A full tank could take her six hundred miles. She fantasized about those miles, that radius. She could refuel and fly on. And on. People had flown between continents in lesser planes. But if she ran away, she knew it would only make Barclay more determined to get her back and keep her. If she stayed, eventually he might come to understand they were badly matched. Having tethered her to him, hooded her like a tame falcon, he could still cut her loose, release her. If she stayed, he still might let her go.
But their truce, their wary tenderness, began to give way as winter thawed: the inevitable collapse of goodwill between two people with intertwined yet irreconcilable wishes. Some days, especially when he told her she could not fly, she turned away from him in bed, shook off his caresses. But when she relented, there was still fire between them. Maybe she’d never loved him, had only been tricked by the reflected flicker. Barclay pinned her arms while she glowered and glittered at him.
He went away on business for a week in March and instructed her not to fly while he was gone. On the third day, she drove a ranch truck into Kalispell, speeding on the muddy, winding roads just enough to scare herself, marveling again that Barclay could survive the route drunk. She looked in the shops without seeing anything she wanted to buy. She found a place to have a drink and had three. Drunk, as she’d lost her tolerance for booze, she parked under a tree on the edge of the airfield and waited for someone to land or take off, but no one did.
“Thought you might have gone for good,” Kate said when she returned after dark.
The next morning, she uncovered and untethered the Stearman, took off from Bannockburn’s rugged strip, mud clinging to the wheels. Only after she was in the air, idly angling the wings this way and that, admiring the mountains’ snowcaps, did she decide to fly down to Missoula and surprise Jamie.
One of the airfield boys gave her a lift up the Rattlesnake. The house was looking worse for wear. She’d thought Jamie, left to his own devices, might have spruced things up, but the paint was peeling; the roof shingles were sodden and buckled. Winter-brown weeds grew thickly around the foundation. She was about to let herself in the side door, but a pang of unease stopped her. For the first time she could remember, she went to the front door and knocked.
The sound set off a cacophony of barking that went on and on, seemingly an army of dogs on the other side of the door. She pressed her ear against the wood, listening for footsteps. She knocked again. The barking reached a new, frantic pitch, and finally she heard the creaking of the stairs, Jamie telling the dogs to quiet down. The door was yanked open, and her brother blinked out at her. “Hello,” he said as though to a stranger.
He had dark circles under his eyes, and a wispy blond beard clung to his cheeks like algae. His clothes were daubed in paint. “You look terrible,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Five dogs streamed out, went to lift legs and squat in the dead grass and crumbly snow. He watched them pensively. “I must have lost track of time. They’ve been shut in all day. That was awful of me. What time is it?”
She looked at her wristwatch. “Just past noon.”
Suddenly he seemed to shake himself free of whatever strange state he was in. “Marian!” He lurched forward to embrace her. With a pang of revulsion, she inhaled the mingled smells of his unwashed body, turpentine, and booze. She’d had enough of drunk men for a lifetime. He said, “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting you.”
“Come inside.” He held the door open, waved her in.
The house was cold and dark, the curtains closed. Plates and bowls were scattered on the floor and furniture, some of the bowls partially filled with water for the dogs, some of the plates bearing traces of whatever he’d been feeding them. Two dogs circled around her legs, panting and peering up as though apologizing for the state of things.
It occurred to her for the first time that it was a Wednesday. “You aren’t at school.”
“No, I’ve stopped going,” he said airily. He padded toward the kitchen, barefoot despite the cold. “Do you want a drink? I’m going to have one.”
The kitchen was a worse mess than the other rooms, heaped with dishes and smelling of decay. A half-empty bottle of clear moonshine was on the table. Jamie picked up a dirty glass, rubbed the rim with his shirttail, poured in two inches and handed it to her. Three inches for himself went into a glass he didn’t bother to clean.
“That’s awful stuff,” she said, coughing after she’d sipped. “I’d forgotten.”