Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  According to the rules, the five machines were to take off in sequence starting with Paulhan. Fred was next; the Curtiss took to the air easily and he tilted it into a long bank to the right. Then they were to fly around the field clockwise until the last one was in the air. At that point a large white flag, hoisted from the grandstand, would signal five minutes to start. A blue flag would be raised at one minute, and a red flag for the start. At that point all five machines were to be to the west of a rickety wooden pylon standing in the grass across from the grandstand.

  Fred, with his throttle cut back, followed Paulhan around in a slow oval. Below on the ground the Wright was having difficulty getting into the air. A number of spectators were helping to push it, in danger of being decapitated by the airscrews or getting caught up in the flying chains. Finally it slid down its improvised rail, bumped once or twice, and managed to get a few feet into the air. The white flag went up. Fred and Paulhan, who were flying close to their stalling speed, caught up to the lumbering Roe triplane and lapped it. The thing seemed to be going only about forty miles an hour. Probably, Fred thought, it wouldn’t provide very much competition. As for the Wright, its operator seemed to have his hands full just keeping it up off the ground. It went straight off over the field in the wrong direction, across the fence. Evidently Matsen had not found out how to turn the thing either.

  The blue flag was up now. Then it went down, and Fred banked around to the right to get to the west of the pylon. Together the pylon and the grandstand formed a rough starting line two hundred yards or so long. Paulhan was above him and to the right. He caught a glimpse of the Frenchman’s face; he was still wearing his little smile. Then they both turned to head back toward the starting line.

  Fred kept his eyes glued on the empty flagstaff. He was a little ahead of time; he throttled back as much as he could. He was going to cross early—no, the red flag flapped its way up the staff just as the pylon went by under his wing. Paulhan was only a second or two behind him. It was a beautiful start. The others were not far behind, except for the Wright which was still struggling to turn around over the meadow in the distance.

  Fred climbed to five hundred feet, enough to take him over the hills. The first leg of the triangle ran across the city to the tower of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market. It was a warm cloudless day, with only a little mist lurking along the beach and clinging to the top of Twin Peaks. The whole city lay below and ahead of him, swirling around the feet of its five hills. The thousands of housetops gave the impression of countless numbers of children’s blocks, laid out in geometric lines and shapes. He made out the diagonal line of Columbus Avenue, running along the valley between Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill. His eye roamed along the waterfront looking for the Ferry Building. Trying to remember the map, he had the impression that the course to it lay approximately across Telegraph Hill. He had expected to see the characteristic tower as soon as he was in the air. But evidently it lay behind the hill from this angle. Then he noticed that Paulhan was not flying the same direction he was.

  At the same moment he caught sight of the Ferry Building. It was considerably to his right, and Paulhan was flying directly toward it. He had made a bad blunder; it came from not studying the map carefully enough. He banked to the right, pushing the throttle wide open. The steady roar of the engine mounted a little. He had no way of counting the RPM except by the note of the engine. With the throttle wide open it was presumably Kinney’s fourteen hundred, which would send the rods through the cylinder walls like a monkey spitting nuts. He held it for a while until Paulhan was only a few yards ahead, then throttled back so that the engine dropped a note or two on the musical scale. He was confident now that he had more speed than the Farman.

  The two machines converged on the Ferry Building tower, the Farman still a little ahead. A rule of the race was that you had to round all pylons, including the tower, at an altitude less than their height. This was tricky because you could easily lose speed in a turn, if you didn’t pay close attention, and drop like a stone before you knew what had happened. Fred throttled back a little, not too much, and sighted over his wing.

  Ahead of him Paulhan went around in a wide bank. Fred turned inside him and much tighter. For a fraction of a second he caught a glimpse of the faces in Market Street turned up to watch him. The tower swam up rapidly, seeming to lean toward him as he banked. As he expected, the Curtiss slowed in the turn as the air dragged at the ailerons and rudder. He gave it full throttle again. Then he was around, kicking back on the rudder bar and straightening the wings to level.

  He allowed himself a quick look around. To his surprise the Farman had gone wide on the turn. It was a hundred yards or so to his right, and gradually falling behind. Evidently Paulhan knew he didn’t have the speed to beat the Curtiss and was counting on Fred making another mistake, or blowing his engine.

  The Blériot with Lecornu aboard was just rounding the tower. The Roe triplane was far behind, lumbering along over Telegraph Hill, and there was no sign of the Wright Flyer. The Blériot was his competition now. The two machines were of about the same speed; the Blériot was perhaps a shade faster. Fred had a lead of several hundred yards, and it was three miles to the Alcatraz pylon. One thing at a time. For the moment he concentrated on getting to the Alcatraz pylon first. He could worry about the final leg later.

  He allowed himself another quick glance behind. The Blériot was still gaining. The throttle was wide open; nothing to be done about that. He checked his controls to be sure they were all exactly flat, to cause the minimum of air drag. He even bent over a little, drawing his head into his shoulders to reduce the resistance of the wind. Not for nothing, he thought, was he an expert bicyclist. The long rocky outline of Alcatraz came into view, like a ship pointed out toward the Golden Gate. The pylon on top of it was a rickety structure of timbers and canvas with an “A” painted on it. The blasted thing was only about fifty feet above the rock; it didn’t leave you much margin for error. He throttled back slightly; Lecornu couldn’t get past him from this angle anyhow.

  As he banked for the turn he looked around again. That infernal Lecornu was inside him now and coming on fast. Apparently he hoped to turn tighter and go by inside the Curtiss. It was a dangerous maneuver for both of them. If he didn’t make it he would go sideways straight into the other machine, unless he managed to slide by above or below. But with a fifty-foot pylon there wasn’t much room. The damned idiot! Gritting his teeth, Fred kicked the bar and swung the wheel over. The island, the rickety pylon, and the Bay with flecks of foam on it staggered drunkenly under him.

  He was around. While he was still leveling out he turned his head for a quick look behind. The scene behind him was fixed and frozen, as precise as in a photograph. The pylon, a corner of the shabby canvas fluttering in the wind, stood bolt upright. Only a few yards from it the Blériot was in a steep bank; far too steep, almost vertical. A little below it the left wing had separated and was suspended in the air, canted at an angle, a piece of sky clearly visible between it and the rest of the machine.

  A second later, without seeming to have moved from this odd position in. the air, the Blériot struck the rock. There was a ball of flame which instantly turned into an expanding blossom of smoke. Fred had time only for a glance, then he had to turn forward again. He felt cold. Everything seemed unreal and for a moment he hardly realized where he was. Mechanically he reached out and reduced the throttle. He saw the Presidio coming up, out beyond it the Golden Gate, and over on his right the Sausalito hills. He went on flying like a mechanical man. He flew quite well, in fact. He made out the pylon and hangar in the Presidio meadows, and adjusted his course slightly to head for them. He found he had cut back the throttle a little too much and nudged it a hair ahead. The next time he looked around Alcatraz was far behind, with a pencil of smoke hanging over it in the sky. Paulhan had already rounded the pylon and was coming on a quarter of a mile or so behind.

  The hangar was about a mile ahead. He
could make out the grandstand now, and the clutter of people around it like black and white ants. The Bay was perhaps a hundred feet below him. At this low altitude the flecks of foam shot by with a dizzying speed.

  He cut back the throttle again and pushed the wheel forward. The Curtiss put its nose down in a flat glide. Coming in this way from the east, the landing machines passed directly before the grandstand and landed only a few hundred yards farther on. Probably this was arranged on purpose to give the spectators a good view of the landings. It also gave the landing flyer a good view of the people in the grandstand, if only for a moment. Fred glanced to the left, hoping to glimpse the persimmon-colored gown in the crowd.

  A moment later he turned his attention to the grassy field racing up below and ahead. He instantly saw that he had overshot the field. He was coming in too high and moving too fast. Ahead was that infernal fence he had barely stopped short of the time before. He twisted the wheel sharply to left and right, rocking the Curtiss like a boat in a seaway. Losing its grip on the air, it dropped so that his stomach came up against his ribs. He had overdone it a little. He pushed the wheel forward to pick up speed again. But it was too late; he was only about twenty feet in the air now. The machine, far below its stalling speed, behaved like a kite with a cut string. It came down tottering and swaying, hesitated, and seemed to hang fixed for a moment. Then it struck the earth with a solid thump, almost a splat, the tail surface and nose together.

  There was a heavy smell of gasoline. The tank on the wing overhead had ruptured and the back of Fred’s clothing was soaked with it. As for the tank, the wing, and the other parts of the machine, they were scattered about on the grass more or less in the shape of an aeroplane, but in a disarranged pattern as though some child had scattered the parts of a puzzle with his hand. The engine had rolled out and lay smoking in the grass a few yards ahead. It was lucky, he thought, that it hadn’t struck him square in the back. There was nothing left of the wicker chair or the belt that had strapped him into it. He stood up, stiff-legged, and walked calmly but rapidly away from the wreckage.

  After only a few yards he fell down. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps his leg was broken. Or perhaps he had only stepped into one of those infernal gopher holes. Lying on his side with an unidentified but not unpleasant buzzing in his ears, he watched while an odd-looking bug floated down past the grandstand, grew larger, and at last touched lightly onto the grass, setting its tail down only when the four transverse wheels were firmly on the ground. Gunning his motor in little bursts, Paulhan blatted and tottered the Farman around in a wide turn toward the grandstand.

  People were running up toward Fred. Some of them pulled him up, others insisted that he sit down again. Kinney arrived, without haste. He had his thumbs in the back pockets of his overalls. He inspected Fred.

  “You okay, Mr. Hite?”

  “I think so.”

  “What was you daydreamin’ about as you went past the grandstand? I saw you lookin’ around in every direction except forward.”

  “I think my ankle is broken. Anyhow I beat Paulhan.”

  “No you didn’t. You got to land the machine to finish.”

  “I thought any landing you could walk away from was a good landing.”

  “Not in racin’ it ain’t. Anyhow you didn’t walk away. You fell down in that there gopher hole. And look at that machine! What am I goin’ to tell Mr. Curtiss?”

  “He says his ankle’s broken,” said someone.

  “No, it isn’t,” Fred decided. “Somebody help me up.”

  Two spectators got him upright and helped him off toward the motor-ambulance at the edge of the field, Kinney following along behind. The ambulance attendants got his outer clothing off and inspected him while he sat on a folding camp chair. He had an ugly bruise on his right cheekbone, a stiff neck—he experimentally wagged his head to left and right, and then backward and forward—and another set of bruises on his left ribs. Both knees were abraded; little pinpoints of blood appeared on them and slid down his shins. He had a gasoline rash on his back, and his left ankle was slightly sprained.

  “I feel fine,” he said.

  He watched while the Roe triplane lumbered down through the gray air like a condor, bounced on the grass two or three times, and finally managed to bring itself to a stop.

  Fred had almost forgotten the Alcatraz pylon. The frozen photograph formed suddenly again in his mind.

  “What about Lecornu?”

  “Monoplanes never was any good,” said Kinney. “No way you can brace just one wing.”

  11.

  Once installed with Ernestine in the horse-cab, and clopping back along Bay Street toward the city, Fred felt—not exhilarated exactly, but in a state of bodily grace, and somberly and metaphysically pleased with himself. There is nothing like a narrow escape from death to sharpen the consciousness and all the senses. And a few bumps and bruises, too, give one a sense of the exquisite intricacy and value of one’s body. No matter that he had spent all Herma’s money, and failed to win the thousand-dollar sweepstakes. He had savored the keenness of life, in this one afternoon, in a way beyond the imagination of any bank clerk or staid office worker. He felt the sting of the two bandages on his knees.

  His ribs hurt, and so did the bruise on his face. “When he waggled his neck something inside it gritted like broken glass. Never mind! He lived, he was still alive, and next to him in the cab was the warm and curvaceous presence of Ernestine, jammed close against his own side.

  “My aeronaut! Poor wounded hero!”

  “Careful of my neck.”

  “Tell me where else it hurts.”

  “Everywhere. You can kiss me though.”

  “Like this? And this, and this, and this.”

  “My right arm works okay.” He wrapped it gingerly around her.

  “Oh, I’m so glad of that.”

  “Hey! there’s a telegraph office,” said Fred, unwinding his arm from her. “Stop! Ernestine, do you by any chance have a half-dollar for a telegram?”

  Sighing, she got out her purse and gave him the coin. He limped in, took a form from the desk, and scrawled on it, “Speidermann, Larkin Theater. Miss Herma is indisposed and won’t sing Fifi tonight. Hite.”

  The clerk snatched it away from him. “Right away. Say, is that the Herma that sings Kiss Me Again?”

  “You’d better hurry. It closes in a week.”

  He went out and got into the cab, somewhat gingerly. His knees were beginning to stiffen up a little now.

  “Why don’t we have some dinner?” he suggested to Ernestine.

  “Some Würstel at the Rathskeller?”

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  She looked into her purse again.

  At Gobey’s Ladies and Gents Oyster Parlor on Sutter they regaled themselves on boiled terrapin and crab stew, along with a high-shouldered bottle of Sauterne in a silver ice bucket. Ernestine ate efficiently, mopping up the last of her stew with a piece of bread and holding the wine bottle upside down over her glass to get the last drop out of it. After the coffee Fred ordered pousse-cafés, consisting of ingeniously arranged layers of different- colored liqueurs in slim crystal goblets. They lingered over these confections for some time. Ernestine, her chin propped on her hand, toyed with the glass in her pale and perfectly manicured fingers. When the bill came Fred slipped it tactfully over to her side of the table, half hidden by the wine bottle.

  She considered it languidly.

  “Alas, I haven’t got it, dear boy.”

  “How much do you lack?”

  With a sigh she straightened up and consulted her purse again. “A dollar and a half. About. I’m not very good at figures.”

  He managed to find a dollar bill, three quarters, and an assortment of nickels and dimes in his own pockets. They left his money and hers on the table and stole out, waiting for a moment when the waiter was away in the kitchen.

  Out on the street, of course, they had no money for a cab or for anything els
e.

  “Tomorrow,” said Ernestine, “it’s to Uncle to hock the shiner. But he’s not open at this hour, unfortunately. Where’s your hotel, dear boy?”

  “I’m not on very good terms with the management just now. What about your rooming house?”

  “There is Mrs. Morbihan. She is quite formidable. However, it’s possible that she is momentarily inattentive, or has gone down the street to the gin mill or something. We can go and see.”

  There was nothing for it but to walk: down Dupont Street, a little way along Market and across it to Third, and then a short distance up Howard to the rooming house. In all truth it was not a very appetizing-looking place. It was on the wrong side of Market Street—south of the Slot, as people said. The street was full of filth, and there was a gang of idlers loafing around the front stoop. The tall, narrow house itself was three stories high and the shape of a guillotine; the open door at the bottom was the hole where you put your head. In the window was a placard: “Morbihan’s Residential Chambers.”

  They stopped a little way down the street and looked the situation over, as well as they could see in the dark. “It’s not the Palace but it’s cheap. Fifty cents a day,” whispered Ernestine, “and I have the best room in the place, second floor front, She’s there all right, the old reptile. Sitting in her room with the door open, where she can see everyone going up the stairs.”

  The curtains were drawn in the room on the ground floor. But inside Fred could make out the door of the lighted parlor, and a pair of large knees in a black taffeta skirt. There was no way to get up the stairs without going past that open door.

  “I don’t understand her prudery about her guests having visitors,” he whispered. “It doesn’t look like that part of town.”