the story, passengers from the tunnel began gathering around us. no one spoke,interrupted, tried to embellish the account.
aboard the gliding craft, a stewardess crawled down the aisle, over bodies and debris, telling people in each row toremove their shoes, remove sharp objects from their pockets, assume a fetal position. at the other end of the plane,someone was wrestling with a flotation device. certain elements in the crew had decided to pretend that it was not acrash but a crash landing that was seconds away. after all, the difference between the two is only one word. didn'tthis suggest that the two forms of flight termination were more or less interchangeable? how much could one wordmatter? an encouraging question under the circumstances, if you didn't think about it too long, and there was no timeto think right now. the basic difference between a crash and a crash landing seemed to be that you could sensiblyprepare for a crash landing, which is exactly what they were trying to do. the news spread through the plane, theterm was repeated in row after row. "crash landing, crash landing." they saw how easy it was, by adding one word,to maintain a grip on the future, to extend it in consciousness if not in actual fact. they patted themselves forballpoint pens, went fetal in their seats.
by the time the narrator reached this point in his account, many people were crowded around, not only people who'djust emerged from the tunnel but also those who'd been among the first to disembark. they'd come back to listen.
they were not yet ready to disperse, to reinhabit their earthbound bodies, but wanted to linger with their terror, keepit separate and intact for just a while longer. more people drifted toward us, milled about, close to the entireplaneload. they were content to let the capped and vested man speak on their behalf. no one disputed his account ortried to add individual testimony. it was as though they were being told of an event they hadn't personally beeninvolved in. they were interested in what he said, even curious, but also clearly detached. they trusted him to tellthem what they'd said and felt.
it was at this point in the descent, as the term "crash landing" spread through the plane, with a pronounced vocalstress on the second word, that passengers in first class came scrambling and clawing through the curtains, literallyclimbing their way into the tourist section in order to avoid being the first to strike the ground. there were those intourist who felt they ought to be made to go back. this sentiment was expressed not so much in words and actions asin terrible and inarticulate sounds, mainly cattle noises, an urgent and force-fed lowing. suddenly the enginesrestarted. just like that. power, stability, control. the passengers, prepared for impact, were slow to adjust to the newwave of information. new sounds, a different flight path, a sense of being encased in solid tubing and not somepolyurethane wrap. the smoking sign went on, an international hand with a cigarette. stewardesses appeared withscented towelettes for cleaning blood and vomit. people slowly came out of their fetal positions, sat back limply.
four miles of prime-time terror. no one knew what to say. being alive was a richness of sensation. dozens of things,hundreds of things. the first officer walked down the aisle, smiling and chatting in an empty pleasant corporate way.
his face had the rosy and confident polish that is familiar in handlers of large passenger aircraft. they looked at himand wondered why they'd been afraid.
i'd been pushed away from the narrator by people crowding in to listen, well over a hundred of them, dragging theirshoulder bags and garment bags across the dusty floor. just as i realized i was almost out of hearing range, i saw beestanding next to me, her small face smooth and white in a mass of kinky hair. she jumped up into my embrace,smelling of jet exhaust.
"where's the media?" she said.
"there is no media in iron city."'they went through all that for nothing?"we found tweedy and headed out to the car. there was a traffic jam on the outskirts of the city and we had to sit ona road outside an abandoned foundry. a thousand broken windows, street lights broken, darkness settling in. bee satin the middle of the rear seat in the lotus position. she seemed remarkably well rested after a journey that hadspanned time zones, land masses, vast oceanic distances, days and nights, on large and small planes, in summer andwinter, from surabaya to iron city. now we sat waiting in the dark for a car to get towed or a drawbridge to close.
bee didn't think this familiar irony of modern travel was worth a comment. she just sat there listening to tweedyexplain to me why parents needn't worry about children taking such trips alone. planes and terminals are the safest ofplaces for the very young and very old. they are looked after, smiled upon, admired for their resourcefulness andpluck. people ask friendly questions, offer them blankets and sweets.
"every child ought to have the opportunity to travel thousands of miles alone," tweedy said, "for the sake of herself-esteem and independence of mind, with clothes and toiletries of her own choosing. the sooner we get them inthe air, the better. like swimming or ice skating. you have to start them young. it's one of the things i'm proudest tohave accomplished with bee. i sent her to boston on eastern when she was nine. i told granny browner not to meether plane. getting out of airports is every bit as important as the actual flight. too many parents ignore this phase ofa child's development. bee is thoroughly bicoastal now. she flew her first jumbo at ten, changed planes at o'hare,had a near miss in los angeles. two weeks later she took the concorde to london. malcolm was waiting with a splitof champagne."up ahead the taillights danced, the line began to move.
barring mechanical failures, turbulent weather and terrorist acts, tweedy said, an aircraft traveling at the speed ofsound may be the last refuge of gracious living and civilized manners known to man.
