She turns away. She doesn’t want to keep talking. But there is one more question. In spite of her feelings, I must ask it. “What about the children, Miss Wilson?”
She looks at me. The air between is brown now, as if a polluted fog had crept into the room. Wind screams outside. In the distance something clatters, maybe a tin roof blowing through the streets.
“The children?”
They do not look like the kids Andrew went to school with.
They are as hard and tight as their Miss Wilson—quick, serious little people with sharp eyes. When I meet those eyes, they do not look away and they do not smile.
Soon one of the other teachers begins reading a book for the benefit of the whole student body, which counts perhaps eighty children. It is Beauty and the Beast. They listen in silence.
Kansas City—Children’s Thoughts
Essays on spring from Miss Wilson’s third grade, Shawnee Elementary School.
If it rains get inside right away. And if you get wet you have to go to the office for geiger, then showers and get rid of your clothes.
If you don’t have any more you have to be in your underpants. You have to be careful, but spring rain is also nice.
The frogs croak and the mayflies fly. Mommy prays for the cabbages, which are just now coming out of the ground. They say spring is the time of hope. We read about lilacs.
I got inside to keep it off me. I saw it go down on Barko. They won’t let me have Barko. Spring rain danger. My daddy tried to keep it off our onions but he got all wet himself and there wasn’t enough plastic from the allocation. Rain from the east is good, but if it comes from the west, just say your prayers, like it did Thurs-day.
Lord Jesus sent a rainbow to say its OK, folks. Dad and Mom went on the cleanup. I was scared, I was home alone all night. Then Miss Wilson came and said come to the cleanup. They taught me how to get the particles with the Dustbuster, and I got a lot. They paint a red circle around them. Then you suck them up. Then you go to the next one, until your Dustbuster is out of juice. The Dustbusters are heavy because they have lead on them.
Our mare is getting ready to foal. I am going to help deliver her with my dad. Mom and Dad said God gave us this foal, but I think War Cloud and Joanie did it when they jumped on each other last year. And we also have pigs.
To me spring is warm days. The sun is out and we don’t have to worry about the coal. We are OK on money. I am often in the garden. We have a general permission because my mom is a garden freak. She makes salad all spring and summer. We sit outside on the back porch and shoot rabbits to eat with it. And I do not hurt when it is warm.
Documents on Limited War and the Limited Economy
The official word from the Federal Complex in L.A. on the economy was one of cautious optimism.
In fact, there is no single American economy. It is possible to define the two big ones of East and West, but beyond those there are many, many more.
As we crossed the country from the prosperous valleys of the Pacific Coast to the dark Northeastern ports, we encountered dozens of economies. Life has focused down: people don’t think in terms of long-range movement and trade anymore, outside California anyway. The concern is the farm on the hill, the plant down the street, the condition of one’s own belly.
The following three documents illustrate how we have refocused to microeconomics because of the suddenness with which the macroeconomy disintegrated and the deep consequences of the shortages that resulted.
The document on the effects of the electromagnetic pulse on Warday is in one way curious: it suggests that there has been steady recovery in such areas as communications and data processing, beginning shortly after Warday. But our lives tell us differently. Even today the overall amount of recovery seems smaller than indicated. It is probable that the document was prepared by people living and working in Los Angeles, who assumed that their local experience was being mirrored across the country, and wrote their projections accordingly.
The paper on shortages tells a central truth: the mineral resources upon which the fabrication of high-technology devices depends are no longer available in substantial quantities to the United States. In losing the electronic superstructure of our economy, we also lost the means to rebuild it, and we must now look to the outside for help.
There is also a report on the state of agriculture. If a bureaucrat could write a dirge, this is a dirge. It is about 450 words long.
With twenty-nine million dead in the famine, that is over 64,000 lives per word.
CLASSIFICATION CANCELED
INTERNAL DJSC DISTRIBUTION ONLY
Defense Joint Systems Command
28 April 1991
1.0 OBJECTIVE
This report summarizes studies completed in the last seven months regarding multiple high-altitude nuclear detonations by the Soviet Union on 28 October 1988 over the United States of America. These detonations created powerful electromagnetic energy fields, known as electromagnetic pulse or EMP, which in turn produced widespread damage in both military and civilian enterprises. Data utilized in this report were supplied by the Department of Defense Joint Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Effects; Headquarters, Aerospace Defense Command; and the National Security Agency.
2.0 BACKGROUND OF THE SOVIET ATTACK
The nuclear attack in October 1988 by the Soviet Union against the continental United States was initialized by the detonation of six large weapons in the 8–10 MT range some 200–225 miles above the U.S. Comprehensive studies of the attack and its effects are limited because of critical wartime conditions, though it is believed, according to limited data from intelligence satellites, that as many as 12 large MT weapons were targeted by the Soviets as EMP devices. Only six such weapons actually detonated, however.
Nuclear weapons detonated at such high altitudes produce extraordinary electromagnetic fields, which in turn travel within the atmosphere and then strike the surface of the earth, where they can either severely damage or destroy sensitive electronic devices. A single weapon, detonated at a predetermined altitude, can affect an area of hundreds of thousands of square miles. The purpose of the Soviet attack, therefore, was to “blanket” the United States with preemptive levels of electromagnetic energy designed to destroy or severely cripple communications, data storage and processing, and electronic intelligence/detection capacities. Studies have shown that each detonating weapon apparently produced a peak field in excess of 100,000 volts per meter. Precise data are unavailable, though the energy fields thus produced far exceeded prewar military estimates of theoretical attacks. There were collateral effects on both surface installations and spaceborne intelligence satellites.