Beth Conner trudged home. She had waited awhile in line, for a ride, with other women being relieved. But many of them lived farther away; and some didn’t even have homes of their own to rest in any longer. She decided to walk and. she moved along in the smoky streets, still carrying her suitcase, breathing whitely in the frigid air.
It was Christmas morning, she thought dazedly. When she saw the house, she stood for a long time, with tears in her eyes that did not fall.
It didn’t sit quite right any more. A chunk of the roof was gone, up over the boys’ room in the attic. The front yard was a pile of debris—some from the house, but most of it tree limbs shoved aside by bulldozers going down Walnut Street. The windows weren’t there any more.
She walked around in back. The paint on the rear wall was scorched and the boards were blackened here and there. The blast had quickly blown out the fire started by the heat. Lots of people had been lucky that way. The metal garage was all right.
She went back around to the front and glanced over at the Bailey house. It was about the same, except that the modernized façade had peeled off and you could see beams and studs and lath and plaster clear across the face of the house. The people across Walnut were better off.
There was a slight dip in the land, behind the Conner and the Bailey house; the bomb blast had rushed up to it; and the houses across the street had been given some protection by those on the Conners’ side.
She went up on her front porch. The steps were loose under her feet and there was a big white, printed sign nailed on the door. “Inspected,” the sign said. “Safe for occupancy.
Use extreme caution. Beware of fire.” Underneath that, was written in red pencil,
“Radiation level okay. Am okay, too. Love. Lenore.”
“Bless her,” Beth whispered. She went in and put down the bag tiredly. She’d had three or four hours of sleep, all told.
She looked out the kitchen window. A great smoke towered over the north view, but there was no visible fire. The kitchen was a shambles, but she had expected that. Women coming and going from the vast hospital area at Crystal Lake had described just such messes already.
She tried the gas stove; it didn’t work. She went back to the hall and opened the suitcase. There was a Sterno stove in it, six cans of pink fuel, powdered coffee, sugar, tinned milk—amongst many other items. She took the things for coffee, and a flashlight, and went back to the kitchen and tried the water but that didn’t run either.
Downstairs, in the air-raid shelter Henry had fixed up years before, were the five-gallon bottles of distilled water he made her change every six months. She was too exhausted to lug one up but she found a pan on the floor—silently thanking Lenore, because she otherwise would not have used any metal objects. She went down in the cellar. Light penetrated it from numerous places; she could see how the house had moved on its foundations. She poured water and went into the jelly closet, discovering that most of the canned things were still on the shelves where she’d placed them, labeled and tidy, all summer long and all during the fruit season in the fall.
They could eat, then, without drawing from the Green Prairie food stocks.
She went up with the water, unfolded the little stove, lit the solidified alcohol and put on the water. Someone knocked at the front door, frightening her. She ran to it.
“Hi, Mrs. Conner! Henry home yet?” It was Jed Emmings, from Spruce Street.
“Not yet”
“You all right?”
“Yes, thanks. Are you?”
“You bet—and thank God. So are my folks. I just came by, to let you know your Ted’s okay, too.”
“Ted?” She stared at him perplexedly. He was filthy dirty, like almost everybody. “I didn’t know,” she said finally, “Ted was hurt.”
“Hurt bad, Mrs. Conner. But he’s over in the Green Prairie Country Club, getting real good care. I was on duty there. I talked to him.”
“What happened?”
“Got buried in a brick slide. Broke both legs.”
“But…?”
Jed Emmings smiled because he understood. “Absolutely okay, Mrs. Conner—or I’d have said so. No head injuries worth worrying about and nothing internal. Chipper and full of beans already. In traction, of course.”
She said, “Thank you, Jed.”
He nodded. “Glad to tell you. Glad to bring some good news to one door, anyhow!”
He went down the walk.
She noticed that the sun was shining. She hadn’t really noticed that before. She felt almost surprised that the sun was still there in the sky in its place.
When she went back to the kitchen, the water was close to a boil. She found an unbroken cup, rinsed it, put in some hot water and a spoonful of powdered coffee, started to take sugar and refrained, sat down on the seat of an armless chair to sip the hot fluid.
A little later, she heard car brakes.
I got home just in time, she thought. More visitors.
The car went on before she reached the hall and what she heard, she did not believe. It was Nora’s voice calling. “Mummie! Mummie! Aren’t you home?”
There she was, running up the walk, the way she always did, and Mrs. Conner felt things start to go black because she did not, could not believe. But there was a car, going away, a colored girl at the wheel, and it wasn’t quite the same Nora, coming up the steps on her spidery legs. She wore a different coat, too small for her, and a dress Beth didn’t recognize. Her hat was missing and one side of her long bob had been chopped off short. There was a big pad of bandage on her right cheek. Mrs. Conner still wasn’t absolutely sure, until she felt Nora in her arms.
“We thought—” she started to say.
Nora leaned back and looked up. “I had one hell of a time, I really did!” Nora said.
Henry didn’t get home till evening.