The Bridge Across Forever: A Lovestory

489 Pages·1986·1.56 MB·English

by  Richard Bach

The Bridge Across Forever:

A Lovestory

By

Richard Bach
Publication Date: October 1989
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

ISBN: 9780440108269
ISBN: 0440108268
Synopsis

If you've ever felt alone in a world of strangers, missing someone you've
never met, you'll find a message from your love in The Bridge Across
Forever.

Annotation

Bach's first person account of his search for the soulmate he knew he was
born to meet. a moving honest love story from the author of Jonathon
Liningston Seagull.
Review by Publishers Weekly

An extended dialogue between Bach and his inner child
comprises the latest book from the author of Jonathan Livingston
Seagull. While hang-gliding one afternoon, Bach is reminded of a
promise he made to himself when he was a child: to write a
book containing the sum of all he has learned and deliver it to
his nine-year-old self, Dickie. But Bach finds that Dickie is angry
and hurt at having been locked away for the last 50 years.
Slowly a dialogue emerges, as Bach tries to pass on his years of
experience and in return relives some buried memories,
particularly the events surrounding the death of his brother
Bobby. What results is a kind of Richard Bach primer, summing
up the author's thoughts on time, love, death and God and
laying out a belief system not unlike George Bernard Shaw's idea
of the Life Force. Participating in this shared voyage of discovery
is Bach's wife, who contributes her own insights and acts as a
kind of reality check on her husband. Though the concept here
may strike some as Philosophy Lite, the book-thanks in large
part to Bach's sincerity-deftly skirts sentimentality and becomes,
ultimately, a real and affecting creation.

Chapter One

She'll be here today. I looked down from the cockpit, down
through the wind and propeller-blast, down through half a mile
of autumn to my rented hayfield, to the sugar chip that was my
FLY-$3-FLY sign tied to the open gate. Both sides of the road
around the sign were jammed with cars. There must have been
around sixty of them, and a crowd to match, come to see the
flying. She could be there this moment, just arrived! I smiled at
that. Could be!
I throttled the engine to idle, pulled the nose of the fleet plane
higher, let the wings stall. Then stomped full rudder, full left
rudder, and jammed the control stick back.
The green earth, harvest corn and soybeans, farms and
meadows calm at noon, the bottom dropped out and they
exploded in the whirling blur of an airshow tailspin of what
would look from the ground like an old flying-machine suddenly
burst out of control.
The nose slammed down, the world spun into a color-streak
tornado wrapping faster and faster around my goggles.

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How long have I been missing you, dear soul mate, I thought,
dear wise mystical lovely lady? Today at last, coincidence will
bring you to Russell, Iowa, take you by the hand, lead you to
that field of alfalfa hay, down there. You'll walk to the edge of
the crowd, not quite knowing why, curious to watch a page of
history still alive, bright paints spinning in the air.
The two-winger twisted down thuddering, kicking against me on
the controls for a thousand feet, the tornado going steeper and
tighter and louder every second.
Spin ... till ... Now.
I pushed the stick forward, came off the left and stood hard on
the right rudder pedal. Blurs going tighter, quicker, one, two
times around, then the spin quit and we dived straight down,
fast as we could go.
She'll be here today, I thought, because she's alone, too.
Because she's learned everything she wants to learn by herself.
Because there's one person in the world that she's being led to
meet, and that person right now is flying this airplane.
Tight turn, throttle back, switch off, propeller stopped . . . glide
down, float soundlessly to land, coast to stop in front of the
crowd.

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I'll know her when I see her, I thought, bright anticipation, I'll
know her at once.
Around the airplane were men and women, families with picnic
baskets, kids on bikes, watching. Two dogs, near the kids.
I pulled myself up from the cockpit, looked at the people and
liked them. Then I was listening to my own voice, curiously
detached, and at the same time I was looking for her in the
crowd.
"Russell from the air, folks! See it floating adrift on the fields of
Iowa! Last chance before the snows! Come on up where only
birds and angels fly. ..."
A few of the people laughed and applauded for somebody else
to be first. Some faces suspicious, full of questions; some faces
eager and adventurous; some pretty faces, too, amused,
intrigued. But nowhere the face I was looking for.
"You're sure it's safe?" a woman said. "After what I saw, I'm not
sure you're a safe driver!" Suntanned, clear brown eyes, she
wanted to be sold on this.
"Safe as can be, ma'am, gentle as thistledown. The Fleet here's
been flying since December twenty-fourth, nineteen twenty-
eight-she's probably good for one more flight before she goes to
pieces. ..."

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She blinked at me, startled.
"Just kidding," I said. "She'll be flying when you and I are years
gone, I guarantee you that!"
"I'd guess I've waited long enough," she said. "I've always
wanted to fly in one of these. ..."
"You're going to love it."
I swung the propeller to start the engine, showed her the way to
the front cockpit, helped her with the safety-belt.
Impossible, I thought. She's not here. Not-here is not possible!
Every day convinced today's-the-day, and every day wrong!
The first ride was followed by thirty other rides, before the sun
went down. I flew and talked till everyone went home to supper
and to their nights with each other and left me alone.
Alone.
Is she fiction?
Silence.
A minute before the water boiled, I took the pan from my
campfire, tapped in hot-chocolate mix, stirred it with a hay-stem.
Frowned, talked to myself.
"I'm a fool, to look for her out here."
I poked last week's cinnamon-roll on a stick, toasted it over
shreds of fire.

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