ST1.10 | "Flying Ham"

PROMPT: Anyone who grew up with the Internet can tell you—it’s forever. It’s the most striking example of the ghosts of our pasts coming back to change our lives now, but it’s bigger than an errant tweet. It’s the Golden State Killer being caught through a family member’s DNA profile. It’s women decades away from an employer finding the strength to finally tell their stories of abuse and harassment.

For October, the epitome of spooky, we want your best story of the skeletons in your character’s closet, literal or metaphorical, finally seeing the light of day. Tell us what haunts them, and what they intend to do about it.

FLYING HAM

by Preston Lang

Comas are expensive. Owen had been in his and on his back for almost thirteen years. None of the caregivers wanted to boot him out of the facility, but Glenda constantly received bright red notices and phone calls from desk monkeys a thousand miles away—we feel we’ve been more than compassionate with you. She couldn’t begin to cover the debts, and every month just piled on more. Still, she came early every day and read to her husband, held his hand and told him about the world. She’d start with the good things, the Crocuses and Robins and other signs that spring was coming, but she’d end up complaining, spitting curses at everything wrong and rotten.

They had been on the interstate, about thirty miles from home, when the canned ham hit the windshield and the car plowed into the concrete of the high overpass. Glenda came out of it with a two-inch gash on her left forearm, but 128 ounces of cured meat, packed inside aluminum, thrown from 43 feet up had ended Owen’s waking life.

At first, she’d been hot for revenge. A man driving a minivan told police he thought he saw a boy in a hoodie running off after the crash. Glenda hounded the detectives. Have you talked to local schools? She wanted a list of all troubled boys within a fifty-mile radius. Bring them to the station and grill them one by one. But the useless police wouldn’t do this, so she’d taken to driving by middle schools, watching kids in the yard, hoping some little motion in the way a boy threw a football or dumped his lunch in the trash would signal his guilt. But it never did, and Owen needed her—a comatose man requires a constant advocate. She gave up.

Years passed without a word or voluntary movement. She’d now known Owen much longer this way than as someone who could walk, or discuss Shakira, or tell her she had spinach in her teeth. No one expected him to come out of it, but no one could say definitively that he wouldn’t.

And, of course, it was hilarious. A canned ham. A popular comedian worked up an extended bit about the accident. A year later, his HBO special was called Flying Ham. The ads showed him standing haplessly while a rocket-powered can shot toward his head. It was just the kind of cosmic buffoonery he was known for—so I gotta look out for terrorists, colon cancer, and now flying ham?

Glenda had watched the routine many times, usually on her phone right next to Owen. She listened to the laughter and thought of the life she’d lost: getting her Masters, working as a pharmacist, playing tennis, having a child. Instead she spent hours on the phone arguing with insurance companies or begging charitable foundations for money—Yes, we are appreciative of what you have done for us, but there are so many expenses we haven’t been able to meet.

One Tuesday morning she checked Seed4Life, an online donation platform. The account had gone from 218 dollars to 1.9 million overnight. An instant solution to all her money woes. She called to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. The money was verified: an anonymous corporate donation. Seed4Life wouldn’t even give her a hint, but when Glenda asked if she could come to their office in Philadelphia to thank the Seed4Life team in person, they had no objections.

Glenda had taken days off before. Not many, but a few trips out of town had been necessary over the years, so the nurses were only a little surprised when she told them she’d be gone a day or two. The earliest bus to Philadelphia got her in before lunch. The Seed4Life office was full of hip, young women, typing, talking on phones. They laughed and leaned back in chairs and threw paper at each other. Computer terminals were set up all over the office, including two near the windows past the bathroom that no one seemed to use.

The hardest part for Glenda was shaking hands and smiling. People hugged her and told her how lucky she was, but then on the other hand, she was also very unlucky. While Glenda nodded and accepted banalities, a slender woman in cutoff shorts came back to her desk and logged onto her computer. Glenda made sure to move in close enough to see the username and password.

The CEO, Dr. Weiss, had a cluttered office in the back. She was surprisingly spiritual.

“You never know where blessings will come from,” Dr. Weiss said.

“No, you certainly do not.”

Sometimes they seem to hit you right out of the sky.

A letter opener sat on the desk between them, and Glenda picked it up. Years ago, she’d gone on TV with two other coma spouses to raise awareness. Glenda thought awareness was just a euphemism for money, but everyone else wanted to talk about blessings and beauty. It was all she could do to keep from strangling someone on air.

She put down the letter opener.

“Can you tell me where the ladies’ room is?”

After Glenda came out of the bathroom, she hit one of the computers, logged in, and quickly found Seed4Life’s donor spreadsheet. It took two pages of scrolling to spot her money: a grant from something called CPI Industries with an address in Manhattan. It had been founded four years earlier by a whiz kid named Jeff Trent. He’d graduated high school in California, but there was no information on where he’d gone to middle school. At age seventeen, he’d patented a process that helped promote healing in certain kinds of damaged blood vessels. He chose not to enforce the patent, so one of the big pharma companies took the idea and made all the money. But he’d had other breakthroughs that were just as good. A few years later, he dropped out of a PHD program and started his own research facility. Not yet 26, Trent had built CPI into a company worth 650 million.

It was hard to find pictures of him. He wasn’t one of those young millionaires who liked to strut around and make noise, but you can’t run a 650-million-dollar corporation with a bag over your head. He was slender and serious and didn’t like to look directly at a camera.

Glenda got to New York around three that afternoon and waited outside the offices of CPI. Jeff came out a little after nine-thirty and walked aimlessly for half an hour, winding his way downtown where he stopped in a little cafe.

In the back with a medium coffee, just a little milk, no sugar, he took a few sheets of paper out of his pocket, dense with numbers and marked up with red pen. Glenda ordered a medium coffee, touch of milk, no sugar, and walked up to his table.

“Hello, Mr. Trent. I’m Glenda Hamilton. You know who I am.”

She could tell he recognized her right away, and that his first instinct was to run, to bolt for the door. But he wasn’t a child anymore.

“I wanted the chance to thank you in person.”

“Really. It’s not necessary.”

“Not necessary? It means everything to us.”

“I meant that I don’t need you to thank me.”

“You just want my husband to have the care he deserves?”

He looked down and stirred his coffee. Glenda did the same. When he was done, he looked up, into her eyes for the first time.

“I don’t deserve anything.”

“Why not?”

“Do I have to tell you?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I think about it every day. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“What did you do?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What did you do, Jeffrey?”

“I threw something off the overpass, and it hit your car.”

“What did you throw?”

“A canned ham.”

“Why canned ham?”

“I needed something that weighed eight pounds. For about four months that year Hormel was selling 128-ounce cans. They don’t sell them anymore.”

“Why did you need to drop ham on the highway?”

“I’d go up there and watch the cars. I could see the highway as a blood vessel. Traffic as blood flow. When you introduce a disruption into that flow . . .”

He put both hands over his face and held them there for nearly half a minute while she got the little packet out of her purse.

“I’ll do whatever you say. Should I admit it? Go to the police?”

He’d been barely a teenager when it happened. They wouldn’t prosecute on something a juvenile had done more than a decade ago. Would it hurt his career? No. If anything, he’d be lauded for the huge donation and celebrated for acknowledging the childhood mistake.

“Do you remember Vinnie Lane?” Glenda asked.

“Who?”

“The comedian. The TV special? The Flying Ham tour?”

“Yes. I remember that.”

“Do you remember how he died?”

“Drugs? An OD, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose it was.” Glenda stirred her drink. “It’s impossible to be sure that you’ve got exactly the right dose to put a man into a coma. Maybe he dies. Maybe he throws up and gets off with a rough weekend. Obviously, I’m not perfect, but I was halfway to a degree in pharmacology when all this happened. What do you weigh, 150?”

“146.”

She switched his cup for hers.

“Drink your coffee,” she said.

He looked at the cup in front of him but didn’t touch it.

“I don’t want to die,” he said.

“I don’t want you to die, either.”

Jeff looked down again.

“What do you think he feels?” he asked.

“They tell you a lot of things. You know, different doctors, scientists. But even the people who’ve woken up can’t say for sure what Owen is feeling.”

Jeff lifted the cup and drained it. He was still sitting upright when Glenda left the shop.

***

Jeff turned back to the columns of data—the most recent lab results. They’d hit a snag; the sort of problem that made you think you were heading the wrong direction. Then in front of him, three small drips of coffee—discrete not continuous. He saw it all. It was counterintuitive, a way to circumvent a deadly blood flow problem without even touching the veins. A completely new idea that would save thousands of lives. He wrote furiously in the margins then on nearby napkins. He thought he had it all mapped clearly enough for smart people to take it forward. Then his head hit the table.

Preston Lang is a small, honest writer based in Ontario. His short work has appeared in Thuglit, N+1, Rock and a Hard Place, and Betty Fedora.