A collie trotted around the corner of the house. He stood at stiff-legged attention until Lou said, “Friend,” after which he sniffed me politely but unenthusiastically.

Ed whisked me inside while Lou went out to the barn to look for the projector. Ed said he wasn’t going to close the shutters; it would only draw attention if a neighbor drove by. We’d go to the basement to watch the film.

Ed took a sheet from a neatly stacked pile in the linen closet under the stairs. I followed him to the basement and helped him tack the sheet to the paneled wall of what he told me was their storm shelter. It was minimally furnished—an old armchair, a daybed against one wall, a cabinet stocked with emergency food and water, a small bathroom in one corner.

“We don’t sit down here much—we like being upstairs where we can watch the sky. After being in the yard all day or out poking through people’s junk, we want stars and fresh air.”

We paced nervously, not talking much, until Lou appeared with the projector. “Just needed a new cord. Got that laid on. Now, Vic, you got those slim fingers, not covered with cuts and burs like ours, you thread the film.”

My slim fingers were thick with nerves, but I followed Lou’s instructions on the threading order, and we had the projector rolling in a few minutes. The film started with the clacking noise of cellophane against spindles and the sparks of black and white that I remembered from childhood movies, and then we were facing a warning:

Property of the United States Air Force. Classified. Top Secret. If you are watching this movie without proper clearance or authorization, you could face fines of $25,000 and up to five years in prison.

“You got clearance, Vic? Ed and I sure don’t.”

The three of us burst into nervous guffaws.

The film ran for just under thirty minutes. It started with a close-up of the missile with its warhead in the Kanwaka site, then panned the faces of the brave men who sat there in shifts, ready to answer their country’s call if they needed to press a button to obliterate human life. This seemed to have been spliced in from a PR film; it looked more professionally shot than what came next, and it was the only segment that didn’t have a date stamp.

Monday, August 15, 1983, 0800 Hours

The ragtag protesters’ camp. The numbers, never large, had dwindled; the tents were shabby, and you could tell that the ground was baked hard by the prairie sun. Jenny Perec was there with her baby, along with a dozen other people, most of them young, many wearing tie-dyed shirts or dresses with the peace symbol painted on the front.