Ericka switched on her car radio. The station was repeating an audio documentary about the past century that had originally aired in January. There was mention of the “Bonus Army” march on Washington in 1932, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the gas shortage of 1973, and, more recently, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. A middle-aged man, Broderain Tyson III, spoke tearfully of having lost his wife in this act of domestic terrorism.
On May 10, 2001, Gail Hoyt passed away. She was survived, incredibly, by her roommate, Catherine Uhlmyer Gallagher Connelly, who went on to live another year and a half to the chelonian age of 109 (and a half).
Ericka put off doing what she had been charged to do. (The will had given custody of the ashes to Ericka. What she was supposed to do with them was not mentioned.) After all, rationalized Ericka, Gail hadn’t said just when she wanted her ashen remains sent eternally airborne. This was left to Ericka’s discretion.
And then…
On a clear blue morning in September, the opportunity for fulfilling Gail’s final request to the letter was lost in the horror and chaos of that epoch of national tragedy. It was an act that clearly belonged to the new century, not to the one now past — the century that all of Gail Hoyt’s Tri-century Centenarian friends claimed as their own for each of its 36,524 days.
Without the World Trade Center, what was to be done? Ericka could keep the urn with her always and always feel guilty, or she could do the only logical thing that she was sure would appease Gail’s hungry, restless, empyreal soul.
Ericka Prager had been to Africa, but she had yet to visit Asia.
She would climb Mount Everest.
AMERICAN DECAMERON SYNOPSES OF STORIES
1901 ARBOREAL IN TEXAS
A baby girl born on the eve of the Great Galveston Hurricane survives the storm, finds love and then rejection at the orphanage that takes her in, and starts along a life path that parallels the ascension of the much-storied American Century.
1902 VEHICULAR IN NEW YORK
A collision with a tree brings a young man to the door of a wealthy woman and her nubile but querulous daughter. The courteous young man and the discourteous daughter are apparently on more intimate terms than circumstances initially indicate.
1903 DEDUCTIVE IN MICHIGAN
The sudden elopement of their daughter has Mom and Dad scratching their heads, while Younger Brother, sniffing coercion and intrigue, springs into action in the guise of his idoclass="underline" Sherlock Holmes.
1904 IN MEMORIAM IN PENNSYLVANIA
The wife of the last surviving member of Haverford College’s Class of 1904 sees only a man in the final stages of senility, while within the sanctuary of his trapped thoughts, the man revisits his golden college days, when his whole life lay spread out before him.
1905 GENEALOGICAL IN RHODE ISLAND
The unofficial draft of the official record of the 1905 reunion of the Livergood Family Association of Warwick, Rhode Island…with copious commentary.
1906 PUNCH(ING) DRUNK IN PENNSYLVANIA
The painful relationship between two brothers whose lives took wildly different paths reaches a life-threatening climax that neither could have anticipated.
1907 PROBLEMATICALLY BETROTHED IN MASSACHUSETTS
On the eve of their daughter’s marriage, a troubling revelation about the groom-to-be causes Mother and Father to consider canceling the wedding, though Daughter doesn’t seem bothered in the least.
1908 VOLANT IN NORTH CAROLINA
An expedition to the sandy wilds of the North Carolina coast confirms what most had believed to be a hoax.
1909 MORBIFIC IN NEW YORK
A female reporter scores an interview with a notorious criminal in isolation and comes to sorely regret the trip.
1910 PORCINE IN NORTH CAROLINA
A boy who displayed piggish manners at the table is forced by his aunt to wear a papier mâché pig nose for a week, though his uncle and schoolteacher don’t agree that this is the best means of behavioral correction.
1911 EFFLORESCENT IN MAINE
A wealthy grandmother falls short when it comes to guiding her granddaughter easily through the garden of budding adolescence.
1912 TRISKAPHOBIC IN WISCONSIN
A would-be assassin winds up in the history books, but fate, a metal eyeglasses case, and the folded pages of an eighty-minute-long speech keep him from becoming a household name.
1913 CLAIRVOYANT IN NEW YORK
The three grown offspring of a woman being milked of the family fortune by enterprising charlatan-psychics set a trap to drive the scammers out of town.
1914 DEVOTIONAL IN ILLINOIS
An eighteen-year-old woman’s diary reveals the details of a life-changing summer upon the grounds of the New Piasa Chautauqua, a spiritual and educational retreat.
1915 HAVING A SINKING FEELING IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
An accidental reunion provides an opportunity for two couples, survivors of the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania, to speak of that which they hadn’t been able to talk about before.
1916 INCARCERATED IN OKLAHOMA
A convict reveals to his cellmate the reason for his imprisonment: the murder of his uncle, stopped in the course of trying to drown the convict’s mentally challenged brother as directed by the convict’s own father.
1917 PRINCIPLED IN MASSACHUSETTS
A short story writer on the staff of a popular magazine must decide whether to serve his country’s propaganda machine or be true to his own views about a war he doesn’t support.
1918 TREPID IN FRANCE
A World War I doughboy sees fear embodied in a terrified young private, for whom the only thing worse than death is the dread that can often precede it.
1919 VESTAL IN NORTH DAKOTA
A disturbed war veteran finds a tragically counterproductive way to protect womanhood from the depravities of man.
1920 FILIAL IN TENNESSEE
The deciding vote to grant universal suffrage to American women is cast by a young man who has always minded his mother.
1921 COMPOSED (?) IN OREGON
A nationally renown classical composer, commissioned to write a concerto for ukelele and orchestra, finds himself tormented both by the demons of his schizophrenic nature, and by the one from whom he inherited those very demons.
1922 CINEASTIC IN ARKANSAS
A minister learns that his young son has been sneaking off to the wicked picture show. The discovery has an unexpected effect on the relationship between the two.
1923 CONSPIRATORIAL IN NORTH CAROLINA
A jury in Greensboro must decide the fate of a woman who fired a shot at her husband’s lover. The case isn’t all that it seems, but then again, neither is the jury.
1924 DOUBLE FAULTED IN ILLINOIS AND D.C.
Two teenage boys die within weeks of one another, one the famous son of a sitting U.S. president, the other a soon-to-be famous victim of cold-blooded murder — each death inadvertently brought on by a love of the game of tennis.
1925 ACROPHILIC AND AGORAPHOBIC IN PENNSYLVANIA