“He’s right, you know.”
Jake turned and looked down the long, straight driveway- Tar- kington was still going, marching for the road, his head up and shoulders back. “Yeah.”
“Go. Take him with you. Go.”
“You going to be okay?”
“Yes. Just go.”
Jake started the car, turned it around and went down the drive- way. He slowed to a crawl alongside Toad, who kept walking. “Get in.”
Tarkington ignored him. He was chewing on his lower Up.
“Get in the car, Lieutenant, or I will court-martial you, so help me God!”
Tarkington stopped and looked at Grafton behind the wheel. He hesitated, then opened the passenger door and climbed in.
As Jake started the car rolling again he glanced in the rearview mirror. In front of the huge mansion covered with ivy, Caplinger was still sitting in the gravel with his head down.
Three miles down the road Toad spoke. “Why did you stay in the navy?”
“Some things are worth fighting for.”
Toad sat silently, his eyes on the road, for a long time. Finally he said, ‘Tm sorry.”
“Everyone’s sorry. We’re born sorry, we spend our life apolo- gizing, and we die sorry. Sorry for all the guys with their names on the Wall. Sorry for the silly bastards who sent them there and stayed home and aren’t sorry themselves. Sorry for the 230 grunts killed in Lebanon by a truck bomb. Sorry for the simple sonuva- bitch who wouldn’t let the sentry load his rifle. We’re sorry for them all.
“Forget it,” Jake added.
“I should’ve killed the bastard.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good.”
“I suppose not.”
31
Rita was released from the hospital on a Wednesday in November. She wore a cervical collar and a blue uniform that Toad had had dry-cleaned. He picked her up at noon. “Where to, beautiful?”
“Straight to the beauty shop, James. I’m going to treat myself to a cut, shampoo and perm, then home to bed.”
She was very tired when he got her home to their apartment, After a nap, that evening she walked around slowly, looking at this, touching that. Harriet came over for a gabfest and left at nine when Rita visibly wilted.
On Friday, Rita insisted on going to the office with Toad. The crowd paraded by the desk one at a time to welcome her back. She greeted each of them joyfully, with genuine enthusiasm. Her delightful exhilaration was contagious. She seemed the incarnation of the promise and hope of life. Yet by noon she was tired, so Toad drove her home, then he returned to the office alone.
Saturday morning arrived crisp and clear. “How do you feel today?” Toad asked as he helped her into the collar.
“Good. I’ll need a nap this afternoon, though.”
“Want to go on an expedition? I promise a nap.”
“Where?”
He wouldn’t tell. So. suitably dressed, they went down to the car, where Toad announced he had forgotten something upstairs.
He rode the elevator back up to the third floor and made several quick phone calls, then returned smiling.
He drove out to a small civilian airport in Reston, all the while refusing to answer questions, parked the car in front of the flying service’s little building, and came around to help her out.
“Just as lovely a morning as ever was seen, for a nice tittle trip in a flying machine,’ ” quoteth Toad.
“What is this? Toadi I can’t fly!”
“I can. You can watch me.”
“You? You’ve been taking lessons?”
“Got my license too. Last weekend. Now we’re both pilots.” He grinned broadly and hugged her gently.
Toad took her inside and introduced her to the owner of the flying service, who visited with her while Toad preflighted the plane and taxied it to the front, where he killed the engine. The machine was a Cessna 172, white with a red stripe extending hori- zontally along the fuselage, back from the prop spinner. Toad thought it looked racy.
Rita was standing in the door, watching him. He couldn’t resist. He bowed deeply from the waist. “Come,” he said. “Come fly with me.”
He helped her strap into the right seat, then walked around the machine and strapped himself into the left.
“This feels funny,” she giggled.
“Come fly with me, darling Rita. We’ll fly the halls of heaven, watch the angel choir. We’ll soar with the eagles and see where the storms are bom. Fly with me, Rita, all your life.”
“Start the engine. Toad-man.”
With a half inch of throttle, the engine spluttered to life again. He pulled the throttle back to idle and the Lycoming ran smoothly, the propeller a blurred disk. Out they went down the narrow asphalt taxiway with Toad monitoring the Unicorn fre- quency and checking the sky. He paused at the end of the taxiway, ran the engine up to 1,700 RPM and checked the mags, carb heat and mixture control, all the while acutely aware of Rita’s scrutiny.
He was trying very hard to do everything right and not to laugh at the incongruity of the situation. When he glanced at Rita, she quickly averted her gaze. She was biting her lip, no doubt to keep from smiling. She had that scrunched-up look around her eyes. Trying hard to keep a straight face himself. Toad got back to the business at hand.
He wiped the controls through a cycle and ran the flaps out and in with an eye on the voltage needle. Satisfied, he announced his intentions on Unicorn and took the runway.
The engine snarled as he smoothly pushed the throttle knob in all the way. With his feet dancing on the rudder pedals, the plane swerved only a little as it accelerated. At fifty-five knots he pulled bock on the yoke and the plane came willingly off the runway. He trimmed the plane for a seventy-knot climb and said, “You’ve got it.”
She took the wheel gingerly and waggled it experimentally. “Oh, Toad! It’s terrific! It flies great.”
“Anything that gets you off the ground is a great airplane.” He gave her the course he wanted and checked that the IFF was prop- erly set.
Upward they climbed. They circled south of the metropolitan Washington area and headed eastward across the Chesapeake at 5,500 feet, 105 knots indicated. The engine was loud, but not un- pleasantly so.
Rita flew with a smile, occasionally waggling the wings or kick- ing the rudder, just to see how it felt. She made gentle coordinated climbing and descending turns as Toad monitored the engine in- struments, swept the sky for other airplanes, and kept track of their position with the VOR needles. Still, 105 knots was not warp speed, so between all these tasks he had time to watch the boats on the Chesapeake a mile below. They were small, trailing short wakes on the great blue water, under the great blue sky.
The wind helped the plane eastward. About fifteen knots of wind from the northwest. Toad figured. Approaching the eastern shore of Maryland, he could see smoke rising skyward from odd smoke- stacks and bending with the wind as it drifted aloft.
Rita signaled that he should take the controls, and he did. She sat back in her seat and watched him fly. Somewhere over eastern Maryland she began to laugh.
What began as a giggle quickly became an eye-watering gut buster. Toad joined in. Together they laughed until they had tears in their eyes. When they had melted themselves down to wide grins, she ran her fingers through his hair as he continued his impersonation of Orville Wright, Glenn Curtiss and Eddie Ricken- backer,
