Alas, Babylon

Until that moment, Randy hadn’t thought of water at all. His grandfather, in a year of freakish drought, at great cost had drilled nearly a thousand feet to find the artesian layer and irrigate the grove. And his grandfather had allowed the Henrys to tap the main pipe, so the Henrys had a perpetual flow of free water, although it was hard with dissolved minerals and Randy hated to taste it out of the sprinkler heads in grove and garden, even on a hot summer day.

“I’m afraid I’d never get used to it,” he said. He counted out two hundred dollars in twenties and thrust the money across the desk. “This is for an emergency. Buy what you need.”

The new notes felt slippery in Malachai’s fingers. “I don’t know when I can pay this back.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not asking you to pay it back.” Malachai folded the bills. “Thank you, sir.”

“See you next week, Malachai.”

Malachai left and Randy mixed a drink. You turned a tap and lo, water came forth, sweet, soft water without odor, pumped from some sub-surface pool by a silent, faithful servant, a small electric motor. Every family on River Road, except the Henrys, obtained its water in the same way, each with its own pump and well. More important than anything he had listed was water, free of dangerous bacilli, unpolluted by poisons human, chemical, or radioactive. Pure water was essential to his civilization, accepted like pure air. In the big cities, where even a near miss would rupture reservoirs, demolish aqueducts, and smash mains, it would be hell without water. Big cities would become traps deadly as deserts or jungles. Randy began to consider how little he really knew of the fundamentals of survival. Helen, he guessed, would know a good deal more. It was a required subject in the education of Air Force wives. He decided to talk to Bubba Offenhaus, who ran Civil Defense in Fort Repose. Bubba must have pamphlets, or something that he could study.

Downstairs Graf began to bark, an insistent, belligerent alarm announcing a strange car in the driveway. Randy went to the head of the stairs, shouted, “Shut up, Graf!” and waited to see who would knock.

Nobody knocked but the door opened and Randy saw Elizabeth McGovern in the front hall, bending over Graf, her face curtained by shoulder-length blond hair. She stroked Graf’s hack les until his tail wigwagged a friendly signal. Then she looked up and called, “You decent, Randy?”

One day she would barge in like this and he would be indecent. She bewildered him. She was brash, unpredictable, and sometimes uncomfortably outspoken. “Come on up, Lib,” he said. Like the Henrys, she was a special problem.

All through the summer and early fall Randy had watched the McGoverns’ house and dock go up, while landscapers spotted palms in orderly rows, laid down turf, and planted flower pots and shrubbery. On a sultry October afternoon, trolling for bass in the channel, he had seen a pair of faultlessly curved and tapered legs incongruously stretched toward the sky from the McGovern dock. Since she was lying on the canvas-covered planking, heels propped up on a post, the legs were all that could be seen from water level. He turned the prow toward shore to discover whose body was attached to these remarkable and unfamiliar legs. When his boat was almost under the dock he’d spoken, “Hello, legs.” “You may call me Lib,” she’d said. “You’re Randy Bragg, aren’t you? I’ve sort of been expecting you’d call.”

When they’d become something more than friends, although less than lovers, he’d accused her of luring him with her lovely legs. Lib had laughed and said, “I didn’t know, then, that you were a leg man but I’m glad you are. Most American males have a fixation about the mammary gland. A symptom of momism, I think. Legs are for men’s pleasure, breasts for babies’. Oh, that’s really sour grapes. I only said it because I know my legs are my only real asset. I’m flat and I’m not pretty.” Technically, she was accurate. She was no classic beauty when you considered each feature individually. She was only beautiful in complete design, in the way she moved and was put together.

She came up the stairs and curled a bare arm around his neck and kissed him, a brief kiss, a greeting. “I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all day,” she said. “I’ve been thinking and I’ve reached an important conclusion. Where’ve you been?”

“My brother stopped at McCoy, flying back to Omaha. I had to meet him.” He led her into the living room. “Drink?” “Ginger ale, if you have it.” She sat on a stool at the bar, one knee raised and clasped between her hands. She wore a sleeveless, turquoise linen blouse, doeskin shorts, and moccasins.

He tumbled ice into a glass and poured ginger ale and said, “What’s this important conclusion?”

“You’ll get mad. It’s about you.” “Okay, I’ll get mad.”