"That'd be a good idea. I don't feel like going back to bed. I want to
listen for more reports."
But there were no more reports. An hour passed. Another and another. Jim
spun the dials and got either silence or the cheerful blatherings of
some inane disc jockey who prattled on as though nothing had happened.
Finally Jim snapped the set off. "Censorship," he said. "Now we're going
to see what it's really like."
In the morning they gathered again in groups--the villagers in this
little community of five hundred, and discussed the shape of things to
come, as they visualized them.
"It'll take a little time to get into action," old Sam Bennett said.
"Even expecting it, and with how fast things move these days--it'll take
time."
"If they invade us--come down from the north--you think the government
will let us know they're coming?"
"You can't tell. Censorship is a funny thing. In the last war, we knew
more about what was going on in Europe than the people that lived
there."
At that moment, old Mrs. Kendal fainted dead away and had to be carried
home. Three men carried her and Tom Edwards was one of them. "Kind of
heavy, ain't she?" Tom said. "I never thought Mary weighed much more
than a hundred."
That night the village shook. In his home, Jim staggered against the
wall. Myra fell to the floor. There were two tremors--the second worse
than the first. Then things steadied away, and he helped Myra to her
feet.
"But there wasn't any noise," Myra whispered. The whisper was loud in
the silence.
"That was an earthquake," Jim said. "Nothing to worry about. Might be
one of the bomb's after effects."
The quake did no great damage in the village, but it possibly
contributed to old Mrs. Kendal's death. She passed on an hour later.
"Poor old lady," a neighbor told Myra. "She was plain weary. That was
what she said just before she closed her eyes. 'Hazel' she said, 'I'm
just plumb tuckered.'"
The neighbor wiped her face with her apron and turned toward home.
"Think I'll lie down for a spell. I'm tuckered myself. Can't take things
like I used to."
* * * * *
Now it was a week after the earthquake--two weeks after the falling of
the bombs, and the town went on living. But it was strange, very
strange. Art Cordell voiced the general opinion when he said, "You know,
we waited a long time for the thing to happen--we kind of visualized,
maybe, how it'd be. But I didn't figure it'd be anything like this."
"Maybe there isn't any war," Jim said. "Washington hasn't said so."
"Censorship."
"But isn't that carrying censorship a little too far? The people ought
to be told whether or not they're at war."
But the people didn't seem to care. A deadening lethargy had settled
over them. A lethargy they felt and questioned in their own minds, but
didn't talk about, much. Talking itself seemed to have become an effort.
This continued weariness--this dragging of one foot after another--was
evidently the result of radiation from the bombs. What other place could
it come from? The radiation got blamed for just about everything
untoward that happened. It caused Jenkin's apples to fall before they
were half-ripe. Something about it bent the young wheat to the ground
where it mildewed and rotted.
Some even blamed the radiation for the premature birth of Jane Elman's
baby, even though such things had happened before even gun powder was
invented.
But it certainly was a strange war. Nothing came over the radio at all.
Nobody seemed to care, really. Probably because they were just plain too
tired. Jim Peters dragged himself to and from work in sort of a daze.
Myra got her housework done, but it was a greater effort every day. All
she could think of was the times she could drop on the lounge for a
rest. She didn't care much whether a war was going on or not.
People had quit waiting for them to come down from the north. They knew
that the places where the bombs had fallen were guarded like Fort Knox.
Nobody got in or out.
Jim remembered the flash, the color, the rumors, the excitement of World
War Two. The grim resolution of the people to buckle down and win it.
Depots jammed. Kids going off to join.
But nobody went to join this war. That was funny. Somehow Jim hadn't
thought of that before. None of the kids was being called up. Did they
have enough men? Washington didn't say. Washington didn't say anything.
And the people didn't seem to care. That was the strange thing, when you
could get your tired mind to focus on it.
The people didn't care. They were too busily occupied with the grim
business of putting one foot in front of the other.
Jim got home one evening to find Myra staring dully at a small handful
of ground meat. "That's a pound," she said.