"Where is that secretary?" he said.
"What secretary?"
"That American Legion secretary." He went on, limping fast, toward where a crowd stood about three women who had fainted. "You said you would pay a hundred dollars to see me swap to that car. We pay rent on the car and all, and now you would..."
"You got sixty dollars," some one said.
The man looked at him. "Sixty? I said one hundred. Then you would let me believe it was one hundred and it was just sixty; you would see me risk my life for sixty dollars..." The airplane was down; none of us were aware of it until the pilot sprang suddenly upon the man who limped.
He jerked the man around and knocked him down before we could grasp the pilot. We held the pilot, struggling, crying, the tears streaking his dirty, unshaven face. Captain Warren was suddenly there, holding the pilot.
"Stop it!" he said. "Stop it!"
The pilot ceased. He stared at Captain Warren, then he slumped and sat on the ground in his thin, dirty garment, with his unshaven face, dirty, gaunt, with his sick eyes, crying. "Go away," Captain Warren said. "Let him alone for a minute."
We went away, back to the other man, the one who limped. They had lifted him and he drew the two halves of his overcoat forward and looked at them. Then he said: "I want some chewing gum."
Some one gave him a stick. Another offered him a cigarette. "Thanks," he said. "I don't burn up no money. I ain't got enough of it yet." He put the gum into his mouth. "You would take advantage of me. If you thought I would risk my life for sixty dollars, you fool yourself."
"Give him the rest of it," some one said. "Here's my share."
The limping man did not look around. "Make it up to a hundred, and I will swap to the car like on the handbill," he said.
Somewhere a woman screamed behind him. She began to laugh and to cry at the same time. "Don't..." she said, laughing and crying at the same time. "Don't let..." until they led her away. Still the limping man had not moved.
He wiped his face on his cuff and he was looking at his bloody sleeve when Captain Warren came up.
"How much is he short?" Warren said. They told Warren.
He took out some money and gave it to the limping man.
"You want I should swap to the car?" he said.
"No," Warren said. "You get that crate out of here quick as you can."
"Well, that's your business," the limping man said. "I got witnesses I offered to swap." He moved; we made way and watched him, in his severed and dangling overcoat, approach the airplane. It was on the runway, the engine running. The third man was already in the front seat. We watched the limping man crawl terrifically in beside him. They sat there, looking forward.
The pilot began to get up. Warren was standing beside him. "Ground it," Warren said. "You are coming home with me."
"I guess we'd better get on," the pilot said. He did not look at Warren. Then he put out his hand. "Well..." he said.
Warren did not take his hand. "You come on home with me," he said.
"Who'd take care of that bastard?"
"Who wants to?"
"I'll get him right, some day. Where I can beat hell out of him."
"Jock," Warren said.
"No," the other said.
"Have you got an overcoat?"
"Sure I have."
"You're a liar." Warren began to pull off his overcoat.
"No," the other said; "I don't need it." He went on toward the machine. "See you some time," he said over his shoulder.
We watched him get in, heard an airplane come to life, come alive. It passed us, already off the ground. The pilot jerked his hand once, stiffly; the two heads in the front seat did not turn nor move. Then it was gone, the sound was gone.
Warren turned. "What about that car they rented?" he said.
"He give me a quarter to take it back to town," a boy said.
"Can you drive it?"
"Yes, sir. I drove it out here. I showed him where to rent it."
"The one that jumped?"
"Yes, sir." The boy looked a little aside. "Only I'm a little scared to take it back. I don't reckon you could come with me."
"Why, scared?" Warren said.
"That fellow never paid nothing down on it, like Mr. Harris wanted. He told Mr. Harris he might not use it, but if he did use it in his show, he would pay Mr. Harris twenty dollars for it instead of ten like Mr. Harris wanted. He told me to take it back and tell Mr. Harris he never used the car, And I don't know if Mr. Harris will like it. He might get mad."
Elly
BORDERING THE SHEER DROP of the precipice, the wooden railing looked like a child's toy. It followed the curving road in thread-like embrace, passing the car in a flimsy blur.
Then it flicked behind and away like a taut ribbon cut with scissors.
Then they passed the sign, the first sign, Mills City 6 mi and Elly thought, with musing and irrevocable astonishment, 'Now we are almost there. It is too late now'; looking at Paul beside her, his hands on the wheel, his face in profile as he watched the fleeing road. She said, "Well. What can I do to make you marry me, Paul?" thinking 'There was a man plowing in that field, watching us when we came out of those woods with Paul carrying the motor-robe, and got back into the car,' thinking this quietly, with a certain detachment and inattention, because there was something else about to obliterate it. 'Something dreadful that I have forgotten about,' she thought, watching the swift and increasing signs which brought Mills City nearer and nearer. 'Something terrible that I shall remember in a minute,' saying aloud, quietly: "There's nothing else I can do now, is there?"
Still Paul did not look at her. "No," he said. "There's nothing else you can do."
Then she remembered what it was she had forgotten. She remembered her grandmother, thinking of the old woman with her dead hearing and her inescapable cold eyes waiting at Mills City, with amazed and quiet despair: 'How could I have ever forgot about her? How could I have? How could I?'
She was eighteen. She lived in Jefferson, two hundred miles away, with her father and mother and grandmother, in a biggish house. It had a deep veranda with screening vines and no lights. In this shadow she half lay almost nightly with a different man; youths and young men of the town at first, but later with almost anyone, any transient in the small town whom she met by either convention or by chance, provided his appearance was decent. She would never ride in their cars with them at night, and presently they all believed that they knew why, though they did not always give up hope at once until the courthouse clock struck eleven. Then for perhaps five minutes longer they (who had been practically speechless for an hour or more) would talk in urgent whispers: "You must go now."
"No. Not now."
"Yes. Now."
"Why?"
"Because. I'm tired. I want to go to bed."