To Ragle, his brother-in-law's change of tone was clear; as soon as business was involved -- his business -- he became professional, close-mouthed, tactical in his responses. Business was never really off, and always on the verge of improving. And no matter how low the national index dropped, a man's personal individual business was unaffected. Like asking a man how he feels, Ragle thought. He has to say he feels fine. Ask him how business is, and he either automatically says terrible or improving. And neither means anything; it's just a phrase.
To Black, Ragle said, "How's the retail sale of water? Market holding firm?"
Black laughed appreciatively. "Yes, people are still bathing and washing dishes."
Entering the living room, Margo said, "Ragle, do you want café espresso? You, darling?"
"None for me," Ragle said. "I had all the coffee I can drink for dinner. Keeps me awake as it is."
Vic said, "I'll take a cup."
"Lasagne?" Margo asked the three of them.
"No thanks," Ragle said.
"I'll try some," Vic said, and Bill Black wagged his head along with him. "Need any help?"
"No," Margo said, and departed.
"Don't tank up too heavily on that Italian stuff," Ragle said to Vic. "It's rich. A lot of dough and spices. And you know what that does to you."
Black chimed in, "Yeah, you're getting a little bulgy around the middle, there, Victor."
Jokingly, Ragle said, "Well what do you expect from a bird who works in a grocery store?"
That seemed to nettle Vic. He glared at Ragle and murmured, "At least it's a real job."
"Meaning what?" Ragle said. But he knew what Vic meant. At least it was a salaried job, to which he set out every morning and returned home from every night. Not something he did in the living room. Not a puttering about with something in the daily newspaper... like a kid, Vic had said one day during an argument between them. Mailing in boxtops from cereal packages and a dime for his Magic Decoder Badge.
Shrugging, Vic said, "I'm not ashamed to work in a supermarket."
"That's not what you meant," Ragle said. For some obscure reason he savored these insults directed toward his preoccupation with the _Gazette_ contest. Probably because of an inner guilt at frittering his time and energies away, a wanting to be punished. So he could continue. Better to have an external source berating him than to feel the deep internal gnawing pangs of doubt and self-accusation.
And then, too, it gave him a kick that his daily entries earned him a higher net income than Vic's slavery at the supermarket. And he didn't have to spend time riding downtown on the bus.
Walking over beside him, Bill Black lowered himself, pulled up a chair, and said, "I wondered if you saw this, Ragle." He unfolded, in a confidential manner, a copy of the day's _Gazette_. Almost reverently he opened it to page fourteen. There, at the top, was a line of photos of men and women. In the center was a photo of Ragle Gumm himself, and under it the caption:
_Grand all-time winner in the Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? contest, Ragle Gumm. National champion leading for two straight years, an all-time record_
The other persons shown were lesser greats. The contest was national, with newspapers participating in strings. No local paper could afford to pay the tab. Costs ran higher -- he had figured one day -- than the famous Old Gold contest of the mid-'thirties or the perennial "I use Oxydol soap _because_ in twenty-five words or less" contests. But evidently it built circulation, in these times when the average man read comic books and watched...
I'm getting like Bill Black, Ragle thought. Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, "What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality? Why rock-and-roll instead of the lovely Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy _Maytime_ music that we listened to when we were their age?"
Sitting close by him, Bill Black held on to the paper, jabbing at the picture with his finger. Obviously he was stirred by the sight of it. By golly, old Ragle Gumm's picture in newspapers coast to coast! What honor! A celebrity living next door to him.
"Listen, Ragle," Black said. "You're really making a mint out of this 'green man' contest, aren't you?" Envy was rampant on his face. "Couple of hours at it, and you've got a week's pay right there."
With irony Ragle said, "A real soft berth."
"No, I know you put in plenty of work at it," Black said. "But it's creative work; you're your own boss. You can't call that 'work' like working at a desk somewhere."
"I work at a desk," Ragle said.
"But," Black persisted, "it's more like a hobby. I don't mean to knock it. A man can work harder on a hobby than down at the office. I know when I'm out in the garage using my power saw, I really sweat at it. But -- there's a difference." Turning to Vic, he said, "You know what I mean. It's not drudgery. It's what I said; it's creative."
"I never thought of it like that," Vic answered.
"Don't you think what Ragle's doing is creative?" Black demanded.
Vic said, "No. Not necessarily."
"What do you call it, then, when a man carves his own future out by his own efforts?"
"I simply think," Vic said, "that Ragle has an ability to make one good guess after another."
"Guess!" Ragle said, feeling insulted. "You can say that, after watching me doing research? Going over previous entries?" As far as he was concerned, the last thing to call it was "guessing." If it were a guess he would merely seat himself at the entry form, close his eyes, wave his hand around, bring it down to cover one square out of all the squares. Then mark it and mail it. And wait for the results. "Do you guess when you fill out your income tax return?" That was his favorite analogy for his work on the contest. "You only have to do it once a year; I do it every day." To Bill Black he said, "Imagine you had to make out a new return every day. It's the same thing. You go over all your old forms; you keep records, tons of them -- every day. And no guessing. It's exact. Figures. Addition and subtraction. Graphs."
There was silence.
"But you enjoy it, don't you?" Black said finally.
"I guess so," he said.
"How about teaching me?" Black said, with tension.
"No," he said. Black had brought it up before, a number of times.
"I don't mean so I can compete with you," Black said.
Ragle laughed.
"I mean just so I can pick up a few bucks now and then. For instance, I'd like to build a retaining wall in the back, so in the winter that wet dirt doesn't keep slopping down into our yard. It would cost me about sixty dollars for the materials. Suppose I won -- how many times? Four times?"
"Four times," Ragle said. "You'd get a flat twenty bucks. And your name would go on the board. You'd be competing."
Vic spoke up. "Competing with the Charles Van Doren of the newspaper contests."
"I consider that a compliment," Ragle said. But the enmity made him uncomfortable.
The lasagne did not last long. They all dipped into it. Because of Bill Black's and Ragle's remarks, Vic felt impelled to eat as much as possible. His wife watched him critically as he finished.
"You never eat what I cook the way you ate that," Margo said.
Now he wished he hadn't eaten so much. "It was good," he said gamely.
With a giggle, Junie Black said, "Maybe he'd like to live with us for a while." Her pert, miniature face took on a familiar knowing expression, one that was sure to annoy Margo. For a woman who wore glasses, Vic thought, Junie Black could look astonishingly depraved. Actually, she was not unattractive. But her hair, black, hung down in two twisted thick braids, and he did not like that. In fact he was not drawn to her at all. He did not like tiny, dark, active women, especially those who giggled, and, like Junie, who insisted on pressing against other women's husbands on the strength of a single gulp of sherry.