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"Principal language of Ceylon, my boy," the pilot said. The pilot also smelled like tea.
"We're going to Ceylon?" Wally asked.
"Can't keep a blond in Burma, lad," the Englishman said. "Don't you know Burma's full of Nips?" But Wally preferred to remember his native friends. They had taught him to salaam--a low bow with the right hand on the forehead (always the right hand, they'd explained); it was a bow of salutation. And when he was sick, someone had always stirred the punkah for him--a punkah is a large, screen-shaped fan that is moved by a rope (pulled by a servant).
"Punkah," Wally said to the English pilot.
"What's that, lad?" the pilot asked.
"It's so hot," said Wally, who felt drowsy; they were flying at a very low altitude, and the little plane was an oven. A brief scent of sandalwood came through the stronger garlic in the pilot's sweat.
"Ninety-two degrees, American, when we left Rangoon," the pilot said. The pilot got a kick out of saying "American" instead of "Fahrenheit
," but Wally didn't notice.
"Ninety-two degrees!" Wally said. It felt like the first fact he could hang his hat on, as they say in Maine.
"What happened to the legs?" the Englishman asked casually.
"Japanese B mosquito," Wally explained. The British pilot looked very grave; he thought that Wally meant a plane--that the Japanese B mosquito was the name of the fighter plane that shot Wally's plane down.
"I don't know that one, lad," the pilot admitted to Wally. "Thought I'd seen them all, but you can't trust the Nips."
The Sinhalese crew had slathered themselves with coconut oil and were wearing sarongs and long, collarless shirts. Two of them were eat-ing something and one of them was screeching into the radio; the pilot said something sharply to the radioman, who instantly lowered his voice.
"Sinhala is an awful language," the pilot confided to Wally. "Sounds like cats fucking."
When Wally didn't respond to his humor, the Englishman asked him if he'd ever been to Ceylon. When Wally didn't answer him--Wally seemed to be daydreaming--the Englishman said, "We not only planted the first rubber trees and developed their bloody rubber plantations--we taught them how to brew tea. They knew how to grow it, all right, but you couldn't get a decent cup of tea on the whole bloody island. And now they want to be independent," the Englishman said.
"Ninety-two degrees," Wally said, smiling.
"Yes, just try to relax, lad," the pilot said. When Wally burped, he tasted cinnamon; when he shut his eyes, he saw African marigolds come out like stars.
Suddenly the three Sinhalese began to speak at once. First the radio would say something, then the three of them would speak in unison.
"Bloody Buddhists, all of them," the pilot explained. "They even pray on the bloody radio. That's Ceylon," the Englishman said. "Two thirds tea and one third rubber and prayer." He yelled something at the Sinhalese, who lowered their voices.
Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, shortly before sighting Ceylon, the pilot was worried about an aircraft in his vicinity. "Pray now, damn you," he said to the Sinhalese, who were all asleep. "That Japanese B mosquito," the Englishman said to Wally. "What does it look like?" he asked. "Or did it get you from behind?"
But all Wally would say was, "Ninety-two degrees."
After the war, Ceylon would become an independent nation; twenty-four years after that, the country would change its name to Sri Lanka. But all Wally would remember was how hot it had been. In a way, his parachute had never touched down; in a way, he had remained over Burma for ten months--just floating there. All Wally would remember of his own story would never make as much sense as an either frolic. And how he would survive the war--sterile, paralyzed, both legs flaccid--had already been dreamed by Big Dot Taft.
It was thirty-four degrees in St. Cloud's when Homer Wells went to the railroad station and dictated a telegram to Olive to the stationmaster. Homer could not have phoned her, and lied to her that directly. And hadn't Olive telegramed them? She must have had her reasons for not wanting to talk on the phone. It was with the almost certain feeling that Ray and Olive knew everything that Homer and Candy were doing that Homer dictated his telegram to Olive--respecting a polite formality as faint as a suspicion. It was a suspicion that could be proven only impolitely, and Homer Wells was polite.
GOD BLESS YOU AND WALLY/STOP
WHEN WILL WE SEE HIM/STOP
CANDY AND I HOME SOON/STOP
I HAVE ADOPTED A BABY BOY/STOP
LOVE HOMER
"You're kind of young to adopt somebody, ain't you?" the stationmaster asked.
"Right," said Homer Wells.
