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The pilot looked pretty much out of it too. I couldn't decide if this was a good sign or
not. Maybe flying in this kind of weather was about as adrenalin-generating for him as a
stroll in the spring rain would be for me.
On the other hand, maybe he was in the midst of a take-no-prisoners child custody
battle with his alcoholic ex-wife and had stopped caring several court appearances back if
he lived or died. Hard to tell.
As we turned and began taxiing down the short runway, the rain picked up and the wind
shook the small craft with a vengeance. As the pilot gunned the engine for take-off and we
plowed down the runway, the plane listed so violently to the left I was pretty sure we were
done for.
The teenager yawned extravagantly as we lifted off into the turbulent skies.
I hated him.
Up we crawled, giant sheets of rain washing over the plane. It was like being in a
massive washing machine that was stuck on some rogue setting between rinse and spin.
“What's your favorite restaurant on the island?” our female fellow passenger leaned
back and asked.
Talk about non sequitur.
“Uh…” I muttered, my mind definitely elsewhere. Actually, I was hoping my mother
would remember to recite
I felt a Funeral in my Brain
as she and five hundred of our closest
friends scattered our ashes over Nantucket Harbor.
“How about
Second Course
? Have you tried it?”
“Yep, we went there New Year's Eve,” said Michael, clearly vying with the teenager
for the “Calmest Passenger in an Airline Disaster Award.”
“Good, but not great,” was the mother's assessment.
“I like
Bananas
,” said the teenager, who had not spoken one word all afternoon but de-
cided, now that we were facing certain extinction, to sprout a personality. “Their fries rule.”
Frankly I've always thought their fries were a bit on the soggy side. But, since my teeth
were chattering so hard that my fillings were likely to fly out and crack the windows any
second, I decided to keep my mouth shut and my opinion to myself.
After five minutes or so, as my fellow passengers nattered on about the pros and cons
of
Conuco
vs
El Quenepo
, I noticed that we were flying in the wrong direction.
Very wrong. As in due north. And we were supposed to be flying pretty much due east.
I tugged on Michael's shirt-tail.
“Huh?” he said distractedly.
“We're headed the wrong way.”
“I noticed that.”
“What do you think's going on?”
“Oh, who knows.”
“But we've been flying north ever since we took off.”
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