Here are the first 2 chapters of THE WEATHERMAN. Start your journey into the dirty secret behind the Cuban Missile Crisis now:
Sironia, Texas October, 1962 Chapter 1 Andrea Wiggins The Cuban Missile Crisis was a hoax. Young people today might not understand what the big deal was – that skirmish in the Atlantic Ocean in the autumn of 1962 doesn’t even rate a full chapter in modern history books that spend more time on famous people’s sexual persuasions than they do talking about the most frightening few weeks of the Cold War, a war that lasted fifty years. For two or three weeks that October, just as the weather was starting to turn in Central Texas, we, and everyone in America, and also in Russia for that matter, lived under the threat of immediate nuclear war. Sure, we went about our daily lives, but the pressure was building. We could hear it in the voices of the news guys on the radio, and the worried looks those same trusted heralds wore when we saw them on that still-new invention, the television screen. It was the only talk at cocktail parties, though Andrea never let me go to cocktail parties. Hell, the whole world was terrified, because nuclear radiation doesn’t go away so quickly. If Russia and America let go with every nuke they had, it would put enough plutonium up into the air to kill people in all the other countries, too. The threat was tangible to us – just the winter before, we had been warned to quit making snow ice cream – though Sironia got snow only once or twice a year – because American and French nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific were filling the` upper atmosphere with radiation. It would be like that movie, On the Beach, which came out a couple of years before – the world’s population dies, except Australia, and them, too, after a few months. Scary photos on TV showed Soviet missiles being hoisted into position in Cuba, only ten minutes away (as the crow rockets) from our nation’s capital. Everyone knew what that meant. We were going to have to attack Cuba, and wipe those missiles out. And even if we did, it was likely the hot-headed Russians who commanded the weapons would have time to shoot off at least one of their monsters. This was it. The fabled, feared nuclear war was finally going to happen. All we could do was wait, and hope that our young president, who had once commanded a Navy crew in World War II, wasn’t about to let our nation suffer the same fate that his PT boat had endured – it was sunk. The Texas summer ended with a couple of weak cool fronts, then came back with a vengeance, and hot air in October hurts worse than the July variety. When the Crisis first began, I couldn’t really focus on the scary details, since I was in my last weeks of the patrolman’s course in the Sironia Police Academy. I was also engaged to Andrea Wiggins, who had a talent for ignoring world events entirely, because, by God, she was going to fashion the perfect wedding, because her future in the Hedonia Club – indeed both of our futures in the mid-sized, serene city of Sironia, Texas – depended on it. So, my days were filled with memorizing laws and citation forms and handgun varieties, and my nights were busy chauffeuring Andrea around town, looking at wedding dresses and place settings and knick-knacks she wanted to put in our register at Cox’s Department Store. “You’re a stupid man, George Blair,” Andrea said often, in her shrill way. “You quit Daddy right when a housing boom was getting started. How in Hades can I make it in society and you with just a policeman’s salary?” She posed that question on a daily basis. My desire to become a cop broke the Eleventh Commandment, in her mind. I had quit working for her father just the previous spring. He was an asshole, and overcharged on his projects, and shorted the materials on the houses he built whenever he could get away with it. It’s a wonder that the homes in Ridgeview Acres, out by the lake, didn’t fall down in the first windstorm. Yet, we were still engaged. Then came that day – when the Missile Crisis became a real crisis for me. This was before I found out the whole thing was a charade. That afternoon, we were on our way to my Police Academy graduation. I remember her waving that cheap Japanese fan in her parent’s hot, humid Lincoln whose air conditioner barely made a dent in the sizzling Indian Summer afternoon. I was driving, as always. “Andrea, I’m smart. You’ve always said so. I’ll get promoted soon enough. We’ll live a good life, take trips down to Corpus Christi, save our money and do all the good things you always planned for us,” I assured her. “Corpus Christi’s a white trash dump,” she said, crossed her arms and huddled against her side of the car. “Just because that dirty old marshal always told you to go to police school. Your father’s dead, George, and Marshal Tup-ne-pup ain’t no substitute. He’s a washed-up old pipe-smoking lush, like every policeman or fireman gets to be before they die. You want to wind up like that? Oh, Lordy, am I doomed to do penance for your daddy dying in a car wreck when you were six?” “Leave my father out of it, Andrea--” “George, you may be quick to learn stuff, but you can’t add. I don’t want to be poor until I’m forty-five. And darn it to Hades if we’re gonna live off my parents.” She always talked like that – like a storm puffing out huge clouds of pressure. I didn’t like it, but I’d never really had any other girlfriend, and I guess I thought all women operated that way. I figured that was the way most guys who were about to get married felt – the same way a plump bass or crappie feels when it’s in the process of being reeled in. “I told you all summer.” She started up again. “Take your pay, then throw in a raise for making sergeant, then lieutenant, then detective. How old are you by then?” She folded the fan and slapped my arm with it, her voice rising to a screech. “It won’t be enough to buy a shack on Lasker Avenue until we’re in our thirties, Blair.” “Shush,” I said, and turned up the radio. An anxious reporter was talking about Cuba, nuclear missiles, imminent war. “Just listen to that,” I said, ignoring her bloated, red cheeks and trying to hold my own temper. “I may not even be a policeman this time next month. If war breaks out, they’ll be drafting every able-bodied man.” “And I’ll just bet you’d go, wouldn’t you?” She sneered. “You don’t even have the sense that Rusty Carter has.” “Who’s Rusty Carter — you mean that plumber that came to your house last month?” “He says there’s ways out of a draft. Says they ain’t going to haul him off to some Cari-been island to fight.” My stomach churned. “Now, how could he say that? Nobody knew about missiles in Cuba a month ago, did they? You been talking to him on the phone?” Andrea ignored the question, and squinted her eyes slyly, the way she did when she had made a decision. I braced for the worst. “Army, Schmarmy. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, George Blair – don’t hit that car! Jeeminy, you scratch Daddy’s wax finish and your first twelve paychecks will go straight to him. Never mind. You go ahead and have your little celebration today. Tomorrow morning, you’re getting up early, and you’re going to take a letter into that Marshal Tup-tuppence –” “Marshal Tudberry?” “Exactly right.” She scooted across the bench seat and dug the fan in, right below my armpit. “If you’re gonna ruin your life because of that dirty old man, then the least he can do is to throw you a bone, if he’s so high and mighty.” She poised her fan for the coup de gras. “You’re going to write Marshal Turnbull a request to be hired as his deputy.” “His name is Tudberry, for the thousandth time, and I would have to be a cop on the beat for ten years, a minimum of five, even to be considered for a federal job.” “That shows you have no grasp of business concepts, Blair.” She huffed, and scooted back to her own side of the car. “What good is knowing somebody if you can’t use a little influence? Grow up. You’re gonna get ahead in life, if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.” My head was swimming, as it always did when Andrea threw one of her fits. I remember turning off of River Bridge, and following the winding road along the Brazos, until the Police gym came into view. She had our lives planned out – completely – but my idea of a comfortable retirement many years from now was different than whatever she had in her master-blueprint. There was no way I could tell her about the fishing cabin on Lake Whitney, the one I dreamed of – or the winter hunting trips to South Texas – both ideas I had also inherited from Marshal Tudberry. At that moment, driving that borrowed Lincoln, and facing either nuclear annihilation or a life with Andrea, that fishing cabin sounded better than ever. Bleachers had been set up on one side of the parking lot that we used for a parade ground and shooting course. Out in the middle, my classmates looked like cops, clad in newly pressed uniforms, kibitzing around with their families. Some even looked older at first glance, as if their new career had already claimed them. A few were married already. Others, like me, were spoken for. In the years ahead, some of these fresh faces would likely die in the line of duty, shot by a burglar, maybe, or wind up in a deadly wreck with a drunk driver. Or maybe we would all be climbing onto a troop ship in Florida a couple of months from now. The autumn air sizzled with possibilities, but who could know what the future held? Only Andrea, it seemed. “It’s too danged hot. My hair’s frizzing up,” she complained as we stepped onto the pavement. But she pasted a smile on her face, like the budding socialite she was, and, arm-in-arm, as the Sironia High Marching Band started tuning up, we waded through the crowd of milling cadets, and into the future. I took a deep breath. I was embarking on a new career. That was the only way I could explain the pregnant, steamy apprehension that muddled my mind. How was I to know that the frantic voices on the radio were worried about something unreal? How could I know that the real future was somehow already set in place – and that I, George Blair, was the one who had set that future into motion? Andrea Wiggins was the love of my life – up to that point. I could not have imagined that there, on the hot pavement of an Indian Summer afternoon, Andrea the imp, the blowhard, the harpy, the soft idealist, the child in a ferocious woman’s body was beginning her swan-song-act in my life. Her last real scenes. And she would play it like the virtuoso that she was. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a hoax. It is left to me to reveal that truth for the record. Because, after these many decades of hiding from the FBI, the CIA, the whole U.S. government, my days on this Earth are dwindling down to just a few. And if I don’t tell what really happened, then no one else will. I know the reader’s logical objection: it could never be a hoax unless the United States and the U.S.S.R. acted in collusion to fabricate the most horrifying little play of their own – the stuff of conspiracy theories, right? But that’s exactly what happened. Two things I have learned over all these years: The first: some secrets CAN be kept. Some conspiracies sustain, even when thousands, maybe even millions of players are involved. The second undeniable fact: Life was slow and easy for me up until that afternoon. Then time sped up, and nothing was ever the same again …
Chapter 2 Victor Perhaps Andrea was right. Marshal Homer Tudberry is the one who got me into this mess. As I stood there in my crisp cotton-wool police uniform, sweating like a pig in the Texas sun, wondering if we might glance up to see sleek, dangerous projectiles coursing through the scattered clouds, I had no hope that my fiancé would forget her demand that I write the old lawman a letter. Once she created a new hoop for me to jump through, she held it up until I jumped. To hell with her theory, I wanted to yell out loud. No one could replace my father. Not even my grandfather, whose main contribution to my upbringing was love, and his eternal dictum: that hard work was all that counts in life. Chief Lafferty droned on and on through his bullhorn, the cadets sweated, a cheer went up, and I threw my hat in the air with the rest of them. It took a good five minutes, grappling in a melee of new, naïve cops, before I found the hat with my name in it. By the time I escaped to the fringe of the crowd, Andrea was standing with her mother and father. “George, you do look smart in a uniform.” Mrs. Wiggins was always a dear, meek little woman. She leaned up and kissed my cheek. “Charles won me over in an army uniform, didn’t you, Charlie? That’s the last time I ever saw him so neat and clean.” She laughed. Mr. Wiggins only looked more wry and sullen than ever. “That’s a wonder, after all the horse manure I shoveled at VMI.” He extended his hand. “No hard feelings, George. I just wish you were still with us. This missile crisis is a gold mine. We got twelve more orders for bomb shelters this week alone.” “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I didn’t realize the company built bomb shelters.” “Oh, hell, we never did. But we do now.” “It don’t matter,” Andrea said, jerking on my lapel, straightening my tie and slapping at dirt on my service coat that I couldn’t see. “Daddy can build anything. That’s what he was going to teach you if you had stuck around, George. But this is as good a time as any to tell Daddy how you’re going to get ahead by calling the U.S. Marshal tomorrow.” “Andrea--” Billy Freedman and Dirk Polk crowded up behind her, arm-in-arm. It was a good bet the both of them had killed a six-pack before the ceremony. “Hey, George,” Dirk yelled over the noise of the milling crowd. “You gonna meet us over at Perkins’ house later?” To my horror, he pantomimed turning a bottle upside down and emptying it into his mouth. “Well, --” I started to fake an answer, but he had blown it. "He most certainly is not,” Andrea bellowed. She wrapped her arm around me. “My man’s spending his last night of freedom going to dinner with his new family. He’s getting up early, going to work on time, and he’ll sail past you boys and be the biggest lawman in Central Texas.” “Andrea--” I tried to shoot them a look. “Perkins’ place, eh? I guess I’ll be too busy. Maybe some other time--” “Nonsense,” Billy yelled, acting like he was cocking and shooting a rifle into the sky. “Get drunk today. They launch the missiles tomorrow.” They both started guffawing, and thank God they had the sense to head the other way. Mr. Wiggins was choking down his own laughter, but Andrea was up in my ear. “You’re not going over there, George. You’re a family man, now.” Then she smiled, and put one arm through mine, and the other around her father’s waist. “Come on. Daddy. Where we gonna eat?” There is a God, I guess, because a full meal seemed to tame my fiancé’s suspicions, and she let me leave their house at eight, saying something about getting her hair done early the next morning. I got to my apartment, and made a few phone calls. It seems the party at Perkins’ had played out – but before I knew it, six of my fellow rookies were lounging on my couch and kitchen chairs, rifling through my record collection and filling the coffee table with dead soldiers – empty beer bottles. “Well, hell, I guess we gotta get up and actually go to work,” Hank Pierce said as the conversation started to lag. “Oh, quit moaning.” Billy scolded him. “Driving a beat, even walking one ain’t nowhere as bad as hitting those books. I’ve read more books in these last six weeks than I did through all of high school.” Hank sneered. “Hell, you only finished half of high school, Fish.” “Won’t be walking any beats, sounds like,” Dirk said glumly. That brought a few tired ears to attention. “What’s that?” I said. Dirk shrugged. “Chief says we may be put into riot training right off. If them Russkies don’t take those nukes out of Cuba, the government’s on the lookout for people going crazy in the streets.” “Hell, Kennedy’s dumb, but he ain’t that dumb,” one of the others said. Hank scowled. “And what the hell’s riot training? We gonna have to stand downtown and knock our own cousins over the head?” “You know,” Pulver said, standing up and drawing a diagram with his hands in the air, “if they launch a missile from Cuba, it can hit Florida in five minutes, Washington D.C. in fifteen, and Texas in twenty.” “Who gives a damn? We’ll just shoot back,” Billy said. “Yeah, we’ll shoot back, but we’ll be dead.” Hank made an ugly noise, and opened my front door with such a sudden movement that we all stood up. I jumped when the phone rang in the very next instant. They razzed me in unison. I think it was Billy who cried out, “Holy shit, it’s your future ball and chain.” “Ahoy, Mama’s callin’,” someone else said, and they stopped at the door while I shook my fist at them. “Damn it, boys, I gotta answer, so shut up.” They were already filing out the door. But not fast enough. “Hello?” I said. Of course it was she. “Lucky for you that you answered, Blair. Something told me you went back out to carouse with those low-lifes.” “Andrea, it’s late.” “Blair, are you slurring your words?” “Andrea, you woke me up,” I lied. “He’s sleep-walking,” Dirk cried out. The remaining clowns doubled over, laughing. I motioned frantically, waving them the hell out, but I started giggling, too, in spite of myself. “Blair, who is that? Who’s there with you?” “Nobody,” I insisted. “I have the TV on too loud.” “Well, what the heck is on at this time of night? Jack Paar?” “Yes,” I said. “I’m watching Jack Paar.” Pierce’s face acquired a stricken look. “Paar just quit,” Billy whispered. “No.” I scrambled. “Not him. That new guy on the Tonight Show.” Now they were falling all over themselves, falling back, banging the door, and I buried the receiver in my stomach, but I could still hear her voice. “My God, Blair, shut the dang TV off and put your letter in an envelope.” The door slammed behind them. Loud, my brain too jostled to track. “What letter?” I could hear her exhale. The way she did before she let someone have it. “Don’t tell me you didn’t write the letter before you nodded off, George. You know darn well what letter. I’m trying to help, or would you rather have some little floozy who lets everything go, like white trash, and you’d never get anywhere? Not anywhere, George. What does it take to teach you that you have to call in your favors sooner or later?” “What favors, Andrea? I never did the marshal a favor. If anything, he did me favors, at least for Grandpa. He even donated for my summer camp that year--” “Blair. My first wedding shower is one month away. I am not going to sit there getting expensive presents and then have somebody like Missy Baird smart off in the middle of it and ask me ‘Didn’t I see George walking a beat on Lamar Avenue?’ By gosh, I’ll be a laughing stock.” Silence. The mixture of beer and Andrea’s shrill voice had paralyzed my brain. “And that’s not going to happen, now, is it George? I’m calling back in twenty minutes. You better have your pajamas on and you better have that letter written, because you’re going to read it to me.” The line cut off with a ringing echo. I couldn’t move. The empty bottles stood before me, a miniature city of brown, spent skyscrapers on the coffee table. I reminded myself how good and personable Andrea had been back in high school when we first started dating. How much mother liked her, so much so that my mom’s dying wish was that I take care of Andrea for the rest of my life. “She needs you, George,” Mom had whispered through her pain, looking at me with those clear blue eyes. I picked up beer bottles, composing that stupid letter in my head, with no thought of rebellion, or concept of getting Andrea out of my life, even that many years after I took that vow. But a knock came on my door at that moment, so loud, it almost lifted me out of my skin. “Hey, guys, keep it down --” I was really fed up with them now, but when I opened the door, it wasn’t my cadet comrades, but a gray-haired Mexican man, dressed up in full Old Mexico regalia – sombrero, multi-colored poncho, crisp shirt and bolo tie. He looked almost clownish, and my first instinct was to slam the door on in his face, but he held out something to me – a sealed envelope. “What is this?” I said, putting an edge in my voice. The caballero was all smiles. “Buenos Noches, Seňor,” he said. “You are Mister George Blair?” “Yes, but it’s late. I don’t want to buy anything--” He removed his huge hat revealing a full shock of salt-and-pepper, not just gray, well-combed and greased, and held the sombrero in front of himself. “My name is Victor, Seňor. I can’t believe it. You are really Mr. George Blair.I have seen pictures – pardon --,” He actually giggled, and shoved the letter into my hand. “A message for you. Muy importante.” My heart was pounding, but the smiling man seemed harmless enough. I ripped the letter from the envelope, but he started reciting the message before I could even look at the words. “A message from Marshal Tudberry, Seňor. He wants you at his office first thing in the morning. Six a.m. And please use the back stairs. He does not wish for you to be seen by any of the deputies. Comprende?” I looked at him. Then read the whole page again for myself. It looked real enough, on official stationary, with some sort of embossed seal down by the marshal’s signature. “Sir, it is an honor to finally meet you.” His hand came forward, and shook mine. I didn’t know what that meant, and didn’t care, for the truth was finally dawning on me. I read it again. “My god--” My voice started as a whisper, but there could be no mistaking what this was. “Mister – Victor, or whatever your name is – did Andrea put you up to this?” I asked, and looked up again. Victor was gone. I finished stuffing all evidence of a party into the trash barrel, and sat down beside the phone. When Andrea called, I would play dumb, I resolved. Give her some rope, and see if she hung herself. If she had already contacted the marshal, it would mark a new milestone of interference – even for her. If she was that determined to run every little part of my life, I might just have to break this whole engagement off, even if Mom didn’t approve from her heavenly perch. That was the first time I ever met Victor. Whenever I recall that night, I wish I had been more attentive, more polite –Victor was the great pillar around which the crazy events of that October were built, you see. But all that will come out as I tell the story. In the moment, I could only think of how I might make Andrea pay for being such a busybody.
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