Time Out of Joint (8 page)

"I wonder what he would have done if he had happened to turn to it," Black said.

"God only knows. Gone into a catatonic coma, most likely."

Black tried to imagine the conversation, if Ragle Gumm had found the number and called it—any of the numbers listed under Ragle Gumm Inc. Branch 25. What a weird conversation that would be, he thought. Almost impossible to imagine.

SIX

The next day, after he arrived home from school, Sammy Nielson carried his still-malfunctioning crystal set from the house, through the back yard, to the locked clubhouse.

Over the door of the clubhouse was a sign his dad had got for him down at the store. The man who did the lettering for the store had made it.

NO FASCISTS, NAZIS, COMMUNISTS, FALANGISTS, PERONISTS, FOLLOWERS OF HLINKA AND/OR BELA KUN ALLOWED

Both his father and his uncle insisted that it was the best sign to have, so he had nailed it up.

With his key he unlocked the padlock on the door and carried the crystal set inside. After he was in he bolted the door after him, and, with a match, lit the kerosene lantern. Then he removed the plugs from the peep-slots in the walls and watched for a time to see if any of the enemy was sneaking up on him.

Nobody could be seen. Only the empty back yard. Washing hanging from the line next door. Dull gray smoke from an incinerator.

He placed himself at the table, strapped the set of earphones over his head, and began dipping the cat’s whisker against the crystal. Each time, he heard static. Again and again he dipped it, and at last he heard— or imagined he heard—faint tinny scratchy voices. So he left the cat’s whisker where it was and began slowly running the bead along the tuning coil. One voice separated itself from the others, a man’s voice, but too faint for the words to be made out.

Maybe I need more antenna, he thought.

More wire.

Leaving the clubhouse—locked—he roamed about the yard, searching for wire. He poked his head into the garage. At the far end was his dad’s workbench. He started at one end of the bench, and by the time he reached the other he had found a great roll of uninsulated steelish-looking wire that probably was for hanging up pictures or for a wire clothesline if his dad ever got around to putting it up.

They won’t mind, he decided.

He carried the picture wire to the clubhouse, climbed the side of the clubhouse to the roof, and attached the wire to the antenna that came up from the crystal set. Out of the two wires he made one vast antenna which trailed the length of the yard.

Maybe it ought to be high, he decided.

Finding a heavy spike he tied the free end of the antenna to it, got his throwing arm limbered up, and then heaved the spike up on the roof of the house. The antenna drooped. That won’t do, he thought. It should be tight.

Returning to the house he climbed the stairs to the top floor. One window opened on to the flat part of the roof; he unlatched that window and in a moment he was scrambling out onto the roof.

From downstairs his mother called, "Sammy, you’re not going out on the roof, are you?"

"No," he yelled back. I am out, he told himself, making in his mind a fine distinction. The spike with the antenna dangling from it lay on the sloping part of the roof, but by lying flat and inching along he was able to grab hold of it. Where to tie it?

Only place was the TV antenna.

He tied the end of his antenna to the metal pipe of the TV mast, and that was that. Quickly he crawled back inside the house, through the window, and ran downstairs and out into the yard to the clubhouse.

Shortly he had seated himself at the table, before the crystal set, and was running the bead along the tuning coil.

This time, in his earphones, the man’s voice could be heard clearly. And a whole raft of other voices babbled in; his hands shook with excitement as he tuned them apart. From them he picked the loudest.

A conversation of some kind was in progress. He had got it part way through.

"... those long kind that look like sticks of bread. Practically break your front teeth when you bite on them. I don’t know what they’re for. Weddings maybe, where there’s a lot of people you don’t know and you want the refreshments to last..."

The man talked leisurely, the words spaced far apart.

"... not the hardness but the anise. It’s in everything, even in the chocolate ones. There’s one kind, white, with walnuts. Always makes me think of those bleached skulls you find out on the desert ... rattlesnake skulls, jackrabbit skulls ... small mammals. What a picture, right? Sink your teeth into a fifty-year-old rattlesnake skull..." The man laughed, still leisurely, almost an actual ha-ha-ha-ha. "Well, that’s about all, Leon. Oh, one more thing. You know that thing your brother Jim said about ants going faster on hot days? I looked that up and I can’t find anything about that. You ask him if he’s sure, because I went out back and looked at ants for a couple of hours since I talked to you last, and when it got good and hot they looked to be walking around at about the same speed."

I don’t get it, Sammy thought.

He tuned the coil to another voice. This one talked briskly.

"... CQ, calling CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; calling CQ; this is W3840-Y asking is there a CQ; is there a CQ anybody; W3840-Y asking for a CQ; CQ; CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ; come in CQ; is there a CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ ..." It continued on and on. So he turned further.

The next voice droned so slowly that he gave up almost at once.

"... no ... no ... again ... what? ... to ... the ... no, I don’t believe so ..."

This is just crud, he thought in disappointment. But anyhow he had gotten it to work.

He tried further.

Squeaks and hissing made him wince. Then frantic dot-dot noises. Code, he knew. Morse code. Probably from a sinking ship in the Atlantic, with the crew trying to row through the flaming oil.

The next one was better.

"... at 3:36 exactly. I’ll track it for you." A long silence. "Yes, I’ll track it from this end. You just sit tight." Silence. "Yes, you sit tight. Got me?" Silence. "Okay, wait for it. What?" Long, long silence. "No more like 2.8. 2.8. You got that? North East. Okay, okay. Right."

He looked at his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. The time was just about 3:36; his watch ran a little off, so he couldn’t be sure.

Just then, in the sky above the clubhouse, a remote rumble made him shudder. And at the same time the voice in his earphones said,

"Did you get it? Yes, I see it changing direction. Okay, that’s all for this afternoon. Up to full, now. Yes. Okay. Signing off."

The voice ceased.

Hot dog, Sammy said to himself. Wait’ll Dad and Uncle Ragle hear this.

Removing his earphones he ran from the clubhouse, across the yard, into the house.

"Mom!" he shouted, "where’s Uncle Ragle? Is he in the living room working?"

His mother was in the kitchen scrubbing the drainboard. "Ragle went to mail off his entry," she said. "He finished up early."

"Oh stunk!" Sammy shouted, devastated.

"All right, young man," his mother said.

"Aw," he muttered. "I got a rocket ship or something on my crystal set; I wanted him to hear it." He whirled about in a circle, not knowing what to do.

"Do you want me to listen?" his mother said.

"Okay," he said grudgingly. He started from the house and his mother followed along with him.

"I can only listen for a couple of minutes," she said. "And then I have to get back in the house; I have a lot to do before dinner."

At four o’clock Ragle Gumm mailed his registered package of entries at the main post office. Two hours ahead of the deadline, he told himself. Shows what I can do when I have to.

He took a cab back to the block in which he lived, but he did not get off in front of the house; he got off at the corner, by the rather old two-story house, painted gray, with a leaning front porch.

No chance of Margo stumbling in on us, he realized. It’s all she can do to run next door.

Climbing the steep flight of steps to the porch he rang one of the three brass doorbells. Far off, past the lace curtains on the door, down the long, high-ceiling corridor, a chime rang.

A shape approached. The door opened.

"Oh, Mr. Gumm," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "I forgot to tell you what day the class meets."

"That’s right," he said. "I was walking by and I thought I’d go up the steps and ask you."

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "The class meets twice a week. At two on Tuesday and three on Thursday. That’s easy to remember."

With caution, he said, "Have you had good luck signing people up?"

"Not too awfully good," she said, with a wry smile. Today she did not seem so tired; she wore a blue-gray smock, flat heels, and she lacked the frailness, the aura of the aging spinster lady who kept an altered cat and read detective novels. Today she reminded him more of active churchwomen who put on charity bazaars. The size of the house, the number of doorbells and mailboxes, suggested that she earned at least part of her livelihood as a landlady. Apparently she had divided up her old house into separate apartments.

"Offhand," he said, "can you recall anybody I might know who’s signed up? It would give me confidence if I knew somebody in the class."

"I’d have to look in my book," she said. "Do you want to step inside and wait while I look?"

"Surely," he said.

Mrs. Keitelbein passed down the corridor, into the room at the end. When she did not reappear he followed.

The size of the room surprised him; it was a great drafty empty auditorium-like place, with a fireplace that had been converted to a gas heater, an overhead chandelier, chairs pushed together in a group at one end, and a number of yellow-painted doors on one side and high wide windows on the other. At a bookshelf, Mrs. Keitelbein stood holding a ledger, the kind bookkeepers usually used.

"I can’t find it," she said disarmingly, closing the ledger. "I have it written down, but in all the confusion—" She gestured at the disorderly room. "We’re trying to get it set up for the first meeting. Chairs, for instance. We’re short on chairs. And we need a blackboard ... but the grammar school has promised us one." Suddenly she caught hold of his arm. "Listen, Mr. Gumm," she said. "There’s a heavy oak desk I want to get upstairs from the basement. I’ve been trying to get somebody all day long to come in and help Walter—my son—get it upstairs. Do you think you could take one end? Walter thinks that two men could get it up here in a few minutes. I tried to lift one end, but I couldn’t."

"I’d be glad to," he said. He took off his coat and laid it over the back of a chair.

A gangling, grinning teen-ager ambled into the room; he wore a white cheer-leader sweater, blue jeans, and shiny black oxfords. "Hi," he said shyly.

After she had introduced them, Mrs. Keitelbein herded them down a flight of dishearteningly steep, narrow stairs, to a basement of damp concrete and exposed wiring, empty fruit jars matted with cobwebs, discarded furniture and mattresses, and an old-fashioned washtub.

The oak desk had been dragged almost to the stairs.

"It’s a wonderful old desk," Mrs. Keitelbein said, hovering critically about. "I want to sit at it when I’m not at the blackboard. This was my father’s desk —Walter’s grandfather."

Walter said, in a croaking tenor voice, "It weighs around one-fifty. Pretty evenly distributed, except the back’s heavier, I think. We can probably tip it, so we can clear the overhead. We can get our hands under it okay; I’ll get hold first with my back to it, and then when I get my end up, you can get your hands under it. Okay?" He already had knelt down at his end, reaching behind him to take hold. "Then when it’s up, I’ll get my grip."

From his years of active military life, Ragle prided himself on his physical agility. But by the time he had raised his end of the desk waist-high, he was red-faced and panting. The desk swayed as Walter got his grip. At once Walter set off for the stairs; the desk twisted in Ragle’s hands as Walter climbed the stairs.

Three times they had to set the desk down on the stairs, once for Ragle to rest, twice because the desk failed to clear the top and had to be taken in a different grip. At last they had it up and into the big drafty room; with a thump the desk dropped from their stiff fingers, and that was that.

"I certainly do appreciate your kindness," Mrs. Keitelbein said, emerging from the basement and switchisg off the stairlight. "I hope you didn’t hurt yourself or anything. It’s heavier than I thought."

Her son was contemplating him with the same shyness as before. "You’re the Mr. Gumm who’s the contest winner?" he asked.

"Yes," Ragle said.

The boy’s kindly face clouded over with embarrassment. "Maybe I shouldn’t ask you this, but I always wanted to ask some guy who wins a lot of money in a contest ... do you think of it as luck, or do you think of it like earning a big fee, the way a lawyer gets a big fee if he’s got something on the ball no other lawyer has? Or like some old painters whose paintings are worth millions."

"It’s a lot of hard work," Ragle said. "That’s how I think of it. I put in eight to ten hours a day."

The boy nodded. "Oh yeah. I see what you mean."

"How did you get started?" Mrs. Keitelbein asked him.

Ragle said, "I don’t know. I saw it in the paper and I sent in an entry. That was close to three years ago. I just drifted into it. My entries won right from the start."

"Mine didn’t," Walter said. "I never won once; I entered around fifteen times."

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "Mr Gumm, before you go I have something I want to give you. You wait here." She hurried off into a side room. "For helping."

He thought, Probably a cookie or two.

But when she returned she had a brightly-colored decal. "For your car," she said, holding it out to him. "It goes on the back window. A CD sticker; you dip it in warm water, and then the paper slides off and you slide the emblem on the car window." She beamed at him.

"I don’t currently have a car," he said.

Her face showed dismay. "Oh," she said.

With a braying, but good-natured, laugh, Walter said, "Hey, maybe he could paste it onto the back of his coat."

"I’m so sorry," Mrs. Keitelbein said, in confusion. "Well, thank you anyhow; I wish I could reward you, but I can’t think how. I’ll try to make the classes as interesting as I can; how’s that?"

"Swell," he said. Picking up his coat he moved toward the hall. "I have to be going," he said. "I’ll see you Tuesday, then. At two."