• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Today Guy pumped him for the story, and Marshall stayed for a long time, telling Guy about hiding out in Paris during the war. Guy listened as though he was turning over a problem in his mind.

Finally Guy said, “I have often heard the older people say to the younger ones, ‘Il vous faudrait une bonne guerre’—you need a good war. They meant so we could understand the hardship of life. But the ones who were résistants would not say that. They were disgusted by war.” He paused and stared into the labyrinth of his store.

“I would not wish a war on my child,” Guy said.

WAITING FOR NICOLAS’S NEXT REPORT, Marshall passed a few days uneventfully, watching himself settle into some vague routines. In the mornings he ate cornflakes or eggs in his kitchen, then went to the tabac up the street for a double express. He liked it better than his own experimental brews. He bought bread from the boulangerie, lugged his laundry to a woman down the block, explored the neighborhood. He walked through the corner church whose bells he heard so frequently. It was the Saint-Pierre de Montrouge, at place Victor Basch. The names were just words to him. He made a circuit of the pews and altars, but he did not know what to look for. He explored Montmartre, ate a croque monsieur at a sidewalk table, and mounted the steps of the Sacré Coeur but didn’t go inside. After buying a small TV from the Everything Store, he found a news-debate program he enjoyed and was pleased that he could more or less follow the fast-talking Frenchmen. He rediscovered jumping jacks and push-ups. He couldn’t find anywhere to buy a pack of peanuts.

At the bank, he changed another two hundred dollars into franc notes. Then reluctantly he arranged to meet Gordon Webb on his next stopover in Paris.

23.

WHEN THEY MET IN THE LOBBY OF THE PAN AM CREW HOTEL, Gordon Webb saluted Marshall and invited him for a drink in the bar. Wearing khakis and a polo shirt, he looked ready for a round of golf. At first Marshall didn’t notice a resemblance between Gordon and the resolute pilot of the Dirty Lily, but later he heard Lieutenant Webb’s voice in Gordon’s guffaw. The kid had a loud laugh, just like his father.

“Well, Marshall Stone,” Gordon said after they had been served drinks. “I tell you, right now I’m bored with airline flying. I miss all that shaky-do flying I did in ’Nam! I bet you miss those Big-Ass Birds.”

“The B-17 wasn’t very shaky-do, not like you mean in a fighter.”

“You’re putting me on. I’ve seen films of 17s damn near doing rolls.”

“Well, maybe,” Marshall said. “But you can bet those crews needed to wash out their shorts when they got back to base.”

“That’s a joke,” he added when Gordon didn’t respond.

Gordon said, “I’m thirty-eight. I did three tours in ’Nam. I signed on with Pan Am five years ago. After flying reconnaissance, the airline is like milk runs. Pretty dull.”

“Times have changed,” Marshall said, smearing water from his glass around on the table.

“I flew the fastest. I flew recon. I flew the Voodoo, the One-Oh-Wonder.” Gordon made sweeping, swirling motions with his hands, a bird angling and diving.

For a while, Gordon described his hairiest flights in the F-101, and Marshall found himself both envious and eager to quit the subject. He glanced intermittently at the TV screen—the largest he had seen in Paris—that hovered above the zinc bar. Gordon’s voice drowned out the TV and the quiet conversations of the others in the room. The waiters scurried past unobtrusively.

At last, with his second drink, Gordon asked about his father’s last flight. Marshall remembered how he had taken over the plane because he thought Webb had the jim-jams. This was not what he told Gordon.

24.

IT WAS A TENSE MISSION, BUT MARSHALL WAS GEARED UP FOR IT. Rocking and swaying, he rode the rolling air as the formation of nearly a thousand fully loaded heavy bombers clawed their way to Frankfurt. The Dirty Lily behaved herself. The formation was so huge—a great dragon, a sky serpent, miles and miles