Time Out of Joint

  "Maybe so," Ragle said. On a curve, the headlights of the truck lit up a section of fence and scrub plants beyond it. I feel as if all this had happened before, he thought. Reliving it a second time ...

  Beside him, Vic examined the papers that he had brought out of the glove compartment. "What do you make of this?" He held up a long paper strip, brightly colored; Ragle glanced at it and saw that it read:

  ONE HAPPY WORLD

  At each end, in luminous yellow, a snake coiled into an S-shape.

  "Has glue on back," Vic said. "It must be for the bumper."

  "Like ’make mine milk,’ " Ragle said.

  After a pause Vic said in a low voice, "Let me hold the wheel. I want you to look at it closer." He caught hold of the steering wheel and passed the bumper strip to Ragle. "At the bottom. In type."

  Holding the strip near the dome light, Ragle read the words:

  Federal law requires that this be displayed at all times.

  He passed it back to Vic. "We’re going to run into a lot more we don’t understand," he said. But the strip had disturbed him, too. Mandatory ... it had to be on the bumper, or else.

  Vic said, "There’re more." From the glove compartment he lifted out a stack of strips, ten or eleven of them, all alike. "He must glue it on every time he makes a trip. Probably rips it off when he enters town."

  At the next stretch of empty highway, when no other trucks could be seen, Ragle drove from the road onto the gravel shoulder. He stopped the truck and put on the hand brake. "I’m going to go around to the back," he said. "I’ll see if he’s getting enough air." As he opened the cab door he said, "And I’ll ask him about the strip."

  Nervously, Vic slid over behind the wheel. "I doubt if he’ll give you a right answer," he said.

  Walking with care, Ragle made his way through the darkness along the side of the truck, past the great wheels, to the back. He climbed the iron ladder and rapped on the door. "Ted," he said. "Or whatever your name is. Are you all right?"

  From within the truck a voice said indistinctly, "Yeah. I’m okay, Mr. Gumm."

  Even here, Ragle thought. Parked on the shoulder of the highway, in a deserted region between towns. I’m recognized.

  "Listen, Mr. Gumm," the driver said, his mouth close to the crack of the doors. "You don’t know what’s out here, do you? You have no idea. Listen to me; there isn’t a chance in the world you’ll run into anything but harm—harm for you, harm for everybody else. You have to take my word for it. I’m telling you the truth. Someday you’ll look back and know I was right. You’ll thank me. Here." A small white square of paper slid out from between the doors and fluttered down; Ragle caught it. A card, on the back of which the driver had written a phone number.

  "What’s this for?" Ragle said.

  The driver said, "When you get to the next town, pull off the road and go phone that number."

  "How far’s the next town?"

  A hesitation, and then the driver said, "I’m not sure. Pretty soon now. It’s hard to keep track of the miles stuck back here."

  "Can you get enough air?"

  "Yeah." The driver sounded resigned, but at the same time highly keyed up. "Mr Gumm," he said, in the same intense, beseeching voice, "you just got to believe me. I don’t care how long you keep me cooped up in this thing, but in the next hour or two you’ve just got to get in touch with somebody."

  "Why?" Ragle said.

  "I can’t say. Look, you apparently got it figured out enough to hijack this rig. So you must have some idea. If you have that much, you can figure out that it’s important and not just somebody’s smart idea, building all those houses and streets and those old cars back there."

  Talk on, Ragle thought to himself.

  "You don’t even know how to drive a two-section rig," the driver said. "Suppose you hit a steep grade? This clunk carries forty-five thousand pounds when it’s loaded; of course it ain’t loaded right now. But you might sideswipe something. And there’re a couple of railroad trestles this thing won’t clear. You probably don’t have any idea what the clearance of this is. And you don’t know how to gear down a grade or anything." He lapsed into silence.

  "What’s the bumper strip for?" Ragle said. "The motto and the snake."

  "Christ’s sake!" the driver snarled.

  "Does it have to go on?"

  Cursing at him, the driver managed finally to say, "Listen, Mr. Gumm—if you don’t have that on right, they’ll blow you sky-high; so help me god, I’m telling you the truth."

  "How does it go on?" he said.

  "Let me out and I’ll show you. I’m not going to tell you." The man’s voice rose in hysteria. "You better let me out so I can stick it on, or honest to god, you won’t get by the first tank that spots you."

  Tank, Ragle thought. The notion appalled him.

  Hopping down, he walked back to the cab. "I think we’re going to have to let him out," he said to Vic.

  "I heard him," Vic said. "I’d just as soon he was out of there, in any case."

  "He may be stringing us along." Ragle said.

  "We better not take the chance."

  Ragle walked back, climbed the ladder, and unfastened the door. It swung back, and the driver, still cursing sullenly, dropped down onto the gravel.

  "Here’s the strip," Ragle said to him. He handed it over. "What else do we have to know?"

  "You have to know everything," the driver said bitterly. Kneeling down he yanked a transparent covering from the back of the strip, pressed the strip to the rear bumper, and then rubbed it smooth with his fist. "How are you going to buy fuel?"

  "Credit card," Ragle said.

  "What a laugh," the driver said, standing up. "That credit card is for in—" He ceased. "In town," he said. "It’s a fake. It’s a regular old Standard Oil credit card; there haven’t been any of them for twenty years." Glaring at Ragle he continued, "It’s all rationed, kerosene for the truck—"

  "Kerosene," Ragle echoed. "I thought it took diesel oil."

  "No," the driver said, with massive reluctance. He spat into the gravel. "It’s not diesel. The stack is fake. It’s turbine. Uses kerosene. But they won’t sell you any. The first place you go, they’ll know something isn’t right. And out here—" Again his voice rose to a screech. "You can’t take no risks! None at all!"

  "Want to ride up front with us?" Ragle said. "Or in the back? I’ll leave it up to you." He wanted to get the truck into motion again.

  The driver said, "Go to hell." Turning his back, he started off down the gravel shoulder, hands in his pockets, body hunched forward.

  As the shape of the driver disappeared into the darkness, Ragle thought, it’s my fault for unbolting the door. Nothing I can do; I can’t run after him and hit him over the head. In a fight he’d take me apart. Take us both apart.

  And anyhow, that isn’t the answer. That isn’t what we’re looking for.

  Returning to the cab, he said to Vic, "He’s gone. I guess we’re lucky he didn’t jump out of the back waving a tire-iron."

  "We better start up," Vic said, sliding away. "Want me to drive? I could. Did he stick the bumper strip on?

  "Yes," Ragle said.

  "I wonder how long it’ll be before he gets word to them about us."

  Ragle said, "We would have had to let him out eventually."

  For another hour they passed no sign of activity or habitation. Then, suddenly, as the truck came out of a sharp descending curve, a group of bright bluish lights flashed ahead of them, far off down the highway.

  "Here’s something," Vic said. "It’s hard to know what to do. If we slow down or stop—"

  "We’ll have to stop," Ragle said. Already, he could make out the sight of cars, or vehicles of some sort, parked across the road.

  As the truck slowed, men appeared, waving flashlights. One of them strode to the window of the cab and called up, "Shut off your motor. Leave your lights on. Get down."

  They had no choice. Ragle opened the door and stepped down, Vi
c behind him. The man with the flashlight had on a uniform, but in the darkness Ragle could not make it out. The man’s helmet had been painted so that it did not shine. He flashed his light into Ragle’s face, then Vic’s face, and then he said,

  "Open up the back."

  Ragle did so. The man and two companions hopped into the truck and rummaged about. Then they reappeared and jumped down.

  "Okay," one of them said. He held something out to Ragle, a piece of paper. Accepting it, Ragle saw that it was some sort of punched form. "You can go ahead."

  "Thanks," Ragle said. Numbly, he and Vic returned to the cab, climbed in and started up the motor, and drove off.

  Presently Vic said, "Let’s see what he gave you."

  Holding the wheel with his left hand, Ragle fished the form from his pocket.

  CERTIFICATE OF ZONE BORDER CLEARANCE 31. 4/3/98

  "There’s your date," Ragle said. April third, 1998. The balance of the form consisted of IBM-style punches.

  "They seemed satisfied with us," Vic said. "Whatever it was they were looking for, we didn’t have it."

  "They had uniforms."

  "Yes, they looked like soldiers. One of them had a gun, but I couldn’t tell anything about it. There must be a war on, or something."

  Or, Ragle thought, a military dictatorship.

  "Did they see if we had the bumper strip on?" Vic said. "In the excitement I didn’t notice."

  "Neither did I," Ragle said.

  A while later he saw what appeared to be a town ahead of them. A variety of lights, the regular rows that might be street lights, neon signs with words ... somewhere in his coat he had the card the driver had given him. This is where we’re supposed to call from, he decided.

  "We got through the border clearance okay," Vic said. "If we can do that, with them shining their lights right on us, we ought to be able to walk into a beanery and order a plate of hotcakes. I didn’t have any dinner after work." He rolled back his sleeve to read his wristwatch. "It’s ten-thirty," he said. "I haven’t had anything to eat since two."

  "We’ll stop," Ragle said. "We’ll try to get fuel while we’re here. If we can’t get it, we’ll leave the truck." The gauge showed the tank to be almost empty. The level had dropped surprisingly fast. But they had gone quite a distance; they had been on the road for hours.

  It struck him, as they passed the first houses, that something was missing.

  Gas stations. Usually, on highway approaches to a town, even a tiny unimportant town, a solid line of gas stations could be seen on both sides. Before anything else. None here.

  "It doesn’t look good," he said. But they had seen no traffic, either. No traffic and no gas stations. Or kerosene stations, if that was the equivalent. Suddenly he slowed the truck and turned onto a side road. He brought the truck to a halt at the curb.

  "I agree," Vic said. "We better try it on foot. We don’t know enough to drive this thing around town."

  They got warily out and stood together, in the dull light of an overhead streeet lamp. The houses appeared ordinary. Small, square, one story, with lawns that were black in the night darkness. Houses, Ragle thought, haven’t changed much since the ’thirties anyhow. Especially if seen at night. One taller shape might have been a multiple unit.

  "If they stop us," Vic said, "and ask for identification or some such, what should we do? We better agree on it now."

  Ragle said, "How can we agree? We don’t know what they’ll ask for." The driver’s remarks still bothered him. "Let’s see," he said, and started off in the direction of the highway.

  The first lights resolved themselves into a roadside diner. Within, sitting at the counter, two boys ate sandwiches. High school boys, with blond hair.

  Their hair had been wound up into topknots. Tall cones of hair, each with a sharp, colorful spike stuck into it. The boys wore identical clothes. Sandals, wrap-around bright blue toga-like gowns, metal bracelets on their arms. And when one of them twisted his head to drink from a cup, Ragle saw that the boy’s cheeks had been tattooed. And, he saw with disbelief, the boy’s teeth had been filed.

  Beyond the counter, the middle-aged waitress wore a simple green blouse, and her hair had been trained in a familiar manner. But the two boys ... both he and Vic stared at them, through the window, until at last the waitress noticed them.

  "We had better go on in," Ragle said.

  The door opened for them by electric eye. Just like the supermarket, Ragle thought.

  Both boys watched them as they self-consciously seated themselves in one of the booths. The interior of the diner, the fixtures and signs and lighting, seemed ordinary to him. Ads for a number of foods ... but the prices made no sense. 4.5, 6.7, 2.0. Obviously not dollars and cents. Ragle stared around him, as if he were trying to decide what he wanted. The waitress began to gather up her order pad.

  One of the boys, nodding his topknotted head toward Vic and Ragle, said audibly, "Necktie-fellows, them smell fright-fright."

  His companion laughed.

  The waitress, stationing herself at their booth, said, "Good evening."

  "Good evening," Vic muttered.

  "What would you like?" the waitress asked.

  Ragle said, "What do you recommend?"

  "Oh, depends on how hungry you are," the waitress said.

  The money, Ragle thought. The damn money. He said, "How about a ham and cheese sandwich and coffee."

  Vic said, "The same for me. And some pie à la mode."

  "Pardon?" the waitress said, writing.

  "Pie with ice cream," Vic said.

  "Oh," she said. Nodding, she returned to the counter.

  One of the boys said in a clear voice, "Necktie-fellows, many old thing-sign. You s’pose—" He stuck his thumbs in his ears. The other boy snickered.

  When the sandwiches and coffee had been brought, and the waitress had gone off, one of the boys swiveled around in his chair to face them. The tattooing on his cheeks, Ragle noticed, had been carried out in design on his arm bracelets. He gazed at the intricate lines, and at last he identified the figures. The designs had been copied from Attic vases. Athena and her owl. Kore rising from the Earth.

  The boy said directly to him and Vic, "Hey, you lunatic."

  The flesh at the back of Ragle’s neck began to crawl. He pretended to concentrate on his sandwich; across from him Vic, sweating and pale, did the same.

  "Hey," the boy said.

  The waitress said, "Cut it out, or out of here for you."

  To her, the boy said, "Necktie-fellow." Again he stuck his thumbs in his ears. The waitress did not seem impressed.

  I can’t stand it, Ragle thought. I can’t live through this. The driver was right. To Vic he said, "Let’s go."

  "Fine," Vic said. He arose, grasping his sandwich, bent down to drink the last of his coffee, and then started for the door.

  Now the check, Ragle thought. So we’re doomed. We can’t win.

  "We have to get going," he said to the waitress. "Never mind the pie. How much?" He groped in his coat pocket, a futile gesture.

  The waitress added up the bill. "Eleven-Nine," she said.

  Ragle opened his wallet. The two boys watched. So did the waitress. When they saw the money, the paper banknotes, the waitress said, "Oh, dear. I haven’t seen paper money in years. I guess it’s still good." To the first of the boys she said, "Ralf, does the government still redeem those old paper notes?"

  The boy nodded.

  "Wait," the waitress said. She recomputed the bill. "That’ll be one-forty," she said. "But I’ll have to give you your change in tokens. If that’s all right." Apologetically, she dug a handful of small plastic wafers from the register, and as he gave her a five-dollar bill she handed back six of the wafers. "Thank you," she said.

  As he and Vic left, the waitress seated herself with a paper-bound book and resumed her reading at a flattened page.

  "What an ordeal," Vic said. They walked along, both of them eating the last of their sandwiches. "
Those kids. Those ghastly damn kids."

  Lunatic, Ragle thought. Did they recognize me?

  At the corner he and Vic stopped. "What now?" Vic said. "Anyhow, we can use our money. And we’ve got some of theirs." He lit his cigarette lighter to inspect one of the wafers. "It’s plastic," he said. "Obviously a substitute for metal. Very light. Like those wartime ration tokens."

  Yes, Ragle thought. Wartime ration tokens. Pennies made out of some nondescript alloy, not copper. And now, tokes. Tokens.

  "But there’s no blackout," he said. "They have their lights on."

  "It’s not the same any more," Vic said. "Lights was when—" He broke off. "I don’t understand," he said. "I remember World War Two. But I guess I don’t, do I? That’s the whole point. That was fifty years ago. Before I was born. I never lived through the ’thirties and ’forties. Neither did you. All we know about it—they must have taught us."

  "Or we read it," Ragle said.

  "Don’t we know enough now?" Vic said. "We’re out. We’ve seen it." He shuddered. "They had their teeth filed."

  Ragle said, "That was almost pidgin English they were talking."

  "I guess so."

  "And African tribal markings. And garments." But they looked at me and one of them said, Hey, you lunatic. "They know," he said. "About me. But they don’t care." Somehow, that made him feel more uneasy. Spectators. The cynical, mocking young faces.

  "It’s surprising they’re not in the army," Vic said.

  "They probably will be." To him, the boys had not appeared old enough. More like sixteen or seventeen.

  As he and Vic stood on the corner, footsteps echoed along the dark, deserted street.

  Two shapes approached them.

  "Hey, you lunatic," one of them said. Leisurely, the two boys emerged in the street light of the intersection, their arms folded, their faces blank and impersonal. "Hold youself stop-stop."

  THIRTEEN

  The boy on the left reached into his robe and produced a leather case. From it he selected a cigar and a small pair of gold scissors; he cut off one end of the cigar and placed the cigar in his mouth. His companion, with equal ritual, brought forth a jeweled cigar lighter and lit his friend’s cigar.