“Hello,” the man said.
“I was looking at your hair,” she said. She took pride in her bluntness. “No offense. It’s striking.”
He raised his eyebrows. They too were white. “Thank you.”
“I mean you see a lot of people with sort of white hair, but not white white.”
“It’s been that way for many years.”
“I like it.”
He stuck out his hand. “Hamish Bogen.”
“Megan Hellenbeck. What is that, German?”
“Bogen is German.” He smiled. “My father was from Munich. Hamish is Dutch. My mother’s father.”
“Bogen,” she said. “What does that mean? Does it mean anything?”
“It means ‘curve.’”
“Curve,” she said.
“Do you know what Hellenbeck means?” he asked her.
“No. Do you?”
“Something like ‘bright bowl.’ Though that doesn’t sound like something you’d want for a name.”
“Why not?” she said. Bright bowl! It sounded simple and optimistic. So many possibilities for a bright bowl. “I kind of like it, actually.”
“You’re in luck!” he said. “It’s yours!” He laughed, then she did too, and then they fell silent. They watched another plane approach the terminal. A man with a flag guided it home. It irritated Megan; she thought, there has to be a better way. They could paint lines on the concrete with magnetic paint or something, and guide the plane by computer. Like those robots they have in hospitals.
“So,” Hamish said, “you are a student?”
“People always assume people my age are students.”
He nodded. “But you are?”
“One more year. I’m going back today. Montana State Marshall.”
Hamish stretched beside her. His clothes made a sound pulling across his skin, like bare feet on a carpet, and for some reason this filled her with longing. For what? she thought. What am I missing? “I often wish I’d gone to college,” he was saying. “I love to learn. I’d imagine I’ve passed up a great deal.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Megan said. She looked at her watch. Ten more minutes. “I don’t like listening to people air their regrets. I personally don’t have any. You could go to college if you wanted. People do what they want.”
He laughed. “One can’t always.”
“I can.” But she sounded too sure of herself. She added, “So far, anyway.”
“You have someone special in Marshall?” he asked.
“Boyfriend.”
“Will you marry him?”
She looked at him. He was smiling. “That’s an awfully personal question.” She turned back to the window. Outside, they were loading metal crates onto the plane. “Yes,” she said, “sure I will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am.” She shifted in her seat. “His name is Lars.”
“When I was your age,” he said. “When somebody says that, it’s time to stop listening, right?”
Megan shrugged.
“When I was your age I was already married.” He rubbed the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. “I’d never been outside Montana. I didn’t know anything. My parents had a ranch. I met a girl and married her, and brought her to live there.”
“Bad move?” Megan said, interested now.
“Maybe, maybe not. A lot of problems. My mother didn’t like her. We didn’t make enough money. I drank and scared my children. I left. I moved to Marshall and straightened out, and eventually I remarried and left Montana for good.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not lecturing you, you know. Kids are smarter these days.”
She turned to face him. “Why are you going back to Marshall today?”
“A while ago my wife died. I got to thinking about Trixie, my first wife. I loved her all along.”
There was a silence. Then, “I don’t buy that,” she said.
“All right.”
“If you loved her you would have stayed.”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then he said, quietly, “Well, I was weak.”
She had been thinking of her jilted college girlfriends, the way they cried when the boyfriends dumped them. Those boys never loved them. But she supposed she shouldn’t have said that to Hamish. It probably wasn’t the same thing. She didn’t know if he loved his wife or not.
“I’m sorry, Mister Bogen.” She thought, curve.
“It’s all right.”
“So you’re going to see her?”
He nodded. “I’m going to see her.”
Some flight attendants were chatting with a pilot near the entrance ramp. Flirting. They all laughed.
“How old are you, Mister Bogen?”
“Hamish, please. Seventy-four.”
“I thought younger.”
He laughed. “And you’re…”
“Twenty.”
“I thought older.”
“Ha!”
They called first class. Hamish didn’t get up. He said to her, “I always fly coach.” As if he could have done otherwise, if he wanted.
“I’ve never flown first class,” she said.
He turned to her and offered his hand. She didn’t know, for a moment, what to do with it. Did he want to be helped up? She extended her hand, slowly.
He shook it. “I hope you do marry,” he said. “I’m sure you will.”
“Well,” she said, “I hope things go well for you in Marshall.”
She stood up. “They’ll call me next. I’m in the back.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Thanks for the chat.” It didn’t seem enough to end the conversation with, but she didn’t know what else to say. She wondered what it would be like to be this man, to be near the end of life and want to bring it full circle. She felt a little sorry for him, and then caught herself. She was acting her age.
“Of course,” he said again.
“Well,” she said.
A woman’s voice crackled over the PA.
“Go, go,” he said, “get in your seat.”
She went. Now it would only be her and Lars, he was the next person she would speak to. She would step into the air-conditioned terminal of the Marshall airport and open her arms for him. She thought, walking down the ramp, that this had been her last summer at home, without him, the last summer alone. She hitched her bag up higher on her shoulder. Then the attendants greeted her and she stepped onto the plane.
For their help reading and editing portions of this manuscript, thanks to Kate Gadbow, David Gilbert and Julie Grau. James Welch checked my facts on the Blackfeet and Flathead Indian tribes. John McCormick of the National Transportation Safety Board in Seattle answered my questions about plane crash investigations.
For their attention to my work, I’d like to thank Lisa Bankoff, Amy S. Fisher, Allyson Goldin, Andrew Sean Greer, Cary Holliday, Mark Holthoff, Kristen Hunter-Lattany, Alicia Ieronemo, Bill Kittredge, Jill Marquis, Richard Nuñez, Chris Offutt, Mary Park, Jocelyn Siler and Ed Skoog.
I reserve my greatest thanks for my family and their kind advice and support, for Ann Parchett, and for my wife, Rhian Ellis.
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Copyright © 1997 by J. Robert Lennon
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Light of Falling Stars Page 35
