Alas, Babylon

  She watched them swimming dreamily, ignoring her in their useless complacency. “In with you,” she said, and dumped fish and water into the pail. She borrowed Ben Franklin’s rod and reel and made for the dock. She was forbidden to go out in Randy’s boat alone, but since she was already involved in one criminal act, she might as well risk another.

  At noon Randy had not returned and Elizabeth McGovern Bragg climbed to the captain’s walk where she could be alone with her fears and anxiety. Her father and Dan Gunn had walked to town that morning. With some volunteers from Bragg’s Troop, they had begun to clean up and repair the clinic. So there was no man in the house and she was afraid for her husband. He had told her there would be no danger but in this new life the dangers were deadly and unpredictable. She kept her face turned steadily to the east, where the Admiral’s striped-awning sail should appear at the first bend of the Timucuan.

  She told herself that she was silly, that Randy and the others, if they found the place at all, might tarry there for hours. They would undoubtedly feast on crab, and she couldn’t blame them. They might find it difficult to load the salt. Anything could delay them.

  From the grass behind the kitchen Helen called up, “Lib!”

  She leaned over the rail. “Yes?”

  “Is Peyton up there with you?”

  “No. I haven’t seen her.”

  “Is she out on the dock?”

  Lib looked out at the dock and saw that Randy’s boat was missing. Before she told Helen this she scanned the river. It was nowhere in sight; Randy had sailed in the Admiral’s cruiser, and the boat should be there.

  At five that evening the Fort Repose fleet sighted Randy’s house. There was no doubt that it had been a triumphant voyage. The five boats were deep with salt, the thirteen men were filled with boiled crabs, lavishly seasoned, so they were all stronger and felt better, and in every boat there were buckets and washtubs filled with live crabs.

  The Admiral ran his boat alongside Randy’s dock and turned into the wind. “You unload what salt you want here,” Sam Hazzard said, “and that washtubful of crabs, and I’ll sail back with the Henrys’ share, and mine.”

  Randy unloaded. He had expected that Lib would be down at the dock to greet him, or certainly watching from the captain’s walk. Coming home with such rich cargo, he was chagrined. He lifted the washtub to the dock and then two fat sacks of salt. Fifty pounds, at least, he thought. It would last for months and when it was gone there was an unlimited supply waiting on the shores of Blue Crab Pool. He said, “So long, Sam. See you tonight.”

  The Admiral pushed away from the dock and Randy picked up the washtub, deliberately spilled some of the water that had kept the crabs alive, and walked to the house.

  The kitchen was empty except for four very large black bass in the sink. He lifted the largest. An eleven-pounder, he judged. It was the biggest bass he had seen in a year. It was unbelievable.

  There was a plate on the kitchen table heaped with roasted meat. It looked like lamb. He tasted it. It didn’t taste like iamb. It didn’t taste like anything he had ever tasted before, but it tasted wonderful. He thought of the crabs, and their value dwindled to hors d’ouevres.

  It was then he heard the first sobs, from upstairs, he thought, and then a different voice weeping hysterically somewhere else in the house. In fear, he ran through the dining room.

  Three women were in the living room. They were all crying, Lib silently, Florence and Helen loudly.

  Lib saw him and ran into his arms and wiped her tears on his shirt. “What’s happened?” he demanded.

  “I thought you’d never come home,” Lib said. “I was afraid and there’s so much trouble.”

  “What? Who’s hurt?”

  “Nobody but Peyton. She’s upstairs crying. Helen spanked her and sent her to bed.”

  “Why?”

  “She went fishing.”

  “Did Peyton catch those big bass?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Helen spanked her for it?”

  “Not that. Helen spanked her because she took out your boat and drifted downstream. We didn’t know what had happened to her until she rowed home an hour ago. She said she couldn’t make it sail right.”

  Randy looked at Helen. “And what’s wrong’ with you?”

  “I’m upset. Anybody’d be upset if they had to spank their child.”

  Florence wailed and her head fell on her arms.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Somebody or something came in and ate her goldfish.”

  Florence raised her head. “I think it must have been Sir Percy. I’m sure of it. I did love that cat and now look how he behaves.” She wept again.

  Randy said, “Isn’t anybody going to ask me whether I got salt?”

  “Did you get salt?” Lib asked.

  “Yes. Fifty pounds of it. And if you women want it, you’ll take the wheelbarrow down to the dock and lug it up.”

  He went into the kitchen to clean the beautiful bass and put the crabs in the big pot. It was all ridiculous and stupid. The more he learned about women the more there was to learn except that he had learned this: they needed a man around.

  Then he found a tattered goldfish in the gullet of the eleven-pounder. He examined it carefully, smiled, and dropped it into the sink. He would not mention it. There was enough trouble and confusion among all these women already.

  So ended the hunger of August. In the fourth week the heat broke and the fish began to bite again.

  In September school began. It was impractical to re-open the Fort Repose schoolhouse—it was unheated and there was no water. Randy decided that the responsibility for teaching must rest temporarily with the parents. The regular teachers were scattered or gone and there was no way of paying them. The textbooks were still in the schoolhouse, for anyone who needed them.

  Judge Bragg’s library became the schoolroom in the Bragg household, with Lib and Helen dividing the teaching. When Caleb Henry arrived to attend classes with Peyton and Ben Franklin, Randy was a little surprised. He saw that Peyton and Ben expected it, and then he recalled that in Omaha—and indeed in two thirds of America’s cities—white and Negro children had sat side by side for many years without fuss or trouble.

  In October the new crop of early oranges began to ripen. The juice tasted tart and refreshing after months without it.

  In October, armadillos began to grow scarce in the Fort Repose area, but the Henrys’ flock of chickens had increased and the sow again farrowed. Also, ducks arrived in enormous numbers from the North—more than Randy ever before had seen. Wild turkeys, which before The Day had been hunted almost to extermination in Timucuan County, suddenly were common. Randy fashioned himself a turkey call, and shot one or two every week. Quail roamed the groves, fields and yards in great coveys. He did not use his shells on such trifling game. But Two-Tone knew how to fashion snares, and taught the boys, so there was usually quail for breakfast along with eggs.

  One evening near the end of the month Dan Gunn returned from his clinic, smiling and whistling.

  “Randy,” he said, “I have just delivered my first post-Day baby! A boy, about eight pounds, bright and healthy!”

  “So what’s so wonderful about delivering a baby?” Randy said. “Was the mother under hypnosis?”

  “Yes. But that’s not what was wonderful.” Dan’s smile disappeared. “You see, this was the first live baby, full term. I had two other pregnancies that ended prematurely. Nature’s way of protecting the race, I think, although you can’t reach any statistical conclusion on the basis of three pregnancies. Anyway, now we know that there’s going to be a human race, don’t we?”

  “I’d never really thought there might not be.”

  “I had,” Dan said quietly.

  In November a tall pine, split by lightning during the summer, dropped its brown needles and died and Randy and Bill felled it with a two-man saw and ax. It was arduous work and neither of them knew the technique.
It was at times like this that Randy missed and thought of Malachai. Nevertheless they got the job done and trimmed the thick branches. The wood was valuable, for another winter was coming.

  Randy went to bed early that night, exhausted. He woke suddenly with a queer sound in his ears, like music, almost. He looked at his watch. It was a bit after midnight. Lib slept quietly beside him. He was frightened. He nudged her. She lifted her head and her eyes opened. “Sweetheart,” he said, “do you hear anything?”

  “Go to sleep,” she said, and her head fell back on the pillow. It bounced up again. “Yes,” she said, “I do hear something. It sounds like music. Of course it can’t be music but that’s what it sounds like.”

  “I’m relieved,” Randy said. “I thought it was in my head.” He listened intently. “I could swear that it sounds like ‘In the Mood.’ If I didn’t know better I could swear it was that great Glenn Miller recording.”

  She kicked him. “Get up! Get up!”

  He flung himself out of bed and opened the door to the upstairs living room, lit by a lamp on the bar, turned low. It was necessary to keep fire in the house for they no longer had matches, flints, or lighter fluid. Randy thought, it must be the transistor radio, started up again, but at the same time he knew this was impossible because he long ago had thrown away the dead batteries. Nevertheless he picked up the radio and listened. It was silent yet the music persisted.

  “It’s coming from the hall,” Lib said.

  They opened the door into the hallway. The rhythm was louder but the hall was empty. Randy saw a crack of light under Peyton’s door. “Peyton’s room!” he said.

  He put his hand on the door handle but decided it would be gentlemanly to knock first. After all, Peyton was twelve now. He knocked.

  The music stopped abruptly. Peyton said, in a small, frightened voice, “Come in.”

  Peyton’s room was illuminated by a lamp Randy had never seen before. Peyton didn’t have a lamp of her own. On Peyton’s desk was an old-fashioned, hand-crank phonograph with flaring horn. Stacked beside it were albums of records.

  Randy said, softly, “Put it on again, Peyton.”

  Peyton stopped plucking at the front of her pajamas, hand-me-downs from Ben Franklin, just as Ben’s pajamas were hand-me-downs from Randy, so fast did children grow. She started the record, from the beginning. Hearing it, Randy realized how much he had missed music, how music seasoned his civilization. In the Henry hose Missouri often sang, but in the Bragg house hardly anyone could carry a tune, or even hum.

  Over the rhythm, Lib whispered, “Where did you get it, Peyton? Where did it come from?”

  “The attic. I went up the little ladder in the back hall. Mother will be furious. She told me never to go up there because the rungs were cracked and I might fall.”

  “Your mother was up in the attic a few months ago. She didn’t see anything.”

  “I know. I was crawling around behind the big trunk and there was a door, a board door that looked like part of the wall. I opened it and there was another room, smaller.”

  Randy said, “Why did you do it, Peyton?”

  “I don’t know. I was lonely and there wasn’t anything else to do and I’d never been up there. You know how it is. When you’ve never been some place, you want to go.”

  Randy opened one of the albums. “Old seventy-eights,” he said, his voice almost reverent. “Classic jazz. Listen to this. By Tommy Dorsey—‘Come Rain or Shine,’ ‘Stardust,’ ‘Chicago.’ Carmen Cavallaro’s ‘Stormy Weather.’ Also ‘Body and Soul.’ Artie Shaw’s ‘Back Bay Shuffle.’ All the best by the best. I guess—I’m certain this must have been Father’s collection. I’ve never seen this machine before, but I remember the records.”

  “In the Mood” ended. Randy said, “Turn it over, Peyton. No. Put on this one.”

  “You’re not angry, Randy?” Peyton said.

  “Angry! I should say not!”

  “I found some other stuff in there too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, there’s an old-time sewing machine—the kind you work with your feet. There are some big kerosene lamps, the kind that hang. This one on the desk I found up there, too. All I had when I went up was a little stub candle. Then there’s an old pot-bellied stove and a lot of iron pipe. Oh and lots of other junk. I left it because I wanted to try the record player. The only other thing I brought down I brought for you and Dan, Randy. It’s there on the bed.”

  Randy picked up the black leather case. It looked familiar. He had seen it before. He opened it and saw the two matched straight-edge razors that had belonged to his father.

  He leaned over and kissed the top of Peyton’s head. “Don’t worry about what your mother will say,” he told her. “I’ll handle everything for you. If I had medals to give, I would pin one on you, Peyton, right now.”

  In this manner, Peyton became a heroine.

  13

  ONE morning in November, when Randy was breakfasting early and alone, Dan Gunn came downstairs smooth-shaven, his jaw looking oddly pallid in contrast to brown forehead, nose, cheekbones, and neck. “Good morning,” Randy said. “You swore you’d never shave again! Why?”

  “Well,” Dan said lamely, “I had the razor and it seemed a shame not to use it after Peyton gave it to me. Then there was the soap.” Within the past few weeks, bars of homemade soap had appeared in Marines Park, produced by Mrs. Estes, who had been senior teller at the bank, and two former co-workers. Everyone agreed that it would be a prosperous and rewarding business.

  “The truth, Dan!” Randy said.

  “Helen asked me to do it. She said she was getting tired of trimming it.”

  “Oh, that’s different. You’d better be home in time for dinner tonight. John Garcia just made another run up to Blue Crab Pool and he’s dropping off a washtub of crabs here. In exchange for one quart of lightning.”

  Dan said, “I’m very fond of Helen. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “Why do anything without her?”

  “Randy, I want to marry her.”

  Randy rose from the table, bowed, and said, “I give you my blessing!”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “Marriage is rarely funny.”

  “She won’t marry me.”

  “Then why did you shave off your beard?”

  “Damn it, Randy, I love her. And she loves me. She admitted it. She wants to marry me. But she won’t. She thinks there’s a chance Mark’s still alive. She’s afraid that if we married then Mark would turn up alive and there’d be one of those awful messes we’ve all heard about or read about. Like when men were reported dead in the Philippines or Korea and they turned up after the war in an enemy prison camp. They came home and found their wives happily married to someone else. Sometimes there were children. It’s always a mess.”

  “It’s happened,” Randy said, “but in this case I don’t think there’s a chance. Want me to talk to her?”

  Dan rubbed his face where his beard had been. “I feel naked. No, Randy, thanks. I don’t think Helen would want it discussed. Not yet, anyway. She just has this feeling, and I’m afraid she’ll have to empty it herself.”

  It was in this month that the first low-flying plane frightened and exhilarated them.

  At irregular times planes had been reported before, but always jets, flying very high, usually no more than a silver splinter in the sky, or contrail, in day, and only sound at night.

  But in the second week in November a big four-engined transport roared over Fort Repose at a thousand feet. It bore Air Force markings. In Marines Park everyone screamed and waved. It did not even waggle its wings, but went on, south. Dan Gunn, who was in town, saw it directly overhead. Randy heard and saw it from River Road. The Admiral, who was out on the river in his flagship, was able to observe it through binoculars.

  That night Randy and Lib and Dan and Helen went to Sam Hazzard’s house to hear his opinion. “I noticed two cylinders slung under the wing,” h
e said. “Not extra gas tanks. I think they might be air traps. I think they might be taking radiation samples.”

  A week later the same plane, or one like it, came over again. This time it circled Fort Repose, and a stream of what appeared to be confetti, at the distance, fell from its belly and drifted down on the river banks and in the town.

  Randy was in Marines Park, at the time, discussing an alarm system with officers of his company.

  Church bells had been used in England during the second World War, and there were bells in the Catholic and Episcopal churches. It was possible to evolve a code by which his troopers could understand the type and location of the emergency. The plane came over and everyone yelled, as before, as if they could hear up there. Then the leaflets fluttered down. They read:

  DO NOT BE ALARMED

  This leaflet comes from a United States Air Force plane conducting atmospheric surveys of the Contaminated Zones.

  At a future date a more precise survey will be undertaken by helicopters.

  Should a helicopter land in or near your community do not interfere with the activities of personnel aboard. Lend them your cooperation if requested.

  This activity is an essential preliminary to bringing relief to the Contaminated Zones.

  In a sense, it was disappointing. But it was something. It was something you could put your hands on, that you could feel, that had come from the outside. It was proof that the government of the United States still functioned. It was also useful as toilet paper. Next day, ten leaflets would buy an egg, and fifty a chicken. It was paper, and it was money.

  In December the helicopter came. It made a fearful racket, wind-milling over Fort Repose. At various open spaces, including Marines Park it hovered low and dropped a long wire from its belly, a small cylinder on the end of the wire actually touching the earth. It was like a gigantic bug dipping for honey.

  It came up the Timucuan and circled the Bragg house.

  The children were down at the dock; Helen and Lib were in the house; Randy was visiting with Sam Hazzard.