Stolidly, Ragle said, "What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, if you think it would help you."
Ragle said, "I've read some, in my time. I was thinking of Bishop Berkeley. The Idealists. For instance--" He waved his hand at the piano over in its corner of the living room. "How do we know that piano exists?"
"We don't," Vic said.
"Maybe it doesn't."
Vic said, "I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a bunch of words."
At that, Ragle's face lost its color entirely. His mouth dropped open. Staring at Vic, he drew himself up in his chair.
"Are you okay?" Vic said.
"I have to think about this," Ragle said, speaking with effort. He got to his feet. "Excuse me," he said. "I'll talk to you again some time later. Dinner's ready... or something." He disappeared through the doorway, into the dining room.
The poor guy, Vic thought. It certainly has got him down. The loneliness and isolation of sitting around all day... the futility.
"Can I help set the table?" he asked his wife.
"All done," Margo said. Ragle had gone on by, down the hall to the bathroom. "What is it?" Margo said. "What's wrong with Ragle tonight? He's so miserable... he didn't flunk out of the contest, did he? I know he would have told me, but--"
"I'll tell you later," he said. He put his arm around her and kissed her; she leaned warmly against him.
If he had this, he thought, maybe he'd feel better. A family. Nothing in the world is equal to it. And nobody can take it away.
At the dinner table, as they all ate, Ragle Gumm sat deep in thought. Across from him, Sammy yammered on about his club and its powerful machinery of war. He did not listen.
Words, he thought.
Central problem in philosophy. Relation of word to object... what is a word? Arbitrary sign. But we live in words. Our reality, among words not things. No such thing as a thing anyhow; a gestalt in the mind. Thingness... sense of substance. An illusion. Word is more real than the object it represents.
Word doesn't represent reality. Word _is_ reality. For us, anyhow. Maybe God gets to objects. Not us, though.
In his coat, hanging up in the hall closet, was the metal box with the six words in it.
SOFT-DRINK STAND
DOOR
FACTORY BUILDING
HIGHWAY
DRINKING FOUNTAIN
BOWL OF FLOWERS
Margo's voice roused him. "I told you not to play there." Her tone, sharp and loud, caused him to lose his line of thought. "Now don't play there. Mind me, Sammy. I'm serious."
"How did it go with the petition?" Vic asked.
"I got to see some minor clerk. He said something about the city not having funds at the present time. The infuriating thing is that when I phoned last week they said contracts were being let, and work ought to start any day. That just goes to show you. You can't get them to do anything. You're helpless; one person is helpless."
"Maybe Bill Black could flood the lots," Vic said.
"Yes," she said, "and then all the children could drown instead of fall and crack their skulls."
After dinner, while Margo washed the dishes in the kitchen and Sammy lay in the living room in front of the TV set, he and Vic talked some more.
"Ask the contest people for a leave of absence," Vic suggested.
"I doubt if they would." He was fairly familiar with the pack of rules and he recalled no such provision.
"Try them."
"Maybe," he said, scratching at a spot on the table top.
Vic said, "That business last night gave me a real turn. I hope I didn't get you upset. I hope I'm not responsible for your feeling depressed."
"No," he said. "If any one thing's responsible, it's probably the contest. And June Black."
"Now listen," Vic said. "You can do a lot better for yourself than Junie Black. And anyhow, she's spoken for."
"By a nitwit."
"That doesn't matter. It's the institution. Not the individual."
Ragle said, "It's hard to think of Bill and June Black as an institution. Anyhow, I'm not in the mood for discussing institutions."
"Tell me what happened," Vic said.
"Nothing."
"Tell me."
Ragle said, "Hallucination. That's all. Recurrent."
"Want to describe it?"
"No."
"Is it anything like my experience last night? I'm not trying to pry. That bothered me. I think something's wrong."
"Something is wrong," Ragle said.
"I don't mean with you or with me or with any one person. I mean in general."
"'The time,'" Ragle said, "'is out of joint.'"
"I think we should compare notes."
Ragle said, "I'm not going to tell you what happened to me. You'll nod gravely right now. But tomorrow or the next day, while you're standing around down at your supermarket chewing the rag with the checkers... you'll run out of conversation and you'll hit on me. And you'll convulse everybody with titillating gossip. I've had enough gossip. Remember, I'm a national hero."
"Suit yourself," Vic said. "But we might -- get somewhere. I mean it. I'm worried."
Ragle said nothing.
"You can't clam up," Vic said. "I have a responsibility to my wife and my son. Are you no longer in control of yourself? Do you know what you may or may not do?"
"I won't run amuck," Ragle said. "Or at least I have no reason to think I will."
"We all have to live together in the same house," Vic pointed out. "Suppose I told you I--"
Ragle interrupted, "If I feel I'm a menace, I'll leave. I'll be leaving anyhow, probably in the next couple of days. So if you can last that long, everything will be okay."
"Margo won't let you go."
At that, he laughed. "Margo," he said, "will just have to let me go."
"Are you sure you're not just feeling sorry for yourself because your love-life is fouled up?"
Ragle didn't answer that. Getting up from the table he walked into the living room, where Sammy lay watching "Gunsmoke." Throwing himself down on the couch, he watched too.
I can't talk to him, he realized.
Too bad. Too darn bad.
"How's the Western?" he said to Sammy, during the midpoint commercial.
"Fine," Sammy said. From the boy's shirt pocket, crumpled white paper stuck up. The paper had a stained, weathered appearance, and Ragle leaned over to see. Sammy paid no attention.
"What's that in your pocket?" Ragle asked.
"Oh," Sammy said, "I was setting up defense bastions over at the Ruins. And I dug up a board, and I found a bunch of old telephone books and magazines and stuff."
Reaching down, Ragle pulled the paper from the boy's pocket. The paper fell apart in his hands. Stringy slips of paper, and on each was a block-printed word, smeared by rain and decay.
GAS STATION
COW
BRIDGE
"You got these' at those city lots?" he demanded, unable to think clearly. "You dug them up?"
"Yes," Sammy said.
"Can I have them?"
"No," Sammy said.
He experienced a maniacal wrath. "All right," he said, as reasonably as possible. "I'll trade you something for them. Or buy them."
"What do you want them for?" Sammy said, ceasing to watch the TV set. "Are they valuable or something?"
He answered, truthfully, "I'm collecting them." Going to the hall closet he reached into his coat, got out the box, and carried it back to the living room. Sitting down beside Sammy, he opened the box and showed the boy the six slips that he had already acquired.
"A dime apiece," Sammy said.
The boy had five slips in all, but two were so badly weatherdamaged that he couldn't read the word on them. But he paid him fifty cents anyhow, took the slips, and went off by himself to think.
Maybe it's a gag, he thought. I'm the victim of a hoax. Because I'm a Hero Contest Winner First Class.