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When Todd came to, he saw two faces suspended above him in a sun so hot and blinding that he could not tell if they were black or white. He stirred, feeling a pain that burned as though his whole body had been laid open to the sun, which glared into his eyes. For a moment an old fear of being touched by white hands seized him. Then the very sharpness of the pain began slowly to clear his head. Sounds came to him dimly. He done come to. Who are they? he thought. Now he ain’t, I coulda sworn he was white. Then he heard clearly:

“You hurt bad?”

Something within him uncoiled. It was a Negro sound.

“He’s still out,” he heard.

“Give ’im time.… Say, son, you hurt bad?”

Was he? There was that awful pain. He lay rigid, hearing their breathing and trying to weave a meaning between them and his being stretched painfully upon the ground. He watched them warily, his mind traveling back over a painful distance. Jagged scenes, swiftly unfolding as in a movie trailer, reeled through his mind, and he saw himself piloting a tailspinning plane and landing and falling from the cockpit and trying to stand. Then, as in a great silence, he remembered the sound of crunching bone and, now, looking up into the anxious faces of an old Negro man and a boy from where he lay in the same field, the memory sickened him and he wanted to remember no more.

“How you feel, son?”

Todd hesitated, as though to answer would be to admit an unacceptable weakness. Then, “It’s my ankle,” he said.

“Which one?”

“The left.”

With a sense of remoteness he watched the old man bend and remove his boot, feeling the pressure ease.

“That any better?”

“A lot. Thank you.”

He had the sensation of discussing someone else, that his concern was with some far more important thing, which for some reason escaped him.

“You done broke it bad,” the old man said. “We have to get you to a doctor.”

He felt that he had been thrown into a tailspin. He looked at his watch; how long had he been here? He knew there was but one important thing in the world, to get the plane back to the field before his officers were displeased.

“Help me up,” he said. “Into the ship.”

“But it’s broke too bad …”

“Give me your arm!”

“But, son …”

Clutching the old man’s arm, he pulled himself up, keeping his left leg clear, thinking, I’d never make him understand, as the leather-smooth face came parallel with his own.

“Now, let’s see.”

He pushed the old man back, hearing a bird’s insistent shrill. He swayed, giddily. Blackness washed over him, like infinity.

“You best sit down.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“But, son. You jus gonna make it worse …”

It was a fact that everything in him cried out to deny, even against the flaming pain in his ankle. He would have to try again.

“You mess with that ankle they have to cut your foot off,” he heard.

Holding his breath, he started up again. It pained so badly that he had to bite his lips to keep from crying out and he allowed them to help him down with a pang of despair.

“It’s best you take it easy. We gon git you a doctor.”

Of all the luck, he thought. Of all the rotten luck, now I have done it. The fumes of high-octane gasoline clung in the heat, taunting him.

“We kin ride him into town on old Ned,” the boy said.

Ned? He turned, seeing the boy point toward an ox team, browsing where the buried blade of a plow marked the end of a furrow. Thoughts of himself riding an ox through the town, past streets full of white faces, down the concrete runways of the airfield, made swift images of humiliation in his mind. With a pang he remembered his girl’s last letter. “Todd,” she had written, “I don’t need the papers to tell me you had the intelligence to fly. And I have always known you to be as brave as anyone else. The papers annoy me. Don’t you be contented to prove over and over again that you’re brave or skillful just because you’re black, Todd. I think they keep beating that dead horse because they don’t want to say why you boys are not yet fighting. I’m really disappointed, Todd. Anyone with brains can learn to fly, but then what. What about using it, and who will you use it for? I wish, dear, you’d write about this. I sometimes think they’re playing a trick on us. It’s very humiliating.…” He whipped cold sweat from his face, thinking, What does she know of humiliation? She’s never been down South. Now the humiliation would come. When you must have them judge you, knowing that they never accept your mistakes as your own but hold it against your whole race—that was humiliation. Yes, and humiliation was when you could never be simply yourself; when you were always a part of this old black ignorant man. Sure, he’s all right. Nice and kind and helpful. But he’s not you. Well, there’s one humiliation I can spare myself.

“No,” he said. “I have orders not to leave the ship.…”

“Aw,” the old man said. Then turning to the boy, “Teddy, then you better hustle down to Mister Graves and get him to come.…”

“No, wait!” he protested before he was fully aware. Graves might be white. “Just have him get word to the field, please. They’ll take care of the rest.”

He saw the boy leave, running.

“How far does he have to go?”

“Might’ nigh a mile.”

He rested back, looking at the dusty face of his watch. By now they know something has happened, he thought. In the ship there was a perfectly good radio, but it was useless. The old fellow would never operate it. That buzzard knocked me back a hundred years, he thought. Irony danced within him like the gnats circling the old man’s head. With all I’ve learned, I’m dependent upon this “peasant’s” sense of time and space. His leg throbbed. In the plane, instead of time being measured by the rhythms of pain and a kid’s legs, the instruments would have told him at a glance. Twisting upon his elbows, he saw where dust had powdered the plane’s fuselage, feeling the lump form in his throat that was always there when he thought of flight. It’s crouched there, he thought, like the abandoned shell of a locust. I’m naked without it. Not a machine, a suit of clothes you wear. And with a sudden embarrassment and wonder he whispered, “It’s the only dignity I have.…”

He saw the old man watching, his torn overalls clinging limply to him in the heat. He felt a sharp need to tell the old man what he felt. But that would be meaningless. If I tried to explain why I need to fly back, he’d think I was simply afraid of white officers. But it’s more than fear … a sense of anguish clung to him like the veil of sweat that hugged his face. He watched the old man, hearing him humming snatches of a tune as he admired the plane. He felt a furtive sense of resentment. Such old men often came to the field to watch the pilots with childish eyes. At first it had made him proud; they had been a meaningful part of a new experience. But soon he realized they did not understand his accomplishments and they came to shame and embarrass him, like the distasteful praise of an idiot. A part of the meaning of flying had gone, then, and he had not been able to regain it. If I were a prize-fighter I would be more human, he thought. Not a monkey doing tricks, but a man. They were pleased simply that he was a Negro who could fly, and that was not enough. He felt cut off from them by age, by understanding, by sensibility, by technology, and by his need to measure himself against the mirror of other men’s appreciation. Somehow he felt betrayed, as he had when as a child he grew to discover that his father was dead. Now, for him, any real appreciation lay with his white officers; and with them he could never be sure. Between ignorant black men and condescending whites, his course of flight seemed mapped by the nature of things away from all needed and natural landmarks. Under some sealed orders, couched in ever more technical and mysterious terms, his path curved swiftly away from both the shame the old man symbolized and the cloudy terrain of white man’s regard. Flying blind, he knew but one point of landing and there he would receive his wings. After that the enemy would appreciate his skill and he would assume his deepest meaning, he thought sadly, neither from those who condescended nor from those who praised without understanding, but from the enemy who would recognize his manhood and skill in terms of hate.…

He sighed, seeing the oxen making queer, prehistoric shadows against the dry brown earth.

“You just take it easy, son,” the old man soothed. “That boy won’t take long. Crazy as he is about airplanes.”

“I can wait,” he said.

“What kinda airplane you call this here’n?”

“An Advanced Trainer,” he said, seeing the old man smile. His fingers were like gnarled dark wood against the metal as he touched the low-slung wing.

“ ’Bout how fast can she fly?”

“Over two hundred an hour.”

“Lawd! That’s so fast I bet it don’t seem like you moving!”

Holding himself rigid, Todd opened his flying suit. The shade had gone and he lay in a ball of fire.

“You mind if I take a look inside? I was always curious to see …”

“Help yourself. Just don’t touch anything.”

He heard him climb upon the metal wing, grunting. Now the questions would start. Well, so you don’t have to think to answer.…

He saw the old man looking over into the cockpit, his eyes bright as a child’s.

“You must have to know a lot to work all these here things.”

Todd was silent, seeing him step down and kneel beside him.

“Son, how come you want to fly way up there in the air?”

Because it’s the most meaningful act in the world … because it makes me less like you, he thought.

But he said: “Because I like it, I guess. It’s as good a way to fight and die as I know.”

“Yeah? I guess you right,” the old man said. “But how long you think before they gonna let you all fight?”

He tensed. This was the question all Negroes asked, put with the same timid hopefulness and longing that always opened a greater void within him than that he had felt beneath the plane the first time he had flown. He felt lightheaded. It came to him suddenly that there was something sinister about the conversation, that he was flying unwillingly into unsafe and uncharted regions. If he could only be insulting and tell this old man who was trying to help him to shut up!

“I bet you one thing …”

“Yes?”

“That you was plenty scared coming down.”

He did not answer. Like a dog on a trail the old man seemed to smell out his fears, and he felt anger bubble within him.

“You sho scared me. When I seen you coming down in that thing with it a-rollin’ and a-jumpin’ like a pitchin’ hoss, I thought sho you was a goner. I almost had me a stroke!”

He saw the old man grinning. “Ever’thin’s been happening round here this morning, come to think of it.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Well, first thing I know, here come two white fellers looking for Mister Rudolph, that’s Mister Graves’ cousin. That got me worked up right away.…”

“Why?”

“Why? ’Cause he done broke outa the crazy house, that’s why. He liable to kill somebody,” he said. “They oughta have him by now though. Then here you come. First I think it’s one of them white boys. Then doggone if you don’t fall outa there. Lawd, I’d done heard about you boys but I haven’t never seen one o’ you all. Caint tell you how it felt to see somebody what look like me in a airplane!”

The old man talked on, the sound streaming around Todd’s thoughts like air flowing over the fuselage of a flying plane. You were a fool, he thought, remembering how before the spin the sun had blazed, bright against the billboard signs beyond the town, and how a boy’s blue kite had bloomed beneath him, tugging gently in the wind like a strange, odd-shaped flower. He had once flown such kites himself and tried to find the boy at the end of the invisible cord. But he had been flying too high and too fast. He had climbed steeply away in exultation. Too steeply, he thought. And one of the first rules you learn is that if the angle of thrust is too steep the plane goes into a spin. And then, instead of pulling out of it and going into a dive you let a buzzard panic you. A lousy buzzard!

“Son, what made all that blood on the glass?”

“A buzzard,” he said, remembering how the blood and feathers had sprayed back against the hatch. It had been as though he had flown into a storm of blood and blackness.

“Well, I declare! They’s lots of ’em around here. They after dead things. Don’t eat nothing what’s alive.”

“A little bit more and he would have made a meal out of me,” Todd said grimly.

“They had luck all right. Teddy’s got a name for ’em, calls ’em jimcrows,” the old man laughed.

“It’s a damned good name.”

“They the damnedest birds. Once I seen a hoss all stretched out like he was sick, you know. So I hollers, ‘Gid up from there, suh!’ Just to make sho! An’, doggone, son, if I don’t see two old jimcrows come flying right up outa that hoss’s insides! Yessuh! The sun was shinin’ on ’em and they couldn’ta been no greasier if they’d been eating barbecue!”

Todd thought he would vomit; his stomach quivered.

“You made that up,” he said.

“Nawsuh! Saw him just like you.”

“Well, I’m glad it was you.”

“You see lots a funny things down here, son.”

“No, I’ll let you see them,” he said.

“By the way, the white folks round here don’t like to see you boys up there in the sky. They ever bother you?”

“No.”

“Well, they’d like to.”

“Someone always wants to bother someone else,” Todd said. “How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Well,” he said defensively, “no one has bothered us.”

Blood pounded in his ears as he looked away into space. He tensed, seeing a black spot in the sky, and strained to confirm what he could not clearly see.

“What does that look like to you?” he asked excitedly.

“Just another bad luck, son.”

Then he saw the movement of wings with disappointment. It was gliding smoothly down, wings outspread, tail feathers gripping the air, down swiftly—gone behind the green screen of trees. It was like a bird he had imagined there, only the sloping branches of the pines remained, sharp against the pale stretch of sky. He lay barely breathing and stared at the point where it had disappeared, caught in a spell of loathing and admiration. Why did they make them so disgusting and yet teach them to fly so well? It’s like when I was up in heaven, he heard, starting.

The old man was chuckling, rubbing his stubbled chin.

“What did you say?”

“Sho, I died and went to heaven … maybe by time I tell you about it they be done come after you.”

“I hope so,” he said wearily.

“You boys ever sit around and swap lies?”

“Not often. Is this going to be one?”

“Well, I ain’t so sho, on account of it took place when I was dead.”

The old man paused. “That wasn’t no lie ’bout the buzzards though.”

“All right,” he said.

“Sho you want to hear ’bout heaven?”

“Please,” he answered, resting his head upon his arm.

“Well, I went to heaven and right away started to sproutin’ me some wings. Six-foot ones, they was. Just like them the white angels had. I couldn’t hardly believe it. I was so glad that I went off on some clouds by myself and tried ’em out. You know, ’cause I didn’t want to make a fool outa myself the first thing …”

It’s an old tale, Todd thought. Told me years ago. Had forgotten. But at least it will keep him from talking about buzzards.

He closed his eyes, listening.

“… First thing I done was to git up on a low cloud and jump off. And doggone, boy, if them wings didn’t work! First I tried the right; then I tried the left; then I tried ’em both together. Then, Lawd, I started to move on out among the folks. I let ’em see me …”

He saw the old man gesturing flight with his arms, his face full of mock pride as he indicated an imaginary crowd, thinking, It’ll be in the newspapers, as he heard, “… so I went and found me some colored angels—somehow I didn’t believe I was an angel till I seen a real black one, ha, yes! Then I was sho—but they tole me I better come down ’cause us colored folks had to wear a special kin’a harness when we flew. That was how come they wasn’t flyin’. Oh yes, an’ you had to be extra strong for a black man even, to fly with one of them harnesses …”

This is a new turn, Todd thought. What’s he driving at?

“So I said to myself, I ain’t gonna be bothered with no harness! Oh naw! ’Cause if God let you sprout wings you oughta have sense enough not to let nobody make you wear something what gits in the way of flyin’. So I starts to flyin’. Hecks, son,” he chuckled, his eyes twinkling, “you know I had to let eve’body know that old Jefferson could fly good as anybody else. And I could too, fly smooth as a bird! I could even loop-the-loop—only I had to make sho to keep my long white robe down roun’ my ankles …”

Todd felt uneasy. He wanted to laugh at the joke, but his body refused, as of an independent will. He felt as he had as a child when after he had chewed a sugar-coated pill which his mother had given him, she had laughed at his efforts to remove the terrible taste.

“… Well,” he heard. “I was doing all right till I got to speeding. Found out I could fan up a right strong breeze, I could fly so fast. I could do all kin’sa stunts too. I started flying up to the stars and divin’ down and zooming roun’ the moon. Man, I like to scare the devil outa some ole white angels. I was raisin’ hell. Not that I meant any harm, son. But I was just feeling good. It was so good to know I was free at last. I accidentally knocked the tips offa some stars and they tell me I caused a storm and a coupla lynchings down here in Macon County—though I swear I believe them boys what said that was making up lies on me …”

He’s mocking me, Todd thought angrily. He thinks it’s a joke. Grinning down at me … His throat was dry. He looked at his watch; why the hell didn’t they come? Since they had to, why? One day I was flying down one of them heavenly streets. You got yourself into it, Todd thought. Like Jonah in the whale.

“Justa throwin’ feathers in eve’body’s face. An’ ole Saint Peter called me in. Said, ‘Jefferson, tell me two things, what you doin’ flying’ without a harness; an’ how come you flyin’ so fast?’ So I tole him I was flyin’ without a harness ’cause it got in my way, but I couldn’ta been flyin’ so fast, ’cause I wasn’t usin’ but one wing. Saint Peter said, ‘You wasn’t flyin’ with but one wing?’ ‘Yessuh,’ I says, scared-like. So he says, ‘Well, since you got sucha extra fine pair of wings you can leave off yo harness awhile. But from now on none of that there one-wing flyin’, ’cause you gittin’ up too damn much speed!’ ”

And with one mouth full of bad teeth you’re making too damned much talk, thought Todd. Why don’t I send him after the boy? His body ached from the hard ground, and seeking to shift his position he twisted his ankle and hated himself for crying out.

“It gittin’ worse?”

“I … I twisted it,” he groaned.

“Try not to think about it, son. That’s what I do.”

He bit his lip, fighting pain with counter-pain as the voice resumed its rhythmical droning. Jefferson seemed caught in his own creation.

“ … After all that trouble I just floated roun’ heaven in slow motion. But I forgot like colored folks will do and got to flyin’ with one wing agin. This time I was restin’ my ole broken arm and got to flyin’ fast enough to shame the devil. I was comin’ so fast, Lawd, I got myself called befo ole Saint Peter agin. He said, ‘Jeff, didn’t I warn you ’bout that speedin’?’ ‘Yessuh,’ I says, ‘but it was an accident.’ He looked at me sad-like and shook his head and I knowed I was gone. He said, ‘Jeff, you and that speedin’ is a danger to the heavenly community. If I was to let you keep on flyin’, heaven wouldn’t be nothin’ but uproar. Jeff, you got to go!’ Son, I argued and pleaded with that old white man, but it didn’t do a bit of good. They rushed me straight to them pearly gates and gimme a parachute and a map of the state of Alabama …”

Todd heard him laughing so that he could hardly speak, making a screen between them upon which his humiliation glowed like fire.

“Maybe you’d better stop a while,” he said, his voice unreal.

“Ain’t much more,” Jefferson laughed. “When they gimme the parachute ole Saint Peter ask me if I wanted to say a few words before I went. I felt so bad I couldn’t hardly look at him, specially with all them white angels standin’ around. Then somebody laughed and made me mad. So I tole him, ‘Well, you done took my wings. And you puttin’ me out. You got charge of things so’s I can’t do nothin’ about it. But you got to admit just this: While I was up here I was the flyin’est son-of-a-bitch what ever hit heaven!’ ”

At the burst of laughter Todd felt such an intense humiliation that only great violence would wash it away. The laughter which shook the old man like a boiling purge set up vibrations of guilt within him which not even the intricate machinery of the plane would have been adequate to transform and he heard himself screaming, “Why do you laugh at me this way?”

He hated himself at that moment, but he had lost control. He saw Jefferson’s mouth fall open. “What—?”

“Answer me!”

His blood pounded as though it would surely burst his temples, and he tried to reach the old man and fell, screaming, “Can I help it because they won’t let us actually fly? Maybe we are a bunch of buzzards feeding on a dead horse, but we can hope to be eagles, can’t we? Can’t we?”

He fell back, exhausted, his ankle pounding. The saliva was like straw in his mouth. If he had the strength he would strangle this old man. This grinning gray-headed clown who made him feel as he felt when watched by the white officers at the field. And yet this old man had neither power, prestige, rank, nor technique. Nothing that could rid him of this terrible feeling. He watched him, seeing his face struggle to express a turmoil of feeling.

“What you mean, son? What you talking ’bout …?”

“Go away. Go tell your tales to the white folks.”

“But I didn’t mean nothing like that … I … I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt your feelings …”

“Please. Get the hell away from me!”

“But I didn’t, son. I didn’t mean all them things a-tall.”

Todd shook as with a chill, searching Jefferson’s face for a trace of the mockery he had seen there. But now the face was somber and tired and old. He was confused. He could not be sure that there had ever been laughter there, that Jefferson had ever really laughed in his whole life. He saw Jefferson reach out to touch him and shrank away, wondering if anything except the pain, now causing his vision to waver, was real. Perhaps he had imagined it all.

“Don’t let it get you down, son,” the voice said pensively.

He heard Jefferson sigh wearily, as though he felt more than he could say. His anger ebbed, leaving only the pain.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“You just wore out with pain, was all …”

He saw him through a blur, smiling. And for a second he felt the embarrassed silence of understanding flutter between them.

“What was you doin’ flyin’ over this section, son? Wasn’t you scared they might shoot you for a crow?”

Todd tensed. Was he being laughed at again? But before he could decide, the pain shook him and a part of him was lying calmly behind the screen of pain that had fallen between them, recalling the first time he had ever seen a plane. It was as though an endless series of hangars had been shaken ajar in the airbase of his memory and from each, like a young wasp emerging from its cell, arose the memory of a plane.

The first time I ever saw a plane I was very small and planes were new in the world. I was four and a half and the only plane that I had ever seen was a model suspended from the ceiling of the automobile exhibit at the state fair. But I did not know that it was only a model. I did not know how large a real plane was, nor how expensive. To me it was a fascinating toy, complete in itself, which my mother said could only be owned by rich little white boys. I stood rigid with admiration, my head straining backward as I watched the gray little plane describing arcs above the gleaming tops of the automobiles. And I vowed that, rich or poor, some day I would own such a toy. My mother had to drag me out of the exhibit, and not even the merry-go-round, the Ferris wheel, or the racing horses could hold my attention for the rest of the fair. I was too busy imitating the tiny drone of the plane with my lips, and imitating with my hands the motion, swift and circling, that it made in flight.

After that I no longer used the pieces of lumber that lay about our backyard to construct wagons and autos … now it was used for airplanes. I built biplanes, using pieces of board for wings, a small box for the fuselage, another piece of wood for the rudder. The trip to the fair had brought something new into my small world. I asked my mother repeatedly when the fair would come back again. I’d lie in the grass and watch the sky and each flighting bird became a soaring plane. I would have been good a year just to have seen a plane again. I became a nuisance to everyone with my questions about airplanes. But planes were new to the old folks, too, and there was little that they could tell me. Only my uncle knew some of the answers. And better still, he could carve propellers from pieces of wood that would whirl rapidly in the wind, wobbling noisily upon oiled nails.

I wanted a plane more than I’d wanted anything; more than I wanted the red wagon with rubber tires, more than the train that ran on a track with its train of cars. I asked my mother over and over again:

“Mama?”

“What do you want, boy?” she’d say.

“Mama, will you get mad if I ask you?” I’d say.

“What do you want now, I ain’t got time to be answering a lot of fool questions. What you want?”

“Mama, when you gonna get me one …?” I’d ask.

“Get you one what?” she’d say.

“You know, Mama; what I been asking you …”

“Boy,” she’d say, “if you don’t want a spanking you better come on ’n tell me what you talking about so I can get on with my work.”

“Aw, Mama, you know …”

“What I just tell you?” she’d say.

“I mean when you gonna buy me a airplane.”

“AIRPLANE! Boy, is you crazy? How many times I have to tell you to stop that foolishness. I done told you them things cost too much. I bet I’m gon wham the living daylight out of you if you don’t quit worrying me ’bout them things!”

But this did not stop me, and a few days later I’d try all over again.

Then one day a strange thing happened. It was spring and for some reason I had been hot and irritable all morning. It was a beautiful spring. I could feel it as I played barefoot in the backyard. Blossoms hung from the thorny black locust trees like clusters of fragrant white grapes. Butterflies flickered in the sunlight above the short new dew-wet grass. I had gone in the house for bread and butter and coming out I heard a steady unfamiliar drone. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. I tried to place the sound. It was no use. It was a sensation like that I had when searching for my father’s watch, heard ticking unseen in a room. It made me feel as though I had forgotten to perform some task that my mother had ordered … then I located it, overhead. In the sky, flying quite low and about a hundred yards off, was a plane! It came so slowly that it seemed barely to move. My mouth hung wide; my bread and butter fell into the dirt. I wanted to jump up and down and cheer. And when the idea struck I trembled with excitement: Some little white boy’s plane’s done flew away and all I got to do is stretch out my hands and it’ll be mine! It was a little plane like that at the fair, flying no higher than the eaves of our roof. Seeing it come steadily forward I felt the world grow warm with promise. I opened the screen and climbed over it and clung there, waiting. I would catch the plane as it came over and swing down fast and run into the house before anyone could see me. Then no one could come to claim the plane. It droned nearer. Then when it hung like a silver cross in the blue directly above me I stretched out my hand and grabbed. It was like sticking my finger through a soap bubble. The plane flew on, as though I had simply blown my breath after it. I grabbed again, frantically, trying to catch the tail. My fingers clutched the air and disappointment surged tight and hard in my throat. Giving one last desperate grasp, I strained forward. My fingers ripped from the screen. I was falling. The ground burst hard against me. I drummed the earth with my heels and when my breath returned, I lay there bawling.

My mother rushed through the door.

“What’s the matter, chile! What on earth is wrong with you?”

“It’s gone! It’s gone!”

“What gone?”

“The airplane …”

“Airplane?”

“Yessum, jus like the one at the fair … I … I tried to stop it an’ it kep right on going …”

“When, boy?”

“Just now,” I cried through my tears.

“Where it go, boy, what way?”

“Yonder, there …”

She scanned the sky, her arms akimbo and her checkered apron flapping in the wind, as I pointed to the fading plane. Finally she looked down at me, slowly shaking her head.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!” I cried.

“Boy, is you a fool?” she said. “Don’t you see that there’s a real airplane ’stead of one of them toy ones?”

“Real …?” I forgot to cry. “Real?”

“Yass, real. Don’t you know that thing you reaching for is bigger’n a auto? You here trying to reach for it and I bet it’s flying ’bout two hundred miles higher’n this roof.” She was disgusted with me. “You come on in this house before somebody else sees what a fool you done turned out to be. You must think these here li’l ole arms of your’n is mighty long …”

I was carried into the house and undressed for bed and the doctor was called. I cried bitterly; as much from the disappointment of finding the plane so far beyond my reach as from the pain.

When the doctor came I heard my mother telling him about the plane and asking if anything was wrong with my mind. He explained that I had had a fever for several hours. But I was kept in bed for a week and I constantly saw the plane in my sleep, flying just beyond my fingertips, sailing so slowly that it seemed barely to move. And each time I’d reach out to grab it I’d miss and through each dream I’d hear my grandma warning:

“Young man, young man
Yo arm’s too short
To box with God.…”

“Hey, son!”

At first he did not know where he was and looked at the old man pointing, with blurred eyes.

“Ain’t that one of you all’s airplanes coming after you?”

As his vision cleared he saw a small black shape above a distant field, soaring through waves of heat. But he could not be sure and with the pain he feared that somehow a horrible recurring fantasy of being split in twain by the whirling blades of a propeller had come true.

“You think he sees us?” he heard.

“See? I hope so.”

“He’s coming like a bat outa hell!”

Straining, he heard the faint sound of a motor and hoped it would soon be over.

“How you feeling?”

“Like a nightmare,” he said.

“Hey, he’s done curved back the other way!”

“Maybe he saw us,” he said. “Maybe he’s gone to send out the ambulance and ground crew.” And, he thought with despair, maybe he didn’t even see us.

“Where did you send the boy?”

“Down to Mister Graves,” Jefferson said. “Man what owns this land.”

“Do you think he phoned?”

Jefferson looked at him quickly.

“Aw sho. Dabney Graves is got a bad name on accounta them killings, but he’ll call though …”

“What killings?”

“Them five fellers … ain’t you heard?” he asked with surprise.

“No.”

“Eve’body knows ’bout Dabney Graves, especially the colored. He done killed enough of us.”

Todd had the sensation of being caught in a white neighborhood after dark.

“What did they do?” he asked.

“Thought they was men,” Jefferson said. “An’ some he owed money, like he do me …”

“But why do you stay here?”

“You black, son.”

“I know, but …”

“You have to come by the white folks, too.”

He turned away from Jefferson’s eyes, at once consoled and accused. And I’ll have to come by them soon, he thought with despair. Closing his eyes, he heard Jefferson’s voice as the sun burned blood-red upon his lids.

“I got nowhere to go,” Jefferson said, “an’ they’d come after me if I did. But Dabney Graves is a funny fellow. He’s all the time making jokes. He can be mean as hell, then he’s liable to turn right around and back the colored against the white folks. I seen him do it. But me, I hates him for that more’n anything else. ’Cause just as soon as he gits tired helping a man he don’t care what happens to him. He just leaves him stone-cold. And then the other white folks is double hard on anybody he done helped. For him it’s just a joke. He don’t give a hilla beans for nobody—but his-self …”

Todd listened to the thread of detachment in the old man’s voice. It was as though he held his words at arm’s length before him to avoid their destructive meaning.

“He’d just as soon do you a favor and then turn right around and have you strung up. Me, I stays outa his way ’cause down here that’s what you gotta do.”

If my ankle would only ease for a while, he thought. The closer I spin toward the earth the blacker I become, flashed through his mind. Sweat ran into his eyes and he was sure that he would never see the plane if his head continued whirling. He tried to see Jefferson, what it was that Jefferson held in his hand. It was a little black man, another Jefferson! A little black Jefferson that shook with fits of belly laughter while the other Jefferson looked on with detachment. Then Jefferson looked up from the thing in his hand and turned to speak but Todd was far away, searching the sky for a plane in a hot dry land on a day and age he had long forgotten. He was going mysteriously with his mother through empty streets where black faces peered from behind drawn shades and someone was rapping at a window and he was looking back to see a hand and a frightened face frantically beckoning from a cracked door and his mother was looking down the empty perspective of the street and shaking her head and hurrying him along and at first it was only a flash he saw and a motor was droning as through the sun’s glare he saw it gleaming silver as it circled and he was seeing a burst like a puff of white smoke and hearing his mother yell, “Come along, boy, I got no time for them fool airplanes, I got no time,” and he saw it a second time, the plane flying high, and the burst appeared suddenly and fell slowly, billowing out and sparkling like fireworks and he was watching and being hurried along as the air filled with a flurry of white pinwheeling cards that caught in the wind and scattered over the rooftops and into the gutters and a woman was running and snatching a card and reading it and screaming and he darted into the shower, grabbing as in winter he grabbed for snowflakes and bounding away at his mother’s, “Come on here, boy! Come on, I say!” And he was watching as she took the card away seeing her face grow puzzled and turning taut as her voice quavered, “Niggers Stay from the Polls,” and died to a moan of terror as he saw the eyeless sockets of a white hood staring at him from the card and above he saw the plane spiraling gracefully, agleam in the sun like a fiery sword. And seeing it soar he was caught, transfixed between a terrible horror and a horrible fascination.

The sun was not so high now, and Jefferson was calling, and gradually he saw three figures moving across the curving roll of the field.

“Look like some doctors, all dressed in white,” said Jefferson.

They’re coming at last, Todd thought. And he felt such a release of tension within him that he thought he would faint. But no sooner did he close his eyes than he was seized and he was struggling with three white men who were forcing his arms into some kind of coat. It was too much for him, his arms were pinned to his sides and as the pain blazed in his eyes, he realized that it was a straitjacket. What filthy joke was this?

“That oughta hold him, Mister Graves,” he heard.

His total energies seemed focused in his eyes as he searched for their faces. That was Graves, the other two wore hospital uniforms. He was poised between two poles of fear and hate as he heard the one called Graves saying,

“He looks kinda purty in that there suit, boys. I’m glad you dropped by.”

“This boy ain’t crazy, Mister Graves,” one of the others said. “He needs a doctor, not us. Don’t see how you led us way out here anyway. It might be a joke to you, but your cousin Rudolph liable to kill somebody. White folks or niggers don’t make no difference …”

Todd saw the man turn red with anger. Graves looked down upon him, chuckling.

“This nigguh belongs in a straitjacket, too, boys. I knowed that the minnit Jeff’s kid said something ’bout a nigguh flyer. You all know you caint let the nigguh git up that high without his going crazy. The nigguh brain ain’t built right for high altitudes …”

Todd watched the drawling red face, feeling that all the unnamed horror and obscenities that he had ever imagined stood materialized before him.

“Let’s git outa here,” one of the attendants said.

Todd saw the other reach toward him, realizing for the first time that he lay upon a stretcher as he yelled:

“Don’t put your hands on me!”

They drew back, surprised.

“What’s that you say, nigguh?” asked Graves.

He did not answer and thought that Graves’ foot was aimed at his head. It landed in his chest and he could hardly breathe. He coughed helplessly, seeing Graves’ lips stretch taut over his yellow teeth, and tried to shift his head. It was as though a half-dead fly was dragging slowly across his face, and a bomb seemed to burst within him. Blasts of hot, hysterical laughter tore from his chest, causing his eyes to pop, and he felt that the veins in his neck would surely burst. And then a part of him stood behind it all, watching the surprise in Graves’ red face and his own hysteria. He thought he would never stop, he would laugh himself to death. It rang in his ears like Jefferson’s laughter and he looked for him, centering his eye desperately upon his face, as though somehow he had become his sole salvation in an insane world of outrage and humiliation. It brought a certain relief. He was suddenly aware that although his body was still contorted, it was an echo that no longer rang in his ears. He heard Jefferson’s voice with gratitude.

“Mister Graves, the army done tole him not to leave his airplane.”

“Nigguh, army or no, you gittin’ off my land! That airplane can stay ’cause it was paid for by taxpayers’ money. But you gittin’ off. An’ dead or alive, it don’t make no difference to me.”

Todd was beyond it now, lost in a world of anguish.

“Jeff,” Graves said. “You and Teddy come and grab holt. I want you to take this here black eagle over to that nigguh airfield and leave him.”

Jefferson and the boy approached him silently. He looked away, realizing and doubting at once that only they could release him from his overpowering sense of isolation.

They bent for the stretcher. One of the attendants moved toward Teddy.

“Think you can manage it, boy?”

“I think I can, suh,” Teddy said.

“Well, you better go behind then, and let yo pa go ahead so’s to keep that leg elevated.”

He saw the white men walking ahead as Jefferson and the boy carried him along in silence. Then they were pausing, and he felt a hand wiping his face, then he was moving again. And it was as though he had been lifted out of his isolation, back into the world of men. A new current of communication flowed between the man and boy and himself. They moved him gently. Far away he heard a mocking-bird liquidly calling. He raised his eyes, seeing a buzzard poised unmoving in space. For a moment the whole afternoon seemed suspended, and he waited for the horror to seize him again. Then like a song within his head he heard the boy’s soft humming and saw the dark bird glide into the sun and glow like a bird of flaming gold.