“Jesse! Jesse! Over here!”
Jesse turned when he heard Alex call his name. He smiled when he spotted Alex, then trotted over to meet him. Jesse set down his bag to hug Alex.
“So, how was your flight?”
“Uneventful.”
“That most definitely is the best kind of flight you can have. Over dinner I’ll tell you about why I no longer fly to Saint Louis.”
Though Jesse cast a quizzical glance in his direction, an excited Alex didn’t notice.
“Thank you for not checking your luggage,” said Alex, who was already two steps ahead of Jesse, heading towards the short-term parking at Washington Reagan Airport. “You know what I say about luggage, right?”
“Yes, Alex,” said Jesse with a smile on his face. “There are two types of luggage, carry-on and lost. You’re quite fond of saying that.”
“Only because it’s true. It’s a little early for dinner yet, and I-95 south of the Beltway usually resembles a long, narrow parking lot at this time of day. Well, that and every other expressway around Washington. Is there anything you’d like to see? If we play tourist for a bit, then maybe have dinner, traffic should be significantly better.”
“Alex, I’ve never been here before. I have no idea what’s nearby to even see.”
“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Alex. “That’s the reason I invited you. One of the reasons.”
“You aren’t excited at all, are you?” replied Jesse. “How about you slow down a bit, so we can walk next to one another. It’ll be easier to talk if we do that, you know.”
Alex stopped to let Jesse catch up. He was grinning.
“Sorry, I guess I am a bit excited,” he said. “Well, we could just go down to Old Town Alexandria. I’ve never actually stopped there but have driven through many times on my way to or from the airport. I think there are some areas with some nice shops and restaurants. If nothing else, the architecture is unlike what you find in the Midwest.”
“Sounds good, Alex.”
-----
Alex and Jesse spent the evening exploring Alexandria, window shopping along King Street before finding a quaint restaurant for dinner. By the time they headed to their hotel in Woodbridge, the traffic on I-95 was moving smoothly.
The two spent much of Saturday exploring DC by bus, enjoying a guided tour. They spent time at Arlington National Cemetery, where they observed the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, and the eternal flame at John F. Kennedy’s grave. They saw the Washington Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial. They visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean Veterans Memorial, and the World War II Memorial. Jesse was surprised when Alex told him, and the rest of the tour group, that his father was a Veteran of World War II.
“My father graduated from high school in 1941. He and his friends knew the US would be in the war before long, so they decided at the end of summer to head to northern Wisconsin where the family of one of his friends had a cottage. They’d all played football in high school, and I guess they missed the game, because they decided to register at Crandon High School as Seniors. The football coach thought he’d died and gone to heaven when all these Senior boys showed up for football practice. I think they managed to keep up their charade for a week before they got found out. I guess their football team didn’t do as well that season as the coach had hoped.
“So, I think my dad volunteered rather than get drafted, though I’m not completely sure. He had basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and then spent some time in Great Falls, Montana. That, if I remember correctly, was cold weather training. He then got shipped to Pasadena, California where he attended airplane mechanic school. Then he was sent to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was stationed for the remainder of the war. I don’t think Fairbanks in the winter was too much fun, but at least he didn’t see fighting like a couple of his brothers did.
“Here’s the cool, thing, though. The planes he worked on? Generally, not American planes. Not Canadian, not British. No, he worked on Soviet planes. I guess the Soviets didn’t have enough mechanics, and probably not enough parts, either. So, their pilots would fly their fighters over the North Pole to Alaska. My dad liked telling people he was in the Red Army.”
Even the tour guide found Alex’s story to be interesting.
On Sunday, the pair visited the Air and Space Museum in the morning, then after lunch they found themselves at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. They saw the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, the defense of which became the basis for the national anthem of the United States. They saw Dorothy’s slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and Archie Bunker’s chair from the set of All in the Family. When they got to the section of the museum devoted to the Civil Rights Movement, however, they heard a story that easily topped the story of Alex’s dad fixing fighter planes for the Soviets.
“Alex, what on earth is that woman doing over there?”
Alex looked to where Jesse was pointing. An older woman, probably not much more than five feet in height, was pointing to a photograph on the wall, smiling. An older man, most likely her husband, was sitting in a wheelchair. He appeared to be taking her picture.
“I’ve got no idea, Jesse. Let’s go and see.”
As they approached the woman, they heard her address two young women who were also curious about the strange behavior. “That’s me,” she said. Sure enough, she’d been pointing to a photograph of a much younger woman, holding several numbers up in front of her. It was a mug shot. They then noticed the older woman’s shirt. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” it read.
“So,” the woman continued, “I was active in the Civil Rights movement. The group of students I headed south with, that summer, ended up in Nashville. The famous lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, had already been going on for some time.” Sure enough, Alex and Jesse had seen the lunch counter from the Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, stools and all, just a few minutes earlier.
“Well, there were sit-ins elsewhere, too,” she continued, “including in Nashville. The lunch counter sit-ins didn’t last nearly as long in Nashville as in Greensboro, but things got quite violent. The locals got pretty rough in their treatment of both the black folks and the white men. However, they were never violent with the white women protestors. We might have gotten banged up from the jostling and such, but we were never intentionally injured. The white men in our group were spit on and hit. They frequently had cigarettes extinguished on their skin. They didn’t take kindly to northern whites traveling south to give support, moral or otherwise, to the black civil rights activists.
“Anyway, one day our group was in Woolworth’s, where our main goal was to act as a barrier between the black men who were the ones doing the sit-in and the angry white people who wanted them gone. The area around the counter was just packed with people. There was a young white man who I think was working for a Nashville TV station. He had a TV camera and was filming the whole thing. He was standing on the counter to stay above the fray. We were there at least two hours before the police broke up the sit-in. After the police cleared the scene, the man with the TV camera came up to our group. Well, the ones who hadn’t been arrested and carted off to the police station. And he said to us, ‘when I started filming, I was most definitely on one side of the issue. By the time I got down off the counter, though, you folks had changed my mind.’ I think that revelation touched me more than anything else I saw that entire summer. That’s what we set out to do…change people’s minds, one at a time.”
Alex and Jesse stood in awe, along with a few others who’d gathered around to hear the story. They both felt truly humbled. After the small group had broken up, and the older woman moved on, pushing the wheelchair, Jesse turned to Alex and said, “Damn, I wished I’d gotten a picture with her. That was most definitely an American hero.” Alex simply nodded.
-----
On Monday, Alex and Jesse took a quick tour of Mount Vernon, President Washington’s home just outside the city named for him, before heading to the airport for the flight back to Iowa. Once they’d boarded their flight, they found their seats and got comfortable.
“Wow,” said Jesse. “This flight’s nearly empty!”
“I know,” Alex replied. “Pretty unusual these days. Flights are almost always full, it seems.”
“So, Alex, you never did tell me why you won’t ever fly to St. Louis.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” said Alex. “Well, Des Moines and Saint Louis are roughly six hours apart, driving. That’s generally right on the cusp of being too close to fly, at least for me. So sometimes I’d fly to Saint Louis and sometimes I’d drive.
“One time I was flying to Saint Louis when there was a bright flash of light. The other passengers and I glanced around at one another, unsure of what had caused the flash. Nothing more seemed to happen out of the ordinary, so after a few minutes we went back to reading or whatever we were doing. At least twenty minutes had passed when the pilot came on the intercom. He said that the plane had been struck by lightning, not to worry because everything was fine, but we were heading back to Des Moines out of an abundance of caution so the mechanics could make sure there were no issues.”
“Wasn’t there a loud ‘boom’ of thunder when the plane was hit with lightning, though?” asked Jesse.
“You’d think, but no. Now it was a little prop plane, so it was pretty loud, but no, nothing louder than that.”
“What do you mean by ‘prop plane’?”
“Sorry,” responded Alex. “It wasn’t a jet. It was a propeller plane, one propeller on each wing. They’re much louder than jets.”
“Oh,” said Jesse. “So that’s why you don’t fly to Saint Louis?”
“That’s only part of my story,” Alex said. “The next time I flew to Saint Louis, I remember boarding the plane, then thinking to myself, ‘The last time I flew to Saint Louis, the plane was hit by lightning. What’s going to happen this time’?”
“And?” replied Jesse.
“Don’t be so impatient!” said Alex. “After a thoroughly uneventful flight, the plane landed in Saint Louis and the passengers walked into the terminal. And it was empty. It was like, 9 or 9:30 am, but the terminal was all but deserted. No gate agents, no passengers waiting for a flight. There was a bar with the metal gate pulled down because it was closed. There was a handful of people standing at the gate, staring at a television in the bar, which had been left on. I walked several steps beyond the bar when I decided I needed to find out what was so interesting on television. So, I walked back to the bar and looked at the TV. The TV showed a split screen. The caption on one side of the screen said ‘New York,’ and the other read ‘Washington.’ And all I could really see on either side of the screen was what looked like smoke.”
“Holy shit, Alex. That was on 9/11?”
“Yup. Is it any wonder I don’t fly there anymore?”
“I guess not.”
“So,” continued Alex, “I decided I needed to call home, because though something bad had clearly happened, I had no idea what that something was. That was back before the days of smartphones, of course. Nowadays, my phone gets switched from airplane mode as soon as the plane’s tires hit the tarmac. Back then, I hadn’t even bothered to turn it on until I felt I needed to phone home. I had multiple voice mails to call home, which came through when I was trying to place my call. It was several minutes before my wife and I finally connected. And I didn’t really believe what I was told.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was told that hijacked planes flew into both towers of the World Trade Center, and one tower had totally collapsed, I replied ‘it did not totally collapse’. I guess you can tell what time I talked to my wife, since the second tower hadn’t collapsed by then.”
“Well, what did you do?” asked Jesse.
“I took the rental car shuttle to Hertz, where I had a reservation. There were very few people in the Hertz building when I got there. I’d heard from my wife that all American airspace had been shut down, so when I got to the counter, I said, ‘I need to make this a one-way rental.’ Then I heard a woman at the counter next to me say, ‘And I need to make my rental one-way as well.’ By the time I’d gotten the keys to my car, the place had become packed be people clamoring to rent a vehicle, realizing, I’m sure, that it was the only way they were going to get home. I was only supposed to be there for the day and fly back in the afternoon, so I had no clothes, no toiletries, nothing with me.”
Just then, the safety announcements were made. Jesse made sure to pay full attention, as he was not a seasoned flyer. Alex also tried to pay attention, since he thought it rude to not, but had heard the announcement made so frequently he could recite it along with the attendant making the announcement. “Except for a time or two on Southwest,” he thought. “I still think of the time when the flight attendant said, ‘Now we’re going to show you how to put on a seatbelt just in case you haven’t been in a car since 1971’.”
Once the announcements were over and the plane had taxied to the end of the runway for takeoff, Jesse asked, “Did you just drive back to Des Moines, then?”
“Well, I did my job first. I was looking at a property that one of the big oil change companies wanted to buy for a new location in Maryland Heights. That’s a suburb of Saint Louis. I went to one of my favorite places, Crazy Bowls and Wraps, for lunch, and I was surprised that it was crowded. I remember they had KPNT on in the restaurant, that was a great alternative rock station, by the way, but it was continuous news coverage on that day.”
“You remember the radio station that was on?”
“Jesse, I know my memory is shit, but I remember just about everything I said that day, probably verbatim. I remember everything in incredible detail. Specific thoughts I had. And the six-hour drive back to Des Moines? It felt like two hours with my ears glued to Neil Conan’s coverage on NPR the entire way.”
“But didn’t all the planes have to get out of the air?” asked Jesse.
“Do you know how many hours that took, Jesse? There are lots of planes in the sky at any one time. And I’m sure larger passenger jets were a higher priority to get out of the sky than a little Beechcraft prop plane with probably no more than ten passengers. I’ve wondered how many more planes still needed to land after we were on the ground. I kind of think very few.” He then added, “There actually was a program on the History Channel about the process of clearing the skies that day. It was fascinating.”
After a brief silence, Alex looked over at Jesse and smiled. As he took Jesse’s hand in his, he asked, “So, did you have a good time?”
Jesse looked at Alex and smiled. “Alex, you know I did. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. Thank you for joining me. I like traveling for work, that’s no secret. But it’s great to shake a work trip up from time to time by doing something fun. And to share it with someone special. I took both Charlotte and Cameron with me on work trips a couple of times. Those were just driving trips, though. They only got to visit Illinois and Wisconsin.”
Jesse leaned his head on Alex’s shoulder. They were silent for several minutes, still holding one another’s hand, their arms on their shared armrest.
“Alex, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” replied Alex. “What is it?”
“Well,” said Jesse, “perhaps not so much a question as an observation, but it’s something I hope you might expand on. I’ve pondered on this for some time, and I’d like to understand.”
Alex nodded.
“You remember when you went off on those three homophobic assholes that night outside The Ranch?”
“Uh, yeah, how could I forget?”
“Then I heard from people in the group that you had an interesting reaction to another homophobic incident not long after.”
Alex gave Jesse a quizzical look. “What do you mean? The preacher that got arrested?”
When Jesse nodded, Alex said, “I didn’t even know you knew about that.”
“Well, I sure didn’t hear about it from you.”
“It wasn’t anything.”
“Well,” replied Jesse, “that’s not how Andrew told it to me.”
The two were silent for a time, as Jesse tried to choose his next words.
“Alex, first, you tell Rhys, me, and everyone else in the group how you’re painfully shy and socially inept.”
Alex nodded in agreement.
Jesse continued, “then you verbally assault those assholes outside The Ranch, definitely something a shy person wouldn’t do.”
Alex again nodded.
“Then you reach out to another homophobe, again not something a shy person would normally do, but in a completely different way than your one-man war on homophobes.”
“Okay,” replied Alex.
“I’m not even sure what my question here is, or what explanation I’m looking for,” said Jesse. “I guess, well, how do you reconcile those things in your mind?”
Alex’s response was both quick and to the point. “I don’t.”
Jesse gave Alex a look of confusion. After a few seconds, he said, “please do better than that, Alex. Please, try to explain it to me.”
Alex was quiet for some time, thinking of how to respond. Jesse waited patiently, sure that Alex was preparing a response and not simply ignoring him. Finally, Alex spoke.
“When I say, ‘I don’t,’ I’m not trying to be snarky or anything. When I look at myself, I don’t understand me. All I see is contradictions. But I’m going to try to explain.
“First, I see myself as both socially inept and painfully shy. I don’t like uncontrolled social situations. I’m very uncomfortable meeting new people. You know how I was when I first joined the group. I feel like I’m doing exponentially better with the group because I’m used to it now. I know the people. I’ve become comfortable with them. But if I were put into another similar situation, meeting a group of new people for the first time, I would be back to shy and inept.”
“Alex, it’s normal to be uncomfortable with new people.”
“I know that, Jesse. But for me, it goes a step further. I think it’s tied to my self-esteem, or more accurately, my lack of self-esteem. You do realize I’m lacking in that department, right?”
Jesse nodded.
“I mean,” Alex continued, “if you were walking down the street, and you saw two people laughing, what would you think?”
“I’d think one had said something funny to the other,” responded Jesse.
“Nothing more specific than that?”
“No.”
“My automatic assumption is that they’re laughing at me, then quickly I try to figure out what I’d done that was embarrassing. I assume I am the butt of jokes, the town idiot, the person with the ‘L’ on his forehead. Yes, I realize that there are a multitude of reasons two people might be laughing in my general vicinity. But you must admit, it’s plausible that they’re laughing at me. That’s my default assumption.”
“Okay,” replied Jesse, “but that’s still only part of what I’m looking for clarity on. How do you explain your wildly different responses to homophobes?”
“Well, my response outside The Ranch was no doubt fueled by alcohol,” said Alex. “I’m sure that’s a good deal of the difference. But other than that, I really can’t answer your question because I don’t know. When I decided to talk to the preacher, I knew I was totally out of my element. I was very unsure of myself when I approached him. I really don’t know what came over me, because I had no idea what I was going to say.”
After a brief silence, Alex added, “Sometimes, Jesse, I feel like I am just a walking contradiction. There are different parts of me that I can’t reconcile. It’s almost as if I’m two people.”
Jesse nodded, thinking back to a conversation he had with Rhys the night of the verbal attack outside The Ranch. That was the same thing he’d said to Rhys about Alex. It was almost as if he was two people.
Alex continued, “you know what I think about church and faith, right?”
“Of course,” replied Jesse. “Your faith is very important to you.”
“And it is,” said Alex, “except that I’m an agnostic.”
“What?”
“No, that’s really not true,” replied Alex. “I’m more of a deist.”
Alex glanced at Jesse and saw the look of complete confusion on his face. “Let me try to explain,” he said. He thought a few seconds before continuing. “First, let me tell you about an art history professor I had in college. She was a bit, uh, esoteric might be the best word. She claimed she could see people’s auras.”
“Okay,” said Jesse. “Where are you going with this?”
“Well, I thought that claiming to see auras was complete lunacy. Now, I tell you that, so you understand how seriously I take the next thing I’m going to tell you. I was with my mother when she died. I saw her take her last breath. Then I saw her soul leave her body. Of that I have absolutely zero doubt. I know what I saw, and what I saw was my mother’s soul leave her body.
“I might even be an atheist if I hadn’t seen that. I mean, I guess if humans have souls, that implies certain other things. To me, it implies some sort of life after death. Taking it one step beyond that, it implies that there must be some sort of supreme being.”
“But what about your Christian faith?”
“Well, I was raised that way. It’s really part of my DNA, I think. I find church to be a comfort. I still feel like I get something very worthwhile out of church, even though I don’t really know how much of it I, deep down, believe. Mind you, it’s also crossed my mind that I still attend church because I’m hedging my bets.” Smiling, Alex added, “You know, I don’t want to take a chance on eternal damnation.”
Jesse gave a weak smile in return, then commented, “I really don’t understand you, Alex.”
Alex laughed. “Join the club! I don’t understand me, either.”
Jesse simply shook his head.
Alex continued, “I don’t mean to be flippant or sarcastic about it, I really don’t. As much as I might like to, I really don’t understand me. What was it that Winston Churchill said about China? A riddle wrapped in an enigma, or whatever. He could’ve easily been talking about me. Seriously, if you can figure me out, please let me know.”
Just then, the flight attendant arrived at their row with a snack and to ask if they’d like a beverage. Instinctively, Alex and Jesse pulled their hands apart.
“Guys, don’t stop holding hands on my account. You two look so cute together! Can I get you anything to drink?”
Once they’d received their beverages, Alex said, “You’ve heard of the Sermon on the Mount, right?”
Jesse nodded, saying, “yes, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t recall the details.”
“Well, said Alex, “the important takeaway from the Sermon on the Mount was how Jesus commanded his disciples, and ultimately, us, to treat others as you’d like others to treat you. Interestingly, you find the same command in all great religions of the world. Now, I’ve heard some say that the Christian command is slightly different from the other religions, because in Christianity it’s a positive command, whereas in other religions it’s phrased more as ‘don’t do to others if you don’t want to be treated that way.’ I don’t really know if that matters or if it’s just splitting hairs. Anyway, that ultimately is in my mind the most simple and basic tenet all humans should follow. It wouldn’t be a command across religions if it wasn’t important. Religions can’t agree with one another on much of anything, but they all seem to agree on this one point.
”So, when I talk about the anti-‘woke’ crowd as simply not being nice to people who think differently than you, I’m getting down to this point. The anti-‘woke’ crowd are largely, if not entirely, made up of Christians. Yet they forget the most basic of teachings of Jesus, you know, the Savior and all. The very center of Christianity. Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize that, for the most part, the people who make the best Christians are people who aren’t Christian at all.”
After a brief silence, Alex added, “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from or why I felt it important to share at this moment. I just did.”
The two were silent for a few minutes, lost in their own thoughts. Suddenly, Jesse spoke, perhaps a little louder than necessary. “Alex, do you know what we forgot?”
Alex began to respond with a ‘no,’ before he realized what Jesse was talking about. “Last night was the night everyone was supposed to have their votes in for the trip! I’ve got to look and see what the group wants to do!” Alex reached under the seat, intending to pull his laptop out and connect to the plane’s wi-fi. Just then, the pilot made an announcement that they’d “begun our initial descent into Des Moines, where the current weather conditions are overcast with a temperature of 26 Fahrenheit.”
Alex sat up. “I guess it can wait a little longer. They’re going to tell us to put our larger electronics away, right about…”
Before he could finish the sentence, the voice of one of the flight attendants was heard throughout the cabin, admonishing the passengers to stow their electronics, raise their seatbacks, and lock their trays to the seat in front.
The two finished their drinks and handed their trash to the flight attendant. Once the tray tables were up, they again held hands. When the flight attendant made the final pass through the cabin to make sure everyone’s seat belt was fastened, he again saw Alex and Jesse’s hands. This time, Alex and Jesse didn’t separate from one another. The flight attendant seemed to nod in approval, winking at the two as he did so.
Posted 5 February 2025