Time Out of Joint Read online

  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.

  "Pants," he said. "The other day I asked myself, What’s the psychological reason for my admiring women in pants? And then I said to myself, Why the hell not?"

  "Thank you," she said. "I guess."

  "You look very good," he said. "Especially with your feet bare. Like one of those movies where the heroine pads over the sand dunes, her arms to the sky."

  Junie said, "How’s the contest today?"

  He shrugged. Obviously he wanted to get away from it. "I thought I’d take a stroll," he said. And again he peered at her sideways. It was a compliment to her, but it always made her wonder if she had left a button undone; she could scarcely resist glancing furtively down. But except for her feet and midriff she was well covered.

  "Open midriff," she said.

  "Yes, so I see," Ragle said.

  "You like-e?" With her, that passed as humor.

  Ragle said, almost brusquely, "I thought I’d see if you’d like to go for a swim. It’s a nice day, not too cold."

  "I have all this housework to do," she said. But the idea appealed to her; at the public park, on the north end of town, where the uncultivated hills began, were a playground and swimming pool. Naturally the kids used it mostly, but adults showed up, too, and quite often gangs of teen-agers. It always made her feel good to be where teen-agers were; she had been out of school—high school—only a few years, and for her the transition had been imperfect. In her mind she still belonged to that bunch which showed up in hot rods, with radios blaring pop tunes... the girls in sweaters and bobby socks, the boys in blue jeans and cashmere sweaters.

  "Get your swimsuit," Ragle said.

  "Okay," she agreed. "For an hour or so; but then I have to get back." Hesitating, she said, "Margo didn’t—see you come over here, did she?" As she had found out, Margo loved to blab.

  "No," he said. "Margo’s off on some—" He gestured. "She’s busy ironing," he concluded. "Involved, you know."

  She shut off the washer, got her swimsuit and a towel, and shortly she and Ragle were striding along across town to the swimming pool.

  Having Ragle beside her made her feel peaceful. She had always been attracted to big burly men, especially older ones. To her, Ragle was exactly the right age. And look at the things he had done, his military career in the Pacific, for instance. And his national fame in the newspaper contest. She liked his bony, grim, scarred face; it was a real man’s face, with no trace of double chin, no fleshiness. His hair had a bleached quality, white and curled, never combed. It had always struck her that a man who combed his hair was a sissy. Bill spent half an hour in the mornings, fussing with his hair; although now that he had a crewcut he fussed somewhat less. She loathed touching crewcut hair; the stiff bristles reminded her of a toothbrush. And Bill fitted perfectly into his narrow-shouldered ivy-league coat ... he had virtually no shoulders. The only sport he played was tennis, and that really aroused her animosity. A man wearing white shorts, bobby socks, tennis shoes! A college student at best... as Bill had been when she met him.

  "Don’t you get lonely?" she asked Ragle.

  "Eh?"

  "Not being married." Most of the kids she had known in high school were now married, all but the impossible ones. "I mean, it’s fine your living with your sister and brother-in-law, but wouldn’t you like to have a little home of your own for you and your wife?" She put the emphasis on wife.

  Considering, Ragle said, "Ultimately I’ll do that. But the truth of the matter is I’m a bum."

  "A bum," she echoed, thinking of all the money he had won in the contest. Heaven knew how much it added up to in all.

  "I don’t like a permanent thing," he explained. "Probably I picked up a nomadic outlook in the war ... and before that, my family moved around a lot. My father and mother were divorced. There’s a real resistance in my personality toward settling down... being defined in terms of one house, one wife, one family of kids. Slippers and pipe."

  "What’s wrong with that? It means security."

  Ragle said, "But I’d get doubts." Presently he said, "I did get doubts. When I was married before."

  "Oh," she said, interested. "When was that?"

  "Years ago. Before the war. When I was in my early twenties. I met a girl; she was a secretary for a trucking firm. Very nice girl. Polish parents. Very bright, alert girl. Too ambitious for me. She wanted nothing but to get up in the class where she’d be giving garden parties. Barbecues in the patio."

  "I don’t see anything wrong with that," Junie said. "It’s natural to want to live graciously." She had got that term out of Better Homes and Gardens, one of the magazines she and Bill subscribed to.

  "Well, I told you I was a bum," Ragle grunted, and dropped the subject.

  The ground had become hilly, and they had to climb. Here, the houses had larger lawns, terraces of flowers; fat imposing mansions, the homes of the well-to-do. The streets were irregular. Thick groves of trees appeared. And above them they could see the woods itself, beyond the final street, Olympus Drive.

  "I wouldn’t mind living up here," Junie said. Better, she thought, than those one-story tract houses with no foundations. That lose their roofs on the first windy day. That if you leave the hose running all night the water fills up the garage.

  Among the clouds in the sky a rapidly moving glittery dot shot by and was gone. Moments later she and Ragle heard the faint, almost absurdly remote roar.

  "A jet," she said.

  Scowling upward, Ragle shaded his eyes and peered at the sky, not walking but standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his feet planted apart.

  "You think it’s perhaps a Russian jet?" she asked mischievously.

  Ragle said, "I wish I knew what went on up there."

  "You mean what God is doing?"

  "No," he said. "Not God at all. I mean that stuff that floats by every now and then." br />
  Junie said, "Vic was talking last night about groping around for the light cord in the bathroom; you remember?"

  "Yes," he said, as they trudged on uphill once more.

  "I got to thinking. That never happened to me."

  "Good," Ragle said.

  "Except I did remember one thing like that. One day I was out on the sidewalk, sweeping. I heard the phone ring inside the house. This was about a year ago. Anyhow, I had been expecting a real important call." It had been from a young man whom she had known in school, but she did not include that detail. "Well, I dropped the broom and I ran in. You know, we have two steps up to the porch?"

  "Yes," he said, paying attention to her.

  "I ran up. And I ran up three. I mean, I thought there was one more. No, I didn’t think there was in so many words. I didn’t mentally say, I have to climb three steps...."

  "You mean you stepped up three steps without thinking."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Did you fall?"

  "No," she said. "It’s not like when there’s three and you think there’s only two. That’s when you fall on your face and break off a tooth. When there’s two and you think there’s three—it’s real weird. You try to step up once more. And your foot comes down-bang! Not hard, just—well, as if it tried to stick itself into something that isn’t there." She became silent. Always, when she tried to explain anything theoretical, she got bogged down.

  "Ummm," Ragle said..

  "That’s what Vic meant, isn’t it?"

  "Ummm," Ragle said again, and she let the subject drop. He did not seem in the mood to discuss it.

  Beside him in the warm sunlight Junie Black stretched out with her arms at her sides, on her back, her eyes shut. She had brought a blanket along with her, a striped blue and white towel-like wrapper on which she lay. Her swimsuit, a black-wool two-piece affair, reminded him of days gone by, cars with rumble seats, football games, Glenn Miller’s orchestra. The funny heavy old fabric and wooden portable radios that they had lugged to the beach ... Coca-Cola bottles stuck in the sand, girls with long blond hair, lying stomach-down, leaning on their elbows like girls in "I was a ninety-eight-pound scarecrow" ads.

  He contemplated her until she opened her eyes. She had ditched her glasses, as she always did with him. "Hi," she said.

  Ragle said, "You’re a very attractive-looking woman, June."

  "Thank you," she said, smiling up at him. And then she shut her eyes once more.

  Attractive, he thought, albeit immature. Not dumb so much as sheer retarded. Dwelling back in high school days ... Across the grass a bunch of small kids scampered, shrieking and pummeling one another. In the pool itself, youths splashed about, girls and boys wet and mixed together so that all of them appeared about the same. Except that when the girls crawled out onto the tile deck, they had on two-piece suits. And the boys had only trunks.

  Off by the gravel road, an ice cream vendor roamed about pushing his white-enamel truck. The tiny bells rang, inviting the kids.

  Bells again, Ragle thought. Maybe the clue was that I was going to wander up here with June Black— Junie, as her corrupt taste persuades her to call herself.

  Could I fall in love with a little trollopy, giggly ex-high school girl who’s married to an eager-beaver type, and who still prefers a banana split with all the trimmings to a good wine or a good whiskey or even a good dark beer?

  The great mind, he thought, bends when it nears this kind of fellow creature. Meeting and mating of opposites. Yin and yang. The old Doctor Faust sees the peasant girl sweeping off the front walk, and there go his books, his knowledge, his philosophies.

  In the beginning, he reflected, was the word.

  Or, in the beginning was the deed. If you were Faust.

  Watch this, he said to himself. Bending over the apparently sleeping girl, he said, "’Im Anfang war die Tat.’ "

  "Go to hell," she murmured.

  "Do you know what that means?"

  "No."

  "Do you care?"

  Rousing herself, she opened her eyes and said, "You know the only language I ever took was two years of Spanish in high school. So don’t rub it in." Crossly, she flopped over on her side, away from him.

  "That was poetry," he said. "I was trying to make love to you."

  Rolling back, she stared at him.

  "Do you want me to?" he said.

  "Let me think about it," she said. "No," she said, "it would never work out. Bill or Margo would catch on, and then there’d be a lot of grief, and maybe you’d get bounced out of your contest."

  "All the world loves a lover," he said, and bending over her he took hold of her by the throat and kissed her on the mouth. Her mouth was dry, small, and it moved to escape him; he had to grab her neck with his hands.

  "Help," she said faintly.

  "I love you," he told her.

  She stared at him wildly, her pupils hot and dark, as if she thought—god knew what she thought. Probably nothing. It was as if he had clutched hold of a little thin-armed crazed animal. It had alert sense and fast reflexes—under him it struggled, and its nails dug into his arms—but it did not reason or plan or look ahead. If he let go of it, it would bound away a few yards, smooth its pelt, and then forget. Lose its fear, calm down. And not remember that anything had happened.

  I’ll bet, he thought, she’s astonished every first of the month when the paper boy comes to collect. What paper? What paper boy? What two-fifty?

  "You want to get us thrown out of the park?" she said, close to his ear. Her face, uncooperative and wrinkled, glowered directly beneath his.

  A couple of people, walking by, had glanced back to grin.

  The mind of a virgin, he thought. There was something touching about her ... the capacity to forget made her innocent all over again, each time. No matter how deeply she got involved with men, he conjectured, she probably remained psychically untouched. Still as she had been. Sweater and saddle-shoes. Even when she got to be thirty, thirty-five, forty. Her hair-style would alter through the years; she would use more make-up, probably diet. But otherwise, eternal.

  "You don’t drink, do you?" he said. The hot sun and the situation made him yearn for a beer. "Could you be talked into stopping off at a bar somewhere?"

  "No," she said. "I want to get some sun."

  He let her up. At once she sat up, rising forward to fix her straps and dust bits of grass from her knees.

  "What would Margo say?" she said. "She’s already snooping around seeing what dirt she can dig up."

  "Margo is probably off getting her petition presented," he said. "To force the city to clear the ruins from its lots."

  "That’s very meritorious. A lot better than forcing your attentions on somebody else’s spouse." From her purse she took a bottle of suntan lotion and began rubbing it into her shoulders, ignoring him pointedly.

  He knew that one day he could have her. Chance circumstances, a certain mood; and it would be worth it, he decided. Worth arranging all the various little props.

  That fool Black, he thought to himself.

  Off past the park, in the direction of town, a flat irregular patch of green and white made him think again about Margo. The ruins. Visible from up here. Three city lots of cement foundations that had never been pried up by bulldozers. The houses themselves— or whatever buildings there had been—had long since been torn down. Years ago, from the weathered, cracked, yellowed blocks of concrete. From here, it looked pleasant. The colors were nice.

  He could see kids weaving in and out of the ruins. A favorite place to play... Sammy played there occasionally. The cellars formed caves. Vaults. Margo was probably right; one day a child would suffocate or die of tetanus from being scratched on rusty wire.

  And here we sit, he thought. Basking in the sun. While Margo struggles away at city hall, doing civic good for all of us.

  "Maybe we ought to go back," he said to Junie. "I ought to get my entry whipped into shape." My job, he thought ironically
. While Vic plugs away at the supermarket and Bill at the water company. I idle away the day in dalliances.

  That made him crave a beer more than ever. As long as he had a beer in his hand he could be untroubled. The gnawing unease did not quite get through to him.

  "Look," he said to Junie, getting to his feet. "I’m going up the hill to that soft-drink stand and see if by any chance they’ve got any beer. It could be."

  "Suit yourself."

  "Do you want anything? Root beer? A Coke?"

  "No thank you," she said in a formal tone.

  As he plodded up the grassy slope toward the soft-drink stand he thought, I’d have to take Bill Black on, sooner or later. In combat.

  No telling what color the man would turn if he found out. Is he the kind that gets down his hunting 22 and without a word sets off and shoots the trespasser of that most sacred of all a man’s preserves, that Elysian field where only the lord and master dares to graze?

  Talk about bagging the royal deer.

  He reached a cement path along which grew green wooden benches. On the benches assorted people, mostly older, sat watching the slope and pool below. One heavy-set elderly lady smiled at him.

  Does she know? he asked himself. That what she saw going on down there was not happy springtide youthful frolic at all, but sin? Near-adultery?

  "Afternoon," he said to her genially.

  She nodded back genially.

  Reaching around in his pockets, he found some change. A line of kids waited at the soft-drink stand; the kids were buying hot dogs and popsicles and Eskimo Pies and orange drink. He joined them.

  How quiet everything was.

  Stunning desolation washed over him. What a waste his life had been. Here he was, forty-six, fiddling around in the living room with a newspaper contest. No gainful, legitimate employment. No kids. No wife. No home of his own. Fooling around with a neighbor wife.

  A worthless life. Vic was right.

  I might as well give up, he decided. The contest. Everything. Wander on somewhere else. Do something else. Sweat in the oil fields with a tin helmet. Rake leaves. Tote up figures at a desk in some insurance company office. Peddle real estate.