“No, you want the new one. Shiny and glittery to impress the neighbors. Lots of dials and knobs and machinery. How much do they want for it?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
His father let his breath out. “Just like that.”
“They have easy time-payment plans.”
“Sure. You pay for it the rest of your life. Interest, carrying charges, and how long is it guaranteed for?” “Three months.”
“What happens when it breaks down? It’ll stop purifying and decontaminating. It’ll fall apart as soon as the three months are over.”
Mike Foster shook his head. “No. It’s big and sturdy.” His father flushed. He was a small man, slender and light, brittle-boned. He thought suddenly of his lifetime of lost battles, struggling up the hard way, carefully collecting and holding onto something, a job, money, his retail store, bookkeeper to manager, finally owner. “They’re scaring us to keep the wheels going,” he yelled desperately at his wife and son. “They don’t want another depression.” “Bob,” his wife said, slowly and quietly, “you have to stop this. I can’t stand any more.”
Bob Foster blinked. “What’re you talking about?” he muttered. “I’m tired. These god-damn taxes. It isn’t possible for a little store to keep open, not with the big chains. There ought to be a law.” His voice trailed off. “I guess I’m through eating.” He pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I’m going to lie down on the couch and take a nap.”
His wife’s thin face blazed. “You have to get one! I can’t stand the way they talk about us. All the neighbors and the merchants, everybody who knows. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without hearing about it. Ever since that day they put up the flag. Anti-P. The last in the whole town. Those things circling around up there, and everybody paying for them but us.”
“No,” Bob Foster said. “I can’t get one.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he answered simply, “I can’t afford it.”
There was silence.
“You’ve put everything in that store,” Ruth said finally. “And it’s failing, anyhow. You’re just like a packrat, hoarding everything down at that ratty little hole-in-the-wall. Nobody wants wood furniture, any more. You’re a relic— a curiosity.” She slammed at the table and it leaped wildly to gather the empty dishes, like a startled animal. It dashed furiously from the room and back into the kitchen, the dishes churning in its wash-tank as it raced.
Bob Foster sighed wearily. “Let’s not fight. I’ll be in the living room. Let me take a nap for an hour or so. Maybe we can talk about it later.”
“Always later,” Ruth said bitterly.
Her husband disappeared into the living room, a small, hunched-over figure, hair scraggly and gray, shoulder blades like broken wings.
Mike got to his feet. “I’ll go study my homework,” he said. He followed after his father, a strange look on his face.
The living room was quiet; the vidset was off and the lamp was down low. Ruth was in the kitchen setting the controls on the stove for the next month’s meals. Bob Foster lay stretched out on the couch, his shoes off, his bead on a pillow. His face was gray with fatigue. Mike hesitated for a moment and then said, “Can I ask you something?”
His father grunted and stirred, opened his eyes. “What?” Mike sat down facing him. “Tell me again how you gave advice to the President.”
His father pulled himself up. “I didn’t give any advice to the President. I just talked to him.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ve told you a million times. Every once in a while, since you were a baby. You were with me.” His voice softened, as he remembered. “You were just a toddler—we had to carry you.”
“What did he look like?”
“Well,” his father began, slipping into a routine he had worked out and petrified over the years, “he looked about like he does in the vidscreen, Smaller, though.”
“Why was he here?” Mike demanded avidly, although he knew every detail. The President was his hero, the man he most admired in all the world. “Why’d he come all the way out here to our town?”
“He was on a tour.” Bitterness crept into his father’s voice. “He happened to be passing through.”
“What kind of a tour?”
“Visiting towns all over the country.” The harshness increased. “Seeing how we were getting along. Seeing if we had bought enough NATS and bomb shelters and plague shots and gas masks and radar networks to repel attack. The General Electronics Corporation was just beginning to put up its big showrooms and displays—everything bright and glittering and expensive. The first defense equipment available for home purchase.” His lips twisted. “All on easy-payment plans. Ads, posters, searchlights, free gardenias and dishes for the ladies.”
Mike Foster’s breath panted in his throat. “That was the day we got our Preparedness Flag,” he said hungrily. “That was the day he came to give us our flag. And they ran it up on the flagpole in the middle of the town, and everybody was there yelling and cheering.”
“You remember that?”
“I—think so. I remember people and sounds. And it was hot. It was June, wasn’t it?”
“June 10, 1965. Quite an occasion. Not many towns had the big green flag, then. People were still buying cars and TV sets. They hadn’t discovered those days were over. TV sets and cars are good for something—you can only manufacture and sell so many of them.”
“He gave you the flag, didn’t he?”
“Well, he gave it to all us merchants. The Chamber of Commerce had it arranged. Competition between towns, see who can buy the most the soonest. Improve our town and at the same time stimulate business. Of course, the way they put it, the idea was if we had to buy our gas masks and bomb shelters we’d take better care of them. As if we ever damaged telephones and sidewalks. Or highways, because the whole state provided them. Or armies. Haven’t there always been armies? Hasn’t the government always organized its people for defense? I guess defense costs too much. I guess they save a lot of money, cut down the national debt by this.”
“Tell me what he said,” Mike Foster whispered.
His father fumbled for his pipe and lit it with trembling hands. “He said, ‘Here’s your flag, boys. You’ve done a good job.’ Bob Foster choked, as acrid pipe fumes guzzled up. “He was red-faced, sunburned, not embarrassed. Perspiring and grinning. He knew how to handle himself. He knew a lot of first names. Told a funny joke.”
The boy’s eyes were wide with awe. “He came all the way out here, and you talked to him.”
“Yeah,” his father said. “I talked to him. They were all yelling and cheering. The flag was going up, the big green Preparedness Flag.”
“You said ”
“I said to him, ‘Is that all you brought us? A strip of green cloth?”’ Bob Foster dragged tensely on his pipe. “That was when I became an anti-P. Only I didn’t know it at the time. All I knew was we were on our own, except for a strip of green cloth. We should have been a country, a whole nation, one hundred and seventy million people working together to defend ourselves. And instead, we’re a lot of separate little towns, little walled forts. Sliding and slipping back to the Middle Ages. Raising our separate armies ”
“Will the President ever come back?” Mike asked.
“I doubt it. He was—just passing through.”