Fallout

I hear a rustle below and peek over the edge. Dad’s leaning over Mom’s bunk, but I can’t see what he’s doing. After a while, he stands up to check on Sparky and me. Our eyes meet and his nose wrinkles. I point at Sparky. Dad nods and then he’s still for a moment. His eyes slide away toward the water tank. Is he thinking that if there’s no water to drink, then there’s none for washing pee-soaked pajamas?

18

Early in July, big sheets of blueprints appeared on our dining-room table. A few days later, Sparky and I followed Dad around the backyard with two men who hammered short wooden stakes into the grass and tied a string that outlined the rectangular boundary where the new addition to our house would go — a new playroom and a bedroom for me.

The next morning, three men with pickaxes, shovels, and a wheelbarrow began digging inside the staked-off area.

By the afternoon, the hole was knee-deep and the size of big kiddie pool. Sparky and I stood on the other side of the string and watched; the men, who were Negroes and wore overalls, stole glances at us. Overalls were not an item of clothing that hung in my father’s closet nor, I was pretty certain, in the closets of any of my friends’ fathers. Under the overalls the men wore dingy T-shirts with small holes and tears in them.

Each man had his own way of digging. The tall, wiry one with long, sinewy arms slammed the heel of his boot against the top of the shovel to drive the blade down into the soil. Then he would arch back and use his whole body to leverage the dirt into the wheelbarrow. The paunchy man with thick undefined arms would lean against the shovel and wiggle the blade back and forth into the dirt. Then he would jam the handle against his hip and, without moving his feet, swivel toward the wheelbarrow. The third man had broad shoulders that narrowed down to his waist, and muscular arms. He looked like a dark version of the muscle builders in the magazines Dad sometimes read and was strong enough to thrust his shovel straight into the dirt, then bend his knees and toss shovelfuls into the wheelbarrow. Hardly any dirt missed.

Within a few days, the men had dug as deep as their thighs, and the rectangular hole reached to the string on all three sides. Beneath the dark brown topsoil was a layer of lighter soil mixed with sand, and below that appeared to be grayish clay. They used the pickaxes now as well as shovels, and the work went more slowly as they heaved shovelfuls of dirt and clay up onto a canvas tarp at the rim of the hole. It seemed strange that they would be digging so deep for rooms that were supposed to be above the ground.

“Maybe it’s an indoor swimming pool,” Sparky said.

Could that be it? Were they not only building an addition but a surprise swimming pool as well? Having our own pool would be a thousand times better than the pool at the country club. Not only because we’d be able to swim anytime we wanted but because we could have just our friends over instead of sharing with everyone. We could float on rafts, which weren’t allowed at the club pool, and private pools had lights, so we could even swim at night.

But the best thing about having our own pool would be doing all the cannonballs we wanted! My friends and I had spent a considerable amount of time the previous summer perfecting cannonballs off the diving board at the club pool. The perfect cannonball resulted in a spoutlike splash of water that rocketed straight upward from the point of entry, sometimes even splashing against the bottom of the diving board. Unfortunately, sometimes our splashes veered off at an angle and sprayed the ladies who sunned on the lounges. When that happened, they’d complain to the lifeguards and cannonballs would be banned for the rest of the day.

Seeking confirmation, Sparky and I raced into the house, where we found Mom sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. That was strange. Usually she only smoked on weekend nights when she and Dad had people over for dinner. And when she sat at the kitchen table, she always read a magazine. But it was the middle of the afternoon, there was no magazine, and her gaze slanted up and away into the smoky air.

“Are we getting an indoor swimming pool?” Sparky asked.

Mom scowled and crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray. “What makes you think that?”

“The hole they’re digging.”

“Your father didn’t tell you? It’s a bomb shelter.”

“What’s that?” asked Sparky.

“A place where we can hide in case the Commies drop the H-bomb on us,” I said.

“Why?” Sparky was filled with disappointment.

“You’ll have to ask your father,” Mom said.