Jake Wolff

So I’m working on a novel set in early 2003, and I’m stuck on this one scene. I’ve had this thing baking forever but it keeps coming out like a sugar cookie—way too plain. It needs frosting.

I go to the facts: What was happening in the world at that moment? Now I’m surfing the web. And I remember, duh, that the Space Shuttle Columbia blew up on February 1st of that year, killing all seven crewmembers. I think: Perfect! I think: That will set the mood for my scene.

So now I open the scene with a description of Columbia reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Everything seems normal. Then the shuttle starts to shake. Then the alarms go off. Then the fire starts, and the temperature rises, and the astronauts look at each with depth, because they know what’s happening. And at this point I’m doing some serious, look-at-me-go Creative Writing. I pretty much have the Pulitzer wrapped up.

I finish the three paragraphs on the Columbia disaster just as the reminder on my phone goes off. The reminder says: Hey, moron, you have to teach a class called Fiction Technique in twenty minutes so why aren’t you in the car already?

I get in the car. I turn on the radio. It’s loud. My wife, who last used the car, blasts NPR like it’s heavy metal. I lower the volume but keep the station. Terry Gross is interviewing some guy. He’s an astronaut. Weird coincidence!

Terry says something like: Have any of your crewmembers ever died on the space station?

And this astronaut, I don’t know his name, I’m joining the interview halfway, says something like: No, but of course I was already an astronaut when the Columbia exploded.

And then he starts to cry.

He’s crying but talking through it. He says: I’m guilty for what happened. He says: I felt in my gut that something was wrong but I didn’t speak up about it. He says: Terry, I helped kill those guys.

And now I’m crying!

I get to campus, and I find a parking spot eventually, and I teach this fiction workshop—it’s Halloween and half the class doesn’t show—and then I drive home and I turn on the computer and I delete every last word about the Columbia explosion because I don’t care whether it happened ten years ago or ten thousand, if I’m going to write about the deaths of seven human beings for no other reason than cookie frosting and if I’m going to write those seven deaths without really feeling them, deep in my heart, like that poor guy on the radio, like it happened yesterday and I’m to blame for all of it, well, then I can pretty much go fuck myself.

Jake Wolff‘s work has appeared in journals such as One Story, Bellevue Literary Review, and Tin House. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he’s currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Florida State University.  Visit him on the web at www.jakewolff.com.