Alas, Babylon

Four young men, strangers, idled in front of the drugstore. The store’s windows were broken, but Randy saw the grim, unhappy face of Old Man Hockstatler, the druggist, at the door. He was staring at the young men, and they were elaborately ignoring him. They were waiting for something, Randy felt. They were waiting like vultures. They were outwaiting Old Man Hockstatler.

Randy pulled into the parking lot alongside Ajax Super Market. It appeared to be empty. The front door was closed and locked but Randy stepped through a smashed window. The interior looked as if it had been stripped and looted. All that remained of the stock, he noticed immediately, were fixtures, dishes, and plastics on the home-hardware shelves. Significantly nobody had bothered to buy or take electric cords, fuses, or light bulbs. As for food, there seemed to be none left.

Randy tried to remember where the salt counter had been, but salt was something one bought without thought, like razor blades or toothpaste, not bothering about it until it was needed. He thought of razor blades. He was low on them. Finally he examined the guidance signs hanging over the empty shelves. He saw, “Salt, Flour, Grits, Sugar,” over a wall to his left. The space where these commodities should have been was bare. Not a single bag of salt remained.

As Randy turned to leave he heard a noise, wood scraping on concrete, in the stockroom in the rear of the store. He opened the stockroom door and found himself looking into the muzzle of a small, shiny revolver. Behind the gun was the skinny, olive colored face of Pete Hernandez. Pete lowered the gun and jammed it into a hip pocket. “Gees, Randy,” he said, “I thought it was some goddam goon come back to clean out the rest of the joint.”

“All I wanted was some salt.” “Salt? You out of salt already?”

“No. We want to salt down some meat. We thought we could save part of the meat in the freezer.” Randy saw a grocery truck drawn up to the loading platform behind the store. It was half-filled with cases, and Pete had been pushing other cases down the ramp. So Pete had saved something. “What happened here?” Randy asked.

“We’d sold out of just about everything by closing time yesterday. When I tried to close up they wouldn’t leave. They wouldn’t pay, neither. They started hollerin’ and laughin’ and grabbin’. I locked myself in back here and that’s how come I’ve got a little something left.” Pete winked. “Bet I can get some price for these canned beans in a couple of weeks.”

Randy sensed that Pete, perhaps because he had never had much of it, still coveted money. He said, “I’ll give you a price for salt right now.”

Pete’s eyes flicked sideways. There was a cart in the corner. It was filled with sacks-sugar and salt. Pete said, “I’ve hardly got enough salt to keep things goin’ at home. We’re in the same boat you are, you know. Freezer full of meat. Maybe Rita will be salon’ meat down too.”

Randy brought out his wallet. Pete looked at it. Pete looked greedy. Randy said, “What’ll you take for two ten-pound sacks of salt?”

“I ain’t got much salt left.”

“I’ll give you ten dollars a pound for salt.”

“That’s two hundred dollars. Bein’ it’s you, okay.” Randy gave him four fifties.

Pete felt the bills. “Ten bucks a pound for salt!” he said. “Ain’t that something!”

Randy cradled the sacks under each arm. “Better go out the back way,” Pete said. “Don’t tell nobody where you got it. And Randy-”

“Yes?”

“Rita wonders when you’re coming to see her. She’s all the time talking about you. When Rita latches on to a guy she don’t let go in a hurry. You know Rita.”

Randy rejected the easy evasion of excuses. One of the things he hadn’t liked about Rita was her possessiveness, and another was her brother. He was irritated because he had placed himself in the position of being forced to discuss personal matters with Pete. He said, “Rita and I are through.”

“That’s not what Rita says. Rita says that other girl-that Yankee blonde-won’t look so good to you now. Rita says this war’s going to level people as well as cities.”

Randy knew it was purposeless to talk about Rita, or anything, with Pete Hernandez. He said, “So long, Pete,” and left the market.

Beck’s Hardware was still open, and Mr. Beck, looking tired and bewildered, presided over rows of empty shelves. On The Day itself everything that could be immediately useful, from flashlights and batteries to candles and kerosene lanterns, had vanished. In the continuing buying panic, almost everything else had disappeared. “Only reason I’m still here,” Mr. Beck explained, “is because I’ve been coming here every weekday for twenty-two years and I don’t know what else to do.”

In the warehouse Beck found a dusty carton of Mason jars. “People don’t go in much for home canning nowadays,” Beck said. “I’d just about forgotten these.”

“How much?” Randy asked.