It’s only when she’s on her way back to the truck that she realizes how it can go wrong: if any of those law enforcement agencies is in Bert’s pocket they’ll warn him off in advance and he’ll simply reschedule the delivery for another time and place. Her effort will have gone for nothing.
But it’s worth the try.
70
Sunday night after nearly a full day’s delay caused by the need to find a garage that was open and capable of replacing a bad front wheel bearing she kicks off her shoes and dances with Doug Hershey to the jukebox in a roadside joint in Wyoming. It’s a bluegrass sort of record with a solid three-quarter beat by someone she’s never heard of-John Starling-but she likes the music. The lyric is something about a hobo on a freight train to heaven.
She feels the steady pressure of his hand in the small of her back. They move unhurriedly to the three-quarter beat and he keeps a little polite distance between them so that she is reminded of the proprieties of the junior prom at the base school in Darmstadt.
She likes the gentility in him: he wants to be a friend-he doesn’t seem to be on the make.
Calmed by the music she’s thinking: I deserve a good break just now. I deserve a friend.
You trusted Charlie too. Remember that.
The unanticipated thought darkens her mood. She feels vaguely ashamed of it.
All of a sudden Doug says, “Takes two to tangle.”
She rears back. “What?”
“I was just thinking. It takes two to tangle. Cute line for a song.”
Past his arm she has one eye on the baby who sleeps in her new blanket on the vinyl seat of the booth. Ellen spent the whole day talking incessantly, commenting on everything in the truck and everything that went by outside. The baby has always been singularly curious about the world around her. Maybe she’s going to grow up to be a scientist-or a poet. But first she’s going to have to learn to speak in real words.
The record ends. Something else starts playing-too fast to dance to unless you’re wired to a high-voltage generator-and they return to the booth and their iced teas. He says, “Tell me about your friend and his airplane again.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe you left out something.”
She feels petulant. “He bugged out on me.”
“Yes, but why? Maybe he had to.”
“There was room. He could have landed.”
“Where was the helicopter then?”
“It went climbing up out of the way.”
“Strange thing to do, don’t you think?”
She squirts lemon into the tea and fishes for seeds with her spoon. She’s beginning to like the stuff.
“I thought so at the time. But whatever they had in mind, they left the runway wide open for Charlie. He could have picked us up. He didn’t. That’s the bottom line.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not. I keep coming back to what you said about afterward. When you kept looking up and you’d see old Charlie up there dancing around the sky with the helicopter.”
“It looked like some sort of dogfight.”
“Sure. He was distracting the helicopter. How big’s that helicopter?”
“You can get four people in it.”
“That’s pretty small. So it’s not too fast. Your friend Charlie could have just put on the throttle and his airplane could’ve run right away from them. But he hung around and kept playing cat and mouse with the chopper. You think he did that for fun?”
“I have no idea.” She fixes the baby’s blanket.
“If I was inclined to give my friend the benefit of the doubt I’d have to guess maybe he was trying to make that chopper mad enough to keep chasing him around the sky-so it couldn’t find you and the baby. You think you’d still been able to get away from those guys on the ground if the helicopter had been right up there keeping watch on you all the way?”
Her fingers pluck at the blanket. “I didn’t-I never thought of that.” She feels defensive. “It doesn’t change the fact he ran away and left us there.”
“Maybe he figured you had a better chance on the ground.”
“But that’s just not true. If you knew what we went through-”
“If I was that helicopter pilot and I saw this airplane coming in and I wanted to stop him, I’d let him go right ahead and land. I’d figure I had a lot better chance if he’s on the ground than if he’s in the air. In the air he’s a lot faster than I am.”
“We could have taken off. I’ve seen Charlie deal with obstacles on the runway. It’s part of the students’ emergency training. He could have bounced the plane right over their Bronco if they’d tried to get in the way.”
“All the helicopter had to do was hover directly above Charlie’s airplane. He’d have been pinned-might as well be nailed down. There’s no Cessna in the world could take off against that downdraft.”
Something in her eyes. She grabs a paper napkin out of the dispenser and presses it against her eyelid.
She hears him say: “I think Charlie must have seen what they were up to. Maybe he waved himself off and suckered the helicopter into that game of tag because he figured it was the best chance he could give you.”
“You men stick together, don’t you. How about the way he never came back to look for us.”
“Sure-and lead them right to you.”
“Damn it, you’re on his side, you don’t know. You weren’t there. He ran out on me.”
“You want to be mad at him, don’t you. Makes things easier. Helps you prove you don’t need anybody. You can get along by yourself. The hell with Charlie, he chickened out so you don’t have to think about him any more. You want to look at me a minute?”
She looks up reluctantly.
His big eyes sorrow at her. “Look how he betrayed you. You’re here. You’ve got what you came for. You got the baby and you’re on your way home.”
She wipes her eye again and examines the napkin closely as if to single out the offending particle. After a while she looks up. “You son of a bitch.” Then she laughs.
They get in the truck. As she hands the sleeping baby to Doug for a moment and prepares to climb into the bunk her foot slips, dislodging the shotgun. It tips over with a bit of a clatter. “Oh dear. Sorry.”
“Safety catch is on. It’s okay, no danger. I’ll put it back. Go ahead.”
She gets settled. He puts the baby down beside her and picks up the capsized shotgun, wedging it back in place. “All set? Nighty-night.”
When they drive out there’s a highway patrol car at the curb and she sees a khaki-uniformed trooper in the phone booth. It isn’t clear whether he’s watching the truck depart.
She sleeps soundly in the bunk behind the seats, lying on her side with the baby in a gentle one-arm cradle. She’s used to the growl and shudder of the truck now.
Somewhere around dawn they cross the border into Utah. The baby has decided to cry for a while, probably in general protest-going on strike as it were. The racket is piercing and she tries to quiet Ellen but the kid isn’t having a bottle or a pacifier or any gentling at all. Her arms and legs keep windmilling petulantly.
Doug keeps looking in the big mirror outside his window.
The baby’s caterwauling subsides at last. Grudgingly the little mouth agrees to pout around the pacifer.
“Is there something in the mirror?”
“Came out of an airport road back there. Been behind us half an hour.”
She leans forward until she can see alongside the trailer through the mirror on her side. As they go into a bend it comes in sight back there-a big station wagon a little way behind, keeping pace.
“It looks like just one person in it-the driver.”
“Probably using us for a pace car,” Doug says. “Sometimes they do that. Keeps them awake or keeps them from speeding, I don’t know. Maybe some people just get nervous blazing their own trail. Hell, if it was trouble he’d have caught up by now, I guess.”