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I Sing the Body Electric
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Год написания книги
2018
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“If the car works, that’s some car you got there.”
“At your service,” I said.
“And when you get where you’re going,” said the old man, putting his hand on the door and leaning and then, seeing what he had done, taking his hand away and standing taller to speak to me, “where will you be?”
“January 10, 1954.”
“That’s quite a date,” he said.
“It is, it was. It can be more of a date.”
Without moving, his eyes took another step out into fuller light.
“And where will you be on that day?”
“Africa,” I said.
He was silent. His mouth did not work. His eyes did not shift.
“Not far from Nairobi,” I said.
He nodded, once, slowly.
“Africa, not far from Nairobi.”
I waited.
“And when we get there, if we go?” he said.
“I leave you there.”
“And then?”
“You stay there.”
“And then?”
“That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Forever,” I said.
The old man breathed out and in, and ran his hand over the edge of the doorsill.
“This car,” he said, “somewhere along the way does it turn into a plane?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Somewhere along the way do you turn into my pilot?”
“It could be. I’ve never done this before.”
“But you’re willing to try?”
I nodded.
“Why?” he said, and leaned in and stared me directly in the face with a terrible, quietly wild intensity. “Why?”
Old man, I thought, I can’t tell you why. Don’t ask me.
He withdrew, sensing he had gone too far.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“You didn’t say it,” I said.
“And when you bring the plane in for a forced landing,” he said, “will you land a little differently this time?”
“Different, yes.”
“A little harder?”
“I’ll see what can be done.”
“And will I be thrown out but the rest of you okay?”
“The odds are in favor.”
He looked up at the hill where there was no grave. I looked at the same hill. And maybe he guessed the digging of it there.
He gazed back down the road at the mountains and the sea that could not be seen beyond the mountains and a continent beyond the sea. “That’s a good day you’re talking about.”
“The best.”
“And a good hour and a good second.”
“Really, nothing better.”
“Worth thinking about.”
His hand lay on the doorsill, not leaning, but testing, feeling, touching, tremulous, undecided. But his eyes came full into the light of African noon.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” I said.
“I think,” he said, “I’ll grab a lift with you.”
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