the Fall

“You the photographer?” Carl shouted to my photographer. I think his hearing was still a little off from the wind up there.

“Yeah,” my photographer said. I didn’t get a chance to introduce the two. The plane was out of fuel, and Carl took the opportunity to walk my photographer through the jump.

“Ok, listen” Carl said. “It’s not an easy shot, but if you listen and do what I tell you, you’ll get it and we’ll all go home happy tonight.”

My photographer nodded. I noticed that he’d taken a little step backward toward the hangar.

“Ok,” Carl said. “We’re gonna fall out of that plane at 10 meters per second.”

He paused.

“That means that if you wait one second, we’ll be fifteen feet away. Wait two, and it’s sixty. Got that?”

My photographer nodded again. I checked his math in my head. We started walking toward the plane.

“So here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to sit here,” we’d reached the plane, and Carl motioned to a small stretch of floor behind the pilot’s seat. The pilot was just taking the fuel nozzle out of the side of the plane.

“When we go, you’re going to roll over the side, stick your head out of the plane, and push the shutter. Don’t even look. Just push. Got it?” My photographer looked a little green. He nodded. “And don’t drop the camera. You could kill somebody.”

Carl turned to me, and started pulling at the straps on my harness. “How about you, you ready?”

“Yeah,” I said. I handed my notebook and pencil to my photographer.

“Ok,” he said. The pilot slammed the gas tank cover shut and circled around the front. We all got in the plane, and taxied past the hangar to the end of the runway.

The airplane only had one seat. Carl, the photographer and I sat on the floor. Carl sat in the back on the right side of the plane, my photographer sat directly behind the pilot, and I squeezed between the pilot and the door, resting my head on the instrument console. We all had little seat belts that were bolted to the floor.

Carl leaned over me, turned to the pilot, and pointed to a spot on the altimeter. “We’re going to go up to about here on this one,” Carl shouted over the little Cessna’s engine.

“Here?” the pilot said, putting his finger on the spot. Carl made a heavy nod with his chin. He turned the corners of his mouth up so that his scars crinkled. I looked at the spot where the pilot still had his index finger. It said ten thousand feet.

I knew from my 38 pages of notes that the others had gone up to 8,500. I looked back at the door of the plane, shut my eyes, and rested my head against the cool metal. Paul sat down opposite me in the rear of the plane and the pilot took off and began his circles.

There is absolutely nothing that prepares you for an open door on and airplane in flight. It’s an image that clashes with everything you think should be happening up there. Doors stay closed. Passengers stay inside. Seatbelts remain securely fastened.

On the Cessna, the door folds up and underneath the wing, which cuts across above the cabin door and the pilot. I can see down 10,000 feet from the open door of an airplane, and I’m not wearing a parachute. If I were to fall right now, I would fall and keep falling until I flattened one of those little trees below us. I am inches away from this door. Noise from the wind and the engine flood the little cabin. My photographer unfastens his safety belt.