“I must be getting along,” I said. I didn’t belong there. I just got out. He came down to the door with me, and then we were both looking back up the stairs toward the door where she was lying on her face on the couch.
“I’ve got a little stake,” I said. “I guess because I’ve eaten so much of your grub I haven’t had time to spend it. So if it’s anything urgent. . . .” We stood there, he holding the door open. “Of course, I wouldn’t try to muscle in where I don’t . . .”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he said. He opened the door. “See you at the field tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said. “See you at the field.”
I didn’t see her for almost a week, didn’t hear from her. I saw him every day, and at last I said, “How’s Mildred these days?”
“She’s on a visit,” he said. “At her mother’s.”
For the next two weeks I was with him every day. When I was out on top I’d look back at his face behind the goggles. But we never mentioned her name, until one day he told me she was home again and that I was invited out to dinner that night.
It was in the afternoon. He was busy all that day hopping passengers, so I was doing nothing, just killing time waiting for evening and thinking about her, wondering some, but mostly just thinking about her being home again, breathing the same smoke and soot I was breathing, when all of a sudden I decided to go out there.
It was plain as a voice saying, “Go out there. Now, at once.” So I went. I didn’t even wait to change. She was alone, reading before the fire. It was like gasoline from a broken line blazing up around you.
III
It was funny. When I’d be out on top I’d look back at his face behind the windscreen, wondering what he knew. He must have known almost at once. Why, say, she didn’t have any discretion at all. She’d say and do things, you know: insist on sitting close to me; touching me in that different way from when you hold an umbrella or a raincoat over them, and such that any man can tell at one look, when she thought he might not see: not when she knew he couldn’t, but when she thought maybe he wouldn’t. And when I’d unfasten my belt and crawl out I’d look back at his face and wonder what he was thinking, how much he knew or suspected.
I’d go out there in the afternoon when he was busy. I’d stall around until I saw that he would be lined up for the rest of the day, then I’d give some excuse and beat it. One afternoon I was all ready to go, waiting for him to take off, when he cut the gun and leaned out and beckoned me. “Don’t go off,” he said. “I want to see you.”
So I knew he knew then, and I waited until he made the last hop and was taking off his monkey suit in the office. He looked at me and I looked at him. “Come out to dinner,” he said.
When I came in they were waiting. She had on one of those little squashy dresses and she came and put her arms around me and kissed me with him watching.
“I’m going with you,” she said. “We’ve talked it over and have both agreed that we couldn’t love one another any more after this and that this is the only sensible thing to do. Then he can find a woman he can love, a woman that’s not bad like I am.”
He was looking at me, and she running her hands over my face and making a little moaning sound against my neck, and me like a stone or something. Do you know what I was thinking? I wasn’t thinking about her at all.
I was thinking that he and I were upstairs and me out on top and I had just found that he had thrown the stick away and was flying her on the rudder alone and that he knew that I knew the stick was gone and so it was all right now, whatever happened. So it was like a piece of wood with another piece of wood leaning against it, and she held back and looked at my face.
“Don’t you love me any more?” she said, watching my face. “If you love me, say so. I have told him everything.”
I wanted to be out of there. I wanted to run. I wasn’t scared. It was because it was all kind of hot and dirty. I wanted to be away from her a little while, for Rogers and me to be out where it was cold and hard and quiet, to settle things.
“What do you want to do?” I said. “Will you give her a divorce?”
She was watching my face very closely. Then she let me go and she ran to the mantel and put her face into the bend of her arm, crying.
“You were lying to me,” she said. “You didn’t mean what you said. Oh God, what have I done?”
You know how it is. Like there is a right time for everything. Like nobody is anything in himself: like a woman, even when you love her, is a woman to you just a part of the time and the rest of the time she is just a person that don’t look at things the same way a man has learned to.
Don’t have the same ideas about what is decent and what is not. So I went over and stood with my arms about her, thinking, “God damn it, if you’ll just keep out of this for a little while! We’re both trying our best to take care of you, so it won’t hurt you.”
Because I loved her, you see. Nothing can marry two people closer than a mutual sin in the world’s eyes. And he had had his chance. If it had been me that knew her first and married her and he had been me, I would have had my chance. But it was him that had had it, so when she said, “Then say what you tell me when we are alone. I tell you I have told him everything,” I said.
“Everything? Have you told him everything?” He was watching us. “Has she told you everything?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Do you want her?” Then before I could speak, he said: “Do you love her? Will you be good to her?”
His face was gray-looking, like when you see a man again after a long time and you say, “Good God, is that Rogers?” When I finally got away the divorce was all settled.
IV
So the next morning when I reached the field, Harris, the man who owned the flying circus, told me about the special job; I had forgotten it, I suppose. Anyway, he said he had told me about it. Finally I said I wouldn’t fly with Rogers.
“Why not?” Harris said.
“Ask him,” I said.
“If he agrees to fly you, will you go up?”
So I said yes. And then Rogers came out; he said that he would fly me. And so I believed that he had known about the job all the time and had laid for me, sucked me in. We waited until Harris went out. “So this is why you were so mealy-mouthed last night,” I said. I cursed him. “You’ve got me now, haven’t you?”
“Take the stick yourself,” he said. “I’ll do your trick.”
“Have you ever done any work like this before?”
“No. But I can, as long as you fly her properly.”
I cursed him. “You feel good,” I said. “You’ve got me. Come on; grin on the outside of your face. Come on!”
He turned and went to the crate and began to get into the front seat. I went and caught his shoulder and jerked him back. We looked at one another.
“I won’t hit you now,” he said, “if that’s what you want. Wait till we get down again.”
“No,” I said. “Because I want to hit back once.”
We looked at one another; Harris was watching us from the office.
“All right,” Rogers said. “Let me have your shoes, will you? I haven’t got any rubber soles out here.”
“Take your seat,” I said. “What the hell does it matter? I guess I’d do the same thing in your place.”
The job was over an amusement park, a carnival. There must have been twenty-five thousand of them down there, like colored ants. I took chances that day that I had never taken, chances you can’t see from the ground. But every time the ship was right under me, balancing me against side pressure and all, like he and I were using the same mind. I thought he was playing with me, you see. I’d look back at his face, yelling at him: “Come on; now you’ve got me. Where are your guts?”
I was a little crazy, I guess. Anyway, when I think of the two of us up there, yelling back and forth at one another, and all the little bugs watching and waiting for the big show, the loop. He could hear me, but I couldn’t hear him; I could just see his lips moving. “Come on,” I’d yell; “shake the wing a little; I’ll go off easy, see?”
I was a little crazy. You know how it is, how you
