On the Wing (5 page)

“Do you think that means something?” I asked her as we came to a stop at a red light. “The way talking to yourself means money in the bank?”

“Doesn't that mean company's coming?” she asked.

“Money in the bank, company's coming, something like that.”

“I think it's just an inevitable consequence of traveling solo,” she said thoughtfully. “Sooner or later, a solo traveler will talk to himself—or to his beautiful aerocycle if he's fortunate enough to have one. That's just the way it is.”

“What?” asked the driver of the car beside me.

“Oh—ah—nothing,” I said. “I was just talking to my—ah—myself.”

“Means you're nuts,” he claimed cheerily. “You want to try to keep that under control.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Embarrassed, I chugged along for a while without saying a word to anyone.

“So!” she said after a couple of blocks. “I embarrass you!”

“Oh, no. No. Of course not.”

“Then why wouldn't you admit to that fool that you were talking to me?”

“I—”

“That was a person of absolutely no consequence to you, someone you are not likely ever to see again, and yet you wouldn't acknowledge me.”

“Please, I—”

“Don't talk to me.”

“Okay.”

We rode on in silence until the silence grew awkward, whereupon I broke it by remarking, as if there were no ill feeling between us, “So this is traveling without a map, free as the wind!”

“I like it!” said
Spirit,
apparently as eager as I to put the past behind us.

“It's easier than I thought it would be,” I said.

“I agree!”

For a moment I thought of using that remark as an opening to point out that she wasn't putting as much effort into transporting me as I had expected her to, but I think that—tyro traveler though I was—I realized that it's not wise to antagonize one's traveling companion or one's conveyance or both so early in the trip.

“Now that I think about it, I realize that I had begun to worry that it was going to be boring,” I said instead, “just one straight road to New Mexico without any diversions.”

“It was studying all those maps that did that.”

“But now I'm finding that although I have a general direction in mind as a goal—”

“A kind of Emersonian tendency.”

“Um, yeah. You could say that. A tendency. Right. A kind of westness. But I can choose the roads that seem most appealing, the ones that seem to offer the most pleasant route to—or at least toward—the goal.”

“I see what you mean. You don't have to go right at it.”

“Right,” I said, inspired. “I can tack.”

“Well put.”

“A sailor soon learns that he almost never takes a direct route,” I declaimed under the influence of her praise, or flattery. “He learns that wind and tide and currents will alter his course, and he learns to live with that, even to enjoy it.”

“‘A tar rolls with the swells,' as Mr. Summers said—”

“Well, yeah,” I said, surprised that she should know about Mr. Summers, leader of the Young Tars, and the mottoes he tried to persuade his followers to adopt, surprised that she should have access to my memory.

“—enjoying the diversion of wind and tide and currents and swells the way that you're enjoying the wandering course of this journey.”

“Yes.”

“You seem to have learned a lot from the days you spent as a boy, sailing with your grandfather on Bolotomy Bay,” she said, mining my memory again.

“Those were wonderful days,” I said with a sigh.

I went on for a while, reminiscing happily about those carefree days on Bolotomy Bay, until, suddenly, to my surprise, there was Bolotomy Bay right in front of me. I throttled down and rolled slowly to the water's edge, where a bulkhead formed the margin of the bay. Somewhere, I realized, somewhere in my recent past, I had made a wrong turn.

Long Island is long and narrow, running east-and-west. When I set out from Babbington I had been headed west, in the general direction of New Mexico. My intention had been to continue heading west, and if I had succeeded in doing so, the bay, which stretches along Long Island's southern shore, should have been to the south of my route. I should have been traveling westward, paralleling the bay, not heading directly into it. I should have arrived in New York City, not at the West Bayborough Municipal Dock, which was where I found myself, or where I found myself lost.

I turned away from the water and in the manner of all lost people began trying to retrace my steps, hoping to find the place at which I had gone wrong, and there to go right, to regain the westward tendency that I had hoped to maintain throughout my journey.

After spending some time in that effort, I began to understand that I must have made many wrong turns. The first one must have been made quite some time ago, not very far from Babbington, and then I must have spent most of the afternoon and early evening making one wrong turn after another. The pleasure I had found in traveling had been a false pleasure, founded on ignorance, a bliss that I felt only while my ignorance lasted, a bliss that vanished when my eyes were opened.

“I blame it on the weather,” I explained to
Spirit.
“When the day clouded over, I had no sunlight or shadows to help me tell west from south or north or even east. I was flying blind.”

“In more ways than one,” she muttered.

“Okay. You're right. It's my own fault. I should have brought a map.”

I thought she might offer me some consolation, perhaps even tell me that I shouldn't blame myself, but she didn't. We rolled on in silence, retracing my steps, but I retraced my steps so badly that I found myself back at the West Bayborough Municipal Dock again.

I stopped. I sighed. Beside me, a grizzled fisherman sitting on the bulkhead heard me sigh and guessed the reason for it.

“Lost?” he asked.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“That's nothing to be ashamed of,” said a lovely dark-haired girl beside him. “Everyone gets lost now and then.”

“In my case, there is something to be ashamed of,” I confessed. “This is trouble of my own making, and the making of it began when I chose to travel without a map.”

“That's quite eloquently put,” the fisherman said.

“I've been practicing,” I said. “I've been rehearsing that for the last hour or so, while I was trying to retrace my steps.”

“In the manner of all lost people.”

“I suppose so.”

“It's a pity we didn't speak earlier, the first time you arrived here at the dock.”

“I didn't notice you.”

“Perhaps.”

“Really. I didn't.”

“Perhaps you were reluctant to ask directions. It's a common failing.”

“No. Really. I just didn't notice you.”

“And yet I have rather an unusual aspect, wouldn't you say?”

“Well, no, not really, to tell the truth. Back home, in Babbington, there are quite a few grizzled—”

“Old salts?” offered the girl.

“Yes.”

“Here I'm considered quite a character,” the fisherman asserted.

“That's true,” said the girl.

“Well—”

“I make a considerable contribution to local color.”

“I'm sure.”

“And I'm considered an important source of folk wisdom.”

“That's the way it is back at home. There are many—”

“If you had asked my advice,” he said, with an unmistakable note of irritation in his voice, “I would have offered you a bit of that wisdom: I would have told you not to try retracing your steps.”

“Why?”

“Retracing one's steps is repeating old errors. It's a miserable way to live one's life.”

“I only spent a couple of hours—”

“Now you take me,” he went on. “I've made mistakes in my life—who hasn't—but do I dwell on them, do I keep returning to them and regretting them? No. Certainly not. What's done is done. You can't change the past. You can't go back to the place where things went wrong and make them go right.”

“But what should he do, Grandfather?” asked the girl.

“Yeah,” I said. “What should I do?”

“You should go on from where you are.”

“But it's getting dark. It feels late. And I've been on the road so long.”

“How long have you been away from home?” asked the girl, placing a gentle hand on my arm.

“Hours,” I said importantly.

“Grandpa,” the girl said to the grizzled fisherman, “this boy must be tired and hungry. I'm going to take him home, give him a hot bath, cook him some supper, and tuck him into bed,” and then she simply faded away, vanished, returning to the land of wishful thinking, from which she had materialized for the few moments that she'd been standing there.

“Did you?” asked the fisherman.

“What?” I asked, bewildered by the way the girl had disappeared.

“I said, ‘You must have had many adventures,'” the fisherman repeated. “Did you?”

“Huh?” I said, still befuddled.

“Never mind,” he said. “Time for me to pack up and head for home—a hot bath—a hearty meal—and a good night's sleep.”

I needed a place to stay. I'd been away from Babbington for only a few hours, but I had already begun to feel the chill of separation. I missed the place—my home town—and the people in it. I felt very much alone and in need of someplace that would make me feel, if not at home, at least in a place like home. I had intended from the start to rely on the kindness of strangers, to ask the people I met along the way to give me shelter, and to exploit the good impression that I, a daring young flyboy, was likely to make on the easily awed populace of the towns I would be passing through. The grizzled fisherman didn't seem easily awed, but he was the only current candidate for the role of kindly stranger.

“Please, sir,” I said, “I've been traveling for some time—I'm tired and hungry—and I need a place to stay for the night.”

“Mm,” he said as he began to pack his gear.

“Could you—?”

“Mm?”

“Could you—um—put me up?”

“For the night?”

“If it wouldn't be too much trouble.”

“I suppose you'll want supper, and a bath, and clean sheets.”

“Well—”

“You'll have to eat fish,” he said, indicating the fish in his bucket.

“I like fish.”

“You'll have to bathe in cold water.”

“I've done that at camp.”

“You'll have to sleep with my granddaughter.”

“That would be—I—really?”

“In your dreams,” he said, cuffing me behind the ear.

His humble home was not far. It was a little cottage, not much larger than the cabin of a boat and outfitted just as efficiently. The fisherman's wife greeted me as if a wayfarer in need of a place to spend the night were not at all an uncommon sight. She had bread in the oven, and as soon as the fisherman had cleaned the fish he'd caught she began making a plain but hearty chowder. Dinner was wonderfully satisfying, and I paid for it by regaling them with tales of my adventures on the road until their eyes began to droop and they began to list the many tasks that awaited them on the morrow. The fisherman showed me to a tiny loft above the kitchen, and there, in a narrow bed with a thin mattress, I slept soundly, with visions of the dark-haired girl dancing in my head.

*   *   *

THE NEXT MORNING, after breakfast, I was surprised to find that I was reluctant to leave the cozy cabin. The grizzled fisherman must have noticed my reluctance, because he took me aside—actually, he grabbed my arm above the elbow and dragged me from the house—and said, “You'll be on your way.” I decided to interpret it as a question.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh, “you're right. You and your wife have been wonderful hosts, and I've enjoyed my stay, but if I'm going to get to New Mexico I'll have to be on my way.”

“It isn't wise to sail without a chart,” he said.

“I realize that now.”

“It's folly, really.”

“I suppose you're right.”

“But,” he added with a twinkle, “as the poet says, ‘If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.'”

“You mean you think that I—should continue to sail without a chart?”

“Yes.”

“That's your advice?”

“That's my advice.”

“And you think I'll become wise by persisting in my folly?”

“You might.”

“All right,” I said, extending my hand, “I'll take your advice.”

We shook hands. I mounted
Spirit
and started her up. I looked around.

“Which—um—which way—”

He pointed in a direction that I hoped was westerly.

Chapter 4

Riding Shotgun

Kurt [Gödel] liked to drive fast. This, combined with his penchant for indulging in abstract reverie while behind the wheel, led his [ … ] wife, Adele, to put an end to his driving career.

Palle Yourgrau,
A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein

ALBERTINE WAS BEHIND THE WHEEL of the Electro-Flyer, driving, and I was beside her in the passenger's seat, asking myself what, exactly, my role was in this adventure. Co-pilot? Navigator? Faithful companion? Sancho Panza? Dr. Watson, Jim, Tonto?

“You're talking to yourself,” said Albertine.

“Not audibly,” I said.

“No, but I can see your lips moving.”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“Why do you talk to yourself?”

“I know not why others may do so, but as for me it has always been a way to clarify my thinking—”

“Clarify somewhat.”