242
WRIGHT MORRIS
humor. A glance at the evening sky was good for a laugh. We had our
own pattern of survival, based on our cat food, his dog food, and the
water stored in our hot water heaters. He would inject powdered coffee
into his-I would spike mine with rum. Seated in the dark around the
dripping spigots we would wait for the
all clear.
As we reasoned it would
be. All clear of any sign of life.
A few weeks ago, seeing some bricks in his yard, I called out to
ask how his "shelter" was going. He smiled. But a different smile. It
was at me, now, not with me. He hadn't got around to it yet, he said,
due to more pressing matters, but he was giving the project serious
thought. The real problem was money. Such improvements to our way
of life were not deductible. Not yet. But one day they would be, and
when they were he would just as soon put one in as not. One might as
well face the facts. Pending the fallout he could use it as a workshop.
The facts. Yes, yes, the facts. Determined to face the facts by all
means, a local religious group, with the future in mind, combined their
skills and resources to provide neighborhood school children, the little
tots, with
fallout kits.
What they would need, that is, in case of a sur–
prise attack. The kit contained a bite of candy, a bite of food, a change
of underwear and socks, and a game or toy to play with until the attack
had passed. This occasion was featured on television as an example to
those who had taken no action, and whose children might be taken by
surprise ·without candy, toys, or a change of socks.
The intent of this effort was commendable. Lacking from the kit,
however, was any connection it might have with the disaster that
threatened. Kits-for-the-kiddies was not different, in kind, from the
fallout shelters overlooking the sea, within eyeshot of the calculated
blast. Both actions function, if at all, as therapy. The mother hushing
the child, the husband comforting the wife, the doctor reassuring the
disturbed patient. Anything will do. Anything, that is, but the facts.
What became of these
facts?
In the thirteen years since Hiroshima
have they become fiction, or got lost? How can Americans, under no
news blackout, go about preparing candy-kits for kiddies as if atomic
war was in the nature of a tropical storm, one of those big blows we
infectiously give the names of girls. One that would soon blow over, the
waters recede, and mothers would reappear in their station wagons and
honk their horns.
.The man who would smile at the kits for the kiddies soberly
prepares his burrow in the basement, neatly lined with beer, cigarettes,
and canned goods for ten or twelve days. The child, happily, suffers the
smaller delusion. Both responses come under the awning of my Aunt
