“Not without an atom bomb,” said Simple. “If I was in Mississippi, I would be Jim Crowed out of bomb shelters, so I would need some kind of protection. By the time I got the N.A.A.C.P. to take my case to the Supreme Court, the war would be over, else I would be atomized.”

“Absurd!” I said. “Bomb shelters will be for everybody.”

“Not in Mississippi,” said Simple. “Down there they will have some kind of voting test, else loyalty test, in which they will find some way of flunking Negroes out. You can’t tell me them Dixiecrats are going to give Negroes free rein of bomb shelters. On the other hand, come to think of it, they might have to let us in to save their own skins, because I hear tell in the next war everything that ain’t sheltered will be so charged with atoms a human can’t touch it. Even the garbage is going to get radioactive when the bombs start falling. I read last week in the News that, in case of a bombing, it will be a problem as to where to put our garbage, because it will be radioactive up to a million years. So you sure can’t keep garbage around. If you dump it in the sea, it will make the fish radioactive, too, like them Japanese tunas nobody could eat. I am wondering what the alley cats will eat—because if all the garbage is full of atomic rays, and the cats eat the garbage, and my wife pets a strange cat, Joyce will be radioactive, too. Then if I pet my wife, what will happen to me?”

“You are stretching the long arm of coincidence mighty far,” I said. “What is more likely to happen is, if the bombs fall, you will be radioactive long before the garbage will.”

“That will worry white folks,” said Simple. “Just suppose all the Negroes down South got atomized, charged up like hot garbage, who would serve the white folks’ tables, nurse their children, Red Cap their bags, and make up their Pullman berths? Just think! Suppose all the colored Red Caps carrying bags on the Southern Railroad was atom-charged! Suitcases would get atomized, too, and all that is packed in them. Every time a white man took out his toothbrush to wash his teeth on the train, his teeth would get atom-charged. How could he kiss his wife when he got home?”

“I believe you are charged now,” I said.