Airfield at Night
On the outskirts, spread even and deliberate, are towers in T-shapes with ladders and antenna. Behind them a chain link fence casts a wide perimeter, easily traversable. They chaperon a cardboard cutout of Kansas plain country stitched to a quilt in the downslope shadow of the Smokies. In the hill valley hemmed by distinguished plateaus and accompanying rivers.
The land is cut and cornered by a road that zig-zags from point to point, lilting up and down and steady like the tide. The pavement widens and shrinks and digs underneath runways. One tunnel's so long and spread your radio craps out and the car in the next lane honks its horn for the echo's novelty value alone. A grey, bright ambiance from the multitude of square overhead lights like buttons on a console board paint the inside and set it distinction.
A building is on the left with a slanted roof. It is alone, surrounded by more flat terrain. A hangar with a small jet inside. More structures and busyness encroach further along toward the west. An airforce base tucked back there. Hard to spot at twelve-thirty. And there's a dense bank of fog layered at eye level and signal lights are flashing in succession along the tower edge. An emergency flare for a camouflaged night that looks a touch apocalyptic.
In the dark the runway tracks are dotted with incandescent jewels in a multitude of colors like a flattened Christmas arrangement. Wheels out, incoming at 20 degrees, an alien craft aglow in the guise of a 747 sinks from the outer atmosphere and threads itself down a sloping invisible highway and lands and turns about the stippled course. Four hundred tons of composite alloy will sprint and levitate from that luminescent pattern laid grandiose like a crop circle message to the heavens. Impossible. Ingenuity as good as magic.
You burrow under more air lanes, then rise, then flatten. To the right is empty, mostly. The left, a monochrome parking complex looming over a seabed of car tops. Hundreds vacant. And everywhere craning above are tall stalks topped with sepia baubles that hang in the cold air and comfort. Too many to count. Perforations to stave off the black canvas out there. Always lit, always on. The whole sprawl a clock ticking all the time, all hours available. People in transit, coming and going with their own motivations and origins and destinations. An itinerant community delineated by accents and passport credentials collate at the meeting circuit. As strangers they pass like ships in the harbor. You can find them in the menagerie of nearby hotels and scheduled shuttle buses. Watch for foreign license plates. Tourists on the sidewalk. A little farther up the road and it's passed. The whole compound left in the rearview and its populace dissolved and acclimated to the regional ocean like the trade winds blowing over the quiet midnight.
The land is cut and cornered by a road that zig-zags from point to point, lilting up and down and steady like the tide. The pavement widens and shrinks and digs underneath runways. One tunnel's so long and spread your radio craps out and the car in the next lane honks its horn for the echo's novelty value alone. A grey, bright ambiance from the multitude of square overhead lights like buttons on a console board paint the inside and set it distinction.
A building is on the left with a slanted roof. It is alone, surrounded by more flat terrain. A hangar with a small jet inside. More structures and busyness encroach further along toward the west. An airforce base tucked back there. Hard to spot at twelve-thirty. And there's a dense bank of fog layered at eye level and signal lights are flashing in succession along the tower edge. An emergency flare for a camouflaged night that looks a touch apocalyptic.
In the dark the runway tracks are dotted with incandescent jewels in a multitude of colors like a flattened Christmas arrangement. Wheels out, incoming at 20 degrees, an alien craft aglow in the guise of a 747 sinks from the outer atmosphere and threads itself down a sloping invisible highway and lands and turns about the stippled course. Four hundred tons of composite alloy will sprint and levitate from that luminescent pattern laid grandiose like a crop circle message to the heavens. Impossible. Ingenuity as good as magic.
You burrow under more air lanes, then rise, then flatten. To the right is empty, mostly. The left, a monochrome parking complex looming over a seabed of car tops. Hundreds vacant. And everywhere craning above are tall stalks topped with sepia baubles that hang in the cold air and comfort. Too many to count. Perforations to stave off the black canvas out there. Always lit, always on. The whole sprawl a clock ticking all the time, all hours available. People in transit, coming and going with their own motivations and origins and destinations. An itinerant community delineated by accents and passport credentials collate at the meeting circuit. As strangers they pass like ships in the harbor. You can find them in the menagerie of nearby hotels and scheduled shuttle buses. Watch for foreign license plates. Tourists on the sidewalk. A little farther up the road and it's passed. The whole compound left in the rearview and its populace dissolved and acclimated to the regional ocean like the trade winds blowing over the quiet midnight.
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