Trouble on His Wings (5 page)

Chapter
Five

T
WENTY
tragic hours later, the
scorched, ragged, blackened, wretched, hungry, weary, dispirited, footsore and
homeless trio trudged into
Coeur d'Alene's
best hotel, cast off by a Forest
Service truck. For a long, long time it had been raining and the soot had clung
to them, a black scum overlaid by
gumbo
.

The clerk was startled
and then dismayed at the pools of black paint which were tracked across the
floor—and though he was not at all haughty about costume, he considered this a
shade too much for two men and a boy to so scandalously appear in his hotel. He
drew himself up behind his desk. “I am very sorry but we have—”

“Skip it,” snarled
Johnny, flashing a wallet with his World News card before the fellow's face.
“You're giving us three connecting, your very best. Where's your telephone?”

The clerk amended his
first lack of hospitality. He called, “Front!” and a bellhop came forward, with
misgivings about any tip. “Mr. Brice of World News,” said the clerk, “will
occupy the governor's suite. Here is the key. Will you go right up, sir? I
could have some food sent to you in your room. You can use the phone there, and
we have some haberdashers in Coeur d'Alene who are up to the minute. Were you
filming the fire? Was it as bad as they say?”

“Send up the menu,
three portions of everything,” said Johnny.

They got into the
elevator and were taken to the top floor. The boy was oblivious of their
footprints on the carpets. His eyes were roundly fixed on Johnny, and he fell
all over the rooms as he opened windows and made a pretense of checking the
towels.

Johnny said, “Tell
them to put a dollar on the bill. And get me some Scotch.”

“Oh, no, sir. I mean
that's all right about the dollar. I always wanted to be a cameraman. Do you
suppose—”

“I said a bottle of
Scotch,” said Johnny.

The boy, still
goggle-eyed, retreated.

The girl sank
spiritlessly into a chair, pulling off the helmet. Her hair had been protected
and the bright honey-gold of it was in startling contrast to her black face.

Irish walked straight
into one of the bathrooms and stepped under the shower without bothering to
take off his clothes. A muddy Mississippi ran down the drain and his small
bright face began to show through its camouflage.

Johnny threw his
stained self down on the silken bedspread and wrapped his fingers around the
phone. “Gimme New York, Bryant 9-3300. I'll hold on.” He sat there listlessly,
hearing the round whir of sound which shot his call through to Chicago, then to
New York. He heard the buzz of the ringing at the office. “Felznick. This is
Brice.” He got Felznick. “This is Johnny. I'm in Coeur d'Alene.”

“You got the
pictures?” said Felznick eagerly. “One of them towns almost burned! Did you get
it?”

“Sure I got it. I got
everything. I got aerial shots at dusk, and then the engine choked, when the
smoke got too much for the carburetor, and we
smeared
in right ahead of the
crown fire.”

“You get the crash?”
said Felznick eagerly.

“Sure. And then I got
the animals heading out from the blaze, and then, with water up to my neck, I
got the crown fire leaping over this creek we stumbled into.”

“Johnny, you are a
genius! A genius! You can come back to New York. I raise your pay! I always
said there never was such a cameraman . . .”

“Wait,” said Johnny.
“A big tree, afire, fell down right across the pool and smashed the DeVry to
smithereens and knocked out the . . . knocked the other can into the drink. I
haven't got a single shot, not even the remains of the burn.”

There was silence at
the other end of the phone. And then there was a long, heartfelt sigh.

“I did my damndest,”
said Johnny. “That was all I could do.”

“Brice,” said
Felznick. “Brice, I am being calm. I am being very cool, Brice. I am not going
to say more than this. . . .”

“I quit!” said Johnny.

“The hell you do!”
screamed Felznick. “You're fired! A twelve-thousand-dollar plane, and you lose
your pictures! You're fired. I never want to hear of you, see you, speak to
you! Never! I won't pay your bills! You can sue for your pay and to hell with
you! Don't ever come close to me again! Never!” There was a bang as he slammed
the phone on the hook.

Johnny hung up slowly,
looking at the girl. “How do you feel?”

She gave him a game
grin. “Okay. A little hungry.”

“Eat hearty,” said
Johnny. “This may be our last meal, and we may have to wash dishes for that.”

“You mean—”

“I'm fired. Irish is
fired. We're in the soup, Jinx.” He got up and walked into Irish's bathroom,
stepping over the edge of the tub and joining Irish under the shower. The
lampblack
fell from him in inky waterfalls. Irish sat on the edge of the tub,
wringing the water out of his coveralls.

“We're fired,” said
Johnny.

Irish gave a start as
though he'd been shot. His mouth hung open and he stared straight ahead.
“Fired?”

“And no pay,” said
Johnny.

“What'll we do to pay
our hotel bill?” gulped Irish.

“You figure it out.”

There came a knock on
the door and the girl hastily put on her helmet and answered it. Three waiters
began to move five tables, all snow-white-napkined and groaning with food, into
the room. The bellhop had a stack of boxes in his arms.

“The haberdashers sent
these up with their compliments,” said the bellhop. “Some silk bathrobes and
stuff. Gee, I bet it was awful hot up at that fire.”

She didn't dare speak
and betray her woman's voice and so she only smiled and happened to glance
down. The bill was protruding from under a plate and the figure on it was so
heavy it showed through the back. Thirty-nine dollars.

A waiter gravely took
the slip and handed it to Johnny under the shower. Johnny signed it and the man
withdrew.

“You got any money, Irish?”
said Johnny.

“I got five bucks.”

“I got three,” said
Johnny.

“You got the company
check book.”

“Think I'm a crook?”
said Johnny.

“Sometimes I ain't so
sure,” said Irish.

Johnny saw the girl in
the doorway. She was holding out two silk robes and slippers and pajamas.

“They're free—in hope
of future trade,” she said.

“Huh,” said Johnny.
“Put them on the chair and close the door.”

“I'm going to my room
and bathe,” she said, hesitating. And then, “Johnny . . . do you think, maybe .
. . that I'm really a jinx?”

“Well?”

“It wouldn't be the
first time,” she said, sadly closing the door.

A moment later there
came another knock and Johnny stepped out of the tub to string a river across
the main room. Two young men in
snap-brim
hats and unpressed clothes were there.

“Mr. Brice?” said one.

“Right,” said Johnny.

“I'm from Associated
Syndicate and this is my pal Tom . . . I mean this is Mr. Thorpe, of United
Service. We're holding down the local desks. We got the idea we might fill our
wires with you. They're through talking about the fire since this morning, and
now we've got to keep up the human interest. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” said Johnny.
“Come in.”

They seated themselves
on the sofa and Johnny stood in the room, shedding blood from the wound on his
head and sooty water from his torn and charred coveralls. He knew what kind of
picture he made, and he didn't even offer to go clean himself up before he
talked.

“I hate to talk about
it,” said Johnny. “In all my career, I have never been so close to death. Can't
you boys excuse me and—” he got out the bottle the boy had brought and filled
two glasses half full of Scotch, presenting them, “and just say a cameraman
crashed a couple minutes ahead of the crown fire and was lucky enough to get
out alive, even though he risked his neck to get the greatest pictures ever
filmed and they were spoiled by a falling, flaming tree which struck directly
across the camera? Haven't any wish for publicity, gentlemen. After all, we're
in the same racket. News is trouble and that's all there is to it, and if us
newshawks
lose our lives trying to serve the headlines hot, then World News,
United Service or Associated Syndicate still goes on, regardless.”

They drank. Simpson,
of Associated, sat very still. His face was working oddly. “Pretty damn heroic,
ain't it, Thorpe?”

“Oh, nothing like
that,” said Johnny. “I was just doing my duty and I failed to get the pictures,
that's all. It doesn't matter how I failed. I did fail. And, boys, I don't
really want to talk about the way the plane exploded—”

“I hate to insist,”
said Thorpe, restraining his eagerness, “but couldn't you do a fellow newsman a
favor? Just the rough details. We'll fill them in. After all, we've got a wire
to fill. Human interest following this great fire, the worst in history. You
know. And you saw it right in front of you.”

“But—” protested
Johnny, dripping sooty water.

“Just as a personal
favor,” said Thorpe.

Johnny took a slow
drink and gave them another half tumbler full apiece. “Welllll, if you put it
that way, all right. We were flying just over the crown fire, well knowing our
engine might quit. It was all part of getting the pictures for World News. And
so there we were, singed by the raging heat below, not knowing if we would ever
get away alive when the engine quit! A chill raced up my spine as I realized
the horror . . .”

They sat enraptured,
recalling themselves to their pencils only with great difficulty, and the
longer Johnny talked the louder the flames roared until the words “World News”
and “duty” began to ring synonymous in the minds of the two reporters.

At last the bottle of
Scotch was empty and so was Johnny. Mopping the sweat of creation from his
brow, he said, “And that's how it was. Now if you'll pardon me—”

“Gee, I got to get
this on the wire!” they both said in unison. They hardly stopped long enough to
pump his hand and then they were gone.

Johnny went back to
his bath and found that Irish was all decked out in a yellow silk robe five
sizes too big for him. “Gosh,” said Irish, “ain't I beautiful?”

“All you need is some
cheap perfume,” said Johnny. “I fixed it, for the minute. That yarn will break
in the local rags as well as on the wire, and then maybe they'll stretch the
credit.”

He bathed, and when he
girded himself in his red bathrobe and stalked forth, he found that Irish and
the girl had already laid waste to two tables. He wrapped his hands around a
whole chicken and began to gnaw. “You guys make me sick,” he said around white
meat. “You eat like a couple animals.”

There came another
knock on the door and Irish bobbed up to answer. It was the manager, with the
clerk hovering worriedly behind him.

The manager adjusted
his glasses. “Mr. Brice—”

“That's him,” said
Irish.

“Mr. Brice,” said the
manager, “it pains me to inform you that we are in receipt of a wire from your
New York office stating that your World News checks are not to be honored. You
. . . have, I . . . er . . . ah . . . infer . . . lost your position.”

“That's right,” said
Johnny. “Paramount upped a pay figure higher than World, and so I changed over.
My Paramount checks won't be here for a couple days, but meantime, I've got
plenty of money. I'm surprised that you would be worried about such a trivial
thing. Here, I'll get my wallet if you don't believe me. I—”

“Oh, no, no,” said the
manager, hastily. “I didn't understand. . . .”

“Quite all right,”
said Johnny.

The manager bowed out,
and Johnny took another chunk off the roast chicken. He looked fixedly at the
girl and she avoided his eyes.

“Have some more
chicken or arsenic or something, Jinx,” said Johnny. “Irish and me have got
eight bucks between us and you're going to be put on a bus as far as that will
take you.”

She wept a little but
very quietly and then went off to her room.

“You're a brute!” said
Irish.

“And she's a jinx!”
snarled Johnny.

“She likes you. She
told me so.”

“To hell with what she
likes!” snapped Johnny, attacking a steak. But a moment later, “What did she
say?”