John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

The electric can-opener and stove were recessed into the wall, the empty cans went down a chute.

"Took three years to build and by the time they got around to the inside work my eyes were pert near gone, so I provided for it in the design. Everything fixed in its place. Not bad, huh? Made my bundle in aerospace after the War, circuitry design. Before all the federal money dried up. They'll be sorry though, the other side starts taking potshots from outer space and they'll wish they stayed behind the Program. Shortsighted sonsabitches." Treat groped in a utensil drawer for a spatula.

"Can I help with anything?" Brian wanted something to keep his mind off the dots. The mottles on the carpet were fluttering around like a cloud of moths.

"You just sit tight, young fella. Got everything I need at my fingertips." He pushed a pot against a lever and water streamed down to fill it. He laid it on a burner to boil.

"Talk to the people down to the school, up to town, you hear them laugh about the Mad Mole. That's what they've hung on me, 'the Mad Mole.' But when she finally hits the fan, and she's gonna one of these days, you'll see them swarming up top like locusts. Let us in, Mr. Treat, they'll say, save us. Save us. And I'll just flip on the loudspeaker and laugh my head off. You heard the story bout the grasshopper and the ant?"

"I think so. Yeah, the grasshopper never plans ahead or something."

"Right. Well I'm the ant." He opened a smaller drawer and pulled out a box of powdered milk. "I worked my tail off and I saved and I saved and I bought a hunk of security for myself and my little girl. Long as an ant stays in his network in the ground he's all set, can't be touched. I worry about the daughter when she's outside all day."

"They probably got drills and all," said Brian. "You know, civil defense." It seemed very important to act straight with Treat, to make a good impression. The weirder the old man got the more important it seemed.

Treat snorted and palmed the excess from the top of a cup of powdered milk.

"We used to have to face the wall and put our heads between our legs," said Brian, "close our eyes and cover our ears." He wanted to do it right then and there. His legs felt like they were tubular steel, bolted to the floor. He didn't dare try to lift a foot for fear he wouldn't be able to. "When I was little, first grade or so. A teacher would come by and tap us when it was through. They tried ringing the bell but some of the kids held their ears too tight to hear."

Treat shook his head. "That's all fine and dandy if you're far enough away from the contact point and if you're warned way in advance. See, first you've got your fireball flash, blinding light. Three seconds later is your primary heat flash, a little temperature rise and if you're lucky it won't fry you or burn up all your oxygen. Then comes a shock wave tearing buildings down and then is your radiation heat flash. You survive everything else and that radiation will still get you in a couple of hard weeks if you're not far enough from the blast. Don't tell me about drills, young fella. When she's out there at school it's like she's being held for ransom and every new morning there's another kidnapping. Don't tell me about drills."

Brian was silent. He touched things. He was really there.

Treat was stirring the milk powder into a pitcher of water. He held his hand steady and his face composed, it was clear he hadn't been born blind. "You drink milk?"

"Not much. Sometimes."

"Real milk?"

"Yeah, I guess so. You know, homogenized."

"Ever hear of strontium go?"

"Yeah. It was on a chemistry test."

"Got to be careful what you let into your body, son, what your let into your shelter. The enemy within is as dangerous as the fire from the sky."

"Yuh." The guy was a certified whacko. Brian noticed a full-length poster on a door at the end of the room. An adolescent rock star in a white leather jumpsuit.

"You're a pretty quiet young fella, aren't you? Got a lot on your mind I suppose."

"Yuh," said Brian. It felt now like blood was running from his left leg into pipes under the floor, through a complicated filter system and then pumped back up into his right leg. "I suppose."

"You kids, you don't talk so much, but you're deep thinkers. Maybe that's good, but it's hard to be around when you depend on your hearing. My little girl, my Derry, she's another deep thinker. Can't get two sentences out of her. But the gears are always turning in that head of hers, I can tell."

Treat perked his nose up as there was a short, deep note from the instrument panel.

"Must be her now."

There was another note, slightly higher.

"It's all done with pressure plates," he said. "You step in my periphery up there and I get a tone. The warmer you get, the closer to the trapdoor, the higher the tone gets."

The panel was working up toward a high C. Treat flipped a switch, went to the vault door and wrestled it open.

"C'moan in, honey, we got company."

The girl was a half-foot shorter than her father. She was small but not so young.

"Derry, this here is uh — Brian? Brian. Young fella this is my little girl."

She stepped into the room, wiggling her arm free of her father's grip and squinting against the bright. "Hey."

Hey.

She was cute, maybe ninth-grade age, and wore a lot of makeup. Deep purple over her eyes, heavy on the liner.

"Choir practice get out late?"

"Yuh," she said and gave Brian an impy grin.

"Have a pretty good day in school?"

"Okay."

"Have any tests?"

"Nope."

"You have much homework?"

"Nope."

"You hungry?"

She peeked over to what was heating on the stove. "A little."

"Brian here is a drifter. He's headed for California."

"Oh."

"Well why don't you wash up for dinner, honey, and we'll get this show on the road."

"Sure."

"These kids," he said to Brian as she sauntered past him with a little smirk, "they don't talk. Deep thinkers, the lot of them, worriers and planners. You got to make allowances for it, hold up both ends of a conversation, pull teeth. And Derry," he shouted across the room, "how's about you clean that bedroom of yours a bit? Almost fell and broke my skull in there today, all them damn stuffed animals lyin around. You hear me?"

The deep thinker turned at her door and gave her father the finger.

Derry changed into gym shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt for dinner. There were wells in the table where the plates and glasses fit. Treat managed to dole out the chow mein and Minute Rice with a minimum of groping. He hooked his thumb over the lip of each glass as he poured the waterylooking milk and when the level reached it he stopped. He squeezed into his bolted seat, bowed his head and folded his hands for grace.

Brian copied the motion but averted his eyes from his plate. He couldn't handle it. Every grain of rice was a separate entity, he felt an urge to count them. Derry ignored her father and scooped Bosco into her milk.

"For the food on our table," he said, "and the roof over our head, we thank Thee, Lord."

Brian was very hungry but the food wouldn't stay quiet. The rice squeaked on his teeth like rubber boots over hardpacked snow, the water chestnuts were like splitting rails and the bamboo slivers were deafening. The food wouldn't stay quiet and wouldn't stay still and Derry's foot kept nudging his. Her legs weren't that long, it had to be intentional.

"They picked the Marines cause the Marines always had to go first, always got chewed up liberating the beachfront. Didn't tell us much, that's their way, let you rumor yourself so scared that the real thing isn't so bad when you finally come up against it. Hell, all we knew was what we'd heard the Haberdasher say on the radio, wasn't nobody knew the first thing about hydrogen bombs or what effect radiation would have on folks. Not even the scientists were so sure. Half the guys expected the islands to be run over with atomic Jap monsters, things with X-ray eyes that would glow in the dark. They gave us a hurry-up lesson in how to use the special equipment right there on the ship, kept warning us whatever you do, don't get contaminated. S'what they said, 'contaminated.' Same word the chaplains always used in their VD lectures.