Flights

by Jim Shepard

  Avco slipped by hardly noticed, as did the airport fence, sunlight beading along its links in rapid succession, and just past stacks of steel drums and an Army trainer he turned onto the access road, bumping over the patched and broken concrete. The small brick Bridgeport Flight Service sat at the terminus of the dead end, and halfway down was the melancholy Windsock Restaurant, its windows broken, seemingly abandoned. He swung a sharp right opposite it through the opening in the interior fence to the hangar area. He slowed as the space opened in front of him.

  Planes of all shapes and colors stood tethered and silent before him, set at random angles in a wide arc. From their wing struts and tails, ropes stretched to metal bars sunk in concrete. He eased to a halt straddling the bike, sweat running into the corners of his eyes. There was no sound, no movement. At this time of day he knew there might be only two or three men in the area, and they would almost certainly be seeking refuge in the manager’s air-conditioned office. He slipped the key ring from his pocket and located the Cessna keys, the firm’s name embossed in raised letters on the bow of the key. Then he untied the bag and pulled out the manual and checklist, no bigger together than the monthly missalette at church, retied the bag, and pedaled silently through the grove of struts and wings, quickly weaving his way to the blue-and-white Cessna parked with its tail to him and its nose to the runway. He glided up to its fuselage as if on rails, and was off the bike and fitting the key to the passenger door in seconds.

  The handlebars caught and grabbed on the metal skin of the fuselage, balking at the smallish cavity of the door, but he angled them around, hefting the bicycle frame waist-high. The delay was agonizing. Finally it slid in and lay reasonably stable, and he shut the door and moved quickly to the tail. He had the preflight checklist memorized so completely he could visualize the pages in his head. He had them visualized so well—he knew them so well—that he could take shortcuts, save time. He unhooked the rudder gust lock, a metal band around the tail resembling a giant bobby pin, by impatiently spinning the wing nut off that held it together, and set it on the pavement behind him. He disconnected the tail tie-down, unlooping the knots, his fingers fumbling next to the smooth aluminum underside of the tail. He checked the control surfaces for freedom of movement and disconnected the wing tie-downs, flipping the freed ropes from the struts. He gave the tires a shove and hurriedly rolled a nearby stepladder up to the wings to check the fuel quantity visually, then rolled it away. He pulled the canvas cover from the Pitot tube: with the cover on, there would be no ram air input, and with no ram air input, his airspeed indicator and altimeter would not function. The cover still in his hand, he unlocked the other door and clambered aboard, flooded with relief to be finally off the tarmac, but still moving quickly, his hands shaking, pulling out the manual and double-checking the exterior checklist. He’d skipped some checks—oil, landing lights, air filter—gambling somewhat but feeling as though he were pressing his luck to the limit with every moment he stayed outside the plane. From his seat the instrument panel spread before him precisely as expected, the flight controls stabbing upward in a pair of elegant bull’s horns. It was a three-dimensional model of the manual’s full-page black-and-white photograph. That’s all, he told himself. Yet he still shook, and his hand jittered across the plastic surface of the flight control when he reached out to touch it, his sweat leaving a momentary mist of a trail.

  Keep moving, he thought. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, or you’ll never do it. His hands flew.

  1. A. Remove control wheel lock.

  B. Check ignition switch OFF.

  C. Turn on master switch and check fuel quantity indicator; turn master off.

  D. Fuel selector valve on BOTH.

  E. Check door security; lock with key if children are to occupy any seats.

  He gazed through the windshield, the sun glaring it in streaks. It all seemed too easy. He fought the terrifying feeling that he had forgotten or bungled a single fatal detail. He folded the manual open to page 1–4 and propped it up on the seat beside him.

  STARTING THE ENGINE

  1. Mixture—rich.

  2. Carburetor heat—cold.

  3. Primer—two to six strokes as required.

  The mixture knob was at the right center of the console, a white plastic knob a bit bigger than a thimble. He turned the indicator to “Rich.” The carburetor heat control was its symmetric twin. The primer was on the lower left of the panel just above his left knee. He slipped two fingers behind it and pulled, half expecting it not to give. It did. He pumped it in and out twice more, priming the engine with fuel.

  4. Throttle—Open 1/8″.

  It was right where his diagram had placed it. He crept it out an eighth of an inch.

  5. Master switch on.

  6. Propeller area—Clear.

  It had better be, he thought, not even looking up.

  He swallowed. Outside the windshield the runway stretched silent under the sun, oblivious. He felt cold. He threaded the brother of the door key into the ignition—number 7 on the checklist—and turned it firmly, and the engine caught, coughing, terrifying him, the noise an explosion in a church, and gained power and volume with a steady surge. Events seemed to accelerate and he wanted to get off the runway and into the air as soon as possible, fearing last-minute police cars or security guards, remembering his sail collapsing in the storm so many months ago, unable completely to believe that he wasn’t overlooking something, some fundamental, foolish detail. Stay with the checklist, he told himself. Move fast. Don’t fool around. Shit or get off the pot.

  TAXIING

  When taxiing, it is important that speed and use of brakes be held to a minimum and that all controls be utilized (see Taxiing diagram, figure 2–4) to maintain directional control and balance.

  The wind sock fluttered orange and fragile in the distance, indicating the wind direction and his next move, as outlined by figure 2–4: right-wing aileron slightly up, elevator neutral. He eased his toe off the brake, the arches of his feet still firm in the rudder stirrups, and opened the throttle. The plane began to roll.

  He experienced at first that moment of sheer terror when he felt completely inadequate to the task of controlling the vibrating, deafening machine he was setting into motion, but it responded, he began to see, to the gentlest deflections of the flight controls. He wobbled steadily forward, jerking a bit from too much brake, learning by trial and error as he rumbled along how to guide the twelve-hundred-pound plane smoothly. He braked at the turn onto the access road that fed the runway.

  The tower stood squat and imperturbable in the distance, an occasional bird crossing behind it. He switched on the receiver, lifted the microphone from its hook, closed his eyes, and pressed the button. He’d already be on the tower frequency.

  “Tower, this is 9–0 Zulu,” he said. “Request clearance for taxi.”

  He released the button and the cockpit filled with static; He waited and there was no answer. His ears were hot and his fingers slippery on the black plastic.

  “Roger, Zulu,” crackled a voice. “Take off runway 24.”

  He rehung the microphone and wiped his forehead. There was no alarm, no sudden activity, no yellow jeep. The sun beat down on the pavement. A Funny Bones wrapper, identifiable at forty feet, blew across the tarmac.

  He turned left, following the painted yellow lines; the sun slipped behind him, and the shadows of his wings crossed the pavement before the plane like cool ripples. Runway 24 was the closest to him, the longest, and stretched to the south, which meant he’d take off over the marshes and Burma Road and be above the Sound in seconds. He rolled cautiously to the very end of the runway, the white “2” and “4” sweeping away from him majestically, and set the parking brake. His finger skimmed the checklist columns of the manual. He checked the flight controls, the fuel-selector valve, elevator trim, suction gauge, magnetos, and carburetor heat. He ran the engine up to 1700 rpm and past it, up to full throttle, or as near as he dared go—21
00 rpm—and back down. He rechecked the locks on the doors. He buckled his seat belt. He was ready to go.

  “Tower, this is 9–0 Zulu asking takeoff clearance,” he said, the microphone brushing his lips. His gums felt dry.

  Roger Zulu, 24 cleared for takeoff.” The answer was prompt, listless: just another day at the airport.

  He released the parking brake and edged onto the runway, pivoting to his right before braking to a halt with the tarmac vast and endless before him, rushing straight-edged off to a single point over his cowling. He nudged the wing-flap switch until the indicator read 10 degrees up. His feet firm on the brakes, he opened the throttle fully.

  The takeoff is a simple procedure: lining the aircraft into the wind, the pilot gives full throttle and releases the wheel brakes. As the aircraft accelerates, airflow over the wings begins to generate lift. When the lift nearly equals the weight, the pilot eases back the control column.

  With his toe off the brake, yet hovering near, he felt the surge and rush of the Cessna down the tarmac even as the flat repetition of images in his peripheral vision seemed to indicate little or no movement, and he remembered to keep the nose of the plane on the horizon as it bumped and shook over the cowling, and he stayed straight on, keeping the centerline centered in front of him, the pavement blurring by, and he felt the wings trying to leave the ground and he was up, prematurely, having waited too long on the control column, and he bounced, hard, frightening himself, but continued to sweep forward and this time pulled the control surface back smoothly and firmly, having the impression from the corner of his eye of the tower and parking lot to his right as colored streaks, and the plane swept off the ground, the left wing dipping a bit with runway to spare, the marshes appearing below, when he dared to look to his left, as yellow and soft as a wheat field with the black shadow of the plane speeding across them. He whooped and cheered, pounding the dashboard, his laughter mixing with the noise of the engine.

  He flashed low across the wetlands, the clouds above and land below recalling to him a fleeting memory of the thermocline corridor at the beach, and he continued to climb as he passed over the strip of sand and road that was Long Beach, noting a running child, the dot of a beach ball, a cyclist at rest with one foot on the ground. Then the beach was behind him and the Sound ahead, blue and choppy. The triangular rainbow of a catamaran sail slipped by. And ever more to his left, away from him, was Port Jefferson, his first navigational objective.

  In flight the pilot will also want to turn. This is not accomplished by merely turning the rudder as is the case with a ship, but by a combination of aileron, rudder, and elevator movement and an adjustment of engine power.

  Trying to remember everything at once and apprehensive, he turned the flight controls, pulling them back slightly as he did and easing out the throttle. The horizon reeled slowly in front of him, the twin stacks of the heavy industry in Port Jefferson harbor centering themselves over his cowling, and he applied opposite rudder and leveled out, elated. He was flying, two thousand feet off the ground without the benefit of a lesson.

  Small boats appeared and disappeared below, flecked across the dark water. He allowed himself only the briefest glimpses, concentrating on the altimeter. In minutes he seemed to be coming up on the harbor at Port Jefferson, a small spit of land rising from his left to a steep bluff. Hundreds of boats were sheltered in its lee like orderly flotsam. There was a long knife edge of breakwater and then the darker blue of the channel and a freighter of some sort, maroon and black with its rust visible even from his height. He passed over the town as it climbed the hills from the harbor as if in an attempt to meet him, and he began to have the vague impression of trees and roads below, his eyes fixed on the compass and altimeter. The engine roared reassuringly and he made constant minute adjustments, concentrating. The cockpit hung pendulum-like beneath the great wings and the sun swept in the canopy and glittered on the fuselage. Ahead of him, rising like a sheer wall to an awesome height, was a snow-white anvil-shaped cloud filling his field of vision as he hurtled into it, having kept his eyes too long on the instruments. The sun disappeared and he was in a world of gray, all sensation of movement gone and the engine racketing abstractly in the half gloom. He fought panic and kept his eyes on the altimeter as it dipped and rose, thinking, Maybe it will stop, it’s got to stop somewhere, and as it continued his fear mounted and he was no longer sure of his compass headings. He had to try something else and he had to trust his memory and ability.

  EMERGENCY PROCEDURES: Disorientation in Clouds.

  Executing a 180° turn in clouds.

  Upon entering the clouds an immediate plan should be made to turn back as follows:

  He located the clock and put his finger physically on the glass over the minute hand, trying to calm himself. When the sweep second hand indicated the nearest half minute, he banked to the left, holding the turn coordinator—a small white symbolic airplane wing on a black field—opposite the lower left index mark, waiting, waiting, for the second hand to complete its revolution. When it did, he leveled off, checking the compass heading to insure it was the opposite of the previous one and climbing to restore altitude. He could hear himself breathing, panting like a dog. Outside the cockpit everything was still softly opaque. He fought the urge to dive or climb. The gray remained, fog or wool, and his fear grew and he was ready to call on God when the gray swept away and sunlight flooded him, glancing blindingly off the cowling. He whooped even as he blinked and averted his eyes.

  After a few moments he swung the plane around to the left again, returning to the cloud but letting the altimeter slip until it read 2000 and he was passing underneath the flat white ceiling, the light losing some of its warmth, bumps and irregularities appearing on the underside and rushing past. He passed a highway, ribboned with moving cars. A shopping center like an arrangement of low boxes. Clusters of towns. More highways. He found himself out from under the cloud, in the sun again, with the shore and the Atlantic uneven strips on the horizon. Towns, trees, roads, fields. Farmland. Low fences with animals (cows?) spotting the land. A bridge across a narrow bay. Marshes and beach houses. The white lines of sand and breakers and he was back over ocean again, banking up and around with blue sky and white clouds spinning across the windshield. When he leveled out, the compass on the dash was reading E-NE and he was following the long thin strip of land to his left between a large bay and the Atlantic, the land a joyous tan in the sun and a directional indicator to East Hampton Airport.

  He seemed to be safely south of the clouds and flew level, free and happy. He laughed aloud again in delight, bobbing his wings a bit to echo his feelings.

  The radio crackled, harsh and startling. “Aircraft 9–0 Zulu, are you on frequency?”

  He stared silently out the window, everything falling apart in front of him.

  “Aircraft 9–0 Zulu repeat are you on frequency?”

  The tone recalled Sister Theresa seeing him on the roof, his father hearing of the detention. Broken windows, ruined dress pants, late arrivals, and poor report cards. They knew the plane was missing, they knew he had it and they knew it was still in the air.

  He sat immobilized by the shock of his failure. It had been crucial that he land undetected, to allow for his unnoticed disappearance on the bicycle, but he couldn’t land undetected anywhere now with the designation he was sporting on the side of his fuselage. His plan had been destroyed, that quickly, that easily. He wiped his eyes furiously. He had to think. It couldn’t be all over after everything he’d been through. Below him breakers ran a jagged white track along the shore, curving and growing in distant foamy lines. He was passing a very large airport to his left, and the land below opened into a great irregular bay closed to the sea by a long spit crested with dunes. If it was Shinnecock Bay, as he guessed it was from the map, Southampton was directly east, and he would be approaching East Hampton Airport in minutes.

  He couldn’t land there, he thought. He couldn’t just quit. But where else could
he go? What other airport could he find from the air without navigational aids? Montauk had an airport, he knew, but that was as good as giving up: they’d be waiting there as well, and it was exposed and isolated, with nowhere to go once he landed.

  “Biddy. Biddy, this is your father. What the good Christ do you think you’re doing?”

  He stared at the radio, stunned. The engine’s roar changed in pitch to signal he’d let the nose drop, and he corrected it.