Her Last Flight(105)
Fine, said Morrow. But if he comes back empty-handed, I’m going to put on a flight suit myself and join him.
On the morning of the fourth day, a noise came from the southeast. For some reason Irene heard it first. She told Sam to wake up, somebody was coming, an airplane was coming. Sam crawled to the emergency kit for the flare gun and went outside. In his fatigue and dehydration, he nearly misfired it. Then it went off and sent an arc of red smoke through the air. The noise shifted a moment later.
“I think he’s seen us,” Sam said. By now, his voice was like the rasp of a saw. Irene couldn’t really speak at all. As she listened, she perceived that this airplane had a single engine, and that it was not in the best of condition. A moment later, the ship came into view through the open hatch, flashing in the sun. Irene watched it approach them in an acute descent. Whoever he was, he was a good pilot who understood the exact limit of the airplane’s capabilities. She thought all this without emotion, without any joy, because joy was now impossible. The ship landed two hundred yards away in a roar of propeller blades, a plume of fine desert sand. Seconds later, the hatch opened, and a man jumped to the ground, followed by another man.
At first, Irene couldn’t see their faces, because the morning sun struck fiercely on the fuselage and cast halos around them. They were both running. In seconds the halos faded and Irene, struggling upright, could at last see their faces.
The first man was her husband, George Morrow.
The second was Raoul Velázquez.
Hanalei, Hawai’i
November 1947
By the time we return to Hanalei, dawn is breaking to the east behind a bank of gathering clouds, and the wind is picking up. I seem to have forgotten my fear of flying, or maybe I no longer care what happens to me. The bumps and jerks of the airplane induce no more panic than the twists of a roller coaster. Instead I stare out the window at the clouds around me, the wondrous, monstrous three dimensions of them, the delicate pattern of wave meeting shore, the infinite beauty of the earth, and I begin to see why man must fly.
We drive back silently to Coolibah down the empty road. When we reach the driveway, Lindquist stops the car and reaches into the back for the cardboard box she was carrying earlier.
“This is for you,” she says.
I peek inside and close the lid swiftly. “Thank God. I thought it was the cat.”
“Sandy? Good Lord, of course not. I’m going to pick her up at the vet’s right now. I wanted her cremated.” She puts her hands back on the steering wheel and stares at the pale house before us. “Tell Olle where I’ve gone, will you? Ask him to take the children to school this morning?”
There’s something funny about the way she says this. I sit there by her side, hand on the door handle, not quite ready to open it. She’s the one who breaks the silence.
“I appreciate your forbearance, by the way.”
“Forbearance?”
“Not killing me.” She tilts her head in the direction of my jacket pocket. “I wasn’t sure what you meant to do with that.”
“I wasn’t sure, either, to be perfectly honest.”
“I guess you had every right to hate me, growing up. It was either hate me or hate Sam, and I’d rather you hated me.”
I open the door and step out. “You’ve got it all wrong, Foster,” I say, through the open window. “The person I hated was myself.”
Captain Leo has already left for the docks. I can tell because his moped is gone from its usual spot, near the gazebo. I march indoors to the noise of the Buick, turning around to head back down the highway toward Lihue. I make straight for the library with my cardboard box.
Now, I forget. Have I described this library? Because it’s certainly not in the usual style, if you know what I mean. That masculine leather-and-mahogany atmosphere you expect to seep from the cornices? Why, there aren’t even any cornices! The walls are covered by simple shelves, containing nothing but books—Lindquist is not the knickknack sort of person, she hasn’t got the time of day for objects that offer no practical purpose—and the furniture is spare, except for an armchair near the window that looks as if it was meant to sleep in. The liquor cabinet is built into the wall, not far from the desk. You open the door and rummage through all the bottles until you find the right poison. The owner walks in just as I’m walking away with a nice double bourbon.
“Where’s Irene?” he demands.
“Relax. She’s alive and well. She took me on a little trip last night to unburden herself. Now she’s headed to the vet to pick up the cat’s ashes. She asked me to tell you to deliver the tadpoles to school this morning.”
He nods to the box, which I’ve laid on the sofa table. “What’s that?”
“Some photographs she wanted me to have.”
A frown drifts across his face. “Have you seen them?”
“Not yet. I thought they might require a little fortification.” I jiggle the glass. “Say, you look as if you could use a little fortification yourself. Can I pour you another?”
We end up side by side on the sofa, drinking a pair of doubles at six o’clock in the morning, as we stare at the cardboard box of photographs Irene gave me. Now, another thing I should have mentioned earlier. For all its grace and homelike comfort, Coolibah is curiously sparse of photographs. Believe me, I notice these things. Most people will have far too many photos cramming the walls and shelves and every available surface; it’s the curse of the modern home, in my opinion. All those framed images lined up in rows, like soldiers, and not one of them in twenty shows any regard for form or light or subject or composition, even by accident; they’re just jumbles of anonymous, blurred, badly lit, badly dressed people or—worse yet!—that deadly plague, the landscape. A photograph should be a thing of beauty, in my opinion, and if it’s just there to recall a family reunion or show off some delightful holiday you took to San Diego or remember how Aunt Mildred looked at her high school graduation, why, stick the old thing in an album so it doesn’t steal the limelight from something worth looking at.