I've written these series of sobering snapshots not to generate
fear, but with the hope of inspiring a compassionate imagination for all
those displaced by war.
This time, the village
knew the siren wasn't going to stop its howling. The time had come to
pack bags, bicycles, cars (what few still had gasoline left in their
tanks), and wheelbarrows and make for the hills. Except this was
Delaware, and the only hills around were septic systems, definitely not
ideal places of refuge. Tension had whipped though Sussex and Kent as
the reports came of the militia taking over the Chesapeake tunnel--it
had been spared the fate of the Bay Bridge, whose twisted and blackened
metal was lying under the bay's water. Now the army was heading south
from Dover to meet them, and Greenwood was a likely site of the crash.
Everyone knew the siren's wail must not be ignored.
On
Queens Street a mother of three middle-school aged children desperately
tried to bring order to their packing. She gave each a backpack to fill
with canned food and water from their last supplies, and told each of
them to put on as many layers of clothing as possible. Impossibly, the
sun shone bright and beautiful through the bedroom window as she packed
bedding for them. As she pulled on layers of leggings and jeans she
watched the dust leap and swirl in the beam of light. "I feel as
insignificant and adrift as one of those specks," she thought. "If only I
knew where we were going to land."
This was the first
flight for the citizens of this town, though there had been two or three
times when most of the residents would spend the day in the forest or
fields because of air raids. For a long time the quiet and agricultural
nature of southern Delaware had drawn internal refugees, as people
looked for reprieve from the chaos of the megalopolis--New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC. When the conflict began, the
number of residents went down dramatically because of enlistment. On
the day of the long siren, the town was more populated than ever before.
Purdue and Mountaire no longer where the chicken basket of the East
like they had before but T.S. Smith's orchards still produced apples,
and the farms grew corn, cabbages, and kale. Everyone who could had a
kitchen
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