Autumn Calm

I and the rest of the world held our breath for two weeks that October in 1962. It was high noon and we stood face to face with the Russians, ready to fire nuclear missiles and drop H-bombs onto the world. We got lucky and cooler heads prevailed, and the earth kept on spinning.
I think the Russians knew we meant business. Didn’t we drop two A-bombs on Japan? That must have been on the minds of Kruschev and all the other leaders in the Kremlin. We actually did it once, and we’d probably do it again, so the Russians backed down.
It was time to heave a sigh of relief and get down to picking out a Halloween costume. Maybe I should dress up as Castro or Kruschev. Imagine my neighbors reactions to a communist boogeyman knocking on their doors! I could wave my arms or bang my shoe at them and they’d tremble with fear. How about a nuclear missile costume? It’s going to be hard trying to be scary this year.
I decide not to be a ghost or a ghoul or anything spooky. Mom has this great big trunk full of old clothes so I dig through that and I finally make up my mind. An old suit with a vest, a curly black wig and a derby and a cane, and suddenly I’m Charlie Chaplin. We’ve got some of those masks that just cover your nose and cheeks, with just an upper lip. They really change your face without covering it up, and the one I pick has a mustache, too. I’m out to make people laugh this year, we’ve all been frightened enough.
It rains on Halloween, but not enough to spoil the fun, and Carl and I haul in plenty of candy between us. I fool a lot of the neighbors, and they can’t guess it’s me. My Charlie Chaplin is a success.
November arrives cold and blustery, and the Russians are taking down their missile sites in Cuba. Steve Kay and I continue to play war around his house and through the grounds of the Episcopal church. A lot of our classmates don’t join in as much as they used to – they’re getting more interested in football, so our armies aren’t as large as they used to be, and our soldiers are a lot younger than they’ve been, but we fight on. We don’t act out that new war, the one over in Vietnam. We don’t quite understand it or what’s going on. Our soldiers are called “advisors” over there, like they don’t really exist or something, yet they go out into jungles and up into mountains fighting some guys they call Charlie. There’s a lot of Special Forces over there. They’re called Green Berets or something, and they’re supposed to be some kind of super soldiers, but we don’t hear much about them, so we fight the Civil War or World War II, battles we can understand.
November is leaf-raking time and I hate that job. We have big oak trees in our yard, and it seems like the leaves never stop falling. I’m spending too many Sundays raking those leathery old things. The only part of the job that’s fun is burning them in the curb. The oak leaves give off a dense black smoke. Maple and cherry leaves dry out fast, so they burn white smoke that doesn’t choke you. The oak leaves are never ending, and I rake and burn, rake and burn up to Thanksgiving. I’ll be thankful not to have to rake any more of these darn things.
Whee-Zee is doing OK. She’s very tired and old-looking, but she’s alive and that makes me happy. I can’t imagine losing her.
My little sister is the luckiest one of us all. She just gurgles and smiles and stuff. She doesn’t have to worry about bombs or missiles. Doesn’t matter to her that the world almost ended, and leaves have to be raked, or worry that our dog could have died.
Yeah, little Cheryl is lucky.
Christmas is coming and she’s just going along for the ride.