Flight: A Novel

Zits figures that Jimmy “is a dirty liar and a cheat,” just like his father (108). He figures that falling into the body of a man similar to his father “is another kind of justice” (108). Jimmy tells Helda that, in the 12 years that he’s been a pilot, that was the first time his wife ever visited the hangar. Helda asks what they should do. When Jimmy looks at Helda, Zits can feel that he doesn’t love her and is even irritated with her. Jimmy tells her that he’s going to go find his wife, whom he loves. Helda begins to cry. Zits feels disgusted with Jimmy for making “two women weep and wail in two minutes” (108). He hopes that he never loves anyone as much as these two women love Jimmy, because most people are like him and will only “use your love” and “take advantage of you” (110). Helda continues to cry as Jimmy “jumps into a big pickup truck and drives off” (110).

As Jimmy drives, he thinks about infidelity and betrayal. He thinks of how fathers abandon their children and how people go to war against each other. Zits then thinks about how “[he] betrayed those people in the bank” (110). He wants to cry, but he can only make Jimmy cry for him. Jimmy’s eyes, however, are filled with his own tears, summoned from hurt over his own situation. He’s crying not only about his wife but about Abbad, who was a refugee. Jimmy thinks that he’s now “turned his wife into a refugee” by destroying his home (111).

When he arrives at his house, he sees his wife tossing his belongings out onto the lawn. He remains in his truck and watches as his “magazines and books and CDs and DVDs and trophies” fly onto the lawn (111). His wife also tosses out “plastic airplanes, toy airplanes, model airplanes, remote control airplanes,” which “crash onto the lawn” as well as into the driveway, “the apple tree in the front yard,” and the driveway (111). Jimmy watches and does nothing because he knows that he deserves this destruction. Finally, his wife pulls off her wedding ring and tosses that, too, into the street. With that act, she collapses onto her knees, weeping.

Alas, Jimmy emerges from his truck and says her name: Linda. She doesn’t respond. When he says her name for the third time, she asks him, without looking up at him, how long he’s been having an affair. He estimates that it’s been a year or 13 months. She asks Jimmy if he loves Helda; he says he doesn’t. Linda then asks her husband if he’s ever brought Helda into their bed. He lies at first, saying that he hasn’t; she sees through his lie, which prompts him to confess that he has. Linda rises, pulls a pistol out of her coat, and aims at Jimmy.

Jimmy stands before his wife, wanting her to pull the trigger of her pistol. Linda pulls it. The gun clicks. Jimmy doesn’t move or express fear. Linda admits that she removed all the bullets. She only wanted to frighten her husband. Instead, Jimmy’s only disappointed that he isn’t going to face some kind of punishment for all that he’s done. When his wife asks why he’s merely standing there, silent, he finally says that he wishes that she had loaded the gun. She expresses pity for her husband, declaring him “sad,” and says that she’s going to stay at her mother’s house (113). In the meantime, Jimmy should clear his things out of the house. She doesn’t ever want to see him again. He agrees and she drives off in her own car.

When Jimmy is alone again, he looks at his things strewn across the lawn. Some of his neighbors are watching the scene; he starts to clean up. He carries “a broken model plane, a DC-10,” inside his house and “sits in his chair in the living room” (115). He stares at the television screen, which is turned off. He replays a memory onto the screen. The memory is of a video of Abbad, “shouting in a foreign language” (115). He thinks of another video, “shot from a boat in the harbor, of a passenger airplane falling from the sky into downtown Chicago” (115). This video is followed by “a photograph of Abbad, his wife, and his baby” (115). Sometime after boarding the plane, Abbad overtook it and crashed it.

Reporters came to Jimmy’s house, asking him what he could tell them about Abbad. Jimmy could neither answer nor wanted to answer. They asked him how it felt to know that he had trained a man who used that training to kill what turned out to be dozens of people. Jimmy felt guilty, though he hadn’t harmed anyone. He still feels guilty and at fault for trusting Abbad.

Jimmy runs outside to his truck, jumps in, and drives back to the airport. Helda is no longer there. He has the awareness now of being completely alone. He starts his plane, taxis, then takes off. He imagines Abbad again. He thinks of the moment that he allowed his old friend and student to take control of the plane for the first time. Abbad didn’t feel ready, but Jimmy assured him that he wasn’t alone. Abbad reached for the controls and screamed in excitement that he was flying the plane. He had a rough time landing, but Jimmy reassured him that it’s always hard to land the first time. They went out afterwards, got drunk, talked for hours, then returned to the hangar. They both collapsed on the floor. Jimmy reached out for Abbad’s hand and declared the man his best friend. Abbad called Jimmy his “brother” (118).

Jimmy feels himself alone in his plane again. He flies out over a large lake. He waits until he sees nothing but blue above and below him. He then “pushes down on the controls and sends the plane plummeting toward the water” (118). Zits is in Jimmy’s body and “[thinks] about all the people [he] loved” as well as those whom he betrayed and those who betrayed him (118). He shuts his eyes and says a prayer, but Jimmy stays quiet “all the way down” (118).