The Gypsy Moths

A Novel by James Drought


When the ground comes up at you like a sledge-hammer...
when the sweat freezes on your brow...
when skydiving isn't only a way to live, but a way to die, too...
you're a Gypsy Moth


Like his previous works, James Drought's powerful novel of a trio of stunt parachutists challenging death caught the imagination of the sixties generation with an overpowering force.  Drought writes with a unique and savage realism, and his refusal to compromise his personal vision has won him an honored place among the most dynamic writers of his time.

"The Gypsy Moths ... sketches one of the most accurate miniatures of the small town since Sherwood Anderson... testifies to the author's eye for the revealing detail.  It is unsettling because of the flayed nerves and sensibilities that ravish its pages, because of the unfiltered, glaring light it sheds on areas we might prefer dark, and because of the desperate urgency and conviction of the writing."
					-  New York Herald Tribune

"The Gypsy Moths ... is a brilliant novel... tender and beautiful and so naturally and superbly written it touches your heart as well as your mind."
				-  New York Morning Telegraph

"The Gypsy Moths ... has action, a tight story line;  scene by scene it builds toward its dreaded climax.  It ranks Drought high on the literary scene --- one of the best American novels in years."
			-  Chicago Sun Times

copyright, 1964 by James Drought
copyright renewal, 1991, by Lorna C. Drought, J. Henry Drought, Sara Drought Nebel, and Carrie Anna Drought

All characters are fictitious

CHAPTER 1

THE THREE OF US --- Browdy, Rettig and I --- drove past the small airport about mid-afternoon.  The bright July sun slicked off the taut red, blue, and yellow skin of the planes resting by the one metal hangar.  There were no runways but the grass looked level and short.
	We were earlier than we expected so we pulled off the highway into the gravel drive of a rootbeer stand on a small rise in the middle of the flat corn land.  We could see the airport behind us, and when we looked ahead we could see the gabled roofs and a few spires of the town that lay on the other side of the railroad tracks that ran along the highway.  But we didn't look much at the town;  after the long drive east from Iowa we were all pretty tired and mostly we wanted to get out of the heat and the bright sun and into the shade where we could feel a breeze if there was one.
	Then too there was this other thing building up in us.  When Browdy ordered the three glasses of rootbeer his voice sounded hoarse the way it did in a bar when he knew a fight was coming.  We'd been together some two years and that's a long time to get tired of each other.  It didn't always show, like now when I looked at Rettig:  the big man was as calm as usual.  His shoulders drooped easily and he looked relaxed.  He didn't fool me anymore though.  A few months ago I wouldn't have suspected the old guy's calm, but for three weeks now I'd been watching him close.
	Rettig was always the guy harping on safety, yet in the last three towns he'd jumped far over the safety limit himself.  He'd started to go lower and lower, gliding too close to the ground before he'd pull his chute cord.  Sure the crowds loved it, but the last time had scared me, and believe me, I don't worry too much about Rettig.  Rettig was thirty-five years old, the old pro among the three of us.  I hadn't said anything to Browdy about what I was thinking-what the hell, Browdy was thirty and both of them treated me like a kid.  I didn't want to say anything until I was sure.  Anyway if Browdy was as smart as he thought he was he'd have seen it when I did.
	Rettig had never given me any idea what was bothering him.  Even now he sat there next to me, calm and looking straight ahead through the old filmy windshield.  He was a funny looking guy.  The large head, the heavy growth of hair that stuck up along the sides, both made his long face look longer.  There were deep, thick lines sloping down around his mouth.  He had an ugly face but he didn't seem to care about it.  He was more sensitive about his legs.  They looked like the legs of a cowboy, sharply bowed and thick.  Browdy'd told me about when they had been paratroopers together in the army one of the guys kept calling Rettig crazy-legs.  One night the guy fell down the steps, or at least he said he fell down the steps.  Nobody mentioned the name crazy-legs anymore.  Even Browdy'd looked like he wished he'd never mentioned it, after he told me.
	"Was that it?" Rettig asked over at Browdy.  He handed Browdy the empty rootbeer mug and nodded back at the airport through the rear window.
	"I know, I know," Browdy said quickly, "it doesn't look like much, Mike.  But we'll have a big crowd.  Everybody from twenty-five miles around comes into this town on weekends."
	"What for?" I said.  I was always trying to puncture him.
	But Browdy was edgy now.  "How should I know what for?" he said.  "I don't care why.  That's for wise college boys like you to figure out, Kid."
	I spent one year at college and Browdy never let me forget it.  Browdy was like that.  I could never figure Browdy and Rettig being together as long as they had been; something like ten years, I think Browdy told me.  Browdy was a nice looking guy in a mick sort of way.  He was always having trouble with sunburn.  Every summer he'd turn red and stay like that until October, and every night he'd be dabbing this lotion on his neck.  In the winter, when we'd work out at the airport in Burlington, he'd turn white as ivory and when we'd get dressed up to do the town, Browdy'd put on a blue suit and he'd look dead.  Still Browdy had been the one that got us started jumping.
	"How about the highway?" I asked him.  "The highway's too close to the airport.  A lot of 'em will see the whole show for nothing it seems to me.  They won't buy a ticket if they can park their cars along the road and look."
	"Relax,, Kid," Browdy grinned.  "You don't think I fly in advance just to put out the circulars do you?  I think of these things.  I got us an advance sale going.  I've had tickets in this town a week." He laughed.  "We'll be all sold out tomorrow morning."
	"I should've known, Browdy."  I handed him my glass and he honked the horn for the girl to take the tray.
	It was then I thought of telephoning.  I had an uncle and aunt in this town I hadn't seen since my folks' funeral ten years ago.  I suppose it was because Browdy had irritated me; anyway, I went into the rootbeer stand and called them.  I'd been a hundred-eighty miles away for about the last two years and I'd never thought about them.
	I called them and, you know how it is, the first thing you know I had to promise we'd stay at their place;  they said they had a big house.  I didn't put up a fight.  I figured Browdy had where we were going to stay all settled and I couldn't think of anything better than to unsettle things for Browdy.
	"Where we staying?" I asked him when I came out.
	"A motel near the airport.  Not far from here."
	"They want us to stay with them.  Home cooked meals.  How does that sound for a switch?"
	Rettig roared, "Tell them okay before they change their mind!" Then he added, "They know we're jumping?"
	"I told them about it.  They said they'd seen some of the circulars."
	That made them all right in Browdy's book.  They'd read his circulars.  I went back inside and told them we'd be there in a few minutes.  Funny how some things happen.  When she'd first answered the phone I'd called her Mrs. Brandon and after that I couldn't bring myself to call them anything else.  It was Mr. and Mrs. Brandon and that was it.  They gave me an address and I came back out to the car.  I showed it to Browdy and he said he knew where it was.
	We drove out of the gravel lot and the damn trailer tugged back on the bumper as we hit the road.  The trailer was loaded with all our equipment and every once in a while during the trip I'd caught myself pulling it with my neck muscles.  I don't like lugging a trailer behind a car; it depresses me.
	The bright highway turned to a red brick road before we'd gone very far, and we soon drove under a railroad trestle, through a narrow one-way tunnel.  Browdy drove cautiously out the other side honking the horn --- Browdy could drive you nuts with his safety.  Then we were in the shade.  Locusts hummed in the tall elm trees and the ragweed smell died away as the smell of cut grass took its place.  High above where the heavy tree branches looped across the road, it looked white through the gaps in the leaves.  Then again the patches would be blue as the clouds slipped on.  Most of the houses probably'd been built thirty to fifty years ago when everybody had to have gables and turrets.  The homes were set back into the lawns like they were withdrawing from the street and were lying in state, their white paint greying with time and weather.  Green grass and flower blankets graced the old stone foundations respectfully.
	To me it seemed wrong to think of the Fourth of July weekend, with all the fireworks, in the presence of the old houses that squatted there with dignity.
	The three of us didn't say anything to each other, mostly because there wasn't anything to say that hadn't been said before.
	A speed sign flicked across the windshield and Browdy slowed the car.  Then another sign coasted by;  Sunday Masses, St. John's, 9-10-11 a.m.;  and Browdy's thick neck wrinkled at the back as he glanced up in the sky through the front windshield.  Browdy was religious.  He was always crossing himself in the plane before we jumped.  Whatever happened was God's way and God's way was the right way, as far as Browdy was concerned.  Still it didn't keep him from trying to influence God before he made his jump.  I watched his neck muscles relax and when I followed his look, out through the upper left corner of the windshield, I saw the crossed shadow above the steeple that rose over the rooftops.  Browdy never went to church on Sundays though.  He was very independent.  He always went on Tuesdays.  I go once a week don't I, he'd say, but nobody is going to tell me what day.  Browdy was very proud of this.
	"We'll need a wind out of the west," Rettig said.  He looked out the window at the grass.  "It's in the southwest now.  I hope it stays."
	"Why do you want a west wind?" I asked him.
	"I don't want the line of descent to be over those phone wires back there when we jump.  They going to set up the stands running north and south?" he asked.
	"Probably," Browdy answered.
	"I'd like to come right up along in front  If the wind shifts to the south we'll have to come in over the wires and the grandstand to get anywhere near the field."
	"Don't worry, Mike," I said.  "Browdy'll order a west wind for you."
	"Maybe I will, maybe I will."
	I could see now Browdy'd been right about town.  Traffic, both people and cars, was getting heavier as we came into the edge of the shopping district.  People walked faster here and cars crawled slowly up the three-block narrow main street.  There were no parking places open and the cars in the outside lanes piled up as drivers stopped and waited for other drivers to pull out away from the curbing.  Buildings four and five stories tall seemed to hug the street with open fields sitting unused on each side of the three-block district.  New store fronts of false stone showed their wares all piled up, while above the chipped brick of the old buildings disappeared into the flat blue country sky.  But few of the shoppers looked up.  Traffic lights flicked quickly and some drivers gunned up to beat the signals.  The street was paved with asphalt --- there was no time to be quaint with red brick on the main street.  People walking on each sidewalk looked rumpled from the July heat, but they walked quickly, scooting into the stores and out again.  Browdy was right about the town of Bridgeville.  It'd be a good place to jump.  I'd been anxious when I'd seen the old houses, but I knew now they weren't the town.  They were the town's history.  The people running in and out of stores would go for a jump.
	I looked over at Rettig and the big man was asleep.  A guy can get mad at somebody who falls asleep next to him when it's hot and the traffic is heavy and three old women carrying packages try to run across in front of the car as the light turns green.  But there he was, his head thrown back against the worn seat, his adam's apple puffing up the skin under his chin, unmoving and denying what I wanted to believe --- that he wasn't sleeping but had his eyes closed against the glare.  He was sleeping all right.
	"We almost there?" I asked Browdy.
	He nodded back without taking his eyes off the street.  We were coming to the end of the asphalt and we could see the red brick and trees ahead.
	"I better wake Rettig then," I said.  I felt better when I'd nudged him.  "Browdy says we'll be there pretty soon.  Better get the sleep out of your eyes.  If I remember right, the old man is a college professor."
	Rettig pulled out his handkerchief methodically and wiped off his face.  Outside through Browdy's open side window I saw two young girls in Levis sitting on a lawn with a bushel-basket between them.
	They were cutting dandelions out of the ground with kitchen knives.  The girls looked up at us and I almost had to laugh as Browdy saw them and straightened up in his seat.  Then he turned back to the front smiling.  One of the girls pointed and the other sat with a dandelion poised over the basket while she watched our car.  I saw Browdy's smile broaden and I thought of the big red letters on the car door under Browdy's elbow, spelling out in big print: "Stunt jumpers, Inc."  Browdy drummed his fingers happily on the steering wheel as he turned his head to the front.
	I remembered that first time in Mendota when I stood in front of the car and saw both doors open at the same time with the printing on them.  At first the red letters had been on Rettig's side only, but then Browdy had the name painted on the driver's side too.  Browdy almost always drove.  But I'd never noticed before Mendota that the lettering wasn't the same color on both doors.  The printing on one side wasn't a true red but more of an orange.  You couldn't notice it unless you saw both doors at once, so it didn't make any difference.
	"You know it's funny about women," Browdy said.  He eased the car around a corner and off the main street.  "You can never tell how old they are after they get to be about seventeen.  I mean unless they're forty," he corrected himself.
	I didn't want Browdy to get into that kind of stuff.  We'd been all through what he thought of women so many times, so I cut in on him.  "We going to do the daisy chain here?" I asked.
	"So that's what's been eating you?" Browdy grinned.  "You're still harping on the daisy chain."
	"I want to know if we're going to do it, that's all," I told him.  "I think it's a phony stunt.  We don't have to make jumping out of an airplane look hard.  What the hell, we're risking our lives."
	"Look, Kid.  The only way people can tell whether we're risking anything or not is by how it looks.  If it's not dangerous you got to make it look dangerous.  Isn't that right, Mike?  The daisy chain is the best stunt we got.  Sure... sure, I know when we use the static lines it makes it look like we got perfect timing.  So what?  We do other stunts that are trickier, but they don't look it.  Believe me, Kid, they just got to look hard."
	"Hear, hear," Rettig said softly.
	"All right, all right," Browdy added.  "But somebody's got to tell him.  Someday you'll get the message, Kid."
	"How about the cape trick?" I asked Rettig.
	Browdy butted in.  "Like the man said, Kid.  They don't pay just to see somebody walk across the street."
	"How about it, Mike?" I repeated, trying to ignore Browdy.
	But Browdy cut in again.  I think it'd be a good spot for it.  This town's never seen a jump.  I checked around.  There's never been an outfit here, at least that anybody can remember."
	"It'll be all right," Rettig said.  Then he added slowly, "I've been trying to think of an easier way to keep my arms straight so I'll glide slower.  I want to stay up longer."
	"You can only stay up so long," Browdy told him.  "Don't worry about it."
	But Rettig didn't say anything more.  He closed up and didn't let on what he was thinking about.  I thought this might be the time to try and find out.
	"That business about staying up longer is no good, Mike," I said.  "I don't like it."
	But Browdy jumped on me.  "Jumping's a business like anything else, Kid.  If you don't sell it, nobody buys.  That's what I meant before when I said you got to pay attention to how the jump looks."
	Rettig laughed and I missed my chance to open him up.
	I looked past him out the window at the trees.  They looked taller now as we continued away from the main part of town, and the houses were set farther back from the sidewalk than the first I'd seen.  Men walking along the sidewalk in the shade of the high leaves moved slowly with their hands in their pockets as they returned home from work in some part of the town.  They didn't look as happy as I'd have been, with the long Fourth of July weekend in front of me.  The Fourth was on a Monday this year.
	As we passed them, they looked up with frowns on their faces as they watched the odd-lumped canvas-covered trailer tagging along behind us.  I wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Brandon would think, and I tried to remember what they were like.
	I recalled that the professor had given in too easily when Doctor Fickers had said he'd take care of me after my folks died.  But I couldn't remember too much about them.  I'd seen them only the day of the funeral and then they were gone.  I knew Mrs. Brandon had always been associated in my mind with horses:  she had looked so sleek that day.  But that was all.  Of course, my folks had talked a little about the Brandons.
	When Mother would speak of the professor, which wasn't often because Dad got irritated, she would always say how quiet he was, how polite, and always studying in his books like a monk or something.  Most of the early pictures of my mother in the photograph .album showed the professor with her.  Mother had gone with him in the Twenties back in Minneapolis.  But then the pictures broke off suddenly and there was Mother married to Dad and the professor was just as suddenly married to Elizabeth, Dad's sister.  Mother used to say Elizabeth was just like her brother;  "highstrung" had been the word she used.  After the accident I'd told Doctor Fickers about my uncle and aunt in Bridgeville and he'd called them.  But they came only for the funeral and left after one day.  I didn't know much about them.
	Browdy slowed down and peered out the window, looking at house numbers and checking the scrap of paper with the address.  He almost went past it.  He put on the brakes and backed up into the curbing and the high cement scraped against the back fenders of the Ford.
	It was a big white house, so white it seemed kind of pure between the big elm trees.  The street was silent with a heaviness that lifted only when the birds whistled.  A heavy quiet seemed draped around the white house, pressing it down on its red brick foundation.  Large tree shadows banked across its whiteness and flowers bloomed behind the trim short hedge that half-hid the foundation.
	We got out of the car, Rettig going immediately around the back to check on the trailer and the equipment, while Browdy stood with one leg on the curbing and stretched his arms up in the air.  I got out and stretched too.  When I turned my head back toward the house I saw her peeking out through the screendoor.  Mrs. Brandon.


CHAPTER 2

SHE EDGED OUT through the doorway, leaving as small an opening as possible behind her.  She smiled and waved from the porch --- although she was close enough to say hello --- and her cheeks flushed as she called back into the darkened screen:
	"John, John.  Come out.  They're here."
	Before her husband could join her on the porch she walked down the steps and came out toward us.  Mr. Brandon stood behind her, looking upset about something.  An odd-shaped pipe was wedged between his teeth and his jaw looked soft even though it was clenched.
	"You came earlier than we expected," Mrs. Brandon said.  She looked back at her husband,, and then in spite of her obvious excitement she stopped at the main sidewalk and held herself away from us.
	Her sleekness was obvious to me again.  Her brown hair was pulled back very tight along the side of her head and tied in the back.  She reminded me of Dad:  she had the same intensity, the high cheekbones and the high hips.  She looked very young, except for her skin that was yellow and pinched up a little around her nose.  Still I guessed she was about forty and no more.
	Rettig came around from the back of the trailer as Browdy smiled at her.  I saw Rettig stop with his hand resting lightly on the corner of the canvas.  She turned to look at him, smiling, but as she saw him standing motionless and staring, she hugged her arms, her hands grasping hard at her elbows like she was suddenly cold or nervous.  Mr. Brandon came down slowly from the porch to meet us and when she f elt his presence she loosened her grip on her arms and took my hand.
	"Come in now and you can bring your things in later," she said.
	I nodded and then introduced her to Rettig.  She didn't offer her hand.  Rettig bowed his head slightly and then shook hands with Mr. Brandon.
	He looked much older than her, about in his fifties I'd say.  There was something about her that didn't seem old at all: some nervous excitement she had so that if she'd suddenly turned and gone running down the street, I wouldn't have been surprised.  She had on a conservative flower print dress that dropped away from her high waist and hardly seemed to touch her slim legs.  She looked like at any time now she might throw her head back and laugh at all of us, but she acted very composed and didn't do more than smile slightly.
	"Forgot my cigarettes," I said and I went back to the car.
	They went on up the sidewalk.
	She was a lot like Dad.  Doctor Fickers had done his best to keep it from me, but gradually I'd come to know about the accident.  Dad had been drunk.  My mother'd wanted to drive but he wouldn't let her and on the way home there'd been a three-car crash killing them both and three others.  All the women at the funeral had said at one time or another:  "Poor woman"; but not much had been said for Dad.  Everybody had expected it to happen to him sooner or later and I got the feeling they were pleased to be right.
	"You coming?" Mrs. Brandon said brightly.
	When I came away from the car they were all four walking ahead of me and it made me feel easier.  Browdy and Rettig stamped heavily in their boots, up the cement steps.  Mr. Brandon waited and held the screendoor open for me.  I felt him studying me as I walked past him.
	"It seems a little stuffy in here," Mrs. Brandon said.  She gave a quick look to her husband like she'd argued about it before we came and was now apologizing to us.
	Mr. Brandon looked back at her patiently.
	"When the windows are closed like this, dear," he said very slowly like he was talking to a child, "the house cools off.  There is no sense letting in the warm air,, now is there."
	"Oh, I think I'd rather have it open.  I can't stand to have the windows closed."  She watched Rettig like she was asking him what he thought.  All he did was smile at her.
	Two small figured lamps with narrow shades were lighted and threw yellow light around the darkened room.  The venetian blinds were drawn against the sun and the lamps looked lonely burning inside the cool stuffy house.  The gloom covered the room and the people with a yellowness.  It was like a piece of old lace had been dropped over everything.
	There were patches of ixell-waxed oak flooring between the three hooked rugs.  A large drop-leaf table was pushed up against the wall opposite us as we came in the doorway, and books were piled on its top.  On the wall behind the table a small tapestry hung from a hook by a golden cord.  The background of the cloth was black with a large gold dragon woven into the center.  All around the room were glass enclosed book-cases filled with books.  On each side of the table there were two wing-backed chairs, well-stuffed and with thick seats.  On the other side of the room was a wing-backed love seat and couch.
	Mrs. Brandon's face looked old in the lamplight.
	"Sit down," she invited.  "I've made some lemonade.  Annie!  Annie, will you bring in that lemonade on the kitchen counter?'
	A young voice called out of the room off the living room that looked like it might be a study.  "All right, Mrs. Brandon."
	"Oh, I'd better help her," Mrs. Brandon decided.  "I don't think Annie knows where the glasses are.  She just came yesterday.  Annie's going to stay with us while she's in school." Mrs. Brandon rose and walked into the kitchen, her high-heels clicking youthfully as she walked across the bare oak floor.
	"It's a hot one today," Browdy said cheerfully.
	"Yes, it is," Mr. Brandon answered briefly.
	"I understand you teach school."
	"Yes.  Biology at the college here in town." Mr. Brandon smiled.  "How long do you plan to stay?" His voice was light, almost timid, but his eyes behind the glasses were staring.
	"We shouldn't be here more than three or four days," Browdy told him.  "If everything works out, we'll be ready to leave Monday morning, although I hate to drive on the Fourth."
	"What is it Elizabeth told me ... you're going to jump from an airplane here?"
	"That's right, Mr. Brandon," I said.  He seemed to ignore me on purpose.
	"And people will come to see you do that?  Well, yes that's right too;  I suppose they will, won't they."
	"They have every time so far," Browdy said proudly.  "We make it interesting."
	"Oh, I imagine it is," Mrs. Brandon said, coming back with five glasses on a silver tray.  "I imagine it is very exciting.  I don't see how anyone can jump from an airplane."
	"He didn't mean that, dear, he was talking about the people who come to see them.  It's exciting to the people, he said," the professor explained.
	She paused slightly.  "I know he did," she said, and I had to give her credit.  "That's what I meant:  it must be very exciting.  I don't think you'll have any trouble getting people to come and see you," she said to Browdy.  "Why very rarely does anyone here have the chance to see anything so exciting."
	"Hello," Browdy said.
	A young girl stood in the doorway to the dining room.  She had a quiet face, soft blonde hair and very soft tan legs.  She stood hesitantly in the doorway like she wanted to slip away.
	"Come in, come in, Annie," Mrs. Brandon said impatiently.  "This is Annie.  She's staying with us for the semester, aren't you Annie?"  She used the same tone Mr. Brandon had used on her.
	Annie nodded to us and then turned as if to go away.
	"Come in and sit down,, Annie, Mrs. Brandon repeated.
	"In a minute, Annie answered.  The two yellow lights shone on her tennis shorts as she turned and went into the study.  After a few minutes we could hear her playing the piano.
	"Is that Annie?" Rettig asked.
	"Yes, it is," Mrs. Brandon looked at him directly for the first time; "she's at that age when she can do anything."
	"At that age?" Rettig smiled.
	Mrs. Brandon smiled back and the professor shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
	"Goodness, Elizabeth, you talk as if you've never had the opportunity to learn piano."
	"Oh, it seems too late to learn anything now," she said.
	I looked around but nobody seemed embarrassed except the professor and me.
	Browdy laughed.  "I've seen men learn to jump out of planes when they were in their late fifties."
	"Do you think it takes more courage to face a plane than it does to face a piano, Mr. Browdy?"
	I couldn't help smiling.  Browdy was always the man with the ladies, but Mrs. Brandon was pinning his ears back for him.  Rettig smiled too.  Mr. Brandon lit a cigarette, pursed his lips and exhaled.  Browdy shifted his weight in the narrow chair.
	"Well, I didn't say that, but I think it proves anyone can learn at any age."
	"I suppose you are right," Mrs. Brandon laughed.  The flush came back to her cheeks.  "But I would like to learn so many things."
	Mr. Brandon pulled a watch from his vest pocket and glanced sideways at it.  I thought he was going to mention dinner and get Mrs. Brandon into the kitchen.
	Instead he said, It's four o'clock, Elizabeth.  Didn't you have a club meeting?"
	"Yes.  Oh, yes, I almost forgot."  She got up from her chair, uncrossing her smooth legs quickly, and stood up with her glass in her hand.  She sipped the last of the lemonade and then walked with her quick steps to the doorway.
	She turned back.  "Say, I just thought ... well ... I don't know exactly how to ask.  I wonder if one of you could possibly go to the club with me and tell us about your fascinating business."  She was looking right at Rettig.  "I know they would be interested and it would be good public relations, wouldn't it, Mr. Browdy?"  She smiled as she held her glass pensively up to her chin.
	Browdy stood up.  "Good idea."
	"Why don't I go along with Mrs. Brandon then while you make sure about the airport's end of it," Rettig said.  He stood up too.  I thought at first he was kidding, and so did Browdy, I guess, because he didn't sit back down but looked across the room with his mouth open slightly.
	"Am I dressed all right for it?" Rettig asked her.  "I'll put on a sport coat."  He went out through the front door as Browdy sat back down.
	I don't usually feel sorry for Browdy; I always figure nothing happens to him that he doesn't deserve ten times over.  But I know I'd have felt better if Browdy was the one leaving for Mrs. Brandon's club.  I couldn't figure Rettig out on this one.
	Mrs. Brandon stood waiting by the stairway going upstairs as she watched Rettig through the front door.  When he came back in, carrying his worn suitcase, he said to me, "Looks like it's clouding up out there.  Better keep an eye on the trailer."  Then he followed her up the steps while she chattered on about what he might say to the members of the club.
	Mr. Brandon was very quiet after they were gone.  He didn't look up from his hands, and neither Browdy nor I said anything so there was a tense silence.
	Finally he sighed and asked, "How did you two start doing this?"
	And Browdy rattled on telling him until Mrs. Brandon and Rettig came down the stairs again.  Mr. Brandon turned away from Browdy in the middle of a sentence and watched the two of them.
	Mrs. Brandon tucked a white purse under her arm and pulled on a pair of white gloves in the doorway.  When she looked up she noticed us watching her.  "Don't let my husband talk on about your mother," she smiled at me.  Rettig held the door open for her and she waved behind her as she stepped outside.  Rettig smiled at us like he was doing no more than leaving for a pack of cigarettes.
	I went over to the doorway and watched Mrs. Brandon back a light green Plymouth out of the driveway.  Rettig sat beside her with his arm hanging out the window, and he waved his hand at me.  Mrs. Brandon swung the car out into the street and then tore away, squeaking the tires momentarily.  When I turned back the professor was lighting another cigarette.  His pipe lay on the table where he'd left it when he'd come in.  What Mrs. Brandon had mentioned about my mother had interested me, although I thought she'd fixed it good so that nothing would be said.
	"I think I'll turn on the radio," Mr. Brandon said.  He rose, breathing heavily which seemed odd for a man his size.  "See what the news is."
	The room seemed to be getting dimmer in spite of the small lamps and I wanted to jerk open the windows and feel some air that was moving whether it was hot air or not.
	Mr. Brandon switched on the radio and then stood in front of it, waiting for it to warm up.  Browdy sat slumped in his chair as he recovered from the brushoff.  We listened to the local news and Browdy pepped up considerably when the announcer read the commercial about the jump.  I lost track of what the announcer was saying, until I caught something important.
	"... Storm clouds have been gathering throughout southern Illinois this afternoon and it is believed there wifl be thunder showers either late tomorrow morning or early afternoon..."
	Then he went on with some local baseball scores, but I wasn't listening anymore.  I watched Browdy.  He was still interested in himself but I could see the rain news was slowly sinking in.  He wiggled in his chair like he didn't know quite what was bothering him.
	"What'd he say?  Rain?" he asked.
	"That's right.  That's what the man said."
	"The hell!" Browdy muttered sharply to me; "what do they know about it!"
	"A lot more than you do," I told him.  "I'd take a guess you're worried about all those tickets you've got out."
	"He said showers.  In the morning too.  It won't hurt us."
	"Maybe not as f ar as the crowd, but what about the chutes?"
	"The chutes won't get damp; they're well-packed, and all we got to do is keep 'em dry until we jump."
	"Browdy, you know better than that.  If those chutes get wet at all it may be enough to hold the nylon together.  If those canopies don't pop open we'll really give your crowd a show."
	"I take it the rain is dangerous," Mr. Brandon said.
	I'd forgotten all about him, and now that I remembered he'd been there all the time I was embarrassed.  Browdy popped off though.
	"It's dangerous for the kid here anytime," he said.  He stood up nervously.  "I better get out to the airport.  I'll get a better weather report out there."
	"Be sure you don't make up your own."
	"It isn't going to hurt anything if there are a few showers tomorrow morning.  You know as well as I do that moist air makes you come down slower."
	"Yeah, either real slow or real fast."
	"Like I said, Kid, they don't pay to watch a man walk across a street."  Browdy let the screendoor bang behind him.  I watched him unhook the trailer and then pull away slowly down the street in the Ford.  Nothing could make Browdy drive fast.
	"All right if I put some of our stuff in your garage?" I asked Mr. Brandon.  I didn't like the way he was staring at me, and I didn't like the way we'd blown off in front of him.  I wanted to get out of the house for a while.
	"Certainly, certainly," he smiled.  "You can pull the trailer into the garage if you like."
	I went out, but I couldn't budge the trailer.  So I lugged the chutes into the garage, putting them up on top of a work table he had in there.  I wanted those babies dry.  Rettig had always been the one to offset Browdy's careless concentration on the buck.  But now here was Rettig out talking to a ladies' club and I didn't know what to expect from him anymore.
	The chutes were packed up tight though.  We used the regular back-pack chutes, the old T-7's the army used to call them.  They were a little better than the air force survival chutes and a little worse than the new ones the army airborne was using now, the T-10's.  In the T-7 the canopy comes out of the back-pack first and then the lines, so that when the canopy pops open the guy hanging in the harness feels like he's been hit by a freight train.  The chute whips open throwing all the shock on the back lash.  The T-10 throws the chute pack away f rom the man and the canopy opens and pulls out the risers, the long cords running from the chute to the harness.  That way a guy doesn't get the shock all at once.  It's a nice friendly chute.  But Browdy and Rettig had never jumped the new chute and they were leary of it.  They were too old to change.  Rettig might have, but not Browdy.  Browdy was sure he didn't want the new ones.  So we went along with him.
	When I came back into the living room Mr. Brandon was sitting in the chair alongside the table, leaning over slightly toward one of the small lamps and reading.  I started past him to go upstairs.
	"Did you get it all in?" he asked me.
	"Yeah.  You never know how much stuff you got along until you have to drag it in someplace in a hurry."
	He smiled.  "No, you don't." He motioned over to a chair and closed his book.  "Tell me, does all this seem worthwhile to you?"
	He caught me off guard.  I sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette.  "I don't know about me, but it does to Rettig.  Rettig believes in jumping out of an airplane.  I don't know what it does for him, but he wouldn't be the same without it."
	"Ah, why is that I wonder?  Does he find the danger fascinating, you suppose, or what?"
	He seemed interested in Rettig.  "Everybody gets a kick out of danger, Mr. Brandon."  I thought I'd throw the ball back to him.  "Even somebody say like, well Mrs. Brandon finds excitement in the danger of jumping."
	But he surprised me.  "Yes, I suppose she tends to make heroes out of you because you risk your lives.  Every woman seems to be looking for something to replace her armored knight, you know.  But I wonder why men should risk their lives when there are so many other things to do."
	He looked at me like he expected me to say something but I sat there silently.
	"Elizabeth is like your father.  She's still looking for excitement, even after all these years.  If she found it now, I don't know what she would do with it."
	The piano music started up again in the study.  And it was only after Annie had started to play that I realized she had stopped.
	Mr. Brandon noticed me looking toward the study door.  "She plays quite often doesn't she." He looked very tired.  "It infuriates Elizabeth.  She plays quite well, Annie."
	I didn't know what he wanted from me, telling me all these things, but I knew he wanted something.  I decided to get away.
	"I wonder if she'd mind if I went in and listened," I asked him.  "My mother used to play all the time."  He moved slowly but I could see his eyes flash behind his glasses when I mentioned my mother.  I thought I'd better skip the whole thing, whatever it was.  "You don't think I'll bother her, do you?"
	"You never bothered your mother did you?"
	As I got up and walked toward the doorway he called after me, "You won't jump tomorrow if it rains, will you?"
	"I don't know," I said.  "Depends pretty much on what Rettig thinks."
	"Rettig seems to be quite important in your group."
	"Rettig is a funny guy," I said.  He was pushing me again.  "You never know what Rettig is going to do."


CHAPTER 3

THE ROOM I went into was as stuffy as the room I left.  It looked like a side porch with the bamboo furniture, but there was only one window.  Annie sat at the dark-stained piano, her back to me.  Her blonde hair was cropped short and curled up on top of her head.  She turned as I came in.
	"Don't stop.  I'm sorry.  If I'd known you'd stop I wouldn't have come in."
	She smiled and turned back to the piano, but she started to play a different piece.  One she thought I'd like, I suppose.  It was a fast number with drive to it.
	"You can play the other one," I told her.  She went into the first tune.  "What is it?" I asked.
	"It's something of my own." Her movements were slow and lazy on the keyboard like she was relishing the motion of her fingers.
	It was a good tune;  soft and quiet with mostly chords rather than any strong melody.  Annie tipped her head down, watching the keys like she wasn't too sure where her hands were going next.
	"I'm trying to think of some words to go with it," she said softly.  She tipped her head back and smiled at me standing above her.  I went over to the couch and sat down.
	"Why don't you leave it the way it is?"
	"Do you think it sounds all right?"
	"Sure I do."
	She laughed.  "I thought so too, but Mrs. Brandon thinks it would be better with words."
	That irritated me so I said, "I don't think so.  I think words would ruin it."
	"What do you think of this one?" she asked me.  She slipped easily into another piece.
	It was like the first only more of it was left out.  I couldn't pin down whether I liked it or not.  When I tried to follow her and hum the tune in my mind, I got fooled and she left me.
	"Have you been playing long?" I was embarrassed at my question.  I knew I was fighting the music and the piano for her attention.  But she didn't seem to mind.
	"Would you rather I stopped for a while?" she said.  She turned around slowly on the piano bench and faced me.
	"No.  No go ahead;  please go on."
	She laughed at me.  "I'm sorry but I'm tired.  Maybe sometime later.  I'm glad you like it," she added.  She got up from the bench and came over to the couch and when she sat down next to me I caught myself wondering what Browdy would say to her.
	"I suppose you feel the same way about your jumping that I do about the piano," she said slowly.  But she was looking at me pretty carefully.
	"Well, it's tiring," I grinned, "but I don't think in the same way."
	"It must be wonderful." She stretched her arms above her with a slow lazy excitement.
	"That's funny.  It's not wonderful at all.  It's like I was an electric toy somebody plugged into the wall socket.  It's frightening, not wonderful."
	She looked at me quizzically.  "Do the others feel that way, too?" she asked.
	I laughed at her seriousness.  "No, they don't.  Rettig doesn't.  But I've tried to feel the way he feels and I can't do it.  It'd be a lot easier if we all felt like Rettig."
	"But it must be exciting."
	"I don't know," I told her.  "Take Rettig.  He's really living when he's up in the air, I know that.  Sometimes I think he hates to come back to the ground.  But me, I'm always trying to get it over with.  When I'm on the ground looking up into the air where I've been, then it's exciting to me."
	She laughed again.  "Maybe you think about it too much.  I know when I think about my music, I can hardly play."
	She had it there and I knew it.  I think about things all the time.  I get tense before a jump, thinking about things.  But then Browdy and Rettig were tense the night before too, so I knew it wasn't something different about me.  Still I had a bad tight feeling and I felt like I wanted to talk to her.
	"Tell me something, Annie.  When you're playing, do you feel like something cold and powerful is taking over?"
	She thought a minute.  "Yes, I think so," she answered slowly.
	"The only way I can explain it.. well, does it feel like you're being led away from something instead of toward something?"
	Annie stretched again lazily.  She reminded me of a bird, the way she arched her back with her arms over her head.
	"How does your other friend feel?" she asked me.
	"Browdy? To Browdy jumping's a job.  Like he says, 'It's like the insurance business only you make more money'."
	"Insurance business?" Annie smiled.  "Browdy picks the insurance business because he used to sell insurance a long time ago before he went into the army.  He splits the whole thing right down the middle.  On one side he risks his life for money; on the other side he prays he won't die.  But you know, Annie, he does jump for something.  He's got his reason:  the money.  And it's more than I've got."
	We didn't do anything much, just sat there and the time seemed to pass easily.
	The screendoor slammed shut, but I was so comfortable I pretended I didn't hear it.  Still Annie heard.  She jumped up.
	"That must be Mrs. Brandon," she said.  She got right up and I followed her out into the living room.
	Rettig and Mrs. Brandon were standing inside the front doorway.  Mrs. Brandon was pulling at her white gloves and Rettig stood smiling behind her.
	"Oh, John, you should have seen them," Mrs. Brandon said excitedly.  "The girls sat with open mouths."  She laughed and looked up at Rettig.  "I'm sure nothing this exciting has happened in Bridgeville since Lincoln spoke."
	Mr. Brandon said nothing.  He stood up and his mouth went up at the corners like he was asking something, but he only smiled.  Rettig smiled too, but a little uneasily, and he came in and sat down before Mrs. Brandon did, like he was trying to point out he had no interest in her.  I thought it was a little late for that.
	He looked over at me.  "I didn't know anybody would be so interested in the finer points of jumping from an airplane."
	Mr. Brandon settled his small body back down in his chair.  "Oh, they enjoy something different, you know.  They are always eager for something out of the ordinary."  His smile lasted for a moment but then his face set into a stiff seriousness.  The sudden silence caught Mrs. Brandon standing in the middle of the room.  She took two quick steps toward the diningroom and then turned to Annie.
	"Did you start dinner, Annie?" she asked.
	"Not yet." Annie glanced at me and then turned away to follow Mrs. Brandon through the dining room and into the kitchen.
	Mr. Brandon opened his book.
	"Where's Browdy?" Rettig asked me.
	"He went out to the airport."
	"We caught a weather report on the car radio on the way back," Rettig said.  "Rain's predicted."
	"I know," I said.  "That's why Browdy blew his stack and took off for the airport.  I don't see what he's got to worry about.  If it rains tomorrow, we don't jump; if it doesn't, we jump.  That's not so hard to figure, is it?"
	Mr. Brandon got up with his book and walked into the study.
	"He's worried about the tickets," Rettig said slowly.  "That advance sale puts him on the spot.  There isn't any sure way of letting the people know the jump's been called off."
	"I guess not," I answered.  "Still, if it rains, there isn't anything else to do."
	"It's always been simple for you, Kid, hasn't it."
	"How about the radio?"
	"We won't know whether we'll jump or not until it's too late to reach everybody by radio.  And if we put it on the radio tonight that the jump'd be called off if it rained, we wouldn't have anybody out there no matter what.  I've seen it happen, Kid."
	"Look, Rettig," I told him.  "Remember what you used to say when we first started?  Be careful, you used to say; be careful, that's what's important in this business."
	"Did I say business?"  He laughed.
	That's what made me mad about Rettig.  I couldn't talk to him.  He'd catch one thing and then ignore everything else like he was afraid.  "I don't know whether you said business or not," I said quietly.
	"A lot of things have changed since then, Kid."
	"Yeah, I've been noticing.  I been watching you."
	"I'm a hero, Kid," Rettig smiled.  "You should have seen those women this afternoon."
	"Be serious with me, Rettig.  Why in the hell are you taking so many chances now?  What are you trying to prove?"
	"You wouldn't understand, Kid."  He smiled slightly.  "Anyway, who says I'm taking chances.  Remember me?  I'm the guy who taught you everything you know about stunt jumping.  Who are you to tell me I'm taking chances?"
	"I'm the guy that worries."
	"Well, don't worry about me, Kid.  I know what I'm doing."
	The screendoor banged and Browdy charged into the living room.
	"We got it made, men," he said, grinning.
	"What's up?"  I hoped the rain scare had gone.
	"We got a good pilot and one of those four-seater Cessnas.  We can't miss.  Remember, Mike, that Cessna we used in Burlingon a month ago?  This is the same kind.  We'll take the back seat out and with the cargo hatch, there should be plenty of room to move around in.  I wasn't sure I'd get it or not.  I was pretty sure when I was up here before, but I didn't want to say anything until it was set."
	"Yeah, yeah," I interrupted.  "What'd you find out about the weather?"
	Browdy took a deep breath and glared at me.  "They still don't know for sure when it's goin' to come.  It may rain tonight, tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon.  That's all they know now.  They said they'd call about seven o'clock tonight and let me know what they've got.  After that all we can do is worry about it."
	"You worry," Rettig snapped.  "All I got to do is jump."
	I looked at Rettig.  He was leaving it up to Browdy, and I knew Browdy was going to jump no matter what happened.  Browdy was on the spot.
	"Look," I said.  "If it's raining, we don't jump.  That's simple enough isn't it?"
	"Yeah, simple," Rettig laughed.
	Browdy looked surprised, but then he smiled at me importantly.  "Everything may be simple to you, Kid, but somebody's got to use their head around here.  It looks like I'm it."
	"All right," Rettig said, "you're it.  But quiet down."
	"All we can do is wait," Browdy said more quietly.  "Anyway we got a sweet plane.  The manager out at the airport's a nice guy.  Turns out he's made some jumps himself.  He brought the plane up from a small town south of here."
	"That's great," I said.  "Nothing's better than a good four-seater Cessna when it's raining."
	"Look, Kid, shut up. just shut up."
	Rettig stepped in quickly.  "All right.  Take it easy, you guys.  There's other people in this house."
	Mrs. Brandon came into the living room.  Mr. Brandon must've seen her pass the door of the study because he came out right away.
	"You can set the table, Annie," Mrs. Brandon called over her shoulder.  "Dinner should be ready in a few minutes," she told us.
	"Did you ask them, Elizabeth?" Mr. Brandon said timidly.  "After all, maybe they would rather eat out.  We wouldn't want to force our hospitality on them."
	Mrs. Brandon stared at him.  Then she said very slowly, "But they're going to pay for it, dear. just the way you wanted them to.  Isn't that right?" she asked Rettig.
	"Uh, yes," Rettig mumbled.  "I didn't get the chance to..."
	But Browdy caught on fast.  This was something Browdy could understand.  "Certainly," he said.  "We couldn't ask you to board and keep us for three days without paying something."
	"See, dear," Mrs. Brandon said.  "Everything's all right."
	Mr. Brandon turned away and walked up the stairs.
	"It's been a long time since we've had a homecooked meal," Browdy smiled, rubbing his hands.  "I hope you made enough for three horses."
	"Oh, don't worry," Mrs. Brandon laughed vacantly.  "I love to cook for people who eat."
	She sat down and picked up a magazine, flipping the pages quickly from back to front.  She stopped and concentrated on a few of the colorful advertisements, but mostly she skipped over the pages like it was a magazine she'd already read.
	Rettig stretched his legs out in front of him.  He sat with his head down, looking at his hands.  When Mr. Brandon came back down right away, I almost had to laugh, because it struck me that he hadn't been embarrassed and had merely gone upstairs to wash his hands.  But he did look sheepish.
	Annie looked up from the table in the dining room after she'd finished setting it.  "I think everything's ready, Mrs. Brandon," she said.
	Mrs. Brandon rose and walked through the dining room.  "I think we'd better give the meat a few more minutes, Annie."
	Mr. Brandon followed her.  "Did you have those knives sharpened this week, Elizabeth?" he asked stiffly.
	"No," she answered vaguely, "I didn't have the knives sharpened."  They both disappeared into the kitchen.
	"I guess we'd better wash up," Browdy said.  He stood up and stretched his arms.
	Rettig and I followed him up the steps.


CHAPTER 4

TALK ABOUT a spread.  The good linen tablecloth was out, the good silverware, and the dishes were the kind that rung out when I touched them with my fork.  Rettig, Browdy and I were doing it justice.  I hadn't eaten so well since I'd left Dr. Fickers' house a couple of years ago.  The food was really good.  But Mr. Brandon and Annie picked at their plates like they weren't very hungry, and I couldn't understand it.
	"Have some more meat?" Mrs. Brandon asked Rettig.  She passed the meat plate down to him without waiting for an answer.
	"You don't know what a treat this is, Mrs. Brandon," Browdy said.
	Oh, now, I'll bet you men have eaten in some of the best restaurants.  All I can give you is quantity."
	Mr. Brandon smiled and dabbed his napkin on his mouth.  "I suppose there is something in having someone serving you and worrying about you."
	Mrs. Brandon looked down at me.  "You'd better save some room for dessert, she smiled.  "There's some apple pie."
	Annie smiled and looked over at me.  I smiled back.  Mrs. Brandon was still looking at me brightly like she expected me to say goodie, or something.  I didn't say anything.  Browdy had finished and he tucked his chin in like he was holding down a belch.
	"There any good shows in town?" he asked.
	"Both of the theaters are parts of large syndicates," Mrs. Brandon said.  "We rarely get any of the good films."
	"That's too bad," Browdy said, but he looked like he didn't quite know why.
	"We never see any of the foreign films.  In fact we seldom even go to the movies anymore."
	"I like the musicals myself," Browdy added.  "Those foreign shows get pretty depressing."
	"We have plenty of musicals," Mrs. Brandon smiled, "musicals and westerns."
	"We have the college theater," Mr. Brandon said, his voice rising slightly.
	"Oh yes, we have the college theater," Mrs. Brandon added sarcastically.
	I looked across at Annie.  "Are you interested in dramatics?" I asked.  Everybody seemed to be ignoring her.
	Mrs. Brandon laughed softly.  "Oh, not Annie.  You couldn't get her up on a stage.  But that's all right, dear.  You couldn't get me up in front of all those people either.  I don't see how anyone can do it."
	"I played for one of the high school plays," Annie told me.
	"That's right, you did, didn't you," Mrs. Brandon put in quickly.  "What was it now?"
	"The student musical.  I played in the orchestra."
	"Well, let's have our coffee in the living room," Mrs. Brandon said.  She rose from the table and went into the kitchen.  I could hear her taking the cups and saucers down from the cabinet, as we all got up.
	Mrs. Brandon served the coffee in small china cups on delicate saucers.  Browdy balanced his saucer on his thigh and Mr. Brandon kept looking at it nervously.  "We'll jump from a four-seater Cessna," Browdy began to explain to him.  "They're bringing it up from Adler."
	"Oh.  I didn't know there was an airport in Adler," Mr. Brandon said.
	"It's not more than a cornfield," Browdy added.  "The manager out at the airport here said there's some sort of flying club down there.  Only three or four planes."
	"Well, anyway you're all set then," Mr. Brandon said like he was trying to wind the whole thing up so Browdy wouldn't talk about it anymore.
	"We got it all.  The airport's all set; I got the police permission when I was up a week ago.  We've been hitting the papers and the radio all week ...
	"I saw the story in this morning's paper," Annie said, like she was trying to help.
	"We've been reading about the parachute jump for the last two days," Mrs. Brandon said.
	"That's it.  Tell these ungrateful birds how valuable I am.  They never think about how much work it takes to get people to come out and see them."  Browdy grinned.
	"That's right," I said.  "Browdy's the most valuable man in the act.  He handles everything but the weather.  That he leaves up to Providence."
	"Oh, it is supposed to rain tomorrow.  I never thought of that," said Annie.  "I do hope the people will come anyway."
	"We don't have to worry about the crowd," Browdy told her proudly.  "We've sold plenty of tickets already."
	"Well then," Mr. Brandon asked, "why are you worried?"
	"Rain can play tricks with the parachutes," Rettig explained.  "Have you ever noticed your nylon stockings, Mrs. Brandon, how on moist days they'll stick?"
	"Why yes."
	"If that happens to a nylon parachute, it might not open."
	"And if the parachute doesn't open then the show gets more exciting than it should be," I added.
	Browdy broke in, "The chances of a chute getting wet and not opening are mighty thin.  The real danger comes in packing the chute when it's damp."
	"Well there've been cases when the nylon sides stuck together in the air," Rettig told him.
	"What do you mean-stuck?" Mr. Brandon asked.
	Rettig leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.  "Well, you see, when the chute is pulled out of the pack on our backs, it comes out twisted and stretched out behind us.  The risers,, or the cords, are attached all along the bottom of the chute.  So unless some air gets up through the bottom and forces the chute open, nothing happens.  It doesn't open," Rettig smiled.  "And if the bottom happens to stick then no air gets up into the chute."
	"It makes me shudder to think of it." Mrs. Brandon rubbed her elbows.  "I don't see how you can do it."
	"I suppose it's something you become used to," Mr. Brandon said quietly.
	"I'm shaking just thinking about it," Mrs. Brandon told us.  She looked down at her arms.
	"Maybe they'd rather we didn't talk about it, Elizabeth."
	"No, we're used to talking about it," Browdy said, which wasn't true.  I couldn't figure out why we were all talking about it.
"As a matter of fact," Browdy added, "it's not as bad as it looks.  Only don't tell anyone I said so," he winked.  The crowd and the ticket receipts were always at his elbow like a private angel.
	"I imagine your equipment does do most of the work for you," Mr. Brandon said.
	Rettig squirmed in his chair, but he stayed silent.  I watched him rub his knuckles vigorously.  Then he looked up from his hands.  "Are you going to watch us tomorrow?"
	"Why of course," Mrs. Brandon answered.  "Mr. Browdy gave us three tickets.  I wouldn't miss it for the world.  I've never seen anything like it before, although John swears we saw a parachutist at an air show in Chicago once.  I still don't remember that, John.  I think you made it up."
	Mr. Brandon laughed tightly and then coughed.
	"What I don't understand, he smiled genially, "is why you make these parachute jumps.  I was asking Johnnie here about it this afternoon."
	"Did he tell you?" Rettig smiled.
	"No, not exactly.  Of course we didn't talk about it very long."  He smiled slightly at Mrs. Brandon.
	Rettig looked angry.  "What would you make of this, Mr. Brandon?  I had a friend when I was in the army --- a master sergeant, who said that jumping was not only a way of life but a way of death, too, which damn few things are."
	Mr. Brandon coughed again and looked at his wife.  "Is there more coffee, Elizabeth?"
	Mrs. Brandon didn't hear him at first, she was staring at Rettig.  Finally she answered, "No, but there's more lemonade.  Would you like some?"  She looked around the room.
	The professor and Browdy said they would.
	"Annie, would you help me with the glasses?"
	Annie stood up.  "Wouldn't you like something?"
	"I'll take a glass of water," I told her.  "Thank you."
	Rettig seemed to draw back into himself after they left the room;  he looked intently at Mr. Brandon and then appeared to make a decision.  Leaning forward he said softly, "Everything has to die sometime, doesn't it, Mr. Brandon?  Everyone has to meet death."
	"Yes," Mr. Brandon chuckled.  "I think that's one point on which all the philosophers would agree.  All things must end, I suppose."
	"Death is always at a man's shoulder," Rettig added.  His voice was very hoarse.  "Death is impossible to defeat, impossible to get away from.  A man can be struck down, and ended.  He has to face it."
	Mr. Brandon looked uncomfortable and he turned to glance into the kitchen.  "All this is very true, but I don't see what significance it has."
	"Doesn't it make sense that some men, feeling this way about death, would try to find a ritual for it some way to meet death with as much dignity as possible?"
	"Yes," Mr. Brandon said cynically, "I suppose some men might feel they elevated themselves by doing just that."
	Rettig lapsed back into silence.
	I looked over at Browdy.  His face was tense and shocked.  I knew how he felt.  Rettig had never said anything like this before.  He'd always been a perfectionist about jumping and we'd accepted it.  We'd never felt any need to ask why.
	What worried me more was I had the feeling that I'd known everything he said even though he'd never said anything like it before.
	Browdy got up suddenly.  There were tight lines around his mouth.  "Let's go down for a beer," he laughed to Rettig, "before you scare hell out of me."
	"We've got some lemonade coming," I interrupted.  I wanted Rettig to go on if he had anymore to say.  I thought it might help, although I wasn't too clear on how.
	I turned to Mr. Brandon.  "Have you ever been up in a plane?"
	"No, I'm afraid not.  Once or twice we almost took plane trips, but then we always decided to go by train instead."
	Mrs. Brandon and Annie came back.  Annie handed me the glass of water.
	"Mr. Rettig has been telling us about death, Elizabeth, Mr. Brandon smiled.
	"Death!  For heaven's sake, what a subject."
	Rettig looked down at his hands again.
	Annie had the oddest face.  I had to admit it wasn't beautiful or cute.  But it wasn't unpleasant either.  It was the kind of face you didn't have to be afraid of.
	Browdy sat down and looked at the lemonade Mrs. Brandon had placed on the table next to him.  He took the glass with his hand, but he didn't drink any of it.  He sat holding the glass in his lap and staring at it.
	Mrs. Brandon sat down.  "But when I left you were saying something about the rain?"
	Browdy's head jerked up.  "That's a funny thing," he said, "when the air is heavy, like it is before or after a rain, that's when jumping is the easiest."
	"I don't understand..."
	"The rate of descent is slower, Browdy told her.  I noticed the sweat coming out on his forehead.  "On a bright dry day, the air is light and we come down pretty fast."
	The phone rang and Annie, who sat closest to the small phone stand, picked up the receiver.  "It's for Mr. Browdy," she said.  She looked at all of us at the same time.
	"Probably the airport," Browdy said.
	He rose and took the phone.
	I watched his face closely while he talked.  Not that I didn't trust him, but I didn't want to wait until he told me.  But Browdy gave no sign of what was being said.  He listened intently and asked no questions.  
	"All right," he said finally.  "Well, thanks a lot for calling anyway."  He placed the phone back on the stand and walked clear back to his chair before he said anything.  "They still don't know for sure when the rain's coming.  But they don't think it'll be tonight now."
	"I hope it clears up in time," Annie said softly.
	It was so unexpected that everyone laughed at her sudden concern.
	"How 'bout that beer now?" Browdy asked Rettig.
	"All right.  You, Kid?"
	I didn't answer, but I got up from my chair and took a couple of steps toward the door.
	"Be careful," Mrs. Brandon said.  "A lot of the railroad workers come into town on the weekends."
	Browdy laughed.  "We'll be careful," he told her.
	We went out the front and walked down to the car.  Rettig ran over to the garage to take a look at the equipment after I told him I'd put it away.
	"What gives with Rettig?" Browdy asked me.
	"I don't know, Browdy.  I don't know."
	We got into the car and waited.  The air had turned cool and I could hear a faint wind coming up.  Rettig walked down the driveway and then climbed in beside me in the front seat.
	"You did a good job, Kid," he said.
	"What if it does rain tonight?"
	"They should be all right.  They're off the floor."
	Browdy pulled slowly away from the curbing.
"Let's worry about the rain tomorrow," he said.


CHAPTER 5

THE THREE-BLOCK business district was still filled with the parked, empty cars, although it was Saturday night and none of the stores appeared to be open.  Browdy drove on through the main drag and turned off into a side street.  We walked back up the main street after parking and we looked in each store window for a likely place to get a beer.
	The air felt cool, much cooler than when we'd come into town that afternoon, and there were few people on the streets now.  Bright red neon signs flashed above us and their glow rebounded at us from the glass store fronts.  The air felt good on my back and I realized if I hadn't gotten outside the house when I did, I'd have soaked my clothes with sweat.
	It was quiet here.  There were the soft clicks of the neon lights, but what little noise there was didn't seem to be a part of us.  I heard my boots striking against the cement and I felt loose as I walked in the cool air like I usually felt when I was carrying something over my head and my legs would swing by themselves.
	I kept wondering where all the people were that had parked all the cars that lined the curbing.  There still weren't any parking spaces open, but there weren't any people on the street and Mrs. Brandon had said there were only two shows.  I wondered if everybody was in the bars.  It would be reassuring, I thought, if all the drivers of the cars were in the bars someplace.
	"This looks okay," Browdy said.
	He turned into a doorway and Rettig and I followed him.  We had to go up three cement steps before we could go on through the door; and when we went in, it was like walking into a small grocery store, except there was a long bar counter that began just inside the door and continued on to the back of the room.  A mirror behind the bar was covered with yellow placards and bottle heads that stuck up from the shelf below.  The other wall was lined with red leather booths, each circular with an opening on the aisle.  A multi-colored jukebox split.the row of booths in the middle.
Browdy slid into the booth next to the jukebox and Rettig and I slid in from the other side.  A slim waitress detached herself from a group at the bar that sang "Happy Anniversary" to a fat man and small woman who sat and glowed sheepishly in the middle.
	Browdy pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket.  He always carried his cigarettes loose like that in his shirt.  They'd get smashed and broken and every day he'd have to replace them with a fresh bunch because he didn't smoke too much.  But he liked it that way, I guess.
	"Three Buds," he told the girl.
	She went back to the bar, stopping for a minute with the group that was celebrating.  She leaned over and sang a few lines and then went on around the bar.
	Browdy had been watching her but then he turned to Rettig.  "Now what the hell is all this stuff about?" he asked sharply.  He said it like he didn't want to know why Rettig had said everything, but like he wanted Rettig to deny he said anything.
	"Don't worry about it," Rettig laughed.
	That was enough for Browdy.  He was going to do just that.
	"Okay, Mike," he laughed.  "I guess we're getting old, that's all."
	The waitress came back with the three bottles of beer.  She slipped the three glasses off the bottle necks and slid them onto the table.  Then she set the three bottles in the middle.  Browdy gave her a bill and told her to keep the change.  She looked at him startled at first, and then smiled and walked back to the anniversary party.
	"What time is it?" Browdy asked.  He looked down at his watch.  "I'd better leave about eight."
	"Seven-thirty," Rettig answered him.
	Browdy nodded his head and then looked around the bar.  "Cute little waitress," he said.  "Doesn't look like small-town stuff, does she?"
	Rettig glanced toward the bar.  "She looks like small-city stuff," he grinned.  "No class."
	I looked at Rettig.  This was something new.  I wondered if Rettig knew he'd wiped out most of his past with his comment.  After all, this type girl had been standard medicine for Rettig before.  There hadn't been any other kind.  When a man takes a poke at the kind of girls he's always favored what am I supposed to think?
	"What's wrong with her?" I asked.
	"Nothing's wrong with her," Rettig answered and he smiled again.  "Right, Browdy?"
	"She looks like her little pants are hotter'n hell," Browdy said, laughing.  "If that's somethin' wrong, it should happen more often."
	"She does that," Rettig grinned.
	"See if you can get her over here," I asked Browdy.  "I'll bet she's nothing more than a girl who's working tonight in a bar."
	"Waitress!" he called out.  Everybody in the bar turned and looked at him like they hadn't heard the word in a long time.  She came around the counter with a slight look of contempt.
	"Marge," she corrected Browdy.  She leaned one palm on the table.  "What can I do for you?"
	She was built slim, except for a few places, and she combed her blonde hair straight down where it was cropped short on her neck;  she was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt.
	"Well.... Browdy smiled, "several things.  Number one though would be easy --- three more bottles of Bud."
	She picked up Rettig's and Browdy's bottle, but when she picked up mine she grinned and set it back down.  It was still half full.  She walked back behind the bar counter again.  The bartender passed her three bottles and she came back, setting them in the middle of the table.
	"Sit down, Rettig told her.  Browdy slid over and she sat on the edge of the leather set with her feet out in the aisle.  She looked over her shoulder at us.
	"Number two is coming up, I see," she remembered.  "You got a cigarette?"
	Browdy tapped out a single cigarette for her on the table.  She took it and glanced over at the bartender, and then poked the end into the middle of her small mouth.  She leaned over to Rettig for a light, but Rettig didn't move.  Embarrassed, she turned back to Browdy.  He snapped open his lighter and made her lean way over to him to get to it.
"Well, gentlemen," she said, blowing smoke into Browdy's face, "such likeable manners."
	"What are you doin' way out in the aisle, Marge," Browdy asked her.
	"Because I'm afraid," she said.  "I'm such a little girl."  Her voice might have been coming out of the jukebox for all the attention she paid to it.
	Browdy drew back.  "You had me fooled," he grinned.  "I was goin' to ask f or a date."
	"That shouldn't bother you," she answered.  "You boys look like the little girl types."
	"You goin' to bring your mother out to watch us jump tomorrow, little girl?"  Browdy reached into his pocket and handed her two tickets.
	Even Rettig winced.  The same old Browdy; little-boy-jumper-Browdy.
	"Oh, you're the parachutists."  She took the tickets and covered her surprise with the smile.  "Where's your airplane?"
	"Out at the airport," Rettig told her.  "They wouldn't let us bring it along."
	"Streets are too narrow," Browdy added.  "The town's way out of date.  Not built for airplanes."
	"You know," she leaned over to Browdy, "two years ago we were all going barefoot.  You wouldn't know it now, would you?"
	"Well", I noticed your feet were a little large, Marge," Browdy told her.
	"That's from sleeping in a short bed," she smiled.  "Whoops, customer, boys." She got up quickly and put her cigarette out on the floor with her shoe.  "We're interested in paying trade."
	"Then bring us three more Buds," Browdy said to her back as she walked to the bar.  "I'm tellin' you, Mike," he told Rettig, "that one's ready made."
	Rettig looked down at his watch.  "Say, it's five to eight.  You better get going."
	"The church isn't far from here;  I got plenty of time."  But Browdy stood up anyway.
	"Say hello to the Padre for me," Rettig told him.  "Tell him I'm sorry too, just in case."
	"Cut it out now, Mike," Browdy pleaded, "you
know what I told you last time you started razzin' me about this."
	"All right, all right.  Take it easy."
	"You guys want me to drive back down here and pick you up or can you take care of yourselves tonight," he grinned.
	"I don't know about the kid, but I'm going back to the house.  You can drop me off on your way."
	"What?" Browdy said.  "My God, Mike, think of those flat feet gettin' flatter and flatter."
	Rettig shook his head and stood up too.  "How about you, Kid?" he asked.
	"I'll go back," I said.
	When we walked out, I let the screendoor close slowly and I looked back.  I saw the waitress turn toward us.  She stood next to the bartender and he looked down at the tickets she was holding up in her hand in front of him.  He said something, then sneered and looked at us too.  She gave him a scornful look and then hurried around the corner of the bar with two bottles of beer.


CHAPTER 6

WHEN RETTIG AND I walked in, Mrs. Brandon was reading by one of the small lights.
	"Hello," she smiled at us.  "I'm certainly glad to see somebody.  john's gone upstairs to bed and I have been reading this boring book.  "She set the book on the table.  "We usually don't go to bed this early."
	I didn't care what time Mr. and Mrs. Brandon went to bed so I couldn't figure out why she'd worry about it.  But Rettig smiled and sat down.  I heard the piano.
	"I think I'll listen to Annie play for a while before I go upstairs," I said.  I walked over to the door of the study slowly because I was afraid if I went fast Mrs. Brandon would get suspicious and call me back.  But I opened the door and went in, and she said nothing.
	It was dark;  Annie hadn't turned the lights on.  I sat down on the couch.  "Don't stop," I told her.  "If you stop every time I come in I'm going to stop coming in."  Then I thought maybe that's what she wanted me to do, stop bothering her, and I held my breath.  But she turned back and began to play.
	Shapes started to form in the darkness as my eyes got used to it, and the streetlight outside the window seemed to grow more and more dim.  Annie moved her head and I could suddenly make out her shadow.  Gradually the light from the street glowed around her, outlining her body.  She was wearing a white blouse, I thought.
	I settled back and let the music drift around me.  Outside I could see the moths fluttering around the glaring globe of the streetlight.  The light was a small intense and artificial globe of yellow and the moths whirled around it in helpless dark specks.
	She sat back suddenly and rested her hands on the bench as she turned and looked out the window.  I looked out too, but there were the moths circling around the yellow globe.  I didn't like the way they looked.
	"Come over here, Annie," I asked her.
	She waited a long time to answer.  Then she rose and came over to the couch.  "All right," she said, and I couldn't see whether she was smiling or not.  It kind of scared me.  I could see she rubbed her arm.
	"Do you feel all right?" I asked her.  After all here it was hotter than hell and she was shivering.
	"Yes," she answered softly.  "It's just that I always feel cold when I go away from the piano suddenly like I did now."
	"Cold?"
	She laughed.
	"Maybe it'd be better if I put my arm around you."  I thought it was the thing to say but she looked at me in an odd way.  "Not that I mean anything," I explained.  "Because you're cold."
	Then she looked hurt so I told her, "I don't know what I mean, Annie."
	"I don't mind," she said.
	I didn't know how to go about it.  My arm settled awkwardly around her neck and I had to slide it down around her shoulders.  I hadn't been with a nice girl since high school.  And even then I hadn't made it a practice.
	"I don't know why you're cold," I laughed, "but it's all right with me."
	We sat there silently and I tried not to look out the window.  But you know how it is.  When there's one bright square in a dark room your eyes always go to it like they were afraid to see nothing.  So after a while I gave up and watched the moths flying around.
	Then Annie stretched her arms back above her head.
	"Sometimes I feel as if everything is going on without me," she said.  "It's as if I weren't a part of anything but the world was just a movie I was watching."  She acted like it was something she had just noticed now.
	"When you play the piano too?" I asked her.  "You do that so well, Annie."
	"When I play it seems I'm farther away than ever."  She spoke softly like she regretted it.
	I reached in my pocket for a cigarette and took out the pack.  She watched me struggle with one hand.
	"Here.  You hold the pack," she said, "and I'll pull it out for you."
	She handed me the cigarette.
	"Do you want one?"
	"Oh no," she said, "it doesn't taste good to me."
	I leaned back and dragged on the cigarette.  "Tell me, Annie, are you going to study music at the college?"
	"I don't think so.  I love music, but I don't think I want to study it."
	"You know, I told her, I was glad when the army drafted me out of college.  I was ready and willing to leave."
	"What school did you go to?"
	I laughed.  "I doubt if you ever heard of it."  I was sorry I brought it up because I didn't want her to know I only went one year.  
	"What were you studying?"
	"Nothing.  I was trying to finish and graduate, that's all."
	"I like you, Johnnie," she said suddenly.
	I thought maybe she was trying to set me off balance at first, but she looked away out through the window and didn't say anything more.  I figured maybe she was waiting for me to say I liked her too.
	"You're doing research," she laughed at last.  "You're finding out how blue the sky is."
	I laughed with her.
	"Does it look any different when you're in a plane?" she asked seriously.
	I almost laughed again, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings.  When I fall out the door of an airplane, I don't worry about the color of the sky.  "Haven't you ever flown?"
	She shook her head.
	"Well, it doesn't look any different.  The only thing is you get more of an idea how much sky there is."
	She was looking at me intently so I went on.
	"Rettig says when a man gets up in the air, that's the only time he gets off the ground."  I laughed but she didn't think it was funny because she didn't laugh at all.
	She tucked her feet up underneath her skirt, after kicking off her shoes to the end of the couch.  I wondered about the couch cover getting dirty.  She pressed the shoes up against it with her feet.  But she didn't seem to mind;  so I thought, why should I.
	But if it wasn't the couch cover it was something else.  Sitting there with my arm slipped easily around her shoulders, I felt guilty about something.  Like I said I'd never messed around much with a girl like Annie.  I listened through the door for some sound from Rettig and Mrs. Brandon, but there was nothing but silence in the next room.  I kept thinking what would happen if Mrs. Brandon should suddenly walk in here and flip on the light.  The streetlight blazed away outside, arcing its light through the darkness, and the moths still danced around it.  Annie took my hand into her lap.
	Why do I hang back, I asked myself.  I've had plenty of girls in so many different towns, why should I hang back now?  Hell, Annie is a girl like any other, I thought.  I leaned my head over her suddenly and tightened my arm along her shoulder.  She met my lips with her teeth clenched tight and then slowly they parted as she let her mouth go soft agai.nst mine.
	But then she pulled away gently.
	"That was nice," she said slowly.  She turned her face toward the window and the light from the street outlined her chin.
	"Then why turn away?" I asked her.  I tried to pull her shoulders back, but she turned her head the other way again.
	"I don't want to spoil it, Johnnie," she said.  She looked worried and scared.  "Not now."
	I let her shoulder go and felt her tight breasts slide across my chest and then her head settled back straight against the back of the couch.  Then I remembered something Browdy'd said.  You let them get the best of you once and they treat you like a dog from then on.
	I pulled her shoulders back around to me.  Her head turned toward me at the quickness of the movement and I bent down and kissed her again, keeping my mouth on hers like I was insisting.  Her mouth was tight again, but it loosened slowly.  She turned and I could feel her body curving against my stomach.
	Then I got scared too, and I turned her shoulders back against the couch again.  I leaned back and looked out through the window.  She didn't say anything.
	"The sky looks almost smoky, doesn't it?" I asked her.
	"Umm hmm," she answered.  Then she looked up at me like she'd remembered and she added, "I hope it doesn't rain."
	"It'll be all right if it rains tonight, or early tomorrow morning."
	"You won't jump if it's not all right, will you?"
	I looked at the sky, not thinking about answering her.  Instead I repeated her question to myself.  I knew she was asking about me, not about the three of us.
	"I can't say, Annie," I said finally.  "I don't know what it'll be like tomorrow.  I can tell you there have been times when I've almost not jumped --- but I can't say anything about tomorrow."
	"I suppose I knew you wouldn't promise anything," she said softly.  "I don't know why I asked you.  I'm sorry; I don't like promises either."
	"I can promise you I'll be the same guy looking up at the sky and trying to decide that I am tonight."
	"I know, I know.  I'm sorry," she said again.
	"I'm glad you asked me, Annie."
	"Well, I don't know whether I'm glad or not," she laughed suddenly.  "I have the feeling I'll be just as cold and worried when you leave tomorrow as I was a little while ago when I came over to the couch."
	I got up.  "I suppose I'd better be getting upstairs."  I don't know why but I felt pretty proud of myself.
	She got up and went over to the piano.  As I opened the door she began to play.  I went out into the living room and closed the door of the study.
	Expecting to see Rettig and Mrs. Brandon I was surprised by the empty room.  But I figured Rettig had probably gone upstairs and Mrs. Brandon must have gone to bed.  Then I wondered why all the lights were still on.  The front door was open, and so were all the windows.  The cool night air drifted through the room.  I tried the screendoor and it was unlocked, but I figured this wasn't my house so I left everything alone.


CHAPTER 7

COMING UP THE steps I could see the light on in Browdy's room.  His door was open and when I got up to the hallway, I could see him lying on the bed.  I started to go into my room, but Browdy saw me.  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and threw a magazine up on the bureau top.
	"Come on in, Kid.  Where you guys been?" he said, standing up.  "I come home and the house looks like a morgue, the lights all on and nobody home." He laughed.
	"Everybody's probably in bed, Browdy."  I walked into his room.
	"Where's Rettig?"
	"Isn't he up here?"
	"Hell no!" Browdy said.  "He hasn't been in since I been here."  Then he grinned, "Say, you don't suppose he went back to see Marge down at the bar?  You know how Rettig is before a jump."
	"I don't know," I said.  "I guess that's his business."  I didn't want to worry about Rettig anymore.  After all a guy can't carry the whole world around on his shoulders.  "Has the airport called again?" I asked Browdy.
	"No.  We still don't know one way or the other.  Hell, everybody seems to know it's goin' to rain.  Nobody knows when."
	"Think the equipment'll be okay?"
	"It should be," Browdy grinned, "if we did a good job packing it in Burlington."
	Browdy was picking his nose.  Rettig always kidded Browdy about it:  You're an all right guy, Browdy, but you pick your nose;  and Browdy'd always laugh.  It irritated me though.  Hell, I've told him about it, but he goes right ahead, thinking whoever mentions it is kidding like Rettig.
	"I think I'll go in and get some sleep, I told him.  I turned around and walked out.
	I had to face it.  If there was any possible way, Browdy was sure to make the jump.  He had to --- the tickets and the crowd --- there was no other way for Browdy.  The money-God stood over Browdy's shoulder, directing him and prodding him;  and Browdy was right when he said this was what kept putting the food in our mouths.
	I turned on the ceiling light at the doorway, and then went over to the dresser and flipped on the small lamp.  When I came back around the bed, I turned the ceiling light off --- you know how damn deliberate you get when you're worried.  Then I sat down on the steel-framed bed and looked at the flat metal footboard.
	I couldn't keep away from wondering about Rettig.  I knew as well as Browdy did that as far as Rettig was concerned a woman was nothing more than a necessary function.  And Rettig always felt the need to function before a jump.  But I couldn't help but worry.  I kept thinking of that jump in Keokuk.  I guess after seeing that I'd lost a hell of a lot of confidence in him.  Every time I thought about the damn thing, the whole scene ran through my head again:
	Rettig dropped down, coming closer and closer --- a dark figure against the blue sky behind him.  A thin trail of white stretched out above him, looping and twisting, and then drifting to pieces in the wind.  I stood on the ground watching, while Rettig twisted down, the flour sack open and strapped between his legs, leaving the white trail out behind him.  I heard Browdy's voice booming out on the loudspeaker behind me.  He's got to pull the chute now, I kept saying to myself; he's got to pull it now.  But Rettig came still closer to the ground.
	"What the hell's he doing!" I screamed at Browdy.  But Browdy wasn't looking at the sky.  He was talking into the mike, looking at the crowd in front of him.  A girl screamed.
	I looked up and caught Rettig as a puff of white nylon streaked out above him to join the remnants of the flour.  I held my breath.  The chute stretched above him in a long ribbon, following Rettig down.  Then the chute popped open and Rettig dangled violently back and forth underneath it.  He was no more than one hundred yards from the ground;  one second from the dirt.
	"Jeezus Kee-rist!" I murmured.  "Thank God."
	Browdy pointed at the bobbing figure, but I didn't hear what he was saying.  The soft gasp of the crowd drifted around me.  I grabbed the old Ford and drove out to pick him up.  He was laughing.
	"Look, Kid.  I ran out of flour.  Have to use a bigger bag."  He held the empty bag up to me.
	He was covered with the white flour except in long strips where it had been whipped away by the wind.  His face was ghostly, streaked with white where the flour had stuck to the wind-tears on his cheeks.  He rolled up the nylon and climbed into the car.
	I had seen guys do crazy stunts before, but not Rettig.  Now he looked like he was playing with the idea of going right into the ground.  I didn't want to say anything about it;  he could twist anything with a laugb and make it sound foolisb.  But I decided to keep an eye on him.
	The light on the dresser glared into my eyes and I rolled out of bed and snapped it out.  I walked over to the window.  There were no stars in the sky and it still looked smoky out.  The streetlight was directly below me.  I wondered if Annie was playing.  I pushed my car against the screen trying to hear.  There was nothing but the wind scraping through the trees and bushes.  I looked out through the branches across the window, at the two streets intersecting down the block.  There were no cars.
	I saw two figures walking slowly on the other side of the Brandons' side yard.  They went up to the corner and then turned toward me.  They turned again, walking on the private sidewalk that ran through the side yard below me.  I recognized Rettig and Mrs. Brandon.  I watched while they sat down on the small bench in the yard below, and then I left the window and stretched out on the bed.
	God damn of all the times, I thought.  Why doesn't she let him alone.
	I tried to figure out whether this meant Rettig would want to jump tomorrow no matter what, or whether he'd want to cancel the jump so's he could stay longer.  I was sure of one thing: the rain wouldn't be influencing him too much either way.
	I got up and walked back to the window.  The two figures were merged in one dark shape under the tree.  I went back to the bed and rolled over on my side and tried to sleep.
	It seemed like I'd just dozed off when I heard something banging and I threw out my arm to stop it.  The banging continued.  I rolled over, swearing, and rubbed my eyes.  Somebody was knocking on the door.
	"You up, Kid?"  It was Rettig's voice.
	"Yeah, yeah.  Just a minute."  I climbed out of bed and turned the light on before I opened the door.  "Come on in," I told him.  "Where the hell've you been?"
	"I went for a walk," he told me, closing the door.
	"You sure must've walked a long way."
	"I did."  He looked at me quickly, then he said, "Did the airport call?"
	"Nobody called."
	Rettig sat down on the bed.  He put his hand up to his forehead.  I couldn't figure what had hit him so hard.  Something was bothering him.
	"Do I look like a patsy to you, Kid?"
	"What do you mean?  Hell no... what do you mean 'patsy'?"
	"Sometimes I get the feeling I'm just being used by everybody.  Everybody's got some use for plug-ugly Rettig."  He sighed and rubbed his face, and when he took his hands away he was smiling again and it was all over, whatever it was.
	"For Christ's sake, you don't have to jump in the rain tomorrow --- is that what you mean? --- just because of Browdy and his lousy tickets!"
	He shrugged like it hadn't been the jump he'd been talking about.  "What do you think, Kid?" he asked.
	"I don't know whether I care anymore.  Browdy's all set to jump unless a damn tornado or something keeps the plane on the ground."
	"Maybe that's just as well, Kid."  He sat there rubbing his knuckles and looking at the floor.  "We'll get the jump over with and get the hell out of here."
	I didn't know what Mrs. Brandon had said or done, but Rettig was acting like somebody'd just given him a kick in the teeth.  I knew where he stood now.  Tomorrow I'd be the only one looking up at the sky for my answer.  Browdy'd want to jump to save the tickets and Rettig would stack up on his side.
	Rettig looked at me carefully.  "What's the matter?"
7	I blew up.  "What's the matter with me?  Jesus, I'm the only sane guy here!  Browdy and you act like you're trying to commit suicide.  What's the matter with me?  That's good.  What's the matter with me."
	Rettig jerked when I said suicide, but then he settled down fast.  "Everybody worries about the jump, Kid.  Don't let it get you down."  He got up and went to the door.
	"Take it easy, Kid.  You'll do all right."  But he stayed in the doorway like he wanted to say something else, then he must've changed his mind because he shrugged his shoulders and walked out, closing the door behind him.
	"God damn it..."  But there was nobody to hear me.  I lay back down on the bed, feeling pretty goddamn helpless.


CHAPTER 8

WHEN I WOKE up the next morning my neck was damp and my head felt heavy.  I rolled out of bed and walked over to the chair to pick up my shirt.  Then I heard the rain against the screen.
	I stood there by the window, watching the rain strike the window sill, and I tried to estimate the dark clouds in the sky that rode so close together they looked like one heavy blanket with a series of thick folds.
	After I dressed I went into Browdy's room.  The door was open.  "Well, we sure as hell can't jump in this!"  I told him.  I decided not to laugh.
	"It's not one o'clock yet," he answered calmly.  He sat on the bed pulling on a white wool sock.
	Rettig came down the hall with a towel over his shoulder.  He poked his head into Browdy's room.  "Think it'll rain, Kid?" he laughed.
	"Very funny, I told him.
	He laughed again, but this time it didn't come out right.  He knew it too and he stood in the doorway uncomfortably like he didn't know how to get back around the corner.
	"I don't know," he said seriously, it might break up.  See that tree?"  He pointed past us to the window.  "Quite a breeze out there.  Wind might break it up soon."
	He turned and went back down the hall to his room.
	"It's got to let up," Browdy moaned.  "Fifteen hundred tickets out already."
	"Fifteen hundred tickets," I said wistfully.
	"Listen, Kid, this is my part of it.  You let me take care of it at this end."
	"It's all yours, Browdy.  Who's trying to take it away from you?"
	"I never noticed you turning down your cut when we split up the proceeds."
	I didn't say anything.  What the hell, I never had turned anything down.
	I walked along the hallway with Browdy and Rettig following me, down the stairs and out to the kitchen.  On the white tablecloth was a tray of coffeecake and three cups and saucers.  A note was propped up against the butter dish.  I picked it up as Rettig and Browdy stepped up behind me.
	Have gone to church.  If you come downstairs before we 	return, help yourselves.
				Mrs.  Brandon
	Rettig took the note from my hand.  While he was reading it, I went over to the stove and felt the coffeepot.  It was still hot so I poured out three cups of coffee.  I noticed Rettig put the note in his pocket and I started to ask him about it but then thought it'd be better to leave him alone.
	"Help ourselves, huh?" Browdy said.  He took two pieces of coffeecake from the tray and put them on his plate.  "That's what I'd call hospitality."
	His big jaw worked laboriously on the coffeecake, sliding the skin all up and down his long cheeks.  Then he stopped chewing suddenly.
	"My God, look at it raining now," he said softly.  He looked out through the high small window over the sink.
	"Oh for Chrissakes," I said, "we'll jump, don't worry.  Your crowd will get its money's worth --- that's what you're worried about, isn't it --- you feel like you'd be cheating them out of the ticket price."
	"Listen, Kid," he said impatiently, "do you know it's impossible to call in all those tickets.  Sure we could postpone the jump and make it tomorrow.  But how would we let everybody know?  How many of them will be listening to the radio in the next three hours?  Some of them are farmers traveling twenty or thirty miles from here."
	"So some farmer blows fifty cents for gas," I said.  Jesus, he was worried about the farmers.  "So it's raining.  We can't jump when it's raining.  You don't expect us to go on in the rain, do you?"
	"Those tickets sold for two dollars apiece," Browdy answered softly.  "Two bucks is a lot of money for some people."
	"You can't even feel sorry for anybody without putting a dollar sign on it," I laughed.  "Sometimes I think you've got a cash register for a head."
	"All right," Rettig broke in, "cut it out you guys."  He looked at us blankly like he didn't care what we said or did and was only stepping in from habit.  It made me madder.
	"Sure, sure," Browdy laughed.  "Anyway, you don't have to jump, Kid, if you think it's too dangerous."
	"Just what the hell do you mean by that?"
	"Nothin', nothin'." Browdy leaned back and put the palms of his hands up in front of him.  "It's just that something is starting to stink around here, that's all."
	"I'll tell you what it is too, Browdy...."
	"Your yellow streak's showing, Kid," he said.  He leaned down over his plate as some jelly slid down his chin.
	"My yellow streak!" I yelled.  "Listen Browdy, you're the one's in trouble.  I've seen your hands sweating and shaking up there when we're in the plane..."
	"I said cut it out, Kid," Rettig said softly.
	"You can put your soul in the hands of Jesus but that doesn't help your feet get out the door, does it, Browdy?"  I couldn't stop now.  "I've seen you up there trying to talk yourself into one more jump.  It doesn't work, does it?"
	Browdy looked at Rettig.  "No punk kid is goin' to say that," he told him.  He snapped his chair back and jerked up.  I saw his hand flying backwards and then I felt the sharp sting across my face.  I didn't even have time to stand up.
	"Why you sonofa..."  I stood up and swung around the table.  I couldn't see anything but that fat laughing face with the red jam on the corner of its mouth.  I threw my fist into his belly and then something flat belted against my nose and all I saw was a blurred black linoleum block that smelled strongly of wax.  I lifted my nose from the floor, hunching my shoulders up.  I tried to breathe and I could feel the warm liquid inside my nose, running down my throat and gagging me.  I turned over on the floor and looked back at Browdy.
	Mrs. Brandon stood in the doorway behind him, her hand pressed over her mouth.  "What... ?"
	Rettig interrupted her as he pushed Browdy away.
	"Just a misunderstanding," he smiled.  "Nerves are all tightened up because of the rain.  It's all over now."
	Browdy came and lifted me up from the floor.  "Sorry, Kid," he said softly.  "I guess I lost my head."  He stood me up and then turned around and walked out of the kitchen.  I heard him bang out through the front screendoor.
	Annie stood behind Mrs. Brandon in the doorway.  Mrs. Brandon stepped aside to let Browdy pass and there was Annie, her wide eyes staring at the blood on my face.
	When I saw how sad she looked it made it worse.  If there's one thing I can't stand it's somebody feeling sorry for me.  I wondered if Annie'd seen me on the floor.  Mrs. Brandon had been right in front of her.
	Mrs. Brandon was looking at me like she couldn't see enough.  Her face was dark and she stood there removing her gloves so distractedly and slowly it was obvious she didn't know she was doing it.  I figured the sight of blood was probably exciting to her too; everything else was.  But she looked at Rettig and suddenly threw her head back and laughed like she was determined to ignore the whole incident.
	"I understand," she said.  "I don't see how you three stand it.  I couldn't sleep at all last night and I'll only be sitting in the grandstand watching."
	"Well we get on edge..." Rettig told her and then he looked at me like he wanted to apologize.  
	Mrs. Brandon turned to me.  "Hadn't you better wash your face?" she asked, like I was some little kid.
	I couldn't help it.  I put my hand up to my nose when she said it like I was bent on some discovery.  The nose was there, whole, and there was a slight dampness underneath.
	"I suppose so," I said.  But I didn't want to leave.  I felt if I walked upstairs to wash my face I'd never come back down.  "You mind if I put some water on it downstairs here?"  I pointed over to the downstairs bathroom off the dining room.
	"No, go ahead," she answered.  "I'll get you a towel."  She walked out of the kitchen and rummaged among the shelves of the linen closet.  "Here," she told me, handing me a fresh towel.  She asked Rettig, "Have you eaten?"
	"Yes.  Thanks."  He pointed down at the half-eaten coffeecake.
	I walked past them, down the hall, and turned into the bathroom.  I stood in front of the mirror and put my hands under the cool water.  The blood trickled down my face in irregular lines.  There wasn't much of it.  I splashed the water on my face then grabbed the towel and patted my nose gently.  Rettig and Mrs. Brandon passed by the closed door.
	"How could he stand there?" Rettig was asking.
	"Don't ask me to explain him," Mrs. Brandon said.  "But how could he stand there and watch?" Rettig repeated.  His voice trailed away as they went into the dining room.
	What the hell is he worried about, I thought.  I looked again at the mirror.  A slight trickle of red had started winding down from my nose, so I pushed the towel up to my face and stood there, trying to figure a way to walk into the living room.
	"Where do you want me to put the towel?" I called down the hallway.
	"There's a hamper in the linen closet," Mrs. Brandon called back.
	I walked out and opened the closet.  There was a light blue hamper sitting beside two brooms and a mop.  I lifted the lid and stuffed the towel inside.  Then I walked on down through the dining room and into the living room.
	"Did you find it?" Mrs. Brandon asked.
	"Yes," I answered.  I went over to one of the chairs.
	Mr. Brandon sat in the armchair by the window, fiddling with a pipe but not smoking it.  The window was closed and the dim light from outside made the air look thick in the room.  Mr. Brandon was looking at Rettig, who sat on the love seat.  Mrs. Brandon was thumbing through a magazine.
	"Well, a bit of excitement, hmmn?" Mr. Brandon said.  His eyes looked half shut in the light.  "We can certainly understand it," he added.  He waved his hand in the air like he was forgiving me.
	Rettig took it hard.  He squirmed in his chair.  I couldn't see what was bothering him.  Browdy and I had had other fights.  Browdy damn near killed me once.  But we've never been ashamed of it.
	"My God," I said.  It was the first time I'd looked out the window.  "It's stopped raining."  Rettig jerked his head up and looked.  "Think it's all over?" I asked him.
	"I don't know," he said.
	Mr. Brandon smiled oddly at Rettig, his eyes expressionless behind the thick glasses.  "You don't ever seem to say much about your jumping," he said.  He was probing again.
	Mrs. Brandon looked up at Rettig like she expected him to tear into Mr. Brandon, but all he said was, "I do my jumping at the airport."  And he smiled down at his hands without looking up.
	Mr. Brandon held his eyes on his wife and she returned his stare.  She was acting very superior to her husband, but she looked scared now.  I hadn't seen her look like this since we came.
	"Yes," Mr. Brandon agreed softly.  He squinted his eyes.  "But once you're at the airport there's no turning back.  It would be hard to turn around and come back."
	"I suppose it would be," Rettig answered simply.  "I've never done it."
	Mrs. Brandon rubbed her arms.  I felt like something was going on here I didn't know about.
	"What is the most dangerous stunt?" Mr. Brandon smiled.
	I could tell by the way Rettig looked that Mr. Brandon had gone too far.
	"The cape stunt," Rettig told him tightly.  "You'll see it today."


CHAPTER 9

WHEN BROWDY returned we were sitting down to eat a light lunch and had about given up on him.
	"I been out to the airport," he explained as he sat down with us.  He didn't look at me.  "They said it looks good now until late this afternoon."
	I looked up at the high window above the sink.  The sky was a heavy grey.
	"I got one of the boys from the radio station to announce," Browdy went on, "while we're in the plane;  he'll bring the mike and the speaker equipment out.  I also checked on the plane and the pilot.  You're jumping with us, aren't you, Kid?"
	Just like that he said it, so calm and smooth.
	"Sure," I answered.  "I don't mind getting wet."
	Let me tell you, that didn't go over very big.  Browdy ignored me.
	"Fine, fine," he said.  He was all business now.  Annie set his plate in front of him.  The rest of us had started.  "I told the radio people to say we were going ahead with it," he added between mouthfuls.  "Not that it makes much difference what they say.  And you know what?"  His voice rose.  "They charged me for it.  Said it was an announcement like all the rest of them we've been making.  Said it wasn't news.  Can you beat that?"
	Mr. Brandon smiled at Browdy but didn't say anything.  I looked down.  I ate slowly because I wanted it to last.  I didn't like this jump.  When I raised my head I saw Browdy shoveling in the food and it struck me he might be eating a lot for the same reason --- to make it last.  His hand shook slightly as he raised his glass to his mouth.  Maybe he didn't want to jump either, I thought.  I thought of the fight and how I'd hit home with the crack about him trying to get out of the plane.  I hadn't ever noticed him shaking:  I'd been running off at the mouth when I'd said it.  Maybe he did care about the farmers and their two bucks;  he cared about anybody's two bucks.  But maybe that wasn't all of it.
	Lunch didn't take long, despite the combined efforts of Browdy and me.  Before I knew it Rettig was pushing back his chair.
	"We'd better get started." He set his napkin down on the table alongside his plate.  Browdy got up too.  I rose slowly.
	"What time do you believe we should get there?" Mr. Brandon asked.  "We wouldn't want to miss anything."
	Browdy glanced at his watch.  "If everything goes okay, we should start at one-thirty."
	"We should get there early," Mrs. Brandon said.
	"Rettig asked me to rope off three seats down front for you," Browdy assured her.
	Rettig turned and walked out of the kitchen.  A few seconds later I heard the front screendoor bang.
	"You don't have to get there until the start, Browdy smiled.  "And don't worry about being late.  If you're not there when we're ready we'll wait for you."
	Mrs. Brandon laughed.  "I'll feel like the mayor's wife."  Her husband winced at that.
	Browdy and I went through the house and outside.  Rettig waited on the sidewalk and all three of us went back to the garage.  We piled the equipment into the trailer; and as Rettig threw in the last chute, I felt a drop of water strike against my neck.  I didn't say anything, but I looked up against the dark side of a tree and I could see it was beginning to drizzle.
	The rain was more noticeable when we climbed into the car, after hooking up the trailer.  Rain drops spotted the windshield.  But as we drove out of the driveway, Browdy refused to turn on the windshield wipers.
	"Not worth it," he explained gruffly to nobody in particular.  "It'll stop in a minute."
	Strangely enough he was right.  The drops on the window became fewer and fewer and the mist stopped suddenly as we turned the corner by the Brandons' house.
	We didn't say anything.  The tires of the old Ford slicked along the wet bricks as we drove through the residential section.  I wanted to jump now and the only reason I could find was I wanted to jump for the hell of it.  It seemed like such a good reason though;  it seemed like it was the only reason worth jumping for.  I wanted to turn to Browdy and say, maybe you're right.  But when I thought about it I knew Browdy wasn't right and never would be.  Rettig wasn't right either.  For the hell of it might not be a good reason but it was better than Browdy's:  for the glory of the dollar;  and it was better than Rettig's:  to prove something, not only to himself, like it had been up to now, but maybe to somebody else now too.  Then I thought maybe I was jumping because Annie wanted me to promise I wouldn't --- and I looked out the car window, confused like I always am.  I never stop thinking until I manage to get myself tied up, then all I can do is get mad at Rettig and Browdy.  I always get the feeling I know something is wrong, but I never know what it is.
	It felt like a breeze was coming up.  The wind had seemed to die right after we left the house.  But now I could see the grass and the tips of the well-cropped bushes along the street starting to waver.  The wind was back but it'd changed direction.  It was just what Rettig wanted --- what Browdy had ordered, goddamn him; the wind was in the southwest.  We could drift right up between the stands now;  all Rettig had to do was get us out of the plane on time and we'd really look good.  It was a nice break.  I watched the slow smile spread across Rettig's face as he felt the wind too.  He could put us down right in their laps now.
	We went underneath the railroad tracks, and it wasn't long before the Ford bumped up from the brick road to the concrete highway and the farms stretched out at our sides.  The corn was high and by the way it looked, it could've been sugar cane in some jungle field.  It was hot enough to be way deep in some jungle field.
	"That wind feels good," Rettig said.  "I hope it stays easy like it is now."
	"Looks like a perfect day to jump," Browdy said.  "Right, Kid?"
	"Looks like it'll be all right," I told him.
	Browdy acted disappointed.  He pressed down on the accelerator and the Ford jumped ahead and jerked the heavy trailer.  I couldn't figure out what it was with Browdy unless he'd wanted to rile me.  But Browdy startled himself too and he soon slowed back down to his same conservative poking along.
	There weren't hardly any cars on the highway and the rootbeer stand looked almost deserted, with one car in its large parkway, as we drove up over the low hill.
	"My God, Browdy," laughed Rettig.  "Where in hell are all your people?"
	The airport looked very empty and green from the top of the hill.  The late morning sun glistened off the metal sides and roof of the hangar.
	"They'll be here, don't worry," Browdy said confidently.
	One side's wooden grandstand seats were already up, and a crew of three men in overalls were working on the section across from it.  They weren't leaving us very much room in the middle.  The green grass seemed to sweep down between the bleachers, like it was pouring through some funnel, and then stretched out the other side where it rolled on toward the horizon line, bending in waves as the wind skimmed along its green surface.  The sky was still grey, but shot through now with light streaks.  The clouds seemed to be breaking up way out low on the horizon.
	Browdy turned the car off the highway and onto the dirt road that wound out to the single metal hangar where the plane sat silently in the dim sun, a little to the left of the building.  Then the sun was gone again and greyness dropped down over everything.  The plane was a good one; Browdy was right.  It was a nice trim single-engine Cessna, a four-seater.  The doors were open and somebody was taking the back seat out.  He would be taking the door off on one side as soon as he was through with the seat.
	With the back seat out we'd have room to move around, and we had to have room, at least enough so the static lines didn't get tangled when we made the daisy chain.
	Browdy parked the car behind the hangar where we unhooked the trailer and pushed it inside the low building.  It went.up on the cement flooring easily and we rolled it back toward the rear of the hangar where there were two long wooden tables.  It looked like somebody had cleaned off the work tables and set them up.  We didn't need the tables.  We could pack the chutes on the floor.  But we were always happy to get them.  When you pack a chute on the floor you never know about the dust and sand and the dampness.  It hadn't been very long ago that we needed the tables every time we jumped because we didn't have enough chutes to make it through a program and we'd have to repack them between the jumps.
	A small man came around the corner of the doorway and walked into the hangar toward us.  He'd been the one I'd seen working on the plane.  He had on this white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up on top of his shoulders and a pair of faded khaki pants that were too big and were cinched up around his waist with a wide black belt.  Browdy went over to meet him, and then the two of them came back to where Rettig and I were throwing the chutes out of the trailer onto one of the tables.
	"This is the pilot, boys," Browdy told us.  We shook hands.  "Chuck Miller."  Browdy turned back to him.  "Rettig here will tell you what he wants you to do.  All you got to do is do it," he grinned.  "The main thing, Chuck, is to get back down here on the field as soon as you can after we jump.  A long wait is bad.  The crowd gets restless."
	"Don't worry about it," Rettig told him.  "I'll try to leave you in a good spot so you'll be able to come down fast."
	"But don't try to land before we do," Browdy laughed.
	The pilot didn't know it was a joke until he saw Browdy laughing.  Then he laughed too, nervously.
	Rettig took the pilot aside while Browdy and I finished unloading the gear.  I always get stuck with a good deal of the work.  We piled the olive-colored chute-packs on the end of the table nearest the door so we could duck inside and grab them between stunts.  We didn't want them outside, in case it rained.  Browdy didn't say this, but that's why we were putting them on the table.
	After we finished I went out to the car and brought in our personal gear.  I went over by the end of the second table and started getting dressed.
	We had these black wrestling tights we'd sent for in the Sears catalogue.  We'd tried to get them around Burlington but all they had was blue ones, and Browdy wanted black.  Then we'd had to try all over hell to get black short-sleeved jersey shirts.  Finally we dyed some heavy polo-shirts black.  What we spent all our money on were the three helmets, black with a white line down the middle.  They had the cup chin-straps that we needed.
	The reason why everything had to be black was because it made it easier to see us up against the sky.  Well, really we could've had any dark color:  green, blue; but Browdy wanted black.
	"What time is it?" Browdy asked.  He'd been talking to the pilot and he turned away to look at Rettig and me sitting on one of the tables all decked out in our tights and helmets.
	It was the pilot that looked at his watch.
	"About fifteen minutes to one," he answered in his high nervous voice.
	But I wasn't worried about his nervousness like you might think.  I always like it when the pilot is a little nervous, not too much, but a little.  It meant he wanted to do a good job and was worried about messing the whole show up.  The boys I worried about were the ones that took everything in stride like it wasn't important to them what happened.
	"The stands filled yet?" Browdy wondered out loud.  I didn't know how he expected us to know, because he'd been the only one outside the hangar since we got here.  Except when I'd gone out to the car, and then I'd only gone maybe ten or fifteen feet.
	The pilot was Browdy's boy.  As soon as Browdy said it, the pilot went over to the large opening and stood outside, looking around the side of the hangar.  He seemed like a nice guy.
	"Biggest crowd I've seen in these parts for a long time, he told us when he came back.  He whistled and shook his head.
	Browdy walked over to the hangar door, carrying his helmet.  He never put on his helmet or chute harness until the last minute.  You'd be up in the plane and there would be Browdy asking you to buckle something for him.
	He was looking out toward the plane when I came up alongside him.  That was a sweet little plane.  The Cessna has one top wing and it's easy to jump from.  This one was all maroon with a cream stripe running along the body.  The door on our side had been taken off.  I looked up at the sky and it didn't look good.  It looked darker than it had when we left the Brandons'.  I didn't say anything.  I knew what Browdy thought of my opinion.  Still I didn't like it.
	The crowd was spotted through with bright-colored summer raincoats and the wind felt like it'd turned cooler.  And now that the people were all sitting and milling around the grandstands, the small space in the middle looked even smaller.  I don't know whether it was because I was feeling bad or the whole scene --- the grandstands, the people, the cars strung out along the highway --- looked like it was perched on top of the ground and not part of it, like if you set an ashtray on a smooth tabletop.  On all four sides the land rolled away in green grass and corn, waving with the wind, and it was broken only by a few far out blotches of trees that stood against the sky.
	"Well, let's go," Browdy said.  He walked out toward the nearest grandstand.
	The crowd didn't even notice him as he walked out into the middle of the field, following the long black cord that wound out to a small table where the microphone was.  Browdy picked up the mike when he got out there and turned around.  His voice was barely audible as he tested it softly, his eyes down on the black cord, crossing and recrossing itself as it stretched back from the mike and slipped under the grandstand on our side.
	A man ran out from behind the grandstand toward Browdy.  Rettig had come up behind me and we went out together to the middle.  As we neared the table, the man was running back toward us with his hand on the cord, letting it slide through his fist and return to the ground.  He smiled at us as we passed him, but I didn't hear what he said.  He disappeared behind the grandstand again and then stuck his head out and waved his arms at Browdy, smiling, like everything was all right.
	"We all set?" Rettig asked Browdy.
	Browdy turned away from the mike and swept his head around slowly as he checked the stands.  The people had noticed us in the middle now and were hurrying to get settled in the seats.  Some kids were running along the sides of the field.  Browdy turned back and nodded.
	"Where's Chuck?" he asked.
	I looked around but I didn't see the pilot.  Then we heard the plane.  It swung out from behind the side of the hangar and pulled slowly up the center of the field between the stands.  Man, it was really effective.  The crowd roared.
	"Good boy," Browdy said.  Rettig grinned.
	The announcer ran out toward us again.  He was a thin man and he had on one of those short-sleeve shirts that you can see through and look at the guy's undershirt.  Browdy was in a hurry now because when the man ran up to us, he didn't introduce him.  And the man stood there smiling at Rettig and me like he was waiting.
	"I'll give the commentary before each jump," Browdy told him.  "Then on the two stunts I go up on, you just describe what you see and add a little color.  You'll get all you need to know from what I say before we get into the plane.  Okay?"
	"Sounds all right," the thin man said.  "I've done a lot of sports events, basketball games and stuff like that," he told us.  He looked like he was trying to assure both us and himself he'd do all right.
	"That's right," Browdy laughed.  "You go ahead just like it was a basketball game."  He winked at Rettig.  "Now on the stunts I don't jump, I'll take over the mike.  All you got to worry about is two stunts.  This first one is one of them.  I'll be up in the plane."
	"All right," the man said.
	Browdy brought the mike up to his face and blew into it.  The nose rasped out through the loudspeakers set up at the top corners of each of the two grandstands.  It was the first I'd noticed them.  The crowd was pretty well into the stands by now.
	"Attention, attention please," Browdy called.  His voice bounced back at us from all sides.  The crowd stilled, but Browdy waited a few seconds until there was almost complete silence and I could hear the wind blowing.  Then he went on.  "We're going to start right on time today because of the weather.  We hope we won't be cut short by rain, but we have decided to go ahead because it looks like it's clearing up."
	I didn't see why he even had to bring it up.  If it rained, we'd stop jumping --- that's all.  They'd never know whether the program was over with or not.
	"First of all," Browdy paused, "I'd fike to thank all of you for coming out here today to watch us.  I believe I can promise you you won't be disappointed.  We've got some very fine stunts coming up and I'll be here to announce most of them."  He laughed and gestured to the far end of the stands.  "The ambulance over there is for any of you in case you get sick."
	Browdy motioned the announcer to come up to the mike.  He put his arm around the thin man's shoulders.  "I know you all know Dan Becker here from your radio station WBOK.  Dan here will help us with the announcing."  Applause started here and there through the stands and gathered momentum.  Browdy waited, grinning, until it died down.
	"The first stunt," he continued, "will be what we like to call the daisy chain.  We will attempt to open our chutes in a timed series.  The success of the stunt depends on the timing involved.  Dan here will count from the time we jump until our chutes open.  And you can be the judge of how good our timing really is.
	"To make it a little harder on ourselves, we'll do the stunt backwards.  In other words the last man who jumps from the plane, which will be Mike Rettig here on my right, will open his chute first.  The first man to jump, Johnnie Fickers on my left, will open his chute last.  I'll be the one in the middle."
	He motioned for us to step up to the mike alongside of him.  Then he turned back and said, "And I know I can speak for Johnnie here when I say he hopes the timing comes out all right.  If it does, his chute should open right in your laps."  Browdy started to turn around, but then he stepped back and added, "By the way, my name is Browdy."
	He gave the mike off to the announcer, but then took it back again, saying, "We will be jumping from about two thousand feet."  He handed the mike back and we walked to the door of the hangar.  The announcer was saying something about the pilot.
	We picked up the chutes and then trotted back to the middle of the field.  I hated the daisy chain because the whole stunt was so goddamn phony.  We slipped into the harnesses right out in the middle of the field so they could all see, and threw the static lines, the long pieces of canvas belting with fasteners on one end, over our backs.  The stunt was easy because of the static lines.  All we had to do was fasten one end of the line to something in the plane.  The other end was packed around the chute inside the canvas backpack, so when we jumped the chute was pulled out from the back-pack automatically.  But Browdy'd thought up the daisy chain.  When we'd get inside the plane, I'd hook the fastener to Browdy's harness and Browdy would hook up to Rettig.  Rettig would be the only one of us who'd f asten the end of his line inside the plane, to the ribbing or the pilots seat.  So when we jumped, I went first, Browdy second, and Rettig last.  Rettig's chute wouldn't open until the static line tightened and pulled it out of the back-pack;  Browdy's chute wouldn't open until after Rettig had stopped his descent.  Rettig's chute would open, stop him, and Browdy's static line would tighten and yank out Browdy's chute.  My chute wouldn't be pulled until Browdy's opened.  The length of the static lines, which were all the same, would make sure our "timing" as Browdy called it, was perfect.  The lines were each about sixty feet long.  If there was any danger, it was that my chute might not open in time, but Rettig had that figured out pretty close.  that was his worry and he took care of it.
	The plane taxied up behind us and the roar of the engine went over the loudspeakers.  Rettig climbed up into the plane with Browdy following.  Browdy turned around and gave me a hand, and I jumped up through the doorway.  There was hardly any room and we had a tough time turning around.  It was always like that.  Every single time we jumped we thought we'd have more room, but when we got up into the plane we'd be cramped inside behind the pilot and it seemed like there was less space than we'd ever had.
	Rettig patted the pilot on the shoulder.  "Let's go, Chuckk," he hollered above the motor.  The pilot turned back grinning and then coasted the plane down the runway.  Let me tell you, this was the bumpiest airfield we'd ever been at.
	I remembered the Brandons and Annie and I looked out through the open doorway as we passed the stands, but it was impossible to see them.  "Hey Browdy!" I shouted.  "The Brandons make it?"
	"Over there," he said in my ear.  "Front row center.  Right in the middle."  He pointed out the door.
	I followed his finger.  There they were:  Mr. Brandon in a dark grey raincoat and Mrs. Brandon sporting one of those red rain jackets.  Annie was next to them.  She was waving:  well, what do you know.  I waved back and then ducked my head inside the plane.
	We bumped along the ground, picking up speed.  Rettig smiled over at me, but I turned away and looked out the doorway.  I was getting so I couldn't even look at the guy without calling him down right on the spot and finding out what was the matter.  You didn't call down a guy like Rettig, though, that was the trouble.  I watched the horizon dip as the plane rose off the field.  The engine roared louder and louder, and then dropped off to the point where I could hear again.  We were in the air.


CHAPTER 10

THERE WERE SLIGHT rocking motions as we dipped now and then but all in all the pilot was holding the plane well.  Rettig leaned over the pilot's shoulder and said something.  I looked back out the door and I could see the ground far below patterned out in big green and yellow blocks.  I could see the field and the small grandstands as nothing more than a small square in one of the green blocks.  The plane banked into a turn and headed back.  Rettig stepped in front of me and peered out the doorway as we went over the airfield.  The wind tore at his cheeks making them look hollow.
We went on over, turned into another bank and came back.  Finally Rettig was satisfied he knew right where to start the jump and he reached back and took Browdy's fastener and hooked it to one of the iron loops on his harness.  Then he stepped back from the door and hooked his fastener to one of the exposed ribs of the plane, where the lining had probably been ripped away for some inspection.  Browdy took my fastener and hooked it to his harness and we were all ready.  Rettig motioned me into the doorway and then stepped back just enough so he could see over my shoulder.
	When I got up, Browdy and Rettig strung the static lines out behind me to be sure we wouldn't get all tangled up when we left the plane.  I stepped up to the doorway, reached out, and put the palms of my hands on either side of the opening.  The plane lurched and my hands tightened.  I swayed out through the door slightly and then back in.  The ground below me dipped and swayed as the plane leveled off for the jump.  Rettig leaned over and talked to the pilot again.  Then he straightened up and shouted into my ear:
	"Don't worry now, Kid.  You'll come pretty close, but you'll be all right."
	As Rettig craned his head out the opening between my shoulders and the top of the doorway, it came to me there really wasn't anything between me and the ground, like it always did.  I felt like I was looking into a big opening with a bottom far below.  That realization that there's nothing between the plane and the sky is something you don't usually think about but it's always rolling around in the back of your head.
	The wind was in my face and my eyes were beginning to tear.  I could feel my cheeks tugging down the skin under my eyes.
	"All right now, watch it!" Rettig shouted.
	I bent my legs slightly, ready to hop up into the air and let the blast from the propeller throw me away and under the plane.  I tucked my chin down on my chest and waited.  Then I felt Rettig's hand smack the seat of my pants.
	My legs hesitated at first, but then straightened on their own, and I was out in the air suddenly, falling free under and away from the plane.  I snapped my feet together automatically so the suspension lines couldn't get between my legs, and I bent my head down, pressing my chin tighter and tighter against my chest.  I heard myself counting... three thousand, four thousand...";  and the voice seemed to roar at me from out to my left.  I listened to it;  there wasn't much else I could do.  I knew it was my voice, but I couldn't really accept it, not from way off there to the left like it was.  I didn't feel too good about trusting the voice, but I had to.
	I didn't feel like I was falling.  I felt like I was sitting someplace, suspended by the wind that slid up past my legs to my cheeks and tugged violently on my skin.  I had my eyes open but it didn't make any difference:  the nothing was grey with my eyes open; it was black with my eyes closed.  Eyes open, eyes closed --- it was all the same. only the shade changed.  There was only the count and the wind, and no way for me to be sure which was which.  The voice chanted ominously, "...eight thousand, nine thousand...", like some stranger falling next to me who was bent on saving his life.  My hands listened though.  They edged across my chest, hoping silently.  "Fourteen ... fifteen ... sixteen ..."
	I felt the soft tug at my back, so gentle, almost nothing more than a nudge, like somebody was saying, "look here..."; and I heard the low whistle and the slapping as the canvas risers shot out from behind my shoulders.  Browdy had opened his chute, and my static line had yanked open my back-pack.
	I stiffened, waiting.
	The straps smacked into my shoulders and yanked up against my crotch, biting, going deeper until I thought they were going through me.  Then I heard the sharp whaack of the chute as it popped open.  The sudden jolt sent my chin slugging down against my chest bone and my legs came bounching up in front of my face, breaking into the foreground of the grey nothing.
	The friendly ache of the sharp impact settled up and down my back.  I swung crazily, back and forth, drifting down slowly now.
	I tipped my head back and looked up from under the helmet.  The chute was spread out white above me and there were no holes.  There was something above me I could touch now if I wanted to.  High above me I could see Browdy and Rettig trailing down to my left.  They looked like they were both slipping the chutes, trying to slant down closer to me.  I looked down and there was the green ground coming up fast.  I was sliding in right between the bleachers and it looked like if Rettig and Browdy could slip in a little farther we'd end up strung out right in front of the people, which would be really something for Rettig.
	I swore affectionately up at him --- that calculating sonofabitch --- and the ground came up and up.  I looked away.  There was an old man sitting in the bleachers with an umbrella between his legs; I looked at him and bent my legs slightly.  I tried to keep them loose, but not too loose.
	Then down into the dullness ... the feet touching, giving ... the legs bending ... the smack on my shank, the roll and my shoulder thudding into the soft dirt ... rolling, rolling in the soft dirt.
I rolled over on my back.  I could feel the grass against my neck and the deep grey sky high above me.  The sky was beautiful;  it looked even blue, because it was something to look at again.  The ground held my back like I was some prodigal or something it was happy to see return.
	I saw Browdy and Rettig come down into the ground, but I thought I'd just lie there for a while.  Even after I watched their chutes spill out into flat round pieces of cloth balanced on top of the wet grass, I didn't move.  I just lay there smelling the grass and stuff like that.  To me jumping was not much more than banging my head against a stone wall; it felt so wonderful to stop.
	I wouldn't say I was afraid to die.  Nobody would say that, I guess.  But it wasn't so much I was afraid to die as it was I wanted to live so bad.  There didn't seem to be anything hanging over my head driving me toward an artful death like there was with Rettig, and I felt kind of stupid doing crazy things like stepping out of an airplane at two thousand feet.  After all, that's for birds with wings and everything.
	I stretched out my hands and looked at the sky.  It didn't look blue anymore, but grey, dead grey, like it'd been when we first went up in the plane.
	"You all right, Kid?  Hey!  You all right?"  Browdy ran up to where I was lying on the ground.
	I shook myself.  I tried to keep Browdy out;  I didn't want to lose the feeling I had.  But Browdy kept hollering, and the sky had turned back to grey anyway.  Jumping was just a game; sure a dangerous game, but a goddamn game anyway.  It wasn't my whole life the way it was for Rettig, and, only in a different way, the way it was for Browdy.
	"I said are you all right?"  Browdy stood over me.
	"Yeah, yeah.  I'm okay."  I figured I had to give some excuse for lying there on the ground and worrying the hell out of him so I added, "I hit pretty hard, that's all."
	Browdy laughed and the tense look left his face.  "You had us worried, Kid."  He laughed again.  "Boy, you missed it.  Get up and look over there at Rettig.  The old man almost lit right on top of the microphone."
 "I bet he scared hell out of. your announcer," I told him, emphasizing the your.  But I was sorry I said it.  Browdy's smile vanished and he looked at me like I'd turned my back on him.
	We trotted back to where Rettig stood grinning downfield at us.  Browdy carried my chute in his arms, which I didn't particularly like because when the crowd saw that everybody must've thought I'd been hurt.  They gave me a big hand for running back.
	"How about that?"  Rettig laughed when we reached him.  "I land right on top of the announcer and you get the big hand.  Anything wrong?"
	"He was resting," Browdy said wryly.
	I didn't say anything back because I was really sorry I'd started the whole thing off again.  I looked around for the Brandons and Annie.
	Browdy threw my.chute down with the other two and took the mike from the announcer.  "Attention!  Attention, please.  Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
	The crowd applauded and Browdy grinned.
	I found the Brandons.  Annie was sitting with her arms stiff and her hands plunged down into the lap of her skirt.  Mr. Brandon looked away down the field, watching the plane land.  Mrs. Brandon was watching us.  I turned to Rettig to say something about how funny and stiff they all looked sitting over there;  but Rettig was watching the plane come in between the bleachers, with a sort of deliberateness.  He looked like he was focusing on the plane to avoid something, so I didn't say anything to him at all.
	I looked back and caught Annie watching me.  At least that's what I thought and I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't.  Her face was very white and her eyes looked wide like she'd been squinting and was relaxing now by pulling down the skin on her cheeks.  But her eyes stayed open like that and she looked at me steadily, so I knew that wasn't it.  She looked scared.  Mr. Brandon looked like he didn't feel too well either.  His shoulders were slouched over and his grey raincoat hung down like a tent.
	"Now we come to one of the most dangerous stunts on the program," Browdy was continuing.
	"Mike Rettig here will jump from four thousand feet and leave a trail in the sky you'll be able to follow.  A sort of jet stream, I guess you could call it, right Mike?  But he'll do it with a bag of flour."
	Rettig had come back already with the cape and the special chute.  He threw the canvas bag that held the flour up in the plane.  Then he slipped into the cape.
	"With this specially fitted cape, Browdy went on, "Mike Rettig will attempt to glide down toward the stands, and do a few tricks for you while he's doing it.  That's a pretty big order.  As far as I know, Rettig is the only man in the country who is performing this stunt now."
	Rettig picked up his chute and slipped into the harness.  He'd made a special chute by fitting a standard harness onto an old army reserve chute, because the chute pack had to be in front on this stunt.  He couldn't wear anything but the cape on his back.  I always wanted him to use one of those old air force chutes where you sit on the chute pack, but Rettig didn't like them.  We had a couple of reserves and it was easy to slip a harness on one of them.  We also had three capes.  Don't get me wrong; not for Browdy and me, but three for Rettig in case one got torn or something.
	I always worried about this one.
	Rettig turned away to climb up into the plane as he buckled down the bottom of the cape.  Then he changed his mind and came back to where I was standing.
	"Check that buckle for me, will you, Kid?" he said.
	His voice sounded strange and tight.
	I tightened up the belt around his waist that held down the point of the cape.  "Turn around and raise your arms," I told him.  He turned around and held his arms straight out from his sides.  The cape formed a triangle from his wrists down to the belt around his waist.
	Then he turned around and faced me.  "How's it look?"  He was looking at me like he wasn't saying what he wanted to.  I wanted to tell him what I found out lying on the ground after the jump but there was no time for it now.  We both just stood there uncomfortably.  Then he grinned and turned around, climbing up into the plane.
	"Watch your arms," I hollered up to him.
	If he came out of the door of the plane with his arms spread the wind would snap the cape back and break both of his collar bones.  And you can't pull a reserve chute ripcord on your belly when both your collar bones are busted.  Rettig had to make sure his arms were tucked up into his chest when he came out of the plane, then he could open them out gradually.  Rettig disappeared inside the plane and I didn't know whether he heard me or not.  He came back to the doorway and I could see him strapping the bag of flour between his legs.  The canvas bag had holes around the bottom and some of the flour was spilling out already on the floor of the plane.
	"You all ready, Mike?" Browdy asked over the microphone.  The crowd was a little uneasy like it always gets when the preparations take up time.  Rettig nodded back.
	Browdy knew how to handle a crowd.  "We call this the Betty Crocker stunt," he said.  The crowd roared and they were back with us again.
	The plane had been idling, but now it roared up and started edging along the grass.  I wanted to tell Rettig this stunt wasn't too important; it wasn't the whole world.  I even took a couple of steps toward him, but by this time the plane was rolling past us, and I turned and came back.  I'd look silly running alongside the plane telling Rettig the stunt wasn't too important.  But I wanted to tell him he was wrong and that I'd found out a couple of things;  I wanted to tell him now that I knew I could say it.
	But the plane was past the end of the stands already.  I watched the wheels come off the ground slowly, and then the gap between the plane and the grass widened quickly until I could see the grey sky under the wheels.
	Browdy kept up a steady line of chatter, telling the crowd what was going to happen:  about how Rettig would rip open a corner of the bag of flour before he jumped and the flour would stream out through a spout and the holes around the bottom of the bag.
	I watched the plane gaining altitude in the sky.
	The feeling of achievement over my own jump was already slipping away from me.  It was always like that, for me at least.  There was something insecure, undurable about a parachute jump.  There was something that didn't last.  After the jump was all over with I never had anything left from it.
	The plane went up higher and higher, circling so it'd stay over the field.  Once --- in Moline I think it happened --- Rettig had lost the field and jumped far out over farmland.  Mike had some control with the cape, but not an awful lot.  If he wasn't pretty much over the airport when he jumped, he'd have a tough time hitting it.  But for Rettig the stunt was ruined if he didn't get close to the stands.  Nobody else would've worried about it too much.  With the flour you can see a man all over hell as long as he's up in the sky, but for Rettig the stunt was never good unless he landed in front of everybody like he was supposed to.


CHAPTER 11

THE PLANE CIRCLED high above us, a tiny fly, an inconsequential black speck in the sky.
	"... there he goes," Browdy said.  He broke into his own commentary.  Individual voices in the crowd blended into an excited humming.
	I couldn't make out his figure.  All I could see was the big puff of white high up in the sky that was left after Mike had left the plane and the wind had caught the flour for the first time.  A looping stream of white extended itself from the puff and followed a speck down that was gradually becoming Rettig's figure.  The speck looped, glided and banked but the ribbon of white was relentlessly on its tail.  The thin flour stream twisted and turned as it stretched down toward us. The first puff of white, the solid ball in the sky that'd marked Rettig's exit was now disintegrating as the wind stretched it and then pulled it into thin wisps and blew it away.  The ribbon was next.  Although it was thin and white where it was close to Rettig, above him the beginning of the flour stream was floating to pieces.  The flour line looped and twisted as it followed Rettig down, but above the wind broke it up soon after it was formed.  It looked like there was a white tail tied to Rettig.  You couldn't tell where he'd begun his jump,  there was only the beginning of a few seconds before, a beginning that was racing with him and following him through the air.  It looked like if Rettig stopped, the beginning would catch up to him.  Of course I knew this couldn't happen.  Rettig wasn't about to stop right up there in the air.
	Down, down the white line came.  Now I could see the dark figure turning end over end in the air and I knew Rettig wasn't gliding anymore but had snapped his arms back into his chest to fold the cape before he pulled the chute.  I waited, but he kept coming down.  The white stream choked off behind him; the flour was all gone and the wind blew away its past.
	The figure dropped through the silent sky.  Goddamn it, Rettig.  The crazy fool had to see how far he could drop, how close he could come.
	"Now he'll pull open his chute," Browdy told the crowd.  He spoke into the mike but his voice was high like he wasn't telling them anything but trying to reassure himself.  He knew Rettig should have opened his chute by now.
	I already knew it was too late.  I stood helpless, my tongue rubbing against my teeth, as I watched him slip down farther and farther.
	"Oh my God!" Browdy cried out over the loudspeakers.
	The body slugged into the ground, not more than a hundred feet from the stands.
	There were shrill screams from both sides of me and a deadly building murmur started.  Browdy dropped the mike and started running.  I followed him out to where the small dust cloud had already begun to settle back down to the earth.
	As we ran we could see the people coming out of the stands.  The ambulance whined and I could hear the lugging noise of its tires as they thumped along the soft ground.  I had to force myself to keep running.  I didn't want to have to look at it.  I wanted to run the other way, admit it happened and then try to forget it.  But my legs were running for my eyes.  My eyes stretched ahead; they wanted to see!
	There wasn't much to see.
	There was no blood.  The small, balled-up lump was covered with mud and grass.  Browdy reached down, but then drew away suddenly.  I came closer and bent down.  There was no face, there was only a flat cake of mud where there had been features.  His thigh bones had been rammed up through his body, splintering, and then cutting up through his armpits.  They poked up out of the tops of his shoulders like two candles on either side of his head.  They were very white and sharp.  His shin bones had been driven out through the empty flesh of his thighs and showed their sharpness above the torn skin.  There was no blood anywhere that I could see to remind or hint of life.  There was only the mud and the grass and the torn limp clothing that flopped when we tried to roll him over.  Over everything there was the flour, streaking down the black here and there.
	"The hell with it," I told Browdy.  "What's the use of turning him over?"
	"There might be some chance," Browdy said softly, and he repeated it.  "There might be some chance."
	"Chance!" I shouted, "Christ, there isn't even a body here.  For Christ's sake, Browdy, admit that he's dead and there's nothing we can do."
	"Turn over his leg," Browdy said.
	I looked for the leg and finally saw a boot.  I picked it up but the boot came away from the lump, detaching itself.  I held it in my hand, looking at it.  Then I let it drop to the ground.  Browdy was trying to raise the helmet off the head, and as I looked over at him the helmet came away with the flat mud still inside it.
	Browdy gagged.
	"I'm sorry, I almost bawled, "but goddamn it, I can't stand here and tear pieces away from his body."
	Browdy stared at me blankly.  He said the words slowly, almost mechanically.  "But we don't know for sure until the doc gets here."
	I noticed the man at Browdy's shoulder.  He shook his head.  "No, no --- I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for him."  I realized the doctor had been standing there all the time.
	I got angry.  "All right now, goddamn you, Browdy, for once admit something.  Will you put Rettig's goddamn head back down there on the ground and admit he's dead?"
	Browdy looked at the helmet and then, like he was thinking out everything he was doing, he placed it back down on the ground.  Browdy straightened back up and looked at me silently.
	The people began to push around the body and the tight circle of space grew tighter and tighter.  There was no murmuring except in the back from the people who couldn't see.  Men and women fought their way to the inner circle, peeked, and let themselves be carried back to the outskirts where they told others what they'd seen.  A tall thin man in bib-overalls fought his way through the crowd, forgetting he carried a small girl on his shoulder.  When she screamed at the sight, he looked up suddenly, told her not to look and then carried her back out of the way where she couldn't see.
	I looked down at Rettig.  The chute pack was still intact, the ripcord ring still hooked to the front.  He hadn't even tried to open the chute.
	I felt some small pricks on my neck, but I didn't really notice them until they grew more frequent.  It had started to rain.  Now when it was all over.  We had hoped the rain would wait until we were finished.  Well, it had waited all right.
	The ambulance driver came over and talked to Browdy.
	"Look," he said quietly, his fat face working on a wad of gum, "this is a mortuary ambulance.  We can take him right to the mortuary if you want."
	Browdy nodded his head and stepped back.  The heavy man and his assistant picked up the body, the best they could, and set it in the back of the ambulance on the stretcher.
	The reporters had come over to Browdy:  there were two of them, I guess.  Browdy was beginning to come back to life.  He began to talk to them and his face gradually became more and more animated.  Before long he was moving his hands in gestures.
	"I'm going to walk back, I told him; and then I turned away before he could say anything.
	The rain had soaked my shirt and it stuck to my back as I crossed the field and passed around the half-emptied grandstand.  I noticed the rain had turned my brown boots dark although I couldn't feel that my feet were wet.  I went across the grass and out the dirt road until I struck into the highway, and then I turned and walked along the road toward town.  The water soaked into my hair and ran down the side of my face and along the back of my neck.
	I tried to remember Rettig, but it was like the rain had already washed away his image, and I could think of him only as a pile of mud-covered clothing.  That wasn't Rettig at all.  "Sometimes a man lives to die," Rettig had said; and that was all I could remember of him.  Why had Rettig been drawn toward death?  I'd stood and watched it all happen.  Hell, I'd thought it wasn't any of my business except in the way it might affect me.  It might be dangerous, I'd thought; dangerous to me.  I'd stood and watched the whole thing happen.  I was the one who hadn't said anything.  Now he was dead.  He was my friend and I had lost him.  I couldn't say it was none of my business anymore.  And Rettig was more dead than my parents, who had died in a clean white hospital room.  Rettig had faced death;  he had gone to meet it; he was devoted to it.  Now what was left?  Nothing.  Rettig didn't exist anymore, not even in my mind, except as a pile of brokenness and that wasn't Rettig.
	The highway cement had turned brown and slick with the wet, and the prairie grass that grew along the road flicked and waved with the wind.
	I should have told him, I thought.  He left nothing.  If I'd said one thing, or if I'd run alongside that goddamn plane, I could've been called a friend.  Browdy and I weren't his friends.  Rettig left nothing but the sight of his jump in the eyes of a couple thousand people who would go home where the worries about payments on the television set and the refrigerator would wipe away the memory of the jump like it had never happened.  Oh, it might crop up in a bad dream now and then.  And the whole story would lie on the page of a newspaper buried in the files of a newspaper office --- but all this'd be dead just like Rettig.
	A car slicked past throwing up spurts of water behind its tires.  The car tracks blended slowly into the wet brown color of the pavement and before the hum of the car disappeared they were gone, and there was nothing but the cool air and the brown cement and the rain and me.  And there was the wind.
	I suppose I was in some kind of shock.  I hardly saw more cars sluice over the pavement and by me as I walked over the hump, the dividing line where the highway turned to brick and the country changed to town.  Rettig, I thought, if I'd just grasped your arm once I would've been your friend and there'd be something left.  There's no honor or glory in death.  I decided to shout it:  "There's no honor or glory in death!"  I raised my fist as I said it, and I stopped walking.
	A horn blared.  Tires whistled and then shrieked.  A car jerked and slid.  I jumped for the edge of the road.
	The car rocked from side to side as its wheels skidded and the driver steered first to the left and then back to the right to keep the car from overturning.
	Mud oozed into my shirt.  I raised up and wet mud clung to my body.  I stood up hesitantly and the heavier mud dropped to the ground, leaving only the dark brown stains.  The rain pelted against my face, washing the wet mud down my neck.  I pulled my shirt out of the front of my pants, doubled it over my hands, and then wiped my face with the inside.  When I stuck it back inside my pants I could feel the cool damp mud against my stomach.
	Ahead, the car pulled away from where it had stopped along the road shoulder.  The driver must've seen me stand up.  I laughed, for some reason.  But when I pulled a cigarette out from the damp and stained package my hands were shaking so I couldn't light it and I had to throw it away.  I started to walk.
	All I remember is walking, walking, walking.  It took me a long time to get back to the Brandons', probably even longer than it had to because I didn't really want to go there.  I didn't want to see them.  "Oh, how terrible!" they would say.  And what could I answer.
	No one was home yet when I reached the house.  The windows were all open and it was still raining.  Mrs. Brandon's little rebellion, I thought.  She must've opened them as she left.  I had to laugh at the way it had turned out for her.  The rain had blown in on the curtains; the big table by the windows was all wet and the upholstery on the wing-backed couch was wet clear through.  The rain was still coming in so I closed the windows back down.
	Then I walked slowly upstairs and it started to sink into me again that Rettig was dead.  I almost got sick when I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and washed the mud off my face.  I didn't feel much like taking a shower, so I went into my room and stripped off the tights and my shirt and then dried off with a towel.
	I went over and flopped on the bed, but I couldn't sleep.  I looked out the window at the rain pelting against the glass.  The water sliding down the pane made the tree limbs outside waver and blow.  I couldn't stop thinking that if I'd spoken one word to Rettig maybe he wouldn't have gone into the ground like that.  Again and again I saw myself take that step back from the plane and away from Rettig.  I heard the roar of the plane motor and then listened while it died away.
	What had he died for?  Nothing.  Rettig had died for absolutely nothing.  That was why I couldn't stop thinking about it.  His death didn't mean anything.  It was for nothing.  He had just walked out and died.  I turned over and buried my face in the pillow.  Rettig had jumped in front of all those people and by now it meant nothing to them.  By now they'd probably avoided thinking about his death, except maybe for a few small kids wondering.
	But am I different, I thought;  why do I jump?  Not to make money;  I could do so many other things to make money.  Not because it's easy; there are so many things that are easier, so much easier.  I don't jump because I like to;  there is nothing for me, no pleasure in facing death.
	Then I realized it; yes,  that's why I jump.  To face death.  To face death is hard but to face life is harder.  I jump because it's possible to avoid life by facing death.  I fear life much more than I fear death, I thought.  That's why I jump.  That's why Rettig jumped; that's why Browdy jumps.  That is the reason for jumping;  the deadly fear of life.  Death is not the test of a man.  A man's life is the only test he'll ever have.  Facing death is like signing my name over and over to a letter I put off writing because I'm afraid to say anything.
	Rettig, if I had helped you, if I had taken your arm once and stopped you for a moment.  If I had spoken one word.  You might have had the strength to face life.  Rettig, my friend.
	Today you signed your name to a useless blank sheet of paper.
	I didn't feel right about sobbing into the pillow like a little kid, so I rolled over and cried with my face up.  I watched the rain beating against the glass, washing down the pane in widening streaks, blurring the tree limbs.


CHAPTER 12

THE FRONT DOOR slammed shut.
	"You upstairs there?"  It was Browdy calling up the stairway.
	I closed my eyes and tried to ignore him.  I tried to shut him off, not think about him --- do anything but answer and admit he was there.  But when I heard him step up on the first stair, I had to realize I couldn't get rid of him.  I tried to stall.
	"Yeah.  What do you want?"
	Browdy came on up the stairs.  "You okay?" he asked.
	I got off the bed and went down the hall in my shorts.  As I turned into the bathroom I saw his head coming up the last of the steps.  Before he got to the doorway I splashed cold water on my swollen eyes, and finally I looked up from the towel and saw him as he was leaving the doorway and on his way down the hall.  When I went back he was in my room.
	"The Brandons okay?" I wanted to know.  Browdy sat on the edge of the bed.  His hands hung loosely between his knees.
	"Fine," he said softly.  "I've never seen anything like that guy.  It didn't seem to bother him at all.  He's seen some things in his day.  Mrs. Brandon had a bad time for a while but she seemed to snap out of it when he said something to her."
	"How's Annie?"
	Browdy answered vaguely like he'd never thought of her.  "I didn't see much of her until we came back."  He put his boots up on the foot of the bed and stretched out with his arm over his eyes.
	I went over to the suitcase and got a clean pair of pants.  I didn't ask Browdy where the clothes were that I'd left out at the airport.  I didn't want to bring up that subject.  But Browdy had different ideas.
	"Say, Kid," he said, like he was trying to figure out how to tell me something.  He moved his arm off his forehead and looked up at me.  His face was drawn and the expression on it looked brittle like it was going to split any minute.  "I don't like to talk about this anymore than you do, but we got to have some money for the burial and everything."
	"My God, don't we have enough from today?"
	"No.  Not if you figure we got to clean up some old debts too, and, then have enough to get out of here after it's all over."
	I agreed with that.  I couldn't think of anything worse than being stranded in Bridgeville.
	"He ever say anything about a family or relatives to you, Kid?" Browdy asked.
	I shook my head.  "No, nothing."  I got a clean shirt from the suitcase and tried not to look at Browdy.
	"Me either." He put his arm up over his head again.
	I knew what he was driving at.  First I thought I'd make him say it.  Then I thought the hell with it, it wasn't Browdy's fault.  "We'll have to make another jump," I said.
	"I don't see what else we can do.  Tomorrow's the Fourth and we could give a short program, maybe only one jump."  He brought his arm down and propped his head up with his hand.  "We could call it a memorial jump.  What do you say, Kid?"
	"All I do is jump?" I told him.
	"I take care of the rest," Browdy answered sadly.  "Haven't I always?"  He sat up slowly and swung his feet to the floor.  "You think we ought to say anything to the Brandons?"
	"What are you going to do?  Keep it a secret?"
	"No, I guess not."
	"We'd better let them know.  What can they say?"
	Browdy got up and shook his head.  "I don't know, but I don't think they're going to like it."  As I followed him out of the room he added, "Mrs.  Brandon's making some coffee."
	Well, that's great, I thought.  In spite of the hot weather, Mrs. Brandon's making coffee.  A ritual for Rettig's death.  Something has changed because he died.  We would've had lemonade for sure.
	Browdy and I went down the stairs, and when we came into the living room Mr. Brandon sat in the chair, slowly and disinterestedly examining his pipe collection.  He held a misshapen old pipe in his hand and was turning it over and over.  He didn't look up immediately as we walked in, but when we were almost on him he said without looking up, "Sit down, sit down.  Annie and Elizabeth are in the kitchen.  I'm sure we can all use some coffee."
	The old man was acting like he'd taken over again.  He looked at me like he was studying me and trying to find out how I'd taken Rettig's death.
	Browdy and I sat down on the couch facing him.  I noticed the back of it was still damp and I wondered if Mr. Brandon knew about the windows, the rain and the curtains.
	"I suppose you'll want to get away as soon as possible now," Mr. Brandon said.  He turned the pipe slowly in his small, thin hands.
"That depends..." Browdy said.  He turned to me.
	"We've decided to make another jump to cover the expenses of burial."  I felt my own words strike at me.
	Mr. Brandon was upset.  "Look here, you don't expect..."
	Mrs. Brandon and Annie came in with the coffee and Mr. Brandon clipped off what he was about to say.  He looked down at his pipe, gave it a quick twist, and then set it back on the table.
	I thought I'd tell them if he wouldn't, so I repeated, "Browdy and I have decided to stage a memorial jump tomorrow."
	It hit them pretty hard.  I thought Mrs. Brandon was going to drop my coffee, her hand shook so as she handed it to me.  "But why," she asked and her voice shook too.  "Why?"
	"We'll need the money for Rettig," I said.  That was something at least, I thought; this time it was for something.
	Browdy got up from the couch.  He looked like he was about to be sick.  His face was pale as he said hurriedly, "I think I'll go out for a while."  He looked back at me like he wanted to ask me to go with him, but he seemed to change his mind.  He left by himself.
	Mrs. Brandon sat down.  "I don't understand ..."
	"We have to do it, Mrs. Brandon," I said.
	"But it's so senseless," she said.  "It's almost like something your father would do."
	"Did do, Elizabeth," her husband corrected her bitterly.
	They were really throwing the book at me.  "I'm afraid I don't remember much about my father.  My mother either."
	"I knew your mother very well," Mr. Brandon said.  His wife's hand jerked and her cup rattled against the saucer.  "Your mother was a beautiful woman."
	Annie rose nervously and went into the study.  After Annie closed the door Mrs. Brandon looked over at it with a relieved expression.
	"I cannot imagine how your father could have been so reckless with her life," Mr. Brandon said, and he ran over the words like it was a phrase he'd used many times.
	Mrs. Brandon sighed.  "John, John.  Let's not go into that again."  Her voice pleaded.  "You can't blame the entire accident on him."
	"I don't see why not," he answered sharply.  "He was completely responsible."
	Mrs. Brandon turned to me.  "Your uncle treats your father very unjustly."  Her mouth formed into a tight small smile.  "But you see he was very fond of your mother."
	I couldn't sit there any longer and listen to them.  I got up and walked to the door of the study.  I tried to think of something to say to them.  I couldn't.  I walked into the study and left them sitting alone.
	Annie was on the couch and I sat down beside her.  We didn't say anything.
	Mrs. Brandon opened the door.  "Are either of you hungry?"
	"No, not me," I said.  I looked at Annie.  She shook her head.
	"I'll leave the sandwich meat out if you change your minds," Mrs. Brandon said.  Her face looked drawn and tired.
	After she'd left, closing the door slowly, Annie turned to me.  "You don't like them, do you?"
	"I don't know; I just don't know, Annie."
	After a brief silence she said, "I worried about you when they said you had walked off in the rain."
	I didn't answer her.  I didn't seem to have any answers for anybody, even Annie.
	We must've sat without speaking much at all for a couple of hours.  Finally Annie said she thought she'd better go upstairs.  I wanted to stay for a while longer so I didn't get up when she did.  She left the door open as she went into the living room, and I heard her walk up the steps slowly like she didn't know whether she wanted to reach the top of the stairs or not.
	I looked at the yellow streetlight.  In the bright glare I could see the moths swirling around it and then dropping to the ground in slight lifeless arcs as they were killed by the same artificial heat that attracted them.
	I must've sat there for about an hour watching them.  By the time I went upstairs the light under Annie's doorway was out and there wasn't a sound in her room.
	I could hear voices though when I passed Mr. and Mrs. Brandon's room.  The light shone under the doorway and the voices sounded like they'd been going on a long time.
	"Listen Elizabeth, you can't act this way.  Don't you think I saw you down there in the garden?" Mr. Brandon was saying.
	I stopped and stood still, listening.
	"How stupid do you think I am?"  It was Mr. Brandon's voice again.  "Oh, I sat here and saw you get up.  Then when I heard the front door close I waited for you, Elizabeth.  I waited for you a long time."
	"Yes, you waited a long time," she said.
	"I went down to the landing."
	"I know, I know," she answered bitterly, and you were afraid to go any farther.  Why were you so afraid, John?"
	"I wasn't afraid.  I saw the two of you on the couch.  After all, Elizabeth, I didn't want to catch you like a common..."
	"You were afraid."
	"How could you do it, Elizabeth?  That's what I don't understand.  How can you sit there so shamelessly and be proud of it, of all things?"
	"I can be proud of it because you were afraid."
	He laughed nervously.  "You certainly can't expect me to understand that.  You can't expect me to take this lightly.  I'm serious, you know.  I don't see how I can live in the same house with you after this."
	There was a pause like he was waiting for her to answer, but she said nothing.
	"How can you act so innocent in the whole matter.  It's as if you weren't yourself."  His voice grew stronger.  "Did he force himself on you?  Is that it?  I could understand that."
	"I've told you," she said quietly, "no, he didn't force himself on me.  I forced myself on him, do you hear me?  I forced myself on him!"
	"If you had only heard me at the landing."
	"Yes, if only I had," she said sleepily.
	"I made enough noise."
	"I know you did, John."
	"Then you did hear me.  You don't think he heard me, too?  He didn't see me, did he?"
	"I believe he did."
	"He saw me standing there on the landing?  He saw me watching you both?"
Oh, not right away.  I'm sure he didn't see you right away.  I did, but I'm sure he didn't.  He saw you ... later."  She laughed at him then.
	I started down the hallway.  Browdy's door was open slightly.  I walked in and shook him.
	"Browdy.  Hey, Browdy.  Wake up!"
	He sat up in bed.  "What?  Oh."  He rubbed his eyes.  "What's the matter  ?"
	I waited for him to wake up fully.  Then I sprung it at him.  "I'm going to jump the cape tomorrow."
	He stared at me as if he hadn't heard me.  "What?" he said finally.  "Are you outa your mind?"
	"Look, are you going to help me or aren't you?"
	Browdy scratched his head.  "Sure, Kid.  I guess if your mind's made up..."
	"Tomorrow morning I want you to fix up a reserve chute for me.  We got the extra capes so we don't have to worry about that."
	"Sure, sure," Browdy yawned.
	"Are you awake?" I asked him.  I was afraid he wouldn't remember.
	"Kid, if I wasn't awake when you first came in, I'm sure awake now."
	I went on into my own room then and stood in the middle of the floor, staring at the steel bed.  I walked over to the window.  It was only a few feet away from the window in the Brandons' bedroom.  I thought of Mr. Brandon standing not more than a few feet away from me last night.
	Then I took off my clothes and dug into my suitcase for some pajamas.  They were almost brand new.  I hadn't worn them for a long time.
	After I put them on I went out of the room into the hallway and closed the door tight.  When I came to Annie's door I opened it quickly and stepped in.  She was asleep;  she didn't wake up for a few minutes.
	For a few minutes she didn't even know I was there.


CHAPTER 13

I WENT BACK to my own room as soon as light began to appear in the sky.
I figured Browdy would wake me up and there wasn't any reason to worry about oversleeping, but still I couldn't get to sleep.  The side of the sky I was looking at through my window was dark and I lay on the bed waiting for the dawn to reach it.
Well, you know how it is:  one minute you're a hero;  next minute you're scared as hell.  I had to admit right about this time that jumping with the cape wasn't so great as I thought it was last night.  I kept seeing Rettig's body on the ground with the mud all over it; and no matter how many times I told myself it couldn't happen to me, I didn't believe it.
The trouble was it could happen to me.
I'd never jumped with the cape.  Sure, I'd talked to Rettig about it.  I knew how to estimate the wind, the line of descent;  I was sure I'd hit close to the airport.  But I didn't want to hit as hard as Rettig did.  I was feeling pretty low about Annie, too.
Rettig had told me about guys he'd heard of or known that had jumped the cape.  A lot of them had never pulled open their chutes and ridden the cape into the ground.  And you didn't know whether you were the kind of guy that'd do that until you at least made one cape jump.  I guess even then you didn't know.  But hell, Rettig had always said if a guy really wanted to pull the ripcord there wasn't a thing on God's earth could stop him.  I figured that sounded pretty good.  I hoped I was one of the ones that wanted to pull the chute bad enough;  of course, that was another thing you didn't know until you'd tried it.
Finally I guess I went to sleep because the next thing I knew Browdy was shaking my feet.
"Hey, come on, Kid."
"Okay, okay."
"You been saying that for the last half-hour.  Then you go back to sleep," Browdy said.  "I'm going to stay here this time until you get outa bed."
I opened my eyes and sat up.  The sun came in through the open doorway and I could see the sky was blue outside the window.  I squinted up at Browdy, trying to figure out whether or not he'd go away.  He looked anxious, so I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat there for a minute, rubbing my eyes.
"I got everything all set," Browdy said.  "The radio's been at it all morning and the paper's got a spread on it."
"What are you talking about?"
"The memorial jump.  Come on, Kid.  Everybody in this whole town is going to be out at that airport."
Here was Browdy believing his own publicity.  I couldn't help laughing.  I sat on the bed and laughed at Browdy.
"Look, Kid.  You got to get hold of yourself if you're going out there and jump with the cape."
I laughed again.  "What would you do if I told you I couldn't get hold of myself and that you'd have to get somebody else?"
"I'd say you were crazy.  You're not serious?"
"No.  Say, what time is it?"
"It's eleven.  Come on, Kid.  Snap to it."
I got up and went down the hallway and washed up.  When I came back Browdy was still sitting on the bed.  "Is Annie downstairs?" I asked him.  I tried to sound casual.
"No," he answered.  "Mrs.  Brandon said she's not feeling too good.  I guess yesterday was too hard on her."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Hurry it up, Kid, will you?"  Browdy got up and walked to the door.  "I'll he downstairs," he said as he left.
I thought about going down the hall and looking in on Annie but I talked myself out of it --- or rather, I couldn't talk myself into doing it.  But I figured maybe it'd be better for everybody all around if Annie stayed in her room for the rest of the day.  I knew she didn't want me to jump again.  Hell, I didn't want to either.
But when I passed her door, I felt like she was right on the other side, waiting for me to come in and say something.  I walked by and went on down the steps.
Mr. Brandon was sitting alone in the living room, staring out the window.  The window was wide open and the blinds had been pulled up clear to the top of the casement.
I could hear Mrs. Brandon in the kitchen talking to Browdy.  When I walked past Mr. Brandon he didn't even look up, but just sat there puffing on his cigarette.
"Come on, Kid, Browdy said when he saw me.  "We don't have much time."
Mrs. Brandon turned from the stove where she was watching the coffee, but she didn't say anything.  She lifted her eyebrows, but then like she thought better of even saying hello to me, she turned back to the stove.  I sat down at the table and when she came over and poured the coffee, her face was flat and blank.
Browdy hovered over me as I drank the coffee like he was afraid I'd break before he got me out to the airport.
I was in the car before I really had the chance to think about it.
"Nice day for it," Browdy said as we pulled away from the house, like he was trying to make conversation.  "Wind's not bad."
"Yeah," I said.
Browdy leaned back and stiffened his arms against the steering wheel.  "You know," he told me, "I been thinking.  If we can pull enough from this jump maybe we can put up some kind of statue."
"Where?" I asked him.  Kee-rist!
"I don't know.  In the cemetery, I guess."
"Who jumps for my statue?"
"Cut it out, Kid," he glared.  "Nothing's going wrong this time.  You take it easy."
"Okay, okay.  Don't get so excited."
It was a good day to jump:  clear and sunny.  Not that it was an easy day or anything.  It was the kind of day when I liked to jump.
As we drove along, Browdy sat straight in his seat and I knew he was conscious of the lettering on the car doors.  I listened to the hum of the car tires on the brick street.  We turned a corner and went by the old houses, sitting majestically and lifelessly way back from the edge of the road.  Then we drove under the tracks, Browdy honking the horn as we turned out from underneath and to the left.  Ahead I could see the brick ending and the white concrete of the state highway starting.  The houses along each side of the road were spaced widely apart and wedged under single trees that appeared occasionally.  Then we were by them and the white highway stretched out before us as we hit the low point and started up the hill.  I could see the drive-in stand.  The parking lot was packed with cars now and the aluminum trays glistened on the car doors.
It was hot in the car.  The sun bounced up from the white cement.  There was a slight wind stirring the field grass that grew on the road shoulder between the concrete and the barbed-wire fencing, and when the wind took a sudden turn the tips of the grasses flipped over easily and bent with it.  I got so interested in the grass that I turned back to watch it.  The grass just dipped as the car passed, and then went with the wind again.  The wind felt cool on my neck.
As we came up to the airport I could see the paper signs with splashes of red, white and blue, all strung across from telephone pole to telephone pole.  American flags, small ones made out of paper, were nailed to the phone poles all the way down the highway, the length of the airport.  There were signs promising fireworks and, of course, the memorial jump.  But the jump signs looked temporary and colorless.  They were printed in black thick letters on oblong sheets of white cardboard and tacked onto each of the poles.  I don't know how Browdy'd done it so fast.
We turned off into the rutted dirt road that was still muddy and I could see the giant wheels set up on wire and swaying flimsily in the wind.  There were wire wheels, wire flags, and one or two slogans I couldn't make out now in the daylight since none of the flares were lighted, all placed close together along the wire.
"You buy the fireworks too, Browdy?" I grinned at him.
"No," he explained very seriously.  "This is where the town has its fireworks display.  I guess they're going to start it as soon as we finish.  Not the fireworks, they'll wait 'til it gets dark.  But the program."
"How you going to get the people to pay?"
"We're not selling any tickets.  We'll pass baskets before you jump.  Everybody will donate," he added confidently.
Browdy pulled up at the hangar.  The steel building was decorated with crepe paper.  Some of the crowd had settled in a small picnic grove I hadn't noticed before out in back of the hangar.  Thick wooden picnic tables had been placed out in the sun.  It looked odd to see a picnic grove without any trees.
Fenced land ran along each side of it and all it really was was a space where there was grass instead of the corn that ran along the barbed-wire on three sides.  There was a small ball diamond and some of the men, their white shoulders sticking out of ribbed undershirts, played ball with their sons.  The game moved along rigidly like everybody was trying hard to have a good time.  All I could think of was here it was the Fourth of July and these guys hadn't had a chance to take their shirts off all summer.
Browdy parked the car as close to the hangar as he could get and I could tell he was afraid of that baseball game.  I could've told him that nobody would poke a ball far enough to worry the old Ford, and even if they did I couldn't see what hurt they could do.
But I didn't say anything and Browdy went around the car after he got out and rolled down both of the back windows.  The front windows were already down.  When he finished he looked over at the game briefly as he walked to the door of the hangar where I was waiting for him.  He gave them a cool look and then walked into the shade of the hangar.
The equipment was all stacked on the long table next to the wall, like it was before.  I figured Browdy must've come out this morning and packed the chutes we'd used yesterday.  Browdy was a good man to have.
He ducked behind the table and came out with a reserve chute.
"How's this?" he said.  He handed it to me.
He'd attached a standard chute harness to the reserve.  I checked it over.  It was a small chute --- about a foot long and six inches wide.  It was about four inches thick and on one of the flat sides there were two fasteners.  On the other side was the ripcord and handle.  When you pulled the handle on this one the chute was sprung into the air, and you usually got a shock like something had grabbed you around the waist and jerked you forty feet, when the chute opened.  I gave a few light tugs on the handle and the wire held firm.
"Looks good," I told him.  "Thanks."
"We're only going to do one --- the cape stunt," Browdy told me.  He looked at my hands holding the chute pack.  "You sure you're all right, Kid?" he asked.
"Sure I'm all right."
"You don't look good, Kid," Browdy said, like he was apologizing.
"I didn't get much sleep last night."
"I know what you mean," he said and he looked away.  I could tell he was worried.
"Take it easy, Browdy," I told him.  "You'd think you were going to make this jump."
"Yeah you would, wouldn't you."  Browdy walked outside the hangar.
I followed him over to the doorway and then stood there, watching him stride out between the two grandstands that were starting to fill.  The mike was out in the center again, the black cord twisting and winding its way out through the green grass.  I noticed the announcer bending over the small portable amplifying system over behind the grandstand closest to me.  He had that same thin white shirt on.  Maybe it wasn't the same; maybe it was just another of the same kind.
As Browdy walked out toward the middle the crowd saw him and there was a sudden murmuring as the people hurried for their seats.  Browdy waved his arm toward the plane.  I guess the pilot'd been sitting in it, because he started it off right away and the roar came over the loudspeakers.  Browdy motioned the plane back and the pilot spun it around in a half-circle and took it out more toward the middle.  The roar gradually decreased, but it still was enough for a goddamn dramatic background for Browdy's little speech.
I went back into the hangar and put on Browdy's tights that he'd given me, and an extra black shirt I'd brought along.  Then I got into the chute harness and buckled it across my legs and chest.  I figured maybe I could just walk out and get into the plane without wasting any time letting people look at me.  I slipped on the cape, putting my arms through the tight armholes, and then strapped it down on the small of my back on top of the harness.  Then I buckled on the chute pack.
I picked up my helmet and went out into the cool air, but before I'd walked very far I realized I had the whole thing figured out wrong.
Browdy was still testing the mike.  I heard his voice droning out the numbers over the loudspeakers and I knew I wouldn't have a chance to get into the plane now.  I looked at it sitting there on the grass between me and Browdy.  The sun shone down on the maroon and cream paint, making the plane look like it'd been splashed with water.
By the time I got out to where Browdy was standing, the noise was terrific, and when I looked up from the grass ahead of me I saw all the people in both grandstands, standing and clapping their hands.  I hoped it was for Rettig but I didn't have much confidence in it.  Browdy hadn't announced anything yet, so I was pretty sure all the loud applause was for me.  The crowd claps for action, I thought;  somebody writes a song and somebody sings it and everybody applauds the singer --- I'd found that much out before.
"Pretty wonderful, huh, Kid?" Browdy said, leaning over to me out of the way of the mike.
"Yeah," I told him.  "Okay to go up now?"
"Hell no," he answered quickly like I was crazy.  "They just went into the stands with the baskets.  And I'm going to say something before you go up."
I knew that.  That's why I wanted to get into the plane.  I could see the pilot through the front window of the plane.  He was the same one as yesterday.  I'd forgotten his name.  He waved at me through the front glass window.  I didn't wave back.  I didn't feel like I could because I was afraid the crowd might take some meaning from my hand being up in the air and start the whole applauding business all over again.  I couldn't see myself waving from the hip or smiling at him, so I ignored him.
I felt uneasy, standing there between the grandstands.  Each stand looked the same, but the people on the far side held pieces of paper, cardboard and their hands up to their eyes to shade them.  It looked like most of them were watching the plane.  I looked around for Annie but I couldn't see her, and I thought I probably wouldn't be able to find her even if she was here.  I thought of all the times Rettig had stood with this damn silly cape on and I wondered how he'd felt.  I remembered Rettig always hurrying to get off the ground and now I thought I knew why.  It was damn unpleasant standing there between the stands with everybody looking at me.  The red cape hung down clumsily in haphazard folds, and it looked make-shift and amateurish.
I tried not to look down at it.
"The Brandons here?" I asked Browdy.
"They said they didn't want to come.  Too much for 'em, I guess.  Can't really blame'em."
"No, I guess not."
I was disappointed.  Oh, not so much that the Brandons hadn't come, but because Annie wasn't here.  I started searching through the stands again anyway.  I thought I saw her once but I couldn't be sure.  All the people seemed to blend when you tried to concentrate on one.
Browdy raised his hand and the pilot revved up the motor again.  Then Browdy dropped it and the roar quieted down.  He picked up the mike and blew into it.  The whistle came out from the tops of the stands.
"I'll wait inside the plane," I said.  I started to edge away from the mike.
"Stay here, Kid."  Browdy looked at me strangely.  "I want to announce you before you go up."
"You'd better announce me now then, because I'm going up into the plane."
Browdy didn't argue.  He put the mike up to his mouth.
"Attention!  Your attention please."  He paused until there was silence.  "A brave man died yesterday."  He paused again.  "But today another brave man takes his place.  Johnnie Fickers here will attempt the cape stunt today.  There will be baskets passed among you and we would appreciate anything you give for Michael Rettig, who was killed while attempting to perform this stunt before most of you yesterday."  Browdy signaled to me.
The crowd was silent as I turned and walked up to the plane.  When I stepped inside they began applauding but the roar of the motor drowned it out.
The pilot turned around, as I looked up from checking the flour bag.
"You ready to go into the business?" I asked him.  I was trying to take the sting out of not waving to him before.
He grinned and nodded above the sound of the motor; and I knew he hadn't heard what I'd said but was only acknowledging that I'd said something.  I leaned over his back and watched Browdy through the front window of the plane.
Browdy gave us the sign and then stepped rapidly out of the way, carrying his microphone with him.  The black cord curled up at his feet as he walked with the mike toward the grandstand.  And the plane started to move.
I buckled the flour sack between my knees and took a few steps, hobbling, to be sure it wouldn't get in my way.  Then I raised my arms and tested the cape.  I felt more and more like I didn't really care whether the chute opened or not.  You take so much and then you don't really care anymore.  I thought about the chute --- whether it would open or not, but I couldn't work up any desire for it.
I hobbled over to the doorway.  Down below I saw the patches again:  the greens and the yellows.  They all blended into a pattern.  I wanted Annie to be down there.  I didn't care whether she saw the jump or not, but I wanted her there.
The pilot went into his turn.  The noise inside the plane was enough so we couldn't say much to each other; and it was also enough so that I wasn't sure he could hear what I would be ordering.
I watched out the door as the grandstands appeared below us alongside the white highway and the speckled area around it where the cars were parked.
There's never enough time for something like this;  there's never enough time to get ready, to get set, to gauge when I should go out the door.  I remembered something Rettig had told me.  Don't ever worry about thinking it out the first time you do it, he'd said.  Don't expect to start thinking about it until at least the fourth or fifth time you jump it.  But I still worried about how quick everything was going.  I didn't pick anything out to jump for.  I thought the only thing I could do would be to jump for the airport whenever I thought it was okay.  I didn't particularly care whether I missed it or not.
What the hell, I thought; all the money's been collected.  And I had to laugh.  The pilot turned around again and smiled and nodded.  It made me feel kind of helpless.
I stood there in the doorway, my hands gripping the sides of the plane.  The pilot went into his turn again and we passed by the airport.  If you can say passed.  The airport didn't seem to move much underneath us.
This will be one for you Rettig, I thought.
I reached back behind my legs and opened the top of the flour bag.  The pilot turned around and I swayed as the plane dipped.
"Keep it level for Christ's sake" I screamed at him.
He nodded again and turned back.  He leveled off so I figured he heard me and it gave me a good feeling.  But then he turned around again, like he was afraid he'd miss the show, and the plane dipped again.  I almost fell out of the doorway.  I knew he hadn't heard anything.
I didn't have time to holler now.  I looked out and got a feeling of nothing between me and the ground.  It was the same feeling I had about not being able to talk to the pilot.  How many people down there are not even looking up here right now, I thought, but are buying a hot dog or taking their little kids to the can?  I almost had to laugh again.  When you jump, you jump all alone.  The plane dipped again.
"Goddamn it, stay level," I hollered back to him.
He turned around with this puzzled look on his face.  His eyes were stretched wide like he was trying to figure out what the hell I wanted, so I waved to him.  It was the only thing I could think of to do.  Then I looked back out the door.
Now.
The wind screamed and tore at my cheeks and I turned over in the air, fighting to bring my hands up from my chest.  It was like being under water, but I made it finally and my body suddenly swooped down and came up and I felt a tingling in my stomach.  The flour puffed up into my face and I must've had my eyes open because all of a sudden they started burning like there was something in them.  It felt like I was in a horizontal glide.  I glided and then collapsed the cape;  then glided and collapsed the cape --- like Rettig had told me to do.  It was a nice easy feeling.  The voice in my ear wasn't fooled though.  "... six thousand, seven thousand..." it went on screaming.  The voice was the only thing that let me know I wasn't gliding horizontally at all but almost vertically, straight down.  I tried to stop the voice.  It bothered me.  But it went on relentlessly:  "... twelve thousand, thirteen, fourteen..."  I couldn't open my eyes.  All I heard was the wind, and the voice telling me not to trust it, that it wasn't keeping me from the ground, that the wind was trick me into thinking I was floating when I was really diving at the airport.
I didn't have any control over the voice.  It was my voice but I wanted to stop it and trust to the wind, but it wouldn't stop.  The voice wouldn't pull the chute for me, though, I knew that; it would only tell me when.  And then it would only do that if I listened.  If I heard it say twenty-five.  But I was rolling on the wind and I didn't want to listen to anything at all.
Something screamed at me.  Something was beating my face and banging my shoulders.  I grabbed out, I felt my cape collapse and I could feel I was dropping now, like a stone.  But I had driven it away.  I clenched my fist, gripping something I'd ripped out of whatever it was.  It felt like feathers in my hand, but I knew there were no birds that could fly this fast.
I felt the jolt and the straps cut through my shoulders and up on both sides of my crotch.  I hung there in the sky.  I looked up and saw the canopy, and I wondered when in the hell I'd pulled it open.  I rubbed my eyes but they still burned and it was all I could do to keep them opened.  I held on tight to what was in my hand though.  Nothing could get me to open that hand.  I couldn't hold it tight enough.
The ground came up and I went into it easily, a little bit downfield from the stands.
Browdy ran up and caught me sitting there staring at my clenched fist.  He leaned over and unbuckled the chute harness.
"You all right?" he asked.  He was really excited.
"I guess so," I told him.  "I didn't hit very hard."
"I'm telling you, Kid, you were terrific.  But you scared the living hell out of me.  Why'd you wait so long?"  He looked at me, but then when I didn't answer right away he dropped it fast.  "It was beautif ul, just beautiful, Kid."
"I want to show you something," I told him.  I opened my hand as he bent over my shoulder.
The sun glistened from the metal that lay in my palm.  It was only the ripcord handle.  I dropped it off into the grass.
"We got a whole box of 'em in the car trunk," Browdy laughed.  "Didn't you know that? You didn't have to bring it back, Kid."
Well, I sat there looking at that goddamn handle and I thought to myself that I'd played everybody else's game long enough.  I decided that if there was something in me that wanted to live that bad, I might just as well let it.  I mean why look at death every couple weeks when you want to live.  I figured I'd slipped into the pattern of avoiding everything just by being with some people.  What the hell, I had to face it now.  I didn't want to avoid living anymore.


CHAPTER 14

EVERYBODY AT supper that night was silent until Mrs. Brandon nervously spilled the coffee while she was pouring it into Browdy's cup.  Annie wasn't there and nobody'd seen her all afternoon.  Mr. and Mrs. Brandon were worried about her.  They said it was the first time she'd left without telling them where she was going.
"I can't imagine where she is," Mrs. Brandon said.
"Maybe she went to the show," Browdy put in.  Browdy could never get over the idea everybody wasn't like him.  "She wasn't feelin' too good, maybe she went to the show."
I almost laughed at that but Mr. and Mrs. Brandon looked up at him, like they were thinking about it.
After we finished eating the four of us went into the living room and just sat around.  Everybody was waiting for Annie.  Mr. Brandon looked uncomfortable and his white, short-sleeved shirt was colored by sweat streaks down the front of his thin chest.  The windows were all open but there was little breeze.
"Maybe Annie went home," I said.
Mrs. Brandon smiled, but I could tell she was uneasy.  "No, I hardly think she would do that."  She looked over at her husband.  He shook his head to reassure her.
"Why not?" I asked.  I didn't like the idea they were so sure Annie hadn't gone home.  I didn't want to think they had some hold on her.
"Why, after all we have done for her?" Mrs. Brandon straightened in her chair.  "We arranged for her to live here while she went to school.  She couldn't have gone any other way.  I hardly think she would go home now, after we went to all the trouble..."
Well, I almost got a little sick right there.  Everybody's trying to get everybody through school, or into a good job, or get a home in the country, or something.  But nobody pays any attention to anybody else.  It isn't what you do for people, it's what you think of them that counts.  What the hell, I almost got sick.  She really thought she was doing Annie a big favor.  When all she had to do was look at Annie once.  That would have been enough for Annie.  I was fed up.
"I hope she's gone home," I said.
You should've seen them look.  Even Browdy jerked up his head at this.
But they found a way to get around it.  Mrs. Brandon spied a moth up against the ceiling.  It flew down and landed on the lamp.  Mrs. Brandon concentrated all her interest in that moth being on the lamp.
"John," she said.  "There's a moth on the shade."
Mr. Brandon looked at her and then the moth.  He rolled up a magazine and advanced slowly across the room, and although he swung hesitantly the moth had dropped its wings back across its body and the magazine caught it against the shade.  Mr. Brandon withdrew the magazine and put his finger out, but then changed his mind and picked the moth off the shade with the edge of the magazine and dropped him in the ashtray.  Then he went back to the chair.
Mrs. Brandon looked very pleased.
"There must be a hole in one of the screens," she said.
"That's what happens," Mr. Brandon said, "when you leave the windows open."
I got up f rom the chair and went up the stairs.
I didn't spend much time in my room.  I threw the clothes into the suitcase, snapped it closed and carried it back down the steps.
"Where in the hell are you going?" Browdy said.  He stood up but didn't come over toward me.
"I'm all through jumping, Browdy," I told him.  "I'm leaving."
Mrs. Brandon's mouth dropped open, but Mr. Brandon only smiled.  "I'm glad to see you've come to your senses," he said.  "But you certainly don't have to leave because you're not jumping from an airplane anymore."
"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Brandon," I told him.
Browdy walked over to me.  "Look, Kid.... he started to say.
"There isn't anything you can say, Browdy."  I turned to go out the door but he stopped me with his hand.
"I'm not trying to stop you, Kid," he said.  "If you want to go that's your business.  But at least let me go upstairs and get your share.  It'll come in handy, Kid."
He looked at me so sincerely I almost broke down and bawled for him like I'd done for Rettig.
"Thanks, Browdy, but honest to God I won't need the money."
I picked up my suitcase and Browdy stood with his hand on the railing.
"Try to understand, will you, Browdy?" I asked.
He nodded, but he looked like he thought I was crazy.
I went out through the door without looking back and walked down the steps and out onto the sidewalk.
I couldn't figure out why I was so happy.  I knew I should've been scared, after all I didn't have anything to do, but I wasn't; and there was nothing I could think up that could make me scared.  I tried.
I walked down the street under the tall trees and past the tight little houses that glowed a dim yellow from the windows.  I knew I was walking away from that dim yellow.  The houses all looked bright on the outside, but inside was that dim yellow.
I'd gone only two blocks when I saw her coming up the street toward me.  She was walking aimlessly, setting one foot in front of the other like it was all she could do to keep going.  Then when she saw me she stopped for a minute.  When she started up again, she walked slower and slower, like she was thinking about stopping again but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
When I came up to her I set down the suitcase and waited for her to reach me.  She stopped too.  She looked at the suitcase, but she didn't say anything.
"Where are you going?" I asked her.
"I don't know," she said.
"I don't know where to go either, Annie."
"I was starting to go back," she said, "but I don't want to."
"No, I told her suddenly.  "Don't go back."
"We could go down to the farm, to my house for a few days," she offered.
I picked up my suitcase and turned her around with my arm.  "Let's go," I said.
"The train doesn't come until five a.m.," she said.
I -realized that she'd been down to the station.  I didn't blame her.  How can a girl wait seven hours in an empty train station at night alone?
"We'll wait for it at the station," I told her.
We walked along slowly.  We had plenty of time.  There was a series of sharp cracking sounds and when we looked up we saw the fireworks going off in the sky.  The whole thing looked pretty phony to me, but we watched it until we got to the station.
Then we sat outside on the bench along the red brick wall of the station and waited.  We didn't say much.
When the dawn came, it came with the brightest yellow I'd ever seen.  We watched the sky come alive as the yellow streaks turned slowly to blue and the sun skipped along the tops of the trees and the houses and the buildings;  and it wasn't long then before the train came.