Stolen Away

I awoke, briefly, when the car came to a stop, saw Lindy conferring with airport officials and some Navy men, and quickly surmised that our plane hadn’t arrived yet. I saw a middle-aged fellow in civilian clothes, apparently an airport manager, hand Lindy a small but bulging bundle and Lindy smiled at him gratefully, taking the bundle, shaking the man’s hand. I went back to sleep, Condon next to me in the car’s backseat, as alert as a watchdog, and nearly as smart.

A whirring roar, louder than Judgment Day, awoke me. I sat up sharply; Condon was gone. I got out and saw, across the airfield, the rising sun glittering on the blue-gray surface of Long Island Sound. Above, a huge silver flying boat wheeled in the sky, making its approach.

“A Sikorsky amphibian,” Irey yelled, above the din. He was standing just behind me, his topcoat flapping in the wind, as he held his hat on with one hand. Some of it was the breeze; most of it was the airplane, coming in for her landing.

Irey moved closer to me. “That’s perfect,” he shouted, almost directly into my ear. “We can spot the Boat Nelly from the air and put down right beside her.”

I nodded. I wondered what he meant by “we.” I’d never been up in a plane, and had no intention of starting now.

As the huge silver bird set down, slowed, and swung gently around, its propellers turning from a blur into blades, Lindbergh walked into, and seemed to enjoy, the wind the props manufactured. I kept my distance while he, Colonel Breckinridge and Irey gathered near the plane. Slim inspected the ship, talking casually but intently with the pilot who brought her in.

Condon was next to me, looking with some trepidation at the big silver bird.

Lindbergh opened up a cabin door and stowed inside the bundle the airport official had given him. Then he strolled over to us and smiled in his boyish way. There was something in his face today I hadn’t seen before. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“All right, gents,” he said brightly.

Hope. That was it: there was hope in his face, the crinkles around his eyes, the tug at the corners of his smile.

“I’d like you to go along, Doctor,” Lindy said to Condon. “You’re not afraid of planes, are you?”

Jafsie raised his chin and said, “Sir, I will go anywhere you go.”

Lindy turned to me. “How about you, Nate?”

“Slim, if God had wanted me to fly, I’da been born with a parachute…and I still wouldn’t go.”

“Well, God isn’t asking you—I am.”

I sucked in some air and blew it out. “What do you want me along for? Somebody ought to stay with the car.”

“We can use another spotter. Besides, you’ve been in on this since almost the beginning. You deserve to be in on the finish.” He squeezed my arm; he squeezed it hard. “We’re going to bring Charlie back, Nate. Come along.”

I went along.

Lindbergh took the controls, of course, and Breckinridge—who was also a pilot, as were so many of Slim’s pals—took the copilot’s chair. Condon and Irey sat behind them, and I sat behind Condon and Irey. In one corner of the plane was Lindbergh’s bundle, loosened enough to reveal its contents: a blanket around some baby clothes and a bottle of milk.

Lindbergh placed his hands on the wheel and sighed, contentedly, and then he gunned the Sikorsky’s engines and I felt my stomach fall to my shoes as we lifted off. In retrospect I realize the takeoff was smooth, but it seemed to me at the time that every nut, bolt and screw holding this mechanical beast together was shaking apart. The bellow of the twin engines was deafening and as Lindbergh swung the ship around, slowly circling the field, I was thankful I hadn’t eaten lately.

Lindbergh pointed the plane toward the climbing morning sun, as we skirted the Connecticut shore. I sat, the seat beneath me rumbling, my eyes closed. We were soon heading toward Martha’s Vineyard, over the northern end of Long Island Sound. But I didn’t know that.

I told myself if I had to fly, what better pilot could I have for my first air voyage than the most famous pilot in the world? At the same time I realized that this particular pilot was one of the most reckless daredevils ever to take flight.

Finally, as the hum of the plane and even the vibration of my chair began to lull me, I looked out my window at the placid blue glimmering surface of the Sound. It, too, lulled me. From up here, the world became something abstract—colors, shapes, patterns. The day couldn’t have been a clearer, more perfect one. It was even cold enough, in the cabin, to keep that damn milk from going sour.

Just as I was getting comfortable, Condon began talking. I couldn’t quite make it out, at first, but he seemed intense, serious.

After a while I tapped Irey on the shoulder and he leaned back, and I said, “What’s the old fart babbling about, anyway?”

“Excerpts,” Irey said with a glazed expression.

“Excerpts?”

“From the Song of Solomon.”

Suddenly the rumble of the Sikorsky’s engines seemed a blessing.