Her Last Flight(38)
She wrote, Good idea to tell press this was test flight.
Sam replied, Live and learn and handed back his empty coffee cup. Irene filled it and passed it on, then poured herself a cup of coffee and wrapped her frozen hands around the mug. Sam had told her about the start of the Dole Derby, about Lindbergh’s flight and the chaos of departure. The throngs of press and spectators that nearly caused disaster. He’d insisted on this misdirection, and he’d been right. Why, the excitement over the supposed test flight was nutty enough; imagine if all those reporters had known they were leaving for Australia that very day! It was unnerving, the idea of all that mass attention directed on the two of them.
Irene set down the cup and leaned down to retrieve one of her maps from its case on the floor. But her hand didn’t encounter the metal edge of the map case. Instead, it sank into a nest of warm, soft fluff.
The fluff moved, jumped into Irene’s lap, and started to purr.
By now, Sandy was maybe seven or eight months old and had grown into a large cat, a diligent mouser, who considered Hangar C her personal dominion and Sam Mallory her personal servant. She looked up at Irene and stretched one lazy paw over the side of her lap. She had a narrow, pointed face and a pair of tawny eyes, which conveyed both affection for her human subjects and an insuperable right to occupy whatever space she pleased.
Irene reached for the notepaper and wrote: Stowaway. She clipped the note to the clothesline and ran it forward. Sam glanced left in surprise; the next note wasn’t due for several minutes yet. He read it, frowned, and looked back. His mouth made a round, panicked hole.
Sandy, on the other hand—Irene could have sworn the cat grinned back at him. It was a love affair between the two of them—unequal, naturally, in the face of Sandy’s obvious superiority of status—but a love affair nonetheless. From Irene’s lap, Sandy jumped to her accustomed place on Sam’s shoulders and started to lick his leather cap. Then she draped herself comfortably and went back to sleep.
As dawn approached, the clouds thinned and then disappeared altogether. The black ocean spread beneath them, split apart by a cold white moon. Irene’s head was now intolerably heavy. She thought about Lindbergh propping open his eyelids. She took her pencil and dug it into the back of her hand, just to create some sensation, any kind of stimulation to her nerves. The airplane began to dive. Irene looked at Sam and saw that Sandy was gone and Sam’s head was bent to his chest. She lunged forward and grabbed the stick.
“Wake up!” she yelled in his ear, but she couldn’t even hear herself. Still, the jostling woke him. Sam took the stick back and shook his head a little. Irene sat back in her chair and hunted for the Thermos of coffee, but it was empty. There was only one Thermos remaining. Irene opened it and poured some coffee into Sam’s cup, although it wasn’t that hot anymore, just warm. She nudged it into his hand and he drank. His eyes were wide and staring. Sandy wandered up, having completed a routine patrol of the premises, and sniffed at the box of sandwiches. Irene unwrapped one and fed the cat a few delicate bites of chicken. She poured some water into a coffee mug so that Sandy could drink.
When the cat was satisfied, Irene put her headset back on and turned the volume as high as it would go. Faintly the pings of the radio beacon came to her, just a hair off. Irene wrote a note to Sam: Adjust bearing two degrees south.
Sam nodded. The ship banked slightly and righted itself.
Irene calculated their position. They were now only three hundred and seventeen miles from Honolulu, or should be. She wrote another note.
Two and half hours left.
Then, You OK?
Sam handed back the empty coffee cup and read both notes. Sandy was back on his shoulders now, grooming her long fur in preparation for another nap, cleaning Sam’s leather cap. He glanced back to Irene and lifted his left fist, thumb pointed upward.
They raised Oahu with staggering precision, at a quarter past six in the morning. Sam saw it first. He nudged a nodding Irene in the shoulder and pointed out the cockpit window. Irene saw a smear on the horizon and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, it was still there, surrounded by the salmon-pink reflection of the sunrise behind them.
Together they stared at this miracle, this mountain rising out of the ocean. Of course, Irene could not yet confirm that this was Oahu itself, instead of one of the neighboring islands—Kauai to the north, or Molokai or even Maui to the south—but that didn’t matter. They had plenty of fuel left. They had found Hawai’i like a speck of dust on the great Pacific. When at last the distinctive shape of Diamond Head grew clear from the window, she wrote a final note to Sam: Diamond Head sighted to south-southeast. Begin approach to Rodgers Field.
Hanalei, Hawai’i
October 1947
Well, I’m alive after all. Coughing and sputtering, drenched and tumbled, on my hands and knees where the foam washes up, surfboard missing, swimsuit almost torn from my body, but I guess that counts as living, since I’m aware of it. Cogito ergo sum, as the philosopher said.
My stomach heaves, and out comes about a quart of the Pacific Ocean.
A pair of long, elegant feet appear to my right, then the bottom edge of a surfboard as it plants in the sand. Dimly, I hear the laughter of children.
“Well done,” says Lindquist, without irony. “Now get out there and do it again.”