Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Ericka helped Gail to her feet. “Have you traveled much, Gail?”

“Oh good Lord, have I traveled! First Tillman and me, and then me and that cuniculine bastard — we all had the wanderlust, don’t you know, and once I was free of Mr. Rabbitt, that wanderlust got even lustier. I flew prop planes all over South America and skydived in Europe and pretty much wore myself out until I was forced to become almost exclusively terrestrial. Even grounded, I’ve had my share of interesting experiences. I lived with an Indian couple in Old Town Albuquerque, had lunch with Harry and Bess Truman in Independence, Missouri. I even worked as a counselor at a girl’s camp in Wisconsin. I’ve seen so much that is good about this country, Ericka, honey, and so much that wasn’t good at all. I was in Greensboro when they rounded up all those homosexuals in 1957. I was in Nashville, Tennessee, when the women-haters almost killed the Nineteenth Amendment abornin’. And can you believe I was even in Cincinnati the night they arrested that evangelist couple about fifteen years ago — the Swearingens…accounting fraud or tax evasion or some such thing as that. Sometimes I feel like — oh, what was that retarded man’s name? Tim Hanks played him in the pictures.”

“Tom Hanks , I think you mean. Forrest Gump.”

“That’s right. I feel just like Forrest Gump. Except that I’m allergic to chocolates.”

Ericka took Gail by the arm and led her back to her room. Catherine was in bed, taking her afternoon nap. On the television there was a story about the risks to airlines of unsecured lithium batteries in their cargo holds. “Is there anything I can get you before I go?” asked Ericka.

“No, dear, I’m fine. And you’ve taken such a load off my mind, knowing that you’ll dispose of my ashes in the way that I ask. Oh, goodness! That’s an awful thought: being ‘disposed’ of. Will you be coming back tomorrow for the celebration?”

“Of course I will,” said Ericka, helping Gail into bed.

“I used to soar. Now I’m earthbound. But at least my ashes will take wing.”

Ericka nodded, said goodbye, and stepped from the room. She poked her head into the room of another friend she had made at the home, a spry widow named Jelena from Kansas City, Kansas. Jelena was resting.

On the drive back to her apartment, Ericka gave more serious thought to what Gail had asked her to do. She was touched that she had been asked, but worried over how she would pull it off. It wasn’t all that easy to throw things from the World Trade Center. For one thing, the windows were airtight. And what if the wind on the observation deck was uncooperative? It would be terrible to leave Gail’s “cremains” scattered about the surface of the building’s roof. Ericka wished that Gail wasn’t so particular about it having to be the World Trade Center. As skyscrapers went, the Empire State Building was far more useful when it came to putting things into the air from a great height. Ericka learned this when she was a little girl and accidentally sent her Barbie Doll all the way down to Fifth Avenue the fast way. Or how about the Woolworth Building? Wasn’t it the tallest building in the world for several years in the early part of the twentieth century?

Ericka switched on her car radio. The station was repeating an audio documentary about the past century that had originally aired in January. There was mention of the “Bonus Army” march on Washington in 1932, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the gas shortage of 1973, and, more recently, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. A middle-aged man, Broderain Tyson III, spoke tearfully of having lost his wife in this act of domestic terrorism.

On May 10, 2001, Gail Hoyt passed away. She was survived, incredibly, by her roommate, Catherine Uhlmyer Gallagher Connelly, who went on to live another year and a half to the chelonian age of 109 (and a half).

Ericka put off doing what she had been charged to do. (The will had given custody of the ashes to Ericka. What she was supposed to do with them was not mentioned.) After all, rationalized Ericka, Gail hadn’t said just when she wanted her ashen remains sent eternally airborne. This was left to Ericka’s discretion.

And then…

On a clear blue morning in September, the opportunity for fulfilling Gail’s final request to the letter was lost in the horror and chaos of that epoch of national tragedy. It was an act that clearly belonged to the new century, not to the one now past — the century that all of Gail Hoyt’s Tri-century Centenarian friends claimed as their own for each of its 36,524 days.

Without the World Trade Center, what was to be done? Ericka could keep the urn with her always and always feel guilty, or she could do the only logical thing that she was sure would appease Gail’s hungry, restless, empyreal soul.

Ericka Prager had been to Africa, but she had yet to visit Asia.

She would climb Mount Everest.

1901 ARBOREAL IN TEXAS

A baby girl born on the eve of the Great Galveston Hurricane survives the storm, finds love and then rejection at the orphanage that takes her in, and starts along a life path that parallels the ascension of the much-storied American Century.

1902 VEHICULAR IN NEW YORK

A collision with a tree brings a young man to the door of a wealthy woman and her nubile but querulous daughter. The courteous young man and the discourteous daughter are apparently on more intimate terms than circumstances initially indicate.

1903 DEDUCTIVE IN MICHIGAN

The sudden elopement of their daughter has Mom and Dad scratching their heads, while Younger Brother, sniffing coercion and intrigue, springs into action in the guise of his idol: Sherlock Holmes.

1904 IN MEMORIAM IN PENNSYLVANIA

The wife of the last surviving member of Haverford College’s Class of 1904 sees only a man in the final stages of senility, while within the sanctuary of his trapped thoughts, the man revisits his golden college days, when his whole life lay spread out before him.

1905 GENEALOGICAL IN RHODE ISLAND

The unofficial draft of the official record of the 1905 reunion of the Livergood Family Association of Warwick, Rhode Island…with copious commentary.

1906 PUNCH(ING) DRUNK IN PENNSYLVANIA

The painful relationship between two brothers whose lives took wildly different paths reaches a life-threatening climax that neither could have anticipated.

1907 PROBLEMATICALLY BETROTHED IN MASSACHUSETTS

On the eve of their daughter’s marriage, a troubling revelation about the groom-to-be causes Mother and Father to consider canceling the wedding, though Daughter doesn’t seem bothered in the least.

1908 VOLANT IN NORTH CAROLINA

An expedition to the sandy wilds of the North Carolina coast confirms what most had believed to be a hoax.

1909 MORBIFIC IN NEW YORK

A female reporter scores an interview with a notorious criminal in isolation and comes to sorely regret the trip.

1910 PORCINE IN NORTH CAROLINA

A boy who displayed piggish manners at the table is forced by his aunt to wear a papier mâché pig nose for a week, though his uncle and schoolteacher don’t agree that this is the best means of behavioral correction.

1911 EFFLORESCENT IN MAINE

A wealthy grandmother falls short when it comes to guiding her granddaughter easily through the garden of budding adolescence.

1912 TRISKAPHOBIC IN WISCONSIN

A would-be assassin winds up in the history books, but fate, a metal eyeglasses case, and the folded pages of an eighty-minute-long speech keep him from becoming a household name.