"I imagine weather conditions were of prime importance to the Navy and Army," Mrs. Keitelbein said.
He answered, "A storm could wreck a landing operation, scatter a convoy of supply carriers. Change the course of the war."
"Maybe that's where you got your practice," Walter said. "For the contest. Making book on the weather."
At that, Ragle laughed. "Yes," he said. "That's what he and I did; we made book on it. I'd say it was going to rain at ten o'clock and he'd bet me it wouldn't. We managed to fritter away a couple of years doing that. That, and drinking beer. When they brought in our supplies once a month they left off a standard ration of beer -- standard, we figured, for a platoon. Only trouble was, we had no way to cool it. Warm beer, day after day." How it took him back to remember all that. Twelve, thirteen years ago... He had been thirty-three years old. An employee in a steam laundry when the draft-notice showed up in the mailbox.
"Hey, Mom," Walter said excitedly. "I got a real good idea; what about Mr. Gumm talking to the class about his military experiences? He could give them a sense of participation; you know, the immediacy of the danger and all that. He probably remembers a whole bunch of training they gave the GIs about safety and what to do under fire and emergency situations."
Ragle said, "That's about all there is; what I told you."
"But you remember stories the other guys swapped, about air-raids and bombings," Walter persisted. "They don't have to actually have happened to you."
Kids are all about the same, Ragle thought. This boy talked along the lines Sammy talked. Sammy was ten; this boy was, say, sixteen. But he liked both of them. And he took it as a compliment.
Fame, he thought. This is my reward for being the greatest -- or longest -- winner in the history of puzzle contests. Boys between the ages of ten and sixteen think I'm somebody.
It amused him. And he said, "I'll wear my full general's uniform when I show up Tuesday."
The boy's eyes widened; then he tried to stiffen and appear blasé. "No kidding?" he said. "A full general? Four star?"
"Absolutely," he said, as solemnly as possible. Mrs. Keitelbein smiled, and he smiled across at her.
At five-thirty, when the store had been closed and locked up, Vic Nielson called the three or four checkers over together.
"Listen," he said. All day he had been planning this out. The window shades were down; the customers had left. At the registers one of the store's assistant managers had started counting the money and setting the tapes for tomorrow. "I want you people to do me a favor. It's a psychological experiment. It'll only take thirty seconds. Okay?" Especially he appealed to Liz; she was the power among the checkers, and if she said okay the others probably would.
"Can't it be done tomorrow?" Liz said. She already had her coat on, and she had changed from low heels to high heels. In them she seemed like some majestic three-dimensional pineapple juice display poster.
Vic said, "My wife's parked out in the lot waiting. If I don't get out there in a minute or so, she'll start honking. So you know this won't take long."
The other checkers, male, small, watched Liz for her reaction. They still had on their white aprons, and their pencils behind their ears.
"All right," she said. Waggling her finger at him she said, "But you better be telling the truth; we better be right out of here."
He walked over to the produce department, shook a paper bag loose from one of the bins, and began blowing it up. Liz and the other checkers gazed at him dully.
"What I want you to do is this," he said, throttling the full bag of air. "I'm going to pop this bag and then I'm going to yell a command at you. I want you to do exactly what I say; don't think about it -- just do it when you hear me yell it. I want you to react without giving it any time. You understand what I mean?"
Chewing on a piece of gum that she had pilfered from the candy and gum rack, Liz said, "Yeah, we understand. Go on, pop and yell."
"Face me," he said. The four of them stood with their backs to the wide glass exit door. It was the only door through which any of them passed to get into and out of the store. "Okay," he said, and, lifting up the bag, yelled, "Run!" And then he popped it. As he yelled, the four of them jumped slightly, startled. When the bag popped -- its noise in the empty store was terrific -- the four of them bolted like hares.
None of them ran toward the door. As a group they ran directly left, toward an upright support pillar. Six, seven, eight steps at it... and then they halted, wheezing and disconcerted.
"Now what's this?" Liz demanded. "What's this about? You said you were going to pop the bag first, and then you went ahead and you yelled first."
"Thanks, Liz," he said. "That's fine. You can go meet your boy friend."
As they filed out of the store, the checkers gave him a look of scorn.
The assistant manager, counting money and setting tape, said to him, "Did you mean for me to run, too?"
"No," he said, only half-hearing him; his mind was on his experiment.
"I tried to duck down under the register," the assistant manager said.
"Thanks," he said. Going out of the store, he locked the door after him, and then he crossed the lot toward the Volkswagen.
But in the Volkswagen was a heavy-set, black German shepherd which eyed him as he approached. And the front bumper of the car had a deep dent in it. And the car needed a wash.
Talk about psychological experiments, he said to himself. It wasn't his car. It wasn't Margo. He had glimpsed the VW drive onto the lot at about the time she usually came for him. The rest had been supplied by his mind.
He started back in the direction of the store. As he got near, the glass door opened and the assistant manager stuck his head out and said, "Victor, your wife's on the phone. She wants you."
"Thanks," he said, catching the door and passing on inside and over to the wall phone.
"Honey," Margo said, when he said hello, "I'm sorry I didn't get down to pick you up; do you still want me to come, or do you want to go ahead on the bus? If you're tired I can get you, but probably it would be faster just to catch the bus."
"I'll catch the bus," he said.
Margo said, "I've been out in Sammy's clubhouse, listening on his crystal set. It's fascinating!"
"Fine," he said, starting to hang up. "I'll see you later."
"We listened to all sorts of broadcasts."
After saying good night to the assistant manager he walked down to the corner and caught a bus. Soon he was riding home, along with shoppers and employees, old ladies and school children.
A city ordinance forbade smoking in a public conveyance, but he felt disturbed enough to light a cigarette. By opening the window next to him he managed to get the smoke to go out, and not into the face of the woman next to him.
My experiment was a whizzer, he said to himself. It worked better than I wanted.
He had assumed that the checkers would scatter in various directions, one toward the door, one toward the wall, one away from the door. That would have supported his theory that this situation, in which they found themselves, was in some manner episodic. That a good part of their lives had been spent elsewhere, and in an elsewhere that none of them remembered.
But -- each should have had his own reflexes. Not the same for all four of them. They had all bolted in the same direction. It had been the wrong direction, but it had been uniform. They had acted as a group, not as individuals.
That meant, simply, that the prior and substantial experiences of the four had been similar.
How could that be?