Time Out of Joint (3 page)

It was his brother-in-law who responded to Junie Black, according to Margo’s gossip. Both Ragle and Junie, being home all day, had plenty of free time on their hands. That was a bad business, Margo said now and again. A man being home all day in a residential neighborhood, where all the other husbands were away at the office and only the wives remained behind. So to speak.

Bill Black said, "To confess, Margo-she didn’t whip this stuff up. We got it on the way home. At some catering place on Plum Street."

Junie Black not embarrassed, laughed.

After the two women had cleared the table, Bill suggested a few hands of poker. They haggled for a while, and then the chips were brought out, and the deck of cards, and presently they were playing for a penny a chip, all colors worth the same. It was a twice-weekly matter between them. Nobody could remember how it had gotten started. The women, most likely, had originated it; both Junie and Margo loved to play.

While they were playing, Sammy appeared. "Dad," he said, "can I show you something?"

"I wondered where you were," Vic said. "You’ve been pretty quiet this evening." Having folded for the round, he could take a moment off. "What is it?" he asked. His son wanted advice most likely.

"Now keep your voice down," Margo warned Sammy. "You can see we’re playing cards." The intense look on her face and the tremor in her voice indicated that she held a reasonably good hand.

Sammy said, "Dad, I can’t figure out how to wire up the antenna." Beside Vic’s stack of chips he set down a metal frame with wires and electronic-looking parts visible on it.

"What’s this?" Vic said, puzzled.

"My crystal set," Sammy said.

"What’s a crystal set?" he said.

Ragle spoke up. "It’s something I got him doing," he explained. "One afternoon I was telling him about World War Two and I got to talking about the radio rig we operated."

"Radio," Margo said. "Doesn’t that take you back?"

Junie Black said, "Is that what he’s got there, a radio?"

"A primitive form of radio," Ragle said. "The earliest."

"There’s no danger he’ll get a shock, is there?" Margo said.

"None whatever," Ragle said. "It doesn’t use any power."

"Let’s have a look at it," Vic said. Hoisting the metal frame he examined it, wishing he knew enough to assist his son. But the plain truth was that he knew nothing at all about electronics, and it certainly was obvious. "Well," he said haltingly, "maybe you have a short-circuit somewhere."

Junie said, "Remember those radio programs we used to listen to before World War Two? ’The Road of Life.’ Those soap operas. ’Mary Martin.’ "

" ’Mary Marlin,’ " Margo corrected. "That was— good lord. Twenty years ago! I blush."

Humming Clair de Lune, the theme for "Mary Marlin," Junie met the last round of raises. "Sometimes I miss radio," she said.

"You’ve got radio plus vision," Bill Black said. "Radio was just the sound part of TV."

"What would you get on your crystal set?" Vic asked his son. "Are there any stations still transmitting?" It had been his impression that radio stations had folded up several years ago.

Ragle said, "He can probably monitor ship-to-shore signals. Aircraft landing instructions."

"Police calls," Sammy declared.

"That’s right," Ragle said. "The police still use radio for their cars." Holding out his hand he accepted the crystal set from Vic. "I can trace the circuit later, Sammy," he said. "But I’ve got too good a hand right now. How about tomorrow?"

Junie said, "Maybe he can pick up flying saucers."

"Yes," Margo agreed. "That’s what you ought to aim for."

"I never thought of that," Sammy said.

"There’s no such thing as flying saucers," Bill Black said testily. He fiddled with his cards.

"Oh no?" Junie said. "Don’t kid yourself. Too many people have seen them for you to dismiss it. Or don’t you accept their documented testimony?"

"Weather balloons," Bill Black said. Vic was inclined to agree with him, and he saw Ragle nodding. "Meteors. Meteorological phenomena."

"Absolutely," Ragle said.

"But I read that people had actually ridden in them," Margo said.

They all laughed, except Junie.

"It’s true," Margo said. "I heard it over TV."

Vic said, "I’ll go as far as admitting that there seems to be some sort of odd-ball stuff going on up there." He remembered one experience of his own. The summer before, during a camping trip, he had watched a bright object flash across the sky at such velocity that no plane, even a jet-propelled plane, could have matched it. The thing had more the manner of a projectile. In an instant it had whisked off over the horizon. And occasionally, at night, he had heard rumblings, as if heavy vehicles were passing at reduced velocity across the sky. Windows had vibrated, so it had not been head-noises, as Margo had decided. In an article in a digest medical magazine she had read that head-noises indicate high blood pressure, and after that she had wanted him to visit their health-plan doctor for a checkup.

He gave the half-finished radio back to his son and resumed playing cards; the next hand had already been dealt and it was time for him to ante up.

"We’re going to install this crystal set as our official club equipment," Sammy informed him. "It’ll be locked up in the clubhouse, and nobody can use it but authorized personnel." In the back yard the neighborhood kids, banding together in response to the herd instinct, had built a sturdy but ugly building out of boards and chickenwire and tarpaper. Mighty doings were conducted several times a week.

"Fine," Vic said, studying his hand.

"When he says ’fine,’ ’’ Ragle said, "it means he’s got nothing."

"I’ve noticed that," Junie said. "And when he throws down his cards and walks away from the table, it means he’s got four of a kind."

At the moment he felt a little like leaving the table; the lasagne and café espresso had been too much for him, and inside him the compound-that and his dinner—had begun to act up. "Maybe I have four of a kind now," he said.

"You look pale," Margo said. To Ragle she said, "Maybe he does have something."

"More like the Asian flu," Vic said. Pushing his chair back he got to his feet. "I’ll be right back. I’m not out. Just getting something to calm my stomach."

"Oh dear," Junie said. "He did eat too much; you were right, Margo. If he dies it’s my fault."

"I won’t die," Vic said. "What’ll I take?" he asked his wife. As mother of the household she was in charge of the medicines.

"There’s some Dramamine in the medicine cabinet," she answered, preoccupied, discarding two cards. "In the bathroom."

"You don’t take tranquilizers for indigestion, do you?" Bill Black demanded, as he left the room and started down the hall. "Boy, that is carrying it too far."

"Dramamine isn’t a tranquilizer," Vic answered, half to himself. "It’s an anti-motion pill."

"Same thing," Black’s voice came to him, along the hall, following after him as he entered the bathroom.

"Same thing hell," Vic said, his indigestion making him surly. He groped above him for the light cord.

Margo called, "Hurry on back, dear. How many cards for you? We want to play; you’re holding us up."

"All right," he muttered, still groping for the light cord. "I want three cards," he called. "It’s the top three on my hand."

"No," Ragle called. "You come back and pick them. Otherwise you’ll claim we got the wrong ones."

He still had not found the light cord that dangled in the darkness of the bathroom. His nausea and irritation grew, and he began thrashing around in the dark, holding up both arms, hands together with thumbs extended and touching; he rotated his hands in a wide circle. His head smacked against the corner of the medicine cabinet and he cursed.

"Are you okay?" Margo called. "What happened?"

"I can’t find the light cord," he said, furious now, wanting to get his pill and get back to play his hand. The innate propensity of objects to be evasive... and then suddenly it came to him that there was no light cord. There was a switch on the wall, at shoulder level, by the door. At once he found it, snapped it on, and got his bottle of pills from the cabinet. A second later he had filled a tumbler with water, taken the pill, and come hurrying out of the bathroom.

Why did I remember a light cord? he asked himself. A specific cord, hanging a specific distance down, at a specific place.

I wasn’t groping around randomly. As I would in a strange bathroom. I was hunting for a light cord I had pulled many times. Pulled enough to set up a reflex response in my involuntary nervous system.

"Ever had that happen to you?" he said, as he seated himself at the table.

"Play," Margo said.

He drew three new cards, bet, met the raises that went around, lost, and then leaned back lighting a cigarette. Junie Black raked in the winnings, smiling in her inane fashion.

"Ever had what happen?" Bill Black said.

"Reached for a switch that didn’t exist."

"Is that what you were doing that took so long?" Margo said, irked at having lost the hand.

"Where would I be used to a light cord hanging from above?" he said to her.

"I don’t know," she said.

In his mind he chronicled all the lights he could think of. In his house, at the store, at friends’ houses. All were wall switches.

"You hardly ever run into a cord hanging down any more," he said aloud. "That suggests an old-fashioned overhead light with a string."

"Easy enough," Junie said. "When you were a child. Many, many years ago. Back in the ’thirties when everybody lived in old-fashioned houses that weren’t old-fashioned yet."

"But why should it crop up now?" he said.

Bill said, "That is interesting."

"Yes," he agreed.

They all seemed interested.

"What about this?" Bill said. He had an interest in psycho-analysis; Freudian jargon cropped up in his conversation, a sign of his being familar with cultural questions. "A reversion to infancy due to stress. Your feeling ill. The tension of the sub-conscious impulses to your brain warning you that something was amiss internally. Many adults revert to infancy during illness."

"What rubbish," Vic said.

"There’s just some light switch you don’t remember consciously," Junie said. "Some gas station where you used to go when you had that old Dodge that used so much gas. Or some place you visit a few times a week, year after year, like a laundry or a bar, but outside your important visits, like your home and store."

"It bothers me," he said. He did not feel like going on with the poker playing, and he remained away from the table.

"How does your innard feel?" Margo asked.

"I’ll live," he said.

They all seemed to have lost interest in his experience. All except Ragle, perhaps. Ragle eyed him with what might have been cautious curiosity. As if he wanted to ask Vic more, but for some obscure reason refrained from doing so.

"Play," Junie urged. "Whose deal is it?"

Bill Black dealt. The money was tossed into the pot. In the other room the TV set gave off dance music, its screen turned down to dark.

Upstairs, in his room, Sammy labored over his crystal set.

The house was warm and peaceful.

What’s wrong? Vic wondered. What did I stumble on, in there? Where have I been that I don’t remember?

THREE

Thump!

Shaving himself before the bathroom mirror, Ragle Gumm heard the morning paper land on the porch. A muscular spasm shook his arm, at his chin his safety razor burred across his flesh and he drew it away. Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and, opening his eyes, continued shaving.

"Are you almost done in there?" his sister called through the closed door.

"Yes," he said. He washed his face, patted on after-shave lotion, dried his neck and arms, and opened the bathroom door.

In her bathrobe, Margo materialized and went immediately past him into the bathroom. "I think I heard your paper," she said over her shoulder as she shut the door. "I have to drive Vic down to the store; could you push Sammy out the front door? He’s in the kitchen—" Her voice was cut off by the sound of water in the washbowl.

Entering his bedroom, Ragle finished buttoning his shirt. He passed judgment on his various ties, discriminated from the group a dark green knit tie, put it on, put his coat on, and then said to himself,

Now the newspaper.

Before he went to get it he began dragging out his reference books, files, graphs, charts, scanning machinery. Today, by dealing with them first, he managed to delay contact with the paper by eleven minutes. He set up the table in the living room—the room was cool and damp from the night, and smelled of cigarettes—and then he opened the front door.

There, on the concrete porch, lay the Gazette. Rolled up, held by a rubber band.

He picked it up and slid the rubber band off. The rubber band sprang away and vanished into the bushes by the porch.

For several minutes he read the news items on the front page. He read about President Eisenhower’s health, the national debt, moves by cunning leaders in the Middle East. Then he folded the paper back and read the comics page. Then he read the letters to the editor. While he was doing that, Sammy pushed by him and outside.

"Good-bye," Sammy said, "See you this afternoon."

"Okay," he said, hardly aware of the boy.

Margo appeared next; she hurried by him and to the sidewalk, her key extended. Unlocking the Volkswagen she slid inside and started up the motor. While it heated she wiped moisture from the windshield. The morning air was crisp. Along the street a few children trotted in the direction of the grammar school. Cars started up.

"I forgot about Sammy," Ragle said, when Vic stepped out of the house and onto the porch beside him. "But he left on his own power."

"Take it easy," Vic said. "Don’t work too hard on your contest." His coat over his shoulder he descended the steps to the path. A moment later Margo put the Volkswagen into gear, and she and Vic thundered off toward the through-street leading downtown.

Those little cars make a lot of noise, Ragle thought to himself. He remained on the porch reading the newspaper as long as he could; then the cold morning air got the better of him and he turned and went back inside, to the kitchen.

As yet he had not looked at page 16, the page on which the Where-Will-the-Little-Green-Man-Be-Next? entry form appeared. Most of the page belonged to the form; beyond it there was little but instructions and comments on the contest, news of previous winners. The tally-sheet of standings; everybody who was still competing was there, represented in the smallest typeface the newspaper could obtain. His name, of course, was huge. Unique. In a box by itself. Every day he saw it there. Below his name, other names had a transient existence, not quite at the threshold of consciousness.

For each day’s contest the newspaper presented a series of clues, and these always got read by him as a preliminary to the task of solving the problem itself. The problem, of course, was to select the proper square from the 1,208 in the form. The clues did not give any help, but he assumed that in some peripheral fashion they contained data, and he memorized them as a matter of habit, hoping that their message would reach him subliminally—since it never did literally.

"A swallow is as great as a mile."

Some oblique stream of association process, perhaps ... he let the crypticism lie about in his mind, sinking down layer by layer. To trip reflexes or whatever. Swallow suggested the process of eating. And of course flying. Wasn’t flying a symbol of sex? And swallows returned to Capistrano, which was in California. The rest of the phrase reminded him of, "A miss is as good as a mile." Why great then, instead of good? Great suggested whales ... the great white whale. Ah, association at work. Flying over the water, possibly toward California. Then he thought of the ark and the dove. Olive branch. Greece. That meant cooking... Greeks operate restaurants. Eating, again! Sensible ... and doves were a gourmet’s delight.

"The bell told on tee-hee."

That stuck in his craw. Gibberish, certainly. But it suggested homosexuality. "Bell." And the "tee-hee"’ the effeminate laugh of the queer, the belle. And the John Donne sermon with the line, "For whom the bell tolls." Also a Hemingway book. Tee might be tea. Ring bell, get tea served. Tiny silver bell. Mission! The mission at Capistrano, where the swallows returned to! It fitted.

While he was pondering the clues, he heard steps on the front walk. Setting down the paper, he slipped into the living room to see who it was.

Approaching the house was a tall, slim, middle-aged man wearing a baggy, tweedy suit, and smoking a cigar. He had a kindly look, like a minister or a drain-inspector. Under his arm he carried a manila folder. Ragle recognized him. The man represented the Gazette; he had come visiting a number of times before, sometimes to bring Ragle’s check—which ordinarily was mailed—and sometimes to clear up misunderstandings about entries. Ragle felt dismay; what did Lowery want?

With no haste, Lowery stepped up onto the porch, raised his hand and touched the bell.

Bell, Ragle thought. Minister. Maybe the clues were there to tell him that the newspaper would be sending Lowery to visit him.

"Hi, Mr. Lowery," he said, opening the door.

"Hello, Mr. Gumm." Lowery beamed ingenuously; there was no gravity in his manner, nothing to suggest that any bad news was to be conveyed, or that anything had gone wrong.

"What’s the visit for?" Ragle asked, sacrificing manners in the name of need.

Lowery, chewing on his Dutch Master, gazed at him and then said, "I have a couple of checks for you... the paper thought I might as well deliver them in person, since they knew I’d be driving out this way today." He wandered about the living room. "And I have a few things to ask you. Just to be on the safe side. About your entries for yesterday’s contest."

"I mailed in six," he said.

"Yes, we got all six." Lowery winked at him. "But you failed to indicate the order of value." Opening the manila envelope, he laid out the six entry forms; they had already been photographed, reduced to more convenient size. Handing Ragle a pencil, Lowery said, "I know it’s just an oversight on your part... but we have to have them numbered."

"God damn," he said. How could he have been in such a hurry? Swiftly, he marked them in order, from one to six. "There," he said, returning them. What a stupid oversight. It might have cost him the contest then and there.

Lowery seated himself, selected the entry marked one, and for a surprisingly long time studied it.

"Is it right?" Ragle demanded, although he knew that Lowery would not know; the entries had to be sent on to puzzle headquarters in New York or Chicago, wherever it all was done.

"Well," Lowery said, "time will tell. But this is the one you mean as your first entry. Your primary entry."

"Yes," he said. This was the secret compact between himself and the contest people; he was permitted to submit more than one entry for each day’s puzzle. They allowed him up to ten, with the stipulation that they be numbered in order of preference. If the number one entry was incorrect, it was destroyed—as if it had never reached them—and the second was considered, and so on down to the last. Usually, he felt sure enough of the solution to limit his submissions to three or four. The fewer, of course, the better the contest people felt about it. No one else, to his knowledge, had this privilege. It was for the one simple purpose of keeping him in the contest.

They had proposed it, after he had missed the correct solution by only a few squares. His entries generally grouped about tangent squares, but once in a while he was unable to decide between squares quite far apart on the entry form. In those cases, he took a risk; his intuition was not strong. But when he felt the solution to lie in an approximate region, he was safe. One or another of the entries proved correct. In his two and a half years of submissions, he had missed eight times. On those days none of his entries had been correct. But the contest people had allowed him to continue. There was a clause in the rules that permitted him to "borrow" against past correct entries. For every thirty correct entries he could make one mistake. And so it went. By the use of loopholes he had remained in the contest. No one outside the contest knew that he had ever missed; it was his secret and the contest people’s secret. And neither of them had any motive to air it publicly.

Evidently he had become valuable from the standpoint of publicity. Why the public would want the same person to win over and over again he did not know. Obviously, if he won he won over the other contenders. But that was the manner of the public mind. They recognized his name. As it was explained to him, the theory went that the public liked to see a name they could identify. They resisted change. A law of inertia was involved; as long as he was out, the public wanted him—and everyone else—out; as soon as he was in, well, that made it self-perpetuating. The force of stasis worked on his side. The vast reactionary pressures now ran with him, not against him. "Swimming with the tide," as Bill Black would put it.

Lowery, seated with his legs crossed, smoking and blinking, said, "Have you looked at today’s puzzle?"

"No," he said. "Just the clues. Do they mean anything?"

"Not literally."

"I know that. I mean, do they mean anything at all, in any way, shape, or form? Or is it just to convince us that somebody up at the top knows the answer?"

"What does that mean?" Lowery said, with a shade of annoyance.

"I have a theory," Ragle said. "Not a very serious theory, but it’s fun to toy with. Maybe there’s no correct answer."

Lowery raised an eyebrow. "Then on what basis do we declare one answer a winner and all others incorrect?"

"Maybe you read over the entries and decide on the strength of them which appeals to you the most. Esthetically."

Lowry said, "You’re projecting your technique on us."

"My technique?" He was puzzled.

"Yes," Lowery said. "You work from an esthetic, not a rational, standpoint. Those scanners you constructed. You view a pattern in space, a pattern in time. You try to fill. Complete the pattern. Anticipate where it goes if extended one more point. That’s not rational; not an intellectual process. That’s how— well, vase-makers work. I’m not disapproving. How you go about it is your business. But you don’t dope it out; I doubt if you’ve ever solved the content of the clues. If you had you wouldn’t have asked, matter of fact."

No, he realized. I never have doped out the clues. In fact, it had never occurred to him that anybody did, that anyone read them and got concrete meanings from them. Such as lining up the first letter of each third word, adding ten, and coming out with the number of a specific square. Thinking that, he laughed.

"Why laugh?" Lowery said, with great soberness. "This is a serious business. A lot of money is at stake."

"I was just thinking about Bill Black."

"Who’s that?"

"A neighbor. He wants me to teach him how I do it."

"Well, if it’s done on an esthetic basis—"

"Then I can’t," Ragle finished for him. "He’s out of luck. That’s why I laughed. He’ll be disappointed; he wanted to pick up a couple of bucks."

With a suggestion of moral indignation, Lowery said, "Does it please you to know that your talent can’t be taught? That it isn’t a technique in the usual sense ... it’s more a—" He searched for the word. "God knows. Obviously, chance plays no role."

"I’m glad to hear somebody say that."

Lowery said, "Can anybody imagine in good faith that you could guess correctly, day after day? That’s ridiculous. The odds are beyond calculation. Or at least, almost beyond. Yes, we did calculate it. A stack of beans reaching to Betelgeuse."

"What’s Betelgeuse?"

"A distant star. I use it as a metaphor. In any case, we know there’s no guesswork involved... except perhaps in the final stage. When it’s a choice between two or three squares."

"Then I can flip a coin," Ragle agreed.

"But then," Lowery said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin and waggling his cigar up and down, "when it’s a question of two or three squares out of over a thousand, it doesn’t matter. Any of us could guess it, at that point."

Ragle agreed.

In the garage of their home, Junie Black crouched before the automatic washer, stuffing clothes into it. Under her bare feet the concrete was cold; shivering, she straightened up, poured a stream of granules from the box of detergent into the washer, shut the little glass door, and turned on the machinery. The clothes, behind the glass, proceeded to swirl about. She set down the box, looked at her wristwatch, and started out of the garage.

"Oh," she said, startled. Ragle was standing in the driveway.

"I thought I’d drop by," he said. "Sis is ironing. You can smell that fine burned-starch smell all over the house. Like duck feathers and phonograph records roasted together at the bottom of an old oil drum."

She saw that he was peering at her from the corner of his eye. His straw-colored, shaggy eyebrows drew together and his big shoulders hunched as he clasped his arms together. In the mid-afternoon sunlight his skin had a deep underlying tan, and she wondered how it was achieved. She had never been able to tan that well, try as she might.

"What’s that you have on?" he asked.

"Slim-jims," she said.