Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“Letter bomb?” he’d say. “All I need’s a zip code. Send it COD.”

“No.”

“Yeah, but Jesus, we’re not getting anywhere.”

“Negative.”

“No, you mean?”

“I do. I mean no.”

By temperament, obviously, I was not inclined toward violence, and therefore even his mock-up bomb made me a bit queasy. A demo model, Ollie called it, but it had the heft and authority of the genuine article. A steel frame with nasty appendages at each end, bright copper wiring, a soft ticking at its core.

“The bombs are real,” Ollie said, and tapped the hollow casing. “Say the word, I’ll arrange some surprises.”

I just shook my head.

In a way, though, he was right. The bomb had credibility. People made wide turns as they entered the cafeteria. The power of firepower: it delivered a punchy little message.

“What I could do,” Ollie said, “I could—”

“No.”

He grinned. “Oh, well,” he said, “live and learn.”

Mostly it was drudge work. We doubled our picket time—Mondays and Fridays. No theatrics, just moral presence. We were there . All around us, of course, the apathy was like cement, hard and dense, and to be honest there were times when I came close to chucking it. Goofy, I’d think. And futile. I was no martyr. I hated the public eye, I felt vulnerable and absurd. Fuck it, I’d tell myself, but then I’d remember. Headlines. A new year, January 1967, and eighteen GIs died under heavy mortar fire outside Saigon.

Goofy, perhaps, but the goofiness had an edge to it.

So what does one do?

Hold the line and hope. My dreams were honorable. There was the golden dome on the state capitol; there was the world-as-it-should-be.

When I look back on that period, it’s clear that my motives were not strictly political. At best, I think, it was a kind of precognitive politics. Granted, the war was part of it, I had ideals and convictions, but for me the imperative went deeper. Sirens and pigeons. A midnight light show. It occurred to me, even at the time, that our political lives could not be separated from the matrix of life in general. Joseph Stalin: the son of a poor cobbler in Tiflis. George Washington: a young neurotic who could not bring himself to tell a modest lie. Why does one man vote Republican, another Socialist, another not at all? Pure intellect? A cool adjudication between means and ends? Or more likely, does it have to do with a thick tangle of factors—Ollie Winkler’s garbled chromosomes, my own childhood, a blend of memory and circumstance and dream?

I wasn’t a fortune-teller.

Vision, nothing more. Dim previews of coming attractions. The rest was trial and error.

In the first week of February, we set up a formal organization on campus. The Committee, we called it. We took out an ad in the Pevee Weekly , calling for volunteers, and three days later, on a Saturday afternoon, we convened our first meeting in a small conference room in the basement of Old Main.

I presided, Ollie sat to my immediate left. At two o’clock, when I called the meeting to order, it was clear that we had a severe manpower problem. The only other body in the room belonged to a large, tent-shaped coed who brooded in total silence at the far end of the table.

“This is Tina,” Ollie said, “I’ll vouch for her.”

The girl gazed fixedly at her own stomach; she seemed fascinated by it, a little overwhelmed.

Tina Roebuck: two hundred pounds of stolid mediocrity. A home-ec major. A chronic overeater. She was not obese, exactly, just well spread out. Generous hips and sturdy thighs and big utilitarian breasts. Like a Russian hammer-thrower, I decided—the poor girl obviously could not tell day from night without a sundial.

I smiled and shuffled some papers.

“Floor’s open,” I said, and shrugged. “I think we can dispense with parliamentary procedure.”

Then I settled back.

Ollie Winkler did most of the talking. For ten minutes the discussion revolved around petty organizational matters. Ollie slipped his boots off, resting a foot on the edge of the table. “What we got here,” he was saying, “is a troika situation, like in the USS of R, three horses pulling the same big sled. Which means we best divvy up the power, keep the reins straight so to speak, that way we don’t get tangled up or nothing… Like with—”

I stood up and opened a window. The room had a stale, dirty-sock smell.

“Like with electricity,” Ollie said. “Power lines, I mean. One person can’t hog the amps and volts. Power, that’s where it’s at, we got to spread it around equal. The troika idea. Equal horsepower.” He paused to let this concept take shape, then massaged his toes and went on to talk about the virtues of shared leadership, how we had to be a democracy.

I slapped the table.

“Democracy’s fine,” I said. “Put your goddamn boots on.”

Ollie blinked.

“A case in point,” he said.

There was laughter at the end of the table. Tina Roebuck reached into her purse and pulled out a giant-sized Mars bar and placed it on the table directly in front of her.

She folded her hands and stared at it.

“Democracy,” Ollie sighed, “a lost art.”

“Next item,” I said.

Ollie hesitated. “Well, hey. Can’t we at least assign jobs, sort of? Like sergeant at arms. Where’s the fun if you don’t get special jobs?”

“Sergeant at arms,” I said. “You’re elected.”

“We didn’t vote .”

“One-zip, a landslide.”

“But we got to—”

“Unanimous. Congratulations.”

He grinned and tipped back his cowboy hat. “Sergeant at arms, it’s right up my alley. Jeez, maybe I should get myself an armband or something—I saw that on TV once, they always wear these nifty black armbands. Like a symbol, you know?”

“Fine,” I murmured.

“Armband. Write it down, man.”

“What?”

“On paper . Armband, put it in writing.”

I jotted a quick note to myself.

There was a disconcerting absence of dignity in the room. Shallow, I thought. Sad and stupid. Across the table, Tina Roebuck was still examining her Mars bar, hands folded. It was a test of willpower, apparently, a curious exercise in temptation and denial. At one point she reached out and nudged the candy with a thumb and then shuddered and quickly folded her hands again.

The world, I realized, was a frail and desperate place.

“Tina,” I said gently, “eat it.”

She frowned and looked up.

“Eat?” she whispered.

“Don’t be bashful.”

“But I’m not… I mean, I’m not hungry.”

“Go ahead, though,” I said. “Treat yourself.”

She glanced at the Mars bar. “No, I just like to look at it. Window-shop, sort of.” She swallowed. Her voice was soft, almost sexy, a surprising Deep South lilt to the vowels. “Anyway, I’m not hungry.”

“Well, good.”

“I’m not .”

“But if you get the urge—”

“Fuck off!” she yelled. The softness was gone. She shifted weight and stared at me. “All this bullshit! The war , that’s why I’m here. People getting killed .”

Ollie smiled.

“Give it to him,” he said. “Open up, kid—both barrels.”

“Killed dead!” said Tina.

“More.”

“Dead,” she repeated. She poked the candy bar. “Talk-talk, no action . When do we start raising hell?”

Again, Ollie smiled at her, fondly.

“There’s the question,” he said. “When?”

Strange people, I thought. The incongruities were beguiling. I couldn’t help but take notice of Tina’s white ballet slippers, Ollie’s cowboy shirt with its fancy embroidery and brass studs. Here was the new order. A midget in the White House, a Mars bar on every plate. Almost funny, except there was some emotion in the room.