In War Times (46 page)

“What’s wrong?” asked Bette. She stood and turned down the television. “You look like zombies.”

“Nothing,” said Brian. They headed for the kitchen. Sam heard the refrigerator door open.

“What have you been doing up there?” Bette said. She and Sam followed their kids into the kitchen.

“Just playing a game,” said Jill.

“I feel like a pizza,” said Bette.

“You
look
like a—” began Megan, but shrugged and flopped into a chair at the table.

“I’ll call Bazzano’s,” said Sam. He ordered a pepperoni pizza to be delivered and hung up the phone.

“What difference does it make?” said Brian. Jill glared at him.

“I mean, why bother to eat? We’re all going to die.”

“Oh, eventually,” said Bette lightly, but Sam could tell she wanted a cigarette.

Megan burst into tears. “No, it will be soon. Because of nuclear war.”

Bette leaned over from behind Megan and hugged her. “What’s brought this on?”

Jill looked aggravated, but then said in her cool-and-collected voice, “We, uh, saw a movie about it. In a school assembly.” She glanced at Brian.

“Yeah,” said Brian, picking it up. “And we had one at our school too.”

“Nuclear war is not very likely,” said Bette, gathering Megan on to her lap. Megan’s long legs hung down to the floor.

“Yes, it is,” said Megan. “No matter what we try.”

“But the Soviet Union—” Sam started to say.

“It’s not them,” said Brian. “China is going to start it.”

“Oh?” said Bette. “That’s what they’re telling you in school?”

“Sounds kind of strange, doesn’t it?” asked Sam.

“Well, they
are
all communists,” said Jill, as if that decided it. The doorbell rang. “The pizza’s here. Where’s the money?” She rushed off to the front door.

The kids calmed down as they ate. Bette insisted on a round of spades, and soon they were all laughing and joking.

After they went to bed, Bette and Sam went outside and sat in a little grotto Sam had made near the creek. It was spring, and they both wore sweaters. Koi swam in the pond next to him, and Bette’s meditation nook, defined by bamboo, was the place for her morning retreat unless it was raining or snowing. The roaring water made it a good place to talk without being overheard. The dog, Winston, lay between them.

“I think the kids have found the HD10,” said Bette. “No thanks to you.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a while. The sounds and smells of the night filled him with Bette’s Chinese poetry.

Whirr of cicadas rises and falls.

A night-bird sings, a clear flute piercing darkness.

Wei Creek runs full and loud.

The clouds shift; moonlight drenches all.

Self vanishes: only this remains.

It reminded him of the first time he had touched the device, back in Tidworth, when it first coalesced…

“Sam!”

He snapped back to their dilemma. “If you’re right, what can we do?”

“Oh, I guess we can sneak around and spy on them.”

Sam said, “We could confront them and ask them about it.”

“Right. Good idea. Kids, your dad hid some strange thing in the attic and we think you’ve found it. Then if they really
haven’t
found it, they soon will.”

“Last time I looked, it was still there.”

“What do you mean, it was still there? It
mutates
, Sam. Part of it walked off and climbed into their ears one night.” Her hand trembled as she lit a cigarette. She was furious.

The next morning, the kids came down for breakfast as if nothing had happened. They seemed cheerful, happy.

“Feeling better?” asked Sam.

“Oh, yes,” said Brian. “We’re all feeling
much
better.”

“Why is that?” asked Bette. “Is there anything you want to tell us?”

“No,” said Jill.

“We just think that it’s not going to happen,” said Megan, and smiled brilliantly.

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Bette. She hugged them all tightly before they left for school.

“Damn it,” she said, when they were gone. “When Megan smiles like that, she’s always hiding something. They’ve gone to ground. I want you to show me where it is. Now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

They went up to the attic. Bette helped him move the broken kitchen chairs and shove aside the heavy trunk. Kneeling where the trunk had been, Sam got a screwdriver out of his pocket and unscrewed the plank. Lifting it up, he removed the lead box, unlocked the padlock, and opened it.

“Well, there it is,” he said, relieved.

“Yeah,” said Bette. “That’s where
some
of it is.”

“All of it. The box is full.”

“It
expands
, Sam.”

“Well, it doesn’t look to me as if they got into it. All of my threads were exactly as I left them. Every last detail.”

“The kids aren’t stupid and neither is this stuff,” said Bette. “You put it all over the Pacific, and in Germany, and probably all over D.C. and every other place you’ve been in the past five years. Sam, I think it’s changed again. That’s why Ed was here. They have all kinds of incredibly sensitive equipment.”

“What can we do? Toss it in the ocean?”

“It’s too late for that.”

O
N JANUARY 27, 1967
, Sam got a call. A flash fire had killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in their Apollo capsule. The capsule sat atop an unfueled Saturn rocket and was fully sealed; they were going through a training exercise.

By the time the news became public, he was on a military flight to Cape Kennedy.

When he returned, he told Bette in the kitchen as they fixed supper, “It’s a tragedy. Not just for the men and their families, but for the whole space program.” He later testified about his investigation as an expert witness before Congress.

In Wink’s world, they had a functioning moon colony. They were probably getting ready to explore Mars, by now. Here, they couldn’t even get off the ground.

Their own space dreams, begun by Kennedy, seemed further and further away.

The temptation to do something with the HD10, to release it to the world, to facilitate the changes it might bring about, was never as strong as at times like these.

Jill became ever more involved with the antiwar movement. She organized and attended rallies, marched, chanted, and came home wrung dry. Bette and Sam refused to let her travel out of town for events. “There’s plenty happening here,” Sam told her.

Now, the latest protest, a huge march on the Pentagon that required national coordination, was on the evening news. Megan dragged them into the living room to watch.

“Look!” said Megan. “That’s Abbie Hoffman! They’re all going to levitate the Pentagon!”

“After that, I have a few other jobs they can take care of,” said Sam.

“Who’s that putting a flower in the Army guy’s gun?” asked Bette nervously, getting up close to the screen.

“Not Jill,” said Megan.

It turned ugly later that night. Sam bailed Jill out of jail at four in the morning amid undaunted chanting that poured out into the street.

“You know,” said Sam, as he drove them home through dark streets, “I think you might be doing some good.”

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

The family was all in the kitchen, just about finished eating dinner, when the phone rang. Bette picked it up.

“What? No, I hadn’t heard. Oh my God. That’s terrible.” A pause. “I don’t think so. Where would we go? No, no one is going to burn down our house.” She turned around and said to them, “Martin Luther King has just been assassinated.”

“He can’t be dead!” Jill turned pale. She had been volunteering at Resurrection City, where participants in the nationwide Poor People’s Campaign had gathered. Dr. King had helped develop the campaign.

“I think it’s true, honey,” said Bette, gently.

Jill pushed back her chair and ran upstairs.

Bette said, “Your sister thinks that we need to leave. She says that all the whites in D.C. are going to be killed.”

“Rather unlikely,” said Sam. “This is just awful, though. I couldn’t blame people for getting mad.” Sam wasn’t sure what would happen, but he didn’t think he or his family were in imminent danger. Their own neighborhood was tightly knit. Their latest neighborhood project was ongoing—fighting the proposed highway that would cut through the District, isolating blocks and people from one another. They had a good organization with good communication—a phone tree to inform everyone of a new development or to call a meeting quickly.

Terence Hanson, their neighbor, came over to the house a few minutes later.

“Come on in,” said Sam. He got both of them beers from the kitchen, and they settled down to talk in the living room.

Terence was a quiet, soft-spoken, graying man. Being a pharmacist, he regularly chatted with Bette about her biochemistry studies. “I think we should keep an eye on the boys.”

“Do you think we’re in any kind of danger?”

“Not if we all stay home. There’s probably going to be trouble, but I’d say that businesses and offices will be targeted. I don’t think anything will happen here. But the boys are…boys. Is Doug here?”

“I think so.” Sam yelled up the stairs. “Brian? Doug?”

They pounded downstairs, a matched pair in bell-bottoms, T-shirts, and plaid overshirts, each with a Coke in one hand. And tall, Sam observed for what seemed the first time. They were what—sixteen?

“I don’t want you going out for the next few days,” Terence said to Doug.

“But Dad—”

“No buts. Just stay on the block and you should be fine.”

“That goes for you too,” Sam told Brian. Brian scowled.

Terence said, “This is serious. People are very angry right now. There will be a lot of dangerous situations. All it would take is a few professional agitators to stir people up. I don’t want you involved in any of it. I imagine that soldiers will be sent in. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some people get shot.”

The boys looked wary, but excited.

The riot started down on 14th Street that evening. Sam decreed that everyone stay home. “I mean it,” he said, making a special trip to Jill’s room to tell her.

During the next few days, smoke billowed from fires just a few blocks away as business were looted and set afire. Brian and Doug were not to be found for half a day, then rolled up on their bikes and said they’d just gone over to a friend’s house on the next block, what was the big deal? Finally they admitted that they’d ridden down to the Washington Monument. Both were grounded. Troops marched through the streets, including their own, where not one of the predicted rampagers had set foot.

They all stood on the front porch and watched them pass.

“Pigs,” Jill muttered.

“I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again!” said Bette.

“Jill hates policemen and servicemen and the National Guard and the war and anyone who’s doing a good job for their country,” said Brian. “Didn’t you know?”

“Everything is going wrong,” Jill raged. “First it was Kennedy! Now it’s King! Who’s next? Only the bad survive. Thousands of boys are dying in Vietnam. Johnson will never pull out. We all have H-bombs aimed at each other! All they have to do is get in a bad mood and push the button! And this whole city, the nation’s capital, is full of the poorest people in the country and they’re all—surprise!—black. What are we waiting for? We need to
do
something! Now!”

After it was again safe to go out, she immediately found her way to the Robert Kennedy campaign and volunteered.

A sense of sadness and resignation pervaded the neighborhood. The Darts, a white family, quickly sold their house and moved to Arlington. The entire social fabric of the city was changed. Alliances between blacks and whites were severely tested, and many were broken. Many neighborhoods would probably never recover. Optimism about progress in race relations evaporated.

Just two months later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. After this event, the third major political assassination Jill had experienced in her short life, she grew silent and intense. She withdrew to her room for days on end, and refused to attend school, though she did go the library from time to time.

“I’m worried about her,” said Bette.

“What can we do?”

“I don’t know. Get her involved in something positive.”

So they were happy when she became even more involved with antiwar demonstrations.

The political situation was deteriorating fast. The country was up in arms, particularly students, who were becoming more and more militant, along with Black Power advocates. Nixon was nominated to run again for the presidency. He was taking a hard line against anyone who criticized his policies. The National Guard and the police were more and more a presence on college campuses. The long, hot summer was filled with tension. Jill went to the Democratic Convention in Chicago, giving her parents a very nervous week as they watched the mayhem on television. She returned excited, invigorated, with a large bandage on her forehead from a police clubbing, filled with more fire than ever for antiwar and other social causes.

“It’s as if she’s taken vitamins,” remarked Bette one day, after Jill had given them a long lecture on imperialism.

Bette herself had to leave, this time for two weeks. When she returned, she was alternately exhilarated and depressed. Sam was worried.

“What’s wrong, Bette?” he asked one evening as they sat in the kitchen. “Anything I should know about?”