Fallout

By now there was a line of boys at the pencil sharpener and nonstop grinding. Kids asked Ronnie to demonstrate his technique. Soon more pencils were stuck in the ceiling.

Down the hall, Mr. Kasman came around the corner. I backed out of the doorway. “He’s coming!”

Everyone hurried to their desks and got to work in their grammar workbooks.

Mr. Kasman came in and sat down and wrote something in his notebook. Then he noticed the empty pencil box.

Then he looked at us.

Then he looked up.

27

The grown-ups sit at the table and talk. The kids sit on the bunks like spectators.

“Maybe she just needs time to recover,” Mrs. Shaw says.

“Anyone ever seen anything like this?” Dad asks.

“That depends on what you mean by this,” Mr. McGovern answers. I think he’s talking about his son, Paula’s brother, Teddy.

“Mr. Porter?” Janet says from the bunk where she’s sitting next to Mom. “She needs to be turned or she’ll get bedsores.”

“Now?” Dad asks.

“The sooner the better, sir.”

One of Mr. McGovern’s eyebrows dips. “And you know this because?”

“I was studying to be a nurse, sir.”

“You? Where?” Mr. McGovern sounds a little mean.

“Long Island College Hospital of Nursing, sir.”

“Never heard of it,” Mr. McGovern says dismissively.

For a moment, everyone goes still. I wish I could ask Mr. McGovern why he said that. Then the moment passes, and Dad helps Janet turn Mom onto her side.

That’s when we all smell it.

As if the mildew and pee odors aren’t bad enough, now there’s this. I feel embarrassed for Mom and try not to watch while Dad and Janet remove her soiled clothes and the sheet she was lying on. It all goes into the big refuse can. Dad relents about using water for something other than drinking. For a sponge and towels, Janet tears off the bottom part of her robe. After the rags are used, they also go into the can.

When they’re finished, Mom is lying on her side with her bare bottom and legs exposed. Dad takes the sheet from the upper bunk and tears it in half. He and Janet tuck it around Mom, who is as still and quiet as before.

My stomach growls, but I know we need to ration the food, so I keep quiet. Ronnie, me, and Sparky, who’s now wearing a little loincloth Janet made for him, have played about a thousand games of checkers. Dad comes over and suggests we switch to Parcheesi. He makes the slightest gesture with his head toward Paula, so I say, “Want to play, Paula?”

With his back to her so she can’t see, Dad smiles and nods.

We four kids play Parcheesi, but all I think about is food. Since it’s impossible to tell whether it’s day or night, people climb into the bunks when they’re tired, but now it’s more like we take long naps rather than sleep for one extended period. Mr. McGovern snores. Sparky grinds his teeth. Mrs. Shaw talks in her sleep. Once she said, “Ronnie, stop that right now!” and another time it was, “I hate this.”

But no one sleeps for long; hunger keeps waking us.

“Is it time to eat, Herr Kapitän?” Mr. McGovern asks.

Sparky looks up curiously. “What’s that mean, Dad?”

“He’s making a joke,” Dad says.

“Well?” Mr. McGovern doesn’t sound like he’s making a joke.

Dad points at the remaining cans on the shelf. “I only stored enough food for four. Now we’re ten. At this rate, we’ll use it all up by the end of the first week.”

“And you’re the one who decides when we eat?” asks Mr. McGovern.

“It’s my family’s food,” Dad points out.

“Maybe it was… before what happened,” Mr. McGovern says. “But now that we’re all in this together, shouldn’t it belong to all of us?”

Dad and Mr. McGovern face each other.

“You know,” Dad grumbles, “none of us would be alive right now if it wasn’t for me. Did it ever occur to you to utter two very simple words like ‘thank you’?”

Paula’s dad glares. “Thank you, Richard. However, don’t forget that if you’d had your way, the rest of us would be dead.”

Dad narrows his eyes. “Yes, I tried to keep people out, but only to protect my family. It was horrible and something that’s going to haunt me for a long time. But how was I supposed to know how many people were up there? What was I supposed to do? Let everyone in? How’d you like it if there were twenty people in here right now? Or thirty? You might as well be up there.”

“I think I’d rather die than know I was responsible for the deaths of others,” Mrs. Shaw says.

I’ve never seen Dad argue or fight with our neighbors before. Except for the disagreements my parents sometimes had, I’m not sure I ever saw grown-ups get cross with one another before.

Now Dad turns to Mr. Shaw. “You want to tell her or should I?”

Mr. Shaw gazes up at the ceiling and lets out a long breath. “Steph, after I got you and Ronnie down here, I… ” He trails off and lowers his head.

“He helped me keep the others out,” Dad finishes for him. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”

28

Once he’d gone around the room with a yardstick and knocked the pencils out of the ceiling, Mr. Kasman made all the boys stay in for lunch detention.

“What was the point of that?” he asked us.

No one answered.