Shadows

by Peter J Manos

  A man in the crowd called out, “Where do you get you numbers?”

  “They’re in the new START treaty. You can find it on the internet but if you’re going to read something, read Daniel Ellsberg’s book The Doomsday Machine because that’s what we have now.”

  When people began directing questions at the general, Claudia Cummings whispered in his ear. They made their way out of the crowd and back into the hotel.

  Will and Karen began handing out flyers and reprints of a policy paper from the Arms Control Association.

  Amy inhaled and exhaled deeply several times, as if she’d been holding her breath.

  “That was general Clayton.”

  “You should write a story about this,” said Karen. “Really, you should.”

  “Oh, Karen,” said Amy. “Just don’t mention this at dinner tonight. Okay? Maybe in a few days. Let me think about it. I’ve got to go now.”

  Will proffered her a flyer and article. She took them and left.

  Half an hour later, Jack and two friends from the football team appeared. Karen knew Baxter and Wayne, disliking them both since seeing them push wobbly, blinking Eddie Driscoll off his cafeteria chair. Edna recognized them as the boys she’d spoken with about her truck, Baxter, the brown-haired boy with the severe crew cut, in jersey number nine and Wayne, the blond boy in jersey number fifteen, still carrying his skateboard.

  Baxter lifted the paper weight, the bronze mask of Edna’s father, from the stack of pamphlets, and took a sheet in hand.

  After a cursory examination Baxter said, “This is crap.”

  “Please put that down,” said Edna, pointing at the mask.

  Baxter held the three-pound brass piece over the card table and let it fall, making a thud.

  Wayne put the skateboard under his arm and crumpled up a flyer and tossed it to Jack who caught it.

  Will stepped forward, placing his sign on the table.

  “That’s enough. Why don’t you boys go home?”

  Baxter laughed.

  “I’d like to see you make us.”

  The small group of people who’d been reading the signs moved back a few steps.

  “Jack, please,” said Karen. “Take your friends and go. Mrs. O’Hare doesn’t want any trouble.”

  Baxter and Wayne looked at Jack, who, still holding the wadded-up flyer which he’d caught, shrugged.

  Wayne and Baxter each picked up a flyer, crushed them into balls, and threw them at Will, who batted them away.

  The two football players approached Will, who stood his ground. Karen stepped between them.

  “Please Wayne,” she said. “Baxter. Please.”

  They pushed past her and then bumped against Will, one on either side.

  “You won’t get off so easy next time,” said Baxter to Will.

  “And, lady,” added Wayne. “You should stop handing out that garbage.”

  The three protestors spent the rest of the day outside the entrance, except for bathroom and water breaks, answering questions and talking with people who came by out of curiosity, having heard the rumor of an argument between a witch and a general.

  O’Hare judged their protest at the Grand Hotel an overall success, marred only by the nastiness of those boys. Karen was apologetic. Jack, after all was her boyfriend, or had been until he’d stood passively by as the bullies harassed Edna and Will. Jack could have—he should have—said something. That would have been enough. She wouldn’t have wanted him to fight with his friends. The sort of potential violence she’d just witnessed appalled her. Will’s steadfastness had impressed her. She and Edna thanked him for stepping in.

  “I’m all wound up after that,” said Karen. “It feels like there’d been a fight.” But, she explained, her father’s icy stare would cool her off. He would react as if her personal antimissile stance threatened world peace. It certainly threatened domestic peace.

  Edna, pleased but exhausted, commiserated and excused herself.

  “I’m going home. Will, are you coming?”

  “I’d like to stay in town, maybe get a cup of coffee.”

  Edna looked at Karen and back at Will.

  “How will you get home?”

  He was now her house guest and she had driven him to town. He had no means of transportation as his car was at her place.

  He was stumped.

  “Uh, I’ll…um. Maybe I’d better go with you after all.

  “I can drive you back,” said Karen, surprising all three of them.

  They sat in a booth in a cafe that Saturday afternoon and ordered sandwiches.

  “So tell me about it,” said Will.

  “I did. He’s now the abominable snow man and our house is the north pole or maybe the south pole. In any case, it’s cold.”

  “How does it make you feel?”

  “Are you going to psychoanalyze me?” she said, smiling weakly.

  “Sorry. You shouldn’t talk about it if you don’t want to. Come to think of it, I don’t talk much about my problematic mother, though heat is more the problem than cold. We can talk about the weather.”

  Will examined Karen’s pretty, oval face, flawless except for a mole near the corner of her mouth, and a slight gap between her front teeth, which actually was winsome. As usual she was prim in a summer dress, but not so prim that her figure was hidden.

  “It’s just hard, that’s all. I love my father. Okay, now it’s your turn. Do you love your mother? And if not, why not? Start at age three and work your way up by decades.”

  They laughed together. He told her about his mother’s derangement, fits of rage, hyperactivity, shop lifting, imperiousness and that he was on the way to New York to help her out of some sort of legal difficulty he did not understand.

  “You must love her then,” said Karen. “A man who loves his mother. A good sign.”

  “But not too much,” said Will.

  “Oedipus rex,” said Karen.

  “You’re quick on the uptake.”

  “No, you’re just obvious.”

  “Uh oh,” said Will.

  “Why uh oh?”

  They joked with each other, moving easily from association to association, real cads to movie villains; movie villains to movie stars.

  Karen mentioned the weekly Saturday night folk dance at the university and asked Will if he’d like to go with her. After he’d agree, she called to tell her parents that she was going dancing and would be a little late going home. Fortunately it was her mother who picked up the phone. She had no objection.

  Forty-two people stood in a circle in the university’s large basketball court, surrounding a casually dressed couple, a man and woman in their fifties, who announced the name of a Macedonian dance—it sounded like hopskip to Will—and demonstrated the step. The dancers held hands, arms at their sides, Will and Karen both pleased with the opportunity to make physical contact without potential awkwardness.

  Skopski Sa Sa was a relatively simple walking dance that Will had no trouble with, but as time passed the dances grew more difficult, with complex steps and rhythms. Will now stood behind the line of dancers, trying to copy their steps. Karen remained with the group of experienced dancers. When she danced the Hambo with an older man, he felt a twinge of jealousy.

  She joined him behind the line of experienced dancers, taking his hand and following the dancers who’d mastered the most difficult dances. At 9:30 they stopped dancing and sat on the bleachers.

  “Are you having fun?” she asked.

  “I am. You’re a good dancer.”

  “Thanks. I’ve been dancing for a while.”

  Will wanted to leave so he could be alone with her but was hesitant to ask, concerned that he’d be spoiling her evening, as the dancing was not yet over. He was also thinking ahead. She’d be driving him home.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked finally.

  “Sure.”

  Situated in a residential district, the university had no particularly desirable de
stination within walking distance so they simply wandered through the neighborhood. Will told her stories of his childhood escapades. Once, after school, when he was about eight or nine, the boy his mother had hired to walk him to and from school took Will to a raft, boarded with him, and shoved off onto a small lake. Will remembered seeing his mother rushing over the bridge, gesticulating wildly that he go to shore. She was as angry, yes, but also frightened as he’d never before seen her. He could not swim.

  “Oh, my. How did she punish you?”

  “I don’t think she did. I don’t remember being punished. She kept us under control by frightening us into thinking we’d be punished. She was probably so relieved I got safely to shore, that punishment didn’t enter her mind.

  “When I was fifteen,” said Karen, “I climbed out the window to join my friends. We weren’t drinking or anything. It was dark, no lights on in the houses. On a dare—not by me, mind you—we took off our clothes, clutched them in our arms, and streaked down the street. We laughed our heads off as we got dressed. I got home, climbed back through the window, and was so wound up, it took an hour to get to sleep. Now who would think a thing like that would ever be discussed with a parent. Well, of course it wasn’t, not by any of us, but one of the girls told a friend who told her mother, who called our mothers in a fit. When my mother and father questioned me about that night, I told the truth but stupid me, I told the whole truth, including the part about taking our clothes off. Big mistake. All that our anonymous little tattle taler had revealed was the climbing out of windows. She hadn’t told whoever that we got stripped.

  “My father bellowed at me but had the self-control to leave the room before he hit me—which by the way he’s never done—and let my mother give me a lecture, ground me for a month, forbid me to watch television or to use the computer unless I was doing homework, to go to bed at eight every night and do chores on the weekends. I don’t climb out windows anymore and I only run around in my birthday suit at the many nudist colonies we belong to.”

  Will laughed and said nothing embarrassing or suggestive, yet Karen now wondered what she could possibly have been thinking to put the picture in his head of her running around like a burlesque queen. And that ill-considered joke about her birthday suit and the nudist colonies. This was so unlike her.

  He took her hand.

  “You were a thrill-seeker. I was just an innocent soul lead astray by a boy with a raft. I had less common sense than a toaster, which at least knows when to pop out the toast.”

  They walked for an hour and a half before Karen said she’d better take him home otherwise she herself would be late.

  “That boy, Jack, is he a friend of yours?”

  Karen kept her eyes on the road, the steering wheel held firmly.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, he used to be my boyfriend. We’ve known each other for a long time. In fact…” She stopped herself. She’d almost said, “he’s the only boyfriend I’ve ever had” but that suggested she had some obvious defect, like the gap between her front teeth but more likely a personality defect. Maybe constant irritability, or contrariness, or weakness in the sex drive department. She laughed at herself.

  “You had a funny thought. What was it?” asked Will.

  “Oh, it was nothing. Now don’t ask me otherwise I’ll have to make something up and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to think of something clever on the spot.”

  She pulled into Edna’s driveway. Though she wanted to stay and talk she also wanted to get home on time so her father wouldn’t be angry with her. That thought made her angry with him, but she still needed to go so she left the motor running to signal this.

  Will put a hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re a lot of fun.”

  “You are, too.”

  He leaned forward, kissing her on the cheek.

  They said their goodnights and she left.

  On the way home her anger at her father flared up as did her self-doubt. Would Will have showed more interest if she’d stayed longer? He hadn’t even kissed her on the lips. Sure, he said she was fun. A roller coaster is fun but you wouldn’t want to snuggle up with one. Is that what she wanted? Or did she just want to be freed of her damn virginity?

  Ironic that Jack had brought her to this understanding of her sexual side and then given her cause to abandon him. She couldn’t feel the sort of affection that led to love-making with a boy who lacked character. She still thought Jack good looking but so what. He really should have stopped his friends from harassing them at the hotel.

  Karen could not decide whether to tell her father what she’d done or just wait until someone else told him. She discussed this with her mother who finally said it would, after all, be best if Karen spoke with him, otherwise it would appear as if she were hiding something from him. And Amy would have to do the same.

  She asked to speak with him alone in the den, having decided she didn’t want her mother defending her or being overprotective.

  She’d become convinced that the missiles must not be replaced, but instead be removed, that they were actually bad for Minot.

  Almost as soon as she started speaking, Roy Haugen pressed his lips together to prevent himself from speaking. His eyes never strayed from hers, but he lowered his eyebrows as if concentrating hard to see something indistinct.

  When she’d finished she fell silent and waited.

  “Your father is a career missile wing sergeant, and you go public to poo-poo the whole enterprise. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not just thinking about myself, but what are people going to think when my own daughter, in effect, says I’m wasting my time? Jesus! Did you give that any thought? It may well just be a tempest in a tea pot, but that’s the end of it. You hear?”

  “Dad?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Are you going to have trouble at work?”

  “If my superiors ask what’s going on with my daughter, I’m just going to say…that you got a little mixed up, but we’ve talked about it and everything’s okay. Is everything, okay?”

  Her anxiety had lessened to a degree though she still half-expected him to curse a few times and some form of punishment. Yet the more she made the argument against the missiles the more confident she was of the truth of it. She must not let this scolding session end without her asking one more question, though on formulating it before speaking, she tensed up.

  “Don’t you believe that submarines are harder to find and destroy than missiles that are stuck in one place?

  “Look, Karen, I know I’m not going to change your mind about this. I just don’t want you making a fool of yourself and of me in the process. Understand? No more posters. No more ridiculous ban-the-bomb stuff.”

  Sadness seeped in, displacing anxiety. Had he even tried to understand her?

  “Did you tell your mother about this?”

  “Yes. And she was there.”

  Amy Haugen had come to the hotel to write an article on Grumman’s industry day, which she expected would be much like her articles about the team’s previous visits to Minot. Newspaper reports—even on major national events—often began with human interest stories meant to entice the reader to finish the entire article, so, for example, she might have begun with an interview of the owner of the Great Plains Construction Company about the GBSD program boon to new construction.

  But here now was a real human interest story: a woman dressed as a witch protesting the Minuteman replacement program, a program that almost everyone in Minot supported, a program that, as part of the nuclear triad, promised the whole country protection from a nuclear attack for the next fifty years.

  This story was real, even surprising news, but it was also unwelcome news, which would displease everyone in town, and “displease” might, in some cases, be euphemistic. Mathew Jackson from the Chamber of Commerce had seen the exhibit and was visibly annoyed. General Clayton and Grumman’s public relations person didn’t like it either, of course.

  She would not include he
r daughter’s name and she didn’t know the name of the nice looking man with the feathered hat.

  How much attention should she devote to the actual content of their protest? To the tit-for-tat between O’Hare and the general. And should she read the references they’d provided her? Fact check?

  That evening she did read the white paper by a visiting research fellow at the Arms Control Association entitled The Future of the ICBM Force: Should the Least Valuable Leg of the Triad Be Replaced?

  Should she cite at least some of its conclusions? That “the deterrent value of the ICBM force is small and diminishing”; that “…the current absence of any foreseeable threat to the U. S. strategic submarines assures that no adversary can preempt massive retaliation by the U. S.” And that “the enhanced capabilities for the GBSD are either unnecessary or may adversely affect strategic stability.”

  The paper was not excessively technical, but it made her head spin anyway. She’d been unaware of any serious opposition to the GBSD program, other than Edna’s, of course. All right, she said to herself finally, Edna’s protest was real news and some of her arguments had to be included in an honest article. She permitted herself to omit Karen’s name from the article. She condensed some of the objections to the GBSD program, tightened up the wording, and submitted her article, Local Woman Protests the GBSD.

  Brad Wilburn called her the next day.

  “What’s the idea, Amy? You trying to have that woman ridden out of town on a rail?”

  “Brad!”

  “Okay, sorry, I got carried away. I suppose we have to publish the damn thing. I’ve already gotten a few calls asking if I’d heard the news.”

  Because he was preoccupied with the search for the missing grenades, Roy did not confront Amy until a few days after the incidents at the Grand Hotel.

  “You didn’t mention the kid’s little poster session.”

  “I thought it best that she tell you herself.”

  This gave him pause.