Philip Dick - Time Out of Joint

"Did somebody cover the Civil Defense class?" Black asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Neroni said.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "She gives it herself, doesn't she?"

"As far as I know. When he rang the bell she opened the door herself." Neroni, at that point, frowned and said, "You're sure we're talking about the same person? Mrs. Kesselbein?"

"Something like that." He felt on edge. Ragle Gumm's actions of the last several days had permanently upset him; the sense of the shaky, day-to-day balance that they had achieved had not left him with Ragle's return.

We know now that he can get away, Black thought to himself. In spite of everything, we can lose him. He can revert gradually to sanity, make plans and carry them out; we won't know until it's too late or almost too late.

The next time, we probably won't manage to find him. Or if not next time, then the time after that. Eventually.

Hiding deep in the closet won't save me, Black said to himself. Burying myself under the clothes, in the darkness, out of sight... it won't do me any good.

When Margo arrived at the parking lot she saw no sign of her husband. Shutting off the engine of the Volkswagen, she sat for a time, watching the glass doors of the store.

Usually he's ready to go by now, she said to herself. She got out of the car and started across the parking lot toward the store.

"Margo," Vic called. He came from the rear of the store, from the loading docks. His pace, and the tension on his face, made her aware that something had happened.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You didn't agree to work Sunday, did you?" That had been in contention between them for years.

Vic caught hold of her arm and led her back to the car. "I'm not driving home with you." Opening the car door he nudged her inside; he got in after her, shut the door and rolled up the windows.

Behind the store, at the dock, a giant two-section truck had started to move in the direction of the Volkswagen. Is that monster going to sideswipe us? Margo wondered. One touch of that front bumper, and nothing would remain of this car and us.

"What's he doing?" she asked Vic. "I don't think he knows how to handle that. And trucks aren't supposed to use this exit, are they? I thought you told me--"

Interrupting her, Vic said, "Listen. It's Ragle in the truck."

She stared at him. And then she saw up into the cab of the truck. Ragle waved at her, a slight flip of his hand. "What do you mean, you won't be driving home with me?" she demanded. "Do you mean you're going to take that big thing to the house and park it?" In her mind she envisioned the truck parked in their driveway, advertising to the neighbors that her husband worked in a grocery store. "Listen," she said, "I won't have you driving home in one of those; I mean it."

"I'm not driving home in it," he said. "Your brother and I are going on a trip in it." He put his arm around her and kissed her. "I don't know when we'll be back. Don't worry about us. There're a couple of things I want you to do--"

She interrupted, "You're both going?" It made no sense to her. "Tell me what this is about," she said.

"The main thing I want you to do," Vic said, "is tell Bill Black that Ragle and I are working here at the store. Don't tell him anything else; don't tell him we've left and don't tell him when or how we've left. Do you understand that? Whatever time the Blacks show up at the house and ask where Ragle is, say you just talked to him down at the store. Even if it's two in the morning. Say I've asked him to help me do an inventory for a surprise auditing."

"Can I ask you one thing?" she said, hoping to get at least a trifle of information; it was obvious that he had no intention of telling her much more. "Was Ragle with Junie Black the other night when the taxi driver carried him in the door?"

"God no," Vic said.

"Are you getting him off somewhere so that Bill Black can't find him and murder him?"

Vic eyed her. "You're on the wrong track, honey." He kissed her again, squeezed her, and pushed open the car door. "Say good-bye to Sammy for us." Turning toward the truck he yelled, "What?" Then leaning back in the Volkswagen he said, "Ragle says to tell Lowery at the newspaper that he found a contest that pays better." Grinning at her, he loped over to the truck and around to the far side; she heard him climb up into the cab beside her brother, and then his face appeared next to Ragle's.

"So long," Ragle shouted down at her. Both he and Vic waved. Roaring and spluttering, sending up black exhaust from its stack, the truck started from the lot, onto the street. Cars slowed for it; the truck performed a laborious, awkward right turn, and then it had disappeared beyond the store. For a long time she heard the heavy vibrations of it as it gained speed and departed.

They're out of their minds, she thought wretchedly. In a reflexively purposeful fashion she put the ignition key back into the lock of the Volkswagen and switched on the motor. Behind her, its wheezing obscured the last noises of the truck.

Vic's trying to save Ragle, she said to herself. Trying to get him away where he's safe. I know Junie consulted an attorney. Do they intend to marry? Maybe Bill won't divorce her.

What a dreadful event, to have Junie Black as a sister-in-law.

Meditating about that, she drove slowly home.

As the truck moved through the early-evening traffic, Vic said to his brother-in-law, "You don't think these big rigs vanish a mile outside of town?"

Ragle said, "Food has to be brought in from outside. The same thing we'd do if we wanted to keep a zoo going." Very much the same, he thought. "It seems to me that those men unloading cartons of pickles and shrimp and paper towels are the connection between us and the real world. It makes sense, anyhow. What else can we go on?"

"I hope he can breathe back there," Vic said, meaning the driver. They had waited until the others had gone, leaving this one. While Ted, the driver, was inside stacking cartons on the hand truck, he and Ragle had closed and bolted the thick metal doors. It had taken perhaps one minute, then, to get up into the cab and begin warming the diesel motor. While they were doing that, Margo had arrived in the Volkswagen.

"As long as it's not a refrigerator truck," Ragle said. Or so Vic had said while they waited for the other trucks to leave.

"You don't think it would have been better to leave him in the store? Nobody looks in some of the back storerooms."

Ragle said, "I just have the intuition that he'd get right out. Don't ask me why."

Vic did not ask him why. He kept his eyes on the road. They had left the downtown business section. Traffic had thinned. Stores gave way to a residential section, small modern houses, one-story, with tall TV masts and washing hanging on lines, high redwood fences, cars parked in driveways.

"I wonder where they'll stop us," Ragle said.

"Maybe they won't."

"They will," he said. "But maybe we'll be across by that time."

After a while Vic said, "Just consider. If this doesn't work out, you and I will face a charge of felony kidnaping and I'll no longer be in the produce business and you probably will be asked to resign from the Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? contest."

The houses became fewer. The truck passed gas stations, tawdry cafés, ice cream stands and motels. The dreary parade of motels... as if, Ragle thought, we had already gone a thousand miles and were just now entering a strange town. Nothing is so alien, so bleak and unfriendly, as the strip of gas stations -- cut-rate gas stations -- and motels on the rim of your own city. You fail to recognize it. And at the same time, you have to clasp it to your bosom. Not just for one night, but as long as you intend to live where you live.