It wasn’t very long before the civil defense siren began wailing. Dad got a phone call from Mayor Swope, asking him if he would meet with a group of volunteers at the courthouse and help spread the word from door to door that both Zephyr and Bruton had to be immediately evacuated.
“On Christmas
Eve?
” Dad said. “Evacuate the whole
town?
”
“That’s right, Tom.” Mayor Swope sounded at his rope’s end. “Do you know a bomb fell out of a jet plane right into—”
“Dick Moultry’s house, yeah I’ve heard. It fell out of a jet plane?”
“Right again. And we’ve gotta get these people out of here in case that damn thing blows.”
“Well, why don’t you call the air base? Surely they’ll come get it.”
“I just got off the phone with ’em. Their public relations spokesman, I mean. I told him one of his jets lost a bomb over our town, and you know what he said? He said I must’ve been in the Christmas rum cake! He said no such thing happened, that none of their pilots were so careless as to accidentally hit a safety lever and drop a bomb on civilians. He said even
if
such a thing happened, their bomb deactivation team was not on duty on Christmas Eve, and
if
such a thing happened, he’d hope the civilians in that town upon which a bomb did
not
drop ought to have sense enough to evacuate because the bomb that did
not
fall from a jet plane could blow most of that town into toothpicks! Now, how about
that?
”
“He’s got to know you’re tellin’ the truth, Luther. He’ll send somebody to keep the bomb from explodin’.”
“Maybe so, but
when?
Tomorrow afternoon? Do you want to go to sleep tonight with that thing tickin’? I can’t risk it, Tom. We’ve got to get everybody out!”
Dad asked Mayor Swope to come pick him up. Then he hung up the phone and told Mom she and I ought to take the truck and get to Grand Austin and Nana Alice’s for the night. He’d come join us when the work was done. Mom started to beg him to come with us; she wanted to, as much as rain wants to follow clouds. But she saw that he had decided what was right, and she would have to learn to deal with it. She said, “Go get your pajamas, Cory. Get your toothbrush and a pair of fresh socks and underwear. We’re goin’ to Grand Austin’s.”
“Dad, is Zephyr gonna blow up?” I asked.
“No. We’re movin’ everybody out just for safety’s sake. The Air Force boys’ll send somebody to get that thing real soon, I’m sure of it.”
“You’ll be careful?” Mom asked him.
“You know it. Merry Christmas.” He smiled.
She couldn’t help but return it. “You crazy thing, you!” she said, and she kissed him.
Mom and I got some clothes packed. The civil defense siren wailed for almost fifteen minutes, a sound so spine-chilling it even silenced the dogs. Already people were getting the message, and they were driving away to spend the night with relatives, friends in other towns, or at the Union Pines Motel in Union Town. Mayor Swope came by to pick up Dad. Then Mom and I were ready to go. Before we walked out the door, the phone rang and it was Ben wanting to tell me they were going to Birmingham to spend the night with his aunt and uncle. “Ain’t it somethin’?” he said excitedly. “Know what I heard? Mr. Moultry’s got two busted legs and a broke back and the bomb’s lyin’ right on top of him! This is really neat, huh?”
I had to agree it was. We’d never experienced a Christmas Eve quite like it.
“Gotta go! Talk to you later! Oh, yeah… Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas, Ben!”
He hung up. Mom collared me, and we were on our way to Grand Austin and Nana Alice’s house. I’d never seen so many cars on Route Ten before. Heaven help us all if the beast from the lost world decided to attack right about now; there’d be a bomb behind us, cars and trucks tumped over like tenpins, and people flying through the air without wings.
We left Zephyr behind, all lit up for Christmas.
The rest of this story I found out later, since I wasn’t there.
Curiosity got the best of Dad. He had to see the bomb. So, as Zephyr and Bruton gradually emptied out, he left the group of volunteers he was riding with and walked a half-dozen blocks to where Mr. Moultry lived. Mr. Moultry’s house was a small wooden structure painted pale blue with white shutters. Light was streaming upward through the splintered roof. The sheriff’s car was parked out front, its bubble light spinning around. Dad climbed up onto the porch, which had been knocked crooked by the impact. The front door was ajar, the walls riddled with cracks. The bomb’s velocity had shoved the house off its foundations. Dad went inside, and he couldn’t miss the huge hole in the sagging floor because it had swallowed half the room. A few Christmas tree decorations were scattered about, and a little silver star lay balanced on the hole’s ragged edge. The tree itself was missing.
He peered down. Boards and beams were tangled up like a plateful of macaroni. Plaster dust was the Parmesan cheese. There was the meatball of the bomb: its iron-gray tail fins protruded from the debris, its nose plowed right into the basement’s dirt floor.
“Get me outta here! Ohhhhh, my legs! Get me to the hospital! Ohhhhh, I’m dyin’!”
“You’re not dyin’, Dick. Just don’t try to move.”
Mr. Moultry was lying amid wreckage with a carpenter’s workbench on top of him, and atop that a beam as big around as a sturdy oak. It had split, and Dad figured it had been a support for the living room’s floor. Lying across the beam that crisscrossed Mr. Moultry was the Christmas tree, its balls and bulbs shattered. The bomb wasn’t on top of Mr. Moultry, but it had dug itself in about four feet from his head. Sheriff Marchette knelt nearby, deliberating the mess.
“Jack? It’s Tom Mackenson!”
“Tom?” Sheriff Marchette looked up, his face streaked with plaster dust. “You ought to get outta here, man!”
“I wanted to come see it. Not as big as I thought it would be.”
“It’s plenty big enough,” the sheriff said. “If this thing blows, it’ll take the house and leave a crater where the whole block used to be.”
“
Ohhhhh!
” Mr. Moultry groaned. His shirt had been torn open by the falling timbers, and his massive gut wobbled this way and that. “I said I’m dyin’, damn it!”
“He hurt bad?” Dad asked.
“Can’t get in there close enough to tell. Says he thinks his legs are broken. Maybe a busted rib or two, the way he’s wheezin’.”
“He always breathes like that,” Dad said.
“Well, the ambulance ought to be here soon.” Sheriff Marchette checked his wristwatch. “I called ’em directly I got here. I don’t know what’s keepin’ ’em.”
“What’d you tell ’em? That a fella got hit by a fallin’ bomb?”
“Yes,” the sheriff said.
“In that case, I think Dick’s in for a long wait.”
“Get me outta here!” Mr. Moultry tried to push some of the dusty tangle of lumber off him, but he winced and couldn’t do it. He turned his head and looked at the bomb, sweat glistening on his suety cheeks. “Get
that
outta here! Jesus Christ, help me!”
“Where’s Mrs. Moultry?” Dad asked.
“Huh!” Mr. Moultry’s plaster-white face sneered. “She took off runnin’ and left me here, that’s what she did! Wouldn’t even lift a finger to help me!”
“That’s not quite right. She
did
call me, didn’t she?” the sheriff pointed out.
“Well, what the hell are
you
good for? Ohhhhhh, my legs! They’re broke plumb in two, I’m tellin’ ya!”
“Can I come down?” Dad asked.
“Rather you didn’t. Rather you got on out of here like any sane man should. But come on if you want to. Be careful, though. The stairs collapsed, so I set up a stepladder.”
Dad eased himself down the ladder. He stood appraising the pile of timbers, beams, and Christmas tree on top of Mr. Moultry. “We can probably move that big one,” he said. “I’ll grab one end if you grab the other.”
They cleared the tree aside and did the job, moving the oak-sized beam though their backs promised a rendezvous with deep-heating rub. Mr. Moultry, however, was still in a heap of trouble. “We can dig him out, take him to your car, and get him to the hospital,” Dad suggested. “That ambulance isn’t comin’.”
The sheriff knelt down beside Mr. Moultry. “Hey, Dick. You weighed yourself lately?”
“Weighed myself? Hell, no! Why should I?”
“What did you weigh the last time you had a physical?”
“One hundred and sixty pounds.”
“When?” Sheriff Marchette asked. “In the third grade? How much do you weigh right
now
, Dick?”
Mr. Moultry scowled and muttered. Then he said, “A little bit over two hundred.”
“Try again.”
“Aw, shit! I weigh two hundred and ninety pounds! Does that satisfy you, you sadist you?”
“Maybe got two broken legs. Broken ribs. Possible internal injuries. And he weighs two hundred and ninety pounds. Think we can get him up that ladder, Tom?”
“No way,” my father said.
“My thoughts right on the button. He’s stuck in here until somebody can bring a hoist.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Moultry squawked. “I gotta stay here?” He looked fearfully at the bomb again. “Well, for God’s sake get that damn thing away from me, then!”
“I’d do that for you, Dick,” the sheriff said. “I really would, but I’d have to touch it. And what if the thing’s primed to go off and all it needs is a finger’s touch? You think I want to be responsible for blowin’ you up? Not to mention myself and Tom? No, sir!”
“Mayor Swope told me he talked to somebody at Robbins,” Dad said to the sheriff. “Said the fella didn’t believe—”
“Yeah, Luther came by here before he and his family hit the trail. He told me all about what that sumbitch said. Maybe the pilot was too scared to let anybody know how bad he messed up. Probably staggered out of a Christmas party and climbed right into the cockpit. All I know for sure is, nobody’s comin’ from Robbins to get this thing anytime soon.”
“What am
I
supposed to do?” Mr. Moultry asked. “Just lie here and suffer?”
“I can go upstairs and fetch you a pilla, if you like,” Sheriff Marchette offered.
“Dick? Dick, you okay?” The voice, tentative and afraid, was coming from upstairs.
“Oh, I’m just dandy!” Mr. Moultry hollered. “I’m just tickled pink”—
pank
, he pronounced it—“to be layin’ down here with two busted legs and a bomb next to my melon! God a’mighty! I don’t know who you are up there, but you’re a bigger idiot than the fool who dropped that damn bomb in the first…
oh
. It’s you.”
“Hi there, Dick,” Mr. Gerald Hargison said sheepishly. “How’re you doin’?”
“I could just dance!” Mr. Moultry’s face was getting splotched with crimson. “Shit!”
Mr. Hargison stood at the edge of the hole and peered down. “That’s the bomb right there, is it?”
“No, it’s a big goose turd!” Mr. Moultry raged. “’Course it’s the bomb!”
While Mr. Moultry thrashed to get free again and only succeeded in raising a storm of plaster dust and causing himself considerable pain, Dad looked around the basement. Over in one corner was a desk, and above it a wall plaque that read A MAN’S HOME IS HIS CASTLE. Next to it was a poster of a bug-eyed black minstrel tap-dancing, and underneath it the hand-lettered sign THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN. Dad wandered over to the desk, the top of which was six inches deep in untidy papers. He slid open the upper drawer and was hit in the face by the enormous mammary glands of a woman on a
Juggs
magazine cover. Underneath the magazine was a hodgepodge of Gem clips, pencils, rubber bands, and the like. An overexposed Kodak picture came to hand. It showed Dick Moultry wearing a white robe and cradling in one arm a rifle while the other embraced a peaked white cap and hood. Mr. Moultry was smiling broadly, proud of his accomplishments.
“Hey, get outta there!” Mr. Moultry swiveled his head around. “It ain’t enough I’m layin’ here dyin’, you’ve gotta ransack my house, too?”
Dad closed the drawer on the picture and walked back to Sheriff Marchette. Above them, Mr. Hargison nervously scuffed his soles on the warped floor. “Listen, Dick, I just wanted to come by and see about you. Make sure you weren’t… you know, dead and all.”
“No, I’m not dead
yet
. Much as my wife wishes that bomb had clunked me right on the brainpan.”
“We’re headin’ out of town,” Mr. Hargison explained. “Uh… we probably won’t be back until day after Christmas. Probably get back near ten o’clock in the mornin’. Hear me, Dick? Ten o’clock in the mornin’.”