by Isla Morley
Dobbs is putting cans on the shelf beside the kitchen counter.
I notice the door is ajar. I move to the other side of the table. I chance another look. Open, definitely open. By my estimate, fifteen feet separates me from it.
“I didn’t care for how that boy’s been sniffing around you since he’s been back. Full of ideas about taking what has no business being his. Just like his daddy with my Evabelle Horne back in high school.”
“Arlo’s my friend.”
“Friend. Right.” You’d think something’s got a hold of his funny bone. “Boys don’t want to be”—he punctuates the air with quotation marks—“friends . . . with girls. Our young Mr. Meier was after one thing and one thing only.” He tilts his nose as if he’s caught a whiff of something starting to sour. “Looked to me like you were set to give it to him, too.”
“You were spying on us?”
Arlo showed up at the picnic just as he said he would. He plunked himself next to me on the bleachers and talked about his new job working at Pyle’s meatpacking plant and that the funniest thing had happened that day: Two guys who worked the rodeo found a deer in their backyard and got the bright idea to lasso it and take it to Pyle’s for cash. Somehow, it got loose and took off down Main Street when Becky Willoby stepped out of her salon and defended the fleeing animal by stopping the men dead in their tracks with her hair dryer. While Arlo was telling the story, my hand had been resting on the wooden bench between us like a purse no one wanted to claim, but as soon as I laughed, he brought his hand down gently on it and wove his fingers through mine. There wasn’t time for this monumental event to sink in because his head was suddenly tipping toward mine.
It was a proper kiss—the kind Suzie was always going on about. No longer were we ten-year-olds snickering from behind a tree at the embrace of young lovers; at sixteen, we were the young lovers. By kissing someone, I thought you exchanged some hidden knowledge. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In place of everything I knew about my childhood friend was a widening, thrilling uncertainty. It made me want to stop and keep going both. And then someone was calling for Arlo over the PA system, and the matter was settled.
“Didn’t even bother to come back, did he?”
Seeing Dobbs smirk like that makes me realize: Dobbs was the one who had Arlo called away. Just as he’d arranged to be driving down the road when I was walking home because Arlo didn’t come back as he said he would. I should’ve just stayed glued to those bleachers instead of wanting to show Arlo a kiss didn’t mean I’d wait on him forever. If I had, Dobbs’s great big plan would’ve amounted to nothing. And I would not be here. A convict—except I can’t figure out my crime.
“When are we going?” I ask Dobbs.
“Going?”
It’s hard to answer him because the muscles in my face have fallen slack. “The letter said—”
He waves his hand at me. “No, no, no. We have to stay put for now. Way too risky to be getting in a car and driving off when everyone’s looking for you.”
“You said they weren’t going to be looking for me. You said that’s why I had to write the letter, so they wouldn’t think I’d been—” I can’t say the word. I mustn’t say the word. As long as it is not spoken, it won’t be true.
“Kidnapped? It’ll be a while yet before someone gets the notion a crime’s been committed. And even then, what with that new gung ho deputy and his wild-goose chases, they’ll be dredging Clinton Lake and rummaging through the Hamm Landfill before they think to follow other leads. You might as well hear it now, Blythe: the trail’s already cold.”
Dear Jesus.
Dobbs starts clapping me on the back, like it’s a bad piece of meat that’s got the better of me.
I pivot out from under him. He goes back to rearranging items on the shelf. He’s jabbering away about Arlo being a carbon copy of his father. I take three steps toward the door.
“Came real close to ruining everything, that boy did.”
Three more steps. Halfway there.
Run!
I sprint as hard as I can. I try flinging the door wide, but it screeches and groans and barely moves an inch. It’s like moving a tank. I get my arm out and then my leg, and I’m about to squeeze my body sideways through the crack, about to scalp myself when Dobbs grabs me.
He pulls me back into the room. He leans against the door till it closes, then locks it with a key from the bunch on his belt.
“You gone awful pale again. You sure you won’t eat something? Let’s heat up some water. Here, this is how you use these gas burners.” He points to a valve on the propane tank, gives instructions. “Always remember to switch it back off once you’re done. You don’t want to gas yourself.”
He fills a kettle with water from the barrel and sets it on the hot plate. “This water’s purified and will last ten years before going stale. Even then, I’ve got some tablets that will dissolve in it and freshen it right up.”
“Dobbs?”
He points out the nonperishables as though he is the owner of a grocery store and this is my first day on the job. “I can’t promise you fresh produce very often. Besides, the canned stuff is better for you in the long run, what with the government doing those chem-sprays over all our farmlands. Airplane vapor trails, my foot.” He fills a small bowl with canned peaches. “This is a special occasion. What we don’t finish, we’ll put in this cooler, and they’ll last you a good week or so. Once I get that old icebox up and running, you’ll be able to order T-bone steaks if you want.”
“Why are you doing this, Dobbs?”
“When I come back, I’ll bring you cold cuts, but just about everything you can think of is here in a tin or a packet or a box. MREs—know what they are? Meals ready to eat. You don’t even need to cook if you don’t want. Give you more time to work on your poems.”
Poems? He expects sonnets in this hole?
“If there’s something you want that’s not here, put it on the list.” He gestures to a bulletin board with a small piece of paper pinned to it. Then he stirs a packet of powder into an enamel cup filled with hot water and hands it to me. “Tastes good; try it.”
I push the cup aside. “Why are you doing this?”
“I realize you have a lot of questions, and we are going to discuss them, in due course.”
There are pauses between his words, whereas mine come out in a rush. “Whynotnow?”
“Because you’re all wound up, and I need for you to be calm. We’ll discuss everything when we can talk, one adult to another.”
But I’m not an adult. I’m sixteen years old.
Taking a sip of the hot chocolate meant for me, he watches me over the rim of the mug. I do my best imitation of being calm, so he will talk to me like an adult and tell me what is going to happen next.
“You weren’t like other girls,” he says instead. “You had your head screwed on right. The first time I saw you in the reference section, I knew. The others: a dime a dozen. But when you came along, I said to myself, ‘Now here’s one who doesn’t buy everything she hears. Here’s one who isn’t brainwashed.’ ” He talks, and I watch the silent movie projected above his head.
We’re in the library. He’s bringing me a book. Saying something nice. “I’m not a teacher, so you don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Hordin. Why don’t you call me Dobbs.”
The next frame is Mercy, smacking her lips together, saying it’s creepy for him always to be suggesting I read survivalist books. Mercy, my best friend—why hadn’t I listened to her? Instead, I defended the man. “He’s an Eagle Scout,” I told her. “He thinks we’d all do better if we were properly prepared.”
“He’s probably one of those conspiracy theorists. Ask him who killed JFK; I bet he’s got an answer.”
Dobbs had, in fact, mentioned previously that the head of the World Bank was responsible for the assassination, but I wasn’t about to tell Mercy that.
When Dobbs’s tone starts changing, I look at him. His voice is scary
, not at all conversational anymore. He shakes his head at me. “You started changing when that kid showed up again. I wasn’t about to sit by and watch you turn out like the others, what with Arlo Meier zeroing in.”
“Please, Dobbs. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’ll do whatever you want. I won’t tell anyone about this. Please; please, just let me go.”
He stops blowing steam from the top of his drink, drains it in one go. Slamming the mug on the table, he says, “I know what you need. You need to get up and walk.”
And I’m already on my feet, thinking, Yes! Finally, this all comes to an end. He only wanted to set me straight about Arlo, and now it is over.
Something doesn’t seem quite right, but he is taking the keys off his belt, and sure enough, he unlocks that door and swings it wide.
A narrow metal staircase rises from the small platform. Up that short flight is the first of the really big doors, which is now propped open. I can’t recall if there were two or three more doors between me and the outside. However many, I can practically smell the outdoors. I’ve always grumbled about summer, about how it can beat the smell out of any living thing; now, I need to smell the open range more than ever.
Instead of going up, Dobbs gestures to the right. “I believe I promised you a tour.”
Only now do I notice that we are in some sort of concrete shaft, that to the right of the platform is a staircase that goes down even further. It is this direction Dobbs intends for me to go.
No, not deeper!
As fast as I can, I belt up the stairs, my footsteps clanging loudly. I clear the first doorway and enter a small concrete corridor. At the other end is another one of those enormous gray-green doors with thick horizontal bars across it, top to bottom. I race through it, and make a sharp left turn. It’s like passing through a maze. I can feel Dobbs behind me, closing in. “Get back here,” he calls.
The concrete corridor takes another right-angled turn. I am about to make the next turn when he grabs me around the neck. He drags me down, whistling happily.
I BOB TO the surface. Where I’d been held under was a dreamless nothingness that suited me just fine. Now, I have to contend again with gravity and three dimensions and time. It’s impossible to tell whether time has run out or whether there is a glut of time, more time than can be stomached.
“I’m sorry, but you were hysterical. I didn’t mean to knock you out for so long. Chloroform’s not an exact science.”
I sit up, scratch my mouth where a rash has blistered. He explains that it is from the chloroform. I notice that I am now wearing a yellow dress.
Dobbs holds up his hands when I spring from the cot. Instantly, the room begins spinning.
“Take it easy. You’ve got to wait for the dizziness to pass.”
Dizziness? I put my hands to my head to make sure there isn’t a vise clamped around it.
“Just to be clear, nothing improper happened. I dressed you, is all. When it was called for, I averted my eyes.”
We are in the large round room again, between the partitions where sleeping is supposed to be done. “I want my own clothes.”
He looks at the cubbyhole at the foot of the bed where my clothes are washed and folded neatly. I grab them and storm into the bathroom.
By the time I come out, he has a cup of tea and a slice of toast waiting for me and insists it will help with the nausea. I refuse to eat, and he refuses to stop talking. I stand by the only door out of this room. On the other side of it is the staircase. I listen for the sounds of thundering footsteps. They’re going to be calling for me soon. I need to be where I can yell back.
“I don’t think you were paying too much attention earlier, but as I said, this is one of twelve silos in the state of Kansas. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and a few other states have theirs, and that’s not counting all the A’s, D’s, and Titans. This here’s the F—the last type of Atlas complex to be built. Where we are now, the upper level, used to be the crew’s living quarters. The lower level is where all the controls were. And, of course, there’s the silo.” He goes over to the central pillar and points to the twelve-inch gap between it and the floor. “You can see the lower level from here.”
He explains that the floor of this level and the identical one below are stacked on top of each other. Forty feet below the ground, both levels are mounted from the ceiling by pneumatic rams. He goes over to a gray cylinder with a gas pressure gauge and assorted steering wheels and spigots. “This is what suspends the floors. They designed it so that if a blast went off on the surface, the whole thing wouldn’t come crashing down.”
Somehow, we are back on the walking tour. Somehow, I am still holding tightly to the belief that if I go along with the lesson, this will all eventually come to an end. There is a chance I can nod my way out. He unlocks and opens the main door again. Briefly, I glance up the staircase, but he shoves me to the right. We go down the flight that makes a half-turn after six stairs. Another six steps and we are directly below the room above. The entrance to this room is not a steel door like the one upstairs. It is more like an office door.
“Welcome to the Launch Control Center.” He unlocks the door and swings it open. We step into another spherical room. At its center is the thick concrete column. Peg-Board partitions divide the space into a series of slice-of-pie-shaped rooms. Against the circular outer wall are angled support beans, a mess of wires, and pipes bent like straws. Dobbs says something about having remodeled the space for “optimized self-sufficiency.”
“All the old control panels are gone, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the controllers strapped into their chairs and waiting for the order to launch.”
“Launch what?”
“An ICBM. The A-bomb. You know—kaboom?” He makes an exploding gesture.
That’s what people put in a place like this!
“No, no, don’t worry. There isn’t a missile in here anymore. These days, nobody cares that these places even exist, much less the reason they were built in the first place. Most of them were constructed in the early sixties, only to be decommissioned a few years later. Some you could snap up for as little as fifteen thousand dollars. Of course, those were the ones that were vandalized or flooded, and you needed a ton of money to get them halfway livable. Some jokers have spent thousands fitting them with wall-to-wall carpeting and simulated daylight. They bring down all kinds of fancy furniture and stereo equipment and satellite TVs. It’s a disgrace, if you ask me. It’s a mockery of what these structures represent.”
I can’t do anything but nod.
“Ten years ago was when I bought this beauty.”
He raises those colorless eyebrows and presses his lips together so the corners of his mouth turn down. I am obviously supposed to be impressed.
There are three clocks on the wall, each with little plaques beneath them: DC, LONDON, MOSCOW. Somewhere on the other side of the world, people are sitting down for supper, saying grace.
“There was a time when this country took the safety of its citizens seriously. Folks were encouraged to prepare for the inevitable, to be self-sufficient. These days, you talk about fallout shelters, people think you’re nuts. What do they think? The government’s going to take care of them? Now, that’s something to laugh at.”
He opens a plywood door, and we pass into a cubicle he calls the Vault. It’s about the size of my bedroom. In the middle of this space, stacked back-to-back, are gray cabinets like the ones at the school library where they keep all the index cards.
“You ever heard of the antediluvian period?”
I shake my head.
“You know who Noah is, right?”
He waits for me to nod.
“Well, between the Creation and the Great Flood was the antediluvian period. The Bible calls it a time of great wickedness. People lived too long, so there was overpopulation, and that’s always the main problem right there. It was also a time giants called Gibborim ruled the earth. ‘Men of renown,’ if you read Genesis six. See wher
e this is going?”
Again, I am required to nod.
“The entire world was run by just a few powerful men, and then, bam! Everyone and everything gets wiped out, except for Noah and his family and a few thousand species of animals. Come, I want to show you something.”
Dobbs pulls out a drawer crammed with packets of seeds. “Here’s where I keep the herb seeds.” In another drawer are flower seed packets. “What’s your favorite vegetable?”
I don’t like it in here with him. It’s too tight. He smells of disinfectant. We’re too close.
“Come on. Green beans? Carrots? How about rhubarb? You like rhubarb pie, don’t you?”
Because I can picture Mama cutting thick slices of tomato for sandwiches, I say, “Tomatoes.”
“Fruit.” He pulls open a different drawer. “Heirloom, Roma, plum, cherry—take your pick.” He fans several packs like a hand of cards. “A bunch of scientists have been tampering for years with the genetic makeup of seeds. They’ve got patents on seeds that can’t reproduce themselves. Can you believe that? You can’t grow your own crops without having to go to a seed manufacturer. And who do you think the seed manufacturer works for?”
“The farmers?” I offer cautiously.
Dobbs returns the packets and slides the drawer shut. The sound echoes through the room like an exclamation mark. “The Gibborim, the handful of corporate CEOs who run this country. Once again, everything is controlled by the mighty few, right down to the lowly tomato. It’s not just our food they’re controlling. For years they’ve been hiring researchers to do experiments on weather control. Half the earthquakes, tornadoes, and tidal waves around the world are caused by man-generated electromagnetic waves. They’ve got Mother Nature on the run. They control the weather, the food, the politics, the money. But it’s about to collapse. Every system in our society is at breaking point. In my view, we’re already having a meltdown. Have you seen what’s happening on Wall Street lately? Mark my words, by the end of the year, we’ll have stepped off a cliff.”