Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“Hurt?”

“Just one opinion.”

Sarah glanced across the table at Tina. “Hurt, he thinks. He’s got opinions.”

“I heard,” said Tina.

“No scruples, lots of opinions.”

“Sad boy.”

“No doubt,” Sarah said, “very sad.”

Ned Rafferty seemed uncomfortable. He looked down at Sarah’s pink toenails, then shifted in his chair and examined the night sky.

Ollie and Tina got up to dance.

For a time things were quiet. Sarah picked up her glass and drained it and rattled the ice. Not drunk, I thought, but close. Her eyes had a hazy, indefinite shine.

“Just one item,” she said thickly. “Those guns you’re so worried about, you know where they were headed? Here’s a hint—not Iowa. Not South Dakota. Guess where.”

“I know where.”

“Oh, you know. That’s the bitch, man, you really do know. That’s the sin. Right and wrong—real perceptive. Bombs and jets and shit, you know it all. But there’s this neuter problem. Huff and puff but you can’t get it up—conscience-wise, pecker-wise—can’t perform. Just can’t. You know but you can’t .”

“Whatever you say.”

Sarah nodded and reached for Rafferty’s glass.

“Neuter,” she murmured, “that’s what I say. Emasculation Proclamation.”

“All right, then.”

“ Not all right. That people-might-get-hurt bullshit—dead wrong. Go count the bodies, check out the stats, then tell me who’s hurting who. Mull it over for a while. Ask yourself this: What’s it like to have Congress with a jellyfish?”

I folded my hands and said, “Fine.”

Sarah laughed.

“Fine, fine,” she mimicked. “Bury your head, it’s always fine.” She turned unsteadily toward Ned Rafferty. “I’ve said my piece. Anything to add?”

Rafferty kept his eyes down. It occurred to me that he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. All evening, especially up in the attic, he’d been watchful and silent. A jock, to be sure, but he was no gunman.

“Final thoughts?” Sarah asked.

Rafferty tried to smile.

“No,” he finally said, but gently, as if to suggest apology. “I guess that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

He wiped his forehead with a napkin and looked straight at me, not without kindness, then shrugged and stood up and took Sarah’s hand and led her toward the music.

Too bad, I decided. They made a handsome couple. Fluid and fitting. Partners in dance and crime and bed. That was the kicker. The ultimate gist—just too damned bad.

There was nothing to be done.

I left some cash on the table and took a short walk up Duval Street and headed back to the house. Endings, I thought. It seemed conclusive. I sat up reading for a while, then turned off the light, but the various gists kept accumulating.

The kinetics, too.

Escalation: G-forces and dizzy spirals. Ho Chi Minh was dead. Others were dying. In the Republic of Vietnam there was the weekly butcher’s bill to pay. There was demolition and privation. There was duplicity. In New York, before the General Assembly of the United Nations, Richard Nixon spoke eloquently of peace, of raising a “great cathedral” to the human spirit, but even then, in Cambodia, the secret bombs were falling on the secret dead. What was unknown could not hurt us, yet somehow it did hurt. There was uncommon distress. Buildings were burning. Harsh words were exchanged. Autumn 1969—the scheme of things had come undone—councils of war, guns in the attic.

I was in it, yes, but I was not part of it.

I just watched.

On the first day of October, my birthday, Ebenezer Keezer and Nethro flew in for a daylong planning session. The meeting convened at 10 a.m. around the kitchen table. I kept my distance, of course, serving coffee, washing the breakfast dishes, but even so I heard enough to feel the dynamic at work. I remember the sounds of shuffling chairs and a briefcase snapping open, the singsong inflection in Ebenezer’s voice when he said, “Hurricane season,” pausing a beat before smiling—“Stormy climate, kiddies, that’s what the Weatherman tells me.”

He was wearing tweeds and sunglasses, a crimson tie loosened at the neck. A professor’s voice, I thought, cool and well waxed as he analyzed recent developments—a situation report, he called it—stressing the convergence of certain historical factors. His smile was steady. “The Feds and the Reds,” he said lightly, “they’re on a collision course. We just aim to lend a helping hand.”

Nethro grunted at this.

“No bullshit,” he said. “Let the good times roll.”

Ebenezer glanced across the table at Sarah, who nodded, then at Ned Rafferty, who looked away. I tried not to listen. I scoured the frying pan and hummed Happy Birthday , pretending I was back home again, my father outside raking leaves, my mother in the bedroom wrapping gifts. October, I thought, a splendid month, but then I was listening again. Knockout time, Ebenezer was saying. He discussed the meaning of moratorium—how it derived from the Latin, as in dilatory. His tone was contemplative as he talked about a pending coast-to-coast mobilization. The pieces were in place, he said. A nationwide coalition. Parades and pickets and fireworks of assorted caliber. The general thrust, he explained, would be nonviolent, but there was always room for maneuver.

Tina Roebuck looked up from the banana she was peeling. Her skin was sallow, her eyes small and beady.

“Maneuver,” she said, “you mean guns?”

“A possibility,” said Ebenezer.

Tina nodded. “You don’t do shit with parades. Guns, that does it. People tend to notice.”

Ebenezer crossed his legs professionally.

“Guns,” he said, smiling. “Now there’s a thought.”

I’d heard enough.

When the dishes were done, I excused myself, moved out to the living room, and turned on the television. I was feeling a little fuzzy. The midmorning fare of game shows seemed wanton and ill conceived—mostly static—happy winners and plucky losers, prizes for everyone. It all rang up as tragedy. There were automatic weapons in the attic, and out in the kitchen my colleagues were discussing crimes against the state, but here on the magic box was a contestant in a clown suit squealing over an Amana self-cleaning oven. Where was the rectitude? And where, I mused, did comedy spill over into sadness? Hard to impose clarity. No theorems, no proofs. Just a war. And the clown-suited contestant bounced and danced in claim of a brand-new self-cleaning oven. Passions were stirred—laughter and greed, the studio audience found it amusing—and Bob Barker rolled his eyes, winningly, as if to absolve: Here it is, America, the fruit, the dream, and the price is right.

Happy birthday, I thought. Johnny Olsen’s deep baritone: William Cowling— come on down!

Curtain Number One: Rio! Cha-cha-cha!

Curtain Number Two: Shine on, William! A trip to the moooon! Samsonite luggage and deluxe accommodations along the unspoiled shores of the Sea of Tranquillity—Shine on!

Curtain Number Three: Hold tight now, because here it is—You’ll never die! That’s right! Never! A blond stewardess and the northern lights and life ever after. It’s all yours… iffff the price is right!

But no consolation prizes.

Which made it hard. Risky choices, and if you guessed wrong the real-life game left you unconsoled.

I closed my eyes and dozed off.

At noon, when they called me in to prepare lunch, the table talk had turned toward acrimony. The issue, apparently, was guns. Tina and Ollie favored force, Ned Rafferty was urging restraint. At the head of the table, his eyes behind sunglasses, Ebenezer Keezer seemed to be enjoying the democratic ironies.