Burning the Days (14 page)

It is a different world at night. The instruments become harder to read, details disappear from the map. After a while I tuned to the Reading frequency and managed to pick up its signal. I had no radio compass but there was a way of determining, by flying a certain sequence of headings, where in a surrounding quadrant you were. Then if the signal slowly increased in strength you were inbound towards the station. If not, and you had to turn up the volume to continue hearing it, you were going away. It was primitive but it worked.

When the time came I waited to see if I had passed or was still approaching Reading. The minutes went by. At first I couldn’t detect a change but then the signal seemed to grow weaker. I turned north and flew, watching the clock. Something was wrong, something
serious: the signal didn’t change. I was lost, not only literally but in relation to reality. Meanwhile the wind, unseen, fateful, was forcing me farther north.

Among the stars, one was moving. It was the lights of another plane, perhaps one from the squadron. In any case, wherever it was headed there would be a field. I pushed up the throttle. As I drew closer, on an angle, I began to make out what it was, an airliner, a DC-3. It might be going to St. Louis or Chicago. I had already been flying for what seemed like hours and had begun, weakhearted, a repeated checking of fuel. The gauges were on the floor, one on each side of the seat. I tried not to think of them but they were like a wound; I could not keep myself from glancing down.

Slowly the airliner and its lights became more distant. I couldn’t keep up with it. I turned northeast, the general direction of home. I had been scribbling illegibly on the page of memory, which way I had gone and for how long. I now had no idea where I was. The occasional lights on the ground of unknown towns, lights blurred and yellowish, meant nothing. Allentown, which should have been somewhere, never appeared. There was a terrible temptation to abandon everything, to give up, as with a hopeless puzzle. I was reciting “Invictus” to myself,
I am the master of my fate …
It availed nothing. I had the greatest difficulty not praying and finally I did, flying in the noisy darkness, desperate for the sight of a city or anything that would give me my position.

In the map case of the airplane was a booklet,
What to Do If Lost,
and suddenly remembering, I got it out and with my flashlight began to read. There was a list of half a dozen steps to take in order. My eye skidded down it. The first ones I had already tried. Others, like tuning in any radio range and orienting yourself on it, I had given up on; something was wrong with that, it wasn’t working. I managed to get the signal from Stewart Field but didn’t take up the prescribed heading. I could tell from its faintness—it was
indistinct in a thicket of other sounds—that I was far away, and I had lost faith in the procedure. The final advice seemed more practical. If you think you are to the west of Stewart, it said, head east until you come to the Hudson River and then fly north or south; you will eventually come to New York or Albany.

It was past eleven, the sky dense with stars, the earth a void. I had turned east. The dimly lit fuel gauges read twenty-five gallons or so in each wing. The idea slowly growing, of opening the canopy and struggling into the wind, over the side into blackness, tumbling, parachuting down, was not as unthinkable as that of giving the airplane itself up to destruction. I would be washed out, I knew. The anguish was unbearable. I had been flying east for ten minutes but it seemed hours. Occasionally I made out the paltry lights of some small town or group of houses, barely distinguishable, but otherwise nothing. The cities had vanished, sunken to darkness. I looked down again. Twenty gallons.

Suddenly off to the left there was a glimmer that became—I was just able to make it out—a faint string of lights and then slowly, magically, two parallel lines. It was the bridge at Poughkeepsie. Dazed with relief I tried to pick out its dark lines and those of the river, turning to keep it in sight, going lower and lower. Then, in the way that all things certain had changed that night, the bridge changed too. At about a thousand feet above them, stricken, I saw I was looking at the street lights of some town.

The gauges read fifteen gallons. One thing that should never be done—it had been repeated to us often—was to attempt a forced landing at night. But I had no choice. I began to circle, able in the mist to see clearly only what was just beneath. The town was at the edge of some hills; I banked away from them in the blackness. If I went too far from the brightly lit, abandoned main street, I lost my bearings. Dropping even lower I saw dark roofs everywhere and amid them, unexpectedly, a blank area like a lake or small park. I had passed it quickly, turned, and lost it. Finally, lower still, I saw
it again. It was not big but there was nothing else. I ducked my head for a moment to look down—the number beneath each index line was wavering slightly: ten gallons, perhaps twelve.

The rule for any strange field was to first fly across at minimum altitude to examine the surface. I was not even sure it was a field; it might be water or a patch of woods. If a park, it might have buildings or fences. I turned onto a downwind leg or what I judged to be one, then a base leg, letting down over swiftly enlarging roofs. I had the canopy open to cut reflection, the ghostly duplication of instruments, the red warning lights. I stared ahead through the wind and noise. I was at a hundred feet or so, flaps down, still descending.

In front, coming fast, was my field. On a panel near my knee were the landing light switches with balled tips to make them identifiable by feel. I reached for them blindly. The instant they came on I knew I’d made a mistake. They blazed like searchlights in the mist; I could see more without them but the ground was twenty feet beneath me, I was at minimum speed and dared not bend to turn them off. Something went by on the left. Trees, in the middle of the park. I had barely missed them. No landing here. A moment later, at the far end, more trees. They were higher than I was, and without speed to climb I banked to get through them. I heard foliage slap the wings as just ahead, shielded, a second rank of trees rose up. There was no time to do anything. Something large struck a wing. It tore away. The plane careened up. It stood poised for an endless moment, one landing light flooding a house into which an instant later it crashed.

Nothing has vanished, not even the stunned first seconds of silence, the torn leaves drifting down. Reflexively, as a slain man might bewilderedly shut a door, I reached to turn off the ignition. I was badly injured, though in what way I did not know. There was no pain. My legs, I realized. I tried to move them. Nothing seemed wrong. My front teeth were loose; I could feel them move as I
breathed. In absolute quiet I sat for a few moments almost at a loss as to what to do, then unbuckled the harness and stepped from the cockpit onto what had been the front porch. The nose of the plane was in the wreckage of a room. The severed wing lay back in the street.

The house, as it turned out, belonged to a family that was welcoming home a son who had been a prisoner of war in Germany. They were having a party and had taken the startling noise of the plane as it passed low over town many times to be some sort of military salute, and though it was nearly midnight had all gone into the street to have a look. I had come in like a meteorite over their heads. The town was Great Barrington. I had to be shown where it was on a map, in Massachusetts, miles to the north and east.

That night I slept in the mayor’s house, in a feather bed. I say slept but in fact I hung endlessly in the tilted darkness, the landing light pouring down at the large frame house. The wing came off countless times. I turned over in bed and began again.

They came for me the next day and I watched them load the wreckage on a large flatbed truck. I rode back with the remains of the plane. In the barracks, which were empty when I arrived, my bed, unlike the rows of others, was littered with messages, all mock congratulations. I found myself, unexpectedly, a popular figure. It was as if I had somehow defied the authorities. On the blackboard in the briefing room was a drawing of a house with the tail of an airplane sticking from the roof and written beneath,
Geisler’s student.
I survived the obligatory check-rides and the proceedings of the accident board, which were unexpectedly brief. Gradually transformed into a comedy, the story was told by me many times, as I had felt, for a shameless instant, it would be that night when the boughs of the first trees hit the wings before I saw the second. There was a bent, enameled Pratt and Whitney emblem from the engine that I kept for a long time, until it was lost
somewhere, and years later a single unsigned postcard reached me, addressed care of the Adjutant General. It was from Great Barrington.
We are still praying for you here,
it said.

——

Confident and indestructible now, I put a dummy of dirty clothes in my bed and one night after taps met Horner near the barracks door. We were going off limits, over the fence, the punishment for which was severe. Graduation was only days away; if we were caught there would be no time for confinement to quarters or walking the Area; the sentence would be more lasting: graduating late and loss of class standing. The risk, though, was not great. “Anita is coming up,” he told me. “She’s bringing a girlfriend.” They would be waiting in a convertible at the bottom of a hill.

Anita was new. I admired her. She was the kind of girl I would never have, who bored me, in fact, and was made intriguing only by the mischievous behavior of Horner. In some ways I was in that position myself, his Pinocchio, willing and enthralled.

Anita was the daughter of a carpet manufacturer. She wore silk stockings and print dresses. She had red fingernails and was tall. Her efforts to discipline Horner were ineffective and charming. “Well, you know Jack …,” she would explain helplessly. I did know him and liked him, I think, at least as much as she did and probably for longer.

Staying close to the buildings we made it in the darkness to the open space near the fence and climbed over quickly. The road was not too long a walk away. We came over a slight crest and halfway down the hill, delirious in our goatlike freedom, saw the faint lights of the dashboard. One of the doors was open, the radio was softly playing. Two faces turned to us. Anita was smiling. “Where the hell have you been?” she said, and we drove off towards Newburgh to find a liquor store. Jack was in front with her; their laughter streamed back like smoke.

The Anitas. I had more or less forgotten them. Ages later, decades, literally, in the deepest part of the night the telephone rings in the darkness and I reach for it. It’s two in the morning, the house is asleep. There is a cackle that I recognize immediately. “Who is this?” I say. To someone else, aside, gleefully he says, “He wants to know who it is.” Then to me, “Did I wake you up?”

“What could possibly give you that idea?”

Another cackle. “Jim, this is Jack Horner,” he says in a businessman’s voice. He was divorced and traveling around. “Doing what?” I ask. “Inspecting post offices,” he says. Bobbing around his voice are others, careless, soft as feathers. One of them comes on the phone. “Where are you?” I ask. My wife is sleeping beside me. A low voice replies, “In a motel. About three blocks from you.” She adds a burning invitation. In the background I can hear him telling them I am a writer, he has known me since we were cadets. He tries to take the phone again. I can hear them struggling, the laughter of the women, his own, high and almost as feminine, infectious.

That May night, however, we parked near an orchard and went up beneath the trees. We got back to barracks very late. A day or two afterwards I came up to him while he was shaving before breakfast. “Have you noticed anything strange?” I asked.

“Yes. What is it? Have you got it too?” It was a rash. It turned out to be poison ivy covering our arms and legs, a first mock rendering to Venus.

We went without neckties, excused from formation. With blistered skin and unable to wear a full-dress coat, I stood at the window of my room and heard the band playing in the distance and the long pauses that were part of the ceremony of the last parade. There came the sound of the music played just once a year when the graduating class, some of them openly weeping, removed their hats as the first of the companies, in salute, came abreast, officers’ sabers coming up, glinting, then whipped downwards.

Far off, the long years were passing in review, the seasons and settings, the cold walls and sallyports, the endless routine. Through high windows the sun fell on the choir as it came with majestic slowness, singing, up the aisle. The uniforms, the rifles, the books. The winter mornings, dark outside; smoking and listening to the radio as we cleaned the room. The gym, dank and forbidding. The class sections forming in haste along the road.

The Area was filled with footlockers and boxes. Everyone would be leaving, scattered, dismissed for the last time, to the chapel for weddings, to restaurants with their families, to the Coast, the Midwest, to the smallest of towns. We were comparing orders, destinations. I felt both happiness and the pain of farewell. We were entering the army, which was like a huge, deep lake, slower and deeper than one dreamed. At the bottom it was fed by springs, fresh and everlastingly pure. On the surface, near the spillway, the water was older and less clear, but this water was soon to leave. We were the new and untainted.

On my finger I had a gold ring with the year of my class on it, a ring that would be recognizable to everyone I would meet. I wore it always; I flew with it on my finger; it lay in my shoe while I slept. It signified everything, and I had given everything to have it. I also had a silver identification bracelet, which all flyers wore, with a welt of metal that rang when it touched the table or bar. I was arrogant, perhaps, different from the boy who had come here and different even from the others, not quite knowing how, or the danger.

As we packed to leave, a pair of my roommate’s shoe trees got mixed up with mine and I did not notice it until after we had gone. In a hand distinctly his,
Eckert, R. P.
in ink was neatly printed on the wooden toe block. He was killed later in a crash, like his brother. His life disappeared but not his name, which I saw over the years as I dressed and then saw him, cool blue eyes, pale skin, a way of smoking that was oddly abrupt, a way of walking with his
feet turned out. I also kept a shako, some pants, and a gray shirt, but slowly, like paint flaking away, they were left behind or lost, though in memory very clear.