Biplane

by Richard Bach

  A burst of power and the pulsing wind beating back upon me for a moment, then left rudder to swing around near the low-octane pump and bring the red-knobbed mixture lever forward to Idle-Cutoff. The engine runs on for four seconds, then all at once it goes quiet and I can hear the pistons clanking softly and the propeller coasting to a stop.

  Switch off.

  Fuel off.

  Seat belt unfastened, parachute straps unbuckled, gloves off, helmet off and feel the gentle soft wind that doesn’t come from a propeller. Still sunlight. Quiet. I can have only a nodding acquaintance with the quiet, for the engine roars on in my ears; the ghost engine, the spirit of a thing that one might be tempted to call dead.

  The little crowd walks over as I begin to refill the tank. They are awed a bit and look silently at the old airplane. Flight students, and they do not see many old airplanes flying. Are they aware of the biplane as a heritage, or just as a strange relic that has come wandering through? It would be good to know, but one can’t ask a stranger group are you aware of this as a heritage. One can’t ask that sort of a thing until one gets to know them, until they are strangers no more.

  “Hi. Any place around here to get a sandwich?”

  7

  THE BIPLANE FLIES on, following the road west to incidents, to lessons. From small incidents, like the filling of a gasoline tank; from bigger incidents, like the spinning crash on the runway at Crescent Beach, something to learn and to apply to knowledge and future action.

  The land changes subtly, the pines cut back for more and more farms to lay themselves green on the earth, under the sun. Like the Land of Oz it is becoming, and the road I follow might as well be of yellow brick. So very neat is the land, even from a short hundred feet in the air. There isn’t a grassblade out of place in the pastures, even the cows are standing over X’s chalked on the ground by a careful director. Places, everyone! Places! Action! Roll ’em!

  I feel like an intruder over the set, and the engine noise will ruin the sound man’s tapes. Somewhere around here, under a giant oak, must be a sound man and a boom mike. But wait. We’re part of the show. And right on cue:

  Enter BIPLANE, flying east to west. Sound of BIPLANE rises from TINY WHISPER to ROAR overhead to fade into WHISPER in west. CUT to cockpit of BIPLANE. Camera holds for moment on COWS, pans forward along YELLOW BRICK ROAD, pans out to FARMHOUSE. Note to Property Manager: FARMHOUSE should symbolize EMERALD CITY; symbolize neatness, spotlessness, everything in working order and moving peacefully through time, should suggest that the over-rainbow magic city often takes forms that we know best, so we cannot see the magic existing.

  CUT to GIANT OAK, from whose shade we watch BIPLANE approaching again east to west, passing LOUD and ROARING through leaves overhead, dwindling and finally disappearing in the west. Dissolve to black and green letters: THE END.

  Good take! Print it!

  Nice that it went so well, but for the biplane, the show is still going on, and on and on. Beneath us, hundreds of directors working hidden, from canvas-backed chairs. Places! Action! BIPLANE. FARMHOUSE. EMERALD CITY. And through it all, YELLOW BRICK ROAD. This is the South in spring, 1929. Every once in a while, some children by their Saturday stream, waving, and worthy of a wave back, from a hundred feet away. And gone. People living down there. I can see them living and fishing and swimming and plowing and starting fires that lift blue smoke up through chimneys. Smoke that curls and drifts in the wind and tells me that the headwind has come now down to the ground. Not a strong wind, but enough to keep us from moving quite so quickly as we would across the earth. And the slower we fly, the more we see the earth and appreciate it. An airplane, especially an antique airplane, cannot hurry. It has only one working speed. For the biplane, I set the throttle in level flight until the tachometer needle steadies at 1725 revolutions. A good comfortable speed where the engine sounds right, neither loafing nor straining; 1725 becomes a good sound, a right sound in the wind. In still air, 1725 gives something like ninety-five miles per hour; in the headwind this noon we move eighty miles per hour across the ground. We definitely will not startle the country with a new speed record on this crossing.

  But we do startle ourselves with a sight of a beautiful land wheeling below. The South is supposed to be an ugly place, and on occasion, on the ground, I have seen it ugly, twisted and roiled in blind dull hatred. But from the air one cannot see hatred roiling and the South is a place with gentleness and beauty filled.

  Airplanes offer pilots a balance for evil, and more than one pilot, more than ten, keeps in his mind an index of places he has seen from the air that are good. In my own file is a valley in the hills bordering the sea at Laguna Beach, California. And that valley just to the east of Salt Lake City, Utah, on the other side of the big mountain there, where down the valley a river flows and in summer it is Shangri-La perfected. There is a good place in eastern Pennsylvania, that happens even to have a little grass airstrip near it. An airline pilot told me of a place he discovered in Arizona. He had seen it from thirty-two thousand feet on the New York-Los Angeles run, had studied it on every flight since his discovery. He said it would be a good place to go, when he retires, to be alone and quiet.

  There is a plain in northern France, a hill in Germany, a beach of sand like sugar on the Gulf side of Florida. And today I add another to my file: the farms and the pastures of central Alabama. If a need comes for escape, these are waiting.

  Places that are good. And, too, times that are good. Not have been good. Are good. For they remain, and I can savor their goodness by simply opening the file and picking one out and refeeling the thought that came from the incident. Not the incident that matters, but the learning. Not the symbol, but its meaning. Not the outside, but what happens within.

  Pick a card, any card. Here is one; at the top it is marked Pat and Lou—El Toro. An incident.

  I had been away from the 141st Tactical Fighter Squadron for a year, moved to the other side of the country from them. And one day a phone call. Patrick Flanagan and Lou Pisane, Crosscountry Aces of the New Jersey Air National Guard, scoring again. This time they were on a 2600-mile training mission, and had landed their F-86’s at El Toro Marine Air Station, thirty miles from me.

  The card is written and filled with old days renewed, of the time Pat managed with a clumsy old F-84F to outfox a Royal Canadian Air Force Mark VI Sabre in the skies of France, to track him for a moment in his gunsight. A mock battle, of course, yet the Mark VI was an airplane built for air combat and the 84 was not. But Pat is a skillful pilot, and with just a little embellishing here and there and with a polished gift of the dramatic and the funny, why, the poor Maple Leaf didn’t have a chance from the beginning.

  And Lou; tall cool Lou, who taught me something about patience as I flew his wing one day and he stalked and finally caught a French fighter plane, to make a roaring blasting pass a yard off his wingtip to remind him that one must look around or he will be caught even by old F-84’s. Lou, as formal and polite and absolutely proper as though he had been raised on etiquette from the moment he could listen; till you got to know him and he came alive, cool still, but a sharp logical mind that wouldn’t stand for nonsense even from the commanding general. “Aw c’mon, General. You know and I know we don’t read every single item on that checklist in the Preflight. If you want us to carry the checklist around in our hand while we make the Preflight, just say so. But don’t try to give us that stuff about reading every single item on there every single time we go out to fly.”

  Filed under Times that are Good, to see them again and to drive them back to the flight line at El Toro. And there, surrounded by Marine airplanes, two silver Air Guard F-86’s parked together.

  “Kinda sad to leave the 84’s in France, but the 86 is a good airplane too, and before long the squadron will be getting 105’s. Don’t you wish you were back with us?”

  “Back with you characters? I had to go clear across the country to get away from you guys, and now you follow me out here, eve
n. Good old 86. Mind if I look in your cockpit, Lou, if I promise not to touch any switches? Boy, there aren’t enough wild horses left in this world to drive me back into the 141st Tac Fighter Squadron.”

  Look at that cockpit. Everything there, the way it used to be: armament panel, throttle, speed brake switch, flight instruments, the long-handled landing-gear switch, circuit breaker panels, the pins in the ejection seat. You guys never learn anything, a dangerous bunch to be with. “Lou, you left your checklist up here! How can you run a proper Preflight inspection without that checklist in your hand?” Never obey regulations. A hopeless bunch.

  And the time is come for a last handshake in the dusk as they climb up the kicksteps to their cockpits, and strap in. The strange uncomfortable feeling that I’ve got to hurry to get into my airplane, or they’ll take off without me. Where’s my airplane? I’ve never had to stay on the ground while the rest of my flight makes ready to go. His helmet and oxygen mask fitted now, Pat talks for a moment on the radio, copying the instrument departure clearance in his high cockpit, reading it back to the control tower. Hey, Pat! Remember the time when Roj Schmitt was on your wing, his first time up in the weather? And he said, “Don’t worry about me, just fly it like you’re alone . . . .” Do you remember, Pat?

  Hey, Lou! Remember back in Chaumont when you bet that the shock of a parachute landing was no more than you’d get if you jumped out a two-story window? Remember?

  And Pat draws the start-engine circle in the air to Lou, and, darn it, he draws it to me too, standing on the ramp, in a civilian business suit. Why did you do that, Flanagan? You hoop, you darn silly hoop. And FOOM-FOOM! the two engines burst together into life, the rising whine of the compressors sucking air in the intake and the rumble of the combustion chambers turning it into fire and pushing it through the turbine. I can shout now and they’ll only see my mouth moving. There the wheels start to roll, and they turn to taxi by me on the way to the runway. Hidden dust sprays out of the concrete where the jetblast catches it in a scorching storm. Pat taxies by, way up in his cockpit, looking down at me, tossing a little salute. See ya, Pat. See ya round, boy. His wingtip grazes my suit coat, the high-swept rudder sails proudly by. And twenty feet behind comes Lou, breaking regulations. You’re supposed to have a hundred feet separation when you taxi, Pisane. Think you’re at some kind of an air show, ace?

  A salute from the cockpit, returned from a civilian in a business suit, standing on the concrete. Give the general hell for me, Lou. Not that you wouldn’t, anyway.

  And they’re gone down the taxiway, as the blue taxilights come on in the evening. Way down at the end of the runway there’s a thunderstorm of two airplanes running up their engines. What are you doing right now, Pat? Emergency fuel check? Stomp on those brakes, run the throttle up to 95 percent rpm, reach over and throw in the emergency fuel switch, let the rpm stabilize, run it on up to full throttle, cut the power back and switch over to normal fuel. And Lou? Checks done, run her up to 98 percent, hold the brakes, nod across to Pat when you’re ready to roll.

  The tiny little fighters at the end of the runway begin to move, trailing thin black smoke of full throttle. Together they grow, lift from the ground, together gear doors drop open, landing gear sucks back into two smooth fuselages, gear doors close, stiff and robotlike. Faster and faster they move, flying low in the air.

  Locked in tight formation, they’re suddenly fire-eating arrows overhead, trying to blast the air loose with sheer sound and fury, and send it in avalanche to the runway. For one long proud moment they’re in side silhouette, and from the ground I can see the dots of the pilots in the cockpits. Then I see wings only, and rudders and elevators and two trails of thin black smoke.

  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.