“Right now. And get it over with.”
His mother glanced at him lovingly and nodded to herself. “I—I guess it isn’t really any different from—thousands of stories like it. Only, when it’s your own sister…! Your own nieces and nephews…!”
“Sure,” he said.
She Sighed and her eyes looked far away. “They got the warning on the radio,” she finally began, “the red signal. They started for the cellar, but it had a foot of water in it. Jim, the fool, decided not to take cover. The windows blew in on them, including new storm windows, she said. It—killed the baby, Irma—but…” She halted.
Ted murmured, “But what?”
“You see—Ruth was holding the baby and the baby’s body saved her face. It ripped up Jim’s face and chest. They—just decamped—ran away—like so many people. Ruth in the lead—
the others following-holding a rope. Some teenage boys, in a car, saw them—saw young Marie, that is. The boys stopped and talked. They soon got out and took Marie, and nobody’s heard any more about her. She was only a little older than Nora.”
Beth hesitated. Tears welled in her eyes.
“And then?”
She averted her face, but reached for his hand. Her voice continued evenly. “Ruth got them to the ball park. People were pouring into it. Ruth thought it was probably some kind of shelter or aid station. I suppose everybody on the outside got that idea. Inside, it was dreadful—packed. Jim had to lie down—he’d bled so badly, all that way. And—she’d— dropped the baby somewhere. It was dead. Anyhow, brands kept falling from the sky and finally the bleachers caught fire so badly no one could put them out. That was when people stampeded. Besides, there was a rumor going around that Russian planes would drop germ bombs on every large crowd.
They did, too—where they found crowds! That whole mass of hurt grownups and kids started for the exits at once. Ruth rolled Jim under some steel seats—he was nearly unconscious—and she tried to save the youngsters.”
“Save them?”
“Yes. From the mob. It was like a river of people, she said, like trying to protect them from a rising flood. And the kids were hysterical, sure they’d be burned to death, trying to get out. Don broke away with Tom, finally, and got separated from Ruth. Trampled. And a man actually yanked Sarah away from Ruth—because they were in his path—and hurled her to the ground. That was what happened.” She wept soundlessly.
“You mean—they all…?”
“Most of the children in that ball park were trampled to death. It’s—inhuman, isn’t it?
But that’s what people do. Ruth lost the youngsters then and there. But, somehow, the crowd carried her out of the park without killing her. She was nearly suffocated by the pressure. Her feet didn’t touch the ground for minutes at a time. She had ribs broken. But she was pushed and driven through a gate. When she could, she went back. She found Jim again and he was unconscious. So she stayed there. She thinks she was there—with thousands of others—for two days. Some of our people finally got to her and brought her out—and she doesn’t remember much, after that, for a long time. You see, Jim had gone into a fever the day after, and died of it, or loss of blood, of untreated infection—shock—all that. Her family was wiped out before her eyes—and she lived—and it’s no wonder she—lost her reason!”
Ted turned his mother around and forced her head onto his shoulder. She wept quietly there and he held her. Because she was weeping, he felt relieved. If she hadn’t cried, he would have worried. It was almost always the ones who didn’t weep, didn’t show emotion, didn’t speak, who were liable to crack up later. Pretty much everybody knew that.
He knew, also, that she would soon do just about what she did.
She pulled herself away, blew her nose on a clean handkerchief with holes in it, and said,
“Imagine a tough old character like me! But I just couldn’t break up, in front of Ruth.
I had to take it evenly. Ted! I really hope, now, she’ll recover!”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he answered. “Not a bit. She could come home here.”
“Do you think Henry would mind, if I tried having her here when the doctors say it’s possible?”
Ted looked into his glass, empty again. “Sometimes, I think the old man doesn’t mind anything this side of hell. He’s got more guts than grizzly bears.”
Mrs. Conner sniffled in a manner reminiscent of the younger Nora. “I know. And I’m glad I cried this out in front of you, Ted. Because now, I can tell him straight, without a whimper—if you promise not to tell on me, for being feeble-headed?”
He winked at her. She bustled to her feet. “Here it is nearly four o’clock and I’ve got twenty-odd guests to feed!”
“Ye gods! I thought it was just us and the Laceys.”
“I asked both families that have moved in the Bailey place.” She glanced across.
“They’re new, and they don’t know a soul in this part of town. I thought we’d get them acquainted. Their names are Brown and Frazetti.”
“I know. Already met the Frazetti kids. Twins.” She nodded. “What about the Brown girl? Have you seen her?”
“Didn’t know there was one.”
“She’s sixteen,” his mother smiled. “Blue eyes and the prettiest red hair I ever saw. If you aren’t in love with her by nine o’clock tonight, I’ll lose a bet.”
“Phooie,” he said.
“Wait till you see her! Name’s Rachel.” Ted looked, also, at the neighboring house. For a year and a half after X-day, it had been occupied by people billeted by town authorities. Then it had been roughly remodeled inside as a double house and occupied by two families. After one winter, they had moved again. The present occupants had arrived recently.
“I wonder what happened to Beau,” he said.
She stopped in the screen door, holding the coffee pitcher and the glasses. “I doubt if we ever find out now!” She thought of her visit with her sister. “Though you can’t tell, can you?”
“Nope.”
It was the way it was in those days.
Lenore’s mother had been sent to Florida and she was still there, undergoing plastic surgery. But Lenore’s father had vanished.
Weeks had passed, months, and now two years and a half—with no word. The bureau set up by the Federal Government to trace people hadn’t located him. Or any sign of him. Netta knew only that he’d been in the cellar when the Bomb burst. After that, he walked into the silences. He was one of the anonymous dead. Or one of the unidentified mad. Or one of the unfound bodies. Or someone who had a new name and a new life somewhere else—because he’d come to unable to remember, ever again, who he was, where he lived, what his name had been—or because he had wanted to forget.
Nora came home on her bike.
Since he had been thinking about the already-remote “Aftertime,” Ted saw Nora in a new light. She was fourteen now and trying to behave like eighteen. Occasionally, for minutes at a time, the effort was fairly convincing. She’d changed in two years and half. She was hardly a kid now. There was something very precise and well-cut about her profile which (wonder of wonders, he thought) had an almost sweet look. Her nose didn’t turn up so much. Her hair, light like his, was not lank like his any more; it was wavy, like their mother’s. And her clear blue eyes were getting slanty—exactly, he thought, as Nora would prefer it: slanty-eyed women got the dangerous men, she claimed.