Up, Aloft in the Air
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Buck saw now that the situatioween Nand himself was siderably more serious than he had imagined. She exhibited unmistakable signs of a leaning in his dire. The leaning was acute, sometimes he thought she would fall, sometimes he thought she would not fall, sometimes he didnt care, and in every way tried to prove himself the man that he was. It meant dressing in unusual clothes and the breaking of old habits. But how could he shatter her dreams after all they had eogether? after all they had jointly seen and done since first identifying Cleveland as Cleveland? "Nancy," he said, "Im too old. Im not here is my son to sider, Peter." Her hand touched the area between her breasts where hung a decoration, datiimated from the World War I period -- that famous period!The turbojet, their "ship," landed on its wheels. Buck wondered about the wheels. Why didnt they shear off when the aircraft landed so hard with a sound like thunder? Many had wondered before him. W art of the history of lighter-than-air-ness, you fool. It was Nancy herself, standing behind him in the exit line, who had suggested that they dan the landing strip. "To establish rapport with the terrain," she said with her distant ess, made more intense by the hot glare of the Edie vendors and s trees. They dahe b, the merihe dolce far e. It was glorious there orip, amid air rich with the incredible vitality of jet fuel and the sensate music of exhaust. Twilight was lowered onto the landing pattern, a twilight such as has never graced Cleveland before, or sihen brokeless laughter and the hurried trip to the hotel.
"I uand," Nancy said. And looking at her dispassionately, Buck jectured that she did uand, unscrupulous as that may sound. Probably, he sidered, I vinced her against my will. The man from Southern Rhodesia ered him in the dangerous hotel elevator. "Do you think you have the right to hold opinions which differ from those of President Kennedy?" he asked. "The President of your land?" But the party made up for all that, or most of it, in a curious way. The baby on the floor, Saul, seemed enjoyable, perhaps more than his wont. Or my wont, Buck thought, who knows? A Ray Charles record spun in the gigantic salad bowl. Buck dahe frisson with the painters wife Perpetua (although Nancy was alone, back at the hotel). "I am named," Perpetua said, "after the famous typeface designed by the famous English designer, Eric Gill, in an earlier part of our tury." "Yes," Buck said calmly, "I know that face." She told him softly the history of her affair with her husband, Saul Senior. Sensuously, they covered the ground. And then two ruly police gentlemeered the room, with the guests blang, <cite></cite>aud romaine and radishes too flying for the exits, which were choked with grass.
Bravery was everywhere, but not here tonight, for the gods were whistling up their mandarin sleeves in the yellow realms where such matters are decided, food or ill. Patheti his servile graciousness, Saul explained what he could while the guests played telephone games in crimson anterooms. The poli, the flower of the Cleveland Force, accepted a drink and danced a police dances of custody and enfort. Magically the music crept bader the perforated Guam doors; it was a se to make your heart cry. "That Perpetua," Saul plained, "why is she treating me like this? Why are the lamps turned low and why have the notes I sent her beeurned unopened, covered with red Postage Due stamps?" But Buck had, in all seriousness, hurried away.
The aircraft were calling him, their indelible flight plans whispered his name. He laid his cheek against the riveted flank of a bold 707. "In case e and blue flames," he wrote on a wing, "disengage yourself from the aircraft by chopping a hole in its bottom if necessary. Do not be swayed by the carpet; it is camel ahin. I suggest that you be alarmed, because the situation is very alarming. You are up in the air perhaps 35,000 feet, with e and blue flames oside and a ragged hole in the floorboards. What will you do?" And now, Nancy. He held out his arms. She came to him.
"Yes."
"Arent we?"
"Yes."
"It doesnt matter."
"Not to you. But to me. . ."
"Im wasting our time."
"The others?"
"I felt ashamed."
"Its being here, in Cleveland."
They returogether in a hired automobile. Three parking lots were filled with overflow crowds in an ugly mood. I am tired, so very tired. The man from Southern Rhodesia addressed the bellmen, who listeo his hateful words and thought of other things. "But, then," Buck said, but then Nancy laid a finger on his lips.
"You appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other men," she said, "I plate you with such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, revenge, love and pride that very little superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a superior being."
"Yes," Buck said, for a fn sculptor, a Bavarian doubtless, was singing "You Take Your Love and Shove It Up Your Heart," covered though he was with stone dust and grog. The crowd roared at the apanists plying the exotistruments of Cleveland, the dolor, the mahe bim. Strum swiftly, fingers! The butlers did not hesitate for a minute. "History will absolve me," Buck reflected, aook the hand offered him with its enormous sapphires glowing like a garage. Theua danced up to him, her great amazing brown eyelashes being. "Where is Nancy?" she asked, and before he could reply, tinued her at of the great love of her existence, her relationship with her husband, Saul. "Hes funny and fine," she said, "and good and evil. In fact there is so much of him to tell you about, I hardly get it all out before curfew. Do you mind?"
The din of dang in Cleveland was now such that many people who did not know the plan were affronted. "This is an affront to Cleveland, this damn din!" one man said; and grog flowed ever more fiercely. The Secretary of State for Erotic Affairs flew in from Washington, the nations capital, to see for himself at first hand, and the man from Southern Rhodesia had no recourse. He lurked into the Cleveland Air Terminal. " I have a ticket for Miami?" he asked the dang ticket clerk at the Delta Airlines ter hopelessly. "Nothing to Miami this year," the clerk tered. "How I talk to him in this madness?" Nancy asked herself. "How the white bird of hope bless our clouded past and future with all this noise? How? How? How? How? How?"
But Saul waved in time, from the porch of Parking Lot Two. He was wearing his belt dangerously low on his hips. "There is copulation everywhere," he shouted, fanning his neck, "because of the dang! Yes, its true!" And so it was, incredibly enough. Affe was running riot uhe reprehensible scarlet sky. We were all afraid. "Incredible, incredible," Buck said to himself. "Even by those of whom you would not have expected it!" Perpetua glimmered at his ear. "Even by those," she insinuated, "of whom you would have expected. . . nothing." For a moment. . .
"Nancy," Buck exclaimed, "you are just about the damn girl in Cleveland!"
"What about your wife in Texas?" Nancy asked.
"She is very oo," Buck said, "as a matter of fact the more I think of it, the more I believe that nice girls like you and Hérodiade are what make life worth living. I wish there were more of them in America so that every man could have at least five."
"Five?"
"Yes, five."
"We will never agree on this figure," Nancy said.
2
The rubbery smell of Akron, sister city of Lahore, Pakistan, lay like the flameout of all our hopes over the plateau that evening.
When his aircraft was forced down at the Akron Airpark by the lapse of the port engines, which of course he had been expeg, Buck said: "But this, this. . . is Akron!" And it was Akron, sultry, molecular, crowded with i<cite></cite>nhabitants who held tiny transistor radios o their tiny ears. A wave of ingratitude overcame him. "Bum, bum," he said. He plumbed its heart. The citizens of Akron, after their hours at the plant, ed themselves in ill-designed love triangles whiever tained less than four persons of varying degrees of birth, high and low and mediocre. Beautiful Ohio! with your transistorized citizens and pt feometry, we loved you in the evening by the fireside waiting for our wife to nap so we could slip out and see our two girls, Manfred and Bella!
The first telephone call he received in his rum raisin hotel room, Charles, was from the Akron Wele Service.
"Wele! new human being! to Akron! Hello?"
"Hello."
"Are you in love with any of the inhabitants of Akro?"
"I just came from the airport."
"If not, or even if so, we want to invite you to the big get-acquainted party of the College Graduates Club tonight at 8:30 p.m."
"Do I have to be a college graduate?"
"No but you have to wear a coat and tie. Of course they are available at the door. What color pants are you wearing?"
Buck walked the resilient streets of Akron. His head was aflame with flig ideas. Suddenly he was arrested by a shrill cry. From the top of the Zimmer Building, one of the buildings in Akron, a group of Akron lovers mated a four-handed suicide leap. The air! Buck thought as he watched the tiny figures falling, this is certainly an air-minded try, America! But I must make myself useful. He entered a bunshop and purchased a sweet green bun, and dallied with the sweet green girl there, calling her "poppet" and "funicular." Then out into the street again to lean against the warm green fa?ade of the Zimmer Building and watch the workmen scrubbing the crimson sidewalk.
" you poihe way to the Akron slums, workman?"
"My name is not<mark>藏书网</mark> workman. My name is Pat. "
"Well Pat which way?"
"I would be most happy to orient you, slumwise, were it not for the fact that slumlife in Akron has bee away with by municipal progressiveness. The municipality has caused to be erected, where slumlife once flourished, immense quadrativentions whiow house former slum-wife and former slumspouse alike. These incredibly beautiful structures are over that way."
"Thanks, Pat. "
At the housing development, which was gauche and grand, Buck came upon a man urinating in the elevator, o a man breaking windows in the broom closet. "What are you fellows doing there!" Buck cried aloud. "We are expressing e at this fine new building!" the men exclaimed. "Oh that this day had never formulated! We are going to call it Ruesday, thats how we feel about it, by gar!" Buck stood in a wash of inprehension and doubt. "You mean there is rage in Akron, the home of quadratic love?" "There is quadratic rage also," the men said, "Akron is rage from a certain point of view." Angel food covered the floor i squares. And what could be wrong with that? Everything?
"What is that point of view there, to which you refer?" Buck asked dumbly. "The point of view of the poor peopte of Akron," those ho yeoman ted, "or, as the city fathers prefer it, the underdeveloped people of Akron." And in their eyes, there was a strange light. "Do you know what the name of this housing development is?" "What?" Buck asked. "Sherwood Forest," the men said, "isnt that disgusting?"
The men invited Buck to sup with their girls, Heidi, Eleanee, Purple, Ann-Marie, and Los. Iree, starlings fretted and died, but below everything was glass. Harold poured the wine of the region, a light Cheer, into the fotten napery. And the great horse of evening trod over the immense se ond for all. We examined our sces. Many a tiny sin was rooted out that night, to make room freater o was "hello" and "yes" and "yes, yes" through the sacerdotal hours, from oo eight. Heidi held a pencil betweeeeth. "Do you like pencil games?" she asked. Something lurked behind the veil of her eyes. "Not. . . especially," Buck said, "I. . ."
But a parade headed by a battalion of warm and lovely girls from the Akron Wele Service elected this tense moment to e dang by, with bands blazing and hideous floats in praise of rubber. goods expanding in every dire. The rubber batons of the girls bent ierglow of events. "It is impossible to discuss serious ideas during a parade," the Akron unists said to Buck, and they slipped away to tinue expressing their rage in another part of the Forest.
"Goodbye!" Buck said. "Goodbye! I wont fet. . ."
The Wele Service girls looked very bravura in their brief white-and-gold Wele Serviiforms which displayed a fine amount of "leg." Look at all that "leg" glittering there! Buck said to himself, and followed the parade all the way to Toledo.
3
"Ingarden dear," Buck said to the pretty wife of the mayor of Toledo, who was reading a copy of Infrequent Love magazine, "where are the poets of Toledo? Where do they hang out?" He showered her with gifts. She rose and moved mysteriously into the bedroom, to see if Henry were sleeping. "There is only one," she said, "the old poet of the city stantine Cavity." A frost of emotion clouded her fuzz-colored lenses. "He operates a juju drugstore in the oldest se of the city and never goes anywhere except to make one of his rare aiful appearances." "stantino Cavity!" Buck exclaimed, "even in Texas where I e from we have heard of this fine poet. You must take me to see him at once." Abandoning Henry to his fate (and it was a bitter one!) Bud Ingarden rushed off hysterically to the drugstore of stantine Cavity, Buventing as they rolled something graceful to say to this old poet, the forerunner so to speak of poetry in America.
Was there fondness in our eyes? We could not tell. zas of dots staihe Western Alliance, already, perhaps, prejudiced beyond the power of prayer to redeem it. "Do you think there is too much hair on my neck? here?" Ingarden asked Buck. But before he could answer she said: "Oh shut up!" She khat Mrs. Lutch, whose i in the pastor was only feigned, would find the Ameri way if anyone could.
At stantine Cavitys drugstore a meeting of the Toledo Medical Society was being held, in sequence of which Buck did not get to utter his opening words which were to have been: "Cavity, we are here!" A pity, but call the roll! See, or rather hear, who is present, and who is not! Present were
Dr. Caligari
Dr. Frank
Dr. Pepper
Dr. Scholl
Dr. Frahaler
Dr. Mabuse
Dr. Grabow
Dr. Melmoth
Dr. Weil
Dr. Modesto
Dr. Fu Manchu
Dr. Wellington
Dr. Watson
Dr. Brown
Dr. Rococo
Dr. Dolittle
Dr. Alvarez
Dr. Spoke
Dr. Hutch
Dr. Spain
Dr. Malone
Dr. Kline
Dr. Casey
Dr. No
Dr. Regatta
Dr. Il y a
Dr. Baderman
Dr. Aveni
and other doctors. The air was stuffy here, rades, for the doctors were sidering (yes!) a resolution of sure against the beloved old poet. Ao this badinage and wit! Let us be grave. It was claimed that Cavity had dispensed. . . but who quarrel with Love Rohtly used? It has saved many a lip. The prosecution was in the able hands of Dr. Kline, who ied the heart, and Dr. Spain, after whom Spain is named some believe. Their godlike figures towered over the tiny poet.
Kline advances.
Cavity rises to his height, which is not great.
Ingarden holds her breath.
Spain fades, back, back. . .
A handout from Spain to Kline.
Buck is down.
A luau?
The poet opens. . .
No! No! Get back!
". . . and if that way is long, and leads around by the reactor, and down in the valley, and up the garden path, leave her, I say, to heaven. For sce has its reasons that reason knows not of," Cavity finished. And it was done.
"Hell!" said one doctor, and the others shuffled morosely around the drugstore iing the strange wares that were being vehere. It was clear that no resolution of sure could possibly. . . But of course not! What were we thinking of?
Cavity himself seemed pleased at the oute of the proceedings. He recited to Bud Ingarden his long love poems entitled "In the Blue of Evening," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Who?" and "Homage to W. C. Williams." The feet of the visitors danced against the sawdust floor of the juju drugstore to the pelling rhythms of the poets poems. A rime of happiness whitened on the surface of their two faces. "Even in Texas," Buck whispered, "where things are very exg, there is nothing like the old face of stantino Cavity. Are you true?"
"Oh I wish things were other."
"You do?"
"There are such a lot of fine people in the world I wish I was one of them!"
"You are, you are!"
"Not essentially. Not inwardly."
"Youre very authentic I think."
"Thats all right in Cleveland, where authenticity is the thing, but here. . ."
"Kiss me please."
"Again?"
4
The parachutes of the other passengers snapped and crackled in the darkness all around him. There had been a malfun ierburner and the pilot decided to "ditch." The whole thing was very unfortunate. "What is your life-style, ati?" Buck asked the recumbent jewel glittering below him like an old bucket of industrial diamonds. "Have you the boldness of Cleveland? the anguish of Akron? the torpor of Toledo? What is your posture, ati?" Frostily the silent city approached his feet.
Upon making tact with ati Bud such of the other passengers of the ill-fated flight 309 as had survived the "drop" proceeded to a hotel.
"Is that a flask you have there?"
"Yes it is grog as it happens."
"Thats wonderful."
Warmed by the grog which set his blood rag, Buck went to his room and threw himself on his bed. "Oh!" he said suddenly, "I must be in the wrong room!" The girl in the bed stirred sleepily. "Is that you Harvey?" she asked. "Where have you been all this time?" "No, its Buck," Buck said to the girl, who looked very pretty in her blue flannel nightshirt drawn up about her kneecaps on which there were red lines. "I must be in the wrong room Im afraid," he repeated. "Buck, get out of this room immediately!" the girl said coldly. "My name is Stephanie and if my friend Harvey finds you here therell be an unpleasant se."
"What are you doing tomorrow?" Buck asked.
Having made a "date" with Stephanie for the m at 10 A.M., Buck slipped off to an i sleep in his own bed.
M in ati! The glorious cold ati sunlight fell indiscriminately around the city, here and there, warming almost no oephanie de Moulpied was wearing an ice-blue wool suit in which she looked very cold aiful and starved. "Tell me about your ati life," Buck said, "the quality of it, thats what Im ied in." "My life here is very aristocratic," Stephanie said, "polo, ed peaches, liaisons dangéreuses, and so on, because I am a member of an old ati family. However its not much fun which is why I made this 10 A.M. date with you, exg stranger from the sky!" "Im really from Texas," Buck said, "but Ive been having a little trouble with airplanes on this trip. I dont really trust them too much. Im not sure theyre trustworthy." "Who is trustworthy after all?" Stephanie said with a cold sigh, looking blue. "Are you blue Stephanie?" Buck asked. "Am I blue?" Stephanie wondered. In the silehat followed, she ted her friends aionships.
"Is there any hy artistic activity in this town?"
"Like what do you mean?"
Buck then kissed Stephanie in a taxicab as a way of dissipating the bluehat was such a feature of her face. "Are all the girls in ati like you?" "All the first-class girls are like me," Stephanie said, "but there are some irls whom I woion."
A faint sound of. . . A wave of. . . Dense clouds of. . . Heavily the immense weight of. . . Thin strands of. . .
Dr. Hesperidian had fallen into the little pool in va Ryans garden (of course!) and everyone ulling him out. Strangers met and fell in love over the problem of getting a grip on Dr. Hesperidian. A steel band played arias from Wozzeck. He lay just below the surface, a rime of algae whitening his cheekbones. He seemed to be. . . "Not that way," Buck said reag for the belt buckle. "This way." The crowd fell back among the pines.
"You seem to be a nice young man, young man," va Ryan said, "although we have many of these of our own now sihe General Electric plant came to town. Are you in puterization?"
Buck remembered the endearing red lines on Stephanie de Moulpieds knees.
"Id rather not ahat question," he said holy, "but if theres some other question youd like me to answer. . ."
vaurned away sadly. The steel band played "Red Boy Blues," "Thats All," "Gigantic Blues," "Muggles," "Coolin," and "Edward." Although each player was maimed in a different way. . . but the affair bees, one fears, too personal. The band got a nice sound. Hookers thied oable placed there for that purpose. "I grow less, rather than more, intimately involved with human beings as I move through world life," Buck thought, "is that my fault? Is it a fault?" The musis rehe extremely romantic ballads "I Didnt Know What Time It Was," "Scratch Me," and "Misty." The grim forever adumbrated i issues of Mind pressed down, down. . . Where is Stephanie de Moulpied? No one could tell him, and in truth, he did not want to know. It is not he who asks this question, it is Mrs. Lutch. She glides down her glide path, sinuously, she is falling, she bursts into flame, her last words: "Tell them. . . when they crash. . . turn off. . .the ignition."
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