“Attack planes. All-weather attack.”
“Attack?”
“Any time, anywhere, any weather, day or night, high, low or in the middle.”
“You…drop…bombs?” His face was blank, incredulous.
“And shoot missiles,” Jake said firmly.
Professor McKenzie took a deep breath and stared at this young man who had been invited into his house by his daughter. His only daughter. Life is amazing — getting into bed with a woman is the ultimate act of faith: truly, you are rolling cosmic dice. Who would have believed that twenty-five years later the child of that union would bring home this…this…
“Doesn’t it bother you? Dropping bombs?”
“Only when the bad guys are trying to kill me,” Jake Graft on replied coolly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, maybe I should take my bags upstairs and wash my face.”
“Of course.” The professor gestured vaguely toward the hallway where the stairs were and took a healthy swig of his highball.
Jake found the spare bedroom and put his bags on a chair. Then he sat on the bed staring out the window.
He was in trouble. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that. Callie hadn’t told her parents anything about him. And that look on the old man’s face! “You drop bombs?”
He could have just said, “Oh, Mr. Grafton, you’re a hit man for the Mafia? What an unusual career choice! And you look like you enjoy your work.”
Jesus!
He dug in his pocket and got out the ring. He had purchased this engagement ring last December on the Shiloh and carried it with him ever since, on the ground, in the air, all the time. He had fully intended to give it to Callie when the time was right. But this visit…her parents…it made him wonder. Was he right for this woman? Would he fit into her family? Oh, love is wonderful and grand and will conquer all the problems — isn’t that the way the songs go? Yet under the passion there needs to be something else…a rightness. He wanted a woman to go the distance with. If Callie was the woman, now was not the time. She wasn’t ready.
And he wasn’t if she wasn’t.
He looked disgustedly at the ring, then put it back into his pocket.
The evening sun shone through the branches of the old oak. The window was open, a breeze wafted through the screen. That limb — he could take out the screen, toss down the bags, get onto that limb and climb down to the ground. He could be in a taxi on the way to the airport before they even knew he was gone.
He was still sitting there staring glumly out the window when Callie came for him thirty minutes later.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, rising from the bed and stretching. “Dinner ready?”
“Yes.”
“Something is wrong, isn’t it?”
There was no way to avoid it. “You didn’t tell me your Dad was Mr. Liberal.”
“Liberal? He’s about a mile left of Lenin.”
“He looked really thrilled when I told him I was an attack pilot.”
“Dad is Dad. I thought it was me you were interested in?”
Jake Grafton cocked his head. “Well, you are better looking than he is. Probably a better kisser, too.” He took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Wait till you meet my older brother,” he told her. “He can’t wait for the next revolution. He says the next time we won’t screw it up like Bobby Lee and Jeff Davis did.”
“How would you rate me as a kisser?” she asked softly.
They paused on the top stair and she wrapped her arms around him. “This is for score,” he whispered. “Pucker up.”
That night when they were in bed Professor McKenzie told his wife, “That boy’s a killer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Wallace.”
“He kills people. He kills them from the air. He’s an executioner.”
“That’s war, dear. They try to kill him, he tries to kill them.”
“It’s murder.”
Mary McKenzie had heard it all before. “Callie is in love with him, Wallace. I suggest you keep your opinions and your loaded labels to yourself. She must make her own decision.”
“Decision? What decision?”
“Whether or not to marry him.”
“Marriage?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know what was going on?” his wife said crossly. “I swear, you’re blind as a bat! Didn’t you see her at dinner tonight? She loves him.”
“She won’t marry him,” Professor McKenzie stated positively. “I know Callie!”
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. McKenzie muttered, just to pacify the man. What her husband knew about young women in love wouldn’t fill a thimble. She herself was appalled by Callie’s choice, believing the girl could do a whale of a lot better if she just looked around a little.
Callie was inexperienced. She didn’t date until college and then couldn’t seem to find any young men who interested her. Mrs. McKenzie had hoped she would find a proper man while working for the State Department — apparently a futile hope. This Grafton boy was physically a good specimen, yet he was wrong for Callie. He was so…blue-collar. The girl needed a man who was at least in the same room with her intellectually.
But she wasn’t going to say that to Callie — not a chance. Pointed comments would probably be resented, perhaps even resisted. In this new age of liberated womanhood, covert pressure was the proper way, the only way. One had to pretend strict neutrality—“This is your decision, dear”—while radiating bad vibes. She owed her daughter maternal guidance — choosing a mate is much too important to be left to young women with raging hormones.
Secure in the knowledge that she was up to the task that duty had set before her, Mrs. McKenzie went peacefully to sleep while her husband stewed.
At breakfast Professor McKenzie held forth on the Vietnam War. The night before at dinner he had said little, preferring to let the ladies steer the conversation. This morning he told Jake Grafton in no uncertain terms what he thought of the politicians who started the war and the politicians who kept the nation in it.
If he was expecting an argument, he didn’t get it. In fact, several times Jake nodded in agreement with the professor’s points, and twice Callie distinctly heard him say, “You’re right.”
After the senior McKenzies left the house for the university, Jake and Callie headed for the kitchen to finish cleaning up.
“You sure handled Dad,” Callie told her boyfriend.
“Huh?”
“You took the wind right out of Dad’s sails. He thought you were going to give him a bang-up fight.”
She was looking straight into his gray eyes when he said, “The war’s over. It’s history. What is there to fight about?”
“Well…,” Callie said dubiously.
Jake just shrugged. His knee was fairly well healed and the dead were buried. That chapter of his life was over.
He gathered her into his arms and smiled. “What are we going to do today?”
He had good eyes, Callie thought. You could almost look in and see the inner man, and that inner man was simple and good. He wasn’t complicated or self-absorbed like her father, nor was he warped with secret doubts and phobias like so many of the young men she knew. Amazingly, after Vietnam his scars were merely physical, like that slash on his temple where a bullet gouged him.
Acutely aware of the warmth and pressure of his body against hers, she gave him a fierce hug and whispered, “What would you like to do?”
The feel and smell and warmth of her seemed more than Jake could take in. “Anything you want, Miss McKenzie,” he said hoarsely, mildly surprised at his reaction to her presence, “as long as we do it together.” That didn’t come out quite the way he intended, and he felt slightly flustered. You can’t just invite a woman to bed at eight-thirty in the morning!