WE MANAGED TO MAKE it to the shower/restroom facility and back without incident. Dobbs was still up, and he admitted us once more into the room. Sax and I resumed our places beneath our respective blankets. The Chief closed his book, replaced his spectacles in their case, and placed these—and his bottle—in the corner near his pillow as he prepared for sleep himself.
Just before Moze turned out his reading lamp, Mr. Dobbs came into view, approaching his bottom bunk. He was holding an oblong metal tray which, to me, looked remarkably like—
“It's a bedpan,” he answered the question in my eyes. He was highly amused by my expression, and apparently Sax's, as well. “I'm an old feller,” he said, grinning. “I cain't be traipsin' up and down the hall all night. So if you boys hear anything...well, it won't be rain.” He was still chuckling as he placed the pan on the floor beside his bunk. I saw Moze, in the top bunk, give a roll of his eyes just before he turned off the rest of the lights.
It was as dark as the inside of a cat, until the faint glow from the clock on the dresser became detectable after a moment or two. Before long, I felt my eyelids begin to droop, and I finally drifted off to sleep.
I had just begun to dream when our room exploded.
I snapped awake as the roar engulfed me, and I felt—more than saw—Sax's full mass crash to the floor, flailing amid his blanket. Still sleep-numbed, I immediately slapped my reading lamp into weak illumination, not knowing what to expect. Then, as the rumble subsided, I became aware of its source.
Sax saw it, too, rising to his knees and clutching his blanket about his head and shoulders. He slowly turned to meet my eyes, his face reflecting the astonishment that was surely showing on mine. Then our gazes returned, not to caved-in walls and smoking debris, but to the sleeping figure of Harry Dobbs....
Mr. Dobbs lay there peacefully, mouth agape, oblivious to the horror of his own snoring!
As we watched in disbelief, another shockwave issued forth like all of the lions in Africa roaring at once inside our room.
Sax looked at me again as the crescendo passed down to the sound of distant rolling thunder. “Hey, Jimbo,” he spoke in his exaggerated stage-whisper. “Do you hear something?”
The look I gave him revealed that I was unamused. I didn't bother to answer.
“Yeah,” he went on, “me, neither. But I think that coffee is keeping me awake.”
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Sensurround, made us look back at Mr. Dobbs again. Then, Sax drew my attention to the top bunk where Moze lay on his side with his back toward us. Sax, still clutching his blanket like the shawl of that old peasant woman in every period-movie ever made, whispered, “Poor ole Moze.... He must've been killed in the first blast.”
How the Chief could sleep through this nightmare was a mystery, but I didn't feel like humoring Sax. “Get back in bed,” I hissed. “We've got to try to get some sleep.”
Sax shrugged and hopped back into the bunk above me. I turned off my lamp and spent the next hundred years trying to block out the sound of the Universe as it tore itself apart.
Once, after another failed attempt to squeeze my pillow and mattress into my ears, I turned my lamp on again—only to be startled by the shell-shocked gaze from Sax's head, which had been hanging for who-knows-how-long over the side of the top bunk, staring at me blankly. I clubbed him with my pillow, and he withdrew. Sighing in resignation, I switched the lamp off and soldiered on against the night.
But, amazingly, sometime around the next millennium, there was blessed silence.... I was in ecstasies! Who knew that Deafness would bring with it such peace, such pleasure? Yet, just as I was about to start laughing with joy, I heard something...a rustling across from me in the dark...followed by the distinct sound of a steady stream of liquid coming into contact with an aluminum container....
I buried my face in my pillow and fought to keep from sobbing in frustration. Mercifully, however, Mr. Dobbs' snoring did not immediately resume once he had finished his business, and I eventually must have fallen asleep.
This I know because I was later snatched from the Sands of Somnolence by a series of Dobbsian Sonic Booms that brought me upright in my bunk—at the same time as Sax and his flailing blanket crashed to the floor in the darkness. I heard him rolling around, trying to orient himself—there was a clang of metal...a sloshing sound...and a low, mournfully-anguished whine of, “For the love of God!”
I just lay back and crushed my pillow onto my face as the roaring of the thunder continued.
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