Then Mr. Sinclair brought out a long box wrapped in birthday paper, and Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? got excited because inside was a telescope, and he said we should all go up to his porch and look through it. As we headed upstairs, Mrs. Sinclair once again gave Ronnie, Freak O’ Nature, and me that look that said we were dead if we got into any mischief.
Out on the porch, Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? set up the telescope. I felt my insides corkscrew when I imagined looking through it and seeing Russian missiles streaking our way.
He aimed the telescope at the moon. “That big white spot is Copernicus crater. And that round dark area right above it? That’s called the Mare Imbrium. It’s Latin for ‘the Sea of Rains.’”
“It rains on the moon?” said Freak O’ Nature.
“It was a sea of lava,” explained Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? “A long time ago, a huge asteroid hit the surface and made a hole so deep that lava came out.”
“What’s an asteroid?” Freak O’ Nature asked.
“It’s like a shooting star,” said Johnny. “Only it’s just a big space rock. People used to think they were stars because they glowed when they burned up in the atmosphere.”
I looked up into the dark. A tiny, starlike dot was moving slowly across the night sky. “Like that?” I pointed.
“Oh, my gosh!” Johnny gasped excitedly. “It’s Echo! The communications satellite.”
“You can see it?” Ronnie asked, dubiously.
“It’s a giant silver balloon,” said Johnny. “This is unreal!”
What was unreal was seeing Johnny get so excited. He never acted like this.
“How do you know it’s not a shooting star?” asked Freak O’ Nature.
“They streak across the sky and are gone in an instant,” said Johnny.
“And how do you know it’s not Sputnik?” asked Ronnie. Sputnik was a Russian satellite.
“You can’t see Sputnik,” said Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? “Here, everyone look.”
We took turns looking at Echo through the telescope. It still looked like a bright dot, only bigger.
“You know that the Ruskies sent Sputnik into space to prove they had a rocket strong enough to launch a nuclear bomb at us?” said Ronnie, looking at me. “Think your bomb shelter can stand up to that, Scott?”
“Pretty soon it won’t even matter,” said Johnny as we watched Echo creep across the star-speckled sky. “Now that we can put men in space, they’re going to build laser cannons that can destroy a whole city with a single blast.”
I didn’t know whether laser cannons were something Johnny had read about in his Tom Swift books or something real, and I didn’t want to ask because I was afraid I’d look dumb. Besides, what difference would it make? Why did they need laser cannons when they already had nuclear bombs that could destroy everything? All I knew was that for an instant, while looking at Echo, I’d managed to forget about war, but now it had all come rushing back.
High above us, Echo gradually dimmed and vanished into the dark.
“Where’d it go?” asked Freak O’ Nature.
“Into Earth’s shadow,” said Johnny.
We watched the sky for something else exciting to come along, but nothing did. Behind us, Ronnie was peering through the telescope. Only it was pointed across the street.
“What are you doing?” asked Johnny.
“Nothing,” Ronnie answered.
Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? aimed the telescope at the moon again and showed us some mountains and craters. Then Mrs. Sinclair came out and said it was time to go.
Outside the Sinclairs’ house, Freak O’ Nature went one way, and Ronnie and I went the other. Bugs zoomed crazily around the streetlights, kind of like missiles.
“Guess what I saw tonight?” Ronnie asked.
“The moon and that Echo satellite.”
“How about Paula’s bedroom?”
“How?”
“With the telescope, dummy. Right into her window. Want to know what I saw?”
I stopped under a streetlight and squinted at him. Here we were possibly on the brink of World War III, and all he could think about was looking in a girl’s bedroom. My jaw tightened, and I suddenly felt angry. Maybe because I was so scared and he was acting like he wasn’t. “No,” I said.
Ronnie put his hands on his hips. “Sure, you do.”
“No . . . I . . . don’t.”
Dad looks down from the trapdoor with a pained expression. “Steven, could you climb up here? Herb, would you get everyone back into the shelter, and then come up and join us?”
“But, Dad —” Sparky starts.
“You’ll all be out soon,” Dad promises. “You just have to wait a little longer.”
Mr. McGovern herds us back around the shield wall. His eyes look glittery. In a quavering voice, he says, “Stephanie, make sure the kids stay put.”
Janet and Mrs. Shaw stand guard by the shield wall to make sure we don’t try to sneak back into the corridor. You’d think they’d be ecstatic that we can finally get out, but they’re both quiet and sad.
“Why can’t we go?” Sparky asks.
“Soon, I promise.” Mrs. Shaw strokes his head reassuringly.
Sparky looks up into Janet’s face. She nods.
Ronnie leans so close, his lips practically touch my ear. “You know what was on top of the door?” he whispers.
“Uh-huh.”
Paula’s face scrunches up as if she might start to cry. Ronnie reaches out, hesitates, then places his hand on her arm. I watch their eyes meet. “We’ll all get out soon,” he says, sounding just like my father.
But every second we wait feels like forever. Cold air fills the shelter, and we start to shiver. Finally Dad calls down, “Scott?”
I go into the corridor and squint in the light coming through the square above. Dad’s up there, out of the shelter, wearing dungarees and a sweatshirt. “It won’t be long,” he says, dropping down a box of Ritz crackers and a package of Oreo cookies. “Here’s something to keep you busy. They’re okay to eat.”
Back in the shelter, everyone eats ravenously. Stale crackers and cookies never tasted so good.
“Why not?” Ronnie asked.
Trouble swirled around me like those bugs around the streetlight. It was times like this when I wished Ronnie wasn’t my best friend. I needed a friend I could admit I was scared to without having to worry that he’d make fun of me. “Because we might be on the verge of nuclear war. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Ronnie shrugged. “Okay, forget it. I’m not gonna tell you what I saw.”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
Ronnie narrowed his eyes. “Come on, admit it — you’re dying to know.”
“No, I’m really not,” I said, feeling anger and fear and resentment percolating inside me. “And you want to know why? Because we could all be killed tonight. And if we’re not, you’re gonna come up with some scheme to look through Paula’s window again, and I’m gonna get in a ton of trouble. And you’re not gonna get in any trouble because you never get punished for anything.”
“You are the biggest baby I ever saw,” Ronnie taunted. “You don’t know anything, and you’re afraid to find out. Go be a coward in your dumb bomb shelter. Want to know something? My dad thinks your dad’s an idiot. Because there’s never gonna be a war because everyone knows the world would be destroyed and no one would win. Only an idiot would be stupid enough to build a bomb shelter.”
“Well, your father’s stupid for giving kids wine and reading Playboy in front of them and never making you do any chores,” I shot back. “And your mom’s stupid because she dresses like a movie star even though she’s just a mother, and she gives you TV dinners instead of real meals because she’s too lazy to cook.”
“Coward,” Ronnie said.
“Spoiled brat,” I said.
“Homo.”
I balled my hands into fists and swung as hard as I could, hitting him on the arm. It must have h
urt a little, but not enough. Ronnie tackled me, and we slammed to the street and rolled around, swinging our fists wildly. I knew I was going to lose, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to hit him as hard as I could. I wanted to make him pay for calling my father an idiot and for not being scared and not doing chores and for always getting me into trouble and having a home filled with so many temptations.
Even when Ronnie pinned me on my back, I still kicked and tried to hit him. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have stolen that cheesecake or drunk too much Dubonnet or had to think about my mother’s breasts and queers. I was sure that behind our backs his father made fun of my father, and that his mother was one of the ladies who stared at my mother in the supermarket.
“Break it up. Come on, boys, that’s enough.” Dad’s voice came through the dark.
I felt Ronnie’s weight rise off me and saw Dad pulling him by the arm. I pushed myself to my feet. My right elbow stung where the skin had been scraped, and my knee throbbed where I’d banged it on the street.
“What’s this about?” Dad asked.
Ronnie and I glared at each other but said nothing. Except for his shirt hanging out and one knee of his pants being torn, he didn’t look like he’d even been in a fight.
“Come on, what’s the story?” Dad asked.
We were silent. I knew that if I told what happened, I’d be labeled a tattletale and a sissy. Dad probably knew it, too.
“Okay, Ronnie, you better go home.” He let go, and Ronnie headed toward his house.
Dad and I started up our driveway, but I limped.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Want to tell me what happened?”
I shook my head.
“A boy thing, huh?” He smiled slightly, almost as if he was proud.
“Yeah.”
Mom cleaned my elbow and knee with Mercurochrome, which stung even more than scraping them had in the first place. She was annoyed when I said I couldn’t tell her what had happened and Dad said it was my private business. I had a feeling they were going to have an argument.
I went to bed wondering if Ronnie was right and there wouldn’t be a war after all. I wondered what would happen tomorrow when I saw him at the bus stop. Would he tell everyone we’d had a fight? Would he say he won or that it had been broken up before either of us could win?
Dad came in and sat on the side of my bed. “How’re you feeling?” he whispered.
I shrugged. It hurt, but not as much as you’d imagine a fight would. “Mom was pretty mad,” I said.
“She’s been upset about a lot of things lately.” Dad seemed sad. “It’s a hard time for everyone.”
“You think there’s going to be a war?”
“No one knows,” he answered.
“That’s what the fight was about, kind of.”
He looked surprised. “Seriously?”
“Ronnie said something bad about you because of the bomb shelter.”
Dad let his breath out and slowly nodded. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it was a mistake. I was just trying to protect us.”
“I think you did the right thing, Dad.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “Even though you got into a fight about it?”
I shrugged. “Ronnie’s a jerk.”
“But he’s your best friend.”
“Yeah.”
A sad knowing smile crept onto Dad’s lips. “Kind of like your mom and me.”
Dad throws down clothes. Sparky and I find our own things, and the others put on whatever comes closest to fitting. Mrs. Shaw and Janet dress Mom.
A few minutes later, Dad and Mr. Shaw climb back down into the shelter.
“Can we go up?” Sparky asks.
“In a moment.” Dad eases Mom to her feet. It’s so strange the way she doesn’t know us but knows to walk when he leads her. In the narrow corridor, Janet and Mrs. Shaw work with Dad to get her onto the bunk bed. Above them, Mr. McGovern reaches down to help her out.
Paula and Sparky go next.
Then Mrs. Shaw and Janet.
Then Ronnie.
Dad looks down from above. “Your turn, Scott.”
I climb up on the bunk bed toward the light and the bad smell. It’s slow going because I’m weak and have to pause and rest, but I’m eager and scared, too. Finally I poke my head out. Even though I’m in the playroom closet, it’s so bright that I have to squint. The playroom windows have been blasted out, leaving jagged ridges of glass in the frames. The floor is covered with broken glass, small branches, leaves, and toys. The rotten meat smell is strong, and I don’t have to ask what the large lumps are that lie under bedsheets here and there. My insides tighten, and the awful thoughts of what it must have been like for those above gnaws at me.
“Don’t look,” Dad says. “Go outside.”
Behind me, Mr. Shaw climbs out of the shelter and hands Dad the flashlight, first-aid kit, the green box, and some other things. Then he and Dad close the trapdoor.
Out in the backyard, the air is cold and fresh. The trees have been stripped bare, and all that remains are stubby, leafless limbs and trunks missing bark on the side that faced the blast. Window screens, tree branches, roof shingles, and sheets of newspapers lie on the ground among the dead leaves and patches of scorched brown grass. The sun is in the west, so for the first time in weeks, we have a sense of what time it is. The air is still, and the sky is mostly blue, with a few feathery clouds here and there.
Up here in the light, it’s a shock to see how thin and gaunt everyone’s gotten. Dad and Mr. McGovern look strange with their short beards. We move slowly and keep looking upward as if trying to adjust to not having a ceiling overhead. Squinting in the angled sunlight, we hug ourselves, not just because we’re chilled.
We’re outside.
It’s so quiet that we can hear Sparky’s teeth chatter.
We’re alive.
Squawking and honking comes from overhead. A V of black-and-white Canada geese flies high above us.
“From up north,” Mr. McGovern says.
“Look.” Mr. Shaw points behind us. In the distance a thin column of white smoke rises almost straight up into the air.
“Other people,” Dad says.
We’re not the only ones.
But now Dad’s looking back into the playroom with a stricken expression. He closes his eyes as if he wishes he couldn’t see.
Mrs. Shaw takes his arm. “It’s horrible, but we all couldn’t have survived, Richard.”
It’s strange that she’s the one who says it. Dad nods slowly as if he knows she’s right, but it still doesn’t make him feel better. He turns to Mr. Shaw and Mr. McGovern. “We have to give them a proper burial.”
The others agree. Paula tugs at her father’s hand as if there’s something he needs to do. “Daddy?”
“Yes, honey, in a second,” Mr. McGovern says, and steps closer to Dad. “Steven, I . . .” He trails off and swivels his head at Janet, who looks away. Paula’s father turns back to Dad. “I’m sorry. We all made mistakes. . . . Would you watch Paula for me? There are things I need to do.”
Dad nods. Mr. McGovern heads off, around our house, toward his own.
Mr. Shaw extends his hand. “Thank you, Richard.”
They shake.
“See you in the morning?” Dad asks, tilting his head toward our playroom.
“Yes, definitely.”
Mrs. Shaw gives Dad a hug, and Ronnie shakes his hand, then looks at me and moves his lips as if to say, See you later. He joins his parents, and they walk across Old Lady Lester’s backyard toward their home.
Dad turns to Janet. “It’s going to be dark soon. If you can wait until tomorrow, I promise that as soon as we finish what we have to do here, we’ll help you look for your children.”
“Thank you, Mr. Porter,” Janet answers.
When Dad turns to me next and places his hands on my shoulders, it catches me by surprise. He turns me to face him. “Scott, I?
??m proud of you. It was terrible down there, and you conducted yourself like a man.”
I don’t know what to say. Dad smiles and says we should go inside, where he’ll make a fire and heat water so we can wash and cook some food. He leads Mom toward the house. Janet and Paula go with him, and I begin to follow, then stop and look back.
Amid the broken branches, torn shingles, and ripped screens, Sparky’s on his toes with his arms spread out, spinning around and around on the scorched grass, laughing.
I can’t help but smile. What a kid.
The one-story ranch house looks smaller than I remember. The white pine in the front yard that I used to climb as a boy looms a dozen feet higher than the roof. The locust tree I helped my father plant fifty years ago is now almost as tall as the pine. The front lawn, which once felt so expansive, now looks hardly large enough for a game of tag.
The home’s current owner invites me in. The slate floor in the living room has been replaced with carpeting, and the kitchen has been modernized. As we walk down the hall toward the back of the house, I am flooded with memories — the games my brother and I played, the fights, the chases, the nooks and crannies we hid in for hide-and-seek.
At the back of the house, where the playroom once was, there is now a short hall and two smaller bedrooms. We go into the first bedroom — decorated in pink, a color virtually nonexistent in the male-dominated home of my childhood — and the owner opens a closet door. He clears away some shoes and dolls from the carpeted floor. “Listen.” He raps the carpet with his knuckles, producing a dull, echoing clang. “We never had it removed.”
He means the metal trapdoor. He can’t show it to me without pulling up the carpet, but it evokes a memory just the same — of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the years after, when the threat of nuclear war had diminished, and the trapdoor practically vanished under toys and balls and other sports equipment.
The trapdoor has been permanently sealed. No one will ever open it and climb down, as I did as a teenager to show my friends the shelter. Instead there is an outside entrance to the shelter now, and, as the owner leads me out to the backyard, he asks me about the stories the neighbors told him when he and his family moved in twenty years ago.