فصل پنجاه و دوم

CHAPTER 52

Graham smiled when he felt the jet’s big push rocket him up and away from St. Louis, turning across the sun’s path south and east at last toward home.

Molly and Willy would be there.

“Let’s don’t jack around about who’s sorry for what. I’ll pick you up in Marathon, kiddo,” she said on the phone.

In time he hoped he would remember the few good moments - the satisfaction of seeing people at work who were deeply committed to their skills. He supposed you could find that anywhere if you knew enough about what you were watching.

It would have been presumptuous to thank Lloyd Bowman and Beverly Katz, so he just told them on the telephone that he was glad to have worked with them again.

One thing bothered him a little: the way he felt when Crawford turned from the telephone in Chicago and said, “It’s Gateway.”

Possibly that was the most intense and savage joy that had ever burst in him. It was unsettling to know that the happiest moment of his life had come then, in that stuffy jury room in the city of Chicago. When even before he knew, he knew.

He didn’t tell Lloyd Bowman how it felt; he didn’t have to. “You know, when his theorem rang the cherries, Pythagoras gave one hundred oxen to the Muse,” Bowman said. “Nothing sweeter, is there? Don’t answer - it lasts better if you don’t spend it talking.” Graham grew more impatient the closer he got to home and to Molly. In Miami he had to go out on the apron to board Aunt Lula, the old DC-3 that flew to Marathon.

He liked DC-3’s. He liked everything today.

Aunt Lula was built when Graham was five years old and her wings were always dirty with a film of oil that blew back from the engines. He had great confidence in her. He ran to her as though she had landed in a jungle clearing to rescue him.

Islamorada’s lights were coming on as the island passed under the wing. Graham could still see whitecaps on the Atlantic side. In minutes they were descending to Marathon.

It was like the first time he came to Marathon. He had come aboard Aunt Lula that time too, and often afterward he went to the airfield at dusk to watch her coming in, slow and steady, flaps down, fire flickering out her exhausts and all the passengers safe behind their lighted windows.

The takeoffs were good to watch as well, but when the old airplane made her great arc to the north it left him sad and empty and the air was acrid with goodbyes. He learned to watch only the landings and hellos.

That was before Molly.

With a final grunt, the airplane swung onto the apron. Graham saw Molly and Willy standing behind the fence, under the floodlights.

Willy was solidly planted in front of her. He’d stay there until Graham joined them. Only then would he wander along, examining whatever interested him. Graham liked him for that.

Molly was the same height as Graham, five feet ten inches. A level kiss in public carries a pleasant jolt, possibly because level kisses usually are exchanged in bed.

Willy offered to carry his suitcase. Graham gave him the suit bag instead.

Riding home to Sugarloaf Key, Molly driving, Graham remembered the things picked out by the headlights, imagined the rest.

When he opened the car door in the yard, he could hear the sea. Willy went into the house, holding the suit bag on top of his head, the bottom flapping against the backs of his legs.

Graham stood in the yard absently brushing mosquitoes away from his face.

Molly put her hand on his cheek. “What you ought to do is come on in the house before you get eaten up.”

He nodded. His eyes were wet.

She waited a moment longer, tucked her head and peered up at him, wiggling her eyebrows. “Tanqueray martinis, steaks, hugging and stuff. Right this way . . . and the light bill and the water bill and lengthy conversations with my child,” she added out of the side of her mouth.