by Philip Wylie
Tomorrow! By
Philip Wylie
Rinehart & Company, Inc. New York Toronto Published Simultaneously in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company, Ltd., Toronto Copyright, 1954, by Philip Wylie
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-10924
Dedicated to the gallant men and women of the Federal Civil Defense Administration and to those other true patriots, the volunteers, who are doing their best to save the sum of things X-Day Minus Ninety
1
When the pioneers came across the plains to the place where the Little Bird River Bowed into the Abanakas, they halted. The tributary was clear and potable. In the muddy main stream, an island served them as a moated campground. It was called Swan Island owing to a shape which, it later proved, changed radically with the Hoods. They renamed the Abanakas the Green Prairie.
The Little Bird, as a town crept south along its banks, became Slossen’s Hun—thanks to a trapper who, in the early part of the nineteenth century, set his lines in the. headwaters of that creek.
The Abanakas, or Green Prairie, Bowed generally east through a flat and fertile land. But below Swan Island it made a wide turn toward the south and sank between low sandstone bluffs.
The water deepened there and a shingle beach served for a towpath. Above the bluffs, the river shallowed; they marked the most westerly local point to which barges could be drawn by mules in the seasons of deep water. This conjunction of navigability, good fresh water, game-filled woods and fertile prairie made an inevitable site for habitation.
Fort Abanakas, the first settlement, was often attacked by hard-riding Sioux. The Indian Trading Post was next—on the north bank, since it had a more gradual slope which made for easier unloading of the towboats. Farmers followed the trappers, and merchants came to deal with both. Long before a shot was fired at Fort Sumter, two sizable towns had come into being on the opposite banks. Their certain rivalry was soon redoubled. For when the territory was carved into states, the Green Prairie River became a boundary over a considerable stretch. Thus
“Green Prairie,” the southern town, and “River City” on the north bank, were loyal to different states though connected even then by bridges a few hundred feet long. The loyalty, and rivalry, grew after Sumter: River City’s state was free, Green Prairie’s, slave.
After the Civil War, lead and zinc were discovered beneath the prairie sod. In distant hills, at the century’s turn, a dam heaped up the river’s energy. Hydroelectric plants followed.
Oil was found in Bugle County and good coking coal in Tead. Smoke covered the prairies from then on. And the immigrants arrived.
They unpacked their carpetbags. They sold skills learned in the mills and mines of Europe. They created lichenlike slums, went to school, entered politics, became the gangsters of the twenties and some, the heroes of the Second World War.
By then the combined population of River City and Green Prairie approached a million.
Where the sullen, sweating mules had brought the barges to rest, where Sioux arrows had fired cottonwood logs in the fort, skyscrapers stood.
By then, there were families who could look back to four or five generations of unbroken residence in the region. Some of these “natives” were rich and powerful; some were poor; but most were ordinary people—prospering modestly, loving freedom, hating interference, intelligent by the lights of their society, fair citizens and superb neighbors. The Conner family in Green Prairie was such.
Their white frame house had been built in 1910, set back in a big lawn on Walnut Street in the “residential south section,” then a long trolley ride from the busy downtown district. The houses around were like the Conner house in atmosphere even though some were frame, some brick and some stucco. The people, too, were like the Conners: indistinguishable from millions in the nation, at first glance—yet, like the millions, on any second look more individualist than most other people of the earth. At the end of the Second War, during the great expansion, the Conners had thrived. But like all their fellow citizens, and more keenly than many, they shared the doubts and anxieties of the new age.
Its very voice influenced their lives, even their domestic lives, as the years chased each other swiftly, rewardingly, after the century’s mid-point. Green Prairie and River City were halves of a happy, urban world, separated by a river and a political boundary but united by bridges both actual and spiritual. Typically American, content, constructive, the Conners, too, were happy. And yet. . . .
The sound came through the open windows of the dining room. Each of the five members of the Conner family was differently affected. Henry, the father, stopped all movement to listen.
The gravy spoon, which he had been about to plunge into his mashed potatoes, dripped midway between the bowl and his plate. His wife, Beth, looked out through the screened windows, frowning, as if she wished she had never heard a siren in her life.
Nora, who was eleven, exclaimed, “Brother! You can hear it this time, all right, all right!”
Ted Conner pushed back his chair, stood, started to go, and snatched a fresh roll, already buttered and spread with homemade jam, before his feet took the stairs with the noisy incoherence of a male high school student in a hurry.
Charles, the older son, smiled faintly. This was the first evening of his leave and the first time he’d worn home the proud silver bar of a first lieutenant. The dinner—especially the roast beef which had filled the kitchen with a hunger—begetting aroma all afternoon—was a celebration for him. Now the sound surging over the city would interfere with that homely ceremony. Charles’s smile expressed his regret. “Can I help?” he asked his father, who had risen.
“Guess not. This is a civilian party!” Henry Conner took the stairs in the wake of his younger son, but more deliberately.
“It’s a shame it had to be this evening,” Mrs. Conner said. “Still, Nora and you and I can at least eat.”
“Aren’t you in it?” Charles asked.
“I’m in the First Aid Group, yes. But we don’t have to answer this call.”
Nora, always ready to amplify any subject, her mobile mouth apparently unembarrassed by potatoes, said informatively, “This is just for air-raid-warden practice, and the rescue teams, and cops and firemen, and like that.”
“Nora! Don’t talk with your mouth full. And don’t say, ‘and like that!’ It’s bad grammar.”
Charles Conner, Lieutenant Conner, laughed a little.
It was good to be home, good to listen to the gentle reprimands that spelled home and were nothing like military correction. After dinner he would get out of uniform, enjoy the comfort of slacks and a sports coat. He would go next door and see if Lenore Bailey would like to take in a movie.
The siren gathered strength and volume. Its initial growl and its first crescendo had seemed far away; soon its slow rise and fall became pervasive and penetrating; when it slurred into each high warble, the human head was invaded not just by noise, but by what seemed a tangible substance. Nora reflected the fact. “This new one,” she yelled above it, “sure is a lulu!”
“They must have hung it on a tree in our back yard,” Charles replied loudly.
His mother shook her head. “It’s on the new TV tower, out on Sunset Parkway by the reservoir.”
Henry Conner came down the stairs two at a time. “Where the hell are my car keys, Beth?”
“Right on your dresser.”
“I looked there—!”
“Behind Charles’s photograph.”
“Oh!” He bounded up the stairs, hurried back, opened the front door and yelled from the porch, “Ted, that moron, has left his jalopy in the drive! How many times do I have to. . . ?”
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sp; “I’ll move it.” Charles pushed back his chair to go to the third floor, where his brother would be tuning in his ham radio as his part in the drill.
Beth stopped him. “Don’t bother. Your dad’s forgotten he’s sector warden, now. Ed McWade’s supposed to drive him.” She hurried out on the porch and repeated the fact to her husband.
“Just as well Ed is coming,” Mr. Conner said. “That monstrosity probably wouldn’t start.”
The automobile—without fenders, with a homemade engine hood—did not look operable. It had been repaired with wire and sticks and painted by hand in half a dozen different colors. These hues were superscribed with initials, emblems, symbols, slogans and wisecracks, so that it resembled a tourist attraction rather than a vehicle.
“Here comes Ed,” Mr. Conner cried, and raced down his driveway, waving. The effort caused his crimson arm band, on which the word “Warden” was stenciled in white, to slide off his unused arm. When he bent to retrieve it, his World War I helmet clattered on the sidewalk. At the same time, Mrs. Conner called, “You forgot your whistle!” and ran indoors to get it. The lieutenant hastened down the walk to help his father reassemble his gear.
At the dinner table, alone in the presence of a feast, Nora made a hasty survey and passed herself the jam. She piled an incredible amount on half a slice of bread, tossed her two braids clear for action, and contrived to crowd the mass into her mouth. She was still masticating when her mother and older brother, having dispatched the paterfamilias, returned to the table.
“Everything’s cold,” Mrs. Conner said ruefully.
“Far from it,” her son answered. “Best meal I’ve looked at in six months.” He sliced a square of thick and juicy beef. “Best I’ve ever tasted!”
Her rewarded look was warm, but it vanished as she noticed the diminished aspect of the jelly dish. “Nora. . . !”
In the car as he sped down Walnut Street beside Ed, Henry Conner was thinking about the wild-strawberry jam and the roast beef, too. His companion had identical sentiments:
“Caught me,” he said, as he slowed to cross Lakeview Road, “just as we were sitting down to dinner.”
“Me, too. Guess they figured everybody would be doing the same. Ought to be a good turnout, on account of it.”
Ed slammed on the brakes in time to avoid the chemical engine of Hook and Ladder Company Number 17. It pounded across the intersection, its lights on in spite of the fact that the sun still shone, its clanging bell drowned by a whoop of the siren. “Something else to think about,” Henry yelled, letting his nerves down easy. “When those sirens are going, you can’t hear car horns or even fire-truck hells!”
Ed wiped a little diamond dust of sweat from his forehead. “Could have been closer, Hank.”
“Oh, sure.”
The sedan turned into South Hobson Street and slowed. The school was only four blocks distant and converging Civil Defense cars were piling up, even though volunteer “police” were blowing whistles urgently and urgently waving their arms, and even though Hobson Street was
“one way” during this surprise drill. They could see, now, hundreds of cars parked and being parked in the playgrounds of the South High School. They could see the “wrecked” corner of the gymnasium where, later in the evening, the fire fighters and rescue squads would rehearse under conditions of simulated disaster, including real flames and chemical smoke. The very numbers of the congregating people stimulated them. That stimulus, added to a certain civic pride and the comparative verisimilitude of the occasion, helped Hank Conner and Ed McWade to forget they were middle-aged businessmen, middle-class householders, who for weary years had periodically and stubbornly pretended that their city in the middle of America was the target of an enemy air raid.
Before Ed parked the car, Henry leaped out and went to his post to assemble his block wardens. One of them, Jim Ellis, proprietor of the Maple Street Pharmacy, was incensed. “You know what, Hank? This is my druggist’s night off. I had to shut down the prescription department since I can’t be there to roll pills myself! Probably cost me twenty, twenty-five bucks. Maybe customers, even. People don’t like to come in a drugstore and not get a prescription filled on the dot. Next time we have one of these fool rehearsals—”
“You shouldn’t be here, anyway, Jim. How come?”
“I said that. I phoned headquarters when the letter about this new drill came. They told me whenever the sirens went to report here at the school—”
“Well, I’ll be responsible for that. You get your car and go back to the pharmacy. All the pharmacists in my area, by God, are going to stay in the stores. What zigzag chump ordered you here? In a real raid you’d be indispensable at the store.”
“That makes sense!”
Hank nodded and his easy voice rose to a pitch of command: “Sykes! Evans! Maretti!
Get Jim’s car cleared and see him around to Baker Avenue! Hold everything up till he’s out of the parking yard!”
A woman wearing a warden’s arm band rushed up from a knot of people gathered around a placard that said, “Station Forty-two.” She cried anxiously, “Mr. Collins! I left rolls in the oven!”
Henry drew a breath, expelled it. “How often do we have to go through the routine, Mrs.
Dace? You’re supposed to check all those things before you jump in a car and start for your post.
You’ll have to get a phone priority slip and tell your neighbors to turn off the gas—”
“It’s a coal range.”
“All right! To turn down the drafts and haul out the pans.” Hank began searching the school grounds for somebody connected with telephone priorities. He wondered with a kind of good-humored annoyance how in hell the citizens of Green Prairie would learn to save lives when they couldn’t remember to salvage biscuits.
In that segment of the attic which had long ago been converted into “the boys’ room,”
Ted Conner worked feverishly amidst a junklike jumble of wires, dimly glowing tubes, switches, dials, condensers, transformers and other paraphernalia with which gifted young men—
specialists at the age of sixteen or so—are able to communicate with one another, often over distances of hundreds of miles. Ted Conner was a member in good standing of the American Radio Amateurs’ Society. He was also a volunteer member of Civil Defense, Communications Division.
To Ted, more than to any other person in the family (and partly because his function was the most realistic), the rise and fall of the siren spelled excitement. It was his instant duty to rush to his post, which meant his radio set. It was his assignment to get the set going and tune in headquarters. It was his additional assignment, every five minutes on the second, to listen for thirty seconds to his opposite number in Green Prairie’s “Sister City,” directly across the river.
Ted was going to be big like his grandfather Oakley, a blacksmith. He had his mother’s light-brown hair—as did Nora—and his father’s clear, blue eyes, as also did his sister. Only Chuck had the Oakley brown eyes; but Chuck hadn’t inherited the size, the big bones and the stature; Chuck was slender. Ted sat now with one leg hooked over the arm of a reconstructed swivel chair, his blue eyes shining, his usually clumsy hands turning the radio dials with delicacy. He was oblivious to everything in his environment: the pennants and banners on the wall; the stolen signs that said, “Danger,” and “Do Not Disturb,” and “Men”; the battered dresser and its slightly spotted mirror framed in snapshots-snapshots of girls in bathing suits and girls with ukuleles and a burning B-29.
He did not see any of it. Not the rafters over his head. Not the end-of-summer leaves on the treetops outside the window, where a setting sun cast ruddy light. Not the moraine of mixed garments which lay, contrary to familial orders, on his bed—not made up, contrary to the same rules. To Ted Conner, who was sixteen, a hideous danger now menaced Green Prairie and its sister metropolis, River City. To Ted, the theoretical enemy bombers were near. To him, brave men like his brother Chuck (though Chuck, actua
lly, was a Ground Force officer) were even now climbing from near-by Hink Field into the stratosphere to engage atom-bomb-bearing planes that winged toward Green Prairie.
This stage setting was necessary to accompany the rest of the dream he had, every time there was a drill:
One enemy bomber was getting through. Man after man was trying for it and missing. Its bomb-bay doors were opening. The horrendous missile was falling. There was an earth-shaking explosion. Half of Green Prairie and even more of River City were blotted out. Now, Ted Conner was alone—alone at his post in the attic. His family had been evacuated. The place was a shambles and on fire. But there he sat, ice calm, sending and giving messages which were saving uncounted lives—to the last. They would put up a monument for him later—when they found his high school class ring, miraculously unmelted in the ashes of the Conner home.
His earphones spoke. “Headquarters. Condition Red! Condition Red! Stand by, all stations.”
Ted felt gooseflesh cascade down his back.
He stood by.
Headquarters had been saying that off and on for twenty minutes. And not much else.