Flying to America Read Online Free PDF Page A

building. Well, yes.
    My answering service refuses to speak to me.
    30 April
    I am being bothered by doves.
    Walking down the street, I notice a white dove (out of the corner of my eye) making an approach at three o’clock.
    The dove dives, then shears off. He hovers for a bit, then begins to descend, then shears off again. This has happened today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday.
    I thought: Doves.
    Ezra and Mitch have gotten very tight. Ezra has explained to Mitch his feelings about Dreyer and Mitch has described to Ezra the inner workings of the Maryland Motherhouse of Our Lady of Perpetual Chagrin. The patients there, Mitch said, were tied to trees, in good weather. In bad weather they were allowed to act out historical pageants, such as the winter at Valley Forge.
    “Real blood,” Mitch said. “Our blood.”
    “I am better than he is,” Perpetua told me.
    “Than who?”
    “Waverly Branch. Our first-desk man.”
    “I believe you.”
    “But he is a man,” Perpetua said. “Therefore —”
    “I see what you mean,” I said.
    “There was nothing the matter with Harold that is not also the matter with all of you,” she said. “I am thinking of becoming a fanatic.”
    “Don’t,” I said. “Give us time.”
    “Time!” she said. “You’ve had centuries.” And then: “Why is that white dove making passes at your head?”
    “It’s something that’s been happening to me lately.”
    I thought: It could not be. I am not worthy.
    “For food,” Mitch said to Ezra, “we had gruel. One oat per bowl.”
    “I am tempted to bust Waverly in the mouth,” Perpetua said, “definitively.”
    I thought: What are the preconditions for being splashed with grace? I’ll have to look it up.
    1 May
    Now we are shooting “Flying to America.”
    The one hundred and twelve pilots check their watches.
    If they all turn on their machines at once . . .
    Flying to America.
    (But did I remember to —?)
    “Where is the blimp?” Marcello shouts. “I can’t find the —”
    Ropes dangling from the sky.
    I’m using forty-seven cameras, the outermost of which is posted in the Dover marshes.
    The Atlantic is calm in some parts, angry in others. This will affect the air.
    A blueprint four miles long is the flight plan.
    Every detail coordinated with the air-sea rescue services of all nations.
    Victory through Air Power! I seem to remember that slogan from somewhere.
    Hovercraft flying to America. Flying boats flying to America. F-111s flying to America. The China Clipper!
    Seaplanes, bombers, Flying Wings flying to America.
    A shot of a pilot named Jellybelly. He opens the cockpit door and speaks to the passengers. “America is only two thousand miles away now,” he says. The passengers break out in smiles.
    Balloons flying to America (they are painted in red and white stripes). Spads and Fokkers flying to America. Self-improvement is the big theme of flying to America. “Nowhere is self-realization more a possibility than in America,” a man says.
    Perpetua watching the clouds of craft in the air . . .
    Gliders gliding to America. One man has constructed a huge paper airplane, seventy-two feet in length. It is doing better than we had any right to expect. But then great expectations are a part of flying to America.
    Rich people are flying to America, and poor people, and people of moderate means. This aircraft is powered by twelve rubber bands, each rubber band thicker than a man’s leg — can it possibly survive the turbulence over Greenland?
    Is this the end of the film? Or is it rather the beginning? I can’t decide.
    Long thoughts are extended to enwrap the future American experience of the people who are flying to America. . . .
    “Sit down,” Perpetua says. I look at her. She is holding my rocking chair!
    “Where did you get that?”
    “Sit down,” she says again. “Relax. Watch the sky. Let Ezra do the rest.”
    I sit down in my rocking chair. I rock and watch the sky. Ezra does the rest. He is