Michael Collins - The Death of All Things Seen

They might go down along the coast for a cruise to catch the sunset later. Joanne had brochures guaranteeing sightings of manta rays and prices circled in a comparison with other brochures. She had a book of coupons and their AAA card that guaranteed 10 per cent off all listed prices.

Norman let her manage it. He would get on whatever boat he was told to get on.

Joanne eventually got the check, peeling her legs from the sweat of the vinyl seating. She suggested that they all use the bathroom before leaving, in a testament to all-things practical.

In the offing, Norman stared at Grace still preoccupied with Captain Cody in the quiet investigation of life and its mysteries. There was a box inside him, hidden, containing every word he ever said or would say.

For a moment, Norman was again left alone in a drifting euphoria, entering a liminal emptiness that was not emptiness at all, but the process of life. He imagined his parents caught up in a generational entanglement of new worries. Walter wading though the new economy of geriatrics teeming with predatory financial advisors trawling the pension funds of former union zealots turned conservative, all united against a welfare state intent on supporting so-called bums and welfare mothers; retirees submitting to the sway of latter-day Tea Party conservatives, with their mega-church ministers calling for moral accountability, tough love and lower taxes.

It was in his head: a trailer park with a low-maintenance pea gravel lawn, their life aligned with the so-called last of the greatest generation, patriots turned scrupulous coupon cutters, who had seen their influence extended in the hanging chad debacle that would determine the course of a new imperialism, emboldening further the would-be 9/11 hijackers logging their flight class hours along the Florida panhandle, box-cutters in hand — the box-cutter the great Excalibur of the disenfranchised.

It was not come to terms with fully yet, the great wound of 9/11. He had seen it in the cast of flags and bumper stickers down through so many states. At play in the collective consciousness, still, the terrifying truth that, in a country where God was asked to confer his blessing, bags had been packed, wives and children kissed, cabs hailed, and all dying before the in-flight service began. Though the stories told were not those stories now, but invariably, the outlier stories of those who woke up too late, the late connection, the hangover, those without upgrade points. In these isolated stories of survival, Jesus’s mercy was made known, and not so the improbable sequence of actual events that got the rest to their appointed death with the assuring sense in their hearts that, on that day, there was a God watching over them and determining their destiny all along.

*

They made a dash across the furnace of the shimmering asphalt to their rental, to the delight of two parking attendants witnessing it. The car roiled in a wave of heat. Joanne had on big-framed black Jackie Onassis sunglasses. Norman saw just her smile and not her eyes. Yes, they should have paid the dollar for parking. All life was not a scam.

Out back of Captain Cody’s, a screech of birds hung over two Hispanics emptying plastic containers of an icy slush of leftovers. A pelican, its wingspan immense in arresting flight, landed, its low-hung belly like a transport carrier.

The busboys fed it amidst the clamor of seagulls, the pelican’s bill filling with a turgid bulge in a tidal wash, as one busboy hosed and the other threw it a flotsam of shrimp, crab leg, oyster, pot roast, and all manner of salads, beets, and slaws.

Then the pelican, in a waddling gait, crossed the scorch of asphalt, seeking flight.

Buoyed on an uplift of unseen thermals, an indiscernible aerodynamics was suddenly made apparent, the tuck of the head and spread of wings, so this majestic creature might go for a very long time out over the ocean caps, Norman Price, made mindful of so many things in life, what might be achieved on the right thermal, with the right attitude, and aware he was riding such a thermal, and in the midst of great flight.

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About Michael Collins

Also by Michael Collins

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MICHAEL COLLINS was born in Limerick. He holds a Masters of Study in Creative Writing from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois. Collins was the 201 °Captain of the Irish National Team 100K. He earned a bronze medal at the 2010 World Masters Championships. Other victories include The North Pole Marathon, The Last Marathon and The Everest Marathon. Running and writing are his twin passions.