A Handful of Time

by Rosel George Brown

  Laughing at himself, Dr. Barnes was about to pull down his Shakespeare when the telephone blared, “Dr. Barnes!”

  He cringed a little and turned the volume back down.

  “Here,” he said.

  “Cliff Reid from Teenie Products,” a heavy, tired voice said. “Don’t you think this has gone far enough, Mark?”

  “Not quite,” Dr. Barnes said patiently. He was tired of Cliff Reid. Tired of Teenie Products hounding him. But could he blame them?

  “We’re facing liquidation,” Reid said, “At this rate, in a few years there won’t be any population for you to control.”

  “I don’t know why you keep calling up to argue. You’ll just have to cut production. There’ll always be some babies, after all. The biological urge…”

  Dr. Barnes’ voice trailed off. The phrase keyed him back to the conversation with Jack a little while before. (“You shouldn’t be thrown by a few biological urges. I’ve educated you…”)

  “Mark?”

  “Still here.”

  “I didn’t call up to go over what we’ve gone over a million times. I just wanted to warn you. Either you call off your dogs or we’re going to send out a few of our own. With teeth.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’ve tried fighting clean.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I don’t like this. But now we’re going to fight dirty.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’ve tried everything else. Now we’re going to make you unpopular. You’d better start cleaning out your conscience and paying your old parking fines.”

  “If you think you’re scaring me, you’re wrong.”

  “That’s not why I called,” Reid said. “I called because I respect you. I’ve known you some time, Mark. I don’t want to do this. There’s nothing dirtier than personal vil. But Teenie Products aside, I think you’re off your rocker with P.C. You’ve gone too far. I can put you before Teenie Products. But I can’t put you before the human race, I only want to let you know it’s nothing personal.”

  There was a silence from Dr. Barnes.

  “And one more thing. I learned my sociology on the other side of the bottle from you, Mark. Something occurred to me and I wonder why it hasn’t occurred to you. Or maybe it has.”

  “What?”

  “It was sociologically almost impossible for the population to be controlled by propaganda alone. Particularly in the face of our counter propaganda. When you get big business on the side of the angels, the combination is hard to beat.”

  “I did it, didn’t I?”

  “Did you? It occurs to me there may be something we’ve all overlooked.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Cliff?” But the line was dead.

  Thus it was that Dr. Barnes, at the very moment he realized he had licked the mushrooming problem of population control, felt his triumph teeter beneath him. And he was one of the first to begin to wonder.

  Something shadowy was nudging at the edges of Dr. Barnes’ mind.

  He remembered himself, at the age of eighteen, facing his father after a bitter argument over population control. Mark, in revolt then, had voted against P.C. And his father, a lawyer, had just made a speech to the entire freshman class favoring P.C, while the adolescent Mark Barnes sat in the audience blushing and mortified.

  “ ‘Nature has a way,’ ” Dr. Barnes remembered himself warning his father in a rage, “ ‘of paying a man back in his own coin.’ It’s against the natural law to tell people how many children they can have!”

  Dr. Barnes remembered how sacred the natural law had seemed.

  “All law,” his father had said calmly, in his rich, developed voice, “is against the natural law. What do you think civilization is?”

  “A mess!” Mark had answered, and flung himself out of the room.

  Dr. Barnes tried to picture himself young, like that, in ivy league stripes and a flat top crew cut, always burning up inside over something. Always feeling awkward and gangling and‌—‌deep down‌—‌wrong, around his father.

  Did Jack feel like that around him? They had no raging arguments. Dr. Barnes didn’t know what Jack thought. What he cared about.

  As an adolescent, Dr. Barnes remembered what his burning desires had been centered on. Thoughts of saving humanity and sleeping with girls. He told his father about the first, but the second he kept to himself.

  All he knew about Jack’s burning desires was that he wanted to shave with pink shaving cream. What went on in Jack’s mind?

  Dr. Barnes had tried not to be a meddlesome parent. Maybe he’d succeeded too well. Where’s the line between respect for privacy and plain neglect?

  “Uh, going out tonight?” Dr. Barnes asked casually as Jack clattered through the door, pushed the stairs to full speed and started running up them anyway.

  “Aw, Pop, do I ever go out on weekends?” Jack shouted over his shoulder. One outstretched, balancing, hand held a bag which contained, no doubt, a spray tube of Whiskoff and a “real” razor.

  Come to think of it, Dr. Barnes hadn’t noticed. He went out some nights. To school activities of various kinds.

  Jack stuck his head over the bannister at the top of the stairs. He seemed to be in ebullient spirits.

  “It’s O.K. with me,” he kidded with his usual anachronisms, “if you want to meet the other cats down at the road-house. Or is it gin mill?”

  He probably thinks I used to sport a handle bar mustache, Dr. Barnes thought. But he determined to watch his son.

  Jack took a long time getting dressed. There was much splashing of water in the basin. And, “Dad, my red socks aren’t here.”

  “You can use my disposable ones. There’re three pair of red I’ll never wear.”

  “I can’t wear those! Where are my real socks?”

  “I guess in the laundry. Look in the Box. They usually come back Saturday.”

  A sound of the Box door banging. A treadle given an extra, unnecessary “smack!”

  “It’s not there. And my ribbed stretch pants are in the laundry too. What am I going to do?”

  “You could just wear your shoulder-hung tweeds, you know, like a human being.”

  “I could wear doublets and lace cuffs,” Jack cried sarcastically. “Can I wear your stretch pant pajamas?”

  “I don’t know why it matters,” Dr. Barnes pointed out, wondering why he, like all parents, kept saying things that were useless. “Those robes cover everything else you have on.”

  “Oh, you don’t understand. Can I?”

  “Wear the pajamas? Of course.”

  Jack finally came cruising down the steps at normal speed, stepped off with dignity and straightened his scarlet Balzac robe, evening the bow on the blue rope around the middle.

  It wasn’t Dr. Barnes’ idea of how a person should look. But all the teen-agers wore them and it struck him then that Jack was growing into a powerful looking man. Powerful for what?

  “I thought you said you weren’t going out tonight.”

  “I did.” Was he deliberately being cryptic?

  Jack pulled his dinner out of the Family Supplier, burning his fingers as he almost always did. Then he trudged past his father’s study, managing to clomp even in his sock feet. The treadle banged on the door to the tiny TV room and then there was silence.

  Long, long silence, while Dr. Barnes stood outside the closed door trying to imagine himself at the age of seventeen getting all dressed up for a special date and then closing himself in to watch TV all evening. Dressed to kill, and ready to spill out all those precious liquors that distill inside a youth reaching for manhood. And then carefully corking up the bottle.

  Why?

  Dr. Barnes got his dinner out and knocked at the door to the TV room. There was no answer and Dr. Barnes went in, seeing Jack hadn’t heard.

  Jack was facing the TV stage, so close the projected Full Figure TV must almost lose its reality. His empty dinner tray was on the floor beside him.
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  Dr. Barnes cleared his throat, but Jack didn’t hear him.

  Dr. Barnes wasn’t watching TV. He was watching his son’s face.

  Jack’s expression was one of rapt waiting, of a combination fear and desire. But with something else. It reminded Dr. Barnes of Jack’s face the first time they took him to see Santa Claus at a department store. And little Jack, still a bubbling mass of baby fat but in a constant excitement over the world that kept opening up around him, had stood there so wanting to see Santa Claus and yet so afraid of the scarlet giant that Dr. Barnes was sure his emotions would burst the very seams of the building.

  But there was something else, now, as though a caricaturist had deflowered a baby picture with a few deft strokes at a cocktail party.

  Waiting for what?

  Dr. Barnes pulled up a chair from the furniture-inlaid floor. There was only one easy chair because only Jack used the TV room. Dr. Barnes ate his dinner on his lap, trying to watch the program but unable to keep his eyes off his son.

  It was the Ad Station. Twenty-four hours of nothing but ads. Who would have thought such a station would succeed? The Dreambook it was called by people who no longer read the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. What was the difference, really, between a catalogue and the Ad Station?

  Dr. Barnes watched his son’s face.

  Nobody ever read a catalogue that way.

  Then Jack eyes narrowed. He caught his breath and reached into a pocket of his robe.

  Dr. Barnes looked quickly to see what Jack was watching. It was a cigarette ad. Not herbal filterness. Just plain, old fashioned filter-tip cigarettes.

  A beautiful blond with rather the effect of a double ice cream cone filled the stage.

  “Smoke a real cigarette,” she offered. With a flick of her finger she proffered a Filt R Tip.

  Cigarettes were not what the ad brought to Dr. Barnes’ mind.

  He glanced at Jack. Jack was opening his brand new pack of Filt R Tips with trembling hands.

  The girl flicked a light from the side of the pack.

  Jack lighted his cigarette.

  The girl disappeared and was replaced by a virile looking man whose cigarette, presumably, the billowy blond had just lighted.

  For the next ten minutes the man did nothing but smoke that cigarette.

  Never, since Jack was weaned, had Dr. Barnes seen anything so lascivious as the way that man smoked a cigarette.

  Dr. Barnes was so fascinated that for a moment he forgot his son.

  Mr. Filt R Tip didn’t put the cigarette right in his mouth. First he appraised it, with discriminating, man of the world sophistication. He noted the even blue smoke curling from the end of it, its perfect roundness, the clean cuttings of the cylinder.

  Then he seduced it lovingly, sniffing the rich aroma of the real tobacco, caressing the crisp, dry white paper, the warm brown of the filter.

  Then slowly, apparently forgetful of the audience and entirely engrossed in his own actions, Mr. Filt R Tip finally put the cigarette in his mouth. He closed his eyes in ecstasy and took a long, long puff. He held the smoke in his lungs until Dr. Barnes could no longer bear it. Then he let the smoke out slowly, with a deep, soft sigh.

  Only then did he open his eyes, looking not at the audience, but at the cigarette.

  The second drag was not as compelling as the first, but it was more interesting. This time Mr. Filt R Tip didn’t wait to seduce the cigarette again. He took a shallow drag and breathed the smoke out through his nose. There was a grin dancing in his eyes. Some secret fun only he and the cigarette knew about. Mr. Filt R Tip ended this drag in a cloud of smoke.

  It was gay.

  The next drag was masterful. Mr. Filt R Tip could bend the smoke to his will. He blew a smoke ring, a puff of cloud, a miniature vortex, all with one puff.

  It went on and on.

  It was, Dr. Barnes decided, a little revolting.

  He turned to see on Jack’s face a look of stark horror.

  “Jack!”

  “Dad!” Jack cried, aware of his father for the first time. “Dad! I… I’m going to be sick.”

  Jack staggered from his chair, out of the TV room. Dr. Barnes followed him to the bathroom.

  He was sick. Very, very sick.

  Then, pale and shaky, he followed his father into the study.

  “Sorry, Dad,” he said, gazing at the floor.

  “Sorry about what?”

  “The… uh… I’ve never smoked real tobacco before. I guess I’m not man enough.” He looked miserable. And guilty. Guilty about what?

  “Don’t be silly. Tobacco makes everybody sick the first time.”

  Jack looked up at him. “You… you’re not angry?”

  “For what?”

  “Because I… smoked real tobacco.”

  “Of course not. You’re old enough to do what you want about that. It’ll ruin your wind‌—‌but that’s up to you. Look, Jack, there’s something more to this. I think you’d better tell me.”

  “I… there is something more, Dad.” Jack’s face was twisted painfully, trying to make his expression a word that would not come. “But I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know what it is. I have… feelings that… that I wasn’t raised to have. Feelings that somehow… I don’t think you ever had.”

  “Feelings about what?”

  “About the… oh, it’s going to sound silly. About… the things I see on the Dreambook.”

  “What things, specifically?”

  “Well, the shaving cream‌—‌Whiskoff. The toothpaste. The Filt R Tips.”

  Dr. Barnes realized his face was a deep frown. He smoothed it with his fingers, seeing Jack’s expression of misery and guilt.

  “I was frowning at myself,” he explained. “I’m trying to understand. The other lads at school‌—‌they feel the same way as you do about this shaving cream and so forth?”

  Jack nodded.

  Somewhere in this, Dr. Barnes was convinced, was a simple biological reason. Adolescents are, after all, adolescents, in any age.

  “When you saw that blond on the Filt R Tip ad,” Dr. Barnes asked, “What did you think about?”

  “Cigarettes.” Jack looked surprised. “What did you think about?”

  “Sex.”

  Jack couldn’t help grinning. “Twenty-three skidoo,” he said.

  “This is the damndest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Dr. Barnes cried.

  Jack’s face twisted again. He stood up, his Balzac robe flapping about him foolishly.

  “I’ve failed you in some way, Dad. I… I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Dr. Barnes said. “I’ve failed you. Your whole generation. I think that as usual what the younger generation suffers from is the older generation.”

  “I can’t find anything to blame you for.”

  “I can’t either, just off hand. But I’m not a sociologist for nothing.” He clapped his son on the shoulder and guided him out of the room. “There’s nothing wrong with you, boy. You’ve just got your shoe on the wrong foot.”

  “What?”

  “I’m getting an idea. Go on back to the TV.”

  Dr. Barnes picked up the telephone and waked up Cliff Reid at home.

  “What the hell?” he said groggily and Dr. Barnes could hear Mrs. Reid snoring faintly in the background. So much, he thought, for the Hi-fi telephone.

  “I just jumped the fence,” Dr. Barnes explained. “I figured it was worth waking you up for.”

  Reid cleared his throat to get the sleep out of his voice.

  “Frankly, I didn’t think you’d scare so easy. Glad you did. Saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “Scare? Oh, that personal vil campaign? That’s not it. It’s my son.”

  “Jack?”

  “Look, I know it’s late but how about coming by for a drink? I’ve got a big thought by the tail and I want you to come help me hold it down.”

  Reid sighed. “For Teenie Products,” he said, “I’ll come.”

  “Don’t get
me over there at this hour of the night and then give me bruised gin,” Reid admonished, glaring balefully at the autobar rattling in the wall convenience.

  “Glad you have a sensitive mind.” Dr. Barnes got a martini pitcher from the pantry. “Antique,” he said. “I feel that way about coffee. Drip my own. Strong as love, black as sin and hot as hell. Like some?”

  “I didn’t come here for an orgy. Let’s sit on the brass tacks. What’s the idea and what’s it to Teenie Products?”

  “Ever notice the younger generation?”

  “After the age of three they’re not my concern.”

  “They are mine. Let’s face it. Teenagers are no longer interested in sex.”

  “That’s fine. Modern education is a success. Want some out of the pitcher?”

  “I’ll use up what the autobar mixed up. Hell it’s a success! Modern education has nothing to do with it.”

  “Then what does? And what does this have to do with Teenie Products?”

  “Plenty. Look. You said something on the phone this afternoon that gave me a good jolt. About me winning. And the possibility that maybe there’s something we all overlooked.”

  “But you said it was something about your son.”

  “That, too. That most of all. He’s a teenager. Almost a man. I… I began to observe him.”

  “And that’s how you found out this shocking truth about teenagers?”

  “Right. So I watched what Jack watched on TV. And do you know what I saw?”

  “What?”

  “I saw man destroying himself by overdevelopment of his most powerful weapon.”

  “You could have switched stations.”

  “I’m serious, Cliff. Have another drink to clear your head. What is our most powerful weapon?”

  “C-bomb? Antimatter?”

  “Long view.”

  “Oh. Intelligence, I guess.”

  “Let’s be more specific. The ability to reason. Based on the ability to symbolize. To see the printed word t-r-e-e and see not little black squiggles on a page but something green and leafy. Right?”

  “Right. ‘I think that I shall never see…’ ”

  “Exactly. But some people would rather read a poem than look at a tree. Right?”