History: unlearned
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The wind was hot and fast and immediate. It kicked up right after the flash. In that instant, Peach knew what was up. At 74 he’d read a lot, seen a lot.
Eighty years ago, the Enola Gay dropped its payload and commenced ticking of something sinisterly ~ or maybe sincerely ~ called the doomsday clock, something that measured the metaphorical seconds between now and some presumed midnight oblivion. Twenty years later, two constructs became real, even common. One was a series of missile bases dubbed ‘Nike’ dotting every fifty or so miles across the American landscape. The other was the backyard-built fallout shelter, plans of which were readily available at the library or newsstand. Both John Hershey, who authored a book, and Slim Pickens, who starred in the final scene of an early Kubrick comedy, perhaps inadvertently reinforced the advisability of digging such a vault.
When the Nike base was nearly completed just north of town, Peach’s father broke ground on a fallout shelter positioned near the water well in his five acres of peaches. (Peach, the son, never forgave fully Papa, the papa, his little nomenclature joke.) The hole was deep and square and, initially smelled like Vina loam, rich and dark. Cinder block and mortar changed the odor to a minerally musk that would infuse the cavity for years. Entry to the shelter was gained through a circular, hinged lid like you might see on the deck of a submarine: crank wheel one way on the outside to open and the other way on the inside to seal shut the underground space. A neoprene rubber ring prevented the inward seepage of radon in the event of...
The unspeakable was often spoken.
Finished, the rust tinted metal stairs echoed with each foot fall. The space was stocked with a month or more’s worth of freeze-dried backpacking food ~ Papa being a hiker ~ and gallon glass jugs of water should the line jury-rigged into the well fail. The provisions bill from the Ski Hut in Berkeley, where Papa got his back country supplies, almost equaled a month’s wages. Mom had been appalled and said so many times, shaking her head and gasping exasperated gasps, as they drove north in the Ford Fairlane with their boys in the back.
Peach and his late brother, Charlie set up their S-gauge American Flyer electric train on the concrete floor, using one of the two duplex outlets to connect the transformer. The single pull chain light cast comic shadows that grew from foot to shoulder. Peach and Charlie’s neighborhood pals, the ones who didn’t make fun of Peach’s name in front of him, liked to trace their oblique shadows on the concrete floor with chalk and then laugh at their masterwork. Once, Peach started down the stairs to surprise Charlie as he attempted to move beyond first base with Yvette ~ secretly known by classmates in high school as Yvette the Corvette ~ and was told to knock, Goddammit, before coming into the shelter. Never mind that there was no place to knock on that heavy circular hatch door. Later, when Charlie shipped out to Vietnam ~ Charlie said he’d be the good Charlie over there shortly before he left ~ Peach plugged in an IBM Selectric, set it on a rickety desk made of two sawhorses and scrap of plywood and typed his college term papers.
There would be no Yvette for any kid named Peach.
Dammit, Papa!
Peach was standing next to the orchard pump house maybe forty feet from the submarine hatch when that wind blasted into being. He glanced at the opening which was now always open: too much a pain in the ass ~ and maybe too heavy ~ to push down and crank shut after each visit even though each visit had become less and less frequent. Besides, the neoprene had rotted off long ago so the place and all of its contents was always coated in a powdery film of loess. Peach faced the furious gale that was coming from just north of town.
Not so long ago, there would have been children to shepherd in. Little ones. Ones that toyed with Barbies and GI Joes; ones that played both house and Rat Patrol; ones that practiced violin and brass tuba because they liked the acoustics even though they didn’t know the word. Ones that needed the strong arms of Peach and the caring heart of Carah to find their way from time to time. How quickly those moments passed. And now: how well they were doing!
Peach and Carah had taken ownership ~ there was no one else in line ~ after the accident. Some moron driving on a frigid pea-soup morning without his damned headlights on crossed a center line. He couldn’t make out Peach’s folk’s station wagon tiptoeing carefully through the tule fog heading somewhere, nowhere. Peach was amazed at how many townsfolks knew Papa or Mom or both.
Kids and trains and tubas and term papers now gone, the cool of the underground made a good place for storing peaches before market. Peach’s peaches ~ perhaps that was the punchline Papa was shootin’ for all along ~ were renowned for their sweetness, delicate skin, and ample dimension. A robust pie would need but four of them. Wearing one of Mom’s old handmade aprons, Carah discovered she could reduce any recipe’s sugar allotment and did so before filling crusts ~ crusts she’d perfected. It wasn’t simply the fruit that gave rise to renown.
Inheriting the place was never in the plan. Once Peach earned his credential, he and Carah immediately lit out for a different horizon, one less agricultural, maybe a bit more foresty. Jobs for history teachers were a dime a dozen especially if the candidate could coach, so Peach claimed he could coach wrestling and maybe volleyball. Thus, he spent three or four years prowling the sideline of the mountain town’s football field as an assistant never quite figuring out the difference in the roles of a defensive guard and a defensive tackle. Then, one late-October evening, they received the call. Taking leave, Peach never returned. With a bit of a resume, some experience under his belt, he figured he could venture home and substitute until something came up locally.
The dime a dozen adage held. Teaching history at his old high school, now ‘Mr. Peach’ hired boys and girls to tend the orchard paying each a little in cash along with firewood and in-season fruit. When asked about the submarine hatch, he simply responded “Rumpus room.” High School curriculum mentioned little about Hiroshima and most years, Peach didn’t get that far in US history, which, he rationalized, was a good thing recalling the terrifying nights when, as an eleven-year-old, he had to crawl into bed with Papa and Mom after reading pages from John Hershey’s account of the world’s first wartime atomic blast.
Standing in the orchard with dust pellets and grit peppering his eyes, Peach wondered how many other US history teachers had made a similar miscalculation, leaving how many now in charge to pass off history unlearned as simply fiction.
Facing the wind and under a dust-cloaked sun, Peach struck out north toward the long abandoned Nike missile base and wondered who among the townsfolk would attend his memorial, knowing the answer would likely be none.
It being midnight and all.
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Church of the Open Road Press
