the lost world, which had attacked the Trailways bus one day and gave it such
a hard knock with its sawed-off horns that the driver and all eight of the
passengers were admitted to the Union Town hospital with whiplash.
Dad reached Mrs. Marchette, but the sheriff had already grabbed his hat
and run out, summoned away from Christmas Eve dinner by a phone call. Mrs.
Marchette told Dad what her husband had told her, and with a stunned
expression Dad relayed the news.
“A bomb,” he said. “A bomb fell.”
“What?” Mom was already fearing Russian invasion. “Where?”
“On Dick Moultry’s house,” Dad said. “Mrs. Moultry told Jack it went
right through the roof, the livin’ room floor, and into the basement.”
“My Lord! Didn’t the whole house blow up?”
“No. The bomb’s just sittin’ in there.” Dad returned the receiver to its
cradle. “Just sittin’ in there with Dick.”
“With Dick?”
“That’s right. Mrs. Moultry gave Dick a new workshop bench for Christmas.
He was in the basement puttin’ it together. Now he’s trapped down there with a
live bomb.”
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’.”
“Yeah, I hear you! I don’t care what time you get back!”
“Well, we’ll get back near ten o’clock. In the mornin’, day after
Christmas. Thought you might want to know, so you could set your watch.”
“Set my watch? Are you—” He stopped. “Oh. Yeah. Okay, I’ll do that.” He
grinned, his face sweating as he looked up at the sheriff. “Gerald and me are
supposed to help a friend clean out his garage day after Christmas. That’s why
