the conclusion of
of
by Daniel Mason
(Fowey, UK: Alexander Associates, 1996)
Perkins selected one sketch at a time, using a pencil to point out this feature or that. As he explained the principles and the engineering behind the craft he had depicted in careful lines and shadings, his voice, which had been high and tight, dropped into a more comfortable range, and his hands stopped flittering and instead soared on the pressure of imaginary zephyrs like the wings he sought to explain. "Lift. Da Vinci proposed wings, flapping like a finch, but consider the hawk, who soars and glides, carrying momentum into momentum. She lights on the tallest trees, stretches her wings and falls into the wind. She sails, riding the breeze that washes over her. You see the cross-section." He pulled out a sketch of several curved shapes, thin, bulbous at one end and tapering to a point at the other, placed in different attitudes all over the page. "An ærofoil. The air flows past, but you see--" He quickly sketched in straight lines on the bottom and curves on top, following the contour of the shape. "--below, here, the shorter distance, less resistance; the wind simply passes. But above, the breeze tarries on the leading edge, then hurries along and out. The speed picks up the wing, and so you have lift. The question is the angle, the curve. Too far this way, no lift. Too far this way, the wing dives." He was sketching as he spoke, quick, neat drawings with the precise, sharp point of his pencil. "Just so, and the wing will round to and stop in mid-air, just like the hawk confronting its prey. We ride the air, but if we lose our balance, the air will push us to earth. It's all pressure." As he drew and spoke, he looked up occasionally, checking, but Susan sensed that he knew they would not understand these invisible countervailing forces, not completely, even though it was all quite real to him.
"Forward thrust: propulsion. A propellor, a wing that spins. We lift, but forward, so we pull. But how much weight? How much power?" His discussion was becoming more and more elliptical, and he was looking up at Jack more often, as if assessing him to see how much he was absorbing, and Susan began to suspect that he was deliberately obscuring the crucial details. "Then--control. Not like a carriage, for we have not only yaw but pitch and roll. All very simple, all very delicate. A rudder, as on a ship, for yaw. Deflect the airstream, and the craft turns. This way--that way. All pressure; the surface and the wind." He was sketching even more quickly now, but no less exactly. "For pitch, a rudder laid on its side. Aft, where the tail catches the wind and swings as we wish. The hawk lifts her tail and rushes down to earth. But for roll--a difficult problem. More rudders, I think, set in the wing, but I haven't solved it yet, not yet." He paused, tapping his pencil and frowning at the paper in front of him. He looked up at Susan, the clear eyes no longer simple, and smiled, not nervous now, but as Jesse used to smile when she ran to him. "It's all right." He actually reached out and patted her hand. "We run wires through pulleys here, here, and here, and the pilot actually twists the wing. A Frenchman thought of it, actually. The wing lives in the air, just like the hawk."
He liked to slip out to the stable before breakfast and remain until dusk had so enveloped the walls that he could scarcely find his way out. He craved not so much the drink as the silence, and as his progress through the brown bottles slackened, he retraced the past, mulling over events like a man who finds a box of letters in the attic. The years seemed to fall into a paradigm, each little epoch marked by the woman who loomed over him: his grandmother, his mother, his wife, and, here at the end, his sister. There was no place for the men in the paradigm. They had come to California and left him behind, left him with the women, and when his mother had brought him, her arm around his shoulders, the men had regarded him with slight surprise, as though they could not quite imagine him. Susan's boys had deferred to him as their uncle, presuming an authority that he did not actually wield, and assuming an elder's disinterest in their affairs. Caught between generations, he huddled in the stable, falling deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine, insoluble past.
Jack broke in. "Mr. Perkins, this is all very well, but I want to see the airplane. I want to see you fly it."
Perkins sat back in his chair, considering his visitor carefully. After a long moment, he rose. "Very well. If you please." He ushered them out of the house and around behind the barn to a large shed. He opened the doors wide, and the daylight revealed a double-winged craft with a span of nearly twenty feet. The thin, delicate struts were built of strong, dry wood, and over the framework was stretched canvas so thin that they could see the members through it.
Jack folded his arms. "It looks like a kite."
Perkins nodded. "It does indeed. I took this craft out last year, towed it behind a horse, had to lash the creature to get him to run fast enough, but it sailed well enough in the end. The great problem was control; it's too small for a man to ride, and his weight would bring it down."
"Can you install an engine in it?" Jack wanted to know.
"Oh, yes. Of course." Perkins walked over to a corner and threw back a tarp. "But look at this. This is how I test my ærofoils. You see?" They looked down at an open, tapered box about twelve feet long. Perkins opened a crate to reveal a whole collection of tiny wing sections, each with a strong cord looped through from top to bottom, and others attached to the tips. "That is a sort of chute, a passage for wind. I take it out in the meadow on the windiest days. I point the chute into the wind, and the flared end picks up the breeze and funnels it back to the center, here. Then I can control the attitude of the ærofoil, and find out how well it works. If it's going to dive, much better to find out now than when you're up in the air."
"Mr. Perkins," said Jack, trying to keep his voice under control and speaking in a slow, measured rhythm. "I want to see you fly."
"Fly?" Perkins seemed to hear the request for the first time. He looked around, up at the clouds, and over at the tree tops. "Not today."
"Why not?" Jack growled. Susan had to concentrate to keep from smiling.
"No wind. Hardly a breeze." Susan realized that the wind had, indeed, died out completely. "You see, Mr. Trevenna, even a powered craft needs a good wind and a good start. I tried using sleigh runners after that blizzard we had last February, but when the snow is deep like that, you can't tell where the rocks might be. No, wheels work better, but you need a bit of a downward slope and, as I say, a fine, strong headwind. Especially here, you see. We're higher in elevation than San Francisco; the air is thinner. Conditions must be just right or the thing won't get off the ground at all."
"You can't fly today?"
"Not possible." The inventor chuckled and began picking at his callouses again. "I wait for weeks sometimes, for just the right day."
"You mean you can fly only in certain weather?"
Perkins smiled. "We've been trying to fly since Icarus. Someday, we'll be able to fly any time we wish. For now, God chooses the days, and then He gives us a glimpse of eternity."
More and more, his reveries followed him into the house, so that pretending to join the others was not enough to free him from his desperate contemplations. More and more, he looked up at Katie or one of the children to find an expression of petulant concern, and he caught his breath, lost, wondering how far and how disastrously he had fallen out of step. More and more, he felt that he was sinking, but the traces of the past had become so entangled with the conundrums of the present that he could not find his bearings well enough to extricate himself.
"My God!" Jack slapped his fist into his palm and stalked off a few paces. He returned to look the inventor in the eye. "Perkins! Did you actually fly?"
"Yes."
"Not a glider, but a machine under its own power?"
"Yes."
"But you can't do it today?"
"No."
"Can you at least show me the airplane?"
Perkins took out a large blue handkerchief and wiped his face all over before anwering. "You wish to see the airplane?"
"Yes."
"The one that I flew last year?"
"Yes."
Perkins considered, blew his nose into the handkerchief, folded it carefully and tucked it away into his coat pocket. "Why?"
"Why?" Jack was incredulous. "You and I are discussing the possibility of my investing in your . . . your operation here." He looked around at the weathered barn, the open shack, and the scraps of ironmongery sitting in the underbrush. "I am proposing to give you enough money to move ahead, to develop this machine into something useful. You might become famous, or rich, or both. So might I. But you need my money and I need what you know. Now." He took a breath. "If I'm going to commit to this thing, then I want some sort of proof. I want to see it."
Perkins lowered his gaze, the lids drooping so that the impossible eyes nearly disappeared. "You say you wish to invest. You say you are interested in the future of powered flight. So you say." He looked at the wind chute. "How do I know you aren't building an airplane yourself? Or representing someone who is?"
"What?" Jack's jaw dropped.
"Oh, yes. Or perhaps you work for the government. The Army." He began drawing the tarp over the chute. "A man came to see me last summer. A man from the Army. No uniform, of course, but he told me what he was about. Imagine, he said, if soldiers could fly over enemy lines. They could locate the other troops, chart their movements. They might even carry weapons and fire on the enemy, or lob shells down onto them. No, I said. Not in my airplane. He smiled. You cannot stop what will happen, Mr. Perkins. No? Perhaps not. But nor will I comply. Good day, sir. And he left."
"You think I'm from the Army?"
"I think nothing. But I must be careful. Yes, I flew an airplane. Single wing, 42-foot span, aft rudders, twin propellors, eighteen-horsepower engine. Flew six times off of that saddle over there, launching right into the face of the gale, so brisk it made my eyes water and I couldn't see, couldn't tell for sure when I left the ground except that I knew I was soaring. I could feel it. Even circled the hill once. The craft is sitting in that barn right there. You've seen the drawings, you have my word--what more do you want?"
"I want to see the plane, damn you!"
Perkins pulled the doors shut. "I must be careful. I hope you are an honest man, Mr. Trevenna, but there are those that are not. Good day, sir. Good day, Mrs. Carne." Scratching his callouses, the inventor walked back to his little house, leaving the visitors standing in the mud.
Without a word, they walked back to the buggy. Jack helped Susan up and then stood there, staring at the barn. They were halfway back to town before he spoke. "Well, automobiles would be safer."
She looked over at him. "D'you think 'e was tellin' the truth?"
Jack stared out between the ears of the horse. "I don't know." He smiled at her. "I hope so. Just think of it. To fly!"
He turned back to the reins, and she looked at his profile, neatly outlined, like a weathervane. "Then why not go back? Offer t' go in with 'im. P'raps, in a little, 'e'll trust you."
Jack looked at her and chuckled a little. "Let him make a fool of me? I don't think so."
"And if 'e is tellin' the truth? What if 'e is the first? Then who's the fool?"
"Let it go, Susan. This time, I know I'm right."
The Race Street house was crowded with children, full armchairs, and cups of hot punch. Susan deflected questions about their mysterious excursion while Jack exchanged a few discreet words with Frederick. The families sat down to Christmas dinner as the freshening breeze whistled past the windows.
On the day after Christmas, Joseph saddled his horse and rode slowly through a desultory drizzle to Auburn, where he rented a room in a boarding house. There was a bed, a table and a chair, and across the single, dingy window hung a torn scrap of canvas. To the center of the ceiling was attached a bracket for a chandelier from the days when the house had held prosperous miners' revels. He drew the chair over to a position directly beneath the bracket, climbed up to stand on the seat, reached up, grabbed on to the iron hooks for a moment, and lifted his feet, gasping. The bracket held. He lowered his feet to the seat of the chair, then stepped down, shrugged off his coat, laid it on the bed, and reached into one of the large pockets to bring out a short length of rope. He sat on the bed, rubbing his fingers along the splintery hemp, and then, quickly and expertly, tied a slip knot in one end. He stepped back up onto the chair, looped the free end of the rope through the bracket, and tied a bowline close up against the metal. He lifted the loop over his head and discovered that he was still wearing his hat, so he took it off, held it in his hand for a moment, and gently let it fall onto the bed below. Then he slid the loop over his head, past his face and down under his chin, and pulled to bring it tightly around his neck. He stood there, staring at the wall. In his ear sounded, again and again, his grandmother's name for the barley gruel she used to feed him, so thin that it was little more than water: "sky-blue and sinker, sky-blue and sinker, sky-blue and sinker." He stood, motionless, for a minute, then another, and another, until fifteen minutes had passed. Abruptly, he shifted his weight so that the chair fell out from under his feet. He fell, but not far enough, and the rope pressed on his windpipe, pressing until his eyes felt swollen. Slowly, so very slowly, the room began to shimmer, and then dissolved.