The rest is hard to tell. Not because we saw so little; we saw everything that happened, but because we had so little in experience to postulate it with. We saw that battered rented car moving down the field, going faster, jouncing in the broken January mud, then the sound of the airplane blotted it, reduced it to immobility; we saw the dangling ladder and the shark-faced man swinging on it beneath the death-colored airplane.
The end of the ladder raked right across the top of the car, from end to end, with the limping man on the ladder and the capped head of the handsome man leaning out of the car. And the end of the field was coming nearer, and the airplane was travelling faster than the car, passing it. And nothing happened. “Listen!” some one cried. “They are talking to one another!”
Captain Warren told us what they were talking about, the two Jews yelling back and forth at one another: the shark-faced man on the dangling ladder that looked like a cobweb, the other one in the car; the fence, the end of the field, coming closer.
“Come on!” the man in the car shouted.
“What did they pay?”
“Jump!”
“If they didn’t pay that hundred, I won’t do it.”
Then the airplane zoomed, roaring, the dangling figure on the gossamer ladder swinging beneath it. It circled the field twice while the man got the car into position again. Again the car started down the field; again the airplane came down with its wild, circular-saw drone which died into a splutter as the ladder and the clinging man swung up to the car from behind; again we heard the two puny voices shrieking at one another with a quality at once ludicrous and horrible: the one coming out of the very air itself, shrieking about something sweated out of the earth and without value anywhere else:
“How much did you say?”
“Jump!”
“What? How much did they pay?”
“Nothing! Jump!”
“Nothing?” the man on the ladder wailed in a fading, outraged shriek. “Nothing?” Again the airplane was dragging the ladder irrevocably past the car, approaching the end of the field, the fences, the long barn with its rotting roof. Suddenly we saw Captain Warren beside us; he was using words we had never heard him use.
“He’s got the stick between his knees,” Captain Warren said. “Exalted suzerain of mankind; saccharine and sacred symbol of eternal rest.” We had forgot about the pilot, the man still in the airplane. We saw the airplane, tilted upward, the pilot standing upright in the back seat, leaning over the side and shaking both hands at the man on the ladder.
We could hear him yelling now as again the man on the ladder was dragged over the car and past it, shrieking:
“I won’t do it! I won’t do it!” He was still shrieking when the airplane zoomed; we saw him, a diminishing and shrieking spot against the sky above the long roof of the barn: “I won’t do it!
I won’t do it!” Before, when the speck left the airplane, falling, to be snubbed up by the ladder, we knew that it was a living man; again, when the speck left the ladder, falling, we knew that it was a living man, and we knew that there was no ladder to snub him up now. We saw him falling against the cold, empty January sky until the silhouette of the barn absorbed him; even from here, his attitude froglike, outraged, implacable. From somewhere in the crowd a woman screamed, though the sound was blotted out by the sound of the airplane. It reared skyward with its wild, tearing noise, the empty ladder swept backward beneath it. The sound of the engine was like a groan, a groan of relief and despair.
IV
Captain Warren told us in the barber shop on that Saturday night.
“Did he really jump off, onto that barn?” we asked him.
“Yes. He jumped. He wasn’t thinking about being killed, or even hurt. That’s why he wasn’t hurt. He was too mad, too in a hurry to receive justice. He couldn’t wait to fly back down. Providence knew that he was too busy and that he deserved justice, so Providence put that barn there with the rotting roof.
He wasn’t even thinking about hitting the barn; if he’d tried to, let go of his belief in a cosmic balance to bother about landing, he would have missed the barn and killed himself.”
It didn’t hurt him at all, save for a long scratch on his face that bled a lot, and his overcoat was torn completely down the back, as though the tear down the back of the helmet had run on down the overcoat. He came out of the barn running before we got to it. He hobbled right among us, with his bloody face, his arms waving, his coat dangling from either shoulder.
“Where is that secretary?” he said.
“What secretary?”
“That American Legion secretary.” He went on, limping fast, toward where a crowd stood about three women who had fainted. “You said you would pay a hundred dollars to see me swap to that car. We pay rent on the car and all, and now you would—”
“You got sixty dollars,” some one said.
The man looked at him. “Sixty? I said one hundred. Then you would let me believe it was one hundred and it was just sixty; you would see me risk my life for sixty dollars. . . .” The airplane was down; none of us were aware of it until the pilot sprang suddenly upon the man who limped. He jerked the man around and knocked him down before we could grasp the pilot. We held the pilot, struggling, crying, the tears streaking his dirty, unshaven face. Captain Warren was suddenly there, holding the pilot.
“Stop it!” he said. “Stop it!”
The pilot ceased. He stared at Captain Warren, then he slumped and sat on the ground in his thin, dirty garment, with his unshaven face, dirty, gaunt, with his sick eyes, crying. “Go away,” Captain Warren said. “Let him alone for a minute.”
We went away, back to the other man, the one who limped. They had lifted him and he drew the two halves of his overcoat forward and looked at them. Then he said: “I want some chewing gum.”
Some one gave him a stick. Another offered him a cigarette. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t burn up no money. I ain’t got enough of it yet.” He put the gum into his mouth. “You would take advantage of me. If you thought I would risk my life for sixty dollars, you fool yourself.”
“Give him the rest of it,” some one said. “Here’s my share.”
The limping man did not look around. “Make it up to a hundred, and I will swap to the car like on the handbill,” he said.
Somewhere a woman screamed behind him. She began to laugh and to cry at the same time. “Don’t . . .” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Don’t let . . .” until they led her away. Still the limping man had not moved. He wiped his face on his cuff and he was looking at his bloody sleeve when Captain Warren came up.
“How much is he short?” Warren said. They told Warren. He took out some money and gave it to the limping man.
“You want I should swap to the car?” he said.
“No,” Warren said. “You get that crate out of here quick as you can.”
“Well, that’s your business,” the limping man said. “I got witnesses I offered to swap.” He moved; we made way and watched him, in his severed and dangling overcoat, approach the airplane. It was on the runway, the engine running. The third man was already in the front seat. We watched the limping man crawl terrifically in beside him. They sat there, looking forward.
The pilot began to get up. Warren was standing beside him. “Ground it,” Warren said. “You are coming home with me.”
“I guess we’d better get on,” the pilot said. He did not look at Warren. Then he put out his hand. “Well . . .” he said.
Warren did not take his hand. “You come on home with me,” he said.
“Who’d take care of that bastard?”
“Who wants to?”
“I’ll get him right, some day. Where I can beat hell out of him.”
“Jock,” Warren said.
“No,” the other said.
“Have you got an overcoat?”
“Sure I have.”
“You’re a liar.” Warren began to pull off his overcoat.
“No,” the other said; “I don’t need it.” He went on toward the machine. “See you some time,” he said over his shoulder. We watched him get in, heard an airplane come to life, come alive. It passed us, already off the ground. The pilot jerked his hand once, stiffly; the two heads in the front seat did not turn nor move. Then it was gone, the sound was gone.
Warren turned. “What about that car they rented?” he said.
“He give me a quarter to take it back to town,” a boy said.
“Can you drive it?”
“Yes, sir. I drove it out here. I showed him where to rent it.”
“The one that jumped?”
“Yes, sir.” The boy looked a little aside. “Only I’m a little scared to take it back. I don’t reckon you could come with me.”
“Why, scared?” Warren said.
“That fellow never paid nothing down on it, like Mr. Harris wanted. He told Mr. Harris he might not use it, but if he did use it in his show, he would pay Mr. Harris twenty dollars for it instead of ten like Mr. Harris wanted. He told me to take it back and tell Mr.
