Time Out of Joint

four

At sunset, Sammy Nielson put in a last tardy hour galloping around the Ruins. Together with Butch Cline and Leo Tarski he had dragged a mass of roofing slats into a heap to form a real swell defensive position. They could probably hold the position indefinitely. Next came the gathering of dirt clods, those with long grass attached, for superior throwing.

Cold evening wind blew about him. He crouched behind the breastwork, shivering.

The trench needed to be deeper. Taking hold of a board that stuck up from the soil, he pried and tugged. A mass of brick, ash, roofing, weeds and dirt broke away and rolled down at his feet. Between two split slabs of concrete an opening could be seen, more of the old basement, or maybe a drainage pipe.

No telling what might be discovered. Lying down, he scooped up handfuls of plaster and chickenwire. Bits covered him as he labored.

In the half-light, straining to see, he found a soggy yellow blob of paper. A phone book. After that, rain-soaked magazines.

Feverishly, he clawed on and on.

In the living room, before dinner, Vic lounged across from his brother-in-law. Ragle had asked him if he could spare a couple of minutes. He wanted to talk to him. Seeing the somber expression on his brother-in-law's face, Vic said,

"You want me to close the door?" In the dining room, Margo had started setting the table; the noise of dishes mixed with the six o'clock news issuing out of the TV set.

"No," Ragle said.

"Is it about the contest?"

Ragle said, "I'm considering dropping out of the contest voluntarily. It's getting too much for me. The strain. Listen." He leaned toward Vic. His eyes were red-rimmed. "Vic," he said, "I'm having a nervous breakdown. Don't say anything to Margo." His voice wavered and sank. "I felt I should discuss it with you."

It was hard to know what to say to him. "Is it the contest?" Vic said finally.

"Probably." Ragle gestured.

"How long?"

"Weeks, now. Two months. I forget." He lapsed into silence, staring past Vic at the floor.

"Have you told the newspaper people?"

"No."

"Won't they kick up a fuss?"

Ragle said, "I don't care what they do. I can't go on. I may take a long trip somewhere. Even leave the country."

"My gosh," Vic said.

"I'm worn out. Maybe after I take a rest, six months of it, I'll feel better. I might tackle some manual labor. On an assembly line. Or outdoors. What I want to clear up with you is the financial business. I've been contributing about two hundred fifty a month to the household; that's what it averages over the last year."

"Yes," Vic said. "That sounds right."

"Can you and Margo make out without it? On the house payments and car payments, that sort of business?"

"Sure," he said. "I guess we can."

"I want to write you out a check for six hundred bucks," Ragle said. "Just in case. If you need it, cash it. If not, don't. Better put it in an account... checks are good only for a month or so, aren't they? Start a savings account, get your four-percent interest."

"You haven't said anything to Margo?"

"Not yet."

At the doorway, Margo said, "Dinner's almost ready. Why are you two men sitting there so solemnly?"

"Business," Vic said.

"Can I sit and listen?" she asked.

"No," both men said together. Without a word she went off.

"To continue," Ragle said, "if you don't mind hearing about it. I thought about going to the VA hospital... I can use my veteran's status and get some kind of medical assistance. But I have doubts as to whether it lies in their province. I also thought of using the GI Bill and going up to the university and taking a few courses."

"In what?"

"Oh, say, philosophy."

That sounded bizarre to him. "Why?" he said.

"Isn't philosophy a refuge and a solace?"

"I didn't know that. Maybe it was once. My impression of philosophy is something having to do with theories of ultimate reality and What is the purpose of life?"

Stolidly, Ragle said, "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if you think it would help you."

Ragle said, "I've read some, in my time. I was thinking of Bishop Berkeley. The Idealists. For instance--" He waved his hand at the piano over in its corner of the living room. "How do we know that piano exists?"

"We don't," Vic said.

"Maybe it doesn't."

Vic said, "I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a bunch of words."

At that, Ragle's face lost its color entirely. His mouth dropped open. Staring at Vic, he drew himself up in his chair.

"Are you okay?" Vic said.

"I have to think about this," Ragle said, speaking with effort. He got to his feet. "Excuse me," he said. "I'll talk to you again some time later. Dinner's ready... or something." He disappeared through the doorway, into the dining room.

The poor guy, Vic thought. It certainly has got him down. The loneliness and isolation of sitting around all day... the futility.

"Can I help set the table?" he asked his wife.

"All done," Margo said. Ragle had gone on by, down the hall to the bathroom. "What is it?" Margo said. "What's wrong with Ragle tonight? He's so miserable... he didn't flunk out of the contest, did he? I know he would have told me, but--"

"I'll tell you later," he said. He put his arm around her and kissed her; she leaned warmly against him.

If he had this, he thought, maybe he'd feel better. A family. Nothing in the world is equal to it. And nobody can take it away.

At the dinner table, as they all ate, Ragle Gumm sat deep in thought. Across from him, Sammy yammered on about his club and its powerful machinery of war. He did not listen.

Words, he thought.

Central problem in philosophy. Relation of word to object... what is a word? Arbitrary sign. But we live in words. Our reality, among words not things. No such thing as a thing anyhow; a gestalt in the mind. Thingness... sense of substance. An illusion. Word is more real than the object it represents.

Word doesn't represent reality. Word _is_ reality. For us, anyhow. Maybe God gets to objects. Not us, though.

In his coat, hanging up in the hall closet, was the metal box with the six words in it.

SOFT-DRINK STAND

DOOR

FACTORY BUILDING

HIGHWAY

DRINKING FOUNTAIN

BOWL OF FLOWERS

Margo's voice roused him. "I told you not to play there." Her tone, sharp and loud, caused him to lose his line of thought. "Now don't play there. Mind me, Sammy. I'm serious."

"How did it go with the petition?" Vic asked.

"I got to see some minor clerk. He said something about the city not having funds at the present time. The infuriating thing is that when I phoned last week they said contracts were being let, and work ought to start any day. That just goes to show you. You can't get them to do anything. You're helpless; one person is helpless."

"Maybe Bill Black could flood the lots," Vic said.

"Yes," she said, "and then all the children could drown instead of fall and crack their skulls."

After dinner, while Margo washed the dishes in the kitchen and Sammy lay in the living room in front of the TV set, he and Vic talked some more.

"Ask the contest people for a leave of absence," Vic suggested.

"I doubt if they would." He was fairly familiar with the pack of rules and he recalled no such provision.

"Try them."

"Maybe," he said, scratching at a spot on the table top.

Vic said, "That business last night gave me a real turn. I hope I didn't get you upset. I hope I'm not responsible for your feeling depressed."

"No," he said. "If any one thing's responsible, it's probably the contest. And June Black."

"Now listen," Vic said. "You can do a lot better for yourself than Junie Black. And anyhow, she's spoken for."

"By a nitwit."

"That doesn't matter. It's the institution. Not the individual."

Ragle said, "It's hard to think of Bill and June Black as an institution. Anyhow, I'm not in the mood for discussing institutions."

"Tell me what happened," Vic said.

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

Ragle said, "Hallucination. That's all. Recurrent."

"Want to describe it?"

"No."

"Is it anything like my experience last night? I'm not trying to pry. That bothered me. I think something's wrong."

"Something is wrong," Ragle said.

"I don't mean with you or with me or with any one person. I mean in general."

"'The time,'" Ragle said, "'is out of joint.'"

"I think we should compare notes."

Ragle said, "I'm not going to tell you what happened to me. You'll nod gravely right now. But tomorrow or the next day, while you're standing around down at your supermarket chewing the rag with the checkers... you'll run out of conversation and you'll hit on me. And you'll convulse everybody with titillating gossip. I've had enough gossip. Remember, I'm a national hero."

"Suit yourself," Vic said. "But we might -- get somewhere. I mean it. I'm worried."

Ragle said nothing.

"You can't clam up," Vic said. "I have a responsibility to my wife and my son. Are you no longer in control of yourself? Do you know what you may or may not do?"

"I won't run amuck," Ragle said. "Or at least I have no reason to think I will."

"We all have to live together in the same house," Vic pointed out. "Suppose I told you I--"

Ragle interrupted, "If I feel I'm a menace, I'll leave. I'll be leaving anyhow, probably in the next couple of days. So if you can last that long, everything will be okay."

"Margo won't let you go."

At that, he laughed. "Margo," he said, "will just have to let me go."

"Are you sure you're not just feeling sorry for yourself because your love-life is fouled up?"

Ragle didn't answer that. Getting up from the table he walked into the living room, where Sammy lay watching "Gunsmoke." Throwing himself down on the couch, he watched too.

I can't talk to him, he realized.

Too bad. Too darn bad.

"How's the Western?" he said to Sammy, during the midpoint commercial.

"Fine," Sammy said. From the boy's shirt pocket, crumpled white paper stuck up. The paper had a stained, weathered appearance, and Ragle leaned over to see. Sammy paid no attention.

"What's that in your pocket?" Ragle asked.

"Oh," Sammy said, "I was setting up defense bastions over at the Ruins. And I dug up a board, and I found a bunch of old telephone books and magazines and stuff."

Reaching down, Ragle pulled the paper from the boy's pocket. The paper fell apart in his hands. Stringy slips of paper, and on each was a block-printed word, smeared by rain and decay.

GAS STATION

COW

BRIDGE

"You got these' at those city lots?" he demanded, unable to think clearly. "You dug them up?"

"Yes," Sammy said.

"Can I have them?"

"No," Sammy said.

He experienced a maniacal wrath. "All right," he said, as reasonably as possible. "I'll trade you something for them. Or buy them."

"What do you want them for?" Sammy said, ceasing to watch the TV set. "Are they valuable or something?"

He answered, truthfully, "I'm collecting them." Going to the hall closet he reached into his coat, got out the box, and carried it back to the living room. Sitting down beside Sammy, he opened the box and showed the boy the six slips that he had already acquired.

"A dime apiece," Sammy said.

The boy had five slips in all, but two were so badly weatherdamaged that he couldn't read the word on them. But he paid him fifty cents anyhow, took the slips, and went off by himself to think.

Maybe it's a gag, he thought. I'm the victim of a hoax. Because I'm a Hero Contest Winner First Class.

Publicity by the paper.

But that made no sense. No sense at all.

Baffled, he smoothed the five slips out as best he could, and then added them to the box. In some respects he felt worse than before.

Later that evening he located a flashlight, put on a heavy coat, and set off in the direction of the Ruins.

His legs ached already from the hike with Junie, and by the time he reached the empty lots he wondered if it was worth it. At first his flashlight beam picked up only the shape of broken concrete, pits half-filled with spring rain, heaps of boards and plaster. For some time he prowled about, flashing his light here and there. At last, after stumbling and falling over a tangle of rusted wire, he came upon a crude shelter of rubble, obviously made by the boys.

Getting down, he turned his light on the ground near the shelter. And by golly, there in the light the edge of yellowed paper gleamed back at him. He wedged his flashlight under his arm and with both hands rooted until he had dislodged the paper. It came loose in a thick pack. Sammy had been right; it seemed to be a telephone book, or at least part of one.

Along with the telephone book he managed to dig loose the remains of large, slick family magazines. But after that he found himself shining his light down into a cistern or drainage system. Too risky, he decided. Better wait until day.

Carrying the telephone book and magazines from the lot, he started back to the house.

What a desolate place, he thought to himself. No wonder Margo wants the city to clear it. They must be out of their minds. One broken arm and they'd have a lawsuit on their hands.

Even the houses near the lots seemed dark, uninhabited. And ahead of him the sidewalk was cracked, littered with debris.

Fine place for kids.

When he got back to the house he carried the phone book and magazines into the kitchen. Both Vic and Margo were in the living room, and neither of them noticed that he had anything with him. Sammy had gone to bed. He spread wrapping paper on the kitchen table, and then, with care, he laid out what he had got.

The magazines were too damp to handle. So he left them near the circulating heater to dry. At the kitchen table, he began to examine the phone book.

As soon as he opened it he realized that he did not have either the covers or the first and last pages. Only the middle part.

It was not the phone book he was used to. The print had a darker quality; the typeface was larger. The margins were greater, too. He guessed that it represented a smaller community.

The exchanges were unfamiliar to him. Florian. Edwards. Lakeside. Walnut. He turned the pages, not searching for anything in particular; what was there to search for? Anything, he thought. Out of the ordinary. Something that would leap up and hit him in the eye. For instance, he could not tell how old the book was. Last year's? Ten years ago? How long had there been printed phone books?

Entering the kitchen, Vic said, "What have you got?"

He said, "An old phone book."

Vic bent over his shoulder to see. Then he went to the refrigerator and opened it. "Want some pie?" he said.

"No thanks," Ragle said.

"Are these yours?" Vic pointed to the drying magazines.

"Yes," he said.

Vic disappeared back into the living room, taking two pieces of berry pie with him.

Picking up the phone book, Ragle carried it into the hall, to the phone. He seated himself on the stool, chose a number at random, lifted the receiver and dialed. After a moment he heard a series of clicks and then the operator's voice.

"What number are you calling?"

He read off the number. "Bridgeland 3-4465."

Then a pause. "Would you please hang up and dial that number again?" the operator said, in her lofty, no-nonsense voice.

He hung up, waited a moment, and dialed the number again.

Immediately the circuit was broken. "What number are you calling?" an operator's voice -- not the same one -- sounded in his ear.

"Bridgeland 3-4465," he said.

"Just a moment, sir," the operator said.

He waited.

"I'm sorry, sir," the operator said. "Would you please look up that number again?"

"Why?" he said.

"Just a moment, sir," the operator said, and at that point the line went dead. No one was on the other end; he heard the absence of a living substance there. He waited, but nothing happened.

After a time he hung up, waited, and dialed the number again.

This time he got the squalling siren-sound, up and down in his ear, deafening him. The racket that indicated that he had misdialed.

Choosing other numbers he dialed. Each time he got the racket. Misdial. Finally he closed the phone book, hesitated, and dialed for the operator.

"Operator."

"I'm trying to call Bridgeland 3-4465," he said. He could not tell if she was the same operator as before. "Would you get it for me? All I get is the misdial signal."

"Yes sir. Just a moment sir." A long pause. And then, "What was that number again, sir?"

He repeated it.

"That number has been disconnected," the operator said.

"Would you check on some others for me?" he asked.

"Yes sir."

He read off other numbers from the page. Each one had been disconnected.

Of course. An old phone book. Obviously. It was true; probably it was a discarded series in its entirety.

He thanked her and hung up.

So nothing had been proved or learned.

An explanation might be that these numbers had been assigned to several towns nearby. The towns had incorporated, and a new number system installed. Perhaps when the switch to dial phones was made, only recently, a year or so ago.

Feeling foolish, he walked back into the kitchen.

The magazines had begun to dry, and he seated himself with one of them on his lap. Fragments broke away as he turned the first page. A family magazine, first an article on cigarettes and lung cancer... then an article on Secretary Dulles and France. Then an article by a man who had trekked up the Amazon with his children. Then stories, Westerns and detectives and adventure in the South Seas. Ads, cartoons. He read the cartoons and put the magazine down.

The next magazine had more pictures in it; something like _Life_. But the paper was not as high-quality as the Luce publications' paper. Still, it was a first-line magazine. The cover was gone, so he could not tell if it was _Look_; he guessed that it was _Look_ or one he had seen a couple of times called _Ken_.

The first picture-story dealt with a hideous train-wreck in Pennsylvania. The next picture-story--

A lovely blond Norse-looking actress. Reaching up, he moved the lamp so that it cast more light on the page.

The girl had heavy hair, well-groomed and quite long. She smiled in an amazingly sweet manner, a jejune but intimate smile that held him. Her face was as pretty as any he had seen, and in addition she had a deep, full, sensual chin and neck, not the rather ordinary neck of most starlets but an adult, ripe neck, and excellent shoulders. No hint of boniness, nor of fleshiness. A mixture of races, he decided. German hair. Swiss or Norwegian shoulders.

But what really held him, held him in a state of near-incredulity, was the sight of the girl's figure. Good grief, he said to himself. And what a pure-looking girl. How could she be so developed?

And she seemed happy to show it. The girl leaned forward, and most of her bosom spilled out and displayed itself. It looked to be the smoothest, firmest, most natural bosom in the world. And very warm-looking, too.

He did not recognize the girl's name. But he thought, There's the answer to our need of a mother. Look at that.

"Vic," he said, getting up with the magazine and carrying it into the living room. "Take a look at this," he said, putting it down in Vic's lap.

"What is it?" Margo said, from the other side of the room.

"You'd be bored," Vic said, setting aside his piece of berry pie. "It's real, isn't it?" he said. "Yes, you can see under it. No supports. It holds itself out like that."

"She's leaning forward," Ragle said.

"A girl, is it?" Margo said. "Let me look; I won't carp." She came over and stood beside Ragle, and all three of them studied the picture. It was full-page, in color. Of course the rain had stained and faded it, but there was no doubt; the woman was unique.

"And she has such a gentle face," Margo said. "So refined and civilized."

"But sensual," Ragle said.

Under the picture was the caption, _Marilyn Monroe during her visit to England, in connection with the filming of her picture with Sir Laurence Olivier._

"Have you heard of her?" Margo said.

"No," Ragle said.

"She must be an English starlet," Vic said.

"No," Margo said, "it says she's on a visit to England. It sounds like an American name." They turned to the article itself.

The three of them read what remained of the article.

"It talks about her as if she's very famous," Margo said. "All the crowds. People lining the streets."

"Over there," Vic said. "Maybe in England; not in America."

"No, it says something about her fan clubs in America."

"Where did you get this?" Vic said to Ragle.

He said, "In the lots. Those ruins. That you're trying to get the city to clear."

"Maybe it's a very old magazine," Margo said. "But Laurence Olivier is still alive... I remember seeing _Richard the Third_ on TV, just last year."

They looked at one another.

Vic said, "Do you want to tell me what your hallucination is now?"

"What hallucination?" Margo said instantly, glancing from him to Ragle. "Was that what you two were talking about, that you didn't want me to hear?"

After a pause, Ragle said, "I've been having an hallucination, dear." He tried to smile at his sister encouragingly, but her face remained cruel with concern. "Don't look so anxious," he said. "It's not that bad."

"What is it?" she demanded.

He said, "I'm having trouble with words."

At once she said, "Trouble speaking? Oh my god... that's how President Eisenhower was after his stroke."

"No," he said. "That's not what I mean." They both waited, but now that he tried to explain he found it almost impossible. "I mean," he said, "things aren't what they seem."

Then he was silent.

"Sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan," Margo said.

"That's all," Ragle said. "I can't explain it any better."

"Then you don't think you're losing your mind," Vic said. "You don't think it's in you; it's outside. In the things themselves. Like my experience with the light cord."

After hesitating he at last nodded. "I suppose," he said. For some obscure reason he had an aversion toward tying in Vic's experience with his own. They did not appear to him to be similar.

Probably just snobbery on my part, he thought. Margo, in a slow, dreadful voice, said, "Do you think we're being duped?"

"What a strange thing to say," he said.

"What do you mean by that?" Vic said.

"I don't know," Margo said. "But in _Consumer's Digest_ they're always telling you to watch out for frauds and misleading advertising; you know, short weight and that sort of thing. Maybe this magazine, this publicity about this Marilyn Monroe, is all just a big bunch of hot air. They're trying to build up some trivial starlet, pretend everybody has heard of her, so when people hear about her for the first time they'll say, Oh yes, that famous actress. Personally I don't think she's much more than a glandular case." She ceased talking and stood silently, plucking at her ear in a repetitious nervous tic. Her forehead webbed with worry-lines.

"You mean maybe somebody made her up?" Vic said, and laughed.

"Duped," Ragle repeated.

It rang a bell deep inside him. On some sub-verbal level.

"Maybe I won't go away," he said.

"Were you going away?" Margo said. "Nobody feels obliged to let me in on anything; I suppose you were going to leave tomorrow and never come back. Write us a post card from Alaska."

Her bitterness made him uncomfortable. "No," he said. "I'm sorry, dear. Anyhow I'm going to stay. So don't brood about it."

"Were you intending to drop out of your contest?"

"I hadn't decided," he said.

Vic said nothing.

To Vic, he said, "What do you suppose we can do? How do we go about -- whatever we ought to go about?"

"Beats me," Vic said. "You're experienced with research. Files and data and graphs. Start keeping a record of all this. Aren't you the man who can see patterns?"

"Patterns," he said. "Yes, I suppose I am." He hadn't thought about his talent in this connection. "Maybe so," he said.

"String it all together. Collect all the information, get it down in black and white -- hell, build one of your scanners and run it through so you can view it, the way you do."

"It's impossible," he said. "We have no point of reference. Nothing to judge by."

"Simple contradictions," Vic disagreed. "This magazine with an article about a world-famous movie star we haven't heard of; that's a contradiction. We ought to comb the magazine, read every word and line. See how many other contradictions there are, with what we know outside the magazine."

"And the phone book," he said. The yellow section, the business listings. And perhaps, at the Ruins, there was other material.

The point of reference. The Ruins.