452
PARTISAN REVIEW
way. Between me and the water there were some big shadows, tall, thin
and bent, and I could see through them, see the ocean, like silver cloth
that's been slung out and rumed and sewed together with black thread:
all that, on the side toward the moon.
Quicker than I would have thought it could be done to me, there
was a terrific clutch up between my legs. Under my shoulders, too.
My
shoulders stopped where they were, and so did
I,
jigging up and down
in the harness, wondering what the hell. I must have still been fifty feet
off the ground, and I was hanging. Not hurting, but hanging, and could
have swung myself if I'd had a mind.
I looked up at the risers. The chute was collapsed, and hung up on
something, one of the things that made the long shadows, maybe, or
were the long shadows, themselves. Though there were not any lights, I
could make out the space between the buildings and the water, and I
couldn't see anything that looked like a man. If I could get down
without anybody seeing me, I could go on to whatever might be next,
on my own.
But I couldn't just hang there in the smoke, which was colored
with red, and seemed to have some kind of wind that came with it,
shifting back and forth, turning one way, then back the other. I felt
down in it with my feet, felt around on all sides, twisting in the harness,
trying to make contact, but there was not anything there for me. I
pulled on the risers,
to
see how my strength was, and I had some. I
started up the lines, arming it out, hand over hand. When I reached the
bottom of the nylon, like a sheet half-off a bed, I went past it to where
the chute was caught, and felt for what it was caught on.
It was a gantry, a loading-crane I was on, and at least fifty feet
from the ground. Holding to the metal, I unsnapped the chute, and was
a lot freer, just in a second. I worked up the crane and out the arm to
where the chute was caught, and cut it loose. A back-swirl of the crazy
smoke-wind caught it, and it disappeared, collapsing, toward the build–
ings back from the docks. I housed the knife, crawled head-first back
along the arm, and started down the main body of the crane, not hur–
rying, but little by little, watching and listening aU-out. The cross-pieces
of the thing hurt my feet pretty bad, when I put both of them in the
same place, and there was one section where I just had to slide down
one of the main beams, shinny, kind of, but I did it. Getting to the
ground was something I could tell I was going to be able to do, by
now. When I got to the top of the cab I turned loose all the beams and
struts and looked around, and there still wasn't anybody there.
There was a ladder on the cab, and I used it. The ground was level
cement, and full of power. I leaned against the wheel of the cab, in the
shadow away from the moon. The smoke was still blowing, though
