And yet she rises to the occasion. Doesn’t she always? She stands her ground as they thunder toward her in their crumpled suits, their sweating collars, white-faced and miraculously alive after the hairiest landing I have ever witnessed. The flashbulbs, the shouted questions. The wind whips her silvery hair. She holds up her hand and they stop, my God! I have never seen that before. I cross my arms and stand the ground by her side. Bill Cushing avoids my stare with an expression of downcast shame that reminds me of Mollie the beagle.

“Gentlemen,” says Irene, in her solemn, clear voice. “I appreciate all the trouble you’ve taken to find me, and your generous concern for my welfare. But I’m afraid you’re too late. I have already contracted exclusive rights to both story and pictures with Miss Eugenia Everett of the Associated Press, and will be unable to answer your questions.”

Epilogue

It is the easiest thing in the world to die. The hardest is to live.

—Eddie Rickenbacker

Hanalei, Hawai’i

April 1949

The book’s taking longer than I figured. I thought that once I collected all the pieces of this puzzle, it would be a snap—so to speak—to arrange them in place and link them together with a few choice words. It turns out that writing books doesn’t work that way.

But I am still here.

Habits are habits, and I often rise at two or three in the morning to work on the manuscript. If the words are stuck inside me somewhere, I’ll develop a roll or two of film, or maybe I’ll sit and look at the photographs Irene gave me, the ones of my father here in Kauai.

I’ve heard it said that according to certain human cultures, when you capture an image of somebody you capture a piece of his soul. I don’t know if that’s true. I think it depends on the image, on the skill of the person drawing or painting or snapping a shutter. Whether that person possesses a particular magic quality of soul catching, and maybe that’s why we look in awe upon the great artists, because they catch souls for a living, while the rest of us drive buses and milk cows and add sums in ledgers.