"Comes in at five-thirty. Takes the hard ones. The ones who don't speak English, the ones who get confused, the old ladies with the big pocketbooks. First week he tried to help a fella from Ghana with his bags and the fella cussed him out, thought he was a thief." Wendell laughed, a deep, delighted sound. "Your boy stood there and took it. Said, yes sir, I understand, sir, and went and got a supervisor so the man would feel safe. I about fell over."
"He's not my boy, Wendell."
"Well, he's somebody's," Wendell said. "His mama comes with him some Sundays. Sits right there in that chair and does her crossword and watches him. Says she's checking on him." He leaned on the broom. "She asked me to tell you something, if I saw you. She said tell the captain the water was good."
Desmond did not trust himself to answer for a moment. He looked down the corridor where Curtis and the woman in the church hat had disappeared toward the trains. He thought of a photograph that had reached him two days after Seattle, forwarded by Sergeant Whitfield with a one-line note, She asked me to send you this: a gray sky, gray water, the long concrete wall of the Ballard Locks, and a tiny figure in a lavender cardigan in a wheelchair at the railing with her face turned toward the Sound, and behind her, holding the chair, a big man in a raincoat who was not looking at his phone.
He had looked at that photograph for a long time.
"Tell her I know," he said. "Tell her I flew it like eggs."
He took the train to B. He walked the concourse with his roller bag rattling behind him, past the coffee kiosk across from B41, past the hockey families and the business travelers and the sleeping toddlers. At the long window between B41 and B43 he slowed, and then he stopped.
The glass was spotless. Somebody cleaned it every morning; he knew who. Out on the ramp, a white Cordillera 737 sat at the gate with its jet bridge snugged against the forward door and a fuel truck under its wing, and a young first officer in an orange vest was walking around the nose with a flashlight, looking up at things.
In the glass, laid over the airplane, Desmond could see his own reflection: a tall Black man of fifty-seven, gray at the temples, in a captain's uniform with four gold stripes on each sleeve. He stood there and looked at him for a while. Then he lifted one hand and laid it flat against the cold glass, fingers spread, the way he had laid it there in October. He held it there. It did not shake.
He took his hand away, and walked on to the gate, and at the podium Marisol looked up and smiled and said, "Morning, Captain. You're early."
"I am," said Desmond Hale. He picked up the handset, and keyed it, and the speakers in the ceiling woke with a soft electric breath. "Good morning, folks. This is your captain. We're going to be right on time today."
He looked out at the gate area, at all the faces turning up toward the sound.
"Nobody has to explain a thing," he said.