Philip Dick - Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

After a time, Al said. “When should I start?”

“Monday,” Knight murmured. “We’ll see you then. Check in here at nine in the morning. Ask for Bob Ross. He’ll be in charge of the project. Ross is Harman’s son-in-law. This is Harman’s great project, the one he’s giving his entire backing to.”

“I thought he was backing the early-classical project,” Al said.

“The Antiqua label? The public isn’t ready for it. Maybe next year.” It was obvious that Knight was through talking to him; he had become involved with his paperwork. There was nothing to do but leave, and so presently Al shut the office door after himself.

Although it seemed to Al a calamity that he had been given a job because he had been born in St. Helena, his wife took a different attitude. She considered it a stroke of luck.

“Suppose you hadn’t been born in St. Helena,” Julie said, when he discussed it with her that night. “You wouldn’t have gotten the job. Or suppose they weren’t interested in a project of recording music in small towns.” She went on, with rapture; the job appealed to her because it meant that he would be able to get out of the Bay Area. “Maybe we can settle up around Sonoma,” she said. “I always wanted to live up there. Or up around the Russian River. I like to be near the water.”

“They humiliated me,” Al said.

“No that’s all in your mind. You project your own motives onto the whole world; just because you’re in the used-car business you see everyone in terms of used-car sales tricks. They had one job for you, and then that project didn’t go through, so they were good enough to dig into your background and find another faculty that you possessed that they could make use of. I think it bodes good. It sounds as if they’re resourceful, intelligent people. I’m very anxious to meet Mr. Harman.”

Al said, “Maybe I’ll be able to strike it rich in Arroyo del Seco.” That was as small a town as he could think of, offhand.

“And you’ll be working directly with the boss’s son-in-law,” Julie said. “That means you might be able to rise right up to the top. It sounds as if the road will be open to you.”

“By killing him?” he said. “And taking his place?” It sounded like something out of Macbeth.

“By immediately making yourself indispensable,” Julie said. “That’s the key to success. I read that in an article in some women’s magazine; wait—I’ll go get it.” She began to rummage about the apartment.

There is no success, Al Miller thought, in a job that requires a man to search through one small town after another, searching for the worst possible singing groups that exist on the face of the earth. And then, when the worst possible singing groups have been turned up, they will be recorded with the worst possible modern sound techniques. He saw himself wandering farther and farther, in ever expanding circles, until at last he was not even in California; his search for the worst possible singing groups would extend into Oregon and then into Idaho and finally into Wyoming and New Mexico and Nebraska and Mississippi, and at last over the whole United States. He would uncover, at last, in a final triumph, the worst of the worst; he would be responsible for unearthing the singing group so bad that no worse one could ever be found, no matter how long the search went on. And then he could retire. He would have done his job for his country and race.

“Poor Doctor Mudd,” he said aloud.

“What?” Julie said, pausing in her search.

“Tootie Dolittle’s dog,” Al said. “He missed out. What he does isn’t audible. It can’t be recorded.” In neither new sound nor old, he thought. A balloon-bunting dog could no longer become part of the American way of life because he could not make it with hi-fi.

If Doctor Mudd could hum spirituals while he bunts the balloon, Al thought, he might have a chance. But that’s asking the impossible. For even the electronics industry there has to be a limit.

And poor Tootie Dolittle, he thought. Imagining that the key to success lay in having a mess of glamour. No wonder Tootie had missed out. Those days were gone. The exotic, the striking, was no longer wanted. Now it was all down home. It was all just folks. Success lay in the hands of the plump, smiling amateur girl-trios, who wore first-prom gowns and who swayed back and forth as they sang “Down By the Old Mill Stream.” Tootie’s mistake had been to not be born in St. Helena or Montpellier, Idaho, or some such place. He had been doomed from the start.

And as for me, Al thought, I almost missed out. But now I’ve been shown the way.

On Monday morning Al Miller put in his appearance at the Harman organization. A receptionist sent him on in to an office on the second floor, where he found himself facing two men, one of which was a recording engineer, the other of which was Harman’s son-in-law, Bob Ross. They had between them an Ampex tape-recorder, battery powered, and aluminum fifteen-inch reels of tapes, mikes, and playback amplifiers and portable speakers.

Ross wore a woolly brown suit with a vest, a narrow tie, and massive glasses. He greeted Al in a deep voice, almost an announcer’s voice, which struck Al as quite a contrast to his chubby, almost babyish face. Certainly he was neatly dressed, but he was so badly proportioned that he looked to Al like an overgrown adolescent. He had, too, a scholarly, overserious, boyish manner.

“You’re the driver?” Ross said.

“I guess so,” Al said. “I was just hired.”

“Milton,” Ross said.

“No,” he said. “Miller.”

“Can you handle a four-speed truck box?”

“Sure,” Al said.

“Let’s go,” Ross said. “Let’s get the stuff in the truck and take off; there’s no point in hanging around here.”

Al began picking up equipment; the recording engineer did so, too, while Ross examined a clipboard of papers. The recording engineer led the way downstairs and out onto the parking lot, where a ton-and-a-half GM truck, several years old, was parked.

“Where to?” Ross said to Al, as the last of the stuff was being put into the truck.

Without hesitation, Al said, “Fort Bragg.”

“That’s where we’ll find it?” Ross said.

“Right,” Al said. He had picked the town at random. He had never been there. It would take all day to get up there and back, and he looked forward to the trip.

“Shouldn’t we start closer to home?” Ross said. “There’re a lot of towns between here and Fort Bragg.”

“They’ve been picked over,” Al said.

“Hell,” the recording engineer said. “If we go all the way up there we might not get back for a couple of days.”

“Let’s be realistic,” Al said. “We have to get out of the good TV reception area. TV has ruined the natural folk-culture for a radius of a hundred miles around here.”

Ross said, “You sound pretty confident of your judgment.”

“I’ve been in this business a long time,” Al said.

“If we’re going that far I better call my wife,” the recording engineer said. He excused himself to go and phone.

Getting out a pipe and a self-sealing plastic pouch of tobacco, Ross said to Al as he lit up, “Frankly, going out of the metropolitan Bay Area doesn’t appeal to me. So far we’ve done most of our taping in clubs in San Francisco. Most folk singers are willing to come down here, and we get plenty of pop and jazz personalities at places like Fack’s Number Two and the Blackhawk and the Hungry I.”

“Okay,” Al said. “You wait around Fack’s Number Two and see how long it takes for a truly authentic barbershop quartet to show up. One that isn’t already signed up.”

Soon they were on the road, with Al behind the wheel of the truck. Bob Ross puffed on his pipe and read a trade journal. The recording engineer propped himself against the door of the cab on his side and soon fell asleep.