Faith

By Michael Cuddy, 4/3/2001

"I didn't believe him at first", I told the man, "He seemed like a nut." I laughed a humorless laugh. "He said that planes don't really fly."

The man looked up from the notes he was diligently taking on a pad of yellow paper. "Why don't you start at the beginning, again."

I sighed. I'd already told him. I'd told him three times. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell him again. "Can I have a glass of water?" Talking like this made my mouth dry.

"Yes, I'll have someone fetch it for you." The man went to the door and talked quietly with another man who was standing there, Bill was his name, I think. A few minutes later, Bill arrived with a tall paper cup filled with cold water.

I took a sip. "I was on the flight..."

"From San Francisco?" the man interrupted. He always did that – it was very annoying.

"Yes, so you say. I honestly don't recall. If you want to hear the story, please stop interrupting me."

The man made a note on his yellow pad and looked at me unapologetically. "Please continue."

"I was on the flight ... from ... San Francisco ... I can't remember where the flight had departed from, or what its destination was. I just know that I was on a plane.

"Tell me about the plane," the man interrupted me again.

I sighed.

"It was big. You know: a big passenger jet. It was only about a quarter full, I remember thinking how wasteful it was to fly this big jet with so few people on it. The thing could have carried two hundred people and there were about fifty on board." I paused to see if the man would interrupt me, he didn't, so I continued. "And, there was this flight attendant..."

"You remember the stewardess?" Again he interrupted.

"Steward", I said, "And actually, they like to be called flight attendants." The word 'stewardess' made me uncomfortable, I didn't know why.

"Tell me about the flight attendant, then." His words said that he wanted to hear my story, but his eyes said otherwise.

"The flight attendant was handsome." I thought about him – the flight attendant -- he had these blue eyes, intense eyes; eyes that smiled and at the same time looked right through you. I smiled. I wished I could remember his name.

"Is that all you can remember, 'handsome'?" More notes.

"Yes," I lied; I didn't want to tell him about his eyes. I don't know why, but I had a feeling he would pester me about the eyes if I mentioned them. Having told this story several times, in almost exactly the same words each time, I had so far not mentioned the flight attendant’s eyes.

"How old was he?"

"I don't know. He had one of those ageless faces. I remember thinking that he was older than most flight attendants that I had seen."

“Most…” he mumbled as he wrote. "Are you a frequent air traveler?"

"I don't think so. It's just that TV commercials always show young pretty, flight attendants. He was not one of those." I took a sip of water, hoping that the man would interrupt there, so that I could get more than two sentences out. He didn't take the bait, so I continued.

"After he made the rounds with drinks ... 'coffee, tea, or milk?' ... I snickered. I seem to remember vodka. ... He had a funny sense of humor. He was wearing strange cologne; it smelled organic."

Memories were beginning to gel in my head.

The man was busy with his yellow pad. He looked up. "Please tell me more about the flight, was there any bad weather?"

There was the interruption I had waited for earlier. This man had a knack for interposing a just as the memories began to coalesce in my head. With his words, the shades of my memories retreated back into the shadows of my subconscious.

"I don't remember any bad weather," I said, "I think the flight was pretty uneventful..."

"For the first two hours?" I wondered if he ever listened to anything I said. He was probably just drawing funny faces on his yellow pad.

"That's about all I remember: two hours of uneventful flight. Oh, I remember something; the in-flight movie was `It's a Wonderful Life'. I really loathe that movie." The man looked up from his yellow pad. "Here it comes", I thought.

"Why don't you like that movie?" He was like a computer program, I said the words, and he gave the same responses each time.

"It's overplayed. And, they played the colorized version. I hate colorized movies." I decided to throw the man a curve ball. "I hate Jimmy Stewart, whenever I see him, I think of that old `Saturday Night Live' bit by Dana Carvey." I gave him my best Jimmy-Stewart impression.

"Ah," he was not impressed. "Why don't we talk about the Steward, ah, flight attendant some more."

Scribble, scribble, scribble. "Tell me what he said to you."

"As I was saying, after he made the rounds with drinks, he sat down next to me and we started to chat. I don't remember what I told him, but we must have had quite a nice talk, because it went on for a long time."

"Did you tell him about yourself?"

"Yes, I think so." I could see where this was going.

"What did you tell him about yourself"

"I don't know." No dice man, until I figure it out, I can't tell you.

"Continue. What did the flight attendant say?"

"After about an hour and a half of conversation, he said `planes can't really fly, you know'. I remember that statement distinctly. `Planes can't really fly, you know'". I repeated the words again to myself in my head. He was right.

I didn't believe him, but he was right. More memories came back to me. I just hoped the man would shut up long enough for the ideas to coalesce in my mind. I continued.

"I remember laughing at him, and asking him, 'okay, if planes can't fly, are we just imagining that we're up in the sky?'"

"'No,' he responded, 'we're actually up in the sky. It's just that the physics of flight is all a lie.'"

"He said that the physics of flight was a lie?"

"Yes." I continued "He said, 'planes don't fly because of all of that stuff you learn in grade school: wings, engines, thrust, drag, lift, gravity. That stuff is bunk.' I asked him, 'So, if planes don't fly because of physics, how do they fly?'"

The man with the yellow pad looked up from his pad, "go on."

I made the decision to finally tell him: "faith."

"Faith?" His eyes finally focused on me, as I gave him the tidbit of information that I had been holding back.

I had just opened Pandora's box, but this guy didn't know it yet.

"Yes, that's what he said. He said that it all started with Leonardo DaVinci. He tried to make flying machines, but he didn't have the faith in his own inventions to actually make them fly. Or maybe, it was because there were so many people around him who didn't believe that the machines could fly, needless to say, DaVinci didn't get off the ground. There wasn't enough faith to get him flying."

"But the Wright Brothers succeeded, when nobody thought they could"

"Not true, I said. The local residents near Kitty Hawk did. The Wrights made them believe, and so they flew. In 1902, they flew a glider a very short distance, and the reports of that made more people believe. The powered flight that they made was more spectacular, not because the overgrown kite that they were piloting had an engine: no, it was because they had faith, and the faith of the bystanders around them." I paused to let the man with the pad catch up in his writing.

He was scribbling furiously -- this time I noticed that he was actually writing, and at the top of the page was a series of doodles.

I continued. "It was the dawn of the age of scientific enlightenment, not false science like phrenology, astrology and alchemy, but 'real', 'hard' science: physics, and it's offshoots, electronics and radio. It was also the dawn of mass media: everyone could have a newspaper on their door. The telegraph made long distance communication of news stories possible. Once the Wrights flew, everyone heard about it. Everyone heard, and many had faith."

I took a drink of water. Much of the conversation with the flight attendant was coming back to me. I was amazed at what I was remembering.

"So," said the man with the yellow pad, still furiously trying to keep up with what I was saying, "Why couldn't the Wright brothers just build a jumbo jet?"

"Well, for one, they didn't have jet engines..."

"Okay," he interrupted, "but you said that engines were not needed."

"They are not needed to fly, that is, to get up in the sky, but they are needed to move forward through the air once you're up – wheels just won't work with no purchase on the ground."

"I see." That was the best he could do. I continued.

"Once people started having faith in flight"

"Because of the newspapers?"

"Yes, stop interrupting. Once people started believing in flying, it was only a matter of time before people started making larger and faster planes. The more people believe in the plane, the larger the plane you could fly."

"So why don't they just build huge planes that can carry thousands of people?" He had stopped writing, and was listening with rapt attention to my tale.

"Because people wouldn't believe that it could fly. And the faith is what keeps it airborne. The aircraft designers, at the highest levels, know this, I think. So they make the planes a little bigger with each generation, and enough people believe that 'science' has advanced far enough to make a plane that size fly, so the plane can fly."

"The aircraft designers know this? How do they keep it a secret? It takes several thousand people to design an airplane!" He was getting agitated. He was trying to find holes in my – the flight attendant's--story.

"Not all of them know. Just the highest level designers. The aircraft fly on faith, after all, and it wouldn't do anyone any good if the general populous found this out--not without breaking it to them very slowly. There's a lot of energy in the faith of the 'mindless masses', that's not to say that all people are mindless sheep, or stupid. Any given person is smart, but 'people' are stupid. No better than sheep."

This statement caught the man with the yellow pad aback, but he thought about it for a second and said, "Crowd mentality. I see."

"Right. Another thing: it's the faith of the people on the aircraft that more directly controls the flight of the aircraft."

"Not the pilot?"

"Oh, the pilot directs the faith of the people. Pilots are strong willed people, generally, the good ones are, anyway. They channel the passenger's belief that the plane can fly into altitude.

The engines push the plane forward and voila', you have flight".

"The flight attendant told you all this?"

"Flight attendant? What flight attendant." My head hurt.

I am a flight attendant.

"The flight attendant you've been telling me about."

"I am a flight attendant!" I blurted out. That sounded right: A flight attendant. The man with the piercing eyes had been sitting in first class on an SFO to DFW flight.

"I had been chatting with the man after performing my cabin service duties. It was about 10:00pm California time and most of the passengers were asleep.

He had the most piercing eyes.

"You seem to have made a bit of breakthrough,"

Memories flooded back to me, my name, who I was, who I am.

"Cary." I said, confidently, it sounded right.

"You know?" He looked surprised.

"Yes, my name is Cary."

"Tell me what happened on flight 1922?"

"The man, the passenger, I can't remember his name, and I had been talking for close to two hours when a queer look crossed his face and he stood up. 'I have to go' he said."

"'Go?' I said, The first class lavatory was occupied so I suggested to him that he could use the lavatory in coach. 'No,' he said. He smiled. I have to get off the plane. You should come too, Cary'. My first thought was that I had a wacko and was about to notify the captain, when I looked into his eyes. He was serious. I was just about to speak when the plane shuddered. A half a second later there was a loud explosion from the rear of the plane."

"And then?"

"The aircraft shuddered some more and the passengers started shouting, and Captain Williams came on the intercom and said that there was some trouble with the aircraft, but they were going to make an emergency landing near El Paso. The man ... I wish I could remember his name ... he took my hand and headed for the port door. I don't know how he opened it, they are not supposed to open in flight. As the cabin depressurized, he and I were blown from the aircraft. I screamed and my life flashed before me. I remember that it was cold, and loud. Everything appeared to happen in slow motion. I watched the plane fly away as I began to fall."

"You were blown from the plane?"

"Yes!" It was all coming back to me. "As I started to fall, I was overcome with a sense of peace. I knew that I was about to die, and I decided to enjoy the last few minutes of my life."

"The sky was beautiful. It was a full moon, and I could see millions of stars. I could see the Milky Way stretching across the night sky. It was amazing. Then, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was him! He was about 500 feet away from me, straight up. The strange thing was, he was just standing there, like he was hovering."

"I thought about the conversation that I had with the man, and I looked down. The ground was getting larger. I was falling. When I looked back up, I noticed that the man was closer to me than he had been before, but still standing in thin air. I heard his voice over the roar of the wind in my ears."

"What did he say?"

"Faith."

"Faith?"

"Yes, just faith."

"And then?"

"Simple. I believed. I found faith. I stopped falling. He took my arm and we started descending, not falling, a slow, controlled descent. I could see the lights of El Paso a few miles away. I was dumbfounded. I should be dead. I ... ", I paused. I was getting choked up.

"Please, continue." This time he meant it.

"I took a look up to where the aircraft was streaking across the sky. I saw that the whole rear of the plane was on fire. A few seconds later, the entire plane exploded. Gone. Just like that. That's the last thing I remember."

Fifty passengers and five of my coworkers, close friends, had been vaporized in a split second. And there I was, standing, in thin air, thirty thousand feet above El Paso.

Suddenly, I remembered one more thing, the last words the man spoke to me: "You couldn't have saved any of them. They stopped believing when the explosion happened. You are alive, because you have faith."

I looked at the Doctor, with tears in my eyes, and said, "I have faith."

"They found you in a field, about 2 miles from the wreckage, physically unharmed, but suffering from amnesia," the doctor explained.

"There was no record of a first class passenger on the flight."

He stood up, and walked out of the room. Bill opened the door and let him out. I looked down and noticed that my cup of water was empty, and as I was about to ask him for another, the world stopped.

I walked around my room, the door was ajar, the Doctor frozen in his tracks. I waved my hand in front of his face and got no response.

I pulled the door open all the way and walked out into the hall. Nurses, Doctors and other patients were all frozen stiff. The world had a faded look to it. Like an old photograph that's spent too much time in the sun. Not black-and-white, but a paler version of itself.

Motion caught the corner of my eye. It seemed strange with everything so still. I turned and was face to face with the passenger. The man. The steel blue eyes and ageless face smiled at me.

He had a beard, but I recognized him from his eyes. He was wearing a dark blue robe that extended to his feet.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," I responded. "How..."

He cut me off by putting his finger to my lips. "We don't have much time." He laughed like he had made a joke. He took my arm and we walked down the corridor. Everyone and everything in the hospital remained motionless.

"Let me tell you a bit about time," he said.

"Faith?" I said.

"Precisely" he said.