Time Out of Joint

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 crotch 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 go 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.

"Clued 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 toss. 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 _Maytime_ 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.

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."

"I see," Margo said. "Well, how nice."

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," Marge 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 Blake 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 psychoanalysis; Freudian jargon cropped up in his conversation, a sign of his being familiar with cultural questions. "A reversion to infancy due to stress. Your feeling ill. The tension of the subconscious 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?_