“This book belonged to Joe Turner who was an assistant engineer working along side the Wright brothers. My husband found it when he was doing some research into the early flights. Joe kept a careful diary of the events leading up to the 1903 flight. Take a look at that if you are interested in the Wright brothers.”
She left me with the book and returned to her guests. Soon I was aware of the party only by the distant rumble of conversation and the clink of glasses as my mind focused on those hand-written words penned some 98 years ago. As my eyes followed the words I seemed to drift through space. My mind was full of questions and apparitions of white fragile wings lifting on long silent winds.
“Hey Ed!” a hand shook me by the shoulder. “ You fell asleep Ed. The wind’s changed, we’re ready to go. There’s about four hours of daylight left” I was sitting at a table in a plain wooden hut. The place was filled with the warm honey glow of an oil lamp. I stood up and walked towards the door following the man who had just awoken me. I looked out of the doorway across the cold landscape of sand dunes stretching away towards the grey sea in the distance. The wind hummed and the air was filled with the calls of gulls. I followed my unknown companion towards a group congregated around a glowing fire. One of the group turned towards us.
“Hi Joe we think we’ll be able to go in the next five minutes. We tossed a coin to see who should fly. It’ll be Orville. We’ll need you and Ed on the wing tips to keep her steady, its very blustery”.
I saw Joe take out the notebook, check his watch and record the time on the next clean page. We walked across the crisp brittle surface of the sand towards the aircraft that lay like some frail insect beyond the dunes. The ‘Flyer’ was a beautiful intricate creation. Delicate networks of wooden spars were braced with tight silver wires. The white fabric of the wings rippled as each breeze passed over it creating the impression of vibrant life within it.
The aircraft rode on wheels that followed wooden rails across the sand and the wings yawed left and right as the capricious breezes danced around it. The late afternoon was punctuated by the staccato blast of the aero engine as Wilbur twisted the propeller, which blurred as the revs built. Soon the Flyer was vibrating under the surging power of the engine, and I held the wing tip feeling the machine’s urge to move forward.
“Joe! Ed! Run with the wing tips. Don’t let go till I yell out!”
The flyer swept along the rails and my feet searched for grip on the soft sand that we kicked up in a fine spray. Soon I was falling forward, hardly able to keep up with the speeding wing, and above the roar of the engine and the hiss of the slipstream through the wires I heard Orville’s voice.
“Let her fly!!”
As the flyer lifted I looked up ahead of me and saw the white wings rising. All sense of speed had left the image and she seemed to hang suspended in time. It was if the frail craft was weightless and had broken free of the force of gravity. Even stranger was the sense that she was flying in a pocket of air in which time itself stood still. As I looked up I felt my foot strike something solid and I fell forward into the soft embracing mass of the sand dune.
A hand touched my shoulder.
“So there you are Ed. I wondered where you were”. It was Tom Nelson, one of the other new students, a tall friendly boy from Boston. “ You’ve obviously been working to hard! Falling asleep at a party. Come on down!
I watched Tom leave the study. I looked down at the table, at the old notebook still lying open. I read the last line.
“And so exactly 12 seconds after the take off the flyer landed. The first flight had ended. It is strange that we never got the name of the young onlooker who had assisted with the take off. Ed who? We’ll have to find out.”
I closed the notebook and stared at my hand. The backs of my fingers were dusted with sand.
