The Event horizon
Katie Erbs He’s waving his gun around like he’s some kind of hotshot. Right there in the middle of her one room apartment. It’s 1960 and Kennedy will win in November. The radio plays Chuck Berry. Maybellene why can’t you be true. Three years previous the Soviets sent Laika into space. Today they’ll send Belka and Strelka up in Sputnik 5. Belka and Strelka. They’ll be okay. Strelka will even go on to have a litter of puppies back here on earth. Back here on earth, my grandmother is six months pregnant with my mother and she’s still wearing her three-inch heels. It’s her apartment and it’s her father— my great-grandfather—that’s waving around his goddamn gun again. That goddamn gun. He keeps pointing it at her too. You done started back doing the things you used to do. In 1960 Sharon Tate gets her first acting gig. Advertising Tareyton cigarettes. A taste to die for! And there’s death in the air. You can taste it. In Saint Louis the summer air gets so hot it bends light. Makes the asphalt shimmer. It riles people up, it sets their teeth on edge. The only AC is in JCPenney’s or Woolworths. The same soda counter where black students will sit in protest. The fire hoses. The police dogs. Chattanooga. Greensboro. Saint Louis. That goddamn gun. The heat