by Luke Davies
A limousine will leave first. Behind its tinted windows will sit a skinny old man, of indistinct features, hired for the occasion. He has been instructed to sink into his scarf and slant the fedora hat down over his face. The press will follow the limousine on a tour of London.
I will then leave with you, Jack, and a couple of the Mormons in a nondescript car. We will drive to Fenwick Airfield. To the Hawker.
All this … migration into newness: I’m beside myself, I can’t think straight. It’s been so many years. The Mormons are merely men of the earth. They don’t understand a single thing. But Jack Real is a prince.
And I’m a god, I’m the God of Air.
In Texas as a boy I had known solitude in the woods with my tin toys. Then I grew into that god. Airplanes allowed me to take my solitude into the air, into space. At night I tried to masturbate, but often could not focus on the image that would make me come. This was in the cockpit, mind you!
I’m talking not just of the rush of the wind, but of speed itself. I’ve flown in open biplanes; I’ve flown in the H-1, a simple streak of steel. In twenty-seven years the new century will begin, the blink of an eye. But I’m talking of something entirely different.
Twenty-seven years back in the other direction, in 1946, in the XF-11, lazily smashing through trees in the streets of Beverly Hills, I was struck by the unreality of that view unfolding. When the windshield shatters you realize how fast you are going. Then I caught fire.
Then, with the medicine, I became eternally renewed, I am my own garden, the sun bears down, a single leaf divides the false and true, such fineness is at work in the world, I am blossoming, I am branching. I understood everything when I understood that the reason there is Something rather than Nothing is that Nothing is unstable. Despite all the zeroes to which all things gravitate.
On the ground I’m a little disorganized and my thoughts tend to wander. But in the plane I’ll be a plane.
Jack, I was the greatest aviator the world had ever known. This is going to work. I am going to fly. God knows I may even stick to that regime, taper off the drugs, starting tomorrow, and fly as regularly as I please. As far as I want. I’ve made three thousand four hundred and seventy-three flights in my life so far. In the first five months of 1943 alone I took off and landed the Sikorsky amphibian two hundred and thirty-one times on Lake Mead, though the last one was not so good, what with death and destruction and drowning all around me, and Dick Felt dead and Ceco Cline sliced up and drowned.
But overall, my ratio of successes to disasters is exemplary.
I am getting a little worked up. I feel like a child, but in a good way. I need the medicine box one more time before we get this thing begun. Let’s call it cocktail time: the Ritalin will blend with the Valium (anxiety) and Empirin (pain) to create just the right level of alertness for the flight. This is not to detract in any way from the new Cary Grant reduction plan, which is imminent. This is merely to deal with what needs to be dealt with today. So I open the box. And, because it’s a Very Special Day, I treat myself to a Brand New Syringe.
Where was I? That’s better. I’m going to fly, again. I’m so clean even the atoms can’t get hold of me.
I was telling you the secret of the memos, Jack. But I have another secret now. I’m writing less and less of them these days. I have a feeling they may not be so important after all. In the grand scheme, if you know what I mean. I’m beginning to relax.
Where was I? That’s better. That’s really something. I feel I’ve got the balances just right. I imagined somewhere perfect. I imagined a place I had once been, before this atmosphere blew in on the winds, before this oppression descended on the earth like a fog. I imagined the clarity of a garden, one bright morning. My breathing was very steady. Money had not been invented. I mean, acquisition, hunger. The frogs dropped softly on the lily pads. My breathing was very steady.
I remembered this place, Jack. I was sure I had been there once.
I was dreaming I was watching television. Perhaps I injected some Empirin or morphine. I can live on oxygen alone. I was remembering somewhere perfect, where the frogs dropped softly on the lily pads, where my breathing was steady and crisp. In that place I was very happy. Where was I now? I was getting the sequences in order. At last I have remembered everything.
*
When I was a boy there was only life, and all the air thick with butterflies. Life! The maid was in the kitchen. I could smell the cookies baking. It was summer in Texas. I was everything there was.
The bottom rung of the oil derrick was a monkey bar. I hung from my legs with Dudley Sharp while our fathers stood talking with the surveyors. Our arms dangled, tingling. The ground rocked back and forth. The horizon swayed in the distance, upside down.
Once upon a time I gallivanted with William Randolph Hearst Jr. and the starlets who jostled and clustered. His father kept a zoo at the ranch at San Simeon. It was like the beginning of the world. On crisp Californian nights when the fog rolled in from the sea and Jean Harlow abandoned herself to pleasure, or to mine at least, our lovemaking was punctuated by the roaring of lions.
I flew into the dawn with Katharine Hepburn, to New York, great city of the century. From far off it rose like a castle on the plain, its impregnable towers in grand silhouette; it is still there today, growing larger and lovelier.
I walked arm in arm with Jane Greer along Ocean Park. She held my hand. We rode the fairground rides. I pitched the baseball. My face was smeared with candy floss. She laughed at me and dabbed my cheek. And kissed me somewhat tenderly.
Twenty-seven years ago, lazily smashing through trees in the streets of Beverly Hills, I caught fire. Then I knew I was through with the other humans for a while. To pass through those last seconds before impact in such elongated terror. Who would not be unhinged? I’ve seen the streets of Hollywood in ways unique to me alone. Finally I felt still and serene as trees, telegraph poles, houses, roads, stood up one after the other to smack me in the nose.
It all seems so silly now, Jack. I had trouble with bucking joysticks, on occasion. Let’s just put it that way. And the ground rose up to greet me. Hello, Howard. Smack!
And that is how I met the medication.
In the stillness after that plane crash I knew already it was creeping toward me, the irrationality, the intolerance, the endless migraines, the memory lapses, the constipation bouts, the enemas, the rotting teeth, the abscesses. I sat on the toilet for hours at a time, decades perhaps. Everything is an obstacle to freedom.
For a long time I have been everywhere and nowhere, yesterday and tomorrow, since all points of reference to day and night, up and down, have been done away with, in all these hotel rooms, for all these years. But in the Hawker Siddeley I will fight my way through space itself. For a long time I have locked into narrow rooms my lifelong hopes. But now it is time to set them free. For a long time I have been a fragment of what was once a fullness. Today I will become complete again.
There are many events gestating in the womb of time and one by one they will all be delivered, I have heard. I am waking from my long intoxication.
I will fly at last. I will unfold my wings. I will unpack my head. I will step back outside. One day I may even make love again. But one thing at a time. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Everything moves closer. I’m ready. I’m ready.
It’s 7.19 a.m. You’ll be up soon, Jack, which is a good thing, obviously, because things won’t stay balanced forever. I’m all ready. I’m all finetuned. The light streams through me. Any second now I’m going to get up, without any Mormon help. I won’t be lying down when you come in. Any second now, I’ll walk across the room with stately grace, delighting in the strangeness of being vertical. I’ll very carefully peel away some of the masking tape that holds in place the heavy curtains blocking the windows. I’ll peek through the slit I have made. Perhaps a red double-decker bus will be trundling slowly by on the street below! Perhaps there’ll be a Sunday morning spar
seness to the traffic down there. I’ll stand and look out upon the flow, at the vast city spreading away, at the light hardening, and I’ll think about how this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.
Then I’m going to take a shower—a shower, Jack!—because this is a special occasion. I’ll emerge smelling of soap, dressed in a linen suit, with my hair Brylcreemed back.
You’ll say, You look like Fred Astaire.
And here I am indeed, I’ll say, bowing low.
We’ll sit like young dandies at the breakfast table, at which a silver tea service will have been laid out on a damask tablecloth. You’ll pour the coffee, Jack. I will eat a slice of toast and marmalade and sip from a glass of orange juice.
And then we’ll speak! But will you be talking, too, Jack? I can’t remember exactly how this works. I’m sure it will come back to me.
I’ll say: Hughes Electronics leads the way in avionics!
You’ll say: Lockheed, the leader in speed!
It is a long time since I’ve chuckled.
It’s 9.33 a.m. One of the Mormons has informed me that you are finally awake—that you’ll be up here within the half-hour. So this is it! It is time to branch out, or else what would I say to myself: that in the end I did nothing? It’s time to act. It’s time, in fact, to think that thought is not the thing. It’s just me and the medicine here, and soon, my dear friend Jack Real. The end of a long night or the beginning of a new day, depending on one’s perspective.
I’m all ready. I’m all finetuned. The light streams through me. Enough of this rehearsal. I need to switch my head off. All right then, I’m turning the TV on, to pass the time till you’re showered and dressed. I’m watching Open University—Electromagnetics and Electronics. It is either that or Service from Park Avenue Methodist Church, Northampton. Lord, the junk they put on. If I thought I was staying long enough I would certainly think about buying a TV station here. It is as if the British don’t take television seriously! Ah, but I’m in no mood to get upset about it. Besides, I’ve always had a fascination with electronics. Open University it is, then.
My attention span seems to have lessened these days. I watch scenes rather than entire movies, segments rather than entire programs. But everything is more like a poem that way. Electromagnetically speaking.
I’ve got the balances just right. Therefore we should go soon. While the going is good.
I’ve been waiting such a very long time. No more sleeps!
How extraordinary, I must have nodded off for a few minutes. But I have not been forgotten. I wake up with Jack Real at my side! The Mormons are all a-dither. As for me, I’m croaky rather than cranky. In fact, I’m almost happy. In the end, we are both too excited to eat. But Jack is my best friend, now: what need do we have for words? The showering, the getting dressed, these things I have fretted about all week—as it turns out, they are done in an instant.
There is no more planning. It is upon us. Everything is moving to a point. At any place on the surface of the globe, we are always rolling east.
The Mormons are in scurry mode. Their walkie-talkies crackle. I drink a glass of water.
Time, gentlemen. Jack takes my arm in his. I feel dashing and elegant in my linen suit. We walk slowly out of the room, followed by Mormons. They radio down for the decoy team to leave. In the basement we clamber into the second Daimler. I lay my head in Jack’s lap. A Mormon covers me with a blanket. Jack’s strong hand rests calmly on my shoulder. We drive out into the day.
I am comfortable. And the Valium has definitely helped. You need it for field excursions. I’ve got all the balances just right.
What I’ve been trying to say is: today is the day. I am going to fly. There are no more tomorrows to think about. It’s the only life I’ve got. Ah, my lovemaking was punctuated by the roaring of lions.
After a while the Mormon says, It’s okay, sir, you can sit up now.
My head reels with the glory and strangeness of London. There is so much activity. There are so many people, merely leading their lives! The sun shines down on the factories and the pubs. We move into the countryside. The green fields glow. The farmer drives the tractor. How will I ever forget how lovely this is? We cross a stone bridge. The butterflies hover. I am not afraid of germs anymore. It is only pollen, it is only pollen, it is nothing that can hurt me. Though we’ll keep the windows up.
Jack Real points out the hangars in the distance: Fenwick Airfield.
What I wanted to say was this. That the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.
I suppose I should have been more like other men. I was not nearly as interested in people as I might have been. I’m leaving you a rather melancholy picture, but in the depths of my heart I’m happy. I have spoken frankly. Forgive me.
We pull up on the tarmac. They help me from the car and up the steps. I am sitting in the cockpit. A kind of terror, suffused with a delicious sinking feeling. The engines throb into life. My balls vibrate. I am approaching zero knowledge. The control panel is merely another part of me. Then I take off all my clothes. The pilot, I mean the co-pilot, tries not to look surprised. In a cockpit one is naked before God.
POSTSCRIPT
On June 10, 1973, a naked Howard Hughes sat behind the controls of a plane in flight for the first time in more than thirteen years. Jack Real accompanied him on the flight. Hughes flew all afternoon, and three more times over the next month.
On August 9, at the Inn on the Park, Hughes fell in the bathroom and broke his hip. Doctors inserted a steel pin at The London Clinic.
He never left his bed again without being carried. It was the beginning of the final decline. In December, Hughes and his entourage left London for the Bahamas—a tax-avoidance move—on a jet borrowed from the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. By early ’74 he was no longer paying serious attention to his business concerns and memos. He watched movies over and over, or stared at the ceiling, rambling incoherently. Two years passed.
By early ’76, for tax reasons yet again, the entourage had moved to Acapulco. By April, Hughes could no longer even inject himself. By April 4, he had lapsed into a coma.
Howard Hughes died on April 5, 1976, at 1.27 p.m., in an oxygen tent in a pressurized airplane cabin, eleven thousand feet over Texas and twenty minutes out from Houston, his birthplace, where a team was waiting to treat him at the Methodist Hospital.
Howard Hughes autopsy X-ray, Houston Methodist Hospital, April 6, 1976.
The thin sharp lines in the biceps area are broken-off hypodermic needles.
(Copyright © Wide World Photos, New York.)
SOME BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
– Howard Robard Hughes born December 24, 1905, Houston, Texas.
– 1908, Howard Hughes’ father patents the drill bit that will be the source of the Hughes money.
– Summer 1916 and 1917, Howard sent to summer camp at Camp Teedyuskung in the Pocono Mountains in northeast Pennsylvania; the second time with childhood friend Dudley C. Sharp.
– 1919, attends South End Junior High in Houston, for less than a year.
– 1920, attends the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts.
– 1920, flies for the first time, in a Curtiss Seaplane, over New London, Connecticut.
– 1921, attends the Thacher School in Ojai, California.
– March 1922, mother dies suddenly, aged 39.
– September 1922, returns to Thacher but pulls out before Christmas, lured to Los Angeles by his lonely father.
– January 1924, father dies suddenly.
– May 1924, Hughes buys out relatives and gains 100 percent control of Hughes Tool Company.
– June 1925, Hughes marries Ella Rice in Houston.
– October 1925, leaves Houston to live in Los Angeles.
– November 1925, hires Noah Dietrich as accountant and financial adviser.
– October 1927, shooting commences on Hell’s Angels, Hughes’ first film.
– Janua
ry 1928, first plane crash, while shooting Hell’s Angels.
– March 1929, Ella walks out of marriage. Hughes seeing Billie Dove. May 30, Hughes and Ella divorce.
– 1932, founds Hughes Aircraft.
– September 1935, sets new land speed record in H-1 prototype. Runs out of fuel on seventh pass and crashes (very minor).
– January 14, 1936, sets transcontinental speed record, flying from Los Angeles to Newark in nine hours and twenty-seven minutes.
– November 15, 1936, Hughes has his third (minor) crash when caught in a tailwind while attempting to land a seaplane at North Beach Airport on Long Island.
– August 1937, Katharine Hepburn moves into Hughes’ Muirfield mansion.
– July 10–14, 1938, sets round-the-world record in Lockheed Cyclone.
– May 1939, first acquires stock in Transcontinental and Western Airlines, later Trans World Airlines (TWA).
– 1940, shoots The Outlaw with Jane Russell.
– 1942, enters flying boat contract to aid war effort. Hughes calls the plane the Hercules; the press dub it the Spruce Goose.
– May 1943, Hughes has his fourth crash, on Lake Mead, Nevada, during a test-flight of the Sikorsky S-43, leaving two dead, and Hughes and two others injured.
– Late 1944, Hughes suffers his first nervous breakdown.
– July 7, 1946, Hughes crashes for the fifth time, in suburban Beverly Hills, during a solo test-flight of the XF-11. Hughes suffers catastrophic injuries, marking the beginning of his painkiller addiction.
– August 1947, Hughes testifies before the Senate War Investigating Committee about irregularities in Hughes Aircraft WWII defense contract work.
– November 1947, flies the Hercules at Long Beach, its one and only flight.
– May 1948, acquires RKO Pictures.
– Early 1950s, Hughes suffers a second nervous breakdown. Germ phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and ongoing drug use by now becoming a permanent factor in his life.
– 1956, orders first jets for TWA: 33 Boeing 707s.