Alas, Babylon Read online

  He slammed his fist on the bar counter and shouted, “I’m a damn fool! We’ve got all the water we want!”

  “Where?” Helen asked.

  “Right out there!” Randy waved his arms. “Artesian water, unlimited!”

  “But that’s in the grove, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure we can pipe it into the house. After all, that’s the same water the Henrys use every day. I think there are some big wrenches in the garage and Malachai will know how to do it. Come on, Ben, let’s go over to the Henrys’.”

  Randy and the boy walked down the old gravel and clay road that led from the garage through the grove and to the river. Randy’s navels had been picked, but the Valencias were still on the trees. They would not be picked this year. Matching strides with Randy, Ben Franklin said, “I just thought of something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t have to go to school any more.”

  “What makes you think you don’t have to go to school? As soon as things get back to normal you’re going to school, young feller. Want to grow up to be an ignoramus?”

  Ben Franklin scuffed a pebble, looked up sideways at Randy, and grinned. “What school?”

  “Why, the school in Fort Repose, of course, until you can go back to Omaha, or wherever your father is stationed.”

  Ben stopped. “Just a minute, Randy. I’m not fooling myself. Nobody’s going back to Omaha, maybe ever. And I don’t think I’ll ever see Dad again. The Hole wasn’t safe, you know. Maybe you think so. I know Mother does. But I’m not fooling myself, Randy, and don’t you try to fool me.”

  Randy put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and looked into his face, measuring the depth of courage behind the brown eyes, finding it at least as deep as his own. “Okay, son,” he said, “I’ll level with you. I’ll level with you, and don’t you ever do anything less with me. I think Mark has had it. I think you’re the man of the family from now on.”

  “That’s what Dad said.”

  “Did he? Well, you’re a man who still has to go to school. I don’t know where, or when, or how. But as soon as school reopens in Fort Repose, or anywhere around, you go. You may have to walk.”

  “Golly, Randy, walk! It’s three miles to town.”

  “Your grandfather used to walk to school in Fort Repose. When he was your age there weren’t any school busses. When he couldn’t hitch a ride in a buggy, or one of the early automobiles, he walked.” Randy put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s get going. I guess we’ll both have to learn to walk again.”

  They walked down to the dock, and then followed a trail that led through the dense hammock to the Henrys’ cleared land. The Henrys’ house was divided into four sections, representing four distinct periods in their fortunes and history. The oldest section had originally been a one-room log cabin. It was the only surviving structure of what had once been the slave quarters, and Randy recalled that his grandfather had always referred to the Henrys’ place as “the quarters.” In recent years the cabin had been jacked up and a concrete foundation laid under the stout cypress logs. The logs, originally chinked with red clay, were bound together with white-washed mortar. It was now the Henrys’ living room.

  Late in the nineteenth century a two-room pine shack had been added to the cabin. In the ’twenties another room, and a bath, more soundly constructed, had been tacked on. In the ’forties, after Two-Tone’s marriage to Missouri, the house had been enlarged by a bedroom and a new kitchen, built with concrete block. It was a comfortable hodgepodge, its ugliness concealed under a patina of flame vine, bougainvillea, and hibiscus. A neat green bib of St. Augustine grass fell from the screened porch to the river bank and dock. In the back yard was a chicken coop and wired runs, a pig pen, and an ancient barn of unpainted cypress leaning wearily against a scabrous chinaberry tree. The barn housed Balaam, the mule, the Model-A, and a hutch of white rabbits.

  Fifty yards up the slope Preacher Henry and Balaam solemnly disked the land, moving silently and evenly, as if they perfectly understood each other. Caleb lay flat on his belly on the end of the dock, peering into the shadowed waters behind a piling, jigging a worm for bream. Two-Tone sat on the screened porch, rocking languidly and lifting a can of beer to his lips. From the kitchen came a woman’s deep, rich voice, singing a spiritual. That would be Missouri, washing the dishes. Hot, black smoke from burning pine knots issued from both brick chimneys. It seemed a peacefiil home, in time of peace.

  Ben Franklin yelled, “Hey, Caleb!”

  Caleb’s face bobbed up. “Hi, Ben,” he called. “Come on out.”

  “What’re you catching?”

  “Ain’t catchin,’ just jiggin’.”

  Randy said, “You can go out on the dock if you want, Ben, but I’ll probably need your help in a while.”

  Ben looked surprised. “Me? You’ll need my help?”

  “Yep,” Randy said. “A man of the house has to do a man’s work.”

  Preacher Henry dropped his reins, yelled, “Ho!” and Balaam stopped. Preacher walked across the dusty field, to be planted in corn in February, to meet Randy. Malachai came out of the barn. He had been under the Model-A. Two-Tone stopped rocking, put down his can of beer, and left the porch. Inside, Missouri stopped singing.

  Randy walked toward the back door and the Henrys converged on him, their faces apprehensive. Malachai said, “Hello, Mister Randy. Hope everything’s all right.”

  “About as right as they could be, considering. Everything okay here?”

  “Just like always. How’s the little girl? Missouri told me she was about blinded.”

  “Peyton’s better. She can see now and in a few days she’ll be allowed outside again. No permanent injury.”

  “The Lord be merciful!” said Preacher Henry. “The Lord has spared us, for the now. I knew it was a-comin’, for it was all set down, Alas, Babylon!” Preacher’s eyes rolled upward. Preacher was big-framed, like Malachai, but now the muscles had shrunk around his bones, and age and troubles deeply wrinkled and darkened his face.

  Randy addressed his words to Preacher, because Preacher was the father and head of the household. “We don’t have water in our house. I want to take up some pipe out of the grove and hook it on to the artesian system.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Randy! I’ll drop my diskin’ right now and help.”

  “No, you stick with the disking, Preacher. I thought maybe Malachai and Two-Tone could help.”

  Two-Tone, who was called Two-Tone because the right side of his face was two shades lighter than the left side, looked stricken. “You mean now?” Two-Tone said.

  Malachai grinned. “You heard the man, Two-Tone. He means now.”

  The three men, with Ben Franklin and Caleb helping, required two hours to lift the pipes and connect the artesian line with the water system in the pumphouse.

  It was the hardest work Randy remembered since climbing and digging in Korea. The palm of his right hand was blistered from the pipe wrench, and a swatch of skin flapped loose. He was exhausted and wet with sweat despite the chill of evening. He was grateful when Malachai offered to carry the tools back to the garage. He said, “Thanks, Malachai. You know that two hundred bucks I loaned you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just consider the debt canceled.” They both grinned.

  Randy and Ben Franklin went back into the house. Randy turned on the tap in the kitchen sink. It gurgled, coughed, sputtered, and then spurted water.

  “Isn’t it beautiful!” Helen said.

  Randy washed the grime from his hands, the water stinging the broken blisters. He filled a glass. The artesian water still smelled like rotten eggs. He gulped it. It tasted wonderful.

  Just after dawn on the third day after The Day a helicopter floated over Fort Repose and then turned toward the upper reaches of the Timucuan. Randy and Helen, hearing it, ran up to the captain’s walk on the roof. It passed close overhead, and they distinguished the Air Force insignia.

  This was als
o the day of disastrous overabundance.

  That morning, when Helen apprehensively opened the freezer, she found several hundred pounds of choice and carefully wrapped meat floating in a noxious sea of melted ice cream and liquified butter. As any housewife would do under the circumstances, she wept.

  This disaster was perfectly predictable, Randy realized. He had been a fool. Instead of buying fresh meat, he should have bought canned meats by the case. If there was one thing he certainly should have forseen, it was the loss of electricity. Even had Orlando escaped, the electricity would have died within a few weeks or months. Electricity was created by burning fuel oil in the Orlando plants. When the oil ran out, it could not be replenished during the chaos of war. There was no longer a rail system, or rail centers, nor were tankers plying the coasts on missions of civilian supply. It was Sam Hazzard’s guess that few major seaports had escaped. After the first wave of missiles from the submarines, they could still be taken out by atomic torpedoes, atomic mines, or bombs or missiles from aircraft. It was Sam Hazzard’s guess that what had been the great ports were now great, water filled craters. Even those sections of the country which escaped destruction entirely would not long have lights. Their power would last only as long as fuel stocks on hand.

  They stared into the freezer, Helen sniffling, Randy numb, Ben Franklin fascinated. Ben dipped his finger into a pool of liquid chocolate and licked it. “Still tastes good but it isn’t even cool,” he said. “All that ice cream! I could’ve been eating ice cream all yesterday; Peyton, too.”

  Helen stopped sniffling. “The meat won’t spoil for another twenty-four hours. I’m going to salvage what I can.”

  “How?” Randy asked.

  “Boil it, salt it, preserve it, pickle it. I’ve got a dozen Mason jars in the closet. There may be more around somewhere. Perhaps you can get some downtown, Randy.”

  “Town and back means a half-gallon of gas,” Randy said. “It’s worth it, if you can just find a few. And we’ll need more salt.”

  “Okay, I’ll give it a try. Maybe I can find jars at the hardware store, if Beck is still keeping it open.”

  Helen reached into the freezer and lifted out two steaks, six pounders two inches thick. She brought out two more steaks, even thicker. “Steaks, steaks, steaks. Everywhere steaks. How many steaks can Graf eat tonight? How does Graf like his steaks, charcoal-broiled?”

  Graf, lying in the doorway between kitchen and utility room, ears cocked and alert at sound of his name, sniffed the wonderful odor of ripening meat in quantity.

  “He likes ’em and I like ’em,” Randy said, “and we’ve got a few sacks of charcoal in the garage. So let’s have a party. A steak party to end all steak parties. Literally, that is. We’ll have the Henrys, and the McGoverns.”

  “I’ve always believed in mixing crowds at my parties,” Helen said. “But what about mixing colors?”

  “It’ll be all right. I’ll ask Florence Wechek and Alice Cooksey and Sam Hazzard too. And Dan Gunn, if I can find him. And I’ll scrounge around for more charcoal. It’ll be a relief from cooking in the fireplace.”

  “Don’t forget the salt,” Helen said. “We’re going to need a lot to save this meat.”

  On this, the third day after The Day, the character of Fort Repose had changed. Every building still stood, no brick had been displaced, yet all was altered, especially the people.

  Earlier, Randy had noticed that some of the plate-glass store windows had cracked under the shock waves from Tampa and Orlando. Now the windows of a number of stores were shattered entirely, and glass littered the sidewalks. From alleyways came the sour smell of uncollected garbage.

  Most of the parking spaces on Yulee and St. Johns incongruously were occupied, but the cars themselves were empty, and several had been stripped of wheels.

  There was no commerce. There were few people. Altogether, Randy saw only four or five cars in motion. Those who were not out of gas hoarded what remained in their tanks against graver emergencies to come.

  The pedestrians he saw seemed apprehensive, hurrying along on missions private and vital, shoulders hunched, eyes directed dead ahead. There were no women on the streets, and the men did not walk in pairs, but alone and warily. Randy saw several acquaintances who must have recognized his car. Not one smiled or waved.

  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 thi
ngs 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.

  Beck shook his head. “Nothing. That safe is full up to the top with money. That’s all I’ve got left—money. Ain’t that funny—nothing but money?” Mr. Beck laughed. “Know what, I could retire.”

  Randy drove on to the Medical Arts Building. Here, he had expected to find activity. He found none, but he did see Dan Gunn’s car in the parking lot.

  There were reddish brown stains on the sidewalk and the green concrete steps. The glass in the front door was shattered and the door itself swung open. The waiting room was ominously empty. There was no one at the reception desk. Randy possessed a country dweller’s keen sense of smell. Now he smelled many alarming odors—disinfectant, ether, spilled drugs, spilled blood, stale urine. He called, “Dan! Hey, Dan!”