Preston's Trial

Preston Sergeant was twenty-five years old, a recent college graduate, an occasional smart aleck, and a young man who was not at all sure about prayer, even though he had been raised in a religious family and had attended religious schools, which taught him to believe in prayer. He thought of several times when he recalled that it did not work for him, and reflected on the joke about the basketball player on the free throw line who made the sign of the cross. “Does that help?” the player was asked after the game. “Yeah, if you can shoot free throws,” he answered. Preston identified with the joke because it meshed with his notion that while prayer might give someone a good feeling, for him at least, the result rarely seemed to fit the plea.

Preston lived in Chicago, on the North Side of the city, or Nort Side, for those who understood the language, and Elaine Miller, the young woman with whom he thought he might be in love, lived in Phoenix, a city Preston was convinced was always hot and therefore not a good place to live, and only to visit if the woman he thought he loved lived there. He liked cold weather actually. One of the reasons was that, when he went ice fishing, he did not have to worry about keeping the beer refrigerated. And though he frequently confounded himself with the idea of prayer's efficacy, he prayed frequently for a sign that Elaine was the one, an inclination carved into his soul by the religious requirement of one wife, forever. Preston's proof to himself was that he never received a sign.

* * *

It was the end of June, two weeks after Preston's graduation, and two months before Elaine would receive her degree, after a necessary course she had accidentally failed to notice was a requirement. She was taking the class at a college near her home. And while Elaine was studying the Peloponnesian War, 431 to 403 B.C., (she was a history major) in Arizona, Preston was in Chicago, a member of a group of like-minded young men who enjoyed sports of all kinds as long as there was some sort of liquid refreshment to keep throats unparched during strenuous summer activities such as Chicago softball, a sport invented in the city. It involved a ball that measured 16 inches in circumference and felt like a pillow after being batted for about three or four innings. One of the few things about his softball experience that had irked Preston since his sophomore year was the result of a tournament played on an August weekend. His team had been successful through a four game Saturday marathon; Sunday was the championship and the team members decided to go to church services before the game. As a hedge. Preston remembered praying for victory. He also remembered losing 22-7 and that was strike two on prayer and an additional sign that it did not work. He discounted the effect of three cases of beer that were consumed during the final game.

So there was Preston Sergeant, with time on his hands and love in his heart and nothing to do for the rest of the summer but buy a plane ticket to Phoenix on Illumination Air, a newer airline company founded by a young man with his deceased father's hedge fund fortune. Illumination Air flew out of Lake International Airport on the Chicago's south side. The airline was so named because its founder was known, during his younger life, to have experimented with hallucinogens and it seemed only natural to describe air travel as an illuminating experience.

But Preston had his own reasons for choosing Illumination Air and the first and, really, the only one, was the unlimited beverage service. Before he left he was asked by a friend to guess how much beer he thought he could consume on the three hour and forty-three minute flight to Phoenix. “Don't know,” he said, “but I'm thinking the stock price of Pabst (his favorite) will improve substantially.” His degree was in business administration with a minor in investment strategy.

On departure day, Preston got a ride to Midway from Wally Moscone, the second baseman on the softball team who suggested they go early and enjoy a brew at the single lounge in the small terminal.

Then it was time and Preston boarded and went to his seat in the last row, which was closest to the galley where the beer was kept. He initially took two cans of Pabst off the cart as it passed him up the aisle. He was scolded and told to behave or he could be refused further service. So he did, and then began to take full advantage of the no limit policy.

Somewhere over New Mexico, about 25 minutes from Phoenix, Preston was jostled by a bump in an otherwise clear sky. About 15 minutes later the plane, banked left and started its approach to Sandy Sky Airport. Camelback Mountain sits about eight miles north of the airport and rises about 2,700 feet from the surrounding sand and cactus. The flight recorder would later determine that the plane, for some as yet unexplained reason, was at 2,400 feet when it came in contact with Camelback and split into five mangled pieces including the tail section which contained the aircraft's last row.

* * *

Preston was sure he was dreaming, that he was in a strange white room and people he did not recognize were hovering around him. And then he didn't remember anything until he woke once more in what he was told was the recovery room at St. Jonathan's Hospital. He was in pain but he felt drunk because everything was blurred including his speech and his ability to understand. His head was in a halo ring anchored in four places on his skull. His left leg was in a cast from his ankle to his upper thigh. His left arm was also in a cast and was suspended from a bar over his bed, and his rib cage felt like it was on a roasting spit. He recognized his mother but he could not talk. She smiled and dabbed at both her cheeks; his father was in the background without an expression. Preston learned he had been in a coma for five days and would need to be hospitalized for at least another couple weeks or so.

He learned that his blood alcohol level, when he arrived at the hospital, would have sent him to jail if he had been driving instead of flying, and also that he was the sole survivor on the 164 passenger flight. He had landed in a field near the main fuselage still strapped into his flight chair and upright, one of those freak results that make headlines. Preston was mostly recovered after three months of rehabilitation. He married Elaine on a January day that marked his parent's 30^th anniversary, after praying for a sign that the marriage was the right decision. He persuaded her to return with him to Chicago where he secured employment with an international charitable organization as payback for the aircraft disaster result that he considered a sign offering the possibility of redemption.

He would be reminded, also, on occasion in the succeeding years, of the day when he first saw a television beer commercial while he was recuperating at his parents' home: He got sick all over his mother's favorite couch, which he interpreted as a sign he should forget about beer and softball or beer and ice fishing or beer and anything else.

* * *

Preston and Elaine had two sons and a daughter, all of whom grew up in wisdom, grace and beauty, according to their father, whose view of the world and his place in it changed dramatically after an airplane ride to Phoenix when he was 25.

Preston never took another plane ride, did all his international work by phone and zoom. He never opened another can of beer either and died at 87 years, morally content with himself. He received the last rites at his home and offered, without reservation, a prayer for his future, which in the waning hours of his life he felt was his personal sign to Whomever that he was finally serious.