The Spirit of ST Louis (44 page)

I'm leaning against my father's side. I hear the clump of horses' hoofs, smell their sweat-damped bodies. Wheels crunch through sand. It's still a long way to our farm. My mother pulls me over, rolls me up in the driving robe, lays me in a hammock formed by the folded carriage hood behind her. Half-turned in the seat, she sings softly:

"A Span-ish cav-a-lier stood in his re-treat, --"

The evening is black; the stars, bright; the carriage rocks on its springs --

"Say, dar-ling, say, when I'm far away, --"

Ah, if I could only sleep like that tonight; if I could only land on one of these clouds, even for a moment, and let its feathery billows cover me up. If I could give way to sleep for five minutes while the plane flew itself! What wouldn't I give for five minutes of sleep? Anything -- except life –

Right rudder—twelve degrees!

My leg is cramped from holding the Ford's clutch in low. Wheels bump, spin, and stop. Water is steaming from the radiator. We step out into the mud -- my father, his two friends, and I. Our car is mired to its hubcaps. All evening we've been grinding over wet, rough, and deeply rutted Minnesota roads. In this tamarack swamp the corduroy logs have rotted out.

I climb back into the driver's seat and push down on the clutch pedal, while the three men put shoulders to the car. We gain six inches, no more. We wade into the swamp to gather sticks and brush. One of the men gets a long pole to pry the wheels up while the rest of us fill the ruts beneath them. Twenty feet ahead is more solid ground.

We make it this time. The men scrape their feet on the running boards and climb in, splattered and muddy. We grind through another quarter mile, and get caught in another mire.

About midnight, we reach a crossroad with a house and country store. We've pushed, strained, and lifted until it's painful to move at all. And the nearest town is more than ten miles away, over the same kind of roads. I drive onto a higher bit of ground and switch off the engine. There's dead silence except for swamp cheepers. Our feet are wet, and it's much too cold to sleep in the car. My father makes his way to the dimly outlined porch. No light shows inside the house. My father's knocks are loud and clear. Minutes pass. There are flickers on glass. The door scrapes open. A lantern and legs appear.

It's a small house with only one bed for the storekeeper and his wife. But we're welcome to sleep on the parlor chairs. Or maybe we'd prefer sleeping in the store. There's plenty of room on the floor there, and we can have two new horse blankets for bedding. We choose the store.

It's hard, the rough plank floor, with only one blanket under us. Sleep is fitful. My father's friends are large men. One kicks, and the other snores. The top blanket, too small to cover four of us, moves constantly back and forth. I'm in between, and warm enough; but my clothes are sticky damp. I doze, and turn, and wake as heavy shoulders crowd against me and press my bones onto the floor --

It had seemed a hardship then, when I was thirteen years of age; but what luxury a bed like that would be in this mid-Atlantic dawn! I'd never feel the hardness of the boards, hear a sound, or notice movement, if I could only sleep—

Six degrees right rudder!

Girls' voices shrill out through open windows. Wheels splash in water. Our river boat throbs with its engine's beat. I wake, sway forward, lean back against the wall, and doze and wake again. I'm in a group of Field Artillery cadets off on a week-end leave, in the summer of '21. We move slowly up the Ohio. It's still more than an hour to our landing and a bed. If I didn't carry the dignity of a soldier's uniform, I'd lie down on deck and sleep soundly till we get there. All day long, before this excursion started, I was loading our Battery's guns on the range at Camp Knox, hooking up caissons, riding my wheel horse. Now, if I could even sit down, I'd close my eyes and sleep. But every bench is full. So I wake and doze and wake again, propped up against this wall.

I'd thought that was the ultimate in tiredness, to doze standing up against a wall. But how I'd welcome a wall tonight to sleep against! I hadn't appreciated the relaxation one can have, leaning against a wall, the freedom of mind, the security of body. One doesn't need comfort to sleep. Cushions and beds are unimportant. All one needs is the knowledge that one can -- sleep -- and -- live –

Ten degrees right rudder!

I switch off the smoking engine, and brace my Excelsior motorcycle upright with my legs. A truck is stalled in front of me, down to its axles in sand. I'm sweating all over in the damp heat of a Florida sun. It's been raining, on and off, for days.

"How far does this sand go west?" I ask.

"Brother, it goes further 'n where we all started from, an' we been goin' four days."

There are two farmers in the truck. Their faces are drawn. Their clothes are wet, spattered, wrinkled. One is sprawled back against the seat, staring at me dazedly. The driver speaks, his voice dull with fatigue.

"How fur does it go yer way?"

"There's about three miles of it," I answer.

"All like this?"

I nod my head. "All like this. A dozen cars are stuck between here and the end of the pavement."

A cow moos—there are three of them in the back of the truck.

"Three miles might as well be thirty, fur as we're concerned," the driver says. "Engine's so hot it's stuck tight. Can't crank it --Guess we better let the stock go, Jim." He motions toward the turpentine swamp. "They'll git somethin' to eat and drink out there."

Jim nods his head slowly, says nothing.

The driver opens the door, and steps down stiffly. He's so exhausted he can hardly keep his balance. He continues talking in the same monotone.

"We set out to market them critters. Had to sell 'em. Needed money -- Nothin' to do about it now." He leans heavily against a fender, as though it were too difficult to stand alone. "We made six miles since yest'day mornin' -- pushin' all night long -- Not a wink o' sleep -- Food's all gone, too -- can't work without food -- git weak --"

I have no food to give them, not even a chocolate bar in my pocket; and I've got barely enough money to get home -- if I don't spend anything on hotels. I might help them get started, if their engine's not too far gone, but they'd be stuck again in fifty feet. They'll have to either get a team of horses to tow them or stay where they are till the rains stop.

"I passed a shack a mile or so back. Maybe you can get something to eat there, " I suggest.

"Thanks, brother. We're goin' to rest fur a while. Then we'll start walkin'."

"I haven't got a bit of food with me," I say, embarrassed. "On a motorcycle? Course ye hain't. We didn't expect none."

"I'd like to, help you; but --"

"Thanks, brother, but ye can't help us now. If ye're goin' west, ye've got yer own problems. Ye're jist a damn fool fer tryin' it on a motorcycle. I'm tellin' ye, ye won't git five miles."

"Well -- I'm going to try -- Good-by."

"Try it if ye like. Ye're white an' free -- G'by, brother."

I start on westward, walking astraddle my motorcycle to hold it upright as the tire churns wet sand. It falls over. I strain to raise it, start the engine, grind along the ruts. It tumbles again. I lift, and start, and waddle forward. I make a mile -- five -- ten -- Tumble, lift, and tumble. Finally my limbs deny their orders. The weight's too much. The machine sinks back onto its side in the sand. I drop down next to it on the road, stretch out, and lie still while my muscles rebuild strength --

Strength -- It's not strength I need tonight in the Spirit of St. Louis -- it's sleep -- sleep -- I take off my helmet -- rub my head -- pull the helmet on again -- I drink some water from the canteen -- that helps. Possibly if I eat a sandwich -- the grease-spotted bag lies unopened at my side. I've had nothing since breakfast yesterday; but my mouth wants no food, and eating might make me sleepier. Should I have taken along a thermos of coffee? Would that keep me awake? No, I don't want coffee either. It wouldn't do any good. It wouldn't have any effect when I'm feeling like this. Coffee may be all right for school pre-examination nights; but it would be worse than useless here.

If I could get down through the clouds and fly close to the waves, maybe that would help me stay awake. It did yesterday. But there isn't light enough yet. To glide down into those clouds would be like going back into night. Even if

there's a ceiling underneath, it would be too dark to fly close to the water -- I'll have to wait another hour at least -- unless the clouds break up -- The crevasses are still black and bottomless –

There's a great, steep hollow in the mist -- No, not mist -- rock -- hard, reddish yellow walls -- broken, crumbling slopes, cupping a mile-wide crater. See the deep, blue sky above, through which a meteor once hurtled to make this giant pockmark on the earth. My mother, my uncle Charles, and I stand on the blasted rim, near Winslow, Arizona. A hot wind blows dust against our eyes, and whistles through stone crevices. Almost a thousand feet below us lies the brush-spotted desert floor, a group of abandoned mine buildings in its center. Far in the distance, a puff of dust marks another car's struggle with the sands. Beyond that, there's not a sign of life for as far as we can see.

It's late summer of 1916. I'm driving our Saxon car from Little Falls to California. We've been over thirty days on the road, and we've been pushing fairly hard. Weather and mechanical troubles have held us up -- a worn-out timer-trigger in Iowa, mud in Missouri (oh, those dismal hotel rooms, where we waited for the roads to dry!), a broken spring-bolt in Kansas, a wheel shimmy that started on the Raton Pass. The list is long; we add new items almost every day, and we still have half a thousand miles to go. My uncle picks up a chunk of brownish rock. I wish we could find a fragment of a meteor -- No, it's not rock -- It's mist -- soft, gray walls -- billowing -- sloping --

Shaking my body and stamping my feet no longer has effect. It's more fatiguing than arousing. I'll have to try something else. I push the stick forward and dive down into a high ridge of cloud, pulling up sharply after I clip through its summit. That wakes me a little, but tricks don't help for long. They're only tiring. It's better to sit still and conserve strength.

My mind strays from the cockpit and returns. My eyes close, and open, and close again. But I’m beginning to understand vaguely a new factor which has come to my assistance. It seems I’m made up of three personalities, three elements, each partly dependent and partly independent of the others. There's my body, which knows definitely that what it wants most in the world is sleep. There's my mind, constantly making decisions that my body refuses to comply with, but which itself is weakening in resolution. And there's something else, which seems to become stronger instead of weaker with fatigue, and element of spirit, a directive force that has stepped out from the background and taken control over both mind and body. It seems to guard them as a wise father guards his children; letting them venture to the point of danger, then calling them back, guiding with a firm but tolerant hand.

When my body cries out that it
must
sleep, this third element replies that it may get what rest it can from relaxation, but that sleep is not to be had. When my mind demands that my body stay alert and awake, it is informed that alertness is too much to expect under these circumstances. And when it argues excitedly that to sleep would be to fail, and crash, and drown in the ocean, it is calmly reassured, and told it's right, but that while it must not expect alertness on the body's part, it can be confident there'll be no sleep.

My eyes, under their weighted lids, seem completely disconnected from my body, to have within themselves no substance, to be conscious rather than to see. They became a part of this third element, this separate mind which is mine and yet is not, this mind both far away in eternity and within the confines of my skull, within the cockpit and outside of it at the same moment, connected to me and yet unlimited to any finite space.

During long ages between dawn and sunrise, I'm thankful we didn't make the Spirit of St. Louis a stable plane. The very instability which makes it difficult to fly blind or hold an accurate course at night now guards me against excessive errors. It's again a case of the plane and me compensating for each other. When I was fresh and it was overloaded, my quickness of reaction held its nose from veering off. Now that I’m dreaming and ridden by sleep, its veering prods my lagging senses. The slightest relaxation of pressure on either stick or rudder starts a climbing or a diving turn, hauling me back from the borderland of sleep. Then, I fix my eyes on the compass and determine again to hold it where it belongs.

There's no use; within a few minutes the needle swings over to one side. No mental determination within my control has more than fleeting value. That third quality has taken over. It knows and holds a limit I can't consciously define, letting my mind and body stay relaxed as long as the Spirit of St. Louis flies reasonably straight and level, giving the alarm to both when needles move too fast or far. So far, no farther, the nose can veer off course; so far, no farther, the plane can dive or climb. Then I react from my stupor, level out, kick the rudder back onto the compass heading, shake myself to half awakeness -- and let the needle creep again. I'm asleep and awake at the same moment, living through a reality that is a dream.