The Smuggled Atom Bomb

She seemed glad to have Duff back at home one minute, and the next, annoyed at everything. “Christmas is coming,” she kept saying, “and we’re so broke and there’s so much to do.”

When he tried to reassure her, she turned away.

Finally, they quarreled over the subject of most quarrels: practically nothing. He had worked late in the laboratory on a difficult problem. When he reached home, Eleanor was in the kitchen, and he went immediately to help.

She said petulantly, “Where in heaven’s name have you been?”

“Over on the campus. Working.”

“Fine thing! I needed you here! The pipe’s plugged under the sink!” She picked up a pan of hot vegetables and drained them over a larger vessel. “See?”

“I’ll fix it right after dinner.”

“You’ll have to or wash dishes in the yard! The kids are going to the movies tonight.”

She lifted the lid on a skillet of sizzling meat. He noticed that she was wearing no apron and hadn’t changed from a particularly pretty dress — gray and scarlet — in her new wardrobe. Her mood communicated to him.

“You’ll get spattered,” he said. “Let me turn the chops. You’ve no apron on.”

“You set the table,” she said. “It isn’t yet… I don’t know why Marian’s late!”

“But that meat’s spitting all over the place.”

She muttered something that sounded like, “Mind your own business,” seized a fork, and immediately was splashed so that the fresh dress was turned into something for the dry cleaner.

She said, “Damn!”

“I told you so.”

She whirled from the stove. “You tell me nothing, Duffer Bogan! All the aprons were dirty and I was too darn tired to change!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure, you’re sorry! So am I sorry! I’m sorry my kid sister is probably giggling with some pimply boy in a schoolyard somewhere! I’m sorry you had to work late and Harry’s feeling rotten! I’m sorry we can’t afford a cook, or to eat out once in a while, or even own enough aprons to keep neat! I’m sorry we’re so mouse-poor, and right now I’m even sorry I’ve got what people think are good looks — except that maybe I can use ‘em, somehow, to get this family out of a lousy mess that goes on forever!”

It wasn’t like Eleanor. It was nothing like her, Duff thought glumly. She had even called him by the derogatory form of his nickname. He felt pity but he thought it was no time to show it. Perhaps, too, he felt in a deep recess of his personality, where his aware mind couldn’t look, the blaze of resentment.

“All you have to do,” he said stonily, “is to say ‘yes’ to Scotty Smythe. I’m sure he’d manage things fine for everybody. You wouldn’t need boarders, so I’d be delighted to hunt up some other place—” It was childish.

He had never heard her shout in anger. She did now. She raised her fork and stabbed it in his direction and yelled, “Get out of this kitchen!”

As he went through the living room, Mrs. Yates called nervously, “What’s wrong, Duff?”

He answered, “Nothing,” and began to set the table. She didn’t offer to make up, so he didn’t.

The day after that, Harry Ellings announced he was going to take a week of his annual two weeks’ vacation to go up to Baltimore to see some doctors about his condition.

When Duff learned that, he wanted, once again, to let the FBI know. But Higgins, the G-man, had been very final in his last talk at the hospital. The FBI wouldn’t be interested in Harry’s trip, and though Duff ached with anxiety over the potential danger of it, he felt he could do nothing.

When Harry returned, he didn’t seem improved. His color had become a grayish yellow. His appetite was bad. His hands shook constantly. His neatly parted gray hair seemed to be getting thinner almost day by day. He talked little and spent most of his time, when he wasn’t at work, lying on his bed.

Nobody gave him much attention — the Yates family was demoralized. Dinners were hurriedly prepared. Every night, afterward, Eleanor either drove to Miami to her job or went to a meeting or had a date, leaving the dishes and most of the housework to Marian, Charles and Duff. With Eleanor absent, and while he worked with the youngsters, Duff could revive the old feeling of cheerfulness, but when Eleanor was at home a jittery gloom prevailed.

In early December there was a cold spell. It was the sort that Florida chambers of commerce would like to keep hushed up. Frost crept over the Everglades. The power company put every generator in service to meet the load of electric heaters glowing in tens of thousands of homes. People with fireplaces stoked them, so that all Dade County was spiced with pine-wood smoke.