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Sylvie was fifteen years old, and by suppertime she would be engaged.
Even Honest Joe Loves an Ice-Cold Brotherhood Beer!
CLOSE-UP on President McCarthy in shirtsleeves, popping the top on a distinctive green glass bottle of BB—now with improved flavor and more potent additives! We see the moisture glisten on the glass and an honest day’s sweat on the President’s brow. [Note to Art Dept: I see what you’re aiming at, but let’s not make him look like a clammy swamp creature, shall we? He’s not exactly the most photogenic gent to begin with.]
NEW SHOT: five Brothers relaxing together in the sun with a tin bucket full of ice and green bottlenecks. Labels prominently displayed. A Milkman, a TV Repairman, a couple of G-Men, and a soldier. [Note to Casting: Better make it one government jockey and two soldiers. Statistically speaking, more of them are soldiers than anything else.] They are smiling, happy, enjoying each others’ company. The soldier, a nice-looking guy but not too nice-looking, we don’t want to send the wrong message, says: There’s nothing like a fresh swig of Brotherhood after spending a hot Nevada day eye to eye with a Russkie border guard. The secret is in the thorium-boosted hops and New Barley fresh from Alaska, crisp iodine-treated spring water and just a dash of good old fashioned patriotism. The Milkman chimes in with: And 5-Alpha! They all laugh. [Note to Copy: PLEASE use the brand name! We’ve had meetings about this! Chemicals sound scary. Who wants to put some freakshow in your body when you can take a nice sip of Arcadia? Plus those bastards at Standard Ales are calling their formula Kool and their sales are up 15%. You cannot beat that number, Stone.] TV Repairman pipes up: That’s right, Bob! There’s no better way to get your daily dose than with the cool, refreshing taste of Brotherhood. They use only the latest formulas: smooth, mellow, and with no jitters or lethargy. G-Man pulls a bottle from the ice and takes a good swallow. 5-Alpha leaves my head clear and my spirits high. I can work all day serving our great nation without distraction, aggression, or unwanted thoughts. Second G-Man: I’m a patriot. I don’t need all those obsolete hormones anymore. And Brotherhood Beer strikes a great bargain—all that and 5.6% alcohol! Our soldier stands up and salutes. He wears an expression of steely determination and rugged cheer. He says: Well, boys, I’ve got an appointment with Ivan to keep. Keep the Brotherhood on ice for me.
QUICK CUT back to President McCarthy. He puts down his empty bottle and picks up a file or something in the Oval Office. Slogan comes in at hip level [Note to Art Dept: how are we coming on that wheatstalk font?]:
Where There’s Life, There’s Brotherhood.
Fade to white.
Optimum Burst Altitude
One week out of every four, Martin’s Father came home. Martin could feel the week coming all month like a slow tide. He knew the day, the hour. He sat by the window tying and untying double Windsor knots into an old silk tie Dad had let him keep years ago. The tie was emerald green with little red chevrons on it.
Cross, fold, push through. Wrap, fold, fold, over the top, fold, fold, pull down. Make it tight. Make it perfect.
When the Cadillac pulled into the drive, Martin jumped for the gin and the slippers like a golden retriever. His Father’s martini was a ritual, a eucharist. Ice, gin, swirl in the shaker, just enough so that the outer layer of ice releases into the alcohol. Open the vermouth, bow in the direction of the Front, and close it again. Two olives, not three, and a glass from the freezebox. These were the sacred objects of a Husband. Tie, Cadillac, martini. And then Dad would open the door and Faraday, the Irish Setter, would yelp with waggy happiness and so would Martin. He’d be wearing a soft grey suit. He’d put his hat on the rack. Martin’s mother, Rosemary, would stand on her tiptoes to kiss him in one of her good dresses, the lavender one with daisies on the hem, or if it was a holiday, her sapphire-colored velvet. Her warm blonde hair would be perfectly set, and her lips would leave a gleaming red kiss-shape on his cheek. Dad wouldn’t wipe it off. He’d greet his son with a firm handshake that told Martin all he needed to know: he was a man, his martini was good, his knots were strong.
Henry would slam the door to his bedroom upstairs and refuse to come down to supper. This pained Martin; the loud bang scuffed his heart. But he tried to understand his brother—after all, a Husband must possess great wells of understanding and compassion. Dad wasn’t Henry’s father. Pretending that he was probably scuffed something inside the elder boy, too.
The profound and comforting sameness of those Husbanded weeks overwhelmed Martin’s senses like the slightly greasy swirls of gin in that lovely triangular glass. The first night, they would have a roasting chicken with crackling golden skin. Rosemary had volunteered to raise several closely observed generations of an experimental breed called Sacramento Clouds: vicious, bright orange and oversized, dosed with palladium every fortnight, their eggs covered in rough calcium deposits like lichen. For this reason they could have a whole bird once a month. The rest of the week were New Vegetables from the Capsule Garden. Carrots, tomatoes, sprouts, potatoes, kale. Corn if it was fall and there hadn’t been too many high-level days when no one could go out and tend the plants. But there was always that one delicious day when Father was at home and they had chicken.
After dinner, they wou
ld retire to the living room. Mom and Dad would have sherry and Martin would have a Springs Eternal Vita-Pop if he had been very good, which he always was. He liked the lime flavor best. They would watch My Five Sons for half an hour before Rosemary’s Husband retired with her to bed. Martin didn’t mind that. It was what Husbands were for. He liked to listen to the sounds of their lovemaking through the wall between their rooms. They were reassuring and good. They put him to sleep like a lullaby about better times.
And one week out of every four, Martin would ask his Father to take him to the city.
“I want to see where you work!”
“This is where I work, son,” Father would always say in his rough-soft voice. “Right here.”
Martin would frown and Dad would hold him tight. Husbands were not afraid of affection. They had bags of it to share. “I’ll tell you what, Marty, if your Announcement goes by without a hitch, I’ll take you to the city myself. March you right into the Office and show everyone what a fine boy Rosie and I made. Might even let you puff on a cigar.”
And Martin would hug his Father fiercely, and Rosemary would smile over her fiber-optic knitting, and Henry would kick something upstairs. It was regular as a clock, and the clock was always right. Martin knew he’d be Announced, no problem. Piece of cake. Mom was super careful with the levels on their property. They planted Liberty Spinach. Martin was first under his desk every time the siren went off at school. After Henry’s Announcement had gone so badly, he and Mom had installed a Friendlee Brand Geiger Unit every fifteen feet and the light-up aw-shucks faces had only turned into frowns and x-eyes a few times ever. There was no chance Martin could fail. Things were way better now. Not like when Henry was a kid. No, Martin would be Announced and he’d go to the city and smoke his cigar. He’d be ready. He’d be the best Husband anyone ever met.
Aaron Grudzinski liked to tell him it was all shit. That was, in fact, Aaron’s favorite observation on nearly anything. Martin liked the way he swore, gutturally, like it really meant something. Grud was in Martin’s year. He smoked Canadian cigarettes and nipped some kind of homebrewed liquor from his gray plastic thermos. He’d egged Martin into a sip once. It tasted like dirt on fire.
“Look, didn’t you ever wonder why they wait til you’re fifteen to do it? Obviously they can test you anytime after you pop your first boner. As soon as you’re brewing your own, yeah?” And Grud would shake his flask. “But no, they make this huge deal out of going down to Matthew House and squirting in a cup. The outfit, the banquet, the music, the filmstrips. It’s all shit. Shit piled up into a pretty castle around a room where they give you a magazine full of the wholesome housewives of 1940 and tell you to do it for America. And you look down at the puddle at the bottom of the plastic tumbler they call your chalice, your chalice with milliliter measurements printed on the side, and you think: That’s all I am. Two to six milliliters of warm wet nothing.” Grud spat a brown tobacco glob onto the dead grass of the baseball field. He knuckled at his eye, his voice getting raw. “Don’t you get it? They have to give you hope. Well, I mean, they have to give you hope. I’m a lost cause. Three strikes before I got to bat. But you? They gotta build you up, like how everyone salutes Sgt. Dickhead on leave from the glowing shithole that is the great state of Arizona. If they didn’t shake his hand and kiss his feet, he might start thinking it’s not worth melting his face off down by the Glass. If you didn’t think you could make it, you’d just kill yourself as soon as you could read the newspaper.”
“I wouldn’t,” Martin whispered.
“Well, I would.”
“But Grud, there’s so few of us left.”
The school siren klaxoned. Martin bolted inside, sliding into the safe space under his desk like he was stealing home.
The Shadow Effect
Every Sunday Sylvie brought a couple of Vita-Pops out to the garage and set up her film projector in the hot dark. Her mother went to her Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting from two to four o’clock. Sylvie swiped hors d’oeuvres and cookies from the official spread and waited in the shadows for Clark Baker to shake his mother and slip in the side door. The film projector had been a gift from her Father; the strips were Clark’s, whose shutterbug brothers and uncles were all pulling time at the Front. Every Sunday they sat together and watched the light flicker and snap over a big white sheet nailed up over the shelves of soil-treatment equipment and Friendlee Brand gadgets stripped for parts. Every Sunday like church.
Clark was tall and shy, obsessed with cameras no less than any of his brothers. He wore striped shirts all the time, as if solid colors had never been invented. He kept reading Salinger even after the guy defected. Sometimes they held hands while they watched the movies. Mostly they didn’t. It was bad enough that they were fraternizing at all. Clark already drinking Kool Koffee every morning. Sugar, no cream. Clark was a quiet, bookish black boy who would be sent to the Front within a year.
On the white sheet, they watched California melt.
