Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“Right,” he said. “Absolutely.”

There was a clumsy moment when he handed the keys over. He followed me outside and stood on the steps as I backed the Buick down the driveway, then he waved and held up two fingers.

A good man, I thought. A veteran of foreign wars and a good man.

Twenty minutes to kill, so I drove up Main Street to the railroad tracks at the east edge of town, then circled around and came back again, slowly, elbow out the window. The air was warm and calm. A big red moon presided over the mountains, a Friday night, and the shoppers were out. There was commerce and goodwill. I drove past the Ben Franklin store, the Thompson Hotel with its old hitching post, my father’s real estate office, the courthouse and the library and Doc Crenshaw’s little three-room clinic. The streets were safe. It could’ve been anywhere, small-town America.

Nobody knew.

I turned on the radio. Rhythms, I thought, Surfin’ Safari , and I tapped the steering wheel and watched the mountains above town, the safe streets and storefronts. I was afraid, of course, but it was mostly homesickness. I thought about the things I’d be losing. Little things, like backyard barbecues, but big things, too, family and history, all of it. For me, at least, it would not be an act of high morality. My father understood that. “It’s a mess,” he’d said, “it’s all upside down, a real hornet’s nest. If it were up to me… It’s not, though. What can I tell you? That damned war. What the hell are we fighting for? That’s the bitch of it, I guess, but I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

Certain blood for uncertain reasons.

It was a phrase I’d picked up in college, one of Sarah’s favorite lines, and now, as I turned past the A&W, I said it aloud. I whistled Surfin’ Safari .

I did not want to die, and my father understood that.

It wasn’t cowardice, exactly, and he understood that, too, and it wasn’t courage.

It wasn’t politics.

Not even the war itself, not the coffins or justice or a citizen’s obligation to his state. It was gravity. Something physical, that force that keeps pressing toward the end.

Certain blood, uncertain reasons, but finally you have to choose.

At eight-thirty I stopped at a pay phone outside the State Bank building. Sarah was all business. “On or off?” she said.

“On,” I said, “I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty?”

“Yes, I think so.”

There was a pause before she said, “Class dismissed. Call me back if—”

“On,” I said.

“Louder, man. Bad connection.”

“It’s go, almost positive. A couple of things to take care of first.”

“Medically, you mean?”

“My dad thinks it’s worth a shot.”

Sarah seemed pensive. In the background, barely audible, I could hear a tinkling sound, ice cubes or wind chimes.

“Flat feet,” she said, and sighed. “Or cold feet. What you should do, maybe, is buy yourself some cute pedal pushers. Have Congress with a butcher knife—works every time.”

“That isn’t quite fair.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “Stick an ice pick up your weewee. Tell them you’re two months pregnant.”

There was a moment of problematic silence. I watched a tractor turn left off Main, a big John Deere painted green with yellow trim. I was hurting. When the tractor was gone, I told her how sick I felt. Turned around, I said. Lost, too, and trapped, and I needed something more than smart-ass bullshit.

Sarah chuckled.

“You’re not pregnant?” she said.

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Pity.”

“Sick,” I said. “Lost.”

There was that wind-chime sound again.

“All right, then, you’re lost,” she said, and her voice seemed to back off a bit. “That’s understandable. Problem is, we need a commitment, something firm. These things get complicated. Heat’s on, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to—I hate to press—but you’ll have to… I am sorry.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, on. Tomorrow night.”

“That translates to Saturday?”

“Saturday.”

“Firm?”

“Yes,” I said, “I guess so.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “That’s what I admire. All that boldness and fire.” She waited a moment, then told me to take notes. “Number one, you’ll have to bus it to Chicago. Number two—write this down—TWA, flight 233, Chicago to Boston, nine o’clock Monday morning. Nine sharp. Miss that flight, the whole deal’s off.”

“Tickets?” I said.

“At the check-in counter. Your name’s Johnson, L. B.”

“That’s comic.”

“We thought so. Anyhow, nine o’clock Monday. You’ve made financial arrangements?”

“My parents.”

“They know?”

“Not the details.”

“But they know?”

“A little. I couldn’t just walk away.”

Sarah snorted. “I thought it was clear. Mouth shut, I said. Didn’t I say that?”

“I was careful. No names.”

“Careful, shit,” she said. There was a brittle sound on the line, a clicking, as if someone were transmitting in code. Voices, too. I heard a whisper, or thought I heard it, then a soft buzzing. After a moment Sarah said, “So where was I? Number three. We’ll have a watchdog waiting in Boston—TWA, main lobby. Find a comfy chair and sit tight. Simple enough?”

“Like cloak-and-dagger.”

“You think so?” Her tone was perfectly neutral. “Because, listen, we can call it a bust right now. You think that?”

“Trans World,” I said. “Sit tight.”

“Exactly.”

“And?”

“Bring a book or something. The watchdog, he’ll find you.”

“Who?”

“No can say. A familiar face.” She made an indistinct sound, almost motherly, but her voice remained firm. “It’s not easy, we both know that. But flat feet don’t cut it. Sooner or later you have to walk.”

Breakfast was a ceremony. There was great decorum in the scrambling of eggs, cups on saucers, pourings and stirrings and fussings over fresh-squeezed orange juice.

“Socks,” my mother said.

“Plenty,” I told her, “no more socks,” but she smiled and shook her head and added socks to the shopping list. “Towels,” she said, “you could use towels.”

We spoke in ellipses.

My father stirred his coffee, glanced at the clock, yawned, stretched, folded his arms, and said, “Goddamned idiots. The whole jackass crew—the Pentagon, the jackass diplomats—give me a chance, I’d strangle the whole crew, one by one, line them up and start—” He strangled his napkin, then shrugged. “I would . My own two hands. March in and murder the sons of bitches, all those whiz-kid bastards. You think I’m not serious? Westmoreland, I’d nail him first, and then Bundy and Ho Chi Minh. I swear to God, I’d do it. Just like that. I’d do it.”

“Towels,” my mother said.

“Towels, right.” My father winked at me. “Towels, to mop up the gore.”

At noon they dropped me off at Doc Crenshaw’s office.

It was hopeless but I went inside and stripped down and closed my eyes while Crenshaw searched for flat feet and asthma and disturbances in the heart. I felt drowsy. Lying there, I wanted to curl up for a decade-long nap, an iron lung breathing for me, fluids flowing in and out through rubber tubing. I held my breath as the old man listened through his stethoscope.

“Thump-thump,” Crenshaw said. “Always the same old tune. Just once I’d like to hear Rhapsody in Blue .”

Later, when I was dressed, he took me by the arm. He squeezed hard, his eyes sliding sideways.

“You could go mental,” he said. “Start seeing flashes.”

“No,” I said.