"Afraid I don't know how," said Paul.
"Maybe," said Mr. Haycox walking away, "maybe if you'd of gone to college another ten or twenty years, somebody would of gotten around to showing you how, Doctor."
Chapter Sixteen
ANITA seemingly mistook Paul's quite excitement for daydreams of happy hours to come at the Meadows, which were less than two weeks away.
She didn't know that he was learning to be a farmer and laying the groundwork for teaching her to be a farmer's wife.
It was a hot Saturday, and on the pretext of buying himself a fielder's mitt, Paul went to his farm - to his and Mr. Haycox's farm. There Mr. Haycox condescendingly and impatiently imparted half-truths about running the place, and gave Paul a vague confidence that he could get the hang of it after a while.
That evening at suppertime, Paul, satisfyingly pooped after having trailed Mr. Haycox for hours, asked his wife if she knew what day the coming Wednesday was.
She looked up from a list of things she was to pack for her trip to the Mainland and, more important, for Paul's trip to the Meadows. "Can't imagine. Have you got nice-looking tennis shoes for the trip?"
"They'll do. For your information, next Wednesday is -"
"Shepherd is taking twelve pairs of socks - all green. He's a captain, too, you know."
"I know."
"What do you make of that? It's kind of a surprise: the first time you get to be captain, he does, too."
"Maybe he sent a coupon to the Rosicrucians. How on earth do you know how many pairs of socks he's taking?"
"Well, he hasn't got a wife to help him plan, so he came over this afternoon to get my help. So I made a list of things he ought to take. Men are so helpless."
"They muddle through. Did he have anything interesting to say?"
She laid down the list and looked at him reproachfully. "Only about the police report about your pistol, and another one about the underworld people you were with that awful night in Homestead." She wadded her napkin and threw it down petulantly. "Paul - why don't you tell me these things? Why do I always have to find out from someone else?"
"Underworld!" snorted Paul. "Oh, for heaven's sake."
"Shepherd says Lasher and Finnerty are being watched as potential saboteurs."
"Everybody's being watched! Why do you listen to that old woman of a man!"
"Why don't you tell me what's going on?"
"Because those things were trivial. Because I was afraid you wouldn't see them that way and get all upset - the way you're getting upset. It's all fixed. Kroner fixed it."
"Shepherd said you could get ten years for the pistol business alone."
"Next time he's over, ask him if he has any idea how much time I'd get if I mashed up his long nose for him."
Paul's muscles were tight from the unaccustomed rigors of the afternoon, and animal smells had communicated to him a feel of primitive strength. The notion of pushing Shepherd's face in -a bizarre sport in a lifetime of pacifistic notions - came as an unexpected complement to the day. "Well, to hell with the captain of the Green Team, I say. Again I'll ask, what day is the coming Wednesday?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Our engagement anniversary."
It was an anniversary with disquieting connotations for both of them - an anniversary that neither had ever mentioned in their years of marriage. It was the date on which Anita had announced to Paul that she was with child, his child, and on which he had responded by offering her his name, etc. Now, with the event softened by years of more or less adequate marriage, Paul thought that they might sentimentally make it something that it was not. The anniversary, more to the point, fell at an ideal time for the beginning of his re-education program for Anita.
"And I have a special evening planned," he said; "not like any evening we've ever had together, darling."
"Funny, I'd forgotten the date completely. Really? Next Wednesday?" She gave him an odd, rebuking smile, as though the story of their engagement had got twisted in her mind - as though she thought he had brought about the event by a now insignificant deception. "Well, that's sweet," she said. "Kind of cute of you to remember. But, with the Meadows so close -" She was of such a methodical nature that when something of importance was in the offing, other aspects of life could have no importance at all. To her it seemed almost indecent to give attention to anything but the crucial matter of the Meadows.
"To hell with the Meadows."
"You don't mean that."
"I mean we're still going out next Wednesday."
"Well, I hope you know what you're doing. You're the captain."
"I'm the captain."
Chapter Seventeen
EDGAR R. B. HAGSTROHM, thirty-seven, R&R - 131313, Undercoater First Class, 22nd Surface Preserving Battalion, 58th Maintenance Regiment, 110th Building and Grounds Division, Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps, had been named after his father's favorite author, the creator of Tarzan - Tarzan, who, far away from the soot and biting winter of the Hagstrohms' home town, Chicago, made friends with lions and elephants and apes, and swung through trees on vines, and was built like a brick outhouse with square wheels and Venetian blinds, and took what he wanted of civilization's beautiful women in tree houses, and left the rest of civilization alone. E. R. B. Hagstrohm liked Tarzan as much as his father had, and hated being a little man and being in Chicago ten times as much.
And Edgar was reading about Tarzan in the bedroom when his fat wife, Wanda, called to him from her station before the picture window in the front room of their prefabricated home in Proteus Park, Chicago, a postwar development of three thousand dream houses for three thousand families with presumably identical dreams. "Gosh, here he comes, Edgar!"
"All right, all right, all right," said Edgar. "So he's coming! So what am I supposed to do, holler bloody murder, kiss his feet, and faint?" He took his time about getting off the bed, and he didn't smooth out the dent he'd made in the bedding. He laid his book open on the bedside table, so the visitors would see that he was a reader, and started for the living room. "What's he look like, Wan?"
"You gotta see, Ed - like a Chinese bird cage or something, all gold and fancy."
The Shah of Bratpuhr had asked his guide, Doctor Ewing J. Halyard, if he might see the home of a typical Takaru, freely translated, from one culture to another, as "average man." The request had been made as they were passing through Chicago from Carlsbad Caverns, and Halyard had stopped off at the local personnel office for the name of a representative American in the neighborhood.
The personnel machines had considered the problem and ejected the card of Edgar R. B. Hagstrohm, who was statistically average in every respect save for the number of his initials: his age (36), his height (5'7"), his weight (148 lbs.), his years of marriage (11), his I.Q. (83), the number of his children (2: 1 m., 9; 1 f., 6), the number of his bedrooms (2), his car (3 yr. old Chev. 2 dr. sed.), his education (h.s. grad, 117th in class of 233; maj. in business practice; 2nd string f'ball, b'k'tb'l; soc. comm., sen'r play; no coll.) his vocation (R&R), his avocations (spec'r sports, TV, softb'l, f'sh'g), and his war record (5 yrs., 3 ov'sea; T-4 radioman; 157th Inf. Div.; battle stars: Hjoring, Elbesan, Kabul, Kaifen, Ust Kyakhta; wounded 4 times; P'ple H't, 3 cl.; Silv. Star; Br'ze Star, 2 cl.; G'd Cond. Med.).
And the machines could have made an educated guess that, since Hagstrohm had gone that far in being average, he had probably been arrested once, had had sexual experience with five girls before marrying Wanda (only moderately satisfying), and had had two extramarital adventures since (one fleeting and foolish, the other rather long and disturbing), and that he would die at the age of 76.2 of a heart attack.