Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

I would slip into a sleeping bag and let the epochs take me down. If it were reasonable, if it were only sane, I would give credence to the proposition that ours is a universe without beginning or end, that mortality itself is relative, that the dead never die.

If it were believable, I would believe.

I would have faith. I would take my family from this hole in the conviction that we might live happily upon the earth. I would fly the flag and pooh-pooh the prophets. Yes, I would.

But the hole chuckles at me.

If you could , it says. Too bad, though, because you know better. Dynamite! Blow my mind! Fission, fusion, critical mass!

I shake my head.

“No,” I say.

Ain’t no sin to lock ’em in! T minus eight, the century’s late! Dynamite, man!

“No,” I say firmly. “Never.”

The hole widens around me, I can smell its breath.

Higgily wiggily doom!

OVER A TWO-YEAR PERIOD, from early March 1969 to late April 1971, I logged something on the order of 200,000 miles in my capacity as a network passenger pigeon. Shuttle diplomacy, Sarah called it. Hectic but safe: Wake up in Key West, eat breakfast over the Gulf, do business in Tampa, fly on to New Orleans, make my pickups and deliveries, see the sights, then hop a night flight for Denver or Chicago. Typically, I’d be on the move for a week at a time—mostly college towns—and then back to the Keys.

In theory, I suppose, it might’ve seemed a decent way to spend the war. “Mr. Jet Set,” Sarah liked to say. “Join the revolution and see the world.”

But it wasn’t that rosy.

What she didn’t understand, and what sometimes gets lost in my own memory, is that constant tickle in the backbone, the Herb Philbrick sweats. I could never relax. Even during the most monotonous times I’d find myself tensed up and waiting, imagining a knock at the door, then a cop asking questions.

It was a delicate daily balance. Betrayal, informants, random accident. The variables were complex.

I was on the run, after all.

Implausible, I’d often think, but my crimes were punishable by lock and key. The draft was one problem. Contraband was another. Routinely, even on the easy campus runs, I was ferrying hot goods through hot channels: money, of course, and the various ways and means of un-American activity.

The situation required vigilance.

Whom to trust? How far? How often?

Early on, I established certain SOPs and then stuck to them without exception. I avoided strangers. I took my meals alone. I dictated the terms for all transactions. If a drop looked questionable, if instinct instructed caution, I’d simply walk away and go about the tedious chore of setting up new arrangements. Granted, paranoia was a factor, but when you’re deep in the shit, you can’t help turning slightly anal.

Loneliness, too. Clerks and bellhops and crowded lobbies, but no human intercourse.

And also exile. It sounds trite but I longed for America. Out on the fringe, alone, there wasn’t a day when I didn’t feel a sense of embarrassment nudging up on shame. Unhinged and without franchise, prone to odd daydreams, I had trouble sleeping. I’d get the midnight chokes. I’d sit on my bathroom throne and close my eyes and ask, “Where am I?”

Two years, but they were long years.

1969—Jane Fonda was on the stump and Kissinger was calling trick shots and Hoffman and Rubin and Dellinger were raising hell in public places. In Vietnam the American troop presence peaked at 540,000, and in Paris the peace talks idled along from hour to hour with high formality, many limousines, frequent adjournments for tea.

At home there was riot gas. It had come now to fracture.

In August a small bomb exploded in a janitor’s closet outside the offices of a Manhattan draft board; in early September a somewhat larger bomb caused untidiness in a Houston National Guard armory. Headlines, of course, and deadlines, and three weeks later, on September 24, a consignment of two hundred M-16 automatic rifles disappeared at a truck stop along Interstate 84 near Hartford.

I was on the road at the time of these events, but it was no surprise to find a celebration in progress when I reached Key West on the evening of September 28. There was cheap wine and laughter. At the appropriate moment Sarah led us up into the attic and pulled back a canvas tarp to display the goods.

“What you see before you,” she said, “is the product of man’s search for meaning.”

The guns were still sealed in plywood crates bearing the Colt logo. At the rear of the attic, where the eaves narrowed, twelve cases of ammunition were lined up neatly along a bare wooden beam. There was the faint smell of oil and carbonized steel.

“Disarmament,” said Ollie Winkler. “No treaties or nothin’, we just flat-out disarmed the fuckers.”

“Unilateral,” said Tina.

Ollie blushed and smiled at her fondly. “Smart lady,” he said.

Ned Rafferty was silent.

This, I surmised, was where it had to go. The future was firepower. Obliquely, half smiling, Sarah looked at me as if waiting for some secret acknowledgment—a sign of conviction, perhaps—then she shrugged and covered the guns.

“What this calls for,” she said, “is ritual.”

Tina produced champagne and we sat on the attic floor and passed the bottle. To me, it didn’t mean much, only late-hour collegiality. I was out of it now. They were fine as friends but it was hard to show enthusiasm when Tina described the hijacking operation: How it had gone like tick-tock—like shoplifting, she said—Ebenezer and Nethro had set it up—a map and a timetable and duplicate keys—a cinch—hop in the truck and drive away.

Tina laughed and shook her head.

“Broad daylight,” she said, “that’s the amazing part. This Howard Johnson’s, you know, real clean and friendly, traffic zipping by, and we just take off with the ordnance. Put it in gear and wave bye-bye.”

“Simple,” said Ollie. “Unilateral piece of cake.”

There was obvious pride and good feeling. Later, when the champagne was gone, we went out for ice cream and then sat drinking at an outdoor café along the waterfront. The night was tropical with stars and a warm wind. I was tired but I listened attentively while Sarah brought me up to date on current events. There was movement now, push alternating with shove. It had gone beyond mere protest.

“The guns,” I said, “I suppose that’s one indicator.”

“I suppose,” Sarah said.

“They don’t stay in the attic?”

“No,” she sighed, “probably not.”

Behind us, a jukebox was playing old Temptations and people were getting up to dance.

Sarah yawned and kicked off her sandals and arranged her feet in Ned Rafferty’s lap. Her hair had been cropped Peter Pan style, tight to the head, and she was wearing yellow camp shorts that called attention to the shapely integrity of her legs. There was distance between us. Opposite extremes, I thought. The conclusion was foregone—she had her code, I had my own—but even so I felt some sadness.

After a moment Sarah smiled.

“Anyway, don’t fret about it,” she said pleasantly. “You play possum, we’ll handle the politics. No objections, I hope.”

“I guess not.”

“But?”

I watched her feet move in Rafferty’s lap.

“But nothing,” I said, “except it seems a little out of proportion. Those guns. I keep thinking people could get hurt.”