“Oh, my God!”
“We’re going to crash!”
“I knew I should have flown Braniff!”
“We’re all going to die!”
“So flight insurance is for suckers, huh, Joe?”
“We are! We are going to crash!”
“Didn’t Momma tell you to go before, Herbie? Now look!”
“Holy shit!”
“Repent! Repent, and ye shall be saved!”
“Holy excreta!”
The last to speak, just before the plane pulled out of the dive and righted itself, was Rhino Dubrowski. A moment later, when our original steward reappeared jogging down the aisle, Rhino grabbed him. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Nothing to worry about, sir.” As he spoke, the aircraft pointed its right wing towards the ground and side-slipped vertically for another thousand feet.
The movement caught the steward by surprise. Clutching for support, he ended up sprawled across Rhino’s lap. “Nothing to worry about?” Rhino clung to him, more terrified than he’d ever been in ’Nam. “What do you call that?”
“Mild turbulence, sir.” The steward struggled to his feet. “Just a little mild turbulence.” He continued down the aisle towards the control cabin.
Before he reached it, the plane gave another sickening lurch and went into a spin.
From somewhere behind me a man called for help in a heartrending voice of pure terror. “Is there a priest on board?”
“I’m a priest, my son.” The answer came calm as a June day in a Killarney meadow.
“I have a confession to make, Father.”
“Yes, my son.”
“I’ve never been unfaithful to my wife, Father, and now, dammit, it’s too late!”
“Peace, my son. God will forgive you.”
“Maybe, but I’ll damn well never forgive myself!”
The dive leveled off. The cabin of the plane was horizontal again. Then it tilted backward as the plane started to climb to regain altitude.
Slowly, the panic in the cabin eased. The PA system made a sound like milk shpritzing breakfast cereal. This was followed by Captain Corcoran’s voice -- deep, experienced, mellow, confident.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it has been brought to my attention by one of our stewards that some of you are concerned by that little bit of bumpiness we’ve been experiencing. Now, I want to reassure you that there is absolutely nothing to be worried about. If anxiety is making any of you feel a wee bit sick, however, remember there are bags into which you may relieve your nausea inserted in the backs of the seats in front of you. But rest assured that there is nothing unusual in this turbulence. I personally have flown this route over one hundred and ten times, and I assure you that this flight is exactly like all the others.”
Captain Corcoran’s speech would have been most reassuring indeed had it not been immediately punctuated by his high-pitched, hysterical laugh. The next voice heard over the PA both explained the laugh and unhinged the jaws of Rhino and myself. “Now, lamb, that is such a crock! Y’all know you have never, ever had you a flight like this before!”
“Don’t touch his—!” I recognized the scream of the steward.
“Look out for the—-!” Another male voice which I assumed belonged to the co-pilot.
Once again the airliner started to plummet. The voice which accompanied this latest maneuver belonged to Terry Niemath. “Oh, Corky, when I put your dingus to me, I just feel so weak and dizzy and my head-—-! Oh, my, how my head does spin!”
“Where did he say that throw-up bag was?” A plaintive woman’s wail.
“The back of the seat in front of—!”
“I’m sorry!” Too late. “I’m so sorry!”
“Oh, shit! Why on me? Why me?”
“Why any of us?”
“Jehovah moves in mysterious ways his punishments to perform! Repent!”
“Oh, feces!”
It was like being on a roller-coaster. Just when you were sure it was all over, the ride leveled off. Only this time the plane was wobbling from side to side as it flew on its roughly horizontal path. This was not reassuring. Neither was the voice of Captain Corcoran when next we heard it over the PA.
“Steward! Steward! What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m taking command of this aircraft, sir.”
“Lady, stop that for a minute. I’ve got to get this straightened out. Now, steward, what did you-—? Ooh! God, lady, just wait one—! Ooh!”
“I am relieving you of command, sir, under Article Twenty-three, Section Sixteen-C of the Flight Attendants’ Code. You’re no longer fit to decide the course of this aircraft.”
“Mutiny! Steward, this is mutiny! . . . Oh, God! Not there! I go all out of control when a woman touches me there.. . . Mutiny, I—ooooh! That feels so good!”
“Not mutiny, sir. Article Twenty-three, Section Sixteen-C of the Flight Attendants’ Code says that, if the pilot in charge of the aircraft shall lose control of his command faculties, or if he shall commit a breach of public morality which causes the passengers to lose faith in his father image, then that member of the crew in the control cabin who is next in the line of command shall relieve the pilot of his responsibilities and take over the aircraft.”
“Steward, this is madness!... Oh, Jesus! Not under my—-! Yo-yo-yo! That feels fantastic.. . . And it’s not logical either, steward. How have I demonstrated loss of control of my command faculties for instance?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment, sir. First, is this switch here the rudder stabilizer, sir?”
“Steward, are you checked out to fly this aircraft?”
“No sir. Now, to answer your other question about loss of control of command faculties, sir. With all due respect to your rank, sir, might I remind you of the incident earlier in the day concerning the mini-bottles of liquor. The johns were unavailable to passengers and crew for forty-five minutes while you personally conducted a search for the three missing bottles.”
“Steward, the company holds me personally responsible in seeing that none of those mini-bottles of booze is filched. I was only doing my job.”
“Perhaps, sir, but in the middle of a hurricane, shouldn’t you have been flying the aircraft instead of putting it on remote control and crawling around under the toilets?”
“Let me remind you, Mister, that you know nothing about the pressures of command!”
“Corky, y’all are spoilin’ the rhythm. Pay attention! I keep gettin’ my little ol’ titty caught in this here instrument. What is this thang anyway?”
“It’s an ashtray. . . . Steward, there has been no breach of the public morality. Now get out of my control cabin!”
“Could y’all pull out your pecker an’ then stick it back in my pussy, sugah, so I can scrunch down an’ give better head to this here co-pilot?”
“I do believe that substantiates my case, sir.”
“Nonsense! Public morality! And it has to cause the passengers to lose faith in my father image! . . . Oh, God! Will you look at that ass move! Is that a thing of beauty? Twirl it, lady! Go-go-go! . . . Nothing public about the privacy of the control cabin, so how could the passengers lose faith?”
“I anticipated that objection, sir. That’s why I turned on the PA system. I wanted to be sure there would be witnesses for the Board of Inquiry.”
“You turned on the—! Ah-ah-ah! Stop-stop-stop!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you listen to me, steward. Even if there were any excuse other than mutiny for this action, you would not be the one to undertake it. The copilot is next in the line of command after me. The only one in this cabin authorized to relieve me, therefore, is the co-pilot.”
“Ordinarily that would be true, sir. But not in this case.”