He did not see any of it. Not the rafters over his head. Not the end-of-summer leaves on the treetops outside the window, where a setting sun cast ruddy light. Not the moraine of mixed garments which lay, contrary to familial orders, on his bed—not made up, contrary to the same rules. To Ted Conner, who was sixteen, a hideous danger now menaced Green Prairie and its sister metropolis, River City. To Ted, the theoretical enemy bombers were near. To him, brave men like his brother Chuck (though Chuck, actually, was a Ground Force officer) were even now climbing from near-by Hink Field into the stratosphere to engage atom-bomb-bearing planes that winged toward Green Prairie.
This stage setting was necessary to accompany the rest of the dream he had, every time there was a drilclass="underline"
One enemy bomber was getting through. Man after man was trying for it and missing. Its bomb-bay doors were opening. The horrendous missile was falling. There was an earth-shaking explosion. Half of Green Prairie and even more of River City were blotted out. Now, Ted Conner was alone—alone at his post in the attic. His family had been evacuated. The place was a shambles and on fire. But there he sat, ice calm, sending and giving messages which were saving uncounted lives—to the last. They would put up a monument for him later—when they found his high school class ring, miraculously unmelted in the ashes of the Conner home.
His earphones spoke. “Headquarters. Condition Red! Condition Red! Stand by, all stations.”
Ted felt gooseflesh cascade down his back.
He stood by.
Headquarters had been saying that off and on for twenty minutes. And not much else.
Downstairs, Nora asked if she could have another piece of pumpkin pie and whipped cream. Mrs. Conner said, “Absolutely not.”
“Then I’ll go out and play till it’s dark.”
“You’ll do your homework, that’s what you’ll do! It’ll be dark in a quarter of an hour, anyhow.”
“Mother! It’s ridiculous to ask anybody to study during an air raid.”
“It is ridiculous,” her mother replied, “to think you can use a drill for an alibi. You go in the living room, Nora, and do your arithmetic.”
“I hate it!”
“Exactly. So—the sooner you do it “
Chuck grinned reminiscently and excused himself. He went through the kitchen to the back door. Queenie, the Conner tomcat, was meowing to be admitted. The lieutenant let him in, marveling briefly over the mistake in gender which had led to the original name and his young sister’s defense, which had permitted the misnomer to stick. “A cat,” Nora had said long ago, “can look at a queen. So, he’ll stay Queenie, even if he has got a man sex.”
He had stayed Queenie for five years though, Chuck thought fleetingly, and after a glance, the scars on the aging tom suggested he had overcompensated for what he must have considered a libel.
Dusk was gathering in the yard. On the high clouds there remained signs of where the sun had gone—purplish shadows, glints of orange. But the Olds was already hidden in the darkness of the open garage and the soldier could smell rather than see that his brother had recently mowed the lawn. He could see, however, that Ted hadn’t trimmed the grass along the privet hedge which separated the Conners’ yard from the Baileys’. Chuck reflected that in his boyhood he had been a precise trimmer and clipper. But then, he’d always wanted to be what he would be now, were it not for his uniform: an architect. And Ted was different: he wanted to be an inventor—at least right now. Inventors were probably not much interested in even lawns, while architects definitely were.
Chuck stood in the drive and looked uncertainly at the Bailey house. Time was when his family’s house and the residence next door had been quite similar—ordinary American homes—two-story-and-attic frame houses, white, with front porches and back porches, clapboard sides, scroll-work around the eaves, and big lawns. Both had been planted with spirea and forsythia, with tulips for spring, random crocuses, and, for fall, dahlias. Both had had vegetable gardens in the back and both had long ago lost barns and acquired garages.
But the Baileys had “modernized” their place in the years just after World War II. The sprangly shrubbery had been replaced by neat evergreens. The front porch had been carted away and the front façade remade with imitation adobe bricks and a picture window instead of the old comfortable curved bay. The vegetable garden had vanished entirely and in its place were a summerhouse and a barbecue pit where, wearing a chef’s hat and an apron with jokes printed on it, Beau Bailey, Lenore’s father, sometimes ruined good beefsteak while his guests drank martinis in the gloaming.
As a man with a degree in architecture (who had gone into uniform from the ROTC before he had professionally designed so much as a woodshed), Chuck now skirted the Bailey property, critically surveying the moderne effect and looking for any recent changes. The house didn’t seem right any more, he thought. Its proportions were wrong. There was nothing in Green Prairie to warrant the use of imitation adobe either. It might be “modernistic,” but it was suitable for the desert, not for a region where winter came in November and went away in May. All in all, Howard Bailey (who was called “Beau” even by the president of the bank where he worked as cashier) had spent a lot of money for his remodeling job, and failed to fool anybody. Such was Chuck’s professional opinion—and his human opinion was similar. Putting on “side” characterized not only Beau, but his wife.
Lenore was different.
At least, Chuck hoped she was different, still.
For Chuck could hardly recall a day in his life when he had not been in love with the Baileys’ only child. Propinquity might have explained that: there was no day when Chuck had not lived next door to Lenore. But propinquity was not needed to explain the attachment.
Lenore long ago had won a “Prettiest Grade School Girl” contest that had included River City as well as Green Prairie. At eighteen she had been May Princess at the South High School, which meant she was the most attractive girl in her senior class. And she had been voted the “Most Beautiful Coed” when she had graduated from State University.
Beauty, then, could have explained Chuck’s fealty—the simple fact that he had grown up next door to a girl who became one of the loveliest women in the city. But the matter of Lenore’s desirability involved more than the impelling forces set going by loveliness. She happened to be bright, and in addition she had been sweet and gracious, democratic and sincere.
Now, Chuck wasn’t so sure. Where Lenore was concerned, he’d had no lasting assurance anyhow.
They had always been “friends.” As “friends” they had enjoyed an intimacy of a particular sort. Chuck was sure, for example, that he was the first boy who had ever kissed Lenore; but it was not very impressive assurance. He had kissed her when they were both six years old. In fact, he had then carried a mixture of ardor and curiosity, which she had shared, considerably beyond mere kissing. The Baileys and the Conners were one day appalled to discover that their two six-year-olds were not merely kissing but that—in the elderberry thicket which had then existed in a then-vacant lot behind the Bailey premises—they were both stark naked, their small shoes, socks, overalls and underwear commingled in an untidy heap. Such findings perennially stun nearly all parents, and Lenore and Chuck had suffered the shocked, conventional punishments. But though Chuck recalled the episode with warmth and savor, his close amity with Lenore at six did little to bolster his confidence at twenty-four.
He hadn’t written her that he was coming home for his thirty days because, until the last moment at the base in Texas, he hadn’t been sure of the date on which his leave would begin.