Or maybe it was a series of storms. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to delay my flight out of Hilton Head to the point that I would misconnect if I waited, so I was swooped off to Savannah International, where I watched from the window in the gate as lightning ripped the sky and orange cones bounced across the ramp like tumbleweeds in a Western as I waited for the ground stop to lift.
And it occurred to me then that for the first time in a while I would have nobody looking to me for calm, no obligation to help carry baby items or change diapers on the go; my connecting gate in Charlotte was to be a mere five gates away, and I would not need a clear head to reach it. And yes, the flight, if ever weather permitted us to board it, would probably feel like competing in the XGames. So it might be a good time, I thought, to withdraw beneath a thick, snuggly mental blanket of dramamine.
I should add here that my experience with drugs is not vast, and
that there very well may be something out there that not only wraps the world in gauze but also compresses time. Alcohol does this to a degree, but it can also evoke nausea -- the opposite of what I was going for.
Anyway, if nothing exists to do this thing, someone could make a lot of money inventing it, because while dramamine thickens the liquid of reality to an unsplashing viscosity, it likewise causes time to flow like molasses, so that people who take it trade a terrible short experience for a mildly unpleasant long one. But like I said, flying solo with no obligations for a change, my sole task being "to arrive," the completion of which I could claim no responsibility for anyway, I said a few quick prayers, popped a couple chalky pills, and settled into a place where the idea of this sleek CRJ aircraft disintegrating over three or so southern states was merely curious rather than alarming.
The normally 45-minute flight lasted for about two hours in real time. We were put into one of those holding patterns around the airport and the plane wheeled around the city again and again as if attached to a mobile on a shaky crib. I became an old man in my own head during this period, which to me lasted anywhere from 35 to 50 years. Like Prospero I watched the storm -- commanded it to a degree, dispatched Ariel to harvest the flakes of the arcing white thunderbolts outside that traced and lit against the sky the wobbling scale that weighed a future where my daughter would grow up with me in her life against a future where I would be gone. Unblinking I sat and stared at the stacking stormclouds as bright, electric spiders spun their delicate webs in my eyelashes.
We must have landed at last, but I do not remember it. What I remember is the pandemonium. Charlotte airport looked like a refugee camp, with hundreds of haggard people clumped and piled and clutching their belongings everywhere. My connecting flight had departed before I arrived, so, glassy-eyed, I stumbled to baggage claim and stood in line at the help desk behind a man who demanded to know where his luggage was. The supervisor was summoned. The threat of calling the police was made. I stood in another line at the information desk, and when it was my turn a different man with a sweaty face shouldered me out of the way. No one seemed to think this strange.
I decided to find a bathroom. It was near the ticket counter, and I could hear arguments going on outside. More threats.
"Leave, sir," a woman said, "or I will call the police."
"You have an obligation to help us here. We were told to go to the services desk, and they told us to come out here, and now you have to help us."
"I'm calling them ..."
When I came out, three police were indeed on the scene. What was strange, though, was that they had sided with the passengers. Arms folded on their chests, they had apparently stopped the ticket agents from leaving, because the hotels by that point were full, and the taxis were overwhelmed, and with no further flights and TSA having shut the checkpoint to the terminal, there was just nowhere for dozens and dozens of people to go.
"Listen to yourself yelling at us," a male passenger told a ticket agent. "You're an animal. We've been all over this airport trying to get someone to help us, but you called the cops on us, and now the cops are trying to help us. So what now, huh?"
"I can't help you anymore," the ticket agent said. "My shift is over. I need to go home."
"WE need to go home!"
"You see this metal door -- it's locked. None of us has the key. We can't do anything for you now."
"But we don't have our things! Where are we supposed to go?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry."
I didn't stick around to see how this scene played out. Sleeping spots on the floor were filling up. There was a nook just about as wide as my shoulders between the escalator and the plate glass window that was perfect; it was closed at one side and strewn with industrial building debris at the other, but crawling over that and wedging myself in, I found that not only could I not be seen, but that if I used my pack as a pillow anybody who wished to rob me in my sleep would have to scramble in, lift me up longways, and get my stuff out from under me -- all without waking me up.
A delightful spot, except apparently the escalator was broken and the repair guys would be fixing it all night with power tools. Not even the dramamine would drown that out.
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