Ben danced the first slow dance with Mary Anne, both of them counting steps and laughing as they counted. Philip Turner cut in before the dance was over. Mr. Dacus danced the first fast dance with Mary Anne and Ogden Loring took the second slow dance. Ansley Matthews, forsaken by Jim Don who had slipped out to the parking lot to drink, asked Ben to dance twice. Memory books were passed back and forth. A flower cart pushed by a sophomore distributed flowers as souvenirs. Streamers hung from the steel rafters almost to the head level of the tallest boys. The water fountain had a sign that read" Le vin Beaujolais. "Pinkie danced twice with Mary Anne, Art the Fart once. The evening passed quickly, even magically at times. Parisian times in the marshes of Ravenel. No one laughed.
Chapter 34
It was a night flight and Bull Meecham had flown from Ravenel to Key West, an out and in flight that would satisfy the requirement of four hours night flying a month.
At 0330 in the morning he departed from Key West estimating his arrival in Ravenel at 0520. He would fly at 32,000 feet. As the F-8 took off, Bull thought about how lucky he was that flight was still a glorious experience for him; he had not grown bored over the years; rather, he still got a small boy's pleasure out of flying a jet plane.
The jet rose in darkness, humming with energy and Godstrength beneath Bull Meecham as he climbed toward his pale, his frontier, as the earth grew puny around him. It was here in an aircraft that he had strange gods before him and his religion was a theology of wind and current, a worship of stars blinking in the intransient dark. Stars, to him, were fixed mariners, old friends, fine compasses, light pure, and druids in the silvery separateness of the night flight. When he left the earth, Bull knew that he had every chance of passing through a square foot of sky unviolated by man before. He could dance as no man had ever danced before; he could spin, dive, or whirl, and his antics in a cloud kingdom thirty thousand feet above the earth would be pure flirtations with absolute limits, with thresholds. His dance in the sky was a ballet of power and menace and there were times when his love of flying possessed him and he would want to heel and toe across the length of one wing, then leap the fuselage and soft-shoe with hat and cane across the other wing, dropping to one knee, and extending his arm to all who would understand this fixation at last; this addiction that certain men develop for flying.
He had begun his career as a night fighter and still practiced the skills of that subphylum of aviator. To him the most feared soldier ever created was the pilot who came at night, hiding from the cast-eyed light of half moons, coming winged and unannounced out of the black, out of the void.
At ten thousand feet, the jet emerged from a cloud bank and the moon filled the cockpit with a light that seemed more than light; it was something distilled through air, something with a smell and a taste and Bull drank in the moon through his eyes and nose and the pores of his skin, a soft Chablis of light suspended between earth and sky. The song of stars tonguelessly entertained him. Bull Meecham was silver, winged, and timeless.
Ben and Mary Anne slept in hammocks on the upper veranda porch. A dog barked somewhere in the dark. A barge, laden with Georgia timber, its lights sliding toward the bridge, sounded its horn, and the bridge swung open. Ben awoke fully awake. He slipped downstairs, out the back door, and made his way to the end of the dock where he watched the barge pass by the house. It was turning colder and the air was heavy with the threat of rain, but the kind of rain that on cool mornings is bled out of the unsubstantial flesh of the fog. The tide had turned and as always when he went to the river's edge and studied the movement of the water, he thought of Toomer and those long nights when stuttering, fishing, and singing, the black man had made a textbook of the river and told Ben things he would never have known, the calculus of approach and recall that ruled every living thing in the tight, contained beauty of returning river. Toomer had taught that all fish, the greatest and smallest, listened to the testimony of the tide in their every nerve ending, in every bone, and in every cell. The smallest fish must play the tide to the last possible moment, hugging the marsh while there is still water, hanging back, and not rushing headlong into the creeks where larger fish were also gambling against the land trapping them. But eventually, the tides forced all creatures to the open waters. For the marsh itself was both a sanctuary and a tomb, its slender grasses rich in both food and safety, in both food and danger. Spines and fins were severed in the morning before the awakening of the town; claws and pincers worked in mute terror at the soundless approach of serrated teeth. Muscles snapped and veins broke as Ben studied the waters with sleep-hungry eyes. He looked across the river to Youman's docks where a shrimper with a Coleman lantern lighting his deck prepared to cast off for the deep waters of St. Catherine's Sound.
The town awoke in ritual, ten thousand different ways. In Ravenel, the shrimpers rose first. Their coffee was always the earliest coffee fixed by the men with the calloused, fin-cut hands as their puffed, ascetic boats moved into the stream of tide returning, cutting through the dark artery of the marsh, through the green empire heaving in the tumult of retreat, alive with the instinct of billions obeying the unbenign law of the tide. Their coffee tasted slightly of shrimp and the sea.
The river seemed to quicken as Ben began to walk back to his house. A trout flared like a match in the light where the lights of the bridge and the river met. Coins of fire ignited the mullet's back as two shrimp boats slid past ringing buoys, tethered yachts, and storefronts. The shrimp boat captains watched for the channels and markers, somehow feeling that they were the lords of all this, of all they saw and felt. For a time, the early riser ruled the world. It was the grand illusion of the darkness.
Ben returned to his hammock with a heavy blanket for himself and one for Mary Anne. The temperature was dropping faster now and there was surprise in the May chill. In her sleep, Mary Anne was moving her lips and gesturing with her hands and for several moments he studied his sister dreaming and felt sad that dreams were not objects that could be catalogued, put away, and studied at leisure. This dream of Mary Anne's would die by morning like all the other dreams of the town. In the town of Ravenel, ten thousand dreams hovered over the town each night and ten thousand died each morning, their washed-out corpses borne away for burial at sea by the first breeze. Somewhere, the billion dreams of the town since its origin stirred in a maelstrom far from the reach of the shrimpers' nets. Old dreams still burned with the power of their one night on earth, but burned deep and forbidden in regions denied to men.
* * *
Flying high over Brunswick, Georgia, and closing fast on Savannah, Bull contacted Atlanta radio.
"Atlanta Center," Bull said," Marine 657 over Brunswick at flight level three-two-zero. Requesting a Tacon approach to Ravenel. Over."
"Roger. 657 is cleared to Sand Dollar intersection. Contact Ravenel approach control on 325-0 at this time."
Bull switched frequencies and called the Ravenel tower. "Ravenel Approach, Marine 657 inbound. Sand Dollar intersection for Tacon approach. Flight level three-two-zero."
"Roger, 657. You are cleared to approach altitude. Report leaving three-two-zero."
Bull loved the simplicity inherent in the language of pilots. In these highways of flying men, their tongue forbidden the people of the earth, all fat had been trimmed, all excess removed. Mankind, by its nature, produced infantrymen and Bull approved that the grunts of the world could not enter into the language of aviators.
He went to the radio again. "Six-five-seven out of three-two-zero. Request weather."
"Ravenel 0515 observation. One thousand feet ceiling with one half mile in light rain with fog. Surface wind light and variable. Ground Approach is standing by. Roger and out."
To Bull it was always extraordinary how the two strangers would speak to each other in disembodied voices, passing vital information back and forth that could mean the difference between life and death and yet Bull had never met one of these unnamed men who coaxed him homeward toward earth. He was a num
ber and the voice that answered him was a tower. In the jet now, time never moved. Time was motionless, even nonexistent. When Bull Meecham vaulted continents and oceans Time did not move a single inch, nor did it change, grow, or diminish. Man on earth had a shotglass of time allotted to him, but the pilot approaching the speed of sound was a conqueror of time measured and time lost. He could gain hours, lose hours, or in a single day fly from winter to summer, to spring or fall. A flower was always in his grasp, as was a glacier, or a glimpse of the southern cross.
As Bull turned his plane slightly out toward the sea, sliding down now, dropping in altitude, and preparing to land, his eye suddenly filled with another eye watching him. Mutely appraising him was the red warning light that sat high on the cockpit panel to his left. Like all the instruments on the panel, it relayed a specific message. This warning light meant fire.
"Ravenel Approach, this is Marine 657. I have a fire warning light. Request penetration and vector for expedited landing. Over."
Bull slid his finger between his cheek and his oxygen mask and sniffed for smoke. The smoke he hunted was not visible but he knew the nose could tell of presences in the cockpit of which the eye was unaware.
"Roger. Turn right to 330, begin descent to 2000 feet."
At 20,000 feet Bull began his turn toward the air station, his eye affixed to the warning light as to the face of a new lover, and every sense he possessed tuned to changes in pitch, vibration, and the handling of the plane. His flesh could sense the steel that enveloped it was in a kind of trouble, an augmented desperation. His ear focused on the howl of the aircraft and an unformed prayer arose in him that this engine retain its demon whine, its savage articulation.
He called the tower again and said," Approach Control, Marine 657 out of penetration at 17 miles. Request Ground Control Approach pickup. No indications of fire other than warning light. Request the tops of overcast. Over."
"Marine 657," the voice replied immediately, "tops of overcast at 12,000 feet. Out."
Bull had started down the slope now, his boards out, and he was descending, alive, alive, adrenaline reinforcing every platelet, every blood cell, and his mind radiating with its response to danger. Then the plane, already in the overcast, entered into the sightless suspended world that had enveloped Ravenel. But he was close now and coming fast toward the safety of runways and the smell of hangars. The red light controlled his eye like a mucilage. Then, in his bones, Bull felt the nature of the emergency change; even before he had proof or corroboration of what his viscera told him, he felt a change in his aircraft, and a change in himself as he went to the radio once more and called out words he had never used before:
"Mayday. Mayday. Six-five-seven. I'm in the soup at 2000. Have severe engine vibration and over-temp. Am going to guard channel and squawking emergency. Out."
Bull switched the button to 243.0 and he went immediately to guard channel. Now, all along the east coast, on every radar screen, the eyes of radarmen that Bull Meecham would never see or never know sighted in on a large, abnormal blip that exploded suddenly on their screens. The eyes watched and those many-towered men knew that a plane was in agony and a pilot was trying to bring that plane home at his own peril.
In the control at Ravenel, Staff Sergeant Alexander Brown began to sweat and fidget as he awaited the next communication from Marine 657, from the voice of the aviator whose panel was screaming" Fire" in a theater of one. He waited, tense, water bleeding out from his forehead and underarms. Then the voice came again.
"Six-five-seven is out of 5000 feet at ten miles. Unable to contact GCA. Request a straight-in approach. Give me full lights. Losing power and engine vibration severe. Will try to bring it in due to proximity of populated areas. Out."
Populated areas. The phrase meant something to Bull. That was where people lived and slept, where families slept. Families like my family, wives like my wife, sons like my sons, and daughters like my daughters. He was now bulldogging a fatally stricken F-8 that was beginning to break up inside itself, beginning to destroy its own vitals. He needed sight and he needed it badly. His every resource as a pilot now came into play as he held the stick that fought the convulsions of a maimed craft shuddering downward like a kind of ruin. Then he heard something that made him reach for the radio in a panic.
Sergeant Brown tensed as the voice came again. "Tower. Engine explosion! Cockpit lights out. Am commencing starboard turn to avoid populated area. Will attempt to punch out when wings are level. Wish me luck. Over."
"Marine 657. Good luck. Crash crew alerted and ready."
But even as Sergeant Brown spoke the radar screen no longer bore witness to the presence or the existence of Bull Meecham. The FAA controller in the radar room called up frantically to Brown. "I've lost your boy, Sarge. I've lost him. I've lost your boy."
"Any fires near the runway?" Sergeant Brown called into a phone.
"Negative," replied the Ground Control Vehicles.
Sergeant Brown grabbed for the emergency phone. "Angel 5! Angel 5!" he said," plane down in area approximately ten miles east of runway in the Combahee Island area!"
In less than two minutes, the rescue helicopter was airborne toward the area where Bull Meecham had disappeared from the screen.
It was growing colder, unseasonably cold for the middle of May, and the fog, though not heavy, was rising off the water, thickening imperceptibly, and obscuring the lowcountry in its passage across the land.
But a rumor was born in that instant and began to assault those hangars and duty shacks where Marines who kept the base alive and functional at night congregated: Bull Meecham, lieutenant colonel, commanding officer of 367, war hero, fighter pilot, Bull Meecham was down.
Ravenel began to wake in earnest at six in the morning. Hobie made his way through the gloom of River Street to open his restaurant. Ed Mills woke to arthritic cramps that made each morning a matins of pain for him. The sun was not up yet, but the town braced for its arrival. The earliest birdsong whispered through the streets. The time was marked down and all eyes turned eastward toward the waters and breakers along the barrier islands. Doc Ratteree delivered a stillborn black child at this time and washed his hands slowly, dreading the moment he would have to walk out and talk to the father who at this moment thought this would be the happiest day of his life. It was the time when night trembled before the coming resurrection, when the air sighed like a lover, when the first fingers of light came stealing out of the abyss to find the secret, soft places. Light and dark groped for each other in the birthing of dawn. Dawn spilled, mist-filtered, into each window, into each leaf, into the river, into each creek, and into the eyes of Ben and Mary Anne. Light danced quick in the river and the marshland, as quick as death or the snap of a claw.
Ben heard a car door slam at a quarter of seven. He woke slowly, looked through the banisters and saw Colonel Joe Varney coming up the front walk accompanied by the chaplain. If a lifetime as the son of the fighter pilot had taught him one thing, it was that he knew instinctively the meaning of this ill-timed visitation: This was a promenade of ruin. The message was irrefutable, for Ben was fluent in the rituals of disaster. He had known too many Marine wives and children who had come to their front door and found dour messengers, their faces carved from the ices of duty, standing with tragic news welting their tongues. But they really need to say nothing. They could stand there and the family would know, would scream at the sight of them, and would wish that their shadows had never desecrated their homes. They could roost like vultures in the trees, birds that bring the famine of grief into unprepared homes. They could come wordless into the house of any Marine family, but no matter how they came or what shape or appearance they assumed, their very presence was the equivalent of some form of apocalypse.
Ben slid out of his hammock and made his way quickly to his mother's room. He knocked on the door, then opened it. Lillian rolled over on her back, rubbed her eyes, and said," Good morning, sugah. Why are you up so early?"
"I think something's happened to Daddy," Ben said.
"Why, darling? What makes you think that?"
"Colonel Varney and Chaplain Poindexter are at the front door."
Lillian threw on a robe and hurried downstairs. She was there at the very moment Colonel Varney knocked at the front door. She looked into the eyes of Joe Varney and saw the embarrassed look she had seen in the eyes of strong men who had to convey news of disaster. She screamed once, raising her knuckles to her mouth, then threw her head against Joe Varney's shoulder.
"He may be all right, Lillian. We might be laughing about this over a drink tonight. He went down about ten miles east of here. We don't know if he punched out or what. He was trying to fly his bird away from the town. He could be hitchhiking back to town for all we know. But we don't know anything and the fog is hindering the rescue operation. I wanted to get the word to you before someone called."
"Thank you, Joe," Lillian said. "You think there's a chance Bull might be all right?"
"There's a chance," Colonel Varney answered, walking Lillian into the house with his arm around her protectively, "there's always a chance. Let's hope for the best until we have a reason to think otherwise."
"All we can do is pray," Chaplain Poindexter said.
"Beth is on her way over here. She's contacting the wives of 367," Varney said.
Ben was standing on the bottom step listening to this news, trying to absorb it, but feeling it rejected like a transplanted organ. His body fevered and froze in alternating currents of temperature. Lillian saw him, straightened herself, dried her eyes, and gathered herself into a woman in control of events. During her whole existence as a Marine wife she had prepared her psyche for the possibility of a crash. There was a strength derived from living with the possibility of disaster and it was a source of energy that could be used when it had to be. Like her husband she had her duties.