by Philip Wylie
By then, Netta understood. She understood and was calm. “You simply haven’t time for it,” she said. “I didn’t think you could be so flighty! If your new frock wasn’t ready, you’ll have to wear your indigo. It looks well on you. Your hair needs more fixing. You’ll have plenty of time to get to the Ritz-Hadley— plenty! You can even lie down for an hour, if you’re tired. You look a bit fagged!”
“Mother. I’m going to the school!”
“My dear, Kit would be furious.”
“Call a cab for me,” Lenore said. “If you can’t get one here in twenty minutes, see if a neighbor would drive me over. Anybody.”
“See here, Lenore. I’ve been patient about this Civil Defense business for long enough. I know you did it just to annoy me, anyhow. But you are not going to cut an important party and break a date with Kit, just because some fool rehearsal has been ordered. Get that perfectly straight.”
“Get this perfectly straight,” Lenore answered. “It’s an alert. Official. I was summoned.
As soon as I can change, I’m going. If you try to stop me, I’ll—I’d even call the police!” She went.
Netta Bailey thought that over; her hands shook as she raised her highball, swallowed deeply. She knew that when Lenore was in that mood, nobody could do anything with her. She went to the phone. She called the Sloane house. Neither Minerva nor Kit was there. She told the butler that Lenore had come home with a sick headache and gone to bed quite ill, but nothing serious. The butler said he would “inform” Minerva and Kit. Netta then phoned Thelma Emerson and told her the same thing. It would never do to let Kit, or people like the Emersons, think that a mere girl-scout duty like Civil Defense had caused Lenore to break a date, to miss a social event.
As an afterthought, Netta called a cab company. She was told there would be a long wait.
So she tried the Davises. Jimmie said he’d knock off shoveling the yard under the clothes line, gladly, to drive Lenore anywhere she wanted to go.
Lenore came downstairs, dressed in her bulky yellow decontamination suit, carrying her radiation counter. Netta regarded her with bitterness, but silently. She was silent because she didn’t trust herself to say anything. She was afraid of a quarrel now: things had gone too far, too well. She had no way of guessing that things had also gone—from her viewpoint—to smithereens. She stonily eyed the beautiful young woman’s head, strange above the cumbersome garment.
Jimmie Davis’s feet pounded four times to make the steps, to cross the porch. Freckle-faced, wearing heavy gloves, a wool cap, a sweater under his jacket, high school personified, he reached to ring the bell. Lenore opened the door hastily. He said, seeing her, “What the. . . ?”
“Civil Defense stuff,” she replied. “Take me over to the South High, Jimmie, will you?
And thanks a million!”
He was gallant: “Who wouldn’t leave off shoveling his mother’s drying yard to take the world’s top beauty for a tour?”
Lenore laughed at him and turned to Netta. “Take care of yourself,” she said.
Netta grunted.
It didn’t have the appearance of a parting.
Conscious of the slick chick at his side, proud of his driving skill, Jimmie Davis made time. It had started to snow; it was slippery; but he made time, anyhow.
“You’re very good,” Lenore said. It was all she said the whole way. For Jimmie, it was sufficient.
He didn’t notice anything special as they stopped at the curb near the school. “Big turnout!” he said. No more.
She nodded, waved her thanks.
But she had noticed.
The parking yard was filled. People were going swiftly through the school doors. Various teams and squads were assembling. Things were being done without any special haste, it appeared. But it was all so quiet.
As she walked along the wire fence around the play yard, she observed the quiet.
Nobody yelled neighborly greetings to new arrivals.
Nobody blew a car horn for the hell of it.
Nobody was telling a boisterous joke to a knot of male volunteers.
Everybody was Sunday-solemn. She also saw, as she swung through the gate and started for the gymnasium doors, where the radiation people had their station, that everyone was pale.
So she knew, before anybody told her anything, it was it.
And like them, she turned pale.
9
Minerva Sloan found that morning, and to her vast annoyance, four names on the lost leaf of her Christmas list which could not be ignored. That meant, in spite of the Saturday crowd, which would also be a last-minute crowd, she would have to go into the middle of the melee again and make four purchases. The items would be mailed, and they would probably be delivered late, but the postmark would show her correct intentions.
It was Willis, her venerable chauffeur, who bore the brunt of the hardship, of course, driving in tortuous traffic, finding a place to double-park (no police disturbed Minerva’s car) and waiting in the tedious cold. Minerva decided, since she was obliged to go out, that she would shop in Green Prairie rather than River City. It was farther, but she could stop in at the bank and save herself another trip on the following Tuesday.
Her errands, to her annoyance, took double the time she had generously allowed. The clerks were tired and rude, the gifts in the shops had been mauled, and traffic moved not at all, for long periods. She put off the bank expedition until afternoon and had Willis edge through Front Street (where the big tractor trucks backed up at warehouses made the way a zigzag, but where the very adroitness of their drivers kept some motion in the long lines of vehicles).
Thence, by other streets, she went to Wickley Heights Boulevard where two policemen and a gaudy doorman kept things moving along the elegant, curved façade of the Ritz-Hadley.
Even that usually serene hostelry was crowded. Minerva had intended to refresh herself in the Aztec Room, a euphemism for the bar. It was jammed. A hundred kids, minors, college students home on vacation, were dancing to an abominably loud jazz band. Dancing and illegally drinking, too.
Minerva backed out of the hot room and had her cocktails on the Palm Terrace, a wide hallway which looked out, through twenty-foot-high glass windows, on the landscaped hotel lawns, the eight-lane parkway, the river—and the slums on the opposite shore. Georges, the headwaiter in the Empire Room, brought a menu to the Terrace. Minerva ordered. She was notified when the meal was ready and dined sedately at an east-facing window, a window hung with wine-colored draperies that gave a view of the putting grounds, the winterempty swimming pool and the Broadmere beyond.
She was considerably mollified by the time she returned, wrapped in her silver-blue mink cloak, to the outside canopy. The tall, mannerly doorman summoned her car. She was still amiably aglow, still pleasantly aburp, when she entered the bank, let in by Bill Maine who rattled nervous bolts when he saw her car.
The moment she entered, she knew things were wrong, very wrong. Too many clerks were rushing about; and they were rushing too hurriedly; besides, they were carrying too many things. She caught sight of Beau Bailey, looking white, trotting in the nether distance. She bawled, “Beau!”
He turned and hurried up. She stared at him as he drew near. The man, she thought, is mortally frightened.
“What the devil is the to-do about?”
Beau trotted even faster to close the gap. “Minerva! Get home immediately! Condition Yellow—been in effect for hours! Don’t you know?”
“Know what? What on earth arc you talking about?”
He clapped a fat hand to his forehead. “It’s all over! The rumors, anyway! Air-raid alert!
The radio and TV aren’t saying, but people keep calling. The most terrific rumors. Enemy planes everywhere! Many cities hit! Condition Yellow here, though, still. . . ! Thank God.”
“Beau, listen. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Russian bombers,” his voice answered, with a thin, squealing overtone, “are said to be attacking
our cities. The CD people have given the bank its special alert! Hours ago!”
“Are you mad?” Minerva peered at the man. “I just had lunch at the Ritz. There was absolutely no sign of such a thing!”
“I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you! The radio is going on, and the TV, as per usual. Only, no announcer sounds right or looks quite right, any more. Evidently they’ve heard more than they’re permitted to tell! But Condition Yellow is official.”
“What in the world is this yellow condition?”
“The first air-raid alert. That’s why”—he looked over his shoulder, along the polished marble floor, toward the closed tellers’ windows—“that’s why everybody’s rushing around!
Condition Yellow means we have to get all important papers—bonds, stock, cash, records—
down in the deep vault.”
“See here, Beau,” Minerva said solidly, “I don’t know what’s panicked you. But I do know nothing of the sort is happening.”
“You do?” He seemed on the verge of inexpressible relief.
“I know it morally. I would have been notified! It may be that those incalculable damned fools have started some sort of a crazy air-alert practice again. They did it before, you’ll remember. It could even be a real foul-up-an alert the military started, because they made some error. That has happened. But—”
Beau’s hope was perishing before her eyes. “If you’d step into Mr. Pavley’s office, where there’s a TV set. . . ”
“I will,” Minerva said. “I will. Because, believe me, this hysteria has got to stop!”
Her first, creepy inkling came when she saw the live show in progress at the local station.
The actors were saying their rather stupid lines, but merely saying them. Their gestures were somewhat alien to their words. And their eyes kept straying from the business in hand, as if they were watching something or somebody in the studio, rather than playing to each other. It was not, as Beau had said, normal.
Minerva picked up a phone. She dialed a number. It was busy, so she tried another. She gave that up because she got the busy signal with the first digit: the automatic switching station was busy as a whole. “Something’s happening,” she admitted.
She went out on the Boor of the bank. Her eyes roved over the place slowly, from the vaulted windows to the huge light fixtures that hung down on chains from the remote ceiling; she looked at the balcony that ran around three sides and at the figures moving there hurriedly. She gazed at the spread of gleaming marble, big as a skating rink, usually peopled by hurrying depositors, people making withdrawals, people doing business—with her. From nowhere, unwonted, a line came into her mind: This, too, shall pass away.
It annoyed her greatly. But it alarmed her slightly, too.
Another thought entered her busy brain. Suppose, right now, the sirens let go? Whether in earnest or in some crazed drill, they would catch her here. Right here. In the middle of town, in the bank. At best, she’d he delayed for hours, getting home. At worst! But the worst was preposterous.
She turned to Beau, who had accompanied her, agitated, wringing his hands frequently.
“I don’t know what this is all about, but I think I’ll go and find out. I’ll phone you.” She left the bank, quite quickly.
After she had departed, Beau went back to his office. He put on his mufHer, his rubbers, his coat and his hat. He went out on the mezzanine and down the stairs. Nobody saw him, nobody who had importance enough to question his going. He pushed through the crowds to the Kyle Parking Garage and waited an endless forty minutes for his car to come down the ramp. He drove east, to the Wickley Heights section and so, circuitously, toward his home.
Traffic was bad and constantly getting worse and it was nervous traffic. He saw fenders banged twice, but the drivers didn’t even get out to argue. They just went on.
He thought three things, mostly:
He wasn’t required in the bank on any Saturday.
Under the Sloan skyscraper were the best air-raid shelters in the center of town, the vaults. If anything did happen, the employees he had left there would be the best off of anyone in the area.
A man’s place, in a crisis, was at home.
His car radio played dance and Christmas music. The regular programs were no longer on the air. Just records, as if somebody in authority had ordered the change.
10
Things had been happening to Nora, inexplicable things. In the middle of the fun at Toyland, when she’d been waiting in line with a million other kids to try the slide that ran for two whole stories beside the escalators, some colored girl in a yellow uniform and a thin coat had come up to Alice Groves. They had talked a minute. Alice had then yanked Nora out of line and said,
“That was one of my probationers. They heard me say I’d be here in Toyland. She came for me.
I’ve got to go back.”
“Why?”
“There’s been an emergency.”
“Can’t I just take my slide? It’ll be my turn, soon.”
Alice said, “No.”
So they were outside again, on the street in the mobs and hurrying. The nurses with them followed, as reluctantly as Nora. “You’ll have to tag along with us,” Alice had said, “and we’ll telephone your people from the Infirmary. I haven’t time to wait to get you on a bus.” And she added, “I should never have come over to Green Prairie on a day like this!”
“Why?”
“Because now there’s an emergency, and heaven alone knows how long it’ll take us to get the Ferndale bus. If I could find a taxi. . . .”
They were still looking for an empty taxi when they passed the Sloan Bank on the way to the bus terminal. Minerva Sloan was just coming out and Alice spoke to her.
At first, Minerva barely bowed her recognition and swept on toward her car, but Alice made her stop. Nora didn’t hear what Alice said because there was one of those tic-ups on Central Avenue just then, which set all the car horns blowing. But Mrs. Sloan, whom Nora recognized, nodded, though she looked mad. Nora, the three nurses and Alice Groves all got into the limousine.
Two nurses sat outdoors with the chauffeur. The car went to Central Avenue Bridge and over it and turned cast and finally reached the Mildred Tatum Infirmary.
“I’ll take the child to my home,” Minerva said.
Nora thanked the colored girls deeply and sank back on the cushions. “This is very kind of you, Mrs. Sloan,” she said in a pious tone.
She was surprised to see that Mrs. Sloan didn’t even hear her, hardly knew she was there at all. Mrs. Sloan’s mind, Nora thought, was probably failing.
11
Coley Borden was walking in the Christmas crowd, too. He looked ten years older than he’d looked on the night when he had written the full-page editorial that had ended his newspaper career and was still reverberating in the Sister Cities. But there was the same sardonic humor about him, and a hint somewhere of his subtle human understanding, his love of his fellows.
Persons in the throng who bumped him, if they troubled to look at him, also troubled to say,
“Sorry.” Not because of his age but because he looked like such a nice little guy.
He was on his way to get the only Christmas present he intended to give: something for Mrs. Slant, his housekeeper. What she needed, he reflected, thinking warmly of the good care she gave him, was Covermark for her wine-colored birthmark and a little plastic surgery for her wens. What he was going to get was a wrist watch. She’d said, months before, sighing as she picked up a dust mop and went to work on Coley’s study, “I do wish I had one of those newfangled wrist watches. Be so downright handy.”
He had remembered.
The best jewelry store was Wesson’s and he was going to get the watch at the best store.
No diamonds—but a good watch.
It had been a long trolley ride from Edgeplains and it was a long walk across town from the trolley line. On the way, he passed the Court Avenue entrance of the T
ranscript Tower and he stepped inside it, briefly, full of such recollections that he knew he should hurry on, before one of the boys came by and caught him red-eyed. It was worse than being caught red-handed, Coley thought.
He felt an arm on his shoulder just then and he heard a familiar voice:
“Hello, boss. Somebody tell you?”
Coley smiled and raised his head and there was Payton, the city editor, grinning, but looking odd, too. “Tell me what?”
“Thought that was why you’d come down here.” Payton glanced apprehensively at the streaming people and lowered his voice: “The whole country’s under air blitz, Coley. They’re holding it back here, to prevent panic, in the belief this area is not on the target list.”
“What is this?” Coley asked softly, “April Fool?”