Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 by Humans (v1.1) Page B

that it wasn’t
him but herself she was rejecting. In the last few weeks his pursuit had become
more reflexive, absent-minded, ritualistic; they’d setded into a vaguely
flirtatious but essentially comfortable relationship that could last for as
long as they worked together.
                He was a decent man, John Auston,
thirty-seven years old, tall and awkwardly husky, as though his skeleton had
never been properly hooked together but still jangled and skidded within its
padding of flesh. He was methodical, quiet, devoted to his work for WHO, and if
Maria Elena were in the market for a man, here was one, an excellent one. But
she was not in the market, never would be in the market, and in any event Jack
was not really unencumbered.
                The fact was, Jack was married and
divorced. He had an ex-wife far away up in the United States , and though he would never admit it, Maria
Elena could tell that he still loved her. Or still needed her, which came to
the same thing.
                Jack always avoided talking about
that ex-wife of his who, when their daughter was three, had packed up one day
and taken the child and crossed the entire United States from Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, to Oregon, simply to get away from him. Maria Elena had no sense
of the woman, whether she was a good or a bad person, strong or weak or
anything about her, and yet sometimes she felt she understood why that wife had
left. There had come a point, there must have come a point, when she had simply
grown tired of steering him. He was
so easily steered, as she herself had steered his flirtatiousness into this
unthreatening shoal where it now safely stagnated, and yet how could you feel
anything but tarnished if you devoted your life to treating another human being
as though he were nothing but a docile ox?
                Since the second front seat, next to
the pilot, was so much more desirable than any of the four seats behind it,
Jack and Maria Elena had worked it out that one of them would ride up front on
the way out each day and the other on the way back. Today, Jack had chosen the
first half of the trip, so now he was the one who climbed up the two toeholds
and crawled over the pilot’s forward-folded seat into the back. Then the pilot
unfolded his seat into normal position and helped Maria Elena climb up. She
slid across to the passenger side, stowing the pilot’s fumetti in the pocket
beneath the window beside her.
                The pilot took his position at the
wheel and, after a brisk series of preparations, started the single engine,
turned the small plane around in a bumpy circle, walked it halfway back up the
field, and swept it around again to face the light wind. Over by the church,
under the tree, Father Tomaz watched; probably hoping they were on their way to
God instead of Brasilia . The pilot started them forward and they jounced and hopped down the
field, the wings waggling as though they’d fall off, the small wheel in the
pilot’s hands shaking like a ribbon tied to a high-speed fan, until all at once
the wheels lifted clear of the hard ground and the plane became graceful,
coherent, almost alive.
                There was no door on Maria Elena’s
side, which was why she and Jack had had to climb over the pilot’s seat, but
the window had a flap in the lower half, like a deux-chevaux that she could open with her elbow to look down
direcdy at the receding ground, becoming aware for the first time just how
large the graveyard was on the other side of the church. And how small so many
of the graves. It was human instinct, when something was trying to exterminate
the species, to reproduce faster and faster. Particularly when the killer was
mostly killing children.
                The noise inside the plane was at a
level where conversation was possible but not easy, so usually they didn’t talk
much, particularly on the flight back, after the long dry