Fallout (17 page)

A bunch of us groaned, but then we always groaned when Mr. Kasman gave us homework.

That night I wrote:

“The refuse can is almost full,” Dad says.

“So, what do you suggest, Herr Kapitän?” asks Mr. McGovern, as if he's hoping maybe this could be another reason to reduce the number of mouths by two.

“Oh, am I still in charge?” Dad asks sarcastically.

“Suppose we just put the solid waste in it?” Mrs. Shaw asks.

Dad nods. “That's what I was thinking.”

So now liquid waste goes directly into the drain on the floor. The men stand; the women squat. People don't always hold up the blanket for privacy anymore. It takes too much energy. The men just turn their backs and go. Janet and Mrs. Shaw hold the blanket for Paula. Dad and Janet take Mom by the arms and help her to squat. Seeing people go now, I feel the way I used to feel when one of our neighbors' dogs went. What's the big deal?

Why was it ever a big deal?

Out of the blue, Mr. Shaw says, “We're worse than animals. Animals only kill what they need for food. Humans kill for no reason.”

Eyes shift as we glance at one another. No one replies.

Dad tries the radio. “There've got to be others. Sooner or later, someone has to start broadcasting.”

“Powered by what?” Mr. McGovern sighs like parents do when their kids act stubbornly. “You think the power plants are still standing? And even if they are, you think the people who run them are still alive? And they're just going to go back to work? What's the point? To earn a salary? Who's going to pay them? And even if someone did, what would they do with the money? Go to a store? There's nothing to buy. No one's going back to work, Richard. No one's making anything. They're all too busy just trying to survive.”

“The government made contingency plans,” Dad counters. “They stored food and gasoline. The army'll get things going again.”

Mr. McGovern rolls his eyes. “You've been completely brainwashed. Do you have any idea how much food and fuel it takes to keep this country running? It doesn't matter what the government has stored. Without a constant supply of new coal, oil, and natural gas, whatever they've got won't last more than a month or two. So unless the army is going to start mining and drilling, and processing and refining, and transporting, and running power plants, it can't possibly go back to the way it was.”

Nobody argues. Dad has his listening-and-thinking face on.

“And I'll tell you something else,” Mr. McGovern continues. “Our power plants and refineries were probably the first things the Russians bombed. Just like their power plants and oil fields were the first things we bombed. And it's not like we can rebuild whatever was damaged; anything that got a direct hit from a nuclear weapon will be radioactive for decades, if not centuries. So to have the energy we need means digging new mines and oil wells, as well as building new power plants. How long do you think
that
will take?”

Dad doesn't answer.

“How long?” asks Sparky.

“Not in our lifetimes,” Mr. McGovern answers, still focusing on Dad. “Maybe now you can understand why some of us weren't in a hurry to build bomb shelters.”

He makes it sound like it's going to be really awful when we go back up there. Almost like, as horrible as it is down here, we might be better off staying. Meanwhile, Dad turns to Paula's father.

“You know, Herb,” he says. “In some ways, you're a very smart guy, but in other ways, you're one of the stupidest people I've ever met.”

In the shadows of our dungeon, tension once again begins to spread. I've never heard a grown-up call another grown-up a name before. Certainly not to his face. And not only that, but I never thought Dad would be the one to do it.

At first, Mr. McGovern clenches his teeth. But then he seems to relax and even smiles. “All right, Richard, perhaps you'd like to tell us what makes you say that.”

“You fought to get in here because when faced with death, you realized how precious life is,” Dad says. “I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to leave your wife and son up there, but you made that choice. We all did, or we wouldn't be down here. None of us really knows what it's going to be like when we get back up there. In the meantime, all we've got to keep us going is hope. But you're so damn intent on proving to everyone how smart you are that you don't seem to care that you're destroying the last bit of hope the rest of us are clinging to. So from now on, keep it to yourself.”

But we know who always has to have the last word. “According to Nietzsche,” Paula's father replies, “‘In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments.'”

Dad brought home a brown-paper shopping bag with handles made from bamboo and wire.

“What is it?” Sparky asked eagerly.

“I'll show you after dinner,” Dad said. That always drove Sparky and me crazy. Maybe it was supposed to teach us patience, but all it really did was make us rush through meals.

To make things worse, Mom served spinach. Except for canned asparagus, there was nothing Sparky and I hated more. But dinner couldn't end until we finished it. I put lots of butter on mine and managed to eat most of it. About halfway through the meal, Sparky got up to go to the bathroom.

He didn't come back.

After a while, Dad said, “Go see what Edward's doing.”

As I went down the hall to the bathroom, I heard the toilet flush. Then it flushed again. I knocked.

“Who is it?” Sparky asked.

“Me,” I said in a low voice. “What's going on?”

Sparky peeked out, then let me in and locked the door. In the toilet were a million little green pieces of spinach. “I spit it out,” he whispered, “but it won't flush.”

This was bad. If Mom or Dad found out that Sparky had filled his mouth with spinach and then spit it out, we might not get to see what Dad brought home. I flushed the toilet. The water swirled around and disappeared, then reappeared with most of those little green pieces of spinach still there.

Rap! Rap!
The knock on the door made us both jump. “Boys?”

Sparky's eyes went wide.

“Open the door,” Dad ordered.

Sparky and I shared a frightened look. As I opened the door, Sparky quickly put down the toilet top and sat. Dad scowled at us. “What's going on?”

“We were just talking,” Sparky said.

“With the door locked?” Dad asked.

“It was boy stuff,” I said.

Dad frowned. “Well, come on and see what I got.”

As we followed Dad down the hall, Sparky rolled his eyes in relief. In the bedroom, Dad took four olive-colored masks out of the shopping bag. Each was about the size of a football with
U.S. NONCOMBATANT GAS MASK
stenciled in black letters on the outside. They were made of rubber with two clear plastic see-through disks. At one end was a gray canister about the size of a Campbell's soup can. At the other end were straps. Sparky put one on, instinctively knowing that the straps went around the back of his head and the clear plastic disks went where his eyes were. He looked like a green anteater with the gray can for a snout. I followed his example. Dad tightened the straps until the gas masks felt firm on our heads. The air inside quickly became warm and stale.

“What's it for?” I asked, my voice muffled by the mask.

“So you won't breathe in radioactive fallout,” Dad said.

Mom came in. When she saw Sparky and me, she frowned.

“They're gas masks, Mom!” Sparky announced with muffled excitement.

Mom crossed her arms and said to Dad, “Scaring them again?”

“We're not scared,” Sparky said. But then he turned to me and asked uncertainly. “Are we?”

“I'm not scared,” I said, because I didn't want Dad to get into trouble.

“You better take those off,” Dad said.

“And go watch TV,” added Mom, in a way that indicated that Dad was in trouble anyway.

We went into the den and watched
Sky King,
but I could hear the sounds of an argument coming from Mom and Dad's bedroom. Sparky's eyes were fixed on the TV; I got up and quietly went down the hall to listen.

“The whole town's talking,” Mom said. “They stare at me in the store. I can feel their eyes.”

“I'm sorry,” Dad said. “But I can't sit here and do nothing. Even President Kennedy said we should build a shelter. He's building one at his summer place in Hyannis Port, and we all know there's got to be an enormous shelter in Washington.”

“Well, good for him. Meanwhile, Scott's pulling the hair out of his head and is so worried he threw up his dinner.”

“What?”

I had to get closer to try to hear what Mom said next. Suddenly the door swung open. Dad looked startled when he saw me. “You . . . were listening?”

I bowed my head in shame.

“You threw up?”

“Ahhhh!”
Halfway down the hall, Sparky let out a cry and dashed away. He must have been coming to see what we were talking about.

“I'll take care of him.” Mom went past us.

In a low voice, I told Dad that I hadn't thrown up, but that Sparky had been so eager to see what was in the shopping bag that he'd filled his mouth with spinach and spit it out in the toilet. Dad sighed, then reached out and turned my head with his hand. “What's this?”

“I don't know.”

“You pull out hair when you're worried?”

I nodded.

“Try not to, okay?”

In order to have toilet paper and washcloths, we've torn our nightclothes down to almost nothing. Paula and Janet clutch what remains of their robes tightly when they move around, but Mrs. Shaw can't be bothered and lets her shredded robe hang open, revealing the nakedness beneath. I guess she knows that we're all so hungry, weak, and miserable that no one cares.

“I can't stand it!” Mr. Shaw suddenly pushes himself up. It seems like the first time he's stood up in days, although that probably isn't true. He stumbles toward the gap in the shield wall.