The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
ONE
She'll be here today. I looked down from the cockpit, down through the wind and propeller-blast, down through half a mile of autumn to my rented hayfield, to the sugar chip that was my FLY-$3-FLY sign tied to the open gate. Both sides of the road around the sign were jammed with cars. There must have been around sixty of them, and a crowd to match, come to see the flying. She could be there this moment, just arrived! I smiled at that. Could be!
I throttled the engine to idle, pulled the nose of the fleet plane higher, let the wings stall. Then stomped full rudder, full left rudder, and jammed the control stick back.
The green earth, harvest corn and soybeans, farms and meadows calm at noon, the bottom dropped out and they exploded in the whirling blur of an airshow tailspin of what would look from the ground like an old flying-machine suddenly burst out of control.
The nose slammed down, the world spun into a color-streak tornado wrapping faster and faster around my goggles.
How long have I been missing you, dear soulmate, I thought, dear wise mystical lovely lady? Today at last, coincidence will bring you to Russell, Iowa, take you by the hand, lead you to that field of alfalfa hay, down there. You'll walk to the edge of the crowd, not quite knowing why, curious to watch a page of history still alive, bright paints spinning in the air.
The two-winger twisted down thuddering, kicking against me on the controls for a thousand feet, the tornado going steeper and tighter and louder every second.
Spin ... till ... Now.
I pushed the stick forward, came off the left and stood hard on the right rudder pedal. Blurs going tighter, quicker, one, two times around, then the spin quit and we dived straight down, fast as we could go.
She'll be here today, I thought, because she's alone, too. Because she's learned everything she wants to learn by herself. Because there's one person in the world that she's being led to meet, and that person right now is flying this airplane.
Tight turn, throttle back, switch off, propeller stopped . . . glide down, float soundlessly to land, coast to stop in front of the crowd.
I'll know her when I see her, I thought, bright anticipation, I'll know her at once.
Around the airplane were men and women, families with picnic baskets, kids on bikes, watching. Two dogs, near the kids.
I pulled myself up from the cockpit, looked at the people and liked them. Then I was listening to my own voice, curiously detached, and at the same time I was looking for her in the crowd.
"Russell from the air, folks! See it floating adrift on the fields of Iowa! Last chance before the snows! Come on up where only birds and angebfly. ..."
A few of the people laughed and applauded for somebody else to be first. Some faces suspicious, full of questions; some faces eager and adventurous; some pretty faces, too, amused, intrigued. But nowhere the face I was looking for.
"You're sure it's safe?" a woman said. "After what I saw, I'm not sure you're a safe driver!" Suntanned, clear brown eyes, she wanted to be sold on this.
"Safe as can be, ma'am, gentle as thistledown. The Fleet here's been flying since December twenty-fourth, nineteen twenty-eight-she's probably good for one more flight before she goes to pieces. ..."
She blinked at me, startled.
"Just kidding," I said. "She'll be flying when you and I are years gone, I guarantee you that!"
"I'd guess I've waited long enough," she said. "I've always wanted to fly in one of these. ..."
"You're going to love it."
I swung the propeller to start the engine, showed her the way to the front cockpit, helped her with the safety-belt.
Impossible, I thought. She's not here. Not-here is not possible!
Every day convinced today's-the-day, and every day wrong!
The first ride was followed by thirty other rides, before the sun went down. I flew and talked till everyone went home to supper and to their nights with each other and left me alone.
Alone.
Is she fiction?
Silence.
A minute before the water boiled, I took the pan from my campfire, tapped in hot-chocolate mix, stirred it with a hay-stem. Frowned, talked to myself.