you'd be pesky enough to come back here, though.'
'You didn't answer my question, Mr. Peterson,' Moss said. Peterson went right on not answering it, too. With a sigh, Moss dug in his pocket. He pulled out a twenty-dollar goldpiece. After examining the double eagle for a moment, he let it fall on the counter. It rang sweetly. 'You didn't answer my question, Mr. Peterson,' he repeated.
The storekeeper studied the coin as if he'd never seen any like it before. Likely he hadn't; not much U.S. gold would have got up here. The eagle in front of crossed swords on the reverse was close to the emblem with which U.S. aeroplanes flew. The legend below held one word: REMEMBRANCE. Peterson scooped up the double eagle and stuck it in his pocket. 'She never said you were a rich fool of a Yank.'
'Thanks so much,' Moss replied. 'Now will you please answer what I asked you?'
'Nope,' Peterson said. For a moment, Moss thought that meant he wouldn't answer. The American wondered if he could get back his goldpiece without killing the storekeeper. As he was making up his mind to try, Peterson slowly went on, 'No, Isaac ain't come back. That should make her fall right straight into your arms, don't you reckon?'
'Nope,' Moss said, imitating him. What Laura Secord had said the last time he'd seen her still scorched his memory. What was he doing here, anyway? Without another word, he spun on his heel and went back out to his automobile.
Winter slapped him in the face as soon as he opened the door to the general store. The sweat the red-hot stove had brought out on his forehead promptly started to freeze. He got into the Bucephalus and stabbed the starter button, silently thanking God he didn't have to stand in the snowy street cranking the engine to life.
He drove out to the aerodrome; it was from there that he knew how to get to the farm Laura Secord had been running. He had some trouble finding the base from which he and his comrades had flown against the Canadians and British. They'd lived under canvas, and the canvas had moved along with the front. But he'd served in these parts through a winter, and so the ground began to look familiar after a while. One field, plainly rutted despite the snow on it, sent chills through him that had nothing to do with the weather. He'd jounced along there any number of times, taking off on missions and coming back afterwards. Now-how strange! — it was only a field again.
It was the field he needed, though. Instead of casting about, he drove confidently once he'd found it. Five minutes later, he pulled off a road even more rutted than the field and up a narrow lane that led to a farmhouse and barn and a couple of smaller outbuildings. The Bucephalus' brakes reluctantly brought him to a halt not far from a stump with a hatchet driven into it. By that, and by the stains on the wood, he guessed it did duty for a chopping block.
He got out of the motorcar. Before he could head for the farmhouse door as he intended, a figure muffled to the eyes walked out of the barn. 'Who's coming to see me in a fancy automobile?' The demand was sharp and curious at the same time.
Hearing Laura Secord's voice for the first time in a year and a half sent a shiver through him, as if he'd taken hold of a live electrical wire. The first time he tried to answer, all that came out was a hoarse cough. He felt sixteen years old again, calling on a girl for the first time. His hands and feet couldn't suddenly have grown large and clumsy, but they felt as if they had. He took a deep breath and spoke again: 'It's Jonathan Moss, Miss Secord.'
He'd forgotten her married name-done his best to blot it from his mind. He wondered if she'd forgotten him altogether. He hadn't seen her that many times, and he'd been far from the only American flier who'd seen her. But her sharp gasp said she remembered. 'The mad Yank!' she exclaimed.
'I don't think so,' he said, his breath steaming with every word.
'Well, you most certainly are,' she said. 'Not mad for being a Yank-I don't suppose you can help that-but mad for coming up here again. Why on earth did you? No matter how daft you are, you can't have wanted to see this part of the world again-or can you?'
'No, I didn't come here for that.' Moss took another deep breath. He wished he could take a drink, too. 'I came up here to see you.'
'Oh, dear God,' Laura Secord said quietly. She gathered herself. 'Didn't you listen to a word I told you the last time you came here? If that's not madness, I don't know what is. You should have stayed wherever you were and gone on doing whatever you were doing.'
'I did that,' Jonathan Moss said. 'For more than a year, I did that. When I couldn't do it any more, I came.' He hesitated, then went on, 'I heard in Arthur that your husband didn't come home. I'm very sorry, for whatever that may be worth to you.'
'You decided to come up here without even knowing that?' she said in open astonishment, and he nodded. Maybe he was mad after all. She remarked, 'He would have shot you, you know. He was very good with a rifle even before he went into the Army.' Moss didn't say anything. He could think of nothing to say. Had she told him to go then, he would have got back into his motorcar and driven away without another word. Instead, she continued, 'Come inside and have a cup of tea. I wouldn't turn out a mongrel dog in this weather before he had a cup of tea.'
That did not strike him as the warmest commendation of his personal charms, if any, but it was kinder than anything she'd said to him the last time he was here. He followed her up the stairs and into the farmhouse. The stove was going in the kitchen, but not like the one in Peterson's general store. Laura Secord shoveled in more coal, filled the teapot from a bucket, and set it on the stove. As she busied herself in readying cups and tea. she kept shaking her head. Doing his best to make light of things, Moss said, 'I really am a harmless fellow.'
'If you really were a harmless fellow, you would have been shot down,' she retorted. Then she pointed to a chair by the table. 'Sit, if you care to. I can get you bread and butter.' He sat and nodded. She served him, then tended to the tea when the pot started whistling.
No matter what he might have expected, the tea wasn't particularly good. It was hot. He gulped it, savoring the warmth it brought. It helped unfreeze his tongue, too: he said, 'I came to tell you that, if there's ever anything you need-anything at all- let me know, and I'll take care of it.'
'A knight in shining armor?' Her eyebrows rose.
Moss shook his head. 'I thought of myself like that at the start of the war: a knight of the air, I mean. It didn't last, of course. War's a filthy business no matter how you fight it. But I'll do that for you. So help me God, I will. You're-special to me. I don't know how else to put it.' He was more afraid of saying love than he had been of facing machine-gun bullets from a Sopwith Pup.
'You'd better go now,' Laura Secord said. She wasn't reviling him, as she had the last time he'd come to her, but there was no give in her voice, either. 'You mean to be kind; I'm sure you mean to be kind. But I don't see how I can take you up on… any part of that generous offer. When I see you, I see your country, too, and your country has destroyed mine. Find yourself an American girl, one who can forgive you for that.' She laughed. 'Melodramatic, isn't it? But life is sometimes.'
He got to his feet. He'd known from the beginning the odds were against him-to put it mildly. 'Here.' He pulled a scrap of paper and pencil from his pocket and scrawled down three lines. 'This is my address. What I said still goes. If you ever need me, let me know.' He turned and left as fast as he could, so he wouldn't have to watch her crumple up the paper and throw it away. Soon he was driving back toward Arthur, and then back past Arthur, toward the life he'd done his best to toss out the window. He kept telling himself he was lucky. He had a devil of a time making himself believe it.
'This feels good,' Reggie Bartlett said to Bill Foster as the two of them strolled through Richmond. 'We haven't done it as much lately as we used to.'
'Time has a way of getting on,' Foster said, and Reggie nodded. His friend went on, 'And we'd stop in a saloon for a beer afterwards, too. When a beer costs twenty-five dollars instead of five cents, stopping in a saloon doesn't seem like such a bully idea any more. My pay's gone up, sure, but it hasn't gone up as fast as prices have.'
'It never does,' Bartlett said with mournful certainty. This time, Bill Foster nodded. Reggie added, 'And you've got to watch your money nowadays. After all, you're going to be a married man this time next month, and Sally's the sort of girl who deserves the best.'
'I only hope I'll be able to give it to her.' Foster's voice held worry. 'How am I supposed to watch my money? All I can do is watch it go away. A dollar I put in the bank at the start of the year isn't worth a quarter now, even with interest.'
