Mystery

She rubbed the tips of her breasts against his chest, and he levered himself up and pushed down his trousers. “Well, what shall we do with this thing?” Sarah said. “Here we are, aren’t we? In this traveling Redwing love nest.” In a flash she was naked, and all of her beautiful body had wrapped around him. She guided him between her legs, and they held to each other and moved as much as they could. Tom felt his entire body gather and gather itself, and she twisted back and forth upon him; and it felt as if he were exploding. Sarah bit his shoulder, and he stiffened again instantly. She tightened around him; her body quivered; and he felt all her warmth embracing him, and after some endless minutes it was as if he turned inside out, as if he were a tree turning into a river within her. Trembling and shaking with passion and what felt like a final, ultimate blessedness, he felt her trembling too. Finally she collapsed against him. Her face was wet against his cheek, and he saw that she had been crying.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I’m glad,” she said, and he remembered her saying it at Miss Ellinghausen’s.

She pulled away from him, and kissed him; and stepped into her shorts and hooked on her bra and pulled her shirt over her tender shoulders. He rearranged his clothing, feeling as though an aura clung to him. And then they were seventeen years old again, seated side by side and holding hands, but everything had changed forever.

“I can still feel you inside me,” she said, “How can I marry Buddy Redwing, when Tom Pasmore is still inside me? I’m branded. There’s this big TP on me somewhere.”

They sat in silence, and the jet pushed its way through the air.

“How are you kids getting on?” Mr. Spence yelled from the bar.

“Fine, Daddy,” Sarah called out in a clear, high-pitched voice that sounded like bells and made Tom’s heart dissolve. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” he yelled back. “Within reason, of course!”

“Reason had nothing to do with it,” she whispered, and they leaned against one another and laughed.

Mrs. Spence shouted down the length of the plane: “Why don’t you kids come up here and be sociable?”

“In a minute, mother,” Sarah called back.

Again they sat in silence, looking at one another.

“I think it’s going to be an interesting summer,” Sarah said.

Grand Forks was a small town twenty miles from Eagle Lake, and because of travelers from Canada as well as Mill Walk, its little airport had a Customs and Immigration section, located in a concrete block shed adjacent to the terminal. Captain Mornay escorted his passengers and their bags to the Customs desk, where the inspector greeted him as Ted and chalked their bags without bothering to open them. Immigration stamped their crimson Mill Walk passports with tourist visas.

“I suppose Ralph sent a driver?” said Mrs. Spence, managing to sound offended by the necessity of asking the question.

“He generally does that, yes, ma’am,” the pilot said. “If you’ll take your bags through that glass door just ahead and take them into the main terminal, you should find the driver waiting for you.”

The customs inspector and the Immigration official were staring raptly at Mrs. Spence’s long legs, as was a young man in a brown leather jacket sprawled out in a chair against one of the grey walls of the shed.

Mrs. Spence covered most of her handsome face with the enormous sunglasses and swept toward the glass door, carrying nothing but a handbag.

“Enjoy your stay,” the pilot said, and turned away to walk toward the grinning man in the leather jacket.

Mr. Spence picked up the Papa Bear suitcase and went after his wife.

One of Tom’s cases had a long strap, which he put over a shoulder. He picked up his other, heavier suitcase by the handle, and with his left hand took the leash of the Mama Bear suitcase.

“Oh, let me do it,” Sarah said. “After all, she’s my awful mother, not yours.” She took the thin strap from his hand, and Tom rearranged his own cases to balance the weight, and they went through the glass door.

Between the jet and the customs shed Tom had been too preoccupied with Sarah Spence to notice anything else except the freshness of the air and the unusual intensity of the sky; in the shorter distance between the customs shed and the terminal building, he felt the edge in the air, the hint of chill at the center of its warmth, and realized that he was thousands of miles farther north than he had ever been before. The sky here made the sky over Mill Walk seem to have been washed a thousand times. Sarah opened the door to the terminal with her hip, and he went in before her.

Mr. and Mrs. Spence stood at the opposite end of the terminal, talking with a stocky young man in his early twenties with a chauffeur’s hat jammed low on his forehead and a dark blue sweatshirt that bulged over his belly. All three scowled at Tom and Sarah.

“Come on, kids,” said Mr. Spence. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Give him my bag, Sarah,” Mrs. Spence said.