Paul felt his mind splatter against his forehead. How do I love me? Let me count the ways. Living through the next minute; that would be one way.

Falling out of the sky ought to create profound insight into one's life, Paul thought. On the other hand, psychologists become accustomed to such understanding; perhaps psychologists--and psychologists alone--are denied this insight at the moment of death, and are compelled instead to mutilate poetry.

Maybe he should have stayed in the ministry. That would have insured a profound thought or two, possibly even three.

Six hundred forty-one hours of flying, one hundred twenty-nine of that in multi-engined aircraft, had taught Paul enough to understand that he was in trouble. The vacuum sucking at the seat of his pants told him everything he needed to know. The surge of adrenalin, the knuckles--white knuckles, surely--gripping the flimsy arms of his seat, the seat belt cutting him in half, all of these were redundant. Spend enough time flying, and the seat of your pants will tell you when you are about to die.

All one needs to get through life is a well-trained backside. That was a truly profound thought, Paul decided. Now he could die in peace.

At that moment the vacuum released him and he fell back into his seat. Back into the world, where a woman named Sheila sat screaming at his side, ripping Kleenex into a storm of confetti.

Paul's first impression of Sheila was of her knees. He couldn't ignore them as he squeezed his briefcase under the seat in front of him before settling in for his flight from Miami to Chicago. Sheila's knees were bony. Paul took a few seconds longer than necessary to arrange his briefcase, using this time to decide that Sheila was too thin. So many younger women were anorexic these days; too often they ended up in his office, needing his help.

He sat first, then half-stood and fumbled for the seat belt he was sitting on, commenting that he should really arrange the seat belt before sitting down. Sheila agreed, moving her oversized leather purse out of Paul's way. They chatted for a minute, introducing themselves--first names only; people who sit beside you on an airplane live in a transient reality, Paul understood--and agreed that, yes, it was true, coach class seats do get smaller on every flight.

He felt good to be going home. A week in Miami in July hadn't been much fun, but at least it was finished. A quiet flight would help him relax.

After takeoff he settled back to read the July issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. The only distraction would be when the flight attendants came by, selling drinks. They came almost immediately, and Paul bought a brandy.

He couldn't concentrate, though, because psychology in a journal couldn't compete with psychology in action, in Sheila's lap. He watched her hands, which were long and slender and seemed to have a mind separate from their owner's.

As Sheila stared out the window, her hands pulled a Kleenex travel pack out of her purse and set the pack in her lap. Then they pulled out a pair of tissues and twisted them into a rope-like strand. Next they tied three loose knots in the tissues, leaving room for a fourth. These tissues went into Sheila's lap, also, next to her purse.

Her hands kept doing this, over and over. Sometimes the tissues pulled apart, and the hands untied the failed knot and tried again. As each tissue became a chain of knots, they tied the new strand to the previous one, pausing occasionally to stuff the growing tissue rope into Sheila's purse.

She's going to be surprised when she opens her purse, Paul thought. He watched Sheila watch the clouds and mountains and forests beneath them, and he watched her hands filling her purse with a strand of knotted tissues.

"Flying still new to you?" he asked.

Sheila, still staring out the window, shook her head. "This is probably my two hundred seventy-third flight, give or take some. I lost count last year."

Paul noted the size of her purse, and tried to calculate how many knotted tissues it might hold. He decided that Sheila knew what her hands were up to, and tried--without success--to return to his reading.

About halfway through Sheila's second pack of tissues, Paul heard and felt an explosion, like a rifle-shot fired point-blank at a tin can. The plane pitched downward, splattering Paul's mind against his forehead and his brandy all over Sheila's tissues.

As the plane leveled out after its fall, and his backside settled back into his seat, Paul put his hand to his shirt pocket, where he kept his most important papers. Yes, they were still there; they hadn't fallen out.

Sheila clenched one end of her tissue rope in each hand. "We're going to die," she said, in about the same tone she might use to announce that she had to pee. "We're going to die."

Paul looked at her face, studying it for the first time. Even through her glasses, Paul could see that her eyes were focused on something in front of her, possibly on a profound thought of her own. This is not the time for profound thoughts, Paul told himself. This is the time to learn once again what a wonderful thing it is to breathe.

He reached over and clasped one of Sheila's hands, and she turned to look at him, her brown eyes open wide enough to show white all around. He was about to speak, but the pilot interrupted him before he could start.

"We have lost the number two engine," the pilot said. "We'll be a little late arriving in Chicago."

"That's not so bad, is it?" Paul asked, giving Sheila's hand a gentle squeeze. "A DC-10 can fly with only one engine, and we still have two."

"A DC-10?" she said, pulling another Kleenex apart. "Is that what we're on?"

"Yes; they're actually much safer planes than people believe."

She pressed his hand with both of hers, and a look of relief came over her face. "Thanks," she said. "I didn't know that."

"It's true. I'm a pilot myself; I know a little about these planes." Something was still wrong with this particular airplane, though; the seat of his pants kept Paul informed of every twitch. But at least it felt like the pilot was still in control. For Sheila, a person terrified of flying, that was the point to emphasize.

They talked a lot, then, or rather Sheila talked and Paul listened.

"People tell me they get bored with flying," she said. "I don't know how. I'm always afraid something like this is going to happen."

"You mean that somebody might spill brandy all over your Kleenex? I'm sorry about the mess."

Sheila looked at her pile of tissues, some of which were spotted with brown and starting to clump. She shrugged, twice.

In the background, Paul noticed the roar of the wind had decreased; the plane must be descending, he thought. "I know this isn't much comfort, considering that we've lost an engine, but the odds are really in your favor. They say it's safer than driving."

"Maybe for you," Sheila said, shaking her head. "I lost my license."

"I see," Paul said. "Have you ever thought of taking the train?"

"They don't go everywhere I need to go. Besides, they have more wrecks than airplanes do."

"Have you considered changing jobs?"

"No." Sheila snorted a small laugh. "I really like my job. I'm a buyer for Marshall Field's, young women's sport clothes. It almost makes this"--she picked up a double handful of tissue rope--"worthwhile." She dropped the tissues in her lap and idly dug through the pile, one strand at a time, with her index finger. "Until now."

"Ummm," Paul replied.

A flight attendant leaned over the seat in front of Paul. "Is everyone doing all right here?" he asked.

"We'll manage," Paul said. "Do you have any more information about the problem?"

"Not yet. I'm sure the pilot will let you know if anything else happens; if not, we should be landing in Chicago in a little while." With that, he stood and leaned over to the passengers across the aisle.

"I really appreciate your listening to me," Sheila said. "I'd be a nervous wreck without it."

Paul smiled and made a mental note to write that down. He kept a notepad in his pocket, just for these occasions. Later--he hoped--he'd have time to write his note and add it to the collection in his pocket, but for now he still felt compelled to earn Sheila's compliment.

These papers in Paul's pocket were the descendants of his childhood, when he'd learned to take credit for doing the right thing.

He'd learned that on the day his brother destroyed his insect collection. Paul didn't have that many insects, nor were they well organized. He knew what the June bugs were, and the grasshoppers and crickets and caterpillars, but the beetles just looked like bugs. He had others he couldn't identify, too; that was why he'd asked his brother Jack to help him. He pulled each insect out of its home--a jar or a matchbox or just the corner of a drawer--and asked Jack what they were. Jack told him which one was a katydid and which one was a cicada, but he tired quickly and started naming the bugs "stinkbug" and "dung beetle." When he said Paul's ladybug was a body louse, Paul knew that Jack was lying and kicked him. Jack punched him in the face and then started crushing Paul's insects between books. A cockroach was the first to go, flattened between Green Eggs and Ham and If I Ran the Circus. A caterpillar was next, smeared across the pages of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Paul picked himself up off the floor and began pummeling his older brother. "Murderer!" he screamed. This brought their mother running into Paul's room, which put an end to the fight and to the bug collection. Paul and Jack got no supper that night, and they didn't get to watch television for a week.

But later that night, Paul's mother slipped into his room and told Paul that she was glad to see that he'd learned to stand up for himself. "You did right," she said.

Paul was thrilled, so thrilled that when his mother tucked him into bed and left the room, he got up, turned the light back on, and wrote what his mother told him on the corner of a piece of paper. I did right, he wrote.

He tore that corner from the rest of the paper, folded it and put it in his jeans pocket. The next morning, even before putting his jeans back on, he took the paper out of his pocket and looked at it. The words were still there, scrawled in the untidy writing of a seven-year-old boy, although the scrawl stayed neatly between the lines.

"I did right," he read out loud, and with a grin he pushed the paper back into his pocket. The words sounded just as good as they had when his mother spoke them the day before.

At school that day, his teacher asked him about his black eye, and Paul explained that his brother Jack gave it to him. He smiled as he told the story, and that made his eye hurt less.

"I'll bet your mother was angry," Mrs. Reed said.

"Nope! She said I did right. See?" He pulled out his scrap of paper to show her.

Mrs. Reed examined the paper and said, "Your mother must be proud of you, then."

Paul smiled his biggest smile. He hadn't thought of it that way. As soon as Mrs. Reed moved on to another desk, he tore a corner from page 83 of his spelling book and wrote My mother is proud of me on the new scrap of paper. He put both papers back in his pocket, and several times each day he pulled them out and read them both. He felt like he grew another inch every time.

This lasted until Saturday, when his mother washed his jeans. The next time he reached into his pocket, he pulled out a tangled mass of paper fragments.

"I can help you relax," Paul told Sheila.

She peered at him over the top of her glasses. "I doubt it."

Paul decided to take this as a challenge. "I'll bet I know one reason you're afraid," he said. "You're not in control here." Sheila shook her head, mouthing something that looked like No, I'm not. "Try to remember that the people who are in control here want to live through this as much as you do."

She thought about that for a minute, and shook her head. "That doesn't help."

"Over time, I think it will," Paul said. "But you need to keep reminding yourself of that. Also, remember that they know how to fly this plane. The airlines even give them training in handling problems like this one."

"I know that. Look, if you're going to--"

Paul raised his free hand to interrupt. "I know this isn't the time to rationalize about your fears. What I want you to do is to think about that pilot. He needs your support right now. I want you to think about the pilot and nothing else."

She pressed her lips together before answering. "I don't think this is going to work."

"It will work if you give it a chance, Sheila. Now, I'm going to teach you how to relax. I want you to lean back in your seat, close your eyes, think good things about the pilot, and follow my instructions."

"I want to know what's going on," Sheila said.

"I'll tell you everything that happens." I'll do no such thing, Paul thought to himself. He had felt the pilot turning the plane to the right for some time, and he could hear and feel changes in the engines which told him that the pilot was steering by engine power alone. He'd learned to fly his own Beechcraft Baron with only one engine. It was the sort of thing that stimulated profound thoughts, except in psychologists.

No, he would tell Sheila only what she needed to know. "Now lean back and close your eyes," Paul said.

Sheila leaned back in her seat, but only stared at the ceiling, shaking her head. "You're going to insist, aren't you?" She looked over at Paul, but her eyes suggested that she hadn't quite condemned him to perdition--yet.

Paul decided to keep trying. "This really does work, Sheila. And it will help pass the time."

She sighed and closed her eyes. "All right."

"All right. Breathe out, now, all your air. Now breathe in, deeply, deeply... now hold... hold... okay, now, breathe out, everything. Exhale! Hold..."

Quietly, Paul talked Sheila through breathing and muscle relaxation exercises. Paul taught these techniques to so many people that he didn't need to think about it; this left his mind free to listen to the engines, to feel the seat of his pants report every twitch and slip of the aircraft. He wanted to be in the pilot's seat; there, he could put the knowledge of his backside to better use.

In the mean time, coaching Sheila was the only way to keep busy, to keep from thinking too much. It seemed to be working--for Sheila, at least--and she was tensing her lower back and about to release when the pilot announced, "We're going to make an emergency landing in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. It's going to be rough." He paused. "As a matter of fact, it's going to be more than rough."

Sheila's eyes popped open and she fixed her stare straight ahead. Her hands sought for her pile of knotted tissues. They gripped individual strands and pulled, turning the remains of her rope into a pile of shredded paper.

Up front, a flight attendant stood in the aisle holding an emergency card.

"All right, Sheila. I think the flight crew is going to tell us what to do. Are you listening?" She nodded but her eyes did not seem to focus on anything inside the airplane.

Another attendant spoke over the intercom while the one in the aisle demonstrated the "brace" position, head down, hands grasping ankles. He moved down the aisle, repeating his demonstration every few rows. Paul watched, knowing that he was learning for two--or perhaps more; the woman across the aisle had looked up only briefly before returning to her book.

"Sheila, I'm putting your purse on the floor," he said, taking her purse and pushing it past her legs to put it under the seat in front. "Now the best thing for you to do right now is to try again to relax."

Sheila sagged back into her seat, but her eyes stayed open. "Do you know any good prayers?" she said, turning to look at him.

"A few. But the ones that work best are the ones you make up yourself."

A smile twitched her lips, then retreated. "You sound like a preacher I knew when I was little. You aren't a preacher, are you?"

Paul never quite knew how to answer this. His reason for leaving the ministry was in a class of profound thoughts that he chose not to examine. These thoughts preceded his training in psychology; to probe them now was to lose them. "No," he said. "Not any more."

She cocked her head to the left and studied him. "Not any more? But you were?"

Paul nodded slowly. "Yes, I was. I'm a psychologist, now." He squeezed her hands, then placed them back in her lap. "Sheila, why don't you lean back and try those breathing exercises again?"

She gave him an exhausted look, but did as he suggested. She got through only three deep breaths before an attendant shouted over the intercom, "Brace! Brace! Brace!"

Her eyes popped open again and she stared at Paul. "What do I do?"

Gently he took her shoulder and eased her forward, guiding her hands down to her ankles. Then he, too, assumed the "brace" position. With their heads forced against the seats in front of them, they looked at each other.

"I can't breathe deeply in this position," she said.

"Don't try. Just think good thoughts about the pilot."

"All right. Paul, will you pray for us?"

"Yes, Sheila. I'll do that." She kept watching him, as if expecting his prayers to be a visible effort, so he shut his eyes and pressed his lips between his teeth, the way he had always prayed, except in church.

But Paul found that prayer was difficult. Alone now with his own thoughts, he could feel the strain the pilot must be under, expressed in the constantly shifting pitch of the engines, and in the wallowing of a wounded aircraft. The plane slithered and bucked and bounced toward an impact that he knew must be coming soon. Suddenly the aircraft lurched to the right and it happened--it must have been the wing hitting first, plowing into the North Carolina soil, but the whole plane shuddered and groaned. Paul could feel himself being thrown into Sheila, and the two of them slammed into the window as the crippled jet pivoted on its the wing.

And then it stopped.

Paul had an eerie sensation that the plane was floating in water as it slowly, almost leisurely, leveled itself. His backside, his pilot's intuition, gave him the sensation of sliding through a tight turn in his Jaguar--hardly a profound insight. One by one, the noises died away. The screams of ripping metal had stopped as soon as they started, but now the rush of wind faded, and the howl of the jets descended in pitch and volume. Paul felt no sensation of movement, no vibration, nothing except the pressure of gravity pulling him against his seat and the warmth of Sheila's body pressed against him. He listened; it was becoming quiet in the cabin, but no one spoke. Uncertain of what he might see, he sat up and looked around.

Here and there, other heads popped up above a sea of blue upholstered seats. They looked only at each other; no one dared to look out.

Gathering his courage, Paul leaned across Sheila's back and laid his arm on her shoulder. He looked out Sheila's window and whispered, "Dear God."

It didn't make any sense. He expected to be dead by now, but instead he was sitting comfortably in an airplane that felt deceptively sound. But it was still in the air, and that was the problem. Their plane was in the air, but it wasn't flying.

It was hard to judge distance to the ground, but Paul guessed they were perhaps 30, perhaps 50 feet above the runways and grass of an airport--probably Raleigh-Durham, based on what the pilot had said. Farther away he saw the terminal, with its loading ramps and red tiled roof above the glass walls and its chaotic assortment of carts and trucks and other odd vehicles. More trucks raced along the runways, fire trucks, ambulances, buses and more, all heading toward the terminal. Something about the scene didn't look right, and it wasn't until Paul looked down again that he knew what it was. The terminal was growing closer, and the plane was moving toward it--sideways, and much too slowly.

He tore his eyes away from the window and collapsed back into his seat. None of this was making sense. He saw Sheila looking up at him, wide-eyed.

"What happened?" she asked.

"We didn't crash. Other than that, you'll have to decide for yourself."

Sheila sat up, revealing a long, red smear across the back of the seat in front of her. She looked out the window, then looked back in quickly and sat upright in her seat. "It seems that your prayers worked," she whispered.

"I don't think so," Paul said. "I wasn't asking for a miracle." All things can be explained, he told himself. Miracles don't happen.

"Well, you got one anyway." Then she noticed the blood in front of her. "Oh, my! I must look awful!"

Paul studied her face. Her eyes were red, her hair was matted with blood, and she had lost an earring. "You look fine," he said.

Sheila cut short an embarrassed laugh and said again, "Oh, my." She picked up her purse and dropped it on her lap. Her chain of knotted tissues trailed out onto the floor. She rummaged around in the purse and, finding a pack of tissues, she removed one that had escaped her rope and dabbed at her scalp. Then she pulled it away from her head and studied the blood that had soaked into the white paper.

Paul took the tissue from Sheila and pulled her head down so he could see her wound. "It doesn't look serious," he told her, "but you should have a doctor check it out. I expect they called some in for the crash."

Just then they felt a bump that pushed them down into their seats. Sheila started and looked out the window, blocking Paul's view. Over the plane's speakers, the pilot said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've landed at Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, directly at gate C19. Please, don't ask me how."

Somewhere in the cabin, one person started to laugh, and stopped just as quickly. Other people began to talk; to Paul it sounded like the buzzing of nervous bees. As Paul reached down for his briefcase, Sheila touched his knee and said, "Paul, I don't know how to thank you. I've never been so scared in all my life!"

Paul put his hands on hers. "Thank you, Sheila." He looked past her, out the window at an impossible sight: an airport, waiting for him to walk off the plane. "In the scale of things, though, I don't think I did anything at all."

Sheila shook her head. "No, you prayed, and you listened to me. I really appreciate that."

Paul hesitated before handing her his boarding pass. "There's one thing you could do. Would you write me a note? In lieu of my usual fee, of course."

Sheila took his pass and examined it. "You know, you really should carry some better writing paper." On the back she wrote, Paul, thanks for all the help. Sheila. Paul took the boarding pass and put it in his pocket.

"By the way," Sheila said. "You never did tell me why you quit being a preacher."

Paul looked past Sheila, into the terminal where people stood at the window looking back at him. "It took me a few years, but I finally figured out why I became one."

"Oh?"

"It's a cheap way to get approval from other people. I decided I'd rather earn it."

Sheila didn't respond. There wasn't anything to say to that; Paul had honed and polished his answer to ensure that it would stop conversation.

As they entered the terminal a nurse noticed Sheila's blood and pulled her aside. Before she left, she pulled Paul to her side and gave him a quick hug. Then the nurse led her away toward another gate where several people, some in white, others in green smocks, were hurrying about, trying to set up emergency medical services--if the hand-lettered sign were correct--in time to handle the passengers walking off the plane, mostly unharmed.

Paul lingered in the waiting area for gate C19, where a handful of people stood looking at the airplane.

Already, maintenance crews were swarming over the jet. One man stood inside the air intake in the middle of the tail. His lean, angular frame seemed harsh and mechanical against an almost organic jumble of twisted fan blades. Long gashes cut through the engine housing on both sides, and several sections of the tail were completely missing.

His glance trailed out along the right wing, whose tip was crumpled. Lodged in between the cracks and bends were several pieces of sod. "It did crash," he whispered.

"Yup," said a deep voice by his ear. Paul jumped. It was another passenger that he recognized from his flight. "You're right. We ought to be dead."

"Just don't tell me it was a miracle. I don't believe in them."

"Don't have to," the man said. "They just happen sometimes."

"No, there has to be a reason, something we can understand."

Paul turned and walked away from the window, over to the medical area. Physically, these people might be unhurt; emotionally, he knew they needed someone to listen. Paul could do that; other people's thoughts had to be more comfortable than his own.

He found a middle-aged couple, sitting and holding hands, as calm as if they were waiting for a connecting flight--except for their eyes, which stared out the window. Their gaze was as flat and featureless as the empty tarmac, which shimmered and threatened to melt in the heat. Paul was ready to sit beside the woman and introduce himself, when he realized that he could not answer a single question they were likely to ask.

If he couldn't answer his own questions, how could he help these people?

He was up the entire night, first at the airport and later at the Sheraton Imperial where the airline put them up for the night. Some passengers, including Sheila, had already left, but others stayed behind, trying to find a way to accept an event for which no acceptable explanation could be found. As Paul talked with them, he collected several more scraps of paper for his pocket collection. But there wasn't a paper from himself; words like "miracle" and phrases like "just be thankful" didn't work for him. After a while, it seemed that any answer but the truth would do.

Finally, at 9:32 the next morning, he boarded another flight and finished his trip home to Lafayette, Indiana. The flight was boring, by anyone else's standards. Paul found himself wishing for a large purse and a couple of Kleenex travel packs. Instead, he pulled the notes from Sheila and the other passengers out of his pocket, and spent most of the flight reading their thanks.

He returned home to a stack of newspapers and mail on his dining room table, collected by his neighbor. Even today's paper was inside; his neighbor must have noticed that he hadn't come home on time. Paul picked out today's edition of the Indianapolis Star and settled into his couch to see if yesterday's near-crash had made the paper. He didn't expect to see much; miracles are back-page news.

But there it was on the front page, one of several similar stories. A freeway bridge had collapsed in Dallas; all the vehicles on the highway floated safely away to level ground. A dam had broken in Idaho, and an invisible wall held the water back, allowing it to flow out of the lake at a rate which did not flood the river downstream. A coal mine in Pennsylvania which had been burning for decades was extinguished, cooled and filled with breathable air.

A teaser across the top of the page promised more such miracles, running on through page seven.

Paul scanned the article on his flight. It discussed the explosion--a rotor had disintegrated in the tail engine, disabling all the hydraulic systems in the aircraft--and described the landing in sniggering terms that suggested the writer didn't want to believe any of it. In a way, Paul could understand; the whole paper read more like the National Enquirer than the usual conservative style of the Star.

The story continued on page fourteen. When Paul opened the newspaper to finish the article, a small scrap of paper fell out, sliding down the page into his lap. It was a page from a desk calendar, dated the day before. He picked up the page and read the words written on it.

The handwriting was terrible, as bad as a second-grader's scrawl, but Paul found that he could read it all too well. It said, "We don't ask for your thanks."

Paul folded the paper, creasing it with sharp jabs, and put it in his pocket. But it wouldn't stay there; he could feel it burning, consuming the papers from his fellow passengers.

He took the new page out, read it again, and tore it into scraps. People should take credit for their good work, Paul told himself. A certain amount of humility was good for a person, but this was taking things a little too far.

A minute later, Paul was digging through his desk, searching for a roll of clear plastic tape. Finding it, he taped the pieces of the note back together. He didn't know who had written it. What he did know was that he was going to find them--if there were any way possible, he would find them--and thank them, personally. And he might not stop with just that.

In spite of the tape, Paul was able to fold the paper again and put it back in his pocket.