get back to normal those three TV sets will be worth their weight in gold.”
“Do you really think things are going to get back to normal?”
“Sure! They always have, haven’t they? It may be a year, even two. I can wait. You look at those big new houses out on River Road. What built half of them? Wars. Profits out of wars. This time I’m going to get mine.”
He saw that she believed it and it was pointless to argue with her. Still, he was intrigued. “Don’t you realize that this war is different?”
She held out her left hand so that the sunlight glinted on the ring on her second finger. “It certainly is different! Look at this!” He looked at the big stone, and into it, and a thousand blue and red lights attested to its worth and purity.
It wasn’t costume jewelry, as he had surmised. It wasn’t glass surrounded by green paste. It was a diamond set in emeralds. “Where did you get it?” he asked, awed, an then he looked at her crescent ear clips and saw that they too, beyond a doubt, were diamonds.
Rita held the ring out, turning her wrist. She did not answer at once. She was enjoying their reaction. “Six carats,” she said. “Perfect.” She slipped it from her finger and handed it to Randy.
He took it automatically but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at her finger. Her finger was marred by a dark, almost black circle, as if the ring were tarnished brass, or its inside sooty. But the ring was clean bright white gold.
Dan came into the room, pawing in his bag and frowning. “I don’t know exactly-” he began, looked at Randy’s face, and failed to finish the sentence.
Frowning, Rita inspected the dark band. “It itches,” she said, and scratched. A bit of blackened skin flaked away, leaving raw flesh beneath.
“I asked you where you got this, Rita,” Randy said, a command.
Before she opened her mouth he guessed the answer. She said, “Porky Logan.”
The ring dropped to the floor, bounced, tinkled, and came to rest on the corner of a blue silk Chinese rug.
“Say, what’s the matter?” she said. “You act like it was hot!” “I think it is hot,” Randy said.
“Well, if you think Porky stole it, you’re wrong. It was abandoned property. Anybody would take it.”
Dan took her hand and adjusted his bifocals so he could examine the finger closely. He spoke, his voice deep, enforcing calm. “Hold still, Rita, I just want to see that finger. I think what Randy meant was that the ring has been exposed to radioactivity and is now radioactive itself. I’m afraid he’s right. This looks like a burn-a radium burn. How long have you been wearing that ring?”
“Off and on, for a month I guess. I never wear it outside, only in the house.” She hesitated. “But this last week, I’ve had it on all the time. I never noticed-”
They looked down at it, its facets blinking at them from the soft blue silk as if it were in a display window. It looked beautiful. “Where did Porky get it, Rita?” Dan asked.
“Well, I only know what he told me. He was fishing in the Keys on The Day and of course he started right back. He’s smart, Porky is. He made a big detour around Miami. Well, he was pass ing through Hollywood or Boca Raton or one of those Gold Coast places and it was empty and right off the main drag he saw one of those swanky little jewelry shops, you know, a branch of some Fifth Avenue store and its windows were blown out. He said stuff was lying all over, rings and pins and watches and bracelets, like popcorn out of a busted bag. So he gathered it up. Then he dumped the hooks and plugs and junk out of his fishbox and went inside and filled it up. Porky said right then he was thinking of the future. He figured that money wouldn’t be worth anything but diamonds and gold were different. They never lost value no matter what happened.”
“Impregnated with fallout,” Dan murmured. “Suicide.” Rita’s hands crept upward to her neck and Randy noticed an oval mark in the hollow her throat, as if the skin were painted darker there. Then her hands flew to her ears. The diamond ear clips fell to the rug beside the ring. She moaned, “Oh, God!” “What did you have to give Porky for those diamonds?” Randy asked softly.
“For the ring, hardly anything at all. For the rest of it we gave him canned meat and cigarettes and coffee and chocolate
“Is that all?” Dan asked.
“No, those are just the watches,” Rita said. “Pete’s been amusing himself, admiring them and winding them every day. There’s more stuff in my room-a couple of necklaces and a ruby and diamond brooch and-well, all sorts of junk.”
“Pete,” Dan said, “throw that kit in the corner, there. Rita, don’t touch anything you may have in your bedroom. There’s no point in your absorbing even another fraction of a roentgen. We’ve got to figure out a way to get the stuff out of here and get rid of it without damaging ourselves. We’ll be back.”
Rita followed them to the door, whimpering. She snatched at Dan’s sleeve. “What’s going to happen? Am I going to die> Is my hair going to fall out?”
“You haven’t absorbed nearly as much radiation as your brother,” Dan said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen because radiation sickness is so tricky.”
“What about Pete? What’ll I do if Pete-”
“I’m afraid,” Dan said, “that Pete is slipping into leukemia.” “Blood cancer?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you’d better prepare yourself.”
Rita’s hands fell from Dan’s arm. Randy watched her diminish, all allure, all bravado falling away, leaving her smaller and like a child. He said, quietly, “Rita, you’d better keep this, here. You’ll need it.” He gave her the bottle of Scotch.
As he pressed the starter Dan said, “Why did you give her the whiskey?”
“I feel sorry for her.” That wasn’t the only reason. If he had owed her anything before, he did no longer. They were quits. They were square. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked.
“I think so, unless a malignancy develops from the burn on her finger. Improbable but possible. Yes, she should be all right so far as radiation goes. The dose she absorbed was localized. But after her brother dies she’ll be alone. Then she won’t be all right.” “She’ll find a man,” Randy said. “She always has.”
Porky Logan’s house stood at the end of Augustine Road, in a grove that rose up a hillside at the back of the house. It was a two-story brick, the largest house in Pistolville, so it was said. Porky’s sister and niece had been caring for him, but he lived alone. His wife and two children had departed Pistolville ten years before.
They found Porky on the second floor. He was sitting up in bed, unshaven chin resting upon blotched bare chest. Between his knees was a beer case filled with jewelry. His hands were buried to the forearm in this treasure. Dan said, “Porky!”
Porky didn’t raise his head. Porky was dead.
Dan stepped to the bed, pushed Porky’s body back against the pillows, and pried an eyelid open. Dan said, “Let’s get him out of here. That’s a furnace he’s got in his lap.”
Randy tried not to breathe going down the steps. It was not only the smell of Porky’s room that hurried him.
Dan said, “We’ve got to keep people out of this house until we can get Porky and that hot stuff underground. How do we do it?”
“What about a sign? We could paint a sign.”
They found an unopened can of yellow paint and a brush in Porky’s garage. Dan used the brush on the front door. In block letters he wrote:
“DANGER! KEEP OUT! RADIATION!”
“You’d better put something else on there,” Randy said. “There are a lot of people around here who still don’t know what radiation means.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I’m positive of it. They’ve never seen it, or felt it. They hear about it, but I don’t think they believe it. They didn’t believe it could kill them before The Day-if they thought of it at all-and
I don’t think they believe it now. You’d better add something they understand, like Poison.” and reached under the bed and snatched the boot. All she said as she went through the door was, `I hope you croak, you sneaky bastard. I’m going back to Apalachicola’.”
Fascinated, Randy asked, “How does she expect to get to Apalachicola?”