“You wouldn’t be cut two and a half per cent, while you were out to lunch though,” the jumper said savagely. “What’s two and a half per cent, of twenty-five bucks?”
“It ain’t the whole twenty-five,” Shumann said. “I hope Jiggs has got that super-charger ready to go back.” So they had almost reached the aeroplane before they discovered that it was the woman and not Jiggs at work on it and that she had put the super-charger back on with the engine head still off and the valves still out. She rose and brushed her hair back with the flat of her wrist, though they had asked no question.
“Yes,” she said. “I thought he was all right. I went out to eat and left him here.”
“Have you seen him since?” Shumann said. “Do you know where he is now?”
“What the hell does that matter?” the jumper said in a tense furious voice. “Let’s get the damned super-charger off and put the valves in.” He looked at the woman, furious, restrained. “What has this guy done to you? given you a dose of faith in mankind like he would syphilis or consumption or whatever it is, that will even make you trust Jiggs?”
“Come on,” Shumann said. “Let’s get the super-charger off. I guess he didn’t check the valve stems either, did he?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, no matter. They lasted out yesterday. And we haven’t time now. But maybe we can get on the line by three if we don’t stop to check them.” They were ready before that; they had the aeroplane on the apron and the engine running before three, and then the jumper who had worked in grimy fury turned away, walking fast even though Shumann called after him.
He went straight to where Jiggs and the reporter stood. He could not have known where to find them, yet he went straight to them as though led by some blind instinct out of fury. He walked into Jiggs’ vision and struck him on the jaw so that the surprise the alarm and the shock were almost simultaneous, hitting him again before he finished falling and then whirling as the reporter caught his arm.
“Here! here!” the reporter cried. “He’s drunk! You can’t hit a—” But the jumper didn’t say a word; the reporter saw the continuation of the turning become the blow of the fist. He didn’t feel the blow at all.
“I’m too light to be knocked down or even hit hard,” he thought; he was still telling himself that while he was being raised up again and while the hands held him upright on his now boneless legs and while he looked at Jiggs sitting up now in a small stockade of legs and a policeman shaking him. “Hello, Leblanc,” the reporter said. The policeman looked at him now.
“So it’s you, hey?” the policeman said. “You got some news this time, ain’t you? Something to put in the paper that people will like to read. Reporter knocked down by irate victim, hey? That’s news.” He began to prod Jiggs with the side of his shoe. “Who’s this? Your substitute? Get up. On your feet now.”
“Wait,” the reporter said. “It’s all right. He wasn’t in it. He’s one of the mechanics here. An aviator.”
“I see,” the policeman said, hauling at Jiggs’ arm. “Aviator, hey? He don’t look very high to me. Or may be it was a cloud hit him in the jaw, hey?”
“Yes. He’s just drunk. I’ll be responsible; I tell you he wasn’t even in it; the guy hit him by mistake. Leave him be, Leblanc.”
“What do I want with him?” the policeman said. “So you’re responsible, are you? Get him up out of the street, then.” He turned and began to shove at the ring of people. “Go; beat it; get on, now,” he said. “The race is about to start. Go on, now.”
So presently they were alone again, the reporter standing carefully, balancing, on his weightless legs (“Jesus,” he thought, “I’m glad now I am light enough to float”), feeling gingerly his jaw, thinking with peaceful astonishment, “I never felt it at all. Jesus, I didn’t think I was solid enough to be hit that hard but I must have been wrong.” He stooped, still gingerly, and began to pull at Jiggs’ arm until after a time Jiggs looked up at him blankly.
“Come on,” the reporter said. “Let’s get up.”
“Yair,” Jiggs said. “Yair. Get up.”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “Come on, now.” Jiggs rose slowly, the reporter steadying him; he stood blinking at the reporter.
“Jesus,” he said. “What happened?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “But it’s all right now. It’s all over now. Come on. Where do you want to go?” Jiggs moved, the reporter beside him, supporting him; suddenly Jiggs recoiled; looking up, the reporter also saw the hangar door a short distance away.
“Not there,” Jiggs said.
“Yes,” the reporter said. “We don’t want to go there.” They turned; the reporter led the way now, working them clear again of the people passing towards the stands. He could feel his jaw beginning to ache now, and looking back and upward he watched the aeroplanes come into position one by one as beneath them each dropping body bloomed into parachute. “And I never even heard the bomb,” he thought. “Or maybe that was what I thought hit me.”
He looked at Jiggs walking stiffly beside him, as though the spring steel of his legs had been reft by enchantment of temper and were now mere dead iron. “Listen,” he said.
He stopped and stopped Jiggs too, looking at him and speaking to him tediously and carefully as though Jiggs were a child. “I’ve got to go to town. To the paper. The boss sent for me to come in, see? Now you tell me where you want to go. You want to go somewhere and lie down awhile? Maybe I can find a car where you can—”
“No,” Jiggs said. “I’m all right. Go on.”
“Yes. Sure. But you ought—” Now all the parachutes were open; the sunny afternoon was filled with down-cupped blooms like inverted water hyacinths; the reporter shook Jiggs a little. “Come on, now. What’s next now, after the chute jumps?”
“What?” Jiggs said. “Next? What next?”
“Yes. What? Can’t you remember?”
“Yair,” Jiggs said. “Next.” For a full moment the reporter looked down at Jiggs with a faint lift of one side of his mouth as though favouring his jaw, not of concern or regret or even hopelessness so much as of faint and quizzical foreknowledge.
“Yes,” he said. He took the key from his pocket. “Can you remember this, then?” Jiggs looked at the key, blinking. Then he stopped blinking.
“Yair,” he said. “It was on the table right by the jug. And then we got hung up on the bastard laying there in the door and I let the door shut behind.. He looked at the reporter, peering at him, blinking again. “For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Did you bring it too?”
“No,” the reporter said.
“Hell. Gimme the key; I will go and—”
“No,” the reporter said. He put the key back into his pocket and took out the change which the Italian had given him, the three quarters. “You said five dollars. But I haven’t got that much. This is all I have. But that will be all right because if it was a hundred it would be the same; it would not be enough because all I have never is, you see? Here.”
He put the three quarters into Jiggs’ hand. For a moment Jiggs looked at his hand without moving. Then the hand closed; he looked at the reporter while his face seemed to collect, to become sentient.
“Yair,” he said. “Thanks. It’s O.K. You’ll get it back Saturday. We’re in the money now; Roger and Jack and the others struck this afternoon, see? Not for the money: for the principle of the thing, see?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. He turned and went on. Now he could feel his jaw quite distinctly through the faint grimace of smiling, the grimace thin, bitter and wrung. “Yes. It ain’t the money. That ain’t it. That don’t matter.” He heard the bomb this time and saw the five aeroplanes dart upward, diminishing, as he reached the apron, beginning to pass the spaced amplifiers and the rich voice:
“… second event. Three-seventy-five cubic inch class. Some of the same boys that gave you a good race yesterday, except Myers, who is out of this race to save up for the five-fifty later this afternoon.
But Ott and Bullitt are out there, and Roger Shumann who surprised us all yesterday by taking second in a field that—” He found her almost at once; she had not changed from the dungarees this time. He extended the key, feeling his jaw plainer and plainer through his face’s grimace.
“Make yourselves at home,” he said. “As long as you want to. I’m going to be out of town for a few days. So I may not even see you again. But you can just drop the key in an envelope and address it to the paper.
And make yourselves at home; there is a woman comes every morning but Sunday to clean up….” The five aeroplanes came in on the first lap: the snarl, the roar banking into a series of down-wind scuttering pops as each one turned the pylon and went on.
“You mean you’re not going to need the place yourself at all?” she said.
“No. I won’t be there. I am going out of town on an assignment.”
“I see. Well, thanks. I wanted to thank you for last night,
