Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page B

the trespasser of that most sacred of all a man’s preserves, that Elysian field where only the lord and master dares to graze?
    Talk about bagging the royal deer.
    He reached a cement path along which grew green wooden benches. On the benches assorted people, mostly older, sat watching the slope and pool below. One heavy-set elderly lady smiled at him.
    Does she know? he asked himself. That what she saw going on down there was not happy springtide youthful frolic at all, but sin? Near-adultery?
    "Afternoon," he said to her genially.
    She nodded back genially.
    Reaching around in his pockets, he found some change. A line of kids waited at the soft-drink stand; the kids were buying hot dogs and popsicles and Eskimo Pies and orange drink. He joined them.
    How quiet everything was.
    Stunning desolation washed over him. What a waste his life had been. Here he was, forty-six, fiddling around in the living room with a newspaper contest. No gainful, legitimate employment. No kids. No wife. No home of his own. Fooling around with a neighbor wife.
    A worthless life. Vic was right.
    I might as well give up, he decided. The contest. Everything. Wander on somewhere else. Do something else. Sweat in the oil fields with a tin helmet. Rake leaves. Tote up figures at a desk in some insurance company office. Peddle real estate.
    Anything would be more mature. Responsible. I’m dragging away in a protracted childhood ... hobby, like gluing together model Spads.
    The child ahead of him received its candy bar and raced off. Ragle laid down his fifty-cent piece on the counter.
    "Got any beer?" he said. His voice sounded funny. Thin and remote. The counter man in white apron and cap stared at him, stared and did not move. Nothing happened. No sound, anywhere. Kids, cars, the wind; it all shut off.
    The fifty-cent piece fell away, down through the wood, sinking. It vanished.
    I’m dying, Ragle thought. Or something.
    Fright seized him. He tried to speak, but his lips did not move for him. Caught up in the silence.
    Not again, he thought.
    Not again!
    It’s happening to me again.
    The soft-drink stand fell into bits. Molecules. He saw the molecules, colorless, without qualities, that made it up. Then he saw through, into the space beyond it, he saw the hill behind, the trees and sky. He saw the soft-drink stand go out of existence, along with the counter man, the cash register, the big dispenser of orange drink, the taps for Coke and root beer, the ice-chests of bottles, the hot dog broiler, the jars of mustard, the shelves of cones, the row of heavy round metal lids under which were the different ice creams.
    In its place was a slip of paper. He reached out his hand and took hold of the slip of paper. On it was printing, block letters.
    SOFT-DRINK STAND
    Turning away, he unsteadily walked back, past children playing, past the benches and the old people. As he walked he put his hand into his coat pocket and found the metal box he kept there.
    He halted, opened the box, looked down at the slips of paper already in it. Then he added the new one.
    Six in all. Six times.
    His legs wobbled under him and on his face particles of cold seemed to form. Ice slid down into his collar, past his green knit tie.
    He made his way down the slope, to Junie.

FOUR
    At sunset, Sammy Nielson put in a last tardy hour galloping around the Ruins. Together with Butch Cline and Leo Tarski he had dragged a mass of roofing slats into a heap to form a real swell defensive position. They could probably hold the position indefinitely. Next came the gathering of dirt clods, those with long grass attached, for superior throwing.
    Cold evening wind blew about him. He crouched behind the breastwork, shivering.
    The trench needed to be deeper. Taking hold of a board that stuck up from the soil, he pried and tugged. A mass of brick, ash, roofing, weeds and dirt broke away and rolled down at his feet. Between two split slabs of concrete an opening could be seen, more of the old