Gemini Summer Read Online Free Page A

said the Old Man. “If he wants to rebury the bones somewhere else, that’s fine with me.”
    “Why can’t they just stay here?” asked Danny.
    “Because they’re in the way.”
    “In the way of
what
?”
    The Old Man sighed. He gestured with his hand, to show Danny all the digging that he’d done. Then he pushed up his cap and sighed again. “Well, maybe it’s time you know. Maybe I should have told you from the start.”

nine
    From his pocket, Old Man River took out a handkerchief. It was white and blue, with a crimson border, like an American flag squashed in his hand. He wiped Danny’s nose, then folded the cloth and wiped his own forehead. “Boys, I’m not just digging here. I’m building a fallout shelter.”
    None of them knew until then that Mrs. River had come out from the house. She was standing just beyond the pit, at the driveway, where the Old Man’s pile of dirt was smallest. She’d arrived when Old Man River was talking about Billy Bear, and had listened with a look on her face that was soft and tender. But that vanished now.
    “Have you lost your mind?” she shouted. “A fallout shelter?”
    “Now, Flo—” he said.
    “Great balls of fire, Charlie.
Why?
”
    All of Hog’s Hollow must have heard her shout that word. Birds flew from the trees, and a distant lawn mower stopped mowing, and in the August heat there was such a stillness that Danny heard the crack of a ball on a baseball bat from the field far away. His mother stood there with her hands on her hips, and the Old Man looked as though she’d slapped him.
    “Don’t you read the papers, Flo?” he asked. “Don’t you know what’s going on in Vietnam? It’s 1941 all over again, but this time it’s worse. It will bring the end of everything.”
    The Old Man climbed up onto his mountain of dirt. He stood like Moses at the top of it, and the boys sat below him, and Mrs. River stared up from the driveway. “I see it coming,” said the Old Man.
    Danny was still thinking about Billy Bear, and only half listened to what the Old Man had to say. He’d never heard of Vietnam or the Gulf of Tonkin.
    “This is how the last war started,” said Old Man River. “It’s how they all begin, I guess. A bit of shooting, then it spreads like fire, and there’s no putting it out. But this time it won’t be guns; it will be missiles. It’ll be men pushing buttons, and it will all be over before you even know it’s begun. For crying out loud, they might be pushing the button right now. Those missiles could be dropping out of the sky and—”
    “Stop!” said Mrs. River. “You’re scaring the boys.”
    “Well, they
should
be scared,” said the Old Man. “We should
all
be scared. Then I wouldn’t be digging here by myself night after night. I’d have some help.”
    “You need it,” said Mrs. River. She was staring into the hole, at the mud and the bones of the animals. “You think I could take the boys down there? Into the dirt? Do you think we could live in the dirt while a war goes on, then come up like—like
moles
when it’s over?”
    “It will be survivable,” said Old Man River.
    “Survivable!”
she scoffed. “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, you and your war talk. Come along, boys.”
    But the boys didn’t come along. They stayed down there in the pit, with the Old Man towering high above them, and little Flo River looking sick with worry.
    “You can’t run away from it, Flo,” said the Old Man. “There’s nowhere to run to.”
    He came down from his mountain, then took up his shovel again. “And it
is
survivable. The government says it is. We’ll have concrete walls three feet thick, a roof banked up with dirt. We’ll have food and water, and we’ll be safe here, the four of us. Darn it, Flo, that’s all that matters. I want to keep us safe.”
    He kicked his shovel into the ground and pried away the dirt. He was going deeper. Danny started digging out the bones of Billy Bear, scraping with his hands around the