Alas, Babylon Part 12

"Sir Percy," Florence interrupted, "a murderer!"

"Hush, dear," Alice said. "The water will be boiling in a moment." She turned to Randy. "Florence really shouldn't blame Sir Percy. After all, there's been no milk for him, and very little of anything else. As a matter of fact, we haven't seen Sir Perry in three or four days-I suppose he was out hunting for himself but a few minutes ago when Anthony flew home Sir Percy was on the porch."

"Ambushed poor Anthony," Florence said. "Actually ambushed him. Killed him and ate him right there on the porch. Poor Cleo."

"Where's Sir Percy now?" Randy asked.

"He's gone again," Alice said. "He'd better not come back." Randy was thoughtful. Hunting cats would be a problem. And what would happen to dogs? He still had a few cans of dog food for Graf, but he could foresee a time when humans might look upon dog food as a delicacy. He said aloud, but speaking to himself rather than the others, "Survival of the fittest."

"What do you mean?" Lib said.

"The strong survive. The frail die. The exotic fish die because the aquarium isn't heated. The common guppy lives. So does the tough catfish. The house cat turns hunter and eats the pet bird. If he didn't, he'd starve. That's the way it is and that's the way it's going to be."

Florence had stopped crying. "You mean, with humans? You mean, we humans are going to have to turn savage, like Sir Percy? Well, I can't do it. I don't want to live in that kind of a world, Randy."

"You'll live, Florence," Randy said.

Walking back to his own house, Randy said, "Florence is a guppy, a nice, drab little guppy. That's why she'll survive." "What about you and me?" Lib said.

"We're going to have to be tough. We're going to have to be catfish."

Chapter 8.

On a morning in April, four months after The Day, Randy Bragg awoke and watched a shaft of sunlight creep down the wall. At the foot of the couch, Graf squirmed and then wormed his way upward under the blanket. During the January cold spell Randy had discovered a new use for Graf. The dachshund made a most satisfactory foot warmer, mobile, automatic, and operating on a minimum of fuel which he would consume anyway. Randy flung off the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. He was hungry. He was always hungry. No matter how much he ate the night before, he was always starving in the morning. He never had enough fats, or sweets, or starches, and the greater part of each day was usually spent in physical effort of one kind or another. Downstairs, Helen and Lib would be preparing breakfast. Before Randy ate he would shower and shave. These were painful luxuries, almost his only remnant of routine from before The Day.

Randy walked to the bar-counter and began to sharpen his razor. The razor was a six-inch hunting knife. He honed its edges vigorously on a whetstone and then stropped it on a belt nailed to the wall. A clean, smooth, painless shave was one of the things he missed, but not what he missed most.

He missed music. It had been a long time since he had heard music. The record player and his collection of LP's of course were useless without electricity. Music was no longer broadcast, any where. Anyway, his second and last set of batteries for the transistor radio was losing strength. Very soon, they would have neither flashlights nor any means of receiving radio except through the Admiral's short wave. WSMF in San Marco was no longer operating. Something had happened to the diesel supplying the hospital and the radio station and it was impossible to find spare parts. This was the word that had come from San Marco, eighteen miles away. It had required two days for the word to reach Fort Repose.

He missed cigarettes, but not so much. Dan Gunn still had a few pounds of tobacco, and had lent him a pipe. Randy found more pleasure in a pipe after each meal, and one before bedtime, than he had ever found in a whole carton of cigarettes. With tobacco so limited, each pipe was a luxury, relaxing and wonderful.

He missed whiskey not at all. Since The Day, he had drunk hardly anything, nor found need for it. He no longer regarded whiskey as a drink. Whiskey was Dan Gunn's emergency anesthetic. Whiskey, what was left of his supply, was for medical use, and for trading.

He missed his morning coffee most. It had been, he calculated, six or seven weeks since he had tasted coffee. Coffee was more precious than gasoline, or even whiskey. Tobacco could be grown, and doubtless was being grown in a strip all the way from northwest Florida to Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia in the rural areas still habitable. Whiskey you could make, given the proper equipment and ingredients. But coffee came from South America.

Randy tested his knife on a bit of paper. It was as sharp as he could ever make it. He went into the bathroom and showered. The cold water no longer chilled him as it had through January and February. He was inured to it. Soap he used sparingly. The house reserve was down to three cakes.

He dried and stepped on the scales. One fifty-two. This was exactly what he had weighed at eighteen, as a freshman at the University. Even after three months on the line in Korea, he had dropped only to one fifty-six. He had lost an average of a pound a week for the past sixteen weeks, but now, he noted, his weight loss was slower. He had held one fifty-two for the past three days. He was leaner and harder, and, truthfully, felt better than before The Day.

There was a knock on the living-room door. That would be Peyton. He slipped on his shorts and said, "Come in."

Peyton came in, carefully balancing the tiny pot of steaming water allotted for his morning shave. She set the pot before him on the counter as if it were a crystal bowl filled with flowers. "There," she said. "Can I watch you shave this morning, Randy?" The sight of Peyton enriched Randy's mornings. She was brash and buoyant, bobbing like a brightly colored cork in the maelstrom, unsinkable and unafraid. "Why do you like to watch me shave?" he asked.

"Because you make such funny faces in the mirror. You should see yourself."

"I do."

"No, you don't really see yourself. All you watch is the knife, as if you're afraid of cutting your throat."

Dan Gunn came out of the bedroom, dressed in Levi's and a blue checked sports shirt. Until The Day, Dan had used an electric razor. Now, rather than learn to shave with a knife or what ever was available, he did not shave at all. His beard had bloomed thick and flaming red. He looked like a Klondike sourdough or Paul Bunyan transplanted to the semi-tropics. On those rare days when his beard was freshly trimmed and he dressed formally in white shirt and a tie, he looked like a physician, outsized 1890 model.

"You can't watch today," Randy told the child. "I want to talk to Doctor Gunn." He poured his hot water into the basin and returned the pot to Peyton. Peyton smiled at Dan and left.

Randy soaped and soaked his face. "Did you know that Einstein never used shaving soap?" he said. "Einstein just used plain soap like this. Einstein was a smart man and what was good enough for Einstein is good enough for me." He sc.r.a.ped at his beard, winced, and said, "Einstein must have had an awfully good razor. Einstein must've used a fresh blade every morning. I'll bet Einstein never shaved with a hunting knife."

Dan said, "I had an awful dream last night. Dreamed I'd forgotten to pay my income tax and was behind in my alimony and the Treasury agents and a couple of deputy sheriffs were chasing me around the courthouse with shotguns. They finally cornered me. They were arguing about whether to send me to the Federal pen or state prison. I tried to sneak out. I think they shot me. Anyway, I woke up, shaking. All I could think of was that I really hadn't paid my income tax, or alimony either. What day is it, anyway?"

"I don't know what day it is but I know the date. April fourteenth."

Dan smiled through the red beard. "My subconscious must be a watchdog. Income tax day tomorrow. And we don't have to file a return, Randy. No tax. No alimony. Let us count our blessings. Never thought I'd see the day."

"No coffee," Randy said. "I would gladly pay my tax tomorrow for a pound of coffee. Dan, if you drive to town today I want to go with you. I want to trade for coffee."

Dan had evolved a barter system for his services. He charged a gallon of gas, if the patient had it, for house calls. Most families had somehow managed to obtain and conserve a few gallons of gasoline. It was their link with a mobile past, insurance of mobility in some emergency of the future. Sickness and injury were emergencies for which they would gladly dip into their liquid reserve. Dan made little profit. Perhaps half his patients were able and willing to pay with gasoline. Still, he managed to keep the Model-A's tank nearly full, and on his rounds he was continuously charging batteries. Bill McGovern had inst.i.tuted a system of rotating the batteries in the car. In turn, the charged batteries powered Admiral Hazzard's short-wave receiver. Not only was the car transport for Randy's water-linked enclave of families, it was necessary to maintain their ear to the world outside. Not that the world, any longer, said much.

Dan said, "Sure, Randy, but it's going to take all morning. I've got a bad situation in town."

"What's the trouble?"

From downstairs they heard Helen's voice, "Breakfast!" "Tell you later," Dan said.

Randy was last to reach the dining room. There was a tall gla.s.s of orange juice at his place, and a big pitcher of juice in the center of the table. Whatever else they might lack, there was always citrus. Yet even orange juice would eventually disappear. In late June or early July they would squeeze the last of the Valencias and use the last grapefruit. From then until the new crop of early oranges ripened in October, citrus would be absent from their diet.

He saw that this morning there was a single boiled egg and small portion of broiled fish left over from the night before. "Where's my other boiled egg?" he said.

"Malachai only brought over eight eggs this morning," Helen said. "The Henrys have been losing chickens."

"What do you mean, losing them?"

"They're being stolen."

Randy put down his juice. Citrus, fish, and eggs were their staples. A drop in the egg supply was serious. "I'll bet it's an inside job," he said. "I'll bet that no-good Two-Tone has been swapping hens for liquor."

Lib spoke. "Malachai thinks it's wild cats-that is, house cats that have gone wild."

"That's not the worst of it," Helen said. "One of the Henrys' pigs is missing. They heard it squeal, just once. Preacher thinks a wolf took it. Preacher says he found a wolf track."

"No wolves in Florida," Randy said. "No four-legged wolves." The loss of hens was serious, but the loss of pigs disastrous. The Henry sow had produced a farrow that in a few weeks would add real meat to everybody's diet. Even now they weighed twelve to fifteen pounds. Each evening, all food sc.r.a.ps from the Bragg, Wechek, and Hazzard households were carried to the Henry place to help feed the pigs and chickens. Every day, Randy had to argue with Helen and Lib to save sc.r.a.ps for Graf. Randy was conscious that the Henrys supplied more than their own share of food for the benefit of all. When Preacher's corn crop ripened in June, the disparity would be even greater. And it had been Two-Tone, of all people, who had suggested that they grow sugar cane and then had explored the river banks in the Henrys' leaky, flat bottomed skiff until he had found wild cane. He had sprigged, planted, and cultivated it. Because of the Henrys, they could all look forward, one day, to a breakfast of corn bread, cane syrup, and bacon. He was sure they would find a way to convert the corn to meal, even if they had to grind it between flagstones. "I don't think we're doing enough for the Henrys," Randy said. "We'll have to give them more help."

"What kind of help?" Bill McGovern asked.

"At the moment, help them guard the food supply. Keep away the prowlers-cats, wolves, humans, or whatever."

"Can't the Henrys do it themselves?" Helen asked. "Don't they have a gun?"

"They've got a gun-an old, beat-up single barrel twelve gauge-but they don't have time. You can't expect Preacher and Malachai to work as hard as they do every day and then sit up all night. And I wouldn't trust Two-Tone. He'd just sleep. Do I hear volunteers?"

"Me!" said Ben Franklin.

Randy's first impulse was to say no, that this wasn't a job for a thirteen-year-old boy. Yet Ben was eating as much as a man, or more, and he would have to do a man's work. "I thought you and Caleb were chopping firewood today?"

"I can chop wood and stand watch too."

"Better let me take it the first night," said Bill McGovern. "I wouldn't want to see anything happen to those pigs." Bill was thinner, as they all were, and yet it seemed that he had dropped years as well as weight. With his fork he touched a bit of fish at the edge of his plate. "You know, for years I looked forward to my vacation in the ba.s.s country. That's why I built a house on the Timucuan when I retired. But now I can hardly look a ba.s.s in the face. I want meat-real red meat."

Randy had his decision. "All right, Bill, you can take the watch tonight, and we'll rotate thereafter. I'm sure the Admiral will take a night too."

"Do I get a night?" Ben Franklin asked. His eyes were pleading.

"You get a night, Ben. I'll make up a schedule and post it on the bulletin board." A bulletin board in the hallway, with a.s.signment of duties, had become a necessity. In this new life there was no leisure. If everybody worked as hard as he could until sundown every day, then everybody could eat, although not well. Each day brought a crisis of one kind or another. They faced shortages of the most trivial but necessary items. Who would have had the foresight to buy a supply of needles and thread? Florence Wechek owned a beautiful new sewing machine, electric and useless of course. Florence, Helen, and Hannah Henry did the sewing for Randy's community. Yesterday Florence had broken a needle and had come to Randy, close to tears, as if it were a major disaster, as indeed it was. And everybody had unthinkingly squandered matches, so that now there were no matches. He still had five lighter flints and one small can of lighter fluid. Luckily, his old Army lighter would burn gasoline, but flints were priceless and impossible to find. Within a few months it might be necessary to keep the dining-room fire going day and night in spite of unwelcome heat and added labor. Nor would their supply of wood last forever. They would have to scout farther and farther a field for usable timber. Hauling it would become a major problem. When Dan could no longer collect his gasoline fees and the tank in the Model-A finally ran dry their life was bound to change drastically, and for the worse.

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

Lib said, "Randy, finish your fish. And you'd better drink another gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.

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, G.o.d!" 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 c.o.ke machine and begged old electric fans but it had been a losing battle.

In thirty years her book budget had been raised ten percent, but the cost of books had doubled. Her magazine budget was unchanged, but the cost of magazines had tripled. So while Fort Repose grew in population, book borrowings dwindled. There had been so many new distractions, drive-in theaters, dashing off to springs and beaches over the weekends, the ma.s.s hypnosis of the young every evening, and finally the craze for boating and water-skiing. Now all this was ended. All entertainment, all amus.e.m.e.nts, all escape, all information again centered in the library. The fact that the library had no air conditioning made no difference now. There were not enough chairs to accommodate her readers. They sat on the front steps, in the windows, on the floor with backs against walls or stacks. They read everything, even the cla.s.sics. And the children came to her, when they were free of their ch.o.r.es, and she guided them. And there was useful research to do. Randy and Doctor Gunn didn't know it, but as a result of her research they might eat better thereafter. It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.

At the town limits, Dan turned into Bill Cullen's fish camp, cafe, and bar. The grounds were more dilapidated and filthier than ever. The liquor shelves were bare. The counters in the boathouse tackle shop were empty. Not a plug, fly, or hook remained. Bigmouth Bill had been cleaned out months before. His wife, strawhaired and barrel-shaped, stepped out of the living quarters. Randy sniffed. She didn't smell of spiked wine this day. She simply smelled sour. Alone of all the people he had seen, she had gained weight since The Day. Randy guessed that she had cached sacks of grits and had been living on grits and fried fish. She said, "He's in here, Doc."

Dan didn't go in immediately. "Does he seem any better?" he asked.

"He's worse. His hands is leakin' pus."

"How do you feel? You haven't had any of his symptoms, have you?"

"Me? I don't feel no different. I've felt worse." She giggled, showing her rotting teeth. "You ever had a hangover, Doc? That's when I've felt worse. Right now I wish I felt worse so I could take a drink and feel better. You get it, Doc?" She came closer to Dan and lowered her voice. "He ain't goin' to die, is he?"

"I don't know."

"The old tightwad better not die on me now. He's not leavin' me nuthin', Doc. He don't even own this place free and clear. He ain't never even made no will. He's holdin' out on me, Doc. I can tell. He had six cases stashed away after The Day. Claims he sold all six to Porky Logan. But he don't show me no money. You know what, Doc? I think he's got that six cases hid!"

Dan brushed past her and they entered the shack. Bill Cullen lay on a sagging iron bed, a stained sheet pulled up to his bare waist. In the bad light filtering through the venetian shade over the single window, he was at first unrecognizable to Randy. He was wasted, his eyes sunken, his eyeb.a.l.l.s yellow. Tufts of hair were gone from one side of his head, exposing reddish scalp. His hands, resting across his stomach, were swollen, blackened, and cracked. He croaked, "h.e.l.lo, Doc." He saw Randy and said, "I'll be d.a.m.ned-Randy."

The stench was too much for Randy. He gagged, said, "h.e.l.lo, Bill," and backed out. He leaned over the dock railing, coughing and choking, until he could breathe deeply of the sweet wind from the river. When Dan came out they walked silently back to the car together. All Dan said was, "She was right. He's worse. I'll swear he's had a fresh dose of radiation since I saw him last."

They drove on to Marines Park. The park had become the barter center of Fort Repose. Dan said, "Do you want to go on with me to the schoolhouse?"

"No, thanks," Randy said. He was glad he wasn't a doctor. A doctor required special courage that Randy felt he did not possess.

"I'll pick you up here in an hour. Then I'll see Hernandez and Logan and then home."

"Okay." Randy got out of the car.

"Don't swap for less than two pounds. Scotch is darn near as scarce as coffee."

"I'll make the best deal I can," Randy promised. Dan drove off Randy tucked the bottle under his arm and walked toward the bandstand, an octagon-shaped wooden structure, its platform elevated three feet above what had once been turf smooth as a gold green, now unkempt, infiltrated with weeds and b.o.o.by trapped with sandspurs. A dozen men, legs dangling, sat on the platform and steps. Others moved about, the alert, humorless smile of the trader on their faces. Three bony horses were tethered to the bandstand railing. Like Randy, some of the men carried holsters at their belts. A few shotguns and an old-fashioned Winchester leaned against the planking. The armed men had come in from the countryside, a risk.

A third of the traders in Marines Park, on this day, were Negroes. The economics of disaster placed a penalty upon prejudice. The laws of hunger and survival could not be evaded, and honored no color line. A back-yard hen raised by a Negro tasted just as good as the gamec.o.c.ks of Carleton Hawes, the well-to-do realtor who was a vice president of the county White Citizens Council, and there was more meat on it. Randy saw Hawes, a brace of chickens dangling from his belt, drink water, presumably boiled, from a Negro's jug. There were two drinking fountains in Marines Park, one marked "White Only," the other "Colored Only." Since neither worked, the signs were meaningless.

Hawes saw Randy, wiped his mouth, and called, "Hey, Randy."

"h.e.l.lo, Carleton." "What're you trading?" "A bottle of Scotch."

Hawes' eyes fixed on the paper bag and he moved closer to Randy, cautious as a pointer blundered upon quail. Randy recalled from Sat.u.r.day nights at the St. Johns Club that Scotch was Hawes' drink. "What's your asking price?" Hawes asked. "Two pounds of coffee."

"I'll swap you these two birds. Both young hens. See how plump they are? Better eating you'll never have."

Randy laughed.

"Being it's you, I'll tell you what I'll do. I've got eggs at home. I'll throw in a couple of dozen eggs. Have 'em here tomorrow. On my word. If you don't believe me, you can take the birds now, as a binder."

"The asking price," Randy said, "is also the selling price. Two pounds of coffee. Any brand will do."

Hawes sighed. "Who's got coffee? It's been three months since I've had a drink of Scotch. Let me look at the bottle, will you?"