On the cover of Time, dated January 14, 1996, was his picture. A painting, in color. With the words underneath it:
RAGLE GUMM—MAN OF THE YEAR
Sitting down on the porch he opened the magazine and found the article. Photographs of him as a baby. His mother and father. Him as a child in grammar school. He turned the pages frantically. Him as he was now, after World War Two or whatever war it had been that he had fought in ... military uniform, himself smiling back at the camera.
A woman who was his first wife.
And then a scenic sprawl, the sharp city-like spires and minarets of an industrial installation.
The magazine was plucked from his hands. He looked up and saw, to his amazement, that the men lifting him up and away from the porch had on familiar drab coveralls.
"Watch out for that gate," one of them said.
He glimpsed dark trees, men stepping on flower beds, crushing plants under their shoes, flashlights swinging across the stone path out of the yard, to the road. And, in the road, trucks parked with their motors noisily running, headlights on. Olive-green service trucks, ton and a half. Familiar, too. Like the drab coveralls.
City trucks. City maintenance men.
And then one of the men held something to his face, a bubble of plastic that the man compressed with his fingers. The bubble split apart and became fumes.
Held between four of the men, Ragle Gumm could do nothing but breathe in the fumes. A flashlight poured yellow fumes and glare into his face; he shut his eyes.
"Don’t hurt him," a voice murmured. "Be careful with him."
Under him the metal of the truck had a cold, damp quality. As if, he thought, he had been loaded in a refrigerator tank. Produce, from the countryside, to be hauled into town. To be ready for the next day’s market.
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 now?" 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 of the window. Parked at the far curb were two olive-green 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.
"It 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 goodbye 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 wnners. 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 order 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, 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 ...
ELEVEN
The following morning, Junie Black called him on the phone.
"Were you working?" she asked.
"I’m always working," Ragle said.
Junie said, "Well, I talked to Mr. Hempkin, my attorney." Her tone of voice informed him that she intended to go into the details. "What a cumbersome business," she said, sighing.
"Let me know how it comes out," he said, wanting to get back to his puzzle solving. But, as always, he was snared by her. Involved in her elaborate, histrionic problems. "What did he say?" he asked. After all, he had to take it seriously; if she took it to court, he might be hailed in as the corespondent.
"Oh Ragle," she said. "I want to see you so badly. I want to have you with me. Close to me. This is such a grind."
"Tell me what he said."
"He said it all depends on how Bill feels. What a mess. When can I see you? I’m scared to come around your place. Margo gave me the worst look I’ve ever gotten from anybody in my life. Does she think I’m after you for your money, or what? Or is it just her naturally morbid mind?"
"Tell me what he said."
"I hate to talk to you over the phone. Why don’t you drop over here for a while? Or would Margo be suspicious? You know, Ragle, I feel so much better now that I’ve decided. I can be myself with you, not held back artificially by doubts. This is the most important moment in my life, Ragle. It’s really solemn. Like a church. When I woke up this morning I felt as if I had awakened in a church, and all around me was this sacred spirit. And I asked myself what the spirit was, and pretty soon I identified it as you." She became silent, then, waiting for him to contribute something.
"What about this Civil Defense business?" he said.
"What about it? I think it’s a good idea."
"Are you going to be there?"
"No," she said. "What do you mean?"
"I thought that was the idea."
"Ragle," she said with exasperation, "you know, sometimes you’re so mysterious I just can’t follow you."
He gathered, at that point, that he had made a mistake. Nothing remained but to drop the business about the Civil Defense classes. It was hopeless to try to explain to her what he meant and what he had thought when Mrs. Keitelbein approached him. "Look, June," he said. "I want very much to see you, as much as you want to see me. More, very possibly. But I have this goddamn puzzle to finish."
"I know," she said. "You have your responsibility." She said it resignedly. "What about tonight, after you mail off your entry?"
"I’ll try to call you," he said. But her husband would be home, so nothing could come of it. "Maybe later today," he said. "Late this afternoon. I think I can get my entry off early, today." He had had fair luck with it so far.
"No," she said. "I won’t be home this afternoon. I’m having lunch with an old friend. A girl friend. I’m sorry, Ragle. I’ve got so much I want to say to you and do with you. A whole lifetime ahead of us." She talked on; he listened. At last she said good-bye and he hung up, feeling let-down.
How hard it was to communicate with her.
As he started back to his room, the phone rang again.
"Want me to get it?" Margo called from the other room.
"No," he said. "It’s probably for me." He lifted the receiver, expecting to hear June’s voice. But instead an unfamiliar older female voice said haltingly,
"Is—Mr. Gumm there?"
"Speaking," he said. His disappointment made him gruff.
"Oh Mr. Gumm. I wonder if you remembered the Civil Defense class. This is Mrs. Keitelbein."
"I remembered," he lied. "Hello, Mrs. Keitelbein." Making himself hard, he said, "Mrs. Keitelbein, I’m sorry to have to—"
She interrupted, "It’s this afternoon. This is Tuesday. At two o’clock."
"I can’t come," he said. "I’m bogged down in my contest work. Some other time."
"Oh dear," she said. "But Mr. Gumm, I went ahead and told them all about you. They’re expecting to hear you speak about World War Two. I phoned every one of them up, and they’re all enthusiastic."
"I’m sorry," he said.
"This is a calamity," she said, plainly overcome. "Maybe you could come and not speak; if you could be at the class and just answer questions—I know that would please them so. Don’t you think you could find time for that? Walter can drop by and pick you up in his car; and I know he can drive you back home afterward. The class is only about an hour at the longest, so it wouldn’t be more than an hour and fifteen minutes at the very most."
"He doesn’t have to give me a ride," Ragle said. "You’re only half a block away."
"Oh that’s so," she said. "You’re just up the street from us. Then you surely ought to be able to make it; please, Mr. Gumm—as a favor to me."
"Okay," he said. It wasn’t that important. An hour or so.
"Thank you so much." Her relief and gratitude flooded through her voice. "I really appreciate it."
After he had hung up he got immediately to work on his entries. He had only a couple of hours to get them in the mail, and the sense that they had to be posted was, as always, dominant in him.
At two o’clock he climbed the flight of unpainted, sloping steps to the porch of the Keitelbein house and rang the bell.
Opening the door, Mrs. Keitelbein said, "Welcome, Mr. Gumm."
Past her he could see a shadowy collection of ladies in flowery dresses and a few ill-defined thin-looking men; they all peered at him, and he understood that they had been standing around expecting him. Now the class could begin. Even here, he realized. My importance. But it brought him no satisfaction. The one person important to him was missing. His claim on Junie Black was slight indeed.
Mrs. Keitelbein led him up beside her desk, the massive old wooden desk that he and Walter had lugged up from the basement. She had arranged a chair for him so that he would face the class. "Here," she said, pointing to the chair. "You sit there." For the class she had dressed up; her long silk robe-like skirt and blouse, with billows and lace, made him think of school graduations and musical recitals.