Tomorrow! (42 page)

But things were getting better everywhere, and fast, now.

When he finished the edge of the walk, he went around the house, limping a little, for a bushel basket. His mother had set one out on the back porch. Before he picked it up, however, he stood on the porch, looking north.

Nora had been right: you could just see the top of the new Farm Industries Building that was being erected near the devastated area—Green Prairie’s fourth huge postwar structure. It wasn’t going to be a skyscraper, just an immense, horizontal building, with parking zones around it. Not that there were too many cars to park, as yet, Ted thought; or that there was much gasoline to run them.

The bushel basket, when he picked it up, seemed odd. It wasn’t made the regular way and it didn’t appear to be the right size. He saw faded stencil marks and read:
Produit de France.
The good old Frogs! he thought. In the “Aftertime,” they’d kicked through—the French and, of course, the English, the Italians and Belgians and Dutch and the Latin-Americans and about everybody else except the Russians—who almost didn’t exist—and the satellite countries.

With America bathed in blood, martyred, crucified, a flood of aid began. In that first dreadful winter, unreckoned millions of Ted’s fellow citizens were saved by European bounty.

He even recalled foreign labels on some of the medicine bottles at his bedside, when he’d been smashed up.

Now, the basket was another example. Everybody in U.S.A. owed something tangible to lots of people abroad. He chuckled a little, thinking what hell that had raised with the old “isolationists. “

Then he went around in front of the dilapidated house, raked up a green mound of fresh-cut grass and carried it, in the French hamper, to the chicken yard. The Conners now had more than sixty chickens and five pigs. Henry was even angling for a cow; some of the Crystal Lake people had offered grazing room on their estates.

His mother came down the street, walking slowly because of the heat and because of her mood. But when she saw the mowed grass, saw her tall, broad-shouldered son mopping his sweaty light-brown hair, she moved faster and she smiled.

Ted knew where she had been. He didn’t ask any questions—just said, “Hello! Been expecting you. Haven’t we got company coming for supper?”

“A lot of people! The lawn looks lovely, Ted!”

“It would—if we had a matching house.”

She laughed. Her eyes moved to the even more tatterdemalion house in which the Baileys had lived. “I think our place looks fine! Call it
quaint.”
Her tone changed. “I believe Ruth is getting better, Ted! The doctors over at the Home think so, too!”

“No
fooling
!”

She nodded. “I’ll bring you some iced coffee.”

“Dandy!”

He was in the back yard when she brought coffee. He went indoors and washed before sitting down with her on the kitchen steps.

“You know,” she said slowly to her son, “Ruth’s never been able to say—what did happen.”

“I know.”

“She’s
told
! The doctors a few days ago. And me just now!”

The young man gazed over the sun-yellowed green of the lawn to the cool blue-green of its shady places. “Bad, hunh?”

“Too awful to think about . . . !”

He drank the cold coffee, tinkled ice, refilled the glass from a pitcher. His mother’s weekly visits to her sister, in the asylum they referred to as the “Home,” invariably depressed her. Today, however, she seemed in a different frame of mind: hopeful, but frightened. Ted knew-most people in these days knew-a great deal about such attitudes. “Better tell me,” he said.

“Right now. And get it over with.”

His mother glanced at him lovingly and nodded to herself. “I—I guess it isn’t
really
any different from—thousands of stories like it. Only, when it’s your own sister. . . ! Your own nieces and nephews. . . !”

“Sure,” he said.

She Sighed and her eyes looked far away. “They got the warning on the radio,” she finally began, “the red signal. They started for the cellar, but it had a foot of water in it. Jim, the fool, decided not to take cover. The windows blew in on them, including new storm windows, she said. It—killed the baby, Irma—but . . .” She halted.

Ted murmured, “But what?”

“You see—Ruth was holding the baby and the baby’s body saved her face. It ripped up Jim’s face and chest. They—just decamped—ran away—like so many people. Ruth in the lead—

the others following-holding a rope. Some teenage boys, in a car, saw them—saw young Marie, that is. The boys stopped and talked. They soon got out and took Marie, and nobody’s heard any more about her. She was only a little older than Nora.”

Beth hesitated. Tears welled in her eyes.

“And then?”

She averted her face, but reached for his hand. Her voice continued evenly. “Ruth got them to the ball park. People were pouring into it. Ruth thought it was probably some kind of shelter or aid station. I suppose everybody on the outside got that idea. Inside, it was dreadful—

packed. Jim had to lie down—he’d bled so badly, all that way. And—she’d—
dropped
the baby somewhere. It was dead. Anyhow, brands kept falling from the sky and finally the bleachers caught fire so badly no one could put them out. That was when people stampeded. Besides, there was a rumor going around that Russian planes would drop germ bombs on every large crowd.

They did, too—where they found crowds! That whole mass of hurt grownups and kids started for the exits at once. Ruth rolled Jim under some steel seats—he was nearly unconscious—and she tried to save the youngsters.”

“
Save
them?”

“Yes. From the mob. It was like a river of people, she said, like trying to protect them from a rising flood. And the kids were hysterical, sure they’d be burned to death, trying to get out. Don broke away with Tom, finally, and got separated from Ruth. Trampled. And a man actually yanked Sarah away from Ruth—because they were in his path—and hurled her to the ground. That was what happened.” She wept soundlessly.

“You mean—they
all
. . . ?”

“Most of the children in that ball park were trampled to death. It’s—inhuman, isn’t it?

But that’s what people do. Ruth lost the youngsters then and there. But, somehow, the crowd carried her out of the park without killing her. She was nearly suffocated by the pressure. Her feet didn’t touch the ground for minutes at a time. She had ribs broken. But she was pushed and driven through a gate. When she could, she went back. She found Jim again and he was unconscious. So she stayed there. She thinks she was there—with thousands of others—for two days. Some of our people finally got to her and brought her out—and she doesn’t remember much, after that, for a long time. You see, Jim had gone into a fever the day after, and died of it, or loss of blood, of untreated infection—shock—all that. Her family was wiped out before her eyes—and she lived—and it’s no
wonder
she—lost her reason!”

Ted turned his mother around and forced her head onto his shoulder. She wept quietly there and he held her. Because she was weeping, he felt relieved. If she hadn’t cried, he would have worried. It was almost always the ones who didn’t weep, didn’t show emotion, didn’t speak, who were liable to crack up later. Pretty much everybody knew that.

He knew, also, that she would soon do just about what she did.

She pulled herself away, blew her nose on a clean handkerchief with holes in it, and said,

“Imagine a tough old character like me! But I just
couldn’t
break up, in front of Ruth.

I
had
to take it evenly. Ted! I really hope, now, she’ll recover!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he answered. “Not a bit. She could come home here.”

“Do you think Henry would mind, if I tried having her here when the doctors say it’s possible?”

Ted looked into his glass, empty again. “Sometimes, I think the old man doesn’t mind anything this side of hell. He’s got more guts than grizzly bears.”

Mrs. Conner sniffled in a manner reminiscent of the younger Nora. “I know. And I’m glad I cried this out in front of you, Ted. Because now, I can tell
him
straight, without a whimper—if you promise not to tell on me, for being feeble-headed?”

He winked at her. She bustled to her feet. “Here it is nearly four o’clock and I’ve got twenty-odd guests to feed!”

“Ye gods! I thought it was just us and the Laceys.”

“I asked both families that have moved in the Bailey place.” She glanced across.

“They’re new, and they don’t know a soul in this part of town. I thought we’d get them acquainted. Their names are Brown and Frazetti.”

“I know. Already met the Frazetti kids. Twins.” She nodded. “What about the Brown girl? Have you seen her?”

“Didn’t know there was one.”

“She’s sixteen,” his mother smiled. “Blue eyes and the prettiest red hair I ever saw. If you aren’t in love with her by nine o’clock tonight, I’ll lose a bet.”

“Phooie,” he said.

“Wait till you see her! Name’s Rachel.” Ted looked, also, at the neighboring house. For a year and a half after X-day, it had been occupied by people billeted by town authorities. Then it had been roughly remodeled inside as a double house and occupied by two families. After one winter, they had moved again. The present occupants had arrived recently.

“I wonder what happened to Beau,” he said.

She stopped in the screen door, holding the coffee pitcher and the glasses. “I doubt if we ever find out now!” She thought of her visit with her sister. “Though you can’t tell, can you?”

“Nope.”

It was the way it was in those days.

Lenore’s mother had been sent to Florida and she was still there, undergoing plastic surgery. But Lenore’s father had vanished.

Weeks had passed, months, and now two years and a half—with no word. The bureau set up by the Federal Government to trace people hadn’t located him. Or any sign of him. Netta knew only that he’d been in the cellar when the Bomb burst. After that, he walked into the silences. He was one of the anonymous dead. Or one of the unidentified mad. Or one of the unfound bodies. Or someone who had a new name and a new life somewhere else—because he’d come to unable to remember, ever again, who he was, where he lived, what his name had been—

or because he had wanted to forget.

Nora came home on her bike.

Since he had been thinking about the already-remote “Aftertime,” Ted saw Nora in a new light. She was fourteen now and trying to behave like eighteen. Occasionally, for minutes at a time, the effort was fairly convincing. She’d changed in two years and half. She was hardly a kid now. There was something very precise and well-cut about her profile which (wonder of wonders, he thought) had an almost
sweet
look. Her nose didn’t turn up so much. Her hair, light like his, was not lank like his any more; it was wavy, like their mother’s. And her clear blue eyes were getting slanty—exactly, he thought, as Nora would prefer it: slanty-eyed women got the dangerous men, she claimed.

At this instant, however, she behaved on the kid side. “Mom!” she yelled through the kitchen screen, “Mr. Nesbit didn’t have enough hamburger to make fifty patties. I got sixty hot dogs instead.”

“That’ll be fine, dear. And don’t bellow.”

She yodeled briefly, put away her bike, came around the house and approached her brother who was clipping edges. She then assumed her pseudo maturity. “Good afternoon,
beast
.”

“Greetings, afreet. How’s things?”

“Ted. Will you give me an answer to a serious inquiry?”

“Sure. Any old answer. What’s your problem?”

“I’m not kidding. Do you think it’s
inevitably,
in
any
case, a mistake for a fourteen-year-old girl to be engaged?” He concealed his grin by great attention to the grass. “Is she deeply in love?”

“Very,” said Nora in a deeply-in-love tone.

“Well”—he rose on his knees, thought somberly—His the boy able to support her?”

“He will be someday. He’s extremely intellectual. He intends to become an anthropologist.”

“Be all right,” he said, nodding in self-agreement. “That is, if the girl’s going to have a child.”

“Oh! You
meanie!
You evil thing!”

“If they’re going to have a child,” he asserted in an offended tone, “I
really
think they
owe
it to the little stranger to marry.”

“There are times,” Nora said, “when you ought to be afraid the earth would open and swallow you up! I’m talking about the sacred kind of love, not the profane kind!”

“They’re so interchangeable,” Ted mummured. “You start out on the profane tack—and lo!—you’re full of nice sentiments, just when you could do without them.
And
vice versa.”

“
You
!” she said. ‘What do
you
know about it?” Idly, she raked up grass with her fingers and threw it on him. “A girl in my class,” she said, “is leaving school this summer to take a job. I don’t think it’s sensible for a girl to abandon her education—”

“Maybe she’s a moron.”

“She’s merely an orphan,” Nora replied. “I wish school didn’t last all summer, now. I bet I have to go clear through high school, this way. Just because so many schools got wrecked. I wish I could go to Europe on a student tour. Do you think Dad would ever let me?”

“Dad might, in a few more years. But would your fiancé?”

“Scum!” she
said. “What’s Queenie doing?”

“I dunno. I haven’t asked him. Every pretty female in the block, doubtless.”

“I mean—over by the Baileys’—by the old summerhouse?”

Ted peered through
the
hedge and across the sunlit lawns. “Search me!” The cat was staring in the gazebo, through the lattice, standing on his hind legs. “A peeping Tom cat, I guess.”

“What a
lowlife
,” she murmured fastidiously—and she went away, to see what Queenie was doing. She came back in less than a minute, running. “Ted! Ted! Oh, Mom! Ted, you were right! The Crandons’ angora is having kittens in there! His kittens, Queenie’s, I bet!”

“
Sans doute
,” he replied and rose, limping more than usual, as he followed her. Even Mrs. Conner came out and looked. There were three kittens on a forgotten pillow—three, thus far. The Crandons’ angora looked proud; Queenie looked appropriately suspicious, pleased, defiant and generally paternal.