In conclusion, it is wrong for white people to be against letting a Negro go to an all-white university because they think that Negroes shouldn’t go to college because they were once slaves.
“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 tak
e 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.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Shaw gasps.
“I’ll take my chances up there.”
“Dad!” Ronnie dashes after his father and wraps his arms around one of his legs.
Shock and alarm fill the shelter. For an instant, my dad looks dumbfounded. Then he hoists himself up and grabs Mr. Shaw’s arm.
“Let go!” Mr. Shaw tries to yank free.
“You’ll kill us all!” Dad warns.
“I can’t stay in here anymore!”
“Dad, stop!” Ronnie cries as his father tries to drag him.
“You’re scaring him, Steven!” Mrs. Shaw yells.
With Ronnie’s arms wrapped around his thigh like a boa constrictor, Mr. Shaw tries to squirm out of Dad’s grip in a strange slow-motion dance as if they don’t have the strength to move faster. Dad hooks an arm around Mr. Shaw’s neck, and they tumble to the shelter floor, a mass of squirming arms and legs.
“Let go!” On the floor, Mr. Shaw tries to wriggle and twist away, but Ronnie’s still clamped to his leg, and Dad manages to pin his arms down. Ronnie’s crying and Mrs. Shaw is yelling, “Stop it! Stop it!” Mr. Shaw twists his head back and forth and tries to kick with his free leg. “Let me go!”
But Dad has him pinned. “If you open that door now, the radioactive dust that falls in could kill us all.”
Her hair a wild mess, Mrs. Shaw kneels and takes her husband’s head in her hands. “Stop,” she says gently but firmly. “Get ahold of yourself. I understand how you feel. I really do. But you have to think about the rest of us. Ronnie needs you. I need you.”
Her words get through. Mr. Shaw goes limp. The back of his head rests on the floor, and he bursts into tears, hiccupping and snorting, his chest heaving.
I’ve never seen a grown man cry so publically before, and it feels strange and upsetting. Sparky’s whimpering. Janet strokes his head reassuringly. Paula’s eyes are wide as she clings to her father. We’re all so close together; there’s nowhere to hide. Ronnie lets go of his father’s leg and sits on the floor, wiping his eyes, his face smudged with tears and dirt.
Mrs. Shaw helps her husband to one of the bunks and lies down with him. She kisses his face and whispers in his ear. He slides his arms around her and pulls her close. I feel bad that they can’t be alone.
Dad watches Mrs. Shaw caress and soothe her husband. He turns his gaze to Janet hugging Sparky. Then he looks at Mom, lying on her bunk with that blank expression, not the slightest bit aware of what just happened.
Dad doesn’t check the radio anymore. But whenever he wakes up from a nap, he goes around the shield wall and tests the radiation levels under the trapdoor.
“A hundred and twenty-seven,” he reports.
It’s dropped again, but is still high above the safe level. Meanwhile, we’re slowly starving to death.
On the TV, President Kennedy wore a dark jacket, white shirt, and thin black tie. He sat at a desk with a dark curtain and an American flag behind him.
The president had a funny way of speaking that had something to do with being from an important Massachusetts family. He said that the Soviets had given false statements about their weapons. The Soviets was another name for the Russians, who were also called Commies, Ruskies, and Reds. The president said that the Soviets were putting two types of weapons on Cuba — medium-range ballistic missiles that could reach Washington and intermediate-range missiles that were capable of reaching Hudson Bay in Canada. Sparky glanced at me with a scowl. Our parents had once gone to Canada for a vacation and came back with Hudson Bay blankets, and I bet he was wondering why the Soviets would want to shoot a missile all the way up there . . . unless they had something against blankets.
The president said the missiles were weapons of mass destruction and that the Soviets were lying about why they were putting them on Cuba. He used a lot of big words, and when he said a quarantine of Cuba was going to be initiated, I wanted to ask Dad what that meant, but I knew he’d tell me to wait until the speech was over.
When the president began talking about the organ of consultation and the Rio Treaty, Sparky started playing with a Slinky. I was tempted to play with my army men, but I watched mostly to see if the president would explain what the Commies had against Hudson Bay and what a quarantine was.
Then Mom came in. I had a feeling that she’d stayed out of the den on purpose to let Dad know that she was against Sparky and me watching the speech, but now she finally gave in to curiosity. She stood with her arms crossed while President Kennedy said that many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lay ahead, and that the cost of freedom was always high and one thing we would never do is surrender. Then he said, “Thank you and good night,” and the speech was over.
I looked at Dad. “When he talked about the cost of freedom, he wasn’t talking about money, was he?”
Dad sighed and shook his head.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go to school tomorrow,” I whispered to Dad at bedtime that night. Sparky was already asleep in the other bed.
Dad’s forehead wrinkled. “Why?”
“If the Russians attack, we may not have time to get home.”
Dad leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Go to school and don’t worry so much.”
But it was impossible not to.
Everyone’s sick. The air smells tart and pungent, and there’s hardly a moment when someone isn’t sitting on the toilet bucket. I feel dizzy and hot with a cramped stomach that’s different from the cramps that come from hunger. For the first time in days, I don’t think about food or even getting out of the shelter. I just want to stop feeling sick.
By now, the men have torn their pajama tops into rags, but there’s still not enough. Dad is the first one to take off his pajama bottoms. Only there isn?
??t any material around for Janet to make him a loincloth the way she did for Sparky.
We nap, wake, sit on the toilet bucket, and lie around feeling too ill and weak to move or talk.
“I wish you’d never built this thing,” Mr. Shaw tells Dad.
Finally I wake up and the cramps are gone. Dad hands me a cup of water, and I gulp it down. Most of the others are awake. Somehow they don’t look as sick as before.
“It’s time,” says Mr. McGovern. His jaw is covered by a short, scruffy beard, and the skin that once stretched tightly over his round belly is loose and saggy.
“Let me check —” Dad begins to reach for the radiation kit.
“I don’t care anymore,” Mr. McGovern says, cutting him short. “I’m going up.”
He doesn’t sound crazy or desperate like Mr. Shaw did. Instead, he’s calm and determined. When he starts to get up, I half expect Dad to try and stop him, but he doesn’t. Paula watches without a word.
Mr. McGovern stands in the dim shadows, a grown, naked man with skinny legs and flat feet. “I’ll need the light,” he says.
Dad picks up the flashlight.
“Can I come?” Sparky asks.
“No.”
“Please?”
“Make sure he stays there,” Dad tells Janet, and takes out two of the gas masks.
With the masks on, they look like naked men with horse heads. The shelter gets darker when Dad follows Mr. McGovern around the shield wall and into the narrow corridor. We listen to the muffled sounds of Mr. McGovern’s grunts and heavy breaths as he starts to climb up the rungs. Then it gets quiet. Then more grunts and heavy breaths. Another quiet period follows.