Time Out of Joint (2 page)

The smartest investment we ever made, she said to herself. Buying a small foreign car. And it’ll never wear out; those Germans build with such precision. Except that they had had minor clutch trouble, and in only fifteen thousand miles... but nothing was perfect. In all the world. Certainly not in this day and age, with H-bombs and Russia and rising prices.

Pressed to the window, Sammy said, "Why can’t we have one of those Mercs? Why do we have to have a dinky little car that looks like a beetle?" His disgust was manifest.

Feeling outraged—her son a traitor right here at her bosom—she said, "Listen, young man; you know absolutely nothing about cars. You don’t have to make payments or steer through this darn traffic, or wax them. So you keep your opinions to yourself."

Grumpily, Sammy said, "It’s like a kid’s car."

"You tell your father that," she said, "When we get down to the store."

"I’m scared to," Sammy said.

She made a left turn against traffic, forgetting to signal, and a bus beeped at her. Damn big buses, she thought. Ahead was the entrance to the store’s parking lot; she shifted down into second and drove up across the sidewalk, past the vast neon sign that read

LUCKY PENNY SUPERMARKET

"Here we are," she said to Sammy. "I hope we didn’t miss him."

"Let’s go in," Sammy cried.

"No," she said. "We’ll wait here."

They waited. Inside the store, the checkers finished up with a long line of miscellaneous persons, most of whom pushed the stainless-wire baskets. The automatic doors flew open and shut, open and shut. In the lot, cars started up.

A lovely shiny red Tucker sedan sailed majestically by her. Both she and Sammy gazed after it.

"I do envy that woman," she murmured. The Tucker was as radical a car as the VW, and at the same time wonderfully styled. But of course it was too large to be practical. Still...

Maybe next year, she thought. When it’s time to trade in this car. But you don’t trade in VWs; you keep them forever.

At least the trade-in is high on VWs. We can get back our equity. At the street, the red Tucker steered out into traffic.

"Wow!" Sammy said.

She said nothing.

TWO

At seven-thirty that evening Ragle Gumm glanced out the living room window and spied their neighbors, the Blacks, groping through the darkness, up the path, obviously over to visit. The street light behind them outlined some object that Junie Black carried, a box or a carton. He groaned.

"What’s the matter?" Margo asked. Across the room from him, she and Vic watched Sid Caesar on television.

"Visitors," Ragle said, standing up. The doorbell rang at that moment. "Our neighbors," he said. "I guess we can’t pretend we’re not here."

Vic said, "Maybe they’ll go when they see the TV set on."

The Blacks, ambitious to hop up to the next notch of the social tree, affected a loathing for TV, for anything that might appear on the screen, from clowns to the Vienna Opera performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio. Once Vic had said that if the Second Coming of Christ were announced in the form of a plug on TV, the Blacks would not care to be involved. To that, Ragle had said that when World War Three began and the H-bombs started falling, their first warning would be the conelrad signal on the TV set... to which the Blacks would respond with jeers and indifference. A law of survival, Ragle had said. Those who refused to respond to the new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish... version of a timeless rule.

"I’ll let them in," Margo said. "Since neither of you are willing to bestir yourselves." Scrambling up from the couch she hurried to the front door and opened it. "Hello!" Ragle heard her exclaim. "What’s this? What is it? Oh—it’s hot."

Bill Black’s youthful, assured voice: "Lasagne. Put on some hot water—"

"I’ll fix café espresso," Junie said, passing through the house to the kitchen with the carton of Italian food.

Hell, Ragle thought. No more work for tonight. Why, when they get on some new kick, do they have to trot it over here? Don’t they know anybody else?

This week it’s café espresso. To go with last week’s fad: lasagne. Anyhow, it dovetails. In fact it probably tastes very good... although he had not gotten used to the bitter, heavy Italian coffee; to him it tasted burned.

Appearing, Bill Black said pleasantly, "Hi, Ragle. Hi, Vic." He had on the ivy-league clothes customary with him these days. Button-down collar, tight pants ... and of course his haircut. The styleless cropping that reminded Ragle of nothing so much as the army haircuts. Maybe that was it: an attempt on the part of sedulous young sprinters like Bill Black to appear regimented, part of some colossal machine. And in a sense they were. They all occupied minor status posts as functionaries of organizations. Bill Black, a case in point, worked for the city, for its water department. Every clear day he set off on foot, not in his car, striding optimistically along in his single-breasted suit, beanpole in shape because the coat and trousers were so unnaturally and senselessly tight. And, Ragle thought, so obsolete. Brief renaissance of an archaic style in men’s clothing... seeing Bill Black legging it by the house in the morning and evening made him feel as if he were watching an old movie. And Black’s jerky, too-swift stride added to the impression. Even his voice, Ragle thought. Speeded up. Too high-pitched. Shrill.

But he’ll get somewhere, he realized. The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises. In the banks, in insurance companies, big electric companies, missile-building firms, universities. He had seen them as assistant professors teaching some recondite subject -survey of heretical Christian sects of the fifth century—and simultaneously inching their path up with all their might and main. Everything but sending their wives over to the administration building as bait...

And yet, Ragle rather liked Bill Black. The man— he seemed young to him; Ragle was forty-six, Black no more than twenty-five-had a rational, viable outlook. He learned, took in new facts and assimilated them. He could be talked to; he had no fixed store of morals, no verities. He could be affected by what happened.

For instance, Ragle thought, if TV should become acceptable in the top circles, Bill Black would have a color TV set the next morning. There’s something to be said for that. Let’s not call him "non-adaptive," just because he refuses to watch Sid Caesar. When the H-bombs start falling, conelrad won’t save us. We’ll all perish alike.

"How’s it going, Ragle?" Black asked, seating himself handily on the edge of the couch. Margo had gone into the kitchen with Junie. At the TV set, Vic was scowling, resentful of the interruption, trying to catch the last of a scene between Caesar and Carl Reiner.

"Glued to the idiot box," Ragle said to Black, meaning it as a parody of Black’s utterances. But Black chose to accept it on face value.

"The great national pastime," he murmured, sitting so that he did not have to look at the screen. "I’d think it would bother you, in what you’re doing."

"I get my work done," Ragle said. He had got his entry off by six.

On the TV set, the scene ended; a commercial appeared. Vic shut off the set. Now his resentment turned toward advertisers. "Those miserable ads," he declared. "Why’s the volume level always higher on ads than on the program? You always have to turn it down."

Ragle said, "The ads usually emanate locally. The program’s piped in over the co-ax, from the East."

"There’s one solution to the problem," Black said.

Ragle said, "Black, why do you wear those ridiculous-looking tight pants? Makes you look like a swabbie."

Black smiled and said, "Don’t you ever dip into the New Yorker? I didn’t invent them, you know. I don’t control men’s fashions; don’t blame me. Men’s fashions have always been ludicrous."

"But you don’t have to encourage them," Ragle said.

"When you have to meet the public," Black said, "you’re not your own boss. You wear what’s being worn. Isn’t that right, Victor? You’re out where you meet people; you agree with me."

Vic said, "I wear a plain white shirt as I have for ten years, and an ordinary pair of wool slacks. It’s good enough for the retail-produce business."

"You also wear an apron," Black said.

"Only when I’m stripping lettuce," Vic said.

"Incidentally," Black said, "how’s the retail sales index this month? Business still off?"

"Some," Vic said. "Not enough to matter, though. We expect it to pick up in another month or so. It’s cyclic. Seasonal."

To Ragle, his brother-in-law’s change of tone was clear; as soon as business was involved—his business -he became professional, close-mouthed, tactical in his responses. Business was never really off, and always on the verge of improving. And no matter how low the national index dropped, a man’s personal individual business was unaffected. Like asking a man how he feels, Ragle thought. He has to say he feels fine. Ask him how business is, and he either automatically says terrible or improving. And neither means anything; it’s just a phrase.

To Black, Ragle said, "How’s the retail sale of water? Market holding firm?"

Black laughed appreciatively. "Yes, people are still bathing and washing dishes."

Entering the living room, Margo said, "Ragle, do you want café espresso? You, darling?"

"None for me," Ragle said. "I had all the coffee I can drink for dinner. Keeps me awake as it is."

Vic said, "I’ll take a cup."

"Lasagne?" Margo asked the three of them.

"No thanks," Ragle said.

"I’ll try some," Vic said, and Bill Black wagged his head along with him. "Need any help?"

"No," Margo said, and departed.

"Don’t tank up too heavily on that Italian stuff," Ragle said to Vic. "It’s rich. A lot of dough and spices. And you know what that does to you."

Black chimed in, "Yeah, you’re getting a little bulgy around the middle, there, Victor."

Jokingly, Ragle said, "Well what do you expect from a bird who works in a grocery store?"

That seemed to nettle Vic. He glared at Ragle and murmured, "At least it’s a real job."

"Meaning what?" Ragle said. But he knew what Vic meant. At least it was a salaried job, to which he set out every morning and returned home from every night. Not something he did in the living room. Not a puttering about with something in the daily newspaper... like a kid, Vic had said one day during an argument between them. Mailing in boxtops from cereal packages and a dime for his Magic Decoder Badge.

Shrugging, Vic said, "I’m not ashamed to work in a supermarket."

"That’s not what you meant," Ragle said. For some obscure reason he savored these insults directed toward his preoccupation with the Gazette contest. Probably because of an inner guilt at frittering his time and energies away, a wanting to be punished. So he could continue. Better to have an external source berating him than to feel the deep internal gnawing pangs of doubt and self-accusation.

And then, too, it gave him a kick that his daily entries earned him a higher net income than Vic’s slavery at the supermarket. And he didn’t have to spend time riding downtown on the bus.

Walking over beside him, Bill Black lowered himself, pulled up a chair, and said, "I wondered if you saw this, Ragle." He unfolded, in a confidential manner, a copy of the day’s Gazette. Almost reverently he opened it to page fourteen. There, at the top, was a line of photos of men and women. In the center was a photo of Ragle Gumm himself, and under it the caption:

Grand all-time winner in the Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? contest, Ragle Gumm. National champion leading for two straight years, an all-time record

The other persons shown were lesser greats. The contest was national, with newspapers participating in strings. No local paper could afford to pay the tab. Costs ran higher—he had figured one day—than the famous Old Gold contest of the mid-thirties or the perennial "I use Oxydol soap because in twenty-five words or less" contests. But evidently it built circulation, in these times when the average man read comic books and watched...

I’m getting like Bill Black, Ragle thought. Knocking TV. It’s a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, "What’s happened to this country? Where’s the level of education gone? The morality? Why rock-and-roll instead of the lovely Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy May time music that we listened to when we were their age?"

Sitting close by him, Bill Black held on to the paper, jabbing at the picture with his finger. Obviously he was stirred by the sight of it. By golly, old Ragle Gumm’s picture in newspapers coast to coast! What honor! A celebrity living next door to him.

"Listen, Ragle," Black said, "You’re really making a mint out of this ’green man’ contest, aren’t you?" Envy was rampant on his face. "Couple of hours at it, and you’ve got a week’s pay right there."

With irony Ragle said, "A real soft berth."

"No, I know you put in plenty of work at it," Black said. "But it’s creative work; you’re your own boss. You can’t call that ’work’ like working at a desk somewhere."

"I work at a desk," Ragle said.

"But," Black persisted, "it’s more like a hobby. I don’t mean to knock it. A man can work harder on a hobby than down at the office. I know when I’m out in the garage using my power saw, I really sweat at it. But-there’s a difference." Turning to Vic, he said, "You know what I mean. It’s not drudgery. It’s what I said; it’s creative."

"I never thought of it like that," Vic answered.

"Don’t you think what Ragle’s doing is creative?" Black demanded.

Vic said, "No. Not necessarily."

"What do you call it, then, when a man carves his own future out by his own efforts?"

"I simply think," Vic said, "that Ragle has an ability to make one good guess after another."

"Guess!" Ragle said, feeling insulted. "You can say that, after watching me doing research? Going over previous entries?" As far as he was concerned, the last thing to call it was "guessing." If it were a guess he would merely seat himself at the entry form, close his eyes, wave his hand around, bring it down to cover one square out of all the squares. Then mark it and mail it. And wait for the results. "Do you guess when you fill out your income tax return?" That was his favorite analogy for his work on the contest. "You only have to do it once a year; I do it every day." To Bill Black he said, "Imagine you had to make out a new return every day. It’s the same thing. You go over all your old forms; you keep records, tons of them— every day. And no guessing. It’s exact. Figures. Addition and subtraction. Graphs."

There was silence.

"But you enjoy it, don’t you?" Black said finally.

"I guess so," he said.

"How about teaching me?" Black said, with tension.

"No," he said. Black had brought it up before, a number of times.

"I don’t mean so I can compete with you," Black said. Ragle laughed.

"I mean just so I can pick up a few bucks now and then. For instance, I’d like to build a retaining wall in the back, so in the winter that wet dirt doesn’t keep slopping down into our yard. It would cost me about sixty dollars for the materials. Suppose I won -how many times? Four times?"

"Four times," Ragle said. "You’d get a flat twenty bucks. And your name would go on the board. You’d be competing."

Vic spoke up. "Competing with the Charles Van Doren of the newspaper contests."

"I consider that a compliment," Ragle said. But the enmity made him uncomfortable.

The lasagne did not last long. They all dipped into it. Because of Bill Black’s and Ragle’s remarks, Vic felt impelled to eat as much as possible. His wife watched him critically as he finished.

"You never eat what I cook the way you ate that," Margo said.

Now he wished he hadn’t eaten so much. "It was good," he said gamely.

With a giggle, Junie Black said, "Maybe he’d like to live with us for a while." Her pert, miniature face took on a familiar knowing expression, one that was sure to annoy Margo. For a woman who wore glasses, Vic thought, Junie Black could look astonishingly depraved. Actually, she was not unattractive. But her hair, black, hung down in two twisted thick braids, and he did not like that. In fact he was not drawn to her at all. He did not like tiny, dark, active women, especially those who giggled, and, like Junie, who insisted on pressing against other women’s husbands on the strength of a single gulp of sherry.