The Man Who Ate the 747 (21 page)

His entourage swelling, J.J. found his way to the main square and the Taverna Nikolaos, where the world record attempt would take place. It was a simple restaurant with grape vines scrambling over an arbor at the entry. All 200 citizens of Hora had turned out for the momentous occasion. Villagers, young and old, clustered around him in awe. The esteemed man from New York. The Keeper of the Records.

J.J. was pleased to see a solid straight-back chair in front of the table that had been set out for him. The room, otherwise, had been cleared of furniture. The crowd sat on the floor ten deep around the perimeter. He opened his rule book and accepted a bottle of water and a plate of figs.

In the empty space in the middle of the restaurant, Mitros Papadapolous, the record seeker, performed deep knee bends and jumping jacks. His eyes were dark and piercing, his mustache prodigious, and he wore a skimpy Adidas tank top and pair of shorts over his sinewy frame. Thick sweatbands adorned his head and wrists. The man was clearly prepared for struggle.

“Are you ready?” J.J. asked.

“Yes,” Mitros said, “I am ready.”

J.J. stood to address the crowd, assisted by a shapely young translator. “The world record in this category is 18 hours, 5 minutes and 50 seconds. It is held by Radhey Shyam Prajapati of India.”

Then he turned to Mitros and held up his stopwatch.

“Kalee epeeteekheea,”
J.J. said. Good luck. “On your mark, get set …”

Mitros took a deep breath, then carefully aligned his head, shoulders, arms and legs.

“Go!”

J.J. punched the chronometer.

And Mitros stood absolutely, positively still.

This time Shrimp was ready for the onslaught. He might have been a few pounds light in his uniform, but he was no pushover. He knew the moment the news about Wally hit the wires, the television trucks would come charging back into Superior. What a bunch of coyotes. They packed up and pulled out when there was no record, but now they were back for the kill.

Shrimp beat them to the hospital. He had the barricades up and ready in the parking lot. He posted his men at the doors of the West Wing and ICU. With his own two hands, he evicted a cute St. Louis reporter decked out like an orderly who tried to sneak inside.

Wally trusted only Doc Noojin, so Shrimp called and invited him to drop by the hospital. They stood together at Wally’s bedside, aghast at the tangle of tubes and flashing monitors attached to their friend. Even the branches of the great oak just outside the window seemed to reach out for Wally, as if to help.

Doc sadly shook his head. “Wasn’t any warning. No idea how it happened.” He wiped his eyes. “When an animal gets this way, well, you know what we have to do.”

The morning press conference was just as bleak. On the front steps of the hospital, facing the wall of cameras, Burl Grimes wore his most funereal face. The news was not good, he told the nation. Wally was unconscious. Vital signs weak. He hoped the specialists choppering in from Omaha would turn things around.

“Is it food poisoning again?” a reporter asked.

“I wish,” Burl said. “The situation is critical. I hope everyone will pray for Wally. He needs God’s help now.”

By noon, silver ribbons had appeared all over town, wrapped around tree trunks, tied to radio antennas, and pinned to the lapels of the good people of Superior. By nightfall, folks across Nebraska wore silver ribbons for Wally.

Room 239 was quiet except for the beeping of the heart monitor.

Rose sat on the edge of Wally’s bed. A big bunch of balloons bumped against the ceiling. There were blossoms everywhere, fancy bouquets like the last time around. Now, instead of celebrating a world record attempt, the flowers seemed to spruce up a tomb.

She made notes on his chart, then put it back on the hook at the foot of the bed. Wally looked so peaceful, a sleeping giant. She gently pushed the hair from his eyes and ran her finger along the scar on his shoulder from Cupid’s arrow, his self-inflicted wound. She took hold of his hand, a hand she had wanted to touch all her life. It was a farmer’s hand, a good man’s hand. She studied his calluses, battered nails, and the lines and markings from years of hard work.

She stroked it for a while, then kissed it softly. She
leaned closer to him, her nose against his neck, and smelled him. Soap, earth, flesh. She had never been this close before, or this far away.

She wiped her eyes and put his hand on top of the bedcovers, straightened the blanket, doing her best to make him comfortable. She whispered, “Please fight, Wally. Please, open your eyes and live.”

She kissed his scruffy cheek.

“Please don’t leave me,” she said. “Please get better.”

She heard footsteps coming down the hall and she stood up quickly. The door swung open. The lead doctor was a 50-year-old woman with short black hair and purple-frame glasses. Behind her trailed the team of specialists from Omaha.

“What’s the latest?” the lead doctor asked.

“Vitals are stable,” Rose said. “He’s not posturing. Pupils are equal and reactive.”

The experts held Wally’s CT scans up to the light. One listened to his heart and lungs, peeled back his eyelids, bent his arms and legs for reflexes. Another studied the blood work-up.

“No evidence of metal poisoning,” a doctor said. “Liver functions are normal. It’s not hepatic encephalopathy.” He shrugged. “Strangest darn thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Absolutely no medical explanation,” the lead doctor said. “Only God knows.” She turned to Rose. “Beep me if there’s any turn,” she added, and they filed out of the room.

They were of no use. They didn’t have a clue. The
heart monitor beeped, and Rose looked at Wally. “Only God knows,” she repeated.

But still, she understood. She had been on duty at the hospital when the 911 call had come. She had raced in the ambulance to Wally’s farm. There she had found Willa hovering over Wally, who was paralyzed on the bathroom floor.

Later, in the emergency room, she held Wally’s shaking head while he cried out that Willa didn’t love him, that she had asked him to stop eating the plane.

Through the night, he wailed….

J.J., that interloper, had pickpocketed Willa’s heart. Instead of treasuring her, he had walked away. He had hurt her. A broken nose wasn’t enough. He should suffer more. What had J.J. done to deserve her? Toss eggs? Climb a tower? What was that compared with Wally’s own proofs of love?

As his fever spiked, Wally had murmured that he would try to find comfort knowing Willa was in his life as a real person now, not as a fantasy. But there was a giant hole where the dream—the love—used to be. That emptiness had sent a shudder through his massive frame, and then he closed his eyes, as if to sleep, and fell deep into a coma.

He had been gone for days….

Rose tucked the covers under his stubbly chin. “Good night, my prince,” she whispered. Then she went to the door and turned off the lights.

She took one last look at the big lunk in the darkness. The reason he had collapsed into a coma was simple and painful. His immunity was gone. No
longer protected by his measureless love for Willa, he was vulnerable to the fatal effects of eating the 747.

At the 16-hour mark, a Corinthian column had nothing on Mitros Papadapolous. Perfectly stationary, not even sweaty, he was well on his way to shattering the world record for motionlessness.

The villagers, however, were bored sitting still. Against the wishes of the proprietors, a ragtag
rebetiko
band started to play. A muscular man danced the
zeibekikos
, the ancient war dance, moving in sweeping circular patterns. He slowed down next to J.J.’s table, kneeled, bit it with his teeth, then lifted it high into the air.

J.J. snatched his rule book before it fell to the ground. The dancer lowered the table, saluted, and spun off toward the other side of the room, where he balanced a glass of wine on his head. Through it all, Mitros remained unmoved and undeterred. He stood serene, like Michelangelo’s David, eyes focused straight ahead.

A pretty girl with a tangerine scarf around her abundant chest flew toward J.J. with a glass of ouzo. “Why you don’t drink?”

“I’m working,” he said.

“No work, drink!” she said, plopping down on his lap.

He pushed her off.
“Efharisto.
Thank you, but I’m busy.”

She pouted and disappeared into the undulating crowd.

J.J. checked his stopwatch: less than 2 hours for the record. Then he looked at Mitros, the man standing still. He seemed so calm amid the whirl of dancers, so tranquil despite the pulse of tambourines.

J.J. wanted peace, too. He gazed into Mitros’s strangely hypnotic eyes, and soon his mind fled Folegandros. He was back in his apartment in New York. An old woman watered a window box of plastic sunflowers, grimy imitations of the real thing. And then he was sitting on a porch under a darkening sky, watching ten-foot-tall, gray-striped, mammoth sunflowers turn their heads toward the sun.

Her name—Willa—ricocheted through every pathway of his cerebral cortex. He heard Emily’s voice accusing him: “You don’t know the first thing about love.” There were flashes of lightning in the sky, and then he was struck by a bolt of understanding. For the first time he saw his own life clearly. He had traveled the world in search of something labeled greatness and had actually found it with a capital G. But because it was unquantifiable, unverifiable, he had failed to recognize it.

Now he sat like a man made of stone, watching another man try to make history by doing absolutely nothing. He was verifying inertia. Authenticating nothingness. All the searching, all the chasing, all the roads had brought him to this dead end. He had to wonder: Who was the real world record holder for standing still?

He came out of his trance to the loud sound of guitars and lutes, hands clapping, feet stomping, and the
breaking of plates and glasses. Mitros’s eyes did not waver, but J.J. shook his head slowly. He had no choice.

He rose up from his official post at the little table. He slammed the rule book shut. Threw down his clipboard and his stopwatch. Pulled off his blue blazer and hurled it in the air. He slipped through the dancers, walked directly up to Mitros, stared into his piercing eyes, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Then, without even saying
adeeo
—good-bye—he turned and raced for the door.

W
illa worshipped in the last row of the First United Methodist church.

She prayed for Wally harder than she had ever prayed in her life. Such a good man. A sweet man. An honorable man. He couldn’t die now. She blamed herself for not taking his devotion seriously enough. It had been truly epic, and she hadn’t seen it. How she must have hurt him. She begged God to help Wally. And she asked for forgiveness.

Never had she seen folks so worried about the same thing. Even the great flood of 1935 didn’t compare, old-timers said. For days there had been a silence over the town, an eerie hush, and scarcely anyone left home. There was no carousing in the
bars on Friday night, no keno at Jughead’s, no bingo at the VFW.

Last night she had closed her eyes for sleep with a feeling of loathing and awakened to the same fear. She couldn’t shower and dress fast enough. Even the old Ford knew this was no time to fuss and started without complaint. She turned on the radio and heard Righty Plowden’s voice. He was on Country 104 to make a special appeal. The latest reports from the hospital were bleak. Wally’s condition was critical and worsening. Nate Schoof and Otto Hornbussel had been summoned to his bedside at 3
A.M.
, and a minister was at the ready. “No one recovers from a coma this deep,” Righty said solemnly. “Let’s dedicate today to Wally. Let’s pray for him at church, pray for him wherever you are.”

Willa turned off the radio and slowed down for the traffic around the hospital. Vehicles from all over the state were lined up on the shoulder of the road, and the parking lot was jammed. Bouquets and cards for Wally covered the steps of the main entrance.

The old brick church at the corner of Fifth and Kansas was also overflowing. She spotted her parents in the last row. They had saved a space, and she wedged herself between them. Pale light in shades of red and blue streamed down from stained glass windows. It felt good and safe.

After hymns and a sermon, the congregation prayed silently. Willa thought she could feel the intensity of their petitions. She could hear the whispers of
her mother’s offerings to God. Someone coughed. A baby whimpered.

And then the tranquility was shattered by an amazing sound, far off, beginning faintly, haltingly, then steadily growing louder. Heads looked up from worship. People rose to their feet. Willa clutched at her mother’s hand. They could not believe the noise.

The roar was clear and unmistakable—it was the snarl of Wally’s grinding machine. It boomed through the church and all across Superior. But how was it possible? Wally was in a deep coma in the hospital. And yet the grating grew.

For years they had all turned away, trying to ignore this noise, but now Willa ran toward it from the church with the congregation flowing behind her. She saw friends streaming from their homes. From all directions they rushed toward the sound coming from Wally’s farm.