Time Out of Joint (11 page)

It would be hard to distinguish.

The cab moved along the dark streets, past houses and stores. At last, in the downtown business section, it drew up before a five-story building and stopped at the curb.

"Here you are, Mr. Gumm," the driver said, starting to leap out to open the door.

Reaching into his coat for his wallet, Ragle stepped from the cab. He glanced up at the building as the driver reached for the bill.

In the street light the building was familiar. Even at night he recognized it.

It was the Gazette building.

Getting back into the cab he said, "I want to go to the Greyhound bus station."

"What?" the driver said, thunderstruck. "Is that what you told me? I’ll be darned—of course it was." He jumped back in and started up the engine. "Sure, I remember. But we got to talking about that contest of yours, and I got to thinking about the newspaper." As he drove he swung his head around, grinning back at Ragle. "I’ve got you so tied in with the Gazette in my mind—what a sap I am."

"It’s okay," Ragle said.

They drove on and on. Eventually he lost track of the streets.

He had no idea where they were; the nocturnal shapes of closed-up factories lay off to the right, and what appeared to be railroad tracks. Several times the cab bucked and floundered as it passed over tracks. He saw vacant lots ... an industrial district, with no lights showing.

I wonder, Ragle thought. What would the cab driver say if I asked him to drive me out of town?

Leaning forward he tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Hey," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Gumm," the driver said.

"What about driving me out of town? Let’s forget the bus."

"I’m sorry, sir," the driver said. "I can’t get out on the road between towns. There’s a rule against it. We’re city carriers; we can’t compete with the bus line. It’s an ordinance."

"You ought to be able to make a few extra bucks on the side. Forty-mile trip with your meter running—I’ll bet you’ve done it, ordinance or no ordinance."

"No, I never done that," the driver said. "Some other drivers maybe, but not me. I don’t want to lose my permit. If the highway patrol catches a city cab out on the highway, they haul it right down, and if it’s got a fare in it, bam, there goes the driver’s permit. A fifty-buck permit. And his livelihood."

To himself, Ragle thought, Are they out to keep me from leaving the town? Is this a plot on their part?

My lunacy again, he thought.

Or is it?

How can I tell? What proof do I have?

A blue neon glow hung in the center of a limitless flat field. The cab approached it and stopped at a curb. "Here we are," the driver said. "This is the bus station."

Opening the door, Ragle got out onto the sidewalk. The sign did not read Greyhound; it read NONPAREIL COACH LINES.

"Hey," he said, jolted. "I said Greyhound."

"This is Greyhound," the driver said. "The same as. It’s the bus line. There isn’t any Greyhound here. The state only allows one bus line to be franchised for a town this size. Nonpareil got in here years ago, before Greyhound. Greyhound tried to buy them out, but they wouldn’t sell. Then Greyhound tried—"

"Okay," Ragle said. He paid the fare, tipped the driver, and walked across the sidewalk to the square brick building, the only building for miles around. On each side of it weeds grew. Weeds and broken bottles ... litter of paper. Deserted region, he thought. At the edge of town. Far off he could see the sign of a gas station, and beyond that street lights. Nothing else. The night air made him shiver as he opened the wooden door and stepped into the waiting room.

A great blast of rackety, distorted sound and tired blue air rolled out over him. The waiting room, packed with people, confronted him. The benches had already been taken over by sleeping sailors and despondent, exhausted-looking pregnant women, by old men in overcoats, salesmen with their sample cases, children dressed up and fretting and squirming. A long line stood between him and the ticket window. He could see, without going any farther, that the line was not moving.

He closed the door after him and joined the line. Nobody paid any attention to him. This is one time I wish my psychosis would come true, he thought to himself. I’d like to have all this revolve around me, at least to the extent of making the ticket window available to me.

How often, he wondered, does Nonpareil Lines run its buses?

He lit a cigarette and tried to make himself comfortable. By leaning against the wall he could take some weight off his legs. But it did not help much. How long will I be tied up here? he asked himself.

A half hour later he had moved forward only a few inches. And no one had left the window. Craning his neck, he tried to see the clerk behind the window. He could not. A wide, elderly woman in a black coat held the first place in line; her back was to him and he assumed that she was involved in buying her ticket. But she did not finish. The transaction did not end. Behind her a thin middle-aged man in a double-breasted suit gnawed on a toothpick and looked bored. After him a young couple murmured together, intent on their own conversation. And after that the line merged into itself, and he could make out nothing but the back of the man ahead of him.

After forty-five minutes he still stood in the same spot. Can a lunatic go out of his mind? he wondered. What does it take to get a ticket on the Nonpareil Lines? Will I be here forever?

A growing fright began to settle over him. Maybe he would stand in this line until he died. Unchanging reality ... the same man ahead of him, the same young soldier behind him, the same unhappy, empty-eyed woman seated on the bench across from him.

Behind him, the young soldier stirred fitfully, bumped against him and muttered, "Sorry, buddy."

He grunted back.

The soldier locked his hands together and cracked his knuckles. He licked his lips and then he said to Ragle, "Hey, buddy, can I ask you a favor? Will you hold my place in line?" Before Ragle could answer, the soldier turned to the woman standing behind him. "Lady, I got to go make sure my buddy’s okay; can I get back in line here without losing my place?"

The woman nodded.

"Thanks," the soldier said, and pushed a passage through the people, over to the corner of the waiting room.

In the corner another soldier sat with his legs apart, his face resting on his knee, his arms hanging down. His compatriot dropped down next to him, shook him, and began talking urgently to him. The bent-over soldier raised his head, and Ragle saw the bleary eyes and twisted, slack mouth of the drunk.

Poor guy, he thought to himself. Out on a toot. During his own days in the service he had several times-wound up in a dismal bus station with a hangover, trying to get back to the base.

The soldier sprinted back to his place in line. Agitated, he plucked at his lip, glanced up at Ragle and said, "This here line; it isn’t moving one bit. I think I must have been standing here since five this afternoon." He had a smooth young face, tormented now by anxiety. "I have to get back to my base," he said. "Phil and I have to be in by eight o’clock or we’re AWOL."

To Ragle, he appeared to be eighteen or nineteen. Blond, somewhat thin. Clearly, he of the two of them did the problem-solving.

"Too bad," Ragle said. "How far’s your base?"

"It’s the airfield up the highway," the soldier said. "The missile base, actually. Used to be an airfield."

Ragle thought, By god. Where those things take off and land. "You’ve been hitting the bars down here?" he said, in as conversational a voice as he could manage.

The soldier said, "Hell no, not in this jerkwater dump." His disgust was enormous. "No, we come all the way in from the Coast; we had a week furlough. Driving."

"Driving," Ragle repeated. "Well, why are you in here?"

The young soldier said, "Phil’s the driver; I can’t drive. And he hasn’t sobered up. It’s just a crummy old jalopy. We dumped it. We can’t wait around for him to sober up. Anyhow, it needs a new tire. It’s back along the road with a flat. It’s only worth about fifty bucks; it’s a ’ 36 Dodge."

"If you had somebody who could drive," Ragle said, "Would you go on by car?" I can drive, he was thinking.

The soldier, staring at him, said, "What about the tire?"

"I’ll chip in on it," he said. Taking hold of the soldier by the arm he led him out of the line and across the waiting room to his hunched-over buddy. "Maybe he better stay here until we get the car going," he said. The soldier, Phil, didn’t look as if he could walk very far or very well. He appeared to understand only vaguely where he was.

To him, the soldier said, "Hey, Phil, this guy’s going to drive. Give me the keys."

"Is that you, Wade?" Phil groaned from his coma.

Wade crouched down and rooted in his buddy’s pockets. "Here," he said, finding the keys and handing them to Ragle. "Listen," he said to Phil. "You stay here. We’re going to walk back to the car and get it running; we’ll drive by and pick you up. Okay? You got that?"

Phil nodded.

"Let’s go," Wade said to Ragle. As they pushed open the door and stepped out of the waiting room, onto the dark, cold street, Wade said, "I sure hope the son of a bitch don’t get into a panic and run out of there; we’d never find him."

How dark everything was. Ragle could barely see the cracked, weed-ridden pavement under his shoes as he and Wade started off.

"Isn’t this to hell and gone?" Wade said. "They always stick these bus stations in the slums if it’s a big enough town to have slums, and if it don’t, then it’s out to hell and gone like this." He strode along, crunching the miscellaneous debris that neither of them could see. "Sure dark," he said. "What have they got, a street light every two miles?"

From behind them a hoarse shout caused both of them to stop. Ragle turned around and saw, standing in the blue neon light of the Nonpareil Coach Lines sign, the other soldier. He had staggered out of the waiting room after them; now he leaned first one way and then the other, yelling after them, walking a few steps, stopping, setting down the two suitcases that he lugged.

"Oh Jesus," Wade said. "We got to go back. Otherwise he’ll fall on his face and we’ll never find him." He started back and Ragle had no choice but to go along. "He’ll sleep all night in the vacant lot here."

When they reached the soldier he caught hold of Wade, rested against him and said, "You guys walked off and left me."

"You got to stay here," Wade said. "Stay here with the luggage while we go hunt up the car."

"I got to drive," Phil said.

At great length, Wade again explained the situation to him. Ragle, wandering about helplessly, wondered if he could stand it. Finally Wade picked up one of the suitcases and started off. To Ragle he said, "Let’s get going. Take the other suitcase or he’ll leave it off and we’ll never see it again."

"Somebody must have rolled me," Phil muttered.

They stumbled on and on. Ragle lost track of time and space; one street light grew, passed overhead flooding them temporarily with brilliant yellow light, and then died away behind them. The next one grew in its turn. They passed the vacant lot, and a square inert factory building appeared instead. He and his two companions labored across multiple tracks, one after another. To his right, concrete loading docks at shoulder-level hove close. Phil stumbled against one and came to rest against it, his head buried on his arm, evidently sound asleep.

Ahead, at the curb, a car attracted Ragle’s attention.

"Is that it?" he said.

The two soldiers regarded the car. "I think so," Wade said excitedly. "Hey, Phil—ain’t that the car?"

"Sure," Phil said.

The car sagged on one side. It had a flat. So they had found it.

"Now we got to get a tire," Wade said, throwing the two suitcases into the back of the car. "Let’s get the jack under it and get the wheel off and see what size tire it takes."

In the trunk compartment he and Ragle found a jack. Phil had meanwhile wandered off; they saw him standing a few yards away, his head back, staring up at the sky.

"He’ll stand like that for an hour," Wade said, as they jacked up the car. "There’s a Texaco Station back aways; we passed it just before the flat." Showing skill and experience, he got the wheel off and rolled it onto the sidewalk. Ragle followed. "Where’s Phil?" Wade said, looking around.

Phil was nowhere to be seen.

"God damn him," Wade said. "He must have rambled off."

Ragle said, "Let’s get to the gas station. I don’t have all night and neither do you."

"That’s a fact," Wade said. "Well," he said philosophically, "maybe he’ll come back and flop in the car and we’ll find him there when we get back." He began rolling the tire and wheel, at a good speed.

The gas station, when they got to it, was dark. The proprietor had closed up and gone home.

"I’ll be a bug-eared frag," Wade said.

"Maybe there’s another station nearby," Ragle said.

"I don’t remember another one," Wade said. "How do you like that." He seemed stunned, unable to act any further.

"Come on," Ragle said. "Let’s go."

After a long hard interval of tramping along, they saw ahead of them the white and red and blue square of a Standard Station.

"Amen," Wade said. "You know," he said happily to Ragle, "I been walking along here praying like a bastard. And there it is." He rolled his tire and wheel faster and faster, squalling a cry of triumph. "Come on!" he yelled back to Ragle.

In the station a clean-cut boy in the starched white uniform of the company watched them without interest.

"Hey, there, man," Wade said, shoving open the station house door. "You want to sell us a tire? Let’s move it."

The boy put down a chart he had been working on, picked up a cigarette from an ash tray, and came over to see the tire.

"What’s this for?" he asked Wade.

" ’Thirty-six Dodge sedan," Wade said.

The boy flashed a light on the tire, trying to read the size. Then he got out a heavy ringed note-binder and leafed through the printed pages. It seemed to Ragle that he examined each page at least four different times, turning them first one way and then another. Finally he closed the notebinder and said, "Can’t do you any good."