The Axman Cometh (7 page)

Shannon has barely made a start in the kitchen when the phone rings.

"Who was that?"

"Oh, hi, Bernice. You mean Robert? Oh, he's
a ...
friend, from Chicago. He'll be in town for a little while. You should have come over, I would've introduced you."

"I hate you. I hate you, Shannon." "It's nothing
ser-ious
," Shannon says teasingly. "Yet. Got to
runnnnn
, Bernice."

Robert McLaren arrives at seven the next evening. For one reason or another Shannon's entire family is on or near the front porch. Dab is reading the
Kansas City Star's
sports pages after supper; Ernestine is smoking one of her rustic-looking hand-
mades
and carrying on a long-distance, three-way conversation with Mrs.
Drewery
, who is framed in her kitchen window across the driveway to the left of the Hills', and Mrs.
Timrecka
on her porch across the street; Chap is mowing the grass; Allen Ray and Duffy
Satterstall
are throwing a football back and forth in the middle of the street and talking racing cars. A radio is playing the Beach Boys' big hit, "I Get Around." The whole neighborhood is teeming: every kid, every dog and cat seems to be accounted for in the mild blue dusk when Shannon comes downstairs and out to the porch, wincing as her mother shouts to Mrs.
Timrecka
, "You can't count on me for the auction if I have to get there in Flossie's car!
The way she drives, I'd feel more secure throwing myself off a cliff!"

Robert pauses to introduce himself to the sweaty Chap, and Allen Ray comes over to see if his sister's date is up to his expectations. "Who's this?" Ernestine says, looking at her daughter as she picks loose tobacco from her lower lip, already a little ulcerous from her long sun-filled hours in the vegetable garden. "Going roller-skating?" But Shannon isn't dressed for a night at the rink and doesn't have her skates with her. She just shrugs. Dab, sitting in one of a pair of chain-hung gliders, the top of his head gleaming like a pumpkin from the bug-repellant lights beside the door, looks at Robert over the top of his newspaper. Dab has a well-chewed matchstick, largely forgotten, in one corner of his mouth. Shannon does a quick side step toward the glider to pluck it away as Robert comes up the sagging steps.

He's wearing sharply pressed chinos tonight, and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. "Oh, a Cubs fan?" Dab says. He likes the KC A's, but has given up expecting miracles from them. Ernestine says, and Shannon wants instantly to disappear beneath the floorboards of the porch, "Kenilworth? That's kind of a fancy-
dancy
neighborhood, isn't it? I lived for a time in Blue Island when I was a girl. My stepfather was half owner of a beer parlor there; but for the most part it was just a front for a thriving policy operation." Laughing. "I expect that's all of my shady past you want to hear about."

Her family's flaws and weaknesses are much too apparent to Shannon as she waits for a likely moment to steer Robert to the car and out of the neighborhood: Dab wheezes when he talks and clears his throat often, as if he is going on seventy instead of fifty, Ernestine has left her shoes somewhere else and hasn't given her wiry hair a lick with the comb for the last day or two: it tends to bunch up all on one side. "You'll never know," her mother says to Robert, "how close we came to naming her Ernestine, junior," as if this is a threat she still holds over Shannon's head. She guffaws, in that surprising way of hers— Ernestine, the neighbors say, has a laugh that can unclog a sink. The next few minutes are even more excruciating, but Robert seems genuinely to want to talk to them, to get acquainted, to make himself known as trustworthy and a fit companion for their daughter. He can't help noticing the four-
masted
schooner tattooed on Dab's left forearm, so they talk about that, and the Navy.

"Just an old sailor man from Kansas,"

Dab says, still amazed by the process that put him in the Pacific for three years. "I was on heavy cruisers—the
Van
Damm
,
the
Sitka.
Tassafaronga
, there was a scrap to remember. Then Saipan, Iwo Jima, lobbing the big shells home. Soon as the weather cleared around Iwo, you could smell those bloody beaches two miles out to sea. Kamikaze finally took us—and me—out of the war. Those were the Nip suicide pilots, you know. They'd load up with munitions and dive straight for your ship. I've got a couple of scars the size of garter snakes
criss
-crossing my lower back."

"Story time," Ernestine says softly and restively, picking more tobacco lint off her lip. She leans back in a rocking chair to hear Mrs.
Drewery
a little better.

"I'm saying, Art and me was down at the county tax assessor's day before yesterday, and when the girl asks him his occupation, Art says, loud enough for the whole courthouse to hear, 'Retired sinner!'"

"You wish," Ernestine says jovially.

"We're not like this all the time," Shannon explains, her eyes a little stony.

"What time do you need to be home?"

"Oh—twelve-thirty," Shannon says, not consulting either of her parents.

"No later, I hope," Ernestine says, raising an eyebrow slightly at Robert. "Just going to ride around, see the sights, take in a picture show? Last one at the Empress starts around nine-thirty."

"Late show at the Twin Screens is at ten," Shannon reminds her. She escapes down the walk with her hand in Robert's, ducking as Chap, competing for attention, tosses a mealy handful of grass clippings in her direction.

"I thought it might be best not to tell them we're going to fly over to Colorado to see the mountains," Robert says with a smile.

"You did the right thing," Shannon assures him, her heart beginning to thud agreeably from anticipation. She feels so
daring.
Just flying around the country with somebody she only met two days ago. Bernice and
Maryleen
are going to flip out when they hear about it—but she'd better get something straight with Rob right away. "Are you sure we have enough time—I mean, seriously, I can't come in at like three in the morning, because Emerson is
dead
after midnight. You know what they'd think."

"Don't worry, I won't disgrace you. It's about eight hundred miles round trip. If we leave by seven-thirty, we'll be back around midnight. Is that for me?" He is looking at the oversize envelope Shannon has under her other arm.

"Uh-huh. The one and only Madge Mayhew. 'Ugly as a tattooed lip.' That's what Dab always says."

The football gets away from Duffy and takes some erratic bounces in their direction; Robert times a bounce, then scoops the ball up one-handed (he has large, strong hands, larger than her father's, which seemed to surprise Dab when they came to grips on the porch). He fires a lofty spiral down the block to Allen Ray, who catches it in full stride over his shoulder.

"I like your family."

"I'm sure they're not a bit like yours," Shannon says with a nervous laugh.

"I hope not." The change in his mood is like a drop in voltage that causes a lamp to grow dim.

In the car as they are driving away Shannon says, "My brother's going to be drafted next month. He doesn't seem to care; but it scares me."

Robert takes a quick look back at Allen Ray. "I didn't do any service. Bad knee. I fell down some stairs when I was eight, and it took three operations before I could walk without a brace."

"Do you know how to get to the airport from here?"

"I know every major street in Emerson by heart, even though I've only been here three days. My photographic memory. I would never need to carry your picture. I'll always remember you perfectly: your eyes are more hazel than blue, although they change to green sometimes."

"All of me is fickle, not just my eyes." "Your lips sort of
squinch
up at one corner when you don't believe what I'm saying, like now. And I love the way the lobe of your right ear is bent out just a little—"

"I usually say I slept on it wrong," Shannon replies, touching the faulty lobe self-consciously.

"There's a little fish-shaped scar under your chin—"

"Oh, honestly. Nobody ever notices
that
any more. Now I feel like I'm all scars and bent earlobes. And you won't remember me
always.
I'll bet you won't even remember me this time next year. Maybe you'll be saying to yourself—" Shannon pitches her voice deeper, "—what was the name of that little girl in Whatchamacallit, Kansas?"

"You don't know me. I'll remember. I'll be right back here on this same day one year from now, and take you away in my plane. Only I'm going to have a
Leaijet
by then, one of the first off the line."

"I think we're going too fast already," Shannon murmurs, and with a glance gives him the opportunity to deny it. Robert just shakes his head complacently.

"I keep my promises. I'm very good about that."

The sun has set but the sky is still mildly alight, gold out over the prairie, by the time they reach the airport. Which is no great shakes, consisting of a 3,500-foot paved, lighted runway, a VOR-TACAN cone in a field surrounded by barbed wire, two
quonset
-type hangers and a small flight service base.

"Okay, you're going to learn a lot about flying tonight," Robert says, eagerly pulling her along to where his red-and-white Piper Aztec is parked and secured by ground cable.

"I have a confession to make. I haven't been up in one of these things in my
life.
And now that I'm this close to
it—"

"I've never had any problems. Check that, no big problems." He opens and closes small hatches on the engine cowlings, inspecting whatever is inside. "It's comfortable and pretty quiet too, even with five hundred horsepower. Trust me."

What else can she do, having come this Ear? And Robert is very thorough—too thorough, after a couple of minutes of technical stuff that leaves her feeling as if she's cramming for finals—explaining how his plane becomes airborne and stays there.

He helps her aboard—one step up to the wing, and inside, where it's as snug as a barrel. Two seats in the cockpit, four more in the cabin behind them. The cabin is filled with stuff: a straw Stetson with a rolled brim and a button that reads
I rode the Blaster at the Iowa State Fair,
stacks of catalogues and textbooks, a long, dusty-looking canvas bag with sturdy leather handles and reinforcement; it sits on the floor between the pairs of opposing seats.

"What's that?"

"Oh, just some of my tools. I'm sort of an amateur stonemason."

Rob shows her his hands, but she already knows how strong they are, and rough, the nails short and scraped and scuffed.

"Friend of mine from college, he took his degree in philosophy but likes working with his hands, a typical son-of-toil Chicago- an. He got me started. I build walls mostly. Do a little sculpting, but I'm not much good at it. My ideas are bigger than my talent. Sometimes I think I'd like to go off somewhere and do another Mount Rushmore. Maybe I will. My mother always told me, 'if something interests you deeply, give it a try.'
Deeply.
Well, that's the way she talked. She was training to be a ballerina, but she grew too tall. She played the violin; wasn't bad, either. A really versatile person. Our house was always filled with musicians. I think she must have given at least a million to the Chicago Symphony. We never missed a concert until just before she died."

Shannon thinks,
Gave? A million? Dollars?
She says, "Your mom died? Oh, I'm sorry."

"That was a long time ago," Rob says, his smile finishing with a twinge.

Once they are into the preflight
runup
the thunder of the engines cancels conversation, and Shannon sits back in the snug right- hand seat to deal with her butterflies. There's a certain amount of vibration as their RPM's increase, but Robert's hands move methodically over the throttles and control panel, making small adjustments, Shannon is satisfied that he knows just what he is doing. She closes her eyes when the plane begins to roll. The Aztec takes off so smoothly several seconds pass before she realizes they have left the runway and are westbound toward a vast field of emerging stars, more colorful than she has ever seen them.