The Landing - Corrected

THE LANDING - corrected The big jetliner banked sharply left, descending out of a bad thunderstorm, lined up on the runway, its six landing lights like a big chandelier suddenly turned up by an unseen hand, the passengers sweating and shaking, sure that death was at hand only seconds ago, the way I felt at age eleven facing Wallace Carter, his ugly brother Aaron, my fists balled up like tiny hams, my skinny arms tense, ready to take a beating and give it back good if I could “Go home to your mama, boy! You ain’t got no balls, you just a fool! Git, now, ‘fore we change our minds!” The pilot, former Navy, had seen bad news before, intense anti-aircraft, heat-seeking missiles, then sudden bad weather, swaying carrier deck in the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz but thunderstorm turbulence a minor cosmic provocation, no cause for apprehension just focus, patience and skill He could overshoot the carrier, take this baby screaming into a near vertical climb, execute a roll, break the sound barrier and then, like the bad dog he is, lay her down on that deck and damn any seaman who’s got something to say! But he caught himself in time…… “I gotch y’all!” he said “We’re comin’ in soft and slow. There ain’t nothin’ in our way but home y’all! Nothin’ in our way but home!”