Probably because he’d put his foot down so firmly, he did not object to Will and Karen taking a walk after dinner.”
“You know, Karen, every time you talk about your doing something he doesn’t like, you say he’ll have a stroke, or a seizure, or the top of his head will blow off. But you don’t mean that literally. You mean he’d be very angry. Extremely angry. Inappropriately angry, if you ask me. You know what you should do? Tell your mother we’ve slept together.”
“What?”
“The opportunity for intimacy is the thing he’s worried about, but it’s already happened. Ideally you’d tell him, but if you tell your mother she’ll tell him. He can blow up at her.”
“I don’t want anyone blowing up at anyone.”
“Then you’re not going with me, is that it?”
“I really want to go.”
“Well then.”
“I don’t think I can. Leaving him so upset.”
Will left without going back inside to say goodbye, nor did he kiss Karen goodnight.
Just after she’d changed into pajamas, her mother came into the room and sat on her bed.
“Can we talk for a while, sweetheart?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“What’s your relationship with Will?”
“We’re friends, Mom.”
“Like boyfriend girlfriend?”
Karen hesitated. Should she now say ‘just friends’ or should she acknowledge that they were indeed boyfriend and girlfriend, which would lead to the next fateful question. She remembered what Will had prophesied. “If you tell your mother, she’ll tell him.”
“Yes, like boyfriend and girlfriend.”
Amy took her daughter’s hand.
“How close are you?”
“As close as you can get.”
Well, she’d gone this far.
“I have an IUD. It was my idea, believe me. Not his.”
In stunned silence, her mother continued holding her daughter’s hand.
Ordinarily a discussion like the one they were about to have would take place in their bedroom after the children had fallen asleep, but Amy was uncomfortable with the idea.
Instead she told her husband,
“I want to talk with you about something. Let me invite you out for a drink. I’ll buy you a mai tai at the Outrigger.”
“You know, Amy, this makes me nervous. Why can’t you tell me here? You’re afraid I’ll blow up. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I just want to talk with you away from the kids.”
At the Outrigger, they had a booth to themselves, but in a public place Roy was less likely to roar when he heard what Amy had to say.
She waited until he’d almost finished his second drink, though he was impatient from the moment they were seated, oblivious to the Polynesian decor, burning torches affixed to the walls, the fishing nets hung from the ceiling. He wanted to get right down to business.
“Roy,” she said finally, “our daughter is a woman.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“She and Will have slept together.”
He sputtered, “What the fuck! I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch.”
He stood to go.
Although she thought she’d been prepared for his reaction, she was mistaken. Somehow it felt to her that he’d discounted her parenthood entirely, discounted feeling, opinion, judgment.
She surprised herself by grabbing his wrist. “Sit down,” she hissed.
Before he could yank his arm free she pulled forcefully so that he sat.
“I was just going to talk with her, damn it,” he said. “And maybe track down that bastard.”
“Are you also going to remove her IUD?”
“What are you talking… Don’t tell me she has an IUD.”
“I just told you and it was her idea.”
“I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t.”
“She has. She did. Are you going to ask her to remove it? Come on. Are you?”
She spoke with a vehemence that startled him.
“Look, Amy, this is so—”
“Are you going to ask her to remove the IUD?”
“Stop that,” demanded Roy.
“I will not stop it. Answer the question.”
“Did she tell you she was going to do this?”
“No. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. Are you going to ask her to remove it?”
“No. Of course not. I’m not a total idiot.”
“Are you going to kill Will Larrabee?”
“Amy, what do you want?”
“I want you to give your blessing to her trip with Will to New York.”
“What am I, a priest that gives blessings?”
“She doesn’t want to upset you. She wants your okay.”
He ordered another drink.
They sat together at the dinner table the next day.
“About your trip to New York,” said her father with a hitch in his voice, “I want you to call me every day.”
Karen stood, went around the table, and hugged him. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank your mother.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Netflix purchased Marvin Martin’s documentary and the New York Times reviewed it.
* * *
While this country struggles to knit up a fraying social safety net and revitalize a public health system that had delayed in stopping the covid-19 pandemic, it simultaneously plans to spend many billions of dollars to replace four hundred fifty aging land-based Minuteman ICBMs with new missiles around air force bases in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.
Marvin Martin documents the fierce debate over whether such a replacement is necessary or, as Minot resident Edna O’Hare, campaigning against the replacement insists, land-based ICBMs are inherently unnecessary, costly, and dangerous. Dangerous because they’re on hair-trigger alert with little time to determine whether radar reporting a missile attack on the United States has instead located a flock of migrating geese.
So heated had the debate become that not only did young men attack participants in a protest march, vandalized Ms. O’Hare’s car, but actually bombed her house with a grenade stolen from the air force base.
The Missiles of Minot is a short course in America’s nuclear deterrent policy. Should land-based missiles be replaced, or should they be removed? America’s and the world’s destiny may depend on the answer to this question.
* * *
The New York Times’s article was reprinted in smaller newspapers around the country, including, to the chagrin of numerous champions of the GBSD, in the Minot Daily News.
Along with many in congress, Steve Jones, in his capacity as chairman of the Congressional Armed Services Committee, began receiving calls from constituents asking if the red-haired woman they’d read about was, as some of them put it, “for real?”
Additionally, numerous arms control groups and a significant segment of Democratic Party officials, pressed for hearings. Saving billions of dollars on unnecessary ICBMs, allowed responsible spending on new submarines, for example.
For its newsworthiness Congressman Jones, invited Edna O’Hare to testify, though she was not what might be called an expert witness, or was she?
Chapter Sixty-Seven
With the invitation to speak before congress came the realization that her testimony would be national news, which, in turn, meant that millions of Americans would learn about the monstrous danger posed by land-based missiles.
Knowing this, her two-ply shame shriveled and disappeared: the shame of having done nothing for months to honor her husband’s wishes and the shame of therefore having been emotionally unable to visit his grave.
Now she knelt on the grass, placing a bouquet of sunflowers before the headstone, having picked them because they were cheerful and because they’d come from their farm. Then she made herself comfortable on a small bright orange, yellow, green, and blue Mexican blanket, whi
ch they’d purchased on a trip to Mexico city.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come until now.” She knew she would cry, knew she had to cry, knew she wanted to cry. With a half dozen fresh handkerchiefs in a basket-like handbag, she’d come prepared.
“All those people you wanted to hear about it, are going to hear about it now.”
* * *
THE END
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Author Notes
Chapter One
* * *
The US maintains 450 missile silos around air force bases in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Fifty of these silos are empty, but for simplicity’s sake this story refers to 450 missiles, 150 around each base. Colorado and Nebraska house some of Warren Air Force Base’s missiles.
* * *
Hans M. Kristensen & Matt Korda (2020) United States nuclear forces. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 76:1, 46-60, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1701286
* * *
Chapter Four
* * *
Daniel Ellsberg. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. New York, London: Bloomsbury, 2017
Chapter Ten
* * *
Though the Minuteman III is capable of carrying multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits the number of warheads per missile to one.
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
Normile, Dennis. 2020 Aftermath. Science. 369:6502
On the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
This test question is from Thompson M. 2014. Are You Smarter than a Nuclear Control Officer. Feb. 13 Time Magazine
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
Wellerstein, Alex. Website Nuke Map. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
* * *
Chapter Twenty
* * *
Air force fires 9 Commanders in Nuke Missile Cheating Scandal. March 27, 2014
* * *
CBS/AP https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-fires-9-commanders-in-nuke-missile-cheating-scandal/
Chapter Twenty-Five
* * *
Snyder, Ryan. 2018 The Future of the ICBM Force: Should the Least Valuable Leg of the Triad be Replaced? Arms Control Association. Policy White Paper. March
* * *
Chapter Thirty
Most of the discussion is a transcription of an actual meeting of the House Armed Services Committee.
* * *
https://www.congress.gov/committees/video/house-armed-services/hsas00/IUm4qXTQFNs
* * *
Chapter Fifty-One
* * *
This chapter largely taken from the opening scene in the 1983 film WarGames directed by John Badham. With Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood, Dabney Coleman.
* * *
Chapter Fifty-Two
* * *
A radar station did indeed once misinterpret the rising of the moon over Norway as a Russian missile attack. Stevens, Matt. Mele, Christopher. The New York Times. Jan. 13, 2018
* * *
Chapter Fifty-Nine
* * *
The number 100,000 Hiroshima bombs is from Blair, Bruce. 2007 Rebuttal of US Statement on Operational Status "A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces" Bruce G. Blair President, World Security Institute October 13, 2007
* * *
Chapter Sixty
* * *
Lehrer, Tom. Be Prepared
Acknowledgments
For their reading of the text and their commentary, I’d like to thank Emma Rous, Bruce Amundson, Steve Harvey, and Dave Strauss.
I am grateful to Dr. Ryan Snyder for discussing with me his article on the third leg of the nuclear triad.
My publisher, Nancy Schumacher, has again made the production of a book as painless as possible, though not eliminating pain entirely.
And without Ingrid’s support and criticism, there would be no book at all.
THANK YOU FOR READING
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* * *
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* * *
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About the Author
Peter J. Manos was voted one of Seattle's top doctors seven years in a row by Seattle Magazine. After retirement he attended a summer session of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His books include: Care of the Difficult Patient: A Nurse's Guide (with Joan Braun, R.N.); Lucifer's Revenge, a novel of magical realism; Dear Babalu: Letters to an Advice Columnist illustrated by Toby Liebowitz, which was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards competition (2017); and a young adult sci-fi novel, A Girl Named Cricket. Flash Fiction Magazine published his story Gamma Rays and the Kitchen Sink in June 2020.
A member of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, he takes an active interest in the threat to humankind of nuclear weapons.
Also by Peter J. Manos
with Melange Books
Published by Fire & Ice Young Adult Books, an imprint of Melange Books
A Girl Named Cricket
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