Mark Dunn - American Decameron

BEFORE THAT:

1618, 3/11/58

Bill Gregg is out in his workshop building a bench with his son. His wife Effie is in the house, sewing. Their two daughters and the couple’s young niece are playing in the yard. Bill hears a plane overhead, then seconds later the detonation of a 7,600-pound bomb right in his back acreage. The concussion makes his ears ring. The walls of the workshop shake. The air becomes a maelstrom of dust and smoke. He runs out into the yard to search for the rest of his family. Huge clods of earth hurled high into the air from the bomb’s impact with the ground start their raining descent. One-hundred, two-hundred-pound soil boulders come crashing down on the house. Smaller chunks pelt the girls as they run and scream in terror. A gash is ripped in Bill’s side; large plaster patches from the house walls come crashing down on Effie.

A mushroom cloud rises up from the instantaneous crater — a crater that measures seventy-five feet wide and thirty feet deep. Several nearby homes and a church are struck by the falling debris. A state trooper, forced off the highway by the blast, shields his head as he rushes to the scene.

The bomb carries no fissionable material. This is not a poisonous mushroom cloud. The bomb is atomic in name only, but the TNT that provides its explosive charge wreaks havoc nevertheless. The Greggs, all of whom survive, find that several of their free-range chickens have been vaporized.

BEFORE THAT:

1616, 03/11/58

Co-pilot Charles Woodruff is having trouble with his bomb’s locking pin. Unlocked by regulation mandate during takeoff, the bomb must now be secured. The B-47’s commander, Captain Earl Koehler, suggests that the bombardier, Captain Bruce Kulka, try to seat the locking pin by hand. Because the bomb bay isn’t pressurized and the plane’s altimeter now reads fifteen thousand feet, the three crew members must strap on their oxygen masks.

The entrance to the bomb bay is too small to allow for both a man and his parachute, so Kulka goes into the bay without it.

Kulka can’t find the locking pin in the bomb-release mechanism. After twelve minutes of fruitless searching, the bombardier pulls himself high up in the bomb bay, where he thinks the pin might be hiding behind the bomb. Unfortunately, he uses the emergency bomb-release mechanism for his handhold. The bomb drops from its shackle. For a brief moment, it and Captain Kulka come to rest together on the bomb bay doors, Kulka straddling the bomb like a rider on a bareback horse. The enormous weight of the bomb forces the doors open. Kulka grabs hold of something — he doesn’t know what — which keeps him from plummeting earthward with the bomb.

Hunter Air Force base doesn’t understand the coded message the crew sends. Captain Koehler is forced to radio the civilian airport in Florence to ask that they communicate to Hunter the fact that they have lost a “device.”

BEFORE THAT:

0800, 03/11/58

A specialized loading crew consisting of two men work for one hour and seven minutes to implant a bomb in Aircraft 53-1876A. The bulbous, blimp-shaped weapon bears a strong resemblance to the infamous Fat Man that was detonated 1,800 feet above Nagasaki, Japan, a dozen years earlier. The plane is scheduled to participate in “Operation Snow Flurry,” part of an important “Unit Simulated Combat Mission and Special Weapons Exercise” programmed for later that day. The purpose of the mission, in which the plane would be accompanied by three other B-47s from the 375th Bombardment Squadron, is to transport a nuclear bomb to Bruntingthorpe Air Base in Great Britain and pretend to release it somewhere over that country.

The loading team has trouble with the bomb’s steel locking pin. They ask the weapons-release systems supervisor for help. He has the weapon removed from its shackle and put into a sling. Then he futzes around the pin with a hammer until it’s seated. The bomb is returned to its shackle. The two crewmen decide not to take the locking pin through its engage/disengage cycle; time is running out. They have to be finished by 1000 hours.

BEFORE THAT:

0715, 03/10/58

Lieutenant Kenneth Daltry and his wife Doris have finished breakfast. Each is indulging in a second cup of coffee before Daltry has to drive to Hunter Air Force Base for the day. Doris mentions the nightmare she had the night before.

“I wish you wouldn’t read that Hiroshima book before you go to bed.”

“I was thinking about that midair collision last month, Ken. The plane was carrying a nuclear bomb. They dropped it in the water, but what if it had hit Savannah?”

“I think you look for things to worry about. The bomb didn’t have nuclear capability. Do you know what the odds are that something like that could happen again? Give me a kiss. I’m late.”

BEFORE THAT:

1558, 02/05/58

An Air Force B-47 Stratojet leaves Hunter Air Force base and shortly thereafter collides with an F-86 Sabre. The B-47 is carrying a Mark 15 hydrogen bomb. The pilot of the crippled bomber (the fighter’s pilot ejects as his plane goes down) makes three attempts to land the plane at Hunter, with its nuclear bomb on board. A safe landing cannot be assured, given the condition of the craft. It is decided that the bomb, its nuclear explosion triggering capsule believed to be safely absent, should be released to allow the compromised craft to land. The weapon is jettisoned in the Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island and doesn’t detonate upon impact with the water. The plane lands safely.

MANY YEARS AFTER THAT:

In 2004 there will be renewed interest in finding the exact location of the ejected bomb. High levels of radiation and unusual magnetometer readings will pinpoint a spot just off the southern tip of “Little Tybee.” This will indicate the possibility that the bomb contained a nuclear capsule after all. On the other hand, the Air Force will report in 2005 that the high radiation reading could most likely be attributed to monazite, a kind of radioactive sand.

One hundred and seventy miles away in South Carolina, a different, terrestrial bombsite exists now only as a shallow depression in the ground, overgrown with vegetation. There were once hand-lettered signs that directed the curious to the spot, but they have been stolen.

Perhaps they were taken as souvenirs.

“You’re starting early,” said Janice, turning around so her husband could zip her up in the back.

Cliff set his highball glass down upon the blonde-wood buffet next to him. “No earlier than usual.”

“It’s going to be a long evening, Cliff. No one goes to a New Year’s Eve party with any expectation of leaving before one or two in the morning — even when the party is as boring as Marilyn and Gilbert’s parties usually are.” Janice glanced up at the aluminum sunray clock hanging from the dining room’s grass cloth wall. Its rays were spiny and looked like something that lived at the bottom of the ocean. “It will be 1960 in less than five hours. I cannot even imagine it. 1960. We met in 1949. We’re entering a third decade together.”

Cliff finished with his wife’s zipper and retrieved his glass. “So what are you suggesting?”

“That you don’t show up at the Powells’ drunk. How will that look? Aren’t you expecting Gilbert to move all his business over to you next year?”

Cliff nodded. Then he sighed. “I’ll stop. It’s seven fifteen. I should go pick up Miss Stillwell. Has Rosalie left yet?”

“She’s clearing the children’s dinner plates and then she’ll be off.”

“Why couldn’t she babysit Judy and Dicky tonight?”

Janice rolled her eyes, annoyed. “It’s New Year’s Eve, Cliff. Rosalie’s going into the city. That would have been mean, don’t you think — making Rosalie stay home on a night like this?”