Alas, Babylon

“Oh, dear!” Florence said. “Again?” Kitty was secretary of the PTA, past-president of the Frangipani Circle, treasurer of the Women’s Club, and a member of the library board. Also, she was the wife of Luther “Bubba” Offenhaus, Chief Tail-Twister of the Lions Club, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce, and Deputy Director of Civil Defense for the whole county. He owned the most prosperous business in town, the Offenhaus Mortuary, and a twin real estate development, Repose-in-Peace Park.

Alice lifted the menu. It fluttered. She set it down quickly and said, “Yes, again. I guess I’ll have the tunafish salad.”

“You should eat more, Alice,” Florence said, noticing how white and pinched her friend’s face looked. “What happened?” “Kitty came in and said she’d heard rumors that we had books by Carl Rowan and Walter White. I told her the rumors were true, and did she want to borrow one?”

“What’d she say?” Florence put down her fork, no longer interested in her chicken patty.

“Said they were subversive and anti-South—she’s a Daughter of the Confederacy—and ordered me to take them off the shelves. I told her that as long as I was librarian they would stay there. She said she was going to bring it before the board and if necessary take it up with Porky Logan. He’s on the investigating committee in Tallahassee.”

“Alice, you’re going to lose your job!” Kitty Offenhaus was the most influential person in Fort Repose, with the exception of Edgar Quisenberry, who owned and ran the bank.

“I don’t think so. I told her that if anything like that happened I’d call the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune and Miami Herald and they’d send reporters and photographers. I said, `Kitty, can’t you see your picture on the front page, and the headline—Undertaker’s Wife Cremates Books?”‘

This was the most fascinating news Florence had heard in weeks. “What happened then?”

“Nothing at all. If I may borrow an expression from one of my younger readers, she left in an eight-cylinder huff.”

“You wouldn’t really call the papers, would you?”

Alice spoke carefully, understanding fully that everything would soon be repeated. “I certainly would! But I don’t think I’ll have to. You see, publicity would hurt Bubba’s business. One third of Bubba’s customers are Negroes, and another third Yankees who come down here to live on their pensions and stay to die.” She lifted her bright, fiercely blue eyes and added, as if repeating one of the Commandments: “Censorship and thought control can exist only in secrecy and darkness.”

“And that was all?”

“That was all.” Alice tried her salad. “What’ve you been doing, Florence?”

Florence could think of no adventure, or even any news culled from the wire, that could compete with telling off Kitty Offenhaus—except her experience with Randy Bragg. She had pledged herself not to say anything about Randy to anyone, but she could trust Alice, who was worldly-wise in spite of her appearance, and who might even, when younger, have encountered a Peeping Tom herself. So Florence told about Randy and his binoculars and how he had stared at her that morning. “It’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it?” she concluded.

“It is unbelievable,” Alice said flatly. “But I saw him at it!”

“I don’t care. I know the Bragg boys. Even before you came here, Florence, I knew them. I knew Judge Bragg well, very well.” Florence remembered vague reports, many years back, of Alice Cooksey having gone with Judge Bragg before the judge married Gertrude. But that made no difference to what went on in the Bragg house now. “You’ll have to admit that those Bragg boys are a little peculiar,” Florence said. “You should have seen the cable Randy got from Mark this morning. Urgent they meet at McCoy today. Helen and the children flying to Orlando tonight-you know those children can’t be out of school yet and the last two words didn’t make any sense at all. `Alas, Babylon.’ Isn’t that crazy?”

“Those boys aren’t crazy,” Alice said. “They’ve always been bright boys. Full of hell, yes, but at least they could read, which is more than I can say for the children nowadays. Do you know that Randy read every history in the library before he was sixteen?”

“I don’t think that has anything to do with his sex habits,” Florence said. She leaned across the table and touched Alice’s arm. “Alice, come out to my house tonight for the weekend. I want you to see for yourself.”

“I can’t. I keep the library open Saturdays. That’s my only chance to get the young ones. Evenings and Sundays, they’re paralyzed by TV.”

“I’m open Saturday mornings, too, so we can drive in together. I’ll pick you up when you’re through tomorrow evening. It’ll be a change for you, out in the country, away from that stuffy room.”

Alice hesitated. It would be nice to visit with Florence, but she hated to accept favors she couldn’t repay. She said, “Well, we’ll see.”