End of Day

N20°53.59′ W156°26.21′

0345 ZULU

The shadows seem to slide across the ramp in quick bursts, like stop-motion animation, as my attention wanders between the dying afternoon outside the cockpit glass and the constant scroll of social media on my phone. In the moments that I stare westward and watch it, more and more of the rough concrete, cooling in the diminishing light, darkens and loses detail and texture as the shadows overtake it. A light breeze blows through the unlatched window to my right, swirling through the flight deck and out the open L1 door behind us, leaving dust motes hanging in the beams of light that are streaming out from a sun that is gradually dropping towards the cloud-shrouded mountains in the distance.

We are halfway through a mail run—a simple out and back trip carrying the US mail between two islands. It’s easy flying, tainted only by the worrying unknown of wondering if the cargo will arrive on time. Today got off to a good start, with the plane loaded, fueled, and ready to go when we arrived to operate our first leg. But now we’ve been waiting for just over an hour to start our return trip, and judging from the three rampers sitting in an empty baggage cart underneath the bulk of our right wing as they wait for the cargo to be delivered, we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I watch in the deepening light as one of the rampers tells a story to the other two. Even with the window open, they are too far away to hear over the roar of engine and equipment noise that is a normal part of every airport ramp. Our APU, running some 190 feet behind us and providing electric power for the plane, and cool air for our comfort, is contributing to the cacophony of sound. But even if it weren’t, I’d still be relying on gesture reading and a sense of imagination to figure out what the story was about. After watching for a minute, I decide that they are talking about fishing—or maybe about the best way to make a sandwich.

The noise outside increases as a United 757 touches down and goes into full reverse thrust, the rising howl of spooling up engines cutting through the constant din. I watch as the plane rolls down the runway, decelerating into the distance, the sound fading away into the background noise. The runway here is 7000 feet long, just about one and one third miles. Coming at me somewhere from the distant recesses of my mind, I remember an FO explaining how at one mile, the curve of the earth is about eight inches of drop. In the cooling air of the cockpit, related memories of that long-ago flight to Memphis—or maybe it was Kansas City—take on form; the FO and I scribbling math figures down on the back side of the flight plan, running the numbers of the Pythagorean theorem to establish the drop at various distances.

Now, as I watch the 757 exit the runway, I wonder if I can’t see its wheels because they are sitting 10 inches below my visible horizon, or because they are over a mile away, which is more than my eyes can handle in the dimming light. The ramp is in full shadow now. I turn back and look out the Captain’s side windshield where the orb of the sun has disappeared behind the peaks to the west, leaving behind a hot white glow that fades outwards, through the color wheel of dusk, towards the deep blue of the sky above. The air takes on a stillness and the noise of the ramp seems to fade away even further. I push my seat back and stand up, rolling the stiffness out of my shoulders as I do. I step out of the cockpit and into the galley, and then turn to the right towards the open L1 doorframe, preparing to greet the coming night.