Ричард Бах - Biplane

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, even. 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.