“Oh yeah?” he shot back. “If the Rooskies send one over, there ain’t gonna be nothin’ left to duck and cover under!”
A wave of nervous laughter rolled across the classroom.
“Isn’t going to be anything left,” the teacher said, correcting him tersely.
“There sure ain’t,” the boy replied with a nod.
Why must this boy always be difficult? He refused to do any studying and yet was always there with a smart-aleck opinion. She was going to pass him this year, no matter what.
“You know that flash of bright light?” he asked with a smirk, then went on before she could respond. “By the time you see it, you’re already dead! Fried to a crisp. Ain’t no time to duck and cover.”
“Harold…”
“Okay, so maybe you do have time. But then what happens after a kid ‘duck-and-covers,’ huh? How come the movie don’t go into that?”
“Doesn’t go into that, Harold.”
“Sure don’t! Everybody’s still lyin’ on the ground, when we see ’em last. That’s ’cause…” And Harold looked around at several girls seated near him, their eyes glued to him. With a delivery worthy of a Chiller Theater host, Harold finished his thought: “…they’re all corpses.”
Laughter, squeals, and assorted sounds of dismay and delight rocked the room.
“Harold!” Mrs. Hahn said sharply. “Everyone!” The classroom quieted. “That’s quite enough.”
But the boy ignored her and looked around at his classmates. “Hey, I oughta know,” he told them, jerking a thumb back at his chest. “My pop was at Nagasaki right after they dropped the big one — the A-bomb!”
Another wave: this time ooo’s and aahh’s, rippled across the class.
Squinting, leaning forward, like a kid telling a ghost story around a campfire, Harold said, “The lucky ones were the ones what got killed. The not lucky ones? All their hair fell out!”
“Harold!”
But Harold had that what-are-you-gonna-do, flunk-me? attitude. “It’ll happen to you, too! If the bomb drops… radiation sickness! Your skin peels off from the heat — just like a snake — then ya start pukin’ your guts up…”
Seated across from the boy, Susan, a frail girl with red hair and homemade haphazardly-cut bangs, began to cry. And the rest of the children looked as frightened as school bus passengers after a sudden stop.
“Harold, stop it!” Mrs. Hahn commanded, stomping one foot.
“You asked for comments, Miz Hahn. I thought you wanted, uh, discussion.”
She swallowed. “That’s true. I do… commend you for your class participation, Harold. But you seem to have forgotten the lessons of last week’s film — Manners in Public.”
Harold just shrugged.
Composing herself, Mrs. Hahn told the class as firmly as she could, “There are not going to be any Russian bombs.”
Mary Ann Stein raised her hand; the perfect little brunette, a straight-A student, asked (when she had been recognized by her teacher, of course), “Then why did you show us this picture, Mrs. Hahn?”
Mary Ann was not being a smart-aleck — the girl was clearly shaken by the film and her classmate’s comments.
“Even as unlikely as a Russian attack might be—” Mrs. Hahn began.
But Harold burst back in: “Last week the Rooskies shot a rocket an’ hit the moon. Hey — don’t kid yourself… we’re next.” He paused, then added, “An’ now they got that fat boy, Krew-chef, comin’ to town to spy on us.”
Mrs. Hahn angrily marched down the aisle to the boy, and pointed a trembling finger at him. “Report to the principal’s office,” she ordered, “at once!” She hoped her manner was authoritarian and did not reveal that the boy’s remarks had gotten to her, as well.
Harold smirked and shrugged and got up from his desk and sauntered slowly to the closed wood-paneled door, where he looked back at the teacher. But the smirk had wiped itself from his face, to be replaced by something else…
Fear.
“ ‘We’ll bury you,’ that’s what that Rooskie fatso said,” the boy told her, and for all his bluster, Harold’s trembling lower lip and his teary eyes revealed his classroom behavior had been motivated not by orneriness but terror.
Then — embarrassed — Harold pushed open the door and disappeared out into the hallway.
The classroom fell deathly quiet again, punctuated by the sniffles of the red-haired girl, and one or two others. The cartoon with the cheerful “duck and cover” theme song and the cartoon turtle had scared the hell out of these seventh graders.
And their teacher.
Mrs. Hahn walked back up the aisle and planted herself in front of the chalkboard. “Class,” she said, forcing her voice to be calm, “don’t pay any attention to Harold. He’s… he’s just a prankster, trying to scare us.” She squared her shoulders, hands clasped under her bosom, and pronounced: “President Eisenhower would never allow an atomic war.”
Then she moved to her desk, pulled out the oak chair with a fingernails-on-blackboard screech, and sat down. “Now, take out your social studies book,” she instructed coolly, “and turn to chapter four.”
As the students rustled around in their desks, Mrs. Hahn glanced down at her notes on the forthcoming lesson; but her mind wasn’t on them.
World War II had been the war to end all wars — hadn’t it? Her husband had fought in the Pacific, coming home with nightmares and recurring malaria. She had lost her brother in Italy. The war to end all wars. That’s what everyone said.
Of course, they’d said that about World War I, as well…
Could it all have been for nothing? Could the world end in a heartbeat — always remember, the flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time!
She gazed out the open window onto Selby Avenue, where on this beautiful Friday morning in September, in the entertainment capital of the world, cars and pedestrians bustled along in pursuit of the American dream.
Sighing, shaking her head, she made herself smile — for her students, for herself. President Eisenhower would never allow an atomic war. Wasn’t that the reason he’d invited Nikita Khrushchev over? To sit down like human beings and reason together? To talk, to straighten all this silliness out?
An atomic war could never, ever happen!
Could it?
Then she withdrew into the class lesson, like a turtle into its shell, and went about her business.
Chapter One
Blonde Ambition
In bungalow number seven on the lavishly landscaped grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the bustle of Hollywood had been banished. A goddess was — with the help of others — preparing herself for an appearance before those who worshipped her.
At just after nine a.m., Ralph Roberts — Marilyn Monroe’s personal masseur — had just finished giving the celebrated actress a rubdown in a bedroom decorated all in white (with the exception of heavy black-out curtains). The man — handsome, muscular, heterosexual — and the woman — beautiful, curvaceous, blonde-all-over, naked — had exchanged only a few words, the massage all business, but for the pleasure the actress received from skilled hands.
In a corner of the room, a portable hi-fi — fit for the most pampered teenage girl — perched on the white-carpeted floor, spinning the latest of a stack of Frank Sinatra 45s. Later in the day the swinging come-fly-with-me Sinatra might have been heard in this snowy chamber; but at this early hour, the singer was crooning, “September Song,” softly, lulling the actress into wakefulness.