Atomic Family


 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Part I
 
 Nellie
 Wilson
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Wilson
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Wilson
 Dean
 
 Part II
 
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Wilson
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 Nellie
 Dean
 
 Acknowledgments
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Part I
 Nellie
 Acknowledgments
 Start to Contents
 
 
 
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 Atomic Family
 
 A Novel
 CIERA HORTON MCELROY
 —BLAIR—
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Ciera Horton McElroy
 All rights reserved
 Printed in the United States of America
 Cover design by Laura Williams
 Interior design by April Leidig
 Blair is an imprint of Carolina Wren Press.
 
 The mission of Blair/Carolina Wren Press is to seek out, nurture, and
 promote literary work by new and underrepresented writers.
 We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support of general operations by the Durham
 Arts Council’s United Arts Fund and the North Carolina Arts Council.
 
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
 system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
 recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
 This novel is a work of fiction. As in all fiction, the literary perceptions and
 insights are based on experience; however, all names, characters, places, and incidents
 are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference
 to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: McElroy, Ciera Horton, 1995– author.
 Title: Atomic family : a novel / Ciera Horton McElroy.
 Description: Durham : Blair, [2022]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022025122 (print) | LCCN 2022025123 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9781949467949 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781949467956 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3613.C4226 A94 2022 (print) |
 LCC PS3613.C4226 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220525
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025122
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025123
 
 
 For Mitchell and Foster
 And for Dad, of course
 
 
 
 PART I
 
 Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day
 when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman
 and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by
 the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment
 by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war
 must be abolished before they abolish us.
 —John F. Kennedy, Address before the United Nations, 1961
 Do I love this world so well
 That I have to know how it ends?
 —W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety
 
 FIRST, THERE IS THE PLANE. The boy watches from the water tower, using his binoculars for a closer look. It moves slowly, widens like an ink spill. The sky is gray, the light pale.
 This is November 1, 1961. A Wednesday.
 Below him, the boy can see the whole town. The houses are brick and uniform. South Carolina flags flap blue and white in the wind. Pumpkins still smile from porches, and paper lanterns lie abandoned on the sidewalks, crumpled now and singed. A procession of women marches down Main Street. They’re wearing black and carrying signs.
 On the edge of town is the bomb plant, all cement, steel, and smoke, with men in hard hats, men with briefcases, men in army vests with guns strapped to their backs. Past the barbed perimeter, down the snaking river, vapor dissolves over the cypress trees like breath in cold air.
 The steam is a steady cloud that cups the town.
 When the plane passes, its pewter belly low in the sky, there is a roar, then a cavity of quiet. But what the protesters will remember are the birds: that shock of frightened plovers. The women lower their pickets, pause with their baby carriages. They watch the gray clouds shift above them, see the ruffle of white and brown feathers as the birds lift into the sky. They return their gaze to the courthouse, where a woman in black stands warning about nuclear war.
 Just below the boy is a schoolyard, brick and columned. The water tower rises to the sky like a watchman along the school’s fenced wall. This is where the children stand screaming, pointing up. They see his little brown head, far above them, barely discernible at the tower’s edge. He watches the plane.
 It’s only a passenger plane, heading to Atlanta. But the boy perched on the water tower does not know this. Their town is the site of