Last night I made a spectacular mistake, to say what I said, to let her go. Is it too late to ask her to come back?
Five minutes later, a climb on the end of the tow-rope, a dive to loosen the tension, and I pull the handle for an easy release.
There is one good thermal near the airport, and it is thick with sailplanes. First plane off finds the lift, and the rest of us like lemmings follow in a great swirl of sleek white fiberglass, a gaggle of gliders going round and round, higher and higher in the warm rising air.
Careful, Richard, look around! Enter the thermal at the bottom, circling same direction as everyone else. A midair collision, some like to mutter, it can spoil your whole day.
All the flying I've done, still I'm nervous, jumpy as a duck when I slide into this small airspace with so many airplanes.
Tight turn. Fast turn. Catch the core of the lift and it's an express elevator on the way to the top . . . five hundred feet per minute, seven hundred, nine hundred. Not Arizona's best thermal, but good enough, for the first lift of the day.
Would she answer the phone if I called, and if she did, what would I say?
Leslie, I am terribly sorry?
Let's go back to where we were?
I've said those before, I've used up I'm-sorry.
Across the thermal from me is an AS-W 19, mirror of my own sailplane, race-number CZ painted on the wing and tail Below, three more gliders enter the thermal together; above, a dozen at least. Looking up is looking up through the eye of a cyclone just hit an airplane factory, a swirling dream of noiseless flying sculpture.
Did I want to drive her away? Was Fve-got-to-be-alone a pill I knew she'd never swallow; was it a coward's way of quitting? Is it possible for soulmates to meet and then to separate forever?
Very gradually I climb past CZ in the thermal, a sign I'm flying well, tired as I am. Our race is a 145-mile triangle above the ferocious broil of desolation that is the desert. It looks like death on the ground, but there's enough lift to hold a sailplane up all afternoon long, at high speed.
Look sharp, Richard! And careful. Next above me is a Libelle, then a Cirrus and a Schweizer 1-35. I can outcllmb the Schweizer, maybe the Cirrus, not the Libelle. Before long we'll be at the top, get headed on-course, it won't be quite so tight.
Then what? Th
e rest of my life alone, racing
sailplanes? How does an expert retreater run away from being without the woman he was born to meet? Leslie! I'm so sorry!
No warning, a sun-bright strobe fired in my eyes. A flash, a spray of flying plexiglass, the cockpit juddering sideways, windblast in my face, bright red light.
I'm slammed against the shoulder harness, then smashed into the seat, G-force trying to throw me out, then trying to crush me flat.
The cockpit tumbles like shrapnel flying. Time creeps.
Richard, you've been hit! And there is not much left of your airplane and if you want to live you've got to kick out of this thing and pull a ripcord.
I feel wreckage lurch, tear apart, tumble faster.
In a red haze there's sky whirling to rocks whirling to sky. Pieces of wing in a ragged torn cloud around me. Sky-ground-sky. . . . Can't seem to get my hands to the safety-belt release.
Not much improved with experience. Slow to evaluate problem.
Oh, hi, pal! Give me a hand, will you. They're gonna say I was pinned in the wreckage. I'm not pinned. It's just the G's are so heavy . . . I can't . . .
Says "can't" when means "won't." / will . . . pull that release. . . .
Listens to observer in last seconds. Curious end to lifetime.
THERE!
The instant I pull the release, the cockpit is gone, I grab the parachute ripcord, pull it, roll over to see the ground before the parachute opens . . . too late. Wook, I am sorry. So ...
black