Michael Malone - Weebly

his death was an imminent possibility (no doubt there
had been countless near car crashes, viral epidemics,
black widow spiders that he had never noticed) had
been a sunny Pacific afternoon when a kamikaze
crashed into the foredeck of the battle cruiser on which
he served as ensign, the plane exploding just far enough
from where he sat reading Livy not to kill or even maim
him but to knock him through space so that somehow, a
second after he turned a page, he was dangling, arms
around a broken metal beam that stuck out over the
churning ocean miles below. For minutes, hours, days,
Abernathy clung there, arms and legs locked on the
beam—as he'd never been able to do in gym class—
until someone helped him back onto deck, where
flames and smoke and screaming men blurred. Only
then had he realized that not only was he bleeding, but,
worse, he'd lost his glasses when struck. The odd part
was (he couldn't be sure, of course, but it had seemed
to him) that while hanging there like a monkey, literally
clinging to life, he had been able to see perfectly well
without his glasses.
This kamikaze experience had been so abruptly