White Noise - Don Delillo [39]
By the time the narrator reached this point in his account, many people were crowded around, not only people who’d just 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, keep it separate and intact for just a while longer. More people drifted toward us, milled about, close to the entire planeload. They were content to let the capped and vested man speak on their behalf. No one disputed his account or tried to add individual testimony. It was as though they were being told of an event they hadn’t personally been involved in. They were interested in what he said, even curious, but also clearly detached. They trusted him to tell them 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 vocal stress on the second word, that passengers in first class came scrambling and clawing through the curtains, literally climbing their way into the tourist section in order to avoid being the first to strike the ground. There were those in tourist who felt they ought to be made to go back. This sentiment was expressed not so much in words and actions as in terrible and inarticulate sounds, mainly cattle noises, an urgent and force-fed lowing. Suddenly the engines restarted. Just like that. Power, stability, control. The passengers, prepared for impact, were slow to adjust to the new wave of information. New sounds, a different flight path, a sense of being encased in solid tubing and not some polyurethane wrap. The smoking sign went on, an international hand with a cigarette. Stewardesses appeared with scented 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 him and 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 their shoulder bags and garment bags across the dusty floor. Just as I realized I was almost out of hearing range, I saw Bee standing 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 on a road outside an abandoned foundry. A thousand broken windows, street lights broken, darkness settling in. Bee sat in the middle of the rear seat in the lotus position. She seemed remarkably well rested after a journey that had spanned time zones,