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.

And another interesting thing. When the engine stopped, I was not frightened. It was clear that I would have to make a landing; there was no choice. Land. Period. No discussions, no fear.

But now there is time to be concerned. It is not the forced landing that concerns a pilot, but the uncertainty of just when it will come. I can expect the engine to stop at any time; I should not be surprised if it does. I would almost be glad if the engine had not started again; I would be left with no choice but to land, and life would be much simpler. The thing to do now is to get some altitude, staying all the while over the one good strip in the desert. Then I shall set out for Fabens, staying always within gliding distance of a good clear spot. The dumb people who fly under storms.

I discover as the plan turns from thought into action and as the biplane slowly fights for altitude over the desert, engine roaring five seconds, silent for a half-second, roaring six seconds more, that ahead are coming the most difficult forty miles of my journey. There is a definite procedure laid down for pilots to follow if the engine stops, and no fear attendant. But if it doesn’t quite stop, what then? I’ll have to consider this tonight over a bowl of soup and a glass of ice water.

The biplane flies more slowly than normal, despite the full-open throttle. Pull the throttle back and the engine dies. Switch magnetos and it dies. Under a very special set of conditions it will just barely keep running. We’ll give her a try. When she stops, we’ll be confident and fearless again. I don’t care if I smash her to a splinter heap, I know I’ll walk away all right. And other soothing statements.

Skirting the right side of the storm, hardly aware that it exists, I help the little biplane through the sky. Any time I want to frighten myself, I have only to switch from the right mag to the left and listen to the silence. The adventurer is wide awake still, and urges me to overcome the fear in the switch. For his sake, to prove to myself that I am not afraid of listening to the quiet when all about the land below is desert, I switch it. But it is no use. It scares me. Yet if by itself the engine stopped and wouldn’t run again, I know that there wouldn’t be the slightest fear. Interesting. Lots of little mental relays and shuttle switches working overtime on this leg. From field, to field, to field, to field I travel, engine smoothing for a while, then cutting out again. I have in my mind a picture of the magnetos, the two of them beneath the engine cowling. It is dark in there, with oil mist swirling, but I can see the water in the seams of the magneto housings, and every once in a while another drop splashes down upon them.

I find the road on the other side of the storm and from it gain some measure of comfort. At least now I can land on the road and be near some kind of occasional rolling humanity. I wonder if motorists know how important they are to aviators. They are a source of glee when the tailwinds are there and the airplane passes the automobiles quickly. Glee, too, when the traffic is heavy on the road and a pilot can pass ten cars a second. A reassurance in the desolate lands, bringing their sign of life into view. And a last-ditch help, when glee is gone and one must land on a highway and ask aid.

Over the nose of the biplane, to the right of the road, a search answered. First ahead, then not quite within gliding distance and therefore uncomfortably distant, and at last I have captured Fabens and I don’t care if the engine stops or not. I take a sheer cool drink of relief. The wind is heading directly down the dirt strip; blessing on blessing! Throttle back, a gliding turn, steeply, to lose altitude. Imagine that. Too much altitude. I feel like a rich man lighting bonfires with hundred-dollar bills. Level above the dirt, an easing of the stick and we are down again, and stopped. Hurray! Land again beneath me, solid and smooth, and a gas pump! A Coca-Cola machine!

Fabens, Texas, I shall never forget you.