Fallout

Clang! On the other side of the shield wall, the trapdoor slams shut, and I hear a clank as if a bolt has been thrown.

  It is pitch-black in the shelter.

  The momentary silence is broken by Paula’s sobs, then into the darkness come ragged breaths — Dad’s and Mr. Shaw’s. From around the shield wall come thuds of fists drumming against the trapdoor. A muffled female voice cries hysterically, “Richard! Richard!”

  It’s horrible. I cover my ears, but it doesn’t help. More thuds and frantic begging join in. “Please!” “For the love of God!” “Don’t let us die!”

  “I’m scared!” Sparky wails. In the blackness, his sobs join Paula’s.

  “Don’t listen,” Mrs. Shaw gasps, as if such a thing might be possible.

  Despite the panicked shouts coming from the other side of the trapdoor, there is a strange stillness in the shelter.

  “Scott?” Dad says somberly somewhere in the dark.

  “Dad?” Ronnie says at the same time his mother says, “Steven?”

  “I’m here,” Mr. Shaw answers, breathing heavily.

  Loud clanks and thumps fill our ears as those left above beat at the trapdoor. But it is made of quarter-inch iron plate. Nothing short of a bazooka could blast through it.

  “Make it stop,” Sparky pleads.

  But it doesn’t. There’s no getting away from the agonized cries of those who’ve been locked out. Stomach cramped, heart racing, I fight back tears and wish the banging and shouting would go away.

  Now there’s a new, more distant sound . . . growing steadily louder like thunder. Then a roar, and one last awful scream that disappears into deafening clatter and crashing. In the dark below, I cower over Sparky and imagine something like a tornado above obliterating everything in its path.

  It rumbles over us, followed by a few muffled thumps.

  And then . . . quiet.

  “Keep an eye out,” Ronnie told Freak O’ Nature, and continued up the Lewandowskis’ driveway. Feeling light-headed with misgivings, I followed, wondering if Ronnie felt that way, too. He had to know that stealing was wrong. Was a Sara Lee frozen cheesecake really worth this much anxiety?

  At the garage door, I glanced back at Freak O’ Nature, hoping he would signal that someone was coming and we should abandon this unlawful endeavor. But he wasn’t even looking at us. Instead he was staring down at his radio as if watching the words come out.

  Ronnie took hold of the garage-door handle. The door creaked upward, revealing a shadowy interior that smelled of car oil and dry grass and was crammed with bicycles, toy carriages, and Hula-Hoops. Without a word, he marched toward the back. The freezer was one of those horizontal models, and a small cloud of chilled white vapor rose into our faces when Ronnie lifted the top. The inner walls were caked white with ice, and it was filled with rectangular packages of chicken pot pies, frozen vegetables, Swanson TV dinners, and the treasure that we sought, Sara Lee frozen cheesecakes. Ronnie picked up a box, covered with a thin film of ice crystals.

  And that’s when the Lewandowskis’ station wagon pulled in.

  “Turn on a light!” Sparky sobs. Paula’s still crying, too. It’s impossibly dark.

  “Give me a moment,” Dad says wearily, his words interrupted by deep breaths.

  Above us, there’s only silence, as if the world has stopped.

  Or disappeared.

  “Please, Dad?” Sparky implores.

  “Yes, Edward,” Dad answers in his soft voice. There’s a faint rustle in the blackness as he feels around for a light.

  “Mom?” I say.

  She doesn’t answer. I wonder if Janet’s still holding her. I’d give anything to hear her reassuring voice.

  Paula continues to sob in the dark. It’s just her and her dad. Not her mom or brother. My stomach twists. I hate to think of what’s happened to them. Our mom may be hurt, but at least she’s here.

  There’s a soft slithering sound like Dad sliding his hands along the wall. “Everybody be still,” he says. “There’s a flashlight around here somewhere.”

  Clinks and scratching follow, as if he’s touching things.

  Crash!

  People cry out in surprise. For one terrifying instant, I imagine that the roof of the shelter is caving in, then realize it was just a bunch of things falling from a shelf. Dad curses, then says, “Sorry, everyone.”

  “You all right?” Mr. Shaw asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Dad, please turn on a light,” Sparky begs.

  “I’m trying, Edward. Believe me, I’m trying.” There’s frustration in his voice. Things jangle and scrape as he sorts through whatever fell.

  “What about the light from before?” Sparky asks.

  I don’t want Dad to get angry, which he sometimes does when we ask too many questions. So I tell Sparky, “It won’t work. There’s no electricity anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  There’s a clunk and Dad grunts, “Damn it!” as if he banged his head.

  “Are you okay?” This time it’s Mrs. Shaw who asks.

  “Yes.” But he sounds even more frustrated. Sometimes when he got this way in the house, I would hide in a closet.

  “Why isn’t there electricity?” Sparky asks.

  “Because the bomb blew everything up,” I tell him.

  “I didn’t hear a bomb,” my brother says.

  “Be quiet,” Dad snaps. “I’m trying to think.”

  “But I didn’t hear a bomb,” Sparky whines, his voice breaking. “Just turn on the light.”

  “Quiet!” Dad bellows.

  Sparky starts crying again. Fearing Dad will get angrier and yell even more, I pull my brother tighter to me and shush him the way Mom would. More clinking and scratching follows. Then, finally, a click and a light goes on.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, then I see Dad near the bunks, shining the beam from a long silver flashlight on Mom, whose head is on Janet’s lap. My breath catches; there’s a big red stain on Janet’s robe. Mom’s hair is dark and gummy, and in the dim light her skin looks almost gray.

  “Mom!” Sparky wails rawly. He bursts out of my grasp and flies toward her, but Dad catches him.

  “She’s going to be okay,” he says, swinging the flashlight beam away. I bite my tongue not to say what I’m thinking, which is that she doesn’t look like she’s going to be okay. Dad has to wrestle Sparky, who’s still struggling to get to Mom. “We have to leave her alone, Edward,” he says softly. “We have to let her get better.” He holds my little brother gently but firmly.

  “Listen to your father,” Janet tells him.

  “But what’s wrong with her?” Sparky asks anxiously, craning to see around Dad.

  “Mr. Porter, is there a first-aid kit?” Janet asks.

  Dad aims the flashlight at some shelves. “Get it, Scott.”

  I rise, and that’s when I notice Mr. McGovern and Paula near the shield wall. Paula’s curled in his arms and weeping miserably. Mr. McGovern hugs her, his eyes glistening.

  They’re half a family.

  It’s . . . horrible.

  “Run!” Ronnie yelled.

  We sprinted around the Lewandowskis’ station wagon — past the astonished faces of Mrs. Lewandowski, Linda, and the rest of the brood — and out into the sunlight, where there was no sign of Freak O’ Nature. I didn’t understand why we were running. Mrs. Lewandowski had seen us. Lest there be any doubt, she now stood at the mouth of the garage and called, “Ronnie? Scott? What’s going on?”

  Being a dutiful child who’d been taught to answer grown-ups, I began to slow, but Ronnie grunted, “Don’t stop!”

  So I sped up again.

  With the cheesecake box tucked into the crook of his arm like a football, Ronnie led the way. On the sidewalk ahead of us was Freak O’ Nature, who’d abandoned his lookout post and was walking home with the transistor radio pressed to his ear. For a moment, I wondered if Ronnie was running after him, angry that Freak O’ Nature had gone AWOL. But he ran right pa
st him and kept going.

  As I sprinted past Freak O’ Nature, he asked, “Where’re you going?”

  “We got caught!” I gasped.

  Ronnie ran another hundred yards and then slowed to a jog. I would have gained on him, but I was winded and slowing as well. Soon we were walking about fifteen yards apart. A stitch had started to cramp in my right side.

  “Wait.” I gulped in pain. “She saw us. She called our names.”

  But Ronnie kept going — down the sidewalk . . . across Freak O’ Nature’s front yard . . . around the side of his house . . . and into the backyard, where he plopped down under a maple tree. I flopped down opposite him, massaging the stitch in my side.

  Neither of us spoke. Ronnie sat staring at the Sara Lee cheesecake box in his lap.

  A minute later, Freak O’ Nature joined us, dropping into an Indian-style position.

  “Thanks a lot,” Ronnie growled.

  “For what?” asked Freak O’ Nature.

  “I told you to keep an eye out.”

  “I did.”

  “For the Lewandowskis.”

  “Oh.” Freak O’ Nature mulled this over. “Sorry.”

  “She’s probably telling our mothers right now.” I imagined Mrs. Lewandowski on the party line, reporting the incident to both our moms at once. “We’re dead.”

  “You could give it back,” suggested Freak O’ Nature.

  “No!” Ronnie clutched the box as if it would shoot right back to the freezer if he let go.

  “It’s just a stupid cheesecake,” I said.

  To end the debate, Ronnie tore open the box and peeled back the round tinfoil lid, revealing the light-brown-rimmed yellow cake inside. I wished I felt hungry, but mostly I felt dread. Getting caught stealing surely qualified as a spankable offense.

  Prying the cake out, Ronnie gripped the sides and tried to break off a piece, but in its frozen state, it wouldn’t even bend. He bared his teeth in the effort, then finally smashed the cake against his knee. It broke sort of in half, and he handed the smaller piece to me and kept the larger for himself.

  “What about me?” Freak O’ Nature asked.

  “You abandoned your post,” Ronnie said.

  Freak O’ Nature didn’t reply. He rarely argued with anyone.

  The chunk Ronnie had given me bore the indentations of his fingers and was covered with his fingerprints. Ronnie bit into the corner of his piece where the filling met the graham-cracker crust. He held the bite in his mouth for a moment, probably letting the cheesecake soften, and then closed his eyes, a blissful smile appearing on his lips as if to rub in Freak O’ Nature’s loss.

  Somehow, despite all the regret I felt about my participation in this terrible crime, and the apprehension about being punished, my appetite crept back. I found a corner of cake free of Ronnie’s fingerprints and took a nibble. The cheesecake was cold and creamy and delicious, and I bit off a little of the nutty brown crust to go along with it. Like a prisoner on death row, I began to savor my last meal.

  The medical kit is the size of a lunch box, with a red cross on it. Next to it is a green box I’ve seen once before, in Dad’s closet. I know what’s in that box, and finding it here catches me by surprise and makes me uncomfortable. I look away and take the first-aid kit to Dad.

  He hands me the flashlight. “Keep it aimed on her.”

  I shine the beam at Mom’s face, which is gray with some black-and-blue marks near her ears. As Dad rips open a gauze pad, then gently lifts Mom’s head and presses the pad against the wound, my stomach coils with anxiety. Her hair in back is all dark reddish and stuck together. As if Dad knows what I’m thinking, he says, “It looks bad, but head wounds bleed a lot.”

  “Uh-huh.” I agree, mostly because I don’t want him to get mad.

  “We’ll just have to wait until she wakes up,” he says, holding the gauze pad in place and pulling a long strip of white tape, which he starts to wrap around her head.

  “Mr. Porter?” Janet says.

  “Yes?” Dad looks up.

  “That’s not the way.”

  Their eyes meet for a moment, and then Dad nods and lets her take over.

  Janet takes a small pair of scissors from the first-aid kit and begins to cut the hair away from Mom’s wound.

  No one speaks. The snip, snip, snip of the scissors is the only sound in this little cement box of a room. Maybe there’s too much to think about. Paula and her dad must be thinking about Mrs. McGovern and Teddy. Is Ronnie thinking about his collie, Leader? What about the rest of our friends and neighbors, teachers, cousins, and grandparents? Did some of them find shelter in basements and tunnels and the other places with those black-and-yellow Civil Defense Fallout Shelter signs?

  Maybe some, but not everybody. Not the ones who were on the other side of the trapdoor.

  Huddled in the shadows with her husband and Ronnie, Mrs. Shaw quietly begins to sob.

  Snip, snip, snip . . . Dark clumps of hair fall to the concrete floor. Janet turns to Dad. “Could I have some water, Mr. Porter?”

  With a start, Dad snatches the flashlight from me and shines it up at a large red sausage-shaped metal tank hanging above us. Skinny brown pipes run into it from the ceiling. Rising quickly, he reaches up and turns some valves, then waits as if he’s expecting something. Everyone else looks up, too. Paula’s cheeks glisten with tears.

  “Come on,” Dad mutters at the tank, and I feel myself tense.

  Seconds pass. He stares intently. “Come on!”

  I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen, but it’s obvious from the way Dad’s acting that it’s important.

  “What is it?” Mr. Shaw asks.

  “The water tank. I was supposed to fill it.”

  “It can’t be too late, can it?” asks Mrs. Shaw while Dad shines the flashlight beam on a metal toolbox on the floor near the wall.

  “I don’t hear water running.” He flips the box open, pulls out a hammer, and starts tapping the pipes. Clank! Clank! Clank!

  Paula buries her face in her father’s shoulder. Dad stops and listens, then starts to hit the pipes harder. CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!

  Sparky covers his ears. “Stop! It’s too loud.”

  Dad listens again. In the glow of the flashlight, the sinews tighten in his neck and his temple pulses.

  CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!

  Despite the jarring racket, Mom lies perfectly still.

  By the time we’d licked the last traces of cheesecake from our fingers, the afternoon was descending toward evening, the shadows growing longer and deeper. The distant train whistle meant fathers were coming home from work. The sweet pleasure of the cheesecake vanished, replaced by the sour taste of dread.

  “The Yankees lost,” Freak O’ Nature said in his normal voice, not affecting any well-known television character, and looked at his watch. “I gotta go in. Are . . . you guys gonna say I had something to do with it?”

  Ronnie and I looked at each other and shook our heads. School-yard logic might have dictated that since he’d been part of the crime at the beginning, he was a tiny bit culpable, but spreading the blame probably wouldn’t reduce whatever punishment we would face at home.

  “Thanks.” With a smile of relief and gratitude, Freak O’ Nature stood up. Since we were in his backyard, Ronnie and I got up as well. As we started toward our homes, the train whistle blew again, sounding closer.

  “I’m gonna get it bad,” I said, trying not to step on the unlucky cracks in the sidewalk — a last-ditch effort to keep things from becoming worse.

  “We could all be dead tomorrow,” Ronnie said.

  Either way, I felt doomed.

  At the front door, Sparky was waiting with an expression of awe on his face. Even though he got into plenty of trouble himself, nothing thrilled and fascinated him more than when the ax was about to fall on me. Before he could say anything, I raised my hand and said, “I know.”

  But he had to say it anyway. “You’re in big trouble.” He grinned with del
ight.

  Mom came out of the kitchen wearing a blue apron and a frown on her face. Then she spoke the words that struck an even greater, or at least more immediate, fear than a Russian attack: “Go to your room until your father gets home.”

  Dad slumps down on the bunk kitty-corner to where Janet sits, still comforting Mom. The tension is gone. Either Dad’s tired or he’s decided that more banging on pipes won’t help. Sparky goes over and settles on his leg. I sit next to him, pressing my shoulder against his arm. In Dad’s hands, the flashlight makes a bright bull’s-eye against the wall of gray concrete blocks.

  “Mr. Porter?” Janet speaks softly.

  Dad shines the light back on Mom. Using a bandage and some alcohol from the first-aid kit, Janet wipes her hands, then starts cutting again.

  Snip, snip, snip . . .

  “Everyone we know,” Mrs. Shaw sniffs woefully. “Everyone!”

  Mr. McGovern mutters, “It’s unbelievable.”

  There are places I can’t stop my thoughts from going to: What about the others who were up there? The ones who didn’t get in? Were Paula’s mom and brother among them? Freak O’ Nature and his family? The Lewandowskis and Sinclairs? Were they all blinded and burned in the heat flash? Poisoned by radiation? Blown apart by the shock wave?

  Or are they still out there trying to avoid the fallout floating down out of the sky like poisonous gray snow? Dad said that if you weren’t in a shelter, the fallout would be unavoidable. Even if you managed not to get any on you or breathe it in, it would still get into the water and food. At the end of World War II, the United States dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and hundreds of thousands of Japanese people died from the explosions and the radiation that followed. And those bombs were tiny compared to the hydrogen bombs that the United States and Russia have now.

  Thinking of my friends brings a deep, sick, sad sensation. Freak O’ Nature, Linda, Puddin’ Belly Wright, and Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? could be lying on the ground above us right now, writhing in pain. Shouldn’t we go up and look for them? But I know what Dad would say. We’d only be exposing ourselves to the radiation. Then we’d die, too.