Shadows

by Peter J Manos

  As they took down the tent and packed their things, they made no reference to the night before, at least not initially. As well as they could, they hid their belongings, which they would carry to the car when their reconnoitering was over, but there wasn’t much reconnoitering to be done. Only now did they realize that this, being the visitor’s entrance, and hence the fancy signs, was not the base entrance that most people would use, which was on Bomber Avenue further south, indicated by a modest green highway sign.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Karen. “It’s better here with the big signs and anyway we’re going to let people know where to go.”

  On the way back to town, Will asked, “Did you dream up that camping idea so we could be alone?”

  “Would you think I was a slut if I did?”

  “You can’t be a slut if you’re a virgin. And anyway don’t you think it’s unfair to have a word like that for a woman who likes it, but not for a man, unless you think the word satyr is the same, which it isn’t.”

  “I think I’ll leave the question unanswered, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Karen, I haven’t done much camping in my life but overnight it’s become my favorite outdoor activity.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be able to go camping again. It was tricky to make the arrangements. If my parents ever find out about this they’ll have seizures, at least my father would. I keep saying that, don’t I?”

  Will wondered what had changed her from prudish to passionate and whether it was possible she was only interested in his body, the thought striking him instantly as so ludicrous he had to laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “I think I’m just happy,” said Will.

  “I am, too.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chubby, energetic, Marvin Martin, a quirky but talented producer of documentaries, spent hours on the internet fishing for hints of much larger stories, which swam around under the surface like marlins. Marvin’s marlins he liked to say.

  Finding such hints, he might go so far as to fly out to the location and start doing what he was good at, interviewing people, to see if there really was a marlin of a tale to be told. His soft-spoken, even a little awkward at times, style was disarming. Indeed, many saw him as a sad sack, inept, and clumsy, though these characteristics tended to put at ease those he interviewed.

  He could, indeed, uncover important stories and make popular and well-reviewed documentaries, but despite this he always needed reassurance and encouragement that what he did was good.

  This was his sister Sarah’s role. She felt protective of him because, despite his success, he was delicate, vulnerable.

  He repeatedly asked, “Let me list you as a co-producer.” But she always refused.

  “Any kind of notoriety at all would screw up my life,” she’d tell him. “Don’t ask me again. The answer is no. This is your show, okay? We’ve been through this before.”

  Despite his sensitivity to criticism, he pursued controversial stories, which insured that he would be criticized.

  He’d found an article in a little North Dakota newspaper that peaked his interest. A small group calling itself The Committee for a Sound Nuclear Deterrence was actually attacked by two young men on a downtown street in Minot, North Dakota.

  A separate article described a bomb attack at the home of Edna O’Hare, a seventy-eight-year-old woman, the head of the organization.

  Minot was also the site of the air force base from which a box of grenades had disappeared.

  All together this didn’t suggest any particular story but was certainly interesting. About the GBSD he knew nothing, but the replacement of all the Minuteman missiles was going to cost a lot of money and these people were saying it was unnecessary.

  So he made a reservation to fly out to Minot.

  Shortly after booking into the Grand Hotel with his crew, he called local reporter Amy Haugen, who was initially suspicious, until she googled his name, which she did as she spoke with him.

  He wanted to interview as many people as he could.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Edna had become fearful of participating in public demonstrations, not simply for her safety, but also for the safety of those around her, especially for the safety of those around her.

  She was the red-haired witch drawing the ire of unknown assailants, or in the case of those two boys, of known assailants.

  But she was comfortable meeting with Rasmussen, Karen, and Will, to discuss tactics.

  Marvin Martin found her easily and she agreed to speak with him, with the proviso that he leave his film crew outside in the van until she decided whether or not she would allow herself to be filmed.

  She was gratified that Andy Rasmussen, Karen, and Will wanted to be present to hear his presentation.

  After introductions were made, they sat in the living room, Edna serving coffee, naturally, but there were no cookies.

  “So what I have in mind,” said Martin, “is an investigative documentary about the GBSD controversy and the people involved.

  “If it were just heated arguments among the citizens of Minot about the missiles it would be a dramatic enough story, but someone actually threw a hand grenade at this house. That makes for real drama.

  “I plan to get both sides of the story, I mean, to interview as many people as I can who want the Minuteman replaced and as many as I can who don’t want it replaced.”

  Martin fumbled with a pen and pad he was holding on his lap, which he moved from hand to hand until the pen dropped. He put pen and pad on the coffee table.

  “Frankly, Mrs. O’Hare, as I see it, the story revolves around you.”

  He took sips of coffee, his hand mildly tremulous, the cup rattling on the saucer before it was safely back in place, but not before he’d spilled a few drops on the table, which he quickly dabbed with his napkin.

  “Of course, if you don’t wish to participate, you’ll still be an important part of the story, maybe still the focal point, though there’d be no interview of you in the film.”

  He dabbed his lips with the napkin, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and picked up the pen and pad again.

  “I’d like to assure you that I would do my best to respect your time and your privacy, but I might have to come back from time to time to ask more questions.”

  “And all of that goes for Dr. Rasmussen, Ms. Haugen, and Mr. Larrabee.

  Rasmussen spoke. “What if we changed our minds about having our interviews included after they’d been filmed? Perhaps because they were edited in way that put us in a bad light.”

  “I can show you the interview immediately after it’s videotaped. You could veto it then or have it redone, but once it’s in the complete documentary, you couldn’t take it out because that would affect the entire narrative.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Now settled in at the Grand Hotel with Olga, his videographer, and Benson, his sound and lighting man, Martin began to make phone calls, finding people surprisingly willing to talk with him, both those for and those against the replacement of the Minuteman.

  With a list of interviewees-to-be in his pocket or, more precisely, in his moleskin pocket notebook, Martin filled in his filming calendar. Edna O’Hare was first, of course. He asked her a few preliminary questions about who she was, how long she’d lived here, and how long she’d been interested in missiles.

  “How long I’ve been interested in missiles? Since I was a sophomore in college. A couple of things happened that year. We had the Cuban missile crisis, and I met my husband-to-be, James Hashimoto, who was born in Hiroshima.”

  “Your husband was born in Hiroshima?” said Martin. “My goodness. That explains a lot doesn’t it.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You kept your maiden name? Why?”

  “Mr. Martin, you’re a little behind the times. Many women prefer to keep the names they’ve grown up with.”

  “You’re right. Tell us more about yo
ur husband.”

  “He was two years old when the bomb went off. The family lived just outside of town on a small farm. Their house was damaged, but the family survived. After the war they moved to Los Angeles where James’s father had a brother who’d been interned during the war but had managed to keep ownership of his small strawberry farm. James and I met at the University of California, Davis.”

  On wooden chairs on the front porch, they sat facing each other, a dish-sized area of fresh, unpainted wood between them.

  Martin only asked a few more questions before jumping into the topic that would interest the most viewers.

  “So someone is so upset with you about your protest that they bombed your house.”

  “It appears so, yes.”

  She had been instructed to ignore the videographer and sound man, but though they tiptoed around her, she couldn’t ignore them, and they added to her anxiety. The publicity was good, but the very idea that she might be viewed by thousands of people was an idea she tried unsuccessfully to squelch.

  Martin pointed to the spot between them.

  “And that’s where the bomb went off?”

  “It was a grenade.”

  “A grenade?”

  “Yes, from the air force base.”

  “From the air force base?”

  His tone was that of feigned disbelief. Would he ask a question each time she asked the previous question? He was managing to draw her attention toward him and away from his assistants.

  After a pause that a later reviewer of the documentary would dub “pregnant,” Martin asked, “It would be truly shocking if someone from the air force had done this, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m not saying anything like that, only that the grenade was from the base.”

  “Hmm. Well let’s get back to your husband. He was two years old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Did this affect him, I mean physically?”

  Edna nodded. “He’d been vaccinated but came down with covid anyway.

  “The doctor had wondered if anyone had ever been concerned that his immune system was underperforming. In fact, since childhood, when he caught a cold, it was always a little bit nastier and longer-lived than expected. We both wondered if radiation exposure in childhood had a lingering effect. Who knows?”

  “I see.”

  Martin paused, then picked up the thread. “Review for us your arguments against these missiles.”

  “Before I do that,” she said, “I’d like to show you some pictures of what Little Boy did.”

  “Pardon me,” said Martin.

  “Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb.”

  From a short stack on the floor next to her chair, she picked up a green folder, removing a black and white photograph from a magazine and displaying it to the videographer.

  “This is the shadow of a person with a cane sitting on the steps of the Sumitomo bank. He or she was vaporized by the heat of the blast. Nuclear bombs are not like ordinary bombs. They don’t just cause a blast. In Hiroshima anyone within sixteen hundred feet of the explosion was vaporized in an instant.

  “Here is the shadow image of a child jumping rope. Speaking of children, almost all of them under ten years old developed thyroid injury from radioactive iodine leading to physical deformities and mental impairment. Some responded to thyroid hormone treatment.

  “And here’s one that’s particularly hard to look at, a seven-year-old girl with third degree burns on half her face and neck.

  “I’m talking about the Hiroshima bombing before talking about the GBSD because I want people to know that nuclear weapons are not ordinary bombs, as I’ve said. They do not just blow away buildings. The burn and irradiate people. They cause generations to suffer from excess cancers and birth defects. Firestorms would cloak the atmosphere with soot blocking out much of the sun’s light. We’d have a nuclear winter so that crops would fail and there’d be mass starvation. A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would lead to the end of civilization.

  “If we can reduce the risk of an accidental war, we must. That’s where ground-based missiles come in…”

  With his office mates’ permission, Dr. Andrew Rasmussen allowed Marvin Martin and his two person crew to film him in an examining room, though the videographer had to station herself in the doorway, and the sound man outside the office, having provided Rasmussen with a lavalier microphone.

  Rasmussen sat in his chair by the small desk, Martin in the chair next to the desk, ordinarily the patient’s chair.

  Martin introduced the doctor, described his participation in Edna O’Hare’s protest and his high standing in the community with the consequence that his opinions would more likely be respected, or at least considered, than would those of an ordinary citizen.

  “How did you become involved in this protest?” asked Martin.

  “Mrs. O’Hare convinced me that—and it’s no exaggeration to say this—land-based missiles threaten humanity. There is no plausible medical response after a nuclear war so it’s a public health question, a question of prevention. I couldn’t live with myself ignoring what is staring us in the face—concretely here in Minot.”

  “And do other doctors feel the way you do?

  “Some, yes. And I’m glad you asked because there is a national organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is concerned, in addition to global warming and economic inequality, with nuclear disarmament. The board of directors asked me if I’d be interested in establishing a North Dakota chapter. I think I’m going to do it but I must say my main focus will not be on nuclear disarmament, but on stopping the replacement of the Minuteman with the GBSD.”

  “I learned,” said Martin, “that Mrs. O’Hare’s protest must have angered someone so much that they bombed her house. Has anything like that happened to you? Have you been threatened?”

  The videographer, it would later be noted, had not simply set up her camera on its tripod and let it run. She’d paid close attention to Rasmussen’s face. When Martin asked if Rasmussen had ever been threatened, she zoomed in, as Rasmussen frowned and then smiled weakly. A full ten seconds passed before he spoke.

  “My truck has not been vandalized. My house has not been bombed, but, yes, I have been threatened. I was told I would be hurt if I continued speaking against the GBSD. I’m sure it would interest the viewers of this interview to know what I was threatened with, but I can’t tell you.”

  “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “I knew the person who threatened me and was able to do something about it. I just can’t say anything more.”

  Initially reluctant to be filmed by Martin, Earnest Schmidt eventually convinced himself that someone had to counter Edna’s blathering. And now here he was. A woman with an industrial-sized camera and a man with a light reflector wandered around his living room before suggesting where the interviewer and interviewee should sit.

  “Mrs. O’Hare is your sister-in-law, is that correct?”

  “Yes, she is,” said Schmidt with evident distaste.

  “What do you think of her?”

  “I thought we were going to be talking about the missiles. What I think of Mrs. O’Hare is not relevant.”

  “Oh, but it is. Didn’t you pay a local therapist, Ted Swenson, if I’m correct, to write a piece suggesting that Mrs. O’Hare might be dangerous.”

  “I don’t know where you’re getting your information. The only theoretical danger she presents is if people believe her and I assure you that the people of Minot do not believe her. The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent will not only continue to protect us, it will bring jobs and business to this city. I’m a proud member of the chamber of commerce, which is fully supportive of the replacement plan.”

  “What do you think of her argument that because it is on hair-trigger alert a Minuteman missile might be fired by mistake?”

  “The air force doesn’t make mistakes.”

  Schmidt’s naïveté, simple ignorance, or conscious dissembling
—everyone makes mistakes, and this was Schmidt’s—irked Martin, so that he now departed from his usual one-question-after-the-other style to read from a long list of mistakes the air force has made, including the loss of atomic and hydrogen bombs over Spain and the explosion of a Titan missile in Damascus, Arkansas.

  “It was topped with a nine megaton hydrogen bomb. If that had exploded—.”

  “These things happened a long time ago,” said Schmidt, recognizing his error. “Technology has much improved. This town trusts the airmen of the Minot Air Force Base. It’s an award-winning operation.”

  “It is indeed an award-winning operation, a fine operation. We all support the men and women in uniform, but they are only human.”

  “It seems to me that you’ve picked a side in this fight, Edna’s side. I want that to be clear to anyone watching this. And I want to repeat that the people of Minot look forward to the installation of the GBSD.”

  Martin decided not to mention Edna O’Hare’s other arguments against the GBSD, but rather to ask Schmidt about the attempts to intimidate, or even kill her.

  “Do you have any idea about who might have thrown a bomb at Mrs. O’Hare’s house?”

  “There are lunatics in any city,” said Schmidt. “I’m sure our police department will find these evil people.”

  Shortly thereafter, Martin thanked Schmidt and left Schmidt’s home.

  Martin had concluded that there was no point confronting him with the latest mistake, the near launching of four hundred fifty missiles because a radar signal bouncing off the moon was interpreted as a full-scale Russian attack on the United States.

  Because word was out that Martin’s documentary might shine a positive light on Edna O’Hare and her arguments against not only the GBSD but against the Minuteman as well, Colonel Nichols reluctantly agreed to be interviewed.

  “She means no harm, of course, but appears to ignore counter arguments.”