The Hunters by James Salter Page B

window, never turning or seeming to hear.
    It has to end some way, Cleve thought. He sat uncomfortably, with his reflections turned inward. The time came when you either did it yourself or it was done for you. Either way was hard. Prepared or unprepared, sudden or slow, it was all the same. Life stopped, and the world went on in the hands of others.
    â€œI can’t help it,” Abbott said after a time, sighing unevenly. He kept his face turned. “You’ll have to come down and see me in Seoul, when you get a chance.”
    â€œYou’ll be too busy briefing generals.”
    â€œNo, I mean it. Come down.”
    â€œAll right,” Cleve said. He would have agreed to anything. He longed for a decent parting phrase.
    â€œAny time,” Abbott insisted. “You’re the only one I can talk to.”
    That stayed in Cleve’s mind afterward. He was reminded piercingly of school, where the athletes held to each other and the
scholars strolled side by side. He hated Abbott for having said it; more and more as, with the maddening insistence of a nightmare, the days went on, cold and empty. They were the kind that, when looked back upon, seem indistinguishable one from another.
    He started every mission with at least some measure of hope, but never was it realized. He was flying the day that Gabriel, the fourth flight leader in the squadron, who had come to the group after Cleve, got a MIG, but he saw nothing. He flew his twenty-eighth mission, his twenty-ninth, his thirtieth. His flight began to take some shape as an entity. Pell, it developed, was a good pilot who picked up experience quickly. He flew on a wing consistently well from the first, always in the right place, and his close formation was almost too close, a measure of insolence. Pettibone, in comparison, was uneven and would never get close enough. He seemed to meet an invisible barrier ten feet out. Cleve patiently guided him, never dwelling on more than one point at a time and as if incidentally.
    â€œYou have to anticipate more,” he would say, “keep ahead of the ship. You’re not doing that enough.”
    â€œI’m trying not to use the throttle too much.”
    â€œStop worrying about that. That’s a refinement. Use it all you want. Use it all the way from the gear warning to the fire warning light if you have to. That’s what it’s there for. Only use it in time, not when it’s too late. Make the throttle your intention, not your reaction. You understand me?”
    â€œI think so, sir.”
    â€œGood.” It was slow work, but gradually it would come about.
    One afternoon when Cleve did not go, Daughters led and got a damaged. Hunter had been on his wing; and that evening they
listened as he enthusiastically described how it had happened, the first bit of mutual success. Cleve tried to feel happy, but it was poison to him. He felt, instead, as men do when they realize that they are losing their sanity, rational but overwhelmed.
    When he sat in the briefings and looked at his name printed on the scheduling board at the head of his flight, he burned with self-consciousness. It seemed to stand out vividly beside the others: Nolan’s for instance, Robey’s, Imil’s.
    Finally, it was Colonel Moncavage who had no kills either, but then, on a single wild mission, got two. It was like an evisceration for Cleve when he heard it. Even Moncavage, he thought, somehow . . . At the bar the colonel took Cleve’s congratulations smilingly, but soon turned back to Robey sitting beside him, to resume a narrative of how it had been accomplished. Cleve listened, feeling alien and empty. Robey was decorating the colonel’s story with experiences of his own. There was nothing that Cleve could contribute.
    â€œYou should have gotten them long before this, Colonel,” Robey said generously. “You just didn’t have the breaks. Sometimes you have to wait for them,