On March 20^th, 2006, in a sky committed to its blueness, a latch actuator failed on Delta flight from Philadelphia to Montreal. This caused the cargo door to blow outward at 26,000 feet, taking 14 square meters of the fuselage with it.  On board the flight: was a junior senator—recently appointed to the Urban Affairs & Housing committee—and two staffers; a successful furniture store owner from Delco; a teacher from Ellis Academy who’d been placed on administrative leave after striking her ex-husband on school property; one-half of an unpopular NHL broadcast team; a woman who journaled religiously; a man who felt it was his time; and the entire strings section of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic.

The plane dropped 800 feet in five seconds.

Another 3,000 in the minute that proceeded.

Luckily.

Thanks to the quick and decisive action from the flight crew, the plane was able to divert safely to Albany International Airport, with only a few minor injuries to passengers, most of which were treated on site by EMS.

And it’s funny.

It is.

That later.

Elk hunters, fishermen, snowmobilers, and other winter sport enthusiasts claimed to find binders of sheet music in remote areas of the Adirondacks. These claims lasted well into the spring. Pages of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata were apparently recovered from and around the areas of Tupper Lake, Schroon Lake, the Santanoni Preserve, Mount Marcy and in the upper crowns of various pine, maple, and birch trees throughout the High Peaks of northern New York State.

“They fell like notes from God,” reported one Forest Reserve employee; an employee later terminated for falsifying fire inspections.



An American Oriole lasered through the cottonwood. Going high for a minute, then another, before coming back down and landing on top of the light pole. Its head turned pausingly, alert-like, the way birds tend to turn and turn out to be. Soon, it dove towards the sun-softened playset that you used to pull my pants off in whenever Ryan and Mikah had their friends over for band practice—before rising again, in a big circle, blotting out some sunlight. It began gaining speed. And then, once more the bird dropped low, barely an inch over the garage, continuing out and then over the green and simple pool cover, the barbeque pit, your clay rooftop, your neighbor’s clay rooftop, the neighbor after that’s clay rooftop, and so on, and so on, and don’t you get it? I’m a clay rooftop.



A news helicopter made an emergency landing in my backyard after its rotor pin fell out during a high-speed police chase. When the pin fell it didn’t land on anyone or pop the tire of the suspect travelling southbound. No. It landed in a field of blue corn and the helicopter landed in my yard off Picaro Street. The dogs barked, of course. All of them. Even though I assume that most of those dogs had seen far worse things than a helicopter not hit power lines.

Fortunately, our yard was big so there was little danger.

I went out and watched the blades slow.

I watched them stop.

I waited for the “Low Altitude” alarm to end.

Then asked if anybody needed help.

Or water.

Because help can be water if it’s what people really need.


Later—because my hedges were flattened, floodlights shattered, my fishpond whipped empty by the strong and unnatural wind, and, also, the emotional damage I suffered from watching good pilots and fine cameramen run around my yard in total panic—I was offered $140,000 to sign something that said I’d seek no further damages. Or speak to reporters. Or release any recorded or rendered accounts of the incident. 

Which I had no plans of doing.

So I signed the dotted line.


Things change with money.

You feel different.

Quickly, I hid some cash in the attic.

In the closet too, inside my wife’s golf bag, which still had the tag on it because the one time we went she said I wasn’t fun to play with whether I was winning or losing.  

I put some cash behind the wet wall and sealed it.

A few other places.

Just in case they came for me.


I spend none of my $140,000 for a long, long time.  

I’ll save it, I think.

I’ll savor it, I promise.


Eventually.

I pay some of the neighborhood boys to replant the hedges.

I pay their fathers to wash my truck.

I get my wife new breasts.

My daughter new teeth.

I redo my wife’s breasts even better, her neck and ears too.

Soon.

She’s round and small.

Next.

I buy a skyscraper, some cattle, and a painting of a woman puking gold down her stomach.

I buy a factory and put it in reverse.

A minor league football team and force them to not have headaches.

Finally.

I buy an adult toy that looks like my wife before all the surgeries. A toy that giggles and says that I’m sexy and that she’s nervous about my size and potential carnality. I buy the nice batteries as well, with extended lithium cells, which the sales guy laughs about.

Then doesn’t.

No.

He just says quietly, “She’ll probably outlive us.”


I buy more things.

So much more that I run out of room.

So.

I buy a house in a new neighborhood.

And sometimes my new neighbors walk by and sort-of-peak in.

Mostly they make it look like they aren’t peeking.

But I know what’s going on. I do. They’re jealous of the drinking bench I had built out of old cross-country skis, the guns, the go-karts with airbrakes, my rare coins, and all the cattle.

My cattle.

Which unfortunately are now sick.

They keep looking at me for help.




We pray and pray but our plane won’t start. Or can’t. Even though it’s close. We think. We think we can hear it turning, wanting to turn over. Solenoids ticking. A flywheel grinding. The exhaust bleeding and then apologizing. It wants to go over. It does. It has to. The crops need their remedy. The remedy requires sky. We need to be in the sky and soon. You argue that this used to be underwater—all of it—an ocean under an ice sheet. I say none of that matters. Not now. “Right now, I just need you to pump this in as soon as you hear a clicking sound, okay? Get it.”

Baby.

Please.

If we lose the lettuce farm.

How will they garnish in the city? •





Sam Berman is a writer living in Boise, Idaho. His work has been featured in X R-A-Y, Forever Magazine and Maudlin House.

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