Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  “What is it?” the reporter said. Jiggs turned and looked at him for a moment of hot blurred concentration without recognition; it was the Italian who answered.

  “For me, nothing!” he shouted. “He come here, he have one drink two drink; he no need either one of them but O.K.; he pay; that O.K. for me. Then he say he wait for friend, that he have one more drink to surprise friend. That not so good, but my wife she give it to him and that maka three drink he don’t need and I say, You pay and go, eh? Beat it. And he say, O.K., good-bye and I say Why you no pay, eh? and he say That drink to surprise friend; looka like it surprise you too, eh? and I grab to hold and call policaman because I don’t want for trouble with drunk and he say bastard to me before my wife....” Still Jiggs did not move. Even while holding himself upright by the counter he gave that illusion of tautly sprung steel set delicately on a hair trigger.

  “Yair,” he said. “Three drinks, and just look what they done to me!” on a rising note which stopped before it became idiotic laughter; whereupon he stared again at the reporter with that blurred gravity, watching while the reporter took the second of the two dollar bills which the negress had loaned him and gave it to the Italian. “There you are, Columbus,” Jiggs said. “Yair. I told him. Jesus, I even tried to tell him your name, only I couldn’t remember it.” He looked at the reporter with hot intensity, like an astonished child. “Say, that guy last night told me your name. Is that it, sure enough? you swear to Christ, no kidding?”

  “Yair,” the reporter said. He put his hand on Jiggs’ arm. “Come on. Let’s go.” The spectators had moved on now. Behind the counter the Italian and his wife seemed to pay them no more attention. “Come on,” the reporter said. “It must be after two. Let’s go help get the ship ready and then I’ll buy another drink.” But Jiggs did not move, and then the reporter found Jiggs watching him with something curious, calculating and intent, behind the hot eyes; they were not blurred now at all, and suddenly Jiggs stood erect before the reporter could steady him.

  “I was looking for you,” Jiggs said.

  “I came along at the right time, didn’t I, for once in my life. Come on. Let’s go to the hangar. I imagine they are waiting for you there. Then I will buy a—”

  “I don’t mean that,” Jiggs said. “I was kidding the guy. I had the quarter, all right. I’ve had all I want. Come on.” He led the way, walking a little carefully yet still with the light spring-like steps, bumping and butting through the gateward stream of people, the reporter following, until they were beyond it and clear; anyone who approached them now would have to do so deliberately and should have been visible a hundred yards away, though neither of them saw the parachute jumper who was doing just that.

  “You mean the ship’s all ready?” the reporter said.

  “Sure,” Jiggs said. “Roger and Jack ain’t even there. They have gone to the meeting.”

  “Meeting?”

  “Sure. Contestants’ meeting. To strike, see? But listen—”

  “To strike?”

  “Sure. For more jack. It ain’t the money: it’s the principle of the thing. Jesus, what do we need with money?” Jiggs began to laugh again on that harsh note which stopped just as it became laughter and started before it was mirth. “But that ain’t it. I was looking for you.” Again the reporter looked at the hot unreadable eyes. “Laverne sent me. She said to give me five dollars for her.” The reporter’s face did not change at all. Neither did Jiggs’; the hot impenetrable eyes, the membrane and fibre netting and webbing the unrecking and the undismayed. “Roger was in the money yesterday; you’ll get it back Saturday. Only if it was me, I wouldn’t even wait for that. Just let her underwrite you, see?”

  “Underwrite me?”

  “Sure. Then you wouldn’t even have to bother to put anything back into your pocket. All you would have to do would be to button up your pants.” Still the reporter’s face did not change, his voice did not change, not loud, without amazement.

  “Do you reckon I could?”

  “I don’t know,” Jiggs said. “Didn’t you ever try it? It’s done every night somewhere, so I hear. Probably done right here in New Valois, even. And if you can’t, she can show you how.” The reporter’s face did not change; he was just looking at Jiggs and then suddenly Jiggs moved, sudden and complete; the reporter saw the hot secret eyes come violently alive and, turning, the reporter also saw the parachute jumper’s face.

  That was a little after two o’clock; Shumann and the jumper had been in the Superintendent’s office from twelve until fifteen to one. They had passed through the same discreet door which Jiggs had used the afternoon before and had gone on through the ante-room and into a place like a board-room in a bank — a long table with a row of comfortable chairs behind it, in which sat perhaps a dozen men who might have been found about any such table back in town, and another group of chairs made out of steel and painted to resemble wood, in which with a curious gravity something like that of the older and better behaved boys in a reform school on Christmas Eve, sat the other men who ordinarily at this hour would have been working over the aeroplanes in the hangar — the pilots and parachute jumpers, in greasy dungarees or leather jackets almost as foul — the quiet sober faces looking back as Shumann and the jumper entered. Just as the blue serge of last night was absent, so were the tweed coats and ribbon badges, with one exception. This was the microphone’s personified voice. He sat with neither group, his chair which should have been at the end of the table drawn several feet away as though he were preparing to tip it back against the wall. But he was as grave as either group; the scene was exactly that of the conventional conference between the mill owners and the delegation from the shops, the announcer representing the labour lawyer — that man who was once a labourer himself but from whose hands the calluses have now softened and whitened away so that, save for something nameless and ineradicable about his clothing — a quality incorrigibly dissenting and perhaps even bizarre — which distinguishes him for ever from the men behind the table as well as from the men before it, as the badge of the labour organization in his lapel establishes him for ever as one of them, he might actually sit behind the table too. But he did not. But the very slightness of the distance between him and the table established a gap more unbridgable even than that between the table and the second group, as if he had been stopped in the midst of a violent movement, if not of protest at least of dissent, by the entrance into the room of the men in whose absent names he dissented. He nodded to Shumann and the jumper as they found chairs, then he turned to the thick-faced man at the centre of the table.

  “They’re all here now,” he said. The men behind the table murmured to one another.

  “We must wait for him,” the thick-faced man said. He raised his voice. “We are waiting for Colonel Feinman, men,” he said. He took a watch from his vest; three or four others looked at their watches. “He instructed us to have everyone present at twelve o’clock. He has been delayed. You can smoke, if you like.” Some of the second group began to smoke, passing lighted matches, speaking quietly like a school class which has been told that it can talk for a moment:

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something about Burnham.”

  “Oh, yair. Probably that’s it.”

  “Hell, they don’t need all of us to—”

  “Say, what do you suppose happened?”

  “Blinded, probably.”

  “Yair. Blinded.”

  “Yair. Probably couldn’t read his altimeter at all. Or maybe forgot to watch it. Flew it right into the ground.”

  “Yair. Jesus, I remember one time I was—” They smoked.

  Sometimes they held the cigarettes like dynamite caps so as not to spill the ash, looking quietly about the clean new floor; sometimes they spilled the ashes discreetly down their legs. But finally the stubs were too short to hold. One of them rose; the whole room watched him cross to the table and take up an ash-tray made to resemble a radial engine and
bring it back and start it passing along the three rows of chairs like a church collection plate. Shumann looked at his watch and it was twenty-five minutes past twelve. He spoke quietly to the announcer, as though they were alone in the room:

  “Listen, Hank. I’ve got all my valves out. I have got to put the micrometer on them before!”

  “Yair,” the announcer said. He turned to the table. “Listen,” he said. “They are all here now. And they have got to get the ships ready for the race at three; Mr. Shumann there has got all his valves out. So can’t you tell them without waiting for F — Colonel Feinman? They will agree, all right. I told you that. There ain’t anything else they can — I mean they will agree.”

  “Agree to what?” the man beside Shumann said. But the chairman, the thick-faced man, was already speaking.

  “Colonel Feinman said—”

  “Yair.” The announcer spoke patiently. “But these boys have got to get their ships ready. We’ve got to be ready to give these people that are buying the tickets out there something to look at.” The men behind the table murmured again, the others watching them quietly.

  “Of course we can take a straw vote now,” the chairman said. Now he looked at them and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, the committee representing the business men of New Valois who have sponsored this meet and offered you the opportunity to win these cash prizes—” The announcer turned to him.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me tell them.” He turned now to the grave almost identical faces of the men in the hard chairs; he spoke quietly too. “It’s about the programmes. The printed ones — you know. With the setup for each day. They were all printed last week and so they have still got Frank’s name on them—” The chairman interrupted him now:

  “And the committee wants to express here and now to you other pilots who were con—” Now he was interrupted by one of the men beside him:

  “ — and on behalf of Colonel Feinman.”

  “Yes — and on behalf of Colonel Feinman — contemporaries and friends of Lieutenant Burnham, its sincere regret at last night’s unfortunate accident.”

  “Yair,” the announcer said; he had not even looked towards the speaker, he just waited until he had got through. “So they — the committee — feel that they are advertising something they can’t produce. They feel that Frank’s name should come off the programme. I agree with them there and I know you will too.”

  “Why not take it off, then?” one of the second group said. “Yes,” the announcer said. “They are going to. But the only way they can do that is to have new programmes printed, you see.” But they did not see yet. They just looked at him, waiting. The chairman cleared his throat, though at the moment there was nothing for him to interrupt.

  “We had these programmes printed for your benefit and convenience as contestants, as well as that of the spectators, without whom I don’t have to remind you there would be no cash prizes for you to win. So you see, in a sense you contestants are the real benefactors of these printed programmes. Not us; the schedule of these events can be neither information nor surprise to us, since we were privy to the arranging of them even if we are not to the winning — since we have been given to understand (and I may add, have seen for ourselves) that air racing has not yet reached the, ah, scientific heights of horse-racing—”

  He cleared his throat again; a thin polite murmur of laughter rose from about the table and died away. “We had these programmes printed at considerable expense, none of which devolved on you, yet they were planned and executed for your — I won’t say profit, but convenience and benefit. We had them printed in good faith that what we guaranteed in them would be performed; we knew no more than you did that that unfortunate ac—”

  “Yes,” the announcer said. “It’s like this. Somebody has got to pay to have new programmes printed. These g — this... they say we — the contestants and announcers and everybody drawing jack from the meet, should do it.” They did not make a sound, the still faces did not change expression; it was the announcer himself, speaking now in a tone urgent, almost pleading, where no dissent had been offered or intimated: “It’s just two and a half per cent. We’re all in it; I’m in it, too. Just two and a half per cent.; when it comes out of prize money, like they say, you won’t notice it because you haven’t got it anyway until after the cut is taken out. Just two and a half per cent., and—” The man in the second group spoke for the second time:

  “Or else?” he said. The announcer did not answer. After a moment Shumann said:

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” the announcer said. Shumann rose.

  “I better get back on my valves,” he said. Now when he and the jumper crossed the rotunda the crowd was trickling steadily through the gates. They worked into line and shuffled up to the gates too before they learned that they would have to have grand-stand tickets to pass. So they turned and worked towards the hangar, walking now in a thin deep drone from somewhere up in the sun, though presently they could see them — a flight of army pursuit single seaters circling the field in formation to land and then coming in, fast, blunt-nosed, fiercely-raked, viciously powerful. “They’re over-souped,” Shumann said. “They will kill you if you don’t watch them. I wouldn’t want to do that for two-fifty-six a month.”

  “You wouldn’t be cut two and a half per cent, while you were out to lunch though,” the jumper said savagely. “What’s two and a half per cent, of twenty-five bucks?”

  “It ain’t the whole twenty-five,” Shumann said. “I hope Jiggs has got that super-charger ready to go back.” So they had almost reached the aeroplane before they discovered that it was the woman and not Jiggs at work on it and that she had put the super-charger back on with the engine head still off and the valves still out. She rose and brushed her hair back with the flat of her wrist, though they had asked no question.

  “Yes,” she said. “I thought he was all right. I went out to eat and left him here.”

  “Have you seen him since?” Shumann said. “Do you know where he is now?”

  “What the hell does that matter?” the jumper said in a tense furious voice. “Let’s get the damned super-charger off and put the valves in.” He looked at the woman, furious, restrained. “What has this guy done to you? given you a dose of faith in mankind like he would syphilis or consumption or whatever it is, that will even make you trust Jiggs?”

  “Come on,” Shumann said. “Let’s get the super-charger off. I guess he didn’t check the valve stems either, did he?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well, no matter. They lasted out yesterday. And we haven’t time now. But maybe we can get on the line by three if we don’t stop to check them.” They were ready before that; they had the aeroplane on the apron and the engine running before three, and then the jumper who had worked in grimy fury turned away, walking fast even though Shumann called after him. He went straight to where Jiggs and the reporter stood. He could not have known where to find them, yet he went straight to them as though led by some blind instinct out of fury. He walked into Jiggs’ vision and struck him on the jaw so that the surprise the alarm and the shock were almost simultaneous, hitting him again before he finished falling and then whirling as the reporter caught his arm.

  “Here! here!” the reporter cried. “He’s drunk! You can’t hit a—” But the jumper didn’t say a word; the reporter saw the continuation of the turning become the blow of the fist. He didn’t feel the blow at all. “I’m too light to be knocked down or even hit hard,” he thought; he was still telling himself that while he was being raised up again and while the hands held him upright on his now boneless legs and while he looked at Jiggs sitting up now in a small stockade of legs and a policeman shaking him. “Hello, Leblanc,” the reporter said. The policeman looked at him now.

  “So it’s you, hey?” the policeman said. “You got some news this time, ain’t you? Something to put in the paper that people will like to read. Reporter knocked down by irate victim,
hey? That’s news.” He began to prod Jiggs with the side of his shoe. “Who’s this? Your substitute? Get up. On your feet now.”

  “Wait,” the reporter said. “It’s all right. He wasn’t in it. He’s one of the mechanics here. An aviator.”

  “I see,” the policeman said, hauling at Jiggs’ arm. “Aviator, hey? He don’t look very high to me. Or may be it was a cloud hit him in the jaw, hey?”

  “Yes. He’s just drunk. I’ll be responsible; I tell you he wasn’t even in it; the guy hit him by mistake. Leave him be, Leblanc.”

  “What do I want with him?” the policeman said. “So you’re responsible, are you? Get him up out of the street, then.” He turned and began to shove at the ring of people. “Go; beat it; get on, now,” he said. “The race is about to start. Go on, now.” So presently they were alone again, the reporter standing carefully, balancing, on his weightless legs (“Jesus,” he thought, “I’m glad now I am light enough to float”), feeling gingerly his jaw, thinking with peaceful astonishment, “I never felt it at all. Jesus, I didn’t think I was solid enough to be hit that hard but I must have been wrong.” He stooped, still gingerly, and began to pull at Jiggs’ arm until after a time Jiggs looked up at him blankly.

  “Come on,” the reporter said. “Let’s get up.”

  “Yair,” Jiggs said. “Yair. Get up.”

  “Yes,” the reporter said. “Come on, now.” Jiggs rose slowly, the reporter steadying him; he stood blinking at the reporter.

  “Jesus,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Yes,” the reporter said. “But it’s all right now. It’s all over now. Come on. Where do you want to go?” Jiggs moved, the reporter beside him, supporting him; suddenly Jiggs recoiled; looking up, the reporter also saw the hangar door a short distance away.