Earthquakes & Nuclear Missiles

Saturday, June 18, 2005

OLeif had just left for the Ozarks that warm breezy morning. He was to pick up Tennessee and drive with the rest of the youth group to the big lakes where Mr. St. Mary from church had offered his boat for the day. Sticking his mandolin in the car, OLeif hurried back upstairs with a lovely blossom which he had found growing below.

“Oh, how beautiful,” Collette placed it in a glass flute on the mantelpiece. “I didn’t know we had pink flowers around here.”

“I did it for you,” OLeif replied. “I made it blush.”

And Collette was quite disappointed to see that the barometer was still not dropping.

Back at the house that afternoon, Joe had his things all packed for Scout Camp, and was wandering around with a piece of tape plastered across his mouth. Collette did a double-take as she walked by him.

“Joe, what is that?”

“I’m Tape Boy,” he called, through his muffled mask.

Meanwhile, Carrie-Bri was running around, curlers bobbing up and down in her hair.

“Aaaaaah!” she cried from time to time, trying to crank out her last paper for the week (before going to work) on the topic of “green infrastructure”.

She had also just made plans to visit Mackinac Island, Michigan, with Elizabeth the first week of August, which included staying in a lovely bed and breakfast and para-sailing. Mackinac was one of the best places in the world, Collette thought – so very quiet – no automobiles, machinery, or anything like it – just the wind, the waves of Lake Huron, and the clop-clop of horses on the streets, and of course – the fudge shops.

Meanwhile, Joe, Linnea, and Francis took turns walking around the house on newly constructed stilts Mom had Joe created from rope and chili bean cans.

“I’m going to go aerate the yard,” Joe called to them, stomping out on the cans to the backyard.

Then Mom and Dad took Francis and Linnea to Klondike park, Collette tagging along. However, in the end, she wished that she hadn’t. Upon arriving, they were all very thirsty, so Collette walked Francis and Linnea back to a soda machine by the shower house. Francis and Linnea selected their root beer and Collette shooed away a bug as she picked out a lemonade. But in walking back, she felt a sharp pain on her upper left arm. Pulling up her sleeve, a great black wasp flew off into the afternoon. A blood spot began to grow on her arm and she put the cold can of lemonade up against it. Within the hour, the blood spot began to blister, surrounded by an oval-shaped area of mildly swollen white skin. A pale red rash encircled this. For such a small thing, it stung for a good three or so hours, after Dad smashed an ammonium nitrate cold pack for her on the way back. Finally, during dinner of fish and chips over the Andy Williams show, her arm grew cool and the sting left.

On the way home from the park, they had seen a bi-plane flying low over the highway, much too low.

“Isn’t that illegal?” Collette had asked Dad.

“Yes, it’s illegal. I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to land…. What a nut-case!”

But they never saw where the pilot put down his plane; it looked as though he might have been in trouble.

And, as Francis and Linnea were put down to bed, the usual happened. Collette was sitting in the living room talking with Mom and Dad when she saw Francis beckon to her from the hall. She followed him back.

“Every time I stare out the window, my vision begins to blur,” Francis began, seriously concerned.

“Francis, it happens to me all the time. Trust me. It’s the light playing tricks on your eyes.”

But Linnea hurried in to join them.

“I’m afraid a nuclear missile will hit the house,” Linnea covered her face in embarrassment.

“I’m sure you are,” Collette looked at her suspiciously.

“But aren’t we in the black zone?”

“For earthquakes, not for nuclear missiles falling on our house.”

“But what would I do in an earthquake?”

“You mean where would you go?”

“Outside by the house,” Francis answered her.

“But what if a tree fell on me?”

“You wouldn’t go by any trees,” Collette told her.

“But what’s the biggest crack anyone ever fell into from an earthquake?” Francis wanted to know.

“Well, I don’t…”

“But where’s the safest place to be during an earthquake?”

“A field,” Francis answered Linnea again.

“Yes, a field would be the best place…”

“No, I mean in the world.”

“Oh, well, Florida, maybe…”

“No,” Linnea’s eyes grew wide. “Francis says they’re in the black zone.”

“Oh, well, I haven’t heard of an earthquake in Florida before…”

“But what would we do if the nuclear missile came?”

“And what if they had laser guns?” Francis added.

“The enemy?”

“Yeah – would they go right through mirrors?”

“Well, I think they’d reflect.”

“Oh, good,” Linnea was happy. “Then mirrors are invincible. Would bullets go through them?”

“Well, yes.”

And on the conversation went, two pairs of eager eyes watching her from beneath the bunk bed, where Francis was tucked under his Psalm 23 blanket and Linnea sat perched next to him in her cat pajamas. And the cats themselves jumped all over the bed.

But soon, Mom called to them that it was time for bed, and was coming back to read to them. And Dad and Joe drove her home, discussing many things about life, and she said goodbye to Joe before they left. Late that night, while asleep, she heard OLeif walk in from his excursion on the lake.