The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [58]
A couple of time zones to the east, Bill Reinking rolled out of bed, careful as always not to disturb his wife. Cloyce was a notably late sleeper. Not many of those in a town like Gros Ventre, and he reflected on the distant passion that had brought this particular woman from satin bedcovers to the quilts they had shared for nearly two dozen years. She was all for any manner of bedding at the time. As was I.
This time of year first light detached itself from night in stubborn gray, and he put on his glasses to track down his clothes and shoes. Padding across to the window that gave a glimpse of horizon through the giant trunks of the cottonwoods, he checked the sky as usual, not that the weather of the moment meant anything in Montana.
The day ahead of him began cumbrously sorting itself out as he crept down the stairs—the county agent's session at the high school on food production for the war effort, all afternoon given over to typesetting the gleanings sent in by his rural correspondents, a Ladies' Aid potluck supper nominally nonpartisan where the Senator would just happen to whip through and speak his mind about the condition of the nation. By now he could forecast those indignant sentiments almost ahead of the words coming out of the Senator's formidable mouth, and the Senator no doubt could parrot off his dogged editorials before they were written. We're as bad as an old married couple.
That stray thought stung. He tried to yawn it away, stoking up the kitchen stove in the semidark to hurry the coffee. It was a terrible habit for a newspaper editor, rising at dawn after late nights. Yet he had always done so and figured he always would. The early bird gets the worm, but is that a balanced diet? Fumbling for a pencil and pad on the sideboard, he wrote that down to use as a column-bottom filler.
While the coffee perked, he put on his mackinaw and hat to go out and scrape the frost off the car windshield. Another bit of headstart that did not gain a soul much in the long run, but it was something to do. Besides, the dawn air brought him a little of Ben now that he was stationed at East Base once more. That rainbow of planes to Alaska and then Russia: any amount of time Ben put in where virginal aircraft instead of bullets were flying was to be prized. Praise be, Franklin D. I knew Lend-Lease was worth the abuse I took every week for being for it.
He paused bent over the whitened windshield, taking in the silence that ushered the slow change of morning light. As a newspaperman he had to hew to the necessary enlistment of all men's sons in this war against the evils of Hitler and Tojo, but as a father he could privately covet any interval of amnesty for Ben.
Scraping off another peel of frost, he paused again to listen. East Base started up even earlier than he himself did. It was an added habit now, delaying out here in the daybreak until he could hear the first distant sound of planes in transit.
His bunk was shaking and he wanted it to quit. Any motion made his head feel on fire, approximately to the roots of his hair.
When he finally unclenched his eyelids, Jake was standing over him with one big mitt of a hand