Biplane

They grow smaller and smaller toward the mountains in the east, climbing now, swiftly . . . and smaller . . . goodbye, Pat . . . and smaller . . . tuck it in there, Lou-babe . . . and gone.

Two trails of smoke in the air, twisting now in the wind.

I look down in the dead quiet to see my civilian shoes standing on the damned concrete and I can’t see shoes or concrete very clearly and it’s just as damn well because even with the damn floodlights on, the night comes in and blurs things. Why did you have to come back, you guys? Why’d you follow me, then leave without me, you blockheads? You hoops couldn’t get me back in that damn squadron for all the damn tea in China.

Lots of times filed away, in that box, lots of incidents.

Shadows on the ground. Not long ones. Indicators only that the sun is passing me by. Inevitable, I guess. If the sun moved eighty miles an hour around the earth we’d have a pretty long day. Go on ahead, sun. About time for me to land, anyway. I can get one more hop in today; might make it to the Mississippi, with luck.

The clean clipped pastures of Oz have given way to a swampy land, and still lakes lying warm. The biplane pulls her shadow steadily along, driving it down the road to slowly slowly pass an occasional automobile. Thank heaven we’re still passing the cars. There’s the cutoff point between Fast and Slow. As long as you can pass the cars, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Ahead, what is a thin blue circle on the map becomes Demopolis, Alabama. Not far from a river (squiggly blue on the map), ground covered nearby with reeds. A great big giant airport, in the precise and geometrical center of Nowhere. Even the town of Demopolis is a long drive down the road. During the war, the airport must have trained some kind of aviator, but now it is nearly deserted, with one tiny gasoline pump, one solitary windsock, a weathered building nearby. Down again on the grass, airplane, and into the wind, to see what we shall find.

We shall find, strangely, a little crowd of people, appearing from hidden nowhere to see the biplane. She is an Event at Demopolis, where there is only one other airplane parked in sight, on fifty acres of concrete and two hundred acres of airport surrounding. Questions in the sun, while the fuel hoses softly into the tank.

“Where you from?”

“North Carolina.”

“Where you goin’?”

“Los Angeles.”

A pause. A look inside the cockpit, at the little black instrument panel. “That’s a long way.”

“It does seem a long way.” And I think of the gallons of gasoline I still have to pump into this tank, and of the hours yet to peer around the oilsmeared windscreen, of the sun at my back in the mornings to come, and in my eyes in the evenings. It does seem a long way to go.

Inside the flight office, and time enough for a bottle of eternal Pepsi-Cola. I know that it must be very quiet here, but the engine is still firing 1-3-5-2-4 in my ears. One more flight today. Stretch one long flight, fly till the sun goes down. Perhaps the Mississippi tonight. Good to stand up, to be able to walk around. Been in the cockpit a long time today. Be nice just to stretch out on the grass and go to sleep. One more hop and I’ll do it.

8

IT’S ALL BEGINNING TO FADE, and run together. I catch myself seeking to hurry. Trees growing back and crowding in about the road and as far as I can see there are treetops greening in the afternoon. There have been many hours spent this day in this cockpit, and I am tired.

Instantly, an astonished little voice. Tired? Tired of flying? Oho, so all it takes is a few hours of the wind and you’re tired, ready to quit. We see at last there is a difference between the pilots of then and of now. Not even halfway across and you’re breaking under the tiny strain of a few hours’ flying.

All right, that’s enough of that. You’ve not much evidence to prove that the early pilots didn’t get tired, and you’ll note that I had no thoughts of quitting, or even of slowing down. Not words, but action will decide whether I can stand with them. Only by living it can I discover flight.

So it is that many people travel by airplane, but few know what it is to fly. A passenger waiting in an airline terminal sees the airplanes through a twenty-foot sheet of glass, from an air-conditioned cube in which soft music plays. The sound of an engine is a muffled murmur outside, a momentary purring backgro

und for the music. In some terminals the reality is almost served to them on a silver tray, for their clothes can be whipped by the same propellerblast, that same sacred propellerblast, that whipped the coats of the great men of flight. And the airplane is right there, towering over them, that has flown many hours and will fly many more before it is replaced by one more modern. So often, though, the propellerblast is only a force that tugs at one’s lapels, an annoyance; and the big airplanes are barely noticed by passengers who are concerned only with finding the entry steps as quickly as possible, to escape the wind. And the airplane, with so much to offer those who will only take the time to see, does it go unseen? The curve of its wing, that has changed the history and the highway of mankind, is it unnoticed?

Well, what do you know. Not unnoticed. There in the wind, hands in pockets, hunched against the sunny cold, the first officer, three gold stripes on his sleeves, paying no attention to the passengers, pays full attention to his airplane. He sees that there are no leaks in the hydraulic lines, that everything is neat and in order inside the giant wheel wells of the wing. The wheels themselves, and the tires, all look good. On around the airplane he walks, looking at it, checking it, enjoying it without a trace of a smile.

The picture is complete. The passengers find their cushioned seats, and will soon be on their way in a machine that so many neither understand nor care to understand. The first officer and the captain do understand, and care for their airplane, and pay her every attention. So no one is forgotten; the airplane is happy, and the flight crew, and the passengers are ready to go their way.

Still, one airplane is two very separate places. In the passenger cabin, the fear that this may be the Last Flight, the awareness of air crashes in newspaper headlines, a certain tension in the narrow air when the throttles come forward, and a hoping that there will be one more flight safely completed before the next set of headlines are splashed across the newsstands. Step forward, through the door and onto the flight deck, and tension disappears as though there were no such thing. The captain in the left seat, the first officer in the right, the flight engineer at his board of solid instruments behind the first officer. All is smooth routine, for it has been lived many times over and again. Throttles come forward all under one hand, checks and crosschecks of engine instruments and of airspeed slowly increasing, a hand on the nosewheel steering shifts to the control column when the flight controls become effective before the airplane is off the ground. The voice of the first officer, as he reads the airspeed indicator: “V-one.” A little code that means, “Captain, we are committed to fly; there is not enough room left to stop the airplane without rolling off the end of the runway.”

“V-R.” And in the captain’s hand the control wheel comes back slightly, and the nosewheel lifts from the ground. A tiny pause, and mainwheels come free and the airplane is flying. A hand, the first officer’s, on the switch marked Landing Gear—Up, and a rumbling sheathing sound from the depths of the airplane as the gigantic heavy wheels, still spinning, move ponderously up into the wheel wells.

“V-two.” Or, “At this airspeed, we can lose an engine and still be able to climb.” The takeoff is marked by checkpoints saying, this is what we can do if we lose an engine now. Takeoff is the beginning, for the flight crew, of an interesting time with many little problems to solve. They are real problems, but they are not difficult, and they are the kind of problems that flight crews solve every hour, every flight. What is the estimated time of arrival over Ambrose intersection? Get a position report ready for Phoenix Center as we cross Winslow, give them a call on the number two radio, on frequency 126.7 megacycles. Transmit a report to the weather stations, telling the actual winds along our course and the turbulence and cloud tops and any icing along the way. Steer 236 degrees for a while, then add three degrees, settle on 239 degrees to correct for the winds.

Little problems, familiar ones, and friendly. Once in a while a bigger problem will come along, but that is part of the fun and keeps flying a fresh and a good way to make a living. If only the door to the passenger cabin from the flight deck weren’t such an effective door, the confidence and the interest that come from thousands of flying hours might filter back and destroy the tension and the fear that there exists.

As it is, even airline pilots are often uneasy when they must fly as passengers. Each pilot would feel a little more comfortable if he were at the controls and not sitting to look at a faceless door that doesn’t admit that there is anyone at all on the flight deck. Gone for pilots is the fun of flying as passenger, unknowing and fearful, unknowing and enjoying flight. There is always the creature within that is criticizing the way an airplane is being flown. Even sitting at the rear of a 110-passenger jetliner there is one lonely soul, during landing, that is saying wordlessly to the pilot, “Not now, you fool! We’re rounding out too soon! East it forward, ease it on in . . . that’s the way . . . too much, too much! Pull it back now! Flare out or you’ll . . .” and with a thump the wheels are rolling on the concrete. “Well, all right,” from the back of the passenger cabin, “but I could have had her down much more smoothly.”

* * *

The biplane hums loudly along with the sun now low ahead, a round circle of distorted oily brightness in the forward windscreen. Not much daylight left to fly. The baseball sun, thrown high, having paused at its noon top, comes whistling down through the horizon. Though the sky goes on being happily light, the ground is not taken in. The ground is a solemn keeper of very precise time, and when the sun is down it dutifully smothers its dwellers in darkness.