Fallout

  There’s still nothing on the radio except bent sound and static.

  Mrs. Shaw smirks. “Is there something you don’t want to miss, Richard?”

  “We’re supposed to listen to the Civil Defense channels,” Dad replies. “They’re supposed to tell us what to do.”

  “Aren’t we doing what we’re supposed to do?” Mrs. Shaw asks ironically.

  “It would be nice to think that someone else has survived,” Mr. McGovern adds.

  “They have,” Dad says. “Lots of people built shelters.”

  “Lots,” Mrs. Shaw echoes, like she’s laughing at him.

  We hear a soft, low groan. Dad squats down close to Mom. “Gwen?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  He tries her name again and again and touches her face gently, but she doesn’t respond. Then he hangs his head.

  “She hasn’t had anything to drink,” Janet says.

  Dad nods.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Sparky asks anxiously.

  “I hope so,” Dad answers, but his heart isn’t in it.

  It doesn’t feel as chilly in the shelter as before. Maybe because of our combined body heat or maybe we’re just getting used to the chill. But when Dad cranks the ventilator, Mrs. Shaw complains that it’s cold.

  “Who builds a bomb shelter and doesn’t put warm clothes in it?” she asks in a tone Mom sometimes used when the silverware at a restaurant looked dirty.

  The question looms over us in the dank, dim air. I brace myself for Dad to get angry, but he doesn’t.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, Stephanie,” he replies evenly. “Maybe I never got around to putting warm clothes down here and didn’t rinse the water tank or test the radio because . . . even though I built this shelter, I never wanted to believe that this could really happen.”

  “Then why build it in the first place?” Mr. Shaw asks.

  Dad throws up his hands. “I was trying to plan for something completely illogical. Why don’t you tell me, Steven. How do you apply logic to something that makes no sense?”

  Mr. Shaw’s forehead furrows. He looks at the floor and doesn’t answer.

  Mothers had breasts. When you got hurt, they would press the side of your head against their bosoms, which were sometimes soft and comforting, and sometimes rough if under their blouse they were wearing a bra, which was the thing women wore to hold their breasts in place. Boys and men didn’t really have anything that needed to be held in place, except when you played Little League, you were supposed to wear a jock with a protective cup so that you didn’t get whacked in the nuts by the ball.

  “Watch this,” Ronnie said, and crossed the street to where Paula was standing beside her bike, talking to Linda. He went behind Paula, reached for the back of her shirt, pulled something underneath, and then let go. Even across the street, you could hear the snapping sound.

  Paula cried out. Her bike crashed to the sidewalk, and she ran home.

  Ronnie raced back toward me. “Come on!”

  I jumped up and ran after him, suspecting that he’d just done something that would get him in trouble again. At least this time, I could say I had nothing to do with it.

  Old Lady Lester’s backyard was a good place to hide because she stayed inside all the time. Ronnie and I sat down on the grass.

  “What’d you do?” I asked.

  “Snapped her bra.” Ronnie grinned.

  “Why?”

  Ronnie stopped grinning. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. Girls wear bras and boys snap ’em.”

  “I never heard of anyone doing that before,” I said.

  “We didn’t know any girls who wore bras before.”

  “My mom wears a bra.”

  Ronnie looked at me like I was crazy. “You can’t snap your mother’s bra.”

  “Why not?” Not that I ever would. But I mostly wanted to hear what kind of reason Ronnie would come up with.

  “You just can’t.” He pulled up a clover and started to suck on it. “Know how to tell how big a woman’s breasts are?”

  “By looking at them?”

  “By how thick their bra strap is.”

  “Why can’t you tell by looking at them?”

  “Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can’t. It depends on what they’re wearing. But you can always tell by the strap. You see a strap like this”— Ronnie spread his thumb and index finger until there was about three inches between them —“and those are really big breasts.”

  He paused and studied me. I stared down at the grass.

  “Ever seen a breast?” he asked. “I mean, for real?”

  I felt my face get hot and tugged at some hairs behind my right ear.

  He gave me an astonished look. “What about your mom’s?”

  “She keeps them hidden.”

  “What about by accident? Like walking into her bedroom when she’s getting dressed?”

  “We’re supposed to knock.”

  “Haven’t you ever forgotten?”

  “No.”

  Ronnie smirked. “You’re allowed to forget once in a while.”

  “You mean . . . on purpose?” I asked, astonished.

  He nodded enthusiastically. It was a shocking suggestion. Sneak into your own mother’s bedroom to look at her breasts? Only someone as sick as Ronnie would think of something like that.

  “You’ve . . . done that?” I asked.

  “Of course. Every kid has.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone doing it.”

  Ronnie harrumphed. “Just like you’ve never heard of snapping bras. Come on, you think Freak O’ Nature or Johnny is going to tell the whole world he snuck into his mom’s bedroom so he could look at her breasts?”

  “Then how do you know?” I asked.

  “I told you. Every kid does it. The best time is in the morning when she’s getting dressed. Or on Saturday nights before she goes out. Moms always take baths and then try on lots of different clothes before they go out, so your chances are pretty good then.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Sneaking looks at your mother’s breasts had to be wrong.

  “Scott, we could all be dead tomorrow,” Ronnie said solemnly. “You want to die without ever seeing a breast?”

  Mom can sit up if someone helps her. She’ll drink and eat if you put water or food to her lips. Janet helps Dad take care of her. Sometimes Dad kneels in front of Mom and talks, but she just sits and stares blankly.

  “Would you try?” Dad asks me.

  I don’t answer because I’m afraid. I’m not even sure what I’m afraid of.

  “Come on, Scott,” Dad says. “And you, too, Edward.”

  Sparky bites his lip and shakes his head. He’s also scared.

  “It’s important,” Dad says. “Maybe she’ll recognize you.”

  Sparky takes my hand. He’s never done that before. We face Mom.

  “Say something,” Dad says.

  “Hi, Mom,” Sparky says.

  She doesn’t react.

  “Mom?” I say.

  No response.

  Sparky starts to sniff, and Dad puts his arms around him. I feel like crying, too. Now I know what I was afraid of — that she wouldn’t know us, either.

  Ronnie and I sit together on the bunk. Our fight is still on my mind, but most of my anger has passed. He’s my best friend. Right now, he’s my only friend. Maybe the only friend I’ll have for the rest of my life. Before the fight, we’d never hit each other, but we’d disagreed and gotten mad plenty of times. Isn’t a fistfight just more of the same?

  He presses his fingertips together under his nose like a squirrel eating a nut and sniffs. Then he leans close and whispers in my ear, “Feels like jail.”

  He’s right, with all of us crammed into this tiny room with bare gray concrete walls. I whisper back, “But they get more to eat.”

  Ronnie chuckles. The others frown when they see us whispering. Up till now, everyone’s said what they’re thinking out loud. And even though R
onnie and I are just talking kid stuff, I have a feeling we shouldn’t look like we’re sharing secrets.

  I hate being hungry. I hate what’s happened to my mother. I hate being down here in this smelly, chilly, damp, windowless room, with nothing to do. I hate that everyone has to go to the bathroom in front of everyone else and nobody has any privacy. I hate feeling sad about my friends and everyone else who was up there. I hate that this happened, and I hate whoever made it happen.

  Dad says we should exercise. “We need to keep our strength up for what comes next.”

  “And just what do you think comes next?” asks Mrs. Shaw.

  “Rebuilding.”

  Ronnie’s mother rolls her eyes. “You really think life’s going back to the way it used to be?”

  “There won’t be that much destruction outside the blast zone,” Dad replies. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  Mrs. Shaw slowly shakes her head. “What are you going to do for food, Richard? Go to the store? There isn’t going to be any food. The animals are dead. The farmers who raised them are dead. There’ll be no electricity, no gasoline. If we don’t starve, we’ll freeze to death. Don’t you understand? The world . . . has been destroyed.”

  “Steph, the kids,” Mr. Shaw cautions.

  “What difference does it make? They’re going to find out soon enough,” Mrs. Shaw says scornfully.

  Maybe we’re supposed to understand that the grown-ups are on edge, but it’s still upsetting when they argue. What’s even more upsetting is suspecting that Ronnie’s mom is right. I tug behind my ear and glance at Sparky, who watches and listens.

  “Let me tell you how you’re going to spend the rest of your life, Richard,” Mrs. Shaw goes on. “You’ll be searching for whatever food hasn’t been contaminated or gone bad. You’ll be looking for clean water. You’ll probably wind up migrating south, because without heat, the winters up here won’t be survivable. And you want to know what’s going to happen when you head south? You’re going to run into all the other survivors who’ve had the same idea. Only then there’ll be even less food and water to go around, and —”

  “Dad!” Sparky cries out, and runs into his arms. “Is that true?”

  “Things will be different from before,” Dad says, hugging him and glaring hard at Mrs. Shaw. “But right now we don’t know how.”

  Playing Parcheesi gets boring, so we go back to checkers. Then that gets boring, and we try Go Fish. But eventually we get to the point where we don’t want to play any games at all. The boredom is bad because there’s nothing to do except wonder and worry about what’s going to happen next. The hunger pangs are worse, but sometimes they take my mind off the future. The bare patch behind my ear must be the size of a tennis ball, but I can’t stop tugging.

  Mom just sits with that blank look like a marionette with the strings cut. Sometimes I wonder if she can think but can’t move her arms and legs. But she can move her eyes. Only she hardly ever does.

  “I can’t stand it,” Mr. McGovern says. “I need to eat something.”

  “We’ll never make it if we don’t ration,” Dad says.

  “Then maybe we shouldn’t be feeding all these mouths,” says Mr. McGovern.

  The words hang in the clammy air.

  “What do you mean?” Dad asks.

  “I think you know.”

  Again there’s silence, as if something serious has happened. Mrs. Shaw’s eyes dart from Dad to Mr. McGovern, and it feels like it does in school when a kid does something really bad. Finally, Dad says, “I think you better watch yourself, Herb.”

  But Mr. McGovern isn’t finished. “You didn’t come this far just to fail now, did you, Richard? If hunger forces us out of here too soon, it’ll all be for naught.”

  My heart begins to thump. It sounds like Mr. McGovern is suggesting that some people leave. But who?

  “We could take a simple vote,” he continues. “The majority rules.”

  “Over my dead body,” Dad says.

  “You were more than willing to let people die so that you and your family could live. You’ll still have your boys.”

  He’s talking about Mom!

  Dad is shaking his head in disbelief. “You can’t be serious, Herb.”

  “I can’t?” Mr. McGovern laughs bitterly. “I’m talking about survival, Richard. Isn’t that what this is all about? Isn’t that why you built this shelter? And in this situation, you might as well add ‘of the fittest,’ because like Stephanie said, that’s what it’s going to be once we get out of here.”

  “That’s enough!” Dad yells, and starts pacing like a tiger in a cage. My heart beats faster, and my forehead grows hot. Are they going to fight?

  Mr. McGovern turns to the Shaws. “Do you think it’s enough? It’s not as if we’re guests here anymore. We’re all in this together, and we all have an equal say. I think Richard’s right about the food. We probably don’t have enough to make it until the radiation gets down to a safe level. But with two less mouths to feed, maybe we could.”

  Two less mouths? Who else is he talking about? He said Dad would still have Sparky and me, and he sure wouldn’t be talking about his daughter or the Shaws. . . . That leaves Janet.

  Just a few months ago, the worst, most scary thing in life was when Dad got angry and came after me with the paddle. After that, the scariest thing was the Russians attacking. Now it’s being in this bomb shelter with grown-ups arguing about who should live and die. Forget what Mrs. Shaw said about how hard life will be when we get out of here. What will happen if Mr. McGovern and the Shaws gang up on Dad? They could force Mom and Janet out, and then what would stop them from forcing Dad and Sparky and me out as well? I know Dad’s stronger than either Mr. Shaw or Mr. McGovern, and I know what’s in the green box on the shelf, but what if they wait until he’s asleep? And they could probably make Ronnie fight me, and I’d be sure to lose.

  Dad stops his tiger prowl beside Mom’s bunk. “I won’t hear another word of this. I said over my dead body, and I meant it.” He faces Mr. McGovern. “Have you lost your mind, talking like this in front of these children? In front of this woman?” He gestures to Janet. “In front of your own daughter?” He gestures to Paula.

  “To quote Charles Darwin, ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It’s the one that is the most adaptable to change,’” Mr. McGovern shoots back. “It looks to me like we can either adapt to the reality of this situation or starve to death.”

  “We’re not going to die,” Dad counters. “As long as we have water, we should be able to survive until the radiation levels go down.”

  “You hope,” Mr. McGovern grouses.

  Dad gives him a stern look. “Yes, Herb, I do.”

  Early each morning, the newspaper boy tossed the paper onto our driveway. Normally Dad would pick it up and read it on the train to the city, where he worked for an insurance company. But lately he went out before breakfast and brought it inside to read with Mom. Sparky and I would come into the kitchen, and they’d be sitting at the table with the paper open, coffee cups in their hands, and serious expressions on their faces.

  When I asked what was going on, they either said “nothing” or gave some vague answer about the Russians and Cuba. And Mom would almost always add, “It’s nothing you should worry about.”

  One night when Dad came in to kiss me good night, I asked, “What if the Russians attack when you’re not home?”

  “You’ll have to go into the shelter without me.”

  “But what’ll happen to you?”

  “There are lots of shelters in the city. In the basements of buildings and the subway.”

  “So we could all meet again after the war?”

  Dad nodded. “That’s the plan.”

  That was good news because it meant the only times Dad might have a problem was when he was on the train going to and from work. “So if they drop the bomb and you’re at work, after the war should we come to the city, or wi
ll you come back here?”

  Dad ran his tongue over his front teeth and thought. “Things in New York could be pretty chaotic. You should stay out here.” He got quiet for a moment. “You and Edward riding your bikes to school every day?”

  I looked down at the bedcovers. A few weeks before, Dad had made us promise we would.

  “I thought we agreed,” he said.

  “Sparky quit after the third day, and I don’t like riding all the way there alone.”

  Dad looked off. “Well, I guess I can understand that.”

  “So what do we do if there’s a war and we’re at school?”

  “Try to get home as fast as you can.”

  The next day after school, I laid a wooden yardstick end over end, marking yards in chalk on the sidewalk in front of our house. When I thought I had enough, I went back and started counting them. “One, two, three.”

  “Seven, six, eight, twelve,” Sparky began spitting out numbers until I forgot where I was. I shook my fist at him. “You want to get hurt?” He backed away and I started over, numbering each yard with chalk. I’d just finished marking off fifty yards when Ronnie and Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? came by.

  Ronnie looked at the yardstick and the chalk numbers going up to fifty. Then he saw my stopwatch lying on the grass. He turned to my brother. “What’s he up to?”

  Sparky shook his head like he wasn’t allowed to say, which was what I told him if anyone asked.

  Ronnie popped a few Sugar Babies in his mouth and smacked his lips. “Man, these are good.” He held the bag out to Sparky. “Want some?”

  Five seconds later, Ronnie knew exactly what I was up to: trying to see how long it would take if I had to run all the way home from school.

  “Scott, anyone ever tell you you’re crazy?” he asked.

  “Yeah. You, about a thousand times.”

  “Make it a thousand and one,” Ronnie said. “You’re crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s the point?” he asked. “Didn’t you see those pictures of Hiroshima? All those burned-up and deformed people. Why would you want to be around for that?”

  “It’s better than dying,” I said, not because I was really sure that it was, but because it was the only answer I could think of.