01 January - the drowning at Los Gatos

the brownish snowman

8:21AM PST, January 28th

Oakland Municipal Airport, Oakland, California

("...immigration authorities in Oakland report that a second woman may have boarded the plane...")

– The Fresno Bee

Nobody wakes up in the morning and wonders how strangers will view them if they happen to die unexpectedly during the day. Nobody wonders whether anyone will notice them laughing or hear them lying or watch them sitting silently in the corner daydreaming? No one wakes up in the morning and wonders how people will talk about those final moments later on. Will they say you were excited about the day ahead or just bored with the routine? Will they tell people they understood your last thoughts? Will they say you sneered at those who were weaker or less able. Or marvel when you took the shirt off your back and handed it away? These are important questions, you know, because those last minutes are the only things some people will remember about you. And without these brief interactions, how would relative strangers be able to claim their tiny fragment of reflected history. And how would they possibly be able to make comments like:

"I saw him that day."

"He was always a good man. A hard worker."

"Was there ever a kinder woman?"

"She cared so much about everyone."

"They could always find something positive from any situation. That's rare, you know."

"They were my friends. My good friends."

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A cab pulled onto the tarmac. It was such a bright shade of yellow that even the hazy sun might have been embarrassed to be so brash. Sam Wilson got out of the cab and stood quietly for a few seconds with his back toward his wife. Then he waited until the ground crew noticed him and finally held out his hand to lead Charon into the small office beside the hangar. They'd wait there until the plane was ready to leave.

Jésus de los Santos nudged his wife and pointed to the cab. In the 30 minutes since they had arrived at the airport, a small crowd had formed near the front of the plane. It included the guards who had escorted them from the Detention Center, as well as three men in greasy gray overalls. None of them had yet noticed the cab because they were busily strutting around the propellers, admiring the aerodynamic lines of the wings, checking the tires, inspecting the riveted seams, and various other useless tasks. Like a dozen cooks in a tiny kitchen, they all were doing their best to wring the last possible moments of self-importance from a cold Wednesday morning.

Stopping briefly, Sam called over his shoulder to ask if all the routine maintenance had been completed. When the conversation about oil seals and schedules dragged on too long, Charon Wilson looked up at the moon and wondered how it could float so quietly above the horizon. And it seemed so much brighter than it should have been – especially for this late in the morning.

From where Maria sat in the rear of the bus, she saw the sun resting just above Charon Wilson's head. A long shadow extended out from Charon's feet. The gray outline stopped about ten feet away from the bus. But when Charon stretched her arms above her head, the shadows of her hands slid along the ground and up the side of the bus. At the end of their journey, the shadowy hands came to rest on Maria's shoulders, and the young woman blew a long, slow lungful of air that ruffled her son's hair. She felt her body relax.

"Todo está bien," she whispered.

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Other than the plane itself, the tarmac, the fueling station, inside the bus with the detainees, and several other places too notable to note, the small office beside the hangar was the real hub of activity that morning. In his chair beside the door, Sam Wilson watched a fly crawling up the wall across from where he sat. The fly got as far as a wall calendar and stopped. With no obvious way to walk onto the calendar, the fly took off briefly and then landed close to where it had started in the first place. After that, it began climbing all over again and Sam shook his head in disgust.

Charon Wilson was also watching the fly, but she hoped it would make it onto the calendar and stop on one of the numbers. Six, if at all possible. Though she liked all even numbers better than odd ones, six was her personal favorite.

All around them, the airport staff continued to do their work and ignored the fly. The flight dispatcher recorded all the necessary information in a logbook. The mechanic came in to update Sam on the estimated time before takeoff. And the custodian swept the office without ever asking anyone to lift their feet.

Never once looking away from the fly, Sam asked if the co-pilot had arrived. "Is it the guy with the blond hair or the one with the crew cut?"

Just then, a young man with blond hair and unusually long legs pushed open the door with his foot. Sam recognized the man as his co-pilot though he couldn't recall his name. To Sam, the young man's name seemed like an unnecessary detail. Nothing that should ever clutter his mind.

Charon also looked at the young man. Though he seemed no older than sixteen, she knew that he had to be older. Like Sam, Charon couldn't recall the co-pilot's name. She only remembered that the name sounded strange. Possibly foreign. Completely unforgettable – except, of course, that she had forgotten it anyway. What she didn't forget were the man's amazingly long legs and his beautiful blond hair. He was the kind of man who seemed more perfect the longer you looked at him.

When the young man saw the fly land on the counter in front of the flight dispatcher, he curled his maps into a club and smashed the insect before it could get away. Then he turned toward Sam and started to introduce himself but Sam cut him off with a wave of his hand.

"You're second in command here," he said, "So, act like it. I want you to go outside and tell them to hurry. I don't want to wait in here all day."

As the young man turned to leave, a lock of his blond hair escaped from underneath his flight hat. It bounced up and down as he walked.

Shaking his head, Sam stood up and whirled around to check the time on the wall clock. It was 8:55. Then suddenly, it was 8:56 as the minute hand jerked forward with a loud click. Four minutes to 9:00. They were already late. Just five minutes. Or maybe it was six.

Sam dropped back onto his chair with such force that the back of it scraped the paint on the wall beneath the clock.

"Christ, Charon. Look at the time."

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One by one, the cargo climbed the stairway to board the plane. Even though the hatch wasn't especially low, each of them bent down to pass through after seeing the men ahead of them do the same. Once they were inside, Charon signaled them to leave their bags in the small space behind the last row of seats. Each bag was simply tossed on top of the others and it wasn't long before the entire area became a disorganized mass of dusty sacks and mud-crusted duffle bags. It took even less time for a gray-brown haze to fill the entrance as each successive bag stirred up new dust when it was tossed onto the pile.

Charon coughed and wondered if she was catching a cold. Then she cleared her throat and watched as a stoop-backed woman boarded the plane at the end of the line of 28 stoop-backed men. If they weren't already late, she might have walked to the cockpit to ask her husband whether they should allow this woman to remain aboard. It was a rule, after all, but Sam was in a hurry and so he had marked the flight plan as Final as soon as the entrance door was shut. Then he started the engines. Or rather, he tried to start them. The starboard engine ran smoothly from the outset, but the propeller on the port side started, stopped, and then started again. As it strained to run smoothly, a small bubble of oil was pushed through a leaking seal on the underside panel. Just briefly, the engine sputtered a second time and the rattling forced another bubble of oil through the trickly seal. In seconds though, both engines were running smoothly. The steady vibration of the portside engine forced a third and larger bubble through the seal. The result was a stack of tacky brown oil bubbles – a sort of brownish snowman vibrating on the bottom panel of the portside engine.

At the back of the plane, Jésus pressed his face against the window. He had never flown before. As he watched the activity outside the plane, a second oil bubble snowman formed on the portside engine. That one wobbled so much with the vibrations that it looked like it was laughing.

Maria peeked inside her coat at Francisco – her own little brown snowman who was cooing beside her breast.

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