On Glorious Wings

by Stephen Coonts

  She turned and nodded in the direction of the hangar. Then she pivoted and said, “Don’t go just yet.”

  The words “Well, how about a cup of coffee . . .” turned into an uncontrollable scream as pain coursed through his arms. Patty slumped to the ground laughing, and inside two mechanics fell into each other’s arms, hysterical from the oldest joke in aviation—the electric fence hot-wired to a Model T magneto. Four turns sent a harmless jolt of electricity through anyone dumb enough to grab the wire.

  “I’m sorry, Bandy, I couldn’t resist. We don’t often get people over here, and the guys get bored.”

  Feeling was returning to his arms, and he smiled weakly. “Yeah, that’s a good joke. We used to pull it back in Salinas. Ha ha.”

  Concerned but still smiling, she took his arm and rubbed it, and he realized the electricity wasn’t all in the wires.

  “I have to act a little rowdy once in a while just to make sure they know I’m one of the guys.”

  “You sure don’t look like one of the guys in that outfit.”

  She glanced down, and buttoned the upper button of her blouse.

  “Bandy, maybe you can help me. Stephan has been in a blue funk ever since that ridiculous incident at the dance. I’m worried that Dickens—or Stephan, for that matter—will do something stupid during their race.”

  Bandfield nodded. She was smart. It was just something like the fight that might cause either one of them to try to do a little more than was safe during the race.

  She continued, “I’d like to get them at least to be civil to each other. I talked to Dickens earlier, and he offered me a ride in a friend’s airplane he’s making a test flight on.”

  “He shouldn’t take you on a test flight—might be risky.”

  “No, he says it’s just routine. He was apologetic, and I don’t want him to be angry with Stephan.”

  Bandfield shuffled, uneasy at the prospect. “He won’t be too happy to see me.”

  “Well, I’m worried about you too. Why not apologize for slugging him? What will it cost you?”

  “Seeing as your little trick with the wire keeps me from moving my arms, it might cost me a black eye.”

  “You can move them, all right. I’ve seen that hot-wire trick played often enough to know how much sympathy you deserve, and you’ve already had your quota.”

  She kept her arm linked in his as they strolled across the dry grass, spotted here and there with empty Coca-Cola and Quaker State Oil bottles. He liked being close to her.

  “When I talked to Dickens earlier, he apologized. He said he was just drunk. He promised to apologize to Stephan, too, if I’d take a hop with him. Just be nice and we’ll get this all fixed up.”

  They talked about the dance and the Caudron’s engine, and her mother’s chances in the women’s unlimited race the following morning.

  “Dickens said he was test-flying the airplane to pay back a favor to an old friend of his who has entered in the Cleveland-Dayton-Toledo round-robin race.”

  “I didn’t think Dickens had any friends,” Bandfield scoffed.

  As they approached the hangar Bandfield could see Dickens’s head sticking up on the other side of an ancient Bach biplane. The patched and tattered airplane had obviously spent too many winters parked outside in the weather, and Dickens was checking everything with extra care. Bandy watched with distaste, unable to understand why Dickens would ask Patty to fly in such a wreck. When he glanced into the cabin, he saw that there was a bench fitted instead of the usual two separate seats. In the air, she’d have a hell of a time getting away from him if he decided to make a pass.

  “Hello there, Bandfield. I guess I owe you one for that sucker punch the other night.”

  “No hard feelings, Roy. Have one on me, as a gift.”

  Dickens gave his usual nasty smile. “No, I’ve got hard feelings all over my ribs. I’ll pay you back someday, you can count on it.”

  After the walk-around inspection, Dickens slid over to the left side, and Patty climbed up into the right. After propping the engine for them, Bandfield trotted alongside as they taxied slowly to the edge of the grassy field. The landing gear was splayed out like an old washerwoman’s legs, the paint on the struts cracked like varicose veins.

  Dickens leered at him as he went through the engine run-up, the tired engine coughing and backfiring. Bandfield could tell that the spark plugs were fouled with oil. Dickens stood on the brakes as he put the throttle forward to full power, deafening the onlookers with the sharp staccato exhaust noise. The plane strained forward like a sprinter against the chocks, slack fabric quivering, landing gear bending forward.

  Bandfield made the classic “cut the engine” sign and bounded up on the wing. Dickens brought the power back and Patty opened her door.

  With his left hand, Bandfield unbuckled her safety belt; he shot his right hand under her rump and scooped her out of the cabin, backing off the wing and falling with her on top of him.

  Dickens sneered at them as he reached over and closed the door. Then he put on full power and the Bach began its takeoff roll.

  Bandfield struggled to his feet, pulling Patty up with him. She was furious, but he held her to him and pointed at the airplane, now struggling a hundred yards down the runway.

  Dickens had the power fully on, and as the Bach slowly accelerated, its landing gear began to spread, the wheels drifting farther and farther apart.

  They stood stock still, his arms still around her, as with a mime’s precision the airplane struggled toward its pratfall. There was a grinding roar as the gear snapped parallel to the wings and the Bach’s propeller snubbed itself into a stub and the plane slammed on its belly.

  Bandfield whispered, “Dear God, don’t let it burn.”

  The airplane, wheels spread out as if it had stepped on a giant banana, slid to a stop, and Dickens sprang out the side like a runner stealing home, racing away from the inevitable explosion.

  The Bach sat for a moment, white vapor showing where the fuel from the ruptured tanks was reaching the red-hot exhaust manifold. A hurricane of flame preceded the sound of the explosion that tossed the airframe fifty feet in the air. It hesitated at the top of the arc, then dove down to impact vertically, wings flying up parallel to the cabin, the tail driving down the collapsing fuselage like a retracting spring.

  For a frozen moment, there was no sound anywhere, and Bandy could hear Patty’s frantic breathing. Then the strident sirens of the emergency wagons wailed.

  The comic crash had diverted his mind but not his body from the excitement of holding Patty Dompnier tightly. She had ceased to struggle, and he was now aware that he was pressing a giant erection against this lovely woman, the wife of a friend.

  She had noticed, at first annoyed, then amused.

  “Thank you for saving me.” She looked back over her shoulder, hesitating for a moment, Then, Charlotte’s daughter, she paraphrased Mae West’s line from a New York play. “Is that a wrench in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

  Blushing, he let her go as Dickens wandered back in a state of shock.

  Embarrassed by her own joke, but not wanting to leave, she asked, “How did you know it was going to happen?”

  “I didn’t. If I’d been sure it was, I wouldn’t have let Dickens go either, I’d have kicked a hole in the rudder or something. But I knew I didn’t want you to take a chance.”

  She nodded. “Thanks.” Then, unable to resist, she added, “For everything.”

  An hour later, he was still trying to think of something clever to say as he polished the last of the Simonize compound off the Rascal’s fuselage. The line about the wrench had been funny; she must have inherited her mother’s bawdy sense of humor. He wondered if she’d inherited her free and easy ways.

  Cleveland and Patty inevitably reminded him of Oakland and Millie. Patty Dompnier was totally different in appearance and manner, but he felt the same stirrings of fundamental hunger for her. Might as well forget about it�
�she’s married, he told himself.

  Bandy knew there was a point in preparing an airplane when it was better just to button everything up and wait for the race. He tossed his polishing rag down and stretched out in the warm Ohio sun to watch the women’s unlimited. Charlotte was competing against some of the best women flyers in the country, with the single exception of Amelia Earhart, who didn’t fly closed-course races.

  Most of the men pilots resented having women compete. The prizes were small enough without having to share them with women, many of whom were wealthy in their own right. Some rash talk about letting them race against the men had been buried in an avalanche of curses and catcalls.

  The women’s unlimited race results would depend almost entirely upon the pilots’ skills, since two of the women were flying Gee Bee Sportsters identical to Charlotte’s except for color. He could see them lined up for the racehorse start, quivering under power, dust swirling behind them.

  All three bore the Granville Brothers trademark paint scheme of gleaming white fuselage and wings edged with a scallop of contrasting colors. Charlotte’s plane was trimmed in red, with the racing number seventeen on the side and the wingtips. Gladys Traden was number nine, and her scallops were green. Gloria Engles bore a black eight-ball for a number, with matching black trim.

  The fourth airplane, flown by young Nancy Alderman, was a taper-wing Laird biplane, clearly outclassed.

  Roget joined him leaning down to yell in his ear, “Hey, Bandy—do you know why women can’t fly upside down?”

  It was the tenth time he’d heard the joke in the last four days. “No idea. Why not?”

  “Cause they would have a crack-up!”

  Hadley had gotten a laugh with this one from everybody but the French mechanics.

  The decibel level of the engines went up and the starter’s flag went down. Gladys Traden got off first, forcing Charlotte to fly high and outside. All the airplanes disappeared momentarily around the far turn, then came back in a blur as they whipped in front of them, hungry hornets racing wide open.

  He wondered about Charlotte’s mental set. A closed-course race was the most dangerous flying short of actual combat, and apparently she loved it.

  The three Gee Bees looked as if they were tied in formation as they bored around the course, never changing position as they whipped around the pylons. They lapped the Laird the fourth time around, and Molly Alderman graciously pulled up high and wide, giving way. She continued to fly the course, waiting for someone to drop out.

  Gloria Engles had attached herself to Traden’s wing, flying in the number-two position all the way around, the turbulence from their prop wash combining to keep Charlotte well back and out of position. On the next lap Engles abruptly pulled deeply into the course in a tight turn that increased the force of gravity on her body four times, pressing her into her seat. She kept the elliptical wings of her racer hanging vertically as she rerounded the pylon.

  Must have missed the turn, Bandfield thought.

  He glanced at Charlotte, now flying number two to Traden, then back to Engles. She was gone. A billowing black cloud of smoke summoned the crash trucks, roaring out with sirens blaring.

  “High-speed stall. I saw her snap. Goddam women shouldn’t be racing anyway.” Roget’s expression was grim.

  An involuntary response to the tragedy gripped the throttles of the two remaining Gee Bees, and their lap speeds slowed slightly. The Laird drifted down to reenter the pattern, lonely, watchful, waiting to finish third.

  Charlotte had drifted a little farther back in her number-two spot, a thin streak of white smoke pouring from her exhausts streaking the white fuselage sides with an oil smear. The two Gee Bees roared past on the final lap, dead level, thirty feet separating them. Traden’s right wing’s fabric suddenly bellowed out to burst like a balloon, sending her aircraft snap-rolling to the right before burying itself inverted in the ground.

  “Holy Christ, that’s two down.”

  Charlotte, in a nervous fog, blasted past the checkered flag, then pulled up and headed off the course, gaining altitude slowly, trying to compose herself. The Laird circled again, Alderman delighted to have an unexpected second place.

  Bandy had a box lunch from the airfield café, but he couldn’t touch a bite. The vision of the two women going in wouldn’t leave him.

  “You’d better eat, Bandy. Twenty laps is one hell of a race, especially around this itty-bitty course.” Hughes pushed a waxed-paper-wrapped sandwich at him.

  “At least the legs are all the same length. But at two hundred and forty miles an hour, you’ll be turning every fifty seconds or so, pulling lots of Gs. Lemme in the cockpit there.”

  Hughes had a roll of adhesive tape and a pair of scissors. He cut and pasted twenty small strips of tape along the bottom of the instrument panel.

  “Its easy to lose track of where you are. Pull one piece of tape off after each lap, so you know how far you have to go.”

  A haunted-looking Stephan Dompnier limped by, glancing neither right nor left.

  Eight airplanes were manhandled to the starting line. Hadley stood towering beside the little airplane, polishing the windscreen with a chamois for the hundredth time, ready for any last-minute emergency. Bandy sat in the Rascal, shivering in spite of the sultry Cleveland weather and the heat roaring back from the 485-horsepower Curtiss engine. He glanced at the panel; the oil and cylinder head temperature gauges were up, the coolant temperature was up, the oil pressure was down. Goddam, another five minutes on the ground and the damn thing would cook itself to death. He eased the throttle forward to clear the engine, burning the plugs clean and keeping air flowing through the radiator, and Hadley turned his back to the blast, squinting to keep the dust out of his eyes.

  Bandfield’s qualifying time had been good enough to get him the third position in the line. It was a good break, because of the hazards of the racehorse start. The planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip; when the flag came down, they would be off and heading for the first pylon like wasps flying down a funnel. Number-two spot had gone to Roy Dickens, sitting comfortably in the Cessna racer he had flown for years, an airplane as pretty as he was ugly. He stuck out of it like a witch on a broomstick. The Cessna looked nose-heavy because of the disproportionately large Wasp engine that powered it.

  A universe of people milled in close proximity, pressing down upon the racers in an inverted pyramid of flesh. A quarter of a million watched from the bleachers, and as many more were spread out around the field. Another three of four thousand—insiders, the cognoscenti—were in the pit area, past the wire that restrained the crowds. A covey of ten or twelve people gathered around each airplane, and each racer had a senior mechanic stationed like Hadley just outside the cockpit.

  But as the minutes ground down toward the starting time, each solitary figure of a pilot became the tip of the inverted pyramid, carrying on his back the weight of the watchers as well as the job at hand. As the seconds ticked off, the pilots’ vision narrowed to a tunnel which saw part of the cockpit and a little section of the windscreen. At the start he would become absolutely alone, launched like an arrow into a winding roar of confusion, a freewheeling gear in a Chaplinesque clock speeding to oblivion.

  Dickens reached down and bottomed out his seat, pulling his head within the confines of the windscreen and doubling his legs up so that they almost reached his face. He’d had to make special cutouts in the instrument panel just to be able to squeeze into the airplane. He glanced to his left at the little Frog in the blue airplane and shook his head. It wasn’t fair. The French government subsidized their racing team, paid Caudron and Renault to do their best. He’d put the Cessna together with hard work and an engine salvaged from one of last year’s crashes. The Frog was rich and didn’t need the prize money. Every cent Dickens had and all he could borrow was invested in the Cessna. He wanted to win, needed to win.

  Looking to the right, he sneered at Bandfield’s airplane, crude in comparison to his or the F
renchman’s. All he had to do was get off first and take the first pylon, then let the rest of them catch up with him. If he got ahead of the Frenchman, he’d never let him pass.

  Dompnier had won the pole position, and his head was now twitching in the cockpit, glancing from his instruments to the starter’s flag and back again. The racehorse start worried him; his retractable gear might not be strong enough to hold up on the rough field surface. But if he could get off first and be first around the pylon, the race was won.

  Bandy stared at the Caudron with admiration. It was the fastest plane on the field by ten miles an hour or so, capable of 260-mph laps when it was running right. It should be running right now, he thought, after all the care Roget had given it. God, after all their efforts, working double shifts to keep the bomber project going while they built the racer, they might have given the prize away to Stephan by rebuilding his engine. Maybe they’d given the factory away! It had been crazy to help Dompnier.

  On his right were five more airplanes—Roy Moore in a Keith Ryder Special, Bill Ong in Howard’s Pete, and then a line of nondescript mechanic’s specials, put together with cutting torch and spare parts.

  Coveys of sweat-stained, grease-covered ground crews surrounded each airplane, blinking through the grit thrown back by the propellers, tugging on the wingtips and holding down on the tails to ease the strain on the brakes. The power would be full on when the starter’s flag went down, and then they’d let go.

  Bandy had finished a thermos of ice water and gone to the bathroom twenty minutes before, but his throat was parched and he needed to urinate badly.

  Roget leaned down and yelled in his ear, “Dompnier’s going to be first off, Bandy. I got a look at his prop. They pump it up with compressed air to fine pitch. When he takes off, a bleed valve opens, and it moves the prop to coarse pitch for the race. It’s a hell of a gadget. I wish we had one.”