Shadows

by Peter J Manos

  “Stay away from my wife, do you hear?”

  “Of course, sweetie. I don’t really want to talk to her. She might get upset given our friendship, and everything.”

  “You’re blackmailing me.” He was about to tell her he’d have to call the police, but he was certain she would call his bluff.

  Dumbfounded he stood there waiting for inspiration, something to do or say. He could not just push her away and get into the car. If it hadn’t been for his goddamn lust. No. He must not forget he was drugged. This woman was diabolical and would carry out her threat. But if he gave in to this, what might she ask of him next. Anything she wanted. She could even ask him to give it to her again, or else. He felt like sinking through the Earth. Right to its molten iron core. And staying there.

  “Okay. I won’t march in the parade.”

  “Thank you so much and one more little thing. I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t speak with anyone about the GBSD or let anyone quote you on the subject. I don’t want to read any stories about you in the paper or see you interviewed on TV or anything like that. And no more speeches at the city council meeting. Are you okay with these things, sweetie?”

  He cringed each time she used that meretricious endearment, a stubby dagger that wouldn’t kill him, just make him bleed.

  “All right.”

  She removed her hand from the car door and before he could react, deftly kissed him on the cheek.

  “It was so good. Maybe another time doggy style?”

  She turned and left. He watched as she walked, exaggerating the sway of her hips for his delectation? No. For his intimidation.

  There went the Devil. Oh, but she was not the Devil. She was a succubus, and she might return in his dreams to haunt him, but that would come later. In the present he had to calm himself down, gather his scattered wits, and rehearse in his mind how he would greet his wife tonight, so she would see no tell-tale expression on his face. He was deeply shaken.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  At 10:30 on a Wednesday morning, a small group of protestors met, as planned, on the corner of Main Street, South and 2nd Avenue, South West in front of Gideon’s Trumpet, a Christian bookstore. Present were Edna O’Hare; Will; Karen; Suzy, and Betty Carlson, the student on the staff of the Red and Green, the college newspaper, who’d become a convert after doing some of her own research. They took turns with the one sign held overhead on its long wooden handle.

  “Where’s Dr. Rasmussen?” asked Karen.

  “I’m afraid he can’t make it,” said O’Hare.

  “Oh, no. Is he sick?” said Karen.

  “Well, to tell you the truth he sounded sick at heart. He said something had come up and he wouldn’t be able to work with us anymore. He wouldn’t tell me what.”

  The despondency in his voice had taken over a little corner of her mind, but she would not say more.

  “Not much of a turn-out, is it?” said Betty. “I talked to some people. A couple said they might show up. Enthusiasm wasn’t that great. But I’m still going to take a few photos and write the article. Don’t worry.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Will. “We know this isn’t a popular idea.”

  “Let’s get started,” said O’Hare.

  They entered the bookstore.

  “Good morning,” said the attendant.

  “Good morning,” said the group in unison, lending a mildly humorous air to the visit.

  “How can I help you?”

  At each encounter a different person would hand out the flyer, and answer questions, if questions arose. O’Hare thought person-to-person contact was as important as the volume of flyers distributed.

  “We’re concerned about the nation’s security,” said Karen. “Land-based intercontinental missiles are dangerous, and we want people to know about it. It’s all here in this flyer.”

  The clerk, a young man with a black handlebar mustache, took the sheet in his left hand, glanced at it, and twirled a tip of his mustache with the other.

  “Boy, are you going against the grain. But I’ll read it.”

  “Thank you,” said Karen,” adding, not cynically, but for good measure, “and God bless you.”

  “God bless you as well.”

  Anderson’s Bootery came next. This time Will was the designated spokesperson.

  A woman, in fringed cow-girl outfit took the flyer.

  “You an anti-nuke group?”

  Though it was his turn to answer questions he turned to O’Hare.

  “Not per se, no. We need a nuclear deterrent, but the government is planning to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to replace missiles we don’t need in the first place.”

  The woman looked at each of the demonstrators and lay the flyer down on the counter.

  “You folks from around here?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” said O’Hare.

  “Me, too,” said Karen.

  “I’m from Bismarck,” said Betty.

  “You?” asked the woman of Will.

  “Born in Brooklyn, raised in L. A., college in Berkeley. Residing in Minot.”

  The woman laughed.

  “You should get some boots to go with that hat.”

  “I’d like to,” said Will. “I’ll come back and take a look.”

  The group moved on to Inspired Interiors, Cookies for You, Charlies Main Street Cafe, Margie’s Art Glass studio, Lien’s Jewelry, Jason’s Electronic Security, and further down the block, eventually visiting fifteen shops. It seemed that their message was best received in art, music, and bookstores.

  Everyone was polite. None of the store people refused to take the flyer. Truth be told, this was the first time that the question of missiles had ever been raised with them.

  In addition to the flyers distributed in the shops, an additional seven were given to passersby, who were drawn to the group by Karen’s recorder rendition of El Condor Pasa, a tune everyone seemed to know. Only a couple of people waved them off without even looking at the flyer.

  O’Hare invited her fellow protesters to lunch at Charlies, which, according to USA Today, prepared one of the best hot beef sandwiches in North Dakota, though at this time of day the protestors settled for soup or sandwiches or both. During the covid-19 pandemic the restaurant made no-contact deliveries, and further protected its customers by wearing masks and single use gloves. Dr. Rasmussen had consulted with them.

  Avoiding nuclear war was a public health matter in his mind but now something had happened, and he’d bowed out, sounding on the phone as if someone had died.

  Betty Carlson, along with the others was sorry that he wasn’t going to be part of her story.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Edna, Will and Karen were on their way to Edna’s truck, parked on 2nd Avenue, South West. The two-story red brick building beside which she’d parked, extended for a city block, its only windows over eight feet above street level so nothing happening on the sidewalk was visible from within.

  “Hey, Russkies, business not so good, huh?”

  They turned to face Wayne and Baxter, who’d come up silently behind them. Tagging along behind them was Jack.

  “Hi,” said Karen in a forced friendly tone.

  “Good morning, gentleman,” said Edna.

  “Not much of a parade,” said Baxter.

  “You’re right about that,” said Edna. “Do you wish to join us?”

  Wayne pulled the flyers from Edna’s hand and threw them in the street.

  “What do you think?”

  “Jack!” implored Karen. But he stood unmoving.

  “You jackass,” said Will, stepping toward Wayne.

  “No,” said Karen, placing a hand on his forearm. “We should go. We can print up more flyers.”

  Will stood undecided.

  “She’s right,” said Edna. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Jack, please, tell your friends to leave us alone.”

  “Baxter,” said Jack, “maybe we should go
.”

  “What are you, pussy whipped?” said Baxter. “These guys are traitors.”

  Jack glanced at Karen and then at his shoes but said nothing.

  “Come on, Will,” said Karen. Let’s go.”

  As Will reluctantly turned to go, Baxter stepped forward, punching him in the back, below the shoulder, but above the flank over his kidney, a punch which would have ended things then and there. It hurt bad enough as it was but was not incapacitating. Will had been expecting an attack and had not lost his footing. The punch shook Karen’s grip loose. Will backed three quick paces away from the assailants, whirled around, and walked back toward Baxter.

  “You two had better pick up those flyers.”

  Baxter swung at Will’s face with his right arm. Will blocked it with his left and hit him hard in the gut with his right. Baxter doubled over, placing hands on knees to steady himself, but remained standing. Wayne, apparently thinking that Baxter, weighing over two hundred pounds, would wrap things up by himself was unprepared for Will’s barrage of punches to the chest and abdomen, and finally the face. He staggered away holding a hand over his bleeding nose.

  Baxter partially regaining his breath, pulled a large folding knife from his pocket. He opened it and charged Will who drove him away with a series of intimidating high kicks aimed at the abdomen.

  Karen and Edna began calling for help, but Baxter was exhausted and backed away too slowly from Will’s last kick, which hit him at the belt line, so that once again he doubled over, but this time fell to the ground.

  When several shoppers responded to the calls for help, Edna pointed to the knife.

  “They attacked us.”

  They turned to go, the bewildered shoppers calling 911 so the injured assailants could be attended to.

  Jack had disappeared.

  In her living room after the parade, Edna listened to Will and Karen as they tried to cheer her up.

  “No, it wasn’t much of a parade, but we got some people interested,” said Will. “And those two jerks were completely on their own.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Edna. “Someone may have put them up to it.”

  “I suppose,” said Will.

  Edna ran her fingertips over her temples, a gesture of thoughtful frustration.

  “I have to admit I’m discouraged, and a bit worn out. Minot is just not interested in what I have to say.”

  “What we have to say, Edna,” said Karen. “You’re not alone.”

  Edna nodded weakly.

  “And another thing,” said Edna after a pause, “I don’t want to put you two in danger. There have got to be more than just two hotheads in town. Without more support, I don’t think I can keep this up. I’ve tried to keep my spirits up, but I feel exhausted.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Almost everyone on campus—staff, students and faculty—read Betty Carlson’s article about Edna O’Hare’s minimally attended street march, the ideas behind it, and the street fight that followed it. Not quite naive, but relatively new to the newspaper business, she was unconcerned about the possibility, which she had not even considered, that the paper could be sued for publishing unflattering, not to say incriminating, descriptions of the two young men who’d started the brawl.

  Inevitably Baxter’s father, Colonel Frank Nichols, 21st Missile Wing commander, received a copy of the paper from his smirk-suppressing adjutant, whose own boys might not be on the football team, but who at least kept their noses clean, as the saying goes.

  Alone in his office he read a bit, cursed, read a bit, and cursed some more. Baxter, he was afraid, was not only capable of doing what he was reported to have done, he most certainly had done it. That boy was out of control. Nichols’s second wife Judy had frequently complained about his sassiness and now this, though it wasn’t his first fight. But drawing a knife!

  He briefly considered suing the paper, a reflex reaction to protect his indefensible son, but clearly no defamation was intended, and the story might even force some sense into the boy. Baxter was a high school senior who, unless he changed his ways, might see his prospects for an athletic scholarship at a good university slip from his grasp like a football covered in olive oil.

  Nichols needed to know what legal action if anything was planned.

  “But, Dad,” protested Baxter. “That SOB almost killed us.”

  “You drew a knife on him.”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “Two big football players against that kid?”

  “Hey, whose side are you on? This bunch of commies are attacking the air force.”

  “The article says you struck the first blow. It was the Larrabee boy who was defending himself.”

  “That reporter is lying. He hit me when I turned to go.”

  “Enough, Baxter. Enough. You are not to use the car. And no allowance until I say so. And I don’t want you seeing your buddy Wayne. Sometimes I wonder if he’s the one who eggs you on. You’ve become a bully. I want it to stop.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more from you.”

  Engaged in a seemingly harmless conspiracy of silence, neither Amy nor Karen Haugen had mentioned the march or the fist fight, which occurred in downtown Minot three days previously. Amy, though, had only reluctantly agreed to keep the secret. When Roy Haugen confronted them with the Red & Green article in the living room after work they were embarrassed.

  “You were hiding this from me,” said Roy scowling. He held the copy of Red & Green out to Karen.

  “No, Daddy, I wasn’t.”

  “You don’t usually read that paper,” added Amy.

  “You’re in on it, too. Did you know our daughter was parading around town saying our own missiles put us in danger and their replacements are a waste of money?”

  Foreseeing the possibility of a long engagement, Amy took a seat on the sofa, followed by Karen, but Roy Haugen remained standing, the paper now clutched in both hands behind his back.

  “You seem more concerned about the beloved rockets,” said Amy, “than you do about our daughter and her friends being attacked and with a knife, no less. God knows what would have happened if that boy Will hadn’t been with them.”

  “That boy is part of the problem,” said Haugen.

  “What have you gotten yourself into young woman?”

  “What do you mean what I have I gotten myself into?” said Karen.

  Haugen harrumphed and began pacing in front of the sofa, whacking his left palm with the newspaper, which he’d rolled into a baton, occasionally raising it above his head.

  Lilly came into the room, sat between Amy and Karen on the sofa, and addressed her father.

  “Are you having a fight?”

  “No, we’re not,” said Haugen.

  “We’re having an argument,” said Amy. “It is kind of boring. Maybe you should go to the den and play.”

  “What are you arguing about?”

  Sending Lily to another room in this house, would not have prevented her from listening, especially if her door was open, nor could her father demand her isolation without the whole family being troubled by the move, after all, she wasn’t being punished. Haugen tossed the newspaper on a chair and said they’d talk about this later.

  After dinner, without encouragement, Lilly left the room on her own to watch a TV program. The argument now continued, though at a lower volume and without the emphasis of a newspaper baton being waved about.

  Until now Karen had not discussed with her father the depth of her new-found aversion for the underground rockets spread around Minot over thousands of square miles, nor had Amy mentioned, even to Karen, her own growing unease about these missiles.

  “They don’t do us any good, Daddy,” said Karen for the third time. “We don’t need them.”

  “Look,” said Haugen reasonably, “you’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change yours, but I don’t want you going on any more marches. I’m going to leave a mess
age with Edna and that boy to leave you out of the protests.”

  “Don’t do that, Daddy.”

  “It’s dangerous. There are people here who have very strong feelings about this.”

  “So they’re allowed their strong feelings, but I’m not allowed mine?”

  He would not mention it now, but the knowledge that one of the boys who attacked them was Nichols’s son Baxter gnawed at him. He didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Roy, she has a point. You’re allowing her view to be suppressed. What if I want to protest?”

  “Damn! Sorry. Excuse me. That’s all I need. Next thing you know, you’ll have Lilly carrying anti-nuke signs.”

  “This isn’t antinuclear,” said Karen. “It’s anti land-based missiles.”

  “What does it look like when one of my children makes a fuss about our nuclear deterrent? I don’t much care what civilians think, but on the base this sort of publicity is bad for morale. You may not know it, but sometimes those launch officers get a little down in the dumps.”

  “I’m going to see them. Edna and Will I mean. I’m sorry, Daddy, but I’m going to see them.”

  “No more demonstrations,” said Haugen, side-stepping the question of his daughter’s friendship with these people. What could he do about that?

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It only took a few days before Will concluded that he’d rather be on the road than be forced to see Karen almost every day, now that she was committed to this work. Convinced of the arguments for the elimination of the ICBMs, Karen Haugen had pledged to help Edna promulgate the idea.

  On a pleasant summer evening two days after Karen told Will, “That’s not how I was raised,” Edna had the two of them to dinner. For her it was simply a way to express her gratitude for their help. For Karen it was a chance to see Will again. For Will it was a chance to say good-bye.

  They ate at the bright yellow kitchen table, Edna talked about her testimony at the city council meeting and of how Dr. Rasmussen had supported her, before mysteriously bowing out.