Andrew Metcalf
Creative Narrative
4/26/2007

Preface
This narrative was inspired by a painting of the atomic bomb cloud. The painting is very serene, making the cloud look more peaceful and heavenly than destructive. My narrative tells the story of four different people as they hear about this event, each described in heavenly terms that the picture conveys. I have also placed their lives in certain “religious” roles, such as that of creator, destroyer, and the Christian doctrine of the trinity.

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People always ask if you remember where you were when a tragedy occurred, and the recipient usually can recall in extraordinarily salient detail.

I was in our kitchen. That morning, cereal had been poured, eaten, spilled, and cleaned; homework completed, backpacks packed, children sent off to school; dinner planned, gossip bantered, tv watched. Outside the sun beamed through clouds as they slowly rolled across the sky. All was well, and then the news man interrupted the refrigerator commercial to tell me that the U.S. had just dropped the atomic bomb.

I was at work on the line putting heads on plastic dolls. I was the head man, my right hand man was the arm man, and on my left was the leg man. But I was the head man; I put heads on the dolls. It was easy to put the heads on right. Any mistake and you just turn it ‘round after you push it on the neck n’ shoulders. It just so happens the leg man was my son before he went off to war. Anyways, sometimes the arm man just wasn’t enough, but me or the leg man would always fix things when he put the arms on the wrong shoulders. We tried tellin’ him a million times to try and make sure he put ‘em on the right way, but the man was like a ghost and our words seemed tuh go right through ‘em. Funny that arm man was…when he did talk it was something holy. And maybe that’s why I remember so good just how it happened. He walks into that old, dark factory, looks at me, and tells me that the U.S. had just dropped the atomic bomb before he went back to deformin’ brand new arms like he’s a dumb God or something.

I was at my desk, looking out my window to the south lawn. It was overcast, humid, sultry…but neither rainy nor sunny. A lot like Independence in the fall, a lot like that smaller white home where I lived before. Things had gotten a lot bigger since then, that was for sure. So I was just sitting there, thinking, when an aide walked in and said “Mr. President, the U.S. has just dropped the atomic bomb.” I took off my thick glasses, put my hand to my forehead, and thought about my life in purgatory after I sent a city to hell with a bomb from the heavens.