Evening, all. I hope your week is off to a good start! Here is the last entry in our month about Countdown.

October 27, 1962, was the most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as events rapidly escalated and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Shooting down of the U-2 spy plane:

On this day, a U.S. U-2 spy plane flying over Cuba was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile, killing the pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson.

Nuclear submarine incident:

Also on this day, a Soviet submarine B-59 was located by U.S. destroyers involved in the Cuban boycott and was threatened by U.S. depth charges. The submarine’s captain ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo. The second-in-command, Vasily Arkhipov, refused to give his consent, and war was narrowly avoided.

The secret deal:

At the end of this day in 1962, a secret deal was reached between the U.S. and the Soviets.

The Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba under United Nations supervision.

The United States would publicly pledge not to invade Cuba.

Secretly, the U.S. also agreed to remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

President John F. Kennedy conferring with his attorney general, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., October 1962

In Countdown, I’m giving the reader context for the history behind the Cuban Missile Crisis in the scrapbooks of songs, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other archival material and cultural ephemera of the early sixties.

Then there is the story of Franny and her family navigating those fourteen days when the world came as close to annihilation as we’ve ever been — or as close as we know about, anyway.

I use a Halloween party and its dangerous aftermath on October 27 to mirror those last days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The story comes to a head at the gravel pit, just as it did on October 27 in Washington, DC, although in Countdown, our characters find themselves in the woods on the way home after the party, where Franny fears she herself may never see another Saturday night.

After a fight, a swing over the gravel pit, a fall, a daring rescue, a broken collarbone, a well-trained dog, and — finally — the sure knowledge that all is well and everyone is okay, I want my characters — and readers — to feel the relief of not only their adventure resolved, but of the world going on.

So I chose to end my story on Halloween night, 1962.

This is the ending to Countdown:

Jack, who has been busy with trick-or-treaters, comes bounding across the yard, so happy to see Margie. It takes two seconds for him to find the scarves, pick them up, and bring them to her. She buries her face in his shaggy body. “Good dog, Jack. Thank you.”

My hard heart begins to melt and I hate that. I have every right to hate Margie Gardener forever.

Margie sniffs and say, “Well, I’ve got to get dressed for trick-or-treat. The girls are both Tweety Bird.” She looks at me one last time, as if she thinks I might respond. When I don’t, she turns slowly and walks away.

My gut begins to churn.

“Hey!” I call after her.

She spins around to face me, hope washing all over her face. I hate that, too. But there’s something about it that helps me find some words.

I take a deep breath. “Maybe.”

“What?”

“Maybe… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Margie nods. “Tomorrow.”

I watch her until she’s out of sight, then I take the scarf-rope from Jack and walk back to the card table in the soft October dark.

“Could you tie this around my sling, Uncle Otts?”

“Let me see,” he says.

And, while Uncle Otts ties a snug knot, it comes to me that I will go on to grow up now — I feel it. I will grow old, like Uncle Otts, with all kinds of stories to tell, all kinds of days to remember, all kinds of moments I will live, and choices I will make.

Like Jo Ellen said: There are always scary things happening in the world. There are always wonderful things happening. And it’s up to you to decide how you’re going to approach the world… how you’re going to live in it, and what you’re going to do.

Now I get it. Now I see what Jo Ellen was talking about. Now I understand what Margie wants, what Uncle Otts was searching for, why Chairman Khrushchev and President Kennedy finally listened, how no one wants the world to blow up, and why my family and my friends are mine to love, no matter what calamity befalls us.

It’s not the calamity that’s the hard part. It’s figuring out how to love one another through it — that’s the hard part. Or maybe that’s the easy part. I don’t know yet.

I’ve got a lifetime to figure it out.

It’s good to be alive.

Well…. Halloween! It was my favorite holiday as a kid, and as I raised kids. It was non-commercialized, homemade, rough-around-the-edges, and full of good cheer.

A woman in our neighborhood in Camp Springs (the same setting as Countdown) dressed as a witch and sat at a card table in the sifty dark at the end of a walkway that ended at her front door. The candy was on the card table.

She didn’t scare us. She didn’t say a word and we couldn’t see her face. It was THRILLING to make the walk up that long sidewalk, trembling with imagined fear, snatch a treat from the table, and run screaming into the dark.

When I had kids, we made a fire at the end of the driveway in Frederick, Maryland, under an old silver maple tree. We brought out the hot dogs and chili, the lawn chairs, the scary music (from a cassette tape in a boom box, no less), and decorated the yard with homemade tombstones or dead guys in clothes stuffed with newspaper.

The leaves crunched underfoot and the fire was cozy; everyone stopped on their way from house to house, parents sitting for a few minutes in lawn chairs and sipping cider or having a bowl of chili with cheese and Fritos on top, kids racing around the yard or to the house across the street, or, more likely, sprawling on the living room rug and trading candy.

My elder son, Jason, still makes a fire at the end of his driveway for his daughter and friends. I love to go there and continue the tradition… a tradition I gave to Franny’s family in Countdown as well.

Taking my life and turning it into stories. It’s what we do, eh?

Have a safe Halloween! See you next week.

PEE ESS:

If you are a Lab Coat, just a note to remember our next Live! on the Second Sunday in November, Nov. 9. 11amET. Watch for more about this in Friday’s Writers Lab.

Write about a Halloween you remember…

“The time that” is how to approach it… start your Focus Sentence with that phrase.

Write about One clear moment in time. Nothing before that moment on that Halloween, and nothing after.

Use as much description as you like. Try some dialogue. And a surprise!

xoxo Debbie