Addison Blu
Sitting on Escalators
“Ten minutes!” the Jumpmaster shouts from near the front of the plane.
“Ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes!” we soldiers shout back to him from our benches running down the length of the plane, cramped in like prisoners of war.
I can feel my body become heavy as the plane lifts. I protect the lump of reserve parachute attached over my belly with my hand like I’m pregnant. The way actors on TV shows do to indicate “this woman is pregnant” even though in real life nobody holds their pregnant belly. I think of my pregnant wife waiting for me below, in the cabin we rented, hidden near the very back of this military base. She never holds her pregnant belly.
But I can’t let go of my parachute baby because there is a red handle on the front of the parachute and if it gets caught on anything as we squirm together, the reserve parachute will come out, and a Jumpmaster will pull me violently to the back of the plane and force me to jump with the next group.
I have trained two weeks for this. I need to pass airborne school to join Special Operations, and I cannot risk failing or I will be sent to a terrible regular unit where my dreams will die.
I feel my body get light as the plane levels off. I am motivated. I can do this.
The Jumpmaster opens the door through which I must jump. The triumphant moment.
I change my mind. I cannot do this.
The animal-deep roar of the engines, the earthquake vibration of the wind rushing through. A primal fear rises in me. My body becomes heavy all on its own. Despite the cool air rushing in, I am sweating.
I am suddenly sure something is wrong with my parachute. I am going to die.
“Six minutes!” the Jumpmaster shouts. Has it already been four minutes since the last callout? I need time to think.
“Six minutes!” I join the chorus shouting back to him anyway.
I can’t cop out now. If I tell someone I’m afraid I’m going to die, I’ll be moved to the back of the plane by a Jumpmaster and kept under direct supervision until we land. Then my harness and parachutes can be thoroughly inspected. If something turns out to be wrong, congratulations! I will be allowed to make up for the missed jump by jumping later.
But if I am wrong, I will be ritually condemned. I will be mocked as a coward and paraded in front of my classmates as what-not-to-do-in-Jump-School. I will be worse than a failure. I will be a Jump Refusal. I will never be allowed to return, and I will be sent to a terrible regular unit where my dreams will die.
In my mind the parachute is both
a) definitely not going to work if I jump, and
b) definitely still going to pass inspection if I don’t.
I’m wearing Schrodinger’s parachute. If I choose not to jump, I will become Schrodinger’s Jump Refusal: technically alive but dead from the shame.
An idea strikes me! If my reserve parachute opens “on accident” I will not be a Jump Refusal. They won’t make me jump this time, and I can try again on the next flight, when I will no longer be scared there’s something wrong.
Then I remember what they taught us: Once the door is open, a reserve parachute will seek the outside of the plane. Snaking, they call it, a wild parachute slithering across the floor to freedom.
If you see a reserve parachute snaking, stomp on it to prevent it from reaching the door. Smother it, they tell you. An airborne abortion. An airbortion.
But even if you see the parachute snaking, and even if you attempt to smother it, the parachute may reach the door anyway, and then there is only one solution: the jumper must follow his parachute out the door. Not as punishment, but because the laws of physics will see to it no matter what anyone does to stop it. The snake parachute has been born, and now you must provide for it, even if that means turning your body into paste by slamming it into the hull of the plane at a hundred miles an hour.
I cannot become a Jump Refusal and I cannot get out of jumping.
“Stand up!” the Jumpmaster shouts. We stand. My mind races, but I do as I’m told.
“Hook up!” he shouts next. We snap our carabiners to the steel wire running back-to-front above our heads.
Attached to my carabiner is a rope. Attached to the rope, the parachute on my back. I will slide the carabiner along the wire to the door. When I jump, the rope will stay attached to the wire, pulling out my parachute for me.
“Check equipment!” the Jumpmaster shouts. I run my hands and eyes along the gear of the person in front of me. His rope is hooked to the wire, which runs perfectly into his parachute. His helmet is snapped on his head, and his harness is connected at the crotch so he won’t fall out. My legs are shaking with fear, but muscle memory takes control. We have rehearsed this a hundred times on the ground.
“Okay!” I hear someone shout behind me. I hear it again and again, getting closer, one person at a time, from back to front. Each person confirming in an unbroken line that the equipment of the jumper in front of them is ready.
The man behind me slaps my butt and shouts, “Okay!” He must spank me so I know he is talking to me. It is the rule. This is so I don’t skip ahead on accident because I heard “Okay!” when it was actually meant for a jumper farther behind me, which would bypass my inspector when my equipment wasn’t ready, and send me to my death.
But I don’t know the man behind me. I do not trust him, butt slap or no. And maybe the issue is inside of my packed parachute, invisible? I can’t think of how to raise the issue, so I weakly slap the butt of the man in front of me and whimper, “Okay.” It comes out in a way that makes it clear that I am not okay.
“All okay Jumpmaster!” the first jumper shouts when the butt slapping reaches her in the very front. She stands in the open doorway. She is very small, the smallest in the entire Jump School. She is so small she needed a waiver to get in. She is too short to hook up her own carabiner.
Despite her size, she has proven every bit that she deserved her waiver. She completed the training and she smiles now in the doorway, unafraid. I believe her when she tells the Jumpmaster that she believes all is okay. She does not know about my parachute. And she is supposed to give me courage. She is the first jumper specifically because she is the smallest. We are supposed to see her jump and think, “If she can do this, certainly I can do this.”
But I cannot do this. I cannot jump. My body is shaking, but nobody can tell because the plane is also shaking. Bile rises in the back of my throat, but I do not vomit because I have not eaten today.
“One minute!” the Jumpmaster shouts. It has definitely not been five minutes since six minutes. We repeat after him anyway.
“Thirty seconds,” he continues. Liar! That was five seconds at best. He doesn’t care. I am out of time.
“Stand by. Green light, go.”
She jumps.
That’s when I decide that I have to do it. I have to jump. I no longer care that if I do, I am going to die. I will do it anyway. They were right. If she can do it, I can do it.
The jumpers in front of me lurch forward to fill the space she has vacated, but my body refuses to move. Oh no. I tell it to go, but it does not. The jumper at my back pushes me forward, and my knees go weak. I nearly collapse to the floor, held up only by my death grip on the rope attached to the wire.
In this moment, I realize something: It is not enough to be okay with dying. That will not get me out of the door. I must want to die.
In a plane fourteen hundred feet above the ground I decide that I want to die. I want to die and I have to jump through that door to do it.
I had a good run. My family will miss me, but they’ll recover.
A strangely strong and familiar sensation washes over me. My mind floods with teenage self-loathing, suicidal ideation I haven’t considered in years. There it is, waiting for me like a snaking chute I thought I smothered but which is suddenly pulling me out of the plane.
Tingling warmth fills my limbs. My legs flex with new strength. I march forward as the next jumper walks out.
The man in front of me hesitates. I push him forward. He takes the next step on his own.
I reach the front, hand the Jumpmaster my rope, turn and face the open door. In that brief moment, I realize that the gap inside the door is the quietest, stillest place on the airplane. Some trick of equilibrium or something. The trees below are beautiful. This is a pleasant way to go.
I jump to my death.
Thirteen years later, I walk through the mall. I am going to see Wonka with my daughter. She is seven years old, one of four children. The last time I parachuted, near the end of my military service, was before she was born.
She smiles at me. “I love you, Daddy,” she tells me, one of the ways she says thank you when I take her to see a movie.
I smile back. “I love you too.”
I take in the scenery around us as we ride the escalator to the third floor where the movie theater is. Over the rail, I can see all the way to the first floor, so far below.
My knees give out. I am dizzy, sweating. I sit on the escalator and close my eyes.
I am terrified I will jump.
I do not want to jump, not even a little. I want to see Wonka with my daughter, watch Timothée Chalamet sing and dance while I enjoy the coconut-oil taste of movie popcorn.
I am sure if I jump I will die, but that didn’t stop me before. What if it’s still in there? A snake I thought I’d smothered?
My chest heaves. My daughter takes my hand. “It’s okay,” she says. And I believe her. If she can do this, I can do this.
My breathing slows. I feel safer. But I do not open my eyes. I do not stand up.
We reach the top and I crawl from the escalator. I don’t look back.
“Jumping out of planes for the Army can be a funny, scary, and absurd experience. ‘Sitting on Escalators’ is an exploration of my first airborne jump and how the act of convincing myself to get out the airplane door still reverberates in my civilian life 15 years later.’ —Addison Blu
Addison Blu is a television writer and SpecOps veteran. He was also the military technical consultant on the Hulu series Paradise. Addison lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four kids, and his work can be found at Duffel Blog, VET Tv, Calliope, and more.