It was illuminated by one kerosene lamp which seemed to cast not light but shadows, out of whose brown Rembrandt gloom the hushed bellies of ranked cans gleamed behind a counter massed with an unbelievable quantity of indistinguishable objects which the proprietor must vend by feel alone to distinguish not only object from object but object from chiaroscuro.
It smelled of cheese and garlic and of heated metal; sitting on either side of a small fiercely burning kerosene heater a man and a woman, whom Shumann had not seen until now, both wrapped in shawls and distinguishable by gender only because the man wore a cap, looked up at him.
The sandwich was the end of a hard French loaf, with ham and cheese. He gave it to Jiggs and followed him out, where Jiggs stopped again and stood looking at the object in his hand with a sort of ox-like despair.
“Could I have the drink first?” he said.
“You eat while we walk home,” Shumann said. “I’ll give you the drink later.”
“It would be better if I had the drink first,” Jiggs said.
“Yes,” Shumann said. “You thought that this morning too.”
“Yair,” Jiggs said. “That’s right.” He became motionless again, looking at the sandwich.
“Go on,” Shumann said. “Eat it.”
“All right,” Jiggs said. He began to eat; Shumann watched him bring the sandwich to his mouth with both hands and turn his face sideways to bite into it; he could see Jiggs shaking and jerking all over now as he worried the bite off and began to chew.
Chewing, Jiggs looked full at Shumann, holding the bitten sandwich in both grimed hands before his breast as though it were a crucifix, chewing with his mouth open, looking full at Shumann until Shumann realized that Jiggs was not looking at him at all, that the one good eye was merely open and filled with a profound and hopeless abnegation as if the despair which both eyes should have divided between them had now to be concentrated and contained in one alone, and that Jiggs’ face was now slicked over with something which in the faint light resembled oil in the instant before Jiggs began to vomit. Shumann held him up, holding the sandwich clear with the other hand, while Jiggs’ stomach continued to go through the motions of refusal long after there was nothing left to abdicate.
“Try to stop it now,” Shumann said.
“Yair,” Jiggs said. He dragged his sleeve across his mouth.
“Here,” Shumann said. He extended his handkerchief. Jiggs took it, but at once he reached his hand again, groping. “What?” Shumann said.
“The sandwich.”
“Could you hold it down if you had a drink?”
“I could do anything if I had a drink,” Jiggs said.
“Come on,” Shumann said. When they entered the alley they could see the outfall of light from the window beyond the balcony as Hagood had seen it last night, though there was now no arm shadow, no voice. Shumann halted beneath the balcony. “Jack,” he said. “Laverne.” But still there was nothing to see: just the parachute jumper’s voice from beyond the window:
“It’s off the latch. Lock it when you come in.”
When they came up the stairs the jumper was sitting on the cot, in his underclothes, his clothing arranged neatly on a chair and his foot on the chair too while with a stained wad of cotton he swabbed liquid from a bottle into the long raw abrasion like a paint smear from his ankle to his thigh.
On the floor lay the bandage and tape which he had worn in from the airport. He had already arranged the cot for the night; the blanket was turned neatly back and the rug from the floor spread over the foot.
“You better sleep in the bed to-night,” Shumann said. “That blanket will give that skinned place hell.” The jumper did not answer, bent over his leg, swabbing the medicine in with a sort of savage concentration. Shumann turned; he seemed to notice for the first time the sandwich in his hand and then to remember Jiggs who now stood quietly beside his canvas bag, watching Shumann quietly and patiently with the one eye, with that patient inarticulate quality of a dog.
“Oh yes,” Shumann said, turning on towards the table. The jug still sat there, though the glasses and the dish-pan were gone and the jug itself appeared to have been washed. “Get a glass and some water,” he said. When the curtain fell behind Jiggs, Shumann laid the sandwich on the table and looked at the jumper again. After a moment the jumper looked up at him.
“Well?” the jumper said. “What about it?”
“I guess I can get it,” Shumann said.
“You mean you didn’t see Ord?”
“Yair. We found him.”
“Suppose you do get it. How are you going to get it qualified in time to race to-morrow?”
“I don’t know,” Shumann said. He lit a cigarette. “He said he could get that fixed up. I don’t know, myself.”
“How? Does the race committee think he is Jesus too, the same as the rest of you do?”
“I said I don’t know,” Shumann said. “If we can’t get it qualified, that’s all there is to it. But if we can…” He smoked. The jumper swabbed carefully and viciously at his leg. “There’s two things I could do,” Shumann said. “It will qualify under five hundred and seventy-five cubic inches.
I could enter it in that and loaf back on half throttle and take third without having to make a vertical turn, and the purse to-morrow is eight-ninety. Or I could enter the other, the Trophy. It will be the only thing out there that will even stay in sight of Ord.
And Ord is just in it so his home folks can see him fly; I don’t believe he would beat that Ninety-Two to death just to win two thousand dollars. Not on a five-mile course. Because it must be fast. We would be fixed then.”
“Yes; fixed. We’d owe Ord about five thousand for the crate and the motor. What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask Ord. All I know is what Ord told him” — he made a brief indescribable motion with his head as though to indicate the room but which indicated the reporter as plainly as if Shumann had spoken his name—” he said the controls cross when it lands. Whether it’s slowing up or whether it’s the air off the ground. Because he said that Ord stalled it out when he… Or maybe a different weight distribution, a couple of sandbags in the—”
“Yair. Or maybe when he gets it qualified to-morrow he will have them move the pylons up to around four thousand feet and hold the race up there instead of at General Behindman’s country club.” He ceased and bent over his leg again, then Shumann also saw Jiggs. He had apparently been in the room for some time, standing beside the table with two of the jam glasses, one of them containing water, in his hands. Shumann went to the table and poured into the empty glass and looked at Jiggs who now mused upon the drink.
“Ain’t that enough?” Shumann said.
“Yair,” Jiggs said, rousing; “yair.” When he poured water from the other glass into the drink the two rims clicked together with a faint chattering. Shumann watched him set the water glass down, where it chattered again on the table before he released it, and then with both hands attempt to raise the other one to his lips.
As the glass approached Jiggs’ whole head began to jerk so that he could not make contact with his mouth, the rim of the glass clicking against his teeth while he tried to still it. “Jesus,” he said quietly, “Jesus. I tried for two hours to sit on the bed because when I would walk up and down the guy would come and hollar at me through the bars.”
“Here,” Shumann said. He put his hand on the glass and stopped it and tilted it; he could watch Jiggs swallowing now and the liquid trickling down his blue-stubbled chin from each corner of his mouth and splotching dark on his shirt until Jiggs pushed the glass away, panting.
“Wait,” he said. “It’s wasting. Maybe if you won’t look at me I can drink it.”
“And then get on the sandwich again,” Shumann said. He took the jug from the table and looked back at the jumper again. “Go on and take the bed to-night,” he said. “You’ll have that leg infected under a blanket. Are you going to put the bandage back on?”
“I’ll sleep in a cuckold’s bed but not in a pimp’s,” the jumper said. “Go on. Get yourself a piece to take to hell with you to-morrow.”
“I can take third in the five-seventy-five without even crossing the airport,” Shumann said. “Anyway, by the time it is qualified I’ll know whether I can land it or not…. How about putting that bandage back on?” But the jumper did not answer or even look at him.
The blanket was already turned back; with the injured leg swinging stiffly he turned on the ball of his buttocks and swung into the cot and drew the blanket up in one motion. For awhile longer Shumann looked at him, the jug against his leg. Then he realized that for some time he had been hearing Jiggs chewing and he looked
