There was a heavy summer smell, and there was the question of the ink.
“You’d think,” he thought, “that it would get into the house and cause mildew, but it is just this side of that; and if you paid attention, you would know it. In the smell. That it was laden and wet, but it stopped short of being harmful, if you had the courage to recognize that you knew it.”
The humidity was not going to harm anything except your sense of order. And if you were required to pay for it, you’d pay for it later in the day, in the heat. “Well, now,” he thought, “will that assuage your sense of fairness?” For was there not a breeze in the world? Yes. There was, he thought, as he sat down to breakfast.
And they said the ribbons in the typewriting machines would last two or three months. But he wondered, as they seemed to last longer, if it was a function of the humidity.
“What is ink?” he thought. “Some substance which maintains semi-liquidity sufficient to allow its transfer, and then dries into a solid state.
“Some dye, in effect, of that description.” And could it not be that the humidity of his city kept the ribbons moist, kept the ink moist, and could it not be that the insufficiency of the company’s estimate reflected not the absence of ink at the end of two months but the desiccation of the ink and ribbon, and that moistening …?
He nodded at Rose, as she sat. He tried to envision a remoistening of the typewriter ribbons. How would it take place? Could one wind and immerse them, and why was that image, he wondered, not as satisfying as the, granted, more elaborate scenario of unwinding the spool to its total length—whatever that might be? (“What might that be,” he thought, “a hundred yards? Hardly. Fifty? Twenty, more likely …”)
“These are the musings,” he thought, “of a content man.”
“At twenty yards”—he smiled at the thought—“some might call me silly. But if the ribbons were strung building-to-building, in the rain—wouldn’t that moisten them? Now, is that idiocy, or an elegant solution? Who can say?” he thought. “Who could say, who hadn’t tried it? If, finally, if—if moisture was, in fact, the problem. And here I am, already surpassing their estimate by thirty percent.
“Are these the thoughts,” he wondered, “of a miser?” And he answered himself, “No, no. I don’t think so. I think that it’s business, and it’s all reducible to that; and if the care, and foresight, yes, and yes, and dreaming, isn’t business, then I do not know what is.
“The man who invented the wheel. Think of that. Think of it. How many millennia of placing a free roller underneath a load. And people dreaming, dreaming, ‘If I could dispense with carrying these rollers: but how?’ and someone, probably, thought of fixing rollers underneath the load, to be axle and wheel at once. But the genius,” he thought, “the genius … and must he not have shivered as he thought of it, not in triumph, but in fear. In fear: ‘Can it work? How can it work? If it could work, would someone not have invented it before?’
“In fear, he must have had the insight, the notion, to abstract the roller into two ‘wheels.’ And must he not have thought: ‘Why me?’
“… Why me?” He nodded.
“For, if he was right, then the rest of the tribe was wrong, and had been wrong for millennia—not to see the obvious.
“And then,” he thought, “they could not see the obvious, and …”
The double-hinged door banged open, and Ruthie came in with the coffeepot.
“These are the thoughts of a happy man,” he thought. “Have I tempted fate?” And: “Jesus Christ, this coffee smells good.”
“Starting to turn hot already,” he thought, as he left the house.
“Turn hot. Parade. Well, that’s as it should be. Price for everything. Some mornings, in the damp, you feel it as a coming penance; some mornings as a reprieve.”
Already the flags were flying. Up and down his street. Confederate Flags. He nodded as he walked past them.
“Everyone has a right,” he thought. “Who is to say he’s less misguided than his adversaries?” He thought: “Any of us. To believe in this or that? When, five years, ten years, our beliefs change that completely we wonder, ‘What can I have meant …?’
“And, of course, it’s a religion. The State. Any state, perhaps; and a good thing, perhaps, at that.
“For how is it different from a company? It is not. It is a company. A Group of Men. Organized under a set of Principles which, perhaps they may think—but they are in error—which will cover all contingencies.
“Now: what do they do when situations arise outside the scope of the Precepts upon which the Concern was founded?
“Good morning, Mrs. Breen,” he said.
“Good morning, Mr. Frank. Goin’ to work?”
“Yes. Off to work. Off to the office.”
“Don’t miss the parade,” she said.
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t miss it, I,” he said. “You know, I see it—I can see it from my fifth-floor windows.”
“You can’t. In the fact’ry?”
“Yes, I can.” He smiled. A little piece of Pear Street. “Yes, indeed, I can.”
“Hmm,” she said, wagging her head slightly, as to say, “What do you know …”
They stopped there for a moment, and she sighed. “Going to be warmish,” she said.
“Well, I should say so. I’d say it’s going to be quite warm.”
He tipped his hat and continued down the street.