Cap - Prose Knight

Here's my first piece published in an obscure little magazine for pilots to commemorate the restoration of a 1930 Stearman Speedmail: at the time one of only 4 flying. It's the shortest thing I have and written 20 years ago, but if you like it, I'll submit a serialized edition of the sequel I wrote  last year, much longer, much better.

20 years of craft make a difference!

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It is an early spring morning. 

Low clouds and a thin fog unusual for this part of Texas diffuse the dim light 
of a hidden sun. The heavy dew on the short grass of the Corpus Christi airfield 
makes for slippery going.

A lineboy is sleepily stumbling through his morning chores. Uncovering the gas 
pump, he slips and mutters a curse under his breath. A truck pulls up beside him,
 "U.S. Mail" lettered on the side.

It is 1931. Pangborn and Herndon prepare for their trans Pacific flight while 
Wiley Post takes on the world. Hoover is in the White House and "The Good Earth"
 is Buck's latest book. Pluto is newly discovered and the country is rising out of 
the Depression as slowly as this Texas sun.

The lineboy takes two sacks of mail from the truck and waves it on, turning 
towards the sound from the North. Not an OX-5 or a Liberty, no straight engine this:
this sound is round! He sits down on a damp wooden bench, leaning back against 
the pumps to wait.

The engine rumbles louder now, circling over the field. He catches a glimpse or 
two as the new mail plane flashes in and out of the fog. Rolling onto final in a 
hard slideslip, a huge biplane blue and orange fades into view. The boy stands 
slowly, slackjawed at the sight of the beast.

With a quiet crash, the plane rolls onto the strip, painting twin strips out of the 
dew as it goes. Engine quiet now, the prop ticks to a stop and the monster 
mailplane slides to a halt in front of him. The sound of the wind dying in the 
wires is music he would never forget.

The pilot flips the latch of the seatbelt and climbs over the side, two steps and 
a hop to the ground. He, too slips on the dew, grabbing at the high cockpit rim 
for support.

"Morning"' he says to the boy.

"Nice plane," the boy, now well awake, answers.

"She's a spanker, all right! First day on the run,"

The pilot takes the mail pouches from the bench and enters the line shack. 
Looking for coffee and finding it old and cold, he sighs and rubs tired ears. 
Outside he finds the boy still staring at the plane.

"Uh, need a prop?" the boy asks, eyeing the nine foot blade and the wet grass.

"Nope, already got one," the pilot replys, patting the cowl. He keys the padlock 
and opens the large front bin, pitching the bags in after the morning light.
Bin locked again, the pilot vaults from the front tire to wingwalk and, with an 
unpracticed step, clambers into his seat.

Master "On"' starter to 'Energize' and the still warm Pratt & Whitney turns the 
prop with powerful assurance. Magnetos 'Both' and the whuff whuff whuff of the 
exhaust burst into an easy lope.

As the plane turns away, the lineboy is buffeted by a warm wind. Closing his 
eyes, he breaths deeply, inhaling the life left behind for him. The smell of clean 
oil and new gas wash over fresh dope, leaving him alert and alive.

"Someday...."

The Speedmail turns onto the runway and the pilot leans into the throttle, urges
the airplane forward. Tail up and he's away in a steep climb, water trailing from 
the wings. Turning to the North, he disappears in the fog, the sound, the song,
 lingering on for a minute or two.

Eyes closed again, the lineboy sees himself in the cockpit of the winged beauty 
passing over western ranchlands and the oil fields at Beaumont. With the breath 
of the beast still fresh in his hair, he opens his eyes and sees the first cresent of 
the sun to the East.

Turning again to his tasks of the day ahead, a sudden realization takes hold...she'll
 be back tommorrow and the next day and the next and the day after that.

He had met his first love,just then, that morning; and her name was Speedmail.

I totally agree with IJReilly here. You have a knack for pace.

And when you're writing with the stuff that you are most intimate and passionate about, the little details and jargon seep out and help pull the reader 'there' as sure as you have been.

One piece of advice which is rather just an online forum technical detail. This is to avoid the ragged lines that appear when one reads this post on a smaller resolution screen. It's better to cut-and-paste your Word (or other) docs into a plain text editor, then recopy and paste in the post box to strip out HTML and rich-text formatting. Unfortunately this requires you to go back and re-format for emphasis like underlines & italics.

The result though is that it will "fit" and scroll better in an unpredictable browser environ (for example, I'm not a premium member and these ads puch the boxes skinnier and screw up the margins. This read a lot better at home where I have resoultion way up, where at work, it's limited to 1024x768.

Here's a Speedmail pic:

There's a whole subculture like bikers. www.antiqueairfield.com will give you a taste. I have some video and quite a few photos there.

Sorry Cap, I didn't read this one. I'm a little pressed for time and after:

"Low clouds and a thin fog unusual for this part of Texas diffuse the dim light of a hidden sun. The heavy dew on the short grass of the Corpus Christi airfield makes for slippery going." I kinda got bored.

Not that I'm knocking it, I wouldn't dare to after loving everything else I've read of yours here. I am lowly pond scum writing on the wall with my own excrement compared to you :) But it reminds me of the importance of writing for an intended audience.I bet if I was or wanted to be a pilot then low clouds, diffuse sunlight, hidden suns and unusual thin fogs would really get my motor roaring.

Correct you are: this was one of my very early pieces written for a newsletter  for flyers. So, if it didn't grab you, don't worry: both the quality of my work and the awareness that a more universal audience might be reading the stuff has increased.

OK, so I came back and read it now that I'm a little more leisurely. I'm glad I did. I don't want to say Steinbeck's name again about one of your posts but I like the same things in his writing. Such sweet imagery in that plane landing with a 'quiet crash'. I've never seen a bi-plane in the flesh but those two words were worth a thousand movie scenes of an old plane landing, and painting twin strips on wet grass no less.

I'm betting that I'll like this Pearl Buck's stuff when I get hold of some too.

I just write what I see in my head. I write in first draft...tha tis to say, the story is finished before I sit down to type. If I have built the characters well, they perform the story for me...I just wind them up and let them go with only a faint outline of what I want them to do.

Always allow for the creative accident and be ready to accept it, polish it, and print it. This I learned from sculpture, but it applies to story as well.