Alas, Babylon

“I have a telegram, Randy– it’s really a cable-from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s signed by Mark. It’s really very peculiar.” Randy let out his breath, relieved. If Mark had sent the message, then Mark was all right. A man can’t pick his relatives, only his friends, but Mark had always been Randy’s friend as well as brother. “What’s the message say?”

“Well, I’ll read it to you,” Florence said, “and then if you want me to read it again I’ll be glad to. It says, `’Urgent you meet me at Base Ops McCoy noon today. Helen and children flying to Orlando tonight. Alas, Babylon.”‘ Florence paused. “That’s what it says, `Alas, Babylon.’ Do you want me to repeat the whole thing for you, Randy?”

“No thanks.”

“I wonder what `Alas, Babylon’ means? Isn’t it out of the Bible?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.” He knew very well what it meant. He felt sick inside.

“There’s something else, Randy.”

“Yes?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll tell you about it next time I see you and I hope not in those loud pajamas. Goodbye, Randy. You’re sure you have the message?”

“I’m sure,” he said, hung up and dropped into the swivel chair. Alas, Babylon was a private, a family signal. When they were boys, he and Mark used to sneak up to the back of the First Afro-Repose Baptist Church on Sunday nights to hear Preacher Henry calling down hell-fire and damnation on the sinners in the big cities. Preacher Henry always took his text out of the Revelation of St. John. It seemed that he ended every lurid verse with, “Alas, Babylon!” in a voice so resonant you could feel it, if you rested your fingertips gently on the warped pine boards of the church. Randy and Mark would crouch under the rear window, behind the pulpit, fascinated and wide-eyed, while Preacher Henry described the Babylonian revels, including fornication. Sometimes Preacher Henry made Babylon sound like Miami, and sometimes like Tampa, for he condemned not only fornication—he read the word right out of the Bible-but also horse racing and the dog tracks. Randy could hear him yet: “And I’m telling you right now, all wife-swappers, whisky-drinkers, and crap-shooters are going to get it! And all them who come out of those sin palaces on the beach, whether they be called hotels or motels, wearing minks and jewels and not much else, they is goin’ to get it! And them fast-steppers in Cadillacs and yaller roadsters, they is going to get it! Just like it says here in the Good Book, that Great City that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, that Great City was burned off the face of the earth in an hour. Just one hour Alas, Babylon!”

Either Preacher Henry was too old, or the Afro-Repose congregation had tired of his scolding and awful prophecies, for he no longer preached except on those Sundays when Afro-Repose’s new minister, a light-skinned college graduate, was out of town. Randy and Mark never forgot Preacher Henry’s thundering, and from it they borrowed their private synonym for disaster, real or comic, past or future. If one fell off the dock, or lost all his cash at poker, or failed to make time with a promising Pistolville piece, or announced that hurricane or freeze was on the way, the other commiserated with, “Alas, Babylon!”

But in this telegram it had very special and exact meaning. Mark had secured leave at Christmas season last year, and flown down with Helen and the two children, Ben Franklin and Peyton, for a week. On their last evening at Fort Repose, after the others were in bed, Mark and Randy had sat here, in this office, peering into the bourbon decanter and the deep anxieties of their hearts, trying to divine the future. Christmas had been a time of troubles, a time of confusions at home and tensions abroad, but in his whole life, Randy could recall no other sort of time. There had always been depression, or war, or threat of war.

Mark, who was in SAC Intelligence, had rolled the old fashioned globe, three feet through, from its place in the window bay, so that the desk lamp shone on it. It was a globe purchased by their grandfather, the diplomat, before the First World War, so that the countries, some with unfamiliar names, seemed oddly scrambled. The continents and seas were the same, which was all that mattered. As Mark talked, his face became grave, almost gaunt, and his index finger traced great circle routes across the cracking surface-missile and bomber trajectories. He then drew a rough chart, with two lines that intersected. The line that con—timed upward after the intersection belonged to the Soviet Union, and the time of the intersection was right then.

“How did it happen?” Randy had asked. “Where did we slip?”