I stood there and looked at it, puzzled and amazed for a few seconds. Then the full import of it dawned on me. He thought I had been holding out for something. He thought he would fix me up. He didn’t know he could never fix me up if I put my stamp of approval on him when he was unfit and he should then go out and kill some passenger because of my leniency.
It started at the top of my head, that raging anger. It burned like flaming coals and raced through my veins like fire. I began to tremble violently, and when I looked up the man was a red flame in a red room.
I hurled the paper bill at him as though it were a javelin and shouted, “Get out! Get out and don’t ever come back!”
Have you ever thrown a piece of paper at anybody?
The bill fluttered ineffectually down to the floor halfway between us. I rushed at it and kicked at it until it was out of the door. I kicked him out too.
I wondered, sitting at my desk afterward, why I had got so mad. It wasn’t honesty. I hadn’t had time to think of honesty. I wondered if it was because he had implied that I was worth ten dollars. I wondered what I would have done if he had offered me ten thousand dollars. I began to understand graft.
[WON ARGUMENT LOST]
“That student is dangerous. You’re crazy if you fly with him again,” I harangued my friend, Brooks Wilson.
“Don’t be that way,” Brooks answered. “He’s not dangerous. He’s goofy.”