41.

MARSHALL PLANNED TO RETURN TO ANGOULÊME AFTER THE weekend. On Thursday night he received a telephone call from Sonia Ford. Her father had died. She wanted to thank Marshall for the call he had made. It meant a lot, she said.

“Would you let the other crew members know?” she asked. “I don’t think I can locate them all.”

“Leave it to me,” Marshall said.

AL GRAINGER ANSWERED on the second ring, and Marshall told him the news.

“Heavens to Betsy,” Al said. “I didn’t even know he was sick.”

“We should have had a poop sheet for the crew. Loretta used to send out stuff and keep everybody in touch.”

“It was Ford’s time,” Al said. “It’s the Lord’s will.”

“I spoke to Ford last week. I had no idea he was that far gone.”

They shared a few memories.

Marshall said, “I was wondering if you could make a couple of calls there in the States to let the others know, to spread the word.”

“Sure thing.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

“The war seems like yesterday, doesn’t it, Marshall?”

Or today, Marshall thought. He explained briefly that he had been looking up people from the war years. They talked for a while about Odile and the parachutists.

“We were lucky we didn’t bail out and fall in a tree,” he said. “Get an arm torn off.”

“We were both lucky you landed the plane, Marshall, even if I did have to spend my vacation at Nasty camp in Germany. By the way, did you get my letter about the idea for a reunion?”

Marshall said that was a fine idea. “We should do that, Al.”

“Yeah. I’m counting on it.”

MARSHALL HAD TROUBLE sleeping that night, despite the blackout curtain. Ford was too young to die; they were all too young yet. Campanello and Cochran and Hadley were still busy with careers, and Marshall himself had found a way to keep moving, going off on a wild tangent. He had to seize the moment. Otherwise, he faced a countdown to oblivion.

More awake, he dreaded the idea of a reunion. Such a get-together seemed like a nightmare. Why should they celebrate their ancient debacle? He shuddered. What would Neil Armstrong do? Armstrong, a man who had disappeared from the limelight, was no superman, he thought. He had read about the time Armstrong brought the X-15 in wrong. He held the nose too high and bounced her off the atmosphere, overshooting the landing zone by miles and miles. Once he got the plane turned around, he almost crashed. He barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway.

MARSHALL BOARDED THE Métro for Saint-Mandé and went straight to see Caroline. She was arranging shiny green apples, polishing them with her apron. Her crooked smile acknowledged him, as if she had expected him. Bobby was in his basket, looking grumpy, and the kid was unloading oranges.

“Bonjour, Marshall! Quoi d’neuf?”

He had news. He had found the woman whose family hid him in 1944, near here, and she knew Caroline’s father. He reported what Annette had told him, adding that he expected to learn more.

“Don’t give up on your father, Caroline.”

“Does your daughter treat you badly, the way I disown my father?” Caroline asked, frowning.

“No. She’s a good daughter.”

“And I’m a bad one?”

“No. Please. I don’t mean that. It’s just more complicated. Things are always difficult between parents and their children.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

He said, “I have it on good authority that your father was very brave in the war. I feel sure there had to be goodness in him.”

She resumed rubbing one of the green apples industriously.

He continued. “Anyway, I also wanted to say I’m sorry I was so overbearing with you—how do you say, too much the commander?”

“You’re sweet, Marshall. Are you sure you won’t marry me and take me to America? To Kentucky?” She grinned and squeezed his arm.

“The dog would be a problem,” he said.

HE REVISITED THE COLONNADE on the rue de Rivoli, where Annette had taken him to have his photo made.

“It was the photomaton at the Louvre store on the corner at the rue Marengo,” she had said last week. “I took the pilots on the Métro to the Palais Royal stop, and you waited in the Tuileries, across the street.”

He tried to get that straight in his mind, but standing here again, he realized that the corner where the photomaton had been was not directly across from the Tuileries, as he had recalled. The gardens were some distance down the street. It made little sense that she would have him wait so far away from the photomaton. With millions of people misremembering a war, could anyone ever get straight what had happened?

At the Colonnade, he stopped at a souvenir shop and on a whim purchased a blue beret for Annette. He bought a black one for himself—to commemorate 1944, when he was Julien Baudouin, stonemason.