The End Read Online Free PDF

Murphy bed in his work pants. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Drip, said the ice in the icebox on the pan. Something to slow his heart down, gin maybe, of which there was alas not a spoonful in the house. Ice cubes in a dishrag on his eyes.
    When they knocked on his door he thought it was time already for D’Agostino and the Friday card game. Why, hello. Brush kitty from the door with the foot. They were wearing impractical woolen outfits but were unsweating and tucked their hats under their arms as they entered, and then they made their outlandish pronouncement.
    Pursuant to the terms of the recent armistice, all United Nations prisoners of war in North Korea were to be let go, Mimmo among them. (Rocco read the news, thank you, he was aware, he had awaited the day.) However, Mimmo, they declared to him, in words that really did not allow air to get in between, had contracted tuberculosis and, by the date of the exchange of prisoners, had died. This was only last week that this had happened. The navy was soon to return the body to the New Jersey, where Loveypants intended to bury it. The secretary of defense wished to express the regret of a grateful nation.
    Rocco had no shirt. His nipples looked uncertainly at his knees.
    Well, this was stated in such a way as not to allow for another person’s way of looking at things. Obviously they had received training in theatricals and elocution. So it was not really any use to argue the case. Because they were committed to their view. Which was their right because in America we have liberty of talking as we please. Thank you, good-bye.
    A moment to consider how he would proceed. Bending deeply, he poured a teacup of cod liver oil into the cat’s bowl.
    On straightening again, his resolution was complete:
    He would physically transport himself, finally, to the New Jersey, to the dwelling place of Loveypants and the boys, and confess to them his own sin in having permitted them to live separately from him these many years, leaving them exposed to the Lord’s righteous anger. He would not plead weakly via post. He would go and see their faces, not only in the mind’s eye but in blood and skin. Once they perceived the earnestness of his confession, they would return with him to Ohio to live.
    Outside the screen door, a woodpecker with flaming red plumage about the head glided past, and the cat flattened herself watchfully to the floor. Rocco cracked the door, and out she slunk.
    All at once his blood went thick with fatigue. He reached his bed just as he lost the strength in his knees to stand. The streak was nearly as old as the middle one himself, if memory served, and now had seen its completion. Sleep, real sleep, lusty, murderous, fell on him at last in all its smothering weight.
    In the middle of the night, not far from his house, the Russians exploded an atomic bomb.
    No, sorry, it was only the risen sun. He was a little disoriented. He had slept clear through the dark part of the morning for the first time in 10,685 days.

2
    W ar at last! Again! It was the beginning of the atomic apocalypse, or so he surmised.
    Rocco was abed, alone, striving mightily to be stouthearted. The flood of light had broken his sleep, and now a boom was going to come, and he would be finished off. Everything was white and ablaze—his sheets, his Skivvies on the chair, his blameless knees. Would he hear the boom, or would it split his eardrums first? He waited for the fabled shock wave, a naked man in his brilliantly illuminated bedroom on a sheet. All of mankind would be annihilated this time for sure.
    The cat fastened her claws to the doorjamb and stretched herself. He had time to note that outside a jay was shrieking. He waited to go deaf and then to disintegrate. He waited in the famous interval between the flash and the noise. Assuming their aim was good, the Russians had bombed the steel mills downtown. That was what Rocco would have hit if he were running their