Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 Read Free

for roadmaps of Iowa and points west…”
                 “But
it’s better now, isn’t it?” she asked after a pause. “I mean, the trains.”
                 “Yes,”
he said, a little dryly. “There aren’t so many uniforms.” After a while, she
not speaking, he said slowly, “You see, I had two brothers, both older. They
were both killed, Dave at Kasserine Pass, and Howie when the Lewistown went down off Savo. It made
being a civilian kind of, shall we say, awkward. I got kind of allergic to
uniforms, not having one myself.”
                 He
sucked at his pipe and knocked the dead coals into his hand and threw them out
the window beside him without looking at her. The windstream snatched the ashes
away from him.
                 “I’m
sorry,” the girl’s voice said.
                 He
said, “It was a stupid reaction. After all, Washington was full of civilians.
But I didn’t really feel the war was over until I loaded my stuff into the car
last Wednesday and headed out. But getting on a train would have kind of
spoiled it, don’t you see? So when I heard you ask for roadmaps I thought it
was worth a try.”
                 She
was silent for a while. He glanced at her. The blue stones in the small gold
blossoms on the lobe of her ear and on the lapel of her jacket caught the light
through the windshield; and the wind through the open window beside her,
sweeping through the car, tugged at the veil she had turned back, at the brim
of her hat, at the wisp of hair that had come free at her temple, and at one
point of the collar of the thin eggshell-colored satin blouse that showed in a
small triangle, between the lapels of her jacket, at her throat. She turned her
head briefly to look at him through the sunglasses that looked a little strange
with the rest of her costume.
                 “Incidentally,
my name is Ann Nicholson, Mr. Emmett,” she said, smiling abruptly.
                 He
laughed. “Yes. I looked at the registration card.”
                 After
a moment she laughed also. He realized with a small shock that she had,
briefly, been wondering if he had recognized her. He glanced at her again, but
her face aroused no recollection in his mind. He was quite sure he had never
seen her before, or even a reasonable portrait of her. He thought he would have
remembered.
                 “I’m
going to Denver,” she said, “if that helps you.”
                 “Denver’s
fine,” he said. “I’ve got reservations for three days at a place on Hogback
Lake, back in the mountains. If Mrs. Pruitt’s still running it, I can probably
talk her into letting me stay longer.” The girl did not say anything,
preoccupied with driving, and after a while he asked, “Do you know the country
around Denver?”
                 She
shook her head. “No. No, I’ve never been west before.”
                 “It’s
fine country,” he said. “We used to drive out every summer. Howie had an old
Dodge he had tied together with baling wire and rubber bands. I think we
covered every national park west of the Mississippi.”
                 She
started to speak, but a string of cars held back by a large truck bore down on
them and claimed her attention; and when they had the road to themselves again
she had, apparently, forgotten what she had been about to say. Emmett wondered
if she, like himself, was thinking of how it had been simple and pleasant
before the war—although probably not quite as simple and pleasant as it seemed
in retrospect. But the war had shown you things about yourself and about other
people that you would rather not have learned. Everything you did now was
colored by what you had learned during the war.
                 Presently
Ann Nicholson braked abruptly and swerved into a filling station, while the car
that had been behind them whipped past