Uncle Anton's Atomic Bomb

by Ian Woollen

  Rob welcomed the moderator’s guff. He recognized that the Stonington 12-step program forced him back into contact with a broader range of people. The Great Tuskers rallied around him too loyally. He needed a good slap, and he wasn’t going to get it from Clyde or Johnny, who blamed Geneva just as much for abandoning her island home.

  He opened up to the group about Ward’s death and how relieved he felt that Duncan waited so long to call, because a trip to Indianapolis would have been emotionally impossible. “On the phone, my brother revealed that he was ditched by his woman too,” Rob added.

  Coming on top of Geneva’s departure, the impact of Ward’s death on Rob was surprisingly grounding. Twice, he found himself in the island church, reliving the encounter with his father that had eased their rift. The fact that Ward specified Great Tusk as his final resting place felt like a confirmation.

  He threw himself into preparations for the arrival of his family after the bombing. The news from Indianapolis caused a run on groceries and gas. Everyone fretted about the aftermath of the toxic explosion.

  Rob stocked the shelves of the Wangert cottage. He aired out the bedrooms and the linens. He arranged the porch furniture. A message came through from the Coast Guard about Anthony’s progress northward. Rob vaguely listened to news reports from Indianapolis on the radio and pondered his lack of response. It would have been easy for him to claim vindication in his decision to walk away from mainstream America however many years ago. It would have been easy to light up a joint and cheer the bombing as a good-riddance contamination of Geneva’s defection to the mainland. Instead, he heard himself regularly commenting back to the radio, “I’m just glad Ward didn’t live to see it.”

  He turned off the radio after reports surfaced about the unnamed nurse, wearing a WWII Red Cross hat. She had briefly appeared onsite after the bombing to care for the victims and then disappeared.

  It was as if Rob’s brain would not allow him to recognize the possibility that the suspect might be Kayla. Because then the bombing would be more than just mainland weirdness and Rob would have to own a part of it.

  Upon his arrival Duncan forced the issue. “How could the bomber not be Kayla?” he demanded. It was all he wanted to discuss, after four days pent up in a car with the ladies. Rob wanted to know about the route they’d taken, up across Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

  “We made it! We made it through!” Ruby chanted on the town dock.

  Mary leaned into Rob’s arms at the gangway. She remained mute. Ruby held her elbow for support. Duncan and Rob offloaded their suitcases and carried them up to the Jeep. They chucked rocks into the harbor, while waiting for Mary to nod hello to everyone in town and receive their condolences. Using Marsden’s delivery truck and the Jeep, they made one trip from the village to the cottage.

  The martini shaker full of Ward’s ashes immediately found a prominent place on top of the parlor woodstove. The boys settled Mary and Ruby for a nap on the daybeds and walked down to the shore. Rob wanted to show Duncan a selection of possible interment sites for Ward’s ashes. Duncan was all about the bombing. He’d been unable to get a call through to the office.

  “Have you figured out the Kayla angle? And what about Vincent? Couldn’t mention it to Mom, because I didn’t want to get her more upset,” Duncan said.

  Rob shrugged and pointed out a few deer berries underfoot.

  “I don’t get your attitude, bro,” Duncan said. “How can you be so blasé about our home town getting nuked?”

  Rob shrugged, “It’s one of several things recently. I can’t get upset—part of my recovery program. Can’t get too riled up.”

  “Bro, we’ve both been through a lot.”

  “Yeah. And you can stop calling me ‘bro,’ ” Rob stated. “What are you thinking, that we’re just going to pick right up and start throwing the lacrosse ball?”

  “I did bring my stick,” Duncan said.

  They followed a familiar path into the woods that led to the promontory at the mouth of the cove. Moss hanging in the perpetual shade of the thick pines dripped with the morning’s fog. Duncan yanked off a handful and started to enact Ward’s old trick of holding the moss up to his chin like a mock Colonel Sanders goatee. He caught himself and threw it onto the ground.

  Rob fumbled for his tobacco pouch and Duncan said, “Roll me one too.”

  Rob said, “Look, if you really think Kayla’s involved, shouldn’t we alert the authorities?”

  Duncan shuddered and kicked at a blowdown. “I think we need to speak to Anthony first. This would pop everything wide open. Reporters would be tracking down Rusalka in Russia. They would dig into Mom’s little confession at a party. They would dig into Vincent and our bomb shelter. There would be stories about Anthony’s biological father and Kathryn and Geneva ditching us. It would all come out! This is what we call ‘a public relations disaster.’ ”

  On the promontory, they scanned the horizon for any sign of Anthony’s boat. “When do you think he’ll make it in?” Duncan asked.

  “Probably late tomorrow,” Rob said. “Last I heard, he was off Portland Light.”

  The wind kicked up a shower of spray off the rocks, which they each quickly wiped from their faces.

  “Are you planning to sleep at the cottage,” Duncan asked, “or at your own place?”

  “I don’t know,” Rob said.

  “Sleep at the cottage, man,” Duncan said.

  Anthony sailed into the cove at dusk the next day. The Wangerts ran out onto the porch. The last hues of sunset rouged his mainsail. Blood red. Anthony hove to and dropped a stern anchor.

  Mary watched her two younger sons race down to welcome their oldest brother. She tried to summon a bit of enthusiasm. Her wherewithal had been badly depleted from a long day of being dragged around by Rob and Duncan to examine proposed interment sites and touring Rob’s garden projects to study the types of landscaping and approach paths he could build. It was all extremely serious and businesslike, and several times Mary thanked her muteness for preventing her from screaming and dropping Ward’s ashes off the town dock.

  The Wangert brothers clattered up to the house and into the parlor, where Mary awaited them, polishing the martini shaker. Windswept and invigorated, still wearing his lifejacket, Anthony marched in, and forcing a bit of leader-of-the-pack-now intensity, kissed his mother. He said, “You won’t believe who showed up at the marina in Washington …. We spent a few hours together and actually had an okay time.”

  “Probably trying to sneak back into Mom’s life,” Rob interjected.

  Duncan said, “Don’t bother with him, Mom. You’ll have lots of suitors. Seventy is the new fifty. You’ll have no problem finding another man.”

  Mary finally broke her silence with a sudden harangue worthy of her father. She snapped, “I don’t want another man, you fool! Who do you think I am? When my husband dies, I’m supposed to give my time to my grandchildren. There are supposed to be grandchildren! But I don’t have any. Three grown sons, and no grandchildren. What’s the matter with you all? Why are your lives so sterile? I can’t even call you a generation of vipers. All that you three have accomplished is pot-addled, cyber-addicted, scoop-chasing sterility! Whereas this man … this man ….”

  Pointing at Ward’s martini shaker, she broke off in tears.

  “Knew how to mix a good cocktail,” Duncan observed.

  Nobody responded. An epiphanic silence bloomed. This was their first gathering in a long time. Due to the bombing, they might be stuck together in the cottage for weeks. The three brothers eyed one another curiously. It was more than just an acknowledgment that Mary was not herself. They recognized that their old jokes were not going to be jokes anymore, that togetherness would require a different way of being and interacting among themselves, with their mother and Ruby, with their past and future, with the earth and the dark ocean and the glowering stars.

  * * *

  Ian Woollen was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. Shipped off
to boarding school at age fourteen, he eventually graduated from Yale University and Christian Theological Seminary. A checkered job history includes house painter, furniture stripper, script reader, psychotherapist. His first novel, Stakeout on Millennium Drive, won the 2006 Best Book of Indiana Fiction Award. His short fiction has surfaced in a variety of journals, including The Massachusetts Review, Juked, decomP, The Smokelong Quarterly, and The Mid-American Review, from which he received a Sherwood Anderson Prize.

  You can find Ian online at woollen.coffeetownpress.com.