“Leukemia. She was thirteen.”
“What’s your mother dying from?”
“I don’t know.”
The patrolman put his hands on his hips and extended his back as if it ached. He put his thumb under the front rim of the helmet, adjusting it. Will wished he knew something about North Dakota’s football teams, so he could make small talk.
“You exceed the speed limit again and you’re going to jail. We can do that. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“I’ve never let anyone get away with driving like that. This is a first. I had a brother who died of brain cancer when he was six. You’d better watch it from here on out and, by the way, if I ever find out you lied to me. Well, let’s just say you’ll regret it.”
He was back on the road again.
His mother wasn’t dying, but his sister had. The mixed story, truth and fiction, just popped out of his jumping jack brain. He still thought of his sister from time to time.
Chapter Nine
Before arriving in Grand Forks, Will’s phone rang, but he ignored it. He knew who it was and didn’t feel up to answering it until he’d had something to eat and gone to the bathroom.
In town he sat on a red stool at the red lunch counter of a 1950s style diner, its floor a checkerboard of large white and black squares. When he agreed to a third cup of coffee, he knew he was dawdling because drinking too much coffee gives one’s bladder more work than it needs, especially if you’re on a road trip. It may not complain now, but it will later. All the kids nowadays were wrapped up with these comic book superheroes with special powers. After watching one of these movies they’d say things like, “My superpower is speed,” or, “My superpower is strength”. Well, if he could have a superpower it would be a bladder with the capacity of an oil tanker. On second thought, just a half gallon would do.
Next to Will sat a big-boned man with dark skin, black hair in a ponytail, in a short-sleeved olive uniform bearing the logo Silverhawk’s Gas and Auto. He wore a beaded necklace.
Waiting for his sandwich, Will turned to the man and asked, “Enjoying the summer?”
Under the right conditions, Will might even strike up a conversation with a tree.
“Yeah, pretty much. How ‘bout you?”
“Yes,” he lied. Might as well avoid forced sympathy. “I’m driving to New York to see my mother.
“Driving all the way from North Dakota to see your mother. You must love her very much.”
“I started in Seattle.”
His eyes grew large.
“That’s some trip. She must be a sweetheart.”
A little later his telephone rang.
“Will, for heaven’s sake, where are you?”
He held the phone away from his ear.
No preamble. No hello, how are you?
“I’m in Grand Forks.”
“Rand orcs! What in God’s name are you talking about?”
She spoke so loudly that the man next to him surely heard every word his sweetheart of a mother was yelling at him. Well, at least the man’s presence would keep Will from flaming into sacrilege and profanity. Funny how he could curse his mother and still do what she asked of him.
Ignoring the question, he said, “I’m on my way.”
“You’re on your way?”
“Yes, Mom, I’m on my way.”
“You’re calling from the plane?”
“I’m driving, Mom. I don’t like to fly.”
The man next to him was engrossed in his coffee, holding the cup in both hands and peering into it as if it were a portal to a parallel world much nicer than this one. A world, perhaps, where mothers and sons enjoyed talking with each other. Oh, yes, and in which there were no atomic bombs.
“Well, please hurry.”
Lowering her voice, she added, “If you don’t get here soon, they’ll…”
Her voice faded to an inaudible whisper before she spoke again.
“Just step on the gas, Will. For your mother.”
He resisted the impulse to ask her how he could be sure it was her. After all, this could be a telephone scam, a talented actress on the other end imitating his mother’s voice perfectly and about to ask him for his credit card number. He wished it were.
“I will but I have to go now.”
“Thank you, darling.”
As Will was paying for his meal the man said, “Long trip. Your car holding up all right?”
Was this clairvoyance or business acumen? Indeed, for the last fifty miles or so Will thought, but was uncertain, that he’d heard his engine complaining, but so faintly as not to spoil anyone’s good time by complaining too loudly. Not spoil anyone’s good time at least until the engine blew up.
Will took the man’s card, which in addition to the name; address; telephone and email numbers, showed a blue circle with eleven red teepees resting around its circumference. Will pointed to it.
“Symbol of the United Sioux Tribes,” said the man.
Will recalled a protest against an oil pipeline and a major oil spill on a wetlands area but thought better than to mention it.
“Thanks for the card, my car may need a little work.”
It needed more than a little work. Will had to check into a motel. Shortly after unpacking, he plopped down on the bed and asked himself aloud, “Do you love your mother, Will? Come on speak up?”
He answered with a mock German accent, “Ve haf vays to make you talk, you know.”
He caught himself about to produce a hackneyed little thespian interlude he didn’t need.
After his car had undergone some needed upkeep, he was back on the road. The speedometer read eighty-two, seven miles per hour over the limit. He slowed down.
He was driving east, away from the sun, but he saw it from time to time in his rear-view mirror, this burning ball of plasma, smashing hydrogen nuclei together to make helium, just like the H-bomb does. Wasn’t there a book Brighter Than A Thousand Suns? You’d go blind looking at one of these explosions.
Thoughts of the sun’s perpetual brightness failed to drive out thoughts of his mother’s periodic darkness. Did he love his mother? Did it matter? What would happen if he didn’t show up, or showed up in a week? The more he thought about this, the angrier he got.
Didn’t that old lady back in Minot need help as well. He pictured her lugging around her pitiful protest sign. And an image of that blonde girl flickered in his thoughts.
He pulled to the side of the road and called his brother, asking him to tell their mother that he was having car trouble, that he was fine, but that he’d be late.
“Why don’t you tell her yourself?” His tone was calm, reasonable. Working in the New York City Department of Finance, which among other things, dealt with taxes, he had practice sounding calm and reasonable.
“I sort of did,” he fibbed.
“We’re going to see if we can have her committed, maybe get ECT.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“She needs help,” said his brother.
“That’s why I’m coming, Tom. I can calm her down. You know that.”
“You can’t even calm yourself down,” he said, his tone still calm and reasonable. “Look, you can calm her down for a day or two, maybe a week, maybe a month. Oh, let’s not get into it, okay?
They were already into it weren’t they?
“Well, I’m still coming,” he said. “Tell her I’m having car trouble.”
“You already said that. I will. Take care of yourself, Will.”
“You, too.”
They used to have fun together until they started wrangling over how best to help their mother.
Why did he want her to know he was having car trouble? To explain being late? Why late? Did he plan to see the sights? The Flood Memorial Obelisk? With global warming and climate change, he’d better see it before it was under water. Not funny.
He turned the car around. He was going back to Minot. That woman needed hel
p. Only once did he ask himself what the hell he was really doing. He didn’t even believe in her crusade.
Chapter Ten
They were in their bedroom packing Lieutenant Joe Calderone’s duffel bag, when Maria Calderone finally hinted at what was bothering her.
“What’s she like?” she asked.
The drive to the missile alert facility, a small complex of buildings surrounded by a wire fence, would take six hours. He’d sleep there tonight, and tomorrow, in a freight elevator, he and Makenna Washington would descend eighty feet to the launch control facility where they’d spend the next twenty-four hours together in close quarters. In the winter, if a heavy snowfall delayed the arrival of the next missile combat crew, the two might be down there together for four or five days in a row.
For a month now, Maria’s husband had already been dressing next to Washington, sleeping in the same bed she had slept in, noting her fragrance. Only a curtain separated the sleeping area from the workspace, though a door had been fitted to the tiny bathroom after women had been admitted to the missile launch crews. Conversation filled long lulls in activity. Missileers had similar educations, back grounds, aspirations and temperaments. That crew members often became friends was not surprising. During the eight-month tour of duty he’d get to know her better than he knew anyone besides his wife.
A month ago, when Maria learned that her husband’s new crew partner was a woman, she’s asked to see a picture of her.
“Cripes, Maria, what is she going to think?”
“Tell her your wife wants to see it.”
He groaned.
“Well, it’s the truth.”
Maria had examined the photo of a fit, attractive, young black woman, smiled weakly, handed back the smart phone, and said, “She looks nice.” The subject had remained dormant, like a hibernating bat. Until today.
Calderone didn’t want it fluttering around the room causing mischief.
“What’s she like? I don’t know… Normal, I guess.”
But had anyone else asked him the question he would not have described Makenna as normal Not that she was abnormal, of course. But she was in some ways exceptional. She could make funny faces and speak in funny voices. Her impersonations of some of the higher-ranking officers at the base were immediately recognizable. But as regards her duty as a launch control officer she was fittingly as serious as expected of anyone charged with the oversight of ten intercontinental ballistic missiles topped with thermonuclear warheads and indeed would probably soon be a better missileer than him. She’d already learned more codes from memory than was necessary and could find the relevant page in a code book or manual in seconds. She never scored less than one hundred per cent on the routinely administered proficiency tests that were uniformly disliked among the missile corps.
He was fond of her but that was all.
“What do you talk about?”
“Work mainly. The weather. Sports. I don’t know. Most of the time we’re busy taking tests, studying, going through drills. There’s not that much time to talk.”
Maria, Joe knew, could quickly develop a corroding acidic jealousy, threatening the bonds of affection unless it were quickly neutralized with a few basic facts gently presented or a humorous remark precisely timed. But now, with little time remaining before he left for duty, he wished simply to avoid discussion.
During his training prior to their move from Vandenberg Air Force Base to Minot Air Force Base, Maria saw her husband glance at the well-proportioned buttocks of a woman in a grocery store whose shorts were so short and clinging that they might as well have been absent. As they transferred groceries from the shopping cart to the trunk of the car, Maria asked, “Did you know that woman?”
“Which woman?”
Maria dropped a shopping bag into the trunk.
“The woman whose butt you were so taken with.”
“That woman with the short-shorts? For crying out loud. I looked at her for maybe a millisecond. I look at a lot of people. I looked at the old lady with the pink cane. I looked at the woman with the baby. Come on. It doesn’t mean anything.”
On the ride home, Maria became increasingly caustic, accusing Joe of having a wandering eye and lust in his heart. When Maria admitted that she, too, had looked at the woman’s behind, Joe theatrically groused that she’d never told him she was a Lesbian. The brief silence was broken by Maria’s laughter. That was the end of it, but Joe had not forgotten. He was grateful when Maria turned to a chest of drawers for the underclothes she had unnecessarily ironed for him.
And there was their disagreement about marijuana. Joe had been let in on a little secret. High quality marijuana was available on the base. By discretely asking around he learned that Airman Charlie Forster was the man. Calderone purchased some and brought it home, looking forward to using it as an aphrodisiac, the well-known effect of the evil weed, satisfaction guaranteed, but Maria was horrified.
“Marijuana! You must be out of your mind. Give me that.”
He’d hesitated.
“But Maria—”
“No way are we going to have marijuana in this house. I’m surprised at you. Please give me that.”
She emptied the contents of the plastic bag into the toilet and flushed.
He had been blind-sided. They’d used marijuana together once, though he’d had to talk her into it, patiently repeating that occasional use was entirely harmless. She finally relented and the experience had been good but afterwards she told him she thought it had been a sin and she’d confessed it to her priest. He hadn’t even considered that she might not have changed her mind. Maybe it having been a sin explained why it had been so damn good. He kept the thought to himself.
Given the tension in the home, Joe had been unable to study for the proficiency exam the way he’d planned. In truth his worry about the exam, and his plan about what to do about that worry, overshadowed his disappointment about the missed opportunity to make love to his wife under the influence.
He was in a bad mood when his ride arrived to pick him up.
“I love you and don’t you forget it,” he said, as he leaned forward to hug and kiss his wife goodbye. As soon as the door was closed he pictured the once promising brown leaves swirling in the toilet’s whirlpool. And he thought of the exam.
Chapter Eleven
The one-story missile alert facility, housed bedrooms, a lounge with TV, a washroom, bathroom, dining area, a kitchen, and a communication room. Bunkbeds filled one of the bedrooms. But since this building was a real home to no one, the walls were bare of pictures, the paint and carpeting a dull air-force-issued brown.
The kitchen was an exception with white walls, white wrap around cabinets, and white countertops shining brightly, daylight through large windows illuminating the deep steel sinks and the room beyond. Best of all was the chef, Airman First Class Ayesha Khoury, who had learned to cook at the side of her Lebanese grandmother and was the person most likely to keep morale high. When the schedule and weather allowed, Airman Khoury went on long runs through the countryside.
The panoramic view through large windows of hundreds of acres of farmland and the endless sky redeemed the building from utter blandness—a view suggesting peace, despite the four hundred fifty missiles distributed out there over thousands of square miles.
They sat at a dining room table eating breakfast. Chef Khoury had made an omelet with peppers and chives for Lieutenant Makenna Washington, pancakes with whip cream for Lieutenant Joe Calderone.
“How was your time off?” asked Washington.
“Okay. Had dinner with friends. Caught a movie. How about you?”
“Prepping for the exam.”
He nodded, his expression neutral, fearful that inadvertently, by word or gesture, he might hint at his secret. He didn’t know her well enough to say anything, so he joked.
“You’re always at it, Makenna. You’ve got to learn to live a little.”
She squinted at him.
“Do I
know you?”
Joe shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I sure know you. Doesn’t matter how many times you score a hundred. With that bad squint of yours, you’ll never get promoted. I can’t see your eyes. How’re you going to read the codes? What if the order comes and you can’t find your key?”
Washington laid her fork on her plate, clasped her hands, and hung her head in mock embarrassment.
“True, I won’t be able to read the ultimate code when it comes, God forbid. But as long as you are crew commander, and I’m only deputy commander, there’s not much I can do about this squint. I guess that’ll be ten fewer missiles dropping in over Russ— Hmm. Not funny. Missiles dropping in on anywhere. Not funny. Nuclear war, on the whole, bad.”
Joe mimicked her, putting his fork down and bowing his head.
“Confession time,” he said, ignoring the nuclear war business. “I studied, too. Had my wife turn the TV down so low she probably couldn’t even hear it.”
“You told me you could have become a farmer if you’d wanted,” said Joe, changing the subject. “Nice outdoor work. Instead you’re stuck underground baby-sitting these brutes. Why’d you join?”
“It’s true. I could have lived on a farm, even inherited it. Mine was one of the few black families that have owned land since the end of the civil war. My parents were proud of that. They wanted me to stay.
“But you know what, I was squeamish about killing chickens and that was a big part of the business. You put them in a cone with the wide end up. It holds them snuggly so, according to theory, they don’t feel so stressed. Only a chicken’s head and neck fit through the narrow end of the funnel. So, they are, upside down and helpless. Then you slit their throat and the blood runs out. No, man. I couldn’t do it.
“I joined the air force to become a pilot, but it didn’t work out that way. Still there’s no work more important than stopping an enemy from destroying your country. And I like the people. Present company excepted, of course. Why’d you join?”
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