Alas, Babylon

“Well, there’s an old-time sewing machine-the kind you work with your feet. There are some big kerosene lamps, the kind that hang. This one on the desk I found up there, too. All I had when I went up was a little stub candle. Then there’s an old potbellied stove and a lot of iron pipe. Oh, and lots of other junk. I left it because I wanted to try the record player. The only other thing I brought down I brought for you and Dan, Randy. It’s there on the bed.”

Randy picked up the black leather case. It looked familiar. He had seen it before. He opened it and saw the two matched straight-edge razors that had belonged to his father.

He leaned over and kissed the top of Peyton’s head. “Don’t worry about what your mother will say,” he told her. “I’ll handle everything for you. If I had medals to give, I would pin one on you, Peyton, right now.”

In this manner, Peyton became a heroine.

Chapter 13

One morning in November, when Randy was breakfasting early and alone, Dan Gunn came downstairs smooth-shaven, his jaw looking oddly pallid in contrast to brown forehead, nose, cheekbones, and neck. “Good morning,” Randy said. “You swore you’d never shave again! Why?”

“Well,” Dan said lamely, “I had the razor and it seemed a shame not to use it after Peyton gave it to me. Then there was the soap.” Within the past few weeks, bars of homemade soap had appeared in Marines Park, produced by Mrs. Estes, who had been senior teller at the bank, and two former co-workers. Everyone agreed that it would be a prosperous and rewarding business. “The truth, Dan!” Randy said.

“Helen asked me to do it. She said she was getting tired of trimming it.”

“Oh, that’s different. You’d better be home in time for dinner tonight. John Garcia just made another run up to Blue Crab Pool and he’s dropping off a washtub of crabs here. In exchange for one quart of lightning.”

Dan said, “I’m very fond of Helen. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Why do anything without her?” “Randy, I want to marry her.”

Randy rose from the table, bowed, and said, “I give you my blessing!”

“It isn’t funny.”

“Marriage is rarely funny.” “She won’t marry me.” “Then why did you shave off your beard?”

“Damn it, Randy, I love her. And she loves me. She admitted it. She wants to marry me. But she won’t. She thinks there’s a chance Mark’s still alive. She’s afraid that if we married then Mark would turn up alive and there’d be one of those awful messes we’ve all heard about or read about. Like when men were reported dead in the Philippines or Korea and they turned up after the war in an enemy prison camp. They came home and found their wives happily married to someone else. Sometimes there were children. It’s always a mess.”

“It’s happened,” Randy said, “but in this case I don’t think there’s a chance. Want me to talk to her?”

Dan rubbed his face where his beard had been. “I feel naked. No, Randy, thanks. I don’t think Helen would want it discussed. Not yet, anyway. She just has this feeling, and I’m afraid she’ll have to empty it herself.”

It was in this month that the first low-flying plane frightened and exhilarated them.

At irregular times planes had been reported before, but always jets, flying very high, usually no more than a silver splinter in the sky, or contrail, in day, and only sound at night.

But in the second week in November a big four-engined transport roared over Fort Repose at a thousand feet. It bore Air Force markings. In Marines Park everyone screamed and waved. It did not even waggle its wings, but went on, south. Dan Gunn, who was in town, saw it directly overhead. Randy heard and saw it from River Road. The Admiral, who was out on the river in his flagship, was able to observe it through binoculars.

That night Randy and Lib and Dan and Helen went to Sam Hazzard’s house to hear his opinion. “I noticed two cylinders slung under the wing,” he said. “Not extra gas tanks. I think they might be air traps. I think they might be taking radiation samples.”

A week later the same plane, or one like it, came over again. This time it circled Fort Repose, and a stream of what appeared to be confetti, at the distance, fell from its belly and drifted down on the river banks and in the town.

Randy was in Marines Park, at the time, discussing an alarm system with officers of his company. Church bells had been used in England during the second World War, and there were bells in the Catholic and Episcopal churches. It was possible to evolve a code by which his troopers could understand the type and location of the emergency. The plane came over and everyone yelled, as before, as if they could hear up there. Then the leaflets fluttered down. They read:

DO NOT BE ALARMED

This leaflet comes from a United States Air Force plane conducting atmospheric surveys of the Contaminated Zones.

At a future date a more precise survey will be undertaken by helicopters.