Time Out of Joint - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,1

something."

"Aren’t you a Democrat?" he asked. "From the South?"

"Not any more. Not since I moved up here. This is a Republican state, so I’m a Republican." The cash register clattered and clanged and the cash drawer flew open. Liz packed the groceries into a paper bag.

Across the street from the store the sign of the American Diner Café started him thinking about afternoon coffee. Maybe this was the best time. To Liz he said, "I’ll be back in ten or so minutes. You think you can hold the fort alone?"

"Oh sholly," Liz said merrily, her hands making change. "You go ahead on, so I can get out later and do some shopping I have to do. Go on, now."

Hands in his pockets, he left the store, halting at the curb to seek out a break in the traffic. He never went down to the crosswalk; he always crossed in the middle of the block, directly to the café, even if he had to wait at the curb minute after minute. A point of honor was involved, an element of manliness.

In the booth at the café he sat before his cup of coffee, stirring idly.

"Slow day," Jack Barnes the shoe salesman from Samuel’s Men’s Apparel said, bringing over his cup of coffee to join him. As always, Jack had a wilted look, as if he had steamed and baked all day in his nylon shirt and slacks. "Must be the weather," he said. "A few nice spring days and everybody starts buying tennis rackets and camp stoves."

In Vic’s pocket was the most recent brochure from the Book-of-the-Month Club. He and Margo had joined several years ago, at the time they had put a down payment on a house and moved into the kind of neighborhood that set great stock by such things. Producing the brochure he spread it flat on the table, swiveling it so Jack could read it. The shoe salesman expressed no interest.

"Join a book club," Vic said. "Improve your mind."

"I read books," Jack said.

"Yeah. Those paperback books you get at Becker’s Drugs."

Jack said, "It’s science this country needs, not novels. You know darn well that those book clubs peddle those sex novels about small towns in which sex crimes are committed and all the dirt comes to the surface. I don’t call that helping American science."

"The Book-of-the-Month Club also distributed Toynbee’s History," Vic said. "You could stand reading that." He had got that as a dividend; although he hadn’t quite finished it he recognized that it was a major literary and historical work, worth having in his library. "Anyhow," he said, "bad as some books are, they’re not as bad as those teen-age sex films, those drag-race films that James Dean and that bunch do."

His lips moving, Jack read the title of the current Book-of-the-Month selection. "A historical novel," he said. "About the South. Civil War times. They always push that stuff. Don’t those old ladies who belong to the club get tired of reading that over and over again?"

As yet, Vic hadn’t had a chance to inspect the brochure. "I don’t always get what they have," he explained. The current book was called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By an author he had never heard of: Harriet Beecher Stowe. The brochure praised the book as a daring exposé of the slave trade in pre-Civil War Kentucky. An honest document of the sordid outrageous practices committed against hapless Negro girls.

"Wow," Jack said. "Hey, maybe I’d like that."

"You can’t tell anything by the blurb," Vic said. "Every book that’s written these days is advertised like that."

"True," Jack said. "There’s sure no principles left in the world any more. You look back to before World War Two, and compare it to now. What a difference. There wasn’t this dishonesty and delinquency and smut and dope that’s going around. Kids smashing up cars, these freeways and hydrogen bombs... and prices going up. Like the price you grocery guys charge for coffee. It’s terrible. Who’s getting the loot?"

They argued about it. The afternoon wore on, slowly, sleepily, with little or nothing happening.

At five when Margo Nielson snatched up her coat and car keys and started out of the house, Sammy was nowhere in sight. Off playing, no doubt. But she couldn’t take time to round him up; she had to pick up Vic right away or he’d conclude she wasn’t coming and so take the bus home.

She hurried back into the house. In the living room her brother, sipping from his can of beer,