There Won't Be War

Josephine Dawkins and Herbie were cleaning the feed trolley in the shed at the near end of the chicken house.

“All done, pop,” the boy grinned at his father. “And the eggs taken care of. When does Mr. Whiting pick ’em up?”

“Nine o’clock. Did you finish feeding the hens in the last house?”

“I said all done, didn’t I?” Herbie asked with adolescent impatience. “When I say a thing, I mean it.”

“Good. You kids better get at your books. Hey, stop that! Education will be very important, afterwards. You never know what will be useful. And maybe only your mother and I to teach you.”

“Gee,” Herbie nodded at Josephine. “Think of that.”

She pulled at her jumper where it was very tight over newly swelling breasts and patted her blonde braided hair. “What about my mother and father, Mr. Plunkett? Won’t they be—be—”

“Naw!” Herbie laughed the loud, country laugh he’d been practicing lately. “They’re dead-enders. They won’t pull through. They live in the City, don’t they? They’ll just be some—”

“Herbie!”

“—some foam on a mushroom-shaped cloud,” he finished, utterly entranced by the image. “Gosh, I’m sorry,” he said, as he looked from his angry father to the quivering girl. He went on in a studiously reasonable voice. “But it’s the truth, anyway. That’s why they sent you and Lester here. I guess I’ll marry you—afterwards. And you ought to get in the habit of calling him pop. Because that’s the way it’ll be.”

Josephine squeezed her eyes shut, kicked the shed door open, and ran out. “I hate you, Herbie Plunkett,” she wept. “You’re a beast!”

Herbie grimaced at his father—women, women, women!—and ran after her. “Hey, Jo! Listen!”

The trouble was, Plunkett thought worriedly as he carried the emergency bulbs for the hydroponic garden into the cellar—the trouble was that Herbie had learned through constant reiteration the one thing: survival came before all else, and amenities were merely amenities.

Strength and self-sufficiency—Plunkett had worked out the virtues his children needed years ago, sitting in air-conditioned offices and totting corporation balances with one eye always on the calendar.

“Still,” Plunkett muttered, “still—Herbie shouldn’t—” He shook his head.

He inspected the incubators near the long steaming tables of the hydroponic garden. A tray about ready to hatch. They’d have to start assembling eggs to replace it in the morning. He paused in the third room, filled a gap in the bookshelves.

“Hope Josephine steadies the boy in his schoolwork. If he fails that next exam, they’ll make me send him to town regularly. Now there’s an aspect of survival I can hit Herbie with.”

He realized he’d been talking to himself, a habit he’d been combating futilely for more than a month. Stuffy talk, too. He was becoming like those people who left tracts on trolley cars.

“Have to start watching myself,” he commented. “Dammit, again!”

The telephone clattered upstairs. He heard Ann walk across to it, that serene, unhurried walk all pregnant women seem to have.

“Elliot! NatMedarie.”

“Tell him I’m coming, Ann.” He swung the vault-like door carefully shut behind him, looked at it for a moment, and started up the high stone steps.

“Hello, Nat. What’s new?”

“Hi, Plunk. Just got a postcard from Fitzgerald. Remember him? The abandoned silver mine in Montana? Yeah. He says we’ve got to go on the basis that lithium and hydrogen bombs will be used.”

Plunkett leaned against the wall with his elbow. He cradled the receiver on his right shoulder so he could light a cigarette. “Fitzgerald can be wrong sometimes.”

“Uhm. I don’t know. But you know what a lithium bomb means, don’t you?”

“It means,” Plunkett said, staring through the wall of the house and into a boiling Earth, “that a chain reaction may be set off in the atmosphere if enough of them are used. Maybe if only one—”

“Oh, can it,” Medarie interrupted. “That gets us nowhere. That way nobody gets through, and we might as well start shuttling from church to bar-room like my brother-in-law in Chicago is doing right now. Fred, I used to say to him—No, listen Plunk: it means I was right. You didn’t dig deep enough.”

“Deep enough! I’m as far down as I want to go. If I don’t have enough layers of lead and concrete to shield me—well, if they can crack my shell, then you won’t be able to walk on the surface before you die of thirst, Nat. No—I sunk my dough in power supply. Once that fails, you’ll find yourself putting the used air back into your empty oxygen tanks by hand!”

The other man chuckled. “All right. I hope I see you around.”

“And I hope I see ...” Plunkett twisted around to face the front window as an old station wagon bumped over the ruts in his driveway. “Say, Nat, what do you know? Charlie Whiting just drove up. Isn’t this Sunday?”