“And you think that means⸺” mused Norris.
“Just what it appears to mean. When something happens to take me away from the air I’ll go to Jennie. Maybe I’ll crash with somebody else, as a passenger. Maybe I’ll contract whooping cough and die. But I’ll crash off, somehow.”
“Well, Bill, perhaps. But that’s getting pretty literal. I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“You would if you loved Jennie,” said Cobb.
Norris gave over his exhortations to moderation and sat smoking silently. Billy rolled into his cot and fell off to sleep, in defiance of the drop lamp on the table and the heat.
His roommate put his pipe aside at length and rose to douse the light. Looking down he saw that Billy was smiling faintly in his sleep.
“You sure deserve to smile, old boy,” said Norris, and snapped off the switch. “I wonder, now,” he grunted as he stretched himself on the torrid sheets.
On August 20th Norris took a five-day leave. On August 25th he returned. Coming by the guard at the gate he headed straight for the club with a vision of sandwiches and coffee in his mind. He had missed his dinner in order to make train connections. As chance provided, Norris had met nobody from Langstrom on his way out to the post. What had happened on the field that day was still the secret of the field as far as Norris was concerned.
Weyman and young Crawley were sitting on the club veranda as Norris came up the steps and through the screen door. He nodded to them and went inside, dropping his suit case in the hall.
He had his sandwiches and his coffee and smoked a cigarette to top off with, letting his thoughts meander idly, glad to rest comfortably after the heat and the grime of the trains. Weyman sitting with Crawley crossed his mind. Weyman recalled something to him. Oh, yes. Billy’s 609. It had been due that day. He must ask the surgeon how it turned out. He went out to the veranda and drew a chair beside the two who sat there.