Why Read Fiction? | An Excerpt

From an in-process novel

For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing thoughts on reading fiction—especially in our age of distraction, hot takes, and outrage. To start, however, a glimpse into other things I do: writing fiction. Here’s the opening to the novel I’m working on, to be fully written in the next 12-18 months (I have a job, write a Substack—there’s a lot of other things going on, which means novel writing takes a while).

Enjoy!

July 19, 1968

The propeller of the Cessna 172 thudded the air, and a column of noise and wind roared where the door had been taken off. Beneath, patches of white on the high peaks, the creviced and angry land of the southern Sierras. He’d never jumped out of a plane before and was too old to do it now. What was he thinking? Months of preparation. Two pints of blood in a bag on the seat beside him, pints Hans had patiently drawn from him over how many months, and then refrigerated in the man’s apartment? He’d never jumped out of a plane before. What was he thinking?

He’d crashed one thirty-three years ago, married to his first wife, only two boys at the time. Before the morphine addiction as he recovered, before his wife left him because he was addicted, before Leo was born, to him and that actress. What was her name? He was too old for this. Why couldn’t he remember her name?

No parachute that time. This time, Hans had ordered him one from a skydiving club up in Chico, shipped to a P.O. Box in Culver City. Untraceable. All so Randolph could fly this plane and jump into nothing. Vanish. He was too old for this. Come on, old man. Everyone still thinks they’re thirty-eight.

Hans had taken the door off, too, since Randolph wouldn’t be able to open it at 131 miles per hour. Maybe if he were younger, but probably not then. What was the actress's name? His wife was Charlotte. Mother to Noble and Arthur. Leo’s mother was—

Why fly a Cessna instead of a plane with Randolph’s last name on it? His company, Brant Aerospace, hardly made planes anymore, and back when they were making personal aircraft the doors were over the wings; he didn’t want to take up an old one and bang against the wing on the way down. Now they made rockets and satellites. Get to the moon before the end of the decade as Kennedy proclaimed. Only a year and a half left.

He picked up the radio to confirm his location. The peaks sharpened in form, a few spires rising from one. Satisfied, he looked at the two pints of blood that Hans had carefully drawn. Best hire Randolph had ever made.

He opened the bag of blood, dribbled it over the instrument panel, and tried to spray some up toward the windshield. The slime of it dripped over the yoke and onto his legs, pooled on the floor. Greasy blood on the tan upholstered seat. Get some on the doorframe, but as he brought the bag near the column of wind it ripped from his grasp, into the back of the plane. Blood on the backseat and back window. But he needed that bag. When they find the wreckage, they can’t find a blood bag. They’ll know to look for him. They’ve watched him for months. Everywhere he looked, someone ducking behind a newspaper or loitering, pretending not to notice him; the same car passing twice as he took a walk; the click on his phone line when he would pick up like it was bugged. They were everywhere, watching. He had to get the bag.

He pulled back on the yoke and the plane gained altitude. Good girl. He would have to be fast; no autopilot on these dinky planes. The pitch above the horizon. He tightened the parachute, the pack that made him sit unnaturally close to the instrument panel. And he let go of the yoke, turned, and tried to shimmy through the small gap between the two front seats, not really meant for a man to pass through. The yoke would drift a little, but it should be okay. Except for his pack—he felt the plane lurch downward as he turned into the little gap between the seats—his pack had hit the yoke. Go. Go. No time to stop. He pushed himself through the gap; again his pack stuck through the seats, the plane pitching downward and beginning to roll to the left; if it continued, the open door would be below him. Move, old man. He was through the seats, the plastic bag not on the back seat anymore but behind it. On his hands and knees patting the floor. Where is the bag? The plane was rolling. Where is it? His hands bloody with his own blood.

The bag in the back corner. He pulled it out, tried to stand, and his feet slid toward the open door; the plane at forty-five degrees and continuing to roll; his feet now caught nothing, but his pack and torso slammed against the back of the pilot’s seat and doorframe, wedging him into place. His legs hanging out in the wind. He could feel the vibration of the engine in his gut, and the slow roll of the plane. He tried to pull himself up. Not enough leverage. How high was he? Did he need to climb again before he jumped? The plastic blood bag in one hand, he pushed again to get up and right the plane. He couldn’t move. How high was he? Third try, but his feet twisted and kicked against nothing. Instrument panel beeping. The plane losing altitude; the gap below him turning as it did; the floor was maybe at 70 degrees now. He would fall out, he realized. Or crash. The unwilling victim of his own attempt at a fake death. Push, dammit. But he couldn’t get up; he could only shimmy toward the opening between the pilot’s seat and the doorframe, wriggling himself free from where he was wedged. Once he was free, though, he would fall. Shimmy. Faster. The instrument panel going crazy now, everything wrong. He shimmied, helped by the rolling plane, now at 90 degrees, and he had no choice, past ninety degrees and the shimmy was easy and fast and his body began falling out and—a sick thud and flash of light—his head hit the doorframe as he fell.

Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash