In Ferndale, Jim Williams’s family assembled while the sirens wailed unheard, and only the ultracalm radio voice gave a warning. Ruth, whoo-whooing, brought the older ones in. Jim hastily put some Coke in a pail—and some beers—and pulled out the screw driver which served as a bolt for the cellar door. The house was heated by oil stoves, so he’d had no occasion to go down to the cellar for some days.
When the door creaked open, he knew by the smell, however.
He switched on the light. Sure enough. Water had seeped in during the thaw, a week back. There was a dark pool of it on the floor.
“Wait up, you!” he called, and went down the cobwebby steps. He found the handle of an old shovel and probed gingerly.
“Water down here,” he reported disgustedly. “About a foot deep! We better stay upstairs after all.”
Relieved, the entire family went back to the parlor. They sat around uncertainly, the kids, for once, quiet. Ruth, alone, stood. When the Light came, she snatched the baby from its pen, where she’d just put her down. Irma began to sob irritatedly. Ruth patted her, feeling comforted because the little thing was in a mother’s arms, where all infants should be in moments of blinding, fearsome Light.
Jim said, or began to say, loudly and to all, but with a still-unconvinced tone, “Maybe we should do like they told us—duck—”
The blast wave struck. The Williams house, more than a thousand yards nearer the place of the fireball than the sturdier Conner home, had its top floor mashed as by a mallet. The windows screamed into the room. And that year they were double; Jim had put on storm windows. Don’s hand was amputated. Jim lost much of his face; it became scarlet stew. All the children fell, bleeding. But Irma, the baby, being kissed by her anxious mother, received a pound of glass in her back and lungs; she was tom almost apart.
Ruth was not hurt at all—the baby having shielded her—not hurt at all, physically.
Kit Sloan, on his way home from the River City Athletic Club, was in a temper even before the sirens started. The seasonal parties, dances, balls and festivities had given him an alcoholic nervousness. He’d decided that day to play squash early, get his rubdown, and come home to dress in time to make it over to the Ritz-Hadley for the Emerson cocktail thing.