“Yair,” Jiggs said. He drew the boots under him and prepared to get up, but he stopped and sat so for a moment, his head bent and the sandwich in one hand, looking at what the reporter did not know, because at once the single eye was looking at him again. “Will you look behind that junk over in the corner there and get my bag?” Jiggs said. The reporter found the canvas bag hidden carefully beneath a rubbish-heap of empty oil cans and boxes and such; when he returned with it Jigs was already holding one foot out. “Would you mind giving it a pull?” The reporter took hold of the boot. “Pull it easy.”
“Have they made your feet sore?” the reporter said.
“No. Pull it easy.” The boots came off easier than they did two nights ago; the reporter watched Jiggs take from the sack a shirt not soiled but filthy, and wipe the boots carefully, upper sole and all, with an air thoughtful, intent, bemused, and wrap them in the shirt, put them into the sack and, again in the tennis shoes and the makeshift leggings, hide the sack once more in the corner, the reporter following him to the corner and then back as if it were now the reporter who was the dog.
“You see,” he said (even as he spoke it seemed to him to be not himself speaking but something inside him which insisted on pre-empting his tongue)— “you see, I keep on trying to explain to somebody that she didn’t understand. Only she understands exactly, don’t she? He’s out there in the lake and I can’t think of anything plainer than that. Can you?” The main doors were locked now; they had to return through the tool-room as the reporter had entered. As they emerged the beacon’s beam swept overhead again with its illusion of powerful and slow acceleration. “So they gave you all a bed this time,” he said.
“Yair,” Jiggs said. “The kid went to sleep on the police boat. Jack brought him in and they let them have a bed this time. She didn’t come in. She ain’t going to leave now, anyway. I’ll try if you want to, though.”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “I guess you are right. I didn’t mean to try to make... I just wanted to...” He began to think now, now, NOW, and it came: the long nebulous sword-stroke sweeping steadily up from beyond the other hangar until almost overhead and then accelerating with that illusion of terrific strength and speed which should have left a sound, a swish, behind it but did not. “You see, I don’t know about these things. I keep on thinking about fixing it up so that a woman, another woman—”
“All right,” Jiggs said. “I’ll try.”
“Just so she can see you and call you if she needs — wants... if... She won’t even need to know I am... but if she should—”
“Yair. I’ll fix it if I can.” They went on around the other hangar. Now they could see half of the beacon’s entire arc; the reporter could watch it as it swung across the lake, watching the skeleton-lattice of the empty bleachers come into relief against it, and the parapet of staffs from which the purple-and-gold pennons, black now, streamed rigid in the rising wind from the lake as the beam picked them up one by one and discarded them in swift and accelerating succession as it swept in and overhead and on. They could see the looped bunting too tossing and labouring and even here and there blown out of the careful loops of three days ago and whipping in forlorn and ceaseless shreds as though, sentient itself, it had anticipated the midnight bells from town which would signal the beginning of Lent.
And now, beyond the black rampart of the sea-wall, the searchlight beside whose truck the photographer had found the reporter was burning — a fierce white downward-glaring beam brighter though smaller than the beacon — and they saw presently another one on the tower of the dredge-boat itself. In fact, it was as though when they reached the sea-wall they would look down into a pit filled not by one steady source of light but by a luminous diffusion as though from the air-particles, beyond which the shore-line curved twinkling faintly away into darkness. But it was not until they reached the wall that they saw that the light came not from the searchlight on the shore nor the one on the dredge-boat nor the one on the slowly cruising police-launch engaged still in harrying away the little skiffs from some of which puny flashlights winked but in most of which burned the weak turgid flame of kerosene — but from a line of automobiles drawn up along the boulevard. Extending for almost a mile along the shore and facing the water, their concerted refulgence, broken at short intervals by the buttons and shields of policemen and now by the sidearms and putties of a national guard company, glared down upon the disturbed and ceaseless dark water which seemed to surge and fall and surge and fall as though in travail of amazement and outrage.
There was a skiff just landing from the dredge-boat. While the reporter waited for Jiggs to return the dark steady chill wind pushed hard against him, through his thin clothes; it seemed to have passed through the lights, the faint human sounds and movement, without gaining anything of warmth or light. After a while he believed that he could discern the faint hissing plaint of the ground and powdered oyster shells on which he stood even above the deep steady humming of the searchlight not far away. The men from the skiff came up and passed him, Jiggs following. “It’s like they said,” Jiggs said. “It’s right up against the rocks. I asked the guy if they had hooked anything yet and he said hooked, hell; they had hooked something the first throw with one hook and ain’t even got the hook loose yet. But the other hook came up with a piece of that damn monococque plywood, and he said there was oil on it.” He looked at the reporter. “So that will be from the belly.”
“Yes,” the reporter said.
“So it’s bottom upwards. The guy says they think out there that it is fouled on some of them old automobiles and junk they throwed in to build it with. — Yair,” he said, though the reporter had not spoken, but had only looked at him: “I asked that too. She’s up yonder at that lunch-wagon getting — —” The reporter turned; like the photographer Jiggs now had to trot to keep up, scrabbling up the shelving beach towards the ranked automobiles until he bumped into the reporter who had paused in the headlights’ glare with his head lowered and one arm raised before his face. “Over this way,” Jiggs said, “I can see.” He took the reporter’s arm and guided him on to the gap in the cars where the steps led up from the beach and through the gap to where, across the boulevard, they could see the heads and shoulders against the broad low dingy window. Jiggs could hear the reporter breathing, panting, though the climb up from the beach had not been that hard. When the reporter’s fumbling hand touched his own it felt like ice.
“She hasn’t got any money,” the reporter said. “Hurry. Hurry.” Jiggs went on. Then the reporter could still see them — the faces pressed to the glass (for the instant he made one as he pushed through them and went around the end of the lunch-wagon to the smaller window) — looking in at her where she sat on one of the backless stools at the counter between a policeman and one of the mechanics whom the reporter had seen about the hangar. The trench-coat was open and there was a long smear either of oil or mud across the upper part of her white dress; she was eating a sandwich, wolfing it and talking to the two men; he watched her drop the fragments back into the plate, wipe her hand across her mouth and lift the thick mug of coffee and drink, wolfing the coffee too, the coffee, like the food, running down her chin from too fast swallowing. At last Jiggs finally found him, still standing there though now the counter was vacant and the faces had gone away too, followed back to the beach.
“Even the proprietor wanted to wash out the cheque, but I got there in time,” Jiggs said. “She was glad to get it, too; you were right, she never had any money with her. Yair. She’s like a man about not bumming from just any guy. Always was. So it’s O.K.” But he was still looking at the reporter with an expression which a more observing person than the reporter could not have read now in the tough face to which the blue and swollen eye and lip lent no quality evoking compassion or warmth but on the contrary merely increased a little the face’s brutality. When he spoke again it was not in a rambling way exactly but with a certain curious alertness as of imminent and irrevocable dis
persion; the reporter thought of a man trying to herd a half-dozen blind sheep through a passage a little wider than he could span with his extended arms. Jiggs now had one hand in his pocket but the reporter did not notice it. “So she’s going to have to be out here all night, in case they begin to... And the kid’s already asleep; yair, no need to wake him up, and maybe to-morrow we will all know better where we... Yair, a night or two to sleep on it makes a lot of difference about anything, no matter how bad you think you h — I mean...”
He stopped. (“He ain’t only not held the sheep, he ain’t even holding out his arms any more,” the reporter thought.) The hand came out of his pocket, opening; the door key glinted faintly on the grained palm. “She told me to give it back to you when I saw you,” Jiggs said. “You come on and eat something yourself, now.”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “It will be a good chance to, won’t it. Besides, we will be in out of the cold for a little while.”
“Sure,” Jiggs said. “Come on.” It was warm inside the lunch-wagon; the reporter stopped shaking even before the food came. He ate a good deal of it, then he realized that he was going to eat all of it, without taste or enjoyment especially but with a growing conviction of imminent satisfaction like when a tooth cavity that has not been either pleasant or unpleasant is about to be filled without pain. The faces were gone from the window now, following her doubtless back to the beach, or as near to it as the police and soldiers would let them, where they now gazed no doubt at the police-boat or whatever other boat she had re-embarked in; nevertheless he and Jiggs still sat in it, breathed and chewed it along with the stale hot air and the hot rancid food — the breathing, the exhalation, the variations of the remark which the photographer had made; the ten thousand different smug and gratulant behind-sighted forms of I might be a burn and a bastard but I am not out there in that lake. But he did not see her again.
During the next three hours until midnight he did not leave the beach, while the ranked cars glared steadily downward and the searchlights hummed and the police-launch cruised in slow circles while the little boats moved outward before its bows and inward again behind its stem like so many minnows in the presence of a kind of harmless and vegetarian whale. Steadily, with clock-like and deliberate precision, the long sickle-bar of the beacon swept inward from the lake, to vanish at the instant when the yellow eye came broadside on and apparently halted there with only a slow and terrific centrifugal movement within the eye itself until with that gigantic and soundless flick! the beam shot incredibly outward across the dark sky. But he did not see her, though presently one of the little skiffs came in and beached to take on another bootleg cargo of twenty-five-cent passengers and Jiggs got out.
“They are still fast to it,” he said. “They thought they had it started once but something happened down there and when they hauled up all they had was the cable; they were even short the hook. They say now it must have hit on one of those big blocks of concrete and broke it loose and they both went down together only the ship got there first. They’re going to send the diver down at daylight to see what to do. Only they don’t want to use dynamite because even if it starts him back up it will bust the mole all to pieces. But they’ll know to-morrow. — Didn’t you want to call the paper at midnight or something?”
There was a pay-station in the lunch-wagon, on the wall. Since there was no booth the reporter had to talk into the telephone with his other ear plugged with his hand against the noise and again spending most of the time answering questions; when he turned away he saw that Jiggs was asleep on the backless stool, his arms folded on the counter and his forehead resting on them. It was quite warm inside, what with the constant frying of meat and with the human bodies with which the room was filled now long after its usual closing hour. The window facing the lake was fogged over so that the lighted scene beyond was one diffused glow such as might be shining behind falling snow; looking at it the reporter began to shake again, slowly and steadily inside the suit to which there was apparently no waistcoat, while there grew within him the first active sensation or impulse which he could remember since he watched Shumann begin to bank into the field pylon for the last time — a profound reluctance to go out which acted not on his will but on his very muscles. He went to the counter; presently the proprietor saw him and took up one of the thick cups.
“Coffee?”
“No,” the reporter said. “I want a coat. Overcoat. Have you got one you could lend me or rent me? I’m a reporter,” he added. “I got to stick around down there at the beach until they get through.”
“I ain’t got a coat,” the proprietor said. “But I got a piece of tarpaulin I keep my car under. You can use that if you will bring it back.”
“All right,” the reporter said. He did not disturb Jiggs; when he emerged into the cold and the dark this time he resembled a soiled and carelessly set-up tent. The tarpaulin was stiff and heavy to hold and presently heavy to carry too, but inside it he ceased to shake. It was well after midnight now and he had expected to find that the cars drawn up along the boulevard to face the lake would have thinned somewhat, but they had not. Individually they might have changed, but the ranked line was still intact — a silhouetted row of oval rear windows framing the motionless heads whose eyes, along with the headlights, stared with immobile and unmurmuring patience down upon the scene in which they were not even aware that nothing was happening — that the dredge squatted inactive now, attached as though by one steel umbilical cord not to one disaster but to the prime oblivious mother of all living and derelict too.
Steady and unflagging the long single spoke of the beacon swept its arc across the lake and vanished into the full broadside of the yellow eye and, already outshooting, swept on again, leaving that slow terrific vacuum in mind or sense which should have been filled with the flick and the swish which never came. The sight-seeing skiff had ceased to ply, perhaps having milked the business or perhaps having been stopped by authority; the next boat to land came direct from the dredge, one of the passengers the mechanic who had sat beside the woman in the lunch-wagon. This time the reporter did his own asking.
“No,” the other said. “She went back to the field about an hour ago, when they found out they would have to wait for the diver. I’m going to turn in, myself. I guess you can knock off now yourself, can’t you?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “I can knock off-now too.” At first he thought that perhaps he was going in, walking in the dry light treacherous shell-powder, holding the harsh stiff tarpaulin with both hands to ease the dead weight of it on his neck and shoulders; it was the weight he felt, the cold rasp of it on his fingers and palms. “I’ll have to take it back first, like I promised,” he thought. “If I don’t now, I won’t do it at all.” The ramp of the boulevard rose here, so that the car-lights passed over his head and he walked now in comparative darkness where the sea-wall made its right angle with the boulevard. The wind did not reach here and since he could sit on the edge of the tarpaulin and fold it about him, knees and all, soon his body heated it inside like a tent. Now he did not have to watch the beacon sweep in from across the lake in its full arc except when the beam materialized slicing across the pie-shaped quarter of sky framed by the right angle of wall and ramp. It was the warmth; all of a sudden he had been telling Shumann for some time that she did not understand. And he knew that that was not right; all the while that he was telling Shumann he was also telling himself that that was not right. His cramped chin came up from the bony peaks of his knees; his feet were cold too or were probably cold because at first he did not feel them at all until they filled suddenly with the cold needles.
Now (the searchlight on the shore was black and only the one on the dredge stared as before downward into the water) the police-boat lay to and there was not one of the small boats in sight and he saw that most of the cars were gone too from the ramp overhead even while he was thinking that it could not possibly have been that long. But it had; the steady clock-like sweep f
lick! sweep, sweep flick! sweep of the beacon had accomplished something apparently, it had checked something off; as he looked upward the dark sea-wall overhead came into abrupt sharp relief and then simultaneous with the recognition of the glow as floodlights he heard the displacing of air and then saw the navigation lights of the transport as it slid, quite low, across the black angle and on to the field. “That means it’s after four o’clock,” he thought. “That means it’s to-morrow.” It was not dawn yet though; before that he was trying to draw himself back as though by the arm while he was saying again to Shumann, “You see, it looks like I have just got to try to explain to somebody that she—” and jerked himself upward (he had not even leaned his head down to his knees this time and so had nowhere to jerk back to), the needles not needles now but actual ice and his mouth open as though it were not large enough to accommodate the air which his lungs required or the lungs not large enough to accommodate the air which his body had to have, and the long arm of the beacon sweeping athwart his gaze with a motion peremptory, ruthless and unhurried and already fading; it was some time even yet before he realized that it was not the beacon fading but the brightening sky.
The sun had risen before the diver went down and came up, and most of the cars were back by then too, ranked into the ubiquitous blue-and-drab rampart. The reporter had returned the tarpaulin; relieved of its stiff and chafing weight he now shook steadily in the pink chill of the first morning of the entire four days to be ushered in by no overcast. But he did not see her again at all. There was a somewhat larger crowd than there had been the evening before (it was Sunday, and there were now two police-launches and the number of skiffs and dories had trebled as though the first lot had spawned somewhere during the night) yet he had daylight to assist him now. But he did not see her. He saw Jiggs from a distance several times, but he did not see her; he did not even know that she had been to the beach again until after the diver came up and reported and he (the reporter) was climbing back towards the boulevard and the telephone and the parachute jumper called to him. The jumper came down the beach, not from the water but from the direction of the field, jerking savagely after him the injured leg from which he had burst the dressing and the fresh scab in making his jump yesterday.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 192