On the Wing (2 page)

If you do not belong to the relatively small group of builders of small aircraft or to the slightly smaller group of their fans, you may not be aware of the custom prevalent among the builders of keeping logs of their progress as they work. For accuracy's sake, make that “efforts” rather than “progress.” These logs, known among the fraternity of plane-builders as “construction logs” or, for short, “clogs,” are often posted on the World Wide Web. Reading them became Albertine's pastime, then her passion.

I get up earlier in the morning than Albertine does. We both wake at the same time, but I get up, get out of bed, make myself some coffee, and work on my personal history for a while. While I write, Albertine reads. Often, during her recuperation, when I returned to the bedroom after an hour or two of work to wish her good morning, I would find our bed covered with pages of online clogs that she'd printed out for ease of reading in bed.

“This isn't becoming an obsession, is it?” I asked her one morning when the bed was heavily clogged.

“A passion,” she admitted, “but not an obsession,” she claimed. “These are really amazing, Peter. There's such a wealth of human drama in these accounts of failed attempts to realize a dream.”

“I have to admit that I haven't spent any time reading them,” I said.

“I can understand that you'd be reluctant to expose yourself to them.”

“Why?”

“Because I understand you.”

“I mean why, in your estimation, wouldn't I want to expose myself to them?”

“Because they are so discouraging. They dash hopes. They shatter illusions. And you are a person who lives on hope and nurses illusions.”

“That's true,” I said. It is. She understands me well. I'm a muddleheaded dreamer. I once belonged to a muddleheaded dreamers' club, as you will see in the pages to come.

“The typical clog begins full of optimism,” she said. “Here—listen to this: ‘The U-Build-It-U-Fly-It kit arrived this morning, and when Delia called me at work to say that it had been delivered I immediately feigned illness and left. I can't describe the feeling of buoyancy that I felt in the car on the way home, knowing that the kit would be waiting for me there. But I'll try. It was as if the car and I were not quite touching the road. In a sense, I was already flying, and the car had become the UBI-UFI. Although I hadn't even opened the kit yet, I felt as if my work was already done, and done well. I felt capable. I felt—how can I put it?—wise. It was as if the lightness I felt were sufficient justification for buying the kit, for the sacrifices I'd inflicted on Delia and the kids. I could fly. That was worth it.'”

“That sounds delightful,” I said, naïvely. “It sounds as if the guy is really off to a great start—”

“Then, typically, the tedium sets in. Listen: ‘Eighty-three days so far, and I don't know how much more of this I can take. Night after night, alone in the garage, struggling to decipher the instructions, too bewildered to make any real progress, too proud to ask that wiseass Stan next door for help. Why, why, why did I ever begin this? I feel like a condemned man, condemned to isolation, laboring alone. It's like trying to cross a desert on foot, or sailing alone around the world, or trying to survey the vast frozen wastes of the Siberian wilderness, struggling to build a shelter out of reeds in the teeth of the cutting wind. Nobody understands what I'm going through, nobody could, nobody cares.'”

“Grim,” I said.

“Often, there is a laudable effort to soldier on: ‘Today I've discovered a new determination, and I'm proud of myself for that. I've found a strength of will in myself that I hadn't known was there, and I think I'm justified in praising myself for that. I've learned that I've got something I might have to call grit. Or maybe pluck. Or maybe it's good old American stick-to-itiveness. Whatever you want to call it, I've got it. It's me against this damned plane, and in the name of all that's holy, I'm going to come out on top!'”

“Impressive.”

“And then, finally, defeat: ‘This is the end. I just can't go on. Every day is torture. After hours wasted in the garage, I lie awake in bed trying to find a way out of this folly. For a while, I thought I might be able to persuade the kid next door—the eldest son of that wiseassed bastard, Stan—to take the damned plane off my hands. He spent a couple of evenings watching me work, and I thought I had him hooked, but then he just stopped showing up. Kids today. They've got no sense of purpose. They can't stick with a thing. My only hope, I've decided, is to get Delia pregnant. Then I'd have to convert the garage into a room for the baby. The plane would have to go. I recognize that this is a desperate plan. But I'm a desperate man.'”

“Chilling,” I said.

For a while, Albertine said nothing. She was overwhelmed, I think, by the emotions occasioned by the builder's defeat. When, at last, she felt like herself again, she said, “I want to go on the road.”

“Touring with your band?”

“Be serious, please,” she said. “Maybe it's my long period of immobility that is making me feel this way,” she said, “but I've got the urge to travel.”

“Where do you want to go, my darling? I'll push you anywhere.”

“Oh, please. I don't want to be pushed. You have been a darling to push me everywhere, and you have been a darling to help me into the pool and into the hot tub, to help me into bed, to help me out of bed. I've even enjoyed it. I've felt pampered. I've felt loved. And I love you for it, for all of it. But I've had enough. I don't want to be helped. I'd like to range beyond this block, beyond this island, and I don't want to be pushed. I'd like to do what you said not so long ago. How did you put it? ‘Walk out our door one day and just
go.
'”

“That's it,” I said. “I met a guy named Johnny on my trip to New Mexico who put the urge that way: ‘Just
go.
'”

“‘Just
go,
'” she said. “That's right. That's what I'd like to do.”

“And stop somewhere at the end of each day for a hot shower, a delicious meal, and a comfy bed?”

“Exactly.”

“By what conveyance?” I asked warily. “Plane, train, aerocycle?”

“By car, I think.”

“We don't have a car.”

“Let's buy one.”

“Are you serious?”

“I think I am. Our little world is not enough for me just now. I want to get up and go. I want to be out in the big, wide world, wandering with you.”

“And do you have a specific car in mind?”

“I'm afraid I do.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes. Afraid that the car I have in mind is a foolish choice. But I think it's a choice that you'd make in my place.”

“Now
I'm
afraid,” I said.

I should explain the reasons for our fear. I should tell you about our cars—well, not all of them—that would tax your tolerance too much. I will tell you about two of them and you can extrapolate from those. Let's see. Which two? The Twinkle, I think, since it was our first car, and, of course, the powerful Kramler, since it was our most magnificent.

There was a time—a time that today seems very long ago—when Albertine and I were enthusiastic motorists. We took Sunday drives, we made rambling excursions, we were adept at double-clutching. In those years, we owned a number of cars that were great fun to drive, but were very little fun to maintain in driving condition. The first of them was a red Twinkle. This was a British car with right-hand drive. We bought it from an English architect. The Twinkle was all of ten feet long and had ten-inch wheels. It really was great fun to drive. It had two transversely mounted rotary engines. One, in front, beneath its diminutive hood (or bonnet), drove the front wheels; the other, in back, in its trunk (or boot), drove the rear wheels. Both engines were small, but their combined output gave the Twinkle considerable oomph. It went like a bat out of hell—a little red bat out of hell.

When I was the Twinkle's co-owner, I would have bristled if you had told me, Reader, that it looked like a toy, but when I see one on the street today I recognize that it must have looked like a dangerous toy to Albertine's parents. They had been worried enough about consigning their daughter to the care of the Birdboy of Babbington when we announced that we were going to get married. I must have looked like a dangerous toy myself.

Her mother asked Albertine, pointedly, “Wouldn't you rather go to Europe?”

Albertine chose me over the European tour, and not long after making the choice she found herself driving a Twinkle and discovering a love of speed. Alas, as the Twinkle aged, it developed a problem that apparently could not be solved. The engines began twisting on their mounts under acceleration or deceleration. Apparently, the art of mounting engines had not then attained its present degree of perfection. When we made an up-shift and accelerated, the engines would twist rearward. This meant that the front engine twisted toward the cockpit until the top struck the fire wall. On deceleration, the reverse phenomenon occurred, with both engines twisting forward, the rear engine striking the back of the diminutive back seat. The only mechanic who even suggested a solution told us that the “constant velocity joints” had to be replaced at a price greater than what we had paid for the car. Putting to work the mechanical skills I'd acquired in building—or attempting to build—a boyhood's worth of
Impractical Craftsman
projects, I designed a set of braces for the engines, had a machine shop fabricate them to my specifications, and bolted the braces between the engine block and the fire wall, in front, and between the engine block and the back of the back seat, in the rear. The engines no longer twisted. Success? Not quite. The cabin roared with the sound of every moving part in both engines, since every vibration and detonation was transmitted via the braces to the steel shell of the car itself. It was like driving inside a hi-fi speaker during a fuzz-bass solo. Clearly the time had come to trade the little baby in on another car or find some sucker to buy the Twinkle from us. My parents had taught me that one never gets a car's true worth when trading it in, so I advertised it for private sale. When I was demonstrating the Twinkle for potential buyers, I kept the radio volume high and sought out extended fuzz-bass solos. Some sap bought the car. I like to think that he is driving it still, and that it pleases him, noise and all.

After the Twinkle, we owned a succession of British sports cars. (I wish that I could say “other British sports cars,” but the Twinkle, a four-passenger car, was never regarded as a sports car by the drivers of two-seaters, who scorned to wave at Albertine and me in the clannish way they greeted the drivers of other two-seaters. The Twinkle was faster than all but the most expensive and exotic of them, but that didn't matter; in fact, one roadster driver dismissed it as a “hot rod.”)

With each of our sports cars, we experienced a brief honeymoon, a euphoric period during which we took several pleasant drives. Then the car would begin breaking down. The drives would become less pleasant, and many of them ended at repair shops. We got to know a number of interesting mechanics. We learned how to whack a fuel pump in just the right way to get it pumping again after it had quit in the fast lane of a highway. We would invest some money—sometimes quite a lot—repairing the sporty little thing, and we would try to convince ourselves that it was now as good as new, but it would keep breaking down, and in time we would sell it and buy another. We had in those days the naïve belief that somewhere there was a reliable British sports car that we could purchase, used, for a reasonable price. Perhaps that belief seems ludicrous to you. Perhaps you cannot imagine that two intelligent young people—which we then were—could labor under such an absurd delusion. If you feel that way, I just want to inform you—or remind you—that a large segment of the population of the United States believes that the sun revolves around the earth, and so I say, in the manner of Bosse-de-Nage in Alfred Jarry's
Gestes et Opinions du Docteur Faustroll,
“Ha-ha.”

As we traded in, we traded up. We would rid ourselves of one limping sports car and promptly buy another that was more powerful, more expensive, and more difficult to keep running. We always had an automobile loan, and the balance kept increasing. Little by little, we progressed from one of the most basic sports cars, a Benson-Greeley Gnome, to one of the most sophisticated, the powerful Kramler.

Our Kramler was powered by a V-12 engine with four camshafts and nickel-plated cam covers, a thing of great beauty. The entire front of the car's body tilted up to reveal this engine, in a far more dramatic and aesthetically effective manner than the ordinary hood would have done. Tilting the front end forward did not, however, allow easy access to the engine for the servicing and repair that it required at frequent intervals. That access might have been better provided by the conventional hood arrangement. Instead, the Kramler people required the mechanic to remove the engine and work on it outside the car. A disconcertingly large number of repair and maintenance procedures in the shop manual, which we owned and which I sometimes used as bedtime reading, began with the words, “First remove the engine; see page 19.” One of these procedures was changing the oil filter.

We haven't owned a car for years. Living in Manhattan makes a car unnecessary, and the cost of garaging a car in Manhattan makes a car insupportable.

Sometimes I miss driving. I can't manage to get as excited by a car as I used to, but there are several available now that I would like to drive. I don't want to own any of them, but I still have the urge to get into something sleek and powerful and just take off, heading west.

“What is this fearsome machine you have in mind?” I asked.