The red jumpsuit fitting smartly around Leo Buckley's shoulders was like a generic superhero costume, with a blank spot on the chest for the logo, maybe a lightning bolt or Superman's S. If he were to choose, Buckley might prefer a picture of a bullet blasting from the barrel of a Colt .45. "The Human Bullet," Buckley said. He has that kind of low, scratchy voice that sounds rough enough to sharpen an ax.
Inside a commercial building at Newport State Airport, a lean man trained a camera on Buckley. In an accent that sounded like Schwarzenegger, the man asked, "Vat are you going skydiving for?" The Human Bullet did not understand. His powers do not include linguistics. He bunched his brow and cocked an ear to the cameraman, smiled politely. "What?"
Anything to say to family?
Buckley stared into the camera. His light eyes are bracketed by deeply grooved laugh lines. At 52, he retains the lean body of a contractor after three decades of hard, outdoor work. "Wish me luck," he said. "I hope I don't splat." He laughed from deep inside his chest like a revving diesel, a laugh that makes other people laugh.
Later, the video of his first parachute jump would be edited and set to music: "Right Now" by Van Halen, a song that asks, "What are you waiting for? "
"There may be a real point where I'm not able to do things," said Buckley. "I want to be able to do things now."
In February 2003, four months past his 50th birthday, Buckley's right hand went numb as he clenched a pen to take on the stack of work orders on his desk. His right leg betrayed him, too; it wouldn't move. Recovering from that stroke was like visiting the far future, where he may be old and infirm.
"I had a lot of memory problems, speech problems, my cognitive skills were pretty much nil. After I got out of the hospital I spent a month in rehabilitation, learning how to walk, learning how to use my hands so I could eat. Basically trying to learn how to dress myself."
Stuck at home, in Franklin, Mass., often in a wheelchair, the self-described workaholic was forced onto Social Security disability. He became clinically depressed and needed prescription mood pills. "I was," he said, "the most miserable son-of-a-gun."
On the tarmac in Newport, he clip-clopped with a light limp in his right leg. The single-prop Cessna had barely enough room in the back for two jumpers, two instructors and two parachutes.
"I've always put things off," Buckley would say later. "The stroke put me at a point where I want to do stuff. I want to do things with my wife that we haven't done. You do stuff for everybody else, for the family" -- he has four sons and four grandsons -- "I want to do stuff I want."
As the plane spiraled to 10,000 feet above Aquidneck Island, Buckley could pick out First and Second Beaches, like two white smiles on the shore, and then the Pell Bridge, the old Navy piers off the west side of Middletown. Buckley clipped to the instructor, who operated the parachute for their tandem jump. Buckley was cargo; his responsibilities would end when they left the plane. Together, they crab-walked to the aircraft's open door. Buckley had no fear, no thought that the chute might not open. "I'm saying, oh, yeah, finally, this is it."
A camera strapped to the instructor's wrist recorded the next 30 seconds. The Human Bullet free-fell. The wind screamed. The skin on Buckley's face stretched tight and the air rippled through his jowls. He plunged at 120 mph, but had no sensation of falling. He felt he was flying. There was a tug when the rainbow-colored rectangle spread above him. The howl of the wind disappeared and the only noise was Buckley's ragged cry, sounding like old gravel-throated Boston Celtic announcer Johnny Most on the famous night Havlicek stole the ball.
"That was unbelievable," he screamed as they floated. "What a rush! Uhhhhhh! Ahhhhh! AWESOME! Yeah! Yeah-hoo!"
Some 20 people, including Buckley's wife, Doreen, waited back on earth to greet him as he plopped into a grassy field. "I was happy people were getting a chance to see this, to support this. My mother's 82. She was crying; she was nervous, I think," he said. "The rush of air, that speed, though you really don't feel how fast you're going until the chute opens." He whispered, as if awed, "and then it's just like . . . wow. I didn't want to give the suit back."
Leo Buckley is 50s in body though sometimes feels older; he says he feels 30 in his soul. For a few seconds over Newport he entered a state that age cannot reach, because those numbers are meaningless two miles up, to a man moving like a bullet.
Your turn: Have you fulfilled a long-standing desire try something new?
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