Hellcat

I walk along a dirt road near a summer cottage we are renting on Block Island. Morning dew sits on the grasses of the field beside me as the sun crests the horizon and warms my back. Red-winged Blackbirds call their alarm and circle above me as I pass. Swallows swoop and dive after an early hatch. In the distance I hear gulls calling at their rookery.

I pass a stone wall, and in the field, at the top of a small rise, I see a man. He’s set up a large piece of plywood on what looks like a pair of sawhorses. He’s circling the table swinging at the taller grasses, milkweed and flowers with a machete. After a moment he stops, surveys and, apparently satisfied with this effort, puts the large knife on the table.

He comes back to his truck, parked near the road where I stand.

“I have to ask,” I say, “what are you doing?”

“Flying a plane off an aircraft carrier.” By explanation he carefully pulls a remote-control aircraft out from the front seat of his car. It is a scale replica of a World War II Hellcat fighter, battleship grey, complete with a US Navy insignia. “Nine ounces.” He says, holding it for me to admire. Its wings span, maybe, two feet.

I follow the man into the field. The passes he’s taken with the table and his tools have worn a bit of a path. The table is painted grey to match the aircraft. Near the table the man has set up a wind vane from which a ribbon of thin cloth hangs limply. Though the air is near-still I notice that the carrier deck is oriented parallel to the vane. The grass rustles ever so slightly. Waves in the field.

I admire the man’s work, his craftsmanship and attention to detail. With a few turns of a precision screw driver he removes the engine. Using tweezers, he installs a fresh battery within the fuselage before screwing the engine back in place. I notice a tiny pilot in the cockpit, goggles on his forehead.

I ask about the plane, about the man. “Are you a pilot?” “Do you own a real plane?” The man answers but is clearly readying his plane for flight and our conversation seems one-sided. Eventually I stop talking and simply watch as he makes final adjustments.

He asks me to move so that the long shadows of the early morning sun do not fall on the plane or on the carrier deck. With one hand on his phone he videos the final preflight test. His free hand toggles the controls to move the elevators, the rudder, and the ailerons. Satisfied, he advances a lever and the engine comes to life with a faint electric whine. I imagine the movie he is creating – a view from the carrier deck, the warbird ready for battle. In his mind’s eye is he sitting in the Hellcat, waiting on the carrier deck? Does he see the blur of a propeller through his goggles and over the engine’s cowling. Can he smell the oil, and gas, sweat and leather in the cockpit, feel the vibration of the massive engine as it roars to life, hear his wingman over the radio? I look toward what will be the background of the man’s movie, out over the field and to the open ocean beyond and wonder what the man sees.

The man turns to me. He looks around and says “You know, maybe you should stand farther back – like down by my truck.” “Of course” I say, turning to the truck twenty yards away.

A friend of mine built a full-size replica of a Sopwith Camel, the World War I biplane made famous by Charles Shulz’s cartoon character, Snoopy. He let me see it under construction and several months later told me he was readying it for its inaugural flight. I asked if I could watch it take to the air for the first time, maybe take a few pictures. “First flights are usually a private affair” he told me. “I might have a few trusties there, certainly someone with a fire extinguisher and someone with 911 already punched in their phone, but because one never really knows what’s going to happen you don’t want too many people around. It can end badly.”

It occurred to me that the man in the field might be thinking the same thing as he readied his Hellcat. Scale model or full-sized craft, a first flight is a first flight.

I retrace my steps through the wet grass toward the truck and back onto the road. I take one more look at the man and his plane but as I hear the electric engine start to whine and as I se the man position himself behind the plane at the rear of the carrier deck, I turn and walk away to leave him to his first flight.