Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

  Dick noticed how Lyndon Johnson followed Amalie’s progress. He could almost hear Shannon—or Adrian—selling her to Johnson as Jack Kennedy’s favorite. That would make her irresistible to a man who had ruined his presidency by compulsively competing with the ghost of JFK.

  An Air Force band struck up “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder” and the doors of Factory One slowly opened. Out came the snout of the monster, looming over the two tractors that were towing her. A murmur ran through the crowd as the entire plane emerged. The tail was as high as an eight-story building. The four jet engines each looked big enough to swallow a Volkswagen. The whole thing was painted a deep black, which somehow added to the awesome bulk.

  Adrian rose to thank everyone for coming and introduced the President of the United States. Johnson stooped over the bank of microphones and recited some of the Colossus’s statistics. It could carry 750,000 pounds at close to the speed of sound. The Colossus fleet, when it was finished next year, could airlift an entire armored division any place in the world. If an enemy thought they could attack American soldiers defending freedom in distant lands, they would have to deal with this “new presence” which made us able to strike back anywhere, anytime.

  “Now I know how we’re going to win in Vietnam,” Cliff Morris whispered in Dick’s ear. “We’re going to drown them in bullshit.”

  The President was followed by two or three Air Force generals, whose voices choked with emotion when they talked about the wonders of the plane. Finally came the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who congratulated the Air Force and Buchanan for building such a marvelous plane and a wonderful factory in Knowlesville, creating twenty thousand new jobs and an “economic renaissance” in Knowles County.

  As Adrian stepped to the microphone to thank everyone for coming to the ceremony and urged them to go through the plane and join them on the factory floor for champagne and refreshments, a yellow Jaguar streaked around the corner of Hangar One and tore across the concrete runways to a gate at the far end of the field. Dick’s eyes were not good enough to see who was driving. But Cliff Morris’s twenty-twenty pilot’s eyes were still in excellent shape.

  “Holy Christ,” Cliff gasped. “That’s Billy—and Amalie Borne.”

  The reception was a melee in which the Secret Service struggled to keep most people at a distance from the lame duck President, who stood forlornly in a corner. An agitated Adrian Van Ness told Dick to get Johnson some champagne. As he returned with the bottle he heard Adrian trying to explain Amalie’s departure.

  “She must have been taken ill. That was my son-in-law driving her. Probably to a hospital. You remember him? Billy McCall? The test pilot?”

  “It’s all right, Adrian,” Johnson said. “The way my luck’s been runnin’ she’d probably’ve given me the syph.”

  As Dick poured champagne for the president and a half-dozen aides, he saw Victoria McCall in the middle distance, sobbing hysterically. Sarah Morris was trying to calm her.

  Much later, as their plane zoomed into the sky toward California, Victoria was still sobbing on Sarah’s shoulder in a rear seat. Adrian glared across the aisle at Frank Buchanan. Dick had never seen him so angry.

  “Is there anything you want to say in defense of your protege before I fire him?” Adrian snarled.

  “Not really,” Frank said, with a sigh. “He’s his mother’s son.”

  A confusing mixture of sadness and happiness suffused Frank’s face. He was wrestling with memories of Sammy that neither Adrian nor Dick could possibly understand.

  “If I have anything to say about it, he won’t be my son-in-law much longer,” Adrian said.

  Dick tried not to think about Billy and Amalie. He tried not to imagine what they were doing in New Orleans as he flew back to California and Cassie. He realized Billy was the man Amalie wanted, the hero who dared without caring whether he survived. She was the perfect answer to Billy’s rage, a woman who did not care what he did to her.

  Dick told himself he no longer cared what happened to either of them. But he could not prevent images from forming and reforming behind his eyes, an obscene kaleidoscope of lips and thighs and breasts. In spite of his desperate good intentions, Dick joined Adrian and Cliff in hoping Billy McCall would run out of luck on the ground and in the sky.

  THE LADY OF DEATH

  Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” poured from the stereo while Victoria Van Ness McCall sat on the deck of her Topanga Canyon home and made another list for Billy. Beside her sat her only friend, Sarah Chapman Morris.

  Victoria had gotten out the earlier lists and had them printed up and hung them all around the house. There were lists of things she did not want Billy to do and lists of things she wanted him to do and lists of books she wanted him to read and lists of movies she wanted him to see and lists of songs she wanted him to hear, above all Wagner’s Ring Cycle. She wanted him to understand through music, not words, how completely their souls were joined. She was Brunhilde, his Valkyrian beloved, born to be a warrior’s bride.

  She was now compiling a list of all the lists and their locations so Billy could consult them quickly, efficiently, when he decided to love her again. Her father called six times a day, begging her to come home, telling her he had fired Billy and she should divorce him. He had a lawyer sitting in his office with the papers drawn. All she had to do was sign them. He sent her a copy of a report full of incomprehensible numbers, proving Billy was stupid and possibly a crook.

  Victoria told Sarah she was now convinced her mother was right, her father only cared about his power. He hated Billy because he had destroyed Adrian’s power over her. Now he was trying to regain her without caring, without even thinking of what that would mean. She would have to leave Topanga and go back to Hancock Park. Back to childhood. She would have to abandon her lists, her hopes, her absolute faith that Billy would come back to her.

  With intensity that approached delirium, Victoria told Sarah her father did not understand how a woman conquered a warrior like Billy. He refused to surrender to power, to money, to threats, to promises. Only one thing could break his will—submission. Patient, absolute, total submission. The women who were reading and praising this book, The Feminine Mystique were as foolish as Adrian. The feminists were really disguised men, with men’s sterile imaginations. They had no ability to envision the power, the drama, the peace, of submission.

  Submission annihilated hatred and fear and regret and anger. It left a woman with a feeling of ultimate power because nothing could destroy submission. Nothing Billy or any other man could possibly do—not the vilest betrayal in the history of love—could touch the pure white peace submission created in a woman’s soul. Submission was not easy to achieve. But when it happened—oh, that inpouring of pure whiteness, of lightness, the burning essence of the sun and stars. She had found a name for it in Ezra Pound’s Cantos: the Immaculata.

  Only one thing worried Victoria—her dreams. Last night and for several previous nights she had dreamt she was two women. One wore the beautiful white robe of submission. The other wore a breastplate of black armor and a girdle of gleaming brass, with a cup of stainless steel over her pubic hair. She kept menacing the smiling white-robed women with a sword. But the white-robed woman only smiled and ignored the ugly steel tip the Amazon kept holding against her throat.

  Her lists of lists completed, Victoria resumed work on a poem in praise of Billy McCall, the warrior pilot. In a low sibilant voice she recited it for Sarah.

  Only once has a woman matched his cruel altitude

  She took flight and soared beyond his stratosphere

  And it changed her life forever.

  She saw the world as a bright teacup

  And dreaded the idea of breaking it.

  So she coasted over seas and stars

  Until her exhausted heart wore wings

  That scorn horizons. Yet the pilot’s eyes

  Remained as blind as Oedipus

  In his dotage. Why,
why? The questions

  Linger in the golden twilight

  Like deer on a Chinese mountain.

  Victoria shook her head and tore the poem to shreds. She told Sarah those words were too self-indulgent, egotistic. They were about her, not about Billy, the warrior who had been betrayed by his country, by his friends, by his gods. She understood so much. She understood the source of Billy’s rage. America the good the true the beautiful, the country a warrior would rejoice to defend had become America the foul, the false, the farcical. That was why she was his only hope of salvation. Billy, the ultimate warrior, had to accept the supreme value of submission, which he would transmute into acceptance of history’s blunders and deformities. She who could not conceive a child would give birth to the perfect warrior, shorn of his rage but not of his courage. Crash, bam, slam. A car lunged up the almost vertical road and screamed to a stop in the yard below the deck. It was the yellow Jaguar she had bought Billy for their fifth wedding anniversary. Billy got out. Victoria’s joy was beyond words. She turned up “The Ride of the Valkyries” so there was no need to speak. He stood there, his hands on his hips for a moment, smiling at Victoria and Sarah. The smile meant nothing, Victoria had learned that by this time. “What the hell are you doing here?” Billy said to Victoria. Sarah might as well have been invisible.

  “Waiting for you,” Victoria said. “Sarah’s keeping me company.”

  “You’re too much,” Billy said, still smiling.

  Amalie Borne was wearing the green suit she had worn in Louisiana. She blended into the trees for a moment, as if she were an animal, a deer. Sarah saw Victoria was glad Billy had brought her. Victoria thought Billy wanted her to see how beautiful Amalie was, how impossible it had been for him to resist her.

  “What are you going to do?” Victoria said.

  “I don’t know. We were gonna stay here for a while. But we can’t do that now. I guess we’ll go to Catalina.”

  Sarah Victoria knew what Billy was trying to do. He was trying to erase all their memories. He was using Amalie Borne to erase her. It was ridiculously easy to stop him. She even knew the next question he was going to ask. He thought it was supremely brutal. He did not realize he was dealing with supreme submission.

  “You want to come?” Billy asked.

  “I’d love to come,” Victoria said.

  Billy shook his head, still smiling. “You are too much,” he said.

  Amalie Borne followed Billy up the steps to the deck. Victoria turned the volume knob of the record player to full. “You like Wagner?” Amalie said, above the booming “Ride of the Valkyries.” The effort disfigured her perfect face.

  “Yes. I’ve been urging him on Billy. I think he’s the perfect musician for pilots!” Victoria shouted. “So much soaring. Don’t you agree?”

  “I hate him,” Amalie cried. “He’s sick, like the rest of Germany.”

  “I don’t agree!” Victoria shouted. “I heard him for the first time at the Hollywood Bowl when I was ten. It made me sense the mountains all around us, even when you couldn’t see them in the darkness. Grandeur. That’s what I want Billy to feel.”

  “He feels it already. It’s his essence,” Amalie shouted. She was beginning to lose her composure.

  Billy came out carrying an old battered suitcase. It had contained all his possessions when they moved in. “Still travelin’ light,” he said, smiling at Victoria and Sarah.

  With no warning whatsoever he smashed Sarah in the face with his open hand. She flew across the deck and landed on her back in a perfect replay of her previous punishment from Cliff. Except here there was no rug. Her head struck the wooden deck with stunning force.

  From a great distance Sarah heard Victoria cry: “Why did you do that?”

  “She’s been askin’ for it for a long time,” Billy said.

  Victoria listened to the “Ride of the Valkyries” fade as they descended the mountain. Jammed in the Jaguar’s narrow backseat, she suddenly understood why she disliked the way Sarah and her father pronounced Billy’s name. She saw the entire scheme, from Billy’s appointment as project manager to his brutal removal. She saw Sarah’s part in it and for a moment could not believe her vileness. She had told her everything, even about the Immaculata. Somehow the purity of her hope became soiled, ruined.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Amalie said.

  “Do you?” Billy said, rocketing up the narrow road toward Burbank Airport, where he parked his Lustra. It would be Victoria’s first ride in the plane in two—or was it three?—years. She thought of their happy first year, when they flew all over California in it. Above all she remembered the precious day they had made love at ten thousand feet. Billy had told her she was the forty-ninth woman who had done it with him at that altitude.

  Was I the best? Why had she asked that stupid question? She knew it was a mistake the moment she had said the words. Maybe that was the beginning of Billy trying to tell her the truth about himself and her refusing to listen. But she would listen now with the perfect attention, the exquisite silence of submission.

  The Lustra was sitting on the flight line, gassed and gleaming. Billy said he and Amalie had been using it to fly all over California. She had seen everything now, even Baja. Only Catalina remained. Only Santa Catalina. Shangri-la. He had erased Victoria from everything else.

  “You’ll love it,” Victoria said. “We spent our honeymoon there. We loved it, didn’t we, Billy?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. He was giving the Lustra a walkaround. He kicked the tires, hauled on the wing struts.

  “Let’s go,” Amalie said. She was impatient. A hopeful sign. Billy disliked impatient women.

  “You want to get there in one piece?” Billy said. “This plane’s almost as old as I am.”

  “I don’t care, really,” Amalie said.

  A thrill ran through Victoria’s soul. She was as daring as Billy, as indifferent to death. That was undoubtedly why he chose her. But Victoria could match her with the perfect acceptance of submission.

  “She’s sore because your Daddy fired both of us,” Billy said, as he taxied out on the runway. “Cut off our salaries. Ain’t that awful?”

  “I have plenty of money,” Victoria said.

  “She does,” Billy said. “She’s worth four or five million.”

  “Disgusting,” Amalie said.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Someone with no fuckin’ brains worth mentioning and no figure to match. But I guess there’s gotta be some compensation for everyone. You think that way? The big Air Traffic Controller in the sky evens things out?”

  “No,” Amalie said.

  “Me neither,” Billy said.

  “Frank Buchanan believes in God,” Victoria said. “He told me to trust Him. He said you’d come back to me and you have.”

  “With me,” Amalie said.

  Billy rammed the throttle forward and the Lustra hurtled down the runway, its big engine thundering. Up, up, they climbed, until California lay beneath them, unfortunately obscured by a thick layer of smog.

  “What a disgusting country,” Amalie said, looking down at the gray mass of gases. “You can’t even breathe freely. Yet you talk of defending the world against tyranny.”

  “Hey, I told you I didn’t go for that kind of crapflak,” Billy said.

  “Are you responsible for his patriotism?” Amalie said.

  “No,” Victoria said.

  “I haven’t been a patriot for a long time,” Billy said.

  “But you won’t let anyone else be unpatriotic,” Amalie said.

  “Shut up,” Billy said. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Why?” Amalie said, not moving.

  “We’re going to fuck at ten thousand feet,” Billy said.

  He turned to Victoria and said: “Can you handle it?”

  “Yes,” Victoria said.

  Billy had failed to teach her how to fly. Now he was teaching her—he was daring her to learn—something else. The robotic submission of
the autopilot. Click. He shoved Victoria into the pilot’s seat and she was flying the plane while he methodically stripped Amalie Borne.

  Victoria did not see any of it. She refused to turn her head. She could not hear any of it either. The sighs, the growls, the groans, were swallowed by the roar of the motor. Click. She was in a state of perfect submission, like the autopilot’s slave. Below them gleamed the dark blue Pacific. Up ahead loomed Catalina, with its rim of white beaches, its miniature mountains and valleys. Their continent. Shangri-la.

  Suddenly the other Victoria was in the copilot’s seat. The amazon. Blood streamed from her maddened eyes. Her pupils were drenched with it. The veins had burst from too much weeping. She had both hands on the yoke and she shoved it forward, tearing it out of Victoria’s robotic grip. Submission, the Immaculata—what had happened to them?

  The Lustra plunged down down down. Billy and Amalie were flung in a sickening tangle against the back of Victoria’s seat. Somehow Billy struggled to his knees and reached over Victoria’s shoulder and pulled on the yoke with all his strength.

  “Let go, let go!” Billy roared. “I love you. Let go!”

  But Victoria could not let go. She had become the other woman, Califia’s daughter, the Lady of Death. Her hands were fastened to the yoke with an eternal persistence, an absolute, relentless refusal. All she could offer Billy was her final submission. She kissed him on the mouth as the Lustra struck the water and exploded into a thousand burning fragments.

  AN EMPTY SKY

  For a week after the crash, Sarah Morris lay in her bed with the electric blanket turned up full, shaking and shivering with violent chills. Death had suddenly declared her life random, superfluous, vacant.

  Again and again she saw Amalie Borne walk from the green Lustra in the harsh Louisiana sunlight. A line from a poem seemed to swirl around her. All in green went my love riding.