Time Out of Joint

ten

Hearty morning sunlight filled his bedroom with a white glare. He put his hand over his eyes, feeling sick.

"I'll pull down the shades," a voice said. Recognizing the voice he opened his eyes. Victor Nielson stood at the windows, pulling down the shades.

"I'm back," Ragle said. "I didn't get anywhere. Not a step." He remembered the running, the scrambling uphill, through shrubbery. "I got up high," he said. "Almost to the top. But then they rolled me back." Who? he wondered. He said aloud, "Who brought me back here?"

Vic said, "A burly taxi driver who must have weighed three hundred pounds. He carried you right in the front door and set you down on the couch." After a moment he added, "It cost you or me, depending on who foots the bill, eleven dollars."

"Where did they find me?"

"In a bar," Vic said.

"What bar?"

"I never heard of it. Out at the end of town. The north end. The industrial end, by the tracks and the freight yards.

"See if you can remember the name of the bar," Ragle said. It seemed important to him; he did not know why.

"I can ask Margo," Vic said. "She was up; we both were up. Just a minute." He left the room. After a moment or so, Margo appeared at the end of his bed.

"It was a bar called Frank's Bar-B-Q," she said.

"Thanks," Ragle said.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better."

"Can I fix you something bland to eat?"

"No," he said. "Thanks."

Vic said, "You really tanked up. Not on beer. Your pockets were full of shoestring potatoes."

"Anything else?" Ragle said. There was supposed to be something else; he had a memory of stuffing something valuable into them, something that he wanted vitally to keep and bring back.

"Just a paper napkin from Frank's Bar-B-Q," Margo said.

"And a lot of change. Quarters and dimes."

"Maybe you were making phone calls," Vic said.

"I was," he said. "I think." Something about a phone. A phone book. "I remember a name," he said. "Jack Daniels."

Vic said, "That was the cab driver's name."

"How do you know?" Margo asked him.

"Ragle kept calling the cab driver that," Vic said. "What about city maintenance trucks?" Ragle said. "You didn't say anything about them," Margo said. "But it's easy to see why you might have them on your mind."

"Why?" he said.

She raised the window shade. "They've been out there since sunup, since before seven o'clock. The din probably affected your subconscious and got into your thoughts."

Lifting himself up, Ragle looked out the window. Parked at the far curb were two olive-green city maintenance trucks. A crew of city workmen in their drab coveralls had started digging up the street; the racket of their trip hammers jarred him, and he realized that he had been hearing the sound for some time.

"Looks like they're there to stay," Vic said. "Must be a break in the pipe."

"It always makes me nervous when they start digging up the street," Margo said. "I'm always afraid they'll just walk off and leave it dug up. Not finish it."

"They know what they're doing," Vic said. Waving good-bye to Margo and Ragle, he set off for work.

Later, after he had got shakily out of bed, washed and shaved and dressed, Ragle Gumm wandered into the kitchen and fixed himself a glass of tomato juice and a soft-boiled egg on unbuttered toast.

Seated at the table he sipped some of the coffee that Margo had left on the stove. He did not feel like eating. From a distance he could hear the drapapapapapa of the trip hammers. I wonder how long that'll be going on, he asked himself.

He lit a cigarette and then picked up the morning paper. Vic or Margo had brought it in and laid it on the chair by the table, where he would find it.

The texture of the paper repelled him. He could hardly bear to hold it in his hands.

Folding the first sheets back he glanced over the puzzle page. There, as usual, the names of winners. His name, in its special box. In all its glory.

"How does the contest look today?" Margo asked, from the other room. Wearing toreador pants, and a white cotton shirt of Vic's, she had started to polish the television set.

"About the same," he said. The sight of his name on the newspaper page made him restless and uncomfortable, and his first nausea of the morning returned. "Funny business," he said to his sister. "Seeing your name in print. All of a sudden it can be nerve-racking. A shock."

"I've never seen my name in print," she said. "Except in some of those articles about you."

Yes, he thought. Articles about me. "I'm pretty important," he said, putting the paper down.

"Oh you are," Margo agreed.

"I have the feeling," he said, "that what I do affects the human race."

She straightened up and stopped polishing. "What a peculiar thing to say. I don't really see--" She broke off. "After all, a contest is only a contest."

Going into his room, he began setting up his charts, graphs, tables and machines. An hour or so later he had gotten deep into the ordeal of solving the day's puzzle.

At noon, Margo rapped on the closed door. "Ragle," she said, "can you be interrupted? Just say you can't if you can't."

He opened the door, glad of a break.

"Junie Black wants to talk to you," Margo said. "She swears she'll stay only a minute; I told her you hadn't finished." She made a motion, and Junie Black appeared from the living room. "All dressed up," Margo said, eying her.

"I'm going downtown shopping," Junie explained. She had on a red knit wool suit, stockings and heels, and a shorty coat over her shoulders; her hair was done up and she had on make-up, a good deal of it. Her eyes seemed extra dark, and her lashes long, dramatic. "Close the door," she said to Ragle, stepping into his room. "I want to talk to you."

He shut the door.

"Listen," Junie said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he said.

"I know what happened to you." She put her hands on his shoulders and then she drew away from him with a quake of anguish. "Damn him!" she said. "I told him I'd leave him if he did anything to you."

"Bill?" he asked.

"He's responsible. He had you followed and spied on; he hired some private detectives." She paced about the room, tense and smouldering. "They beat you up, didn't they?"

"No," he said. "I don't think so."

She pondered that. "Maybe they just wanted to scare you."

"I don't think this has anything to do with your husband," Ragle said hesitantly. "Or with you."

Shaking her head, Junie said, "I know it does. I saw the telegram he got. When you were missing he got this telegram -- he didn't want me to see it, but I grabbed it away from him. I remember exactly what it said. It was about you. A report on you."

Ragle said, "What did it say?"

For a moment she squeezed together her faculties. Then, fervently, she said, "It said, 'Sighted missing truck. Gumm passed barbecue. Your move next."

"You're sure?" he said, aware of her vagaries.

"Yes," she said. "I memorized it before he got it back."

City trucks, he thought. Outside, in the street, the olive-drab trucks had not left. The men still worked away at the pavement; they had gotten quite a stretch of it dug up, by now.

"Bill has no contact with maintenance, does he?" he asked. "He doesn't dispatch the service trucks, does he?"

"I don't know what he does down at the water company," Junie said. "And I don't care, Ragle. Do you hear that? I don't care. I wash my hands of him." Suddenly she ran toward him and put her arms around him; hugging him she said loudly in his ear, "Ragle, I've made up my mind. This thing, this awful criminal vengeance business of his, finishes it forever. Bill and I are through. Look." She tugged off the glove of her left hand and waved her hand before his face. "Do you see?"

"No," he said.

"My wedding ring. I'm not wearing it." She put her glove back on. "I came over here to tell you that, Ragle. Do you remember when you and I lay out on the grass together, and you read poetry to me and told me you loved me?"

"Yes," he said.

"I don't care what Margo says or anybody says," Junie said. "I have an appointment at two-thirty this afternoon with an attorney. I'm going to see about leaving Bill. And then you and I can be together for the rest of our lives, and nobody can interfere. And if he tries any more of his strong-arm criminal tactics, I'll call the police."

Gathering up her purse, she opened the door to the hall.

"You're leaving?" he asked, somewhat dazed to find himself now in the ebb of the whirlwind.

"I have to get downtown," she said. She glanced up and down the hall and then she made a pantomime, in his direction, of ardent kissing. "I'll try to phone you later today," she whispered, leaning toward him. "And tell you what the lawyer said." The door snapped shut after her, and he heard her heels against the floor as she rushed off. Then, outside, a car started up. She had gone.

"What was all that?" Margo said, from the kitchen.

"She's upset," he said vaguely. "Fight with Bill."

Margo said, "If you're important to the whole human race you ought to be able to do better than her."

"Did you tell Bill Black I had gone off?" he said.

"No," she said. "But I told her. She showed up here, after you had gone. I told her I was too worried about where you were to give a darn what she had to say. Anyhow, I think it was just an excuse on her part to see you; she didn't really want to talk to me." Drying her hands on a paper towel she said, "She looked quite nice, just now. She really is physically attractive. But she's so juvenile. Like some of the little girls Sammy has for his playmates."

He barely heard what she was telling him. His head ached and he felt more sick and confused than before. Echoes of the night...

Outside, the city maintenance crew leaned on their shovels, smoked cigarettes, and seemed to be keeping in the vicinity of the house. Are they there to spy on me? Ragle wondered.

He felt a strong, reflexive aversion to them; it bordered on fear. And he did not know why. He tried to think back, to remember what had happened to him, what he had done and what had been done to him. The olive-green trucks... the running and crawling. An attempt, somewhere along the line, to hide. And something valuable that he had found, but which had slipped or been taken away...