Calico Pennants

by David A. Ross

“Keep to the present course,” he instructed without alarm. “We’re close now.”

  “I’ve been on the short wave trying to locate the non-directional beacon,” the pilot related. “I was hoping we’d have a sighting when we came through this break in the clouds. The visibility is lousy. No telling how far the clouds and fog extend.”

  The pilot mentally recounted the US Fleet Air Base weather news received just before take-off from the airport at Lea, New Guinea: FORECAST THURSDAY, LEA TO ONTARIO. PARTLY CLOUDY, HEAVY RAIN SQUALLS TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MILES EAST OF LEA. WIND EAST SOUTHEAST, TWELVE TO FIFTEEN. ONTARIO TO LONGITUDE ONE SEVEN FIVE, PARTLY CLOUDY, CUMULUS CLOUDS ABOUT TEN THOUSAND FEET, MOSTLY UNLIMITED. WIND EAST NORTHEAST EIGHTEEN. THENCE TO HOWLAND, PARTLY CLOUDY, SCATTERED HEAVY SHOWERS, WINDS EAST NORTHEAST FIFTEEN. AVOID TOWERING CUMULUS AND SQUALLS BY DETOURS AS CENTERS FREQUENTLY DANGEROUS.

  “How’s our fuel holding out?” Freddy asked.

  “We’ve used more than I expected,” she told him. “Right from the start wind speeds have been much stronger than forecasted. I’m guessing twenty-five to thirty. Avoiding storm centers spent fuel, and even though I made regular fuel transfers from the storage tanks to the wing-mounted gravity tanks...” She bit her lower lip. “The autogiro should have kept us on course while I was priming the pump. My forearm is aching. Maybe the manual isn’t working properly.”

  “I’ve never trusted Sperry’s autogiro,” Freddy complained sourly. “Sure, it’s good for keeping close to the intended course, but it can’t compensate for even minimal wind drift. One slight change in velocity or direction, and we’re out here trying to find a pimple on the backside of an elephant. But don’t worry,” he reassured, “I’m certain that ribbon of runway that FDR built for you is down there somewhere.”

  “If you have any suggestions, Freddy, I’m listening.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Thirty to forty minutes—that’s all.”

  “What about the Itasca?”

  “It’s supposed to be in the vicinity. I’ve been in contact, but reception is patchy at best. I’ll try to raise them again.”

  The pilot began another transmission: “ITASCA, WE ARE ABOUT 100 MILES OUT/ PLEASE TAKE BEARING ON US AND REPORT.”

  The response was garbled and full of static: “CANNOT TAKE BEARING ON 3105/ PLEASE SEND ON 500, OR DO YOU WISH TO TAKE BEARING ON US/GO AHEAD PLEASE.”

  “Which frequency are you signaling on?” the navigator questioned.

  “I switched from 6210 kcs. to 3105 kcs.”

  “Without a trailing wire our range is limited,” he grumbled. “But that shouldn’t be a problem this close in. Still, you’ve gotta stay with the pre-arranged frequency!”

  Unable to completely understand Itasca’s instructions, the pilot radioed once again: “KHAQQ CALLING ITASCA/ WE MUST BE ON YOU BUT CANNOT SEE YOU/ GAS IS RUNNING LOW.”

  “WE HEAR YOU ON 3105/ MESSAGE OKAY/ SENDING AAA’s ON...”

  “What are they saying? Can you make it out?” she asked the navigator.

  “Too much static,” he said. “Keep trying.”

  “ITASCA WE ARE CIRCLING BUT CANNOT HEAR YOU/ GO AHEAD ON 7500.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAAA/GO AHEAD ON 3105.”

  “KHAQQ CALLING ITASCA/ WE RECEIVED YOUR SIGNALS BUT UNABLE TO GET A MINIMUM/ PLEASE TAKE BEARING ON US AND ANSWER 3105.”

  “YOUR SIGNALS RECEIVED OKAY... IMPRACTICAL TO TAKE BEARING ON 3105 ON YOUR VOICE.”

  Like impossible legends, the towering clouds were reflected in Amelia’s flight goggles. Fatigue and frustration showed on her face. Pressing chapped lips and closing her burning eyes for a moment, she hoped that once she opened them again she might see not the everlasting image of sky and ocean, but the newly constructed landing strip at Howland. And having lived her life on the cusp of expectation, desire, belief, and luck, there was at this point little choice but to acknowledge, for pilot and navigator alike, that the future remained suspended on something so intangible as currents of air.

  “I’m sending a series of long dashes over five seconds,” she said to Freddy.

  “Look,” he reasoned, “I’ve done my best. After all the detours last night, it’s amazing that we’re as close as we are. And we have a sun line! So there’s no reason we should be lost. I know Howland is down there!”

  Three weeks prior to departure Noonan had implored her to install a trailing wire, warning her over and over again about the danger of becoming lost and disoriented over the Pacific. But she’d obstinately resisted the inclusion of a simple device that might have enabled them to broaden the band of short wave reception. “In all my years of flying,” she’d persisted, “I’ve never used my radio, except to break the boredom with a little music!”

  Amelia busied herself with a perfunctory check of the Electra’s instruments. They were flying at an altitude of only seven hundred feet, due Northeast, at an air speed of one hundred forty miles per hour. Oil pressure was one hundred ninety-five pounds per square inch starboard, one hundred ninety per square ince port, and the internal temperature of each engine was within acceptable limits. It was the fuel gauge that threatened an insoluble problem.

  Focusing upon the barely discernible horizon (gradients of light upon the water sometimes made it difficult to distinguish a land mass from a bank of clouds), the pilot continued to search for the landing site. Above the drone of the 500 horsepower ‘Wasp’ engines she could hear the short wave set hiss and crackle and make that curious tuning sound that seemed utterly nebulous one minute, and full of promise the next. She watched in silence as Freddy compared readings from each of his three compasses: one magnetic; one aperiodic; and the third a directional gyro. Concentrating intensely, he recorded readings from the Electra’s newly installed, though sometimes unreliable, drift indicator. Furnished with up-to-the-minute information, he referred once more to his charts.

  With each updraft, Amelia’s mind drifted from the present to the past, from the cold reality of the moment into nostalgic reminiscence. In spite of Freddy’s unquestioned expertise as a navigator (the success of Pan Am’s early survey flights across the Pacific Ocean was due to a large extent on Noonan’s development of aerial navigational techniques), his growing reputation as a drinker—not wholly undeserved—had slammed certain doors in the world of commercial aviation squarely in his face. Not to mention arousing caution on more personal fronts. Amelia knew that Freddy felt as though he’d been blackballed unfairly, and by no means had he kept his disdain to himself. He had always said he didn’t give a damn about what most of his colleagues thought of him. Except for her. She sensed that. She knew also that, like herself, he loved to fly for the unbridled joy of it. For the sheer fun of it! Just to fly, and fly, and fly...

  She had first experienced the ecstasy of flight at the age of eighteen and was immediately captivated. The road to esteem had been both long and difficult, but over time she’d won respect as an aviator, and as an iconoclast. It now seemed like eons ago that she’d been recruited as the first woman to cross the Atlantic non-stop. She knew that she was probably the best overall pilot on board the Friendship, still she was never permitted to fly the plane once they’d left Nova Scotia. She’d spent the entire crossing lying on her belly in the rear cabin—at least until the exhausted pilot over-shot their projected landing site in Ireland by nearly a hundred miles. Finally, it was she who had executed a nearly perfect water landing in the fog at Burry Port, Wales, though the truth of the matter had been hushed.

  First in Wales, then at the beautiful Southampton estate of Lady Astor, the Brits had given the now celebrated crew of the Friendship the royal treatment. “My dear girl,” said Lady Astor, “your sense of daring leaves us all rather breathless. Nevertheless, I believe I would prefer to cross the Atlantic by ship!” she declared.

  Still, that intensely scrutinized flight, as well as the subsequent reception and many forthcoming accolades, had hardly been the apex of her career in aeronautics. Flying from Long Island to LA o
ver the checkerboard fields of mid- America, she had often landed her single engine Vega right on the main street of one dusty farm town or another. Seeing her plane touch down, farmers, shopkeepers, and their wives and children, had come running from their fields, or out of their stores and houses, to welcome her and offer her food and lodging.

  And whether she was traversing mid-America or flying non-stop from Honolulu to Oakland, G.P. was inevitably waiting for her at journey’s end. Decidedly in his element, her husband entertained groups of overly eager publicity people, or pandered to a group of financial backers.

  She had not turned to aviation for financial gain. The truth was that she would have worn rags just to stay in the air. But with G.P. handling the details of business such sacrifices were never necessary, for her husband had natural genius when it came to public relations. The mundane tasks he asked her to perform to help with fundraising—interviews, autograph signings, and personal appearances—were tedious, but in the end it was a small effort to make for solvency. Worthy airplanes, after all, were incredibly expensive.

  She now recalled the staged conversation that had taken place between herself and G.P. just prior to her departure, and she grimaced not only at the duplicity of the event, but also at its scripted idiocy.

  GP: Tell me dear, why are you going on this trip?

  AE: G.P., you know it’s because I want to.

  GP: Well, how about taking me along?

  AE: Of course I think a great deal of you, but on a flight one hundred eighty pounds of gasoline might be more valuable.

  GP: You mean you prefer one hundred eighty pounds of gasoline to one hundred eighty pounds of husband?

  AE: I think you guessed right, GP.

  To her chagrin, such contrived farewell scenes were always conducted in public view, and she always delivered her lines on cue, without spontaneity or conviction, and feeling as though she’d been made to face too many lenses. Over time George Putnam’s publicity effort had managed to remake her into some sort of weird icon, but her unwavering self-confidence had given her determination, and not even GP’s unflagging attempts at control and manipulation could put a crack in that foundation.

  Her thoughts turned to her longtime friend and confidant, Eugene Vidal, a high-level administrator in Roosevelt’s Commerce Department.

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just go off and live on a tropical island?” she had once fantasized to him. She had then described in intricate detail how one might meet the challenges created by such a self-imposed exile.

  Of course Vidal knew her well—perhaps even better than George Palmer Putnam—and he acknowledged that if any woman could survive the solitary, Spartan challenges of being marooned, surely it was she. Time and again he’d witnessed her singular focus and practical work ethic guide her over untried tides and currents, as famous aviatrix, a pacifist, and a feminist. What’s more, it had always seemed to her that Gene was intimately aware of the other side of her personality—the side that was whimsical and dreamy, and seldom expressed.

  “You see anything yet?” Noonan asked, breaking her connection with the past.

  “You kidding? In this fog it would be impossible to spot San Francisco, let alone Howland Island!”

  “Anything on the short wave?”

  “Nothing but static.”

  “We need to begin constructing a grid,” Freddy advised. “We must be in the vicinity, so it’s only a matter of dividing the area into sectors.”

  “It’s a big ocean, Freddy,” she said.

  “How much time?” he asked as she banked right to begin the methodical search.

  “Twenty minutes or so.”

  As her eyes moved over the endless water, her thoughts again turned to Vidal. The evening before the flight had commenced, they’d stood on the tarmac together, talking. “What with the false start in Honolulu, and all the subsequent preparation, I’m exhausted,” she’d confided to him. “Right from the beginning our financial backers have been putting on the pressure. I’ve decided that this is going to be my last record-breaking flight, my swan song. You know, Gene, sometimes people just get tired of their own legends.”

  “What would G.P. say if he heard you talking like that?” he’d asked.

  “Of course he’d say to me, ‘Always think with your stick forward, darling!’ But lately I’ve begun to feel as if I’m mortgaging the future.”

  “You’ll pull it off. You’ve got to do it,” he reassured. “And what are futures for, anyway?”

  “Gene, the truth is that you’re only worried about the prospects of the Ludington Line should I fail and be swallowed by the deep blue ocean.”

  Unable to take her sarcasm seriously, he feigned a laugh and put his arm around her shoulder as they walked slowly toward the Electra’s hangar. “When it comes to the future of commercial aviation, your influence is going to be crucial,” he told her. “But you’re more important than that to me. To all of us!”

  “Maybe to you, Gene. To George? I’m not so sure. I’ve never really been sure.”

  Flying north to south, then back again, she created the grid that her navigator had suggested. The delicate weave of her pattern attempted to leave no area uncovered. Clouds and fog gathered below, threatening to engulf the plane. Again the pilot leaned into the stick, this time taking the Electra all the way down to five hundred feet. “I can’t see the ocean anymore, Freddy,” she said.

  Impressed by her steadiness, Freddy watched as she moistened her weathered, cracking lips with the tip of her tongue. Her sun-bleached, short hair had become dry and brittle, while her brows were golden from many hours spent in the cockpit beneath the blazing equatorial sun. On several occasions she’d told him she was not afraid to die; and in fact, try as she might, she had never been able to envision herself growing old. Weird as such a statement had seemed to Freddy at the time, he was inclined to consider its source. Amelia was an odd bird; she always had been. But so were most of the flyers he knew. They seemed to take some curious and bizarre pleasure from flirting time and again with oblivion. Transfixed, Freddy painted a vivid portrait of her in his mind—one that might somehow endure the outcome of the catastrophe they now faced. “Try the radio again,” he said.

  “WE ARE ON THE LINE OF POSITION 157 DASH 337/ WILL REPEAT THIS MESSAGE ON 6210 kcs./ WAIT, LISTENING ON 6210 kcs./ WE ARE RUNNING NORTH AND SOUTH/ WE ARE RUNNING ON LINE/ WILL REPEAT...”

  She descended another two hundred feet, and still fog inhibited a visual search. Somehow sensing its plight, the plane’s starboard engine missed and knocked, as if the heart of exploration itself had skipped a beat.

  Noonan looked up nervously, expectation written all over his sunburned face. He wanted to say something significant, to recap the myriad events of his life in a single word, but before he could utter a sound, Amelia pulled out the choke, and the engine came roaring back to a measured equilibrium. That was just like her, he thought, disarming disaster with a deft flick of her wrist, controlling the uncontrollable with her cool competence. “I thought you told me we had enough fuel for twenty minutes,” he said.

  “Measuring range is not an exact science, Freddy,” she said to him.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “I’m taking it down a little further,” she said.

  Freddy could now see the foamy waves reflected in her blue-gray eyes. Her slender fingers clutched the stick with white-knuckled determination. Her body had gone rigid against disaster.

  “We’ll continue searching until we’re out of fuel,” she said. “But if I have to ditch her in the ocean... Why don’t you begin unfolding the rubber lifeboat, Freddy? But let’s pray we don’t need it!”

  “Right!” he said as he crouched down to re-enter the fuselage. “And remember Eddie Rickenbacker!” he proclaimed.

  A moment later, at one hundred feet and still flying blind, the fuel was exhausted and the stuttering engines shook the plane before going silent. Rocking and diving, the Electra cut through the fog.
The wings tipped, and balance was lost. They both felt the vacuum of rapid descent.

  “This is it, Freddy,” Amelia called out. “I’m afraid we’re going down!”

  Lost in terror and disbelief, the navigator said nothing, but clasped his hands and began to pray. The pilot whispered the defining lines of her own poetical legacy:

  “Merciless life laughs in the burning sun,

  And only death intervenes, circling down…”

  PART II

  CHAPTER 8

  The Seven Sisters

  AGAIN SHE WALKED the well-worn path of evocation, through the ‘Grove of Many Dragons’. Under the morning’s dun sky, subaqueous spirits embraced the energy of the vegetable world, and a hundred thousand tapered points quivered in the breeze of the storm’s aftermath. In her hand she carried a stone from the beach, washed smooth by the waves and collected at the mouth of the delta. There the waters of the Seven Sisters moved over the rocks on their way to the sea.