The Hat

This is a short story I wrote as part of my creative writing course:

The man was his hat – yellow brown, tattered, wrinkled, concealing an immense force that did not receive its due respect. And his hat was he, and they could not be separated, not even when the lady in uniform extended her aging fingers with matronly conviction, asking it to leave him, dark coats spilling out of her other arm. After the allotted maximum time for fussing over each passenger had expired, she moved on, and got lost among the other prim blue uniforms with tiny glinting silver, gold and red-gold badges brandishing increasing degrees of power. The usuals happened –seatbelts upright, turn off electronic equipment, candy, water and juice, the closing shut of the open overhead bins, stern loud, but not rude loud. The odd pillow, the belt checks, bassinets, silent headcounts.

Not many spoke, though everyone thought, of time. Especially of time to come, and all the hurry and the hustle seemed meaningless considering that try as they might, they couldn’t keep at it for longer than riding alongside the sun three quarters of the way across the globe could. And the time came, and the flight hissed alive, taxied in all directions at once, and then, made up its mind and raced northwards, took off into the clouds, and then turned left heading for its long journey west, slanting gracefully both ways, as if tipping its hat to both unseen hemispheres, somewhere below the thick fog, applauding its successful takeoff.

From below the hat that he was, a hint of grey hair queried fiercely for meaning amidst the chaos, like the antennae of a dying cockroach fulfilling its last wish to know its surroundings a little better. As the uniforms bustled around serving sweet nothings, too busy to note anyone in particular, he set aside his laptop, and ambled over to the front of the plane, frowning, clutching his hat as if stuck in a desert storm. An observant co-passenger might have conjectured from the direction of his frown through the cockpit door, that he required urgent clarification regarding the flashing light – the sixth green light from the left, third row from the top, in the panel to the left of the co-pilot’s head, just in front of the window and the clearing skies without. For a moment, the coast was clear, and he emerged right behind the captain, his head, hat and all, barely clearing the seated captain’s own, and asked, in crystal clear diction of his native tongue, a long passionate question, that no one, of course, understood. No one understood, especially because no one tried to understand, for the pressing concern around the question lay not in its interpretation, but in standard procedure to deal with such questioners in the cockpit who were not certified members of the flight crew. The captain pressed a button by his feet and murmured the specific code for possible foreign terror attack, which happened on that day to be QC31C. Immediately, muscles, and patches of a white shirt and grey suit appeared in the cockpit, in jumbled bits, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle of a suited gorilla all mixed up. The newcomer, who amorphously filled the little remaining empty space in the cockpit, grabbed the intruder, officially a suspected terrorist, to be killed before any questions asked, and pinned him down to the floor with one hand, while drawing a gun with the other almost expertly. The lights flashing green and orange and red, the dials and the knobs, the captain, the copilot, each felt a light breeze while the unwitting ape felt nothing where he had felt his gun, and then experienced excruciating intermittent pain at varying locations for the rest of his life. The door, realizing the need for room for important goings on inside the cockpit, had slammed itself shut. The entire flight staff had drifted towards the rear end of the aircraft, where everyone suddenly seemed to have exercised their rights to maximum baggage limits, and there were a few angry people indignantly protesting the manner in which their cabin luggage was seized and checked in at the last moment.

He pulled his hat down a bit at a time further as he spoke furiously, until his hat almost covered the thin slits of his mere points of eyes.

The captain tried asking him if he understood English or French or German or Dutch, but the man just stood there, hat in hand.

The copilot turned to the captain and asked, “Chinese or Japanese, Steve?”

“Chinese, not Japanese, could be Korean or Taiwanese as well, or from somewhere in those parts, and our great luck, he is the only Asian onboard – Pam at the desk mentioned this when I checked in – she mentioned that was because today is the birthday of Buddha and most people spend the day visiting temples, monasteries, whatever…”

He looked at the man, clutching his hat. Now he just stood there, bobbing his hat up and down, and then pulling it way down over his eyes and then again...

“Steve, could we ask the ground staff?”

The captain looked at the panel and at the spotless blue sky beyond. He had been glad the sky was clearing up, and had looked forward to a pleasant eventless flight, and then this.

“No way, Jeffrey! They will do what we did, only they will send the whole army down here, and he doesn’t look like he wants to hurt us or anything. He just seems worried about something in that panel.”

“And also about his hat,” Jeffrey looked at the little man. “Do you think his flash was beginner’s luck? Maybe I could take him.”

“You will do no such thing,” Steve nodded at the man on the ground babbling gibberish to himself, unable to even think of thinking about getting up, who reminded him of a drunken Indian monkey he had seen during a climbing expedition in the Himalayas. The monkey had somehow gotten into their van when they were out climbing, sprinted through every item of food in the van, and when they returned, the glutton had sat groaning exactly the same words as his bigger and arguably more civilized kin was now chanting on the floor. However, there was tangibly more emotion in the present case and the monkey was still able to roll on the ground.

He turned to Jeffrey, and said, “I will check every light in this panel, and you go see if you can find someone who knows Chinese back there. Don’t say anything, just bring someone who knows Chinese over – tell him that I would like to speak to him. But whatever you do, for God’s sake, don’t start a panic wave out there.”

Jeffrey left, carefully edging past the hat which was the man. Steve settled down to inspecting the panel.

A moment later, Jeffrey popped his head in. “Steve?”

“Yes?”

“Steve, when you say Chinese, do you mean Mandarin?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Any bloody dialect will do – Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, whatever!”

“OK, boss. And another thing – how come the ground staff hasn’t contacted us?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. There is a lot of disturbance due to the thunderstorm, maybe the connection is down. But they should be back any time now. So hurry!”

Steve’s head squeezed itself out of the door and, finding a matching body with ambulatory capabilities, walked away to do his thing. The man who was his hat followed, one hand inside his hat, the other hand holding his hat down.

Once outside in the business class, the man in the hat, spoke loudly, as before, a solemn hymnic chant, a private message to no one in particular.

In an appropriate response to what sounded like a warcry from a man holding a gun under his hat, everyone panicked. Most people shrank into themselves, shutting their eyes tight, women screamed, men shrieked, children howled, while some men stared blankly, obviously planning something heroic. A couple of them in the back were calling the police on their cell phone, and poor Jeffrey was trying to control the mayhem by shouting, “It’s all fine here – nothing to worry about…” which was drowned in all the wailing.

One man in a bright green hawaian shirt strode forward confidently and spoke to the man in the hat. Jeffrey grabbed him, almost in tears and dragged him to the cockpit. The man followed, holding his hat that was him down over his head. They all entered and Jeffrey shut the door and latched it from within.

It would be only minutes before all hell broke loose. They may even send planes to gun them down – like September 11^th.

The man said to the captain cheerily, “hi, I’m Xavier.”

The captain didn’t care, though he allowed himself to think, Yeah, savior all right.

“Xavier, can you please tell us what this man is trying to say?”

Jeffrey said, “Just to provide you with a status update, well, how do I put it, they all know.”

At this moment, passengers were banging on the cockpit door, presumably demanding an explanation, most likely enlightened by their research that this guy seemed to be alone and there was no partner watching the passengers.

Steve ignored the moans from the floor, the bang from the door and squeezed Xavier’s shoulder hard.

Xavier turned to the hat and said something. The man replied something angrily.

Xavier did not look like a man easily influenced by cussing, and yet he turned red. He turned to Steve and said, “I will translate for you, as best I can, but I cannot do justice to the expletives. You see, swearing has its own regional flavors, and while I know when someone cusses, and how bad the words are by the tone and context, I cannot provide an exact translation to most of this man’s words, as he speaks a Mandarin variant called standard Mandarin, whereas I know only a variant called Sichuan Mandarin.”

The captain was speechless in response to Xavier’s passion for meticulous detail and sincerity around translating cusswords.

Xavier began, “You must land the plane immediately.”

Steve hesitated, “ Is this a terrorist threat of some sort? Does he have a bomb under his hat?”

Xavier translated. Hat responded. Xavier laughed till he wept, then turned to the captain and said, “No, no. That is not it. You got him all wrong.”

Jeffrey sang sarcastically, “Oh, please tell, please tell. I can’t stand the suspense. What is it?”

Another round of clarification and response. Xavier’s hawaian shirt almost instantly sprouted black patches of sweat as he heard the hat.

“He can explain, but he wants you to start procedures for emergency landing right now, otherwise it will be too late. Trust me, I will fill you in as you work on this.”

Steve and Jeffrey protested, and just then air traffic control made contact and demanded an explanation, and Steve made the call, and they landed the plane in the ocean, just like they show in the picture before every flight – with jets, flotation devices and all, and no one was hurt, except of course, gorilla man who now sat sullenly in a corner of the cockpit clutching his stomach by his right hand and his right wrist, which had held the gun on the hat, by his left hand. He was too occupied to even look at the man who was his hat. That was justice for you – the man in the hat had broken the law, the captain and his crew had ignored air traffic control, even the passengers had been an unruly lot who should, rightfully, have been punished in a court of law. But the only one hurt was the one who did exactly what he was assigned to do. He decided to go back to robbing stores across the country, much safer and a lot more job satisfaction there.

Later, Steve pointed to the pretty brunette in the first row – she was from an obscure local newsletter. She stood up and said, “I have brought along a technical interpreter, Mr. Lee”. She laid her hand on the shoulder of the man with black hair and blacker glasses wearing a black shirt and beige trousers standing next to her. “Can I ask Professor Huang a question?” Steve turned a little pink, but the dim lighting did not carry the change across the hall. She called out her question, “Professor Huang, thank you for joining us today. Can you please tell us what actually happened?” Lee translated. Everyone heard the word Huang. The professor moved towards the microphone, politely circumventing Steve. He spoke, and Lee translated.

“I am a professor of meteorology from the Nanjing institute of meteorology. I was touring Europe and headed to the US, demonstrating a new improved system for predicting storms. First of all, I regret the injury to the security officer onboard. I was merely saving my life using an ancient Indian Martial art technique called Marma. The pain will only go with time, but it may be some relief to know that it is only pain and there is no damage to his organ systems. Now, turning to the main issue of the evening, I will try to avoid boring you with technical details, but in short, we have found a way to accurately predict an impending storm very shortly before it starts. There are fifteen parameters which we measure to predict a storm. Now, there are certain combinations of some of these characteristics, which indicate a storm with very high accuracy. For instance, if some values are in a certain way, and there is a certain cloud formation, then a storm is highly likely. However, a rarer and deadlier pattern occurs when parameters are in a different combination, and there are heavy clouds which rapidly clear up. I had noticed the second such pattern in the route of travel, but the skies were cloudy and predicted to remain so all the way at the time of departure, through till our arrival. However, as we took off, the skies began to clear, and in fact, I first noticed it when the cockpit door was opened and the sun shone through a clear blue patch in the sky. I walked down to see for myself, and confirmed that the sky was clearing up, which meant that there was soon going to be a storm. I had no time to show them the data. I didn’t even know anyone there would understand. I thought of gesturing a storm, but that is somewhat hard to directly gesture for someone with no experience in charades. Also, I have just learnt that the word I was looking for in English is “storm”. I will never forget that word.” He paused.

The brunette gestured impatiently, “What did you do, professor?”

Lee conveyed.

The professor looked around the room, turned to Steve, and then replied, smiling, and pulled his hat down low over his head.