Ричард Бах - Biplane

11

THE SKY IS ALMOST CLEAR when we once again trade land underwheel for sky underwing and turn to follow our faithful navigation highway, which lies like a cracked arrow pointing toward El Paso. Tonight at El Paso, or if I’m lucky, at Deming, New Mexico. We fly low once again with the sky burnt umber in the dust at our back and the sun turning quietly to shine in our eyes. We fly through a tall invisible gate, into the desert. The desert is very suddenly there and looks at us with a perfectly blank expression; no smiles, no frowns. The desert simply is there, and it waits.

Dimly ahead, hazy blue outlines, mountains. They are mountains still of fantasy, faint and softly shimmering. There are three of them, to the left, to the right, and one, with impossibly steep sides, barely to the right of course. The sleeping thirster for adventure wakes, saying, Perhaps a battle? What comes ahead? What do you see out there? A chance to wrestle against great odds? But I put him once again murmuring to sleep with the assurance that there are no windmills ahead, no dragons to slay.

For long minutes as I fly, I relax in the sun and the wind, the biplane needing only a gentle touch to follow its whiteline compass down the road to the horizon. The road turns imperceptibly to the left and the airplane turns to follow. The sun and the wind are soft and warm and there is little to do but wait for this flight to reach El Paso, as though I had bought my airline ticket in Monahans and now it is up to the captain to bring me to destination.

I can never help thinking, as I cross the deserts, of those who looked through this air a hundred years ago, when the sun was a fireball in the sky and the wind was a jagged knife along the ground. What brave people. Or did they leave their homes for the West not out of bravery but out of just not knowing what lay ahead along this path? I look for wagon tracks and find none. There is only the highway, the Johnny-come-lately highway, and this white line, angling south of west.

They deserve a lot of respect. Months to cross a continent, that even an old biplane can cross in a mere week. A cliché, that, and easily said mockingly. But it is hard, over this land, not to think of those people. Imagine that, people down there on the surface, in the sun, driving oxen! If the sameness and the mile-on-mile exist for a biplane that covers seventy miles in a single hour, how much more it must have existed for them during those months.

Looking up from the gunbarrel road to the horizon, a little shock of ice, and within me the adventurer jerks bolt upright. The three mountains are there ahead, and clearer. But the mountain in the center, with the impossibly steep sides, has moved to stand squarely across my path. From the top of it drifts a short anvil of white. And now beneath it I can see a black column of angled rain. I’m not alone out here after all; the tall white thunderstorm ahead is an absorbing, hypnotic personality in the sky.

Easily avoided. Plenty of room to give it a wide berth; I’ll just swing around to the right. FIGHT IT! It is the adventurer, wide awake now and looking for bright quick things to happen. FIGHT IT, BOY! YOU ’RE NOT SOME SHRINKING FEARFUL NAMBY-PAMBY, ARE YOU? Y OU GOT ANY COURAGE AT ALL YOU ’LL FLY THROUGH THAT THING! T HAT ’S EXCITEMENT OVER THERE, THAT ’S SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE CONQUERED!

Oh, go back to bed. I’d be out of my mind to fly through that storm. At the very least I’d get soaking wet, and at worst the thing would tear the biplane to shreds.

The cloud looms over me now and I can see the anvil of it towering way up high over the top wing of the biplane. I have to tilt my head back to see the end of it in the sky. We begin a turn to the right.

OK. Fine. Turn away. You’re afraid of it. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with being afraid of a thunderstorm. Of course the rain beneath it is not a tenth as bad as flying through the center, and I’m not asking you to fly through the center, just the rain. A very mild little adventure. Look, you can almost see through the rain to the other side of the storm, where it’s clear again. Go ahead. Turn away. But just you don’t talk to me about courage any more. Mister, if you don’t fly through this one little patch of rain, you don’t have the faintest idea of what courage is. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with being afraid and being a coward, but, son-of-a-gun, you better not let me catch you thinking about bravery any more.

It is childish, of course. Not the courageous, but the foolhardy would fly under a storm when avoiding it is a matter only of a shallow turn to the right. Ridiculous. If I believe in caution and prudent action, I will stand up for it and prudently fly around the storm.

The biplane swings to the left and points its nose into the black rain.

It certainly looks frightening, close up. But it is just rain, after all, and maybe a tiny bit of turbulence. The top of the cloud is out of sight now, over my head. I tighten the safety belt.

The engine doesn’t care. The engine doesn’t care if we fly through a tornado. The five cylinders roar on above a wet road, dull under the black base of the cloud.

A light tap of turbulence, just a little thud, and the forward windscreen sprays back the first drops of rain. Here we go. COME ON STORM! Y OU THINK YOU’RE BIG ENOUGH TO STOP AN AIRPLANE? T HINK YOU’RE BIG ENOUGH TO KEEP ME FROM FLYING RIGHT ON THROUGH?

An instant answer. The world goes grey in a hard sheet of rain, a smashing solid rain much more dense than it had seemed. Even above the roar of the engine and the wind I can hear the rain thundering on the cloth of the wings. Hang on, son.

A thousand feet up in the rain, and abruptly, without warning, the engine stops.

Good God.

Hard turn to the right, looking for a narrow strip to land. You idiot. Wouldn’t fly around the thing, would you? Maybe we can land on the highway no the highway is crosswind and we’ve got to get out of this rain. A few places to land, but they’d be the end of the airplane. Mounds of sand, with tough sage holding them together. What a stupid thing to do. Fly under a thunderstorm.

We float out from under the cloud, and the torrent instantly stops. One beat from the engine, one cylinder firing. Pump the throttle, the primer, if you only would have gone around the rain, throw the magneto switch from Both to Right, there is the survival kit in the back and the jug of water. Some more cylinders fight into life, but it is an uneven fight; they fire once, miss three times, fire once again. The magnetos. The magnetos must have gotten wet. Of course. Now all they have to do is dry out before we touch the ground. Come along, little magnetos.

Five hundred feet now, and turning toward a clear lane in the sand. If it goes well, I won’t hurt the airplane. If everything goes just right. Feel that sun, magnetos. No more storms for you today. A few more cylinders fire, and more often. Switch from right mag to left, and the firing fades completely. Quickly back to right and the propeller blurs faster, and for seconds at a time the engine runs normally. Sounds like those old rotary engines, cutting on and off. And there it is. Still missing every once in a while, but firing enough to keep the biplane in the air. We circle the landing place, three hundred feet above it. Retrieve the map from where it has fallen. Forty miles to the next airport, next airport is Fabens, Texas. Here’s a problem for you. Leave a place where I might be able to make a safe landing, or push on across forty miles of desert and hope that the engine will keep running? If I land now and everything goes right, I can let the magnetos dry, take off once again and be sure of reaching El Paso.