Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

Ben had been in the barracks along with five or six others when this Russell guy had come in to pack up. They had continued their conversation, making it a bit louder. Russell had not looked at any of them while packing. Ben remembered how uncomfortable they had all felt, as though they were forced to watch something embarrassing, like the time Brandon had cuffed his wife around in the club for feeding too much money to the slots.

Very subdued. Russell had walked to the door, and turned with rigid shoulders and absolutely no expression and said, “So long, guys.”

They had all answered at once, making it, out of embarrassment, too loud and too cheery. They were silent after he left, until Tex said. “There goes the luckiest man in Florida. If I had any fool sense I’d go with him.”

And they all agreed that was so, and they all knew it was not so, and that night Tex had got surly drunk. Ten days later Tex had cut it too fine in gunnery practice and tripped his wing against the water of the Gulf of Mexico. At five hundred miles per hour water is like concrete. The ball of flame rolled a quarter of a mile across the blue water before it slowed enough to hiss out and sink. The flight leader radioed the crash boat, took another look, and told them to never mind.

Now Ben saw himself walking, unmasked, down the aisle of a barracks, with the silent men sitting on the beds watching him. The handle of the bag cut into the palm of his hand. The door was a hundred miles away.

He knew he could not face that. He knew he could not endure that public shame. Nor could he repair whatever it was inside him that had snapped. And so the only escape was never to report. First they’d call it AWOL and then, later, desertion. There were twenty-eight days left. It was time to plan what he would do. He had more money on him than he’d ever carried around before.

He paid for his drinks and went back through three cars to his roomette. He turned on the light and slid the mirrored door shut. He had got used to the mustache he had grown while he was flying, and now his face looked oddly naked without it. He had shaved it off in San Francisco, at the hotel, the night before his leave officially started. There were jobs where you didn’t have to be fingerprinted, didn’t have to have papers.

Going to New York had been an impulse; it was MacLane’s town. Now he remembered the picture of Helen MacLane — of a sweet-faced, solemn-faced blonde in a tailored suit striding down a city sidewalk. Dick MacLane had once said he didn’t like pictures of people smiling. Now she was a stranger bereaved. Ben had her New York address, but he wondered if perhaps she had gone back to her family’s place in Ohio when she heard about MacLane — that had been ten months ago.

No, she wouldn’t do that. He realized now that he was going to see her. And in realizing it, he knew that it had been in the back of his mind all along. He’d be at Grand Central Terminal at nine. He’d find a place to stay and then go see her. If she was like Dick, she’d be somebody to talk to.

Dick had called her “the golden girl.” Maybe going to see her was wrong. It might be sticky and grotesque and unpleasant.

Ben called three hotels from the station; they were all full. He checked his bag in a coin locker and went out into the chill Manhattan morning.

There was a strange feeling of unreality in looking at the busy traffic and being in the middle of the turmoil and confusion of the city, among the hurrying dead-faced people. It was strange to think that New York had been just like this on all the mornings when he’d been taking off back there in Korea, slamming straight up with that gut-wrenching, whistling roar, going off to hunt across the stone hills, across the metal ribbons of the rivers, riding high. It was funny how you couldn’t see the war from up there — just the hills and rivers and dusty threads of road, and the clouds down below, flattened close to the land. You were up there, and nothing seemed to move. Your plane hung motionless in the sky while the earth turned slowly underneath, and the only reality was a neighboring wing tip, frozen, rock-steady.

These city people had not known how it was, and yet it seemed all right that they shouldn’t. You couldn’t mix the two worlds. He walked slowly and then stepped out of the heavy pedestrian traffic and leaned against a gray wall near a window display of leather and cutlery and watched the people. The young girls moved quickly on their high heels and there were many men with brief cases. He felt suspended on the strangeness of the city, not yet part of it, the way a needle can be gingerly floated on water, supported by surface tension.

He went into a restaurant where he could sit at the counter and have a late breakfast. He ate and thought about telephoning Helen MacLane, and felt an odd tremor of eagerness. He shouldn’t be feeling that way. He saw where the telephone booth was, and he made himself take his time over a second cup of coffee. Even though it was Saturday, she probably wouldn’t be home at this time of day. MacLane had said she did some modeling, said that was how he had met her, through the small advertising agency where he had just been made assistant copy chief the week before they called him back into the service.

Ben found the number in the book: Richard A. MacLane, a 64th Street address. He called, but there was no answer.

He got a handful of change from the cashier and went back to the telephone and placed a call to Philadelphia. Leah, his stepmother, answered and became warmly excited at the sound of his voice. He talked to Leah, to his father, to his hero-worshiping half brother and two half sisters. His father came back on the line and said, “How soon are you coming down, son? Today?”

“Soon. I guess. I’ll let you know. There’s — some people I want to see.”

He knew his father detected the restraint. “Well, don’t wait too long. The kids want to see you. So do I.”

“Okay, Dad. I’ll let you know.”

After he hung up he went back to the counter for another cup of coffee. He knew his hands trembled a bit. He could imagine how it would be later when his family was questioned about his failure to report. “And how did your son act when you saw him, Mr. Morrow?”

“He seemed the same as always. A little tense, maybe, but that would be understandable, wouldn’t it?”

“So far as you know, he planned to report when his leave was over?”

“Yes.”

Ben could see all that clearly, but he could not visualize where he would be. The world would end when the twenty-seven days were gone.

He wondered where this idea of running away had started. Maybe it had begun on a half-forgotten playground, with a deft avoiding of a scrap, because the other kid was bigger. Maybe he had saved face by starting a quarrel with somebody easier to handle. Maybe he had saved pride by forgetting the whole incident as quickly as possible.

To think of it as just a lack of courage was an oversimplification. MacLane would understand that. Somehow Ben’s conditioning had failed him, had slipped aside like a shield and left him naked. If that was true, then the inference was that he had never been completely tested before, and thus had never known how quickly the breaking point could be reached. He had crashed in a trainer once, but he’d been too busy that time to think about anything. But in Korea the slow descent of the chute had given him time to think, and that was what was bad. He’d had time to think of how thin his skin was, how warm and tight over the little white nerve endings. After MacLane’s talks the ship had begun to feel strange under his hands, and all the fliers had begun to look like strangers.

And he remembered how everything had been so orderly and uncomplicated at MacDill. That was when he had had the red convertible, and they used to take the girls over to Clearwater. That was when you knew you were a little bit better than any other breed of man. You were a tiger.