Alas, Babylon

Staring down at his plate, he thought of all this.

Lib said, “Randy, finish your fish. And you’d better drink another glass of orange juice. You’ll be hungry before lunch, if Helen and I can put a lunch together.”

“I hate orange juice!” Randy said, and poured himself another glass.

Dan drove. Randy sat beside him. It was warm, and Randy was comfortable in shorts, boat shoes, and a pullover shirt. He carried his pistol holstered at his hip. The pistol had become a weightless part of him now. He had dry-fired it a thousand times until it felt good in his hand, and even used it to kill a rattlesnake in the grove and two moccasins on the dock. Shooting snakes was a waste of ammunition but he was now confident of the pistol’s accuracy and the steadiness of his hand. In Randy’s lap, encased in a paper bag, was the bottle of Scotch he hoped to trade for coffee. They smoked their morning pipes. Randy said, “Dan, what’s this bad situation in town?”

“I haven’t said anything about it,” Dan said, “because I can’t get to the bottom of it and I didn’t want to frighten anybody. I’ve got three serious cases of radiation poisoning.”

“Oh, God!” Randy said, not an exclamation but a prayer. This was the sword that had been hanging over all of them. If a man kept busy enough, if his troubles and problems were immediate and numerous, if he was always hungry, then he could for a time wall off this thing, forget for a time that he lived in what had officially been designated a contaminated zone. He could forget the insidious, the invisible, the implacable enemy, but not forever.

“This is very strange,” Dan said. “I can’t believe it’s caused by delayed fallout. If it were, I’d have three hundred cases, not three. This is more like a radium or X-ray burn. All of them have burned hands in addition to the usual symptoms, nausea, headache, diarrhea, hair falling out.”

“When did it start?” Randy asked.

“Porky Logan was the first man hit. His sister caught me at the school three weeks ago and begged me to look at him.” “Wasn’t Porky somewhere in the southern part of the state on The Day? Couldn’t he have picked up radiation then?” “Porky was perfectly all right when he got back here and since then he hasn’t received any more exposure than the rest of us. And the other two have not left Fort Repose. Porky’s a mess. Every time I see him he’s drunk. But the radiation is killing him faster than the liquor.”

“Who else is sick?”

“Bigmouth Bill Cullen-we’ll stop at his fish camp on the way to town-and Pete Hernandez.”

“It couldn’t be sort of an epidemic, could it?” Randy asked. “No, it couldn’t. Radiation’s not a germ or a virus. You can eat or drink radioactive matter, like strontium 90 in milk. It can fall on you in rain. It can sift down on you in dust, or in particles you can’t see on a day that seems perfectly clear. You can track it into the house on your shoes, or pick it up by handling any metal or inorganic matter that has been exposed. But you can’t catch it by kissing a girl, unless, of course, she has gold teeth.”

At the bend of River Road they caught up with Alice Cooksey riding Florence’s Western Union bicycle. Alone of all the people in Fort Repose, Alice continued with her regular work. Every morning she left the Wecheck house at seven. Often, ignoring the unpredictable dangers of the road, she did not return until dark. Since The Day, the demand for her services had multiplied. They slowed when they overtook her, shouted a greeting, and waved. She waved back and pedaled on, a small, brave, and busy figure.

Watching the car chuff past, Alice reminded herself that this evening she must bring back new books for Ben Franklin and Peyton. It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education. Alice would never admit it aloud, but for the first time in her thirty years as librarian of Fort Repose she felt fulfilled, even important.

It had not been easy or remunerative to persist as librarian in Fort Repose. She recalled how every year for eight years the town council had turned down her annual request for air conditioning. An expensive frill, they’d said. But without air conditioning, how could a library compete? Drugstores, bars, restaurants, movies, the St. Johns Country Club in San Marco, the lobby of the Riverside Inn, theaters, and most homes were air conditioned. You couldn’t expect people to sit in a hot library during the humid Florida summer, which began in April and didn’t end until October, when they could be sitting in an air-conditioned living room coolly and painlessly absorbing visual pablum on television. Alice had installed a Coke machine and begged old electric fans but it had been a losing battle.