Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

Then we moved out.

We crossed the tennis courts and followed Nethro down to the dunes.

The darkness was something solid. There was fog, too, which carried the scent of brine and seaweed, and the night seemed to slide beneath itself. Ahead, I could see the green phosphorescent glow of a wristwatch. I reached out and put a hand on Rafferty’s rucksack and moved by touch. If you’re sane, I thought. Then I laughed and thought: Ghosts.

“Hush,” Rafferty said. “Cerebral slack, man, just spin it out.”

The starting line was a shallow trench in the sand. Quietly, we knelt down to wait. There were spooks in the dark but I imagined I was elsewhere. Mars, maybe. A deep cave. I breathed from the bottom of my lungs. Forty minutes, a full hour, then the fog lifted and I could see moonlight on barbed wire, the outline of a rickety tower two hundred meters up the beach. No panic, I thought. Just this once, I would perform with dignity. I would not wail or freeze or befoul myself.

There was movement in the dark.

“On your bellies!” Nethro called. “Stay flat, kiddies!”

At the far end of the beach there was a sharp splatting noise. A green flare exploded high over the tower.

Rafferty tapped my arm.

“Stick close,” he said. “I’ll run the interference.”

Behind us, Nethro fired up a flare and yelled, “Hit it!” and we were moving. Sarah went first, then Ollie and Tina and Rafferty. Nethro kicked me and said, “Anytime, darlin’.”

The first twenty meters were easy. Up and over, out of the trench, snaking motions, part wiggle, part crawl, rifle cradled across the elbows. I was a commando now. Anything was possible. Push-glide, no thinking. Off to my right I could make out the peaceful wash of waves where the sea touched land. Dignity, I thought, then I said it aloud, “Dignity.”

When we hit the first wire, Rafferty used his cutters and motioned for me to slip through.

We bellied forward.

“Easy,” Rafferty said, but it wasn’t easy. There was confusion, and my rucksack caught, and I felt a cool slicing sensation on my forehead. Concertina wire—looped and tangled—and when I twisted sideways I was cut again at the neck and cheek.

A white flare rocketed up over the beach.

There was a soft whooshing sound and then the guns opened up. Red tracer rounds made edges in the night. “Move,” Rafferty said, “just move .” But the wire had me. High up, almost directly above us, another flare puffed open, and the two machine guns kept up a steady fire. A game, I reminded myself, but then I flopped over and watched the red tracers unwind through the dark. That much was real. The guns were real, and the flares and muzzle flashes. No terror, just the absence of motor control. I felt Rafferty’s big arms around me, and then came a clicking sound, and we rolled through the wire.

I pressed my face into the sand. I found myself posing foolish questions. Why were my eyelids twitching? Foolish, but why?

Later, when I looked up, Rafferty was gone.

I lay flat and hugged my rifle. It was all I could do, hug and twitch. Gunfire swept the beach. This, I deduced, was how it was and had to be. If you’re sane, if you’re in command of the present tense, you dispense with scruples. You recognize the squirrel in your genes. You sprawl there and twitch and commit biology.

The night whined with high velocities.

Lazily, I got to my hands and knees. It occurred to me that the danger here was mortal. A tracer round ricocheted somewhere behind me—blue sparks, a burning smell—then a succession of flares lit up the sky, yellow and red and gold, and for a moment I seemed to slide back to the year 1958, a balmy night in May when I jerked up in bed and waited for the world to rebalance itself. I was a child. A Soviet SS-4 whizzed over my head. Far off, the earth’s crust buckled and there was the sizzle of a lighted fuse. The sky was full of pigeons. Millions of them, every pigeon on earth. I watched the moon float away. There was horror, of course, but it was seductive horror, even beautiful, pastels bleeding into primaries, the radioactive ions twinkling blue and purple, the pink and silver flashes, charm mixing with childhood.

If you’re sane, I thought, you come to respect only those scruples which wire to the nervous system.

I surprised myself by crawling forward.

It was a crabbing kind of movement, without dignity. I heard myself saying, “Sorry,” then saying, “Stop it!” Squirrel chatter. I was thinking squirrel thoughts: There is nothing worth dying for. Nothing. Not dignity, not politics. Nothing. There is nothing worth dying for.

I reached a miniature dune and stretched flat. The guns kept firing, raking the beach, swiveling left to right and back again.

Nothing, I thought.

A tracer round corkscrewed over my head. I was twitching, but the twitches were strictly amoral. I was lucid. I understood the physics: If there is nothing, there is nothing worth dying for.

I blinked and looked up and swallowed sand. There were no ethical patterns. Ahead was another tangle of barbed wire, and beyond the wire was more wire, then flat beach, then the two droning machine guns. There was fog, too, and tear gas, and familiar voices. In the distance, Ebenezer Keezer was shouting through a bullhorn, “Life after Lenin! Revolution, people! Ollie-Ollie in free!”

Then amplified laughter.

Briefly, near the tower, a human form rose and took shape against a yellow flare. Sarah, I thought, and I scrambled forward. Gunfire snapped close by. “Please,” I said, and lunged into the wire. The pain surprised me. I was bleeding from the nose and lips. The tear gas was heavy now, and the tremors took hold, but I clawed through the wire and rolled along the beach and whimpered and thought: Nothing. The thought was perfectly symmetrical, because if there is nothing, there is nothing worth dying for.

I sobbed and listened to Ebenezer Keezer’s bullhorn laughter. He was engaged in philosophy.

“Terrorism,” he shouted, “is a state of mind! A state of mind is a state of bliss! Extremism in the pursuit of bliss is no bummer!”

There was a harsh electronic squeal. A lavender flare exploded without sound. The guns were on automatic and the night shimmied in bright greens and reds.

Odd, but I also heard music.

Out on the margins, Buffalo Springfield was singing… a man with a gun over there… tellin’ me I got to beware .

The bullhorn buzzed and Ebenezer cried, “States of mind! States of bliss! Down with the states!”

With effort, I detached myself.

It all seemed fanciful, the mix of guns and rhetoric, the Beatles now insisting on revolution. Belly-down, I crawled toward the sea.

“Ain’ no mountain high,” Ebenezer sang.

I bled from the lips and nostrils. Numerous clichés came to mind. Missing in action, I thought. Lost in space. My gyro had gone, I couldn’t locate the scheme of things, but I kept moving until chance brought me to the fringe of the sea.

It was the maximum reach. This far, no farther.

I composed myself in a respectable posture, faceup, heels seaward, hands folded at my belly, and I lay back and watched the lights.

“Day-O, Day-O,” Ebenezer sang, “dee daylight come an’ I want to go home.”

A dud flare fizzled overhead.

Tracers skipped across the Caribbean, toward Miami, and the sound track had become sentimental. Mellow music, smooth and wistful… Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end .

“In time of terror,” Ebenezer declared, “there is no objection by means of conscience. There is no alternative service.”

I didn’t budge.

I watched the sky do sleight of hand. Awesome, I decided, miracles of form and color. Dangling from its parachute, a nearby flare sailed upward against gravity. The twin machine guns kept firing their steady fire, and Mary Hopkin sang persuasively in the dark, achingly, we’d fight and never lose, those were the days, oh yes …