Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

“Okay.”

The woman showed him where to put the car, and then she showed them their rooms. She smiled at Helen. “Anybody’d know right off you two are brother and sister, Miss Salter.”

Ben put the bags in the rooms. They were large and clean. He got the tarp out of the luggage trunk and covered the car. They ate in the small restaurant, and then they walked through the night back to the rooms.

She held out her hand and said, “Good night, Ben. And thanks for not trying to set up some kind of a situation. You’re sweet.”

“That’s a deadly adjective to apply to any guy, Helen.”

“Brother and sister. I guess we could be, the way we look.”

“But not the way I feel.”

“Please.”

“I guess that was a sort of automatic reflex. Defense against being called sweet.”

“Dick wrote that you were a nice guy, Ben.”

“Knowing Dick, I’m sure he wrote more than that.”

“Yes. I guess I can tell you because he said the same about me. He said you were unformed — that was the word he used, I think. An adult waiting to happen. He used to say that to me, and I never knew what he meant. It used to make me mad. I felt as grown up as anybody. I didn’t want to be patted on the head and told I was a good little girl. Now I know more about what he meant. But maybe not enough. Not as much as he knew. He would never have run from anything. Ever.”

She stood, her arms folded, leaning against her door. The headlights of the passing cars illumined her face briefly. A night breeze stirred her hair. She yawned. “I’m dead.”

“I can sleep too. Up early?”

“Early, Ben.”...

He went to bed and fell asleep at once, and woke up with a convulsive start. His watch showed it was only midnight. He tried to settle back into sleep, but it was no good. After a time he sat on the edge of the bed and lighted a cigarette. His mouth felt dry. He got a drink of water. This waiting was like before those first few missions. You knew you ought to sleep and yet you weren’t able to. He adjusted the blinds so he could look out at the highway. An occasional truck roared through the night, its running lights outlining its bulk. There was a curve down the road so that the lights of westbound traffic swept across the front of the court. There were metal tables and chairs out on the dark lawn. He saw the glow of a cigarette out there. When the next west-bound car came along, he looked closely and saw the light on her pale hair. He sat there for a time, and then got up and pulled on his trousers over his pajamas, put on his coat, slid bare feet into his shoes.

He walked slowly across the grass. When he was close he could see her clearly. “Helen.”

She gasped and turned sharply. “Ben! You scared me.”

“Sorry. Can’t you sleep either?”

“No.”

They kept their voices low. Dark cars were nuzzled up toward the rooms where the people slept. There was a dim light in the office, another in the restaurant. The stars looked cold and far away.

“I have to tell you something, Helen.”

“Yes?”

And so he told her carefully, told her all of it, as though, by being precise and objective, he could learn more about it himself. She listened in silence, asking no questions.

“You see,” he said, “I don’t know exactly what it was that, well, seemed to break. I thought I was afraid before I was shot down. That’s supposed to be standard, isn’t it? To be afraid and go ahead and do what you have to do anyway? But I wasn’t afraid, really, before that happened. I think Dick was really afraid all the time, but he could make himself do it. I can’t. It isn’t something you can think about. It’s after midnight now. So I’ve got twenty-four days left. It’s no good telling myself that when my leave is over I’ll trot down there and report like a good little tiger. That’s why I had to find you. We’re both running, Helen.”

She was silent for a long time. And then she put her hand out shyly and touched the back of his hand where it lay on the arm of the metal chair. “I know, Ben. I know exactly what it is. Survival, or something. I want to keep myself alive under any conditions. All those big words are empty words when you’re dead. I dream about — what happened to Denny. About the sounds his hands made, and the way she hung limp like a doll, so the other man had to grab her hair to hold her face up. And then that sound the bullet made when they shot at me. As if somebody hit the wall real hard with a little hammer, and it left a little hole in the window with a million cracks around it.” When she spoke again, her voice was angry. “What is it to me, anyway? What affair of mine?”

He didn’t know what to say to her. He guessed maybe you had to have something valid and good that you could think about advising anyone else.

Thunder began to rumble far down the valley, and the pale glow of lightning flickered below the horizon. The wind changed, and gusts whipped the corner of her robe.

They walked back toward their rooms. At the doorway he turned toward her and she came quickly into his arms. He had a strange feeling that he had held her this way before. She made a small sound in her throat and pressed her forehead against his cheek, and clung to him. The wind whipped her blonde hair against the side of his throat.

He kissed her but there was little meaning in it. It seemed as if what both of them wanted was to hold someone close, to shut out fear and loneliness with a stranger’s warmth.

He knew that she would surrender to him without protest, because she was, in her fear, enormously vulnerable. But because it would be achieved through fear, it would be bad and meaningless. And he knew how it would be in the morning: the evasive eyes, the guilt, the ruin of a relationship that seemed good.

He held her shoulders and said softly, “Sleep well, Helen.”

He felt her tremble, and then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek and went into her own room without speaking.

For a long time he lay staring up into the darkness. The hard rain came and the thunder banged, and then the storm moved on, and he went to sleep.

At breakfast they were shy with each other, and talked with false gaiety. They packed and headed west, planning to turn off Route 20 at Cazenovia and head for Syracuse. The morning air was sparkling bright and it made him think how it would be if he were starting off with this girl on such a morning with the whole world the way it used to be — back during the uncomplicated life of Benjamin Morrow. He could think of that other Morrow as a stranger now, and he knew how the other one would have reacted. Such a blonde would have been a prime target, very choice. And that other Morrow would have sneered at the complicated scruples of the Ben Morrow who had talked to the girl about fear last night.

A few miles from the motel he saw a state-trooper car go by him, headed in the opposite direction. He looked in the rear-vision mirror when he heard the squeal of tires and brakes, and he saw the car make a fast U turn on the two-lane road.

Helen looked back too. “After us?”

“I don’t know.” He felt tense. The sedan came after them fast. When it was behind them the siren made a warning growl.

“Oh, no!” she said.

“I’ve got to pull over. I’m not sure enough of this car to make a run for it.”

He turned into the shoulder. The sedan pulled in ahead of them and the big trooper got out quickly and came warily back, gun drawn. He motioned with the gun. “Out, you!”

Ben tried to smile and said, “Why the artillery?”

“Just get out and turn around. Then bend over and put your hands flat against the car.”

Ben obeyed. This was no traffic arrest. The trooper patted his clothing roughly. “Stay right there,” he ordered. “Get out, girl.”