The Last Supper: And Other Stories by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

construction in Northern Ohio was taken up with Mr. Baxter’s vision, and hundreds of men brought paychecks home each week and turned them into food for their children and clothes and rent; but of all this Mr. Baxter was superbly unaware. And when finally the form of the massive underground house which could survive even a direct hit of a hydrogen bomb took shape, Mr. Baxter’s mood could be compared to one of actual ecstasy. Everyone at the plant, his friends, his associates, his wife—everyone noticed the change in him, the manner in which he held his head, so straight and confident, the way his eyes shone, the way his voice had become, so soft, so knowing.
    One September evening, when the shelter was almost complete, as Mr. Baxter stood near the elevator that led down to it, admiring the concrete result of his vision, a quick autumn thunderstorm blew out of the lake. Mr. Baxter ran for shelter, but the rain overtook him before he reached his house. On the garden path to his den, deluged by sheets of water, his foot slipped, and he fell and struck his head a resounding whack on the flagstones. He lay there in the rain for more than an hour, and it was only when he failed to appear for dinner that his wife sent the servants out to look for him. When they found Mr. Baxter, he was quite dead and already cold.
    All of his children and grandchildren came in for the funeral, and for the reading of the will. He had told them nothing about the shelter, for he had intended to inform them only after it was complete, and now Clarise thought it better not to mention it at all. She looked very youthful and beautiful in black, and while she bowed to all the conventions of sorrow, everyone remarked on how well she looked. The will allocated the lake, place and some five million dollars in securities to Mrs. Baxter, the other interests being divided among the sons and the daughter, and Clarise, who had never been a greedy woman, was quite content with her share.
    Clarise waited three months before she left for Europe, and in that time, she did her best to sell the lakeside place; but the air was full of talk about negotiations and banning the H bomb and no one wanted to invest three million dollars in a self-contained shelter. In the south of France, Mrs. Baxter met an Austrian count, whom she married in what her children thought was an indecently short time—and it was remarkable how much attention the count, who had never been a business man, gave to her securities. When he discovered that her lakeside property had been reassessed to a value of four million dollars, he persuaded her to let it go in default for the taxes—and the county simply boarded it up and let the acres of lawn go to weed. The hermatically sealed elevator began to rust, and the twenty thousand vitamin pills lay silently, waiting vainly for someone to gobble them.
    Sometimes, Mrs. Baxter had wistful thoughts of her first husband, Henry; but whenever she found herself giving way to feelings of guilt, she imagined five years in the self-contained shelter, and that stiffened her spine. As for her second husband, the, Austrian count, with five million dollars to spend, he never gave a second thought to the H bomb.
    Only Mr. Somerville was really regretful. He had been sure that science combined with American know-how could lick a direct hit by an H bomb, and sometimes he felt very sad because Henry J. Baxter never really had a chance to test his theories.

A Walk Home
    M ARTIN ANDERSON LIVED EIGHT BLOCKS FROM THE plant, and almost every evening, he walked home. If the weather was very bad, hard rain or snow or sleet, he would sometimes take a lift from some of the boys who shared a car-pool, for he was well liked, and they were always ready to squeeze a little tighter or even carry him on someone’s lap for the few blocks; but by and large, he enjoyed the walk, even in the rain, and living so close to the plant made it possible for him and Alice and