Alas, Babylon

  “I’m sorry, Randy. We’re Adventists. We don’t drink whiskey or trade in it.”

  This contingency Randy had never imagined. Half-aloud he said, “Well, I tried.”

  “I suppose you wanted the honey for Mark’s children,” Hickey said.

  “Yes. I did.”

  Hickey reached into the basket and brought out two square, honey-packed combs. “I wouldn’t like to see Mark’s kids go without,” he said. “Here. I’d give you more except my supply is way down. There’s something wrong with my bees this spring. Half my broods are foul, full of dead pupae and larvae. At first I thought it was what we call sacbrood, or queen failure. I’ve been to the library, reading up on it, and now I wonder whether it couldn’t be radiation. We must’ve had fallout on The Day—after all, the whole state is a contaminated zone—and maybe it affected some of my queens and drones. I don’t know what to do about it. It isn’t something they taught us at the University.”

  Randy removed the bottle from his paper bag, locked it under his arm, and replaced it with the honeycombs. He was overwhelmed. He knew that Mark and Hickey had been in the same grade in primary school, but they had never been close friends. Hickey was no more than an acquaintance. He lived in a neat, sea-green, five-room concrete block house far out on the road to Pasco Creek. Randy, before The Day, rarely saw him; and then only to wave a greeting. Randy said, “Jim, this is the nicest, most generous thing I can remember. I just hope I can repay you some way, some day.”

  “Forget it,” Hickey said. “Children need honey. My kids have it every meal.”

  Randy heard the Model-A’s horn, raucous as an angry goose, and saw it pull up to the curb.

  Walking to the car, he noticed that it was a clear and beautiful spring day, a better day than yesterday.

  The spores of kindness, as well as faith, survived in this acid soil.

  Randy climbed into the car and showed the honey to Dan and explained how it had been given to him. “The world changes,” Dan said. “People don’t. I still have one old biddy in the schoolhouse who prunes and trims the camellias, and weeds the beds. They aren’t her camellias and nobody gives a damn about flowers any more, except her. She loves flowers and it doesn’t matter where she is or what happens she’s going to take care of ‘em. This same old lady—Mrs. Satterborough, she’s been spending her winters at the Riverside Inn for years—she picks up the telephone in the principal’s office every morning and dials Western Union. She thinks that one day the phone will be working just fine and that she’ll get off a telegram to her daughter. She’s certain of it. Her daughter lives in Indiana.”

  “I don’t understand how those old people stay alive,” Randy said. He knew that Dan brought them oranges by the bushel, and Randy sent them fish whenever there was a surplus catch.

  “Most of them didn’t. Death can be merciful, especially for the old and sick. I was about to say old, sick, and broke, but it doesn’t matter any longer whether you’re broke. Only five alive out of the Riverside Inn now. Maybe three will get through the summer. I don’t think any will get through next winter.”

  Driving north on Yulee, the business district, while deserted, seemed no more battered than it had the month before, or the month before that. A few optimistic storekeepers had prudently boarded windows, split by blast on The Day or broken by looters afterwards, against water and wind. On the two principal business blocks glass had been swept from the sidewalks. Abandoned cars, stripped of wheels, batteries, radios, and spark plugs, rusted in gutters like the unburied carcasses of giant beetles.

  They turned off Yulee into Augustine Road, with its broken macadam and respectable but decaying residences. They bounced along for a block and then Randy smelled Pistolville. Another block and they were in it.

  There had been no garbage collections since The Day. In Pistolville each hut or house squatted in a mound of its own excretion—crushed crates and cartons, rusting tin cans, broken bottles, rotting piles of citrus rusks and pecan shells, the bones of fowl, fish and small animals. A tallow-faced, six-year-old girl, clad in a man’s castoff, riddled T-shirt, crouched on the curb, emptying her bowels in the dust. She cried out shrilly and waved as the Model-A bounced past. A bearded, long-haired man burst out of a doorway and jogged down the street on bandy legs, peeling and eating a banana, turning his head as if he expected to be followed. At the corner a scrawny boy of eighteen urinated against a lamp post, not bothering to raise his eyes at the sound of the car. Buzzards, grown arrogant, roosted in the oaks and foraged in the refuse. Of mongrel dogs, cats, partihued pigs, chickens, and pigeons—all normal impediments to navigation on the streets of Pistolville—no trace remained.

  Once before in his life, in Suwon, immediately after its recapture and before the Military Government people had begun to clean up, Randy had seen degradation such as this. But this was America. It was his town, settled by his forebears. He said, “We’ve got to do something about this.”

  “Yes? ” Dan said. “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “Torches and gasoline,” Dan said, “except there isn’t enough gasoline. Anyway, these poor devils are as well off in their own houses as they would be in the woods, or in caves. No better off, mind you. But they have shelter.”

  “In four months,” Randy said, “we’ve regressed four thousand years. More, maybe. Four thousand years ago the Egyptians and Chinese were more civilized than Pistolville is right now. Not only Pistolville. Think what must be going on in those parts of the country where they don’t even have fruit and pecans and catfish.”

  As they approached the end of Augustine Road the houses were newer and larger, constructed of concrete block or brick instead of pitch-sweating pine clapboard. Between these houses grass grew shin-high, fighting the exultant weeds for sunlight and root space. There was less filth, or at least it was concealed by greenery, and the smell was bearable. In this airier atmosphere lived the upper crust of Pistolville, including Pete and Rita Hernandez and Timucuan County’s Representative in the state legislature, Porky Logan.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen Rita?” Dan asked.

  “Not since before The Day—quite a while before.”

  “Does Lib know about her?”

  “She knows all about it. She says Rita doesn’t bother her, because Rita is part of the past, like Mayoschi’s in Tokyo. You know who worries Lib? Helen. Imagine that.”

  They were at the Hernandez house. Dan stopped the car. He said, “I can imagine it. Lib is an extremely sensitive, perceptive woman. About some things, she has more sense than you have, Randy. And all rules are off, now.”

  Randy wasn’t listening. Rita had stepped out of the doorway. In Hawaii Randy had seen girls of mixed Caucasian, Polynesian, and Chinese blood, hips moving as if to the pulse of island rhythm even when only crossing the street, who reminded him of Rita. She was not like a girl of Fort Repose. She was a child of the Mediterranean and Carribean, seeming alien; and yet certainly American. Her ancestors included a Spanish soldier whose caravel beached in Matanzas Inlet before the Pilgrims found their rock, and Carib Indian women, and the Minorcans who spread inland from New Smyrna in the eighteenth century. She had not gone to college but she was intelligent and quick. She had an annulled high school marriage and an abortion behind her. She no longer made such foolish errors. Her hobby was men. She sampled and enjoyed men as other women collected and enjoyed African violets, Limoges teacups, or sterling souvenir teaspoons. She was professional in her avocation, never letting a man go without some profit, not necessarily material, and never trading one man for another unless she thought she was bettering her collection.

  Under any circumstances Rita was an arresting woman. Her hair was cut in straight bangs to form an ebony frame for features carved like a Malayan mask in antique ivory. She could look, and behave, like an Egyptian queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty or a Creole whore out of New Orleans. On this morning she wore aquamarine shorts and halter. Cradled easily u
nder her right arm was a light repeating shotgun.

  She was smoking a cigarette and even from the road Randy. could see that it was a real, manufactured filtertip and not a stubby homemade, hand-rolled with toilet paper. She called, “Hello Doctor Gunn. Come on in.” Then she recognized the passenger and yelled; “Hey! Randy!”

  Dan put the car keys in his pocket and said, “Better bring the whiskey and honey, Randy. I never leave stuff in the car when I make a call in Pistolville.”

  As he walked to the house, Randy noticed the Atlas grocery truck and a big new sedan in the Hernandez carport and a Jaguar XK-150 sports car in the driveway. A latrine had been dug behind the carport and partly shielded from the road by a crude board fence.

  Rita swung open the screen door. “You’ll pardon the artillery,” she said. “The goons down the street are envious. When I hear a car or anything I grab a gun. They killed my dog. She was a black poodle, Randy. Her name was Poupée Vivant. That means Livin’ Doll in French. Cracked her skull with an ax handle while Pete was lying sick and I was off fetching water. I found the ax handle but not the body. The goddamn cracker scum! Ate her, I guess.”

  Randy thought how he would feel if someone killed and ate Graf. He was revolted. And yet, it was a matter of manners and mores. In China men for centuries had been eating dogs stuffed with rice. It happened in other meat-starved Asian countries. The Army had put him through a survival course, once, and taught him that in an emergency he could safely eat pulpy white grubs found under bark. It could happen here. If a man could eat grubs he could eat dogs. Pistolville was meat starved and, as Dan had said, the rules were off. All Randy said was, “I’m sorry, Rita.”

  Randy walked through the door and stopped, astonished. The two front rooms of the Hernandez place looked like show windows in a Miami auction house. He counted three silver tea services, two chests of flat silver, three television sets, and was bewildered by a display of statuary, silver candelabra, expensive leather cases, empty crystal decanters, table lighters, chinaware. Gold-framed oils and watercolors, some fairly good, plastered one wall. Table clocks and wall clocks raised their hands and swore to different times. “Great God!” Randy said. “Have you people gone into the junk business?”, Rita laughed. “It’s not junk. It’s my investment.”

  Dan said, “How’s Pete, Rita?”

  “I think he’s a little better. He’s not losing any more hair but he’s still weak.”

  Dan was carrying his black bag. It held little except instruments now. He said, “I’ll go back and see him.”

  Dan walked down the hall and Randy was alone with her. She offered him a cigarette. Her perfume opened the gates of memory—the movies in Orlando, the dinners and dancing at the hotel in Winter Park, the isolated motel south of Canaveral, the morning they found a secluded pocket behind the dunes and were buzzed by a light plane and how the pilot almost sideslipped into the sea banking around for a second look, and most of all, his apartment. It seemed so long ago, as if it had happened while he was in college, before Korea, but it was not so long, a year only. He said, “Thanks, Rita. First real cigarette I’ve had in a long, long time. You must be getting along all right.”

  She looked at the bottle. “You didn’t bring me a present, did you, Randy?” The corners of her mouth quivered, but she did not quite smile.

  He remembered the evenings he had come to this house, a bottle beside him on the seat, and they had gone tooting off together; and the evenings he had brought bottles in gift packages, discreet gratuities for her brother; and the nights in the apartment, sharing a decanter drink for drink because she loved her liquor. He realized that this is what she intended he remember. She was expert at making him feel uncomfortable. He said, “No, Rita. Trade goods. I’ve been in Marines Park, trying to trade for coffee.”

  “Don’t your new women like Scotch, Randy? I hear you’ve got two women in your house now. Which one are you sleeping with, Randy?”

  Suddenly she was a stranger, and he looked upon her as such. Examined thus, with detachment, she looked ridiculous, wearing high heels and costume jewelry with shorts and halter at this hour of the morning and in this time of troubles. Her darkling ivory skin, once so satiny, appeared dry and mottled.

  Her hair was dull and the luster in her eyes reflected only spiteful anger. She looked used and tired. He said, calmly, “You can take your claws out now. I don’t feel them. My skin’s tougher.”

  She licked her lips. They were puffed and brown. “You’re tougher. You’re not the same Randy. I guess you’re growing up.”

  He changed the subject. “Where did you get all this stuff?” He looked around the room.

  “Trading.”

  “I never see you in Marines Park.”

  “We don’t go there. They come to us. They know we still hold food. Even coffee.”

  He knew she wanted the bottle. He knew she would trade coffee, but he would never again trade with her, for anything. He said:

  “You said this was your investment. Do you think three television sets is a good investment when there isn’t any electricity?”

  “I’m looking ahead, Randy. This war isn’t going to last forever and when it’s over I’m going to have everything I never had before and plenty besides, maybe to sell. I was only a kid after the last big war but I remember how my dad had to pay through the nose for an old jalopy. Do you know what that Jag cost me?” She laughed. “A case of beans, three bottles of ketchup, and six cans of deviled ham. For a Jag! Say, as soon as things get back to normal those three TV sets will be worth their weight in gold.”

  “Do you really think things are going to get back to normal?”

  “Sure! They always have, haven’t they? It may be a year, even two. I can wait. You look at those big new houses out on River Road. What built half of them? Wars. Profits out of wars. This time I’m going to get mine.”

  He saw that she believed it and it was pointless to argue with her. Still, he was intrigued. “Don’t you realize that this war is different?”

  She held out her left hand so that the sunlight glinted on the ring on her second finger. “It certainly is different! Look at this!”

  He looked at the big stone, and into it, and a thousand blue and red fights attested to its worth and purity.

  It wasn’t costume jewelry, as he had surmised. It wasn’t glass surrounded by green paste. It was a diamond set in emeralds. “Where did you get it?” he asked, awed, and then he looked at her crescent ear clips and saw that they too, beyond a doubt, were diamonds.

  Rita held the ring out, turning her wrist. She did not answer at once. She was enjoying their reaction.

  “Six carats,”, she said. “Perfect.” She slipped it from her finger and handed it to Randy.

  He took it automatically but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at her finger. Her finger was marred by a dark, almost black circle, as if the ring were tarnished brass, or its inside sooty. But the ring was clean bright white gold.

  Dan came into the room, pawing in his bag and frowning. “I don’t know exactly—” he began, looked at Randy’s face, and failed to finish the sentence.

  Frowning, Rita inspected the dark band. “It itches,” she said, and scratched. A bit of blackened skin flaked away, leaving raw flesh beneath.

  “I asked where you got this, Rita,” Randy said, a command.

  Before she opened her mouth he guessed the answer.

  She said, “Porky Logan.”

  The ring dropped to the floor, bounced, tinkled, and came to rest on the corner of a blue silk Chinese rug.

  “Say, what’s the matter?” she said. “You act like it was hot!”

  “I think it is hot,” Randy said.

  “Well, if you think Porky stole it, you’re wrong. It was abandoned property. Anybody would take it.”

  Dan took her hand and adjusted his bifocals so he could examine the finger closely. He spoke, his voice deep, enforcing calm. “Hold still, Rita, I just want to see that finger. I think wh
at Randy meant was that the ring has been exposed to radioactivity and is now radioactive itself. I’m afraid he’s right. This looks like a burn—a radium burn. How long have you been wearing that ring?”

  “Off and on, for a month I guess. I never wear it outside, only in the house.” She hesitated. “But this last week, I’ve had it on all the time. I never noticed—”

  They looked down at it, its facets blinking at them from the soft blue silk as if it were in a display window. It looked beautiful.

  “Where did Porky get it, Rita?” Dan asked.

  “Well, I only know what he told me. He was fishing in the Keys on The Day and of course he started right back. He’s smart, Porky is. He made a big detour around Miami. Well, he was passing through Hollywood or Boca Raton or one of those Gold Coast places and it was empty and right off the main drag he saw one of those swanky little jewelry shops, you know, a branch of some Fifth Avenue store and its windows were blown out. He said stuff was lying all over, rings and pins and watches and bracelets, like popcorn out of a busted bag. So he gathered it up. Then he dumped the hooks and plugs and junk out of his fishbox and went inside and filled it up. Porky said right then he was thinking of the future. He figured that money wouldn’t be worth anything but diamonds and gold were different. They never lost value no matter what happened.”

  “Impregnated with fallout,” Dan murmured. “Suicide.”

  Rita’s hands crept upward to her neck and Randy noticed an oval mark in the hollow of her throat, as if the skin were painted darker there. Then her hands flew to her ears. The diamond ear clips fell to the rug beside. the ring. She moaned, “Oh, God!”

  “What did you have to give Porky for those diamonds?” Randy asked softly.

  “For the ring, hardly anything at all. For the rest of it we gave him canned meat and cigarettes and coffee and chocolate bars and stuff like that. You know how Porky ate. For Chrissakes, Doc, what are you going to do about this?” She stared at her finger.