I Was Amelia Earhart (Vintage Contemporaries) (5 page)

The pilot touched down at Dum-Dum airport, and on the way into the city, passing through wide streets, as they caught sight of a marquee showing Shirley Temple in
Captain January
, she and her navigator began to bicker.

They picked up their arguing just where they had
left it, with a discussion of Noonan’s hypocritical fastidiousness, a lecture on the way he brushed his hair ten times as often as his teeth, and an appendix on the way he insisted on carefully folding his dirty clothes. In the days that followed, he was told that his vaguely southern accent sounded phony, and that she didn’t believe he didn’t realize that he had one. He was made aware that as a partner in her flirtation with death, it was incumbent upon him never to remark on the risks they were taking or on the unlikelihood of their success, even in good fun. Good fun, in fact, was a tender subject; she hated his sense of humor. If he tried to tease her, she acted wounded and offended. If he tried to cheer her up, she said his jokes were bad. He found this last stab of hostility cruel. He could be very funny; other people had told him so. He assumed it was just another twist in the barbed wire of their connection and made a halfhearted effort to forgive her for it.

On one occasion, however, her game-playing had infuriated him, nearly ending their journey in the middle.

It had started off innocently enough: they were on the road to Mandalay. A monsoon had brought them down early from Akyab on their way to Bangkok, and after two hours of sightless flying through soupy weather they had landed in Rangoon. A Mr. Austin C. Brady, the American consul, met them at the airfield and offered
to take them sightseeing. The rain was pouring down heavily and the prognosis was for more of the same, so they decided it would be hazardous to continue on and accepted his generosity. In the car he pointed out places of interest along the way and maneuvered past various animals. The road on which they were driving was called Mandalay, and he told them that it was, as a matter of fact, the very road made famous by Kipling’s poem. In the heart of the city the streets were thronged, and Mr. Brady proudly identified the Burmese, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Chinese by their varying dress, habits, and language. Gharries clopped by, pulled by single horses and shuttered against the rain. Rickshaw runners sped past on foot, kicking up sprays of mud. The runners wore conical coolie hats made of old kerosene tins. Mr. Brady commented that he thought these must be noisy in the rain, but that they were the custom, and then he shrugged.

From the air their first sight of Rangoon had been the gold spire of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Now, as they approached the shrine by car, the rain let up and the sun broke through the clouds. It dried off the glistening roof, which pointed like an elongated nipple up to the heavens. Worshipers moved purposefully in and out of the temple, an elaborate structure apparently made up of many different buildings. There was an air of spiritual business about the place, not too ethereal, but not too worldly. A long arcade covered with graded roofs, each
poking up behind the one before it like houses on a steep hillside, led up to the interior of the shrine. Raindrops dripped off the high palm leaves. A spicy thread of incense wafted through the air. Mr. Brady stepped out of the car and lit a cigar. They followed him and stood for a moment, just staring at the majesty of the pagoda.

Then she said, Well, we have to go up.

Of course, Noonan answered, sure.

They headed to the entrance of the covered staircase at a time during which Mr. Brady was too engrossed in his smoke to explain to them the etiquette of the temple. As soon as they reached the foot of the stairs, however, an old man in a silk dress who appeared to be dead in his chair jumped up and started explaining to them in international gibberish that they would have to remove their shoes. That the shrine could only be entered barefoot. She leaned over and unlaced her sensible brown oxfords, and then she took off her socks. She began making her way up the steps, but when she reached the sixth one she turned around and saw Noonan, still at the bottom, staring up at her with an expression of forced cheeriness.

Go ahead without me, he called up. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll stay here.

Never in his life had he received such a stupefied look. And miss the pagoda? she said.

It took several minutes, during which she refused to descend from her position of self-righteous elevation, for
him to get around to confessing that he didn’t want to take off his shoes. It was probably the most difficult moment of their journey together. She could not abide his refusal to take off his shoes, and her intolerance enraged him. As she stood there on the steps, worshipers on their way up and down passing her on either side, some pausing to take in the spectacle of two undignified Americans, she argued with him about the merits of seeing the shrine, the wastefulness of missing it, the prudishness of modesty, and the beauty of the human foot. The more she said, the angrier he became, and the more determined not to take off his shoes. She seemed to him to be intentionally and maliciously dragging him as far away from Nirvana as possible, and he told her so. This was his great mistake. She turned around. She walked slowly up the steps. She spent an hour and a half in the shrine.

For three days we didn’t speak. It was the last three days before Lae. Then in Lae, New Guinea, our last stop before Howland Island, the wind was blowing the wrong way.

L
AE
. It seems the farthest precinct of human habitation. Tall, rocky islands reach up from the ocean like the mortified fingers of the dead. The sky is filled with billowing cloud beasts. In the shallow waters, thatch-roofed huts wobble on stilts like long-legged insects. The runway is a thin strip cleared through the jungle. It ends on a cliff hanging over the sea. In the local pidgin English, all the women are called Mary. The wind is blowing the wrong way.

She is surprised that Noonan doesn’t seem outwardly troubled by the weather, and she has no sense from him that he is even thinking about the dangers that lie ahead. She is struck with the sudden fear that he has
given up all hope, but she puts aside her anxieties because in spite of his drinking, she secretly harbors the suspicion that he is brave.

The truth is that Noonan is sure that they are going to die. It is this certainty that accounts for his outward calm, as he watches in silence for any sign that his intuition is faulty. But the ominous winds rage on. She has radioed the
Itasca
, a Coast Guard cutter posted to listen for her signals and watch for weather. The meteorological forecast cites squalls and headwinds. They need good weather because Noonan needs good star sights. Their only hope of finding Howland Island is by celestial navigation. But the odds are worse than terrible. Because of radio difficulties, Noonan hasn’t been able to set the chronometers, and any miscalculation of their speed would defeat the accuracy of navigating by the stars. His gyroscope has been unreliable over the past week. And she has to gauge her fuel consumption, but the fuel analyzer has been off, first in India and then in Indonesia.

The
Itasca
is supposed to help guide them to Howland, but the captain doesn’t know that she has left her telegraph code key transmitter in Miami. Incredible as it seems, neither she nor Noonan knows how to communicate in Morse code. The captain is also unaware that she has dropped her trailing wire, the antenna that
would allow her to broadcast and receive signals on more frequencies.

Later, when they discover how mismanaged the flight has been, people will think that she was out of her mind.

He couldn’t sleep. He went to wander along the water, reciting prayers into the howling wind. That night he drank himself into a stupor, and when he staggered into his room he fell onto the bed, not noticing that it was covered in mosquito netting. The structure collapsed. The clamor woke her up. When she helped him back into bed, she told him that they would be leaving the next morning.

He said that it wasn’t up to her. It was up to the fucking wind.

They left the next day. The Electra waddled off the end of the cliff and disappeared for several seconds. Then she rose up from the water like a Phoenix, only to disappear again, into the ashen mist.

Behind the mist, there’s nothing but sky. The sky is flesh. It’s the last sky.

•

I’m flying around the world. I’m flying over the Pacific somewhere off the coast of New Guinea in my twin-engine Lockheed Electra, and I’m lost. I watch the sky as it curves and swells, and every now and then I think I can see it shudder. My eyes and my eyes reflected in the windshield hold the sun in them, and it burns. I blink and reach one arm directly overhead. My fingers grasp a dial. Out of the far corner of my field of vision, I catch a glimpse of the underlying sea. Thinking to myself that this might be the last day of my life, that I’m hot, and that I am hungry, I adjust the dial and lower my arm.

The sea is dark. It is darker than the sky.

Earhart. Overcast.

We must be on you but cannot see you.

Earhart calling
Itasca
. We are circling but cannot hear you.

The navigator has been roused from his stupor and is drinking from the bottle of rum. He stands up slowly and immediately sits down. He moans and then closes his eyes.

While he awakes, night falls. One by one the stars arrive in the sky like a thousand distant windows lighting
up. Soon the emptiness is crowded with heavenly bodies, crowded with glitter and smothered in moonlight.

He picks up a bottle and sets it on the map, a beacon for lost mariners. He looks out the window and studies the stars. Then he scribbles some calculations on the map itself, filling up the ocean with ink. He rips off a corner of the map and writes a note, which he attaches to a string hanging from the bamboo pole. He pulls on the string and the note travels forward into the cockpit. Then he sits back and opens the bottle.

He waits a long time for a response, and while he waits, he makes the liquor last. It isn’t his only bottle; he’s hidden more somewhere, but for the moment he can’t remember where. The drink takes hold. In the awareness of lost awareness, he feels that he is able to see his mind in motion, and this fascinates him. It’s like being inside a watch.

It is this very passivity and self-absorption that she hates about his drinking. He has a hard time deciding if he agrees with her. He’s suffered for his habit over the years, sometimes more painfully than he can admit, and he realizes that this has made his life difficult. But then again, if his life hadn’t been difficult to begin with, he wouldn’t have been drinking anyway. He never takes the argument very far. It’s a subject he can only contemplate when drunk.

•

The handsome navigator is dreaming about a pair of stockinged legs, light glossing over silk over pearly skin, when he remembers that he has been waiting for a reply from the cockpit.

He stands up slowly and immediately sits down. He moans and closes his eyes. He stands up again, and balancing his weight on the table, he steadies himself and heads for the cockpit.

Much later, when Noonan remembers what happened, he will flatter himself by recalling that as soon as he sat down in the copilot’s seat, he had a premonition of death.

In reality, when he sees the thin margin of error left on the fuel gauge and hears the blind static sputter weakly from the radio, he has a vision of escape involving feathers and wings. Then he steadies his wits and takes off his glasses, one wire over one ear at a time, and he squeezes the bridge of his nose. He’s obviously nervous. His hand trembles. His confusion—he has no idea where they are or how they have drifted so far off course—hardens into a carapace of false self-control. Gesturing out the window with one hand while he puts on his glasses with the other, he says, The United States is that way, remember?

•

When she doesn’t answer or look over at him, he asks her what the hell is going on. He reaches down toward the dashboard to fiddle with the radio, and in her first statement to him in what is beginning to feel like days, she tells him that it doesn’t work. He asks her again what the hell is going on.

What the hell do you think is going on.

The mindless roar of the engine is interrupted by a rattling, and then by a thumping sound.

Jesus, he says. What the hell is going on? What the goddamn hell is going on?

The thumping increases, and then suddenly it changes. It slows to a rumble. Then down to a purr.

Jesus, he says again. Jesus goddamn Christ. Why won’t you tell me what the hell is going on?

As they descend she can feel the full weight of her ship barreling beneath her. It is a soaring, howling fall. She comes reeling out of the sky like some wanton satellite winging her way reckless and unhinged. Her metal skeleton scrapes the atmosphere which seems to rupture as she passes, healing behind her as she passes, sucking her through again and again. She feels the shaking of her brakes and the shivering of her wings in a sweeping passage down to where she lingers for a moment in the moonlit darkness, the sea below her as black as blood. For a moment, everything asway. The silent waves. The
hot, salt air. The wind holding, holding her up before letting her go. Then a cracking and a breaking and a last long shudder as she speeds down into the final chaos.

He grabbed onto her, sobbing, when he felt the fall. He clutched her hair and he gasped for breath. She carried the weight of him in her arms, letting the tears roll down her neck, and she thought about the weakness of men. She felt weak herself, but not too frightened to face the night and everything it offered, even if what it offered was only death. They were both dying ridiculous deaths, she thought, brought about by hubris and liquor. They might as well have been lovers, she thought. They had made all the blunders of a typical couple: he had woken up from the dream too late, and she was too angry to forgive him for his absence. It was tragic, but life was tragic, especially the mysterious entanglements of men and women. She had never given much thought to relations between the sexes, she had always tried to live her own life. But now here she was, on the brink of the abyss, with a grown man collapsed in her arms. It was fate and it was funny and it was making her angry. She was filled with regret for not having been kinder to him, and she burned with a desire to start their journey over from the beginning, but she couldn’t forgive him for everything he’d done, and she blamed him more than herself for her circumstances. She wished she could say something
comforting to him, but she couldn’t, and then she wished that he would pull himself together.