The Spirit of ST Louis (48 page)

Right rudder, twelve degrees.

The fog dissolves, and the sea appears. Flying two hundred feet higher, I wouldn't have seen it, for the overcast is just above me. There's no sun; only a pocket of clear air. Ahead, is another curtain of mist. Can I get under it this time? I push the stick forward. Waves are mountainous -- even higher than before. If I fly close to their crests, maybe I can stay below the next area of fog.

I drop down until I'm flying in salt spray whipped off whitecaps by the wind. I clip five feet above a breaker with my wheels, watch tossing water sweep into the trough beyond. But the fog is too thick. It crowds down between the waves themselves. It merges with their form. A gull couldn't find enough ceiling to fly above this ocean. I climb. The air's rougher than before, swirling like the sea beneath it. I open my throttle wider to hold a margin of speed and power.

Before I reach a thousand feet, waves show again, vaguely -- whitecaps veiled and unveiled by low-lying scuds of fog. I nose down; but in a moment they're gone, smothered by mist. I climb.

The next clear area is larger, with a broken sky above. Strips and patches of blue open and close like shutters, while layers of clouds shuffle past one another. It looks as though the storm is really breaking. I pull out my air cushion, blow it up, stuff it back under me quickly, and straighten out the

plane. There's not much time. More fog lies just ahead. I

pour a little water down over the dryness of my throat. The canteen is still half full. I'm tempted to take long, cool swallows, but I must guard my supply in case I'm forced to land at sea.

Fog closes in. Again I try to stay below it. Again I have to climb. A light rain streaks by my windows, trickles over struts and wings, splashes through cracks and around corners into the cockpit. Flecks of cool water strike my face. Finding these pockets of clear air removes all question of climbing up above the clouds. Every glimpse I catch of the sea helps ward off sleep. And rain may be an indication of better weather close ahead.

While I'm staring at the instruments, during an unearthly age of time, both conscious and asleep, the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences--vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise at their coming. There's no suddenness to their appearance. Without turning my head, I see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision. There's no limit to my sight -- my skull is one great eye, seeing everywhere at once.

These phantoms speak with human voices -- friendly, vapor-like shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. Now, many are crowded behind me. Now, only a few remain. First one and then another presses forward to my shoulder to speak above the engine's noise, and then draws back among the group behind. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.

Apprehension spreads over time and space until their old meanings disappear. I'm not conscious of time's direction. Figures of miles from New York and miles to Paris lose their interest. All sense of substance leaves. There's no longer weight to my body, no longer hardness to the stick. The feeling of flesh is gone. I become independent of physical laws -- of food, of shelter, of life. I'm almost one with these vaporlike forms behind me, less tangible than air, universal as aether. I'm still attached to life; they, not at all; but at any moment some thin band may snap and there'll be no difference between us.

The spirits have no rigid bodies, yet they remain human in outline form -- emanations from the experience of ages, inhabitants of a universe closed to mortal men. I'm on the border line of life and a greater realm beyond, as though caught in the field of gravitation between two planets, acted on by forces I can't control, forces too weak to be measured by any means at my command, yet representing powers incomparably stronger than I've ever known.

I realize that values are changing both within and without my mind. For twenty-five years, it's been surrounded by solid walls of bone, not perceiving the limitless expanse, the immortal existence that lies outside. Is this death? Am I crossing the bridge which one sees only in last, departing moments? Am I already beyond the point from which I can bring my vision back to earth and men? Death no longer seems the final end it used to be, but rather the entrance to a new and free existence which includes all space, all time.

Am I now more man or spirit? Will I fly my airplane on to Europe and live in flesh as I have before, feeling hunger, pain, and cold, or am I about to join these ghostly forms, become a consciousness in space, all-seeing, all-knowing, unhampered by materialistic fetters of the world?

At another time I'd be startled by these visions; but on this fantastic flight, I'm so far separated from the earthly life I know that I accept whatever circumstance may come. In fact, these emissaries from a spirit world are quite in keeping with the night and day. They're neither intruders nor strangers. It's more like a gathering of family and friends after years of separation, as though I've known all of them before in some past incarnation. They're as different from men, and yet as similar, as the night's cloud mountains were to the Rockies of the West. They belong with the towering thunderheads and moonlit corridors of sky. Did they board my plane, unseen, as I flew between the temple's pillars? Have they ridden with me through sunrise, into day? What strange connection exists between us? If they're so concerned with my welfare, why didn't they introduce themselves before?

I live in the past, the present, and the future, here and in different places, all at once. Around me are old associations, bygone friendships, voices from ancestrally distant times. Vistas open up before me as changing as those between the clouds I pass. I'm flying in a plane over the Atlantic Ocean; but I'm also living in years now far away.

.

Whip-poor-will --- Whip-poor-will
--- That's Father's whistle! He's coming down the icehouse road. I jump up from kitchen table, let the screen door slam, hop down steps to meet him. It's late afternoon. A cool breeze has followed midday's blistering sun. My father leans his bicycle against an oak tree, and we walk along the garden path. Here, tomato plants are growing. There, radishes are crisp and ripe. Under that stone pile, Spot, my hunting dog, is buried. I carried rocks for weeks to mark his grave.

Father and I eat radishes and lettuce, and talk of our plans, for next week, in this month of June, 1915, we start on a most important expedition. From the headwaters of the Mississippi, we are to make a rowboat voyage through forest, swamp, and rapids, until, after many nights of camping, we arrive again at the banks of our farm. Possibly in future years we'll drift all the way down to New Orleans -- but that's a dream –

Six degrees right rudder.

Now, our train has jerked and whistled north to Bemidji. Now, our white, clinker-built rowboat is being towed by livery car over the forty miles of road to Lake Itasca. Now, our equipment is stowed in bow and stern, and only the painter holds us to the wharf.

My father rows along the shore, searching for the river outlet. Water is clear and satin smooth. Fish splash rings upon the surface. Turtles, slither off their logs.

"Charles, you're young; you'll live to see great changes," my father tells me as we glide over the surface. "They may not come in my lifetime, but they will in yours."

Sometimes, when we're alone, Father talks to me about politics and economics, and the reforms our government ought to bring about. I don't make any answer, for I don't quite understand what he means, and it disturbs me to have him mention things that will take place after he is dead.

Ever since I can remember, Father has been concerned about what's going on in this country -- tariffs, and monopolies, and the "Money Trust." I sometimes wonder if he doesn't spend too much time thinking about problems he doesn't have to solve. Maybe he makes them seem more serious than they really are. If such dangerous happenings lie ahead, why don't other men worry about them too? But of course my father isn't like other men. There are moments when I feel he can see into the future, as though he were living, today, in years ahead; as though it's my life to come that he dwells in rather than his own.

"Money can't draw such high interest rates indefinitely," Father continues. "A man who has a mortgage on his land at ten or twelve percent doesn't have a fair chance. If the farmers don't organize, big business will take everything they've got. This country belongs to the people, but they haven't learned how to run it yet. The trouble is that people don't have any way of getting at the truth."

Father's concerned about the war, too. He says special interests would like to get us in it, and that propaganda is already under way. "We're making too many foreign loans," he tells me; and, "the trouble with war is that it kills the best and youngest men."

We find the river -- up here it's only a brook -- and wind slowly down through grass banks, tamarack, and pine. Sun alternates with shower. There are noises in the brush.

Turn east, turn north, turn south, and west. You'd think a river had no purpose. But it's as certain as it is indifferent. We can trust the Mississippi. We know that regardless of where it wanders, it will finally take us to our farm. We portage around rapids. Clouds pinken in the west. Spaces between tree trunks darken. We ground our boat, pitch our teepee tent, and light the cooking fire ---

Flames play with forest shadows. Two bass fry in the pan. An owl hoots in the distance. Water gurgles over stones. We stand in smoky air to keep mosquitoes away, and eat, and talk ---

Our tent is dark. Frogs and crickets have the night. The day's work fades in mind -- I'll wake at sunrise -- know exactly where I am -- One can't get lost -- voyaging down a river --

Gray scales appear below, vague and misty. I nose down. But fog closes in before I drop a hundred feet. Were those waves real, or did I see a mirage in the mist? I'm not sure. I decide to fly at a thousand feet instead of fifteen hundred. There, I'll have a better chance of making contact with the water.

But I catch only tantalizing glimpses of the sea. Finally I give up searching for it, and resign myself to the cockpit, the instruments, and the strange passengers I carry. In them are solitude and companionship, proximity and distance, a call to death, a guidance to life. One or two, more prominent than the others, ride just behind my shoulder, close but never touching; communicating sometimes by voice and sometimes without the need of speaking.

Mist lightens--the Spirit of St. Louis bursts into brilliant sunlight, dazzling to fog-accustomed eyes -- a blue sky -- sparkling whitecaps. The ocean is not so wild and spray-lashed. It's less ragged with streaks of foam. The wind's strength has decreased, and it has shifted toward my tail.

The plane's shadow rushes in to meet me as I nose down closer to the waves. I last saw it centered in the rainbow, high up in morning clouds. Such a small shadow, skipping from crest to crest, all but losing itself in the troughs, seemingly fearful it won't catch up before I reach the surface.

Brilliant light, opening sky, and clarity of waves fill me with hope. I've probably passed through the great body of the storm. Clouds still lie ahead and on each side -- some as fog on the water -- some high above. But there are channels of clear air between. Not that I'll follow those channels, but future periods of blind flying should be shorter, and broken up by similar gemlike vistas of the sea. I'm free of the instruments. I can look around again. The gravitation of life is strong.

THE TWENTY-THIRD HOUR
Over the Atlantic

HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK
¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 + 1-1

LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WINO

¼ + 1 ¼ + 1 ¼ + 1

FUSELAGE

Six zero five. For over three hours I've entered nothing in the log. What difference does it make? When one can sit still and warm in sun, and stare at such beauty, the clerklike details of a log are of trivial importance. Besides, I'll be in the next cloud before I can take down a set of readings -- unless there's ceiling enough to fly beneath it.

There is no ceiling. I climb back to a thousand feet, and reset the wind drift from ten to five degrees.

I'm over ten hours out from Newfoundland. In less than eight hours more, if the wind holds and I'm not too far off course, I should strike the Irish coast. Eight hours isn't such a long flight -- only one working day -- only a little longer than the trip between St. Louis and New York. And then, in another six hundred miles, I'll be over Paris. In fourteen hours, the flight will be done. Fourteen hours is less time than it took to fly between San Diego and St. Louis -- If the weather clears -- If the engine keeps on running -- if I strike Ireland -- Well, at least my plane will be light, and stall down slowly -- Why think about a forced landing? Think about Ireland -- Eight hours isn't such a long flight -- only three times the length of the mail route between St. Louis and Chicago -- I'm already biting into the eighth hour -- In one more hour, only seven will be left -- There's the sun again, beating down on another fog-shored lake of the ocean –

Sea, clouds, and sky are all stirred up together -- dull gray mist, blinding white mist, patches of blue, mottling of black, a band of sunlight sprinkling diamond facets on the water. There are clouds lying on the ocean, clouds just risen from its surface, clouds floating at every level through twenty thousand feet of sky; some small, some overpowering in size -- wisps, masses, layers. It's a breeding ground for mist.