The Bridge Across Forever

ONE She'll be here today. I looked down from the cockpit, down through the wind and propeller-blast, down through half a mile of autumn to my rented hayfield, to the sugar chip that was my FLY-$3-FLY sign tied to the open gate. Both sides of the road around the sign were jammed with cars. There must have been around sixty of them, and a crowd to match, come to see the flying. She could be there this moment, just arrived! I smiled at that. Could be! I throttled the engine to idle, pulled the nose of the fleet plane higher, let the wings stall. Then stomped full rudder, full left rudder, and jammed the control stick back. The green earth, harvest corn and soybeans, farms and meadows calm at noon, the bottom dropped out and they exploded in the whirling blur of an airshow tailspin of what would look from the ground like an old flying-machine suddenly burst out of control. The nose slammed down, the world spun into a color-streak tornado wrapping faster and faster around my goggles. How long have I been missing you, dear soulmate, I thought, dear wise mystical lovely lady? Today at last, coincidence will bring you to Russell, Iowa, take you by the hand, lead you to that field of alfalfa hay, down there. You'll walk to the edge of the crowd, not quite knowing why, curious to watch a page of history still alive, bright paints spinning in the air. The two-winger twisted down thuddering, kicking against me on the controls for a thousand feet, the tornado going steeper and tighter and louder every second. Spin ... till ... Now. I pushed the stick forward, came off the left and stood hard on the right rudder pedal. Blurs going tighter, quicker, one, two times around, then the spin quit and we dived straight down, fast as we could go. She'll be here today, I thought, because she's alone, too. Because she's learned everything she wants to learn by herself. Because there's one person in the world that she's being led to meet, and that person right now is flying this airplane. Tight turn, throttle back, switch off, propeller stopped . glide down, float soundlessly to land, coast to stop in front of the crowd. I'll know her when I see her, I thought, bright anticipation, I'll know her at once. Around the airplane were men and women, families with picnic baskets, kids on bikes, watching. Two dogs, near the kids. I pulled myself up from the cockpit, looked at the people and liked them. Then I was listening to my own voice, curiously detached, and at the same time I was looking for her in the crowd. "Russell from the air, folks! See it floating adrift on the fields of Iowa! Last chance before the snows! Come on up where only birds and angebfly. ..." A few of the people laughed and applauded for somebody else to be first. Some faces suspicious, full of questions; some faces eager and adventurous; some pretty faces, too, amused, intrigued. But nowhere the face I was looking for. "You're sure it's safe?" a woman said. "After what I saw, I'm not sure you're a safe driver!" Suntanned, clear brown eyes, she wanted to be sold on this. "Safe as can be, ma'am, gentle as thistledown. The Fleet here's been flying since December twenty-fourth, nineteen twenty-eight-she's probably good for one more flight before she goes to pieces. ..." She blinked at me, startled. "Just kidding," I said. "She'll be flying when you and I are years gone, I guarantee you that!" "I'd guess I've waited long enough," she said. "I've always wanted to fly in one of these. ..." "You're going to love it." I swung the propeller to start the engine, showed her the way to the front cockpit, helped her with the safety-belt. Impossible, I thought. She's not here. Not-here is not possible! Every day convinced today's-the-day, and every day wrong! The first ride was followed by thirty other rides, before the sun went down. I flew and talked till everyone went home to supper and to their nights with each other and left me alone. Alone. Is she fiction? Silence. A minute before the water boiled, I took the pan from my campfire, tapped in hot-chocolate mix, stirred it with a hay-stem. Frowned, talked to myself. "I'm a fool, to look for her out here." I poked last week's cinnamon-roll on a stick, toasted it over shreds of fire. This adventure, barnstorming through the 1970s with an old biplane, I thought. Once it was spiced with question-marks. Now it's so known and safe I might as well be living in a scrapbook. After the hundredth tailspin I can do them with my eyes closed. After searching the thousandth crowd, I'm beginning to doubt that soulmates appear in hayfields. There's enough money, passenger-hopping, I'll never starve. But I'm learning nothing new, either, I'm hanging on. My last real learning happened two summers before. I had seen a white-and-gold Travel Air biplane, another barnstormer in a field, had landed and met Donald Shimoda, retired Messiah, ex-Saviour-of-the-World. We became friends, and in those last months of his life he had passed along a few secrets of his strange calling. The journal that I kept of that season had turned into a book sent oif to a publisher and printed not long ago. I practiced most of his lessons well, so new tests were rare indeed, but the soulmate problem I couldn't solve at all. Near the tail of the Fleet, I heard a low crackling; stealthy footsteps crunching in the hay. They stopped when I turned to listen, then crept slowly forward, stalking me. I peered into the dark. "Who's there?" A panther? A leopard? Not in Iowa, there haven't been leopards in Iowa since . Another slow step in the night hay. It's got to be ... A timber-wolf! I dived for the tool-kit, grabbed for a knife, for a big wrench, but too late. In that instant around the wheel of the airplane popped a black-and-white bandit's mask, bright eyes studying me, furry whiskered nose sniffing inquisitively toward the grocery-box. Not a timber-wolf. "Why . why, hello there . ."I said. I laughed at my heart, pounding so, and pretended I was putting the wrench away. Baby raccoons, rescued and raised as pets in the Midwest, are set free when they're a year old, but pets they are ever after. There's no wrong, is there, in crackling through the fields, in stopping by after dark to ask if a camper might have, oh, a little something sweet to nibble on, while a night slows by? "That's OK . c'mon, c'mon little fella! Hungry?" Any little sweet thing would be fine, a square of chocolate or ... marshmallows? I can tell you have marshmallows, The raccoon stood on its hind feet for a moment, nose twitching, testing the air food-ward, and looked to me. The rest of the marshmallows, if you won't be eating them yourself, they'd be fine. I lifted the bag out, poured a pile of the soft powdery things on my bedroll. "Here y'go . come on. ..." Settling noisily to dessert, the mini-bear stuffed marsh-mallows into its mouth, chomping them in happy appreciation. It declined my homemade panbread after half a bite, finished the marshmallows, downed most of my honeyed puffed-wheat, lapped the pan of water I poured. Then it sat for a while, watching the fire, sniffed at last that it was time to be moving on. "Thanks for stopping by," I said. The black eyes looked solemnly into mine. Thank you for the food. You're not a bad human. I'll see you tomorrow night. Your panbread is awful. With that the fluffy creature trundled away, ring-striped tail disappeared into the shadows, steps crunching fainter and fainter through the hay, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the wish for my lady. It always comes back to her. She is not impossible, I thought, she is not too much to hope for! What would Donald Shimoda tell me, if he were sitting here under the wing tonight, if he knew I hadn't found her yet? He'd say something obvious, is what he'd say. The strange thing about his secrets was that every one of them was simple. What if I told him I'd failed, searching for her? He'd study his cinnamon-roll for inspiration, he'd run his fingers through his black hair and he'd say, "Flying with the wind, Richard, from town to town, has it occurred to you that's not a way to find her, that's a way to lose her?" Simple. And then he'd wait without a word for whatever I had to answer. I would have said to that, if he were here I would have said, "OK. Flying over horizons is not the way. I give up. 'Tell me. How do I find her?" He'd narrow his eyes, annoyed I'd ask him instead of myself. "Are you happy? Are you doing, this moment, exactly what you most want to do in the world?" Habit would have answered of course I am, of course I'm running toy life just the way I please.

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