The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [99]
He looked up at her after a long time, almost bringing both eyes into alignment with the intensity of his gaze. She could see him making one of the decisions involved in discussing this with her and she maintained a strict neutrality, so as not to influence him. When he spoke, his voice was as empty of accent as his face was naked of defense. "And you think that this would be appropriate? There would be no suspicion," he said and then hesitated before saying, "of favoritism?"
"D.W., I wouldn’t have asked if I thought there was even a possibility of that." It’s okay, she wanted to say. He’s easy to love. I understand. "I think the others would approve and I believe it will mean a great deal to him. Spiritually." She cleared her throat then, embarrassed even to have said that word. "I hope you don’t mind my venturing into your purview here—"
D.W. waved that off. "Oh, hell, no. Course not. I trust your judgment. You’re much closer to him than I ever was, Anne." He looked at her to see if she accepted that and then rubbed his eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot in his pale, disheveled face. "Okay. Fine by me. He goes first. Assumin’ it looks safe to get out! We may get down there and decide it’s too damn dangerous for anyone to risk it."
"Oh, D.W.! Oh, my darling man!" Anne cried. "If you even think about not letting us out of the lander, I will chew straight through that plane. You just try to stop me."
D.W. laughed, and she decided against hugging him but held out her hand. He took it and, to her complete astonishment, brought it to his lips and kissed it, looking crookedly at her the whole time. "Good night, Miz Edwards," he said, Southern and gallant as he could be, dressed in sweats and floating in midair. "Sleep well, y’hear?"
ALL OF THEM, in their own ways, prepared that night both for death and for a kind of resurrection. Some confessed, some made love, some slept exhausted and dreamed of childhood friends or long-forgotten moments with grandparents. They all, in their own ways, tried to let their fear go, to reconcile themselves to their lives prior to this night, and to what might come tomorrow.
For some of them, there had been a turning point that now seemed justified, however painful the decision might have been. For Sofia Mendes, a way to make peace with what, even now, she could only think of as "the days before Jaubert." For Jimmy Quinn, the end of worry that he was wrong to leave his mother, and right to claim his life as his own.
For Marc Robichaux and Alan Pace, there was a sense that they had lived their lives the right way and confidence that God had recognized their artistry as the prayer they had always meant the work to be, and there was hope that He would let them serve Him now.
For Anne and George Edwards, for D. W. Yarbrough and Emilio Sandoz, this voyage had given meaning to random acts, and to all the points where they had done this and not that, chosen one thing and not another, to all their decisions, whether carefully thought out or ill considered.
I would do it all again, each of them thought.
And when the time came, each of them privately felt a calm ratification of those reconciliations, even as the noise and heat and buffeting built to a terrifying violence, as it seemed less and less likely that the plane would hold together, more and more likely that they’d be burned alive in the atmosphere of a planet whose name they did not know. I am where I want to be, they each thought. I am grateful to be here. In their own ways, they all gave themselves up to God’s will and trusted that whatever happened now was meant to be. At least for the moment, they all fell in love with God.
But Emilio Sandoz fell hardest of all, letting his fear and doubt go almost physically, his hands opening as everyone else clutched at controls or straps or armrests or someone else’s hand. And when the mind-numbing scream of the engines diminished and then fell off to a silence almost as deafening, it seemed