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She tried to regard Dent objectively, which was impossible. “I’m still forming my opinion.”
“Your folks didn’t like him.”
“I’m not my folks.”
He didn’t remark on that.
“You’ve known him for a long time.”
“Sure have.” He tossed the soggy remnants of his cigar into the trash can and unwrapped a fresh one.
“Do you ever light those?”
He frowned cantankerously. “Haven’t you heard? Smokin’ is bad for your health. God knows he drummed that into my ears till I either had to quit or kill him just to shut him up about it.”
“Dent lectured you on smoking, when he’s so reckless in his own right?”
Gall fixed his rheumy gaze on her. “Reckless? I guess in some areas of his life he could exercise more caution.”
“He drives way too fast.”
“Yeah, he likes speed. And on occasion he drinks too much and wakes up in a bed he ought not to be in. But I’ll tell you one damn thing.” He held the cigar between two fingers as he wagged them at her. “He’s the best damn pilot I’ve ever run across.”
When she didn’t comment, he took it as an invitation to expand.
“Some pilots are taught to fly, and they learn good enough to keep the airplane from crashing. If the machine is in working order, and the pilot doesn’t fuck up, the thing will fly. You gotta use your hands and your feet and you gotta have a pretty good head on your shoulders and at least a little common sense, so you don’t make a stupid mistake or take a gamble that gets you killed. But even the smartest of men can be the lousiest pilots. You know why? They make it mental. They don’t do it from their gut.”
He gave his belly a loud smack. “The good pilots do it from here. They feel it. They know how to do it before they ever take a lesson. Sure, you gotta learn about the weather, how to read instruments. There’s a lot that can be taught to improve natural skill, but, in my book, that skill—something you’re just born with—is essential. I don’t have it. But I know it when I see it.”
He removed his cigar from his mouth and studied the end of it as he rolled it between his fingers. “I got to shake hands with Chuck Yeager once, out at an air base in New Mexico. I was just a kid, a grease monkey, but in my work I got to rub elbows with lots of flyboys who later became astronauts and such. Damn good pilots. The kind I’m talking about. The ones who do it by instinct.”
He tipped his chin down and looked at Bellamy from beneath the shaggy line of his eyebrows. “But I wouldn’t trade ten of them for one Denton Carter.” As though to underscore the statement, he jammed the cigar back into the corner of his mouth and anchored it there with his teeth.
Amused, she said, “I don’t intend to dispute you.”
“Well,” he grumbled, “just in case you were of a mind to.” He looked beyond her. She turned so that she, too, could see into the hangar where Dent was still inspecting the airplane. “Only a nekkid woman would hold that much fascination for him,” the old man remarked with a cackle.
“When he first started coming out here, he was a moody little bastard, full of piss and vinegar and lots to prove, ready to take offense at the drop of a hat. But when he got around the airplanes, I saw the look that came over his face. There’s an expression for it. Uh… What’s the word?” he asked, rapidly snapping his fingers.
“Rapture?”
“Yeah. Rapture. Like somebody that ought to have sunlight shining on him through a stained-glass window. That’s the way Dent got whenever he looked at an airplane in flight.”
“He told me about the first time you took him up. He said he fell head over heels in love with flying.”
Gall shifted his eyes off Dent and back to her. “He told you that?”
“In those words.”
“You don’t say? Huh.” He tilted his head and studied her for a moment. “I’ve never known him to talk about it before.”
She weighed the advisability of asking her next question, but decided she would never know the answer if she didn’t ask. “What happened in the cockpit during that flight that nearly went down? I don’t think either the media or the public got the full story.”
“What has Dent told you about it?”
“Nothing. He changes the subject.”
“Well, then, you won’t hear it from me. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you his own self.”
