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
