Not thinking anything of it, Bryce looked out the window again. His eyes started to track across it, but then stopped as if physically seized. They had to be bugging out of their sockets.
He’d flown between anvil-topped thunderheads that towered higher into the sky than his airliner. Not often-most of the time, you stayed well above the weather-but he had. Those had been goddamn bumpy flights, too.
But those clouds’d gone up a little higher than his plane. That black column off in the distance ahead… If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have been sure it was impossible. Even seeing it, he thought it should have been. Not knowing how far away it was, he couldn’t say how high up it went. He could say, though, that it went one hell of a lot higher than anything he’d ever imagined, let alone seen.
The guy next to him was staring at the iPhone as hard as Bryce was staring out the window. “Supervolcano,” the man muttered to himself. “The fuck is a supervolcano?”
No one could possibly have dropped an icicle down Bryce’s back. But that was how he felt. He knew what a supervolcano was. He might not have if not for Colin’s new lady friend, but he did. Colin had taken Kelly seriously even before Yellowstone started bubbling over. Bryce hadn’t known how seriously to take her, not then, especially since he was hearing her message delivered through Colin. He knew now, by God!
Other people in the window seats on his side of the plane were seeing that colossal-and seemingly expanding, too-cloud. The word supervolcano started rippling through the whole cabin. Not everybody seemed sure what all it meant, but it obviously wasn’t good news.
“Does this mean we won’t get to have dinner with Uncle Louie tonight?” a woman said. Some people were not overburdened with brains.
“This is the captain one more time. If I could have your attention, please…” The man in the cockpit had to know the passengers were seething. “If I could have your attention, please.. ” He waited for them to settle down a little before continuing, “Some of you on the starboard side will have seen a large cloud of ash and dust rising into the upper atmosphere.”
Naturally, all the people who hadn’t seen it craned their necks in that direction, trying to get a glimpse. Bryce admired the pilot’s power of understatement. A lesser man would have been incapable of it.
“That is why we’re turning around,” the pilot went on. “We can’t fly over it, we don’t dare fly through it-grit does bad things to turbine blades-and it doesn’t look like we can go around it. There is some turbulence associated with this eruption. And I’m going to ask all of you who turned on your smart phones to for God’s sake turn ’em off again. Getting our electronics screwed up right now would be the last thing we need. Thanks very much, folks.”
Bryce would have hit the flight-attendant call button if the guy in the middle seat hadn’t turned off the iPhone. Maybe he was worrying about the hazard too much. But if the captain was getting up in arms about it, he figured he was also entitled to.
Up ahead a few rows, somebody didn’t want to squelch his BlackBerry. He loudly and profanely didn’t want to, in fact. Aided by two other passengers, a flight attendant dispossessed him of it. That brought on more profanity.
“You can have it back when we land, sir,” the stewardess said sweetly. Sweetly still, she added, “Then I hope you ram it up your stupid ass.”
That startled the foulmouthed passenger into silence. You didn’t expect someone in a service industry to shoot back at you with your own weapons. Bryce hadn’t expected anything like that, either. Hearing it made him wonder how much trouble the flight might be in. Up till then, he’d worried what the dickens he would do in Chicago once they got back there. He had nowhere to stay, he had a carry-on’s worth of clothes, and he had no more money than any other grad student. Now he wondered whether they’d make it back. If that flight attendant felt she could let fly at a passenger, she was wondering the same thing.
Some turbulence associated with this eruption. The captain’s bloodless phrase came back to Bryce. Suppose you dropped Rhode Island into a frying pan big enough to hold it-a figure of speech Colin liked, since, as Bryce had long known, he couldn’t stand Rhode Island. What kind of shock wave would go through the air after you did that? How fast would it go? What would it do to any old airplane it happened to meet?
Those were all fascinating questions, weren’t they? They sure were, especially that last one. Bryce’s current perspective aboard one of those old airplanes made it even more intriguing.
He could do exactly nothing about it. He’d never felt helpless in this particular way before. The guy sitting next to him must have made the same kind of calculation, because out of the blue he said, “I did two tours in Afghanistan. When the mortars start coming in, you just hope you’re lucky. After I got out of the Army, I didn’t figure I’d ever have to worry about that kind of shit again, y’know?”
“Uh-huh.” Bryce managed a nod. He wanted to freak out, but not in front of a bunch of strangers. How much of what got labeled bravery was really just fear of embarrassment?
He couldn’t see the cloud any more; the airliner’s turn meant it was behind them now. But he could imagine the shock wave tearing through the air and gaining on them every second. A bell chimed in the cabin. The seat-belt warning lights came on. “The captain has directed that everyone should return to their seats and remain there,” the boss flight attendant declared on the PA. “This is due to safety concerns for all on board, and will be enforced as necessary.”
That sounded tougher than airline personnel usually talked. Bryce thought of the Coke he’d had with his sandwich. Sooner or later, it would make itself known again. What was he supposed to do then if he couldn’t get up? Pee in his airsick bag? Maybe. And men had it easier there than women did.
The engines changed note once more. They were working harder. If that meant the plane was going faster, Bryce was all for it. The intercom came back to life: “This is the captain speaking, folks. We have been cleared to land in Lincoln, Nebraska. We will be approaching from the northwest, and I will have you down on the ground just as soon as I possibly can. Do please stay in your seats, with your belts securely fastened. This may not be real pretty, but I will make it work.”
One more piece of news that didn’t sound so good. Bryce looked out the window again. They were coming down like mad bastards. No leisurely landing descent today. When the pilot said he wanted to get down fast, he wasn’t kidding. Bryce’s physical eyes saw farms and ponds and roads swell beneath him. His mind’s eye saw a red needle on an altimeter sliding from right to left. Altimeters probably didn’t look like that these days-everything now was bound to be digital. So his mind’s eye wasn’t as precise as it might have been. So what?
Lincoln. The University of Nebraska was there. What did he know about the University of Nebraska? They had a good football team and a good university press. Who was their ancient historian? What kind of classics department did they have? He’d talked with some of their peoplen Chicago. Now he might try to crash on them for a little while-they were as close to family as he had this side of Youngstown, Ohio.
He didn’t want to think about crashing on right now, or crashing into, or crashing anything. When you analyzed poetry, you always had to remember the difference between literal and figurative language. Bryce was fully aware of it here. He still didn’t want to think about crashing just now.
They weren’t that far off the ground any more. If something went wrong, could they try landing on one of these country roads? They were long and straight, and most of them looked as if they took maybe one car a week. Not ideal runways, but better than nothing.
“Please raise your tray tables and return your seat backs to the fully upright position,” the boss flight attendant said. “We may be a little early with this announcement, or-” She broke off, one word too late.