She looked up at him so he could see her eyes in the reflected glare and she sort of smiled as if she were embarrassed and he could tell she was stark, raving crazy. Then she flopped over, but the other thing went on blatting and blatting, its breath catching on every intake.
He was sorry he’d just drunk so much soda.
Back on the comer, they were yelling, “Signals! Signals!”
He hitched into the walkie-talkie and trotted toward the men. “Here I am!”
“For crissake, stay in the main drag, willya? We needya!”
8
It was cold out at Hink Field.
It was a cold, icy-clear night, with stars.
Toward the cities, of course, the stars were obscured. And even directly overhead, they were dimmer. That was owing to the fire. It lit up Hink Field the way a flare from a private gas well lights a farmer’s barnyard. It threw an immense pall of smoke across the eastern sky. But the high, steady wind from the northwest blew it away from the airports. And at Hink, by midnight, the thermometer was down to twenty.
They were doing what they could. It wasn’t much.