Tomorrow! (26 page)

Then he remembered that nobody had thought to give him a key. He couldn’t get in without breaking something.

He chose a front window because it was handiest. The glass shattered; he reached in . . .

the lock turned.

He ran up both Bights of stairs, threw himself into the broken swivel chair at his work table, clapped phones on his head and started to pull switches, turn dials.

Presently a hysterical and varied chatter began to pour into his astounded ears.

“It’s real,” he whispered to himself. “It’s—
it
.”

Anyone looking at the teen-ager in that transfixed moment would have thought that “it”

was the most wonderful thing that the young man could have hoped for. It wasn’t, exactly; but nobody could top it for pure, raging excitement.

In Ferndale, Chuck got through at last to Hink Field. Dinner was spoiled. His mother and his aunt were indignant; Ruth was, in fact, weeping with disappointment and rage. He could hear her say, over and over, “The fools! Oh, the
fools!
They’re little
boys,
really. It’s all a big game and they
love
it.”

Grimly, Chuck hoped that she would go on forever thinking it was just a “big game.” The baby started to cry, as if she, too, realized the party was over, spoiled, done for.

That was when he dialed for the twentieth time and got through.

“Captain Parker here,” a voice said.

“Jeff? This is Chuck Conner—”

“Chuck? Report out here as soon as possible, hunh?”

“Know anything?”

There was a minute pause—as if the captain had looked over his shoulder. Then his voice came, tense, low and fast. “
Yeah!
Only a Yellow alert, so far. First wave sneaked in low, somewhere above Great Slave Lake. Spread out and cruised slowly. They’re split in pieces now and under attack. Thing is—thing that gets
everybody!
—a wave is coming
from the south!”
The voice became Hat again: “Okay, Conner. Report, Hink, instanter.”

At that moment, Charles Conner had perhaps the most accurate information of any person within the main confines of the Sister Cities.

He walked back into the distraught living room and said, casually almost, “Mother, I’ve got to report to Hink, myself. Guess I should take you home now; we’ll have to use the buses.”

“Take my car,” Jim said. Chuck looked at him. “Wouldn’t you rather keep it, under the circumstances?”

Jim was sitting in his easy chair now, his face puckered with indignation and a glass of beer in his hand.
“Hell.
This phoney-baloney? Take the car, boy.”

“It may not be—phoney. . . .” Chuck didn’t want to frighten his uncle, merely to warn him. And he didn’t want to violate his own trust. He was cleared to know the thing he now knew.

Unauthorized civilians in this region, so far, were not supposed to know anything at all.

Jim Williams stood up, his expression sardonic. “You complete your call?”

Chuck nodded.

“The Hink Field soldiers take it straight?”

Chuck nodded.

“Bunch of idiots! I tell you—even if this spreads all over the country—it’s fake. Some lousy Government idea of a test run. Making the civilian population knuckle to the military.

Damned fraud, I say. Watch my vote next time!
Brother
!”

“Just the same,” Chuck said, bringing his own and his mother’s coats, aware of his mother’s eyes, “if you hear the air-raid siren, get down in your cellar with all the kids—and
stay
there.”

Jim was grinning. “That’s a hot one! Notice what the man said, Ruth? ‘
If
we hear the sirens!’ Son, there aren’t six sirens in all River City and the nearest one to Ferndale is audible in a strong wind only about to the reservoir.”

Chuck had forgotten the great difference between the defense preparations of the two cities. He said, “Promise this. Keep the radio on.”

“Believe me, I will. Should be a circus—everybody running like headless chickens!”

“Keep the radio on. If you hear a Condition Red, get in the cellar and get there fast and stay there!”

“Sure.
If
we hear a Condition Red. Fat chance!”

Chuck gave a worried glance at the Williams kids, saw that Ruth was still merely scornful, and opened the door. “Promise?”

“Sure,” Jim said negligently. “
Gosh!
I never realized I had such spooky, damned fool relatives.”

In the Williams car, Beth said, “It’s real, isn’t it, Charles?”

“Damned real.”

“You were told—more than you can tell us?”

He turned into Willowgrove, avoided a speeding truck, and started south. “This is for you, Mother—and only you. Dad will get it shortly beyond doubt. The whole area, I guess. There are two . . . three waves of bombers on the way and one’s corning from the south—God knows why or how.”

She didn’t answer. He looked around. His mother had bowed her head and shut her eyes and he realized, at first with a sense of shock and then with a sense of its fitness, that she was crying.

It wasn’t the dead, Nora realized as she looked in fixed horror. The dead didn’t wear hip boots. It was just some sewer men carrying lanterns. Her relief was overwhelming.

Almost any adult who had passed through such a series of ideas and corresponding nervous and visceral shocks would have folded up quietly on the curved cement. But Nora, relieved of the infernal terrors, now faced terrors common to persons of her age: the terrors of angered adults.

“What the hell! A
kid
!”

Nora called timidly, “Hello.”

The men held up lanterns. There were three of them. “What in God’s name you doing here?”

Nora perceived in the man’s voice more astonishment than wrath. The men behind also seemed amazed. Astonishment in adults offered, not peril, but opportunity.

“I’m lost,” Nora said. “I was running away from—people—and I saw a ladder in a hole. I went down—and slid—and I guess I hit kind of hard and when I came to my senses I was wandering in this place. Where is it?”

“Issa bout Washanan an’ da riva,” a man with a mustache said. “Da poor leetle keed.”

“They were boys I was running away from,” Nora went on hurriedly. “Big boys. Men, almost. They asked me to do—terrible things.” A woman in distress, Nora felt, one who was trying to get sympathy, should be in distress for a more suitable reason than pursuit by Mrs.

Bailey.

“Be goddam!” said the Italian.

The man who’d spoken first said, “What’s the name, sister?”

“Nora Conner.”

“You sure you didn’t come in here a-purpose?”

“I don’t even know were it is—-or what, exactly.”

“I’m Ken Smith and don’t tell any more dam’ lies. Come on, Nora, we’ll get you out.”

“Where?’’

“Washington Avenue.” The man held the lantern up but could not read her face. “That suit you?”

“Anything,” she said dramatically, “to get out.”

She almost told them that she’d thought they were the dead from the cemetery. She realized in time, being Nora, that the confidence, true and horrific though it might be, would reveal the good knowledge she’d had of her whereabouts.

They walked along with Nora second in the file. “What were
you
doing here?” she asked.

“Trying to stop a leak in a joint.”

“Are you the superintendent?”

Ken Smith grunted, “Foreman.” Light showed ahead and soon a ladder and a round, white eye above. Ken boosted her. “Scraggle out, kid,” he said. “And don’t come in here any more. They got
rats
in this sewer as big as you.”

Nora climbed. She thought Mr. Ken Smith was about half a nice person and half not very nice. There was no such thing as a rat as big as she. The higher she got and the closer to the light, the surer she felt of that. In a moment, she was outdoors.

The light hurt her eyes for a while.

When the hurt stopped, she started over Washington.

All around, now, were the big buildings, the skyscrapers, and the shops. The sidewalks, though broad, couldn’t hold the people. They tramped in the snow, packing it down, and they bulged out in the street, off the curb, and cars honked at them. Cars piled up at every cross street; people going over in big bunches sometimes made the cars wait over an entire green light, honking in fury, but helpless.

There were all kinds of people and thousands of kids. There was everything on earth in the store windows—mannequins in silk dresses and men’s silk dressing gowns, cameras and Kodak film and wonderful, enormous snapshots in the window of Eller’s Photo Store. There were toys and windows full of candies and huge boxes in Slater’s, wrapped in silver paper and tied with silver ribbons with imitation holly berries as big as apples and probably a lot of nothing, Nora thought, in the boxes. On every corner, there was a Santa Claus ringing a dinnerbell and holding out a box for money and down Central Avenue the Salvation Army was playing carols, but she decided it would take too long to push her way up and watch the lassies with trombones, though she wanted to.

She got across Central finally, after waiting two lights, and she decided every soul in the county must be doing their last-minute shopping. She noticed, too, that people were in kind of a bad temper-doubtless because they were shopping so late and the things they wanted were all shopworn by now or sold out and they had to take second choice. The carillon in St. Mark’s suddenly began to play “Silent Night” and a few large flakes of snow came past Nora’s nose, making her look aloft at the weather. She saw it was completely cloudy, and she expected it would soon snow hard, giving them a white Christmas in the Sister Cities three times over, counting the snow on the street.

The press of people—intent, hurrying, pouring into stores and pouring out, people for the most part bigger and stronger than Nora—became worrisome. The prospect of hard snow also offered problems. Simmons Park began to seem quite far away, though it was actually only a few very long blocks, less than a mile, from Central. A mile was usually as nothing to a determined Nora. But a mile in a mob, with the threat of snow—and no lunch—was something else.

When she got across Central, she began to wonder whom she could find to help her. If her father had been at work, in the Phillips Building, everything would be simple; but he wasn’t; he was in Ferndale, stuffing himself with roast pork and potatoes.

She peered in the Morgan-Fenwick Department Store windows. And she thought of Mr.

Bailey. The Sloan Bank, after all, was only a short way farther downtown and she’d heard Netta say Beau was working because they’d kept open a few “cages” for Christmas-rush deposits, and Beau felt he should be there.

She walked down Central, the biggest street, the most important.

The falling snow and the snow on the wide sidewalk made peoples’ voices whispery. It muffled auto horns; even the metronome clank of a loose tire chain sounded fuzzy. Iron bells in St. Mark’s played “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,” and the Santa Clauses rang shrill bells; people put money in pots that hung on tripods, and the Salvation Army blared out “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”

Bemused by these matters, Nora inadvertently walked past the vaulted entrance of the Sloan Bank and found herself looking in the window of the White Elephant Restaurant, just beyond. At the sight of people eating, she swallowed several times. She pushed her nose against the cold glass and wondered if twenty-seven cents was enough to give her entry. She considered going in, anyway, and ordering, and then telephoning Mr. Bailey or somebody. They could come and pay the bill. Once before, though, Nora had tried that, and the people in the other restaurant had asked to see her money before serving her. So she’d run out, vastly humiliated. It had even made her father sore.

Still, Nora didn’t want to risk such ignominy.

Four very pretty women, not very old women, were eating their lunch right under Nora’s nose. Her magnetized gaze traveled from syrup-dripping waffles to chicken salad. One of the women started watching Nora and soon said something to the others; all of a sudden she jumped up and came out the revolving door to the street, in the snow, without her coat or hat and said to Nora, “You hungry, honey?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Haven’t you got any money or any folks around here?”

“I was Christmas shopping,” Nora explained readily. “And I ran out of funds. I thought my daddy was in his office, but he’s gone home already.”

“What’s your name, dear?”

“Nora Conner and I live out on Walnut Street. That’s near Crystal Lake.”

“My name’s Alice Groves and I’m having lunch with three nurses. Would you like to eat with us? I’ll buy the lunch.”

Nora hardly bothered to consider the fact that Alice Groves was colored and so were the other three women she said were nurses. She had a vague feeling that perhaps some people would not approve if they saw her eating in the White Elephant window with four colored ladies, but Nora privately thought the majority of colored adults were a good deal more interesting than nearly any grown white people. She accepted.

They introduced themselves. It seemed they were all trained nurses at the Mildred Tatum Infirmary, which Nora knew about, and Miss Groves was head of the whole thing. They were off duty, Christmas shopping, and having lunch here at the White Elephant.

“Order anything you like, dear,” Miss Groves urged.

Studying the menu, Nora thought that colored people got lower wages, so she skipped the blue plates and main dishes. “Would it be all right if I had two sardine sandwiches and then waffles?” That came to ninety-five cents, a good deal.

One of the nurses—her name was Rebecca—laughed quite hard.

Alice Groves said, “It would be perfectly all right.”

Besides that, they gave her the best seat. There was one seat from which you could watch a man across the street on the flagpole on the top edge of the building which, Nora determined by counting the windows, was only a paltry fifteen stories high.

He was interesting to watch because he was more like a bug up there than a person. And while they had lunch, he came down, riding a kind of horizontal ladder on ropes. As he crossed the sidewalk to a small truck he had parked there, she could see he was lame. On the truck was painted, not in real lettering but just homemade letters, “Steeplejack Sam—Your High Repair Man.”