Calico Pennants (7 page)

“How much time?” he asked as she banked right to begin the methodical search.

“Twenty minutes or so.”

As her eyes moved over the endless water, her thoughts again turned to Vidal. The evening before the flight had commenced, they’d stood on the tarmac together, talking. “What with the false start in Honolulu, and all the subsequent preparation, I’m exhausted,” she’d confided to him. “Right from the beginning our financial backers have been putting on the pressure. I’ve decided that this is going to be my last record-breaking flight, my swan song. You know, Gene, sometimes people just get tired of their own legends.”

“What would G.P. say if he heard you talking like that?” he’d asked.

“Of course he’d say to me, ‘Always think with your stick forward, darling!’ But lately I’ve begun to feel as if I’m mortgaging the future.”

“You’ll pull it off. You’ve got to do it,” he reassured. “And what are futures for, anyway?”

“Gene, the truth is that you’re only worried about the prospects of the Ludington Line should I fail and be swallowed by the deep blue ocean.”

Unable to take her sarcasm seriously, he feigned a laugh and put his arm around her shoulder as they walked slowly toward the Electra’s hangar. “When it comes to the future of commercial aviation, your influence is going to be crucial,” he told her. “But you’re more important than that to me. To all of us!”

“Maybe to you, Gene. To George? I’m not so sure. I’ve never really been sure.”

Flying north to south, then back again, she created the grid that her navigator had suggested. The delicate weave of her pattern attempted to leave no area uncovered. Clouds and fog gathered below, threatening to engulf the plane. Again the pilot leaned into the stick, this time taking the Electra all the way down to five hundred feet. “I can’t see the ocean anymore, Freddy,” she said.

Impressed by her steadiness, Freddy watched as she moistened her weathered, cracking lips with the tip of her tongue. Her sun-bleached, short hair had become dry and brittle, while her brows were golden from many hours spent in the cockpit beneath the blazing equatorial sun. On several occasions she’d told him she was not afraid to die; and in fact, try as she might, she had never been able to envision herself growing old. Weird as such a statement had seemed to Freddy at the time, he was inclined to consider its source. Amelia was an odd bird; she always had been. But so were most of the flyers he knew. They seemed to take some curious and bizarre pleasure from flirting time and again with oblivion. Transfixed, Freddy painted a vivid portrait of her in his mind—one that might somehow endure the outcome of the catastrophe they now faced. “Try the radio again,” he said.

“WE ARE ON THE LINE OF POSITION 157 DASH 337/ WILL REPEAT THIS MESSAGE ON 6210 kcs./ WAIT, LISTENING ON 6210 kcs./ WE ARE RUNNING NORTH AND SOUTH/ WE ARE RUNNING ON LINE/ WILL REPEAT...”

She descended another two hundred feet, and still fog inhibited a visual search. Somehow sensing its plight, the plane’s starboard engine missed and knocked, as if the heart of exploration itself had skipped a beat.

Noonan looked up nervously, expectation written all over his sunburned face. He wanted to say something significant, to recap the myriad events of his life in a single word, but before he could utter a sound, Amelia pulled out the choke, and the engine came roaring back to a measured equilibrium. That was just like her, he thought, disarming disaster with a deft flick of her wrist, controlling the uncontrollable with her cool competence. “I thought you told me we had enough fuel for twenty minutes,” he said.

“Measuring range is not an exact science, Freddy,” she said to him.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“I’m taking it down a little further,” she said.

Freddy could now see the foamy waves reflected in her blue-gray eyes. Her slender fingers clutched the stick with white-knuckled determination. Her body had gone rigid against disaster.

“We’ll continue searching until we’re out of fuel,” she said. “But if I have to ditch her in the ocean... Why don’t you begin unfolding the rubber lifeboat, Freddy? But let’s pray we don’t need it!”

“Right!” he said as he crouched down to re-enter the fuselage. “And remember Eddie Rickenbacker!” he proclaimed.

A moment later, at one hundred feet and still flying blind, the fuel was exhausted and the stuttering engines shook the plane before going silent. Rocking and diving, the Electra cut through the fog. The wings tipped, and balance was lost. They both felt the vacuum of rapid descent.

“This is it, Freddy,” Amelia called out. “I’m afraid we’re going down!”

Lost in terror and disbelief, the navigator said nothing, but clasped his hands and began to pray. The pilot whispered the defining lines of her own poetical legacy:

“
Merciless life laughs in the burning sun,

And only death intervenes, circling down
…”

AGAIN SHE WALKED the well-worn path of evocation, through the ‘Grove of Many Dragons’. Under the morning’s dun sky, subaqueous spirits embraced the energy of the vegetable world, and a hundred thousand tapered points quivered in the breeze of the storm’s aftermath. In her hand she carried a stone from the beach, washed smooth by the waves and collected at the mouth of the delta. There the waters of the Seven Sisters moved over the rocks on their way to the sea.

Otherwise featureless, the egg-shaped stone, now wrapped in a yellow ti leaf, would be her offering to Mo’o, the serpentine god she’d never actually seen, (though she’d once felt his cold hand upon her leg). Mo’o lived at the bottom of the pool where the twin waterfalls cascaded over a ninety-foot embankment and plunged into the largest of seven descending pools. From the water she drew her vitality.

As she danced to the rhythms of the tropics, lost in time, the rain forest was her only partner. Inveterate ferns cloaked the forest floor like decorative ruffles along the hem of a full skirt, and were contrasted by the vibrant and prolific red blooms of the Poinciana. The aerial roots of the banyan trees sought the moisture of the volcanic earth, and tall palms opened like umbrellas overhead. The yellow, red, and green ti leaves and arching bamboo shoots filled every open space, and broad-leafed philodendrons wound round and round the gnarled bark of the monkeypods. The twisting trunks of the dracaenas reminded her of her own divergent destiny. Shortly after her arrival on the island—immersed in the largest of the seven pools—she had chosen to re-christen herself. The relinquishing of her outworn persona came after an incisive and perilous twist of fate—a crash landing. Marooned and quite alone in Paradise, it was essential that she befriend herself without qualification, and she bestowed upon herself the immutable and loyal appellation, Amie.

Placing her offering on top of a volcanic stone at poolside, she heard the distant rumble of thunder. Last night’s storm was moving away. During her time spent as a castaway, Amie had weathered countless storms, yet this morning she felt uneasy. Something unspecified, and perhaps unwanted, remained in the wake of the tempest.

Tossing her long hair back she unfastened the sennit rope that held her skirt round her waist and let the garment drop to the ground. She took the flower lei from her neck and carefully placed it nearby. Bending down, she noticed a small spider spinning its gossamer web among the ferns. The tiny arachnid’s home was an intricate network of connections, as was her own. With eyes raised and arms outstretched she paid homage, as she did each morning, to the spirits of earth, air, fire, and water. Bathed in temporal light she stood naked and unashamed.

Amie moved to the side of the pool, her lengthy stride declaring a propensity to motion. Gazing innocently into the crystalline water she drew a single, amazed breath, for she barely recognized her own reflected image.

Her blue-gray eyes shone clear and lucid, her face tawny and smooth. Spreading over her cheeks, nose, and forehead, a precipitous field of freckles lent her face comic relief. A small gap between her two front teeth, which she’d had since childhood, continued to make her self-conscious about her smile even though there was nobody here to see it. Over time her lips had grown fuller, and the tiny crow’s feet around her eyes had mysteriously disappeared. Amie admired her fine neck and proud shoulders and recalled how her long legs and slim hips had once been perfect for Coco Chanel’s nouveau fashions. The passing years had not diminished her figure in the least. If anything, it was even better now.

Indulging a moment of recapitulation, she tossed a pebble into the pool and watched as concentric circles spread out over the top of the placid water. How many years had passed? There was really no way of knowing how long she’d been marooned on the island. Seasonable variation was quite subtle, and the meridian at which the sun rose and set deviated not more than a couple of degrees. The procession of days came and went without tangible distinction, and weeks turned into months, months into years.

In the beginning the establishment of rituals had helped her maintain her sanity in the face of isolation and loneliness. Over time such routines became a spiritual comfort. Ephemeral symbols evolved and deepened; her daily devotions became more joy than habit.

Shortly after her arrival Amie ventured away from the sandy, palm-lined coast to explore the inland territory. The beach front surrendered suddenly to a razory cluster of peaks. Each one, she estimated, rose to an altitude of greater than a thousand feet. While scrambling up an immense stone platform that lay nearly hidden by the dense overgrowth, she came near the cinder cone—a crater measuring as much as seventy-five yards in diameter. From her narrow foothold she looked down from the summit at the reef that encircled the island.

While the atoll was apparently now untenanted by other humans, certain discoveries led her to suspect past habitation. In a clearing near the mouth of the volcano she came upon what appeared to be an ancient temple. Stone seats surrounded a great altar. Indeed, no artifact could have spoken more eloquently of the island’s extinct culture.

Looking southward she observed hardened black lava fields. Parched and faded grasses grew between the cracks and fissures of the brittle pumice. What an awesome display of power and beauty such a cataclysm would have unsealed! Now the volcano laid mottled green across pearly waters.

Wading into the pool and treading water, Amie returned her attention to the present. She cupped her hands and drew cool water over her face. Instantly she felt renewed. The morning’s illustrious sunlight reflected off the ripples in the cool water, and Amie swam near a great protruding stone, where she rested on a ledge. Only then did she hear a voice—the first, other than her own, in what seemed an eternity.

“
I only have eyes for you
...” came the song from a source hidden somewhere within the prolific, overhanging vegetation. Such an unexpected incursion rattled her sensibilities.

The shiny, blue and yellow plumage of a macaw parrot shone through the deep green depths of the tropical rainforest, and with perfect vision Amie segregated the first-time visitor without difficulty. Hardly accustomed to receiving company, she laughed aloud, and the macaw, in turn, imitated her laughter. “What are you doing here?” she asked innocently.

“What are you doing here?” he echoed.

“I was marooned here a long time ago,” she offered. “What about you?”

Through the misty spray of the waterfall, Buenaventura perceived the island’s only resident in a spectral array of light, and he was first inclined to liken her splendor to that of a rainbow.

“I’m a mutineer,” was all he elected to disclose.

“After all this time spent alone, you can’t know how wonderful it is to finally hear the sound of another voice,” Amie said. “Even if you are a parrot!”

Amie climbed out of the water and lay down upon a flat rock to dry herself in the sunshine. With both hands she wrung water from her wavy, riotous hair, then tried to untangle its curly ends. “Why not perch closer so I can have a better look at you?” she suggested to the bird.

Buenaventura ignored her request; rather he responded with a bit of original poetry:

“
People think I’m timid,

And people think I’m tame,

But that just goes to show,

I’m wilder than you know,

Fate turns on the axis of my name
.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Amie, delighted.

“Keep in touch!” said BV as he spread his wings and flew away.

Amie’s world was truly a private place. She barely separated herself from its earthly cadence, though it had not always been so. Walking from the bathing pool downstream toward her home near the beachfront, she contemplated the unexpected encounter with the loquacious parrot and was suddenly conscious of how accustomed she’d grown to living alone. Perhaps over time she’d even come to cherish the solitude.

Of course integration had not been easy. During those first uncertain days, procuring basic needs superseded all else. Thankfully, fresh fruit was obvious and plentiful, though finding adequate shelter was an issue not easily resolved. The very thought of going back to the plane made her shake uncontrollably, so she slept on the warm sand, where the seafront vegetation edged the strand.

At first she dreamed repeatedly of the crash—the initial loss of control, the sensation of time slowing down, and finally the jolt of impact. She’d prepared for a water landing, but in dense fog the plane had grazed the side of an indiscernible mountain. Tumbling end over end, the mangled craft came to rest in a field of ferns. The only passenger, her navigator, had died in the defining moment of his life, and she was barely able to contain her grief and guilt. In the confusion of her own survival she had crawled from the ruined aircraft. Looking for help she hobbled, in amazement and denial, through the dense rainforest, but met with only the profound and eerie silence of a deserted Shangri-La. Following the course of a swiftly running stream she was able to reach the shoreline, where she collapsed in shock.

When she regained consciousness, she bound an open leg wound with the remnants of a torn shirtsleeve. She tried to unsnarl strands of hair matted with dried blood. She washed her face with sea water. The salt stung her eyes. Trying to reconcile her situation she searched sky and horizon for any sign of a rescue party. The Cutter, Itasca, must be nearby... Feelings of desperation surfaced, and she tried not to give way. Of course a massive search would be launched once it was determined that they were delinquent at Howland Island. G.P. was a person of action; he knew how to set a plan in motion. And the president would not disavow knowledge of her mission... So she lit a fire on the beach, and kept it burning day and night.

During her third night on the island it began to rain just after dark. The castaway huddled beneath the wide canopy of a spreading monkeypod tree in a futile attempt to stay dry. Next morning, soaked to the skin, she determined to make herself a shelter.

Among the branches of the rain tree, Amie constructed her house. Making rope ladders from banyan vines for access to the tree’s lower branches, she industriously fashioned a wood floor from the fallen limbs of a nearby koa tree. Lashing together two-inch thick branches with braided sennit rope, she planed the wood with an adz fashioned from a piece of sharp coral. And weaving together dried grasses found up-shore with freshly-gathered, spiky palm fronds, she fabricated a thatched, conical roof that she covered with philodendron leaves laid like shingles to shed rain water. In place of solid walls she made large bamboo shades that could be raised by a drawstring in good weather, and lowered when it rained.

Determined to survive, she gradually assembled the elements essential for day-to-day living. And though she dreaded a return to the site of the crash, she gathered her courage and made her way back to the plane’s wreckage. She knew she could re-fashion parts of the Electra into much needed items for this new and imposed lifestyle.

Reaching the crash site she was caught off guard by the devastation. Such chaos poignantly certified the end of erstwhile goals and aspirations, and she wept for connections she might never again engage. So massive was the damage that she was forced to disregard the notion of her plane as a phoenix; and with angry determination she stripped leather off the seats, peeled rubber from the flattened tires, and disconnected steel rods.

From twisted metal she created several essential items: cooking pots and utensils; a system of gutters, funnels, troughs, and spouts to deliver water from the running stream directly to a manmade reservoir near her dwelling. She managed to forge a combination shovel/ax from the smashed tip of a propeller blade, and she used fragments of shattered glass as magnifying elements to kindle fires by sunlight. She salvaged the rubber life raft to use as an inflatable bed; as well as a compass, a thermos, and a canteen and two cups. From the first aid kit she took scissors, tape, gauze, and a needle. Her mechanic’s tools lay strewn about the wreckage of the fuselage, and she was able to locate only her hammer, a crowbar, a few wrenches, and a single screwdriver. She made certain to collect all clothes that were carried on board.

She spent many weeks bringing order to this enforced habitat, each day securing some new aspect of her livelihood from nature’s informal entropy; and it was only after she’d provided for her basic needs that she took some quiet time to give thanks for her subsistence and acknowledge the awesome sovereignty of her environment.

Thankfully the struggle for survival was long past. Over time her life as a solitary had become a series of peaceful devotions, routines she performed with solicitude and genuine grace. Now, along this ancient pathway she walked each day after bathing, through the palm grove above the shoreline. Near the far end of her sweet potato patch she had to ford a stream in a mist that never really made her wet. Then, passing the banana grove uphill from her tree house, vistas of the rugged coastline gave way to sauna-like alcoves, carved out by pounding waves and centuries of erosion, now protected by fern-covered canyon walls. On a hillside covered with lantana, fresh water trickled off a broad-leafed spout coming out of a tree trunk, horny and spiny as the skin of a troll.