MY SISTER SALLY. EXTERMINATION HOURS.

II. 1

      Bobby was organising base ball games for veterans in Dallas, Texas, and he got on the first plane and showed up with a baseball uniform: gloves, ball and bat, as a present for the boy.        

     We became very fond of the children. Gladys was so enthusiastic about the three little orphans that she would unexpectedly leave her fashion and couture business in New York to fly to meet Sally and the little ones. The five of us siblings were closer because of them. If my father had held his head up, I think he would have erected a monument to the noble Vietnamese people. So things were going along smoothly and pleasantly in the Carter-Valenti's life, when suddenly everything began to happen like a drug addict's feverish, phantasmagoric nightmare after injecting a dose of morphine. Sally took the children with her and drove them in her car to visit Disneyland. The small train carriage they and other children were riding in was suddenly blown up by a tremendous explosion, engulfed in a flash of red and yellow flames, smoke and shrapnel. As a result of the brutal shock, Sally was left in such a state of painful prostration that her mental reason was affected and she had to be committed to a psychiatric sanatorium. The other siblings, and Gladys in particular, were deeply affected by the traumatic impact. After the first hours of our shock and indignation were over, we began to meet frequently, mainly in Gladys' flat in New York, and to comment on and follow the development of the police investigation through newspapers, radio and television. We wanted to know in principle, and with us all the citizens of the United States, the reason that had induced a criminal hand to place a powerful bomb on a harmless children's train full of kids. Explosives experts discovered that the bomb had been placed in a box of chocolates. The criminal must have handed it to one of the children, moments before the train set off. The inference was supported by the statement of a witness, a young German photographer who was travelling alone as a tourist. According to him, it was a young, well-dressed man who handed over the box. The press speculated for some time about the identity of the criminal and published a photograph of the German tourist as he boarded the plane at Kennedy Airport. Gradually the press, television and radio died down in their reporting of the case and their criticism of law enforcement officials for their slowness and ineffectiveness. The public outcry of the American nation also grew weaker in its anger and its demands for light and justice in the whole murky affair. In addition to contributing my money as a capitalist partner, I contributed literary works to a weekly magazine, "El Espectro", which specialised in sensationalist reporting. My two partners, Graham and Miller, called me to tell me that they did not wish to add to my grief by precipitating our magazine into the cul-de-sac of such a vandalistic and bloodthirsty case. They were not fooling me. I knew they were afraid. Everyone was afraid of the truth: the curious public, the representative organs of broadcasting, the police themselves, and even some respectable members of the Washington government. There had been hours of annihilation and outrage followed immediately by hours of general panic. I realised that everyone wanted and needed to forget. Not so the Carter-Valenti family.