The Age of Descent

errol flynn and erich von stroheim had long since flown their spads and fokker triplanes into the sunset, but they could still be conjured up to help the old pilot make one more perfect landing

Harry noticed there was only one other person at the bar of the country inn--a girl who looked young enough to be his daughter. Less than 12 hours ago he would have regarded her as a charming curio from another world and let it go at that. His feelings about men who worked way out of their age brackets had been righteous and well defined: contempt, leavened with the prescribed degree of pity. And such feelings had been easy enough to sustain; he simply had never known any real temptation. But things had happened today, ending in a remark overheard by chance--about himself. Somewhat devastating, it was. A reappraisal of value judgments was taking place in his mind; a new tolerance for the aging lecherous members of his sex might be emerging. Meanwhile, without venturing to use his eyes, he cocked an ear in the direction of the girl.

But her prattling to the bartender was hardly audible over the background music, so that he found it necessary to take some momentary interest in his surroundings. Typical of inns in the Berkshires, this one had been a stagecoach stop in Colonial times. Its proprietor had superimposed the decor of an English pub on the original structure: darts, skittles and Oyster Stout from the Isle of Man. The conspicuous absence of a cash register behind the bar was a heart-warming touch, also the discreet sign directing attention to the existence of modern motel units nestled against the mountain in the rear. It was the owner's practical philosophy that while his guests liked to drink in the country, they preferred the illusion of sleeping in the city.

Harry left his seat at the bar and went to stand with his back to one of the fires. In a way, he regretted leaving his wife behind in New York; she would love the inn. On the other hand, she had been right to insist that what he wanted to do required doing alone--she had never been keen on flying, anyway, and least of all with him at the controls. Back in the War, of course, she thought him very dashing in his crushed cap, parachute-silk scarf and sheepskin boots. He would have been the first to agree with her.

But today he had felt thoroughly dated in his old leather jacket. The young man assigned to check him out in the new Piper was dressed like a junior executive of IBM. "Sixteen years is quite a layoff, sir. We'll just take it easy at first." Harry was already having second thoughts about this pilgrimage to the romantic past. He decided to keep his old flying glasses in his pocket.

They went up and practiced a few power stalls--rather mushy affairs--and some 360s, in which he lost several hundred feet of altitude. Finally the young man in the gray business suit said, "You can take her in now, sir." The $20 hour was up. The young man adopted an air of elaborate casualness as the dirt runway came up to meet them, which meant that he was ready to snatch the controls in an instant. The landing, however, was respectable, in spite of a slight cross wind. Harry felt a number of years slip away when his copilot said, "OK." Later in the little administration building he had overheard the sobering remark. But now, before he could fall into further introspection, he became aware that the girl was standing beside him.

"Are you a flier?" she asked, stroking his leather sleeve lightly.

"Lafayette Escadrille. World War One."

"I don't believe it," the girl said seriously.

"You like World War Two?"

"Well, don't give me that Red Baron bit." She turned her back to the fire and stretched voluptuously as the heat (continued on page 142) Age of Descent (continued from page 103) penetrated her sweater and slacks. "I'm crazy about wood fires. I wish I never had to go back to the city. It's anal!"

Slightly shocked, he replied, "I hate it, too. But how can you make a decent living in the country?"

"Why don't you go back to flying?"

"Too late."

"Don't be silly--my father's a pilot."

"What kind?" Was it square of him to be bothered by her use of the word "anal"? She looked so young and fresh. Very fresh.

"Air cargo. I'm getting a license, too."

"Good for you. Can I buy you a drink?"

"Sure."

They went back to the bar and the girl asked for a stinger. He wondered for an instant what the bartender was thinking; then she turned toward him and smiled, putting the drink to her lips. "My father has a mustache, too," she said. At once he understood that the difference in their ages didn't have to be a problem. The knowledge made him feel a little like a spider; not altogether an unpleasant sensation. He had begun to plan his next move when he heard her say:

"Don't think I have a father complex or anything."

"It never crossed my mind."

Funny, he thought, how these kids know all the words and think they are inoculated against the disease. He felt a nice little pang of pity to prove he wasn't all spider. Also, it was good to know that he was in no apparent danger of an ego-bruising rebuff, if he proceeded tenderly. The fact that he was proceeding, he realized, was his disease; and in nature's jokebook, it was nicely complemental to hers. Somehow it was all arranged; who was to say whether it was for better or for worse? The bartender, maybe. But not himself. Instinctively, he seemed to know what line to take next.

"I had a little jolt at the airport this morning. Kind of amusing."

The girl smiled knowingly. "You landed the airplane ten feet off the ground."

"A different kind of jolt. Let's move over by the fire." (The bartender had a daughter the same age as this girl--he was sure of it.) He took her stinger and led her to a high-winged bench of dark wood that faced the hot flames. He took a position with his back toward the bar. That and the music would make matters private.

"Isn't this better?"

"Cool."

The word hadn't struck her as inapt. She snuggled into a corner of the bench with her knees up under her chin. Part of the effect was a flamboyant plumping out of the jersey-sheathed hips, transforming her into a woman--or at least something more in the nature of legitimate prey. And yet there was an assertive innocence, too. Strange creatures.

He said, "You want to hear about my jolt?"

"I'd love to."

"It's quite a story."

"I love stories."

He looked at her drink; it was only half gone. Harry lighted a cigarette and began.

"You see, when I was a little boy"--irresistible imagery, he knew--"I was crazy about flying. We lived on Riverside Drive--it was different then. I could watch the seaplanes landing on the river and I made models out of balsa and silk: Spads, Fokkers--all the World War One planes, I guess. The whole apartment smelled like wing dope. And I read all the pulp magazines; they had gorgeous pictures of dogfights on the covers, and I knew all the beautiful maneuvers like chandelles and Immelmanns. You know what an Immelmann is?"

"No."

"Like this." He described it on the air with his hands. "You roll it out on top." He could tell by her eyes that his boyish enthusiasm was working; it was becoming real to him, even. A little rum. A little female.

Who was he fooling?

"You are a romantic," she said.

"Like Daddy?"

"No," she drained her glass, "but it's nice."

Somebody was fooling herself, anyway. It was necessary.

"Good," he said. "Another stinger?"

He took their glasses to the bar and ordered himself a run and soda. "The wine of warriors." Only two drinks ago he had been a spider. He looked at the old flier's chronograph on his wrist. Nine thirty-eight. She must have had dinner. Food would not be good for the mood right now. While the bartender was making the drinks, Harry went to the men's room and examined his mustache: One wild gray hair, curled like a piglet's tail, dismayed him. He snatched it out.

The girl was sitting cross-legged, putting a comb back into her pocketbook. The hair was black, combed down over one eye--probably she had never heard of Veronica Lake.

"I want to hear the rest of the story."

"Truly?"

She nodded vigorously; the hair bounced as it does in the TV commercials.

"Well, it happened that my parents brought a man home to dinner one night. He was something. British--gentleman, I think. Tall. Lean. Beautiful clothes. Sort of Ronald Colman--"

"He's dead. But he was cool."

"This fellow was cool, too: He was a pilot. Or he had been, in the Great War--a fighter pilot in the R. A. F. Of course, my parents wouldn't let me ask him questions. They said men who had been in the War didn't like to talk about it. But the next time he came, I showed him my models and he said he'd bring me his old flying helmet--which he did. It was gorgeous, with a cape that came down over the shoulders. I tried to wear it, but I couldn't keep it on for more than a few minutes. The itchiest wool inside."

"I can't stand wool next to my skin," she said.

He wondered what the jersey pants were made of. You were never quite sure of what anything was made of these days--except little girls. But that had changed, too. He thought of the itchy helmet as something gone and honest.

"What happened to the cool guy?"

"The last I heard, he had the rowboat concession in Central Park. I suppose he's really old now--if he's alive. Of course, he seemed old to me then. But still very glamorous; or maybe because of it. A veteran. An Old Pilot. It became my sole ambition to be an Old Pilot, too. I walked with a slight limp, like him. I squinted into the sun and I drank flat ginger ale out of a brandy snifter when I got up for the dawn patrol--about seven-thirty."

"Cute."

"Not cool?"

"Of course not. Anyway, I use that word too much. It's a hangover from my youth." She laughed and then stretched, arching to thrust out her bosom; proof positive, presumably, that she had left immaturity behind.

The question of who was seducing whom came to him. But clearly, any distinction between predator and prey was an abstraction. This concept tended to quash his small residue of conscience. At the same time, he sensed that it was too soon to attempt bodily contact. The ritual must continue, inevitable as the mating dance of wild swans.

"So when you grew up, you had to be a pilot," she said.

"It wasn't exactly the way I imagined it; I did Immelmanns and chandelles alone in the sky. That was great. But one thing seemed to be missing, something I must have assumed would be there--"

"Like someone to share it with?"

"That's right--you're very perceptive--an audience. You know, 'Look, Ma, I'm dancin'!'"

"Your wife didn't like to fly."

"You are perceptive."

"It's obvious," the girl said.

They were silent for a moment while he wondered if it mattered to her that he was married. Probably not; didn't her daddy have a wife? She might even prefer it. A wife would be no more than another unworthy rival.

"Anyway," he went on, "I flew for a while after the War--on the GI Bill. I had some idea of becoming an instructor; that way, you always have an audience who thinks you're great. One weekend I decided to rent a plane and fly down to the end of Long Island for a swim in the ocean. My wife finally agreed to go along; we took off early in the morning from an airport in Jersey. High over Central Park, we hit a down-draft and dropped about four hundred feet. It was a bit sudden; and all those cement teeth and dark shadows down there, like the jaws of death.

"That was the end. She made me turn back. I was angry; it seemed like a vote of no confidence in me. Damn foolish, I suppose, but I didn't fly much after that. I imagine there were other reasons."

"I don't think it was foolish," the girl said earnestly.

Which was what he wanted to hear.

"In any case"--his voice conveyed the right degree of sadness--"I stayed away from airplanes for a long time. I wouldn't even fly on business--like the alcoholic."

"How could a woman do that to a man?" the girl said.

"I couldn't really blame her; she was willing to let me fly alone."

"Very big!"

"Anyway, I didn't. Then last week, the bug bit me again. I came across my Old Pilot's helmet in the bottom of the cedar closet. The lining was as itchy as ever. That night I went to see The Blue Max, a picture about World War One flying, and here I am."

"And here we are." Her glass was empty again. "Like fate."

"Perhaps." He felt himself smiling. "I'll get you a refill."

"I want to hear about the jolt first."

"It's a little silly, I guess."

"I don't care."

"It is something like fate, in a way--the completion of a cycle."

"I like fate," the girl said.

"Sometimes," he said. "So I rented a Piper Comanche this afternoon. Naturally, they had to send a pilot up with me--I've only got thousands of hours in real airplanes. I was a little sloppy at first, but it came back fast. This IBM clerk they sent with me was jittery for a while--until I did a couple of 360s without losing or gaining any altitude to speak of. Then he took courage and told me to land it. I managed to grease it in. There was a stiff cross wind."

"Naturally," the girl said. "And the jolt?"

"It came in the little administration building, later. I was filling in this new logbook they gave me. I overheard the IBM clerk talking to the airport owner:

"'How'd it go with that fella in the jacket, Gus?'

"'Not bad, Walter. Those old pilots are pretty smooth.'"

The girl smiled at Harry, but he couldn't be sure what the smile signified. That's one of the troubles with new faces. Finally she said, "I want another drink."

He went to the bar and stood, waiting, staring at the little sign about motel units, almost sorry he had told her the story. Wasn't a man a fool to dramatize his age? He felt all alone, suspended in some limbo between the man behind the bar and the girl at the table. He had lost it: a feeling of his own glamor that had sustained him through the telling of his story. But then, as he was handed the drinks, it started coming back in a strange way. Something familiar, romantic, coming into consciousness: the theme song from an old film. He walked back to the table at an easy, slow-rolling pace. Feeling tall.

The meaning of the girl's smile was plain now. "Remember--The High and the Mighty. I can see the ending now: John Wayne walking slowly away from the airplane, into the night, whistling this tune--lonely." She began to whistle sweetly, accompanying the music that came out of the walls.

"Of course," he said. "And Robert Stack was the young pilot who blew his cool."