A Journey to Seattle (712 words)

Terminal 3 at O’Hare was bustling with activity as usual. The flight to Seattle would be departing from gate K18 in three hours’ time, and presently people bound for a different city were waiting to board their flight, their faces ruddy with anticipation, though they did their best to conceal it, lest they give the impression that they had never flown before. K12, on the other hand, directly across from K18, was relatively empty, since a flight had recently departed from there. The large windows afforded an unpretentious view of a row of parked airplanes against a most bleak and unsummery grey sky.

The hours passed quickly enough; and soon the flight to Seattle was announcing its boarding order, which began on a lengthy and unctuous note of gratitude to passengers belonging to various exclusive clubs, followed by groups 1-4, each group announced with perceptibly less enthusiasm than the last. 

The onboard entertainment would not begin till after the aircraft had taken off, as though the pilot begrudged the passengers their enjoyment. The Sudoku and crossword puzzles in the inflight magazine had been thoughtfully completed by a previous passenger in ink, and a little girl somewhere was effusively telling her mother that she had never been on a plane so big.

Once the plane was in the air, a steward and stewardess (or flight attendants or cabin crew) trundled the meal cart down the cabin, smilingly offering people drinks. The steward in his friendly Hispanic manner explained in answer to an inquiry that only alcoholic drinks were charged.

The map on the screen of the entertainment system showed that the plane was presently flying over Lake Oahe in South Dakota, which manifested itself in the form of a pronounced bulge in the thin river leading into it. How shallow the water looked from 36,000 feet; how calm the river appeared. If one were to jump off the plane at that moment, and be swallowed up by the river at the terminus of the descent, the qualities heretofore ascribed to it would doubtless seem quite foreign.

The cabin crew trundled the cart back down the length of the aircraft to the invisible cabin where it was stowed. There were two more hours to go, at the very least.

Now the plane was flying over Montana. There were few clouds, so the terrain and the leathery hills below were visible in all their terrible barrenness. Soon there would be real mountains, snowcapped mountains, and the earth would once again fill the human mind with wonder at its beauty. And then the mountains appeared and the clouds thickened; and as the aircraft neared Seattle, the pilot apologetically announced that Mt. Rainier was to the left of the aircraft, just a tiny portion of its “fourteen thousand, three hundred and something feet” visible above the clouds; and then the descent commenced.

The plane dove beneath the clouds as it approached Seattle, and the city and the surrounding land looked like a forgotten world under the sea: the thin rays of sunlight that penetrated the layer of clouds made the singular green landscape look bluish; and the valleys and the hills that disappeared into the fog gave the place the look of an unsullied and forgotten world—like an imaginary landscape or Atlantis.

Then the plane finally landed in that magnificent city in the Northwest. The little girl was told sternly by her mother she had “to go potty” before she could see Daddy. Then one by one the passengers disembarked, and walked through the long jetbridge, and down the terminal till they arrived at baggage claim. A recorded voice repeated through the PA system that it was illegal for transportation companies to approach passengers.

But taxis were not difficult to find. There was a little white cab parked just outside the terminal doors, with a middle-aged Indian driver tending to obesity half-dozing in the driver’s seat.

The address was 9888 NE 136^th Street in Bellevue. It was a large house with a finely decorated lawn, and stone steps leading up to the front door. The hostess had been waiting; but her pretty smile disappeared as soon as she opened the door, and she gasped, for where there should have been a person there was none.