by James Salter
When we didn’t see each other we spoke for hours over the phone. Across the hall in the rickety bachelors’ quarters a friend of mine had a phone I could use. It would have been impossible to use the common one downstairs and carry on the low-voiced, endless conversations.
I flew my first fighter, a P-47—big engine throbbing slowly as I taxied, hard tires jolting on the concrete—out over the base soft-ball game and all of Honolulu, and when I landed, proud of myself and my sweat-darkened flying suit, went right to their house. “My God,” Paula said, “I’ve never seen you look so pale.”
I would die in a crash, I knew, without ever having made love to her. There is that certainty of a woman who was made for you just as Eve was for Adam. On my dresser was a photograph taken at their engagement party, laughing, joyous, filled with life, the best one of her I had ever seen. She had made Leland bring it over to me one day. She was ready to give anything, do anything, and we were held apart by all that was drawing us together: honor, conscience, ideals. There was no way out.
We used to take our planes, the four-engine transports, back to the States for major inspections and modifications. On one of the trips I went to Los Angeles for the first time and in the late afternoon, driving along Sunset Boulevard, was passed by a convertible with the top down. There were three or four people in it and one of them—she turned and I saw her clearly—was a girl I had been infatuated with in high school. I was in uniform and called out and waved. I saw her wave back but then whoever was driving the car sped up and cut through the traffic. I couldn’t catch them. I watched her disappear down the silky road and vanish around a curve, it was near Bel Air. The world of schooldays and youthful dreams from which I had never really separated myself had suddenly passed me by and gone. I was in a new world, a more serious world, in which love was even stronger and more consuming.
II
It didn’t end as I expected. The fever never broke as Leland had hoped, but Paula, sensing something perhaps, the impossibility of our situation, the hopelessness of pretending, put her mark on me in another way, a very feminine way, I came to see later, subtle, lasting, sure. She chose for me the girl I ought to marry, whom I had met one afternoon in the courtyard of the Moana, Ann Altemus, good-looking, unspoiled, very much of her class, which was minor society, she was from the horse country in Virginia. Her father owned a big farm near Warrenton. She was perfect for me, Paula said, exactly the kind of girl I needed. I believed her. Who else loved me as much or knew me as well? What she did not say was that she saw someone she knew she could be friendly with and who would not be a threat to her.
We were all stationed in Washington together for a year and a half, and not long afterwards I stood at the altar in the chapel at Fort Meyer with my wife-to-be. We had more or less strolled into marriage. Our parents—her father and my mother—disapproved. They did not understand that the rest of the world was pleased with the idea. We, too. I knew, as one does, that she saw life as I did but felt misgivings at the solemnity of the vows. To myself I said, “Five years.” Paula and Leland were there—he was my best man. The reception was in their little house in Georgetown. Paula held her new baby in her arms, a little girl, and my wife and I drove off in a dashing yellow MG, stopping for the first, uneasy night in some nameless motel on the road to Florida.
——
After I left Honolulu I saw O’Mara only once. It was in Valdosta, Georgia. He was driving through and came to dinner. We were stationed there, living in an apartment above the two spinsters who were our landladies and watched all comings and goings from the parlor below. I had been promoted but I could see I had fallen in O’Mara’s estimation, settled into predictable life with a woman who obviously did not take to him and was not stimulated by the things we were remembering. It was not that I had lost promise but rather, he must have felt, that I had been bridled. It was a friendly evening, but uninspired.
Later I heard he had gotten into trouble. Through cards he had lost his car and the beautiful golf clubs. He’d been at Kelly Field in an administrative job, feared and disliked, a martinet and, what seemed to say everything, an inconstant one, polished and immaculate one day, unshaven and inexplicably rumpled the next. So he passed from sight.
——
When our first child came she was named for Leland and he was her godfather. As couples we were living far apart by then. Leland was an attaché in South Africa. It was a great bore, Paula thought, but they traveled and had a certain status. We adored Rome. After a brief tour I am feeling extremely cultured and so annoyed with Nero.
I was assigned to a headquarters in Germany. Paula’s letters had beautiful stamps with animals on them. Everybody is a lieutenant colonel, she wrote, I love you. We saw them once or twice in Europe—once they drove up from Paris to visit. He was the same, cordial, more moody perhaps, the lines deeper in his face, a glass more often in his hand. They were giving each other false little smiles. They had come to a rocky part of marriage, but we knew they would continue together. They were bound by children, friends, career—everything that had once stood between Paula and me. It was the long journey that held them together. It was good sense, plus all they had lived through.
——
They were divorced in 1959, two years after our second child was born. It was Paula who insisted on the divorce—she must have been young and happy once but she couldn’t remember, she said. Leland was shattered by it. He married again soon after. She did not, and we once more drew close. By then I was out of the Air Force. She came up from Washington frequently and we went there. A sudden burst of missing you unbearably, she wrote. There were three of us again, and it was still she and I who were intimates, excluding the other. When she was visiting I would come back in the evening and find two women, both amiable, smiling, sitting on cushions on the floor and waiting for me. We would drink and have dinner at a low table in front of the fire. She would tell stories of dates with other men, or the lack of them, just as I had once done with her. Someone had a man they wanted her to meet. Unrewarding adventure—he brought his sister along, they were obviously in love with each other, and it looked like a long affair, she added. She worked for a while on Capitol Hill, then for a foundation, then a boutique, and wrote for The Washington Star. For years she had an off-and-on relationship with the alcoholic son of an old family she and Leland had been fond of, but she was too intelligent to marry him. Finally she met the man she was looking for, a journalist, divorced, urbane. He and I seemed to have limited interest in one another, or perhaps he felt her interest should end. In any event, the curtain descended.
I saw Leland once more. It was in 1961 during the Berlin crisis. As a reserve, I’d been sent to France. Leland was stationed at Fontainebleau and one weekend I drove up there. He, his wife, and I had dinner. It was as always—at the last minute there wasn’t enough food in the house and he and I went out in the evening dark for some hasty shopping, a bottle of wine, meat, some cheese. He was in fine spirits and on good terms with the shopkeepers. I was impressed that he knew the French word for “wedge,” as in “wedge of Camembert.” He spoke good French. He called his wife darling. Somehow I didn’t believe it.
He retired as a colonel and they went to live in the south of Spain. I had news of him only rarely. I imagined him as he had always been: a perfect companion on the links, drinker in the bar afterwards, the heels on his loafers a bit worn down. Like an unimaginative British officer in some remote town, but knowing exactly who was who and what their business was.
Then I heard he was dead. It was completely unexpected. He hadn’t been ill. The night before they had gone out to dinner and played bridge with friends. In the morning he couldn’t be wakened.
I called Paula. I hadn’t spoken to her for a long time—she was living near Palm Beach. Yes, it was true, she said. She seemed undisturbed by it. There was some Spanish law that a body had to be buried within twenty-four hours, and because arrangements to fly him home couldn’t be made in time, he was bur
ied there, in Spain. A memorial service was being held in Washington but she wasn’t going up for it; she would not look back.
A SINGLE DARING ACT
LATE IN THE SUMMER OF 1951 I entered at last the realm long sought and was sent to Presque Isle, Maine, to the 75th Fighter Squadron.
The operations officer, distinguished by having had his photograph, while fighting in Korea, on the cover of Life, had been killed in an accident a few days before I arrived. What the history of the squadron was I did not know and was not told. Its tradition was embodied for me by the new operations officer, a plump Southerner, lying on the floor of a bar in town, too drunk to stand but still animatedly talking to and later borne from the place by his admiring pilots. It was he who gave me my first jet rides. His equipment always looked as if it had been borrowed—helmet oddly perched on his head, flying suit too small and deeply pinched by parachute harness—but he was an experienced pilot, the stick held daintily in his stubby hand. It was September. The heat had never died. Flies were trying to come indoors for the winter and a pennant race that turned out to be the most famous ever was going on. In a car parked out near the runway my wife waved congratulations as I taxied in alone in the trainer for the first time.
I felt I was born for it. One of the initial things I did when I went up without a chase plane in an F-86 was climb to altitude and shut the engine off. The sky was suddenly flooded with silence, the metal deadweight. Calmly, though my fingers were tingling, I went through the steps to restart it, air start, it was called. Afterwards I did it again. I wanted to be confident of the procedure in case of a flame-out, and following that I never thought of them with dread.
The true hierarchy was based on who was the best pilot and who flew the most. There might be an obvious leader or two or three near equals. One quickly sensed who they were. In addition there were those who had flown in combat. Their stories were listened to more attentively. There was a big, overconfident pilot in another squadron who starred in one of the first I heard. He had flown F-80s, the earliest jet, in Korea. He was coming back from a mission one day, leading his flight home, at thirty thousand feet on top of an overcast. He called radar for a vector, “Milkman, this is Maple Lead.” Milkman answered, identified the flight on the radar screen, and gave them heading and distance to their field, which was K-2: One hundred and seventy degrees and a hundred and twenty miles.
The flight was low on fuel and the weather deteriorating. They would have to make an instrument approach, the leader knew. He called his element leader for a fuel check, “What state, Three?”
The fuel gauge on the F-80 had a small window where the pilot set in the number of gallons he had at takeoff, and thereafter, like an odometer in reverse, they clicked off during the flight. “Sixty gallons, Lead,” the element leader replied.
“No sweat.”
The clouds were solid. They could see nothing. After a while the radar station gave them another steer, still one hundred and seventy degrees, ninety-five miles.
“How are you doing, Three?”
“Forty-two gallons.”
“Roger.”
The ships, not far apart, could do nothing to affect one another though they shared a common fate. There was no need to speak. Silent minutes passed. The gallons fell away.
“Milkman, Maple Lead. Where do you have us now?”
“Stand by one, Maple Lead. We have you … steer one eight zero to home plate, sixty-six nautical miles.”
“Roger. Sixty-six out. Will you inform K-2 that we’re in the soup, low on fuel? We’ll be declaring an emergency.” Then, to the element leader, “What do you have, Three?”
“Twenty-four gallons.”
That was six or seven minutes of flying at altitude, throttled back to minimum cruise, but they also had to let down, make an approach, line up with the runway if they could find it. The heads in the cockpits were motionless, as if nothing of interest were going on, but they were facing the unalterable. The wingmen might have even less fuel than the element leader. After a while the flight leader called again, “Milkman, Maple. How far are we out?”
“We have you thirty-four miles out, Maple flight.”
“Roger.” He looked over at the element leader, who was perhaps fifty feet away. “What do you have now, Brax?”
“I’ve got nine hundred ninety-eight gallons, buddy,” the reply came calmly.
Not long afterwards, one by one, they ran out of fuel. The entire flight dead-sticked onto the runway at K-2.
It was among the knowledgeable others that one hoped to be talked about and admired. It was not impossible—the world of squadrons is small. The years would bow to you; you would be remembered, your name like a thoroughbred’s, a horse that ran and won.
——
In November, in northern Maine, you might see two of them from far off, at the end of the runway set amid the fields. They are barely identifiable, early F-86s with thin, swept wings. Nearer there is the sound, wavering but full, like a distant cataract. Then, close, it becomes a roar with the smoke billowing up behind. They are being run up, engines full open, brakes on, needles trembling at their utmost.
The pilot of the first airplane has his head bent forward over the instruments as if examining them closely. Red-haired, gaunt, he had so far said almost nothing to me. His name was Stewart. I knew little about him. He was a Korean veteran and a maintenance officer. Lined up beside him, I waited. Why do you remember some things above all others and men who have hardly spoken a word to you? I was new in the group and nervous. I was determined to fly good formation, to be a shadow, almost touching him. We were taking off just before sunset. No one else would be flying.
His head rose then and turned towards me. His hand came up and hesitated. I nodded. The hand dropped.
Wreathed in thunder we started down the runway. Gathering speed I saw his arm suddenly swinging wildly in a circle. I had no idea what it meant, was I to go on, was he aborting? In a moment I saw it was neither, only exhilaration; he was waving us onward as if whipping a bandana around in the air. The noses came up; we were at liftoff speed. I saw the ground fall away and from that moment for him I ceased to be.
There was a low overcast through which we shot, and above it brilliant reddening sky. I was barely twenty feet from him but he never so much as glanced at me. He sat in the cockpit like a prophet, alone and in thought, head turning unhurriedly from side to side. We had reached thirty thousand feet when the tower called. Weather was moving in, our mission had been canceled. “Operations advises you return to base,” they said.
“Roger,” I heard him say matter-of-factly. “We’ll be in after a few minutes. We’re going to burn out some petrol.”
With that he rolled over and, power on, headed straight down. I didn’t know what he intended or was even doing. I fell into close trail, hanging there grimly as if he were watching. The airspeed went to the red line; thousands of feet were spinning off the altimeter. The controls grew stiff, the stick could be moved only with great effort as we went through rolls and steep turns at speeds so great I could feel my heart being forced down from my chest.
We burst through the overcast and into the narrow strip of sky beneath. I’d moved to his wing again. We were well over five hundred knots at about fifteen hundred feet. It was almost impossible to stay in position in the turns. I had both hands on the stick. All the time we were dropping lower. We were not moving, it seemed. We were fixed, quivering, fatally close.
Five hundred feet, three hundred, still lower, in what seemed deathly silence except for an incandescent, steady roar, in solitude, slamming every moment against invisible waves of air. He was leading us into the unknown. My flying suit was soaked, the sweat ran down my face. A pure pale halo formed in back of his canopy and remained there, streaming like smoke. I began to realize what it was about. Never looking at me, absorbed by the instruments in front of him and by something in his thoughts, sometimes watching the world of dark forest that swept beneath us, hills and f
rozen lakes, he was gauging my desire to belong. It was a baptism. This silent angel was to bring me to the place where, wet and subdued, I would be made one with the rest. If, like a scrap of paper held out the window of a speeding train, my airplane were to instantly come apart, torn bits tumbling and fluttering behind, he would only have begun a large, unhasty turn to see what had happened, his expression unchanged.
I had surrendered myself to all of it and to whatever might come when unexpectedly he turned towards the field. We had already crossed it two or three times. This time we entered on initial approach and dropped dive brakes, slowing as we turned. I had a feeling of absolute control of the airplane. It was tamed, obedient. I could have gently tapped his wing with mine, I felt, and not left a dent. I could have followed him anywhere, through anything.
I remember that moment and the smoothness of landing in the fading light. Now that the sound of our passing violently overhead had disappeared, on the field all was still. There was unbroken calm. Our idling engines had a high-pitched, lonely whine.
Afterwards he said not a word to me. The emissary does not stoop to banter. He performs his duty, gathers his things, and is gone. But the snowy fields pouring past beneath us, the terror, the feeling of being for a moment a true pilot—these things remained.
——
My closest friend in the squadron, a classmate, had hair flecked with gray and a wry way of talking that I liked. William Wood was his name. He was older—he’d been perhaps twenty when we became cadets, and afterwards had gone right into fighters; he’d been in them since the beginning. He was relaxed and could be very droll.
Early that winter, he and I went to Korea. We had eagerly read—it passed from hand to hand—the first definitive report, a sort of letter about the enemy airplanes that had suddenly appeared in the war, Russian planes, MIG-15s, and when the chance came, like men running to a claims office, we had raced to volunteer. There were two openings that month and we got them. It was not only the report, the war itself was whispering an invitation: Meet me. Whatever we were, we felt inauthentic. You were not anything unless you had fought.
