Day of the Bomb (7 page)

The first showing of
The Wizard of Oz
a week
earlier had had the monkey troop clapping and screaming for more
even though they were relegated to playing the Wicked Witch’s troop
of flying monkeys. Today’s repeat performance would be shorter
because Jason lacked the endurance of putting on his ninety-minute
version due to continued weight loss. He had grown weary of his
two-part diet of fish and fruit and now consumed about 1,000
calories a day. His body had begun to metabolize fat, muscle, and
bone as a result of no more K-rations.

Jason began the re-enactment with his favorite song,
one he had first heard at age sixteen in the front row of the first
run of the movie in his hometown; a song that now fed him enough
hope that “somewhere over the rainbow” he would at last return home
to greater happiness than three years of killing and dodging
bullets.

Then, scene upon scene played out until he announced
to Toto, played by Kong, “Kong, I don’t think we’re in the Pacific
anymore.” When Jason pointed at the monkeys watching from the
trees, they tensed as they remembered their cue from a week
ago.

“Kong! It’s the Flying Monkeys! The Wicked Witch of
the West sent them!”

The monkeys howled and jumped from tree to tree to
simulate flight. After they had delivered Jason and Kong to the
Wicked Witch, they settled back into their perches to watch the
last reel. Before long, Jason’s cries of “I’m melting! I’m
melting!” as he shrunk into a heap brought total silence to birds
and monkeys alike. Much too soon, Jason was clicking the heels of
his boots and saying, “There’s no place like home” over and over.
He then lay on his back, stared up at the clouds drifting by
against the bluest sky he had yet seen, and told Kong about
“home.”

“It’s called Madisin, Kong.” Kong lay down beside his
human and used his exposed ribcage as a firm pillow. “Typical small
town, about 10,000 people. I was born there in 1923. When were you
born?”

Kong shifted his head.

“Guess it doesn’t matter. Things were okay for us for
the most part. Then that depression came along when I was six.
People didn’t have much use for Daddy’s construction business after
that so he had to let all his help go. That’s when he started to
use me and my three brothers as helpers. They’re named Leroy, John,
and Ed. You got any brothers or sisters, Kong?”

Kong yawned.

“No matter. One day, old Leroy, he’s the oldest,
asked Daddy how much he’s going to pay us and Daddy says, ‘same as
I been paying you since you were born – room and board and the
clothes on your back.’ When Leroy started to grumbling, Daddy said,
‘you don’t have to stay on here, son. You can join the Army or that
CCC of FDR’s and see the world.’ So Leroy joined up with the CCC.
They sent home part of his paycheck all the time but Daddy stuck it
all in his safe and gave all that money back to Leroy when he quit
the CCC. Daddy wouldn’t stick it in a bank because he lost money
when his bank shut down after there was a run on it. Then I met
Thelma at high school, at a dance. Those gal monkeys you chase
after do for you what Thelma does for me, Kong? I bet they do.
Guess you could say Thelma stole my heart.”

Kong’s snoring sounded like a “yes.”

Jason laughed. “So we went steady. Then the Japs
bombed Pearl Harbor up real bad. I went off and joined up the next
day. I’m glad I did, I guess. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here shooting
the breeze with you, Kong. John joined up too. He liked airplanes
so he went into the Army Air Force. Momma said she was glad I kept
my feet on the ground. Leroy got a deferment from the draft because
he moved on up to Detroit to work at some factory that builds
tanks. Ed was classified 4-F because his joints are sort of twisted
up and he’s got flat feet. I got two sisters too, Alice and Wilma.
They’d sure get a kick out of you, Kong. I’ll introduce them to you
after we get ourselves rescued off of Monkey Island. Let’s see.”
Jason counted the groups of five notches in the tree that supported
the lean-to. At first he had carved each notch before he went to
bed each evening. Two weeks ago, he had begun carving them when he
awoke each morning. He reasoned that if he had survived the night
then the rest of the day would be easy. “One hundred forty days
down and 225 days left to go.” He shut his eyes and joined Kong for
a nap.

Sleep was even more of a friend than Kong. It alone
killed the loneliness, the guilt, the hunger, at least
temporarily.

“I ain’t in no trouble, am I boss?”

“No, George. I just have a few questions is all.”

“Okay.”

“Were you here in the building with Dave Freight when
the Gadget was tested?”

“Well, sir, that was almost a year ago. Let’s see if
I can recollect…”

“I’m not concerned any about you, George. It’s Dave
whom I’m worried about.”

“I figured as much. Now you got me to thinking that
what I say to you is going to get Mr. Freight in a pile of
troubles, maybe even get him fired.” He blinked and rubbed his
sweaty palms on his pants.

“I know I have a reputation for being a hard task
master. Please believe me that I’m only doing my job.”

George sighed. “I reckon so. My daddy always said
being a boss man ain’t no piece of cake. And he bossed people at
his restaurant back there in Texas until the day he died so he
should know.”

“Well?”

“Yes, sir. Me and Mr. Freight were both here when
they blew up that bomb.”

“Did he act strangely?”

“To tell a fact, he did act sort of strange thing
that day.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. He didn’t want to look off at where you
were setting off the bomb at even though I had an extra pair of
dark glasses for him to put on.”

“So what did he do instead?”

“He hid himself in the supply closet
so’s the rays from the bomb wouldn’t go inside him. I didn’t think
it was necessary to be doing all that. But then I looked at some
movie called
The Invisible
Ray
.”

“The one with Boris Karloff as the mad
scientist?”

“That’s the one. The way his body soaked up all those
invisible rays and then anyone he touched died made me start to
thinking that maybe Mr. Freight is smarter than we give him credit
for.”

“Did he wrap himself up in tin foil to protect
himself? That’s the rumor I heard. Someone found the tin foil all
wadded up under his desk.”

George shifted in his chair. “Am I in trouble if I
tell you I helped him to do it?”

“No, of course not. I’m only trying to get the bottom
of all this is all.”

“Yes, sir. I helped him wrap himself up in tin foil.
You think it protected him from those invisible rays that came
shooting on out from that bomb?”

“The results are not in yet on all that. But we have
scientists studying the survivors of the blasts at Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. Eventually we’ll have all the answers. Researching
something so new is not easy. It has to be done slowly if we’re
going to get it right.”

George rose to go. “I sure hope they figure all that
mess out before they do any more tests around here. I got a wife
and kids depending on me. I can’t be having no invisible rays make
me to where I can’t work and support them no more. I best be
getting back to work now.”

“Thank you, George.” He waited until the janitor had
shut the door before scribbling notes: June 3, 1946. Interviewed
janitor George Seymour. He confirmed that he was a witness to
technician Dave Freight donning tin foil day Gadget was tested,
July 1945. Follow-up interview with Freight revealed… Anxious to
fill in the blanks, he buzzed his secretary. “Miss Marpler, please
locate Dave Freight and send him in.”

“Yes, sir.” She found Dave talking to George by the
water cooler, their favorite meeting place. “Mr. Freight, the boss
is waiting for you.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there.” He turned and shook
George’s hand. “Thanks.”

“But I thought maybe I got you into a heap of
heartache. You ain’t mad at me?”

“No. You told the truth. I couldn’t
ask for any more than that.” Armed with knowing what his boss
already knew, Dave settled on which role to play as he walked to
his office.
I’ll give him the deer in the
headlights routine. That’ll make him happy. He loves to hunt. Pull
out your rifle, boss. Here comes your trophy buck, all snorting and
ready for your best shot.

“Come in and sit down, Dave. Please close the
door.”

“Thank you. I’ve been standing a lot today. My feet
sure do hurt.”

Probably from you standing out by
the water cooler as usual.
“Please relax. I
just need to clarify some rumors that have come to my
attention.”

Dave stiffened and his eyes grew wide. “Rumors? Not
about me.”

“I’m afraid so. As usual, they took forever to get as
high up as me. Did you stay here in the building when the Gadget
was tested?”

“I had no choice. Look at what happened to Daghlian
and Slotin. They got killed by the rays from the same radioactive
material months apart. That stuff must last forever. They don’t
call it the Demon Core for nothing. I wouldn’t be too surprised if
something goes wrong with the bomb that that core wound up in.”

“Their deaths were tragic, but they were both in
direct contact with the makings of the next bomb. All of us were
more than a sufficient distance from the Gadget when it exploded.
None of us have died. We followed adequate safety precautions.”

“Are you 100 percent certain of that?”

The boss sighed, placed his hands
behind his head and feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair.
For a final touch of removing all the invisible barriers that exist
between supervisor and employee, he took off his glasses. The dark
circles that had for the last three years given him the appearance
of a prize fighter after a bad ten rounds in the ring had faded to
a dull gray that at least somehow blended into his ruddy
complexion. Quite a bit of hair had dropped off of his head during
his five years of working to develop and detonate Earth’s first
atomic weapon. The few hairs that remained on the top of his head
looked like antennas to Dave, antennas no doubt tuned into the
collective unconscious defined by Jung. No use lying to such a
boss. Dave’s mother had told him of George Washington chopping down
the cherry tree and that “honesty is the best policy.”
If President George and janitor George could be
honest then so can I.

“Sir, with some of our scientists predicting that
detonating the Gadget would have set off a chain reaction that
would destroy the Earth, can you blame me for being careful? Sure,
I was covering my own butt. But can you blame me?”

“Look, Dave. You know I’m a scientist by training.
But the powers that be made me more of an administrator than
anything else. So my job is to make sure that people like you do
your job. My big worry is that your fears are hindering you from
doing your job.”

“Look at it this way. Maybe by
protecting myself I’m healthier than the ones who went near the
blast and then the detonation site afterwards. Maybe what they were
exposed to has made all of them less effective.”
Including you, you big fat dummy! I bet the rays
turned that pea-sized brain of yours into pea soup! Pretty soon
green goop will start oozing out of your ears. Don’t say I didn’t
warn you when they wheel you out of here on a gurney.
He hid his thoughts with a smile so broad that it
exposed his recent dental work; two fillings and a cleaning that
had made his gums bleed. His boss grimaced at the still raw gums as
he wondered if Dave liked meat cooked very rare and had eaten some
for lunch.

“Dave, believe it or not, I’m on your side. Tin foil
does not offer the protection that you think it does. Besides, it’s
totally unnecessary.”

“Huxley, whose mind is greater than ours put
together, said it did in his book.”

“That one about tin foil hats keeping others from
reading your thoughts and from projecting their thoughts into your
mind? That’s science fiction, with the emphasis on fiction. I sure
hope you don’t read too many of those kind of books or those crazy
science fiction magazines and comic books. Next, you’ll be telling
me you believe that movie George saw about dangerous rays.”

“The Invisible
Ray
? It was okay. I gave it three stars out
of five. Hollywood is so hit and miss these days. They did a much
better job with all of their takes on Frankenstein, the Wolfman,
the Mummy, and Dracula. And now that the war’s finally over with
I’m hoping they will do some more science fiction. Lord only knows
how much subject matter we’re handing them on a silver platter by
successfully giving the world the Gadget.”

Feeling like when his car’s rear tires became
anchored in mud or snow, the boss reverted to a stiff formal
posture, his desk now a barricade against what he thought to be the
Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy all combined
into one of his subordinates. “That will be all.” He scribbled a
concise summary and then asked his secretary to place a call to
Washington, D.C. to his person of last resort.

“Hello, Tony? This is Joe down at Los Alamos in New
Mexico…Just fine, thanks. Listen, I need you to send one of your
boys down here…No, I already tried that. That’s why I need your
help…He can? Great. Listen, the hunting is fantastic down here. Can
you get away sometime in the fall…? Great. I’ll see you then. I
need a break from this loony bin…I don’t mean to complain but I
think mine is loonier than yours, I’m afraid.”

“So what do you think of our asylum? Are the inmates
running it?”

Arkhip shrugged. “I can’t complain. At least I’m
sheltered and fed and surrounded by some of the world’s best minds.
What more could I wish for?”