Alas, Babylon

“I have,” said Garcia. “I’ve seen ‘em while I was fishing for cats at night. No, that ain’t exactly right. I’ve heard ‘em. I heard one two nights ago.”

“Whose?” Blaustein asked. Garcia shrugged. “Beats me.”

This discussion, Randy knew, would continue through the day. The question of who won the war, or if the war still continued, who was wi

John Garcia said, “You coming to the Easter service, Randy?”

“Hope so. Hope to come and bring the family.” As he stepped from the bandstand he looked again at the two useless drinking fountains. There was something important about them that he could not recall. This was irritating, as when the name of an old friend capriciously vanishes from memory. The drinking fountains made his mind itch.

He saw Jim Hickey, the beekeeper, a picnic basket under his long, outstretched legs, relaxed on a bench. Before The Day Jim had rented his hives to grove owners pollinating young trees. Before The Day, Jim’s honey was a secondary source of income; “gravy,” he called it. Now, honey was liquid gold, and beeswax, with which candles could be dipped, another valuable item of barter. Jim Hickey, who was Mark’s age, had learned beekeeping at the College of Agriculture in Gainesville. It would never make him rich, he had been warned, and until The Day it hadn’t. Now he was regarded as a fortunate man, rich in highly desirable commodities endlessly produced by tens of thousands of happy and willing slaves. “What are you trading?” he greeted Randy.

“A bottle of Scotch. Are you holding coffee?”

“No. I’ve been trying to trade for coffee myself. Can’t find any. All I hold is honey.” He lifted the lid of the picnic basket. “Lovely stuff, isn’t it?”

It was lovely. Randy thought of Ben Franklin and Peyton, whose need and desire for sweets could not be wholly supplied by the sugar content of citrus. It would be weeks before Two Tone’s cane crop matured. Randy wondered whether he was being selfish, trading for coffee. It was true that he would share the coffee with the other adults on River Road, but the children didn’t drink it. There were no calories or vitamins in coffee and it was of no use to them. He forced himself to be judicial. When you examined the facts judicially, and asked which would provide the greatest good for the greatest number, there could be only one answer. Coffee would furnish only temporary and personal gratification. He said, “Jim, maybe I could be persuaded to trade for honey.”

“I’m sorry, Randy. We’re Adventists. We don’t drink whiskey or trade in it.”

This contingency Randy had never imagined. Half-aloud he said, “Well, I tried.”

“I suppose you wanted the honey for Mark’s children,” Hickey said. “Yes. I did.”

Hickey reached into the basket and brought out two square, honey-packed combs. “I wouldn’t like to see Mark’s kids go without,” he said. “Here. I’d give you more except my supply is ‘way down. There’s something wrong with my bees this spring. Half my broods are foul, full of dead pupae and larvae. At first I thought it was what we call sacbrood, or queen failure. I’ve been to the library, reading up on it, and now I wonder whether it couldn’t be radiation. We must’ve had fallout on The Day-after all, the whole state is a contaminated zone-and maybe it affected some of my queens and drones. I don’t know what to do about it. It isn’t something they taught us at the University.”

Randy removed the bottle from his paper bag, locked it under his arm, and replaced it with the honeycombs. He was overwhelmed. He knew that Mark and Hickey had been in the same grade in primary school, but they had never been close friends. Hickey was no more than an acquaintance. He lived in a neat, sea-green, five-room concrete block house far out on the road to Pasco Creek. Randy, before The Day, rarely saw him, and then only to wave a greeting. Randy said, “Jim, this is the nicest, most generous thing I can remember. I just hope I can repay you some way, some day.”

“Forget it,” Hickey said. “Children need honey. My kids have it every meal.”

Randy heard the Model-A’s horn, raucous as an angry goose, and saw it pull up to the curb. Walking to the car, he noticed that it was a clear and beautiful spring day, a better day than yesterday. The spores of kindness, as well as faith, survived in this acid soil. Randy climbed into the car and showed the honey to Dan and explained how it had been given to him. “The world changes,” Dan said. “People don’t. I still have one old biddy in the schoolhouse who prunes and trims the camellias, and weeds the beds. They aren’t her camellias and nobody gives a damn about flowers any more, except her. She loves flowers and it doesn’t matter where she is or what happens she’s going to take care of ‘em. This same old lady-Mrs. Satterborough, she’s been spending her winters at the Riverside I

“I don’t understand how those old people stay alive,” Randy said. He knew that Dan brought them oranges by the bushel, and Randy sent them fish whenever there was a surplus catch.

“Most of them didn’t. Death can be merciful, especially for the old and sick. I was about to say old, sick, and broke, but it doesn’t matter any longer whether you’re broke. Only five alive out of the Riverside I

They turned off Yulee into Augustine Road, with its broken macadam and respectable but decaying residences. They bounced along for a block and then Randy smelled Pistolville. Another block and they were in it.

There had been no garbage collections since The Day. In Pistolville each but or house squatted in a mound of its own excretion-crushed crates and cartons, rusting tin cans, broken bottles, rotting piles of citrus rusks and pecan shells, the bones of fowl, fish, and small animals. A tallow-faced, six-year-old girl, clad in a man’s castoff, riddled T-shirt, crouched on the curb, emptying her bowels in the dust. She cried out shrilly and waved as the Model-A bounced past. A bearded, long-haired man burst out of a doorway and jogged down the street on bandy legs, peel—ing and eating a banana, turning his head as if he expected to be followed. At the corner a scrawny boy of eighteen urinated against a lamp post, not bothering to raise his eyes at the sound of the car. Buzzards, grown arrogant, roosted in the oaks and foraged in the refuse. Of mongrel dogs, cats, partihued pigs, chickens, and pigeons-all normal impediments to navigation on the streets of Pistolville-no trace remained.

Once before in his life, in Suwon, immediately after its recapture and before the Military Government people had begun to clean up, Randy had seen degradation such as this. But this was America. It was his town, settled by his forebears. He said, “We’ve got to do something about this.”