I did, and as I did, I watched Lily lead Gurley into another whispered conversation. I couldn't hear them, but I could see them. I could see Lily pointing, gesturing. I could see Gurley standing tall, and then, after a few minutes, just slightly-easing. And I thought I could see why. The tiniest part of him really did believe her-not just about her sense of where to go next, but about her need to convince him, to connect with him. That is to say, he had started to believe that she really did care for him. And the strangest thing about that to me was that I sensed he was right.
I thought about it as I finished loading the boat. I replayed the trip we'd taken in my head, and I stopped the film whenever I saw them exchange a glance, or better yet, when their eyes didn't meet; when just one of them was stealing a look at the other.
I don't know what had happened, or what was happening, but clearly there was something working on all of us-more of Lily's magic, I suppose-and when we got back into the boat, Gurley returned Lily to the bow and me to the stern, and pointed ahead. “Onward, Belk,” he said to the air, and then turned back to me. “Follow that woman in the bow wherever she tells us to go.” Then he took out his handkerchief and let it rest on his knee while reaching down with his other hand to unsnap, once more, his holster.
CHAPTER 18
THE CLOUDS RETURNED, THIS TIME TO STAY. A SLOW, STEADY rain seemed to follow us down the Kuskokwim, and no arrangement of tarps and ponchos could keep us all from getting soaked through.
Occasionally, the rain would lift, but then the mosquitoes would descend. They took a particular interest in Gurley which I enjoyed except for those times when he had his gun out. He'd been obsessively removing it, cleaning and polishing it with the handkerchief, then replacing it and starting again thirty minutes later. But whenever the mosquitoes wreathed his head, Lily and I would be treated to the terrifying display of him wildly swatting at them, gun in hand.
Gurley had put his faith in Lily to lead us through the delta, but ever since then, she had grown more hesitant and unsure. She would point us one way, then another. She let her hand drift along in the water outside the boat. She studied the skies. And with each passing hour, she grew more anxious.
When Gurley suggested we stop for lunch, she just shook her head. Gurley looked at me and rolled his eyes-a standard gesture of his, but darker, somehow, out here alone in the bush. He and I tore into some C rations that had been stowed, and we continued on.
About one o'clock, the engine sputtered, coughed out a few mouthfuls of smoke, and died. While Gurley and Lily looked on with great concern, I uncoupled the gas line from the primary tank and inserted it into the reserve. Then I started the engine again. Miraculous. My passengers turned away, satisfied. I thought to joke that we'd need Lily to use her powers of divination to find us a gas depot eventually, but it wasn't a joke-we would.
I was the first to see it. I had been following the contortions of an ever-widening waterway, wondering if we'd made it back into the main channel of the Kuskokwim. Even though it was wet, Gurley was slumped in the floor of the boat, sleeping or pretending to. Lily was looking at him, and I was trying to catch her eye when something downriver caught mine.
Of course, I thought I was hallucinating. There had been the strange appearance of that fire balloon my last night in Anchorage, but to actually see a balloon, in flight-that hadn't happened since Shuyak, and that whole episode had seemed like a kind of dream anyway. But now, here one was, drifting along, not fifty feet above the ground, bright as the moon.
It was beautiful. I mean that. I knew these balloons had killed people and that one might someday kill me. But they were spectacular all the same. They were the most gorgeous thing the war produced, and again, I know that's a horrible thing to say, given their intent. But they couldn't help it, even if their makers could. Nothing else soared the way those balloons did. They even elevated the quality of that pokey training film that Gurley had made me watch. Before getting down to the dirty business of charts and diagrams and the stolid reenactment of disassembling a balloon, the film lingered over a long, sweeping shot of a balloon in morning flight along the Pacific Coast. The balloon seemed to be moving incredibly, effortlessly fast. Part of the thrill came from thinking how lucky the filmmakers must have been to actually capture one in flight, but even if they'd just reinflated one and sent it aloft for filming, it was still extraordinary. It felt like the beginning of an epic. There are films I see today that have such aspirations, but, honestly, none matches the power that film's balloon had sailing through that sunny, black-and-white landscape.
Such memories have made me biased. Balloons were mankind's first aircraft, and I do not think we have improved upon them. Planes are noisy, metal things, all angles and exhaust, that require you to tell them where to go. Balloons are a much purer kind of flight; they go where they will and leave you little say. I wondered then and wonder still what it would have been like to travel aboard one of those bomb balloons. What would the sky have looked like from up there, or the ocean, or a man on the ground like me?
If you've ever been that man on the ground, you know there is something about the silence of a balloon in flight that consumes you, that renders everything around it silent, as if the balloon's magic included not only flight but the ability to swallow sound. Accept that, if you like, as my reason for not shouting, for throttling back the engine and just drifting, watching as the balloon seemed first to come toward us, then turn away, and then float closer once more.
Lily was silent as well. But as the balloon drew closer she began to rise in the boat, steadying herself with one arm and reaching up with the other. Gurley on the other hand, might never have awakened had the balloon not begun bleating.
It sounded like a bird and I assumed it was, but the closer we drew, the more distinct the noise became: a whistle, the kind air raid wardens frantically blew, the kind you might have mistaken for a cricket, except the sound went on too long. Still, I was ready to chalk it up to a bird or some strange way that the wind moved through the balloon's rope-work, until Gurley startled awake. He saw the balloon and scrambled shakily to his feet. Without taking his eyes off the balloon, he snapped his fingers at me. “Glasses, Belk. Binoculars. My God-Lily. My God.” I found the binoculars in a case beneath the seat and handed them to him.
The balloon had crossed our path, and the river's, and was now making a slow descent to the tundra. As the river carried us past, Gurley shouted at me to hold our position and then cursed, fumbling the glasses. He caught them, but when he raised them again to his eyes, he had one hand on his holster.
“Find and load your sidearm, Sergeant Belk,” Gurley said. “Lily, get down. Lie down.” Lily didn't move. “Bring us ashore here, Sergeant. Lily, down.” Lily crouched down, but put a hand on Gurley's pant leg as she did.
“It's okay,” she said. “Don't worry.”
“It's landing!” Gurley said. “It's going to crash! Beach us, Belk, dammit, land!” He dropped into a crouch, and I sped to the bank. Luckily, we tangled in some grass, or I think I would have sent us all flying out of the boat in my haste to execute Gurley's order.
Gurley splashed out into knee-deep water and began pulling the boat onto the shore. With one last tug, he beached the boat, and then turned to face Lily and me with delight. “The enemy!” He looked up. The balloon seemed to be hovering with indecision about a hundred yards off, about two stories off the ground. Then a gust of wind pushed it toward us, and lower. Gurley ducked down.