Coverly turned and nodded to her, but his tongue was so swollen with fear that he could not make a sound. He worked it around desperately in his mouth to stir up some lubrication. The other passengers were still, and on they rocketed through the dark—sixty-five or seventy strangers, their noses pressed against the turmoil of death. What would be its mode? Fire? Should they, like the martyrs, inhale the flames to shorten the agony? Would they be truncated, beheaded, mutilated and scattered over three miles of farmland? Would they be ejaculated into the darkness and yet not lose consciousness during the dreadful fall to earth? Would they be drowned, and while drowning display their last talent for inhumanity in trampling one another at the flooding bulkheads? It was the darkness that gave him most pain. The shadow of a bridge or a building can fall across our spirit with all the weight of a piece of bad news, and it was the darkness that seemed to compromise his spirit. All he wanted then was to see some light, a patch of blue sky. A woman, sitting forward, began to sing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” It was a common church soprano, feminine, decent, raised once a week in the company of her neighbors. “E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,” she sang, “still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. . . .”
A man across the aisle took up the hymn, joined quickly by several others, and when Coverly remembered the words, he sang:
Joe Burner and the old lady were singing, and those who didn’t know the words came in strong on the refrain. The bulkhead door opened, and there was the thief. He wore a felt hat and a black handkerchief tied over his face with holes cut for the eyes. It was, except for the felt hat, the ancient mask of the headsman. He wore black rubber gloves and carried a plastic wastebasket to collect their valuables. Coverly roared:
They sang more in rebelliousness than in piety; they sang because it was something to do. And merely in having found something to do they had confounded the claim that they were helpless. They had found themselves, and this accounted for the extraordinary force and volume of their voices. Coverly stripped off his wristwatch and dropped his wallet into the basket. Then the thief, with his black-gloved hands, lifted the briefcase out of Coverly’s lap. Coverly let out a groan of dismay and might have grabbed at the case had not Burner and the old lady turned on him faces so contorted with horror that he fell back into his seat. When the thief had robbed the last of them, he turned back to the bulkhead, staggering a little against the motion of the plane—a disadvantage that made his figure seem familiar and harmless. They sang:
“Thank you for your cooperation,” said the public-address system. “We will make an unscheduled landing in West Franklin in about eleven minutes. Please fasten your seat belts and observe the no-smoking signal.”
The clouds outside the ports began to lighten, to turn from gray to white, and then they sailed free into the blue sky of late afternoon. The old lady dried her tears and smiled. To lessen the pain of his confusion Coverly suddenly concluded that the briefcase had contained an electric toothbrush and a pair of silk pajamas. Joe Burner made the sign of the cross. The plane was losing altitude rapidly, and then below them they could see the roofs of a city that seemed like the handiwork of a marvelously humble people going about useful tasks and raising their children in goodness and charity. The moment when they ceased to be airborne passed with a thump and a roar of the reverse jets, and out of the ports they could see that international wilderness that hedges airstrips. Scrub grass and weeds, a vegetable slum, struggled in the sandy bottom soil that formed the banks of an oily creek. Someone shouted, “There they
