Biplane

“I’m not being silly. When was the last time you had to pay the going rates to have some work done on an airplane, George? You’re the world’s best mechanic, sir, but the world’s worst businessman. Come on, now. I have to get going before the sun’s down. I can’t leave till I pay you something. I won’t be able to look at myself in the morning if I walk out of here without paying you. Honest. And I really am sorry.”

A small shy voice from across the room. “Thirty, forty dollars be too much?”

I argue for a while and work him up to strike an agreement at fifty dollars, which leaves me just enough money to finish the trip across the country, but still feeling like a young and heartless overlord taking advantage of the kind and gentle people who dwell about him. And I feel at the sa

me time, helplessly, that I am committing a sacrilege. For George Carr and I love the same machines and the same joys. I can’t help but believe that in the short time we spent working together over the biplane we each earned a friend. What kind of person is it who offers blind money to a friend in return for an act of friendship?

But the others, who were not my friends, those sheer brisk businessmen repairing a tailwheel, had handsomely charged and been handsomely paid. It isn’t fair.

The biplane takes her throttle well, and lifts quickly into the wind. A last wing-rocking pass over the hangar and over two tiny figures on the grass, waving, and we point our nose again into the sun, swinging swiftly down out of its high arc toward certain collision with an immovable horizon.

* * *

How many collisions, sun? How many times have you dropped from high focused white heat down through the same cooling arc and fallen into the same valley that you will fall into this evening? And across the world, every moment a sunrise, and a new day beginning.

The sun moves another tenth of a degree toward the horizon, and as I fly, the valley that would have received it becomes a little lake, all golden, a mirror of a golden sky. And then a forest of trees moves in to stand pretender to the final resting place of the sun. If I could stand still in the air, I would be able to believe that the sun truly sinks into that valley, that lake, that forest. But the biplane dispels old illusions as quickly and as firmly as she creates new ones.

One that she is working on now: the engine will run forever. Listen: 1–3–5–2–4, over and again and again and again. If there is no faltering now, there will never be a faltering. I am strong and powerful and I shall spin my bright propeller until the sun itself is weary of rising and of setting.

* * *

The ground now is going dark, and the surface of the land is one smooth pool of shadow. Once again the biplane reminds me that she has no lights for flying or landing. Even the flashlight is out of reach, in the front cockpit.

Fine thing this could be. Spend your time daydreaming and wake to find yourself enveloped in night. Find a place to land, son, or there will be more repairs for you to make. At 1740 revolutions per minute, fifty-two gallons of gasoline will last five hours and six minutes. Which means, at the moment, that there are three hours and twenty-one minutes left for my brave engine. My five-cylindered companion and its faithful flashing blade will cease to turn at just the moment that the sun sets in San Francisco, and that it rises in Jakarta. Then, perhaps, twenty-five minutes of silent gliding and the end of the world. For the sky is the only world, quite literally the only world there is for an airplane and for the man who flies it. The other world with its flowers and its seas and its mountains and deserts is a doorway to dying for the craft and the man of the sky, unless they return very gently, very carefully, seeing where they touch.

It is time to land now, while I still can see. And let us see. Over the side, down through the deep wind, we have a few darkening pastures, a puzzlework forest of black pines, a little town. And look at that, an airport. Beacon going green . . . going white . . . going green . . . and a short double row of white pinpoints in the dark; runway lights. Come along, airplane, let us go down and sleep against the earth tonight.

Tomorrow will be a big day.

5

MORNING, SUN ONCE AGAIN, and a fresh green wind stirring across the wing that shelters me. A cool wind, and so fresh out of the forest that it is pure oxygen blowing. But warm in the sleeping bag and time for another moment of sleep. And I sleep to dream of the first morning that I ever flew in an airplane . . .

Morning, sun, and a fresh green wind. Softly softly it moves, hushing gently, curving smoothly, easily, about the light-metal body of a little airplane that waits still and quiet on the emerald grass.

I will learn, in time, of relative wind, of the boundary layer and of the thermal thicket at Mach Three. But now I do not know, and the wind is wind only, soft and cool. I wait by the airplane. I wait for a friend to come and teach me to fly.

The distant seashell hush of a small-town morning is in the air, whispering along with the early wind. You have missed much, city dweller, the words trace in smoky thought. Sleep in your concrete shell until the sun is high and forfeit the dawn. Forfeit cool wind and quiet seashell roar, forfeit carpet of tall wet grass and soft silence of the early wind. Forfeit cold airplane waiting and the footstepsound of a man who can teach you to fly.

“Morning.”

“Hi.”

“Get that tiedown over there, will you?” He doesn’t have to speak loudly to be heard. The morning wind is no opponent for the voice of a man.

The tiedown rope is damp and prickly, and when I pull it through the lift strut’s metal ring, the sound of it whirs and echoes in the morning. Symbolic, this. Loosing an airplane from the ground.

“We’ll just take it easy this morning. You can relax and get the feel of the airplane; straight and level, a few turns, look over the area a bit. . . .”

We are settled in the cockpit, and I learn how to fasten the safety belt over my lap. A bewildering array of dials on the dashboard; the quiet world is shut away outside a metal-doored cabin fitted to a metal-winged, rubber-tired entity with words cast into the design of the rudder pedals. Luscombe, the words say. They are wellworn words and impartial, but flair and excitement were cast into the mold. Luscombe. A kind of airplane. Taste that strange exciting word. Luscombe.

The man beside me has been making little motions among the switches on the bewildering panel. He does not seem to be confused.

“Clear.”

I have no idea what he means. Clear. Why should he say clear?

A knob is pulled, one knob chosen at this moment from many samelooking knobs. And there goes my quiet dawn.