woods at the far end of the valley, on their annual Grandfolk's Picnic. They didn't die, except inside.

Three months later, an enemy jet came out of the sky and over the valley. A scoop arrangement under its belly was sniffing Tennessee and Alabama air for radioactive particles. It sniffed low over the town, and then again—a ruined town might hide an underground lab and converter—and then it barrel-rolled and crashed. Nine rifle bullets had hit the motor; straight back through the jet intake, into the blades.

A year after that another jet came low over the town, and it crashed too. Only three bullets this time; but a jet motor's like a turbine—you get a blade or two, and it goes crazy.

Two years after that, Ben Bates (no longer Mayor Ben, because a mayor has to have a town; but still the man in charge) knocked off playing horseshoes in what had been the Town Hall. Now the building served as a recreation hall; there were horseshoe pits at one end of the long room, there were tables for checkers and cards, and a short tenpin alley along one wall. Three years ago the alley had been twice as long as it was now; but then there were young men around who could peg the length of it without tiring every time. Overhead the roof sagged, and in one place you could see quite a piece of sky—but under the hole the old men had rigged a slanted board watershed that led to a drainage ditch; and scattered through the room were a lot of supporting posts and timber braces. Actually the building was about as safe as it had ever been.

There were other buildings like it; buildings that the bomb hadn't pounded flat or made too risky. They were propped up and nailed together and buttressed and practically glued so they'd stay up. From outside you'd think they were going to crumble any minute—walls slanted all cockeyed, boards peeled off and hanging, and roofs buckling in. But they were safe. Fixed up every which way—from the inside. All from the inside; not an inch of repair on the outside. It had to be that way, because the town had to look like a dead town.

After the men had finished propping, the women had come along with all the furniture and things they'd salvaged, and they swept and scrubbed and did a hundred jobs the men never would have thought of; and so the old people ended up with half a dozen buildings to live in, secretly and comfortably, in the town that had to look dead.

"Arthritis is bad," Ben Bates told his teammates and opponents. "Hell, I'm just giving away points. Maybe 

 Prev. P 2/19 next