Fallout

  “You know about radiation poisoning?” asked Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? He was in the smart class at school and never got into trouble. And he was nice. Not brownnose-teacher’s-pet-nice like Paula, but nice and polite in a sincere way that made everybody like him. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was a good athlete who could throw and catch and run really fast. The only thing wrong with Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? was that there was nothing wrong with him.

  “A little,” I answered.

  “What is it?” asked Sparky.

  “It’s from the radioactive fallout,” Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? explained. “After the mushroom cloud, dust and ash float down out of the sky, and it’s full of radiation, and when you touch it or breathe it into your lungs, it makes you sick. Your hair falls out and you throw up and —”

  “Ahhhhh!” Sparky let out a cry and ran toward the house with his hands over his ears.

  “Did I scare him?” asked Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny?

  “He has this thing about throwing up,” I explained. “Even if you just mention it, he starts to cry.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? said. And the thing was, he wasn’t just saying it. He really was sorry.

  Ronnie pointed at the fifty yards I’d marked off. “You gonna try it?”

  I gave him the stopwatch, then crouched down like a sprinter, pressing my hands against the rough concrete. “Anytime.”

  “Ready . . . set . . . go!” Ronnie yelled.

  I took off as fast as I could. When I’d passed the fifty-yard line, I stopped and bent over with my hands on my thighs. “How’d I do?” I panted.

  Back at the start line, Ronnie shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Didn’t you time me?”

  Ronnie looked down at the stopwatch. “Is that what this is for?”

  “Very funny.” I walked back to the start line, took the stopwatch, and gave it to Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? “No tricks, okay?”

  Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? never played tricks on people. Once again, I crouched down. “Anytime.”

  “On your mark, get set, go!”

  I went.

  “Seven point four seconds,” Johnny called out after I’d passed the finish line.

  Still breathing hard, I took out a piece of paper on which I’d prepared some calculations. There were 2,640 yards in a mile and a half, and divided by 50, it was 52.8. If you multiplied 52.8 by 7.4 seconds, you got 390.72 seconds. “I can make it home in about six and a half minutes,” I said.

  This was good because there might be things I’d need to do before I went down into the bomb shelter. Like go into my room and get the latest MAD magazine if I hadn’t finished reading it. And get the Halloween candy if Mom had already bought some. After all, Halloween was less than two weeks away and it would be a shame to see all that candy wasted.

  “What about Sparky?” asked Ronnie.

  I hadn’t thought of that. Sparky was slower than me, but not that much slower. “I think he’ll make it in time.”

  “Can I see that?” Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? gestured for the pencil and paper. I gave it to him and lay back on the grass and looked at the clouds. Today they were thin and wispy, but I was thinking about a mushroom cloud. The only picture I’d ever seen of one had looked dark gray and ominous and was no doubt filled with radioactive fallout.

  “You do what we talked about?” Ronnie asked while Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? was busy scribbling on the paper.

  “Huh?”

  “What we talked about after I pulled the thing that snapped? And then we ran behind Old Lady Lester’s house?”

  I shook my head.

  Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? looked up from his calculations. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You could always look at your father’s Playboys,” Ronnie said.

  “I don’t think my father has any,” I said.

  “All fathers have Playboys,” Ronnie insisted. “Look in his closet. If they’re not there, look in his dresser drawer under his shirts.”

  “Does your father have Playboys?” I asked Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny?

  He shook his head and circled a number on the paper. “I hate to say this, Scott, but it’s going to take you a lot longer to run home from school.”

  “Why?” I asked, unsettled by how he’d stressed a lot.

  “The fastest man alive can run a mile in about four minutes. Even if he could continue at that same pace for another half mile, which is doubtful, it would take him six minutes.”

  “Uh-oh.” Ronnie grinned. “You’re probably about a thousand times slower than the fastest man alive. If they drop the bomb while we’re at school, you’ll never make it home in time.”

  This was really bad news.

  “I’d look for those Playboys if I were you,” Ronnie said.

  The talk of making people leave the shelter has stopped, but it doesn’t feel like it’s over. A little while ago, after they fed Mom, Dad put his hand on Janet’s shoulder as if to reassure her that nothing bad would happen. I guess as long as we’re hungry, what Mr. McGovern said will probably be in the backs of everyone’s minds.

  In the meantime, we have to adapt to less and less privacy. When someone has to go potty, two people hold up a sheet. It’s not just for the person who’s going, but for the rest of us, so we don’t have to watch.

  When Sparky and I go, Dad reminds us to use as little toilet paper as possible. The way he says it makes me think he’s trying to remind the others as well, because he can’t really tell Paula or Ronnie or the other grown-ups what to do. But with ten people, the toilet paper seems to go fast no matter how careful we are.

  We quickly get used to the potty noises that made us giggle up there. If a kid in class farted, everyone would laugh and titter. But down here no one cares anymore.

  Dad and Janet take Mom to the toilet bucket often in case she has to go. They turn her on her bunk so she doesn’t get bedsores. Now and then Dad crouches in front of her and speaks, but he gets no reaction.

  Sometimes Sparky sits next to Mom and holds her limp hand. And once in a while, he’ll reach for Janet’s hand. When he does that, you might catch a frown on Mr. McGovern’s face. Ronnie keeps pressing his fingertips under his nose and sniffing. Paula picks her nose but tries to hide it. Mr. Shaw sticks his finger in his ear and rotates it, digging out wax. Maybe they’ve always done these things in public and I just never noticed, but now there’s nothing else to notice. There’s no outside, no windows, no TV screens. Nothing to look at but each other. There are a few books and magazines, but if someone uses the flashlight to read them, there’s no light for anyone else. We take turns resting on the bunks and sitting on the floor and at the table. We’ve played about a million games of checkers and Parcheesi and Sorry! and Go Fish. When no one talks, we listen to the groans and cries of empty stomachs.

  And I can’t help wondering if we’ve even been down here for three days yet.

  Once a week, Janet came to clean our house and babysit Sparky and me so that our parents could go out. She’d sleep on a cot in the laundry room and go home in the morning with a Negro man who drove a dented green car with a cracked windshield. Sometimes when Sparky and I left for school in the morning, the car would be parked in front of our house and the man would be inside it, waiting.

  One afternoon back in September, I was playing with my plastic army men on the white shag carpet when Mom called, “Get in the car, kids. We’re driving Janet home.”

  “She’s not staying over?” Sparky asked.

  “No, your father and I aren’t going out tonight.”

  Mom and Janet got in the front, and Sparky and I sat in the back.

  “You’ll have to tell me how to get there,” Mom said as we backed out of the driveway.

  “I’m not exactly sure, Mrs. Porter. Elmore does the driving.”

  “Oh, I know,” Mom said. “
I’m that way when Richard drives.”

  It sounded strange when Mom referred to Dad by his first name. She seemed to know where to go for a while, but then we got to a corner and she stopped and glanced at Janet.

  “I think it’s a right turn, Mrs. Porter.”

  It was starting to feel like an adventure. At the next light, Mom asked, “Does this look familiar?”

  Janet looked out the window and pulled her lips in. “’Fraid not, Mrs. Porter.”

  “I wonder if we missed a turn,” Mom said. The light changed, and we had to start going again. At an Esso gas station at the next corner, Mom pulled in. “I’ll be right back.”

  While she was in the office, a man in dark-green coveralls strolled past our car. His hands were almost black with grime and grease. When he stopped and squinted at us, Janet looked down. The man took a dirty rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands. “Everything okay?” he asked me.

  I nodded. The man glanced at Janet again and then walked toward a car waiting for gas.

  Mom came out of the office and got into the car. “It’s a little farther.” She started to drive.

  “A man asked if everything was okay,” Sparky said from the back.

  “Why?”

  “I think because of Janet.”

  Janet stared down at her lap again.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said.

  “It’s not your fault, Mrs. Porter.”

  I wasn’t sure if Mom was sorry that Sparky had said it or sorry that the man had asked in the first place.

  “Oh, there! There!” Janet suddenly got excited and pointed. “That’s the street!”

  Mom turned so quickly that the tires screeched, and we all slid to the right. “Aha!” She let out a gasping laugh that sounded like half relief and half surprise that the car didn’t wind up on the sidewalk. Lining the street were small brick houses with white shutters. The houses were so close together that there was barely room for a driveway between them. The small yards had low metal fences and gates. In our neighborhood one lawn blended into the next, and no one had a fence. Some Negro boys around my age were playing baseball in the street, and inside a gated yard, some girls were playing teatime with dolls around a small table. The boys eyed us warily as we passed. When my friends and I played on the street, we rarely looked to see who was in the cars that went by.

  “There.” Janet pointed to the right. “The one with the sunflowers.”

  Mom pulled to the curb. Parked in the driveway was the dented green car with the cracked windshield. The hood was raised, and tools were scattered on the ground. Tall yellow sunflowers lined the yard. A tricycle lay on the grass.

  Janet gathered her things. “Thank you so much for driving me home, Mrs. Porter.”

  “It was no bother, Janet.” Mom looked at the flowers. “How pretty.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Porter,” Janet said as she got out. “Elmore loves to roast the seeds, but he better pick them quick before the birds get ’em.”

  The kids in the street were still watching us. It was hard to imagine how they could play when the balls must have constantly rolled under the parked cars that lined the curb.

  Then I noticed that two small faces had come to a window in Janet’s house. It felt like High Noon when the bad men rode into town and everyone peeked from behind curtains.

  Mom started back the way we came. When we passed the Esso station, the man in the dark green coveralls was pumping gas.

  “Why did he ask if everything was okay?” Sparky said.

  I expected Mom to say she didn’t know, but instead she said, “That’s just the way some people are, Edward.”

  “They don’t like Negroes sitting in the same car as white people?” I asked.

  Mom nodded.

  “I thought that was only in the South,” I said.

  “I think there’s a little bit of it everywhere.”

  Dad tries the radio again: nothing.

  “Could it mean the Russians won?” Ronnie asks.

  “Nobody won,” mutters Mr. Shaw. “We destroyed them, and they destroyed us.”

  “Maybe not,” Dad says. “Maybe Kennedy ordered our side not to retaliate.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Mr. McGovern.

  “There’s no sense in destroying everything,” says Dad.

  Paula’s father laughs contemptuously. “Ridiculous. He’d never let the Russians win.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s obvious you’re no student of history, Richard.” Mr. McGovern sounds like he thinks he’s so smart and Dad’s so dumb. Now I know where Paula gets it. “Great men think of their place in history. They think about what they’ll be remembered for. You really believe Kennedy would risk being remembered as the leader of the free world who refused to fight back? As the coward who allowed the Communists to take over? You actually think the president is hiding in a bunker somewhere waiting to surrender?”

  I hate the way Mr. McGovern talks to Dad, but what I hate almost as much is how what he says sounds right. When Dad doesn’t reply, I wonder if he also thinks Mr. McGovern is right.

  “If the Russians did win, would we be their prisoners?” Ronnie asks.

  Mr. McGovern snorts. “Just what they need. More mouths to feed. I suppose they’d need men and women for work camps, but they’re no strangers to atrocities. Anyone who’s familiar with their actions during the war would know that.”

  Sparky tugs at Dad. “What’s he mean?”

  “Nothing.” Dad shushes him.

  “Far from it,” says Mr. McGovern.

  Dad gets to his feet and steps toward Mr. McGovern, who is sitting with Paula. You can feel everyone grow tense. “That’s it, Herb,” Dad growls. “If you know what’s good for you.”

  But Mr. McGovern doesn’t look afraid. Maybe because he knows Dad would never do anything in front of Paula and us. I almost wish he would, though.

  When Janet isn’t helping Mom, she sits alone and hugs her knees, staring at a spot on the floor. She hasn’t been mean or done anything bad to anyone. It must be awful for her, knowing Mr. McGovern doesn’t want her here.

  I go sit next to her. Pulling the blanket around his skinny bare shoulders, Sparky sits on her other side and takes her hand. She sniffs and quietly starts to cry.

  Sometimes Mom bought bread at the bakery, and it would still be warm on the inside. Sparky and I would spread butter and jelly on it and eat slice after slice. Sometimes she made a pizza, and we would help her press the dough out flat on the pan and cover it with tomato sauce. Sparky loved the chocolate pudding she made, but he hated the thick, gummy layer on top and would give it to me because I liked to eat it with Cool Whip. Or she’d make chocolate-chip cookies and let us eat the batter, which was always better than the cookies themselves. And at breakfast sometimes she would let us pour heavy cream over our Rice Krispies, then Sparky and I would dump sugar all over it, and it was like eating candy.

  All I think about is food. I would eat anything anyone gave me right now. Even spinach.

  In school, Dickie Keller said that in some parts of Russia they practiced cannibalism. When I got home, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and reading an article in a magazine about decorating bomb shelters. Sparky was in the den watching TV. Recently, she’d started letting him watch all the TV he wanted. And she said I could go to Ronnie’s house, even though I hadn’t finished my homework.

  On the floor in his room, Ronnie and I played game after game of Nok-Hockey with small wooden hockey sticks and a flat wooden puck the size of a fifty-cent piece. Ronnie won most of the time. After a while the door opened, and Mrs. Shaw came in. Her hair was all poofed up, and she had black stuff around her eyes and bright-red lips like Brigitte Bardot. “Phew!” She pinched her nose and fanned her face. “Somebody better start using deodorant.”

  When Ronnie lifted his arm to sniff, I saw a dark sweat stain. I felt under my arm. It was as dry as the desert.

  “Scotty, you
r mom called,” Mrs. Shaw said. “It’s time for dinner.”

  “He can’t go,” Ronnie said. “We’re in the middle of a huge series. If he goes now, it’ll ruin everything.”

  That was a lie. We weren’t playing a series. Ronnie just didn’t want me to leave.

  “I’ll call her back,” Mrs. Shaw said. “Maybe you can stay.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Shaw.”

  She left, and Ronnie gave me a knowing smile. “Another game?”

  While we played, I wondered how Ronnie had gotten so good at lying. When I told a lie, I really had to work at it. First I had to stop myself from telling the truth. Then I had to think of the lie I wanted to tell. Then I had to think about whether it was believable or not. Then I had to consider what would happen if I got caught. And only after all that would I dare tell it. But Ronnie was a natural. It was almost like he thought of the lie before he thought of the truth. And they were perfect lies, too. Completely believable if you didn’t already know.

  We were in the middle of the next game when Mrs. Shaw came in again. “Your mom says you can stay for dinner. Fried chicken, okay?”

  “Great, thanks.”

  We must have lost track of time because the next thing I knew, the door opened, and there was Mr. Shaw in a business suit. He took a deep sniff and wrinkled his tanned forehead.

  “I believe a shower will be de rigueur before you’re permitted to attend tonight’s soirée, my son,” he said.

  Sometimes Ronnie’s dad had a strange way of talking, as if even he knew the words sounded funny when he said them. Like it was some kind of inside joke. Now he turned to me. “So, Scott, how about an aperitif while Sport attends to the nether regions?”

  I followed him into the den, wondering what half those words meant. Everything in the Shaws’ house was new and modern. Instead of white-washed wooden walls, theirs were dark and shiny. Instead of couches made of Naugahyde, which was a kind of plastic imitation leather that stuck to your skin on hot days, theirs were soft and black and made of real leather. In the den, Mr. Shaw opened a cabinet filled with shelves of glimmering glasses. “What’ll it be?” he asked himself, and sorted through some bottles. “Ah! Dubonnet!” He took a bottle by the neck. “Hey, Sweet Bumps!” he called cheerfully toward the kitchen. “Wet your whistle?”