The other boys are good too, but Myers and Bullitt have the ships. So I’ll say third will be Jimmy Ott, and Roger Shumann and Joe Grant last, because as I said, the other boys have the ships. — There they are, coming in from the scattering pylon, and it’s — Yes, it’s Myers or Bullitt out front and Ott close behind, and Shumann and Grant pretty well back. And here they are coming in for the first pylon.”
The voice was firm, pleasant, assured; it had an American reputation for announcing air meets as other voices had for football or music or prize-fights. A pilot himself, the announcer stood hip high among the caps and horns of the bandstand below the reserved seats, bareheaded, in a tweed jacket even a little over-smart, reminiscent a trifle more of Hollywood Avenue than of Madison, with the modest winged badge of a good solid pilots’ fraternity in the lapel and turned a little to face the box seats while he spoke into the microphone as the aeroplanes roared up and banked around the field pylon and faded again in irregular order.
“There’s Feinman,” Jiggs said. “In the yellow-and-blue pulpit. The one in the grey suit and the flower. The one with the women. Yair; he’d make lard, now.”
“Yes,” the taller man said. “Look yonder. Roger is going to take that guy on this next pylon.” Although Jiggs did not look at once, the voice did, almost before the taller man spoke, as if it possessed some quality of omniscience beyond even vision: “Well, well, folks, here’s a race that wasn’t advertised. It looks like Roger Shumann is going to try to upset the boys’ dope. That’s him that went up into third place on that pylon then; he has just taken Ott on the lake pylon.
Let’s watch him now; Mrs. Shumann’s here in the crowd somewhere: maybe she knows what Roger’s got up his sleeve to-day. A poor fourth on the first pylon and now coming in third on the third lap — oh, oh, oh, look at him take that pylon! If we were all back on the farm now I would say somebody has put a cockleburr under Roger’s — well, you know where: maybe it was Mrs. Shumann did it.
Good boy, Roger! If you can just hold Ott now because Ott’s got the ship on him, folks; I wouldn’t try to fool you about that. — No; wait, w-a-i-t. — Folks, he’s trying to catch Bullitt; oh, oh, did he take that pylon, folks, he gained three hundred feet on Bullitt on that turn. — Watch now, he’s going to try to take Bullitt on the next pylon — there, there, there — watch him, WATCH him.
He’s beating them on the pylons, folks, because he knows that on the straightaway he hasn’t got a chance; oh, oh, oh, watch him now, up there from fourth place in four and a half laps and now he is going to pass Bullitt unless he pulls his wings off on this next. — Here they come in now; oh, oh, oh, Mrs. Shumann’s somewhere in the crowd here; maybe she told Roger if he don’t come in on the money he needn’t come in at all. — There it is, folks; here it is: Myers gets the flag and now it’s Shumann or Bullitt, Shumann or — It’s Schumann, folks, in as pretty a flown race as you ever watched—”
“There it is,” Jiggs said. “Jesus, he better had come in on somebody’s money or we’d a all set up in the depot to-night with our bellies thinking our throats was cut. Come on. I’ll help you put the ‘chutes on.” But the taller man was looking up the apron. Jiggs paused too and saw the boy’s khaki garment riding high above the heads below the bandstand, though he could not actually see the woman. The six aeroplanes which for six minutes had followed one another around the course at one altitude and in almost undeviating order like so many beads on a string, were now scattered about the adjacent sky for a radius of two or three miles as if the last pylon had exploded them like so many scraps of paper, jockeying in to land.
“Who’s that guy?” the taller man said. “Hanging around Laverne?”
“Lazarus?” Jiggs said. “Jesus, if I was him I would be afraid to use myself. I would be even afraid to take myself out of bed, like I was a cut-glass monkey-wrench or something. Come on. Your guy is already warmed up and waiting for you.”
For a moment longer the taller man looked up the apron bleakly. Then he turned. “Go and get the ‘chutes and find somebody to bring the sack; I will meet…”
“They are already at the ship,” Jiggs said. “I done already carried them over. Come on.”
The other, moving, stopped dead still. He looked down at Jiggs with a bleak handsome face whose features were regular, brutally courageous, the expression quick if not particularly intelligent, not particularly strong. Under his eyes the faint smudges of dissipation appeared to have been put there by a makeup expert. He wore a narrow moustache above a mouth much more delicate and even feminine than that of the woman whom he and Jiggs called Laverne. “What?” he said.
“You carried the ‘chutes and that sack of flour over to the ship? You did?” Jiggs did not stop. “You’re next, ain’t you? You’re ready to go, ain’t you? And it’s getting late, ain’t it? What are you waiting on? for them to turn on the boundary lights and maybe the floods? or maybe to have the beacon to come in on to land?” The other walked again, following Jiggs along the apron towards where an aeroplane, a commercial type, stood just without the barrier, its engine running. “I guess you have been to the office and collected my twenty-five bucks and saved me some more time too,” he said.
“All right; I’ll attend to that too,” Jiggs said. “Come on, The guy’s burning gas; he’ll be trying to charge you six bucks instead of five if you don’t snap it up.” They went on to where the aeroplane waited, the pilot already in his cockpit, the already low sun, refracted by the invisible propeller blades, shimmering about the nose of it in a faint copper-coloured nimbus. The two parachutes and the sack of flour lay on the ground beside it. Jiggs held them up one at a time while the other backed into the harness, then he stooped and darted about the straps and buckles like a squirrel, still talking. “Yair, he come in on the money. I guess I will get my hooks on a little jack myself to-night. Jesus, I won’t know how to count higher than two bucks.”
“But don’t try to learn again on my twenty-five,” the other said. “Just get it and hold it until I get back.”
“What would I want with your twenty-five?” Jiggs said. “With Roger just won thirty per cent, of three hundred and twenty-five, whatever that is. How do you think twenty-five bucks will look beside that?”
“I can tell you a bigger difference still,” the other said. “The money Roger won ain’t mine but this twenty-five is. Maybe you better not even collect it. I’ll attend to that too.”
“Yair,” Jiggs said, busy, bouncing on his short strong legs, snapping the buckles of the emergency parachute. “Yair, we’re jake now. We can eat and sleep again to-night…. O.K.” He stood back and the other waddled stiffly towards the aeroplane. The checker came up with his pad and took their names and the aeroplane’s number and went away.
“Where you want to land?” the pilot said.
“I don’t care,” the jumper said. “Anywhere in the United States except that lake.”
“If you see you’re going to hit the lake,” Jiggs said, “turn around and go back up and jump again.”
They paid no attention to him. They were both looking back and upward towards where in the high drowsy azure there was already a definite alteration towards night. “Should be about dead up there now,” the pilot said. “What say I spot you for the hangar roofs and you can slip either way you want.”
“All right,” the jumper said. “Let’s get away from here.”
With Jiggs shoving at him he climbed on to the wing and into the front cockpit and Jiggs handed up the sack of flour and the jumper took it on to his lap like it was a child. With his bleak humourless handsome face he looked exactly like the comedy young bachelor caught by his girl while holding a strange infant on a street corner. The aeroplane began to move; Jiggs stepped back as the jumper leaned out, shouting: “Leave that money alone, you hear?”
“Okey doke,” Jiggs said. The aeroplane waddled out and on to the runway and turned and stopped; again the bomb, the soft slow bulb of cotton batting flowered against the soft indefinite lake-haze where for a little while still evening seemed to wait before moving in; again the report, the thud and jar twice reverberant against the stands as if the report bounced once before becoming echo. And now Jiggs turned as if
