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FREE AIR
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
AUTHOR OF
THE JOB, ETC.
[Device]
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I MISS BOLTWOOD OF BROOKLYN IS LOST IN THE MUD 3
II CLAIRE ESCAPES FROM RESPECTABILITY 10
III A YOUNG MAN IN A RAINCOAT 21
IV A ROOM WITHOUT 36
V RELEASE BRAKES--SHIFT TO THIRD 49
VI THE LAND OF BILLOWING CLOUDS 66
VII THE GREAT AMERICAN FRYING PAN 74
VIII THE DISCOVERY OF CANNED SHRIMPS AND HESPERIDES 85
IX THE MAN WITH AGATE EYES 101
X THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE HILLSIDE ROAD 112
XI SAGEBRUSH TOURISTS OF THE GREAT HIGHWAY 119
XII THE WONDERS OF NATURE WITH ALL MODERN IMPROVEMENTS 129
XIII ADVENTURERS BY FIRELIGHT 138
XIV THE BEAST OF THE CORRAL 149
XV THE BLACK DAY OF THE VOYAGE 154
XVI THE SPECTACLES OF AUTHORITY 165
XVII THE VAGABOND IN GREEN 176
XVIII THE FALLACY OF ROMANCE 188
XIX THE NIGHT OF ENDLESS PINES 194
XX THE FREE WOMAN 205
XXI THE MINE OF LOST SOULS 219
XXII ACROSS THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 228
XXIII THE GRAEL IN A BACK YARD IN YAKIMA 237
XXIV HER OWN PEOPLE 242
XXV THE ABYSSINIAN PRINCE 254
XXVI A CLASS IN ENGINEERING AND OMELETS 270
XXVII THE VICIOUSNESS OF NICE THINGS 279
XXVIII THE MORNING COAT OF MR. HUDSON B. RIGGS 290
XXIX THE ENEMY LOVE 300
XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS 307
XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE 310
XXXII THE CORNFIELD ARISTOCRAT 331
XXXIII TOOTH-MUG TEA 345
XXXIV THE BEGINNING OF A STORY 361
FREE AIR
FREE AIR
CHAPTER I
MISS BOLTWOOD OF BROOKLYN IS LOST IN THE MUD
When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire
fancied she was piloting a drowned car in dim spaces under the sea. When
it was open, drops jabbed into her eyes and chilled her cheeks. She was
excited and thoroughly miserable. She realized that these Minnesota
country roads had no respect for her polite experience on Long Island
parkways. She felt like a woman, not like a driver.
But the Gomez-Dep roadster had seventy horsepower, and sang songs. Since
she had left Minneapolis nothing had passed her. Back yonder a truck had
tried to crowd her, and she had dropped into a ditch, climbed a bank,
returned to the road, and after that the truck was not. Now she was
regarding a view more splendid than mountains above a garden by the
sea--a stretch of good road. To her passenger, her father, Claire
chanted:
"Heavenly! There's some gravel. We can make time. We'll hustle on to the
next town and get dry."
"Yes. But don't mind me. You're doing very well," her father sighed.
Instantly, the dismay of it rushing at her, she saw the end of the patch
of gravel. The road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with
ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo--which is mud mixed
with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered
caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for the
stump-dynamite and try blasting.
It was her first really bad stretch of road. She was frightened. Then
she was too appallingly busy to be frightened, or to be Miss Claire
Boltwood, or to comfort her uneasy father. She had to drive. Her frail
graceful arms put into it a vicious vigor that was genius.
When the wheels struck the slime, they slid, they wallowed. The car
skidded. It was terrifyingly out of control. It began majestically to
turn toward the ditch. She fought the steering wheel as though she were
shadow-boxing, but the car kept contemptuously staggering till it was
sideways, straight across the road. Somehow, it was back again, eating
into a rut, going ahead. She didn't know how she had done it, but she
had got it back. She longed to take time to retrace her own cleverness
in steering. She didn't. She kept going.
The car backfired, slowed. She yanked the gear from third into first.
She sped up. The motor ran like a terrified pounding heart, while the
car crept on by inches through filthy mud that stretched ahead of her
without relief.
She was battling to hold the car in the principal rut. She snatched the
windshield open, and concentrated on that left rut. She felt that she
was keeping the wheel from climbing those high sides of the rut, those
six-inch walls of mud, sparkling with tiny grits. Her mind snarled at
her arms, "Let the ruts do the steering. You're just fighting against
them." It worked. Once she let the wheels alone they comfortably
followed the furrows, and for three seconds she had that delightful
belief of every motorist after every mishap, "Now that this particular
disagreeableness is over, I'll never, never have any trouble again!"
But suppose the engine overheated, ran out of water? Anxiety twanged at
her nerves. And the deep distinctive ruts were changing to a complex
pattern, like the rails in a city switchyard. She picked out the track
of the one motor car that had been through here recently. It was marked
with the swastika tread of the rear tires. That track was her friend;
she knew and loved the driver of a car she had never seen in her life.
She was very tired. She wondered if she might not stop for a moment.
Then she came to an upslope. The car faltered; felt indecisive beneath
her. She jabbed down the accelerator. Her hands pushed at the steering
wheel as though she were pushing the car. The engine picked up, sulkily
kept going. To the eye, there was merely a rise in the rolling ground,
but to her anxiety it was a mountain up which she--not the engine, but
herself--pulled this bulky mass, till she had reached the top, and was
safe again--for a second. Still there was no visible end of the mud.
In alarm she thought, "How long does it last? I can't keep this up.
I--Oh!"
The guiding tread of the previous car was suddenly lost in a mass of
heaving, bubble-scattered mud, like a batter of black dough. She fairly
picked up the car, and flung it into that welter, through it, and back
into the reappearing swastika-marked trail.
Her father spoke: "You're biting your lips. They'll bleed, if you don't
look out. Better stop and rest."
"Can't! No bottom to this mud. Once stop and lose momentum--stuck for
keeps!"
She had ten more minutes of it before she reached a combination of
bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With
this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as
she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about
the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in
front; of a pain at the base of her brain. Her father glanced at her
curiously. "I must be a wreck. I'm sure my hair is frightful," she
thought, but forgot it as she looked at him. His face was unusually
pale. In the tumult of activity he had been betrayed into letting the
old despondent look blur his eyes and sag his mouth. "Must get on," she
determined.
Claire was dainty of habit. She detested untwisted hair, ripped gloves,
muddy shoes. Hesitant as a cat by a puddle, she stepped down on the
bridge. Even on these planks, the mud was three inches thick. It
squidged about her low, spatted shoes. "Eeh!" she squeaked.
She tiptoed to the tool-box and took out a folding canvas bucket. She
edged down to the trickling stream below. She was miserably conscious of
a pastoral scene all gone to mildew--cows beneath willows by the creek,
milkweeds dripping, dried mullein weed stalks no longer dry. The bank of
the stream was so slippery that she shot down two feet, and nearly went
sprawling. Her knee did touch the bank, and the skirt of her gray
sports-suit showed a smear of yellow earth.
In less than two miles the racing motor had used up so much water that
she had to make four trips to the creek before she had filled the
radiator. When she had climbed back on the running-board she glared down
at spats and shoes turned into gray lumps. She was not tearful. She was
angry.
"Idiot! Ought to have put on my rubbers. Well--too late now," she
observed, as she started the engine.
She again followed the swastika tread. To avoid a hole in the road
ahead, the unknown driver had swung over to the side of the road, and
taken to the intensely black earth of the edge of an unfenced cornfield.
Flashing at Claire came the sight of a deep, water-filled hole,
scattered straw and brush, debris of a battlefield, which made her
gaspingly realize that her swastikaed leader had been stuck and--
And instantly her own car was stuck.
She had had to put the car at that hole. It dropped, far down, and it
stayed down. The engine stalled. She started it, but the back wheels
spun merrily round and round, without traction. She did not make one
inch. When she again killed the blatting motor, she let it stay dead.
She peered at her father.
He was not a father, just now, but a passenger trying not to irritate
the driver. He smiled in a waxy way, and said, "Hard luck! Well, you did
the best you could. The other hole, there in the road, would have been
just as bad. You're a fine driver, dolly."
Her smile was warm and real. "No. I'm a fool. You told me to put on
chains. I didn't. I deserve it."
"Well, anyway, most men would be cussing. You acquire merit by not
beating me. I believe that's done, in moments like this. If you'd like,
I'll get out and crawl around in the mud, and play turtle for you."
"No. I'm quite all right. I did feel frightfully strong-minded as long
as there was any use of it. It kept me going. But now I might just as
well be cheerful, because we're stuck, and we're probably going to stay
stuck for the rest of this care-free summer day."
The weariness of the long strain caught her, all at once. She slipped
forward, sat huddled, her knees crossed under the edge of the steering
wheel, her hands falling beside her, one of them making a faint brushing
sound as it slid down the upholstery. Her eyes closed; as her head
drooped farther, she fancied she could hear the vertebrae click in her
tense neck.
Her father was silent, a misty figure in a lap-robe. The rain streaked
the mica lights in the side-curtains. A distant train whistled
desolately across the sodden fields. The inside of the car smelled
musty. The quiet was like a blanket over the ears. Claire was in a hazy
drowse. She felt that she could never drive again.