The Spirit of ST Louis (41 page)

It's a two-mile walk to our farm -- past Martin Engstrom's hardware store, past Wilsczek's butcher shop, past the swinging-doored saloons. We stop at Ferguson's grocery to order food for the week. Along with it, the one-horse delivery cart will bring our suitcases and trunk.

Our road bends south around the yellow brick church, still waiting for its steeple; then west to the Coultas home where my dog has spent the winter. From a flower-filled yard with picket gate he bounces out to meet me—red-haired, white-chested, barking, wriggling Dingo.

We start down the sandy street together. Soon I'll be out of city clothes -- in overalls, barefooted. Here's the path through hazel brush -- green leaves, ear-switching branches. Here's the short cut through the gravel pit where I sometimes find carnelians. Here we strike real country, for the telephone poles stop. There's where wagon wheels spoiled the bicycle path last summer; it's still sandy and soft. "La-a-l-l-y bo-o-os-s-y. La-a-l-l-y bo-o-o-s-s-y" —the Sandstrom girls are calling their cattle. Here's the Johnson farm, with its pasture rolling over to the river -- the brindle cow staked out in thick green grass.

Now, the road jogs away from the river to take in a strip of woodland. It widens and straightens for its half-mile stretch southward between the white-cedar fence posts of our farm. There's our gray barn, and the tenant's horses. Trees and flowering honeysuckle bushes screen our house. I throw open the iron gate, run under oaks and poplars along a deeply shaded footpath, feet kicking through last October's leaves. Short-tail, my pet chipmunk, scampers into his rock pile beside the back porch steps.

I turn the key in the padlock, jerk open the rusting hasp, push through our kitchen door. Dingo wedges past my legs, and Mother is close behind. A cool, musty smell surrounds us. There's been no one in the house all winter -- unless some thieves have entered, as they did two years ago. I rush through rooms and basement, examining door and window locks. We throw everything wide open, let wind flood through our house. We light the cookstove, start unpacking boxes, closets, shelves. Between tasks I run out to see that the swing ropes have not been stolen, that the tree seat hasn't blown away, that the cave roof hasn't tumbled in, that I can still keep my balance on my stilts. There's the maidenhair patch to visit, the bluffs on the creek to slide down. There are neighbors' boys to swim and play with under noonday suns ahead. I have my guns to clean and hawks to hunt. Dingo has gophers to catch.

I bolt my mother's lunch of salad, preserves, and breaded round steak, and start up the river path toward Alex Johnson's home. Birds flutter out of grass and call from branches. A rabbit leaves its clump of brush for safer briers. Crows warn all the woods of my approach. This path the Chippewa once followed. These mounds of earth they may have built. With luck, one sometimes finds an agate arrowhead.

Mrs. Johnson, slight and wrinkled, waves from the kitchen, where she's planning supper for her family of seven. She offers me a pan of freshly baked sprits cakes. Mrs. Johnson still speaks with an "old country" accent. "I think Alex is cleaning out the barn," she says.

A blond-haired boy emerges from the red-plank building at the roadside, leaning steeply backward to balance the forkload of manure in his hands. I run down to meet him

"Alex! Can ya go swimmin'?"

"Yah, I guess so, but I gotta clean the barn."

We finish the work together.

"Let's go pick up Bill."

Bill Thompson's house lies back in the woods, a quarter-mile to the west, in a stumpy clearing. It's a five-minute walk, if one hurries, along a grass-centered, little-traveled road. Alex captures a garter snake. I put it in my pocket.

Bill is in the yard, target-shooting with his older brother's rifle. The firing pin has been lost, but he's replaced it with a clipped-off shingle nail.

"How about goin' swimmin'?"

Bill runs in to stack his gun against the kitchen wall, and we start back toward the river.

"Let's go out to the log jam by the dryin' rock."

We push our way through cut-grass, and poke sticks under deadheads along the bank. Minnows and crayfish scuttle into deeper water. I almost catch a turtle.

We strip, swim down the current, roll logs, sun-dry, and dress.

"Let's go to the creek!"

We climb up hill, crawl over four fences, run through the milk-cow herd, slow down to walk along the old, abandoned road --

"She's full up!" Pike creek, in early summer flood, churns against its gravel banks, carries our naked bodies down with its clear and brownish waters -- Watch the rocks -- stay away from snags -- make the bank before the rapids. Pebbles press hard against winter-tendered feet as I pick my way back upstream to the sandbank, and slap a horsefly dead. Dingo yelps in a woodchuck's hole, backs up and sits on a thistle.

The sun is low when we cut across Williams' woods to leave Bill at his home. Ferns reach halfway to our heads. Thick leaves on basswood, oak, and ash shield off the sky. An owl quietly leaves its branch as a red squirrel chatters out our passing.

"A-a-a-lex!" It's Mrs. Johnson's voice.

"G-by. I gotta pump some water."

We lift our arms in parting gesture and I saunter toward the river. My feet ache from miles of walking. My clothes are sweaty from the sun. The water is cool and swift. I know the channel through the rapids; its wake-marked rocks create no threat. I wade out in shoes and clothes, and plunge downstream -- Light is shallow -- dark is deep -- Keep well clear of log jams -- angle into the current -- angle back toward shore -- sidestroke to check the depth.

Now it's twilight, after supper. I'm sitting on porch steps, in dry clothes, my hand on Dingo's velvet ear. Black swallows silhouette against the sky. Tomorrow we can finish our unpacking -- tonight -- I'm going to climb in bed -- and sleep.

The earth-inductor compass needle is halfway to the peg! That constellation I've been following has drawn me south of course. I press left rudder, banking the Spirit of St. Louis toward its proper heading. The needle moves up slowly, fluctuating; then overshoots the lubber line and drops down on the other side. I kick right rudder. The needle falters upward. I've never seen it act like that before. Is the earth-inductor failing, or am I half asleep and flying badly?

I throw my flashlight on the liquid compass overhead. It, too, is swinging -- probably because of the double change in heading. I center the turn-indicator, and hold my nose straight toward the star. But the earth-inductor needle is still top-heavy, and the liquid compass swinging doesn't stop.

Something's seriously wrong. I haven't depended too much on the earth-inductor compass. It's a new and complicated instrument, just past the experimental stage. If it failed completely, I wouldn't be surprised. But the liquid compass! -- the whole flight is based on it. It's almost as essential for the liquid compass to work as for the engine to keep running. I never heard of two compasses giving out at the same time. The plane must still be turning. There must be something I've overlooked, some simple element I've neglected to consider. I've been sleepy – unobservant -- my eyes must be tricking me. But the turn-indicator is centered, and the stars confirm that I'm flying straight.

I look at the liquid compass again, as though trying to steady it by concentration alone. The card is rocking through an arc of more than 60 degrees -- more than 90 degrees at times. Is it possible that I'm entering a "magnetic storm"? Most pilots scoff at their existence. They say magnetic storms are figments of imagination, like air pockets -- just an excuse for getting lost -- an attempt to explain away mistakes in navigation. Do magnetic storms really occur, then? Have I found my way through a labyrinth of cloud only to be confronted with this new, unknown danger? How large are magnetic storms? How long do they last? How far off will they throw a compass card? Do they have a permanent effect on the magnets?

The earth-inductor is hopeless. The needle's wobbling back and forth from peg to peg. There's no use paying any attention to it. But the liquid compass hesitates between oscillations, and remains fairly steady for several seconds at a time. I set my heading by these periods of hesitation, and hold it by the stars -- except when a thunderhead gets in the way. As long as the stars are there, I can hold a general easterly direction; but there'll be little accuracy to navigation. God only knows where I'll strike the European coast. But if the liquid compass gets any worse, and high clouds shut off the sky, I won't know whether I'm flying north,' south, east, or west. I may wander around in circles.

It would be easier to set a course if I could read the liquid compass without a flashlight. But the luminous figures aren't bright enough for that. While the flashlight's on, I can't see the stars; and it's hard to watch the compass overhead and the instruments on the board at the same time.

On what delicate devices flight depends: a magnetized bar of steel, slender as a pencil lead, reaching for the North Pole thousands of miles away, swinging with each bump of air, subject to the slightest disturbance, barely strong enough to point; yet without its directive force the horsepower of the engine, the aerodynamic qualities of the plane, the skills of the pilot, become meaningless. Detouring thunderheads, flying in an unknown wind ten thousand feet above the water, trying to follow a compass that swings thirty degrees and more off course, what hope have I to make my landfall on the southern Irish coast? In fact, can I expect to find a coast at all?

Last night I couldn't go to sleep -- Tonight I can barely stay awake -- If only I could balance the one against the other -- awake -- asleep -- which is it that I want to, be? But look -- there's a great black mass ahead --
It necks out toward the route my compass points for me
-- Its ears stick up -- its jaws gape wide -- It's a cloud -- or -- maybe it's not a cloud -- It could be a dragon, or a tiger -- I could imagine it into anything at all -- What's that whitish object, moving just beyond the window of my room -- no, my cockpit

-- no, my room -- I push goggles up to see more clearly -- No, they're bedsheets I'm peeking out between -- I'm in the nursery of my Minnesota home, and I'm afraid of the dark! Yes, I know that jungle animals don't jump through windows in the North. I trust my mother and my father when they tell me. But what is that, moving slowly, there behind the table? Suppose it
did
leap forth!

Look! -- it's turning! -- it's crawling! -- It's about to spring! Nerve and muscle tense against the terror -- bed and nursery disappear. I raise my wing and kick left rudder, and watch the compass spin.

Dragons, tigers, jungle animals? How ridiculous! But it's true that I used to be fearful in the dark. It was years before I got completely over it. As a child, I could wander alone, tranquilly, through the most isolated places by the light of day. But at night my mind conjured up drowned bodies on the riverbank, and robbers behind every sumac clump. The reality of life was tame compared to my imagination's fantasies. It was what I couldn't see that frightened me -- the python, slithering overhead, the face beyond the curtain. And most of all, the imaginary horrors that took no clear-cut form.

Stars drop lower. Valleys between thunderheads widen. I no longer have to look up through the window on top of the fuselage to find a stable point in space. Clouds tower and slant in bands and layers. Their outlines are sharp -- too sharp for clouds at night; and the sky seems lighter. Can it be the first faint warning of the moon's approach? I turn to the south window -- the night has a deeper shade. Yes, it must be the morning twilight of the moon -- a luminous wash, barely perceptible, on the northeastern wall of night.

But so soon, and so far north! I thought it would rise on the other side of my plane. Have the swinging compasses turned me that many degrees off course? Am I heading for Africa instead of Europe? I hold the Spirit of St. Louis straight with the constellation overhead, and watch the liquid compass. No, if the compass is correct during its steady periods, I'm pointed about on course -- maybe a little southward, but not over ten degrees, not enough to explain the moon's position unless -- unless
both
compasses are
completely
wrong! Maybe the steady periods aren't caused by the magnets pointing toward the pole. Maybe they're the result of some freak vibration. But they can't be very far in error with the North Star in approximate position, high on my left.

I glance at the chart on my lap. Of course I've shortened the night by flying with the earth's rotation. And I've been bending more and more eastward as I follow the great-circle route, cutting each meridian at a greater angle than the last, changing course a degree or two clockwise every hour through -the day and night. When I took off from New York, I pointed the Spirit of St. Louis northeast; and when the sky cleared, the morning sun beamed down on the angle from my right. But when I reach Paris, I'll be heading south of east, and heavenly bodies will be rising on my left. After all, it's late in May. That's probably where the moon should be for a pilot on the great-circle route.

I'd almost forgotten the moon. Now, like a neglected ally, it's coming to my aid. Every minute will bring improving sight. As the moon climbs higher in the sky, its light will brighten, until finally it ushers in the sun. The stars ahead are already fading. The time is 10:20. There have been only two hours of solid darkness.

Gradually, as light improves, the night's black masses turn into a realm of form and texture. Silhouettes give way to shadings. Clouds open their secret details to the eyes. In the moon's reflected light, they seem more akin to it than to the earth over which they hover. They form a perfect setting for that strange foreign surface one sees through a telescope trained on the satellite of the world. Formations of the moon, they are -- volcanoes and flat plateaus; great towers and bottomless pits; crevasses and canyons; ledges no earthly mountains ever knew -- reality combined with the fantasy of a dream. There are shapes like growths of coral on the bed of a tropical sea, or the grotesque canyons of sandstone and lava at the edge of Arizona deserts -- first black, then gray, now greenish hue in cold, mystical light.

I weave in and out, eastward, toward Europe, hidden away in my plane's tiny cockpit, submerged, alone, in the magnitude of this weird, unhuman space, venturing where man has never been, irretrievably launched on a flight through this sacred garden of the sky, this inner shrine of higher spirits. Am I myself a living, breathing, earth-bound body, or is this a dream of death I'm passing through? Am I alive, or am I really dead, a spirit in a spirit world? Am I actually in a plane boring through the air, over the Atlantic, toward Paris, or have I crashed on some worldly mountain, and is this the afterlife?