Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“It won’t happen, angel.”

“Tomorrow. In the morning.”

“Won’t happen.”

“I heard her,” Melinda says. “I’m not deaf, that’s what she said—she already called the stupid goddamn taxi , I heard it.”

“Don’t say goddamn.”

“Goddamn,” she mutters.

It’s no use lecturing. I pocket the poem, spit on my hands, and go back to digging. Later I say, “This taxi business. What time?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Early?”

Melinda nods. “Real early. We have to sneak out so you can’t get crazy and try to stop us. It’s a secret, though. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“Better hadn’t, then.”

“I already did .”

“You did, yes. Thanks.”

Shrugging, Melinda kicks some dirt down on me. Her position is precarious. I tell her to back away—it’s a fifteen-foot drop—but she doesn’t seem to hear. Those blue eyes, they’re wired to my heart.

What can one do but dig? Mid-June now, two months on the job, and I’ve got myself one hell of a hole. Fifteen feet and counting. No tricks—solid walls and solid rock. Amazing, I think, what can be done with a spade and a jackhammer and a little dynamite. I bend down and lift a chunk of granite.

“Daddy,” Melinda yells, “we’re leaving! ”

But it doesn’t stop me.

I put my spine to the space and lean in. Relativity, for Christ sake. Metaphor. Poets should dig. Fire and ice—such sugar-coated bullshit, so refined and elegant. So stupid. Nuclear war, nuclear war, no big deal, just a metaphor. Fission, fusion, critical mass… “Daddy!” Melinda cries. I look up and smile. The world, I realize, is drugged on metaphor, the opiate of our age. Nobody’s scared. Nobody’s digging. They dress up reality in rhymes and paint on the cosmetics and call it by fancy names. Why aren’t they out here digging? Nuclear war. It’s no symbol. Nuclear war—is it embarrassing? Too prosaic? Too blunt? Listen —nuclear war—those stiff, brash, trite, everyday syllables. I want to scream it: Nuclear war! Where’s the terror in this world? Scream it: Nuclear war! Take a stance and keep screaming: Nuclear war! Nuclear war!

“Daddy!” Melinda wails.

She drops a clod of hard clay from fifteen feet, a near miss. The real world. It gets your attention.

“Do something!” she shouts. “God, we’re leaving! Do something!”

“Baby,” I say.

“Now!”

She smacks her hands together. She’s crying, but it isn’t sadness, it’s fury. She pushes a wheelbarrow to the lip of the hole. “Do something!” she yells. And then she shoves the wheelbarrow down. Frustration, that’s all. She doesn’t mean to kill me. “I don’t want to leave,” she cries. She’s on her hands and knees, bawling. I scramble up the ladder and try to hold her, but she rolls away and kicks at me and says, “Please!”

I clamp on a bear hug.

Melinda squirms but I press close, and for a long time we lie there at the edge of the hole, father and daughter. I can feel her heartbeat. A warm afternoon, a Friday, and there are puffy white clouds above us. Melinda’s eyes are closed.

“Better now?” I ask.

She stiffens, wipes her nose, puts her head in my lap. She doesn’t understand. Twelve years old, how could she?

“You’ll do something, won’t you?” she whispers. “Tomorrow, you won’t just let us go away?”

“Can’t happen.”

“Mommy said so.”

“She’s wrong,” I say firmly. “Nobody’s leaving.”

Later, in the house, we take turns using the shower. I go first, then Melinda. There was a time, not long ago, when we’d do our showering as a team, a real family, but now she’s at the age of modesty. I love that little girl. I love my wife. Standing in the hallway, toweling off, I can hear Melinda singing Billy Boy behind the bathroom door.

“Nobody’s leaving,” I murmur. “I won’t allow it.”

I know what must be done.

It’s ugly, but it’s also a relief. In the kitchen, I’m whistling Billy Boy as I prepare a lunch of sausage and salad.

“That song,” Melinda says, “I hate it.”

She comes to the table wearing a pink robe and pink slippers, a white towel wrapped turban style around her head. She tells me she’s sorry about the wheelbarrow. I nod and say, “A bad time.” Nuclear war: I want to scream it. But instead I tell her we’ll find a solution. Back to normal, I say, and then, out of the blue, I hear myself asking if she’d like to have her own pony someday. It’s a preemptive tactic, I suppose. Or maybe an apology. Melinda thinks about it for a moment and says, “I guess that’d be okay. A pony. Except you’d probably blow it up with dynamite.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would . Boom—dead pony. No, thanks.”

Composure, I think.

I shrug and fix up Bobbi’s lunch tray and carry it to the bedroom door. I knock twice but there’s no response. For a few seconds I listen with my ear to the door. Packed suitcases, things neatly folded and tucked away. A walkout.

I put the tray down and head back to the kitchen.

“See what I mean?” Melinda says. “She’s serious. It’s all planned, so you better hurry up and do something.”

“Done,” I say.

“What?”

“Relax, princess. All under control.”

The afternoon goes by peacefully. Bobbi has her plans, I have mine. While she’s busy tidying up the loose ends of our marriage, I go about my business with confidence and dispatch, a disconnected calm that seems to nudge up against sadness.

Two things are clear.

I won’t stop digging. I won’t lose my family.

The trick now is to avoid arousing suspicion. I’m canny. I stick to the routines: wash the dishes, sweep the floor, lace up my boots, and then march back to the hole.

I know what must be done, and I’ll do it, but for now I just dig.

Squeeze the spade. Concentrate on kinetics. The downward drag, it’s a solid feeling. All motion.

I was born to this sort of labor, a jackhammer and a spade. There are no metaphors. There is only science when I say, “Nuclear war.” Why, I wonder, is no one explicit? Why don’t we stand on our heads and filibuster by scream? Nuclear war! Nuclear war! Why such dignity? Why do we shy from declaring the obvious? Why do we blush at our own future? And why, right now, as I save her life, does my wife think I’m crazy? Why would she leave me? Why separate?

Dig , the hole says.

A light echo, then it chuckles and says, Nuclear war, man. Just dig .

All afternoon I keep at it. I weigh progress by the pound. I count the inches.

You’re sane , the hole says. Dig-down-dead!

I won’t be blackmailed.

This running-away garbage, I won’t tolerate it.

Dig—it’s my life.

Late in the afternoon I climb out of the hole and slip into the tool shed and make a few quiet preparations. Some measuring, some easy arithmetic.

Oh, yeah , the hole says.

I pile up a stack of two-by-fours; I go to work with a saw and hammer and nails. Specifications. I know what I’m doing. There’s nothing funny about it, but at one point I start giggling—it hurts, my eyeballs sting—and I have to step back and take a breather. Child’s play , the hole purrs. Follow the dotted lines: fission, fusion, critical mass .

“Love,” I say.

An hour later, when I leave the tool shed, the afternoon has become twilight. There’s a soft rain.

I switch on the outdoor Christmas lights and the backyard glows in reds and greens. The rain is warm and steady, not quite real, like a movie set. If Sarah were here she’d squeeze my arm and tell me to calm down. “Step by step,” she’d say, “one thing at a time.”