Make it Count

Plane door open, 13,000 feet. The light turns green. I step up to the edge, feeling the wind skim past me. I stop for a moment to take in the familiar horizon, hazy with low clouds, but definite, where the land ends and the sky begins.

My well-packed chute hugs me like an old friend. I always said I would die with this thing on, one way or another.

I glance at Jake, my co-pilot. He grins and gives me the thumbs up.

"Happy birthday, Captain!" he shouts over the engine. "Make it count!"

I give a thumb back, then step off.

Most 85-year-olds would be doing this for the first time in their lives. I try to imagine that. What would it be like for the first time? Maybe just like now; strangely secure, the wind cupping me like a cradle. I feel like a baby. I tuck in and turn slowly over, watching the plane overhead. 

I'll make this one count for sure. I like how we keep saying that, Jake and I. I remember his face as he sat on the edge of the door on his maiden voyage, a cherry just like me, eyes bugging while he tried to look serious (and for a second you do wonder if you're going to die).

But then he finally shouts, "I'll make it count!" and disappears out the door. And he did make it count, every time, until his knees finally gave way.

I check the altimeter on my wrist. 11,000 feet. The wind is still surging as I turn back over and look at the ground, so silent and motionless, a pretty quilt of greens and browns just waiting, ready to catch me.

And then I let myself see it. The land draining of color. Hazy clouds thickening with chalky smoke. I feel it again, in my lungs. I feel my rifle in my arms. 

We're going in, like it or not. That's just how it is.

But I'm done with that kind of thinking. Everyone has reasons for things, and oftentimes they're not good ones. I see the stripped trees. The impacts, dirt flying. Children running.

And then I’m home, and I see my brother standing over me, his fist still clenched, his knuckles bloody. That’s my blood on his fist. My blood, streaming from my mouth where he hit me, mixing with the whiskey spilled all over the floor as I lie there, not even trying to get up. He did it for my benefit, I guess. To protect people from me, to protect me from myself.

10,000 feet. 

The sky around me grows quiet now. And I hear birds, and am suddenly in a garden, and through the fumes of diesel and blood and nuoc mam thick with heat I catch the scent of jasmine flower.

And I see her. My Lily. I can see her face, scowling at the blossoms by our back door, chatting at them, telling them to grow in thicker. But when she looks up, her face breaks into a grin and shines. The sun in my days. The soft and brilliant moon in my nights. 

And I can’t tell her how beautiful the flowers are, or how beautiful she is, because I’m choked up by some old image, some ghost that has me and won’t let me go until its too late.

6,000 feet.

The ground begins rushing in. Around this altitude you really do get a sense of how fast you’re coming in. The garden evaporates into a mix of fields and barns and jungle and craters. I think I can hear people screaming.

My Lily. Always there for every birthday, even when I became an unbearable ass, refusing all gifts. Our four months of holidays, Thanksgiving through Tet, that time she packed the house with friends so it didn’t feel so empty. But it’s always full enough for me, with just her. And of course I didn’t say that when I was in a raging panic, screaming at everyone to get out.

My timing was all off. When I was away I was thinking of her, but when I was with her I was only thinking about myself. 

Up here though, my timing is perfect. I could float here forever if it were my choice. So I keep coming back. Living it again and again.

3,000 feet.

The altimeter enters the yellow zone. Not too much more time left.

Lily knew how important pictures were to me, but sometimes I couldn't look at them, and I couldn't explain why, but I think she knew, she must have known, because she didn't leave me. She stayed and kept them up, and maybe she knew that I knew that they were there, and I did look at them when I could, at the people we both loved, the places we had been to during the happy times. 

But there were bombs in those photos too, in those faces I clung to in that ditch, my body laughing and sobbing. How could she know? That they were all happy times, and sad times, all mixed together. You can't sift the two apart.

And now she’s not here any more. I was supposed to go first. I was supposed to be the one blown up. Why did the sky keep forgiving me? Why did it keep giving me one more chance?

2,000 feet.

We’re close to the red now. The ground is starting to swallow me in.

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you go, and I suppose that's true. But I can't change anything about the past now. I can't reason it into something it's not.

Maybe she won't be happy when she sees me next. Maybe she’s enjoying her freedom. Maybe when I finally walk through that big door in the sky she'll say "You!" and she'll snap at me and tell me to make my own pho. But she would never do that. And I don't think she hid anything from me. I don't think she was pretending. It must have been hard for her to look at her family too sometimes. How they hated me. They saw me for who I was. They saw right through me.

So here I am with the sky again, the place where it all feels right. Such a perfect balance of heaven and earth. I really could stay here forever. Maybe it will forgive me again. But really, another time isn't enough.

1,000 feet.

Deep in the red. The landing is close.

If I were gonna pull, this would be it.