Day of the Bomb

by Steve Stroble

  Improvisation became Fred’s new game. Instead of motels Fred stayed at YMCAs or the homes of friendly VFW members in return for listening to their war stories. By the time he hit Chicago he had sold twenty-two policies. An honest man, he steered customers to term insurance. With its lower premiums and higher payout in case of death of the insured, he knew it would better provide for the beneficiaries. If someone was more interested in investments he sold them a whole life policy or annuity with the promise that “if you live long enough it will pay you dividends.”

  Some of those he gave rides to proved interesting; others a little strange, such as the one he picked up on the road that linked Chicago to Milwaukee. The man who appeared to be about fifty carried a rifle in a leather case and a history that bent his head toward the ground.

  “I didn’t know it was deer season here,” Fred said.

  “Who said it was?”

  “Uh, that is for shooting deer?” He pointed at the weapon.

  “Some times.” He unzipped the case and pulled out the 30.06, complete with scope. “Fine shooting iron. Give me $45 and it’s all yours.”

  “Uh, no thanks. Looks like rain or snow.” Fred pointed at the clouds that covered the sky.

  “It best be rain. Snow leaves too many tracks. I don’t like people following behind me.”

  “Uh, how far you going?”

  “As far as you are.” His smile revealed two missing teeth.

  “Well, I’m stopping off in Milwaukee. I have to speak to a group at a VFW chapter.”

  “What about?”

  “Life insurance.”

  “Figures. All of you salesmen wear cheap after-shave lotion. The deer would smell you a mile away.”

  When they reached the city, the rider asked to be dropped off at the first pawnshop that he spotted. “They better give me a decent price. Here. I won’t be needing these.” He tossed a box of bullets onto Fred’s lap. “Sorry but I don’t have a dime on me to give you. My crop got wiped out by hail. That’s why I’m selling my rifle. But at least you can trade them for a couple gallons of gas at a gas station out in the country. City folks won’t want them. Sorry if I sound down. That’s what happens when you lose your crop.”

  ***

  Business slowed for Jason as the weather went from autumn rains to winter snows. From now until spring most of his work would be fixing burst plumbing, repairing storm damage to storefronts or houses, and shoveling snow. To announce his seasonal service, he added Snow Removal onto the pieces of plywood attached to the bed and sides of 1933 Ford pickup. His dual signs now read:

  Dalrumple Construction

  And

  Snow Removal

  MObley5-8912

 

  “It always get this slow for you every winter?” Jason asked his father during the extended family’s biggest annual feast.

  “Son, it’s been nothing but slow since 1930.”

  “What’s the deal that I have to pay Social Security tax twice for myself and then I have to pay it as the employer for anybody I hire?”

  “Maybe now you can understand why I used you and your brothers as my hired help so much.”

  “Hired help? Leroy slapped his knee. “You never paid us one thin dime, Dad.”

  “I gave you room and board and…”

  “The clothes on our backs.” Leroy turned to Jason. “You need to move on up to Detroit little brother. I can get you on at one of the auto plants. The union boss loves me. Then you won’t be worrying about running your own business, only about cashing your paycheck.”

  Thelma scowled at her brother-in-law. “We don’t need the kind of help you like to hand out, Mr. Bigshot. You can keep Detroit and all it’s big city ways.”

  Leroy held up his hands. “Still the wildcat you always were huh, Thelma? Guess they were right when they said a leopard can’t change its spots. Go ahead and be a scab, Thelma. Work at that rundown factory making furniture. Maybe you can even build yours and Jason’s coffins. You’ll both be dying early deaths, I guarantee it.”

  “I’m not a scab.” She shook a knife at him.

  “Oh? Did old man Monroe finally let the union come in to his place?”

  “We don’t need them. He pays us a fair wage.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Leroy impaled his quarter-inch thick slice of ham with his fork and waved the meat above the Christmas dinner table. “You’re nothing but a piece of meat to him.” He held the meat above his face and let the grease drip into his mouth.

  “That’s enough from all of you.” Though sixty-three, the clan’s mother still exerted control over her family, even if only when they gathered for holidays. “Land sakes alive. To listen to the way you all carry on you would think some of us are blood enemies instead of family. You know good and well all I ask from all of you every Christmas is to show up for dinner. That’s all.” She shook her finger at her three sons. “What are you always fighting for? Your brother must be rolling over in his grave having to listen to you fuss on and on.”

  One by one the brothers turned to the fireplace. Its smoking pine and cedar logs filled the home with a sweet fragrance as their sap boiled and melted. On the mantelpiece stood a lone photograph of John standing next to the B-17 that had served as his coffin. Ed, the youngest brother, pushed his chair back from the table and shuffled to his mother. He knelt and hugged her.

  “Pay them no nevermind, Ma. They always did fight up a storm.”

  The wisdom of the simplest member of the Dalrumple clan calmed the tension and kept Jason and Leroy from trying to get the last word.

  “Your mother is right, boys.” Their father cleared his throat. “Just because we have axes to grind doesn’t mean we have to bury them in one another.”

  The next day Thelma returned to Monroe Furniture. Five months pregnant, she now worked twenty hours a week. Her morning sickness and the fumes of the varnishes and stains applied to desks, chairs, dressers, and tables had driven her from the station she had handled for five years. She now sanded furniture until it was as smooth as she imagined her baby’s bottom would be.

  Her fellow employees had dropped from a wartime high of 137 to a force of fifty-nine. Some had joined husbands returning from the war and headed off to supposedly greener pastures than those of Madisin. Others had moved to where larger factories were transitioning to a consumer-based demand. Mr. Monroe’s factory, started by his grandfather, had weathered the Great Depression. Weary with increasing complaints from his workers that a union was needed, he assembled his workforce on the factory floor after the whistle sounded that the day’s lone shift had begun.

  “Wonder if he’s going to say Happy New Year?” Darryl spoke loud enough that half the workers heard him. “He didn’t even say Merry Christmas to me on Christmas Eve.”

  “Who can blame him? You’re just a Scrooge.” The retort made Darryl flush with rage.

  Monroe raised his hands for quiet. “No use in my beating around the bush. You all know that the union boys are back in town to get you to vote on whether to join. But now that our contracts with the Army have all ended I can’t pay what they’ll put into a union contract for even higher wages. I’d like to shift our products and get them into stores all around the country. But we can’t compete with the bigger factories if I have to pay you all top dollar. My factory is just too small. So you’re going to have to decide what you want. If you vote to go union I’m going to sell out to the first buyer who makes a decent offer. If you vote the union down, I’ll make Monroe Furniture into an employee-owned company. It’s up to you.”

  “It’s a trick.” Darryl kept mumbling his warning until the lunch whistle blew. Then he stood in line to use the pay phone at the edge of the factory’s parking lot.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me. Darryl.”

  “Yeah? You got enough votes lined up for us yet? The vote is next week.”

  “We got trouble. Meet at Joe’s Bar at 5:30.”

  “Okay.”

  Half honk
y-tonk and half lounge, Joe’s Bar drew three sets of clientele. From Sunday to Thursday, lonely hearts looking for companionship trolled its dark booths. After high school football and basketball games, boys old enough to buy 3.2 per cent beer or those with fake IDs celebrated wins or bemoaned losses. Friday and Saturday nights a small band, either local boys or some traveling outfit, mounted the bar’s small stage and sang about fighting, dancing, romancing, living, and dying. The bar’s dark interior made it an excellent place for politicians and their supporters to transact deals. So Darryl deemed it adequate for the likes of Big Ben.

  Ben was a union boss of the old school. He had cut his teeth organizing for his union in and around Chicago for the last thirty years. Now he was tasked with cracking the toughest nuts of all, factories in small cities, a job proving especially tiresome in Madisin.

  “We got trouble.” Darryl slid into the booth that served as Ben’s office.

  “The trouble is you. You’ve already taken a month too long to line up the votes for an election to set up a local.” Ben’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s not me. Old man Monroe wants to make his factory employee owned.”

  Most of the beer in Ben’s mouth sprayed outward and hit Darryl’s face. The rest entered the pathway to Ben’s lungs and choked him. Darryl wiped the saliva and foam from his hair, forehead, cheeks, and nose.

  “I knew you were going to be upset. But just say it don’t spray it.”

  “Upset? Not me.” He stood and threw a quarter on the table. “The vote is next week. That gives you plenty of time to shake hands, grease some palms, break some legs, or whatever it is you do around this Palookaville to get people on the bandwagon.”

  “You’re still going to help me out, right?”

  “I got other fish to fry.” He glanced at his diamond-studded watch. “I’m due in Saint Joseph tomorrow morning. I’ll just barely make it if I leave right now. I’ll be back here if we win the election to help you set up local 582. If you lose…” He shrugged and gestured a thumb down.

  Darryl stared at the quarter, empty beer bottle, and wet tabletop. Every other time they had met Ben had bought him a beer and talked about the Cubs, Bears, and White Sox. To bolster his swagger before he left he ordered one of his own and drained it in two gulps. Copying his mentor, he tossed a quarter onto the table and strode out into the twilight. He did not notice the car that followed him from the bar’s parking lot to his home until it pulled in behind him in his driveway.

  “Who’s there?” Shielding his eyes from the car’s high beam headlights, he walked to the driver’s side. “Oh, it’s only you.”

  “Didn’t think this day would ever dome, did you?” Jason stepped from his car and leveled a .45 on Darryl’s midsection. “Come on over here, Fred.” He handed the gun to his sweating friend. “If he goes for a gun or knife while I search him, shoot him. Fred here is none too happy with your chasing after Sally while he was away during the war.” He pulled a .22 pistol from Darryl’s waistband. “Ooo…look at this little pea shooter of yours. What Fred’s holding shoots a slug twice as big as this thing does.” He handed it to Fred. “Okay, Fred. Just in case I didn’t find some other weapon Darryl might still be hiding, now you can shoot him with both guns if he pulls anything out.”

  “What are you going to do? I was only joking around with Sally. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just like you didn’t mean anything when you starting acting sweet with Thelma.”

  Darryl held out his hands as if he were pushing against a wall of glass between him and his captors. “Now that’s a whole different ball game, Jason. You two weren’t even married yet so Thelma was fair game.”

  “You skunk. You were married.” Jason shook his head. “To poor little Nancy. She’s a saint and you’re a devil. She’s at choir practice tonight, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Now let’s mosey on into your garage. Can’t be having the neighbors calling the cops to come and break up the match.”

  “Match?”

  “You and me. Fred here is the referee just to be sure you don’t hit me below the belt or kick me, you snake.”

  They shuffled through the side door of the garage. Darryl pulled the string attached to its lone source of lighting, a fifty-watt bulb.

  “Okay. Here’s the rules.” Jason backed into a corner of the dusty concrete floor. “Ten rounds but no bells in between rounds. Two minutes per round times ten means twenty minutes of nonstop beating, punching, and dodging each other’s fists. No kicking, scratching, clawing, or biting allowed. Any questions?”

  “Just one. Are you crazy? You still look like a shrimp from being stranded on that island. I outweigh you by a good fifty pounds at least. I’ll clobber you. It’s like a heavyweight versus a welterweight.”

  “So what? It’ll be my 144 pounds of pure muscle versus your 200 pounds of pure fat. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Jason turned to Fred. “Okay, ref. Start timing us at the sound of the bell.”

  Fred stared at his watch. “Ah… three, two, one, clang clang.”

  Seventeen minutes later the bare knuckled pugilists had retreated to their corners where Darryl was vomiting up the remnants of his dinner and Jason was rubbing two broken knuckles on his hand, injured during the first round when he landed a right hook to his opponent’s jaw. For the remainder of the fight, he had punched away at Darryl’s sagging belly. Its thick layers of fat cushioned every blow but sickened him enough to lose the hot dog, milk shake, and onion rings he had devoured before his meeting with Big Ben. Darryl had landed twenty-nine blows to Jason’s head, which most of Madisin knew to be the hardest part of his body. Six of the punches had sent Jason to the concrete mat. But each time he arose before Fred’s count reached ten. Neither fighter claimed victory. Hoping to settle the hostilities, Referee Fred proclaimed the match a draw.

  “Well, have a good night, Darryl.” Jason pulled on his shirt and left it unbuttoned. He took the .22 pistol and pointed it at Darryl’s left temple. “I’m going to keep this puny little pea shooter of yours. If you go out tom catting around either Thelma or Sally ever again, I’m going to shoot you in the head right there with it, wipe off my fingerprints from it, and then put it in your cold dead left hand. The police will figure out that you shot yourself.”

  Darryl reached for a soda from the half empty six-pack carton on his tool bench. He popped its cap off with the bottle opener nailed to a stud. After using two mouthfuls to rinse the vomit from his mouth and throat, he sat on a stack of used tires. “Whatever you say, boss.” He saluted. “You give more orders than old man Monroe and Big Ben put together.”

  “That’s a good boy. Fred and me are going home to our wives now. We’ll take showers to wash this little nasty incident off of us. I bet old Fred will hop into the sack and have some fun with Sally. Me? You whooped me so bad that I won’t be having fun with Thelma for two or three days most likely. But you’re still in good enough shape to get real friendly with that pretty woman of yours. So go and take a shower and treat Nancy like she deserves to be treated when she gets on back home from choir practice.”

  Darryl stared at the bantam rooster who did not know when to stay down or shut up.

  “Keep it in your pants when you’re away from home from now on. Some other man might shoot you if you don’t. Not everyone is as forgiving as me and Fred are.”

  Jason asked Fred to drive down Shady Lane and to stop at the bridge built in 1908. At its rusty iron rail he dropped the .22 pistol into the river below. After making a slight splash, the weapon sank through eight feet of water and made a plume as it rested in the riverbed’s soft mud.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “So I never do what I said to Darryl. He’s one of those all or nothing types. If he can’t get a union in at work he’ll keep on badmouthing Mr. Monroe. Just because he didn’t get to marry Thelma, he spends his nights chasing after other women. His type is n
ever satisfied, no matter what.” He pointed at the river. “This is our little secret.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Well that was number five on my list. Now maybe I can finally get back to normal living for a change.”

  ***

  The spring of 1947 came early to Madisin. Both Fred and Jason rejoiced as the days without snow on the ground outnumbered those with a white landscape. Their wives had a hallelujah breakdown as they celebrated the end of their husbands’ months long cabin fever.

  “I was beginning to think I wouldn’t last the winter with Fred.” Sally sighed. “All he did on days he couldn’t hit the road was pace around the house like some tiger caged up at the zoo. Am I ever glad he’s gone for three weeks. I was beginning to lose my marbles.”

  “Where’s he off to?”

  “Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas. I’ll give Fred this much. He sure knows how to line up speeches with VFW chapters. Afterwards he always sells at least one policy.”

  “You think you have it bad?” Thelma reached across the red checkerboard tablecloth and clutched her hand. “Jason is totally crazy.”

  Sally slowly pulled her hand free from her best friend. When Thelma winced, Sally patted her forearm. “Oh come on, Thelma. Anybody that calls Fred the Professor can’t be all that nuts.” She blinked as tears rolled down Thelma’s cheeks. “Can he?”

  “You have no idea what it’s like living with him. Most nights he talks in his sleep to Kong.”

  “Kong? Who’s that?”

  “Didn’t Fred tell you?”

  “No. He never talks about the war. He keeps it all bottled up inside.”

  “Kong was Jason’s one and only friend on Monkey Island. That’s where I might as well be the way Jason pays me no attention all the time.”

  “I know he loves you. Look at how hard he works to take good care of you.”