Another had gone ten minutes before and Shumann and the woman described the jumper to the starter and he had not been in that one either. “He must have decided to walk out, after all,” Jiggs said, moving towards the step. “Let’s grab a seat.”
“We might as well eat now,” Shumann said. “Maybe he will come along before the next bus leaves.”
“Sure,” Jiggs said. “We could ask the bus driver to start taking off his overhead.”
“Yes,” the woman said, suddenly. “We can eat out there.”
“We might miss him,” Shumann said. “And he hasn’t—”
“All right,” she said; she spoke in a cold harsh tone, without looking at Jiggs. “Do you think that Jack will need more watching this morning than he will?” Now Jiggs could feel Shumann looking at him too, thoughtfully from within the machine symmetry of the new hat.
But he did not move; he stood immobile, like one of the dummy figures which are wheeled out of slum-district stores and pawnshops at 8 a m., quiet waiting and tranquil; and bemused too, the intumed vision watching something which was not even thought, supplying him, out of an inextricable whirl of half-caught pictures like a roulette wheel bearing printed sentences in place of numbers, with furious tag ends of plans and alternatives — telling them he had heard the jumper say he was going back to the place on Amboise Street and that he, Jiggs, would go there and fetch him — of escaping even for five minutes and striking the first person he met and then the next and the next and the next until he got a half-dollar; and lastly and this steadily, with a desperate conviction of truth and regret, that if Shumann would just hand him the coin and say go get a shot, he would not even take it, or lacking that, would take the one drink and then no more, out of sheer gratitude for having been permitted to escape from impotence and need and thinking and calculation by means of which he must even now keep his tone casual and innocent.
“Who, me?” he said. “Hell, I drank enough last night to do me a long time. Let’s get on; he must have deadheaded out somehow.”
“Yair,” Shumann said, still watching him with that open and deadly seriousness. “We got to pull those valves and mike them. Listen. If things break right to-day, to-night I’ll get you a bottle. O.K.?”
“Jesus,” Jiggs said. “Have I got to get drunk again? Is that it? Come on; let’s get a seat.” They got in. The bus moved. It was better then, because even if he had the half-dollar he could not buy a drink with it until the bus either stopped or reached the airport, and also he was moving towards it at last; he thought again out of the thunder of solitude, the instant of exultation between the terror and the dismay: “They can’t stop me. There ain’t enough of them to stop me.
All I got to do is wait.”— “Yair,” he said, leaning forward between Shumann’s and the woman’s heads above the seat back in front of the one on which he and the boy sat, “he’s probably already on the ship. I’ll go right over and get on those valves and I can send him back to the restaurant.”
But they did not find the jumper at once at the airport either, though Shumann stood for a while and looked about the forenoon’s deserted plaza as though he had expected to see the parachute jumper still in the succeeding elapse second from that in which he had walked out of sight beyond the alley’s mouth. “I’ll go on and get started,” Jiggs said. “If he’s in the hangar I’ll send him on to the restaurant.”
“We’ll eat first,” Shumann said. “You wait.”
“I ain’t hungry,” Jiggs said. “I’ll eat later. I want to get started—”
“No,” the woman said; “Roger, don’t—”
“Come on and eat some breakfast,” Shumann said. It seemed to Jiggs that he stood a long time in the bright hazy sunlight with his jaws and the shape of his mouth aching a little, but it was not long probably, and anyway his voice seemed to sound all right too.
“O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go. They ain’t my valves. I ain’t going to ride behind them at three o’clock this afternoon.” The rotunda was empty, the restaurant empty too save for themselves. “I just want some coffee,” he said.
“Eat some breakfast,” Shumann said. “Come on, now.”
“I ain’t any hungrier now than I was out there by that lamp-post two minutes ago,” Jiggs said. But his voice was still all right. “I just said I would come in, see,” he said. “I never said I would eat, see.” Shumann watched him bleakly.
“Listen,” he said. “You have had… was it two or three drinks this morning? Eat something. And to-night I will see that you have a couple or three drinks if you want. You can even get tight if you want. But now let’s get those valves out.” Jiggs sat perfectly still, looking at his hands on the table and then at the waitress’s arm propped beside him, wrist nestled by four Woolworth bracelets, the finger-nails five spots of crimson glitter as if they had been bought and clipped on to the finger-ends too.
“All right,” he said. “Listen too. What do you want? A guy with two or three drinks in him helping you pull valves, or a guy with a gut full of food on top of the drinks, asleep in a corner somewhere? Just tell me what you want, see? I’ll see you get it. Because listen.
I just want coffee. I ain’t even telling you; I’m just asking you. Jesus, would please do any good?”
“All right,” Shumann said, “Just three breakfasts then,” he said to the waitress. “And two extra coffees. — Damn Jack,” he said. “He ought to eat too.”
“We’ll find him at the hangar,” Jiggs said. They found him there, though not at once. When Shumann and Jiggs emerged from the tool-room in their dungarees and waited outside the chicken-wire door for the woman to change and join them, they saw first five or six other dungaree figures gathered about a sandwich board which had not been there yesterday, set in the exact centre of the hangar entrance — a big board lettered heavily by hand and possessing a quality cryptic and peremptory and for the time incomprehensible as though the amplifier had spoken the words:
NOTICE
All contestants, all pilots and parachute jumpers and all others eligible to win cash prizes during this meet, are requested to meet in Superintendent’s office at 12 noon to-day. All absentees will be considered to acquiesce and submit to the action and discretion of the race committee.
The others watched quietly while Shumann and the woman read it.
“Submit to what?” one of the others said. “What is it? Do you know?”
“I don’t know,” Shumann said. “Is Jack Holmes on the field yet? Has anybody seen him this morning?”
“There he is,” Jiggs said. “Over at the ship, like I told you.”
Shumann looked across the hangar. “He’s already got the cowling off. Seer.”
“Yair,” Shumann said. He moved at once. Jiggs spoke to the man beside whom he stood, almost without moving his lips.
“Lend me half a buck,” he said. “I’ll hand it back to-night. Quick.” He took the coin; he snatched it; when Shumann reached the aeroplane Jiggs was right behind him. The jumper, crouched beneath the engine, looked up at them, briefly and without stopping, as he might have glanced up at the shadow of a passing cloud.
“You had some breakfast?” Shumann said.
“Yes,” the jumper said, not looking up again.
“On what?” Shumann said. The other did not seem to have heard. Shumann took the money from his pocket — the remaining dollar bill, three quarters and some nickels, and laid two of the quarters on the engine mount at the jumper’s elbow. “Go and get some coffee,” he said.
The other did not seem to hear, busy beneath the engine. Shumann stood watching the back of his head. Then the jumper’s elbow struck the engine mount. The coins rang on the concrete floor and Jiggs stooped, ducking, and rose again, extending the coins before Shumann could speak or move.
“There they are,” Jiggs said, not loud; he could not have been heard ten feet away: the fierceness, the triumph. “There they are. Count them. Count both sides so you will be sure.” After that they did not talk any more.
They worked quiet and fast, like a circus team, with the trained team’s economy of motion, while the woman passed them the tools as needed; they did not even have to speak to her, to name the tool. It was easy now, like in the bus; all he had to do was to wait as the valves came out one by one and grew in a long neat line on the work-bench and then, sure enough, it came.
“It must be nearly twelve,” the woman said. Shumann finished what he was doing. Then he looked at his watch and stood up, flexing his back and legs. He looked at the jumper.
“You ready?” he said.
“You are not going to wash up and change?” the woman said.
“I
