The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [27]
The deer leaped across the blacktop and disappeared into the surrounding trees. Then the controller came back on the radio and gave me clearance to land.
It was the most marvelous day.
It didn’t occur to me until later that the deer might not have fared so well if the controller hadn’t warned me about them. I might not have fared so well, either.
The weather stayed warm and calm right through November. I got my logbook signed as often as I could, landing on a dozen little airstrips and then flying back home. Mason was always waiting when I landed. He’d applaud silently and give me a thumbs-up sign, gestures that make a man hard to resist.
One afternoon I headed for Front Royal, the Blue Ridge mountains bathed in the same magical, amber sunlight that had shone for days. My map showed a factory on one side of the airport and a forest on the other. Focusing on the forest, acres of bare trees with a lovely maroon cast to them in the sunshine, I decided there must be a thousand deer down there and cautioned myself to keep an eye out for potential casualties. I knew I must be getting close to the airfield, but with all my attention on venison, I didn’t see it. I picked up the UNICOM frequency of my radio and asked where it was.
“Are you lost, one two seven November?” a man’s voice demanded.
“Negative, Front Royal. I know I must be close.”
“If you’re lost, maybe you should turn back.” When you got lost, you were supposed to remember the three C’s—confer, confess, and climb. I didn’t want to climb. Didn’t need to. I was sure I was right there.
Then I saw it—the flat top of the factory, the forest, the airstrip, right where they were supposed to be. Not a deer in sight. “I’m not lost,” I said. “I see the airport now.”
“Do you also see the factory?” The voice was edgy, unsure.
“Roger, Front Royal. I see the factory, too.”
“Lady, are you sure you know what you’re doing? Because you can still go back where you came from, where you know the airport.”
Usually people called you by your numbers and used the standard radio talk, but this man sounded like he thought I was some dumb kid standing right there in front of him.
“Sure I know what I’m doing.”
I could hear him take a breath. “Runway nine is in use and there’s no known traffic.” If there was no traffic, why did he sound so nervous?
I turned into my final approach, dropping low over the threshold. Maybe I was too anxious to get in after all that, or more shaken than I thought, but I flared just a little too late. I hit the blacktop hard and bounced, jolted. Even without thinking, I opened the throttle, closed the carburetor heat, did a touch-and-go, climbed back up.
Okay, it was humiliating, but I would go around again. If the airport wasn’t busy, it never hurt to do a touch-and-go, my instructor always said—never hurt anything but your pride. When you had to fly out of a bounce, you took a few deep breaths, thought a few cool thoughts, got your act together. My instructor had a lot of touch-and-go stories.
“One two seven November, did you do any damage?” the man on the radio asked.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d done any damage. I was sure I hadn’t. I’d hit the ground harder than that before. But when my voice came, it was smaller than I expected, a tiny chirp. “I don’t think so.”
“One two seven November, maybe you better make a low pass over the field so we can take a look,” he said.
Make a low pass over the field? Ridiculous! But I—who was never afraid of anything—was all of a sudden shrinking inside. “All right,” I whispered. “Affirmative.”
My head pounded as I flew low over the runway. I expected to see one or two people