the Fall

I inch backward on my knees toward the rear of the cabin until I’m snug against Carl’s chest like he told me to. It feels very intimate, a little uncomfortable, and I feel a pull in my shoulders under the arms as Carl snaps into each metal loop on my harness. In my head, my brain is spinning through the instructions I jotted down in my notebook on the ground. Roll. Tuck. Spread. He puts my goggles on my face, leans over and shouts into my ear over the wind and the engine.

“That guy from the other paper,” Carl shouts, “was a disaster. He forgot everything I told him, and I fixed it, but it wasn’t good. We both went home that night, but it was bad. Let’s see if we can do things a little cleaner this time.”

A few weeks before, another local newspaper had sent a reporter to do a feature with Carl. He’d been calling a lot of newspapers lately, trying to drum up business.

“We’re gonna fall,” he keeps shouting, but I barely hear. “We’re going to jump out of this plane, and we’ll fall. Falling is easy. But if you let me, we won’t fall. If you let me, if you work with me, if you dance with me up here, we’re gonna fly.”

I nod my head and steal a quick glance out the open side of the plane.

“Ok,” he shouts again. “Here we go.”

On the ground, we had all practiced sticking our legs out the side of the plane. I stuck mine out at 10,000 feet and the wind grabbed it like a tube sock in a leaf-blower. Up here, I can’t bend my knees, and I guide my little stick of a leg to the platform by the right wheel. 10,000 feet above sea level, standing on a four-inch metal platform halfway outside an airplane, I can look straight down.

Tuck, roll, spread. Tuck. Spread, tuck, bend, roll. Tuck. Tuck, roll, spread.

“I can’t jump for you,” Carl shouts. I can feel his stomach press against my back. “I’ll count you down. Three!”

Ok. Tuck, roll, spread. Tuck, spread—tuck- tuck, spread, roll.

Fuck.

“Two!”

Tuck. Roll. Spread.

“One! Ok, let’s go!”

I’m not sure which one I did. I think I rolled out of the plane. I may have tucked. I remember seeing my feet spill up in front of me, watching the plane sink underneath them, seeing the ground whiz by as we spun earth over sky, one, two, three times, almost four. I felt something hit my shoes and legs, first the left, then the right, hitting them hard. It was Carl. I pushed them back. We leveled out, the wind pushing back at my hair and at the skin around my mouth. It was cold. We started spinning laterally, turning in flat circles, and then stopped, still speeding toward the earth. And then there was a lift in my stomach that stood me up straight and swung my legs out in front of me.

It was so quiet, that change from 210 mph to 15. I looked up at the yellow and blue stripes of the parachute. I couldn’t see Carl. He was behind me.