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2 Smoke from a dozen cigarettes filters down the narrow aisle. Jack clears his throat, lights a Marlboro, draws a deep breath, and then blows smoke rings that twine together in the stale morning air. Rather like a mushroom cloud, Jack imagines, as he stretches his legs on the empty seat beside him. With any luck, the seat will stay vacant. Checking his watch, he turns to peer through sand-pocked window glass at a parking lot filled with similar yellow boxes on wheels. Clark County School District, ready to transport an array of reporters and civic dignitaries to the Nevada Proving Ground eighty miles away. A long drive, in a rattletrap bus, to see the Doom Town setup, soon to be demolished by an explosion that will start the 1953atomic testing series with a bang. Hoping he can protect his space, Jack almost immediately realizes he’s made a mistake. He should have kept his legs sprawled sideways and his eyes front and center. “Excuse me, sir.” A stubby young man, earnestly polite, stares down at Jack. “Excuse me, sir,” he wheezes, dipping his head and tipping his porkpie hat. “All the other seats seem to be taken.” Jack sighs, as he swivels into a more upright position and makes room. A blend of Old Spice and cheap pomade cuts through the smoke, and settles beside him for the long ride. When the young man’s briefcase brushes Jack’s knee, the nasal voice repeats itself. “Excuse me, sir. I’m Sammy Cerillo. From Las Vegas. On the mayor’s staff.” He pats his briefcase. “Anything you want to ask me, go ahead. I can tell you anything about Doom Town you want to know.” Thrusting his hand toward Jack, he smiles with sudden self-assurance. Jack wavers. He wants to snub the guy, and he especially wants to be rid of the sweet scents emanating from the guy’s pompadour. On the other hand, he might pry some newsworthy information out of the mayor’s man. By riding next to him, all the way to Mercury, Jack might scoop the competition. So he nods, holds out his own right hand, and acknowledges that he’s Jack Windsor from Seattle, a Post-Intelligencer staff writer whose column, “Windsor Wind-Up,” circulates throughout the West. “Delighted to meet you, sir, delighted,” the mayor’s man responds. And so the long, monotonous ride begins. For miles, nothing but creosote bushes, tumbleweeds, and blowing sand. Or so it seems to someone born and raised Jack Jack 3 in emerald moisture, a Pacific Northwest of ferns and fir. Staring out the bus window, Jack yawns and nods his head just often enough to encourage Sammy Cerillo, who natters nonstop about the day ahead. More than six hundred observers—newspapermen like Jack, civil servants like Sammy, career politicians like the men in the seat just ahead—are caravanning together to look at what soon will be ground zero. Once they reach the Nevada Proving Ground, they’ll tour the Civil Defense setup and learn more facts and figures about the impending action. They’ll see buildings , underground shelters, cars, manikins, food, furniture, everyday household appliances, all set out near a tower where a bomb euphemistically called a “device” and whimsically named Annie, is ready to fall. Sammy doesn’t say much that Jack hasn’t already heard. Yesterday a half dozen Sammy look-alikes spent hours droning on about the Doom Town design and about the atomic explosion that will occur on St. Patrick’s Day. At the outset Sammy’s boss, Las Vegas mayor C. D. Baker, had welcomed the reporters to Las Vegas. A no-nonsense, ex-military, stiff-backed politician , Baker is a ramrod Las Vegas booster. That means he’s a Nevada Proving Ground booster, too, with grand plans to bring more and more tourists to his own atomic city. First Helldorado Days; now atomic Annie. At the daylong briefing a reporter from Reno sitting next to Jack had leaned over and whispered, “This is nothing. You ought to hear His-oner when he’s really on.” When Jack asked for more material, the Reno man gave him an earful. It seems that Exalted Ruler Baker, at a recent Las Vegas Elks Club meeting, had pranced around with a pair of antlers on his head, whooping it up for his personal pet tourist project, Helldorado Days. “No telling what he might wear as an atomic Annie,” the Renoite chortled, making...

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