Episode 2: Fifty Years

SCENE 1. IN THE SKY. WHERE WE LEFT OFF.

THEO (close to the mic, frightened) Theo Finch. Somewhere over the mountains. Tape's rolling. The engine's stopped. It's so quiet. I didn't know a plane could be this quiet.

DEL (calm, steady) Theo. Look at me. Are you holding Blue?

THEO Yes.

DEL Good. Planes don't fall out of the sky when the engine stops. They glide. We've got lots of height, and lots of time. Now I'm going to point the nose down, and the wind is going to spin the propeller, and the propeller is going to try to wake the engine up.

THEO What if it doesn't?

DEL Then I'll find us a lake. But first we try. Hold on.

DEL (under her breath) Come on. Come on, old girl.

THEO (shouting, laughing with relief) It worked! It worked!

DEL (shouting) It's running! It's not running well, but it's running!

THEO (into the mic, under the engine) Aunt Del says the engine is sick, but not too sick to get us to the coast. She says it's like having a cold. You don't stay in bed for a cold. Blue doesn't agree. Blue has climbed inside my jacket and won't come out.

SCENE 2. THE OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA. THE NEXT AFTERNOON.

THEO (into the mic, shouting a little over the engine) Theo Finch, over the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Tape's rolling. It's a long, skinny strip of sand, out in the ocean, with water on both sides. Ocean on one side. A big flat bay on the other. Aunt Del says that's where we'll land.

DEL (shouting) Theo, I need you to do something for me. Tighten your belt as tight as it goes.

THEO Why?

DEL (calm) That's why. Hold on to Blue. This landing is going to be bumpy.

THEO (very quiet, to himself) Please. Please. Please.

THEO (breathing hard) Are we... are we okay?

DEL We're okay. Are you okay?

THEO I think so. Blue?

THEO Blue's okay.

DEL (letting out a long breath) Well. We made it to Kitty Hawk.

THEO We did?

DEL Near enough. See that big hill over there, with the stone monument on top? That's Kill Devil Hills. That's where they flew.

SCENE 3. THE BEACH. LATER.

THEO (into the mic) We're stuck on a sandbar at the edge of the bay. The Mallard is tipped over a little, like a duck that's had a long day. Aunt Del has climbed up onto the float with her toolbox. And I've decided to help.

DEL You have?

THEO I said I'd try. In the hangar. I said I'd try again. So.

DEL (pleased, trying not to show it) All right. What do you think is wrong with it?

THEO I think... it needs new spark plugs. In the movies, it's always the spark plugs.

DEL That's as good a guess as any. Go on, then. There's a box of new ones in the bottom drawer.

THEO (into the mic, a little later) Okay. Attempt number one. I've changed the spark plugs. Every single one. My hands are black, and I've got grease on my face, and Aunt Del says that makes me a real mechanic now. Okay, Aunt Del. Try it.

DEL Nothing.

THEO Maybe it's the fuel. Maybe there's water in the fuel. That happens, right?

DEL It does happen.

THEO (into the mic) Attempt number two. Draining the fuel, looking for water.

THEO It's clean. There's no water.

THEO What about the oil? Or the... the thing with the air? The air thing?

DEL The carburetor.

THEO That!

DEL Theo.

THEO I can fix the carburetor!

DEL Theo. Slow down.

THEO (frustrated) I am slow! I've been slow all afternoon! I've done three things, and none of them worked, and my hands smell like gas, and we're stuck on a beach in the middle of nowhere, and it's my fault we even came!

DEL How is it your fault?

THEO Because I fixed the stupid toy! If I hadn't fixed it, you wouldn't have thought about Kitty Hawk, and we'd be at home.

DEL (gently) Theo.

THEO I told you. I'm not a builder. I'm going to go for a walk.

DEL Take Blue with you.

THEO Blue doesn't want to come.

DEL Blue disagrees.

SCENE 4. THE WRIGHT BROTHERS NATIONAL MEMORIAL.

THEO (into the mic, quiet, a bit sulky) Theo Finch. Kill Devil Hills. Tape's rolling. I don't really want to record anything right now, but it's a habit. There's a big hill here, covered in grass, and on top is a tall stone monument with giant wings carved into its sides. And there's a ranger, and she's waving at me.

RANGER Afternoon! You look like you've had a day.

THEO Our plane broke. It's down on the beach.

RANGER The old green seaplane? I saw you come in. That was quite a landing.

THEO That was my Aunt Del. She's a good pilot. I'm the one who can't fix it.

RANGER Well, you came to the right place.

THEO Why?

RANGER Because the two most famous people who ever stood on this hill couldn't fix their flying machine either. Not for a long time. Want to hear about it?

THEO Is it sad?

RANGER For a while it is. Sit down. Your cat can sit too.

RANGER It's the summer of 1901. Wilbur and Orville Wright have come back here to Kill Devil Hills with a brand new glider. They chose this place because it has strong, steady winds and soft sand to land on. And this new glider, they've done everything right. They've used all the best numbers from all the experts.

SCENE 5. KILL DEVIL HILLS. SUMMER, 1901.

ORVILLE Will, the mosquitoes are back. They're in the tent, they're in the blankets, they're in my ears.

WILBUR Put more wood on the fire. The smoke keeps them off.

ORVILLE The smoke keeps me off too.

WILBUR Orv. The wind is good this morning. Let's try again.

ORVILLE (shouting) Nose up, Will! Nose up!

ORVILLE Are you all right?

WILBUR (getting up, breathing hard) I'm fine. But it's no good, Orv. It hardly lifts. It should be lifting three times as much as this.

ORVILLE We used the tables. Lilienthal's numbers. Everybody uses those numbers.

WILBUR Then either the numbers are wrong, or we are.

ORVILLE The numbers can't be wrong. They're the experts.

RANGER (telling the story) All that summer, the glider went wrong. They went home to Dayton, Ohio, with almost nothing to show for it. And on the train ride home, Wilbur said something to his brother that he never forgot.

WILBUR (quietly, looking out the window) Orv. I think we should face it. Man is not going to fly. Not for fifty years.

ORVILLE You don't mean that.

WILBUR I've never meant anything more.

SCENE 6. THE MEMORIAL.

THEO He quit?

RANGER He nearly did. He told his brother people wouldn't fly for fifty years.

THEO But they flew. Two years later. Right here.

RANGER They did.

THEO So what happened?

RANGER Their sister happened. Katharine. A man named Octave Chanute asked Wilbur to come to Chicago and give a speech to a room full of engineers about his gliders. Wilbur didn't want to go. What was he going to say? "Hello, everyone, I failed"?

THEO (a small laugh) That's what I'd say.

RANGER Katharine made him go anyway.

SCENE 7. DAYTON, OHIO. SEPTEMBER, 1901.

KATHARINE Will, you're going to Chicago, and that's the end of it.

WILBUR Katharine, I don't have anything to tell them. The glider didn't work.

KATHARINE Then tell them that. Tell them exactly what went wrong. Tell them what you measured, and what the tables said you should get, and what you actually got. Somebody in that room might need to hear it.

WILBUR (slowly) What I measured... and what the tables said.

KATHARINE Yes.

WILBUR (thinking) Katharine, I think you've just told me where to look.

KATHARINE I have?

WILBUR We kept asking what we did wrong. We never asked if the experts' numbers were wrong. Orv! Orv, come here!

ORVILLE What's the matter?

WILBUR Stop guessing. We need to test it. Not the whole glider. Little wings. Hundreds of little wings. In a wind we can control.

ORVILLE How do you control the wind?

WILBUR We build our own.

RANGER (telling the story) And so in the back of their bicycle shop, they built a wooden box about six feet long, with a fan at one end that blew a steady wind through it. A wind tunnel. They made little test wings out of metal, and they measured each one with scales made out of bicycle spokes and old saw blades. Wing after wing. About two hundred of them.

ORVILLE Number forty-one. Thinner at the front.

WILBUR Write it down.

ORVILLE Number forty-two. Curved a little less.

WILBUR Write it down.

RANGER (telling the story) And when they were done, they knew something nobody else in the world knew. The experts' numbers were wrong. Every failure that summer had been a clue, and they'd written every one of them down.

SCENE 8. THE MEMORIAL.

RANGER The next summer, they came back here with a new glider, built from their own numbers. And it flew. Hundreds and hundreds of glides, right down that hill.

THEO (slowly) They stopped guessing.

RANGER They stopped guessing. They tested one thing at a time, and they wrote it all down.

THEO I was guessing. Spark plugs, because of the movies. Fuel, because it happens sometimes. I was just trying things to see if I got lucky.

RANGER Sounds like you've got some testing to do.

THEO (standing up) Thanks, Ranger Owens.

RANGER Good luck, kid. Bring the cat back sometime.

THEO (into the mic, walking fast) Theo Finch, running back to the beach. Tape's rolling. I've got an idea. And Aunt Del isn't going to believe it.

SCENE 9. THE BEACH. SUNSET.

THEO (out of breath) Aunt Del! I'm sorry I left.

DEL You came back. That's what counts.

THEO I want to try something. Not a guess. A test. An engine needs three things to run, right? You told me once. Fuel, air and a spark.

DEL That's right.

THEO So we don't guess. We test them one at a time, and I'll record everything. Like a notebook. Test one. Fuel.

DEL We checked the fuel. It's clean, and it's getting to the engine.

THEO Fuel, yes. Test two. Air.

DEL Air filter's clear. The carburetor's clean.

THEO Air, yes. Test three. Spark. How do we test spark?

DEL (impressed) You take a plug out, you hold it against the metal, and you turn the engine over. If there's a spark, you'll see a little blue flash.

THEO Okay. I'm holding it. Ready.

THEO Nothing. No flash.

DEL Try another one.

THEO Nothing again. Aunt Del, none of them have a spark. So it's not the plugs. It's whatever makes the spark.

DEL (quietly) The magneto.

THEO The what?

DEL The magneto. It's a little box that makes the electricity for the spark plugs. It's right... here.

DEL Right under that cat.

THEO Blue. Blue, move. Good boy.

DEL Oh, Theo. Look at that.

THEO It's cracked. Right down the middle. Is that bad?

DEL That's the whole problem. You found it.

THEO (amazed) I found it. We found it. We actually found it!

DEL Three guesses and three tests. The guesses got us nowhere, and the tests found it in ten minutes.

THEO (into the mic, so happy) Theo Finch. Tape's rolling. For the record, we found the problem!

DEL (quieter) Theo. Finding it was the easy part.

THEO What do you mean?

DEL This is a magneto for a nineteen-forties radial engine. Nobody's made one of these in fifty years. There isn't a shop in the world that sells this part.

THEO Fifty years.

DEL Fifty years.

THEO So we're stuck.

THEO Aunt Del. Who's that?

CRANE (smooth, a little way off) Good evening, Miss Del. And this must be the young reporter. What a long way you've come.

DEL (cold) Mr. Crane.

CRANE I believe your engine has stopped. Just as I said it would. Shall we talk about my offer?

CAMPFIRE QUESTION

THEO (calm, close to the mic) Theo Finch here again. Before you go, here's my Campfire Question. Wilbur Wright almost gave up after one bad summer. But every failure was really a clue, and when he wrote them all down, they showed him the answer.

THEO So here's my question. Think of something you tried that didn't work. What was it trying to tell you? There's no right answer. Just think about it.

THEO Epic Creek Adventures. Tape's off.