If this keeps up!
A sudden dip indicated that it would. It tipped Wylie White into the seat opposite me, shunted the stewardess precipitately down in the direction of the cockpit, and plunked the Jewish man into a sitting position. After the studied, unrufled exclamations of distaste that befitted the air-minded, we settled down. There was an introduction.
Miss Brady Mr. Schwartz, said Wylie White. Hes a great friend of your fathers, too.
Mr. Schwartz nodded so vehemently that I could almost hear him saying: Its true. As God is my judge, its true!
He might have said this right out loud at one time in his life but he was obviously a man to whom something had happened. Meeting him was like encountering a friend who has been in a fist fight or collision, and got flattened . You stare at your friend and say: What happened to you? And he answers something unintelligible through broken teeth and swollen lips. He cant even tell you about it.
Mr. Schwartz was physically unmarked; the exaggerated Persian nose and oblique eye-shadow were as congenital as the tip-tilted Irish redness around my fathers nostrils.
Nashville! cried Wylie White. That means we go to a hotel. We dont get to the coast till tomorrow night if then. My God! I was born in Nashville.
I should think youd like to see it again.
Never Ive kept away for fifteen years. I hope Ill never see it again.
But he would for the plane was unmistakably going down, down, down, like Alice in the rabbit hole. Cupping my hand against the window I saw the blur of the city far away on the left. The green sign Fasten your belts No smoking had been on since we first rode into the storm.
Did you hear what he said? said Schwartz from one of his fiery silences across the aisle.
Hear what? asked Wylie.
Hear what hes calling himself, said Schwartz.
Mr. Smith!
Why not? asked Wylie.
Oh nothing, said Schwartz quickly. I just thought it was funny, Smith. I never heard a laugh with less mirth in it: Smith!
I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the days of the stage-stops nothing quite as lonely, as somber-silent. The old red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked people didnt get off at those isolated stations unless they lived there. But airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up to two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity. In the big transcontinental planes we were the coastal rich, who casually alighted from our cloud in mid-America. High adventure might be among us, disguised as a movie star. But mostly it wasnt. And I always wished fervently that we looked more interesting than we did just as I often have at premières, when the fans look at you with scornful reproach because youre not a star.
On the ground Wylie and I were suddenly friends, because he held out his arm to steady me when I got out of the plane. From then on, he made a dead set for me and I didnt mind. From the moment we walked into the airport it had become plain that if we were stranded here we were stranded here together. (It wasnt like the time I lost my boy the time my boy played the piano with that girl Reina in a little New England farmhouse near Bennington, and I realized at last I wasnt wanted. Guy Lombardo was on the air playing Top Hat and Cheek to Cheek, and she taught him the melodies. The keys falling like leaves and her hands splayed over his as she showed him a black chord. I was a freshman then.)
When we went into the airport Mr. Schwartz was along with us, too, but he seemed in a sort of dream. All the time we were trying to get accurate information at the desk, he kept staring at the door that led out to the landing field, as if he were afraid the plane would leave without him. Then I excused myself for a few minutes and something happened that I didnt see, but when I came back he and White were standing close together, White talking and Schwartz looking twice as much as if a great truck had just backed up over him.
He didnt stare at the door to the landing field any more. I heard the end of Wylie Whites remark
I told you to shut up. It serves you right.
I only said
He broke off as I came up and asked if there was any news. It was then half-past two in the morning.
A little, said Wylie White. They dont think well be able to start for three hours anyhow, so some of the softies are going to a hotel. But Id like to take you out to the Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson .
How could we see it in the dark? demanded Schwartz.
Hell, itll be sunrise in two hours.
You two go, said Schwartz.
All right you take the bus to the hotel. Its still waiting hes in there. Wylies voice had a taunt in it. Maybe itd be a good thing.
No, Ill go along with you, said Schwartz hastily.