by Amy Brashear
51 DC. Ronnie Raymond is a high school student and Martin Stein is a Nobel Prize–winning physicist; an accident fused them together. Their first appearance was in Firestorm: Nuclear Man #1, March 1978.
52 Marvel. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created mutants who were born that way.
53 DC Comics, founded in 1934 by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.
54 Marvel Comics, founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman.
55 The smooth-talking friend of Han Solo played by Billy Dee Williams, the one black character in all three films.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We shouldn’t have been so excited to see Astrid Ogilvie die. But we were. Beyond excited, I’d say. It made the hassle of coming to the fairgrounds and sitting through take after take so much more bearable. It had only been a couple of days, and still I knew I never wanted to be an actress—even if it meant being a world-famous millionaire.
I found her sitting on a cloth chair with her name on it. It was facing away from the action. She was reading a copy of Vogue. It was as thick as a telephone book. I tapped her on the shoulder.
“Astrid, I hear you’re dying today,” I said.
“Why, yes, I am,” she said, smacking her lips and not looking up.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“It is, isn’t it?” she chirped.
“Have a nice death.”
“Thanks, love. You too. Now, piss off.”
The fire department was there in case it got out of hand.
It got so real so fast. Astrid’s stunt double got injured in a trial run, which meant that the scene had to be cut, but that wouldn’t do for Mr. Edman. He had his heart set on killing Astrid Ogilvie—I mean Martha Wells. He wanted everything as realistic as possible.
“I’m not afraid,” Astrid said over and over to the director.
The producers were not going to be happy. All the ways it could go wrong. Her suit failing and her dying was another. But it was decided. Astrid Ogilvie would be set on fire.
“You’re insane,” Freddy said as we watched her get fitted into her fire-resistant suit.
“I know, but I’m kind of being bamboozled into it,” she said.
“You can say no,” I told her.
“Unlikely.”
Dylan was going to do two shots. One with her in her regular clothes and then in the fire-resistant suit, which was, as the suit was ironically named, set on fire. In production they’d mesh them together—or so they said.
Astrid was going to die, all right.
She was looking at herself in one of those handheld mirrors, practicing her lines. She must have been a reincarnated silent movie actress because all her facial expressions and gestures with her hands were so overexaggerated.
“Stare much?” she asked, catching me looking at her.
I looked away.
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha,” Astrid said, holding her abdomen.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She buzzed her lips and then scrunched her face up tight.
“If you make a face like that, it’ll stay that way,” I said.
“Unlikely,” she said.
“I warned you.”
“As I was in Arkansas I saw a saw that could saw any saw I ever saw saw. If you happen to be in Arkansas and see a saw that can out-saw the saw I saw saw I’d like to see the saw you saw saw,” she repeated, looking into her handheld mirror.
“We all do this,” Owen said as he walked up to me. “It helps us say the words in the script better.”
“It’s a little disturbing,” I told him.
He just smiled.
Astrid walked away, still looking in her handheld mirror. “You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.”
It was downright cold. We were pretending that it was June even though in reality it was November turning into December. That was the thing with Arkansas weather; it had two settings: hellfire and hypothermia. The saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”—well, it was true. We had been known to go through all four seasons in one day.
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” Mayor Hershott said, walking up beside me. “Laura, how are you?”
“I’m good,” I said.
He was dressed in a tweed jacket, tweed vest, tweed pants, tweed bow tie, and glasses, and his hair was combed to the side. I guessed tweed was popular in 1954.
“Betty bought a bit of butter, but she found the butter bitter, so Betty bought a bit of better butter to make the bitter butter better,” said Mayor Hershott.
“Astrid was talking weird too—”
“Vocal exercises,” he said. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?”
The director was standing next to the cinematographer, and they were arguing. The director would yell, and then the cinematographer would yell, and then the director would stomp his foot, and then the cinematographer would stomp his foot. The cinematographer walked away cursing and raising his arms in frustration, leaving the director biting his fingernails.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Everyone seems tense.”
“Well, they are—the explosives aren’t here yet, and the big blast is next Thursday,” Tyson said, walking up beside me.
“There’s actually going to be a bomb going off?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “A big one.”
“Is that smart?” I asked.
“What could go wrong?”
“Are you asking? Because a lot,” I said.
He walked away, pulling his sunglasses down from the top of his head.
“The light is great. We need to get going,” yelled the guy with a clipboard.
The director threw his arms in the air and decided it would do.
That was encouragement.
The set safety people were talking to Astrid. I was hoping they were talking some sense into her, but sadly no. She wanted to do this. Even though her stunt double was being treated with likely third-degree burns.
“Okay, quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director said.
“Action!” The guy who held the clapperboard closed it with a clap.
“NO! STOP,” the director yelled. Everyone froze. “She’s got red lipstick on her teeth. FIX!”
Kitty came running with a tissue, and rubbed and rubbed Astrid’s two front teeth. Kitty reapplied the lipstick and made her smile.
“Okay, Quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director yelled again.
“This is going to be the best thing since sliced bread,” Kitty whispered.
“Astrid’s going to kick the bucket right before our eyes,” Raymond said in a whisper.
I looked over to Freddy and Owen. They too were excited to watch fire engulf Astrid. It was Christmas morning for these people.
“And action!”
It’s a calm and sunny Monday morning. The Wells family goes to the festivities for Operation Alert. Martha stands toward the back with her mother, father, and brother Willie. Mayor Forte informs the crowd of the public service announcement set forth by Civil Defense.
“The Reds will not let Pikesville live,” says Mayor Forte. “You are instructed to go to your local shelters until the formidable threat has concluded.”
Martha grabs Willie’s hand as the sirens sound an air raid alert. The citizens of Pikesville talk and laugh as they slowly move to their designated fallout locations . . . paying no attention to the sleek missiles rising over the town of Pikesville.
At first, people think: airplanes dropping leaflets—This Is A Bomb!—a good old-fashioned propaganda technique to scare them.
Flash, Heat, and a Deafeni
ng Boom, and a Blast Wave that knocks people off their feet.
The sudden and overwhelming force sweeps down Main Street. People run. But there’s no time to hide.
In the end, Willie is stronger. He dashes ahead. Martha loses his hand and becomes one of the many engulfed bodies turned to black char. But the mushroom cloud in the sky is an indication—fallout is coming.
Eve of Destruction, Book, page 9.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I awoke to light suffusing my room. As it faded, the ceiling fan slowly came to a stop. I squinted in the sudden darkness. It was quiet. My alarm clock was blank, not even blinking the dreaded 12:00. The dryer was off. Mom always did a load right before bed; I usually heard it rumbling if I woke up. The telltale sound of white noise or buzz of some sort of electronic appliance. Kind of comforting. Now nothing. The power did a fast whoop before shutting off.
My heart leapt. It had to be an EMP.56 Right? Which only meant I was awake for the apocalypse.
They, as in the people who were in charge of doing the unthinkable, said once you see the flash, you have less than thirty seconds before the blast. Flash. Blast. Boom. I lay there in my bed with the covers up to my chin, waiting for the blast, boom, since apparently I had already had the flash.
But did I really want to be here in bed when the end of the world happened?
My first stop was the living room and then the kitchen. No lights on the VCR and no humming of the fridge. I tried a light switch in the dining room to be sure, but nothing. I even opened the fridge to see if the light was on—it wasn’t. It was still cold, so I quickly shut it. We would need the food before the radiation came. Looking out the window, I saw nothing. The streetlamps that usually kept our cul-de-sac lit were out. It wasn’t just our house.
They said that a bomb fifty miles away sounded like a giant door slamming the depths of hell.
I peeked in to Dennis and Mom’s room, but they were asleep. Mom and Dennis asleep. Mom sprawled out all over the bed, leaving poor Dennis with a square inch of his own. Did they feel it?
We could have had the flash, but then it was too far away to see the blast. Even so, when was the fallout going to hit us?
Terrence’s room was down the hall from mine. I could hear the snoring from outside the door. I cracked it open just to make sure. If he was awake, we could experience the blast and boom together. But he was asleep. I went to close the door, grabbing the knob, but ended up stubbing my toe on the doorframe (Stubbing your toe. It hurts like an atomic bomb went off in your foot and you have no one to blame but yourself) and yelped, waking up Terrence. “What are you doing?” he asked, half asleep.
“I saw a flash of light and all the power went off,” I said.
“What?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m waiting for the blast.”
“What?” he asked again. “Did we just get hit?”
“I thought I’d be the only one awake for it.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t want to be alone,” I said.
“Laura—” he started, but I closed the door before he could say anything.
I went back to my room but not before closing all the curtains in the house (close the curtains, stay away from the windows, and do not look toward the light) including in my room. My bed was by the window, so instead of getting back in bed, I made a makeshift one in my closet, and I might have hummed the entire Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire”57 to myself.
A little while later, there was a knock on my closet door.
“You want company?” Terrence asked.
He brought his pillow and comforter. He sat opposite me.
“I’m afraid of going to sleep and not waking up. I’m afraid that there won’t be a tomorrow. That sounds really corny. Like something Scarlett O’Hara would say—I won’t go hungry again, because I’ll eat those radioactive radishes,” I said to him.
He laughed. “Frankly, Laura, I don’t give a damn.”
“You had to,” I said.
“Sorry, but yeah, I had to.”
I kicked at his leg and he kicked at mine.
For the rest of the night, or morning, we contemplated whose fault it was—for the nuclear holocaust that would surely come, and for the one that never occurred.
The next morning, they said a transformer had blown, but seriously, I had my doubts.
Maybe that whole fictional life was creeping into my nonfictional life, but I thought we were all going to need psychological counseling after the movie wrapped.
* * *
56 Electromagnetic pulse. Electronic devices will be shut down for a hundred miles in every direction due to the EMP generated by the blast. That includes cars, radios, televisions, clocks—anything, really, that runs on electricity. And they won’t start up ever again.
57 “Ring of Fire” was written by June Carter Cash and Merle Kilgore. It was originally recorded by June’s sister Anita Carter. However, it was most known as a Johnny Cash song that was released in April 1963. It’s a mixture of country and rock and roll.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We stayed late after school so we could be extras in the Operation Tat-Type scene. I, with my fellow castmates, would be getting fake tattoos under my arms.
Makeup and hair were done on the stage, and wardrobe was in the gym locker rooms. The gym was where the scene was supposed to take place, but the acoustics were pretty bad (thank you, Kathy’s dad, who donated the gym’s sound system. His name, Peter Baker, was on a plaque that hung over the light switch next to the fire exit doors, but he forgot that insulation was important to soundproofing), so a location change was in order. We moved the whole operation to the cafeteria.
Half the crew came in and moved the tables, the food-serving counters, tray cart, fork-and-spoon dispenser, and milk cooler out into the hall, while the other half moved in the cots, hung the white cloth partitions, and moved in tiny chairs for everyone to wait on.
Kitty went “plain” with the makeup. A lot of beige. And Raymond dressed everyone, at least the girls, in white bras and skirts and Keds. All the male extras and talent would be shirtless with slacks. Boys were instructed by many a production assistant not to gawk, and girls were instructed not to giggle.
There was something to say about how a man could be seduced and manipulated by just a quick show of boobs, even if those were protected by a thin layer of fabric—in the case of my choice of brassiere, lace. Personally, I liked more of a rounded cup, but this bra was more pointy—take-out-an-eye pointy.
“Does there need to be a point with boobs like this?” Astrid asked.
“The nipple. They’re the point on a bare breast,” I said.
“Good one, Laura,” she said.
She knew my name.
What were the ’50s like? I only understood the ’50s from the perspective of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.58
“I’m getting sick and tired of Hollywood portraying men as nothing but sexual objects. I know Hollywood does that with women, but that’s different,” said Owen.
“You can’t be serious,” Astrid said. “We’re the eye candy.”
“I wasn’t being serious. I was being ironic.”
“Oh, well, my point still remains,” she said, pulling up her bra strap.
“Point,” Freddy said, laughing.
Astrid mocked them by mimicking them.
There’s something about this decade in movies that has a fascination with women’s boobs. They’re not that special. They hurt when you run. They hurt when you sleep.
In May, I went to the movies with Max. We saw Sixteen Candles.59 When Samantha stared at Caroline while she took a shower, Max was doing the same thing. Revenge of the Nerds60 was even worse.
Two years ago, Max and I went to Little Rock with my mom for a day of shopping at University Mall. We we
nt over to the movie theater. Mom went to see An Officer and a Gentleman61 with a friend, and Max and I were supposed to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial again, but we snuck in to see Fast Times at Ridgemont High,62 starring Sean Penn, the greatest stoner of all time. When it got to the Phoebe Cates scene, Max had to leave the theater for a while.
They never showed a guy’s you-know-what. All you ever saw from a guy was his ass. Thank you, Footloose.63
After the movie, Max was fascinated by Phoebe Cates. I think he was fascinated by Phoebe Cates’s breasts.
“What a wonderfully structured, detailed, and fleshed-out character Linda Barrett is. She has such a huge screen presence. The actress really is a true find. God bless you, Cameron Crowe,” he said, waiting for my mom in the theater lobby.
“I think you mean the structure, details, and flesh of her boobs?” I said.
“Prude,” he said.
“I’m not a prude,” I said.
A lot of parents did not want their children to participate as extras in this scene. Sure, they had no problem with them participating in the death blast. Priorities. Permission slips were sent home, and only the ones who had it signed were allowed to be filmed. Max’s mom did not agree, so he went home after school. Dana and Kathy were here but decided against it when they were ordered to remove their shirts. Terrence was here, and so were Kevin and Rodney. When a man walked in with a clipboard, checking off his to-do list, he took one look at Rodney and dropped his number two yellow pencil to the ground.
“Oh, nononononono,” he said.
That made three.
Isaiah, Derek, Sam, Marcus, and Latitus walked in without their shirts on.
That made eight.
Deidra, Jessica, Andrea, Elise, and Rachel came in wearing nothing but their bras and skirts.
That made thirteen.
Suddenly I could only imagine Mr. Edman’s head exploding. We were in the South, not an all-white region. What was he expecting?