01 January - the drowning at Los Gatos

Yksi Murha Liikaa

9:57AM PST, January 28th

over Gilroy, California on route to Burbank

("...the air crash was attributed to an oil leak in the big DC3's left engine.")

– The Fresno Bee

The worst disasters in our lives require an intricate tango between hundreds of seemingly unrelated factors. It is a dance of a thousand voices. In the end, however, we will sum up the result in a single sentence such as, "the air crash was attributed to an oil leak." Of course, it's never that simple. And yet, it is comforting to ignore everything else. We ignore one man wanting to finish a book before the end of the day, one woman not knowing how to say a simple word in Spanish, an airplane with all its seats occupied, and even a host of gummy globs of oil working in close coordination. Our brains crave simplicity so we allow ourselves to overlook all those other dance steps that were just as much the cause of what happened.

εεε

On that Wednesday morning, the leaking oil seal on the plane's portside engine was in no hurry to burst. It understood that waiting for a while longer would make for a better story. So instead of breaking open completely (and thus alarming the crew), it plugged itself with globs of oil and let the pressure build more slowly.

Behind the seal, everything was operating with perfect precision. When one glob was pushed out, another came to its aid like a perfectly trained soldier. The little army of globs did what they could to hold back the simmering pan of oil. Since the seal was failing at several points simultaneously, the effort had to be collaborative. In time, a neat line of oil globs gathered at each of the weak points and plugged the gaps whenever they appeared. All along, the pressure built.

In the cockpit, there was no rise in anxiety or even any real concern. The conversation between the pilot and co-pilot was mechanical. It consisted of a logical sequence of statements and consequent actions. Once they were in the air, Sam Wilson's voice became emotionless. When he said that he was retracting the wheels, he simply pulled the lever to lift the wheels back inside the plane's fuselage.

At the same time, the long-legged co-pilot held one hand above the dual instruments. He looked simultaneously attentive and unaware. While one hand hovered above the instruments, the other fished around in his small flight bag searching for the novel that he had been reading. When the wheels were fully retracted, the plane vibrated slightly and another gummy glob popped out from its hiding place behind the oil seal.

"Wheels retracted. Setting course to one one eight west. Altitude one point one. Cruise to three." Sam's voice was flat.

Again, the blond co-pilot held his hand above the instrument panel just in case. As soon as the course was set and the plane leveled off, the young man opened his novel. Though he rarely read while flying, he was about to get to the steamiest section of a fairly steamy mystery and he wanted to finish his book before the day was out. The cover showed an elderly man holding a knife at the throat of a terrified (and lightly clad) young woman. Another man watched the scene from behind a curtain. The title read:

Yksi Murha Liikaa

Sam looked at the strange title and silently tried to pronounce the words. After a couple of attempts, he decided it was hopeless – there were simply too many vowels. Then he tried to guess what the words meant. Surprisingly, he came quite close. Using the picture on the cover as a guide, Sam thought the title might be A Murder Undone or Unsuspecting Victims. In a way, that was a reasonable translation but still he shook his head and wondered why all languages weren't made up of small and easily guessable words.

In the back of the plane, Charon Wilson was struggling to cobble together several small words into a simple sentence. Since the words were Spanish, that was a problem for her. Although she knew how to say hello in Spanish, how to welcome people onto the plane in Spanish, and how to tell them not to bump their heads on the doorway in Spanish, she couldn't remember how to say the word month. When she finally assembled what she considered a passable sentence, she kneeled in the aisle beside Jésus and spoke directly to Maria. The blue baby outfit she had bought months before was hidden behind her back.

"Su bebé. Tres months? Or cuatro?"

Despite all the practicing, each word coming out of her mouth was more tentative than the one before. Charon even blushed when she said "months" instead of its unknown Spanish equivalent. In the moment that followed, Charon held up three fingers with one hand and four with the other. If she hadn't added that extra hint to mask her limited knowledge of foreign languages, she wouldn't have been forced to drop the baby clothes. As she raised her hand to show four fingers for four months, the cute little blue outfit fell to the floor behind her.

Maria, who had been waiting to see if her husband would respond, finally cleared her throat and raised three fingers.

"Tres meses. Gracias. Gracias."

A warm smile was included with the thank you, but that reaction came far too late to make a difference to Charon. The tiny delay between the question and the answer embarrassed her and she stuffed the baby clothes into the waistband of her skirt without ever showing them to the young mother.

As Charon walked swiftly toward the cockpit, the crumpled blue outfit flopped up and down outside her jacket like a bird pecking the ground for seed. On the way up the aisle, Charon was struck by the clothing worn by the passengers. It was no different than the clothing worn on any other flight back to the border, but she was suddenly surprised by the lack of color and variety. It was all shades of brown and denim blue. No greens or oranges or bright (bright) yellows. But what was most striking was that there were no creases in the clothing. There were wrinkles, of course. And also dirt mingling with the brown. But there were no creases. Just soft undulating folds of heavy fabric that wouldn't hold a crease if you begged it to.

Standing at the cockpit door, Charon ran her thumbs under the lapels of her flight jacket and used the palms of her hands to flatten her clean white blouse. Then she entered the cockpit just in time to hear the co-pilot say, "No woman can be that stupid, can she?"

Sam nodded and grunted.

When neither man turned to look in her direction, Charon scuffed her feet across the floor to signal them that she was standing in the doorway. "Can I help you men with anything?"

Sam gave a quick shake of his head.

After a few seconds, Charon added, "Since there's no room back there, I'll squeeze in here for a while, if you don't mind."

ααα