Chasing the Wind (4 page)

Jude glanced at his watch. It was eight o'clock. Franky & Johnny's was slow tonight. He wondered how Amalise had managed on her first day back. She'd been ill for so long. He pressed his hands over his eyes and slid them down his cheeks, fingers splayed as the memories intruded. Jude saw himself behind the wheel, peering down the narrow dirt road, searching the darkness for Amalise—and for Phillip, who he knew would harm her. Suddenly Amalise had appeared from around the curve, looming in the beams of his headlights. He'd slammed on the brakes, the car skidding toward her.

He could still see the terror in her eyes just before she fell.

Jude had stumbled from the car, fallen to his knees, and gathered her to him, praying, willing her to live—desperately
willing
her blood to pump on through her veins—realizing in that moment that he wouldn't want to live without her. The understanding of what it would mean to lose Amalise had hit him then like a blow to his solar plexus, a bludgeoning glimpse of long gray years ahead without her.

He'd known then that he loved Amalise Catoir. He'd loved her since they were children, but this feeling was new, transformative—different from the way he'd felt with any other. This was something deeper, more profound.

He hadn't told her yet. Soon he would. He longed to tell her, and not for the first time he wondered how it would feel to kiss this girl whom he'd practically helped to raise. But Amalise was no longer a girl. She was a woman now—and a widow.

In the time they had spent together during her recuperation, it had been tempting just to lay things out for her, to tell her how he felt. But better judgment had prevailed. Not while she was on the mend and still vulnerable. Remembering Phillip. Remembering that night.

So he'd kept silent. So far. Waiting for just the right time.

Tonight she'd be focused on her return to work. He glanced around at the room, at the other customers, the bright lights overhead, the linoleum floors. No. Not yet, but soon. A pit lodged in his stomach at the thought.
How do you tell your oldest friend that you're in love with her?

He steepled his hands and tipped his fingers against his lips. Years of piloting ships over the sandbars in the passes south of the river had taught him how to navigate dangerous currents and ghost-like shoals. He studied the soundings, the weather, reports from other pilots. The ships were equipped with radar to guide the way. But even with that wealth of information at hand, still he knew that the surest decisions were those based on experience—the touch of the wheel, the feel of the keel, and the chop of the Gulf.

The waitress arrived and he shook his head. "I'm waiting for someone," he said, and she disappeared. His fingers rap-tapped the tabletop in a rhythm only he could hear. Seconds passed, then he sat back in the chair, arms stretched out before him. Cacophonous sounds of madness came from the kitchen nearby, a clashing of pots and pans and ribald laughter. The jukebox blared. Behind the bar a glass shattered.

He looked up and over his shoulder saw Amalise enter the restaurant. Her face lit when she saw him. She waved and smiled, and her confident stride told him everything he needed to know. She'd weathered her first day back. He lifted his hand and pushed back his chair.

She slipped off her coat, and he took it from her, laying it across an empty chair. "You look great," he said as she raised up on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. Without thinking he stepped back and away. Things were different now.

She gave him a fleeting curious look as he pulled out a chair for her, and she sat. "It's windy out there," she said. She turned her face up to his as she brushed back her hair. Strands of fine, dark silk hair drifted barely to her shoulders, so different from Rebecca's long red curls. Men turned to watch Rebecca. But Amalise . . . if they only knew. Amalise was the one to watch.

He smiled and sat down beside her. "Weather's coming in. But we're in the middle of October, chère, and hurricane season's almost over. And best of all," he leaned over and patted her arm, "you've escaped the doctors at last."

She gave him a wide smile. "First day back on the job, Jude. Done."

Checking off her list. "Was it difficult?"

"No. It's as if I'd never been gone." She fluffed her hair with both hands and looked around the room.

Jude caught the waitress's eye and signaled her.

Forearms squared on the table, Amalise leaned forward. Her eyes sparkled. Her tone was triumphant. "I've been put on one of Doug's deals. They want to close before Thanksgiving, so it will move fast."

"That sounds restful. It's what any doctor would prescribe for a patient who's been laid up for months with a concussion and partial amnesia."

She threw up her hands. "I know."

He smiled. She was healthy at last and happy.
Thank you.

Reaching for the basket at the center of the table, she pulled out a saltine cracker wrapped in plastic. "I couldn't have handled one more day as an invalid, Jude, wanting to get back to the city. To hear the sound of streetcars, to be part of the crowds downtown. To work, to eat in busy restaurants."

Absently he watched her fighting with the plastic paper around the cracker, twisting the corners.

"Not that I don't like Marianus," she added quickly. "But I've got to catch up now."

"Catch up to what?" Jude took the cracker from her, tore the wrapper off, and handed it back. He eyed her as she bit into the cracker. Amalise's calendar wasn't like others'. For her, days were mile markers. Life was a race, though he wasn't sure of the goal.

The waitress appeared and handed them menus. "Iced tea, please." Amalise tilted up her face. "Unsweetened. Plenty of ice. Plenty of lemon."

The waitress nodded. Hand on her hip, she eyed Jude's empty glass. "Same for me," he said, and she picked up the glass.

When she'd gone, Amalise lifted the menu and scanned it. "I'm restless, Jude. Since the accident, I've felt an urge, a need to do something with my life that's . . ." She gave him a self-conscious look. "I don't know. Something that's lasting, I suppose. Something with a clear purpose." She set the menu down and leaned toward him, looking at him. "But I don't know what it is."

He watched as she unwrapped the napkin from around the knife and fork, placed the napkin across her lap and the flatware side by side on the table. He sensed that something had changed in her after the accident, early on while she was still in the hospital. She'd confided in him in those early days that her brush with death, and what she called this second chance, made her understand more deeply the value of life. She wasn't afraid of death, she'd said. She knew what lay beyond. But now she thought there was a reason that God, her Abba, had spared her—for a purpose she didn't yet understand.

He entertained the notion of suggesting that life was meant for love. He longed to put his hands on her shoulders so she'd have to look straight into his eyes, and then he would explain how the friendship they'd shared for so many years had—for him—grown into something else that would last a lifetime. He wanted Amalise and children and a home.

But it was too soon. So instead he slung an arm over the back of his chair and half-turned to her and said, "What about your job? Isn't that enough?"

"Oh, I love practicing law. I'd never think of giving that up." She laughed at herself. When the iced tea arrived, she squeezed lemon into her drink. Sliding the sugar bowl over, she added two teaspoons to the tea and stirred. "I was like a sponge in law school, you know, soaking everything up." She looked at him. "But you come out of it thinking differently, analyzing problems in a new way."

Jude dropped his arm and turned back with a sideways look. "Yes. I saw that in your relationship with Phillip."

Instantly he regretted the sarcasm. For a split second she looked down, gave all of her attention to unwrapping a straw, sliding the paper down, rumpling it. She tossed it at Jude.

He shouldn't have joked. "I'm sorry for that, Amalise."

She nodded and he watched as she moved the fork closer to her plate. Slid the knife parallel again. "I know. Don't worry." She looked up. "But sometimes thinking of Phillip makes me wonder how I got so far off the path."

Amalise didn't give into moods often. Even at the worst times of her marriage to Phillip, she'd seemed able to compartmentalize, to set worries aside and enjoy a good moment.

Jude straightened. Reaching across the table, he nudged her chin with his knuckle and put more gusto than he felt at this moment into his voice. "Let's change the subject. This is your first day back at work. Take things easy for a while and have fun."

She picked up another cracker and, without fighting the plastic wrapper this time, handed it to him. He opened it, crushed the paper, and handed the cracker back. "You're on a great transaction, Rebecca says. Be thankful for the good things."

"I will." She bit into the cracker and looked at him, and his heart melted at the trust in her eyes. "After Phillip died, I suddenly understood how important it is to get things right." With a wan smile, she added, "But sometimes I'm still a little blue."

The only times he could remember Amalise sinking into gloom were the last few years of the Vietnam War, when they were assaulted every night with scenes of young soldiers fighting and dying, the brave and scarred, the dead, the wounded, night after night. Misery was all around, it seemed, tightening about the nation like chains. Jude closed his eyes, remembering the lottery for the draft. In the beginning, planted in front of the television, waiting for the numbers to be drawn, they had been struck dumb with helplessness by the randomness of it all. If your number was pulled, you were shipped out to those jungles. He'd been one of the lucky ones.

Then came the news of American troops withdrawing from Southeast Asia. The images were powerful, imprinted forever on the minds of his generation. Worse was the memory of the many left behind—numerous of America's own, the dead and captured South Vietnamese who had fought alongside them, and the most vulnerable, the elderly and the children of a war-torn land. The shadow children, Amalise had called them, orphans struggling to survive in the burning villages of Vietnam and Cambodia. Cambodia had simply vanished under a black veil in 1975 after the Khmer Rouge moved in. The killing fields, they were calling them now. Amalise had never been able to forget.

She sat silent beside him now in Franky & Johnny's, waiting for some kind of response. He sipped his iced tea. It was the futility that had gotten her down the most back then, he thought, problems that were too big to solve, even for a girl who'd grown up thinking she could fix anything given enough effort. Amalise could do nothing but watch. That was the blessing and curse of nightly television news.

He remembered one Thanksgiving in Marianus—1974, he thought it was. They'd had a long day, a good meal followed by an afternoon of fishing together. The Judge had gone to bed, and Amalise had disappeared to her room to study, so he'd thought. He'd shooed Amalise's mother, Maraine, off to bed. He could see how tired she was. He told her he'd clean up the kitchen before going home. Maraine had given him a grateful look with those eyes of hers, so like Amalise, and then she'd kissed his cheek and patted his shoulder and disappeared.

But when he finished the dishes, turned out the kitchen light, and headed for the door, he'd halted as he entered the darkened living room lit only by the flickering glow of the television set. Amalise was curled up in the cushioned armchair the Judge claimed as his own, alone, eyes riveted to the pictures on the silent screen, the orphaned children of the wars on the other side of the world, children searching the midday sky in eerie silence for the Air America planes to come and leave pallets of food on the airstrip.

He'd moved toward her and then halted when he realized that she was weeping. Her lips were moving. She was praying for those children in the shadows of the war, he realized. As she swiped tears from her cheeks with the heel of her hand, he'd backed out of the private moment before she saw him. He left through the back door.

Jude looked at her now. She was searching for meaning and purpose, wanting to get things right this time. But with all that had happened in the past two years . . . well, it was no wonder she felt a little down.

So he sat up straight while he formed the words she was waiting for, hands clasped before him, conscious that she watched him carefully, as she'd always done. He gave her a reflective look. "You've had a hard time the last few years, chère, between Phillip and everything else. But it's time to let old problems go, to put them in God's hands." He slid his own hands over the table so that their fingertips met.

She nodded but didn't say anything.

"Well, here's my advice for what it's worth." He paused. "Take each day as it comes. Use the mind God gave you, keep the faith, and you'll make right decisions." He shrugged. "If there's more . . . if you're meant for a particular purpose, you'll know it when you see it." He gave her a long look.

She slid her hands back into her lap. "All right."

Fighting the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her, he let out a short laugh. "Prioritize," he said. "You've always been good at that."

A smile broke through. Seconds passed, then she leaned back, drawing in a long breath. "I'm starving. I'll have red beans and rice."

He pushed his own menu aside. He had it memorized by now.

"What are you having?" she asked.

"A bowl of gumbo."

"That's all?"

He laughed. "You'll order enough for two. I'll have some of yours."

When the waitress returned, Amalise ordered red beans and rice with sausage and ham, French bread on the side with garlic butter, and greens. He watched, amused, wondering again how she managed to stay slim.

She caught his look. There hadn't been time for lunch, she said. Bundling his menu with hers, she handed them to the waitress, and settled back. "When do you leave for Pilottown?"

"I've got a while." And he wasn't sorry about that because he needed time. He planned to tell her everything before he left. He envisioned the isolated hamlet where he lived with the other pilots on watch two weeks out of every month at the mouth of the Mississippi. Usually he loved the place, but recently it had begun to strike him as lonely.