“Caught me,” he said, as he slowed to cross Lakeview Road, “just as we were sitting down to dinner.”
“Me, too. Guess they figured everybody would be doing the same. Ought to be a good turnout, on account of it.”
Ed slammed on the brakes in time to avoid the chemical engine of Hook and Ladder Company Number 17. It pounded across the intersection, its lights on in spite of the fact that the sun still shone, its clanging bell drowned by a whoop of the siren. “Something else to think about,” Henry yelled, letting his nerves down easy. “When those sirens are going, you can’t hear car horns or even fire-truck hells!”
Ed wiped a little diamond dust of sweat from his forehead. “Could have been closer, Hank.”
“Oh, sure.”
The sedan turned into South Hobson Street and slowed. The school was only four blocks distant and converging Civil Defense cars were piling up, even though volunteer “police” were blowing whistles urgently and urgently waving their arms, and even though Hobson Street was “one way” during this surprise drill. They could see, now, hundreds of cars parked and being parked in the playgrounds of the South High School. They could see the “wrecked” corner of the gymnasium where, later in the evening, the fire fighters and rescue squads would rehearse under conditions of simulated disaster, including real flames and chemical smoke. The very numbers of the congregating people stimulated them. That stimulus, added to a certain civic pride and the comparative verisimilitude of the occasion, helped Hank Conner and Ed McWade to forget they were middle-aged businessmen, middle-class householders, who for weary years had periodically and stubbornly pretended that their city in the middle of America was the target of an enemy air raid.
Before Ed parked the car, Henry leaped out and went to his post to assemble his block wardens. One of them, Jim Ellis, proprietor of the Maple Street Pharmacy, was incensed. “You know what, Hank? This is my druggist’s night off. I had to shut down the prescription department since I can’t be there to roll pills myself! Probably cost me twenty, twenty-five bucks. Maybe customers, even. People don’t like to come in a drugstore and not get a prescription filled on the dot. Next time we have one of these fool rehearsals—”
“You shouldn’t be here, anyway, Jim. How come?”
“I said that. I phoned headquarters when the letter about this new drill came. They told me whenever the sirens went to report here at the school—”
“Well, I’ll be responsible for that. You get your car and go back to the pharmacy. All the pharmacists in my area, by God, are going to stay in the stores. What zigzag chump ordered you here? In a real raid you’d be indispensable at the store.”