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Authors: Harry Haskell

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BOOK: Maiden Flight
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After Harry left, I sank into another one of my black times. Everything worried me—Harry and all
his
problems, Orv and all
his
problems, myself and all
my
problems. I couldn't sleep for days on end. It seemed to me the Smithsonian business was hopeless, that anything I could do would be wrong and would make someone unhappy, that I was nothing but a troublemaker and should have foreseen what my dear friendship with Harry was leading up to. It was plain enough that he had given the subject a great deal of thought! If Orv's eyes had been sharp, he would have seen in the expression on Harry's face when he said good-bye to me something different from anything he'd seen before.

Harry

My furtive visit to Dayton, while Katharine's “little brother” was away on business, was meant to clear the air between us. Instead, the fog settled in thicker than ever. As much as I wanted to help Katharine find out what was in her heart, I couldn't possibly ask her to do what she thought she shouldn't do. The one thing I was burning to discuss—marriage—was the very subject she seemed determined to avoid at all costs. I tried reasoning with her. I argued that she had her own life to lead and that Orville wouldn't have hesitated to leave her if he had taken it into his head to marry. But Katharine reasoned right back at me. She pointed out that Orville didn't want to leave her and had planned their lives with a view to
sharing everything with her. I departed in a deep funk, convinced that we had reached an impasse.

I did take away one small shred of consolation, however: Katharine and I would see each other again in a month's time. She and Orville had invited me up to their summer “camp” on Georgian Bay in Canada. I had heard about Lambert Island for years and was curious to see the place that meant so much to them both. Katharine insisted on taking precautions to avoid arousing her brother's suspicion. She urged me not to write too frequently in advance of my visit. It would be awkward, she said, if there were five letters waiting for her every time they called at the village post office. I was to avoid sending telegrams and address all my letters on the typewriter. And from time to time I was to write a chatty “business” letter that Katharine could share with Orville, to show him we had no secrets. To keep tongues back home from wagging, I was to put it out that I just happened to be coming near the bay on my way east. With luck, nobody would check the timetable and find out that there was only one train to and from Toronto each day.

At the appointed hour, Katharine and Orville met me at the little station in Penetang and took me out to the island on their motor launch, a distance of some ten or twelve miles across open water. I recognized the compound immediately from the snapshots Katharine had sent me. We pulled up at the dock alongside the boathouse. The main dwelling with its inviting screened porch sat on top of the hill, with two smaller cottages and various outbuildings scattered among the rock outcroppings. All the buildings were painted the same light green and were unfinished inside. Orville had jury-rigged a pull cart, using old airplane tires,
to haul luggage and other cargo up from the jetty. I had one cabin to myself, Orville slept in another, and Katharine had her bedroom just off the enclosed porch in the main house.

I'll say one thing for the bay: it hasn't been overadvertised. It is about the loveliest place I have ever seen. The Wrights made me feel at home straight away. They even had the daily
Star
delivered by mail. Orville had had the happy inspiration of decorating the cabins with works of art reproduced on the covers of our Sunday magazine. Twice a week we rode into Penetang to pick up supplies and letters. And each day we took the launch to a nearby island and brought back three quarts of fresh milk, which we bought off an Indian family. Orville wasn't a milk drinker, so Katharine used his share to make cottage cheese. She insisted on serving my favorite breakfast of shredded wheat biscuit laced with fresh cream. Now that's my idea of roughing it!

The Wrights led a quiet, simple life on the island. No “fancy togs” or other luxuries were permitted to spoil the rustic atmosphere. They both needed to put the workaday world behind them for a few weeks. Katharine asked me to bring the manuscript of a book I was working on, but we never got around to discussing it. In fact, we didn't do much of anything that required mental or physical effort. Day after day we rocked on the porch, read our books and newspapers, foraged for wild blueberries, and bathed in the pure, ice-cold water of the bay. A few nights, after dinner, Orville brought out a deck of cards. The Bishop would have turned over in his grave to see his two well-brought-up children playing a spirited round of poker at the kitchen table. We placed bets with matchsticks and used regular poker language. None of the niceties of the polite bridge game for us.

Orville got special pleasure out of taking his guests on long boat rides to view the sunsets over the bay. I must have been a satisfactory audience, because Katharine said she never knew him to be so anxious to show anyone Go-Home River, Honey Harbor, and all the other places they liked. Orville's launch had an aviation motor so powerful that the boat occasionally seemed to leave the water and take to the air, skimming over the tops of the islands. Every now and then the motor seemed to fall to pieces, but Orville would patiently dive in with some heavy wire and a pair of pliers, collect the pieces, put them together, crank up, and on we went. I never had had the opportunity before to watch a distinguished inventor at his relaxations. It was a fascinating experience.

It was just as Katharine had described: Orville is a completely different person up at the bay. I can still hear him singing in the distance as he tinkered away at one of his pet projects. He is constantly designing, building, or repairing one thing or another—Katharine says the natives think he is a little “touched” to work so hard when he doesn't have to—and he prides himself on doing it all without special tools. His reconstruction of the water system at the compound to give a direct pressure line connected with the hose—to fight fire, as he said, or maybe just to amuse himself sprinkling water—was especially impressive. Ah, them were the days!

With so many agreeable distractions, it was easy to forget that no progress was being made in resolving Orville's dispute with the Smithsonian. The label on the Langley machine still made the patently false claim that it was capable of flight. I was of the opinion that a congressional investigation would be a good deal of a farce. The influence of the Smithsonian was too pervasive. What
was needed then, as it is now, was a detailed account by Orville of the state of aviation at the time he and Wilbur took it up, of their own laboratory work, and of the way they applied it in actual flight. Such a book would settle the matter once and for all. But he never will write it unless he has somebody cooperating with him to spur him on. I know it, Katharine knows it, and deep down Orville knows it too.

Orville

Once word got around of my decision to ship the flyer to England, my days of peace and quiet were numbered. You would have thought I was public enemy number one. What really got my goat was the way certain individuals who had not lifted a finger to defend me from the Smithsonian's scurrilous attacks now had the cheek to accuse me of being selfish, shortsighted—even un-American, for pity's sake. Senator Norris, for one, was furious at the prospect of the machine going out of the country. Earl Findley of the
New York Times
told him why I was doing as I was, and how all my dealings with Secretary Walcott had led nowhere, but even then he refused to back down. “That old man won't always be there. He isn't the Smithsonian Institution.” That's easy for Norris to say—he isn't in the Smithsonian's line of fire.

Katharine and I had always planned to get up a good, fair, clear statement of the situation when the machine was ready to be sent. It would have recalled Will's and my early experience with the government, the years of trouble because of government patronage of patent infringers, the years of endurance with the unfair treatment of the Smithsonian. We would have told how, in spite
of early snubbing by the Ordnance Department and the chance to sell the machine abroad,
always
the US government was excepted, in every exclusive contract proposed; how we kept still about all the rest and hoped the matter would be cleared up when there was a chance to know the facts; and how, even now, the offer to the Science Museum in London is restricted so that if there is a change, the machine can come back where it belongs.

Now that Kate has taken herself out of the picture, I hardly see how that job will ever get done. There is no one else I can trust to do it right, no one else who knows the full story of what Will and I put up with all those years. Just think: it's been a quarter of a century since we took the machine up at Kitty Hawk. The 1903 flyer is a piece of history now. I saved it from the flood and preserved it and patched it back together again—and all for what? So it could be put on display in a
British
museum! Two or three years ago, before Swes ran off and got married, I still had a sliver of hope. But I was worn to a frazzle after the long, hard fight. It seemed every time I turned around I bumped into a reporter asking for a comment or a politician lecturing me on my patriotic duty to keep the machine in the United States.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the first flight is over and done with—and good riddance. I've had my fill of speeches and awards and parades and brass bands. All I crave now is to get away from it all. If it wasn't the middle of winter, I'd shut up the house and head up to the bay tomorrow. A day on the island never fails to set the world to rights. Kate and I fell for the place the moment we laid eyes on it. Course, I saw right away that it would take a lot of work to make it as comfortable as it is now. Back then it was just a bunch of shacks sitting atop a barren rock out in the middle of
nowhere. A Canadian gent had built the main cottage for his bride, but she took one look at their new home and hightailed it back to civilization. Kate, I'm glad to say, was made of sturdier stuff.

Scipio, our dear departed Saint Bernard, loved to splash around in the water and sun himself on the rocks. After Father and he died, Kate and I would stay up north for weeks at a spell with just ourselves for company. Visitors were welcome, so long as they were tolerably self-sufficient and not overly particular about the accommodations. Harry fit in nicely, I'll say that for him. He was always good company—able and conscientious, with not a bit of conceit. I remember meeting him at the train in Penetang. He had come straight from Toronto and still had that nervous, jumpy look about him that people get when they're in the big city. It took him a few days to fall into the rhythm of island life. Every day he looked a little more rested, and by the time he left he was fully restored. The bay has that effect on people.

Visitors or no visitors, Kate and I observed our daily routines. I had my chores and hobbies to keep me occupied, while she read, wrote letters, tidied the house, and fixed meals. In the long summer evenings, when the dusk lingers long past bedtime, we would sit on the porch with Harry and talk for hours, the way we used to do at Hawthorn Hill. I took him around in the motorboat to see our favorite spots—past Franceville, through the Freddy Channel, past Whalen's store, the McKenzies and Williams places, and so on. We saw some beautiful sunsets out on the bay. Sunsets on the island remind me of the ones we used to have at Kitty Hawk. The clouds light up in all colors in the background, with deep blue clouds of various shapes fringed with gold.

Harry stayed with us two weeks, and not once during that time was the Smithsonian's name so much as mentioned. We could hardly avoid reading reports of the controversy in the newspaper, but there was an unspoken agreement that no serpent would be allowed in to poison our island paradise. So we cheerfully put the unpleasantness out of our minds and got about our business. Kate and I generally went our separate ways at the bay, just as we did back home. Some days we hardly set eyes on each other from dawn to dusk, save for mealtimes. And Harry couldn't have been easier to have around. For once, I was genuinely sorry to see one of our guests depart. He had begun to feel almost like a member of the family.

Katharine

It nearly made my heart stop beating to think of being with Harry at the bay. I wasn't at all sure we could carry it through without letting Orv see any difference from the past. I had a dreadful time acting unconcerned and casual about his coming. At the last minute I had a crazy idea about not being able to invite him to the bay after all, but it was just the result of my supersensitiveness and guilty conscience. What can have been the matter with me that I blew around so like a weathercock? I was deathly afraid I was doing the wrong thing to let Harry come and to assume that I loved him. And I don't know how I would have survived if he had repeated one of the off-color stories
he picked up in Sinclair Lewis's so-called Sunday school class in Kansas City. Little Brother never could appreciate that vulgar brand of humor!

Even the letters Harry wrote before his visit made me self-conscious. I had my own room where I could be alone, just off the porch, but it wasn't easy to read with Orv sitting on the other side of the door waiting for me to come and talk. I felt guilty to be doing something I couldn't tell him about—but Harry's love letters were worth having some perturbation of spirit over! It took some doing to hold up my end of the correspondence. The big table in the living-and-dining room was the only place where I could write with any comfort, and I could write to Harry in peace only when Orv was busy somewhere else. Once I managed to do it with Orv playing solitaire right at the same table. Can you beat that?

I had worried that Harry would find our life on the island dull and primitive compared to the life he was used to, but he came to love it as much as Orv and I did. The bay grows on people that way. We had spent all our summers there since the end of the war and looked forward to it more and more every year. The two of us always had lots of fun in the simplest sort of ways. We went around in our old clothes and enjoyed not having to get dressed up for anything. The days were never long enough for all the idling we had to do. I warned Harry that he was in for a few surprises when he saw me in action—or
in
action. About the most energetic thing I ever did was picking wild blueberries. They were ripe by the time Harry came in July, and we had delicious blueberry pies, if I do say so myself.

I'll never forget how comfortable Harry was at the bay. I could never get him to admit he was uncomfortable, despite the primitive accommodations. The two weeks he was with us passed like an enchanted dream. All the things I had wanted to discuss sort of faded into nothing when we had a chance to talk by ourselves.
I was as tongue-tied as a schoolgirl. So many thoughts I had—so much I wanted to say, and so much I
couldn't
say a word about! Nothing of all Harry said to me seems dearer now than that he was “home” at last: “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.” I dived down and hid my head on his shoulder when I couldn't say how I loved him but was just overwhelmed with it. I knew then that we were both home and safe with each other.

It was a blessed, perfect time. I knew Harry was special, of course, but I had no idea he was so nice to have around—let alone some of the other things we got up to as we poked around the island foraging for berries and lounged in the big chair on the porch! He seemed to be a kind of tempter. I grew to love the characteristically crisp way he has of saying words, and his movements—and everything about him. One rainy, blowy night, Orv went to bed early and left us to our own devices. It was so lovely to be with Harry all alone. That was the only evening we had—and then only an hour, and that only five minutes long! I was getting to be a regular lotus eater—no cares or responsibilities. And the less my conscience troubled me, the more I liked to think about all the dear things that made up the bond between us.

You see, I looked upon Harry's visit to the island as a kind of test, for him as well as me. I had a notion that I could tell whether I loved him or not by having him very near me—that if I felt the least repulsion I could be sure I must stop short, even if I hurt him mortally. It was such a serious thing to me—more than that, a life-and-death matter—for I had two people to think of, and I couldn't see how to live either way. If I didn't love Harry, it would be a tragedy for him. If I did love him, I had an unmanageable
situation for myself and Orv. It made me almost stop breathing to think of it!

Well, I hardly know what happened, but I realized right away that Harry was dearer to me than I had thought. I didn't feel any repulsion at all. I loved to have him hold me as close as could be. He was so gentle and tender, and it was natural enough for me to be tender with him. I had felt that way ever since he had been so troubled, and especially after he went off to Europe alone. I loved him sitting on our porch at the bay and not seeing how to “get started.” We just sat silently together and loved each other. When I couldn't get a word out, I'd scrunch up my shoulders and snuggle as close to him as I could. And he would just shake his head at me when words failed him. He frightened me when he showed so much feeling. That is the side of him that I didn't know existed at all, and it almost hurt me.

Funny—with Stef it had been exactly the other way around. At first I thought he was much more responsive than he actually was. It took me a long time to realize that it was just a superficial closeness, or rather a closeness that existed mostly in my mind and not in reality. Stef has an outer layer of extraordinary friendliness and interest in people, but inside of that is a place where no one is admitted in a really intimate way. There is nothing wrong with Stef—he is just being himself. But having once started on the wrong track, I had to have a lot of collisions and smashups before I got it into my head what was the matter between us. I was ridiculously sensitive and full of absurd ideas and awfully hard to get along with. I just wobbled around, ashamed of thinking so much of him one minute, and ashamed of being ashamed the next minute.

The two experiences were so similar, and yet so completely different. With Stef I never dared to trust my feelings for fear that he would find them a burden and shut down without reciprocating. With Harry—well, let's just say I was afraid I had got hold of something that was too much for me. Even now I sometimes wonder if I am not still living a dream. I am so old to have such a beautiful thing come to me. Harry loves me as if I were a girl. No one could ask for anything more! Because he loves me as if I were a woman too, and that makes it perfect. These thoughts and feelings come to me over and over and are lovelier all the time. I have such absolutely perfect confidence in his character. I love him so surely—and so irrevocably.

One thing followed another, and by the time we saw him off on the train in Penetang, Harry and I were engaged to be married—at least,
I
considered us engaged. If it comes to that, Harry didn't make a formal proposal until several weeks later—and then only after I had written demanding to know if I was ever going to get one! Of course, I knew that we were a good deal better than engaged, but Harry had made some frivolous remark about suing me for breach of promise if I didn't agree to marry him, and I couldn't resist pointing out that he had never actually
asked
me to marry him. What's more, I said, if he could find anything actionable in my foolish talk, it wouldn't impress any court of law very much!

If it makes Harry feel like a regular caveman the way he rushed in and grabbed the woman of his choice, all right. My impression is that he had to have a good deal of help. Either way, the die was cast. We had gotten past the explosion stage and “plighted our troths.” The only thing now standing between us and the altar was Orv.

BOOK: Maiden Flight
11.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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