The Brentwood Anthology
The Experimental Plane In Alamogordo, I trudged through sandstorms with a bloody nose, but hid behind the kitchen door when test pilot Roger Croman showed up drunk. My dad would coax and reassure him the experimental plane was solid, that he (and it) wouldn’t fall, in flames, to Earth. 16
My dad’s gone and I think about gravity a lot: How scientists can (and can’t) explain what it really is. Once my dad took me on a ferris wheel, and together we looked down at my mother, a tiny figure on the ground, screaming. Dad said something like: She gets dizzy drinking from a tall glass.