Testimony of Pilot

Published in Barry Hannah’s 1978 short story collection Airships, “Testimony of Pilot” tells the story of Arden Quadman, a pilot with a storied and sad life. It is told from the point of view of Ard's friend William Howly, who recounts the boys’ meeting as kids, to their separation by war as adults. The character of Ard is said to be based on Hannah's real-life friend John Quisenberry, a Clinton Mississippian, and former F-8 Crusader fighter pilot in the Vietnam war. Hannah won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award for Airships.

The boys' meeting is an unusual one: Peering through a pair of binoculars, William and another boy, Radcleve, witness two drunken black men bludgeon a hog to death. The racist ten-year-olds, incensed by the apparent overreach of these men, decide to trail them back to their home to punish them. Radcleve improvises a mortar to lob attacks at the men's house. They do not hit the men's house, however; they hit the house of Mr. Quadberry, a history professor with a musician wife, and an unpopular, hook-nosed son, Arden, or “Ard.” Angered, Mr. Quadberry sends his son to tell the other boys to quit their hijinks; he reluctantly does so, taking his saxophone with him. When Ard meets the other boys, they ask him to play his saxophone, and he does. As he is about to leave them to return home, Radcleve throws a firecracker packed in mud at Ard; it hits him in the eye, almost blinding him.

William is both ashamed of his participation in the incident and put off by Ard's general strangeness, so the boys have no further interaction until their senior year of high school. William is in the school band as a drummer. Ard joins to play the saxophone. William has the opportunity to observe Ard at close quarters. One time, he watches Ard casually beat up a ninth-grader who calls him “Queerberry.” Another time, when the band's beloved band director is killed in a car crash on his way to a major performance, Ard surprises everyone by assuming control of the situation. He leads the school in a performance of Ravel's “Bolero,” nailing the saxophone solo. His playing attracts the attention of a sexy thirty-something woman, who introduces herself. It also attracts the attention of the beautiful majorette Lillian. However, Ard decides he doesn't like Lillian, a third-chair clarinetist, because she had missed the start of the performance drinking. He can smell the alcohol on her breath.



William and Ard start a band, and are quite successful, making up to $1200 a night. Their success is cut short, however, when William goes deaf as a result of his drum playing. Nonetheless, he goes on to become the leader writer at Gordon-Marx Advertising in Jackson, an accomplishment over which he feels vain. For his part, Quadberry moves to Annapolis and studies to become a fighter pilot. His departure to fight in the war is dramatic – he spurns Lillian's affections, leaving her and William with a cryptic message before taking to the air: “I am a dragon. America the beautiful, like you will never know.”

During the war, Ard's back is badly damaged, leaving him nearly invalid, and the Navy discharges him. Lillian, who has become a flight attendant, is killed during an airline hijacking. Quadberry ends up in the care of his parents. William visits him there, and Ard tells him about an experimental treatment that might give him back his movement – or might kill him. There is a 25 percent that the operation will go wrong, ending in his death. William encourages him to try the treatment, noting how far he has already come, and Ard agrees. The treatment kills Ard. Again feeling responsible for a tragedy in Ard's life, William feels compelled to tell his story as a kind of atonement. The story ends with William lying in bed with Lillian's younger sister.

Hannah's Testimony of a Pilot is one of the acclaimed writer's best known short stories – and he was known for many, being widely considered a master of the form by critics. The story's characterizations are vivid and complex, as are its moral ambiguities. Like William Faulkner, to whom he has often been compared, Hannah specializes in the creation of characters who relish their own perversities – this is certainly true of both William and Ard, both of whom impress the reader with their believable eccentricities and ambivalence.