Biplane

by Richard Bach

  “Looks like that ought to do the job.” The pounded aileron fitting is straight and flat as a concrete hangar floor. “Stronger, than it was before. Cold-worked, you know.”

  Perhaps I haven’t been born too late, after all. Perhaps it isn’t too late to learn. I have been brought up in a world of airplanes with the white stars of the military upon their wings, and U.S. AIR FORCE stenciled beneath gunports. Of airplanes repaired by specialists, in accordance with T.O.1–F84F–2, of flying procedures prescribed by Air Force Regulation 60–16, of conduct controlled by the Universal Code of Military Justice. There is, in all of this, no regulation that allows a pilot to repair his own airplane, for that requires a special army of technicians with a special army of serial numbers and job classifications. Airplanes and parts of airplanes in the military service are rarely repaired at all—they are replaced. Radio fading and going dim in flight? Corrective action: remove and replace. Engine operated overtemperature? Remove and replace. Landing gear strut collapse after touchdown? Class 26: aircraft removed from service.

  And here is George Carr, barnstormer, mechanic, with a rawhide mallet in his hand, saying it would all be stronger than ever. I learn that the repairing or rebuilding of an airplane, or of a man, doesn’t depend upon the condition of the original. It depends upon the attitude with which the job is taken. The magic phrase, “Is THAT all that’s wrong!” and an attitude to match, and the real job of rebuilding is finished.

  “Gordon Sherman’s loaning you a wheel from his Eaglerock to get home on; ’Vander Britt put it out in the trunk of the car.” He is straining now over a heavy bolt on the landing gear leg. “You might run . . . the wheel . . . down to the gas station . . . and see if they can put the tire on for us.”

  As simple as that. Gordon Sherman is loaning you a wheel. A rare old 30-by-5 spun-aluminum wheel, the kind that aren’t built now and haven’t been built for thirty years and that never will be built again. On loan from a friend I never met. Perhaps Gordon Sherman had wondered how he’d feel a continent away from home, in need of a rare old wheel for his Eaglerock. Perhaps he has wheels to spare. Perhaps his basement is filled with 30-by-5 spun aluminum wheels. But Gordon Sherman is this moment silently thanked by a friend he has never met, and will be thanked, silently, for a long time after.

  Colonel George Carr works on into the night, under the green fluorescent lights of the hangar at Crescent Beach, South Carolina. He works and he directs and I learn from him until 1:30 A.M. At 1:30 A.M. the biplane is patched, and ready to fly.

  “You might fly her over toward North Carolina tomorrow,” he says, grinning, not knowing that at 1:30 in the morning people are supposed to be dead tired and ready to drop instantly asleep, “and we’ll put the finishing touches on her there. There’s some fabric around the shop, and some dope. We’ll put you to work doping.”

  And it is done. He lifts his clanking, boulder-heavy tool kit into the car, sets the torn wheel carefully beside it, and with a wave disappears into the darkness, driving back to Lumberton. Exit, for the moment, a teacher of confidence. Exit a window into what, until one knows better, one calls the past. By the time he is home, I am asleep on the hangar floor, having spent half an hour listening to the rain, thinking that there are only twenty-six hundred miles to go.

  In the morning, one patched biplane, yellow fabric held together here and there with bright red tape, lifts away from Crescent Beach, following from above a river, a highway, a railroad track, and arrives again at Lumberton, North Carolina.

  Turn into the wind, touch the grass, taxi to the hangar where the colonel waits, readying fabric and dope.

  Evander Britt is inspecting the taped wing before the propeller has stopped turning, running his hand lightly over the tape, feeling for broken ribs.

  “You got a broken rib out here, Dick.”

  “I know.”

  “And I see you welded a plate onto the main landing gear fitting. Cracked out down there, was it?”

  “Little crack, where it started to give before the bolt sheared. Welded the plate on, and it shouldn’t want to crack any more.” As long as we are talking, the guilt on my shoulders doesn’t hurt. It hurts when Evander Britt is silent, and looks at the biplane.

  “If you want to trade back for your Fairchild . . .”

  “Evander, I want this airplane and I know I don’t deserve it. I’m going to fly it home if it takes me all year, if I have to pick it up in a box and carry it to California.” That is probably the wrong thing to say. After this start, the chances of my having to pick up the pieces and carry them west are much greater than the chances of the biplane flying there under her own power. There is little doubt that the lawyer would like to have his airplane safely again in his hangar instead of chasing around the country with a novice pilot in its cockpit. There is less than little doubt. There is no doubt at all.

  “Well, if you ever want to . . .” he says, looking again at the taped wing. “Boy, you sounded miserable as a wet rooster on that telephone. Like a little old soaking-wet banty rooster. Like the whole world had just come down on your head.”

  “Sure wasn’t very happy. That was a stupid thing, trying to land in that wind. It was really stupid.”

  “Well, don’t feel bad about it, boy. These things happen. Come on now. Roll up your sleeves and we’ll help George get her fixed better than new.”

  I learn about repairing wood-and-cloth airplanes. The colonel shows me how to cut a patch of Grade A cotton fabric and fray the edges, and smooth it to the wing with clear dope, let it dry and sand it smooth. Another coat of clear dope, another sanding. Then colored dope and sanding, over and over, until I can’t tell the patch from the rest of the fabric around. After many patches, at last finished and better than new, it is afternoon and time to turn the nose westward, and fly.

  “What do I owe you, George?” This is a hard time, when the business has to come to the front and the learning and the friendship of working together on an airplane take a back seat.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Didn’t really do much. You did most of the work.” He rummages in a tool bin, looking for his pipe tobacco.

  “The devil I did. Wasn’t for you, this airplane would be sitting in that hangar at Crescent Beach till the junkman came to haul her away. What do I owe you?”

  A week ago, in Wichita, the tailwheel on the Fairchild had been replaced. A four-hour job, by businesslike modern-day mechanics. Cost: $90.75, parts and labor and tax included. What should it cost, then, to replace aileron fittings that had been smashed flat and immovable, install new shock cord on a main gear leg, install a new wheel, repair a wingtip and ribs and spar and cover the whole with fabric; parts, labor and tax included?

  George Carr is awkward and uncomfortable and for a full twenty minutes I point out that my thanks aren’t going to buy him dinner tonight or replace the dope and fabric I have used, or buy back the sleep that he missed or even the gasoline that he used driving to Crescent Beach.

  “Name a figure, then,” he says. “Whatever you say will be fine with me.”

  “Five hundred dollars is what it would cost me, assuming I could have found somebody that even knew where a spar is in a biplane.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not being silly. When was the last time you had to pay the going rates to have some work done on an airplane, George? You’re the world’s best mechanic, sir, but the world’s worst businessman. Come on, now. I have to get going before the sun’s down. I can’t leave till I pay you something. I won’t be able to look at myself in the morning if I walk out of here without paying you. Honest. And I really am sorry.”

  A small shy voice from across the room. “Thirty, forty dollars be too much?”

  I argue for a while and work him up to strike an agreement at fifty dollars, which leaves me just enough money to finish the trip across the country, but still feeling like a young and heartless overlord taking advantage of the kind and gentle people who dwell about him. And I feel at the sa
me time, helplessly, that I am committing a sacrilege. For George Carr and I love the same machines and the same joys. I can’t help but believe that in the short time we spent working together over the biplane we each earned a friend. What kind of person is it who offers blind money to a friend in return for an act of friendship?

  But the others, who were not my friends, those sheer brisk businessmen repairing a tailwheel, had handsomely charged and been handsomely paid. It isn’t fair.

  The biplane takes her throttle well, and lifts quickly into the wind. A last wing-rocking pass over the hangar and over two tiny figures on the grass, waving, and we point our nose again into the sun, swinging swiftly down out of its high arc toward certain collision with an immovable horizon.

  * * *

  How many collisions, sun? How many times have you dropped from high focused white heat down through the same cooling arc and fallen into the same valley that you will fall into this evening? And across the world, every moment a sunrise, and a new day beginning.

  The sun moves another tenth of a degree toward the horizon, and as I fly, the valley that would have received it becomes a little lake, all golden, a mirror of a golden sky. And then a forest of trees moves in to stand pretender to the final resting place of the sun. If I could stand still in the air, I would be able to believe that the sun truly sinks into that valley, that lake, that forest. But the biplane dispels old illusions as quickly and as firmly as she creates new ones.

  One that she is working on now: the engine will run forever. Listen: 1–3–5–2–4, over and again and again and again. If there is no faltering now, there will never be a faltering. I am strong and powerful and I shall spin my bright propeller until the sun itself is weary of rising and of setting.

  * * *

  The ground now is going dark, and the surface of the land is one smooth pool of shadow. Once again the biplane reminds me that she has no lights for flying or landing. Even the flashlight is out of reach, in the front cockpit.

  Fine thing this could be. Spend your time daydreaming and wake to find yourself enveloped in night. Find a place to land, son, or there will be more repairs for you to make. At 1740 revolutions per minute, fifty-two gallons of gasoline will last five hours and six minutes. Which means, at the moment, that there are three hours and twenty-one minutes left for my brave engine. My five-cylindered companion and its faithful flashing blade will cease to turn at just the moment that the sun sets in San Francisco, and that it rises in Jakarta. Then, perhaps, twenty-five minutes of silent gliding and the end of the world. For the sky is the only world, quite literally the only world there is for an airplane and for the man who flies it. The other world with its flowers and its seas and its mountains and deserts is a doorway to dying for the craft and the man of the sky, unless they return very gently, very carefully, seeing where they touch.

  It is time to land now, while I still can see. And let us see. Over the side, down through the deep wind, we have a few darkening pastures, a puzzlework forest of black pines, a little town. And look at that, an airport. Beacon going green . . . going white . . . going green . . . and a short double row of white pinpoints in the dark; runway lights. Come along, airplane, let us go down and sleep against the earth tonight.

  Tomorrow will be a big day.

  5

  MORNING, SUN ONCE AGAIN, and a fresh green wind stirring across the wing that shelters me. A cool wind, and so fresh out of the forest that it is pure oxygen blowing. But warm in the sleeping bag and time for another moment of sleep. And I sleep to dream of the first morning that I ever flew in an airplane . . .

  Morning, sun, and a fresh green wind. Softly softly it moves, hushing gently, curving smoothly, easily, about the light-metal body of a little airplane that waits still and quiet on the emerald grass.

  I will learn, in time, of relative wind, of the boundary layer and of the thermal thicket at Mach Three. But now I do not know, and the wind is wind only, soft and cool. I wait by the airplane. I wait for a friend to come and teach me to fly.

  The distant seashell hush of a small-town morning is in the air, whispering along with the early wind. You have missed much, city dweller, the words trace in smoky thought. Sleep in your concrete shell until the sun is high and forfeit the dawn. Forfeit cool wind and quiet seashell roar, forfeit carpet of tall wet grass and soft silence of the early wind. Forfeit cold airplane waiting and the footstepsound of a man who can teach you to fly.

  “Morning.”

  “Hi.”

  “Get that tiedown over there, will you?” He doesn’t have to speak loudly to be heard. The morning wind is no opponent for the voice of a man.

  The tiedown rope is damp and prickly, and when I pull it through the lift strut’s metal ring, the sound of it whirs and echoes in the morning. Symbolic, this. Loosing an airplane from the ground.

  “We’ll just take it easy this morning. You can relax and get the feel of the airplane; straight and level, a few turns, look over the area a bit. . . .”

  We are settled in the cockpit, and I learn how to fasten the safety belt over my lap. A bewildering array of dials on the dashboard; the quiet world is shut away outside a metal-doored cabin fitted to a metal-winged, rubber-tired entity with words cast into the design of the rudder pedals. Luscombe, the words say. They are wellworn words and impartial, but flair and excitement were cast into the mold. Luscombe. A kind of airplane. Taste that strange exciting word. Luscombe.

  The man beside me has been making little motions among the switches on the bewildering panel. He does not seem to be confused.

  “Clear.”

  I have no idea what he means. Clear. Why should he say clear?

  A knob is pulled, one knob chosen at this moment from many samelooking knobs. And there goes my quiet dawn.

  The harsh rasp of metal against metal and gear against gear, the labored grind of a small electric motor turning a great mass of enginemetal and propeller steel. Not the sound of an automobile engine starter. A starter for the engine of an airplane. Then, as if a hidden switch was pressed, the engine is running, shattering stillness with multibursts of gasoline and fire. How can he think in all this noise? How can he know what to do next? The propeller has been a blur for seconds, a disc that shimmers in the early sun. A mystic, flashing disc, rippling early light and bidding us follow. It leads us, rubber wheels rolling, along a wide grass road, in front of other airplanes parked and tied, dead and quiet. The road leads to the end of a wide level fairway.

  He holds the brakes and pushes a lever that makes the noise unbearable. Is there something wrong with the airplane? Is this flying? We are strapped into our seats, compressed into this little cabin, assailed by a hundred decibels running. Perhaps I would rather not fly. Luscombe is a strange word and it means small airplane. Small and loud and built of metal. Is this the dream of flight?

  The sound dies away for a moment. He leans toward me, and I toward him, to hear his words.

  “Looks good. You ready?”

  I nod. I am ready. We might as well get it over with. He had said it would be fun, and had said the words with the strange soft tone he used, belying his smile, when he truly meant his words. For that meaning I had come, had left a comfortable bed at five in the morning to tramp through wet grass and cold wind. Let’s get it over with and trouble me no more with your flying.

  The lever is again forward, the noise again unbearable, but this time the brakes are loosed, and the little airplane, the Luscombe, surges ahead. It carries us along, down the fairway.

  Into the sky.

  It really happened. We were rolling, following the magic spinning brightflashing blade, and suddenly we were rolling no more.

  A million planes I had seen flying. A million planes, and was unimpressed. Now it was I, and that green dwindling beneath the wheels, that was the ground. Separating me from the green grass and quiet ground? Air. Thin, unseen, blowable, breathable air. Air is nothing. And between us and the ground: a thousand feet of nothing.

 
The noise? A little hum.

  There! The sun! Housetops aglint, and chimney smoke rising!

  The metal? Wonderful metal.

  Look! The horizon! I can see beyond the horizon! I can see to the end of the world!

  We fly! By God, we fly!

  My friend watches me and he is smiling.

  * * *

  The wind stirs the flap of my sleeping bag and the sun is already above the horizon. It is 6:15 and time to get up and get moving. The wind is not just cool; the wind is cold. Cold! And I thought spring in the South was a languid time of liquid warm from dawn to dawn. Into the chilled flight suit and pull on the frozen boots and the icy leather jacket. The airport is flat and closed about me and the runway lights are still on. Breakfast at the next stop, then, and time now to get the engine started and warming. One must always let the old engines warm themselves well before flight. They need ten minutes running on the ground to get the cold out of their oil and life into their controls.

  Despite the cold, engine start is a beautiful time of day. The routine: pull the propeller through five times, fuel valve on, mixture rich, seven shots of priming fuel, pull the prop through two more times, magneto switch on, pump the throttle, crank the inertia starter, run back to the cockpit, engage the starter and swallow exhaust and engine thunder unfiltered and loud and frozen sharp, shattering again the silence of a little airport.

  How many times have I started an airplane engine, even in the few years that I have been flying? In how many airplanes? So many different ways, so many different sounds, but beneath them all the same river; they are symbols of one meaning.