I can account for.
I wanted Brady to understand what I couldn't comprehend myself, how I could identify so closely with such a long lost thing. The harder I reasoned, the more disdainful the Cause became, yet the more I realized that I belong to it. It must be that the Cause with which I identify bears little resemblance to that which motivated so many in 1861. Or maybe, even in those troubled times, the Cause had many and varied meanings.
I don't know, maybe the Cause is simply that which drives me to express my threatened individuality, to preserve and protect my freedom, to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds, like that inspirational feeling a Southerner has when he or she is the underdog. Maybe we just like being underdogs. When I see that impassioned flag with its crossed bars and blue stars, I don't see hatred and bigotry, though I see them in the faces of the wretched people who use the flag to justify them. Rather, I see courage and honor. I see it the way my great- granddaddy saw it.
Brady accepted and tried to understand my feelings. But he explained, with deep sincerity and logic with which I had to agree, the feelings of his culture. We didn't agree on everything, but we were able to talk about such things without confrontation, with open mindsa characteristic, I believe of maturity, the Christian values to which we both subscribed, and of true friendship.
Brady has a way of characterizing bigotry with humor. He related a story from his days in UPT. Nearing graduation he was scheduled for the big event, the T-38 solo out and back. He had about thirty hours' solo time the day his instructor released him to fly the 'White Rocket' alone to Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama.
Brady was a bit unnerved about flying to Selma. The city had been in the national spotlight because of great racial turmoil and violence. The very word 'Selma' had come to symbolize hatred and struggle.
But Brady had no time for that. His paramount priority, like that of all UPT students, was to get through the program and graduate. The challenge was tremendous; the washout rate was high. But he was relieved that his itinerary was to refuel expeditiously and return to Columbus.
The flight was uneventful. Brady had hit his checkpoints and set the '38 down on one of Craig's long runways. He taxied to the transient parking ramp and shut down the engines. Then, looking down, he saw that the service personnel were civilians, not the Air Force airmen he expected. No doubt they were citizens of Selma. And they were white. As he unhooked his oxygen mask and raised his sun visor, the men stopped and looked up at him incredulously, mouths agape. Brady knew what they were thinking. 'That niggah done stole that T-38!' he guffawed.
I told Brady about the first black pilot I had ever met. I too was a student in UPT learning to fly T-37. Although our instructors, clad in their helmets, masks, visors, and hoses, often appeared to us as beasts, they were very much human. In fact most of them were only a year or two older than I. Many of them were 'first assignment' instructors, meaning they had never flown anything but trainers. Because of a good UPT performancebut one maybe not quite good enough to get a fighter jobthey had been retained to teach their newly acquired jet flying skills.
For the most part I didn't care for these guys because I sensed that they were frustrated with their jobs. They really wanted to get out and 'fly the line' like a real pilot. Their attitude often resulted in a strained relationship with their students. UPT was challenging enough without your having to put up with a guy who was trying to prove that you can't walk and chew gum simultaneously, let alone fly a jet. Such was my attitude when Captain Brown came.
A slight hush fell across the training room when he walked in. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a bushy hairstyle that must have pushed the haircut regulations to the most liberal of interpretations. His eyes were the color of coal tar, and he carried his big frame as if he were on the backside of some great achievement. He smiled diplomatically but yet at the same time looked slightly annoyed; he was here among us, casting an imposing presence, but was subconsciously elsewhere. And he was intensely black.
This was a time of widespread racial turmoil and upheaval. Black people in any prominent position in society were exceptional, and black pilots were almost unheard of. The potential for confrontation was clear. Captain Brown was obviously the new instructor we'd been told to expect. The changing of instructors was a common practice, and we never knew when we would be assigned another one without explanation. I just hoped I would not be the person to find out what this bold new pioneer of his race wanted to prove. I wasn't prejudiced. Naa, not me. I had always regarded black folks as my Dad had taught me: they were human beings and deserved respect. But there lingered a reservation back in the dry bays of my mind that maybe black people were better adapted to things other than flying.
My pulse began to race with anxiety. I was from Alabama, for cryin' out loud. My governor, George Wallace, was running for president on a states' rights platform, which everyone knew was a smoke screen for segregation. In those days if you mentioned Alabama, people thought of a smoldering children's Sunday school room and bloodstains on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Both were the work of a few pitiful zealots, but the images were devastating. And here I was caught in between. Maybe I could lie to him about where I was from, but I could never cover my accent.
Presently Captain Brown and the flight commander emerged from an adjoining office into the big room. The flight commander pointed at me, and Captain Brown came to my table.
Why me, Lord?
He extended his hand, smiled warmly, then sat down and with a calm, completely reassuring voice began to melt my silly concerns away. I saw immediately that this man was a far cry from those first-assignment instructors. He was a seasoned combat veteran fighter pilot of a hundred missions over North Viet Nam. He had flown Phantoms, had seen friends perish in fiery crashes, and had watched some men parachute into the hands of a tortuous and vengeful enemy. His countenance was that of a man who had glimpsed Hell and knew now what was important in life and what wasn't. Yes, I could sense it. Here was a man who stood far above petty prejudice and vindictiveness.
He captured my respect at once. He began to cultivate a pilot-to-pilot relationship with me, not the instructor-to-dumbshit type that prevailed at the other tables. He stressed that I was going to be the beneficiary of his greater knowledge and experience. It was as simple as that. I had logged about fifty hours in the Tweet, including a few solo flights, but that first flight with Captain Brown was to be my first lesson in aerobatics. Normally the lesson would make students apprehensive, as aerobatic training was a totally new experience. But as we took our chutes and helmets, and walked out to the jet, I marveled over how relaxed and unpressured I felt.
He didn't say much while I started the little jet up and flew it toward our assigned airspace over the town of Pond Creek. Then, with his coaching, we put the Tweet through thrilling sequences of loops, rolls, immelmanns, split S's, cloverleafs, and my favorite cuban eights, high over the plains of northwest Oklahoma. The freshly harvested wheat fields, neatly dissected by straight roads and fence lines, rolled lazily across the top of our canopy, rushed straight at our nose, and fell away as quickly behind our tail. Cumulus-studded blue sky and yellow field spiraled and oscillated in a swirling kaleidoscope of color, as we rolled and looped like a blissful young dolphin in a boundless ocean. We were pilgrims, fresh out of bondage, turned loose in a promised land, where the uncompromising gods of airspeed, altitude, and power jealously demanded our devotion. Yet sin we did, forsaking the margins of our concentration to self-indulgence and, awash in a resplendent freedom, drank of the joy and laughed wildly within our souls.
Years later I would stand in some of those same fields down below, beside my future father-in-law, and watch those same Tweety jets waltz high overhead, revealed only by an occasional reflection of sun on canopy, their engines barely heard above the prairie winds. And I would remember Captain Brown's calm, patient, and clear-headed instructions as he chatted into the mask microphone as if he were teaching me to oil paint.
'OK, a little more back pressure. Thaaat's it. Now lay your head back against the headrest and look as far back as you can. Just wait. Here comes the horizon now. Pick out a section line and pull straight down through it. Can you believe they pay us to do this? Incredible. It ought to be the other way around. Now, when your nose passes through that green-roofed farmhouse, the one there beside the pond, unload and roll out. Great. Now, hold your dive angle. Watch your airspeed. Start the pull again at 250 knots. Thaaat's it.'
I glanced at Captain Brown a time or two, during his demonstrations, as if I could somehow see his face through all the trappings. The cockpit shadows retreated across his helmet as the jet rolled sunward, and all I could see was the reflection of myself in his visor. My image looked exactly like his. I knew that he was smiling, that he loved what we were doing. Yes, this man was different. Whatever he had, I wanted it.
That night in my room, as I watched the grim TV reports of racial strife and struggle, I reflected on the events of the day. We had both reluctantly returned to earth and to the realities of Newtonian physics. But while I
