Джозеф Хеллер: Maximum Impact

I am a pilot. I have extensive experience in Washington, D.C. Yet even that combination proved inadequate to tell this story. I needed a lot of help.

Acknowledgments must begin with Win Blevins, a wonderful friend and author of Western historical novels that you should read if you haven’t already. Over lunch at a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, restaurant one wintry afternoon in 1987, Win heard me spin this tale of intrigue and announced, “If you don’t write that story, I will.” I’ve come to doubt the sincerity of the threat, but I needed to hear it. Through the next year of false starts and self-doubt, he was always willing to serve as advisor, confidant, and gentle critic, amassing favors I will never be able to repay.

Nor could this have worked without the counsel of the late John Galipault, founder and president of the Aviation Safety Institute. Over a twenty-year friendship, John taught me aviation, convinced me to learn to fly, and, during the last months of his life, reviewed this manuscript for technical accuracy.

Dr. Ned Clarke, a veteran aviation accident investigator with a remarkable imagination, is solely responsible for the fact that this story has an ending. Ned, too, was kind enough to read the manuscript for accuracy and correct a few miscues. He also taught me to be careful where I eat peanuts—a reference you will understand in due course.

Mike Benson, National Transportation Safety Board, made sure I got details right.

Dr. Martha Stearn taught me about the Circle of Willis and insulin.

Psychologist Andy Turner taught me about the horrors to which human beings can subject themselves when ravaged, rightly or wrongly, by guilt.

Book editor John Ordover helped me find and eliminate the flaws, and Melissa Ann Singer saw a difficult publication through to its happy ending.

Roz Targ never lost faith.

And, finally, I need to mention the NCAA basketball program. Only Ray will understand why, but that’s all right.

To all, my thanks.

Jimmy squeezed the trigger gently, just as he’d been taught, and saw dirt kick up a foot in front of the white-tailed rabbit sitting in an open spot in the cornfield, basking in the late-afternoon sunshine. The rabbit turned its head toward the small pock in the earth as if to see what had intruded on its moment of peace, and then, prudently, it ran to cover.

Shit!

The word flashed through Jimmy’s mind. He wanted to say it aloud, but he wouldn’t let himself do that in front of his parents, especially not his mother, who objected to this outing and was looking for an excuse to prove it a bad idea.

He felt his neck muscles tense to jerk his head. He fought it down, desperately. He recognized the first signs that the loathsome tremors were building inside him and soon would wrack his frail body if he let it happen. He clutched his .22 rifle tightly to his chest against the rising spasms, as if to gain strength from the firearm.

The ten-year-old turned his back on his parents, hoping they wouldn’t see. He didn’t want to worry her; she fussed over him too much anyway. But the stronger desire was not to disappoint his father, who was so proud of his performance this day. Two shots had hit their marks with only two misses, counting the latest one. He wanted more than anything to please the man whose gentle patience and encouragement were the only constants in his short and generally miserable life.

Jimmy feared if his father noticed him losing control, it would ruin what had been a glorious day of rabbit hunting in the sere cornfields of autumn. How he hated the monster in his brain. It overpowered his will and shook his body as the wind whips a willow.

Jimmy’s arms jerked once, sharply. The spasm sneaked up on him and burst out before he could will it away. He knew his father saw it.

“Jimmy, you’ve had a great day, son. Why don’t you let me carry the rifle back to the car?” The man’s big hand closed over the stock, but the boy yanked the gun away. “Please, Jimmy. You can have it back as soon as you take your medicine.”

“No,” the boy begged. “I-I-I’m all right.”

Jimmy saw his parents exchange looks in the way married people communicate without words. He knew they were considering whether to press him and guessed they would relent. He’d heard his doctor tell them many times to avoid creating stress. The father shrugged slightly and nodded, muttering something about the situation not being critical; they were just a fifteen-minute walk from their car, where Jimmy’s pills were tucked in the glove box.

The child’s grip on the rifle tightened more as he felt muscle control slipping away.

Please, God, let me get to the car. Just to the car. I promise I’ll make my bed every day for a month, and I won’t leave my socks on the floor or my dirty shorts by the shower. I promise, promise, promise, promise. Just to the car. Ple-e-e-e-ease!

He walked deliberately, following his mother out of the field, his father tromping behind. One foot, then the other. Arms steady. Head rigid. Mind resolute. Dr. Wallace had said if Jimmy concentrated, he could stop the tremors. Not forever, but for a time. So Jimmy concentrated as hard as he could. But the monster in his brain would not be denied.

Even as their big Buick station wagon came into view, the jerking in Jimmy’s arms became uncontrollable. “N-N-N-No!” He began to sob. He saw his mother turn and start toward him, and he thought he tried to drop his rifle. He thought he felt his hands loosen, and he thought the weapon started to slip from his grasp. Instead, in the grip of an intense spasm, his hands tightened again, and he pulled the trigger.

The sharp report startled him. Did I do that? He looked up at his mother. He saw first a look of disbelief on her face and then a moment of consummate sadness as she fell. She died immediately from the bullet that pierced her heart.

He felt his father push by him roughly and heard him calling, “Connie! Connie!” The big man knelt beside the still form that had been his wife, calling her name over and over, getting no response. He looked up at his son, and Jimmy saw the tears running down his face, his lips moving to say something that wouldn’t form on his tongue.

Jimmy watched in wretched horror as his father lifted his mother’s body and half-ran, half-stumbled to the station wagon for a fruitless dash to the hospital. The boy dimly heard his father screaming for him to come along. “Run, Jimmy. Please! Hurry. Run!”

He dropped the rifle and followed. He climbed into the front seat, on his knees, facing the rear, staring in mute disbelief at the still body lying across the backseat.

The rocking of the automobile as it dashed through traffic and the blaring of the horn under his father’s clenched fist began to float out of Jimmy’s stunned consciousness. He chewed on some dead skin beside the nail on his right forefinger, and he fixed his concentration on that. The rest of the scene, the ghastly rest of it, began to go out of focus.

Jimmy refused to let himself see the body with the blood spot on the front of the shirt. He refused to let himself think about his new rifle, now abandoned on the edge of the old cornfield. He refused to let his father enter his mind, or to imagine what his father would say to him later, or what he would answer. He chewed on his finger, and his mind began to drift away from the tragedy of the hunting trip and from the ordeal of life itself. It was so much easier not to have to deal with any of it.