Facing Grace with GloriaWilliam H. Coles |
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Facing Grace with Gloria, page 3
“That’s him,” I told my new friend.
“Is he alive?”
Arthur coughed in his half-sleep. Then he gave up a wet one.
“Don’t stand too close. You get hit with the spit.”
She moved back a step.
“Arthur,” I said. “Meet and greet. You got company.”
Arthur shook his head so his gray-streaked beard wagged like a broom on front. He was wearing only shorts and torn sandals with straps and soles smoothed by some long-gone hippie. Sweat glistened on his forehead.
Although he was half-blind, I waved my cash behind Gloria as she stared at him, trying to get him on board my Gloria train. Arthur didn’t have my instincts for the big deal.
“You were at the crash? Air Florida 63?” she gushed. Arthur missed my cash wave behind her head.
“Why do you ask?”
“My father was on that flight. Flight 63.”
Arthur finally saw me and gave me a glare. I put away the cash. “Sorry about your dad,” I said.
“I’m having a little trouble understanding your purpose,” Arthur said.
“I saw the shrine. I thought you saw the crash!”
“A hero,” Arthur said.
“Tell me. I want to know!”
Arthur coughed as if to get the story spirited into his voice. He pushed up in his chair and leaned forward slightly. He’d told it before. The DC bard, he was. This was going to be great!
“It was just before midnight, wet snow coming down almost like rain. The jet had iced wings and lost altitude after takeoff. The pilot tried to land on river ice to miss people on the ground. The plane slid on its belly and stopped. Survivors crawled out the exits and slid into the frozen river grasping for anything – but there was only ice. The plane sank, slow at first, then faster. Like the Titanic.”
“In the Atlantic,” I said.
Arthur ignored me. “Poor souls lost, some bodies never found.”
“What about the man?” she asked.
“The rescue chopper arrived and let down a line with a clamp. It wasn’t a chair or anything fancy. The man grabbed the line and could have saved himself but he turned to a woman – a stranger I learned later – holding onto a piece of ice about fifty feet away. The man shoved the line toward her but the chopper downdraft blew the line away. The man pointed at the line; it stopped in midair. With a slow motion of his hand he willed that line to move to her. ‘Strap it around your chest’ he yelled, ‘Under your arms! Snap the clamp!’ The chopper-people pulled that woman into the aircraft, a spotlight still fixed on this man who was glowing like a light bulb filament. I watched him. The rotor air wash splashed water on the ice and he couldn’t hold and he went under. The chopper flew off.”
“A miracle,” I said.
“A tragedy,” Arthur added wisely.
“Could you see him?” the girl asked of Arthur.
“Yeah. I was maybe two hundred feet away.”
“Was he old?”
“What do you mean, ‘old’?”
“Fifty?”
“Yeah. I could see his face. About fifty.”
“Could you see his hair?”
“Like the color?
“Was he bald?”
“Bald. I could see he was bald,” Arthur said.
The girl eyed Arthur as if he had just parted the Red Sea. I thought that was a good sign for closing the deal, sort of just payment for the true scoop.
“He was a big man,” Arthur said.
“With big shoulders?”
“It was hard to know with him in the water. But I could tell by his neck he was large.”
“He was a big man!” she said as if in a dream. Then the kid started crying.
“Your father?”
She nodded.
“A son of God.”
“He died for a stranger,” I said. “A real hero!”
“To do that for another human being,” Arthur said. “A man blessed with the grace of God.” I thought Arthur had gone too far bringing the grace of God into it.
She wiped her nose with the short sleeve of her blouse. “I didn’t know my father well. My folks were divorced and I lived with my mother. She says it couldn’t be my father who saved that woman.”
Arthur let go with a lung-turner of a cough. His face turned red. The bald dome on top of his head flushed. “That’s the story,” he finally said.
The girl dug in her bag. She wanted to give Arthur five of her big bills. Behind her back I gave Arthur a one-man high five. Crazy Arthur said “no.” He’d never accept anything from the daughter of him, he said. Goddamn! Arthur had always been a little slow to embrace opportunity, but this was ridiculous.
Gloria sat motionless for a while. Her wad must have had a thousand dollars. Just a little of that would make an easy round-trip bus ride to Eureka, if added to what I had. I felt like bawling. When she had collected herself, she thanked Arthur again, said she was grateful to know.
“Walk her down to that motel near the expressway. They’ll call her a cab,” Arthur instructed.
I protested but Arthur had fallen asleep again.
We were on our way – me , and Gloria, and her cash.
“What’s Arthur’s last name?” Like she might send him a thank you note or a little gift in the mail.
I wasn’t feeling up to chatting. “I’m not sure. O’Leary, maybe. I forgot his lot.”
“Will he die?”
“I ain’t a doctor. But he looks dead already.”
We walked without talking. She had a new spring to her stride. She was smiling to herself, as if someone had given her warm cocoa on a cold night. I hate children, but if I had to have one, I’d have chosen Gloria.
We were close to the motel. She stopped, opened her bag and asked if I needed more. Maybe not all was lost. I could make it to Eureka, and maybe get Arthur out of the VA clinic to a real doctor, too.
“That’s a lot of dough,” I said, eyeing her stash.
“You’ve been so kind.” She offered me at least five hundred.
I was fighting with myself inside. More money than I’d seen in years. Maybe I wouldn’t tell Arthur; he would never know, and I deserved it after all I’d been through to set it up. Ideas were bouncing around in my head like Ping-Pong balls in a rotating lottery cage. One crazy idea kept popping up! If she did pay, she would soon wonder if Arthur’s story was true and whether it was really her dad or not.
“It’s yours,” she said.
I shook my head no in a moment of insanity. I just wasn’t up to erasing Arthur’s graffiti from this girl’s blackboard.
The sun was gone, rubbed out by a rain cloud, and the roar of an eighteen-wheeler downshifting blasted us from the overpass of the expressway. I saw her to the motel lobby sliding door that was stuck on closed and I pried it open for her. I turned quickly. There was no need for long good-byes.
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September 2nd, 2011 at 2:44 pm
I had troble following the story, but I'm glad I read it.
August 28th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Good thoughts. Your comments are very useful. Many thanks. WHC
August 27th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Mr. Coles,
I have the greatest respect for you and your site, as I have said elsewhere, and for your writing.
I do understand you are writing fiction here, but IMHO there are too many similarities to the actual event for the reader to assume you're not writing about it and to wonder why you altered the facts. This diminished the impact of the story for me, while for those that don't remember, it would not lessen the effect to have the actual facts memorialize the event.
At the time, I lived a couple miles upriver, directly under the flight path.
Every time I heard a plane I would wonder if were safe, and that jet might just as easily have come down on my house. So it is a very vivid and emotional memory for me (though I did have the bridge wrong in my comment, it was 14th Street Bridge, not Memorial.)
August 27th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Thanks. The story is fictional, although set in D.C., and the bridge photo used was to label the story for the Internet post, and was not meant to suggest reality. My apologies. WHC
August 27th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for the information. The characters and the story are entirely fictional, although the idea for the story was generated from descriptions of the crash years ago I think you describe. The crash scene as Arthur described it was used (and made up) only to advance story so the characters could reasonably make their story decisions. Again, thanks. WHC
August 27th, 2010 at 10:01 am
That photo is of Key Bridge, not Memorial Bridge.
August 27th, 2010 at 9:58 am
I was in Washington at the time. I remember it vividly. It happened late afternoon just before dark, not at midnight, as Arthur tells it. It was in the middle of a terrible storm, but I could see emergency vehicles headed down MacArthur Boulevard. One of them was towing a small boat. You wouldn't see that at midnight in a snowstorm. No way.
August 11th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Nicely narrated,Beautiful discription of the Characters’ & location's. A simple but good short story, just like it should be.Loved it!
July 29th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I loved the story. It had just the right mystery to keep you reading and wanting more.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I thought that this story was very beautiful and moving, but there really wern't enough clues for most readers to understand that Arthur was Gloria's father. Perhaps instead of 'We're in Washington for a settlement', it would be a bit clearer as 'THE settlement'. Gloria could have mentioned that her father's name was 'Arthur'. Great story–I loved it!
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:11 am
This is such a beautiful story, so graphic and real, as if readers could step into it and experience it just as the author did. I wish I could write like this. :)
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:23 am
i'm in highschool and i think it is a great story :)!!!(:
May 27th, 2010 at 2:44 am
not so short tho i have to say for me ???
May 1st, 2010 at 12:20 pm
hi fan great boy POO
April 10th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
not so short but i love it im trying to get ideas for a story i all ready wrote 3
April 5th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I love it I think I just might marry it!
March 18th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Okayy.? Lovely story, I personally think you should put more action into it but all in all great job!
March 18th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Nicee….story kids will love it. Hopefully, next time you can make a book out of it, if you do could you please inform me I would love to read it…!
January 29th, 2010 at 9:02 am
I sincerely thank you for your question/comment and I am honored that you want to send your story. I also regret that I can't help. I am not involved in publishing. The stories posted on the sight have had the single purpose to provide resources for writers and readers of literary fiction. I do wish I had an easy answer for you. Many of the more commercial publishers are now requiring fees for reading, which they justify as contest fees. I personally find this distasteful, but it is becoming common practice. There are magazines that still read (usually at restricted times) without charge. You can find lists of these publications on line, if you haven't already. Good luck. Publication opportunities are shrinking, but don't let that discourage you from writing your best and trying, as you are, to discover a way for your stories to find their readers. WHC.
January 29th, 2010 at 1:21 am
I would like to send you my short story for publication. Can you tell me where to send it. Thanks.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Lovely story, beautifully illustrating some of the principles you write about on this site.
December 27th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Wake up people! Listen, here is what went down. You know old Arthur? HE is the girl's dad, get it now? When the plane crashed HE was on it! "…some of the bodies were never recovered…" He just stayed right there in that area and made a monument to himself, a dead hero that his daughter could respect rather than the wreck of a looser he evidently had become. We might have assumed the above not probable if he had really been a man with Vietnam veteran status now "waiting on agent orange settlement" but if that were so why would he have needed "dr. cash" when the VA would have provided. Recall him finally starting to charge for crash site tours? I'm thinking the daughter found out he was still alive when she joined the class action suit (probably did that more at her mom's insistence and a chance to perhaps find out something about her dad than for money" Or maybe she was never any part of that suit. she did arrived at the site along with the other two old spinsters but nothing else in common with them in fact she informed them that she "had already settled" Possible that since she coincidentally walked up at the same time that she decided to use the same reason for being there? Somewhere along the line when the pieces started coming together she looked for him. A likely address he might have used would have been that motel. She would then find out that he was homeless right in that area and that he did the "tours". She looked all over that Expressway for signs of him so she knew there was no "crevice" to sleep in. Who knows how many times she had visited the "crash site" before she got lucky. I'm thinking the cash she brought along that day was FOR her dad. Somehow she had pieced things together but when she found him he KNEW it was her but assumed and did not want her to know it was him. And even though he really needed money he would not take it from her, it being so much more valuable to have her believe he was a dead. Recall too that she did not ask Arthur but waited till later to ask Arthur's friend what his last name was. She honored her estranged father's desire to at least let him believe that she thought her hero dad was dead. All three characters came away richer for the day. Re-read it and see if you aggree, If you find differntly by all means please tell me what I missed!
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Compelling story, powerfully told. I was engaged mentally and moved emotionally. You are gifted.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am
A homeless veteran finds grace, and two people finds redemption through sharing. A great story! I enjoyed it immensely.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:47 am
deanna
ilu
August 10th, 2009 at 2:32 am
All this and jazz piano to boot. Great story!
July 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The real revelation was the ending wherein the narrator's inherent goodness won out over greed.This is such a well written piece and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
What a wonderful story, I felt as if I standing Grace as she listened to the gentleman describing the rescue of the woman in the water as her father, or even if was not her father, the gentleman gave her something that she could hold onto. She needed to have just a piece of her father's life. She needed this part of him, something that she was cheated up as she was growing up. Excellent storyline.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:58 am
This is an interesting story. It took my breath away and am loving it. The dialogue is great and the characterization is superb. Thanks for the story. I love it.