No Time for the Billiard Ballet

this was it, they decided, this would liberate them from the rat race

Driving Home, Ray said, "Want to stop at the Hibiscus for a nightcap or something?"

"A drink? Just before bed? I don't think so. Unless you particularly want one for some reason."

"No. We could make it coffee if you'd rather. They have a coffee shop."

She didn't answer immediately, and when he glanced at her the corners of her mouth were bunched in a repressed smile. Quickly she said, "All right, let's stop if you like. Only I think I'll have tea; coffee keeps me awake."

"What's funny?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, Sophia."

She let her mouth relax in a laugh. "You really don't know? Well, it's just that you've started the Sunday-night Stall; I've been wondering what it would be this week".

"The what?" He touched the brake, then curved onto the turnoff for the pink-neoned motel-bar-and-restaurant on the paralleling service road.

"Well, last Sunday when we got home from the movies it was a sudden revival of interest in chess. Since it was 11:40 at night and we don't much like chess or really know how to play it and I had no idea of where the set was anyway, I suggested calling it a day and getting to sleep. Instead, you reread most (continued on page 156)Billiard Ballet(continued from page 101) of the Sunday paper. Out loud. To me. Including some classified ads." Ray stopped the car between the angled parking-space lines before the big windows of the coffee shop, shut off the motor, and turned to face Sophia, still listening. He was 28 years old, she was 24; both were blond, and their name was Rasmussen. "The Sunday before, I think it was, you discovered a wonderful radio program; old records, old 78s. And it was good; I liked it. But it started at midnight. Tonight -- well, we stayed at the Dabneys' till they were ready to throw us out."

"Phil wasn't."

"No, he's as bad as you are Sunday nights; June's told me. He'd have kept us there another hour. June was tired, though, so we left reasonably early, but now instead of going straight home we're stopping for coffee." She watched his face for a moment. "You still don't know what I mean?"

Opening his door, he smiled wryly. "Yeah, I know all right; the Sunday night Stall before the Monday-morning Blues. I didn't realize it was that bad, is all."

Inside, after they had sat down at the long plastic-topped counter and ordered, Sophia said, "Do you really hate your job all that much, Ray?" It was after 12, and there was only one other customer, a tan-uniformed California highway patrolman halfway down the counter.

"No, I don't hate it. Though I guarantee you I don't love it."

"Then why don't you find another job? You're young, your career's ahead of you; find something you really love to do. There must be something that -- --"

His eyes were amused. "You sound like my mother; just before I finished school. Always after me to tell her 'what I really wanted to do,' and I never knew what to say." He glanced up to thank with a smile the waitress who was setting their cups down. "She assumed -- it was an article of absolute faith with her -- that for every boy there was not only a girl but a job he'd love. But it's not necessarily true. Not for me. The girl, yeath, the job, no."

"Ray, I know people who --"

"Oh, I know 'em, too! I grew up with a kid who knew when he was 10 years old that he wanted to be a doctor. Now he is one, working 12 and 14 hours a day, and loves it. Another kid I knew was a natural-born artist. He didn't have to learn, he could always draw. He's a commercial artist now and it's all he ever wants to do. Well, I envy people like that; they're the lucky ones of the world. They have the call. They spend their lives doing what they want to do and that's the best thing there is. Next to good health and a chubby little wife. It's a million times better than just making money. But mostly the world is populated by people like me."

"No, it isn't."

He smiled, picking up the sugar jar. "You're deluded, kiddo. I fooled you easy."

They poured cream into their cups; unwrapped sugar, and dropped in the cubes; stirred; tasted; set down their cups. Ray stared ahead for a moment or so, then shrugged and turned to Sophia. "Oh, I'm not running myself down; I'm intelligent enough and I'm not lazy. I just don't have any special talent, that's all; none; The world's full of us, and all we can do is go out and hunt a job when the time comes, and it doesn't much matter what kind. I'm an assistant account executive in an advertising agency; for no special reason. I could just as well be something else. There are times when the job's tedious, plenty of them, but it has its interesting moments, too; as many as any other job I could hope to find. So I don't hate it, Soph; a job's necessary and this one's OK. I guess what I resent is the time it takes; most of my life."

"What do you mean?"

"Figure it out. I get up at 6:30; still dark most of the year. And for more than the next 12 hours, till I get home just before seven, it's either work, preparing to leave for work, or going to and from it on a bus. If I get eight hours' sleep, that's over 20 of the 24 hours gone. And it happens five days out of seven. That's most of my life, kid." He smiled at her, shrugging again. "I'm not complaining, though; it's no worse for me than anyone else. you just got me started is all." He shook his head, still smiling. "The Sunday-night Stall; I didn't know it showed."

The Dabneys visited the Rasmussens the following Sunday. Phil Dabney was Ray's oldest friend; they'd grown up together in San Francisco. Now they each lived here on the Peninsula, in the commuting area south of the city, and because their wives liked each other, the Rasmussens and the Dabneys were each the couple the other saw most often. Tonight it was rainy and chilly outside, typical end-of-the-winter Bay Area weather. But here inside they sat or lay on the floor before a fire in the tiny black-metal fireplace which hung suspended by its own stovepipe from a corner of the living-room ceiling.

The room was silent. The two men lay sprawled on their stomachs facing each other across a very large tablet of white paper, a layout pad from Ray's office. Each of the men, Ray in corduroy pants and a collar-frayed white shirt, phil in dark pants and a red-plaid wool shirt, was drawing a careful series of dime-sized circles on the pad. The circles, their edges overlapping, formed two curved lines moving out toward each other from each side of the sheet. Beside the pad lay an open box of colored pencils, and each time one of the men finished a circle he would color it in: Ray's were red, Phil's green. Scattered on the carpet around them lay other sheets, each with a diagram of colored discs.

Phil laid down his pencil, and ran the spread fingers of his hand through his straight black hair. He was a big nervous-mannered man and this compulsive gesture was so familiar to his wife and friends that they no longer saw it. Glancing at June, his wife, he smiled.

She nodded at the pad. "I'm still not sure how that's supposed to work." She lay on the floor on her side, watching them, wearing black slacks and turtleneck sweater, head propped on her elbow, her blue eyes calm and intelligent. Her long hair, black as her clothes, was piled on her head; she was a fair-skinned, unusually tall girl with a handsome figure; she seemed half again as big as sophia sitting cross-legged beside her in blouse, wool skirt and coral sweater.

Ray looked up from the pad to answer her; he enjoyed looking at June, which made him feel a little guilty toward Sophia and Phil. "It's the Billiard Ballet. The pool Table Polka. And it'll revolutionize the experimental film."

"I know. So you've both said."

"Fourteen times," Sophia added. "With more to come."

"But will it work?"

"Sure it will," Phil said. "We'll use the pool table in Al Kahler's family room; we'll give him a credit line in the finished film. And Ray's going to borrow a 16-millimeter movie camera with a stop action; an artist at his office has one."

"That's the part I don't ----"

"We mount the camera above the pool table, and focus straight down on it," Ray said, looking up at June again. "We arrange the pool balls in a pattern, and then snap just one frame at a time, using color film. Between each frame we take, we move the pool balls slightly, according to these diagrams. It's the way you make an animated film; and when we finish our film, and run it off, the balls will seem to move. They'll come rolling up onto the table from the pockets first. Then they'll roll all over the table, bounching off the side cushions, circling one another, forming all sorts of intricate moving patterns."

"It'll be absolutely spectacular," Phil said, and again he ran his fingers quickly through his hair. "It really will; they'll roll around like magic. We'll dub in music, finally, and the balls will seem to (continued on page 168)Billiard Ballet(continued from page 156) roll into and out of patterns in rhythm."

"I like it," June said. "It sounds wonderful."

"So do I," said Sophia, "and I'd love to see it. But won't it take an awfully long time?"

Phil looked up to nod ruefully. "Yeah. Just rearranging the balls between each frame will take several minutes. And you need 16 frames for every second of finished film. The whole thing will take days."

"Well, why do you want to do it, exactly?"

The two men looked at each other for a moment, then turned back to the women. "For fun," Phil said. "For nothing else but the sheer pleasure of doing it. It'll be one of the few things done in the 20th Century for absolutely no other reason."

June nodded, and rolled to a sitting position. "Yeah," she said, and turned to Sophia. "Five will get you 10 that we never hear of it again after tonight. Remember the game they were going to invent? Like Monopoly, only better? And the mail-order business they were going to start in our garage?"

"Sure, Sunday projects, every one. In full, glorious bloom Sunday night, withered and forgotten Monday morning." Sophia nodded at the colored diagrams on the floor. "June, don't you realize? It's just this week's version of the Sunday-night Stall."

"Of course; I should have known" -- she glanced at her watch; it was a quarter of 12. "Today is Stretchable Sunday, the only day in the week with at least 25 hours." Working on their diagram again, the men ignored her. "Look at them; this week the Billiard Ballet, next week Lord knows what. Did I ever tell you that one Sunday last summer Phil wanted to start washing the car at 12:15 at night? There was a full moon, he pointed out, and it was warm outside. We'd never washed the car by moonlight, he said; an argument that, believe me, is hard to answer."

"Someday they'll finally figure out how to hold off Monday forever and it'll be Sunday for the rest of our lives."

"We sure married a pair of comical ladies, Phil. Not much on looks, but they're sure a laff-riot, to quote the movie ads. How come you're not chuckling away?"

Phil smiled slightly. "Maybe because it's true. We'll never finish this or even start it. And we both know it. It'd take several weeks' full time, and maybe longer." He smiled again, in the manner of one about to repeat an old joke -- "Working for a living takes too damn much time. And you know something?" He pushed himself up from the floor, and sat facing the others, arms around his knees, one hand clasping the other wrist. "I finally figured out why. It's three-and-a-half days till payday for me right now, and as is usual at that time we're broke. We've got about a buck and a half between us; I'll carry my lunch till Thursday. Well, I used to laugh whenever that happened. I'd say, 'Where does the money go?' then shrug and forget it. But lately I've been thinking about where it goes. You know what the real-estate man said when we bought our house? He said it cost 'eighteen-five,' and that's how I thought about it for quite a while. Then it occurred to me that another way to say it -- very slowly -- is $18,500. It sounds different that way, but I think it's the right way to say it because it's going to take me exactly 24 years to pay it, and that isn't all. When we finally own the house -- in 1987, and we want you over to dinner to celebrate -- I'll have paid out another $12,000 in interest on the mortgage, seven or eight thousand more in county taxes, and several thousand on top of that in repairs and upkeep. At least $40,000 all told. Well, Raymond, my boy, it takes years and years of getting up in the morning and going to work to save up that much. You spend years of your life just to buy a roof over your head."

He held up a hand against interruption, though none of the others had tried to speak. "And you've got to have a car, don't you? It never enters your head that you don't. But I'm warning you; don't ever sit down and figure out what it really costs. Three thousand bucks just to buy one, every few years. Well, that's over four months' work for me, after taxes. And it's only the beginning. Add insurance each year, license, gas, tires, repairs, parking fees, meter fees, tolls -- and, man, it's fantastic what a chunk of your life goes into earning what it takes just to drive a car around; you could make half-a-dozen Billiard Ballets in that time! Another full quarter of everything I earn -- one fourth of my working life -- goes for nothing but taxes; Federal income tax, state tax, sales tax, liquor tax, cigarette tax, tax tax! June and I have a decent house, decent clothes, food, car and some luxuries besides, and that's fine; it's great. But sometimes I wonder: Do you really have to spend over half your waking hours at a job or getting to and from it -- for just the necessities of life and something over? Could there possibly be another quicker way to get them if I could only think of it? And wouldn't it be great to find one? So that every once in a while, all through your life, you'd have enough of it left over to go to work on a Billiard Ballet just for the sheer fun of it?"

Through several seconds they sat silent and motionless, then Phil smiled embarrassedly, looking sheepish, and ran a hand through his hair. Ray said, "Right! So it's Up, Rebels, and we'll free Ireland! Let's work all night on the Pool Table Polka, and to hell with the jobs in the morning." But even as he spoke he was getting to his feet, then he stood stretching his back and shoulders. The evening was over and not long afterward the Dabneys went home.

On Friday of the next week the sky cleared, the sun came out strong and warm, and as happens several times during a California winter, it was briefly summer again. Saturday was warmer still, and immediately after breakfast Ray told Sophia that he'd like to take the car; that he'd be gone all day and, smiling as he said it, she was to ask no questions. But it was nearly eight o'clock before he was home again, with Sophia beginning to worry. Then he came in through the kitchen door, from the garage, and he was smiling, and she saw that his eyes were excited. Before she could speak he held up a hand. "A big favor; hold the questions till tomorrow. We're going on a picnic with the Dabneys, and it's a surprise till we get there."

Sunday was bright and clear, almost hot, and they left early in the Rasmussens' four-year-old Plymouth station wagon; the women in sweaters and slacks, the men in wash pants and wool shirts. By 11 o'clock they were driving past the domed State Capitol building in Sacramento, Ray still refusing to say where they were going. At noon, a dozen miles past Placerville, in the mountain foothills, Ray turned off U.S. 50 onto an asphalt county road. A few miles later he turned off this onto a narrow dirt road, drove for a mile, and parked. Then, the men taking turns carrying the wicker basket of lunch Sophia had prepared, they walked into the woods, following a trail, for a quartermile.

They came out into a natural clearing, a meadow of some several acres sloping to a small stream. It was entirely surrounded by tall pines, and above and beyond them the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas rose in the hazy distance. It was a beautiful place, secluded and wonderfully warm in the noon sun. The little stream, perhaps 20 feet wide, was strewn with gray-black boulders, some as large as a house, and the racing water gurgled and sang as it flashed between them. As they walked down the slope toward the stream, June saw and exclaimed over deer tracks leading to and from the water; then, finding places to sit on a great shelving of flat rock beside the stream, they all saw a trout leap, white-bellied and shining momentarily in the sun.

Lying or sitting on the warm rock surface, they ate lunch. Then Sophia and June poured coffee, steaming from the insulated jug, and now, cups in hand, the others turned to Ray. Phil said, "OK, Ray; it's a great spot and I'm glad we're here. But it's a long drive for a picnic."

He smiled, nodding in acknowledgment of the implied question. "Yeah, it is a nice spot. Yesterday I looked at half-a-dozen others around here, all just about as nice; the woods are full of them. A guy from Placerville took me around; a local real-estate man. You know what property like this costs? Off the roads and utility lines? Maybe a $100 an acre, not a lot more. You could buy this whole place, as far as you can see, for only a few hundred bucks."

The others were nodding, interested, and June said, her voice pleased, "You mean to come to in the summers?"

"Be great here in the summer, wouldn't it?" Ray answered. "It's perfectly possible, you know, to build your own cottage. Out of logs. From the trees right on your own property. It'd be work; plenty of it, and hard, but it's perfectly practical and the kind of hard work I'd actually enjoy. Wouldn't you, Phil?" Phil nodded, and Ray lifted his arm to point up the slope of the clearing. "I've thought about how you'd do it. You'd cut your logs up on the slopes, all around the edges of the woods. You'd trim and peel them where they fell. Using ropes and levers, you'd roll them downhill to the site. Phil and I'd work together; build two cabins, one for each of us. They'd have only one room at first. You'd add on in subsequent years, as many more rooms as you wanted to have. They'd cost almost nothing but the work and fun of building them. You'd even make your own shingles; shack shingles aren't hard to split once you get the knack. I think maybe you'd buy aluminum window frames and screens, and the flooring, but that's about all. A couple of fireplaces in the house, and you'd be snug and warm in the winter, too; wouldn't Christmas up here in the snow be something?"

Phil had been nodding, frequently running his hand through his hair. "Be terrific. Cut your own Christmas tree! And you'd be perfectly warm, all right; log walls are fine insulation. What's the matter, Junie?"

She was shaking her head. "Look, I love the place, and a cabin up here would be fine. And I know you two could build them. But before you get all worked up and excited, figure it out in advance for once! Half-a-day to drive up here and half-a-day back leaves one day a week, plus a two-week vacation, to build your cabins. It simply isn't enough time!"

"I know; I'm not talking about weekends." They all swung around to stare at Ray, and he set down his cup, and got to his feet, shoving both hands into the back pockets of his tan wash pants. Not looking at the others, he began to slowly walk the flat surface of the great rock. "Do me a favor; all of you. Just listen to what I say and don't laugh till I'm finished; then, if you feel like it, laugh all you want." He turned to look at Phil. "What you said last Sunday is absolutely true; I've been thinking about it all week. A man spends a big hunk of his life just paying for a house to live in. Tens of thousands of dollars, all told, just for a house on a 60-foot scrap of land." He flung out an arm at the clearing around them. "But here's a hundred times as much land that costs a fraction as much, and your house comes with it practically free! Over no more than three or four years you could build a house just as big as you wanted it, just as solid and strong and good as the houses we own -- or that own us. And that's the end of it. You'd own it! Free and clear! Monthly payments zero! Good Lord; you'd save years of your own life!" He stood looking at them, eyes elated. Then he leaned toward them, and said softly, "Can any of you tell me why the hell we don't do it?"

After a long moment Sophia spoke -- as gently as though speaking to a child. "Ray, Ray. How would we live? Where would you get a job? And at what?"

He grinned at her. "I wouldn't, baby; that's just the point. I wouldn't need one. What's a job for, when you think about it? Unless it's something a man loves and really wants to spend his days at, why does he have a job? Only to buy shelter, food, clothes, a car, some luxuries. Well, we'd build our own house; we really and truly could. As for food -- what are you buying, Sophia and June, when you pay out nearly one-third of a dollar for a small can of peas for supper? You're paying for a steel can, a label printed in color, for cardboard shipping cartons, canneries, diesel trucks, warehouses, and for a big fluorescent-lighted supermarket to buy it in. You almost forget that the peas themselves just grow out of the ground. And that it's perfectly easy to grow them and that it could be done right here. Right there by the stream, on half an acre of our own land, we could grow all the peas, beans, carrots, beets, corn, lettuce, tomatoes and all the rest of it, that the four of us could possibly eat."

His voice surprised, Phil said, "That's true, isn't it? In fact, that's exactly what everyone did as a matter of course only a couple of generations ago. People didn't buy their fruits and vegetables; they raised them in backyard truck gardens. Ate them fresh all summer and canned the rest in Mason jars for the winter. And you know something else? I've got a good shotgun; in the winter, when they'd keep, we'd kill three or four deer. That's meat for weeks!"

"And the other weeks?" June said almost sarcastically.

Phil smiled, holding a hand up defensively. "I don't know! I haven't decided to move here tomorrow! I don't know if it's practical, or what I think of it." Then he shook his head, and almost muttering it to himself, he added, "Except that it's the damnedest, most exciting idea I've heard in years."

Ray said, "Sure, Junie -- we'd have to buy meat sometimes. Other things, too; salt, sugar, flour. And still other things for variety, and even luxury. Well, Phil and I'd work for them; maybe two or three months out of every year. There are farms all around us, there's a saw-mill, towns, county roads to work on, ski resorts; a man could easily get work by the day or week or month. Enough to earn a few hundred dollars each year. And that's all we'd need for house, food, and clothes, too; because day in and day out we'd wear denims, not expensive dresses and business suits that cost half a week's pay!"

"Oh, for heaven sakes, Ray!" Sophia burst out. "What about water, gas, electricity? What about entertainment? And reading a book, magazine and newspaper occasionally? What about seeing other people, and getting into civilization? What about --"

"Hold it!" He walked over to Sophia, squatted before her and took her hand in his. "Relax, baby; no one's got a gun in your back. You've got full veto power; you ought to know that." Then, speaking to the others, too, "It's not something any of us ought to decide in a hurry, unless you already know you're absolutely against it. We couldn't begin work on the cabins or do much of anything till the rains stop. And that's several weeks away yet. This would be a big decision; we ought to talk it over plenty."

They did; starting at once. On the way home, June said, "I suppose you two pioneers are prepared to give up your cars along with your jobs? The two sort of go together."

Phil said, "I've been sitting here thinking about that. Take this car. Ray's finally finished paying for it. But all that means is that he's now entering the big-repair period. From now on, till he breaks down and buys a new car and starts the cycle all over again, he can expect some nice fat repair bills every now and then. Like 65 bucks. And $142.50. Because it's far too complicated a piece of machinery for him to repair himself, even if he had the tools. But you know something? Ray could sell this car tomorrow morning, and I could sell mine, and we'd have at least three times what we'd need to buy a Model A Ford sedan!"

"Heaven help us."

"Build a log garage on a $40 scrap of farmland next to the county road up there, and we're set! A Model A never wears out if you take care of it; they've proved that. They give twice the gas mileage, they're so simple we could repair it ourselves, and even the license is the cheapest you can buy! We could drive into Placerville every week, and even down to San Francisco twice a year, on two or three bucks a month."

"Damn right." Ray was delighted. "Leave the chrome, whitewalls, and power cigarette lighters to those who want them."

They talked about it at the Dabneys'; the men lounging in the kitchen doorway while the women made waffles for supper. "You don't mind waffles golden brown from an electric waffle iron, do you?" Sophia said. "Eaten under the harsh glare of electric lights?"

"I don't mind," Ray said, "but I don't think electricity is a necessity either. My grandfather didn't have it in his house and he lived in the heart of New York City."

Phil said, "For that matter, we didn't have it in my folks' summer cottage near Tahoe when I was a kid. We used kerosene lamps and they gave a fine light; steady and bright, wonderful to read by. And a six-bit can of kerosene lasted all summer. Hell, when you think about it, the kings and queens of France living in the Palace of Versailles never had lights even a fraction as good!"

"That's right. And while a kerosene stove takes a little longer to start, once it's going it gives just as hot and even a flame as gas or electricity. So who needs a $25 gas and light bill every month? Who really needs every last thing that's ever been invented?"

Pouring batter into the waffle iron, Sophia nodded. "Fine; that takes care of gas and electricity. But it may be harder to do without water."

Ray looked at Phil. "She thinks it has to come out of a faucet or it doesn't count." To Sophia he said, "We'd have running water, kiddo; it would run right past the door, fresher and cleaner than we've ever had it before in our lives. I'd have to carry it in, I know that. Unless Phil and I rigged up some way to pipe it in. But I'm willing to haul water, aren't you, Phil?"

"It's what we're built for, isn't it? Why are we men, why do I weigh 180, what are my muscles for?" Clenching his fists, he began rotating his shoulders slowly, moving his big back muscles. "It can't be to sit at a desk all day. Pushing little pieces of paper around. When you think about it, it's the most unnatural way to live that the human race ever dreamed up -- sitting all your life; getting flabby in mind, muscles and guts. We're made to carry things! And to cut down trees and hunt for food!" Standing in the doorway, he glared at the two women; then he shook his head. "God, I'd love to build my own house!" he said; and after a moment June walked over to him, her eyes suddenly soft, and kissed him.

At five minutes of two, all sitting in the Dabneys' living room still talking, Sophia stood up. "It's absolutely practical," Ray was saying to Phil. "Sell the two houses and cars and get our equities back, and we'd have several thousand dollars apiece. Buy our Model A, our tools, tents and gear for the first summer while we build the cabins, and we'd still have a nice emergency fund left over." He looked up at Sophia. "What's the matter?"

"I'll die if we don't go home; so will June." Smiling ruefully at June, she said, "The Sunday-night Stall to end them all."

"Wasn't it a beauty? This one started Saturday morning!"

But on Thursday, June phoned Sophia to say, "Listen, that was no Sunday-night Stall. Phil's absolutely serious; he doesn't talk about anything else."

"I know. Ray, too. Even at breakfast."

"Well, what're we going to do, Soph? I'm worried; I really am. If we let them keep on, they'll talk us all into a pair of log cabins!"

There was a pause, then Sophia said slowly, "June, there's one thing I have to do. If Ray is serious about this, then I've got to be, too. I could kill the whole thing with my attitude; Ray would give it up if he felt I really and truly hated the whole idea. So it wouldn't be fair to him not to give this an honest chance in my own mind, silly as it seems. And that's what I've been doing all week; here by myself in the daytime. Standing washing dishes, or vacuuming, I think about it, trying to imaging how it would be. And I've got to tell you, June; there are moments when I almost wonder if it isn't actually possible."

"Well, thank goodness. I wanted you to say it first. Because Phil's been after me morning and night, and he's got me half-thinking that all in all, recognizing the problems and even hardships, it might just possibly be a wonderful way to live."

That Sunday all talk on the subject was stopped, by general agreement. The women suggested it. Again they were sitting or lying on the floor before the Rasmussens' tiny fireplace; it had turned cold and rainy once more. Phil had been describing, with sketches, a simple block-and-tackle method he'd read about in the library one noon hour for raising logs into place while building a cabin. He finished, then June said, "And now we've talked enough. We've said it all. Most of it twice. And Soph and I think we ought to have a moratorium on any more talk for a while." She looked over at Sophia for confirmation.

"Yes, it's time to shut up, really think this over, then make up our minds once and for all."

Phil nodded. "Well, that makes sense. What about two weeks of silence while we think about it? If we all want to do it then, we'll know we really mean it."

They looked at Ray, who said, "It's OK with me; it's a good idea. But there's something I'd like everyone to be clear about before we shut up and think this over. And that is that we're not talking about making our own soap, weaving our own clothes and retreating from the 20th Century; just the opposite. We're talking about making the best possible use of the time we live in -- by selecting from the best it offers. We'll pick what's really useful, but forget the junk; we'll take the penicillin and forget the electric back scratchers. And by stripping to the essentials of good living we'll get back our own lives and have more time to live!" Smiling, but his voice intense, he said, "And believe me, we'd really live; that's what I want you to think about. Picture it! There'd be time for the kind of reading you'll never get a chance for otherwise. Every week we'd bring home books and magazines from the Placerville library, books we've all meant to read for years. Now there'd be time for them and time to discuss and think about them. And we'd play chess and bridge and have hobbies. We'd take hikes, we'd hunt, fish, work in the garden, ski in the winter, make things for ourselves. There'd probably come a summer when we'd all build a log-and-earth dam to make a pool big enough to swim in. And we'd see people more than ever before; new friends up around there, and old ones who'd drive up from the Bay Area. And I'll tell you something else; after a year or so, when they saw how it was, some of those friends would stay; build their cabins, too, and join us. One last thing; Soph and I want children, and soon now, and I know you two do. We've talked about that; there are farms up there, other children for them to know and play with. There's a school less than two miles away they could walk to; through woods part of the way, along a country road the rest. It would be a wonderful place and a wonderful way for children to grow up in. They'd miss the joys of spending sunny days in a darkened room watching animated cartoon figures beat each other up on television. But they'd learn a lot about the woods and fields and about the four seasons." He shrugged. "That's all I wanted to say; that this may be more than just practical, it may be fun. Here, in the 20th Century, we may just possibly have hit on a wounderful way to live out our lives."

They kept their agreement, or very nearly. Two weeks later they met at the Dabneys' for Sunday breakfast. June served scrambled eggs and sausage; then, over second cups of coffee, cigarettes lighted, plates pushed aside, Phil turned to Ray and said quietly, "OK; what's the word with you two?"

Ray took a final sip of coffee, set his cup down carefully, then looked up at Phil. "Phil, I'm sorry but we broke our word; Soph and I have been talking about this for the last two nights, and we can't decide, we can't make up our minds." He looked from Phil to June, then back at Phil, and shrugged helplessly. "Something's happened."

"Happened?"

"Yeah." Ray nodded several times. "I could give you the long version; all the stuff we've talked about for hours. But maybe I can say it all in four words -- I got a raise." For a moment or so he sat searching their faces, then he said defensively, "Matter of fact, it's a pretty damn good one. I don't know if you'll understand, but --"

Phil laughed then; a single bark of abrupt laughter. "Oh, I understand," he said, "I understand very well. About 10 days ago the rumors started at work; the head of my department was going to leave. Friday we learned that it's true. Ray, that means somebody will have to replace him, and the funny thing is that it looks as if I've got a chance if I want to make a try for it. So we understand you, Ray, boy; we've been talking, too."

They laughed then, uneasily; offering jokes, shaking their heads. Then Sophia looked around the table. "Well?" she said. "Today's the day. We've got to decide. We can't just talk forever. What are we going to do?"

No one answered. The men sat staring at their plates, restlessly tapping their cigarettes. Then Ray said, "We'll do what my father did." They looked up, and Ray said, "He was a doctor, and not long before he was married -- he'd been practicing about a year -- he was offered a chance to go down the Amazon River as part of an expedition, exploring and mapping; to be the doctor for the party. It would mean giving up his practice, and starting all over again after a year, but he wanted to do it, and he thought about it, and agonized over it, and finally made up his mind."

Ray waited till Phil said, "Well? What did he do?"

Ray smiled slightly and tilted back on the rear legs of his chair. "He did what we're going to do, Phil. He talked and thought about it. And finally, for a long, long list of very excellent and sound, sensible and practical considerations, he decided against it." Ray dropped his chair to its four legs, leaning forward across the table to look the others in the eye. "And then -- not always, by any means, but just every now and then, every once in a while during all the long and successful years that followed -- he regretted it for the rest of his life."