Free Flying High by Gwynne Forster Page B

things going your way, that was the time to make demands.
    “You’ve got one more present coming after you eat your dinner.”
    The child’s face bloomed into a smile. “Okay. What is it, Unca Nelson?”
    “You’ll know after you eat you dinner.”
    He needed a few minutes to himself, some time to sort out his feelings, to understand what was happening to him. He ran up the stairs, went into his room and closed the door. He had always been honest with himself and with others. In his head, he meant to avoid emotional involvements and to see to it that no other woman made him the butt of a painful joke. Swearing eternal love and fidelity, accepting his ring and letting him find her in his bed with the guy who would be best man at their wedding. Oh, no. He let the closet door have the brunt of his fist. Oh, no. I’m not going there. Period.
    After dinner, he gave Ricky his first bicycle and watched him master it within five minutes. Observing the child’s happiness reminded him of the birthday party, and he had to struggle to keep his feelings about that and about Audrey in abeyance.
    “I think I’ll turn in,” he said to Lena.
    “Yes, sir. I expect you got a lot to think about.”
    He stared down at her. “What do you mean?”
    “It was Ricky’s party, but you the one that got the message. Your life ain’t normal, and now you know it. Y’all sleep well.” She walked off singing her favorite hymn, and he wondered if she had some magical powers that let her see inside of him.
    His steps fell heavily on the stairs, and when he reached the landing his body sagged as if he’d just run miles. He still thought of himself as an unattached man, free to do as he willed, to go and come as he pleased. But he could no longer lock the door, throw his duffel bag into the trunk of his or a USMC car, and go off without a care or a thought as to when or whether he would return. He was father to Ricky and responsible for Lena’s well-being, neither of which he minded, and he didn’t shirk responsibility. He wanted to watch Ricky grow and to shape him into a man, but how could he do that while fighting for peace in first one part of the globe and then another? He was the delight of Ricky’s life, his anchor. What would happen to the boy in his absence? He doubted that Lena would be able to comfort him. One more stumbling block in his path toward the top. But he’d get there.
    * * *
    “I’m developing backward,” Audrey said to herself that evening, in a moment of self-reprimand for her failure to discourage Nelson’s gestures signifying the existence of more than a platonic relationship between them. The tenderness with which he’d stroked her face while his eyes told her things that reduced her to a pile of mush... A long breath, more a wish than a sigh, seeped out of her. She had to stop thinking about Nelson. Hadn’t she daydreamed herself into what had proved to be the most devastating experience of her life? What was it about Nelson Wainwright that she seemed unable to resist?
    She answered the phone praying that it wasn’t Nelson, but she didn’t want to speak with her Aunt Lena, either.
    “You still refusing to mind Ricky for me day after tomorrow?” Lena asked her.
    “Aunt Lena, I’d do most anything for you. You know that. But I am not going to let you make a mat of me for Nelson Wainwright. Left to you, I’d be in his path so much he’d have to step over me. No thanks. I’m not doing it.”
    “Suit yourself. If it doesn’t happen one way, it’ll happen another. You can’t do a thing about the Lord’s will.”
    “Come on, Aunt Lena. Just because you want it doesn’t mean the Lord has any such plans.”
    “You’ll see.”
    * * *
    Nelson opened his front door at twenty minutes before eight that Saturday morning to see a woman’s finger reaching toward the doorbell. Attired in a loose T-shirt and shorts, he was on his way out for a sprint around the block. Looking down at the woman, he saw at