Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Adam and Eve Teams were dispatched to notify—in person whenever possible and practical—the next of kin. The Adam and Eve Teams also had to learn a new vocabulary—or anti-vocabulary—because they reported to the corporate general counsel, who had written a list of thirty words that any airline representative was prohibited from uttering. The most verboten was, in fact, next of kin . They could not say passenger, as in Seventy-seven passengers were killed, a word prohibited after a specific incident following a minor crash in Denver, when the father of one of the victims beat an airline-reservation clerk senseless, saying, “My son is not a passenger; his name is David,” each time his fist struck flesh. Airline employees could not say crash, as in Flight 503 crashed on approach, if only because in the mind of one astute litigator (a second-year associate who briefly had considered a career in personal injury law), the word crash implied a relationship between cause and effect, the ultimate judgment of who exactly was at fault. So it was that a crash became an incident; investigations and reconstruction became part of the incident report. And a crash like this afternoon’s—the disintegration of the airframe, the inability to precisely identify human remains, the concomitant likelihood of ongoing litigation—became not merely an incident but an incident of uncontrolled flight into terrain. The airline was willing to make extraordinary efforts following the death or injury of a loved one in an incident.

Team members were prohibited from referring to themselves by name. They were prohibited from identifying themselves as anything other than representatives of Panorama Airlines. They spoke in the communal voice, using the plural personal pronoun we whenever possible. The singular I was prohibited. We want to know what we can do in this difficult time. We can accommodate any number of special requests. We stand ready to help. How can we serve you?

They called the next of kin the contact, like an operative behind the Iron Curtain in an old spy thriller, someone who could materialize with an envelope and a smuggled weapon without attracting too much notice. Use of the words widow, widower, orphan, and especially victim was not tolerated, nor was the use of any word that described the relationship of the passenger to the next of kin, which abrogated husband, wife, child. The contact was an honorific that did not imply any power relationships, did not evoke a default response of sympathy.

Among the fifty-odd people crowding the conference room of the tower offices of Salt Lake City International Airport, more than half were representatives of Panorama Airlines. The other half sat stunned and motionless. Some were grieving, some thinking of miracles.

A folding table had been converted to a buffet, a mercy meal of hamburgers and barbecue sandwiches and pizza slices and cinnamon rolls and great, steaming urns of coffee that went almost untouched. Still, men in white uniforms came and went every half hour, carrying in a new urn, departing with the old one.

At the front of the room, four Panorama employees outlined the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours on a series of handwritten posters that they taped to the wall and then read aloud.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, accompanied by the Go Team, were en route to Dallas to take command of the incident scene.

A ticket audit was under way to confirm who was on board the aircraft.

Official notifications would begin within the hour.

The Dallas County coroner had agreed to expedite the issuance of notarized death certificates for those needing documents for banking and insurance purposes.

They did not mention the bodies, and it was Mike Renfro who raised his hand and asked, “There’s no delicate way to say this, so I’m just going to. Have they begun to recover the bodies? Are there even bodies? What exactly are you telling us?”

“We’re not prepared to discuss that particular issue,” one of the men at the front said, and moved on to the next question. Mike saw the man’s suit, his continual habit of referring to his black binder, and guessed Corporate counsel.

Mike was surprised at how docile the crowd was. He stood up. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need more than that. We’ve been here for forty minutes, and you haven’t told us a damn thing. You’re behaving like we didn’t just see a burned-out jet smash into the ground on network television. Prepared? Prepared? None of us were prepared to discuss this today. It’s the holidays, for fuck’s sake. Excuse my language, but I need to know. We all do. We’ve all got questions. What exactly happened? When are we going to be told something that matters? Are there any survivors? We’ve ruled out bad weather and another plane being involved, but only because we watched it all on television. But are you going to take us to Dallas? Will we be able to see the site? I asked about the bodies. Have the bodies been recovered? Are there even bodies? Can we even tell if the people are who we think they are? I don’t have any idea how to get her dental records, but isn’t that what people do, they go get dental records? I don’t think any of us has any idea what to do, and so far, none of you seem to either. Can you tell us anything at all? Or does that notebook tell you just to come up here and bullshit until the lawyers arrive? You’re not telling us anything that I haven’t already heard on the news.” Mike took a deep breath and sat down. He thought he’d spoken in his usual, mannered tone, but the reactions of the people around him—the open mouths, the way the two women nearest him rocked back in their chairs—suggested that perhaps he hadn’t.

One of the men from the front of the room walked to the buffet table, picked up two small plastic bottles of water, and then moved to Mike’s seat, took out the chair next to him and turned it around, straddled it. He handed one of the bottles of water to Mike. It was a ten-ounce bottle, narrow and thin, and it disappeared into Mike’s meaty hand.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t had a chance to speak individually,” the man said. In his jacket pocket was the same laminated script that each member of the Angel Team was required to carry, offering an apology on behalf of the airline’s chairman, our shareholders, and, most important, the friends and family we work alongside each day. “But I’m sure you can understand that things are still very much in flux. There’s so much we don’t yet know, and it would be irresponsible to speculate. As a matter of fact, I am going to step outside and say exactly the same things I’ve just told you to the reporters who are waiting in the hallway. But friends and family have to know these things first.”

“I understand,” Mike lied. He did not understand. This man had one job, and it was to pacify him. This was new territory. Mike coughed out a small laugh: No one in this room had spent more of his life helping to prepare others for the unthinkable than he, Mike Renfro; hell, it was part of his sales spiel. But no one had ever helped him. He did not know how to ask for what he wanted and never had. After Mary Beth kissed him on the forehead, he had not known how to ask her to please not leave him with such a chaste and sisterly kiss. He wanted to have stayed up all night with her, to have had any conversation she wanted. He didn’t want to have found her as he had at 4:00 a.m.; he’d gone to take a leak in the middle of the night, and there she was, half-asleep in the bathtub, resistant to his efforts to wake her and relocate her back to the warmth of the bed.