TransAtlantic

by Colum McCann

  Every half hour or so Brown notices that the Vimy is a little heavier in the nose, and he watches Alcock exert backwards pressure on the yoke to level the plane out.

  At all times Alcock’s body is in contact with the Vimy: he cannot lift his hands from the controls, not even for a second. He can already feel the pain in his shoulders and the tips of his fingers: not even a third of the way there and it has lodged itself hard in every fiber.

  AS A CHILD, Brown went to the racecourse in Manchester to watch the horses. On weekdays, when the jockeys were training, Brown ran on the inside of the Salford track, around and around, widening his circle the older he got, pushing the circumference outwards.

  The summer he was seven the Pony Express riders came from America and set up their Wild West show along the Irwell River. His people. From his mother and father’s country. Americans. Brown wanted to know who exactly he was.

  Cowboys stood in the fields, swirling their lassoes. There were broncos, buffaloes, mules, donkeys, trick ponies, a number of wild elk. He wandered around the huge painted backdrops of prairie fires, dust storms, tumbleweeds, tornadoes. But most amazing of all were the Indians who paraded around the tea shops of Salford in ornate headdresses. Brown trailed behind, looking for their autographs. Charging Thunder was a member of the Blackfoot tribe. His wife, Josephine, was a sharp-shooting cowgirl who wore elaborate leather coats and six-shooter holsters. Towards the end of summer their daughter, Bessie, came down with diphtheria, and when she got out of hospital they moved to Thomas Street in Gorton, right beside Brown’s aunt and uncle.

  On Sunday afternoons, Brown cycled out to Gorton and tried to stare into the window of the house, hoping to see the shine of the headdress coins. But Charging Thunder had cut his hair short and his wife stood in an apron making Yorkshire pudding on the stove.

  A COUPLE OF hours into the flight Brown hears a light snap. He puts on his goggles, leans over the fuselage, watches the small propeller on the wireless generator spin uselessly for a second, shear, then break away. No radio now. No contact with anyone. Soon there will be no heating in their electric suits. But not just this. One snap might lead to another. One piece of metal fatigue and the whole plane might come apart.

  Brown can close his eyes and see the chessboard of the plane. He knows the gambits inside out. A thousand little moves that can be made. He likes the idea of himself as a center pawn, slow, methodical, moving forward. There is a form of attack in the calm he maintains.

  An hour later there is the chatter of what sounds to Alcock like a Hotchkiss machine gun. He glances at Brown, but he has figured it out already. Brown points out towards the starboard engine where a chunk of exhaust pipe has begun to split and tear. It glows red, then white, then almost translucent. A flock of sparks flare from the engine as a piece of protective metal breaks away. It flies upwards a moment, almost faster than the plane itself, and shoots away into their slipstream.

  It is not fatal, but they glance at the severed pipe together and, as if in response, the noise of the engine doubles. They will have to live with it for the rest of the trip now, but Alcock knows how the engine roar can make a pilot fall asleep, that the rhythm can lull a man into nodding off before he hits the waves. It is fierce work—he can feel the machine in his muscles. The sheer tug through his body. The exhaustion of the mind. Always avoiding cloud. Always looking for a line of sight. Creating any horizon possible. The brain inventing phantom turns. The inner ear balancing the angles until the only thing that can truly be trusted is the dream of getting there.

  WHEN THEY ENTER the layers between the clouds, there is no panic. They tug on their fur helmets, reposition their goggles, wrap their scarves around their mouths. Here we go. The terror of a possible whiteout. The prospect of flying blind. Cloud above. Cloud below. They must negotiate the middle space.

  They climb to escape, but the cloud remains. They drop. Still there. A dense wetness. Can’t just blow it away. I’ll huff and I’ll puff. Their helmets, faces, shoulders are soaked with the moisture.

  Brown sits back and waits for the weather to clear so he can guide the plane properly. He looks for a glint of sun on the wingtip, or a breakout into blue, so he can find a horizon line, make a quick calculation, shoot the sun for longitude.

  The aircraft swings from side to side, fishtailing in the turbulence. The sudden loss of height. It feels as if their seats are falling away from them. They rise once more. The ceaseless noise. The bump. The heart skip.

  Light fading, they come upon another gap in the upper layer of clouds. The sun falling red. Down below, Brown gets a brief glimpse of sea. A split-second curve of beauty. He grabs the spirit level from the floor. Tilts it, straightens. A quick calculation. We’re at 140 knots approx, on general course, a bit too far south and east.

  Twenty minutes later they come upon another huge bank of cloud. They rise to a gap between layers. We will not get above the clouds for sunset. We should wait for dark and stars. Can you get above at, say, 60 deg? Alcock nods, banks the plane, curls it slowly through space. Red fire spits through the fog.

  They both know the games the mind can play if caught in cloud. A man can think a plane is level in the air, even if laid on its side. The machine can be tilted towards doom and they might fly blithely along, or they could crash into the water, no warning. They must keep a lookout for any sight of moon or star or horizon line.

  So much for the bloody forecast, scribbles Brown, and he can tell from Alcock’s response, in the gentle pull-back of the engine, the slight caution in the movement, that he is worried, too. They pull their collars up into the wet slap of weather. Beads of moisture slide upwards along the open windscreen. The battery in the seat between them still sends faint pulses of warmth through the wires in their suits, but the cold is shrill around them.

  Brown kneels on his seat, leans over the edge to see if he can find any gap, but there is none.

  No range of vision. 6500 feet. Flying entirely by dead reckoning. We must get through the upper range of cloud. Heating fading fast, too!

  THE BONES IN their ears ring. The racket is stuck inside their skulls. The small white room of their minds. The blast of noise from one wall to the other. There are times Brown feels that the engines are trying to burst out from behind his eyes, some metal thing grown feral, impossible now to lose.

  THE RAIN COMES first. Then the snow. A prospect of sleet. The cockpit has been designed to keep most of the weather at bay, but hail could rip the cloth wings asunder.

  They lift into softer snow. No light. No relief. They hunker down as the storm thuds around them. More snow. Harder now. They drop once more. The flakes sting their cheeks and melt along their throats. Soon the white begins to drift around their feet. If they could rise above and look down, they would see a small open room of two helmeted figures pelting through the air. Stranger than that, even. A moving room, in the darkness, in a screech of wind, two men, the top of their torsos growing whiter and whiter.

  When Brown shines his flashlight at the control behind his head he sees that a layer of snow has started to obscure the face of the petrol-overflow gauge. Not good. They need the gauge to guard against trouble with the carburetor. He has done this before, turned in the cockpit, reached dangerously high above his head, but never in weather like this. Still, it has to be done. Nine thousand feet above the ocean. What form of madness is this?

  He glances at Alcock as they ride a small bump of turbulence. Just keep her level. No use telling him now. Can’t swim, old boy. Would hardly bring a smile to his lips.

  Brown adjusts his gloves, pulls his earflaps tight, hikes his scarf high around his mouth. He swivels in his seat. A throb in his bad leg when he moves. Right knee against the edge of the fuselage. Then the left knee, the bad one. He grabs hold of the wooden strut and pulls himself up into the blast of air. The chloroform of cold. The air pushing him back. The sting of snow on his cheeks. His soaking clothes stuck to his neck, his back, his shoulders. A chandelier of snot from
his nose. The blood backing off his body, his fingers, his brain. Abandoning the five senses. Careful now. He extends himself into the thrashing wind, but can’t quite reach. His flight jacket is too bulky. He loosens the zip, feels the whoosh of wind at his chest, stretches backwards, knocks the snow off the glass gauge with the tip of his knife.

  Good God. This cold. Almost stops the heart.

  He hunkers quickly back in the seat. A thumbs-up from Alcock. Brown reaches immediately for the battery wires to warm himself up. He doesn’t even need to write the note to Alcock: Heating is entirely dead. On the floor, at his feet, lie the maps. He stamps his feet, careful not to sully the charts. The tips of his fingers sting. His teeth chatter so much he thinks they might break.

  Over his left shoulder, in the small wooden cupboard, is the flask of tea and the emergency brandy.

  IT TAKES AN age to get the lid off the flask, but then the liquor stuns the wall of his chest.

  THEY REMAIN IN the hotel room, the table still positioned at the window in case the plane returns. Mother and daughter together, watching, waiting. There has been no news. No radio contact. No stirrings at the makeshift aerodrome. The field has been silent for twelve hours.

  Lottie finds herself gripping the window frame. What might have happened? It was, she thinks, a bad idea for her mother to have written to the family in Cork. To have distracted them, maybe. She feels complicit now. Brown didn’t need another thing to worry about, no matter how small, why stop him on the stairs, why give him the letter? What was the point of it anyway? Perhaps they fell. They must have fallen. They have fallen. I gave him a letter. He was distracted. They fell. She can hear them falling. The whistle through the struts of the plane.

  She puts her fingers against the cold of the windowpane. She doesn’t like herself at moments like this, her strange bearing, her shrill self-consciousness, her youth. She wishes she could walk outside of herself, out the window, into the air, and down. Ah, then, but that’s it, maybe? That, then, is the point of it all, surely? Yes. A salute to you Mr. Brown, Mr. Alcock, wherever you might be. She wishes she could take a photograph of the moment. Eureka. The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.

  DOWN BELOW, IN the lobby, the other reporters crowd around the telegraph machine. One by one they link back to their editors. Nothing to report. Fifteen hours gone. Either Alcock and Brown are approaching Ireland now, or they are dead and gone, casualties of desire. The reporters begin the first paragraphs, writing in both styles, the elegiac, the celebratory—Today, a great joining of worlds—Today, a great mourning of heroes—keen to be the first to finger the pulse, keener still to be the first to get a hold of the telegraph when any real news comes through.

  IT IS CLOSE to sunrise—not far from Ireland—when they hit a cloud they can’t escape. No line of sight. No horizon. A fierce gray. Almost four thousand feet above the Atlantic. Darkness still, no moon, no sight of sea. They descend. The snow has relented but they enter a huge bank of white. Look at this one, Jackie. Look at her coming. Immense. Unavoidable. Above and below.

  They are swallowed.

  Alcock taps the glass of the airspeed meter. It doesn’t budge. He adjusts the throttle and the front end of the plane lifts. Still the airspeed meter remains the same. He throttles again. Too sudden, that. Darn it.

  Good God, Jackie, put her in a spin. We’ll take our chances now.

  The cloud grows tighter around them. They both know full well that if they don’t break it now they will spiral-dive. The plane will gain speed and shatter in an immensity of pieces. The only way out is to maintain speed in a spin. To have control and lose it, too.

  Do it, Jackie.

  The engines throw out a taunt of red flame and then the Vimy hangs motionless a second, grows heavy, keels over as if it has taken a punch. The slowest form of falling at first. A certain amount of sigh in it. Take this weary effort at flight, let me drop.

  One wing stalled, the other still lifting.

  Three thousand feet above the sea. In the cloud their balance is shot to hell. No sense of up. No down. Two thousand five hundred. Two thousand. The slap of rain and wind in their faces. The machine shudders. The compass needle jumps. The Vimy swings. Their bodies are thrown back against the seats. What they need is a line of sky or sea. A visual. But there is nothing but thick gray cloud. Brown jerks his head in every direction. No horizon, no center, no edge. Good God. Somewhere. Anywhere. Keep her steady, Jackie boy.

  One thousand feet still falling nine hundred eight hundred seven fifty. The pressure of their shoulder blades against the seats. The whirl of blood to the head. The heaviness of the neck. Are we up? Are we down? Still spinning. They might not see the water before they smash. Undo the belts. This is it. This is it, Teddy. Their bodies are still pinned to their seats. Brown reaches downwards. He tucks the log journal inside his flight jacket. Alcock catches him out of the corner of his eye. Such glorious idiocy. A pilot’s last gesture. Save all the details. The sweet release of knowing how it happened.

  The dial turns steadily still. Six hundred, five hundred, four. No whimpering. No moaning. The scream of cloud. The loss of body. Alcock maintains the spin in the endless white and gray.

  A glimpse of new light. A different wall of color. It takes a split second for it to register. A slap of blue. A hundred feet. Strange blue, spinning blue, are we out? Blue here. Black there. We’re out, Jack, we’re out! Catch her. Catch her for godsake. Christ, we’re out. Are we out? Another line of black looms. The sea stands soldier-straight and dark. Light where the water should be. Sea where the light should crest. Ninety feet. Eighty-five. That’s the sun. Christ, it’s the sun, Teddy, the sun! There. Eighty now. The sun! Alcock gives the machine a mouthful of throttle. Over there. Open her. Open her. The engines catch. He fights the jolt. The sea turns. The plane levels. Fifty feet to spare, forty feet, thirty, no more. Alcock glances down at the Atlantic, the waves galloping white-edged beneath them. The sea sprays upwards onto the windscreen. Not a sound from either of the men until the plane is leveled again and they begin to rise once more.

  They sit, silent, rigid with terror.

  Oh go ’way man

  you just hold your breath a minit

  for there’s not a stunt that’s in it

  with the Maple Leaf Rag

  LATER THEY WILL joke about the spin, the fall, the rollout over the water—if your life doesn’t flash in front of your eyes, old boy, does that mean you’ve had no life at all?—but climbing upwards they say nothing. Brown leans out and slaps the flank of the fuselage. Old horse. Old Blackfoot.

  THEY LEVEL OUT along the water, at five hundred feet, in clear air. A horizon line now. Brown reaches for his drift-bearing plate, corrects his compass. Almost eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time. Brown scrambles around for his pencil. Ticklish? he scrawls, with a series of exclamation marks. He catches the sideways grin of Alcock. It is the first time in hours they have had a run without fog or layers of cloud. A dull, chewy gray out over the water. Brown scribbles down the last of the calculations. They are north, but not so far as to miss Ireland altogether. Brown reckons the course is 125 degrees true, but allowing for variation and wind he sets a compass course at 170. Ruddering south.

  He can feel it rising up in him, the prospect of grass, a lonesome cottage on the horizon, perhaps a row of huddled cattle. They must be careful. There are high cliffs along the coast. He has studied the geography of Ireland: the hills, the round towers, the expanses of limestone, the disappearing lakes. Galway Bay. There had been songs about that during the war. The roads to Tipperary. The Irish were a sentimental lot. They died and drank in great numbers. A few of them for Empire. Drank and died. Died. Drank.

  He is screwing back the lid on the flask of hot tea when he feels Alcock’s hand on his shoulder. He knows before turning around that it is there. As simple as that.

  Rising up out of the sea, nonchalant as you like: wet rock, dark grass, stone tree light.

  Tw
o islands.

  The plane crosses the land at a low clip.

  Down below, a sheep with a magpie sitting on its back. The sheep raises its head and begins to run when the plane swoops, and for just a moment the magpie stays in place on the sheep’s back: it is something so odd Brown knows he will remember it forever.

  The miracle of the actual.

  In the distance, the mountains. The quiltwork of stone walls. Corkscrew roads. Stunted trees. An abandoned castle. A pig farm. A church. And there, the radio towers to the south. Two-hundred-foot masts in a rectangle of lockstep, some warehouses, a stone house sitting on the edge of the Atlantic. It is Clifden, then. Clifden. The Marconi Towers. A great net of radio masts. They glance at each other. No words. Bring her down. Bring her down.

  They follow their line out over the village. The houses are gray. The roofs, slate. The streets unusually quiet.

  Alcock whoops. Shuts the engines. Angles in, flattens the Vimy out.

  Their helmets applaud. Their hair roars. Their fingernails whistle.

  FROM OUT OF the grass a flock of long-billed snipe rises and soars.

  IT LOOKS TO them like the perfect landing field, hard and level and green, yet what they don’t notice coming down are the nearby slabs of peat that lie like cake, the sharp cuts in the brown earth, the lines of wet string that run along the banks, the triangular ricks of earth off in the distance. They miss, too, the wooden turf carts that lie weathered and rainpocked at the side of the road. They miss the angles of the slanes, leaning up against the carts. They miss the rushes grown long on the abandoned roads.

  They bring the Vimy towards the ground. A flawless trajectory. Almost as if they could lean out and scoop the soil in their hands. Here we are. The plane suspends itself a foot from the ground. Their hearts thump in their shirts. They wait for the moment of touch. Skim the top of the grass.