Flying Leap. Judy Budnitz

TV screen and say, “What’s the use?”

      Then March came. Some of the stores in town closed up, and the movie place, and two of the gas stations. No new stock coming in, they said. The government needs supplies, they said. Gasoline shortage. You understand.

      April: My school closed early for summer vacation. So did the high school my brothers, Eliott and Pat, went to. For a while they enjoyed it. Then they got bored and tried to find summer jobs. But no one was hiring. Later even more stores closed up, and restaurants. Downtown began to look like a ghost town. For a while Eliott and Pat and their friends liked to drive around at night, smashing windows and things. Then gasoline ran out.

      My friend Marjorie lived two and a half blocks away and I went there. Marjorie had two long ponytails and always thought of things to do. She taught me to hang by my knees, and how to make a grass stem buzz between my thumbs. Once we drew faces on our stomachs and made them talk to each other and kiss.

      Then came June. The electricity went. No air-conditioning, and it was just beginning to get hot. We missed the TV. We still sat around it sometimes and stared at it like it might all of a sudden come to life. Then one night Dad got angry and kicked the glass screen in. Now he sits and reads the paper—every word of it, even the ads.

      It’s all because of the war, they say. Roads are closed off. For government use only. And the power—they say the government shut it off so the enemy can’t trace it with their radars and bomb us. I think the government’s hoarding it for themselves; they’re all holed up in Washington watching TV, one giant slumber party.

      There’s nothing to do; it’s deathly quiet. No cars running since the gasoline ran out. People stay in their houses now. Nobody goes out. When you do, you can see people watching you from their windows, from behind curtains, all up and down the street. Everyone sits and waits. That’s the worst of it, sitting and waiting. For what? The attack? Should we look at the sky? Should we look down the road? Dad keeps the news in the paper to himself. The government delivers the paper, once a week. Dad says you can’t believe a word of it anyway. But still he reads it and chews his lip.

      I have nothing to do because Marjorie is gone. Her family went to stay with her grandmother who lives in the city. They left in June, just before the roads closed. These days my dad says I should stay near the house, but when he is away, I walk over to Marjorie’s old house and just look at it. I’m afraid to hang by my knees without her. I might fall on my head.

      The worst of it is the animals. Sometime in July, they all went away, every one. You don’t think about it really, until they’re gone. Then the silence. No birds singing. No squirrels doing acrobatics in the trees or knocking in the attic. Even the crickets—gone. The pets have disappeared. My mother’s cat, Polka Dot, wandered off long ago. She cried about it for days. Pets that couldn’t get out died in their cages. My pet goldfish, belly-up in the bowl. Are they all dead, all those missing animals? Or did they all go somewhere else, a great exodus in the middle of the night? The flock, the pack, the herd, the horde of them. Two by two down the road? To somewhere safe? We’ll never know.

      “Rats deserting a sinking ship,” says my dad. “They know something we don’t know.”

      So we wait and watch the skies, watch the roads, watch the ground—who knows, they could tunnel straight through the earth and surprise us that way, where we least expect it. Technology, the technology can do anything these days, my father says. I picture technology as a big transformer robot crushing cities, slicing the sky. Germ warfare, Dad warns us. When I drink water, I try to filter it through my teeth, screen out the germs. Surely they are big germs, heavily armed. We try to hold our breath.

      I think radiation, when it comes, will rain down glowing like the juice inside neon signs.

      No one seems to know who we’re fighting. Pat says it could be anyone. America has been number one for too long, and now all the little countries are ganging up on us. Anyone could be an enemy. Your next-door neighbor could be a spy.

      Pat says, “Your own sister could be a spy, even.”

      “Am not,” I say, and hit him in the gut.

      “I was just kidding, sport,” he says, and whacks me a hard one. Pat has straight greasy brown hair. It hangs in his face. He hasn’t had a haircut for a long time.

      Eliott doesn’t like to talk about who we’re fighting. He is almost old enough to get drafted. My dad says they haven’t started drafting people yet, but they may, soon. He keeps telling Eliott to walk around barefoot all the time, so then maybe he’ll develop flat feet and they won’t want him in the army. I can’t tell anymore when my dad is kidding. His eyes are always shiny. He watches us all without blinking. My mother says he has begun to grind his teeth in his sleep, keeping her up all night.

      In August the beggars started coming around. My mom calls them unfortunates; my dad calls them bums. They don’t have anywhere to live; they don’t get government rations. They came wandering from I don’t know where. First they came around asking for work, a night in the garage. Now they ask for food, scraps, even a glass of water. Now there’s nothing left, and still they come by. All they seem to want is the human interaction—a little attention, some eye contact, conversation. Even when you yell at them, they seem to like it.

      This one is the dog suit is a new thing.

      He comes back again the day after we feed him that first time. It is almost nice to see an animal again, even if it’s not a real one. He’s well trained. He sits up and begs. My mother puts a morsel in his mouth. He rolls over.

      “How adorable,” says my mother.

      “He’s trying to look up your skirt,” I say.

      “You’d better look out; he’s some nut,” says Pat. “Some crazy. Some loony who hasn’t seen tail in a long time. Yeah, and I don’t mean a dog tail, either.”

      My mother turns around and stares at him. “Where did you learn to speak like that?” she says. Pat hunches over and slinks away without answering.

      I could tell her where Pat learns things. Pat and Eliott spend their nights sitting in the basement reading old Playboys by the light of the moon. There’s a curfew now at night, so everybody has to be home, inside, before dark. Army trucks patrol the streets.

      My mother strokes the man’s head for a moment. Then she goes back inside. She finds things to do—she cleans the house; she keeps busy. We haven’t gotten mail for months, but she still checks the mailbox. There’s nothing to do, but still she bustles around all day, stays on her feet, is exhausted by evening.

      My dad reads the paper every day, then goes out with his gun. He’s looking for anything: a pigeon, a rabbit, a squirrel, someone’s pet chicken. There’s nothing out there.

      Pat and Eliott keep to themselves. They don’t talk to me. They wear the same clothes, day after day. Back in May they traded most of their clothes to a friend for some joints. I heard them talking about it. Now they wear the same sour-smelling jeans and T-shirts. When I go down to the basement, they chase me out.

      That is why I sit there on the stoop after my mother goes back inside. I sit next to the man in the dog suit. I tell him things. He cocks his head at me like he’s listening, but he doesn’t really understand—which is okay.

      I stroke his head. It is a hot day. His nose is shiny with sweat. He pants.

      It must be hot in the dog suit.

      He smells worse than before. His teeth are yellow and his gums are black.

      After a while I push him away. He looks back at me, wiggling his stump of tail. I chase him away again. He crawls off, whining and sobbing.

      I go inside and find my mother straightening up closets. “Why does he do that, Mom? Why does he pretend he’s a dog? Is he crazy?”

      My mother sighs and sits back on her heels. “If he thinks he’s a dog, why can’t we let him think