Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

“We lost. Chop it up,” Adrian said.

  “Chop it up?” Pakenham said. “Jesus—can’t we give it to a museum or something?” Pakenham had tears in his eyes. Adrian kept forgetting how the men who worked on a plane fell in love with it.

  Although he felt nothing but rage, Adrian put his hand on Pakenham’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Boeing’s won it.”

  “With that goddamn swing wing? Christ, who did they pay off?” Pakenham roared.

  Back in his office, Adrian found the company’s attorney, Winthrop Standish, and a lawyer from one of Los Angeles’s major law firms waiting impatiently for him. The appointment was on his calendar. He apologized and braced himself for more bad news. Last year Lyndon Johnson had passed a civil rights act designed to banish racial discrimination from American life. Since there were virtually no blacks or Mexicans in the aircraft industry, Adrian had paid little attention to it. Almost as an afterthought, a congressman had suggested adding women to the list of those against whom it would be a crime to discriminate. There were quite a lot of women in the aircraft business—all working at lowly jobs.

  Adrian squirmed in his chair. The doleful expressions on the legal faces said everything in advance. “Ed here doesn’t agree with your inclination to fight these discrimination suits, Adrian,” Standish said.

  “Why not?” Adrian said testily. Sixteen women in the design department were suing Buchanan, claiming they had been denied meaningful promotion.

  “For one thing, Frank Buchanan says he’ll testify in their favor. He says he would have been happy to promote them if the company’s policy permitted it.”

  “If a jury hears that, it’ll be treble damages,” Ed intoned.

  “What about the sex-harassment case from Audrey Sinclair?” Adrian said. “That bitch used to work at the Honeycomb Club!”

  “Frank—and Buzz McCall—both admit to having sexual relations with her,” Standish said, wiping his brow. “Frank says he never approved of the Honeycomb Club.”

  “Never approved of it?” Adrian shouted. “He donated the land for it!”

  “Adrian,” Standish said. “That’s irrelevant. The point is what he’s saying now. What he might say to a jury. Can you imagine what the papers would do with that story? They’d dig up a half-dozen other women who worked there. We’d be smeared as the company who used government money to pay for sex orgies.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Ed intoned, “All the aircraft companies are getting hit with these suits.”

  But how many of them have a chief designer ready to testify against them? Adrian wondered, almost strangling on his rage. The lawyers departed to negotiate away his money. Adrian stared at his reflection in the window. A rumble. The prototype of the Thunderer, their new ground support plane, was coming in for a landing, his son-in-law Billy McCall at the controls.

  Crash, you son of a bitch, Adrian prayed. Crash. He wanted to take something away from Frank Buchanan. Something precious and irreplaceable.

  He would do the next best thing. He would deprive Frank of someone else who had been tolerated long enough. Once more Adrian lunged out of his office to stride down corridors to the remote cubicle where Buzz McCall sat plastered for most of each day.

  Voices. Billy McCall was in the office, having a drink with Buzz, talking about the air war in Vietnam. “It’s the goddamndest mess I’ve ever seen,” Billy said. “The fucking president picks out the targets. Or one of McNamara’s Pentagon assholes does it for him. Then everybody says it proves air power can’t do the job.”

  Adrian charged into the office. “Hello, Billy,” he said. “Buzz. I’ve got some bad news. We’ve lost the SST contract. Under the circumstances we’ve got to cut costs. You’re off the payroll at the end of the week.”

  “Adrian—Chrissake—gimme somethin’ to do. Still make a contribution,” Buzz mumbled.

  Adrian glanced at Billy. Loathing was all he saw in his eyes. “This is a business, not a goddamn rest home,” Adrian snarled.

  Other words leaped to his lips. He killed the only woman I ever loved. I’ve been waiting twenty-five years to do this. But he did not speak them.

  Back in his office, Adrian struggled for self-control. He could fire Frank Buchanan too. But that would be a mistake. Only time, his ally in the past, time and forethought, could bring him revenge on the scale he sought. In the meantime he had to remember who he was, he had to cope with the hatred in other ways.

  His first target, now that Buzz was gone for good, was Billy McCall. He had to get that defiant bastard under control. He wanted to break him, not only because it would wound Frank Buchanan. He wanted to deliver the empty shell to Victoria so she could see for herself what a hoax she had married.

  A month later, Cliff Morris came booming into Los Angeles with the proposal for the new transport. There would be a pro forma competition with Douglas and Convair but Buchanan was the guaranteed winner. It was going to be the biggest plane in the world, able to carry an entire battalion of troops into combat. The contract was now worth three billion dollars—a nice consolation for the loss of the SST and the Warrior.

  There were several flies in this soothing ointment. The plane would have to be built in Louisiana to keep the new head of the House Armed Services Committee happy—and it would be a fixed-cost contract, a TPP, they were now calling it—a Total Performance Package. The potential overruns—no one had ever built a plane of this size before—were scary.

  “Who do you think should be the project manager?” Adrian said.

  “Billy McCall,” Cliff said.

  “What does he know about running something this big?” Adrian snorted.

  “Not a damn thing,” Cliff said. “But we’ve got Mike Shannon to cover our asses in Washington. He says half the senators and two-thirds of the congressmen on the armed services committees think this TPP idea is idiotic. We can get back most of an overrun on appeal.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s a good chance to see what kind of a manager Billy is. If he can’t hack it now’s the time to find out.”

  Adrian suddenly read all the meanings in Cliff’s matter-of-fact voice. Here was the ally he was looking for, someone who hated Billy McCall even more than he did.

  “I think you’re right,” Adrian said. “Now’s the time.”

  TICKET TO PARADISE

  After calling the ground controller three times on the wrong frequencies, I find the right one. Billy’s eyes roll. We taxi onto the tarmac. I set the altimeter wrong. Billy is yelling at me not to use brakes and power at the same time. When I search his face, trying to understand the source of his rage, he tells me to get my eyes back on the taxiway where they belong.

  At run-up I get the tower frequency wrong. Finally we are set for takeoff, with a plane just behind us, which rattles me even more than usual. The wheels lift off before I realize it and I am pulling the nose up into a stall. Billy yells at me to get into a lower nose position, to pick up speed as lift increases. Why can’t I remember any of these things?

  Suddenly we are airborne in a bell jar full of haze. Water droplets make the air glossy, like taffy, iridescent in places. The airport, the runway, the ground disappear. I think it’s marvelous and ask Billy if he thinks so too. “When are you going to make your turn?” Billy yells.

  A quick look for oncoming traffic in the haze, then I bank left, still climbing toward 2,000 feet. I shoot through the ceiling because I haven’t changed the plane’s attitude and reduced the power at the right time. Worse, I am supposed to be flying a rectangle around the airport and already I’m arcing far out to sea.

  “Why are we out here? Where are we going?” Billy yells. “Why are we still climbing?”

  “I don’t know!” I scream back.

  “Do something. Don’t just sit there. Do something!”

  I cut the throttle back and bank sharply toward the airport again. It’s a terrible bank. The turn indicator ball tumbles Jar left. Billy points to it and yells “Jesus Christ!”r />
  “We’re supposed to be flying a base leg at right angles!” Billy shouts. “Are we too high or too low to make the runway?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, beginning to sob.

  “Do something!” Billy shouts.

  I throttle back and we drop dead toward the telephone wires on the west side of the airport. Too low. I gun the throttle and now we are too high. I see the aim point but need flaps to steepen our descent.

  I look at the ground, trying to estimate my airspeed. We seem to be going like mad. “How many times do I have to tell you to look at the instruments, not the ground?” Billy says.

  I come in too hard and too fast and worst of all not on the center line but at an angle. “Fix it!” Billy says.

  I try pedaling: right rudder, left rudder. Nothing happens.

  “Don’t just jiggle the rudder. Use it. Get us back on that center line with our nose straight! Now! Fast! Fast!”

  The runway looms under us at ten feet. I try to level out the nose. He yanks the yoke back hard and settles us in. “Victoria,” he says. “This plane is not designed to land on its nose. You were diving at five feet off the ground!”

  Sarah Chapman Morris sat on the sunny deck of Victoria Van Ness McCall’s futuristic house on a ridge in Topanga Canyon, reading the story of Billy McCall’s attempts to teach Victoria how to fly. It was a disaster from the first lesson to the last one. Victoria had a poetic mind. Flight to her was an experience in beauty. The plane was a creature as mysterious as an animal or a bird. She simply could not grasp the hard technical details of conquering the sky. She either ignored the dials or chased them obsessively when Billy yelled at her to watch them. She made major changes in pitch at low altitudes, where life or death required delicacy. She admired clouds when she should have been looking for other planes in her approach pattern.

  She had written it all down with unsparing accuracy, portraying herself as a hopeless pilot. She wanted Billy to read it and laugh and say something cheerful and kind. She was showing it to Sarah because she needed a confidante and Sarah was always there, smiling sadly, eager to listen to every awful thing Billy was doing to destroy his marriage.

  A doe bounded out of the trees and dashed across the clearing. A moment later she was followed by a buck. Somewhere in the nearby woods the buck caught up to his quarry. Sarah and Victoria listened to the thrashing and panting. Sarah saw the whole thing in the theater of her mind, the rutting, the submission.

  Did Victoria see it too? Of course. She was Sarah. Sarah was Victoria. She got up and took one of the tranquilizers Dr. Kirk Willoughby had prescribed for her. “I hate my mind!” she said to Sarah. “Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Of course. All women do,” Sarah said.

  Victoria told Sarah she did not know where her husband was. He might be flying over China Lake, the Navy testing center, in the Thunderer or lying on the sand at Malibu with some acid-dropping teenager. She did not know and she did not want to know.

  She could call Frank Buchanan and ask him if Billy was at China Lake, turning over the Thunderer to the Navy for testing. If Frank said no, she would burst into tears. If he said yes she would burst into tears anyway.

  Victoria showed Sarah a list of the things she hated Billy to do. She had written them down yesterday. She was thinking of showing it to him. She was even thinking of having it printed in headline-size type and posting it on the wall of their bedroom.

  1. Fly without me.

  2. Go to Malibu without me.

  3. Go to Laguna Beach without me.

  4. Insult Cliff Morris.

  5. Criticize Sarah Morris.

  6. Talk to any woman under thirty.

  7. Read the newspapers aloud.

  8. Look at the news on TV

  9. Say what the fuck.

  10. Say why the fuck.

  11. Say how the fuck.

  12. Drink in front of me.

  13. Drink without me.

  14. Talk about World War II or Korea.

  15. Talk about Vietnam.

  16. Ask me if I believe in God.

  17. Ask me why I don’t really like to fuck.

  18. Tell me I don’t really like to fuck.

  19. Tell me why some women are better fuckers.

  Sarah Morris said it was a very good list. She told Victoria a better way to handle Billy. She had to find something to do outside the house, something that made her look independent without being independent. Because Billy would not tolerate real independence. Sarah urged Victoria to become cochair-person of one of her committees. There was scarcely a volunteer activity in Los Angeles Sarah did not either run from behind the scenes or chair or both. She was always raising money for starving Chicano artists or scholarships for ghetto blacks or a new campaign to eliminate smog. Sarah told Victoria being a com-mitteeperson was very good preparation for becoming an executive’s wife. After all, Billy was bound to become a Buchanan Aircraft executive. He might even become president.

  Victoria frowned. Lately she had begun to dislike the way Sarah pronounced Billy’s name. Sarah knew she disliked it but she could not stop pronouncing it that way, with a throb, a thud of hatred in it. “I heard Billy made some wonderful suggestions to improve the Thunderer,” Sarah said.

  Billy, Victoria thought. “Oh? Who told you that?”

  “I think it was Frank Buchanan. I was talking to him at the benefit for the Downtown Arts. He’s such a sweet man. He adores Billy.”

  Billy. Victoria thought.

  “But then we all do. We’re so lucky to have gotten him away from the Air Force. It’s such a shame about the SST, though. Cliff is just crushed by it. He so looked forward to working with Billy on it. They would have made a perfect team.”

  Billy, Victoria thought.

  Sarah urged Victoria to join the Committee to Rebuild Watts. A mob had burned down most of this black Los Angeles slum earlier in the year. She said Cliff was going to chair a subcommittee to get more blacks into the aircraft industry workforce. Maybe Billy could join him. That would give him and Victoria something to share, outside the house.

  Billy, Victoria thought.

  “Your father’s going to be honorary chairman. I was talking to him the other day and he complained he never sees you. This would be a good excuse. He wishes he saw more of you—and Billy.”

  Billy, Victoria thought.

  Sarah could see Victoria trying to understand what she disliked in the way Sarah said Billy. Victoria shook her head. “I don’t want that sort of help. Especially not from him.”

  “That’s not being realistic, Victoria,” Sarah said. “He wants to help you—and Billy in every way he can.”

  Victoria sat there, trying to understand why she was suddenly unable to stand Sarah. Was it because of the way she said Billy or was it because she was English? That lovely vanilla accent carried Victoria back to Oxford, to days when she sat around talking about ways to save the world. Now all she thought about was how to save her marriage.

  The telephone rang. It was Frank Buchanan. “I have some more books for your mother,” he said. “Can I drop them off some time today?”

  “I don’t think she reads them, Frank,” Victoria said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just having them in the house, in her room, could make a difference. A book releases emanations. Not as much as a mind but—”

  Frank’s mysticism was lost on Victoria. She had her father’s cold objectivity toward life on matters that did not involve Billy McCall.

  “I know it sounds foolish. But it means a great deal to me. I’m very fond of your mother,” Frank said.

  Sarah had told Victoria that Amanda and Frank had been lovers. She had revealed almost all Buchanan’s secrets, carefully portraying Adrian as a much-misunderstood man, hoping it would eventually reach his ears.

  “How’s Billy?” Frank asked.

  “Fine. He’s up at China Lake today, isn’t he? Delivering the Thunderer?”

  “I don’t know. I’m spending my
days and nights on another plane. A monster transport. I hope it won’t look like a monster, of course.”

  “It won’t, I’m sure of that,” Victoria said.

  “I’ll drop off the books on the way home.”

  Sarah was in the kitchen fixing lunch. Victoria was about to help her when the phone rang again. “Is Billy there?” her father said.

  Billy, Victoria thought. He pronounced it the same way. “No,” she said.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “I thought he was at China Lake. Delivering the Thunderer.”

  “He did that last week.”

  Victoria struggled to stifle an impulse to weep. This was the third time Adrian had called in search of Billy. Was he trying to tell her something? Or find out something?

  “I just thought you and he might want to hear some good news,” Adrian said. “We’ve gotten a three-billion-dollar contract to build the world’s biggest transport for the Air Force. I’m going to make Billy the project manager. He’ll be perfect for the job. He’ll be able to handle the usual maddening interference from the Pentagon. Cliff Morris will keep Congress at bay. He and Billy will work together beautifully. Do you think he’ll do it?”

  Sarah, listening on the extension in the kitchen, heard her weeks of patient persuasion pay off. Victoria’s resistance dissolved. “I hope so. It’s exactly what he needs. More responsibility.”

  “Ah. I’ve finally done something right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ever since you married, I’ve felt you regarded me as the scum of the earth.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Maybe it’s just neurosis at work.”

  “I’m grateful, Daddy. I really am.”

  “I’m not doing it for that reason. But it’s nice to hear.”

  “How’s mother?”

  “About the same. Wondering aloud why you don’t give her a grandchild.”

  “Maybe now we will. If Billy isn’t flying any more, there goes his last excuse.”

  “That thought occurred to me.”

  “You Machievelli.”

  “Disraeli. I think of myself as Disraeli. His Victoria was difficult too, at times.”