The Eagle
I was a teenager when I learned to fly. But let’s be clear about one thing right off the bat. I’m not like Superman, some alien powered by a yellow sun, able to leap over the tallest buildings in a single bound. I did it the old-fashioned way: by trial and error.
There are a few other things worth noting. I don’t have any so-called “superpowers,” like telepathy, telekinesis, or teleportation. I haven’t been exposed to any abnormal amounts of radiation either, unless you count x-rays. I avoid wearing Spandex at all times, even when at the beach. I am not fabulously wealthy nor much inclined to wearing flashy jewelry. Both of my parents are still alive, along with many of my aunts and uncles, although they’re now reaching their golden years. I got decent enough grades in high school, but I’m a far cry from what you might call a genius. The most complex piece of technology I own is a smartphone, and I’d rather buy a new one than change the battery. My point is that I’m just a normal guy, born and raised in French Lick, Indiana. My name is Tyler Winthrop, but most people call me The Eagle.
It sounds cheesy, I know. But I didn’t choose it. I suppose it’s better than the alternative; another, even more generic bird moniker. I might have called myself Falcon, but that one had already been taken. Still, it could have been worse. They could have called me Pigeon or Crow.
There’s something else I should add before you get the wrong idea, even if what I just said wasn’t enough of a clue. I’m not a hero anymore — much less a super one. What all happened before was more or less an accident or a strange case of being in the right place at the right time.
I’ve always been fascinated by flying. When I was a kid, I wore out the VHS tape of Peter Pan, so my parents had to buy a new one. My favorite childhood toys were model planes that I would detach from their base and then zoom around the house. Birds were always, of course, a constant source of wonder and pleasure. We used to have a deck next to our swimming pool in the backyard. The boards had been bleached a sickly shade of white from the years of sun and chlorine. The tree line of oaks and pines some thirty yards away demarcated the unofficial boundary of our property, even though my parents technically owned the woods as far back as the abandoned railroad tracks.
I was forbidden to go back there until I began junior high, though I’d already done some sneaking around. The first time was on a dare from a neighborhood friend. We found a small, rocky clearing and lit off a box of firecrackers. We had gotten away scot-free, but I somehow managed to indict myself and spent the better part of two weeks grounded.
In any case, it wasn’t long before I built up the courage to venture back there on my own. I liked to climb the trees. My greatest goal and aspiration at the age of seven was to build a tree house, like the one they had in the Swiss Family Robinson. I understood early on that my flimsy plywood and two-by-four models would never compare. But the view from above was always a treasure.
Even at that young age, I was never afraid of heights. I’d continue to climb until the top of the tree would start to sway and lean under my shifting chimp weight. Once situated, I’d remove the pair of binoculars stuffed in my backpack and look for my feathered friends. Birding, they call it, if you do it for sport. I never really cared so much about seeing different types of birds, although naturally I had my favorites, like the goldfinch or, especially, the scarlet tanager with its red body and black wings and tail. Its pattern inspired that terrible latex costume I wore for the cover of Time magazine.
Anyway, I mostly preferred to study their most beguiling aspect: how they fly. I’ll not spoil the majesty of such an act with a belabored mechanical description. Instead, I want to try to convey the boyhood wonder I felt as these winged animals would decide, on a whim, to release their talons from a branch and soar. Despite being their primary mode of locomotion, it seemed to me like they spent as much time playing and dancing and mating as they did scrounging the dirt for food.
One year my mom decided to hang a hummingbird feeder on one of the tall support beams of the pool deck. I’d asked several times for a birdbath, or even a house, but they were rejected on account of being referred to as “filthy cesspools of disease” by my father. So I guess this was their idea of an olive branch. I was told to not drink their food by accident, which my mom kept in a Kool-Aid pitcher on the top shelf of the fridge. Of course, curiosity required me to hazard a taste. It looked like syrup!
So then we were attracting hummingbirds right to our back porch. This was a much safer alternative to climbing trees or craning my neck skyward to catch a glimpse. But hummingbird watching requires vigilance. They can appear and disappear before you ever even realize they were there. One moved so fast I had the impression it had somehow materialized at the feeder’s port for a drink.
As the summer wore on, a feeling akin to despair began to take hold. I mean it. My childhood interest developed into an obsession. Thus beginning a series of increasingly perilous experiments. The first test was necessarily the most basic. I jumped off the top of our shed. It was harmless enough, appearing more like some bone-headed stunt rather than a hopeful defiance against gravity. The thrill of that failure, however, planted the seed of dare-devilry that would soon consume my life.
I began to leap from higher and higher places, and the landing spots became harder and harder to nail. I never had any doubts, so convinced was I by my delusion that I wouldn’t, in fact, fall. From the shed, I moved on to the roof of our one-story, ranch style house. It wasn’t long before I reached the highest point at the elementary school playground, above the fireman’s pole, my descent softened by the bed of pebbles below.
The first few times I jumped I flapped my arms like an idiot before I realized the results were negligible in the mirthless face of gravity. Nor did a cape fashioned from used bed sheets produce the desired effect. I practiced my takeoff form on a trampoline. My pyro friend Billy had the brilliant idea of setting it up so that my bounce trajectory would land in the pool. I got grounded another two weeks for that one.
My laundry list of injuries piled up. They were exceedingly minor at first: the occasional sprained ankle, a hyper-extended knee, scuffed palms and elbows — things of that nature. Then, one day in the dead of winter I landed wrong and my ACL snapped like a rubber band and I tried like hell to walk it off. That went about as well as you would expect. Then, after minimally invasive surgery and a few weeks on crutches, I made the fateful decision the following spring to jump from the top of a tree.
Looking back on it, I probably rushed my return to action. In the meanwhile, I had gained a reputation. Word had spread about my antics and small crowds gathered to watch me go splat. At first, I kept the banter to a minimum, although it was around this time that I discovered I have a certain knack for showmanship.
“Is this dude serious?” was the typical refrain. I sometimes overheard people at school talking about me behind my back. To them I was the village fool, the royal jester, the kid who had clearly lost his mind. Yet people didn’t know whether they should laugh or not. Pride prevented me from backing down, even as it dawned on me that I had become a clown in everyone’s eyes save for my own.
I’d taken to reading the literature about my spiritual predecessors. I envied those inventors and daredevils and lunatics who looked to the skies without caring about what awaits below. I saw a bit of myself in those black and white videos of some poor sap wearing a leather helmet, goggles, and a debonair waxed mustache, rigged with a winged contraption attached to his torso, arms, and legs. The results were always more Wile E. Coyote than Batman. A jog increases to a sprint, arms pumping like pistons, a runway to the edge of a cliff.
The tree was in a clearing in the woods. A canopy of transformers and power lines feeding electricity to the suburbs gave the impression of a stadium. The tree had been previously used by deer hunters. A hunting stand was attached to the trunk a quarter of the way up in order to spot passing bucks. They left the stand up year round and I had been practicing smaller jumps from that point since the previous summer. But now I felt ready to go much higher.
A few people came with me. More arrived after, including a girl with a video camera. Suddenly, the pressure was on in a way it never had been before. I felt victory within my grasp, that despite my shortcomings — notably, being a wingless mammal who weighed 135 pounds with no wings, no cape, no propeller, no jet engine, and no hope — somehow my body just knew the ground wasn’t meant for me.
I gave a small, impromptu speech atop the stand to scattered, skeptical applause. There must have been around twenty people waiting to see me fly or fail. I climbed higher. A breeze picked up and caught the bangs of my hair. Birdsong erupted from a nearby tree. I must have climbed fifty or sixty feet. I looked down. The earth below was covered with hard prairie grass. As a precaution beforehand, I checked my potential landing area for any prickly plants or dreaded thistle. People appear smaller from this high up.
I soon found the branch I had scouted. “Please work,” I muttered, squeezing my eyes tight. The faint outline of a dark prism formed in my head and I had the distinct impression that I was floating. I could hear everyone talking below. Just then a raven shot out of the brush with a piece of carrion dangling from its beak and quickly flew from view.
Why wait? I wondered, without bothering to take a deep breath, and leapt from the branch. The warm air rushed through my hair and into my nose. My t-shirt flapped and billowed. Finally, I felt free.
I’d like to tell you I didn’t revert to flapping my arms uselessly like a clucking baby chicken, but video evidence rarely lies. I’d like to say my trajectory was more like a rocket than a submarine. But the cold, hard truth is that I hit the ground like a sack of flour.
No one was laughing then. The video the girl took becomes a bit Blair Witch and it’s difficult to follow the subsequent confusion. Billy sprinted off to dial for the ambulance while the vast majority of bystanders gawked at my splayed form. I looked like a chalk outline. Blood began to pool around my head.
Girls shrieked when I didn’t move. Even when I had previously suffered grievous injury, I always had the ability to bounce right back up. But this time I was lying face down with a leg that was clearly broken below the knee. The shredded muscle of my calf resembled the torn out stuffing of a doll. The camera panned from the snapped wishbone of my tibia and fibula up to the pale, distended face of a girl with freckles, who then proceeded to throw up. The camera managed to capture the look in her eyes when no one was sure if I was dead or alive.
When the ambulance arrived, they outfitted me in a neck brace after determining that I was somehow still breathing. Then, to add insult to serious injury, some bird had the audacity to crap on my unconscious and immobilized face. I swear I’m not making that up. Normally, the worst part of a failed flight attempt was the red-cheeked embarrassment. It crept up again and again, no matter how much I foolishly believed or how hard I tried. My sole consolation was knowing there were all those little birds hopping around in their nests, dive-bombing towards the finality of the earth to see if they too were ready. The trick is to never brace for impact.
The list of my injuries from this fall was extensive. I broke forty-eight bones, including three ribs, one of which managed to puncture a lung. I also ruptured my spleen, suffered internal bleeding, compacted my spine and had a grade three concussion. At the time I knew nothing about any of this because I was in a coma for twelve weeks.
This was an especially challenging time for my family. Surgeons and doctors gave them a grim prognosis for my recovery, and no one was certain if I’d ever walk again. Eventually, though, I healed — piece by piece, bit by bit.
When I came out of the coma, I had a mild form of retrograde amnesia. True memories surfaced in flashes and at first I had trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. Names and faces came back easily enough, but communication was limited due to my jaw being wired shut and my body embalmed in a cast. I felt like a chained monster. I had to eat and drink from a tube. I couldn’t even tell my folks I loved them. Whatever ambitions and aspirations I had were dashed, and so I solemnly took up the grueling task of rehabilitation and recovery.
Despite having compressed three vertebrae and essentially breaking my neck, I somehow miraculously avoided permanent damage. Still, I remained bedridden for another month upon waking, which meant my muscles had atrophied to the point where it looked like I had never used them and my stamina, flexibility, and endurance were reduced to zero.
Since I couldn’t walk and talking made me feel like I had a mouth full of cotton, I took to drawing. I drew up harebrained schematics mostly, gliders, experimental capes and other things that I imagined would be able to defy the laws of physics, even if at the sacrifice of my remaining health. They were silly pipe dreams, but they helped me cope with my mounting disappointment.
This account wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the psychiatrists. There were so many of them. It’s been so long now I don’t even recall half of their names. The most memorable was a husband and wife team, the Myrtilles, who approached our sessions like some buddy cop interrogation scene. Mrs. Myrtille was the bad cop.
By this point I had been upgraded to a wheelchair. Their office was in a strip mall next to an arts and crafts store, a beauty salon, and separated by a shared parking lot with a Ponderosa restaurant. Since it was a suburban strip mall, they were well-equipped for handicapped people like me. After making my way up the ramp and passing through the automatic doors that sealed behind me with a satisfying, vacuum-sealed thump, I’d scavenge through the magazine table for any signs of National Geographic. The walls were the color of ocher and festooned with motivational posters, bearing dried kernels of wisdom. One, I remember, was a print of Captain Planet, he of blue skin and a green mullet, floating above a line of kids holding a fire hose like some weirdo bodybuilder. Lo and behold his stock phrase, “The Power is Yours!” It was strangely motivational.
Mr. Myrtille always welcomed me with cookies and fresh juice that was always a touch too sweet. He was a large, blond, Teutonic man with a Gallic nose. In spite of his size, he spoke like a whistle and said dated things such as “chipper” and “swell,” in a flashback of 1950s Americana. Mrs. Myrtille had long, frizzy hair the color of freshly dug earth. She wore oversized tortoiseshell glasses and squinted little cigarette burns into your soul. She had a mouth that had sucked on too many lemons and used pretentious jargon like “delusions of grandeur,” “death wish fixation,” and so on. Her clinical diagnosis was that I might be insane and that my parents needed to strongly consider having me committed to an institution.
Mr. Myrtille, on the other hand, considered me sane with some boundary issues. The way he saw it, I was a teenager testing my limits, which was normal, but in a visibly unhealthy manner. He suggested ROTC and pilot school. My parents ultimately decided to go with Ponderosa.
Rehabilitation was intense. I went five times a week for six weeks, and then three times a week for four weeks, and then twice a week for another ten weeks. I basically lost a year of my life. My body was an emaciated wreck. Cancer victims looked like Olympic champions compared to my pale and feeble frame. The lightest weights at first were pure torture. A two-pound dumbbell would bring me to tears as I lifted my arms up to my shoulders and felt, intimately, every single striation of muscle rip and tear. But then it would rebuild itself, becoming stronger and denser, and I would return the following day to tear myself apart once more.
In time I was hobbling along with crutches or a walker. I felt for old people like my grandma Shirley, who, for her, the walker wasn’t a point of progress on the slow path to recovery, but instead a small foothold on a steep gradient of decline. It was one of life’s final indignities before the end.
Inspired by my good fortune, I redoubled my efforts. I became a dedicated gym rat, content to do extra time in the weight room or hours of cardio if it meant I’d one day be back to the way I was before.
Around this time, I could discern my dreams again. In the aftermath of my tree plunge I was so doped up on pain meds, antidepressants, and a whole cocktail of other drugs that I barely knew the difference between my left and right hand. Sleep was dark and eternal. Drowsy was my default state of mind. So it was a relief when the clouds began to recede.
At first, my dreams were just vague sensations, like the tingling of a foot that has fallen asleep. They seemed to mirror my recovery — as my body healed and grew stronger, my dreams expanded, like the fog of war was being erased in my mind, opening the path to something colossal yet undefined.
Most of these dreams were, at first, voiceless and soundless experiences. Then, one night, after a day where I worked myself beyond the point of exhaustion on the elliptical machine, I had just begun to doze off when my body seized and I had the distinct conscious impression that I was paralyzed. I panicked, fearing the worst: what if the workout had set me back, or somehow crippled me? I was trapped and suffocating. I tried to open my eyes to the outside world but there was only darkness. Then, what I can only describe as my soul somehow detached from my dreambody and floated up into the void. Suddenly, I could see myself laying there pitifully, but I eventually realized that in this state I was free to fly around the room.
Noises, pure gibberish, beckoned from further above. I floated higher in the darkness in search of its origins. A gray box came into view, becoming clearer as I made my approach. My frozen body far below twitched in recognition. The noises this close were a cacophony, growing louder the closer my soul approached. On the side of the box was a switch, like a light switch found in any old living room. I reached for it and flicked it up. At that moment I awoke.
Like any dream, the sensation and urgency quickly faded. By the time I rose for my shower, it all seemed to be just that: a dream. But something still felt off. I continued my rehabilitation and made a discreet, subdued return to school. People I once called friends cast a wary eye on me, certain I was nuts and belonged more in a loony bin than third period Algebra. I still heard their whispers of gossip.
After school I continued my expeditions to the gym. My social ostracism left me adrift, so I gravitated to the surest thing I had discovered since my fall. Exercise became my sole release and revelation. The work was grounded, methodical, and repetitive. A day structured around arm curls, squats, sit ups, bench press, and shoulder shrugs. Where once five reps of two pounds would have killed me, I had rebuilt my body to a point far beyond my original strength.
I did a lot cardio on the elliptical machine. I favored it over the treadmill since it was easier on the knees. And stationary biking didn’t much appeal to me. Something about the elliptical enhanced my general well-being, whether it was the undulating motions that made it seem like I could walk on water or the fact that they had large enough cup holders for my water bottle, I don’t know.
I was on the elliptical when I sensed that the switch I had flipped in my dream became active in reality. I’m not sure how else to explain. I’d been on the Adventurer setting, which called for thirty minutes of increasing incline followed by five minutes of cool down. I was sweating and lost in my own little world, bobbing my head along to a Stevie Wonder tune when I had a sudden breakthrough of sorts. It was as if something had unlocked deep inside my brain with an emphatic click.
I did my cool down and toweled off in the locker room. Standing there in my boxers, I felt lighter. I checked behind me for I don’t know what — wings, maybe. But there wasn’t anything. It wasn’t until later that evening, outside by the pool that whatever had snapped into place inside my head came fully to pass. Night had not yet fallen. The trees rustled in the breeze. The water pump for the pool hummed and the plastic flap for the skimming filter flapped with a clocklike regularity.
I sat on the deck, more alone than I’d ever felt, more alone than any teenager should ever be. My foolish desire to fly had only brought me pain, misery, and a few post-therapy trips to the buffet line. I had reached a point where I was ready to give up and start a new life. I would finish school, maybe find a girlfriend and become a nurse or something. These thoughts almost put me at ease. They were manageable dreams. I couldn’t stomach the thought of becoming a pilot anymore. I had it fixed in my mind that it would be all or nothing.
I felt a sudden freedom at having let go. A new horizon unfurled, albeit on a lower plane than the one that had set before.
Just then, a hummingbird zipped to the feeder. I watched as it came and floated and fed for no more than a few seconds before it sped off to its hiding spot in the woods. Never at rest.
My mom came out to check on me. She carried a pitcher of lemonade and gave me a glass filled with crushed ice.
“You’ve grown up a lot this past year,” she said. “This . . . accident has made you more mature.” She spoke delicately, dancing around her feelings. My parents were convinced like the Myrtilles that my jumps were a cry for help. I only later discovered they’d shamed my friends for having not done anything to prevent my presumed suicide attempt. Well, sometimes our parents, in spite of their best intentions, just don’t get it.
“I don’t feel any different,” I lied. But something was different. It doesn’t make much sense today, but at the time it seemed like a great stone rising up through my chest.
My mom and I watched the sunset together and then she went back inside. I could hear the TV, but couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. The sounds were gibberish, but I could have sworn I’d heard them somewhere, sometime before. The sky soon grew dark, like a bottle of ink spilling and spreading across the globe.
I stood and walked closer to the wood’s edge. The TV blared through the screen door. My father would eventually need a hearing aid. He was probably watching ESPN or some game show, yet all I could think at the time is that everyone was speaking in tongues.
The sound chased me and so I began to run. At first it was like any other sprint. I was barefoot and my heels clomped hard against the flat-topped grass like a horse’s steady gallop. My chest heaved and soon my lungs began to burn as I careened across the lawn. Then, without realizing it, my gait changed, transforming from a gallop to an elliptical chug. Soon, the jabbering voices sounded further away. I looked up in search of the moon, hidden behind the studded cloth of the sky. That’s when I took a chance and closed my eyes. I didn’t need to run anymore. I reached my arms out wide, ready to catch a Hail Mary pass, and then I leapt for the last time.
