By Fred Chamberlain

he aged gravekeeper was nervous.  At first he thought it was the dark, gray sky—the cold, whipping wind that foretold another storm.  When it was like this, the hills covered with stony reminders of the dead seemed to fill him with a pointless uneasiness. Then he noticed the tall young man, motionless behind the iron fence at the other side of the cemetery.  An unblinking penetrating quality of the eyes gave the old gravekeeper a feeling that invisible hands were reaching out for him, and he shuddered.  It was four thirty and would soon be dark.  No use waiting till five, he thought; time to lock up and leave.  As the gravekeeper drove away, he saw the young man walking rapidly into the night toward the more affluent residential districts.

"You’re not going to do this to my daughter, Ray!"  The heavy woman in a shapeless dress leaned on the polished surface of her dining room table, fingers curled like talons helplessly clawing at the smooth surface.  "It’s indecent!  It’s obscene! It makes me sick to even think about it!" she rasped.  "I’ll stop you, no matter what it takes!  I’m an important woman in this town!"  Her narrowed eyes and stony nose matched the hissing tone of her voice.  Stopping, seemingly at a loss for words, she glared up at the young man.  Her labored breathing filled the room.

Ray leaned even further forward from the opposite side of the table.  Eyes needling downward, exploring the pudgy little woman’s face, he said, "The grave may be right for you, but you’re not going to shove it down Barbara’s throat!"  His voice had an angry, cold deepness, like the growling of a blizzard’s wind passing through thick groves of trees.  "You didn’t want the marriage," he said.  "Now you don’t want this, but it’s not going to change a thing!"

Ray’s face softened into a broad, bitter smile that had no humor in it.  "Picture yourself the way she is!" he suddenly threw at her.  "Then see your corpse lying in a casket!  Do you really like that picture?  Perhaps that’s what you deserve!"  The bulky woman began to tremble.  His expression becoming serious, reflective, Ray turned abruptly and left; the house shook as he closed the door.  Barbara’s mother reached, choking, for the telephone, and dialed the number of her attorney.

"It’s time to go, Barbara," Ray said gently, as he pulled a chair up beside her bed.  "You won’t need much.  The plane leaves in an hour!"  Although his voice was calm, controlled, Ray struggled deep within himself not to think of the lonely years ahead.  He reached out and stroked her hair softly.  There was so little time left!

"What’s my mother going to do?" Barbara asked, her weakened voice wavering for a moment.  "She’s always fought me tooth and nail on this!"  Her dark eyes smiled and burned with determination, despite the pallor that surrounded them.  Barbara still looked as firmly convinced as when she had first broached the subject with her parents and stood her ground, three years before she and Ray had met.

"Your mother will try to stop it," Ray said.  "That’s why we have to hurry.  When the doctors admitted treatment was useless... advised it be stopped, your mother finally realized it actually might happen.  That’s when she began talking to her minister and attorney.  I’ve seen them both.  The minister is harmless enough, but her lawyer might be able to get some kind of injunction.  They’ll probably try it tomorrow morning... tonight, if they find out we’re going so quickly."

Ray rose and quickly packed Barbara’s things, then said, "I’ll take your bag to the car and come back for you."  Barbara smiled as he paused at the door and looked back.  Panoramas of happy days flashed before Ray’s eyes.  It’s going to be much easier for her, he thought.  A blink of those lovely lashes and she’ll be on her way to the future.  But these memories are going to have to last me a long, long time.  A moment later Ray tore himself away and left the room.

The short, plump nurse was visibly upset, her voice sharply edged, when Ray pushed Barbara’s wheelchair out of the room. "You can’t take her out of here on a night like this!" she objected. "In her condition?  She’s so weak she shouldn’t be moved at all! I have instructions she’s not to leave her bed!"

"There’s somewhere she wants very much to go," smiled Ray sadly.  "If people were telling you any moment could be your last, if there were a special place you wanted to be, wouldn’t you go?"  Ray and Barbara were approaching the main door, and the nurse could see nothing would stop them.  Returning quickly to her station, she thought for a moment and then called a doctor. Her supervisor had warned her something funny might happen.

Snow was beginning to fall, as Ray rolled Barbara’s wheel-chair toward the plane.  A phone call with a physician in Arizona had satisfied the terminal’s authorities that a sick person needed to be moved on an urgent basis.  "Is there any chance the flight might be canceled?" Barbara asked, brushing her hair back and looking out the plane’s window at the drifting flakes.

"I don’t think so," said Ray.  "The snow’s not deep, yet!  The main front is still a hundred miles away, but it’s moving very rapidly.  Any delay like a phone call from your mother’s attorney or a judge could hold things up till the field’s unusable.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen!"  He put his arms around her.  Together they watched the snow continue to fall, covering the plane’s giant wings with a velvet whiteness.  The wait seemed endless!

Finally, one by one, the large turbojet engines were started; the plane rolled down the taxiway toward its takeoff position.  Neither Ray nor Barbara knew that after a hurried conversation with her attorney, Barbara’s mother had called the police, telling them her daughter had been ‘kidnapped’!  Roadblocks were being set up in the dark roads filling with snow.  As the pilot applied full throttle to all engines, neither Ray nor Barbara knew the police were having a heated argument with the airport’s manager about whether or not a husband could ‘kidnap’ his wife when she appeared to be going willingly and doctors were waiting at the other end.

Neither Ray nor Barbara knew that before the plane reached cruising altitude, attorneys in California would have talked to a local judge, convincing him that a meddling old woman had no right interfering in her daughter’s life.  They did not know that at a research building in Northern California, a surgical team had been alerted, should it be needed upon their arrival.  Their plane was expected to land at dawn.  A rescue vehicle would be at the unloading ramp to meet them.

Ray and Barbara were totally unaware of these things.  They were curled deep in each others arms, asleep beneath soft, warm blankets, while the storm was left a thousand miles behind. Thirty thousand feet below, full moonlight fell on fresh snow as the mountains of southern Colorado and central Utah slid silently underneath.  Tiny clusters of lights from small towns came and went as the huge plane sped toward a California sunrise.