Phases of Gravity (29 page)

It was a minor thing. A few minutes. He was flying back to Houston from the Cape some time during the last months of training. He was alone in his T-38—just as Dave had been a week ago—when, on an impulse, he overflew the sprawling subdivision in which he lived. Baedecker remembers the perfect timing of the emergence of his wife and seven-year-old child, the clarity with which he saw them from an altitude of eight hundred feet at five hundred miles per hour. He remembers the sunlight dancing on the Plexiglas canopy as he pulled the T-38 into a victory roll, and then another, celebrating the sky, the day, the coming mission, and his love for the two small figures seen so far below.

Someone in the household coughs loudly and Baedecker starts from the edge of sleep, conditioned by years of listening for his son's labored breathing in the night. He watches a rectangle of white light moving across the dark line of books and tries to relax.

Eventually he sleeps. And the dream comes.

It is one of only two or three dreams that Baedecker has that he knows is not a dream. It is a memory. He has had it for years. When he comes awake, gasping and clutching at the headboard, he knows immediately that it has been the dream. And, sitting up in the darkness of Dave's study, feeling the sweat already drying on his face and body, he knows that this time—for the first time—the dream has been different.

Until now the dream had always been the same. It is August of 1962 and he is taking off from Whiting Field near Pensacola, Florida. It is a sickeningly hot day, muggy beyond belief, and it is a relief when he is sealed into the cockpit of the F-104 Starfighter and begins breathing cool oxygen. He is not involved in flight-testing. There is nothing untested about this F-104; the chrome-alloyed aircraft is all stock-block equipment, scheduled to join an Air Force squadron at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami. Baedecker has spent two weeks ferrying it cross-country on an "interservice courtesy call," his first political job for NASA, giving rides to Navy and Army VIPs curious about the new first-line fighter. A retired admiral here at Pensacola—a hulk of a man too fat for his flight suit and almost too fat for the rear seat—had patted Baedecker on the back after his joyride and proclaimed, "Absolutely first-rate flying machine." Like most pilots who had flown the F-104, Baedecker did not totally agree. The aircraft was impressive for its power and brute force—indeed, it was used out at Edwards as a proficiency trainer for the X-15 that Baedecker had flown for the first time earlier that summer—but it was not a first-rate flying machine; it was an engine with an ejection seat attached, two seats in this case, and two stubby wings offering about as much lift surface as fins on an arrow.

Sitting in the cockpit on this particularly hot August day, Baedecker is glad that the tour is over; he has a ten-minute solo flight to Homestead and then he will be heading back to California by C-130 transport. He does not envy the Air Force pilots who will be flying the F-104 on a daily basis.

Heat waves rise in rippling billows and distort the runway and line of mangrove trees beyond. Baedecker taxis into position, radios the tower for clearance, and sets the brakes on while he brings the engine up to full power. He can feel that everything is copacetic even before the dials register their proper readings. The machine strains at its mechanical tether like a half-mad thoroughbred pushing at the starting gate.

Baedecker radios the tower again and releases the brakes. The machine leaps forward, slamming him back into his seat while the runway centerline blurs together under the nose of the aircraft. Still, the monster uses an ungainly amount of runway before it reaches rotation speed. Baedecker lifts the nose sharply onto an invisible line twenty degrees above the advancing wall of trees, feels the aircraft solidly off the ground, pulls the gear up, and kicks in the afterburner.

Things happen simultaneously then. Power drops to ten percent of what is needed, Baedecker's board goes red, he knows without thinking that the flanges around the afterburner have popped open and that thrust is spilling uselessly in a blazing fountain behind him, and the stall buzzer screams in panic. Baedecker instinctively throws the nose down, sees he has neither time nor altitude for this, and pulls back sharply on the stick at precisely the same instant the first branches snap off under the belly of the dying F-104. Baedecker hunches in a near fetal position, pulls the D-ring, sees the canopy fly off in a strangely silent act of levitation and waits a full eternity of 1.75 seconds before the charge in his ejection seat fires and he is following the canopy up but too late, the plane is striking heavy branches now, is shearing off entire trunks of pine trees, and the cartwheeling tail section slams into the base of the rising ejection seat, not a solid hit but a foul tip that sends the seat spinning ass-over-tail, Baedecker flying out of it upside down, his spring-loaded chute deploying toward the foliage forty feet below, both of his ankles already broken by the impact, his head ringing. Then the main chute is opening, Baedecker's feet tug toward the sky like a child swinging too high, the impact is too strong, breaking his left shoulder upon opening and his right shoulder after swinging him almost completely around, the main chute side-slipping below him now, an inverted, orange umbrella trying to close in on itself, no reason for it not to close and drop him to the flame and flying carnage below, but it does not and he swings forward in another full arc, his broken feet almost striking the upper branches and flowers of flaming aviation fuel this time, his lungs already breathing in the unbreathable vapors and heat. And then, for two endless seconds, he is hanging under the silk canopy the way God and man had meant, drifting forward like a tourist under a para-glide chute being towed by a KrisKraft, but it is not water under him but half an acre of jagged stumps and branches, ten thousand punji stakes created in three seconds of violent aircraft impact, and flame as far as he can see, flame rising around him and above him, already licking razor-tongues at his suit and shroudlines and pain-dead feet hanging at impossible angles beneath him, and in two more seconds he will land in that conflagration of sharpened stakes and flesh-melting fuel fire, he will land on those broken ankles, bones splintering, body and parachute sputtering into flame in the heat, skin broiling like a mantis boiling and popping through its own shell in the flames.

And Baedecker awakes.

He awakes—as he always does—reaching above him for shroudguides and finding headboard and wall. He awakens—as he always does—silent and sweating and remembering each detail of what he had not been able to remember in the pain-wracked hours of consciousness after the crash or in the pain-measured ten weeks of slow recovery in the hospitals after that . . . or even in the three years following that August day until that first night when he had had the dream for the first time and came awake, just like this, reaching and sweating and remembering perfectly what could not be remembered.

But this time the dream had been different. Baedecker swings his feet to the floor, rests his head in shaky hands, and tries to find the difference.

And does.

The board is red, the stall buzzer is screaming, Baedecker feels the aircraft wallow belly-first toward the trees. There is no reprieve from this heavy pull, the earth is calling him down and under. But Baedecker pulls the stick back into his stomach, hunches and pulls the D-ring, knowing there is not enough time, seeing shattered branches fly up with the lifting canopy, but then—in slow motion—the familiar salvation as the ejection seat rises from the coffin of disintegrating fuselage, rises as slowly as a Victorian elevator in no particular rush to leave, and as his helmeted head passes the line of sight of the deflection mirror set above the cockpit instruments he sees himself for a second there, visor reflecting mirror reflecting visor, and rising farther he sees what he has forgotten, sees what he did not think about in the exigency of the survival instant—which, of course, he had always known, had never really forgotten only abandoned in the reflexive instinct of survival—he sees Scott in the backseat; Scott along for the ride today and still trusting, Scott, about seven years old in crew cut and his Cape Canaveral T-shirt, and his eyes in the mirror, still trusting, waiting for his father to do something but no fear there yet, only trust, and then Baedecker is up and out and safe—but such painful safety!—and screaming Scott's name even as he drifts slowly down to the churning waves of fire.

Baedecker stands and takes two steps to the window. He sets his cheek and forehead against the coolness of the rain-streaked glass and is surprised to feel tears streaking his cheek.

In the deep hours of the morning, Baedecker sets his face against the cold glass and knows exactly now why Dave had died.

Baedecker leaves before dawn so as to be in Tacoma by 7:30 A.M. Some of the members of the Crash Board are not happy to be there but by 8:15 A.M. Baedecker is sitting and listening to the six of them, speaking briefly when they are finished, and by 9:00 A.M. he is on his way south and east, crossing into Oregon above the Dalles. It is a gray, windy day with the smell of snow in the air, and although he scans the northern bluffs for some glimpse of the Stonehenge monument, he sees nothing.

It is a little after 1:00 P.M. when Baedecker looks down at Lonerock from the hilltop to the west of it. There are patches of snow on the steep incline, and he keeps the rented Toyota in second gear. The town seems even emptier than usual as he drives down the short main street. Solly's mobile home is closed up for the winter; Miz Callahan's school has heavy curtains pulled across the windows; and pockets of snow on the side streets have not been disturbed. Baedecker parks in front of the picket fence and lets himself into the house with the keys Di had loaned him two days earlier. The rooms are tidy, still smelling faintly of the ham they had heated up there after the funeral. Baedecker goes into the small writing room at the back of the house, gathers up the stack of manuscript and notes, packs them in a box that had held nine-by-twelve envelopes, and carries it out to the car.

Baedecker walks the hundred yards to the schoolhouse. There is no response either to his knock or to calls into the speaking tube. He backs away to look up at the belfry, but the windows are gray slabs reflecting the low clouds. The garden still holds brittle, broken cornstalks and a decomposing scarecrow dressed in a tuxedo.

He drives the short distance to Kink Weltner's ranch. He has parked the Toyota and is about to go up to the house when he catches sight of the Huey tied down in the field beyond the barn. The presence of the helicopter shakes him in some obscure way; he had forgotten that Dave had flown it there. Baedecker walks to it, runs his hand along the tie-down wires, and peers into the

cockpit. The windshield is frosted, but he can see the Air National Guard helmet propped on the back of the seat.

"Hullo, Dick."

Baedecker turns to see Kink Weltner walking toward him. Despite the cold, Kink is wearing only a dark suit, the left sleeve neatly pinned back.

"Hello, Kink. Where are you headed all dressed up?"

"Headed down to Las Vegas for a few days to get rid of this cabin fever," says Kink. "Fucking weather gets tiresome."

"I'm sorry we didn't get to talk after the funeral," Baedecker says. "I had a few things to ask you."

Kink blows his nose with a red kerchief and slips it back into the breast pocket of his suit. "Yeah, well, I had a lot of chores to finish up. Goddamn, I wish that hadna happened to Dave."

"Me too," says Baedecker. He taps the side of the fuselage. "I'm surprised this is still here."

Kink nods. "Yeah. I've called 'em twice about it. Talked to Chico both times because nobody wants to take responsibility for a machine that's not supposeta exist. They're waiting for a patch of good weather, I guess. I'm not sure if nobody wants to drive this far or if they're afraid to fly it over the mountains. It's all fueled and ready to go when they want it. I'd fly it back myself, but it's sort of hard to handle a Huey with one arm."

"I never mastered it with two arms," says Baedecker. "Kink, you talked to Dave when he got here, didn't you?"

"Just said hello. I was surprised to see him right after Christmas an' all. I knew he and Diane was comin' up sometime after the baby was born, but I didn't expect him before that."

"Did you see him again before he left?"

"Nah, the weather'd already closed in when he landed, an' he said he had the Cherokee stored over to the house. He said he'd be back in a couple of weeks to get the Huey if nobody else picked it up before then."

"Did he say why he'd come out to Lonerock?"

Kink shakes his head and then stops as if he had remembered something. "I did ask him how his Christmas was and he said fine but that he left one of the presents out here. That didn't make a whole lot of sense since they hadn't been out here—far as I know—since you was here with 'em back before Halloween."

"Thanks, Kink," says Baedecker as they walk back toward the house. "Can I use your phone?"

"Sure, just slam the door shut on your way out. Don't bother to lock it," says Kink as he climbs into his pickup. "See ya around, Dick."

"So long, Kink." Baedecker goes into the house and tries calling Diane. There is no answer. The afternoon light makes it seem like late evening, as if there is no energy left in the universe.

Baedecker drives back through Lonerock, passes the closed-up house, and turns right toward the school. He sees the curtains still closed, makes a U-turn in the snow out front, and is heading back toward Main Street when he sees the thin figure with its shock of white hair come around the building from the field behind. He stops and is out of the car jogging uphill toward her, thinking that in her long, dark coat, Miz Callahan resembles the scarecrow in her frozen garden.

"Mister Baedecker," she says and takes his hand in both of hers. "I was just getting my automobile ready for the trip. I have decided to drive to the coast and spend a few weeks with Mr. Callahan's sister's daughter."