Planting Bulbs

Planting bulbs is always an act of faith and optimism. Last fall, I was out there, in the chill, with a long winter ahead of me, sticking something in the ground to be frozen and thawed repeatedly. It seems so unlikely to work even without the threat of squirrels digging up tasty tulips for a snack. In the middle of my fall bulb planting, it started raining. The kids and I kept at it. The rain wasn’t too hard. Then the rain turned to hail, tiny pellets of ice. I figured I should take the kids in. And I never made it back to bulb planting. 

Photo from Mari Potter@maripotter on Unsplash.

Fast forward four months.

Last weekend, we took inventory. The tulips I planted last fall are just coming up. The squirrels did not get them. I have a fenced in yard without deer, and apparently the local woodchuck isn’t as interested in destroying my tulips as it is in destroying everything else I try to grow (including zinnias and marigolds! It even munched off some hot peppers last summer. Unless that was a spice loving rabbit). Success, of a kind, has already taken place.

My optimism is being rewarded. Some of the edges of the green leaves poking up are tinged with red. Are those the red tulips? Some are curled, others smooth. Even the ones planted in somewhat questionable areas seem to be doing well.

So I did something even more outrageously optimistic: I planted the rest of my bulbs. Not the shriveled up ones, but the ones with weight and in some cases a bit of a shoot coming up. 

It felt like the right thing to do, and even if none of them ever bloom, it was worth it.

Dispatch 5 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

If you’re interested, start with Dispatch 1

The Journalist

Elizabeth Owle--Liza to her friends--looked from her apartment’s small third floor balcony over the city and to the sliver of the Ohio River. The sun was just coming up. This was why she had chosen this apartment, for its balcony with its river view, even if she couldn’t see much in the summer when the trees had leafed out. Though she was in the middle of the city, this was a place in which she always felt alone. Not lonely. Peaceful, free from watchful eyes. When she was awake early, on her balcony, she almost felt that she was in another world, or at least on a farm far from the city. She loved Louisville, but she also loved peace, and the two didn’t often go together. Up here, though, she was surrounded by green, the tree-tops of the smaller trees, the tree line along the river bank further away, the big oak a few lots over. The birds were up, and she kept hearing the loud call of a particularly close and persistent bird but could not find it. She sipped her morning tea. The city was coming to life around her.

An hour later, dressed for work and carrying a small case in which she kept her dictaphone, a few emergency snacks, her current reporter’s notebook and, this morning, the final draft of an entertaining little human interest piece she had finished last night, she exited the building. At the end of last week, she had wrapped up a months-long investigation into a scam involving the duplication of permitting fees. It had taken many hours of painstaking research, including the cultivation of sources in city and county offices. She had attended countless bureaucratic meetings, some less than fully official, and several cocktail parties. She knew it would be quite a while before she would actively seek out another shot of bourbon. 

As a break-- and to ward off the sense of flatness that often engulfed her upon completion of a major project--she had taken on a fluff piece about the upcoming release of a contest-winning new glaze pattern designed by a local potter’s apprentice. She had talked with the young potter and written up a nice little article telling how the young man had dreamed of becoming a potter and describing notebooks of potential designs. The fact that his design won a contest delighted him, and it had been easy to write a cheerfully typical “local boy makes good” story to accompany a photograph of his smiling face next to a prototype mug and plate, each featuring the River Bends design, a simple blue line of Commonwealth Cobalt modeled on the curve of the river at Louisville. It was actually a pleasing design, Liza thought. She would buy a few pieces for herself when the new collection was released. 

With that story done, she was ready for something to dig her teeth into. Something complicated. With luck, her in tray at the office would contain some provocative complaint or tantalizing incongruity. As she walked into the street, she could tell that the restaurant on the ground floor of the building next to hers was making tortillas, and soon she caught a whiff of charring peppers mixed with the usual warm comfortable and appealing smell of popcorn. It always made her want something to eat, even if she had eaten breakfast. Preferably popcorn with chillies and a couple of tacos. Maybe she would find the time to go to a taqueria for lunch. There was a particularly good one near the government buildings. She could already taste their tomatillo pawpaw habanero salsa. Tangy, sweet, hot. 

And their popcorn. Liza was an adequate cook but popcorn was one of those things she preferred to get out. Maybe one day she would get a Cambridge Popper. She always appreciated them when she was visiting family and old friends in New England: A box for popping corn that didn’t burn anything and contained the flying kernels as they exploded! It would be a bit of a luxury, but everyone in New England had them. Unfortunately, export was still illegal, even almost 70 years after the invention of the Cambridge Popper, because of rumored military applications. Liza was skeptical: What did New England think the rest of the states were going to do with a Cambridge Popper other than pop corn? 

She was figuring out what she might look into that day, having filed the completed story she had taken home for a final edit. She nodded her greetings to the other reporters who were already at their desks. Her editor was not. Before she had finished sorting through her in tray, he had arrived. Within minutes, he called out “Liza” and beckoned her over to his office. He shut the door. 

This was unusual and she waited expectantly. “Busy?” he asked. 

She shrugged. Everyone was always busy. But there was nothing that she had to do immediately, unless it was buried in her in tray. Besides, he had closed the door. That seemed to promise something exciting. “Nothing crucial,” she said. 

“Right. Something’s just come through. You know Little View?”

She shook her head. “Of course not,” he said. “Small town, corn country. No reason to know of it. Nothing ever happens out there.”

“Until now,” Liza interjected.

“Right. Until now,” he said. “Here’s the deal. I’ve just heard over the wire that a small plane has gone down out there.”

Liza looked at him sharply. A small plane crash was hardly reason enough to send someone way out to Little View, wherever that might be. Especially someone like her. Liza was modest, but not unduly so. She was an investigative reporter, not someone to spend her time running from Pikeville to Paducah covering small-town crop-duster crashes.

“Right. You’ll want to know why I’m sending you out there,” he said. 

The fact that he kept saying “right” was not lost on Liza. It was what he did when he was excited or nervous. She nodded, all thoughts of the popcorn and her possible taqueria lunch banished. It wasn’t that Liza relished a plane crash. She wasn’t bloodthirsty, after all. But though she had been told she was too nice to be an investigative reporter, she relished a big story as much as anyone in her profession.

“What I’m hearing is that the Tres Amigos were on that plane,” he said. Liza’s heart skipped a beat. She had spent months watching the new gaming secretary before he had been appointed out of nowhere to fill the role. Nothing definitive had come of it, except that when Plunkett’s name came up, she was the one in the newsroom to whom everyone turned. 

Of course once Klair Plunkett was named the Honorable Secretary of Gaming, she knew she would never get to publish a real explanation, even if she got to the bottom of anything. She might do a personal profile, but she did not care for that kind of story. It wasn’t why she had gone into journalism. She had gone into journalism to watch people, to figure things out. And Liza had known Plunkett was a figure to watch as soon as she first saw him across the room at a Derby party at Churchill Downs that she had begrudgingly attended. The celebrity beat was not for her. But she had gone, and there, she had watched with interest as dapper business men and beautifully dressed young women were seemingly drawn to Plunkett. He was so warm, so down to earth, so expansive. He had implausible crowd-pleasing ideas: A Bubbleland outpost in Louisville! He was playing the crowd, playing the slightly hapless fool to draw them all like moths to the flame, or that is what she’d thought then. So she had kept an eye on him,  and had taken her “vacation” to Bubbleland when she knew he would be there. She had ruthlessly expensed an evening at the high stakes Blackjack table to get closer to him, and she had been rewarded by the realization that the dealer was handing it to Plunkett. But Plunkett had no idea. He was just having fun, a night of Blackjack and bourbon. That Liza would bet on, with her own money, if she were a betting woman. And that is when she revised her assessment of Plunkett: A pawn. That’s what Plunket was. 

Things were starting to make sense, but Liza’s investigation was cut short by  one of the sudden shifts in Commonwealth politics: An ostensibly bloodless coup. White Hall would be behind that. Obviously. Well, if the coup had been bloodless, here was some blood.

Plunkett was in a plane crash. Injured possibly, dead probably. And not just Plunkett--the Tres Amigos. Liza could feel her heart beating in her chest. This wasn’t anxiety. It was gratification, excitement, pride that she was being given this story.  There could hardly be bigger news. As much practice as had she projecting professional unsurprise, she knew that shock registered on her face. 

“Right. That’s what they’re saying.” Her editor paused. “And now you know as much as I do. We’ve got to get on this now. Obviously.”

“Right,” Liza said over her shoulder, wondering whether he would notice her use of his favorite all-purpose word. She was already on her way out of his office. This was precisely the kind of story she lived for. Her notebook and dictaphone were still in her bag, ready. Back at her desk, she checked her train schedule and found that she had a little bit of time before she needed to go to the train station to catch the first train from Louisville that would take her to the Little View station. She went to the politics board and checked the current whereabouts of the Tres Amigos: Yesterday they were to have been in Lexington for a ceremonial baseball game. Today they were to give a press conference in Central City. No other details were listed.

So they were en route from Lexington to Central City. It must have been a very early flight. Ridiculously early. She checked a map. Yes, it could make sense that they would fly over Little View. She checked her watch. She still had a few minutes if she hurried. She went to the research room. The front desk was unoccupied. The support staff wouldn’t arrive for another ten or fifteen minutes. She found a pamphlet on corn and one on the history of the Little View region. She would read them on the train. She signed for them and left the newspaper office for the train station.

On Building a Tiny Path

I built a tiny path, too small for a mouse, too big for an ant. No creature, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has taken this path, and the path itself doesn’t lead much of anywhere. I gathered pebbles in shades of gray and off-white. The path meandered from a sand castle up towards a little rift of grass, dry and tough, still waiting to send out new growth. I meandered through even less spectacular scenes.

This creative undertaking was all about the process. It was very small, completely temporary, utterly pointless, and yet deeply satisfying. The simplicity of the task was calming. Arranging pebbles carefully was consuming. If one rolled down a tiny hill, I picked it back up, the disaster insignificant within the insignificant project.

It is rare that I find the time and prioritize the energy to do something this seemingly insignificant. It is now on my to-do list for tomorrow, which seems paradoxical or absurd, but if a to-do list is the way to get something done, I’m for it. Even if that something is a pebble path never taken.

Note: I attempted to publish this on 3/13, but apparently I published two blank posts instead. I blame my phone.

Dispatch 4 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State

If you’re interested, start with Dispatch 1

Rhetoric Department’s Morning Briefing for White Hall

The Tres Amigos departed Lexington 5 am. The plane went down in flames in a corn field near Little View.

Recommendation 1: Emphasize the continued safety of air travel in all comments to media. This will focus the public’s attention on their own safety and suggest pilot error.

Recommendation 2: In the coming days, allow the possibility of mechanical failure to gain traction as the “real story.”

Recommendation 3: If we are responsible or wish to be thought responsible, bring up corrosion due to saltwater because someone, probably LB among others, will figure that out and ask about it at a news conference.

Recommendation 4: If we do not want any responsibility, deploy Lexington Blues Health and Safety Manager et al to state radio with distracting pronouncements about safety of teams. Mention seasonal allergies for additional distraction.

Boxers and Saints: A Review

Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints is a critically acclaimed historical graphic novel set. I like a pretty wide range of fiction, but a magical realist epic graphic novel would not be something I would expect to love. And I love Boxers and Saints. I’ve read it a few times, sometimes dipping in and out, but also straight through more than once. This book review is pretty spoiler free.

One book features a “Boxer” and the other a “saint.” The graphic style is appealing to me, the time period complex and controversial, and the two novel approach compelling and an excellent strategy for addressing differing perspectives. 

This dual perspective approach is central to what makes Boxers and Saints work. Also central is the masterful balance of the individual and small scale with the scope of the Boxer Rebellion. Somehow, I think Yang’s trademark magical realism makes this balance work. 

I would not expect all of this to work, at least not for me: The scale is epic, not something I normally seek out. On top of that, Boxers and Saints healthy dose of magical realism puts it in another genre I do not spend significant reading time exploring. 

For me, the fact that this is a graphic novel designed with a relatively young audience in mind (despite some very violent and disturbing graphic scenes and themes) is probably crucial. Boxers and Saints might be classified as YA.  That means that I can read quickly, and the many references to historical context that I don’t fully understand do not compel me to research. Yang invites readers with little historical knowledge to simply read the story, without requiring them to feel stupid or devote themselves to catching up. Boxers and Saints is great way to learn and teach about the Boxer Rebellion, a significant, complicated, and relatively recent episode of modern Chinese history that many Americans have barely heard of. It is not a comprehensive history, and it does not set out to be. 

What it is is an intimate piece of epic storytelling. We see Little Bao watching his older brothers and seeking to develop his own role. We see peopl desperate for a meager meal and sharing a cup of tea in the night. That balance of the individual and small scale with the scope of the Boxer Rebellion is ambitious. There is a surprising amount of exploration of character, a none-too-subtle but also not overbearing exploration of human motivation, violence, identity, culture, and religion. 

This is a great read for anyone interested in the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese history generally, coming of age, Christianity, or historical graphic novels such as the deservedly popular Maus and Persepolis, or the less well-known Aya and Dare to Disappoint.

Dispatch 3 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

Dispatch 2 Dispatch 1

The farmer 

Andrew McCurtain rose early, as was his habit. He liked to make himself a cup of strong sweet tea, watch the mist rise, and check on his fields and his barns before things started happening around the farm. If he had been honest with himself, he would have acknowledged that what he really liked about the early morning hours was that his old father was not yet awake. Once his father,  Andrew Senior, was about, things were crowded on the farm, though it was a generous 300 acre piece, with an additional 100 up the way. Young Andrew, not quite 32 years old, got along well enough with his parents, who lived in the main farmhouse, but he was a busy, industrious young agriculturalist, and he needed some time alone on the farm to do what needed to be done. In his youth, Andrew had no interest in farming, but after some years away, years during which he made the disappointing discovery that he wasn’t as good at baseball as he had hoped, Andrew had begun to see that an ambitious man such as himself could do a lot with a piece of land such as his parents farmed. 

Especially with his family’s ties to the mayoral dynasty of Little View. When the current mayor had first been elected, after her father and grandfather before her, she had succeeded in bringing the fast train line to Little View, and she had done it by purchasing a plot of his family’s land. Having a fast train line come through the station less than five miles away was just what he needed. And having a mayor who owed him was a game changer. 

The soil was rich, the tree lines were crooked, the lightning bugs made a beautiful show in the early summer rising from the fields blinking out their interest in sex. That was how Andrew thought of it. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that the land was zoned for corn. Bourbon corn, of course. Technically. 

Andrew set his empty tea mug, a solid Kentucky stoneware with a cobalt blue lip, down beside the sink in the kitchen. He walked out to the secondary barn, the cat barn as they called it, though now all the cats had switched their allegiance back to the main barn in the mysterious way of cats. Here in his private domain, one of the tack rooms was filled with sacks of corn. The sacks were a smooth sturdy hemp, undyed, with a label “Bourbon Corn,” the date of harvest 20--, and McCurtain Farm with a little sketch of a sprout. The labels were hemp labels, re-usable, and printed with Commonwealth-made soy-based ink. People liked personal touches like that, and all of the local companies he worked with became his friends. Smells of oil and gas mixed with the earthy old barn smell that permeated the place. There was a hint of manure, though cows hadn’t inhabited the cat barn since Andrew was a boy. Andrew turned on the CB radio, listening to the local chatter, both official and unofficial. All was as it should be. 

The biggest news was that a neighbor up the road had lost some chickens in the night. The coop yard was a mess, with several mutilated birds. “Wasteful little bandits,” Andrew muttered. He knew his neighbor’s double latch gate. It should have been enough, especially with plenty of more accessible food sources about. But the coons were getting cleverer and cleverer by the sound of it. Time for a better latching system on his own coop, he thought, as he listened to the distant sound of a single-engine plane. Many of the local farmers shared a crop-duster, a few had their own. Some might fly into Louisville, though it took about as long as the train. The sound was growing louder and louder. The pitch sounded different than he was used to, higher, faster. It didn’t sound right. He went over to his CB, tuned to the main unofficial local station, “Morning. This is Buddy Blue. Are we supposed to have company today?” He heard a rumble and thought he felt the ground shake. “Anyone else hearing this?” 

He tuned his radio to the safety and alerts channel. “Ground to air, Little View,” he said. “Everything OK?”

As he waited for a response, he looked out the open barn door over the field, bright in the morning sun, just in time to see a streak of red and white as the plane skimmed across the top of his ripe corn field. There was a crash, the whomp of aviation fuel as the air rushed in and exploded out as it ignited. Andrew stood, holding his radio, frozen. He didn’t hear a mayday or any other signal from the plane. “Mayday. Mayday,” he said into his radio, but he had forgotten to hold down the “talk” button on his handset. 

Hendrick’s Gin Really Does Taste Like Rose and Cucumber

I was at the grocery store the other night for a little fun family outing. It was pretty late, so I thought the in-grocery liquor store was closed, but it was not, and I ended up getting my first bottle of Hendrick’s. 

Somehow I had never knowingly tasted Hendrick’s. And for some reason I did not believe that it would actually taste like cucumber and rose. It does, and it is delicious. It is a great warm weather gin, refreshing, and delightful on ice. Or in chilly weather, it exists as a respite from pumpkin spice.  Despite its light flavors, this gin tasted strong— stronger than it is. 

My tasting notes:

Clear, oh my goodness this actually tastes like cucumber. I taste the rose too— slightly floral but nothing outrageous. This is still a gin. On first tasting Hendrick’s, I was so amazed that it tasted like what it was supposed to taste like, that I was unable to focus properly on other flavors. 

I started with a G&T, which I of course liked, as I like G&Ts. I do not think that a G&T is the best use for this gin, though. I like it better as a simple martini (even without the bitters) or as a fizz with a bit of citrus, maybe a splash of simple syrup. It’s fun to play up the cucumber too, as in the fizz idea below. This is not quite a recipe. 

The Hendrick’s Cucumber Lime Fizz Idea 

2 oz Hendrick’s Gin

1/4-1/2 oz lime (to taste)

2 thin cucumber slices

1/2-1 oz simple syrup (optional, balance out your lime)

2 oz sparkling water

I’ll admit this is very tart without the simple syrup, but I like it that way, and it has a very clean and clear line. For people who like to squeeze citrus juice on everything, this is not a problem. It is fun. For people who detect the tiniest hint of citrus juice in a vinaigrette and wonder what went wrong, well. You know yourself, right? This is not for you. 

As for the range in lime juice, again, this is a decision you need to make for yourself if you’re following this idea. A recipe version would call for 1/2 oz lime juice and 1/2 oz simple syrup.

Ambivalent Recommendation—Masie Dobbs: A book review

I put Jacqueline Winspear’s Masie Dobbs (published in 2003), the first novel in a series featuring psychologist and investigator Masie Dobbs, on my reading list on the strength of a recommendation card at my local bookstore. I am always on the lookout for a good mystery, especially a good mystery series. 

When I read a mystery, I want to relax, and there is nothing more relaxing than being able to just pick up another book in a series, knowing the world, knowing the perimeters, knowing what will be expected of me as I spend some time with a familiar character. So part of the appeal is that Winspear has published a long series. Seeing that someone has published 15 since 2003 however, also fills me with apprehension. Is the writing going to be annoyingly bad? Is the plotting going to be sloppy? Is this book going to be worth reading for me? 

So I started reading Winspear’s first book with some hope but also perfectly ready to set it aside never to be picked up again. What made me commit was the homage to PD James’ Cordelia Grey series. Less well-known than her series featuring detective Adam Dalgliesh, the Cordelia Grey series is a favorite of mine. When Winspeare introduces Maisie Dobbs as she enters her new office and has a discussion about the hanging of her new name plate, the reference to Grey is unmistakable. The parallel extends: Masie and Cordelia are both female investigators just setting off on her own, as the older men who trained them exit the scene. It was enough for me that Winspear clearly admires James, one of my personal favorite mystery writers— one so good that her characterization, scene-setting, and prose over-all transcends the genre to the point that I include her on my list of top writers. 

Winspear is not on that list. At times, as I read her first Masie Dobbs, I thought about stopping. I don’t read much historical fiction and don’t tend to enjoy it all that much, so the substantial elements of historical fiction didn’t work as well for me as they would for some readers.

The particular form that the sentimentality and over-wrought tendencies of historical fiction takes in the Masie Dobbs series may be deduced from the time period (between the wars) and the fact that Masie, as she often points out, was a nurse in France in WWI. This is a mystery set in the golden age of detective fiction, and that means tea and trains, class warfare—of a fictionally smooth variety—and of course the legacy of WWI. Interestingly, while it is the tendency towards historical fiction that almost caused me to put the book aside, the interest in a different time and place (particularly one so central to a certain kind of detective fiction) is what made me finish the book and put number two on my list as well.

Dispatch 2 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

Dispatch 1

Introduction to the First Victim: Part II

The way the Commonwealth insisted that even gambling boats moored outside Cincinnati and Evansville were Commonwealth property. That was absurd too, and who benefited from that? People said it was good for the bottom line, but Plunkett felt that mutual promotion of gaming would make for better relationships with neighboring states to the north. Obviously. A Commonwealth Gaming Industry unhindered by corruption and stifling rules and partnering with Indiana and Ohio Gaming-- that would be good for everyone. He had tried to involve the new Secretary of Alcohol and Tobacco, too: Trade of bourbon should be opened, if not with Indiana, at least with Ohio. Small batch bourbon distillers should not be subject to impossibly high export taxes if they wanted to expand their markets beyond the Commonwealth. At the very least, the so-called tax trifecta situation, where both the mayors of  Covington and of Newport implemented-- or attempted to implement--taxation of exports to Cincinnati, and Cincinnati exacted tariffs on many goods, needed to be streamlined. But his counterpart at A and T had no desire to fix things, didn’t even seem to understand Plunkett’s careful explanations of what was wrong. Energy was beyond Plunkett’s interest, but he had attempted to sound out his counterpart on Energy as he sought to build support and been met with nothing but equivocation. 

Plunkett’s attempts to improve things were getting nowhere, and he was not recognized as significant in his own right. The work was disappointing. All he did was go to meetings arranged for him by his adjutant, a sharp-dressing youngster who was carefully deferential, but who possessed an alarming confidence and self-contained energy. 

He remembered the surge of triumph he had felt on the morning of his swearing in, the taste of success, the chance to implement his long-cherished dream of what Gaming could be. To become the Gaming Secretary had been a worthy ambition, one anyone had a right to be proud of achieving. He had dressed with care, with the help of his adjutant, and he knew he looked the part. He had been pleased then to have a former military man at his side, a man who knew his way around a razor and effortlessly selected the right socks for the suit.

 For the swearing in, and even into  the early days of his prominence, as he worked to avoid the mistakes he would have made as plain “Mr. Plunkett,” the grandson of a farmer. He had been grateful to have a military man assist him in his toilette. Now, he felt himself to be cowed by his adjutant. He had thought that, with time, he would gain sartorial confidence, and his adjutant would recognize that competence and find a new job. Then, too, Plunkett himself would know what to do in any situation. 

At first, when people came to him at cocktail parties with requests for favors -- special permits; exemptions; a faster, smoother route through the stifling bureaucracy and whatever arcane legislation stood in their way -- he found himself stumbling along, as unsure of himself as he had always been. He didn’t want to master the machinery of the bureaucracy. He just wanted it gone. Its machinery was stubborn. Well, Plunkett was stubborn too. And if he had been clueless and naive when he stepped into the role, he was no longer. 

Now, he would be wearing a beige and white seersucker suit, spit-polished spectators, and appropriately dashing pink bow-tie and matching socks. He was the gaming secretary, after all, and a bit of flair was just the ticket. He was no longer an imposter. He had picked out his own clothes, and he was learning what to say, who ought to be given special treatment, and who deserved to be left to muddle through paradoxical rules. 

Sometimes he thought his wife was right: He was a fool, in over his head. But he was catching on. Just because he liked a good time didn’t mean he was unable to figure out how things worked, he told himself. It was no accident of Fate that he was the Honorable Secretary of Gaming now. He finished his grits and mentally steeled himself for the arrival of his adjutant. It was an unreasonable hour. Why hadn’t he put his foot down and refused to be talked into this painfully early departure? It was definitely time for his adjutant to move along to a new client. 

Thus it was that his adjutant found Klair Plunkett in an unusually belligerent mood when he arrived at 5 am sharp. 

Nevertheless, being good at his job, he cajoled his reluctant charge and master onto the plane. The Tres Amigos were ready. After a pleasant evening of baseball and bourbon, they were going out to Central City to do a press conference. Flying over the horse fields, even Plunkett felt a sense of satisfaction. Take-off was smooth.  Once he had only dreamed of flying all across the Commonwealth from his Lexington home. Now, that dream was a reality. Here he was, up and flying, while lesser folks slept below him or blearily stumbled home from nights of debauchery he tried to convince himself held no appeal for him any longer. He fell asleep almost as soon as the plane reached its cruising altitude.

When Plunkett was awoken about forty minutes later, the fields and trees below were illuminated by a warm and delicate morning glow. For a moment, he felt the optimism of a new day, but then everything shuddered and a loud buzz filled the plane, which picked up speed. “Buckle up!” called the pilot, his voice tense and hard. 

“S____ ” muttered the adjutant. Plunkett looked up in alarm and the men met each other’s eyes. The usual curated expressions were wiped from their faces by the exigency of the situation. It gave Plunkett pause to see the man’s expression, eyes wide with a terror he could feel reflected on his own face. The adjutant was never alarmed. Things must be bad. 

There was a rumble. “Duck” someone yelled. As if that would help. “Impact in 6” said the pilot “prepare to brace” he added mechanically, certain that the angle was too steep for it to make any difference. 

Plunkett sat bolt upright, as he realized that none of the pilot’s adjustments were doing any good. They were going into the ground. He might be a pathetic gaming secretary and a weak man who would never achieve his dreams, but he would not duck like a coward. He looked out of the window at the cornfields and his eyes fixed on the green leaves on the corn stalks, bending in the breeze and reflecting the morning sun. Despite the icy sweat running down his back, he noticed that his skin felt uncomfortably hot, numb, tingly.

It was the last conscious thought of his life.