after a night of dream-lit snows the air turned clear and still. there was a taut blue quality in the january light, ahardness and confidence. the sound of boots on packed snow, the contrails streaked cleanly in the high sky. weatherwas very much the point, although i didn't know it at first.
i turned into our street and walked past men bent over shovels in their driveways, breathing vapor. a squirrel movedalong a limb in a flowing motion, a passage so continuous it seemed to be its own physical law, different from theones we've learned to trust. when i was halfway down the street i saw heinrich crouched on a small ledge outsideour attic window. he wore his camouflage jacket and cap, an outfit with complex meaning for him, at fourteen,struggling to grow and to escape notice simultaneously, his secrets known to us all. he looked east throughbinoculars.
i went around back to the kitchen. in the entranceway the washer and dryer were vibrating nicely. i could tell frombabette's voice that the person she was talking to on the phone was her father. an impatience mixed with guilt andapprehension. i stood behind her, put my cold hands to her cheeks. a little thing i liked to do. she hung up the phone.
"why is he on the roof?""heinrich? something about the train yards," she said. "it was on the radio.""shouldn't i get him down?""why?""he could fall.""don't tell him that.""why not?""he thinks you underestimate him.""he's on a ledge," i said. 'there must be something i should be doing."'the more you show concern, the closer he'll go to the edge.""i know that but i still have to get him down.""coax him back in," she said. "be sensitive and caring. get him to talk about himself. don't make suddenmovements."when i got to the attic he was already back inside, standing by the open window, still looking through the glasses.
abandoned possessions were everywhere, oppressive and soul-worrying, creating a weather of their own among theexposed beams and posts, the fiberglass insulation pads.
"what happened?"'the radio said a tank car derailed. but i don't think it derailed from what i could see. i think it got rammed andsomething punched a hole in it. there's a lot of smoke and i don't like the looks of it.""what does it look like?"he handed me the binoculars and stepped aside. without climbing onto the ledge i couldn't see the switching yardand the car or cars in question. but the smoke was plainly visible, a heavy black mass hanging in the air beyond theriver, more or less shapeless.
"did you see fire engines?""they're all over the place," he said. "but it looks to me like they're not getting too close. it must be pretty toxic orpretty explosive stuff, or both.""it won't come this way.""how do you know?""it just won't. the point is you shouldn't be standing on icy ledges. it worries baba.""you think if you tell me it worries her, i'll feel guilty and not do it. but if you tell me it worries you, i'll do it all thetime.""shut the window," i told him.
we went down to the kitchen. steffie was looking through the brightly colored mail for coupons, lotteries andcontests. this was the last day of the holiday break for the grade school and high school. classes on the hill wouldresume in a week. i sent heinrich outside to clear snow from the walk. i watched him stand out there, utterly still, hishead turned slightly, a honed awareness in his stance. it took me a while to realize he was listening to the sirensbeyond the river.
an hour later he was back in the attic, this time with a radio and highway map. i climbed the narrow stairs, borrowedthe glasses and looked again. it was still there, a slightly larger accumulation, a towering mass in fact, maybe a littleblacker now.
"the radio calls it a feathery plume," he said. "but it's not a plume.""what is it?""like a shapeless growing thing. a dark black breathing thing of smoke. why do they call it a plume?""air time is valuable. they can't go into long tortured descriptions. have they said what kind of chemical it is?""it's called nyodene derivative or nyodene d. it was in a movie we saw in school on toxic wastes. these videotapedrats.""what does it cause?"'the movie wasn't sure what it does to humans. mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps.""that's what the movie said. what does the radio say?""at first they said skin irritation and sweaty palms. but now they say nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath.""this is human nausea we're talking about. not rats.""not rats," he said.
i gave him the binoculars.
"well it won't come this way.""how do you know?" he said.
"i just know. it's perfectly calm and still today. and when there's a wind at this time of year, it blows that way, notthis way.""what if it blows this way?""it won't.""just this one time.""it won't. why should it?"he paused a beat and said in a flat tone, 'they just closed part of the interstate."'they would want to do that, of course.""why?"'they just would. a sensible precaution. a way to facilitate movement of service vehicles and such. any number ofreasons that have nothing to do with wind or wind direction."babette's head appeared at the top of the stairway. she said a neighbor had told her the spill from the tank car wasthirty-five thousand gallons. people were being told to stay out of the area. a feathery plume hung over the site. shealso said the girls were complaining of sweaty palms.
'there's been a correction," heinrich told her. 'tell them they ought to be throwing up."a helicopter flew over, headed in the direction of the accident. the voice on the radio said: "available for a limitedtime only with optional megabyte hard disk."babette's head sank out of sight. i watched heinrich tape the road map to two posts. then i went down to the kitchento pay some bills, aware of colored spots whirling atomically somewhere to the right and behind me.
steffie said, "can you see the feathery plume from the attic window?""it's not a plume.""but will we have to leave our homes?""of course not.""how do you know?""i just know.""remember how we couldn't go to school?"'that was inside. this is outside."we heard police sirens blowing. i watched steffie's lips form the sequence: wow wow wow wow. she smiled in acertain way when she saw me watching, as though gently startled out of some absent-minded pleasure.
denise walked in, rubbing her hands on her jeans.
"they're using snow-blowers to blow stuff onto the spill," she said.
"what kind of stuff?""i don't know but it's supposed to make the spill harmless, which doesn't explain what they're doing about the actualplume.""they're keeping it from getting bigger," i said. "when do we eat?""i don't know but if it gets any bigger it'll get here with or without a wind.""it won't get here," i said.
"how do you know?""because it won't."she looked at her palms and went upstairs. the phone rang. babette walked into the kitchen and picked it up. shelooked at me as she listened. i wrote two checks, periodically glancing up to see if she was still looking at me. sheseemed to study my face for the hidden meaning of the message she was receiving. i puckered my lips in a way iknew she disliked.
'that was the stovers," she said. "they spoke directly with the weather center outside glassboro. they're not callingit a feathery plume anymore.""what are they calling it?""a black billowing cloud.""that's a little more accurate, which means they're coming to grips with the thing. good.""there's more," she said. "it's expected that some sort of air mass may be moving down from canada.""there's always an air mass moving down from canada."'that's true," she said. 'there's certainly nothing new in that. and since canada is to the north, if the billowing cloudis blown due south, it will miss us by a comfortable margin.""when do we eat?" i said.
we heard sirens again, a different set this time, a larger sound— not police, fire, ambulance. they were air-raidsirens, i realized, and they seemed to be blowing in sawyersville, a small community to the northeast.
steffie washed her hands at the kitchen sink and went upstairs. babette started taking things out of the refrigerator. igrabbed her by the inside of the thigh as she passed the table. she squirmed deliciously, a package of frozen corn inher hand.
"maybe we ought to be more concerned about the billowing cloud," she said. "it's because of the kids we keep sayingnothing's going to happen. we don't want to scare them.""nothing is going to happen.""i know nothing's going to happen, you know nothing's going to happen. but at some level we ought to think about itanyway, just in case.""these things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. society is set up in such a way that it's the poor andthe uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. people in low-lying areas get thefloods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornados. i'm a college professor. did you ever see a collegeprofessor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those tv floods? we live in a neat and pleasant town near acollege with a quaint name. these things don't happen in places like blacksmith."she was sitting on my lap by now. the checks, bills, contest forms and coupons were scattered across the table.
"why do you want dinner so early?" she said in a sexy whisper.
"i missed lunch.""shall i do some chili-fried chicken?""first-rate.""where is wilder?" she said, thick-voiced, as i ran my hands over her breasts, trying with my teeth to undo her braclip through the blouse.
"i don't know. maybe murray stole him.""i ironed your gown," she said.
"great, great.""did you pay the phone bill?""can't find it."we were both thick-voiced now. her arms were crossed over my arms in such a way that i could read the servingsuggestions on the box of corn niblets in her left hand.
"let's think about the billowing cloud. just a little bit, okay? it could be dangerous.""everything in tank cars is dangerous. but the effects are mainly long-range and all we have to do is stay out of theway.""let's just be sure to keep it in the back of our mind," she said, getting up to smash an ice tray repeatedly on the rimof the sink, dislodging the cubes in groups of two and three.
i puckered my lips at her. then i climbed to the attic one more time. wilder was up there with heinrich, whose fastglance in my direction contained a certain practiced accusation.
"they're not calling it the feathery plume anymore," he said, not meeting my eyes, as if to spare himself the pain ofmy embarrassment.
"i already knew that."'they're calling it the black billowing cloud." "good.""why is that good?""it means they're looking the thing more or less squarely in the eye. they're on top of the situation."with an air of weary decisiveness, i opened the window, took the binoculars and climbed onto the ledge. i waswearing a heavy sweater and felt comfortable enough in the cold air but made certain to keep my weight tippedagainst the building, with my son's outstretched hand clutching my belt. i sensed his support for my little mission,even his hopeful conviction that i might be able to add the balanced weight of a mature and considered judgment tohis pure observations. this is a parent's task, after all.
i put the glasses to my face and peered through the gathering dark. beneath the cloud of vaporized chemicals, thescene was one of urgency and operatic chaos. floodlights swept across the switching yard. army helicoptershovered at various points, shining additional lights down on the scene. colored lights from police cruiserscrisscrossed these wider beams. the tank car sat solidly on tracks, fumes rising from what appeared to be a hole inone end. the coupling device from a second car had apparently pierced the tank car. fire engines were deployed at adistance, ambulances and police vans at a greater distance. i could hear sirens, voices calling through bullhorns, alayer of radio static causing small warps in the frosty air. men raced from one vehicle to another, unpackedequipment, carried empty stretchers. other men in bright yellow mylex suits and respirator masks moved slowlythrough the luminous haze, carrying death-measuring instruments. snow-blowers sprayed a pink substance towardthe tank car and the surrounding landscape. this thick mist arched through the air like some grand confection at aconcert of patriotic music. the snow-blowers were the type used on airport runways, the police vans were the type totransport riot casualties. smoke drifted from red beams of light into darkness and then into the breadth of scenicwhite floods. the men in mylex suits moved with a lunar caution. each step was the exercise of some anxiety notprovided for by instinct. fire and explosion were not the inherent dangers here. this death would penetrate, seep intothe genes, show itself in bodies not yet born. they moved as if across a swale of moon dust, bulky and wobbling,trapped in the idea of the nature of time.
i crawled back inside with some difficulty.
"what do you think?" he said.
"it's still hanging there. looks rooted to the spot.""so you're saying you don't think it'll come this way.""i can tell by your voice that you know something i don't know.""do you think it'll come this way or not?""you want me to say it won't come this way in a million years. then you'll attack with your little fistful of data.
come on, tell me what they said on the radio while i was out there.""it doesn't cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, like they said before.""what does it cause?""heart palpitations and a sense of déjà vu.""déjà vu?""it affects the false part of the human memory or whatever. that's not all. they're not calling it the black billowingcloud anymore.""what are they calling it?"he looked at me carefully.
"the airborne toxic event."he spoke these words in a clipped and foreboding manner, syllable by syllable, as if he sensed the threat instate-created terminology. he continued to watch me carefully, searching my face for some reassurance against thepossibility of real danger— a reassurance he would immediately reject as phony. a favorite ploy of his.
"these things are not important. the important thing is location. it's there, we're here.""a large air mass is moving down from canada," he said evenly.
"i already knew that."'that doesn't mean it's not important.""maybe it is, maybe it isn't. depends.""the weather's about to change," he practically cried out to me in a voice charged with the plaintive throb of hisspecial time of life.
"i'm not just a college professor. i'm the head of a department. i don't see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event.
that's for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are."we watched wilder climb backwards down the attic steps, which were higher than the steps elsewhere in the house.
at dinner denise kept getting up and walking in small stiff rapid strides to the toilet off the hall, a hand clapped to hermouth. we paused in odd moments of chewing or salt-sprinkling to hear her retch incompletely. heinrich told hershe was showing outdated symptoms. she gave him a slit-eyed look. it was a period of looks and glances, teeminginteractions, part of the sensory array i ordinarily cherish. heat, noise, lights, looks, words, gestures, personalities,appliances. a colloquial density that makes family life the one medium of sense knowledge in which anastonishment of heart is routinely contained.
i watched the girls communicate in hooded looks.
"aren't we eating a little early tonight?" denise said.
"what do you call early?" her mother said.
denise looked at steffie.
"is it because we want to get it out of the way?" she said.
"why do we want to get it out of the way?""in case something happens," steffie said.
"what could happen?" babette said.
the girls looked at each other again, a solemn and lingering exchange that indicated some dark suspicion was beingconfirmed. air-raid sirens sounded again, this time so close to us that we were negatively affected, shaken to thepoint of avoiding each other's eyes as a way of denying that something unusual was going on. the sound came fromour own red brick firehouse, sirens that hadn't been tested in a decade or more. they made a noise like someterritorial squawk from out of the mesozoic. a parrot carnivore with a dc-9 wingspan. what a raucousness of bruteaggression filled the house, making it seem as though the walls would fly apart. so close to us, so surely upon us.
amazing to think this sonic monster lay hidden nearby for years.
we went on eating, quietly and neatly, reducing the size of our bites, asking politely for things to be passed. webecame meticulous and terse, diminished the scope of our movements, buttered our bread in the manner oftechnicians restoring a fresco. still the horrific squawk went on. we continued to avoid eye contact, were careful notto clink utensils. i believe there passed among us the sheepish hope that only in this way could we avoid beingnoticed. it was as though the sirens heralded the presence of some controlling mechanism—a thing we would do wellnot to provoke with our contentiousness and spilled food.
it wasn't until a second noise became audible in the pulse of the powerful sirens that we thought to effect a pause inour little episode of decorous hysteria. heinrich ran to the front door and opened it. the night's combined soundscame washing in with a freshness and renewed immediacy. for the first time in minutes we looked at each other,knowing the new sound was an amplified voice but not sure what it was saying. heinrich returned, walking in anover-deliberate and stylized manner, with elements of stealth. this seemed to mean he was frozen with significance.
"they want us to evacuate," he said, not meeting our eyes.
babette said, "did you get the impression they were only making a suggestion or was it a little more mandatory, doyou think?""it was a fire captain's car with a loudspeaker and it was going pretty fast."i said, "in other words you didn't have an opportunity to notice the subtle edges of intonation.""the voice was screaming out.""due to the sirens," babette said helpfully.
"it said something like, 'evacuate all places of residence. cloud of deadly chemicals, cloud of deadly chemicals.'"we sat there over sponge cake and canned peaches.
"i'm sure there's plenty of time," babette said, "or they would have made a point of telling us to hurry. how fast doair masses move, i wonder."steffie read a coupon for baby lux, crying softly. this brought denise to life. she went upstairs to pack some thingsfor all of us. heinrich raced two steps at a time to the attic for his binoculars, highway map and radio. babette went tothe pantry and began gathering tins and jars with familiar life-enhancing labels.
steffie helped me clear the table.
twenty minutes later we were in the car. the voice on the radio said that people in the west end of town were to headfor the abandoned boy scout camp, where red cross volunteers would dispense juice and coffee. people from theeast end were to take the parkway to the fourth service area, where they would proceed to a restaurant called thekung fu palace, a multiwing building with pagodas, lily ponds and live deer.
we were among the latecomers in the former group and joined the traffic flow into the main route out of town, asordid gantlet of used cars, fast food, discount drugs and quad cinemas. as we waited our turn to edge onto thefour-lane road we heard the amplified voice above and behind us calling out to darkened homes in a street ofsycamores and tall hedges.
"abandon all domiciles, now, now. toxic event, chemical cloud."the voice grew louder, faded, grew loud again as the vehicle moved in and out of local streets. toxic event, chemicalcloud. when the words became faint, the cadence itself was still discernible, a recurring sequence in the distance. itseems that danger assigns to public voices the responsibility of a rhythm, as if in metrical units there is a coherencewe can use to balance whatever senseless and furious event is about to come rushing around our heads.
we made it onto the road as snow began to fall. we had little to say to each other, our minds not yet adjusted to theactuality of things, the absurd fact of evacuation. mainly we looked at people in other cars, trying to work out fromtheir faces how frightened we should be. traffic moved at a crawl but we thought the pace would pick up some milesdown the road where there is a break in the barrier divide that would enable our westbound flow to utilize all fourlanes. the two opposite lanes were empty, which meant police had already halted traffic coming this way. anencouraging sign. what people in an exodus fear most immediately is that those in positions of authority will longsince have fled, leaving us in charge of our own chaos.
the snow came more thickly, the traffic moved in fits and starts. there was a life-style sale at a home furnishing mart.
well-lighted men and women stood by the huge window looking out at us and wondering. it made us feel like fools,like tourists doing all the wrong things. why were they content to shop for furniture while we sat panicky inslowpoke traffic in a snowstorm? they knew something we didn't. in a crisis the true facts are whatever other peoplesay they are. no one's knowledge is less secure than your own.
air-raid sirens were still sounding in two or more towns. what could those shoppers know that would make themremain behind while a more or less clear path to safety lay before us all? i started pushing buttons on the radio. on aglassboro station we learned there was new and important information. people already indoors were being asked tostay indoors. we were left to guess the meaning of this. were the roads impossibly jammed? was it snowingnyodene d.?
i kept punching buttons, hoping to find someone with background information. a woman identified as a consumeraffairs editor began a discussion of the medical problems that could result from personal contact with the airbornetoxic event. babette and i exchanged a wary glance. she immediately began talking to the girls while i turned thevolume down to keep them from learning what they might imagine was in store for them.
"convulsions, coma, miscarriage," said the well-informed and sprightly voice.
we passed a three-story motel. every room was lighted, every window filled with people staring out at us. we werea parade of fools, open not only to the effects of chemical fallout but to the scornful judgment of other people. whyweren't they out here, sitting in heavy coats behind windshield wipers in the silent snow? it seemed imperative thatwe get to the boy scout camp, scramble into the main building, seal the doors, huddle on camp beds with our juiceand coffee, wait for the all-clear.
cars began to mount the grassy incline at the edge of the road, creating a third lane of severely tilted traffic. situatedin what had formerly been the righthand lane, we didn't have any choice but to watch these cars pass us at a slightlyhigher elevation and with a rakish thrust, deviated from the horizontal.
slowly we approached an overpass, seeing people on foot up there. they carried boxes and suitcases, objects inblankets, a long line of people leaning into the blowing snow. people cradling pets and small children, an old manwearing a blanket over his pajamas, two women shouldering a rolled-up rug. there were people on bicycles, childrenbeing pulled on sleds and in wagons. people with supermarket carts, people clad in every kind of bulky outfit,peering out from deep hoods. there was a family wrapped completely in plastic, a single large sheet of transparentpolyethylene. they walked beneath their shield in lock step, the man and woman each at one end, three kids between,all of them secondarily wrapped in shimmering rainwear. the whole affair had about it a well-rehearsed andself-satisfied look, as though they'd been waiting for months to strut their stuff. people kept appearing from behind ahigh rampart and trudging across the overpass, shoulders dusted with snow, hundreds of people moving with a kindof fated determination. a new round of sirens started up. the trudging people did not quicken their pace, did not lookdown at us or into the night sky for some sign of the wind-driven cloud. they just kept moving across the bridgethrough patches of snow-raging light. out in the open, keeping their children near, carrying what they could, theyseemed to be part of some ancient destiny, connected in doom and ruin to a whole history of people trekking acrosswasted landscapes. there was an epic quality about them that made me wonder for the first time at the scope of ourpredicament. the radio said: "it's the rainbow hologram that gives this credit card a marketing intrigue."we moved slowly beneath the overpass, hearing a flurry of automobile horns and the imploring wail of anambulance stuck in traffic. fifty yards ahead the traffic narrowed to one lane and we soon saw why. one of the carshad skidded off the incline and barreled into a vehicle in our lane. horns quacked up and down the line. a helicoptersat just above us, shining a white beam down on the mass of collapsed metal. people sat dazed on the grass, beingtended to by a pair of bearded paramedics. two people were bloody. there was blood on a smashed window. bloodsoaked upward through newly fallen snow. drops of blood speckled a tan handbag. the scene of injured people,medics, smoking steel, all washed in a strong and eerie light, took on the eloquence of a formal composition. wepassed silently by, feeling curiously reverent, even uplifted by the sight of the heaped cars and fallen people.
heinrich kept watching through the rear window, taking up his binoculars as the scene dwindled in the distance. hedescribed for us in detail the number and placement of bodies, the skid marks, the vehicular damage. when thewreck was no longer visible, he talked about everything that had happened since the air-raid siren at dinner. he spokeenthusiastically, with a sense of appreciation for the vivid and unexpected. i thought we'd all occupied the samemental state, subdued, worried, confused. it hadn't occurred to me that one of us might find these events brilliantlystimulating. i looked at him in the rearview mirror. he sat slouched in the camouflage jacket with velcro closures,steeped happily in disaster. he talked about the snow, the traffic, the trudging people. he speculated on how far wewere from the abandoned camp, what sort of primitive accommodations might be available there. i'd never heard himgo on about something with such spirited enjoyment. he was practically giddy. he must have known we could all die.
was this some kind of end-of-the-world elation? did he seek distraction from his own small miseries in some violentand overwhelming event? his voice betrayed a craving for terrible things.
"is this a mild winter or a harsh winter?" steffie said.
"compared to what?" denise said.
"i don't know."i thought i saw babette slip something into her mouth. i took my eye off the road for a moment, watched hercarefully. she looked straight ahead. i pretended to return my attention to the road but quickly turned once more,catching her off guard as she seemed to swallow whatever it was she'd put in her mouth.
"what's that?" i said.
"drive the car, jack.""i saw your throat contract. you swallowed something.""just a life saver. drive the car please.""you place a life saver in your mouth and you swallow it without an interval of sucking?""swallow what? it's still in my mouth."she thrust her face toward me, using her tongue to make a small lump in her cheek. a clear-cut amateurish bluff.
"but you swallowed something. i saw.""that was just saliva that i didn't know what to do with. drive the car, would you?"i sensed that denise was getting interested and decided not to pursue the matter. this was not the time to bequestioning her mother about medications, side effects and so on. wilder was asleep, leaning into babette's arm. thewindshield wipers made sweaty arcs. from the radio we learned that dogs trained to sniff out nyodene d. were beingsent to the area from a chemical detection center in a remote part of new mexico.
denise said, "did they ever think about what happens to the dogs when they get close enough to this stuff to smellit?""nothing happens to the dogs," babette said.
"how do you know?""because it only affects humans and rats.""i don't believe you.""ask jack.""ask heinrich," i said.
"it could be true," he said, clearly lying. "they use rats to test for things that humans can catch, so it means we get thesame diseases, rats and humans. besides, they wouldn't use dogs if they thought it could hurt them.""why not?""a dog is a mammal.""so's a rat," denise said.
"a rat is a vermin," babette said.
"mostly what a rat is," heinrich said, "is a rodent.""it's also a vermin.""a cockroach is a vermin," steffie said.
"a cockroach is an insect. you count the legs is how you know.""it's also a vermin.""does a cockroach get cancer? no," denise said. "that must mean a rat is more like a human than it is like acockroach, even if they're both vermins, since a rat and a human can get cancer but a cockroach can't.""in other words," heinrich said, "she's saying that two things that are mammals have more in common than twothings that are only vermins.""are you people telling me," babette said, "that a rat is not only a vermin and a rodent but a mammal too?"snow turned to sleet, sleet to rain.
we reached the point where the concrete barrier gives way to a twenty-yard stretch of landscaped median no higherthan a curbstone. but instead of a state trooper directing traffic into two extra lanes, we saw a mylex-suited manwaving us away from the opening. just beyond him was the scrap-metal burial mound of a winnebago and asnowplow. the huge and tortured wreck emitted a wisp of rusty smoke. brightly colored plastic utensils werescattered for some distance. there was no sign of victims or fresh blood, leading us to believe that some time hadpassed since the recreational vehicle mounted the plow, probably in a moment when opportunism seemed an easilydefensible failing, given the situation. it must have been the blinding snow that caused the driver to leap the medianwithout noting an object on the other side.
"i saw all this before," steffie said.
"what do you mean?" i said.
"this happened once before. just like this. the man in the yellow suit and gas mask. the big wreck sitting in thesnow. it was totally and exactly like this. we were all here in the car. rain made little holes in the snow. everything."it was heinrich who'd told me that exposure to the chemical waste could cause a person to experience a sense of déjàvu. steffie wasn't there when he said it, but she could have heard it on the kitchen radio, where she and denise hadprobably learned about sweaty palms and vomiting before developing these symptoms themselves. i didn't thinksteffie knew what déjà vu meant, but it was possible babette had told her. déjà vu, however, was no longer aworking symptom of nyodene contamination. it had been preempted by coma, convulsions, and miscarriage. ifsteffie had learned about déjà vu on the radio but then missed the subsequent upgrading to more deadly conditions, itcould mean she was in a position to be tricked by her own apparatus of suggestibility. she and denise had beenlagging all evening. they were late with sweaty palms, late with nausea, late again with déjà vu. what did it all mean?
did steffie truly imagine she'd seen the wreck before or did she only imagine she'd imagined it? is it possible to havea false perception of an illusion? is there a true déjà vu and a false déjà vu? i wondered whether her palms had beentruly sweaty or whether she'd simply imagined a sense of wetness. and was she so open to suggestion that she woulddevelop every symptom as it was announced?
i feel sad for people and the queer part we play in our own disasters.
but what if she hadn't heard the radio, didn't know what déjà vu was? what if she was developing real symptoms bynatural means? maybe the scientists were right in the first place, with their original announcements, before theyrevised upward. which was worse, the real condition or the self-created one, and did it matter? i wondered aboutthese and allied questions. as i drove i found myself giving and taking an oral examination based on the kind ofquibbling fine-points that had entertained several centuries' worth of medieval idlers. could a nine-year-old girlsuffer a miscarriage due to the power of suggestion? would she have to be pregnant first? could the power ofsuggestion be strong enough to work backward in this manner, from miscarriage to pregnancy to menstruation toovulation? which comes first, menstruation or ovulation? are we talking about mere symptoms or deeplyentrenched conditions? is a symptom a sign or a thing? what is a thing and how do we know it's not another thing?
i turned off the radio, not to help me think but to keep me from thinking. vehicles lurched and skidded. someonethrew a gum wrapper out a side window and babette made an indignant speech about inconsiderate people litteringthe highways and countryside.
"i'll tell you something else that's happened before," heinrich said. "we're running out of gas."the dial quivered on e.
"there's always extra," babette said.
"how can there be always extra?""that's the way the tank is constructed. so you don't run out.""there can't be always extra. if you keep going, you run out.""you don't keep going forever.""how do you know when to stop?" he said.
"when you pass a gas station," i told him, and there it was, a deserted and rain-swept plaza with proud pumpsstanding beneath an array of multicolored banners. i drove in, jumped out of the car, ran around to the pumps withmy head tucked under the raised collar of my coat. they were not locked, which meant the attendants had fledsuddenly, leaving things intriguingly as they were, like the tools and pottery of some pueblo civilization, bread in theoven, table set for three, a mystery to haunt the generations. i seized the hose on the unleaded pump. the bannerssmacked in the wind.
a few minutes later, back on the road, we saw a remarkable and startling sight. it appeared in the sky ahead of us andto the left, prompting us to lower ourselves in our seats, bend our heads for a clearer view, exclaim to each other inhalf finished phrases. it was the black billowing cloud, the airborne toxic event, lighted by the clear beams of sevenarmy helicopters. they were tracking its wíndborne movement, keeping it in view. in every car, heads shifted,drivers blew their horns to alert others, faces appeared in side windows, expressions set in tones of outlandishwonderment.
the enormous dark mass moved like some death ship in a norse legend, escorted across the night by armoredcreatures with spiral wings. we weren't sure how to react. it was a terrible thing to see, so close, so low, packed withchlorides, benzines, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content. but it was also spectacular, part ofthe grandness of a sweeping event, like the vivid scene in the switching yard or the people trudging across the snowyoverpass with children, food, belongings, a tragic army of the dispossessed. our fear was accompanied by a sense ofawe that bordered on the religious. it is surely possible to be awed by the thing that threatens your life, to see it as acosmic force, so much larger than yourself, more powerful, created by elemental and willful rhythms. this was adeath made in the laboratory, defined and measurable, but we thought of it at the time in a simple and primitive way,as some seasonal perversity of the earth like a flood or tornado, something not subject to control. our helplessnessdid not seem compatible with the idea of a man-made event.
in the back seat the kids fought for possession of the binoculars.
the whole thing was amazing. they seemed to be spotlighting the cloud for us as if it were part of a sound-and-lightshow, a bit of mood-setting mist drifting across a high battlement where a king had been slain. but this was nothistory we were witnessing. it was some secret festering thing, some dreamed emotion that accompanies the dreamerout of sleep. flares came swooning from the helicopters, creamy bursts of red and white light. drivers sounded theirhorns and children crowded all the windows, faces tilted, pink hands pressed against the glass.
the road curved away from the toxic cloud and traffic moved more freely for a while. at an intersection near the boyscout camp, two schoolbuses entered the mainstream traffic, both carrying the insane of blacksmith. we recognizedthe drivers, spotted familiar faces in the windows, people we customarily saw sitting on lawn chairs behind theasylum's sparse hedges or walking in ever narrowing circles, with ever increasing speed, like spinning masses in agyration device. we felt an odd affection for them and a sense of relief that they were being looked after in a diligentand professional manner. it seemed to mean the structure was intact.
we passed a sign for the most photographed barn in america.
it took an hour to funnel traffic into the single-lane approach to the camp. mylex-suited men waved flashlights andset out day-glo pylons, directing us toward the parking lot and onto athletic fields and other open areas. people cameout of the woods, some wearing headlamps, some carrying shopping bags, children, pets. we bumped along dirtpaths, over ruts and mounds. near the main buildings we saw a group of men and women carrying clipboards andwalkie-talkies, non-mylex-suited officials, experts in the new science of evacuation. steffie joined wilder in fitfulsleep. the rain let up. people turned off their headlights, sat uncertainly in their cars. the long strange journey wasover. we waited for a sense of satisfaction to reach us, some mood in the air of quiet accomplishment, thewell-earned fatigue that promises a still and deep-lying sleep. but people sat in their dark cars staring out at eachother through closed windows. heinrich ate a candy bar. we listened to the sound of his teeth getting stuck in thecaramel and glucose mass. finally a family of five got out of a datsun maxima. they wore life jackets and carriedflares.
small crowds collected around certain men. here were the sources of information and rumor. one person worked ina chemical plant, another had overheard a remark, a third was related to a clerk in a state agency. true, false andother kinds of news radiated through the dormitory from these dense clusters.
it was said that we would be allowed to go home first thing in the morning; that the government was engaged in acover-up; that a helicopter had entered the toxic cloud and never reappeared; that the dogs had arrived from newmexico, parachuting into a meadow in a daring night drop; that the town of farmington would be uninhabitable forforty years.
remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation. no one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing.
as people jolted out of reality, we were released from the need to distinguish.
some families chose to sleep in their cars, others were forced to do so because there was no room for them in theseven or eight buildings on the grounds. we were in a large barracks, one of three such buildings at the camp, andwith the generator now working we were fairly comfortable. the red cross had provided cots, portable heaters,sandwiches and coffee. there were kerosene lamps to supplement the existing overhead lights. many people hadradios, extra food to share with others, blankets, beach chairs, extra clothing. the place was crowded, still quite cold,but the sight of nurses and volunteer workers made us feel the children were safe, and the presence of other strandedsouls, young women with infants, old and infirm people, gave us a certain staunchness and will, a selfless bent thatwas pronounced enough to function as a common identity. this large gray area, dank and bare and lost to history justa couple of hours ago, was an oddly agreeable place right now, filled with an eagerness of community and voice.
seekers of news moved from one cluster of people to another, tending to linger at the larger groups. in this way imoved slowly through the barracks. there were nine evacuation centers, i learned, including this one and the kungfu palace. iron city had not been emptied out; nor had most of the other towns in the area. it was said that thegovernor was on his way from the capitol in an executive helicopter. it would probably set down in a bean fieldoutside a deserted town, allowing the governor to emerge, square-jawed and confident, in a bush jacket, withincamera range, for ten or fifteen seconds, as a demonstration of his imperishability.
what a surprise it was to ease my way between people at the outer edges of one of the largest clusters and discoverthat my own son was at the center of things, speaking in his new-found voice, his tone of enthusiasm for runawaycalamity. he was talking about the airborne toxic event in a technical way, although his voice all but sang withprophetic disclosure. he pronounced the name itself, nyodene derivative, with an unseemly relish, taking morbiddelight in the very sound. people listened attentively to this adolescent boy in a field jacket and cap, with binocularsstrapped around his neck and an instamatic fastened to his belt. no doubt his listeners were influenced by his age. hewould be truthful and earnest, serving no special interest; he would have an awareness of the environment; hisknowledge of chemistry would be fresh and up-to-date.
i heard him say, "the stuff they sprayed on the big spill at the train yard was probably soda ash. but it was a case oftoo little too late. my guess is they'll get some crop dusters up in the air at daybreak and bombard the toxic cloud withlots more soda ash, which could break it up and scatter it into a million harmless puffs. soda ash is the common namefor sodium carbonate, which is used in the manufacture of glass, ceramics, detergents and soaps. it's also what theyuse to make bicarbonate of soda, something a lot of you have probably guzzled after a night on the town." peoplemoved in closer, impressed by the boy's knowledgeability and wit. it was remarkable to hear him speak so easily toa crowd of strangers. was he finding himself, learning how to determine his worth from the reactions of others? wasit possible that out of the turmoil and surge of this dreadful event he would learn to make his way in the world?
"what you're probably all wondering is what exactly is this nyodene d. we keep hearing about? a good question.
we studied it in school, we saw movies of rats having convulsions and so on. so, okay, it's basically simple.
nyodene d. is a whole bunch of things thrown together that are byproducts of the manufacture of insecticide. theoriginal stuff kills roaches, the byproducts kill everything left over. a little joke our teacher made."he snapped his fingers, let his left leg swing a bit.
"in powder form it's colorless, odorless and very dangerous, except no one seems to know exactly what it causes inhumans or in the offspring of humans. they tested for years and either they don't know for sure or they know andaren't saying. some things are too awful to publicize."he archied his brows and began to twitch comically, his tongue lolling in a corner of his mouth. i was astonished tohear people laugh.
"once it seeps into the soil, it has a life span of forty years. this is longer than a lot of people. after five years you'llnotice various kinds of fungi appearing between your regular windows and storm windows as well as in your clothesand food. after ten years your screens will turn rusty and begin to pit and rot. siding will warp. there will be glassbreakage and trauma to pets. after twenty years you'll probably have to seal yourself in the attic and just wait and see.
i guess there's a lesson in all this. get to know your chemicals."i didn't want him to see me there. it would make him self-conscious, remind him of his former life as a gloomy andfugitive boy. let him bloom, if that's what he was doing, in the name of mischance, dread and random disaster. so islipped away, passing a man who wore snow boots wrapped in plastic, and headed for the far end of the barracks,where we'd, earlier made camp.
we were next to a black family of jehovah's witnesses. a man and woman with a boy about twelve. father and sonwere handing but tracts to people nearby and seemed to have no trouble finding willing recipients and listeners.
the woman said to babette, "isn't this something?""nothing surprises me anymore," babette said.
"isn't that the truth.""what would surprise me would be if there were no surprises.""that sounds about right.""or if there were little bitty surprises. that would be a surprise. instead of things like this.""god jehovah's got a bigger surprise in store than this," the woman said.
"god jehovah?""that's the one."steffie and wilder were asleep in one of the cots. denise sat at the other end engrossed in the physicians' deskreference. several air mattresses were stacked against the wall. there was a long line at the emergency telephone,people calling relatives or trying to reach the switchboard at one or another radio call-in show. the radios here weretuned mainly to just such shows. babette sat in a camp chair, going through a canvas bag full of snack thins and otherprovisions. i noticed jars and cartons that had been sitting in the refrigerator or cabinet for months.
"i thought this would be a good time to cut down on fatty things," she said.
"why now especially?""this is a time for discipline, mental toughness. we're practically at the edge.""i think it's interesting that you regard a possible disaster for yourself, your family and thousands of other people asan opportunity to cut down on fatty foods.""you take discipline where you can find it," she said. "if i don't eat my yogurt now, i may as well stop buying thestuff forever. except i think i'll skip the wheat germ."the brand name was foreign-looking. i picked up the jar of wheat germ and examined the label closely.
"it's german," i told her. "eat it."there were people in pajamas and slippers. a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder. kids crawling into sleepingbags. babette gestured, wanting me to lean closer.
"let's keep the radio turned off," she whispered. "so the girls can't hear. they haven't gotten beyond déjà vu. i wantto keep it that way.""what if the symptoms are real?""how could they be real?""why couldn't they be real?""they get them only when they're broadcast," she whispered.
"did steffie hear about déjà vu on the radio?""she must have.""how do you know? were you with her when it was broadcast?""i'm not sure.""think hard.""i can't remember.""do you remember telling her what déjà vu means?"she spooned some yogurt out of the carton, seemed to pause, deep in thought.
"this happened before," she said finally.
"what happened before?""eating yogurt, sitting here, talking about déjà vu.""i don't want to hear this."'the yogurt was on my spoon. i saw it in a flash. the whole experience. natural, whole-milk, low-fat."the yogurt was still on the spoon. i watched her put the spoon to her mouth, thoughtfully, trying to measure theaction against the illusion of a matching original. from my squatting position i motioned her to lean closer.
"heinrich seems to be coming out of his shell," i whispered.
"where is he? i haven't seen him.""see that knot of people? he's right in the middle. he's telling them what he knows about the toxic event.""what does he know?""quite a lot, it turns out." "why didn't he tell us?" she whispered. "he's probably tired of us. he doesn't think it'sworth his while to be funny and charming in front of his family. that's the way sons are. we represent the wrongkind of challenge." "funny and charming?""i guess he had it in him all the while. it was a question of finding the right time to exercise his gifts." she movedcloser, our heads almost touching. "don't you think you ought to go over there?" she said. "let him see you in thecrowd. show him that his father is present at his big moment.""he'll only get upset if he sees me in the crowd." "why?""i'm his father.""so if you go over there, you'll ruin things by embarrassing him and cramping his style because of the father-sonthing. and if you don't go over, he'll never know you saw him in his big moment and he'll think he has to behave inyour presence the way he's always behaved, sort of peevishly and defensive, instead of in this new, delightful andexpansive manner." "it's a double bind." "what if i went over?" she whispered. "he'll think i sent you." "would thatbe so awful?""he thinks i use you to get him to do what i want." "there may be some truth in that, jack. but then what arestepparents for if they can't be used in little skirmishes between blood relatives?"i moved still closer, lowered my voice even more. "just a life saver," i said. "what?""just some saliva that you didn't know what to do with." "it was a life saver," she whispered, making an 0 with herthumb and index finger.
"give me one.""it was the last one.""what flavor— quick.""cherry."i puckered my lips and made little sucking sounds. the black man with the tracts came over and squatted next to me.
we engaged in an earnest and prolonged handshake. he studied me openly, giving the impression that he hadtraveled this rugged distance, uprooting his family, not to escape the chemical event but to find the one person whowould understand what he had to say.
"it's happening everywhere, isn't it?""more or less," i said.
"and what's the government doing about it?""nothing.""you said it, i didn't. there's only one word in the language to describe what's being done and you found it exactly.
i'm not surprised at all. but when you think about it, what can they do? because what is coming is definitely coming.
no government in the world is big enough to stop it. does a man like yourself know the size of india's standingarmy?""one million.""i didn't say it, you did. one million soldiers and they can't stop it. do you know who's got the biggest standing armyin the world?""it's either china or russia, although the vietnamese ought to be mentioned."'tell me this," he said. "can the vietnamese stop it?""no.""it's here, isn't it? people feel it. we know in our bones. god's kingdom is coming."he was a rangy man with sparse hair and a gap between his two front teeth. he squatted easily, seemed loose-jointedand comfortable. i realized he was wearing a suit and tie with running shoes.
"are these great days?" he said.
i studied his face, trying to find a clue to the right answer. "do you feel it coming? is it on the way? do you want it tocome?
he bounced on his toes as he spoke.
"wars, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. it's all beginning to jell. in your own words, is there anything thatcan stop it from coming once it picks up momentum?""no.""you said it, i didn't. floods, tornados, epidemics of strange new diseases. is it a sign? is it the truth? are youready?""do people really feel it in their bones?" i said.
"good news travels fast.""do people talk about it? on your door-to-door visits, do you get the impression they want it?""it's not do they want it. it's where do i go to sign up. it's get me out of here right now. people ask, 'is there seasonalchange in god's kingdom?' they ask, 'are there bridge tolls and returnable bottles?' in other words i'm saying they'regetting right down to it.""you feel it's a ground swell.""a sudden gathering. exactly put. i took one look and i knew. this is a man who understands.""earthquakes are not up, statistically."he gave me a condescending smile. i felt it was richly deserved, although i wasn't sure why. maybe it was prissy tobe quoting statistics in the face of powerful beliefs, fears, desires.
"how do you plan to spend your resurrection?" he said, as though asking about a long weekend coming up.
"we all get one?""you're either among the wicked or among the saved. the wicked get to rot as they walk down the street. they get tofeel their own eyes slide out of their sockets. you'll know them by their stickiness and lost parts. people trackingslime of their own making. all the flashiness of armageddon is in the rotting. the saved know each other by theirneatness and reserve. he doesn't have showy ways is how you know a saved person."he was a serious man, he was matter-of-fact and practical, down to his running shoes. i wondered about his eerieself-assurance, his freedom from doubt. is this the point of armageddon? no ambiguity, no more doubt. he wasready to run into the next world. he was forcing the next world to seep into my consciousness, stupendous eventsthat seemed matter-of-fact to him, self-evident, reasonable, imminent, true. i did not feel armageddon in my bonesbut i worried about all those people who did, who were ready for it, wishing hard, making phone calls and bankwithdrawals. if enough people want it to happen, will it happen? how many people are enough people? why are wetalking to each other from this aboriginal crouch?
he handed me a pamphlet called "twenty common mistakes about the end of the world." i struggled out of thesquatting posture, feeling dizziness and back-pain. at the front of the hall a woman was saying something aboutexposure to toxic agents. her small voice was almost lost in the shuffling roar of the barracks, the kind of low-levelrumble that humans routinely make in large enclosed places. denise had put down her reference work and wasgiving me a hard-eyed look. it was the look she usually saved for her father and his latest loss of foothold.
"what's wrong?" i said to her.
"didn't you hear what the voice said?""exposure.""that's right," she said sharply.
"what's that got to do with us?""not us," she said. "you.""why me?""aren't you the one who got out of the car to fill the gas tank?""where was the airborne event when i did that?""just ahead of us. don't you remember? you got back in the car and we went a little ways and then there it was in allthose lights.""you're saying when i got out of the car, the cloud may have been close enough to rain all over me.""it's not your fault," she said impatiently, "but you were practically right in it for about two and a half minutes."i made my way up front. two lines were forming. a to m and n to z. at the end of each line was a folding table witha microcomputer on it. technicians milled about, men and women with lapel badges and color-coded armbands. istood behind the life-jacket-wearing family. they looked bright, happy and well-drilled. the thick orange vests didnot seem especially out of place even though we were on more or less dry land, well above sea level, many milesfrom the nearest ominous body of water. stark upheavals bring out every sort of quaint aberration by the verysuddenness of their coming. dashes of color and idiosyncrasy marked the scene from beginning to end.
the lines were not long. when i reached the a-to-m desk, the man seated there typed out data on his keyboard. myname, age, medical history, so on. he was a gaunt young man who seemed suspicious of conversation that strayedoutside certain unspecified guidelines. over the left sleeve on his khaki jacket he wore a green armband bearing theword simuvac.
i related the circumstances of my presumed exposure.
"how long were you out there?"'two and a half minutes," i said. "is that considered long or short?""anything that puts you in contact with actual emissions means we have a situation.""why didn't the drifting cloud disperse in all that wind and rain?""this is not your everyday cirrus. this is a high-definition event. it is packed with dense concentrations of byproduct.
you could almost toss a hook in there and tow it out to sea, which i'm exaggerating to make a point.""what about people in the car? i had to open the door to get out and get back in.""there are known degrees of exposure. i'd say their situation is they're minimal risks. it's the two and a half minutesstanding right in it that makes me wince. actual skin and orifice contact. this is nyodene d. a whole newgeneration of toxic waste. what we call state of the art. one part per million million can send a rat into a permanentstate."he regarded me with the grimly superior air of a combat veteran. obviously he didn't think much of people whosecomplacent and overprotected lives did not allow for encounters with brain-dead rats. i wanted this man on my side.
he had access to data. i was prepared to be servile and fawning if it would keep him from dropping casuallyshattering remarks about my degree of exposure and chances for survival.
"that's quite an armband you've got there. what does simuvac mean? sounds important.""short for simulated evacuation. a new state program they're still battling over funds for.""but this evacuation isn't simulated. it's real.""we know that. but we thought we could use it as a model.""a form of practice? are you saying you saw a chance to use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation?""we took it right into the streets.""how is it going?" i said.
'the insertion curve isn't as smooth as we would like. there's a probability excess. plus which we don't have ourvictims laid out where we'd want them if this was an actual simulation. in other words we're forced to take ourvictims as we find them. we didn't get a jump on computer traffic. suddenly it just spilled out, three-dimensionally,all over the landscape. you have to make allowances for the fact that everything we see tonight is real. there's a lotof polishing we still have to do. but that's what this exercise is all about.""what about the computers? is that real data you're running through the system or is it just practice stuff?""you watch," he said.
he spent a fair amount of time tapping on the keys and then studying coded responses on the data screen—aconsiderably longer time, it seemed to me, than he'd devoted to the people who'd preceded me in line. in fact i beganto feel that others were watching me. i stood with my arms folded, trying to create a picture of an impassive man,someone in line at a hardware store waiting for the girl at the register to ring up his heavy-duty rope. it seemed theonly way to neutralize events, to counteract the passage of computerized dots that registered my life and death. lookat no one, reveal nothing, remain still. the genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness innoble and beautiful ways.
"you're generating big numbers," he said, peering at the screen.
"i was out there only two and a half minutes. that's how many seconds?""it's not just you were out there so many seconds. it's your whole data profile. i tapped into your history. i'm gettingbracketed numbers with pulsing stars.""what does that mean?""you'd rather not know."he made a silencing gesture as if something of particular morbid interest was appearing on the screen. i wonderedwhat he meant when he said he'd tapped into my history. where was it located exactly? some state or federal agency,some insurance company or credit firm or medical clearinghouse? what history was he referring to? i'd told himsome basic things. height, weight, childhood diseases. what else did he know? did he know about my wives, myinvolvement with hitler, my dreams and fears?
he had a skinny neck and jug-handle ears to go with his starved skull—the innocent prewar look of a rural murderer.
"am i going to die?""not as such," he said.
"what do you mean?""not in so many words.""how many words does it take?""it's not a question of words. i
