to get supplies in San Marco that he wouldn’t have been able to get if he hadn’t been in Civil Defense. For one thing, he had been able to get gasoline out of the county garage. But the tanks had long been dry, all other official supplies exhausted. He said, “I’ve only got one hearse that will run and only a couple of gallons of gas in it. I’m saving it for an emergency.”
`This is an emergency,” Dan said. “You’ll have to use it now.”
Bubba thought of another obstacle. “It’ll take eight men to tote that lead-lined casket with Porky in it even if he’s lost weight like I have.”
Randy spoke. “We’ll get them. Plenty of strong men hanging around Marines Park.”
In the park they mounted the bandstand. Randy shouted, “Hey, everybody! Come over here!” The traders drifted over, wondering.
Bubba made a little speech. Bubba was accustomed to speaking at service club luncheons and civic meetings, but this audience, although many of the faces were familiar, was not the same. It was neither attentive nor courteous. He spoke of community spirit and cooperation and togetherness. He reminded them that they had sent Porky Logan to the state legislature and he knew Porky must have been a friend to many there. Now he asked for volunteers to help bury Porky. No hands went up. A few of the traders snickered.
Bubba shrugged and looked at Dan Gunn. Dan said, “This is in your own interest. If we leave the dead unburied we’re inviting an epidemic. In addition, in this case we must get rid of radioactive material that can be dangerous to anyone who finds it.”
Somebody yelled, “Bubba’s the undertaker, ain’t he? Well, let him undertake it.”
Some of the men laughed. Randy saw that they were bored and would soon turn away. It was necessary that he act. He stepped in front of Dan, lifted the flap of his holster, and drew out the .45. Holding it casually, so that it was a menace to no one in particular, and yet to each of them separately, he pulled back the hammer. His left forefinger jabbed at the faces of five men, big men. “You, Rusty, and you, Tom, and you there, you have just volunteered as pall-bearers.”
They looked at him amazed. For a long time, no one had ordered them to do anything. For a long time, there had not even been a boss on a job. Nobody moved. Some of the traders carried handguns in hip pockets or holsters. Others had leaned shotguns or rifles against benches or the bandstand railing. Randy watched for a movement. He was going to shoot the first man who reached for a weapon. This was the decision he had made. Regardless of the consequences he was going to do it. Having made the decision, and being certain he would carry it out, he felt easy about it. He realized they must know this. He stepped down from the bandstand, his eyes holding his five volunteers. He said, “All right, let’s get going.”
The five men followed him and he holstered his pistol.
So they buried Porky Logan. With him they buried the contaminated loot in Porky’s carton and out of the Hernandez house. Also into the coffin went the fire tongs with which Dan Gunn had handled the jewelry. When the grave was filled and mounded somebody said, “Hadn’t there ought to be a prayer for the poor bastard?”
They all looked at Randy. Randy said, “God rest his soul.” He added, knowing that it would be passed along, “And God help anybody who digs him up to get the stuff It’ll kill them like it killed Porky.”
He turned and walked slowly, head down, to the car, thinking. Authority had disintegrated in Fort Repose. The Mayor, Alexander Getty, who was also chairman of the town council, was barricaded in his house, besieged by imaginary and irrational fears that the Russians had invaded and were intent on his capture, torture, and the rape of his wife and daughter. The Chief of Police was dead. The two other policemen had abandoned unpaid public duty to scramble for their families. The fire and sanitation departments, equipment immobilized, no longer existed. Bubba Offenhaus was frightened, bewildered, and incapable of either decision or action. So Randy had shoved his gun into this vacuum. He had assumed leadership and he was not sure why. It was enough trouble keeping the colony on River Road alive and well. He felt a loneliness not unfamiliar. It was like leading a platoon out of the MLR to occupy some isolated outpost. Command, whether of a platoon or a town, was a lonely state.
When they returned to River Road at noon Randy’s boat shoes were stiff with caked clay of the graveyard. He was knocking them clear of clods, on the front steps, when he was attracted by movement in the foliage behind Florence Wechek’s house. Alice Cooksey and Florence were standing under a tall cabbage palm, steadying a ladder. At the top of the ladder, head and shoulders hidden by fronds, was Lib. He wondered why she must be up there. He wished she would stay on the ground. She took too many chances. She could get hurt. With medical supplies dwindling-Dan had already been forced to use most of their reserve-they all had to be careful. Everyone had chores and if one was hurt it meant added burdens, including nursing, on the others. A simple fracture could be compound disaster.
Bill McGovern, Malachai, and Two-Tone Henry came around the corner of the house. Bill was wearing gray flannels raggedly cut off above the knees, tennis shoes, and nothing else. His right hand grasped a bouquet of wrenches. Grease smeared his bald head and fine white beard. He no longer looked like a Caesar, but like an unkempt Jove armed with thunderbolts. Before he could speak Randy demanded: “Bill, what’s your daughter doing up that palm?”
“She won’t say,” Bill said. “She and Alice and Florence are cooking up some sort of a surprise for us. Maybe she’s found a bird’s nest. I wouldn’t know.”
Randy said, “What’s the delegation?”
Bill said, “It’s Two-Tone’s idea. Two-Tone, you talk.”
Two-Tone said, “Mister Randy, you know my sugar cane will be tall and sweet and Pop’s corn will be up in June.”
“So?”
“Corn and sugar cane means corn whiskey. I mean we can make ‘shine if you says it’s okay. Pop and Mister Bill here, they say it’s up to you. I suggests it only on one account. We can trade ‘shine.”
“Naturally you wouldn’t drink any, would you, Two-Tone?” “Oh, no sir!”
Randy understood that they required something from him beyond permission. Yet if they could manufacture corn whiskey it would be like finding coffee beans. Whiskey was a negotiable money crop. In this humid climate both corn and sugar cane would deteriorate rapidly. Corn whiskey was different. The longer you kept it the more valuable it became. Furthermore, only a few bottles of bourbon and Scotch remained, and the bourbon was strictly medicinal, Dan’s anesthetic. Two-Tone, the no-good genius! Cannily, all Randy said was, “If you have Preacher’s permission, it’s all right with me. It’s Preacher’s corn.” Bill said, “I’ve already contributed my Imperial.”
“You’ve what?”
“Contributed the guts of my Imperial. You see, to make the still we have to have a lot of copper tubing. We have to bend condensing coils, and you have to have tubing between the boiler and condenser and so forth.”
“What you’re getting at,” Randy said slowly, “is that you want me to contribute the gas lines out of my Bonneville.” “That’s right. The lines out of my car won’t give us enough length. And we have to have your lawn roller. You see, first we’ve got to build a mill to crush the cane. We have to get the juice and boil it down to molasses before we can make whiskey, or for that matter use it as syrup. Balaam, the mule, will walk a circle, a lever harnessed to his back to turn the roller on concrete slabs. That’s the mill. That’s the way they did it a couple of hundred years ago. I’ve seen pictures.”
Randy knew it would work. He said, sadly, “Okay. Go into the garage. But I don’t want to watch.” It had been a beautiful car. He remembered Mark’s casual prediction that it wouldn’t be worth a damn to him. Mark had been wrong. Some of it was useful.
Lunch was fish, with half a lime. Orange juice, all you could drink. A square of honeycomb. Dan and Helen were at the table. The others had already finished. Helen always waited for him, Randy noticed. She was so solicitous it was sometimes embarrassing.
Dan looked at his plate and said, “A fine, thinning diet. If everybody in the country had been on this diet before The Day the cardiac death rate would have been cut in half.”
“So what good would it have done them?” Randy said. He speared his honey and munched it, rolling his eyes. “We’ve got to do more trading with Jim Hickey. We’ve got to find something Jim needs.” Randy remembered what Jim had said about half his broods going foul since The Day and how Jim suspected radiation was responsible. He told Dan and Helen what Hickey had said.
Dan stared at his plate, troubled. He cut into his honeycomb and tasted it. “Delicious,” he said, but his mind was elsewhere. At last he looked up and spoke gravely. “We shouldn’t be surprised. Who can tell how much cesium 137 showered down on The Day? How much was carried into the upper atmosphere and has been filtering
