Steel and other stories [SSC] Page 9

  Bill went on talking about what he’d read concerning life in the Tunnel—the exchange set-up, the transportation system, the plans for substitute food production and all the endless skein of details that went into the creation of a new society in a new world.

  Les didn’t listen. He sat looking past his friend at the purple and red sky that topped the shifting dark blue of the ocean. He heard the steady flow of Bill’s words without their content; he heard the women moving in the kitchen. What would it be like?—he wondered. Nothing like this. No aquamarine broadloom, wall to wall, no vivid colors, no fireplace with copper screening, most of all no picture windows with the beautiful world outside for them to watch. He felt his throat tighten slowly. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—

  Ruth came in with the glasses and handed Bill his beer and Les his wine. Her eyes met those of her husband for a moment and she smiled. He wanted to pull her down suddenly and bury his face in her hair. He wanted to forget. But she returned to the kitchen and he said “What?” to Bill’s question.

  “I said I guess we’ll go to the Reseda entrance.”

  “I guess it’s as good as any other,” Les said.

  “Well, I figure the Hollywood and the downtown entrances will be jammed,” Bill said. “Christ, you really threw down that wine.”

  Les felt the slow warmth run down into his stomach as he put down the glass.

  “This thing getting you, kid?” Bill asked.

  “Isn’t it getting you?”

  “Oh . . .” Bill shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I just make noise to hide what it’s doing to me. I guess. I feel it for Jeannie more than anything else. She’s only five.”

  Outside they heard a car pull up in front of the house and Mary called to say that Fred and Grace were there. Bill pressed palms on his knees and pushed up.

  “Don’t let it get you,” he said with a grin. “You’re from New York. It won’t be any different from the subway.”

  Les made a sound of disgruntled amusement.

  “Forty years in the subway,” he said.

  “It’s not that bad,” Bill said, starting out of the room. “The scientists claim they’ll find some way to de-radiate the country and get things growing again.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe twenty years,” Bill said, and then he went out to welcome his guests.

  “But how do we know what they really look like?” Grace said. “All the pictures they print are only artist’s conceptions of what the living quarters are like down there. They may be holes in the wall for all we know.”

  “Don’t be a knocker, kid, be a booster,” Bill told her.

  “Uh!” Grace grunted. “I think you’re oblivious to the—terror of this horrible descent into the ground.”

  They were all in the living room full of steak and salad and biscuits and pie and coffee. Les sat on the cherry-colored couch, his arm round Ruth’s slender waist. Grace and Fred sat on the yellow studio couch, Mary and Bill in separate chairs. Jeannie was in bed. Warmth filtered from the fireplace where a low, steady log fire burned. Fred and Bill drank beer from cans and the rest drank wine.

  “Not oblivious, kid,” Bill said. “Just adjusting. We have to do it. We might as well make the best of it.”

  “Easily said, easily said,” Grace repeated. “But I for one certainly don’t look forward to living in those tunnels. I expect to be miserable. I don’t know how Fred feels, but those are my sentiments. I don’t think it really matters to Fred.”

  “Fred is an adjuster,” Bill said. “Fred is not a knocker.”

  Fred smiled a little and said nothing. He was a small man sitting by his wife like a patient boy with his mother in the dentist’s office.

  “Oh!” Grace again. “How can you be so blasé about it is beyond me. How can it be anything but bad? No theatres, no restaurants, no travelling—”

  “No beauty parlors,” said Bill with a short laugh.

  “Yes, no beauty parlors,” said Grace. “If you don’t think that’s important to a woman—well.”

  “We’ll have our loved ones,” Mary said. “I think that’s most important. And we’ll be alive.”

  Grace shrugged. “All right we’ll be alive, we’ll be together,” she said. “But I’m afraid I just can’t call that life—living in a cellar the rest of my life.”

  “Don’t go,” Bill said. “Show ‘em how tough you are.”

  “Very funny,” Grace said.

  “I bet some people will decide not to go down there,” Les said.

  “If they’re crazy,” said Grace. “Uh! What a hideous way to die.”

  “Maybe it’s better than going underground,” Bill said. “Who knows? Maybe a lot of people will spend a quiet day at home tomorrow.”

  “Quiet?” said Grace. “Don’t worry, Fred and I will be down in those tunnels bright and early tomorrow.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Bill.

  They were quiet for a moment, then Bill said, “The Reseda entrance all right with everybody? We might as well decide now.”

  Fred made a small palms-up gesture with his hands.

  “All right with me,” he said. “Whatever the majority decides.”

  “Kid, let’s face it,” Bill said. “You’re the most important person we’ve got here. An electrician’s going to be a big man down there.”

  Fred smiled. “That’s okay,” he said. “Anything you decide.”

  “You know,” Bill said. “I wonder what the hell we mailmen are going to do down there.”

  “And we bank tellers,” Les said.

  “Oh, there’ll be money down there,” Bill said. “Where America goes, money goes. Now what about the car? We can only take one for six. Shall we take mine? It’s the biggest.”

  “Why not ours?” Grace said.

  “Doesn’t matter a damn to me,” Bill said. “We can’t take them down with us anyway.”

  Grace stared bitterly at the fire, her frail hands opening and closing in her lap.

  “Oh, why don’t we stop the bomb! Why don’t we attack first?”

  “We can’t stop it now,” Les said.

  “I wonder if they have tunnels too,” said Mary.

  “Sure,” Bill said. “They’re probably sitting in their houses right now just like us, drinking wine and wondering what’ll it be like to go underground.”

  “Not them” Grace said, bitterly. “What do they care?”

  Bill smiled dryly. “They care.”

  “There doesn’t seem any point,” Ruth said.

  Then they all sat in silence watching their last fire of a cool California evening. Ruth rested her head on Less shoulder as he slowly stroked her blonde hair. Bill and Mary caught each other’s eye and smiled a little. Fred sat and stared with gentle, melancholy eyes at the glowing logs while Grace opened up and closed her hands and looked very old.

  And, outside, the stars shone down for a million times the millionth year.

  ~ * ~

  Ruth and Les were sitting on their living room floor listening to records when Bill sounded his horn. For a moment they looked at each other without a word, a little frightened, the sunlight filtering between the blinds and falling like golden ladders across their legs. What can I say?—he wondered suddenly—Are there any words in the world that can make this minute easier for her?

  Ruth moved against him quickly and they clung together as hard as they could. Outside the horn blew again.

  “We’d better go,” Les said quietly.

  “All right,” she said.

  They stood up and Les went to the front door.

  “We’ll be right out!” he called.

  Ruth moved into the bedroom and got their coats and the two small suitcases they were allowed to take. All their furniture, their clothes, their books, their records—they had to be left behind.

  When she went back to the living room, Les was turning off the record player.

  “I wish we could take more books,” he said.

  “They
’ll have libraries, honey,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “It just—isn’t the same.”

  He helped her on with her coat and she helped him on with his. The apartment was very quiet and warm.

  “It’s so nice,” she said.

  He looked at her a moment as if in question, then, hurriedly, he picked up the suitcases and opened the door.

  “Come on, baby,” he said.

  At the door she turned and looked back. Abruptly she walked over to the record player and turned it on. She stood there emotionlessly until the music sounded, then she went back to the door and closed it firmly behind them.

  “Why did you do that?” Les asked.

  She took his arm and they started down the path to the car.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe I just want to leave our home as if it were alive.”

  A soft breeze blew against them as they walked and, overhead, palm trees swayed their ponderous leaves.

  “It’s a nice day,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” he said and her fingers tightened on his arm.

  Bill opened the door for them.

  “Hop in, kids,” he said. “And we’ll get rolling.”

  Jeannie got on her knees on the front seat and talked to Les and Ruth as the car started up the street. Ruth turned and watched the apartment house disappear.

  “I felt the same way about our house,” Mary said.

  “Don’t fret, Ma,” Bill said. “We’ll make out down thar.”

  “What’s down thar?” Jeannie asked.

  “God knows,” said Bill, then, “Daddy’s joking, baby. Down thar means down there.”

  “Say, Bill, do you think we’ll be living near each other in The Tunnels?” Les asked.

  “I don’t know, kid,” Bill said. “It goes by district. We’ll be pretty close together I guess, but Fred and Grace won’t, living way the hell over in Venice the way they do.”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry,” Mary said. “I don’t relish the idea of listening to Grace complain for the next twenty years.”

  “Oh, Grace is all right,” Bill said. “All she needs is a good swift kick where it counts once in a while.”

  Traffic was heavy on the main boulevards that ran east for the two city entrances. Bill drove slowly along Lincoln Boulevard towards Venice. Outside of Jeannie’s chattering none of them spoke. Ruth and Les sat close to each other, hands clasped, eyes straight ahead. Today, the words kept running through his mind: we’re going underground, we’re going underground today.

  ~ * ~

  At first nothing happened when Bill honked the horn. Then the front door of the little house jerked open and Grace came running wildly across the broad lawn, still wearing her dressing gown and slippers, her gray-black hair hanging down in long braids.

  “Oh my God, what’s happened?” Mary said as Bill pushed quickly from the car to meet Grace. He pulled open the gate in time to catch Grace as one of her slipper heels dug into the soft earth throwing her off balance.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, bracing her with his hands.

  “It’s Fred!” she cried.

  Bill’s face went blank and his gaze jumped suddenly to the house standing silent and white in the sunshine. Les and Mary got out of the car quickly.

  “What’s wrong with—” Bill started, cutting off his words nervously.

  “He won’t go!” Grace cried, her face a mask of twisted fright.

  They found him as Grace said he’d been all morning— fists clenched, sitting motionless in his easy chair by the window that overlooked the garden. Bill walked over to him and laid a hand on his thin shoulder.

  “What’s up, buddy?” he asked.

  Fred looked up, a smile starting at the corners of his small mouth. “Hi,” he said quietly.

  “You’re not going?” Bill asked.

  Fred took a breath and seemed about to say something else, then he stopped. “No,” he said as if he were politely refusing peas at dinner.

  “Oh, my God, I told you, I told you!” Grace sobbed. “He’s insane!”

  “All right, Grace, take it easy” Bill snapped irritably and she pressed the soaked handkerchief to her mouth. Mary put her arm around Grace.

  “Why not, pal?” Bill asked his friend.

  Another smile twitched momentarily on Fred’s lips. He shrugged slightly.

  “Don’t want to,” he said.

  “Oh, Fred, Fred, how can you do this to me?” Grace moaned, standing nervously by the front door, right hand to her throat. Bill’s mouth tightened but he kept his eyes on Fred’s motionless face.

  “What about Grace?” he asked.

  “Grace should go,” Fred answered. “I want her to go, I don’t want her to die.”

  “How can I live down there alone?” Grace sobbed.

  Fred didn’t answer, he just sat there looking straight ahead as if he felt embarrassed by all this attention, as if he was trying to gather in his mind the right thing to say.

  “Look,” he started, “I know this is terrible and—and it’s arrogant—but I just can’t go down there.”

  His mouth grew firm. “I won’t,” he said.

  Bill straightened up with a weary breath.

  “Well,” he said hopelessly.

  “I—” Fred had opened up his right fist and was uncrumpling a small square of paper. “Maybe—this will say—say what I mean.”

  Bill took it and read it. Then he looked down at Fred and patted his shoulder once.

  “Okay, pal,” he said and he put the paper in his coat. He looked at Grace.

  “Get dressed if you’re coming,” he said.

  “Fred!” she almost screamed his name. “Are you going to do this terrible thing to me?”

  “Your husband is staying,” Bill told her. “Do you want to stay with him?”

  “I don’t want to die!”

  Bill looked at her a moment, then turned away.

  “Mary, help her dress,” he said.

  While they went to the car, Grace sobbing and stumbling on Mary’s arm, Fred stood in the front doorway and watched his wife leave. She hadn’t kissed him or embraced him, only retreated from his goodbye with a sob of angry fear. He stood there without moving a muscle and the breeze ruffled his thin hair.

  When they were all in the car Bill took the paper out of his pocket.

  “I’m going to read you what your husband wrote,” he said flatly and he read: “If a man dies with the sun in his eyes, he dies a man. If a man goes with dirt on his nose—he only dies.”

  Grace looked at Bill with bleak eyes, her hands twisting endlessly in her lap.

  “Mama, why isn’t Uncle Fred coming?” Jeannie asked as Bill started the car and made a sharp U-turn.

  “He wants to stay,” was all Mary said.

  The car picked up speed and headed toward Lincoln Boulevard. None of them spoke and Les thought of Fred sitting back there alone in his little house, waiting. Alone. The thought made his throat catch and he gritted his teeth. Was there another poem beginning in Fred’s mind now, he thought, one that started—If a man dies and there is no one there to hold his hand—

  “Oh, stop it, stop the car!” Grace cried.

  Bill pulled over to the curb.

  “I don’t want to go down there alone,” Grace said miserably. “It’s not fair to make me go alone. I—”

  She stopped talking and bit her lip. “Oh—” She leaned over. “Goodbye, Mary,” she said and she kissed her. “Goodbye, Ruth,” and kissed her. Then Les and Jeannie, and she managed a brief, rueful smile at Bill.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “I love you,” he answered.

  They watched her go back down the block, first walking, then, as she got nearer to the house, half running with a childlike excitement. They saw Fred come to the gate and then Bill started the car and he drove away and they were alone together.

  “You’d never think Fred felt that way, would you?” Les said.

  �
�I don’t know, kid,” Bill said. “He always used to stay in his garden when he wasn’t working. He liked to wear a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and let the sun fall on him while he trimmed the hedges or mowed the lawn or something. I can understand him feeling the way he does. If he wants to die that way, why not? He’s old enough to know what he wants.” He grinned. “It’s Grace that surprises me.”