Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  The large sliding door was open enough for a person to slip through. He went inside. There was a certain amount of light from openings up under the eaves of the iron roof. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he made out a machine like nothing he had ever seen before, or even read about. It was a pusher biplane with midwing ailerons. Twin bamboo tail booms led back to the tail assembly. Between the wings was mounted what appeared to be a four-cylinder motorcycle engine. The wings were braced by a complex maze of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal wires—a rigger’s nightmare. In place of the crude skids of the Wright, there was a tricycle landing gear with cut-down motorcycle wheels about a foot in diameter.

  But what interested Fred more was the control system. Instead of lying on his stomach the operator sat comfortably in a kind of wicker seat like a Morris chair. In front of him was a stout metal yoke, hinged at the bottom so that it could move freely back and forward. At the top of the yoke was a wooden steering wheel like that of an automobile, except that the spokes were wire. Glancing around to be sure there was still nobody in sight, he tried the controls. To bank left or right you turned the wheel; to climb or descend you pulled back on the wheel or pushed it forward. The operator’s feet fitted into a rudder bar which controlled the large rudder in the tail assembly. There was no canard elevator. Pushing on the yoke raised or lowered a large elevator surface at the rear, integrated with the rudder. The whole thing was ingeniously simple and beautifully designed. Obviously this was the control system of the future. Where was the throttle! There it was, just by the operator’s left hand.

  Some premonition made him turn. Unexpectedly a small man was there, with his thumbs in the back pockets of his overalls, stock still and watchful.

  “Whatcha lookin’ for, Buster?”

  “I’m just having a look at this machine.”

  “Well, don’t touch it.”

  “I’m not touching it.”

  “I know what you’re doin’. I been watchin’ you ever since you walked on the field. Who are you anyhow?”

  “I’m Fred Hite.” He went on recklessly. “You’ve probably heard of me. I’m a flyer from Southern California. They have Wrights down there. I’m living up here now, and I’m interested in flying this Curtiss.”

  The mechanic said nothing for a while. He took in the checked jacket, the well-cut beige pants, and the yellow shoes. He still had a look as though Fred was trying to sell him a gold brick. His attention was caught by the long hair sticking out from the rear of the derby.

  “That’s a funny haircut you’ve got.”

  “I’m in show business.”

  “You an actor?”

  “No, a manager.”

  He said all this with such confidence that the mechanic didn’t inquire why a manager in show business had to have long hair.

  “That there,” he said, “is an experimental model. Only one on the West Coast.”

  “Yep,” said Fred. “A beautiful design. Ailerons mounted between the wings. Good airflow there. I like the tricycle landing gear.” He walked around to the rear to inspect the engine. “That’s a motor off a Harley, it looks like. Except it has aluminum cylinders.” He set his hand on the engine confidently. “How much does it weigh?”

  “I told you don’t touch it. Two hundred and ten pounds. The whole thing weighs six hundred and fifty with nobody in it. How come you said you was a flyer, if you’re a manager in show business?”

  “I’m a gentleman flyer. Do you rent these things?”

  “Sometimes. You got a license?”

  “You mean they have licenses now?”

  “Well,” he admitted, “I ain’t never actually seen one. Mr. Curtiss says we got to ask for licenses. You need a piece of paper from somebody sayin’ you’ve had a lesson or two.”

  “What’s the rate?”

  “Twenty an hour, for the Farman and the Voisin. Like I say, you got a license?”

  “I’ve had … quite an experience with the Wright,” said Fred, thinking in a part of his mind of Marmora. He walked around to look at the controls of the Curtiss again. “This is a beautiful control system. It’s a heck of a lot better than the Wright. The wing warping on the Wright doesn’t work very well, and you can’t see anything lying flat on your stomach. And the canard elevator,” he went on, “is a rotten idea. It’s an inherently unstable design. A touch too much and you stall or go into a dive.”

  “That’s the trouble with the Farman,” said the mechanic, pointing his thumb over the shoulder at the pasture outside. “Now this machine here,” he said with calm satisfaction, “I helped Mr. Curtiss to build it. I practically built that control system myself.” It was obvious that, with the influence of a little mild flattery, his mistrust of Fred was vanishing like fog in a sunshine.

  Fred said, “The Wright doesn’t have a throttle either. Just a make-or-break arrangement.” He looked at the throttle on the Curtiss, a neat metal bar with a black knob on top of it. “What’s the RPM at full power?”

  “Runs about twelve hundred. Depends on the pitch. This here,” he explained from the rear of the wing, “is something else you probably never saw before. It’s an adjustable airscrew. You set it on the ground. The flatter the pitch, the higher the RPM, but you have to be careful, because if it goes over fifteen hundred the thing flies to pieces.”

  Fred closed his hand on the throttle, observing the ingenious linkage that opened and closed the throats of the four carburetors. This time the mechanic didn’t reprimand him for touching something. “That there’s the mixture,” he told him, “just under your left hand.”

  On the Wright, to adjust the mixture, you had to reach over and turn a plug on top of the engine, at the peril of catching your hand in the whirling bicycle chain.

  “You say twenty dollars an hour?”

  “That’s for the Farman or the Voisin. This here is an experimental model. Mr. Curtiss don’t want no one to fly it unless they’re expert flyers. I ain’t supposed to let you have any of them without a license.”

  “Let’s say thirty.”

  The mechanic surveyed him doubtfully for a long moment. Then he said, “All right. You goin’ to fly in that outfit?”

  Fred took off the derby. Then, after some thought, he took off the checked jacket too and hung it on a nail in the hangar wall. “Maybe you could lend me some goggles.”

  The mechanic thought this over for a while. Then he went away into the office and came out with a pair of goggles, along with a leather cap which Fred put on backwards.

  “Where’s the thirty?”

  Fred dug around in his pockets and came up with a twenty-dollar gold piece and a ragged paper ten. The mechanic put the coin in one pocket of his overalls and the bill in the other. Evidently he was scrupulously honest and never mingled his own money with that of his employer.

  “My name’s Kinney by the way. Pleased to meet you.” He pushed open the sliding door of the hangar, with surprising vigor for such a small man, and then he and Fred began pushing the machine out into the sunshine. “Mr. Curtiss calls this here the June Bug,” said Kinney, panting a little. “Now we get it. Headed. Into the wind.”

  He lifted up the front wheel of the thing and turned it around as though it were a child’s toy, heading it into the sea breeze streaming in over the Golden Gate. Fred lifted himself up into the wicker seat and buckled his helmet, leaving his goggles up for the moment. He set his yellow shoes onto the rudder bar.

  Kinney went around to the rear and set both hands on the airscrew.

  “Set the mixture to rich. That’s the ignition contact there to your right.

  Be sure it’s off.”

  “Contact off.”

  Kinney swung the airscrew a half-dozen times. From the engine behind Fred there was a rich smell of gasoline. He turned the wheel and watched the ailerons moving, one up and one down. He pushed it back and forth; the elevator at the tail went up and down. He saw a disadvantage to the Curtiss design now; a canard out in front was constantly in view, bu
t you couldn’t see the angle of the rear elevator without crooking your head around. He set it to neutral and memorized where the yoke was: just even with his knees. He waggled the rudder with the rudder bar.

  “Okay, contact now,” said the voice from the rear.

  “Contact.”

  Kinney swung the airscrew again. The engine gave a kind of a cough and there was a smell of half-burned gas. The second time it caught for good. The racket was terrific; the unmuffled motorcycle engine sounded like a string of firecrackers going off. On the grass ahead a few dead leaves and scraps of paper were sucked magically toward the aeroplane and flew by underneath.

  “KEEP IT RICH FOR ANOTHER MINUTE,” yelled Kinney.

  Fred nodded without turning his head. He pulled down the goggles.

  “WATCH OUT FOR GOPHER HOLES OUT THERE IN THE FIELD,” Kinney went on yelling, “KEEP TO THE TRACK WHERE YOU SEE EVERYBODY ELSE’S BEEN TAKING OFF. WAIT TILL THE FRONT WHEEL GETS LIGHT THEN PULL BACK AND YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY. LEAN NOW.”

  Fred leaned the mixture. He opened the throttle and the June Bug began to bump over the grass. Kinney ran along beside, still offering advice.

  “DON’T GIVE IT TOO MUCH AILERON,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “BECAUSE THE AILERONS SLOW IT DOWN, PARTICULARLY IN A TURN.” He began to fall behind as the June Bug gathered speed, “WHICH IS MOSTLY WHEN YOU USE AILERON!” he yelled. “WATCH THE …”

  The rest was lost in the din of the unmuffled engine. The grass raced toward Fred and fled by underneath. The thing bumped so much that it was hard to tell when the front wheel got light. He saw now what Kinney meant about gopher holes. He had forgotten to get onto the track in the grass where everybody else took off. Finally, judging that he had reached about forty-five miles an hour or so, he pulled back on the wheel. The June Bug rose but immediately began to slide off to the right. This was the torque effect, one of the disadvantages of the single airscrew. He corrected, a little too much in fact, and the thing slewed off the other way. This was bad for his airspeed and he was still only three feet off the grass. There was a fence ahead that was just about that high. Pushing the throttle all the way forward, he inched back gingerly on the wheel, wary of stalling when he still didn’t have full speed. The fence shot by underneath.

  When he came gliding back in, exactly fifty-seven minutes later, he was almost over the edge of the field when it occurred to him that Kinney had told him nothing about how to land the thing. Probably assumed he knew. Full throttle, half, or shut? The hangar was over on his left, and up ahead was the fence he had barely managed to clear when he took off. At fifty miles an hour everything happened very quickly. Fred had perhaps three seconds to perceive that he was coming in too high, and another second to decide what to do about it in order not to slam into the fence at the other end of the field after he landed. Of course there were no brakes on the murderous thing.

  There is nothing like a certain amount of danger to hone the wit and stimulate fast thinking. In the split second remaining, Fred rapidly reviewed all the qualities of the Curtiss including Kinney’s advice not to give it too much aileron because this slowed it down. He wrenched the wheel back and forth. The June Bug waggled in the air as the ailerons tipped one way and then the other. This slowed it down all right. It sank abruptly, causing Fred’s stomach to rise against his ribs. The ground was coming up far too fast. Fighting the instinct to pull back on the wheel, he pushed it forward and at the same time gave the throttle a nudge. The June Bug fell in a swoop, then leveled out until the grass was only three feet or so below. He waited for the moment to pull back on the wheel … now. The thing dropped to the grass as lightly as a sparrow. When he came to a stop the fence at the edge of the field was about twenty feet ahead.

  Kinney came running across the grass. Fred pushed up the goggles and shut off the contact.

  “Nice landing, Mr. Hite. I forgot to tell you how to lose altitude case you came in too high. But I see you already knew that.”

  Fred clambered out, with nothing much to say for himself. “Torque effect is a little tricky.” He walked around stiff-legged on the grass.

  “Yep, well I guess you was used to the twin airscrews on the Wright. Help me turn this thing around, will you?”

  They lifted up the front wheel and pointed it back toward the hangar. Then the two of them pushed it back across the grass, one on either side of the engine. Fred was still in a state of exaltation from his hour in the air. He hardly knew what he was doing. He still felt the trembling of the machine vibrating in his blood, the wind that sang in the wires and pushed against his body like a powerful hand, he saw the dizzying spectacle of the Golden Gate tilting back and forth and then settling to level as he turned. He hardly paid attention to what Kinney was saying; still something about the torque. “It don’t cause no trouble. Long as you know it’s there.” The June Bug bumped over a hole; they were almost to the hangar. Kinney was panting again. “Mr. Curtiss thinks. Maybe you can. Bias the ailerons. To counteract it.”

  “No doubt,” gasped Fred, short of breath himself.

  They left the June Bug in front of the hangar. Fred went into the hangar for his jacket and derby. When he came out, still panting, Kinney was refilling the fuel tank with a bucket and a funnel.

  “You’re quite a flyer, Mr. Hite,” he said, tipping in the last of the gasoline. “You know, next Sunday we’re havin’ an air show here. Mr. Curtiss, he’s held up in the East and he can’t make it. There’s a sweepstakes for private aviators. We’d sort of like the Bug to win. It’s for the publicity,” he explained in case Fred didn’t understand.

  “That so?”

  “That Frenchman will be here, Paulhan. A lot of people will be comin’ out to see him. We charge a dollar for admission. He’s goin’ to fly a Farman. Not this piece of junk here,” he gestured with his thumb. “A new one. It’s comin’ out by rail. Course the Bug is a much finer aeroplane. Fly rings round that Farman. Trouble is, it’s an experimental model and there ain’t many flyers round here that know how to handle it.”

  Fred’s heart began pounding again. He said nothing and remained outwardly calm.

  “You could enter the Bug if you wanted. Course you’d have to pay the usual rent. And there’s also an entry fee. Fifty dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “First prize for the sweepstakes is a thousand dollars,” said Kinney laconically.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “So long, Mr. Hite. That was a nice landing you made.”

  Fred walked the half mile back across the grass to the end of the trolley line. He felt in his pocket as he went. He still had a dime for the trolley and another one for the cable car. He calculated how long it would be until Herma’s next payday. Wednesday till Saturday: three more days.

  9.

  The cable car came to a stop at the corner of Powell and Market, and Fred got off. It was a few minutes before noon, and the sidewalks on both sides of Market were crowded with clerks and office workers going to lunch. It occurred to him for the first time to wonder where he himself was going to have lunch. For a while he had eaten at the Larkin and charged it to his bill, but the Sheeny had put an end to that. With no particular aim in mind, he set off in the opposite direction from the hotel, down Market toward the Embarcadero.

  The crowd on the sidewalk was thick. People were coming both ways, streaming against each other like two rows of contrary ants. Fred went along at a leisurely pace, now and then dodging around someone coming the other way. The sun was shining warmly and people were beginning to perspire. There was a friendly odor of sunshine, humanity, and cheap whiskey in the air. Directly ahead of Fred was a bizarre obstacle: a glazier’s boy carrying a kind of trestle or framework that fitted over him like a sawhorse. On the trestle were pieces of glass of all sizes and shapes. Fred moved to the left to pass the glazier’s boy, working his way with difficulty through the stream of pedestrians coming the other way. He bumped against a pair of workmen, threaded
his way around the clerk from a bank, and pushed past a yokel in a greasy hat, perhaps a miner from the gold country, who was gazing around at everything in a curious way. Then, framed in an opening in the collection of glass plates ahead of him, he caught sight of something that made him catch his breath.

  It was the upper part of a persimmon-colored dress with two perfect and slightly pendulous globes in it, swaying up and down as their owner walked. Separating the two shapes, down the middle of the dress, was a row of buttons and a trim of lace. There could be only one bosom like it in the world.

  Fred wheeled about, dodged around the glazier’s boy, and set off the other way up the sidewalk. He caught up with her in only a few seconds.

  “Ernestine! What are you doing here?”

  She gave him a bright smile. “I’m walking up Market toward my rooming house, which is on Howard Street, not a very savory part of town, I’m afraid.”

  “But—Mr. Larkin?”

  Her ironic, lightly theatrical manner was still the same. “Mr. Larkin, I regret to say, is no more. And that’s a whole story, which I’d be glad to relate to you over lunch, if you’d be good enough to invite me.”

  Fred fell into a kind of babble. “No more? You mean he … Ernestine, what are you saying? Lunch?” The clock on the Ferry Building indicated a quarter after twelve. “It would be a pleasure, but the fact is … I’m just a bit short at the moment …” He stuck his hand into his pocket, a silly gesture that immediately made him color. “However …”

  “Oh, if that’s all it is, I can foot the bill. I’ve still got a few pennies. You’ll just have to invite me, that’s all.”

  She was quite blithe. Fred understood nothing. Together they went up Market another block and then off on Bush to a kind of rathskeller he knew where you could get a nourishing lunch for half a dollar.