A case in point: Frank Hopper, better known to us as “Hoppy.” We called him that because of how he walked, bird-like, with quick mincing, steps, his chinless head thrust pigeon-style out in front of him (that his last name matched his walk was a coincidence). He walked to the supermarket and back, arms wrapped around twin grocery bags, eyes darting clandestinely back and forth. He wore the same dust-colored clothes every day, faded green worker’s pants, beat-up leather bombardier jacket, dirty sneakers and a dusty fedora with a wrinkled brim (and that he wore with no crease or pinch and pulled down over his ears in a way that would have outraged my hat-worshipping stepfather). On the evidence of these qualities we concluded that Hoppy was a homo who performed indecent acts on kids that he would lure into his shack on Durant Lane, a dead end. Not only was Hoppy a homo, he was the quintessence of homosexuality. Of this we were as sure as we were that the earth was round and Communists had hooves, horns and pointy red tails. Had their been a picture next to that word in the dictionary, it would have borne Frank Hopper’s likeness.
Though he used a cane and walked with a limp the Man in Blue’s walk was nothing like Hoppy’s. There was nothing bird-like or mincing about it. He took fast, long, determined strides, as if fighting against some urge that held him back, or tried to. I watch him cross the parking lot, seeing nothing but his back, until the buildings of Main Street hid him from view.
Just then the others arrived, walking their bikes. Rudimentary greetings were exchanged. How’s it hanging? Long and lean or low and lazy? Can you throw it over your shoulder like a continental soldier? Does it wobble to and fro or do you tie it in a bow? Short, shriveled and always to the left or straight down the middle?
“Did you see him?” said Skunky, parking his red Schwinn Typhoon against a tree. Summer hadn’t even started, officially, and already the sun had done a job on the tip of his freckled nose. He got out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and passed it around.
“Who?” I said.
“The blue guy,” said Paps.
“You had to see him. How could you not see him?”
“He just crossed the parking lot five seconds ago.”
“So did you see him or didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure. What did he look like?”
They described him. Blue suit. Beard. Cane. Limp.
“Hmm,” I said. “I’m really not sure.”
“How could you not be sure?”
“He was too busy looking through these things.” Paps grabbed the binoculars from around my neck and then dropped them.
“You should try using your own eyes once in a while,” said Skunky.
“Yeah, you’d be surprised how well those two round shiny balls in the front of your head work,” said Victor.
“Only first he’s got to get his head out of his ass,” said Paps.
“Sounds to me like a major operation,” said Skunky.
“A headupyourassectomy, it’s called, I believe,” Paps said.
I flipped them all my fractional middle finger.
Following which the speculations began.
A beatnik.
A homo.
An ex-con.
A lunatic.
A communist.
A spy.
A Commie spy.
“A hot dog,” said Gilbert.
* * *
From the Man in Blue conversation turned to nuclear annihilation, a popular subject in those duck-and-cover days. Just the week before, on May 6, 1962, three weeks after John Glenn’s singed Mercury capsule sizzled into the cool Pacific like a drop of hot oil in water, Bowler and neighboring Danville had staged a mock nuclear attack. “Theoretical Bomb Destroys Bowler,” the headline in the local paper read, with the article accompanying it describing the imaginary havoc wreaked by a hypothetical H-bomb carrying the equivalent of 60,000 tons of TNT set off at the intersection of Route 202 and Main Street. In addition to both towns’ shopping districts being “completely obliterated,” the article reported, all local hospitals, radio stations, newspapers and Civil Defense headquarters were destroyed. Streets were rendered impassable, utilities knocked out, and everyone caught in the immediate vicinity of the impact was incinerated. The article didn’t say who might attack us, but we all knew it would be those bastard Russians.
The front page photograph in the Bowler News Times showed two elementary school children sitting under a trestle table in the school hallway, peeking over folded arms, with their teacher, Mr. Craig (my 5th grade teacher), showing them the proper procedure. Inside were more photos showing school children participating in “Duck & Cover Day,” with groups being lead down into a fallout shelter as part of their Civil Defense Drill, the three basic steps of which were as follows:
1. Remain calm.
2. Proceed to the nearest fallout shelter in an orderly fashion.
3. If you can’t get to a shelter, sit under your desk or in the hallway with your legs pulled toward your chest and your head on your knees and cover the back of your neck to guard against “A-bomb flash.”
To these simple steps Paps had added one more:
4. Kiss your ass goodbye.
Mr. White, Skunky’s father, had taken President Kennedy’s advice and, based on plans in the latest issue of Popular Mechanics, had started building a shelter in their back yard. Mr. White’s next door neighbor, Mr. Lubdell, inspired him. One evening a few weeks earlier, while Walter White was watering the front garden, he noticed Mr. Lubdell, who’d just finished building his fallout shelter, standing in his front yard looking up at the starry sky. He had a rifle. He said good evening to Skunky’s father, then began talking in a strangely quiet voice, explaining how a bomb shelter is designed to provide the requisite amount of filtered air, bottled water, and emergency food for one family and one family only. “So,” Mr. Lubdell said, “however unpleasant it may be, a man must be firm: when the bombs fall, he’ll hustle his family down there and close the door on the rest of the world. The goddamn dog’s staying up top, and the neighbors, too, including you and your family, Walt. No hard feelings. It’s just that there’s no extra room. You let extras in and we’re all going to die.” So saying, Mr. Lubdell shouldered the rifle, took aim at a distant star, and fired. “Dead, god damn it.”
“So now dad’s building our own shelter and screw Mr. Lubdell!” said Skunky.
“Keeping up with the Joneses,” said Victor.
“Keeping up with the jerks is more like it,” said Paps.
“My dad’s building us one, too,” said Victor the liar. “It’s gonna be three floors, with hot and cold running water, air conditioning, and a heated pool.” He drank water from an aluminum Boy Scout canteen. His belly jiggled as he gulped. “He’s building it under the garage where no one can see it.” This was the same garage that, according to Victor, once housed a mint condition Stanley Steamer and currently sheltered his father’s XK-E Jaguar, which likewise none of us had ever seen.
“Guess he’ll have to interrupt building that replica of the Hanging Hardens of Babylon, huh, Vic?” Paps said.
“No kidding," said Victor. "I mean there's no point having a beautiful garden if your whole family is gonna be dead, not much of one, anyway. Is there?”
“He's got you there, Paps,” said Skunky, spitting through the gap in his front teeth. Of us all Skunky was the best spitter. The gap gave him superior range and accuracy.
“A hot dog,” said Gilbert.
Paps wasn’t alone in his pessimism. None of us, not even Skunky with his faith in fallout shelters, considered duck & cover to be anything but the shining emblem of adult mendacity. We had seen enough doomsday movies (On the Beach, The Day the World Ended, Atomic Kid) and Twilight Zone episodes to know it would take more than a desk to save us from all that fallout. Among popular topics of debate wasn’t if or when we’d die, but how. We revisited that debate now, with Skunky saying that death would be “instantaneous.” Paps begged to differ, claiming we’d die slowly, from our internal organs out, that our guts would liquefy, and that we’d know the end was near when we started pissing or puking out lungs, kidneys, and intestines. According to Victor death would come even more slowly, a penetrating sunburn that would deep fry us up “like a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky fried chicken wings” (count on fat Victor to dish up a culinary metaphor). I—who had looked into the matter—said if we were lucky we might live a month or two before our skin and hair started falling off in clumps and blisters bubbled up in our lungs and on the walls of our stomachs.
We were deep into our debate when Victor tapped my shoulder.
“Look, man! He’s coming back this way!”
I looked down and saw him again: the Man in Blue, limping across the bicycle saddle factory parking lot, approaching the cliff this time, carrying a shopping bag, not the way Hoppy did but with one arm around it like a fireman rescuing a child.
Skunky broke off a chunk of limestone and hurled it. The cheese bomb arced in the air and came down on the pavement a few inches in front of the tip of the man’s cane, where it smashed to powdery bits that scattered across the parking lot.
The Man in Blue stopped walking and looked up at us. We waited for him to shout something or shake his fist like the old guard. He didn’t. He didn’t even smile or frown. He kept looking up at us, his mouth a straight line under his beard.
Then he kept walking.
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