“What?” the reporter cried, glaring, gaunt, apparently having already rushed on and out of his precarious body so that only the shell glared back at Jiggs. “What? What’s he holding this meet for? What did he — do you think maybe he built this airport just for a smooth place for aeroplanes to land on?” He went on, not running yet but fast. As he hurried up the apron the aeroplanes overtook and passed him, banked around the field pylon and faded on; he did not even look at them. Then suddenly he saw her, leading the little boy by the hand, emerge from the crowd about the gate to intercept him, wearing now a clean linen dress under the trench-coat, and a hat, the brown hat of the first evening. He stopped. His hand went into his pocket and into his face came the expression, bright, quiet, almost smiling, as she walked fast up to him, staring at him with pale and urgent intensity.
“What is it?” she said. “What is this you have got him into?” He looked down at her with that expression, not yearning nor despair, but profound, tragic and serene like in the eyes of bird dogs.
“It’s all right,” he said. “My signature is on the note, too. It will hold. I am going in right now to testify; that’s all that’s holding them; that’s all that Ord has to—” He drew out the nickel and gave it to the boy.
“What?” she said. “Note? Note? The ship, you idiot!”
“Oh.” He smiled down at her. “The ship. We flew it, tested it over there. We made a field hop before we—”
“We?”
“Yes. I went with him. I laid on the floor in the tail, so we could find out where the weight ought to be to pass the burble. That’s all it was. We have a sandbag rigged now on a cable so he can let it slide back. It’s all right.”
“All right?” she said. “Good God, what can you know about it? Did he say it was all right?”
“Yes. He said last night he could land it. I knew he could. And now he won’t need to make but one more....”She stared at him, the eyes pale, cold and urgent, at the face worn, dreamy, and peaceful in the soft bright sun; again the aeroplanes came in and snored on and away. Then he was interrupted; it was the amplifier; all the amplifiers up and down the apron began to call his name, telling the stands, the field, the land and lake and air, that he was wanted in the superintendent’s office at once. “There it is,” he said. “Yair. I knew that the note would be the only thing that Ord could... That was why I signed it, too. And don’t you worry; all I need to do is walk in and say, ‘Yes, that’s my signature.’ And don’t you worry. He can fly it. He can fly anything. I used to think that Matt Ord was the best pilot alive, but now I”
The amplifier began to repeat itself. It faced him; it seemed to stare straight at him while it roared his name deliberately as though he had to be summoned not out of the living world of population but evoked, peremptory and repetitive, out of the air itself. The one in the rotunda was just beginning again when he entered; the sound followed him through the door and across the ante-room, though beyond that it did not reach — not into the board room of yesterday where now Ord and Shumann alone occupied the hard chairs. They had been ushered in a half-hour ago and sat down facing the men behind the table; Shumann saw Feinman for the first time, sitting not in the centre but at one end of the table where the announcer had sat yesterday, his suit, double-breasted still, tan instead of grey beneath the bright splash of the carnation. He alone wore his hat; it appeared to be the smallest object about him; from beneath it his dark smooth face began at once to droop into folds of flesh which, constricted for the instant by his collar, swelled and rolled again beneath the tight creases of his coat. On the table one hand bearing a gold-clamped ruby held a burning cigar. He did not even glance at Shumann and Ord; he was looking at Sales, the inspector... a square bald man with a blunt face which ordinarily would be quite pleasant, though not now... who was saying:
“Because I can ground it. I can forbid it to fly.”
“You mean, you can forbid anybody to fly it, don’t you?” Feinman said.
“Put it that way if you want to,” Sales said.
“Let’s say, put it that way for the record,” another voice said — a young man, sleek, in horn-rim glasses, sitting just back of Feinman. He was Feinman’s secretary; he spoke now with a kind of silken insolence, like the pampered, intelligent, hate-ridden eunuch mountebank of an eastern despot: “Colonel Feinman is, even before a public servant, a lawyer.”
“Yes; lawyer,” Feinman said. “Maybe country lawyer to Washington. Let me get this straight. You’re a government agent. All right. We have had our crops regimented and our fisheries regimented and even our money in the bank regimented. All right. I still don’t see how they did it, but they did, and so we are used to that. If he was trying to make his living out of the ground and Washington come in and regimented him, all right. We might not understand it any more than he did, but we would say all right. And if he was trying to make his living out of the river and the government come in and regimented him, we would say all right, too. But do you mean to tell me that Washington can come in and regiment a man that’s trying to make his living out of the air? Is there a crop reduction in the air, too?” They — the others about the table (three of them were reporters) — laughed. They laughed with a kind of sudden and loud relief, as though they had been waiting all the time to find out just how they were supposed to listen, and now they knew. Only Sales and Shumann and Ord did not laugh; then they noticed that the secretary was not laughing either and that he was already speaking, seemed to slide his silken voice into the laughter and stop it as abruptly as a cocaine needle in a nerve:
“Yes. Colonel Feinman is lawyer enough (perhaps Mr. Sales will add, country enough) to ask even a government official to show cause. As the colonel understands it, this aeroplane bears a licence which Mr. Sales approved himself. Is that true, Mr. Sales?” For a moment Sales did not answer. He just looked at the secretary grimly.
“Because I don’t believe it is safe to fly,” he said. “That’s the cause.”
“Ah,” the secretary said. “For a moment I almost expected Mr. Sales to tell us that it would not fly; that it had perhaps walked over here from Blaisedell. Then all we would need to say would be ‘Good; we will not make it fly; we will just let it walk around the pylons during the race this afternoon —— —’”
Now they did laugh, the three reporters scribbling furiously. But it was not for the secretary: it was for Feinman. The secretary seemed to know this; while he waited for it to subside his unsmiling, insolent contempt touched them all face by face. Then he spoke to Sales again. “You admit that it is licensed, that you approved it yourself — meaning, I take it, that it is registered at Washington as being fit and capable of discharging the function of an aeroplane, which is to fly. Yet you later state that you will not permit it to fly because it is not capable of discharging the function for which you yourself admit having approved it — in simple language for us lawyers, that it cannot fly. Yet Mr. Ord has just told us that he flew it in your presence. And Mr.” — he glanced down, the pause was less than pause— “Shumann states that he flew it once at Blaisedell before witnesses, and we know that he flew it here because we saw him. We all know that Mr. Ord is one of the best (we New Valoisians believe the best) pilots in the world, but don’t you think it barely possible, barely, I say, that the man who has flows it twice where Mr. Ord has flown it but once... Wouldn’t this almost lead one to think that Mr. Ord has some other motive for not wanting this aeroplane to compete in this race—”
“Yair,” Feinman said. He turned to look at Ord. “What’s the matter? Ain’t this airport good enough for your ships? Or ain’t this race important enough for you? Or do you just think he might beat you? Ain’t you going to use the aeroplane you broke the record in? Then what are you afraid of?” Ord glared from face to face about the table, then at Feinman again.
“Why do you want this ship in there this afternoon? What is it? I’d lend him the money, if that’s all it is.”
“Why?” Feinman said. “A
in’t we promised these folks out there” — he made a jerking sweep with the cigar— “a series of races? Ain’t they paying their money in here to see them? And ain’t it the more aeroplanes they will have to look at the better they will think they got for the money? And why should he want to borrow money from you when he can maybe earn it at his job where he won’t have to pay it back or even the interest? Now, let’s settle this business.” He turned to Sales. “The ship is licensed, ain’t it?” After a moment Sales said:
“Yes.” Feinman turned to Ord.
“And it will fly, won’t it?” Ord looked at him for a long moment too.
“Yes,” he said. Now Feinman turned to Shumann.
“Is it dangerous to fly?” he said.
“They all are,” Shumann said.
“Well, are you afraid to fly it?” Shumann looked at him. “Do you expect it to fall with you this afternoon?”
“If I did I wouldn’t take it up,” Shumann said. Suddenly Ord rose; he was looking at Sales.
“Mac,” he said, “this ain’t getting anywhere. I will ground the ship myself.” He turned to Shumann. “Listen, Roger—”
“On what grounds, Mr. Ord?” the secretary said.
“Because it belongs to me. Is that grounds enough for you?”
“When an authorized agent of your corporation has accepted a legal monetary equivalent for it and surrendered the machine?”
“But they are not good for the note. I know that. I was a damn stick-straddler myself until I got a break. Why, damn it, one of the names on it is admitted to not be signed by the owner of it. And listen: yair; I don’t even know whether Shumann did the actual signing; whoever signed it signed it before I saw it or even before Marchand saw it. See?” He glared at the secretary, who looked at him in turn with his veiled, contemptuous glance.
“I see,” the secretary said pleasantly. “I was waiting for you to bring that up. You seem to have forgotten that the note has a third signer.” Ord stared at him for a minute.
“But he ain’t good for it either,” he said.
“Possibly not, alone. But Mr. Shumann tells us that his father is and that his father will honour this signature. So by your own token, the question seems to resolve to whether or not Mr. Shumann did or did not sign his and his father’s name to the note. And we seem to have a witness to that. It is not exactly legal, I grant you. But this other signer is known to some of us here; you know him yourself, you tell us, to be a person of unassailable veracity. We will have him in.” Then it was that the amplifiers began to call the reporter’s name; he entered; he came forward while they watched him. The secretary extended the note towards him. (“Jesus,” the reporter thought, “they must have sent a ship over for Marchand.”)
“Will you examine this?” the secretary said.
“I know it,” the reporter said.
“Will you state whether or not you and Mr. Shumann signed it in each other’s presence and in good faith?” The reporter looked about, at the faces behind the table, at Shumann sitting with his head bent a little and at Ord half-risen, glaring at him. After a moment Shumann turned his head and looked quietly at him.
“Yes,” the reporter said. “We signed it.”
“There you are,” Feinman said. He rose. “That’s all. Shumann has possession; if Ord wants any more to be stubborn about it we will just let him run to town and see if he can get back with a writ of replevin before time for the race.”
“But he can’t enter it!” Ord said. “It ain’t qualified.” Feinman paused long enough to look at Ord for a second with impersonal inscrutability.
“Speaking for the citizens of Franciana who donated the ground and for the citizens of New Valois that built the airport the race is going to be run on, I will waive qualifications.”
“You can’t waive the A.A.A.,” Ord said. “You can’t make it official if he wins the whole damn meet.”
“Then he will not need to rush back to town to pawn a silver cup,” Feinman said. He went out; the others rose from the table and followed. After a moment Ord turned quietly to Shumann.
“Come on,” he said. “We’d better check her over.”
The reporter did not see them again. He followed them through the rotunda, through the amplifier’s voice and through the throng at the gates, or so he thought because his police card had passed him before he remembered that they would have had to go around to reach the apron. But he could see the aeroplane with a crowd standing around it. The woman had forgotten too that Shumann and Ord would have to go around and through the hangar; she emerged again from the crowd beneath the bandstand. “So they did it,” she said. “They let him.”
“Yes. It was all right. Like I told you.”
“They did it,” she said, staring at him, yet speaking as though in amazed soliloquy. “Yes. You fixed it.”
“Yes. I knew that’s all it would be. I wasn’t worried. And don’t you...” She didn’t move for a moment; there was nothing of distraction especially; he just seemed to hang substance-less in the long peaceful backwash of waiting, saying quietly out of the dreamy smiling, “Yair. Ord talking about how he would be disqualified for the cup, the prize, like that would stop him, like that was what.. not even aware that it was only the shell of her speaking quietly back to him, asking him if he would mind the boy.
“Since you seem to be caught up for the time.”
“Yair,” he said. “Of course.” Then she was gone, the white dress and the trench-coat lost in the crowd — the ones with ribbon badges and the ones in dungarees — which streamed suddenly down the apron towards the dark horse, the sensation. As he stood so, holding the little boy by one damp sticky hand, the Frenchman Despleins passed again down the runway which paralleled the stands, on one wheel; the reporter watched him take off and half roll, climbing upside down. Now he heard the voice; he had not heard it since it called his own name, despite the fact that it had never ceased, perhaps because of the fact:
“... oh oh oh, mister, don’t, don’t! Oh, mister! Please get up high enough so your parachute can try to open! Now, now; now, now.... Oh, Mac! Oh, Mr. Sales! Make him stop!” The reporter looked down at the boy.
“I bet you a dime you haven’t spent that nickel,” he said.
“Naw,” the boy said. “I ain’t had a chance to. She wouldn’t let me.”
“Well, my goodness!” the reporter said. “I owe you twenty cents then, don’t I? Come—” He paused, turning; it was the photographer, the man whom he had called Jug, laden again with the enigmatic and faintly macabre utensils of his calling so that he resembled vaguely a trained dog belonging to a country doctor.
“Where in hell you been?” the photographer said. “Hagood told me to find you at ten o’clock.”
“Here I am,” the reporter said. “We’re just going inside to spend twenty cents. Want to come?” Now the Frenchman came up the runway about twenty feet high and on his back, his head and face beneath the cockpit-rim motionless and alert like that of a roach or a rat immobile behind a crack in a wainscot, his neat short beard unstirred by any wind as though cast in one piece of bronze.
“Yair,” the photographer said; perhaps it was the bilious aspect of an inverted world seen through a hooded lens or emerging in grimacing and attitudinal miniature from stinking trays in a celibate and stygian cell lighted by a red lamp: “and have that guy come down on his whiskers and me not here to get it?”
“All right,” the reporter said. “Stay and get it.” He turned to go on. —
“Yair; but Hagood told me—” the photographer said.
The reporter turned back.
“All right,” he said. “But hurry up.”
“Hurry up what?”
“Snap me. You can show it to Hagood when you go in.” He and the boy went on; he did not walk back into the voice, he had never walked out of it:
“...an inverted spin, folks; he’s going into it still upside down — oh oh oh oh — —” The reporter stooped suddenly and lifted the
boy to his shoulder.
“We can make better time,” he said. “We will want to get back in a few minutes.” They passed through the gate, among the gaped and upturned faces which choked the gangway. “That’s it,” he thought quietly, with that faint quiet grimace almost like smiling; “they ain’t human. It ain’t adultery; you can’t any more imagine two of them making love than you can two of them aeroplanes back in the corner of the hangar, coupled.” With one hand he supported the boy on his shoulder, feeling through the harsh khaki the young brief living flesh. “Yair; cut him and it’s cylinder oil; dissect him and it ain’t bones: it’s little rocker arms and connecting rods....” The restaurant was crowded; they did not wait to eat the ice-cream there on a plate; with one cone in his hand and one in the boy’s and the two chocolate bars in his pocket they were working back through the crowded gangway when the bomb went off and then the voice:
“... fourth event unlimited free-for-all, Vaughn Trophy race, prize two thousand dollars. You will not only have a chance to see Matt Ord in his famous Ninety-Two Ord-Atkinson Special in which he set a new land plane speed record, but as a surprise entry through the courtesy of the American Aeronautical Association and the Feinman Airport Commission, Roger Shumann, who yesterday nosed over in a forced landing, in a special rebuilt job that Matt Ord rebuilt himself. Two horses from the same stable, folks, and two pilots both of whom are so good that it is a pleasure to give the citizens of New Valois and Franciana the chance to see them pitted against each other....”He and the boy watched the take-off, then they went on. Presently he found her — the brown hat and the coat — and he came up and stood a little behind her, steadying the boy on his shoulder and carrying the second melting cone in his other hand as the four aeroplanes came in on the first lap — the red-and-white monoplane in front and two more side by side and some distance back, so that at first he did not even see Shumann. Then he saw him, higher than the others and well outside, though the voice now was not from the amplifier but from a mechanic:
“Jesus, look at Shumann! It must be fast: he’s flying twice as far as the rest of them — or maybe Ord ain’t trying. — Why in hell don’t he bring it on in?” Then the voice was drowned in the roar, the snarl, as the aeroplanes turned the field pylon and, followed by the turning heads along the apron as if the faces were geared to the sound, diminished singly out and over the lake again, Shumann still quite wide, making a turn that was almost a skid yet holding his position. They converged towards the second pylon, the lake one, in slightly irregular order and tiny now with distance and with Shumann still cautiously high and outside, they wafted lightly upwards and around the pylon. Now the reporter could hear the mechanic again: “He’s coming in now, watch him. Jesus, he’s second — he’s diving in — Jesus, he’s going to be right behind Ord on this pylon; maybe he was just feeling it out—” The noise was faint now and dis seminated; the drowsy afternoon was domed with it and the four machines seemed to hover like dragon-flies silently in vacuum, in various distance-softened shades of pastel against the ineffable blue, with now a quality trivial, random, almost like notes of music — a harp, say — as the sun glinted and lost them. The reporter leaned down to the woman who was not yet aware of his presence, crying:
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 190
