Epilogue:
Professor Xavier sat, listening to the sounds of the sleeping house. He put the c.d. in to the player and closed the lid. He spread the headphones and put them over his ears. The song was D.B. Cooper by Todd Snider
"D.B. Cooper was 43 when we first heard his name."
Was not. He thought.
"47 miles away from where he fell down to his fame."
Xavier smiled.
"But he told me that the hardest part wasn't really jumping out of the plane."
"It was spending the night, watching those lights, shine through the pouring rain."
He closed his eyes and listened to the folksy ballad.
"They had a manhunt that next morning like nothing I had ever seen,
I was only eight years old at the time – watching on a TV screen.
They said he was never gonna make it now, now that daylight had set in.
But later that night, they were shining those lights, down on the mountain again."
Xavier let the music sweep over and through him as though it were Bach or Mozart.
"The cops blocked off all the exit roads and turned loose all of the hounds,
They even dragged the river a couple of times – to see if he had drowned.
With all of those men working overtime they swore they would bring him down"
He felt his humor rising through him, and a flush of embarrassment, at having been caught by Rogue.
"But a parachute and a few hundred dollars, Was all that they ever found."
Xavier laughed out loud, despite himself.
"Now some people say that he died up there somewhere in the rain and the wind. Other people say that he got away – but his girlfriend did him in. – The lawman say – if he is out there – someday they're gonna bring him in."
He smiled knowingly, in a great relief, that it was no longer just his secret.
"As for me, I hope they never see, D. B. Cooper again."
He let the horns in the song envelope him. Unsung? He thought to himself. Hardly.
"Not far away"
Xavier wheeled himself down the hall and around the corner toward the library. He stopped short, and wheeled himself backwards and out of sight. Someone's signing the book. He realized.
"From the City of Roses"
A soft noise echoed down the hall. And he detected the faint trace of sulfur in the air. When he looked again, the hall was empty.
"A light shined from a house"
He wheeled his way down the hall and pulled up in front of the book.
"Out in the rain."
Kurt had flipped the pages after he signed it. Xavier flipped them back. "I am forever Thankful, " He had written "That persistence really does pay off. – And that my sister – finally seems to have come home."
"It was D.B. Cooper."
Xavier smiled, slyly, and he closed the book, then pulled the glass case over it, and locked it with a small silver key
"Drinking champagne."
