Джон Макдональд: Flight of the Tiger

Davis got up. He grinned wryly. “The old lady is on a tear. We heard from our kid today. He got himself tattooed in Tokyo. Now it’s like I’m to blame. I’ll see you around sometime.” He gave them a mock salute and walked out into the rain.

“Nice guy,” Ben said.

“They’ve all been nice. Oh, Ben, I can’t believe that we can sit here and not have to be afraid.”

He didn’t answer. She was suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry, Ben, I forgot that you—”

“Let’s drop it.”

“Of course, Ben.”

She had a friend she could stay with, and after a phone call he took her there in a cab and sat for a time in the small apartment, feeling beat and weary. He telephoned from there and located an available room on the third call, a room at a good hotel. He said good night to Helen in the hall by the elevator.

“I’ll see you, Ben?”

“Sure. Sure.”

He checked into the hotel without luggage and they gave him one of those overnight kits. He lay in darkness and thought of the small plane and the sunlight and the colors. He thought of the plane as a toy, like one of those on a string on the end of a stick that you buy for children at a carnival. It was a fluttering plane; it was not a bomb that rode at the hot end of streaks of fire. When the fire went out, those jets had the glide angle of an iron pump handle. It had felt good for a few minutes, handling the little kite, but it meant nothing. It had been like a man afraid of guns daring to face up to a cap pistol. The tiger’s teeth had been pulled, his claws blunted. Helen knew that. It was no good pretending with her. It would never be any good hiding anything from her...

The next morning he checked out and took a train north to Rhinecliff. After lunch he crossed the river and went to the hospital in Kingston and saw John Cassidy. Cassidy’s eyes looked bright and young, and his handshake was firm. The bandages looked white against his face.

“Ben, you ought to hear Mike’s story of your exploit! I’m sorry I missed it. How’s Helen? Where is she? How did they treat you?”

Ben told him the whole story. John said the farm had been overrun by the curious, and probably still was, and that damage to the station wagon had been slight. “Why don’t you go over and move into the cabin, Ben?” he asked.

“I want to go down to Philadelphia and see my people.”

“I’ll be home tomorrow. Stay there tonight, why don’t you? Then I tell you what, Ben. We can get along fine with one car for a while. You go on up and pick up the MG and keep it until your leave is up.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“I insist. That’s a small enough favor. If it hadn’t been for you — well, you know what I keep thinking of.”

A day or two delay wouldn’t make much difference, Ben decided. “All right, John. And thanks.”

“I promise not to report it stolen.”

A nurse bustled in officiously and Ben had to leave. Over at the farm there were cars parked on the shoulder of the highway, people wandering around and pointing, making airplane motions with their hands. Ben paid the cabdriver. Mike met him at the door, his eyes filled with an embarrassing amount of adulation. Katey thanked him all over again, calmly enough at first, but then she had to turn away quickly. Ben felt as if there should be some way to explain to all three of the Cassidys that this was like a case of mistaken identity, that he felt as though he were representing someone else, as if he were receiving an award given in absentia.

Ben took over the cabin and John came home the next day. It was decided that on the following morning John and Mike would take him to Poughkeepsie in the station wagon in time to catch the advance Empire State Express at five minutes of ten. That would get him to Utica by a little after one, and he could make a bus connection down to Route 20 to pick up the MG. He took a long walk in the afternoon, and when he joined them for dinner, their good spirits brought him out of his depression for a time.

In the morning John and Mike drove him down to Poughkeepsie. Over John’s protests he bought his own ticket. He had John’s note to Captain Walther in his pocket. He waved at them as the train pulled out, and wondered why they should both stand there with such conspiratorial grins.

Five minutes later he knew why they had grinned so widely, when Helen said demurely, “Is this seat taken?”

He stared at her. She sat beside him and said, “It’s a lovely morning, Ben.”

“What on earth are you—”

“I phoned John yesterday afternoon. Let me see, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?”

“You can’t—”

She leaned toward him. “Keep that up and I’ll begin to think I’m not wanted, Lieutenant.”

“You’re wanted, but—”

She put her hand on his arm and was instantly serious. “Ben, if there’s any possible way I can help, I want to. Not as a returned favor, but just because I want to. Do you understand?”

“I guess I do.”

“And it’s all right?”

“Of course, Helen.”

She settled back in the seat. “Where are we going, then?”

He looked at her and saw the shyness in her eyes and saw her faint flush, and he knew that it had not been easy for her. He said slowly, “Philadelphia first, I guess. To see my people.”

“I’d like that. And then?”

“I don’t know.”

“When will you know?”

He turned in the seat and held her hands. “If you stay with me, there’s an off-chance that I might know. I might be able to go — where I’m supposed to go. When my leave’s up you could take the car back to John — though it would be a long trip. I mean, if you stay with me it seems as if, right now, I might be able to go back. I don’t mean to stay with me in any sense except — just to have you close and somebody to talk it out with and try to help me understand it. Sisterly, or whatever the hell you want to call it. I can’t be in love with you until I know about myself, and if it comes out right, I want to be.”

“I’d like that,” she said gravely.

The morning sun touched her hair. She was the golden girl. He released her hands. A feeling of strength had begun to grow inside him. If, together, they could keep that, it would be a better kind of courage than the kind he had lost. It would be the kind Dick had had, a courage that included a full awareness of mortality, not the kind that presupposed your own invulnerability.

It was then, in the high blue sky, that he saw a twin vapor trail, with a metal glint drawing it slowly forward. He sat with her hand in his, and watched that shining dot until he could no longer see it. The earth-bound train sped north, up the east bank of the Hudson.