Richard Bach - Illusions

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Illusions -- Richard Bach

(Version 2002.10.10)

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Preface

It was a question I heard more than once, after Jonathan Seagull was

published. "What are you going to write next, Richard? After Jonathan, what?"

I answered then that I didn't have to write anything next, not a word,

and that all my books together said everything that I had asked them to say.

Having starved for a while, the car repossessed and that sort of thing, it was

sort of fun not to have to work to midnights.

Still, every summer or so I took my antique biplane out in the green-

meadow seas of midwest America, flew passengers for three-dollar rides and

began to feel an old tension again - there was something left to say, and I

hadn't said it.

I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out

there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach

for a pencil.

But once in a while there's a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and

brick and splinters through the front wall and someone stalks over the rubble,

seizes me by the throat and gently says, "I will not let you go until you set

me in words, on paper." That's how I met Illusions.

There in the Midwest, even, I'd lie on my back practicing cloud-

vaporizing, and I couldn't get the story out of my mind...what if somebody

came along who was really good at this, who could teach me how my world works

and how to control it? What if I could meet a super-advanced...what if a

Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with the power over the illusions of

the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if i could meet

this person, if he were flying a biplane and landed in the same meadow with

me? What would he say, what would he be like?

Maybe he wouldn't be like the messiah on the oil-streaked grass-stained

pages of my journal, maybe he wouldn't say anything this book says. But then

again, the things this one told me: that we magnetize into our lives whatever

we hold in our thought, for instance - if that is true, then somehow I have

brought myself to this moment for a reason, and so have you. perhaps it is no

coincidence that your holding this book; perhaps there's something about these

adventures that you came here to remember. I choose to think so. And I choose

to think my messiah is perched out there on some other dimension, not fiction

at all, watching us both, and laughing for the fun of it happening just the

way we've planned it to be.

Richard Bach

1. THERE WAS A MASTER COME UNTO THE EARTH, BORN IN THE HOLY LAND OF

INDIANA, RAISED IN THE MYSTICAL HILLS EAST OF FORT WAYNE.

2. THE MASTER LEARNED OF THIS WORLD IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF INDIANA,

AND AS HE GREW IN HIS TRADE AS A MECHANIC OF AUTOMOBILES.

3. BUT THE MASTER HAD LEARNINGS FROM OTHER LANDS AND OTHER SCHOOLS, FROM

OTHER LIVES THAT HE HAD LIVED. HE REMEMBERED THESE, AND REMEMBERING BECAME

WISE AND STRONG, SO THAT OTHERS SAW HIS STRENGTH AND CAME TO HIM FOR COUNCIL.

4. THE MASTER BELIEVED THAT HE HAD THE POWER TO HELP HIMSELF AND ALL OF

MANKIND. AND AS HE BELIEVED SO IT WAS FOR HIM, SO THAT OTHERS SAW HIS POWER

AND CAME TO HIM TO BE HEALED OF THEIR MANY TROUBLES AND THEIR MANY DISEASED.

5. THE MASTER BELIEVED THAT IT IS WELL FOR ANY MAN TO THINK UPON HIMSELF

AS A SON OF GOD, AND AS HE BELIEVED, SO IT WAS. AND THE SHOPS AND GARAGES

WHERE HE WORKED BECAME CROWDED AND JAMMED WITH THOSE WHO SOUGHT HIS LEARNING

AND HIS TOUCH; AND THE STREETS OUTSIDE WITH THOSE WHO LONGED ONLY THAT THE

SHADOW OF HIS PASSING MIGHT FALL UPON THEM AND CHANGE THEIR LIVES.

6. IT CAME TO PASS, BECAUSE OF THE CROWDS, THAT THE SEVERAL FOREMEN AND

SHOP MANAGERS BID THE MASTER LEAVE HIS TOOLS AND GO HIS WAY, FOR SO TIGHTLY

WAS HE THRONGED THAT NEITHER HE NOR OTHER MECHANICS HAD ROOM TO WORK UPON THE

AUTOMOBILES.

7. SO IT WAS THAT HE WENT INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE, AND PEOPLE FOLLOWING

BEGAN TO CALL HIM MESSIAH, AND WORKER OF MIRACLES; AND AS THEY BELIEVED, SO IT

WAS.

8. IF A STORM PASSED AS HE SPOKE, NOT A RAINDROP TOUCHED A LISTENERS

HEAD; THE LAST OF THE MULTITUDE HEARD HIS WORDS AS CLEARLY AS THE FIRST, NO

MATTER LIGHTNING NOR THUNDER IN THE SKY ABOUT. AND ALWAYS HE SPOKE TO THEM IN

PARABLES.

9. AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, "WITHIN EACH OF US LIES THE POWER OF OUR

CONSENT TO HEALTH AND TO SICKNESS, TO RICHES AND TO POVERTY, TO FREEDOM AND TO

SLAVERY. IT IS WE WHO CONTROL THESE, AND NOT ANOTHER.

10. A MILL-MAN SPOKE AND SAID "EASY WORDS FOR YOU MASTER, FOR YOU ARE

GUIDED AS WE ARE NOT, AND NEED NOT TOIL AS WE TOIL. A MAN HAS TO WORK FOR A

LIVING IN THIS WORLD."

11. THE MASTER ANSWERED AND SAID, "ONCE THERE LIVED A VILLAGE OF

CREATURES ALONG THE BOTTOM OF A GREAT CRYSTAL RIVER.

12. "THE CURRENT OF THE RIVER SWEPT SILENTLY OVER THEM ALL-YOUNG AND

OLD, RICH AND POOR, GOOD AND EVIL, THE CURRENT GOING ITS OWN WAY, KNOWING ONLY

ITS OWN CRYSTAL SELF.

13. "EACH CREATURE IN ITS OWN WAY CLUNG TIGHTLY TO THE TWIGS AND ROCKS

OF THE RIVER BOTTOM, FOR CLINGING WAS THEIR WAY OF LIFE, AND RESISTING THE

CURRENT WHAT EACH HAD LEARNED FROM BIRTH.

14. "BUT ONE CREATURE SAID AT LAST, 'I AM TIRED OF CLINGING. THOUGH I

CANNOT SEE IT WITH MY OWN EYES, I TRUST THAT THE CURRENT KNOWS WHERE IT IS

GOING. I SHALL LET GO, AND LET IT TAKE ME WHERE IT WILL. CLINGING, I SHALL DIE

OF BOREDOM.'

15. "THE OTHER CREATURES LAUGHED AND SAID, 'FOOL! LET GO, AND THAT

CURRENT YOU WORSHIP WILL THROW YOU TUMBLED AND SMASHED ACROSS THE ROCKS, AND

YOU WILL DIE QUICKER THAN BOREDOM!'

16. "BUT THE ONE HEEDED THEM NOT, AND TAKING A BREATH DID LET GO, AND AT

ONCE WAS TUMBLED AND SMASHED BY THE CURRENT ACROSS THE ROCKS.

17. "YET IN TIME, AS THE CREATURE REFUSED TO CLING AGAIN, THE CURRENT

LIFTED HIM FREE FROM THE BOTTOM, AND HE WAS BRUISED AND HURT NO MORE.

18. "AND THE CREATURES DOWNSTREAM, TO WHOM HE WAS A STRANGER, CRIED,

'SEE A MIRACLE! A CREATURE LIKE OURSELVES, YET HE FLIES! SEE THE MESSIAH COME

TO SAVE US ALL.

19. "AND THE ONE CARRIED IN THE CURRENT SAID, 'I AM NO MORE MESSIAH THAN

YOU. THE RIVER DELIGHTS TO LIFT US FREE, IF ONLY WE DARE TO LET GO. OUR TRUE

WORK IS THIS VOYAGE, THIS ADVENTURE.'

20. "BUT THEY CRIED THE MORE, 'SAVIOR!' ALL THE WHILE CLINGING TO THE

ROCKS, AND WHEN THEY LOOKED AGAIN HE WAS GONE, AND THEY WERE LEFT ALONE MAKING

LEGENDS OF A SAVIOR."

21. AND IT CAME TO PASS WHEN HE SAW THAT THE MULTITUDE THRONGED HIM THE

MORE DAY ON DAY, TIGHTER AND CLOSER AND FIERCER THAN EVER THEY HAD, WHEN HE

SAW THAT THEY PRESSED HIM TO HEAL THEM WITHOUT REST, AND FEED THEM ALWAYS WITH

HIS MIRACLES, TO LEARN FOR THEM AND TO LIVE THEIR LIVES, HE WENT ALONE THAT

DAY UNTO A HILLTOP APART, AND THERE HE PRAYED.

22. AND HE SAID IN HIS HEART, INFINITE RADIANT IS, IF IT BE THEY WILL,

LET THIS CUP PASS FROM ME, LET ME LAY ASIDE THIS IMPOSSIBLE TASK. I CANNOT

LIVE THE LIFE OF ONE OTHER SOUL, YET TEN THOUSAND CRY TO ME FOR LIFE. I'M

SORRY I ALLOWED IT ALL TO HAPPEN. IF IT BE THY WILL, LET ME GO BACK TO MY

ENGINES AND MY TOOLS AND LET ME LIVE AS OTHER MEN.

23. A VOICE SPOKE TO HIM ON THE HILLTOP, A VOICE NEITHER MALE NOR

FEMALE, LOUD NOR SOFT, A VOICE INFINITELY KIND. AND THE VOICE SAID UNTO HIM,

"NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE BE DONE. FOR WHAT IS THY WILL IS MINE FOR THEE. GO THY

WAY AS OTHER MEN, AND BE THOU HAPPY ON THE EARTH."

24. AND HEARING, THE MASTER WAS GLAD, AND GAVE THANKS AND CAME DOWN FROM

THE HILLTOP HUMMING A LITTLE MECHANIC'S SONG. AND WHEN THE THRONG PRESSED HIM

WITH ITS WOES, BESEECHING HIM TO HEAL FOR IT AND LEARN FOR IT AND FEED IT

NONSTOP FROM HIS UNDERSTANDING AND TO ENTERTAIN IT WITH HIS WONDERS, HE SMILED

UPON THE MULTITUDE AND SAID PLEASANTLY UNTO THEM "I QUIT."

25. FOR A MOMENT THE MULTITUDE WAS STRICKEN DUMB WITH ASTONISHMENT.

26. AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, "IF A MAN TOLD GOD THAT HE MOST WANTED TO

HELP THE SUFFERING WORLD, NO MATTER THE PRICE TO HIMSELF, AND GOD TOLD HIM

WHAT HE SHOULD DO, SHOULD THE MAN DO AS HE IS TOLD?"

27. "OF COURSE, MASTER!" CRIED THE MANY. "IT SHOULD BE PLEASURE FOR HIM

TO SUFFER THE TORTURES OF HELL ITSELF, SHOULD GOD ASK IT!"

28. "NO MATTER WHAT THE TORTURES, NOR HOW DIFFICULT THE TASK?"

29. "HONOR TO BE NAILED TO A TREE AND BURNED, IF SO BE THAT GOD HAS

ASKED," SAID THEY.

30. "AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO," THE MASTER SAID UNTO THE MULTITUDE, "IF GOD

SPOKE DIRECTLY TO YOUR FACE AND SAID, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE

WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' WHAT WOULD YOU DO THEN?"

31. AND THE MULTITUDE WAS SILENT, NOT A VOICE, NOT A SOUND WAS HEARD

UPON THE HILLSIDES, ACROSS THE VALLEYS WHERE THEY STOOD.

32. AND THE MASTER SAID UNTO THE SILENCE, "IN THE PATH OF OUR HAPPINESS

SHALL WE FIND THE LEARNING FOR WHICH WE HAVE CHOSEN THIS LIFETIME. SO IT IS

THAT I HAVE LEARNED THIS DAY, AND CHOOSE TO LEAVE YOU NOW TO WALK YOUR OWN

PATH, AS YOU PLEASE."

33. AND HE WENT HIS WAY THROUGH THE CROWDS AND LEFT THEM, AND HE

RETURNED TO THE WORLD OF MEN AND MACHINES.

It was toward the middle of the summer that I met Donald Shimoda. In

four years' flying, I had never found another pilot in the line of work I do:

flying with the wind from town to town, selling rides in an old biplane, three

dollars for ten minutes in the air. But one day just north of Ferris,

Illinois, I looked down from the cockpit of my fleet and there was an old

Travel Air 4000, gold and white, landed pretty as you please in the lemon-

emerald hay.

Mine's a free life, but it does get lonely, sometimes. I saw the biplane

there, thought about it for a few seconds, and decided it would be no harm to

drop in. Throttle back to idle, a full-rudder slip, and the Fleet and I fell

sideways toward the ground. Wind in the flying wires, that gentle good sound,

the slow pok-pok of the old engine loafing its propeller around. Goggles up to

better watch the landing. Cornstalks a green-leaf jungle swishing close below,

flicker of a fence and then just-cut hay as far as I could see. Stick and

rudder out of the slip, a nice little round-out above the land, hay brushing

the tires, then the familiar calm crashing rattle of hard ground under-wheel,

slowing, slowing and now a quick burst of noise and power to taxi beside the

other plane and stop. throttle back, switch off, the soft clack-clack of the

propeller spinning down to stop in the total quiet of July.

The pilot of the Travel Air sat in the hay, his back against the left

wheel of his airplane, and he watched me.

For half a minute I watched him, too, looking at the mystery of his

calm. I wouldn't have been so cool just to sit there and watch another plane

land in a field with me and park ten yards away. I nodded, liking him without

knowing why. You looked lonely",, I said across the distance between us.

"So did you."

"Don't mean to bother you. If I'm one too many, I'll be on my way."

"No. I've been waiting for you:'

I smiled at that. "Sorry I'm late."

"That's all right."

I pulled off my helmet and goggles, climbed out of the cockpit and

stepped to the ground. This feels good, when you've been a couple hours in the

Fleet.

"Hope you don't mind ham and cheese," he said. "Ham and cheese and maybe

an ant." No handshake, no introduction of any kind.

He was not a large man. Hair to his shoulders, blacker than the rubber

of the tire he leaned against. Eyes dark as hawk's eyes, the kind I like in a

friend, and in anyone else make me uncomfortable indeed. He could have been a

karate master on his way to some violent demonstration.

I accepted the sandwich and a thermos cup of water. "Who are you

anyway?" I said. "Years, I've been hopping rides never seen another

barnstormer out in the fields."

"Not much else I'm fit to do," he said happily enough. "A little

mechanicking, welding, roughneck a bit, skinning Cats; I stay in one place too

long, I get problems. So I made the airplane and now I'm in the barn storming

business."

"What kind of Cat?" I've been mad for diesel tractors since I was a kid.

"D-Eights, D-Nines. Just for a little while, in Ohio."

"D-Nines! Big as a house! Double compound low gear, can they really push

a mountain?"

"There are better ways of moving mountains," he said with a smile that

lasted for maybe a tenth of a second.

I leaned for a minute against the lower wing of his plane, watching him.

A trick of the light...it was hard to look at the man closely. As if there

were a light around his head, fading the background a faint, misty silver.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

What kind of problems did you have?"

Oh, nothing much. I just like to keep moving these days, same as you."

I took my sandwich and walked around his plane. It was a 1928 or 1929

machine, and it was completely unscratched. Factories don't make airplanes as

new as his was, parked there in the hay. Twenty coats of hand-rubbed butyrate

dope, at least, paint like a mirror pulled tight over the wooden ribs of the

thing. Don, in old English gold leaf under the rim of his cockpit, and the

registration on the map case said, D. W. Shimoda. The instruments were new out

or the box, original 1928 flight instruments. varnished-oak control stick and

rudder-bar; throttle, mixture, spark advance at the left. You never see spark

advances anymore, even on the best-restored antiques. No scratch anywhere, not

a patch on the fabric, not a single streak of engine oil from the cowling. Not

a blade of straw on the floor of the cockpit, as though his machine hadn't

flown at all, but instead had materialized on the spot through some time warp

across half a century. I felt an odd creepy cold on my neck.

"How long you been hopping passengers?" I called across the plane to

him.

"About a month, now, five weeks."

He was lying. Five weeks in the fields and I don't care who you are,

you've got dirt and oil on the plane and there's straw on the cockpit floor,

no matter what. But this machine...no oil on the windshield, no flying-hay

stains on the leading edges of wings and tail, no bugs smashed on the

propeller. That is not possible for an airplane flying through an Illinois

summer. I studied the Travel Air another five minutes, and then I went back

and sat down in the hay under the wing, facing the pilot. I wasn't afraid, I

still liked the guy, but something was wrong.

"Why are you not telling me the truth?"

"I have told you the truth, Richard," he said. The name is painted on my

air plane, too.

"A person does not hop passengers for a month in a Travel Air without

getting a little oil on the plane, my friend, a little dust? One patch in The

fabric? Hay, for God's sake, on the floor?"

He smiled calmly at me. "There are some things you do not know."

In that moment he was a strange other planet person. I believed what he

said, but I had no way of explaining his jewel air plane parked out in the

summer hay field.

"This is true. But some day I'll know them all. And then you can have my

airplane, Donald, because I won t need it to fly. He looked at me with

interest, and raised his black eyebrows. "Oh? Tell me."

I was delighted. Someone wanted to hear my theory! "People couldn't fly

for a long time, I don't think, because they didn't think it was possible, so

of course they didn't learn the first little principle of aerodynamics. I want

to believe that there's another principle somewhere: we don't need airplanes

to fly, or move through walls, or get to planets. We can learn how to do that

without machines anywhere. If we want to."

He half-smiled, seriously, and nodded his head one time. "And you think

that you will learn what you wish to learn by hopping three-dollar rides out

of hayfields. "

"The only learning that's mattered is what I got on my own, doing what I

want to do. There isn't, but if there were a soul on earth who could teach me

more of what I want to know than my airplane can, and the sky, I'd be off

right now to find him. Or her."

The dark eyes looked at me level. "Don't you believe you're guided, if

you really want to learn this thing?"

"I'm guided, yes. Isn't everyone? I've always felt something kind of

watching over me, sort of. "

"And you think you'll be led to a teacher who can help you. "

"If the teacher doesn't happen to be me, yes."

"Maybe that's the way it happens," he said.

A modern new pickup truck hushed down the road toward us, raising a thin

brown fog of dust, and it stopped by the field. The door opened, an old man

got out, and a girl of ten or so. The dust stayed in the air, it was that

still.

"Selling rides, are you?" said the man.

The field was Donald Shimoda's discovery; I stayed quiet.

"Will if you want, won't if you don't."

"And you want the dear Lord's fortune, I suppose."

"Three dollars cash, sir, for nine, ten minutes in the air. That is

thirty-three and one-third cents per minute. And worth it, most people tell

me."

It was an odd bystander-feeling, to sit there idle and listen to the way

this fellow worked his trade. I liked what he said, all low key. I had grown

so used to my own way of selling rides ("Guaranteed ten degrees cooler

upstairs, folks! Come on up where only birds and angels fly! All of this for

three dollars only, a dozen quarters from your purse or pocket..."), I had

forgotten there might be another.

There's a tension, flying and selling rides alone. I was used to it, but

still it was there: if I don't fly passengers, I don't eat. Now when I could

sit back, not depending for my dinner on the outcome, I relaxed for once and

watched.

The girl stood back and watched, too. Blonde, brown-eyed, solemn-faced,

she was here because her grampa was. She did not want to fly.

Most often its the other way around, eager kids and cautious elders, but

one gets a sense for these things when it's one's livelihood, and I knew that

girl wouldn't fly with us if we waited all summer.

"Which one of you gentlemen...?" the man said.

Shimoda poured himself a cup of water. "Richard will fly you. I'm still

on my lunch hour. Unless you want to wait."

"No, sir, I'm ready to go. Can we fly over my farm?"

"Sure," I said. "Just point the way you want to go, sir." I dumped my

bedroll and toolbag and cook pots from the front cockpit of the Fleet, helped

the man into the passenger seat and buckled him in. Then I slid down into the

rear cockpit and fastened my own seat belt.

"Give me a prop, will you, Done"

"Yep." He brought his water cup with him and stood by the propeller.

"What do you want?"

"Hot and brakes. Pull it slow. The impulse will take it right out of

your hand."

Always when somebody pulls the Fleet propeller, they pull it too fast,

and for complicated reasons the engine won't start. But this man pulled it

around ever so slowly, as though he had done it for ever. The impulse spring

snapped, sparks fired in the cylinders and the old engine was running, that

easy. He walked back to his airplane, sat down and began talking to the girl.

In a great burst of raw horsepower and flying straw the Fleet was in the

air, climbing through a hundred feet (if the engine quits now, we land in the

corn), five hundred feet (now, and we can turn back and land in the hay...now,

and it's the cow pasture west), eight hundred feet and level, following the

man's finger pointing through the wind southwest.

Three minutes airborne and we circle a farmstead, barns the color of

glowing coals, house of ivory in a sea of mint. A garden in the back for food

sweet-corn and lettuce and tomatoes growing.

The man in the front cockpit looked down through the air as we circled

the farmhouse framed between the wings and through the flying wires of the

Fleet.

A woman appeared on the porch below, white apron over blue dress,

waving. The man waved back. They would talk later of how they could see each

other so well across the sky.

He looked back at me finally with a nod to say that was enough, thanks,

and we could head back now.

I flew a wide circle around Ferris, to let the people know there was

flying going on, and spiraled down over the hayfield to show them just where

it was happening. As I slipped down to land, banked steeply over the corn, the

Travel Air swept off the ground and turned at once toward the farm we had just

left.

I flew once with a five-ship circus, and for a moment it was that kind

of busy feeling...one plane lifting off with passengers while another lands.

We touched ground with a gentle rumbling crash rolled to the far end of the

hay, by road.

The engine stopped, the man unsnapped his safety belt and I helped him

out. He took a wallet from his overalls and counted the dollar bills, shaking

his head.

"That's quite a ride, son."

"We think so. It's a good product we're selling."

"It's your friend, that's selling!"

"Oh?"

"I'll say. Your friend could sell ashes to the devil, I'll wager, can't

he now?"

"How come you say that?"

"The girl, of course. An airplane ride to my granddaughter, Sarah!" As

he spoke he watched the Travel Air, a distant silver mote in the air, circling

the farmhouse. He spoke as a calm man speaks, noting the dead twig in the yard

has just sprouted blossoms and ripe apples.

"Since she's born, that girl's been wild to death about high places.

Screams. Just terrified. Sarah'd no more climb a tree than she'd stir hornets

barehand. Won't climb the ladder to the loft, won't go up there if the Flood

was rising in the yard. The girl's a wonder with machines, not too bad around

animals, but heights, they are a caution to her! And there she is up in the

air."

He talked on about this and other special times; he remembered when the

barnstormers used to come through Galesburg, years ago. and Monmouth, flying

two wingers the same as we flew, but doing all kinds of crazy stunts with

them.

I watched the distant Travel Air get bigger, spiral down over the field

in a bank steeper than I'd ever fly with a girl afraid of heights, slip over

the corn and the fence and touch the hay in a threepoint landing that was

dazzling to watch. Donald Shimoda must have been flying for a good long while,

to land a Travel Air that way.

The airplane rolled to a stop beside us, no extra power required and the

propeller clanked softly to stop. I looked closely. There were no bugs on the

propeller. Not so much as a single fly killed on that eight-foot blade.

I sprang to help, unshackled the girl's safety belt, opened the little

front-cockpit door for her and showed her where to step so her foot wouldn't

go through the wing fabric.

"How'd you like that?" I said.

She didn't know I spoke.

"Grampa, I'm not afraid! I wasn't scared, honest! The house looked like

a little toy and Mom waved at me and Don said I was scared just because I fell

and died once and I don't have to be afraid anymore! I'm going to be a pilot,

Grampa. I'm gonna have an airplane and work on the engine myself and fly

everywhere and give rides! Can I do that?"

Shimoda smiled at the man and shrugged his shoulders.

"He told you you were going to be a pilot, did he, Sarah?"

"No, but I am. I'm already good with engines, you know that!"

"Well, you can talk about that with your mother. Time for us to be

getting home. "

The two thanked us and one walked, one ran to the pickup truck, both

changed by what had happened in the field and in the sky.

Two automobiles arrived, then another, and we had a noon rush of people

who wanted to see Ferris from the air. We flew twelve or thirteen flights as

fast as we could get them off, and after that I made a run to the station in

town to get car gas for the Fleet. Then a few passengers, a few more, and it

was evening and we flew solid back-to-back flights till sunset.

A sign somewhere said Population 200, and by dark I was thinking we had

flown them all, and some out-of-towners as well.

I forgot in the rush of flying to ask about Sarah and what Don had told

her, whether he had made up the story or if he thought it was true, about

dying. And every once in a while I watched his plane closely while passengers

changed seats. Not a mark on it, no oil-drop anywhere, and he apparently flew

to dodge the bugs that I had to wipe from my windshield every hour or two.

There was just a little light in the sky when we quit. By the time I

laid dry cornstalks in my tin stove, set them over with charcoal bricks and

lit the fire, it was full dark, the firelight throwing colors back from the

airplanes parked close, and from the golden straw about us.

I peered into the grocery box. "It's soup or stew or Spaghetti-O's," I

said. "Or pears or peaches. Want some hot peaches?"

"No difference," he said mildly. "Anything or nothing."

"Man, aren't you hungry? This has been a busy day!"

"You haven't given me much to be hungry for, unless that's good stew."

I opened the stew can with my Swiss Air Officer's Escape and Evasion

Knife, did a similar, job on the Spaghetti-0's, and popped both cans over the

fire.

My pockets were tight with cash...this was one of the pleasanter times

of day for me. I pulled the bills out and counted, not bothering much to fold

them flat. It came to $147, and I figured in my head, which is not easy for

me.

"That's...that's...let's see...four and carry the two...forty-nine

flights today! Broke a hundred-dollar day, Don, just me and the Fleet! You

must have broke two hundred easy...you fly mostly two at a time?"

"Mostly," he said.

"About this teacher you're looking for..."he said.

"I ain't looking for no teacher," I said "I am counting money! I can go

a week on this, I can be rained out cold for one solid week!"

He looked at me and smiled. "When you are done swimming in your money,"

he said, "would you mind passing my stew?""

Throngs and masses and crowds of people, torrents of humanity pouring

against one man in the middle of them all. Then the people became an ocean

that would drown the man, but in stead of drowning he walked over the ocean,

whistling, and disappeared. The ocean of water changed to an ocean of grass. A

white-and-gold Travel Air 4000 came down to land on the grass and the pilot

got out of the cockpit and put up a cloth sign: "fly $3 fly".

It was three o'clock in the morning when I woke from the dream,

remembering it all and for some reason happy for it. I opened my eyes to see

in the moonlight that big Travel Air parked alongside the Fleet. Shimoda sat

on his bed roll as he had when first I met him, leaning back against the left

wheel of his airplane It wasn't that I saw him clearly, I just knew he was

there.

"Hi Richard," he said quietly in the dark. "Does that tell you what's

going on?"

"Does what tell me?" I said foggily. I was still remembering and didn't

think to be surprised that he'd be awake.

"Your dream. The guy and the crowds and the airplane," he said

patiently. "You were curious about me, so now you know, OK? There were news

stories: Donald Shimoda, the one they were beginning to call the Mechanic

Messiah, the American Avatar, who disappeared one day in front of twenty-five

thousand eye-witnesses?"

I did remember that, had read it on a small-town Ohio newspaper rack,

because it was on the front page.

"Donald Shimoda?"

"At your service," he said. "Now you know, so you don't have to puzzle

me out anymore. Go back to sleep."

I thought about that for a long time before I slept.

"Are you allowed...I didn't think...you get a job like that, the

Messiah, you're supposed to save the world, aren't you? I didn't know the

Messiah could just turn in his keys like that and quit." I sat high on the top

cowling of the Fleet and considered my strange friend. ''Toss me a nine-

sixteenths, would you please, Don?"

He hunted in the toolbag and pitched the wrench up to me. As with the

other tools that morning, the one he threw slowed and stopped within a foot of

me, floating weightless, turning lazy in midair. The moment I touched it,

though, it went heavy in my hand, an everyday chrome-vanadium aircraft end-

wrench. Well, not quite everyday. Ever since a cheap seven-eighths broke in my

hand. I've bought the best tools a man can have...this one happened to be a

Snap-On, which as any mechanic knows is not your everyday wrench. Might as

well be made of gold, the price of the thing, but it's a joy in the hand and

you know it will never break, no matter what you do with it.

"Of course you can quit! Quit anything you want, if you change your mind

about doing it. You can quit breathing if you want to." He floated a Phillips

screwdriver for his own amusement. "So I quit being the Messiah and if I sound

a little defensive, it's maybe because I am still a little defensive. Better

that than keeping the job and hating it. A good messiah hates nothing and is

free to walk any path he wants to walk. Well, that's true for everybody, of

course. We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the

Mind, or however else you want to say it."

I worked at tightening the cylinder base nuts on the Kinner engine. A

good power plant, the old B-5, but these nuts want to loosen themselves every

hundred flying hours or so, and it's wise to stay one jump ahead. Sure enough,

the first one I put the wrench to went a quarter turn tighter, and I was glad

for my wisdom to check them all this morning, before flying any more

customers.

"Well yes Don, but it seems as if Messiahing would be different from

other jobs you know? Jesus going back to hammering nails for a living? Maybe

it just sounds odd."

He considered that, trying to see my point "I don't see your point.

Strange thing about that is he didn't quit when they first started calling him

Savior. Instead at that piece of bad news, he tried logic: 'OK, I'm the son of

God, but so are we all; I'm the savior, but so are you! The works that I do,

you can do!' Anybody in their right mind understands that."

It was hot, up on the cowling, but it didn't feel like work. The more I

want to get something done, the less I call it work. Satisfying, to know that

I was keeping the cylinders from flying off the engine. "Say you want another

wrench " he said.

"I do not want another wrench. And I happen to be so spiritually

advanced that I consider these tricks of yours mere party games, Shimoda, of a

moderately evolved soul. Or maybe a beginning hypnotist."

"A hypnotist! Boy, are you ever getting warm! But better hypnotist than

Messiah. What a dull job! Why didn't I know it was going to be a dull job?"

"You did," I said wisely. He just laughed.

"Did you ever consider, Don, that it might not be so easy to quit, after

all? That you might not just settle right down to the life of a normal human

being?"

He didn't laugh at that. "You're right, of course," he said, and ran his

fingers through his black hair. "Stay in any one place too long, more than a

day or two, and people knew I was something strange. Brush against my sleeve,

you're healed of terminal cancer, and before the week's out there I'm back in

the middle of a crowd again. This airplane keeps me moving, and nobody knows

where I came from or where I'm going next, which suits me pretty well."

"You are gonna have a tougher time than you think, Don."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, the whole motion of our time is from the material toward the

spiritual...slow as it is, it's still a pretty huge motion. I don't think the

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Illusions--RichardBach(Version2002.10.10)###hasasmallsectionmissing###PrefaceItwasaquestionIheardmorethanonce,afterJonathanSeagullwaspublished."Whatareyougoingtowritenext,Richard?AfterJonathan,what?"IansweredthenthatIdidn'thavetowriteanythingnext,notaword,andthatallmybookstogethersaideverythingthatI...

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Richard Bach - Illusions

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