Tomorrow! Page 7

  It has been noted that Nora had evaded the study of geography on the previous evening.

  She had, very honorably, opened the book. But she had pored over other matters than home industries and resources: matters contained in a hidden, paper-back volume entitled Sin in Seven Streets. This item, borrowed from a classmate in return for the use of one of Nora’s mother’s necklaces at a party, purported to be “a frank and factual account of the shocking international traffic in womanhood, written by a team of world-renowned journalists.”

  So it happened the next day (which was sunny and very hot) that Nora found herself ill prepared for geography recitation. Bells, which regiment the lives of children, rang loudly.

  Arithmetics had been put away and thirty-nine sixth graders had taken out geographies, setting them on their desks, closed. Blackboards were erased.

  “Now, class,” Mrs. Brock began, “we have memorized the industries of Green Prairie and, though it’s not in ‘Our State,’ of River City, also. I’m going to call on one of you to start the list and when he—or she—thinks it’s complete, I’ll ask for hands. Nora Conner. How many—

  and what—industries did you memorize last night?”

  Nora stood. It was her opinion that she was being picked on. Inasmuch as she had done no memorizing whatsoever, she could only regard her predicament in that light. It would not have occurred to her (under these circumstances) that very little in this wide world bored Mrs.

  Brock more than the lists of what nations and cities made and shipped to each other. Nora was incapable of imagining—for all the yeastiness of her brain—that teachers even had such feelings, or to guess that Mrs. Brock had singled her out in the hope that her voluble memory would complete the dull circuit faster than any other pupil’s.

  In her dilemma, however, Nora was not without resources. She had, to begin with, lived in Green Prairie for eleven years, the sum total of her life. She was observant. Her family was a lively one. She had also perceived early in her school career that where a long list is asked for—

  or a complex matter is to be discussed—and where the victim of such inquiry is unprepared, a very thorough exposition of some recollected or guessed—at portion of the unknown whole will satisfy a teacher, even fool one, and often lead to a good mark when Hat failure threatened.

  “Green Prairie,” Nora therefore began, taking her time, “has a vast metals industry. Early settlers in the area noticed the peculiar color of some of the rocks. These rocks, occurring in sandstone hills, are much older than most of the Missouri Basin. They were pushed up by volcanoes before the dinosaurs came on the earth. They are called igneous intrusions. They contained lead and zinc and other ores—”

  “Just the list,” Mrs. Brock munnured. “The geology is something from last week’s lesson we got from Life magazine. Now. Our industries. Metals smelting is one, of course.”

  “Petroleum. . . .”

  Mrs. Brock nodded. “Green Prairie has a cracking plant.”

  “. . . and, of course, agriculture and all that cities do with it. Sugar beets grow all around, wheat and corn, oats and barley. Green Prairie refines beet sugar and makes oatmeal. It—”

  “Nora. Did you study last night?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Brock.” Nora would have been happy to oblige with a detailed resume of harlotry in Buenos Aires, as noted by two American journalists who had made a three-day survey of the city. But she was not, she realized, on the beam in the matter of “industries.” Hands flew all around her.

  Mrs. Brock sighed. “Sit down, Nora. Charles Williams.”

  Charles stood. His small, marblelike eyes squinted, and his freckled face tipped back, his stomach mightily protruding. His voice shrilled and its every syllable was a wound to Nora’s self-esteem: “Steel, limestone, coking ovens, brick, brine, sulphuric acid, light metals including a large aluminum plant, airplane frames, farm machinery—this is the biggest business in the area—dairy products, furniture, pumps, hardware of all sorts, tools, dies, wool and flax fabrics, beet sugar”—his slitted eye rolled on Nora—“one of the least important industries—and also paint, dyes, wallpaper, plastics, patent medicines and varnish. Linoleum, soap, industrial resins and greases and potash. Doll carriages, cement—” his memory gave out.

  “Very good—very good, indeed, Charles! Evelyn?”

  A solemn child with a pale face, bangs and a surprisingly animated, even sassy voice said, “He forgot—toothpaste, synthetic flavorings, canned vegetables and a small but promising garment industry.”

  “Excellent! Now, what does River City make and do besides these?”

  Hands fluttered again, like confetti.

  Roy Rich filled in: “River City has many of those industries, also.” His eyes did not squint, but shut, as he consulted memory and ripped off in a staccato: “World’s biggest built-in, tractor-plow factory, huge ceramics industry, lead and zinc smelters, electric-furnace reduction plants, nation’s eighth largest surgical aid and pros- pros- something—”

  “Prosthetics.”

  “Pros-thetics-whatever-that-is-plant, high-grade special oils, tungsten wire, nuts, bolts, screws and automatic screw machines, chicken and fence wire, and that’s all I remember.”

  Mrs. Brock sighed. It hadn’t taken half the period, after all, to pull from her class the various items of the Sister Cities’ endless business and, she thought irrelevantly, the attendant smoke, fumes, slums, labor troubles and traffic congestion. She brightened. “Now, class, you’ve pretty well covered the lists in the book. We’ll turn to a more creative project. What industries can you yourselves list that are not in our geography book?”

  Fewer hands rose. Nora thought poutily, She’s a sucker for anything she thinks is creative!

  It was not far from the truth, though Nora’s momentarily low opinion of Mrs. Brock’s educational penchant was unjustified.

  “Halleck?” Mrs. Brock beamed.

  “Candy,” said Halleck Watrous, hardly rising and dropping back in his seat at once.

  “Well-yes,” the teacher murmured dubiously.

  “Mr. Papandrocopulis makes the best nougat in the West,” Halleck said defensively.

  “It’s a small local business. Who else?” She looked. “Mary?”

  A sleek, prettied-up sixth grader with very blonde hair said, “My own father is superintendent of the Acme Rubber Products Company.”

  “Very good,” Mrs. Brock nodded. Then, catching a subdued snicker in the male section, she flushed faintly and hurried on. “I can think of dozens of things! John?”

  “Slaughterhouses and sawmills.”

  “Excellent! Manda?”

  “Lace. Old ladies tat it.”

  “Marvin?”

  “The Teen-James Company makes police whistles.”

  “I suppose they do—very good—novelty products, we should call it.”

  Nora had an idea and put up her hand, thinking to recoup. Mrs. Brock, surprised, said,

  “Yes, Nora?”

  “Amusement rides—Swan Island’s the biggest amusement park in the whole area.”

  Mrs. Brock’s reaction was less than delighted and the class giggled.

  “It isn’t play—for the people that make money out of it!” Nora said defensively. “It’s a business. I bet they make more money than the banks!”

  The teacher nodded happily. “Banks! Now there is a big Sister City business. Finance, market trading, clearing houses, banks.” Horse dust, Nora thought to herself, with no clear image of a substance, but a sense that the phrase was appropriate.

  Mrs. Brock went on. “Well, let me hint. What’s big, and mostly glass, that you see in the suburbs and the country. . . ?”

  They guessed it. Greenhouses, nurseries and a new hydroponics experiment in winter-vegetable raising.

  It was not a good day for Nora. She was unable to define “commission government” in civics, and she got three dates wrong in the history test. Moreover, when she stopped beside the school fence to argue with
Judy Martin on the meaning of “morphodite,” Billy Westcott crept up behind her, tied her two long pigtails together and hung them over an iron picket. The result was that, finding herself overwhelmed by Judy’s superiority in esoteric information and being told there was “no such word,” Nora decided to run—and did not. Instead, her head jerked back nastily, her neck-hair was painfully pulled, she bumped the iron fence, and only a fast, reflex scuffling of her feet saved her from falling, and from hanging ignominiously by her braids. She unhooked herself speedily. The same thing had already happened twice before that year: once on the iron cleat of a phone pole and once on a fire extinguisher. She threw four futile rocks at the hilarious, rapidly retreating Billy.

  Her journey back to her home did little to improve things.

  The way from Public School 44 led out Dumond A venue and over Walnut-a matter of some twelve blocks, or about a mile. Nora preferred, however, to come by less direct routes. She had several favorites, depending on the season. One, involving a long detour, took her past Restland Cemetery and a good third of the distance into town. Another followed Hickory—the school being on the corner of that street and Dumond Avenue—diagonally across Hobart Park, which placid preserve had been a bequest to Green Prairie by the long-deceased founder of Hobart Metal Products. The park, once the Hobart estate, contained a pond; Nora enjoyed ponds-ducks came to them, fish lived in them, rowboats tipped over in them, and you could wade, if the cop was trifling with some nursemaid. She also liked, when in the humor, to go clear over to Cold Spring Street, which was beyond her home, and watch trains go by on the Kansas and Southern Railroad.

  This day, however, she went along Hickory merely to River Avenue and turned south.

  River Avenue crossed Plum Street, Oak, Spruce, Pine and Maple, before reaching Walnut. It was a broad thoroughfare, much used by buses and trucks and, in this district, a minor shopping street besides. Now, however, River Avenue was dug up and new sewers were being laid. This enterprise involved noise, fire and big machinery, men, moraines of Green Prairie’s underlying clay, dynamite explosions and other interesting features.

  Nora’s tour, however, was unlucky. She met two boys she’d never seen before who said they lived over Schneider’s Delicatessen, challenged her to penny-pitching and won eight cents, all she had on her at the time. Furthermore, a bus hit a puddle at the Spruce Street intersection and spattered her dress.

  Her inner condition was mediocre when she reached home. She was about to open the front door and enter, which was her right, when her father drove into the yard with a sound of brakes that meant either he was mad or he had to go to the bathroom in haste. She looked and saw that he was mad. Very mad.

  “Nora,” he said, “I want you to stay outdoors this afternoon! I’m having a meeting.”

  “It’s impossible,” Nora responded.

  Thus challenged, he took closer cognizance. “You sick? It’s a perfectly swell, hot day!”

  “My dress is filthy—through the fault of the Green Prairie Street Transportation Company.”

  “Well, go round the back way then. I expect a lot of people here shortly.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  He went in. “How do I know? I just got here, too! Making sandwiches, I hope.”

  “What’s the meeting for?”

  “Civil Defense indignation meeting. My section. We may decide to cancel all our subscriptions to the Transcript.”

  “That old stuff!” Nora murmured. She brightened. “Anyhow—if it ever did happen—it would probably be a hydrogen bomb and there wouldn’t even be a stone standing in the uttermost corners of the County.”

  He stared at her. “Sometimes,” he said gently, “I feel that would be best.”

  He slammed the door. His daughter shrugged several times and tittered. Inasmuch as her mother was putatively making sandwiches, Nora went dutifully around back. She was given a cheese-and-jelly and a cold meat.

  These she took into the yard, eating one and then the other, like Alice with the mushroom edges. She thought of climbing on the trunk and scrutinizing the objects her father kept in a locked garage closet. From the trunk, a dusty window gave a good view. But that had lost its shock. She saw Queenie, the cat, move furtively through the hedge into the Bailey yard. Queenie then bounded forward a number of times and flattened out again. Sneaking.

  Nora went through the hedge also, skirted the summer-house and came to rest, kneeling, behind the chimney of the Bailey barbecue pit. What Queenie was after was a bird, Nora told herself interestedly—a small one with red on it. The cat looked at the girl with hate in his eyes until he saw Nora was positively rather than negatively engrossed in his stalking. Then, showing off a little perhaps, he made a pitch for the bird. He moved inchmeal, all but invisibly; when the bird moved he froze. The bird didn’t notice Nora, who ate thoughtfully, taking care to make no sudden movement. It was a fairly fascinating thing to see, and she hoped old Queenie would get the bird because she had never seen a cat eat up a bird and never even really got a good look at a bird’s insides.

  Thus Nora was where she was with reason. She was not engaged in eavesdropping, hiding in bushes, or any other such furtive occupation. She was merely watching her own cat hunt, while she ate her own sandwiches. The fact that she was concealed had to do with the cat’s quarry, and nothing whatever to do with the descent upon the summer-house of Lenore and Kittridge Sloan.

  Lenore came jouncing and hurrying and laughing in a sweater and a skirt but no bra, Nora observed. The man—Nora at that time did not know who he was—had a mustache, black, small, twisty. She failed to observe that he was more than six feet tall, about thirty years old, built like a first baseman and dressed in sports clothes. She did notice that he wore three gold rings, looked like a “Mexican movie actor,” and got out a little leather thing that had a file in it and dug his nails, when angry.

  “I haven t got long,” Lenore said, “so let’s sit here—”

  “The Jaguar would take us some place a lot better in about five minutes.”

  “I told you, Kit, I have to go to a meeting . . .”

  He looked across the lawn at the Conner house and said, “You really mean you intend to go?”

  Certainly. I’m in Henry Conner’s sector.”

  He laughed a long time. “And I’ve invited you to the club!”

  “I know. But this is important. The Transcript was perfectly beastly, this morning and . .

  .” she broke off. There was a pause and she said, “I’m sorry.”

  That made him laugh even more, and Nora could see the dark young woman was relieved. The man said, “That’s Mother’s doing. She was trapped downtown last night. Brother!

  Did she ever boil, simmer, curdle and take fire!”

  “She has a right to her opinion, but I don’t agree—”

  The man took Lenore by the shoulder and shook her gently, so that her dark hair swung and her worried expression faded. “I certainly am glad I went shopping today. Ye gods! Imagine you being around town—and me not. knowing it! How long . . . ?”

  “I graduated over a year ago, Kit,” she said.

  From behind the barbecue pit and sundry rose bushes Nora reflected that his name, anyhow, was Kit, like First Aid Kit.

  “And I didn’t know!” He peered at her with what the adventitious but fascinated onlooker regarded as an oozy look. “You realize, don’t you, that you’ve turned into the most beautiful piece of stuff in two states?”

  Lenore moved away from him and sat down. She said, “Nonsense!” She paused and went on, “Besides, you have seen me, or could have, when you were in town last winter—at the Semophore Hill Club Christmas party. Several places. Only—you were busy.”

  That made him laugh, too. “Blondes?”

  “Various shades,” Lenore answered.

  Nora began to wonder what would not make him laugh or, at least, titter. He sat down very close to Lenore, offered her a cigarette, and put one, for himself, in some kind of holder.
A gold one, extremely sissified. “I gave you up,” he said, “three years back because—”

  “Because wouldn’t—give.”

  “Still the same old Lenore.”

  She nodded. “You bet. Untarnished. But with a gradually souring disposition perhaps.”

  He shook his head in mock sorrow. “Naturellement,” he said, which Nora knew was French for “naturally.” Otherwise she didn’t know what he meant when he went on, “The end product of spinsterdom.”

  “Are you going to be in River City long?”

  “Living with Muzz,” he nodded. “For how long? Search me! You know, Lenore, you could have something to do with that!”

  “I doubt it. Maybe a day or two’s difference.”

  “I was pretty crazy about you.

  “You were pretty crazy, period.”