Uncle Anton's Atomic Bomb

by Ian Woollen

  Two hours later, Ward appeared on the ground far below. He circled and finally spotted her. He called up, “Mary Wangert, what are you doing?”

  “What are YOU doing?” Mary rejoined.

  “We were waiting dinner. You didn’t show!”

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me,” Mary called.

  Ward shrugged. “Okay, I am talking to you again. Now come down out of that tree.”

  “Did you see the note on the office door?”

  Ward said, “I always thought he sounded weird.”

  Mary called, “What about me? Is that what you always felt about me?”

  Ward shook his head. Mary continued, “Or you saw me as some kind of lost kitten that you had to save?”

  Ward paced the circumference of the large tree. “It would appear that way. Do I have to call the fire department?” he said.

  “You might. Sometimes it’s harder to go down than up.”

  Ward cupped his hands to his mouth. “I think the truth is, you saved me,” he called up.

  “That’s very nice of you to acknowledge,” Mary said.

  Ward pleaded, “Will you come down now, please?”

  “No,” Mary countered. “If you really believe what you just said, you’re going to have to join me. You have to join me up here. Dr. Keller says our sadnesses need to meet.”

  “Our what need to what?” Ward said.

  “I’m very serious,” Mary called.

  Ward took off his jacket and tie. He tried to ignore his fear of heights and focus instead on the emerging fear of his wife leaving the marriage. It wasn’t just husbands leaving wives anymore, to go off and become swingers like Elbert. He tried to imagine his father climbing a tree to make up with Constance. It wouldn’t have happened. Ward Sr. would have shown up with a chainsaw. Ward folded his jacket and carefully laid it across the lowest branch, beside Mary’s shoes. Mary indicated the climbing route she’d taken. Ward followed her instructions and eventually reached her perch about thirty feet above the ground.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, breathing heavily, “Please forgive me. I’m the one who was lost.”

  “Here, kitty kitty,” Mary said.

  “Ward and Mary sitting in a tree,” he teased.

  “I’d like to kiss,” she said, “but I’m afraid we might fall.”

  “So what’s all this business about sadness?” he asked.

  “We’re only a couple years away from all the boys being gone,” Mary said. “What are we going to do then?”

  “Is that your sadness?”

  “One of them,” she stated.

  “I’m supposed to answer: run away to Canada?” Ward said.

  Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. We’ll still have elderly parents. The hourglass of time will be turned over soon. And by the way, why don’t you ever talk about your father’s death? In all the years since he’s been gone, I don’t think you’ve said five words about him.”

  Ward gazed out across the city. A plume of dark smoke stained the horizon. He said, obliquely, “It is what it is. I don’t blame him or you or anybody. We make our choices and live with them, despite whatever the … you know … counterculture says.”

  Mary said, “I hear that word a lot, but I’m not sure what it means.”

  “I think it comes from all the time that young people in the Civil Rights movement spent at counters, like soda counters and lunch counters.”

  Mary shook her head. “No, wrong, you old goat. That’s not it.”

  Anthony came home for spring break during the first week of April. His visit coincided with the aforementioned Robert Kennedy speech. Robbie and Duncan urged their older, wiser brother, who flew home all by himself on Trans World Airlines, to convince Dad to take them to the event. They told Anthony about the loud fight overheard after the party. They didn’t really understand it, but in the way children will unconsciously push a raw spot between parents, they wanted to see what would happen. Anthony pitched the Kennedy speech to Dad as a chance to cover the presidential primary campaign for the Rokeby Record.

  To appease his sons and wife, post-tree climb, Ward complied.

  On the evening on April 4, 1968, they ate an early supper with Rusalka and her kids. Everyone enjoyed sampling a special treat, a shipment of Russian caviar, that Mary assumed came from the new director of the Anglo-American School in Moscow who recently graced Mary with a letter of appreciation for founding the school back in 1951.

  Directions to the Kennedy rally were a bit fuzzy. Rusalka thought it was taking place at Crispus Attucks High School.

  “That’s where Oscar Robertson played,” Duncan spouted, from the backseat of the car.

  “Who?” Ward said.

  “Dad, you don’t know anything,” Robbie said.

  Eventually they found a crowd assembled in a vacant lot outside the Broadway Christian Center on 17th Street. The crowd was mostly black, with a few pockets of whites, including Father Tyler, who beckoned for the Wangerts and Rusalka to join him.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” Paul Tyler whispered to Ward. They glimpsed Kennedy pacing behind a truck.

  News cycles were longer in 1968. Headlines could happen in one part of the country and take many hours to spread. The story of Robert Kennedy’s improvised speech in Indianapolis on the evening of Martin Luther King’s assassination is widely known, but deserves a brief summary here. While flying to Indianapolis from a campaign stop in Fort Wayne, Kennedy and his speechwriter received news of the King shooting in Memphis. They threw out his previously prepared remarks and drafted a new speech. At the airport they were met by a swarm of police. The police chief was afraid of riots and urged the candidate to cancel his appearance. Kennedy refused to cancel, and in turn, the police chief refused to escort him to the “ghetto.” In the ensuing confusion, Kennedy and his speechwriter were separated and ended up in different cars. The speechwriter’s car (and the speech) never made it to 17th and Broadway. So Robert Kennedy, without notes, finally climbed up on the back of a flatbed truck and informed the crowd of King’s assassination. Wails and shouts and moaning filled the air. The Wangerts and Rusalka and Father Tyler feared for their safety. On a night in which one hundred and ten American cities erupted in violence, Indianapolis grieved quietly. Kennedy’s speech was credited with calming the city. It lasted four minutes and fifty-four seconds and was direct from the gut. A section of it was inscribed soon after in the granite at his own gravesite in Arlington Cemetery.

  Needless to say, the speech made an impression, especially on Robbie and Duncan. They knew the event was important, because their parents did something they hadn’t done in a long time. They hoisted the boys up in their arms, like little kids, to see and hear the speaker. Robbie and Duncan couldn’t really describe the experience afterward, not like Anthony did. He won a special prize for his account in the Rokeby Record newspaper. The younger boys only vaguely comprehended who Martin Luther King was and why the killing was so tragic. At their next school bomb drill, instead of giggling and poking at Vincent and each other, Robbie and Duncan filed down to the basement hallway and hunched obediently on the floor with their arms over their heads, silent and wary, because anything could happen! Vincent and Kayla’s dad had suddenly disappeared and maybe an atomic bomb really was going to fall. A bomb might explode and kill them right now, just like Mister Kennedy had been killed in California! Who knows what would explode next? The 1960s gave them their Lucky Charms childhood, and also abruptly jinxed it.

  Chapter 30

  The Dark Star

  He Who Remains Classified read Anthony’s article in the Rokeby Record. He read it over several times, admiring the skill of the reportage, but also concerned about an increasingly liberal slant in the young man’s thinking.

  He Who Remains Classified usually ignored domestic policy matters, consumed as he was by external threats to the nation, and trusting that most legislative squabbles eventually work
ed themselves out. He had no real gripe with the Kennedy people. Jack had been very good to the agency, authorizing in his three short years many more missions that Eisenhower did in eight.

  Daylight from his Venetian blinds sliced across the walls of his office. The sun illuminated signed photos of four different presidents embracing him, with personal inscriptions of thanks for his service. He Who Remains Classified wished he could show them to Anthony. Hell, with a quick phone call, he could even arrange for the boy to be photographed with LBJ or Nixon or Humphrey, or whomever he wanted!

  His position within the ranks was unassailable now. The Vulture functioned as an autonomous force and no longer feared any kind of blackmail. Too many notches on his holster to worry. As far as young Anthony’s political development was concerned, high time his real father recognized that, damn straight, he did have something to offer that neither Mary nor Ward could provide. The boy needed some balance.

  * * *

  PART V

  * * *

  Chapter 31

  Mary and Ward’s Nighttime Tale

  Wearing matching flannel pajamas and slippers (a Christmas gift from their sons), Mary and Ward built a fire in the upstairs fireplace. They traded backrubs, while improvising the next twist:

  Young Peter no longer lived at the estate. The diplomat, finally recognizing the boy’s intelligence, enrolled him at the prestigious science academy in Moscow. The diplomat began making noises about adopting Peter. He was encouraged by his confessor, Father Vlod, a monk at the local monastery.

  Lubya’s headaches came back in full force when the diplomat mentioned Father Vlod’s suggestion. Little did the diplomat realize that Father Vlod was Peter’s actual father.

  At the Moscow school Peter was teased mercilessly for his love of marmalade and his country ways, and also for his intelligence, which made the other boys jealous. Peter took minutes to solve equations that his tormentors labored over for hours.

  Behind the scenes, the diplomat met with Peter’s physics professors and discussed certain challenging projects that were of interest to the Ministry of Defense. They whispered about a bomb that for now only existed in theory, a bomb like none that had come before it. Rumors circulated that other countries were well along in their own research and that recently a foreign scientist’s documents had been lost on the docks at Yalta.

  Lubya, without her peach-fuzz adolescent son at home, descended into a moody listlessness. Mikel tried to cheer her up. In the morning, Mikel played on a reed flute. At noon, he urged her to eat. When Mikel offered to accompany Lubya to the monastery to talk with the confessor, Father Vlod—ouch—she slapped him.

  One rainy evening, the diplomat returned from the city. He rang his bell for Lubya to take his wet garments. She didn’t appear. The diplomat found her asleep in the hayloft of the stables. If that wasn’t bad enough, he also found the brass-clad steamer trunk hidden behind a stack of bales. He opened it and squinted and gasped.

  The lost bomb documents!

  Chapter 32

  Detectives

  Like Anthony scouting for Soviet submarines, Robbie and Duncan became concerned about security. They formed the Wangert & Wangert Detective Agency. Anthony considered this an indication of growth in his little brothers, after their lemonade and cookie stand on the Great Tusk town dock with its dubious pricing policy. One cookie for ten cents, two cookies for twenty-five, and three cookies for fifty cents.

  Detectives Robbie and Duncan spent hours hiding in the bushes of the Yacht Club grounds, gussied up with pine needle paths and gravel drives that were gathered up at the end of the season and washed. When Geneva joined the detective agency, they changed its name to Wangert & Salter & Wangert. As an island resident, Geneva had better leads on evildoers.

  Geneva organized their after-hours stakeout of the general store’s gas pump. The pump had no locking switch. Gas sales worked on an honor system. Big-bellied Marsden often grumbled about nighttime “siphoners.” They never actually caught anyone in the act, but Marsden assured them that their efforts—advertised by a sign taped to the pump, “Premises patrolled by Wangert & Salter & Wangert”—were definitely scaring off the “siphoners.”

  From their nocturnal perch behind the tank, they also had a clear view of the parking area above the town dock. On Great Tusk nobody locked their cars. The detectives noticed that plenty of activity occurred inside the parked cars after dark. Glow of cigarettes. Clink of bottles. Splash of oars. Dinghies floated in and out from the sailboats on the guest moorings.

  “Night people,” Geneva announced, pulling her watch cap lower over her pigtails. They each wore black watch caps, emblazoned with the firm’s badge.

  “You mean, like zombies?” Duncan whispered.

  “There’s a song about them on the radio,” Geneva said.

  Robbie said, “I wonder if it’s a full moon.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to be home by ten,” Duncan grumbled.

  Under supervision from his father, who was spending more time on the island now, Anthony monitored his brothers’ curfew. After supper he drove them into town to Geneva’s house and picked them up at 9:55. Robbie and Duncan considered this very generous of their older brother, until they realized he had an ulterior motive. Anthony, upright Anthony, was one of the night people!

  Duncan spotted him through binoculars. Sharing a cigarette with one of the staff from the yacht club. A debate ensued about informing on him. What fun to get Anthony in trouble! Geneva counseled further surveillance. She pointed out that informing on Anthony probably meant losing their ride home every night.

  In the full bloom of puberty, Geneva also pushed her fellow detectives into philosophical debates on big questions, such as, “Would you rather have your parents die or a hundred people you didn’t know?” These discussions usually occurred at their office, located in the loft of Johnny Salter’s bait shack. The town’s recently installed diesel generator made it possible to run an extension cord out from the house to power Geneva’s 45 RPM record player. She started their meetings by playing a record. She liked Elvis.

  Duncan liked whatever she liked.

  Robbie routinely offered contrarian opinions, so that Geneva would think him different from Duncan. Their entry into puberty was bringing out physical contrasts too. Duncan grew taller and stockier. Robbie’s voice sounded crackly and lower, like his father’s.

  “Can you believe some of the cottages at Cliff Head have trash chutes that run straight from their kitchen to the edge of the cliff, so their trash goes right out into the ocean?” Geneva said.

  “That’s bad,” Duncan said. “If I were First Selectman, I’d have signs posted all around the island.”

  “People out here don’t like being told what to do,” Robbie said.

  Whenever their discussions became too technical, Geneva guided them back to the larger philosophical realm. “I wouldn’t want Great Tusk to be exactly like the mainland. This is a special place, after all.”

  “You’re lucky you get to live here year round,” Robbie said.

  “Don’t you ever think about going somewhere else?” Duncan asked.

  “Not me,” Geneva said proudly, “I’m an islander through and through.”

  Robbie said, “Dad was talking with Ranger Amos about the hippie tourists camping illegally.”

  “That could be our next stakeout.” Geneva announced, “We’ll track illegal campers in the park.”

  “Neat!” Duncan exclaimed.

  Robbie, to his infinite dismay, did not get to participate in the illegal camping stakeouts. He came down with chicken pox. A doctor from the mainland traveled out to make the diagnosis. Duncan and Geneva teased Robbie for catching a “chicken illness.” His condition was exacerbated by a severe attack of what his mother called “F.O.M.O.—Fear of Missing Out.” To keep him from fleeing his bedroom quarantine, Mary and Ward took turns sitting with the restless captive.

  They installed Robbie in the guestroom at the far end of the
upstairs hall. It featured the same peeling, floral wallpaper as when Ward sat quarantined with his unwritten novel many years before. He and Robbie watched the clock and waited for Mary’s afternoon trips into town to pick up the mail.

  They ripped open their letters together. Ward was eager for Rusalka’s reports from the office, and Robbie for Vincent’s commentary on a new game called “Dungeons and Dragons.” They listened to Red Sox games on the radio and played Scrabble. Robbie truculently specialized in words such as ‘piss’ and ‘crap,’ which Ward turned into ‘dogpiss’ and ‘crapper,’ scoring a few extra points with his son. Mary moved the telescope upstairs, so Robbie could track the stars over Zippy Cove at night.

  Mary told him about her hospitalization at age ten for scarlet fever, trying to illustrate that quarantine can be a time for personal discovery—in her case, adventure books.

  “Did you ever spend time in a hospital, Dad?”

  “Yes, once, for an asthma attack,” Ward said.

  Mary explained, “A lung condition that makes breathing hard. My brother had it too.”

  A comparative tracking of illness in Mary and Ward’s families led to a startling revelation: “Before I was born,” Ward said, “an infant sister died from asthma.”

  “A sister? How could I have been married to you all these years and never heard about a sister?!” Mary blurted.

  “She died before I was born, and I didn’t know about her till I was about ten, so I wasn’t sure if she even counted as a sister,” Ward said. “You know how it was back then. Infant deaths were more common. People just didn’t talk about it.”