The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story by Richard Bach Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard Bach
will she find him before he kills himself?
Kill myself? Suicide? Even our observers don't know who we are. It wasn't my fault, the streamer. A freak failure, it won't happen again!
I didn't bother to recall that I was the one who had packed that parachute.
A week later, I landed for fuel, late on a day in which everything had been going wrong with my huge fast P-51 Mustang. Radios failing, left brake weak, generator burned out, coolant temperatures unexplainably to redline and unexplainedly recovered. Definitely not the best day, definitely the worst airplane I had ever flown.
Most airplanes you love, but some, you just never get along.
Land and gas, tighten the brake and let's get off again, quick as we can. A long flight, watching engine instruments show things not right behind that enormous propeller. Not one part of the airplane cost less than a hundred dollars, and the parts that were breaking like reeds, they cost thousands.
The wheels of the big fighter-plane floated a foot over the runway at Midland, Texas; then they touched. At once the left tire blew out and the airplane swerved toward the edge of the pavement, in a blink off the pavement into the dirt.
No time. Still moving fast enough to fly, I pressed full throttle and forced her back into the air.
Bad choice. Not moving fast enough to fly.
The airplane snarled its nose upward for a second or so, but that was the last it would do. Sagebrush flashed beneath us; the wheels settled and instantly the left main landing gear broke off. The monster propeller hit the ground, and as it bent, the engine wound up, howling, exploding inside.
It was almost familiar, time falling back into slow motion. And look who's here! My observer, with clipboard and pencil! How've you been, guy, haven't seen you in days!
Chats with observer while airplane gets torn to hell in sagebrush. May be worst pilot have ever seen.
Mustang-crashes, I knew full well, are not your everyday left-over-from-dinner airplane-wrecks. The machines are so big and fast and lethal, they go tearing through whatever happens to be in the way and blow up hi sudden pretty fireballs of flame-yellow and dynamite-orange and doom-black, detonating bolts and pieces a half-mile round impact center. The pilot never feels a thing.
Slewing toward me eighty miles per hour was impact coming up ... a diesel-generator shack out in the middle-of-nowhere desert, an orange-and-white checkerboard generator-house that thought it was safe from getting run over by huge fast airplanes crashing. Wrong.
A few more jolts along the way, the other landing gear disappeared, half the right wing was gone, the checkerboard slid huge in the windscreen.
Why is it that I have not left my body? All the books say ...
I slammed forward in the shoulder harness when we hit and the world went black.
For a few seconds, I couldn't see anything. Painless.
It is very quiet, here in heaven, I thought, straightening, shaking my head.
Completely painless. A calm, gentle hissing . . . What is it hi heaven, Richard, that could be hissing?
I opened my eyes to find that heaven looks like a demolished U.S. Government diesel-generator shack, flattened under the wreckage of a very large airplane.
Slow as toad to understand what is going on.
Just a minute! Could it be ... this isn't heaven? I'm not dead! I'm sitting inside what's left of this cockpit and the airplane hasn't blown up yet! It's going to go VOWNF! in two seconds and I'm trapped in here . . . I'm not going to be exploded to death I'm going to be burned to death!
Ten seconds later I was sprinting two hundred yards from the steaming wreckage of what had once been a handsome airplane, if not reliable or cheap or sweet. I tripped and threw myself face-down in the sand the way pilots do in movies just before the whole screen blows apart. Face down, covered my neck, waited for the blast.
Able to move with remarkable speed when finally gets picture.
Half a minute. Nothing happened. Another
Kill myself? Suicide? Even our observers don't know who we are. It wasn't my fault, the streamer. A freak failure, it won't happen again!
I didn't bother to recall that I was the one who had packed that parachute.
A week later, I landed for fuel, late on a day in which everything had been going wrong with my huge fast P-51 Mustang. Radios failing, left brake weak, generator burned out, coolant temperatures unexplainably to redline and unexplainedly recovered. Definitely not the best day, definitely the worst airplane I had ever flown.
Most airplanes you love, but some, you just never get along.
Land and gas, tighten the brake and let's get off again, quick as we can. A long flight, watching engine instruments show things not right behind that enormous propeller. Not one part of the airplane cost less than a hundred dollars, and the parts that were breaking like reeds, they cost thousands.
The wheels of the big fighter-plane floated a foot over the runway at Midland, Texas; then they touched. At once the left tire blew out and the airplane swerved toward the edge of the pavement, in a blink off the pavement into the dirt.
No time. Still moving fast enough to fly, I pressed full throttle and forced her back into the air.
Bad choice. Not moving fast enough to fly.
The airplane snarled its nose upward for a second or so, but that was the last it would do. Sagebrush flashed beneath us; the wheels settled and instantly the left main landing gear broke off. The monster propeller hit the ground, and as it bent, the engine wound up, howling, exploding inside.
It was almost familiar, time falling back into slow motion. And look who's here! My observer, with clipboard and pencil! How've you been, guy, haven't seen you in days!
Chats with observer while airplane gets torn to hell in sagebrush. May be worst pilot have ever seen.
Mustang-crashes, I knew full well, are not your everyday left-over-from-dinner airplane-wrecks. The machines are so big and fast and lethal, they go tearing through whatever happens to be in the way and blow up hi sudden pretty fireballs of flame-yellow and dynamite-orange and doom-black, detonating bolts and pieces a half-mile round impact center. The pilot never feels a thing.
Slewing toward me eighty miles per hour was impact coming up ... a diesel-generator shack out in the middle-of-nowhere desert, an orange-and-white checkerboard generator-house that thought it was safe from getting run over by huge fast airplanes crashing. Wrong.
A few more jolts along the way, the other landing gear disappeared, half the right wing was gone, the checkerboard slid huge in the windscreen.
Why is it that I have not left my body? All the books say ...
I slammed forward in the shoulder harness when we hit and the world went black.
For a few seconds, I couldn't see anything. Painless.
It is very quiet, here in heaven, I thought, straightening, shaking my head.
Completely painless. A calm, gentle hissing . . . What is it hi heaven, Richard, that could be hissing?
I opened my eyes to find that heaven looks like a demolished U.S. Government diesel-generator shack, flattened under the wreckage of a very large airplane.
Slow as toad to understand what is going on.
Just a minute! Could it be ... this isn't heaven? I'm not dead! I'm sitting inside what's left of this cockpit and the airplane hasn't blown up yet! It's going to go VOWNF! in two seconds and I'm trapped in here . . . I'm not going to be exploded to death I'm going to be burned to death!
Ten seconds later I was sprinting two hundred yards from the steaming wreckage of what had once been a handsome airplane, if not reliable or cheap or sweet. I tripped and threw myself face-down in the sand the way pilots do in movies just before the whole screen blows apart. Face down, covered my neck, waited for the blast.
Able to move with remarkable speed when finally gets picture.
Half a minute. Nothing happened. Another
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