Excerpt
His eighth drink was half full. He belted part of it down and ordered another. And still he wanted someone to admit the truth of the construction site. “Say, Elmer, you work out on the edge’a town, too.” For a second the rum hit kind of hard. He felt dizzy.
Vanders faced him, “Yeah, so?”
The dizziness passed. It always did, “What’re they buildin’ out there?”
Vanders took a deep breath, smoothed his handlebar moustache, then faced away, “It’s called an energy house, Kirby. Sort’a like a museum. A demo site. You know that.”
“I know that’s what we’re told, yeah.”
Vanders kept facing away, hunched his shoulders, “Why question it? It’s a job. Something we both need.”
“But don’t you ever wonder?”
“Nope.” Vanders appeared to have sobered, slightly, “Never.”
“Nobody’ll talk about what’s goin’ on out there, Elmer. Why is that?”
“Cause nuthin’s goin’ on.” Vanders faced him, appeared to have sobered even more, “I get paid workin’ there, Kirby, and that’s all I care. If somethin’ else’s goin’ on, fine. But I don’t need to know about it. And I really don’t care.”
“I know what’s bein’ built, Elmer.”
“You don’t know shit.”
Kirby had not actually spoken the words before. Sometimes he had trouble even thinking them, and said, not quite whispering, “It’s a bomb shelter.”
The jukebox music stopped. By chance the song had finished, but abruptly. So did the television. Kirby jerked toward it. Evidently a short pause. The silence throughout the place roared through his ears.
He stared at Vanders, who—eyes bulging—stared back for a second and then looked away. Kirby glanced around the room. Colleen sat absorbed on her TV viewing perch.
Linden, Bradding, Smith, everyone in the tavern just sat, not talking but not indicating they had heard, either.
Kirby licked at his sharp wisdom tooth nubs furiously. His armpits ran again. Then a new song began on the jukebox. The television came back on. Conversations from several directions drifted in. Things returned to normal, with nobody but him knowing they had been kind of abnormal for maybe three seconds. A point in time when everything had simply stopped.
He took a breath, then faced the front of the bar, like everyone else, and belted the rest of his drink, “How’s the family, Elmer?”
Vanders answered without facing him, “Family’s fine.”
The evening passed back into the norm, and the complacent acceptance of what was being built outside of town.