Blackout

by Jason Elam

  Riley’s thoughts were interrupted when every light in the stadium went black.

  Sunday, September 13, 9:15 p.m. EDT

  New York, New York

  A roar came from the back of the bus, followed by Gorkowski’s booming voice, already slipping into a slight slur. “Ten high? How do you take a pot with a ten high?”

  “The best way possible,” replied defensive end Donovan Williams, the only player on the team with a big enough body and a bad enough attitude to face Gorkowski head-on. “I took it from an idiot who tried to bluff with a nine high!”

  The bus roared again, almost drowning out Gorkowski’s curses and vows to win his money back.

  At the end of last season, the PFL had banned alcohol from all postgame activities and team functions. Too many players were getting picked up driving drunk or crashing their Ferraris into trees. But, not to let something as silly as rules get in the way of their good times, a few players usually smuggled at least four or five flasks onto the bus after each game. Keith Simmons thought Gorkowski sounded like he may have kept a whole one to himself.

  Yeah, and who are you to knock them? Last year, you would have been the loudest, drunkest one of the bunch! A lot had changed in Keith since the end of the previous season.

  The wound he had received during the attack on Platte River Stadium was the catalyst. His thigh had healed quickly enough, but the injury had left him with a lot of questions. What if the shrapnel had been a couple feet higher and had hit me in the chest? If I had died that night, would my life have been worthwhile? Have I done anything that makes a difference? Would I have left anything that would last?

  As he analyzed his life, he realized that the answer was no. Sure, his family would miss him, as would some fans. Maybe he’d even make the Ring of Fame, and when some kid asked his dad who that guy was, the dad would have some exciting story to tell. But beyond that, after a somewhat-tearful tribute to him by the Colorado Mustangs, he would soon be forgotten.

  Then one night, while venting about the purposelessness of life over at his sister’s house, she had suggested that he meet with her pastor, Bishop Ezekiel Jenkins. At first Keith had balked at the idea. He got enough of the religion stuff from Riley Covington, thank you very much! But after an hour of arguing with himself, he had finally agreed.

  The next day, he was in Bishop Jenkins’s little, old-book-smelling office while the bishop told Keith all about hope and faith and love. Keith suddenly realized that he was putting all his life’s eggs into his own basket, accepting all the love he could get but never really knowing how to give love back. The bishop walked him through the example that Jesus gave—total sacrifice, total living for others, total love—then reminded him of the legacy that one man could leave.

  In that moment, things became clear to Keith. His life felt purposeless because he was trying to be his own purpose. If he wanted his life to mean anything, it had to become about others, not himself. Never before would a thought like that have held any appeal to him, but that day in that office he knew it was the life he wanted.

  Keith shared his epiphany with the bishop, and before he knew it, he was on his knees on the threadbare carpet, giving himself to Christ. Since that time, his life had seemed to consist of one mistake after another, but in his weekly meetings with the bishop, he was reassured of God’s constant love and unending forgiveness.

  He also began meeting with Riley, who told him to go easier on himself—God didn’t expect perfection, he said; that’s why He so readily promised forgiveness. The Christian life was a never-ending process of growing and learning.

  Riley helped Keith learn how to be a Christian in an environment like professional football—not always an easy task. There were so many ways to stumble—so many opportunities to do the wrong thing. He struggled with holding on to the guilt when he blew it rather than accepting God’s forgiveness and forgiving himself. Ultimately, for him it was much easier to look back and dwell on all his failures, not the least of which was that stupid hazing of Zerin Khan. Which reminds me . . .

  “Hey, Z,” Keith said to Afshin, who was sitting across the aisle from him, “what do you think happened to Zerin? In all my years of playing, I can’t remember one time when a guy simply didn’t show up for an away game. I’ve seen guys late who end up having to pay their own way. But just not showing up? Never.”

  Afshin, who like many others on the bus was checking out the game summary sheet—a paper that was distributed to all the media with each player’s stats—put the document down. “I know, and especially with it being his first regular-season game. I mean, this was one of the most amazing experiences of my life! I’ve always dreamed of playing in the PFL, and here I was tonight actually doing it!”

  “Yeah, I remember the feeling,” Keith said.

  “You can? Really? Because that’s a long ways back. Maybe you just remember it because you’ve seen it in black-and-white highlight reels,” Afshin gibed.

  “Watch it, Rook.”

  Afshin shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t imagine what happened. Zerin doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to get cold feet. Think about it—on top of it being his first game, it was also the first game in the Dell Dome. This was history, man! It’s just weird.”

  Both men leaned back into their seats, each lost in his own thoughts.

  Looking out the window, Keith said, “So what do you think about this traffic? It’s 9:00 at night, and we’re still bumper to bumper.”

  Afshin took a peek, then immediately returned to the game summary. “That’s why I live in Denver.”

  “No, you live in Denver because the Mustangs had a need at linebacker, and you just happened to still be on the board when their turn came.”

  Without looking up, Afshin said, “Nah, I think my being in Denver is more than just luck or fate. If you had seen my star chart for that day, you would have recognized that Jupiter had just moved into my seventh house, which, as we all know, is a very auspicious cosmological PFL draft event.”

  “Yeah, keep talking like that and I’ll knock your Jupiter out of that house and into the next galaxy over.”

  Afshin looked at Keith and grinned.

  “Hey, how you guys doing?” asked team doctor Ted Bonham.

  “I’m cool,” said Afshin, who then turned his gaze on Keith.

  “You know, Bones, I’m actually doing all right, too,” Keith answered.

  Bonham was visibly surprised. On the bus ride to the airport and while on the plane, Bonham made regular rounds passing out Vicodin, Percocet, Valium, and any other legal drug a player might need—or want. The last few seasons, Keith had found himself anxiously anticipating Bones’s walking pharmacy rounds and was always ready with real or made-up aches and pains that required an immediate dose of Percocet, plus a few extra doses to last him through the next couple days.

  Keith had confessed his growing dependence on the pills to Riley and Afshin, who both had promised to hold him accountable to his commitment to walk away from them. Iron sharpening iron, Riley had called it. Good phrase! Saying no to Bones is like having Chef Bobby Flay slap me back and forth across the sharpening steel twenty or thirty times.

  “You sure?” Bonham asked.

  “Yeah, and beat it before I change my mind,” Keith said grumpily.

  After he moved to the next row, Afshin said, “Who’s better than you?”

  “Yeah, that did feel pretty good,” Keith said with a smile. “Percocet? We don’t need no stinkin’ Percocet!”

  “Hey, Simms,” came Gorkowski’s voice. “Get back here! All these guys are cleaning me out, and I need someone I can win some money from quick!”

  “Yeah, right! I’ll own your truck before we get to the airport,” Keith yelled back as he stood up. “Hey, Z, you want to come back?”

  “Nah, I think I’ll just hang out here and relish my two sacks and six tackles, which—just checking the sheet here—would be about two sacks and one tackle more than—who was that again?—oh yeah, you
.”

  “Yeah, gloat if you want. But if they weren’t double-teaming me, you wouldn’t have had those clear paths.”

  “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas, my friend.”

  Keith laughed, then stopped and said, “You know, I don’t even know what that means. But just in case . . .” He flicked Afshin just above his right ear.

  “Ow,” Afshin said as Keith retreated to the back of the bus. “Yeah, you better run away!”

  Keith wedged himself past Bones, who was still making his rounds.

  “Here he comes,” Gorkowski called out. “Simms, I’m gonna make you my—what’s going on?”

  The inside of the bus had abruptly gone completely dark—the inside lights extinguished, the brightness of the city gone. The bus itself, which had been traveling no more than ten miles per hour, drifted to the right, then came to a stop against a small pickup truck.

  “Hey, bus driver, you have a seizure or something?” Gorkowski called out, causing nervous laughter among some of his more loyal followers.

  “Hang on, Snap, the dark isn’t just in here! Look outside! Everything is dark. It’s a total blackout,” Travis Marshall observed.

  A thought suddenly occurred to Keith. He fished his BlackBerry out of his pocket and flipped it open. No light. He pressed the power button, but nothing happened.

  “This isn’t an ordinary blackout,” he called back to where he had heard Marshall’s voice as he quickly made his way toward the front. “Riley warned me about this!”

  He ran into Bonham, knocking him down and then walking over him, all the while yelling, “Everyone, stay in your seats! Stay in your seats!” Although he wasn’t sure how that would help anything, he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Open the door,” he commanded the bus driver. “I’ve got to find Coach—”

  “What is that?” Danie Colson yelled out of the black.

  A loud shooshing noise passed over the bus. Keith looked out the windshield to see a huge shadow, darker than the night, rapidly dropping to earth. Then, no more than three hundred yards away, an enormous fireball erupted. The bus rocked as the wave of heat blasted its side. The sound was deafening.

  Once it was safe to look out the windows again, Keith could see three more fireballs rising in the distance with new ones happening in a seemingly never-ending succession.

  “We’re under attack,” Colson called out. “They’re bombing us.”

  “Yeah, we’re under attack, all right,” Keith loudly answered him, instantly catching everyone else’s ear. “But they’re not bombing us. It’s way worse than that.”

  Sunday, September 13, 9:15 p.m. EDT

  New York, New York

  Almost home, Jim Babylon thought. What’s that old Jefferson Airplane song? “Give me a ticket for an aeroplane. Da da da da da da fast train. Lonely days are gone; I’m a-going home. my baby just wrote me a letter.”

  Well, it all fits, except for the letter, and “my baby just sent me a text message” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

  He checked his watch again. It felt like they had been on approach for hours, even though they had only been in the holding pattern for twenty minutes. If the gates at Kennedy weren’t backed up, I’d be on the ground right now—probably almost at the baggage claim. And maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  Although he had Tamara’s address on a slip of paper in his pocket, he still hoped that she would surprise him at the airport. After all, her profile had emphasized the words spontaneous and romantic.

  Jim had met Tamara on eHarmony three months ago. When he first signed up for the service, he had limited his searches to the Kansas City area, but after reading what seemed like hundreds of profiles and even attempting two unsuccessful meetings, he had decided to widen his parameters.

  And why not? Owning his own successful business allowed him the freedom and resources to travel wherever he needed to. Besides, how many times had he said he would walk around the world to find that perfect soul mate? At least flying is better than walking, although being stuck in a coach middle seat is only slightly the better of the two options.

  Matches from all over the country began pouring into his profile page. So many choices; so few possibilities. Just when his frustration level was approaching its highest, Tamara’s profile had popped up on his list. Before he was through reading her first-level answers, he knew she was the one. That feeling was confirmed after she gave him permission to read the rest of her information.

  “They always said you’re just going to know,” he had told her during their third multi-hour phone conversation. “They were right.”

  Now, after thirty-eight years of singleness, he was within an hour or two of finally meeting in person the woman he truly felt he was going to spend the rest of his life with. If they’d only land this plane. “So close, so close, yet so far away,” Jim sang to himself. Who was that? Air Supply? No, the singer sounded too much like a man. Oh, I know, it was that duo—one tall, long-haired, blond guy and his short, curly-headed buddy. Hall & Oates! That’s it.

  “Are you nervous?”

  “What?” Jim responded more abruptly than he meant to.

  The old woman next to him nodded toward his bouncing leg.

  “Oh, that,” Jim laughed, a little embarrassed. “Yeah, I guess I am. But not about the flying.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m about to meet a woman. I think I’m going to marry her,” Jim said, wondering why he was telling this to a complete stranger. Other than a quick greeting when he had sat down next to her and a thank-you when he had moved into the aisle to allow her to get to the restroom, they hadn’t said two words to each other.

  “Well, it sounds like you’ve got things in the right order. Meet her before you marry her,” the woman said with a little wink. She then turned back to the window to look at the lights of the city below.

  Jim smiled. Yep, meet, and then marry. Probably not all in the same visit, but you never—

  The jet went black. The quietness and the stillness of the air made Jim wonder if he had died. It was like suddenly being buried alive. The only sound was the wind outside.

  Then a woman screamed, and several other passengers instantly followed suit. Jim gripped the armrests on either side of him.

  What is this? What’s happened?

  He could feel that the plane was still moving, but he couldn’t tell which way—up, down, nose first, tail first. It was like being suspended in a lunar capsule and hurtled through space.

  He looked to his left to see if the city lights below could help him get his bearings, but the window was completely black.

  When did the old lady pull the shade down? he wondered. He reached over to push it back up but felt only the smooth coolness of the window. Where’re the lights? Where’s the city?

  Jim felt his breathing increasing. With the circulation stopped and people screaming all around—loudest of whom seemed to be the businessman next to him—he felt like all the air was being sucked from him.

  Suddenly a cold, bony hand laid itself on his, and another placed itself on his neck, tugging him. At first he resisted. Then finally, he let himself be pulled down.

  In the midst of the pandemonium, the voice of the old woman, so close he could feel the warmth of her words on his ear and smell the tea on her breath, cut through the noise. “Jesus loves you, child.”

  The words barely had time to register in Jim’s mind, and then nothing else registered at all.

  Sunday, September 13, 9:15 p.m. EDT

  New York, New York

  Sarah Gallardo was exhausted. I don’t know how long I can keep this schedule up. Seven days a week—it never ends! Andy’s got to get out. I didn’t sign on to be a single mom. He needs to be here helping.

  But even as she pressed the elevator’s button for the tenth floor, she knew she was being selfish. Her husband, Andy, was currently deployed with the Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Afghani
stan. He was serving his country, fighting for what he believed in—what they both believed in. Who am I to complain? I knew I was marrying a Marine. If it was good for me then, it should be good for me now.

  However, while this was true, there was one big difference between the then and the now—a difference she lifted up to her face in a little pink and brown Graco baby carrier.

  “Genvieve needs her daddy, doesn’t she?” Sarah said, giving her four-month-old a little tickle. Then she sighed and lowered the carrier. “She needs her mommy, too.”

  Once again Sarah wondered if she should just move back in with her parents. They lived twelve blocks away. Then she could quit one of her two jobs, and that would open up more of her time for her little girl. Genvieve already spends most of her time there with her grandma anyway.

  Yet as she walked down the hall and unlocked her front door, all the reasons for keeping her own place came back to her—independence, not having to deal with her dad, building toward their future. But the chief motivation for staying away was so that she wouldn’t have to hear “I told you so” from her folks.

  Her parents had never liked Andy. They wanted her to marry a nice little Jewish boy who worked in a nice little Jewish company, and together they could keep a nice little Jewish home and raise nice little Jewish children. But instead of fulfilling their nice little Jewish plan, she had fallen in love with Andy Gallardo—a nice big Spanish boy who wanted to be a nice big Spanish Marine.

  She placed Genvieve’s carrier on the kitchen table of the small apartment and pressed the button on her answering machine. Nada—always a disappointment and a relief. Walking to the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of apple juice.

  “Got to wet my whistle; then I’ll let you wet your whistle, baby doll,” she called out.

  If I moved back home, it would be admitting defeat. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a Marine’s wife, it’s never surrender.