JUDAS BOMB
by Kit Reed
And then, of course, there is still the possibility of peace— if you find the prospect peaceful.
Mrs. Reed here suggests some prospects derived from the present trends in urban teenage gang behavior. (The trouble with these reductii ad absurdum is they don’t always seem so absurd — ten years later. We can only hope.)
If anyone can cope with the peaceless peace, by the way, I am convinced it will be the Connecticut housewives. There was Mrs. Schoolfield (Kaatje Hurlbut), wife of a New York newspaperman, raising three children exurbanly, writing four hours a day, six days a week for eighteen years (the first twelve without selling a word of it) — and still able to get up and out for a pre-dawn stroll to watch the sky.
And now a “faculty wife,” married to an English Professor at Wesleyan University. In the eight years since she finished college, Mrs. Reed has been twice named New England Newspaperwoman of the year; published two novels (most recently, Mother Isn’t Dead, She’s Only Sleeping, Houghton Mifflin, 1961); acquired two children; and published short stories in such diversified media as F&SF, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and the Yale Literary Magazine. With a two-year-old and an infant son at home, she says she can now manage “only one” freelance newspaper job — besides her fiction, that is.
It happened, in the days when the young ruled, that Washington got a bomb. The Hypos found out about it when one of the Judas Gang got swell-headed and started to brag. He stepped over the marker into Hypo country around Delaware, and the Hypos got him and he didn’t brag any more. Little Easter, Franko’s man, took care of him, and while Little Easter was working on him he said the Hypos had better lay off because Washington knew where he was, and Washington had a bomb. Little Easter finished what he was doing and then he told Franko and the Hypos held a council of war.
From Buffalo and Philadelphia and Albany the Hypos came, and they parked their ‘cicles in ramshackle Rockefeller Center, Franko’s pad, and they parleyed, sitting cross-legged in the deserted square where skaters had glided before the gangs moved out of the neighborhoods into the city and the country and the world. They sat, in silver-sheen jackets sewn for them by the squares, and they talked about the bomb, oblivious of the beer cans, the garbage, the cigarette butts that littered the ground and piled high in the corners.
Franko said, “You know what they’re gonna do with that bomb.”
Netta Rampo was tall and broad and tough. She was from Trenton, and she ran the Hypettes. She made a gesture. “That’s what they’ll do.”
“Oh, man. ‘worse’n that. They’re not gonna use it on us. We don’t bug them half as much as the Comradskis. They’ll find a way to drop it over there. Then—” Franko ground his boot heel into Netta Rampo’s hand. “That’s what’ll happen to us.” She didn’t even wince. “It’ll be the last rumble, man. We’ll get it from all over — Kiev, Leningrad, Peiping — they’ll be plantin’ bombs like appleseed, and it’ll be the end.”
Billy from Philly, sprawled on his elbows, kicked at the dirt. “So?”
“So we gotta stop ‘em.” Automatically, Franko zipped and unzipped his jacket. Twenty heads turned toward him. Twenty pairs of eyes coldly looked him up and down. “We gotta get a bomb. We gotta get that bomb.”
They talked long into the night, and it was decided that one of them would have to do the job — alone. They wrangled on, and every once in a while one of them would interrupt Franko and Little Easter would get him and it would be very quiet after that.
“Okay,” Franko said at dawn. “We gotta decide who’s going. Netta’s out because she’s a girl.”
“Bug you,” Netta said.
“So it’s gotta be one of us guys. We’ll face off for it. Guy that’s still standing up at the end gets the job. I’ll take on any one of you guys, starting now. Anybody…”
“Forget it, Franko.” A dark form stood up.
In the dimness, Little Easter started forward. “Nobody interrupts Franko…”
Franko pulled him back.
“Except Johnny Fairhair.” Fairhaired Johnny was big, bigger than Netta Rampo, and he was sturdy as a rhino and muscled like a bull. He had big, black eyes and the ugliest face in Christendom, and to his shoulders fell hair as pale and silky as that of a child. “Forget it, Franko.” He headed for his ‘cicle, parked in a corner of the rink. “I’ll go.”
Billy from Philly looked after him and said softly, “Just as well. He’s nearly twenty. He’s almost through.”
Without seeming to look at him, Johnny wheeled and threw his knife. It stuck in the back of Billy from Philly’s hand.
He set out for Washington without a weapon or a plan, traveling until the brightness of the dawn warned him to take his ‘cicle down. He set down at a deserted landmark, the last Howard Johnson’s on the Jersey Turnpike, stepping carefully through the shattered glass front, looking into every possible hiding place before he settled down to sleep. Day fell, and the deserted building was silent, except for the occasional drone of a ‘cicle overhead.