Day of the Bomb

by Steve Stroble

  “Special delivery, Thelma.”

  She turned to see who had tapped on her shoulder. “Oh, Lord have mercy on me! Has something bad happened to Grandpa or Grandma?” She tried to conjure up her visit to their farm in the neighboring state last Christmas.

  “No, ma’am.” He shoved the telegram into her face. “It’s good news. Real good news. Wait til you read it.”

  After she threw the telegram into the air and hugged its deliverer, the factory shook from its workers’ cheers. Those who knew Thelma best crowded around her to join in her tears and laughter. The disruption brought the factory’s owner from his office across the parking lot. Within minutes he was driving Thelma home. A half hour later he was taking her to the train station.

  “You take as much time off as you need to,” Mr. Monroe said. “We’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “Thanks.” Thelma studied the telegram. “You ever been out to San Diego, Mr. Monroe?”

  “No. Not yet. You best check in with the USO once you get there. Explain your situation. They’ll help you out.”

  ***

  While Thelma watched thousands of miles of the Midwest, Great Plains, and Southwest roll by her train window, Jason stared down at the Pacific, an ocean that seemed to last forever as he flew from the Marshall Islands to Johnston Island to Hawaii to San Diego. When his feet hit the tarmac in California, he fell to his hands and knees and kissed the hot concrete. He laughed at Thelma as she scanned the disembarking passengers.

  “Thelma! Over here! Here I am!”

  She spun around and gawked at the scarecrow of a man who held out his arms toward her. “Jason? Is that really you? There’s not much left.”

  “In the flesh.” He grabbed her. Lifting her off of her feet had been effortless as he had boarded the troop train in 1942 but now a hug sufficed. He stepped back. “How do I look? The docs said I put on five whole pounds the two days I was in the hospital. Once I get on back home to Mom’s and your home cooking I’ll fill back out in no time. I can hardly wait.” He licked his lips.

  Thelma hugged him again and lifted. “Jason, what happened? You’re so light I think I just pulled your feet up off of the ground.”

  “You swept me off my feet, honey pie. Let’s go get hitched.”

  But getting married on the spur of the moment in California proved impossible. Such unions might be available across the border in Nevada or Mexico, but not the golden state. Informed of the couple’s frustration, an army captain that commanded the office that was processing Jason from life as an E-3 PFC to a civilian came to their rescue. “I know Mexico is just a stone’s throw that way.” He pointed southward. “But Nevada’s a better place to spend your honeymoon in. As luck would have it, there’s a clerk here due for a three-day pass that hits Las Vegas every chance he gets. I’ll have him give you a ride there and back here. By the time you get back, we’ll have all the paperwork ready with all of your back pay and you can catch the train back home. Unless…”

  Jason gulped. Go ahead and let the other shoe drop.

  His steel gray eyes bore into Jason’s soul. “Unless you decide you want to take a burst of six.”

  “What’s a burst of six?” Thelma’s eyes rotated from captain to fiancé.

  “Re-up for six years? I don’t know, sir. I’m tired of war. It just sort of wears you out. If you live long enough to get through it that is.”

  “Son, now that we put the Krauts and Japs back in their place all we got to worry about are the Russians. But President Truman won’t take any gruff from them no matter what Stalin says. I guarantee you that much for certain. Besides, where else can you put in twenty years and retire with a pension? How old are you, boy?”

  “Twenty three, sir.”

  “How many years have you been in so far?”

  “Four and a half, counting my time on Monkey Island.”

  “You see what I mean? You only need fifteen and half more years and you could retire at thirty-eight. Maybe get yourself a government job or buy a farm and work some more until your Social Security kicks in. Then you put up your sign that says, Gone Fishing. How about it?”

  Jason cocked his head and pursed his lips. Thelma cleared her throat, elbowed him, and whispered, “No.”

  “Tell you what. Talk it over with your pretty wife on your honeymoon. Let me know what you decide once you get back. You need some dough for it?”

  “Yes, sir. I haven’t had any paydays for almost a year now. I don’t know how much Thelma’s has left after her train ride way out here.”

  The captain pulled out his wallet and counted out its contents, which he shoved into Jason’s hands. “You can pay me back when you get the back pay you’re owed.”

  ***

  “Boy am I glad you two showed up when you did. You were just in time.” Corporal Lance Ivers pretended the steering wheel of his 1939 Oldsmobile was a pair of bongo drums. He tapped out a beat in time with the big band’s song blasting through the car’s lone speaker. “I was getting a case of cabin fever number nine back there at the base. Forget California.” He started to sing. “Las Vegas here I come. Right back where I started from. Turn on your neon signs. Nevada here I come.”

  At McDonalds Famous Barbeque in San Bernardino, Lance ordered three burgers, fries, and sodas to go. “We can eat on the run. I don’t know why they bother selling that barbeque. Their burgers are the best there are.”

  He pulled onto Route 66 and headed north to Barstow. After tossing the remnants of his lunch out the window, Lance continued singing along with every tune he could find as he turned the radio’s dial. In Barstow, he topped off the fuel tank and bought six more sodas. He smacked his lips as he finished the first and tossed the bottle over the car’s top and onto the sand next to the road’s shoulder. “I can’t drink beer because it makes me too sleepy. But that doesn’t mean we can’t sing that famous tune loved by sailors and soldiers everywhere, Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” He elbowed Thelma in her ribs.

  With the temperature at 109 degrees and body odors of the two next to her combining to make her carsick, Thelma climbed over the front seat and sought refuge in a nap on the back seat. She listened as the duo in front sang, sometimes sharing the lead vocals, sometimes harmonizing, but usually off key. The swaying motion of the car and monotonous lyrics first hypnotized her and then began to lull her to sleep:

  Eighty-eight bottles of beer on the wall

  Eighty-eight bottles of beer

  Drank one down

  Passed it around

  Eighty-seven bottles of beer on the wall...

  She drifted off to sleep at bottle number eighty-six. After the song ended, Lance turned to weightier subjects, such as life as a civilian. “I heard the captain giving you his spiel about signing up for six more years.”

  “Yeah. What gives with him anyway?”

  “Who knows for sure? Sometimes I think they give out promotions to officers and NCOs who can talk you into re-enlisting. Not me, Uncle Sam. My time is up in 102 days and it’s good-by Army Air Force and hello world. Lance Ivers is back in town.”

  “So where are you headed when you get out?”

  “Back home of course. But just for a visit. My mom’s been hounding me pretty regular like about spending Thanksgiving and Christmas back there.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Upstate Michigan. Right about where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet at. That’s what I love about Route 66. You hop on it in Los Angles and it’s a straight shot all the way to Chicago. Only four maybe five more hours once I hit Chicago and I’m home sweet home. But when I stay for just a while it’s going to make Mom cry or mad or both at once.”

  “You sure your captain didn’t talk you into re-upping? That guy is so good he ought to sell used cars.”

  “Nah. I’ll be coming on back out here to Los Angeles in my civvies after I spend the holidays at home. I’ve never seen a place growing so fast. Every time I drive through it they got another subdiv
ision of houses going up. And the women! Mama mia. Every good-looking gal seems to end up in Hollywood wanting to be the next Betty Grable or Lauren Bacall. Of course most of them won’t give me the time of day when they find out I’m not in the movie business. But I’m thinking of becoming a hotshot agent. You know, the guy who gets those babes signed up with a big juicy contract at some movie studio, with a nice slice of it going to yours truly. God gave me the gift of gab. It would be a sin for me not to use it, right?”

  “Whatever you say, chief.” Jason used an opener to pry off the top from a soda bottle.

  “You’re religious, huh? I can tell.”

  “Well, I always went to church if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yeah. I knew it all along. Every other couple I drove to Nevada to get hitched were always in the back seat practicing for their honeymoon. You and Thelma aren’t like that at all. Sort of nice to see folks like you two. Here’s to you.” He lifted his second bottle in a toast and then bit the cap off.

  At Needles they turned north again. By the time they reached Laughlin, Nevada, all three needed a bathroom break. Thelma also needed a break from the insanity that two short timers with little time left in uniform can produce. She pulled Jason aside outside of the restrooms. “Let’s get off here.”

  “But I thought that you wanted to see Las Vegas.”

  “Maybe some other time. That long drive through the desert wore me out. That and all the crazy talk and songs you two kept on singing. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall? You’re like a couple of crazy high school boys all liquored up and you haven’t even been drinking. I’m scared of what will probably happen if you’re anywhere near him in Las Vegas. One or both of you will end up in jail for sure. Then we won’t get back home for the wedding reception that our moms got all planned out for next Saturday. They’re already plenty upset that we didn’t want to wait to get married in Madisin.”

  Jason scratched his chin, a habit he had learned from Kong. If stopping off here made her happy, why not? His dad had always said, “Anytime you can please a woman, go for broke.” So he walked over to their driver to explain the change in plans. “Is there any chapel here in town? Thelma’s not too up on going all the way on to Las Vegas.”

  “Sure is. Hop in and I’ll take you there in a jiffy.”

  The ceremony took twenty minutes, fifteen of which were spent waiting for another couple to act as witnesses to Thelma and Jason vowing to sail life’s seas “in sickness and health, for richer or poorer till death do us part.” The newlyweds then graciously served as witnesses for the ones who married after they did.

  Attached to the back of the wedding chapel was a small house, home to Rev. and Mrs. Quantrum. A small sign at the chapel’s front door told customers to ring the doorbell below it. Doing so set off a loud buzzer in the house and brought one of the two to usher the couple into the pews. So far, Rev. Quantrum had married 14,298 couples but business had dropped off since the war ended and the flow of those in uniform migrating through southern California slowed from a flood to a trickle. But there was always some couple eloping, divorcee marrying on the rebound, or other lonely souls in a hurry to tie the knot. The Quantrums closed the chapel for a two-week vacation annually. Otherwise it was open seven day a week, twenty-four hours a day, rain or shine.

  After counting their remaining money, Mr. and Mrs. Dalrumple checked into a cheap motel that came furnished with a radio, fan, and roaches. Thelma screamed at them as she smashed any she spotted. Within five minutes her shoes’ soles were covered with parts of their flattened corpses. After a year spent with monkeys, birds, and rats as his only neighbors, Jason only noticed the remnants of the insects his wife had crushed. Any that moved seemed natural. He was likewise oblivious to her complaints about “our sorry honeymoon.” Her new husband tried to compensate by making love to her three times during their two-day stay in Laughlin. His efforts coincided with Thelma’s cycle so that one of the millions of his sperm produced during those two days penetrated one of her approximately 70,000 eggs that she carried. But it would be a couple of months before her missed periods and morning sickness alerted Thelma to their honeymoon child.

  Just as a good taxi driver should, Corporal Ivers arrived promptly at the wedding chapel after his two days and nights of gambling and carousing in Las Vegas. His downcast features betrayed his empty wallet.

  “You look lower than whale crap,” Jason said as Lance drove south toward Route 66. Unwilling to endure any more short timer fever, Thelma sought refuge in the back seat.

  “You might say that. I went through my whole pay for the month.”

  “What did you play, the slot machines?”

  “Nah. They’re all luck, just like the roulette wheel and craps table. I stick with poker only. Now there’s a game that takes real skill. Yes, sir. Give me three new cards, dealer, and get ready to ante up.”

  “What about blackjack?”

  “Twenty-one? I tried it a couple times but kept right on losing. With poker I come back to the base with a couple hundred bucks sometimes.”

  “Oh. Then I guess you wouldn’t be interested in the Method.”

  “Method? What’s that? What gives? You been holding out on me or what?”

  Jason spent a quarter hour outlining the Professor’s way of winning at blackjack. Lance listened silently until Jason’s retelling of his night of gambling before falling off the troop ship into the Pacific. Then he slammed on the brakes and the tires’ skid marks snaked onto the road’s shoulder as the car shuddered to a stop. He opened the door and began a war dance around the vehicle and its passengers, who stared at each other and him. An imaginary tomahawk cut the air as he hopped from foot to foot and yelled, “Hee hi ho, huh, huh, huh” over and over. When Jason poked his head out the window to say that Thelma was tired of sitting in the 101-degree heat, the fist holding the invisible tomahawk crashed into his skull. It bounced off of the window frame but no blood flowed.

  “Ow. What did you hit me for?”

  “Sorry.” Lance rubbed his hand. “I always do my war dance with my eyes closed and didn’t see your head. Man, it sure is hard. I sprained my hand when I clobbered you.”

  “War dance?”

  “Yeah. My grandma was full-blooded Huron so I’m one-quarter Indian. My dance just declared all-out war on the casinos. You and your Method are going to get me the victory, pale face, because those dealers speak with forked tongues.” He turned to Thelma. “Sorry about the hold up. You think you could drive while Jason and me play some blackjack in the back seat?”

  “Anything to get this heap moving so we at least have some breeze.” Thelma hopped out and slid into the driver’s seat as Jason and Lance moved to the back seat.

  Jason dealt four piles of cards: his, Lance’s and two for phantom players. As the cards dealt face up appeared he explained how to calculate what cards remained in the deck. Six hours and 482 hands later, Lance had the Method memorized.

  Chapter 14

  Agent Bill Sampson, Army Counter-Intelligence Corps, always reviewed past assignments as he traveled to his next one. After starting his career as a flatfoot on the streets of Chicago, he had moved to the fastest growing federal bureaucracy, the Department of the Treasury, which was burdened with enforcing Prohibition throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. He became a legend of sorts, at least among moonshiners, bootleggers, and speakeasy owners as being fair and honest. Every bribe that came his way was rejected with, “I was going to let you off easy but since you think so little of my integrity that you want to buy me off, you leave me no choice but to throw the book at you.”

  Word spread that “whatever you do, don’t ever try to bribe Agent Bill Sampson.” Soon those who made, transported, and sold illegally manufactured alcohol began to ask agents their names. If the response was Bill, their wallets stayed in their pockets.

  When J. Edgar Hoover took the helm of the Bureau of Investigation Sampson began to read newspaper stories of how the new federal bur
eaucracy was taking down gangsters, some one at a time such as John Dillinger, others a whole gang at once, such as Ma Barker and her boys. He transferred and became one of Hoover’s agents. Of the eight presidents that Hoover served, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proved to be the most difficult.

  Perhaps this stemmed from the different worlds that the two came from. Hoover was born into a family that prided work ethic above social status. FDR was raised as a child of privilege. To keep the bloodline pure, he married his distant cousin Eleanor. She did her best to ferret out the unworthy in their midst, labeling Whittaker Chambers with the snub, “he’s not one of us” after Chambers blew the whistle on Americans spying for the USSR, some of whom she considered as “one of us.”

  While Agent Sampson was apolitical, Hoover and President Roosevelt were bureaucrats of Machiavellian proportions. But Hoover thought it only necessary to spy on those he deemed as threats to America, not those whom FDR deemed as threats to his New Deal, so the head of what was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation cared little about using his agents as the president demanded they go after his hit list of enemies. When FDR signed an order to send Japanese Americans to relocation camps in 1942, Hoover protested because almost all of those imprisoned were American citizens. Angry that such American citizens were being interred, Agent Sampson had decided he could be of more service to his country by ferreting out genuine spies working for the Japanese/German/Italian Axis.

  So he had transferred to the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. During the war he had assignments to atomic development centers in Washington state and Tennessee. This was the first he would visit the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. He always left his family at home with only hugs and no explanation for his sudden trips.

  “Daddy’s job makes him travel,” Mrs. Sampson told their children.

  His flight aboard a DC-3 from Washington D.C. to Cincinnati to St. Louis to Oklahoma City to Albuquerque was long and boring but it gave him time to practice his assumed role for this assignment, an exercise he always did to be in character by the time he reported to his destination. He was now Bill Pryzinski, on his way to his new job at Los Alamos. The passenger next to him on the plane perked up at the mention of the laboratory. “Los Alamos? Isn’t that the place where they blew up the first atom bomb?”