“Stay and eat some dinner,” Ord said. “I told Mrs. Ord you fellows—”

  “I reckon we better get on back,” the reporter said. “It looks like we will have all day to-morrow with nothing to do but eat.”

  “We could eat and then drive over to the hangar and I will show you the ship and try to explain—”

  “Yair,” the reporter said pleasantly. “But what we want is one that Shumann can look at from inside the cockpit three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Well, sorry we troubled you.” The station was not far; they followed a quiet gravelled village street in the darkness, the Franciana February darkness already heavy with spring — the Franciana spring which emerges out of the Indian summer of fall almost, like a mistimed stage resurrection which takes the curtain even before rigor mortis has made its bow, where the decade’s phenomenon of ice occurs simultaneous with bloomed stalk and budded leaf. They walked quietly; even the reporter was not talking now — the two of them who could have had nothing in common save the silence which for the moment the reporter permitted them — the one volatile, irrational, with his ghost-like quality of being beyond all mere restrictions of flesh and time; the other single-purposed, fatally and grimly without any trace of introversion or any ability to objectivate or ratiocinate, as though like the engine, the machine for which he apparently existed, he functioned, moved, only in the vapour of gasoline and the film slick of oil — the two of them taken in conjunction and because of this dissimilarity capable of almost anything. Walking, they seemed to communicate by some means or agency the purpose, the disaster, towards which, without yet being conscious of it apparently, they moved. “Well,” the reporter said. “That’s about what we expected.”

  “Yair,” Shumann said. They walked on in silence again; it was as though the silence were the dialogue and the actual speech the soliloquy, the marshalling of thought:

  “Are you afraid of it?” the reporter said. “Let’s get that settled; we can do that right now.”

  “Tell me about it again,” Shumann said.

  “Yes. The guy brought it down here from Saint Louis for Matt to rebuild it; it wouldn’t go fast enough for him. He had it all doped out, about how they would pull the engine and change the body a little and put in a big engine and Matt told him he didn’t think that was so good, that the ship had all the engine then it had any business with and the guy asked Matt whose ship it was and Matt said it was the guy’s and the guy asked Matt whose money it was and so Matt said O.K. Only Matt thought they ought to change the body more than the guy thought they ought to and at last Matt refused to have anything to do with it unless the guy compromised with him and even then Matt didn’t think so much of it, he didn’t want to butcher it up because it was a good ship, even I can tell that by looking at it. And so they compromised because Matt told him he would not test it otherwise, besides getting the licence back on it and the guy saying how he seemed to have been misinformed in what he had heard about Matt and so Matt told him O.K., if he wanted to take the ship to somebody else he would put it back together and not even charge the guy storage space on it. So finally the guy agreed to let Matt make the changes he absolutely insisted on and then he wanted Matt to guarantee the ship and Matt told the guy his guarantee would be when Matt got into the cockpit and took it off and the guy said he meant to turn a pylon with it and Matt told the guy maybe he had been misinformed about him and maybe he had better take the ship to somebody else and so the guy cooled down and Matt made the changes and put in the big engine and he brought Sales, the inspector, out there and they stressed it and Sales O.K.’d the job and then Matt told the guy he was ready to test it. The guy had been kind of quiet for some time now, he said O.K., he would go into town and get the money while Matt was testing it, flying it in, and so Matt took it off.”

  They didn’t stop walking, the reporter talking quietly: “Because I don’t know much; I just had an hour’s dual with Matt because he gave it to me one day: I don’t know why he did it and I reckon he don’t either. So I don’t know: only what I could understand about what Matt said, that it flew O.K. because Sales passed it. It flew O.K. and it stalled O.K. and did everything it was supposed to do up in the air, because Matt wasn’t even expecting it when it happened: he was coming in to land, he said how he was getting the stick back and the ship coming in fine and then all of a sudden his belt caught him and he saw the ground up in front of his nose instead of down under it where it ought to been, and how he never took time to think, he just jammed the stick forward like he was trying to dive it into the ground and sure enough the nose came up just in time; he said the slip stream on the tail group made a — a—”

  “Burble,” Shumann said.

  “Yair. Burble. He don’t know if it was going slow to land, or being close to the ground, that changed the slip-stream, he just levelled it off with the stick jammed against the fire wall until it lost speed and the burble went away and he got the stick back and blasted the nose up with the gun and he managed to stay inside the field by ground-looping it. And so they waited awhile for the guy to get back from town with the money and after awhile Matt put the ship back in the hangar and it’s still there. So you say now if you think you better not.”

  “Yair,” Shumann said. “Maybe it’s weight distribution.”

  “Yair. That may be it. Maybe we will find out right away it’s just that, maybe as soon as you see the ship you will know.” They came to the quiet little station lighted by a single bulb, almost hidden in a mass of oleander and vines and palmettos. In either direction the steady green eye of a switch-lamp gleamed faintly on the rails where they ran, sparsely strung with the lighted windows of houses, through a dark canyon of moss-hung live oaks. To the south, on the low night overcast, lay the glare of the city itself. They had about ten minutes to wait. “Where you going to sleep to-night?” Shumann said.

  “I got to go to the office for awhile. I’ll go home with one of the guys there.”

  “You better come on home. You got enough rugs and things for us all to sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time Jiggs and Jack and me have slept on the floor.”

  “Yes,” the reporter said. He looked down at the other; they were little better than blurs to one another; the reporter said in a tone of hushed quiet amazement: “You see, it don’t matter where I would be. I could be ten miles away or just on the other side of that curtain, and it would be the same. Jesus, it’s funny: Holmes is the one that ain’t married to her and if I said anything like that to him I would have to dodge — if I had time. And you are married to her, and I can.... Yair. You can go on and hit me too. Because maybe if I was to even sleep with her, it would be the same. Sometimes I think about how it’s you and him and how maybe sometimes she don’t even know the difference, one from another, and I would think how maybe if it was me too she wouldn’t even know I was there at all.”

  “Here, for Christ’s sake,” Shumann said. “You’ll have me thinking you are ribbing me up in this crate of Ord’s so you can marry her maybe.”

  “Yair,” the reporter said; “all right. I’d be the one. Yair. Because listen. I don’t want anything. Maybe it’s because I just want what I am going to get, only I don’t think it’s just that. Yair, I’d just be the name, my name, you see; the house and the beds and what we would need to eat. Because, Jesus, I’d just be walking: it would still be the same: you and him and I’d just be walking, on the ground; I would maybe keep up with Jiggs and that’s all. Because it’s thinking about the day after to-morrow and the day after that and after that and me smelling the same burnt coffee and dead shrimp and oysters and waiting for the same light to change, like me and the red light worked on the same clock so I could cross and get home and go to bed so I could get up and start smelling the coffee and fish and waiting for the light to change again; yair, smelling the paper and the ink too where it says how among those who beat or got beat at Omaha or Miami or Cleveland or Los Angeles was Roger Shumann and family. Yes. I would be the name; I could anyway buy her the pants and the nightgowns and it would be my sheets on the bed and even my towels.... Well, come on. Ain’t you going to sock me?” Now the far end of the canyon of live oaks sprang into more profound impenetrability yet as the headlight of the train fell upon it and then swept down the canyon itself. Now Schumann could see the other’s face.

  “Does this guy you are going to stay with to-night expect you?” he said.

  “Yes. I’ll be all right. And listen. We better catch the eight-twenty back here.”

  “All right,” Shumann said. “Listen. About that money—”

  “It’s all right,” the reporter said. “It was all there.”

  “We put a five and a one back into your pocket. But if it was gone, I’ll make it good Saturday, along with the other. It was our fault for leaving it there. But we couldn’t get in; the door had locked when it shut.”

  “It don’t matter,” the reporter said. “It’s just money. It don’t matter if you don’t ever pay it back.” The train came up, slowing, the lighted windows jarred to a halt. The car was full, since it was not yet eight o’clock, but they found two seats at last, in tandem, so they could not talk any more until they got out in the station. The reporter still had a dollar of the borrowed five; they took a cab. “We’ll go by the paper first,” he said. “Jiggs ought to be almost sober now.” The cab, even at the station, ran at once into confetti, emerging beneath dingy gouts of the purple-and-goldbunting three days old now dropped across the smoke-grimed façade of the station like flotsam left by a spent and falling tide and murmuring even yet of the chalk-white, the forlorn, the glare and pulse of Grandlieu Street miles away. Now the cab began to run between loops of it stretched from lamp-post to lamp-post; then it ran between the lofty and urbane palms and turned slowing and then drew up at the twin glass doors. “I won’t be but a minute,” the reporter said. “You can stay here in the cab.”

  “We can walk from here,” Shumann said. “The police station ain’t far.”

  “We’ll need the cab to get around Grandlieu,” the reporter said. “I won’t be long.” He walked into no reflection now, since darkness was behind him; the doors swung too. The elevator door was slightly ajar and he could see the stack of papers beneath the face-down watch and he could smell the stinking pipe but he did not pause, taking the steps two at a time, and on into the city room. Beneath his green eyeshade Hagood looked up and saw the reporter. But this time the reporter neither sat down nor removed his hat: he stood, loomed, into the green diffusion above the desk-lamp, looking down at Hagood with gaunt and quiet immobility as though he had been blown for a second against the desk by a wind and would in another second be blown onward once more.

  “Go home and go to bed,” Hagood said. “The story you phoned in is already set up.”

  “Yes,” the reporter said. “I must have fifty dollars, chief.” After awhile Hagood said:

  “Must, do you?” He did not move at all. “Must, eh?” he said. The reporter did not move either.

  “I can’t help it. I know that I... yesterday, whenever it was. When I thought I was fired. I got the message, all right. I ran into Cooper about noon and I didn’t call you until after three. And I didn’t report in here, like I said. But I did phone in the story; I will come back in about an hour and clean it.... But I got to have fifty dollars.”

  “It’s because you know I won’t fire you,” Hagood said. “Is that it?” The reporter said nothing. “All right. Come on. What is it this time? I know, all right. But I want to hear it from you — or are you still married or moved away or dead?” The reporter did not move; he spoke quietly, apparently into the green lamp-shade as if it was a microphone:

  “The cops got him. It happened just about the time Shumann nosed over, and so I...So he’s in the can. And they will need some jack too until Shumann gets his money to-morrow night.”

  “So,” Hagood said. He looked up at the still face above him which for the time had that calm sightless contemplation of a statue. “Why don’t you let these people alone?” he said. Now the blank eyes waked; the reporter looked at Hagood for a full minute. His voice was as quiet as Hagood’s.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can’t?” Hagood said. “Did you ever try to?”

  “Yes,” the reporter said in his dead flat voice, looking at the lamp again; that is, Hagood knew that the reporter was not looking at him. “I tried.” After a moment Hagood turned, heavily. His coat hung on the back of his chair. He took his wallet from it and counted fifty dollars on to the desk and pushed it over to the reporter and saw the bony, clawlike hand come into the lamp’s glare and take up the money. “Do you want me to sign anything now?” the reporter said.

  “No,” Hagood said without looking up. “Go home and go to bed. That’s all I want.”

  “I’ll come in later and clean up the story.”

  “It’s already in galley,” Hagood said. “You go home.” The reporter moved away from the desk quietly enough, but as he entered the corridor it was as though the wind which had blown him against Hagood’s desk and left him there had now begun to blow him again. He was passing the elevator shaft towards the stairs with only a glance at it when the door clashed back and someone got out, whereupon he turned and entered, reaching with one hand into his pocket as with the other he lifted the top paper beneath the sliding face-down watch. But he did not even glance at it now; he thrust it, folded, into his pocket as the cage stopped and the door clashed open.

  “Well, I see where another of them tried to make a headline out of himself this afternoon,” the elevator man said.

  “Is that so?” the reporter said. “Better close that door; I think you got a draught in there.” He ran into the swinging reflection in the glass doors this time, on his long loose legs, with the long loose body which had had no food since noon and little enough before that but which, weightless anyway, had the less to carry now. Shumann opened the cab door for him. “Bayou Street police station,” the reporter told the driver. “Make it snappy.”

  “We could walk,” Shumann said.

  “Hell, I got fifty bucks now,” the reporter said. They travelled cross town now; the cab could rush fast down each block of the continuous alley, pausing only at the intersections where, to the right, canyon niched, the rumour of Grandlieu Street swelled and then faded in repetitive and indistinguishable turmoil, flicking on and past as though the cab ran along the rimless periphery of a ghostly wheel spoked with light and sound. “Yair,” the reporter said, “I reckon they took Jiggs to the only quiet place in New Valois for a man to sober up in. He’ll be sober now.” He was sober; a turnkey fetched him in to where the reporter and Shumann waited at the desk. His eye was closed now and his lip swollen, though the blood had been cleaned away except where it had dried on his shirt.

  “Got enough for awhile?” Shumann said.

  “Yair,” Jiggs said. “Give me a cigarette, for God’s sake.” The reporter gave him the cigarette and held the match while Jiggs tried to bring the cigarette into the flame, jerking and twitching until at last the reporter grasped Jiggs’ hand and steadied it to make the contact.

  “We’ll get a piece of steak and put it on your eye,” the reporter said.

  “You better put it inside of him,” the desk man said.

  “How about that?” the reporter said. “You want to eat?” Jiggs held the cigarette in both shaking hands.

  “All right,” Jiggs said.

  “What?” the reporter said. “Would you feel better if you ate something?”

  “All right,” Jiggs said. “Do we go now or do I go back in there?”

  “No, we’re going right now,” the reporter said. He said to Shumann, “You take him on to the cab; I’ll be right out.” He turned to the desk. “What’s it, Mac? Drunk or vag?”

  “You springing him, or the paper?”

  “I am.”

  “Call it vag,” the desk man said. The reporter took out Hagood’s money and laid ten dollars on the desk.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Will you give the other five to Leblanc? I borrowed it off of him out at the airport this afternoon.” He went out too. Shumann and Jiggs waited beside the cab. The reporter saw now the once raked and swaggering cap crumpled and thrust into Jiggs’ hip pocket and that the absence of the raked and filthy object from Jiggs’ silhouette was like the dropped flag from the shot buck’s — the body still ran, still retained a similitude of power and even speed, would even run on for yards and even perhaps miles, and then for years in a gnawing burrowing of worms, but that which tasted air and drank the sun was dead. “The poor bastard,” the reporter thought; he still carried the mass of bills as he had thrust them into and withdrawn them from his pocket. “You’re O.K. now,” he said, loudly, heartily. “Roger can stop somewhere and get you something to eat and then you will be all right. Here.” He nudged his hand at Shumann.

  “I won’t need it,” Shumann said. “Jack collected his eighteen-fifty for the jump this afternoon.”

  “Yair; I forgot,” the reporter said. Then he said, “But what about to-morrow? We’ll be gone all day, see? Here, take it; you can leave it with her in case....You can just keep it and pay it all back, then.”

  “Yair,” Shumann said. “Thanks then.” He took the crumpled wad without looking at it and put it into his pocket and pushed Jiggs into the cab.

  “Besides, you can pay the cab, too,” the reporter said. “We forgot about that.... I told him where to go. See you in the morning.” He leaned to the window; beyond Shumann, Jiggs sat in the other corner, smoking the cigarette out of both shaking hands. The reporter spoke in a tone repressed, conspiratorial: “Train leaves at eight-twenty-two. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” Shumann said.

  “I’ll have everything fixed up and meet you at the station.”

  “O.K.,” Shumann said. The cab moved on. Through the back window Shumann saw the reporter standing at the kerb in the glare of the two unmistakable pariah-green globes on either side of the entrance, still, gaunt, the garments which hung from the skeleton frame seeming to stir faintly and steadily even when and where there was no wind. As though having chosen that one spot out of the entire sprawled and myriad city he stood there without impatience or design: patron (even if no guardian) saint of all waifs, all the homeless, the desperate and the starved. Now the cab turned its back on Grandlieu Street, though presently it turned parallel to it or to where it must be now, since now there was no rumour, no sound, save the light glare on the sky which held to their right even after the cab turned and now ran towards where the street should be. Shumann did not know they had crossed it until they plunged suddenly into the region of narrow gashes between balconies, crossing intersections marked by the ghostly one-way arrows. “We must be almost there,” he said. “You want to stop and eat?”

 

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