I'll take beer, son, and thanks again for the offer. As you can see,
I'm kinda down on my luck. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not
really on the bum. I usually make out all right--nothing fancy, mind
you, but it's a living. Odd jobs in the winter and spring, follow the
harvests in the summer and fall. Things are slack right now.
You? Electronics, huh? Used to know a fellow in electronics....
His name was Joe Shannon, used to work for Stellar Electric up in
Fremont. Young fellow, not more'n twenty-five or so. Rail thin, wispy
hair, serious look--you know, the one suit, absent-minded type. Joe
was a brain. A triple-A, gold-plated, genuine genius. Had a wife named
Marge. Not beautiful but pretty and a nice figure and a cook you never
saw the likes of. Like I say, she was married to Joe but Joe was
married to his work and after you'd been around a while, you could
tell there was friction.
But that ain't the beginning.
I suppose I'm partly responsible because it started when I was over
for dinner one night. I had been working in the garden and doing odd
jobs around the house that afternoon and I finagled it so I was
invited for supper. Marge Shannon made chili that I just couldn't stay
away from. Thick with beans and meat and easy on the spices so it
wouldn't burn an old man's stomach.
[Illustration]
Joe and I had just gone into the living room--Marge stayed in the
kitchen to do the dishes--and I was feeling stuffed and kinda sleepy.
All of a sudden Joe says out of a clear blue sky: "Harry, this is a
hell of a world we live in, isn't it?"
Now Joe had never struck me as being the unhappy type. He loved his
work, he loved his wife (and just about in that order), and so far as
I knew he didn't owe any money. So I tried to feel him out, to find
out where the rub was.
"There's nothing wrong with the world, Joe," I says. "It's just the
people in it."
He started methodically filling his pipe and tamping down the tobacco
and not saying a word and I get the feeling that he's deadly serious
about something.
"You're right," he says quietly. "It isn't the world, it's the
people."
I sit there feeling puzzled but a lot less sleepy and finally I ask:
"Anything wrong, Joe?"
He lights his pipe and settles back in the big, overstuffed easy chair
with the flowered slip-cover that Marge made, still frowning. "It's an
unhappy world," he repeats.
"It all depends on what side of the picture you want to look at," I
says, trying to cheer him up. "Maybe you been reading too many
newspaper headlines."