“And you play both the guitar and five-string banjo?” Hada said. “Not at once, of course.”

Rags Park mumbled, “No, sir. I alternate. Want me to play something right now for you?”

“Where were you born?” Nat Kaminsky asked. Hada had brought his production chief along; in matters such as this, Kaminsky’s opinion was valuable.

“In Arkansas,” Rags answered. “My family raises hogs.” He had his banjo with him and now, nervously, he twanged a few notes. “I know a real sad song that’ll break your heart. It’s called ‘Poor Old Hoss.’ Want me to sing it for you?”

“We’ve heard you,” Hada said. “We know you’re good.” He tried to imagine this awkward young man twanging away over CULTURE in between lectures on twentieth-century portrait sculptors. Hard to imagine…

Rags said, “I bet there’s one thing you don’t know about me, Mr. Hada. I make up a lot of my own ballads.”

“Creative,” Kaminsky said to Hada straight-faced. “That’s good.”

“For instance,” Rags continued, “I once made up a ballad about a man named Tom McPhail who ran ten miles with a bucket of water to put out the fire in his little daughter’s crib.”

“Did he make it?” Hada asked.

“Sure did. Just in time. Tom McPhail ran faster and faster with that bucket of water.” Chanting, Rags twanged in accompaniment.

Twang, twang, sounded the banjo, mournfully and urgently.

Kaminsky said acutely, “I’ve been following your shows and I’ve never heard you sing that number.”

“Aw,” Rags said, “I had bad luck with that, Mr. Kaminsky. Turned out there really is a Tom McPhail. Lives in Pocatello, Idaho. I sang about ol’ Tom McPhail on my January fourteenth TV show and right away he got sore—he was listenin’—and got a lawyer to write me.”

“Wasn’t it just a coincidence in names?” Hada said.

“Well,” Rags said, twisting about self-consciously, “it seems there really had been a fire in his home there in Pocatello, and McPhail, he got panicky and ran with a bucket to the creek, and it was ten miles off, like I said in the song.”

“Did he get back with the water in time?”

“Amazingly, he did,” Rags said.

Kaminsky said to Hada, “It would be better, on CULTURE, if this man stuck to authentic Old English ballads such as ‘Greensleeves.’ That would seem more what we want.”

Thoughtfully, Hada said to Rags, “Bad luck to pick a name for a ballad and have it turn out that such a man really exists… Have you had that sort of bad luck since?”

“Yes, I have,” Rags admitted. “I made up a ballad last week… it was about a lady, Miss Marsha Dobbs. Listen.

“That’s the first verse,” Rags explained. “It goes on for seventeen verses; tells how Marsha comes to work at Jack Cooks’s office as a secretary, goes to lunch with him, then later they meet late at—”

“Is there a moral at the end?” Kaminsky inquired.

“Oh sure,” Rags said. “Don’t take no one else’s man because if you do, heaven avenges the dishonored wife. In this case:

Hada broke in over the twanging and singing. “That’s fine, Rags. That’s enough.” He glanced at Kaminsky and winced.

“And I bet it turned out,” Kaminsky said, “that there’s a real Marsha Dobbs who had an affair with her boss, Jack Cooks.”

“Right,” Rags said, nodding “No lawyer called me, but I read it in the homeopape, the New York Times. Marsha, she died of a heart attack, and it was actually during—” He hesitated modestly. “You know. While she and Jack Cooks were at a motel satellite, lovemaking.”

“Have you deleted that number from your repertoire?” Kaminsky asked.

“Well,” Rags said, “I can’t make up my mind. Nobody’s suing me… and I like the ballad. I think I’ll leave it in.”

To himself, Hada thought, What was it Dr. Yasumi said? That he scented psi powers of some unusual kind in Ragland Park… perhaps it’s the parapsychological power of having the bad luck to make up ballads about people who really exist. Not much of a talent, that.

On the other hand, he realized, it could be a variant on the telepathic talent... and with a little tinkering it might be quite valuable.

“How long does it take you to make up a ballad?” he asked Rags.

“I can do it on the spot,” Rags Park answered. “I could do it now; give me a theme and I’ll compose right here in this office of yours.”

Hada pondered and then said, “My wife Thelma has been feeding a gray fox that I know—or I believe—killed and ate our best Rouen duck.”

After a moment of considering, Rags Park twanged:

“But ducks don’t cluck, they quack,” Nat Kaminsky said critically.

“That’s a fact,” Rags admitted. He pondered and then sang:

Grinning, Kaminsky said, “Okay, Rags; you win.” To Hada he said, “I advise you to hire him.”

“Let me ask you this,” Hada said to Rags. “Do you think the fox got my Rouen?”

“Gosh,” Rags said, “I don’t know anything about that.”

“But in your ballad you said so,” Hada pointed out.

“Let me think,” Rags said. Presently he twanged once more and said:

“How did you know I meant psi?” Hada asked. “You can read interior thoughts, can’t you? Yasumi was right.”

Rags said, “Mister, I’m just singing and twanging; I’m just an entertainer, same as Jim-Jam Briskin, that news clown President Fischer clapped in jail.”

“Are you afraid of jail?” Hada asked him bluntly.

“President Fischer doesn’t have nothing against me,” Rags said. “I don’t do political ballads.”

“If you work for me,” Hada said, “maybe you will. I’m trying to get Jim-Jam out of jail; today all my outlets began their campaign.”

“Yes, he ought to be out,” Rags agreed, nodding. “That was a bad thing, President Fischer using the FBI for that… those aliens aren’t that much of a menace.”

Kaminsky, rubbing his chin meditatively, said, “Do one on Jim-Jam Briskin, Max Fischer, the aliens—on the whole political situation. Sum it up.”

“That’s asking a lot,” Rags said, with a wry smile.

“Try,” Kaminsky said. “See how well you can epitomize.”

“Whooee,” Rags said. “ ‘Epitomize.’ Now I know I’m talking to CULTURE. Okay, Mr. Kaminsky. How’s this?” He said: