Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

Tina’s face was flushed.

“Nobody ever listens to me!” she was saying. “Fat Tina, stupid Tina. I’m not stupid, though, I’ve got brains .”

“Look,” said Rafferty, “I didn’t—”

“You did . Ridiculous, you said, I heard it, you said fucking ridiculous .”

“The guns, I meant. The shoot-’em-up stuff.”

Tina crushed a napkin in her fist.

“There, you see? Nobody pays attention. I didn’t say anything about shoot, I never once said that. I said action. Action, that’s all I ever said.”

“Gun action,” Rafferty muttered.

“And so?”

“So I object.” He looked warily at Ebenezer. “This quick-draw business. I don’t go for it. The rifles, they’re just a symbol, right?”

Tina hooted.

“Symbols,” she said fiercely. “What about Nixon? Our chief executive, he doesn’t grasp symbols. Power. That’s all he grasps. Just power. Symbolize all you want—sit on your ass and sing If I Had a Hammer —but I’ll tell you something, somebody has to drive home the nails .”

Ollie Winkler clapped.

“Nails! Beautiful!” He got up and circled around the table and ran a hand through Tina’s thin greasy hair. Lovebirds, I thought. I could imagine their children: midgets and Mars bars. “Pure beautiful,” Ollie said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Charmer,” said Nethro.

Ollie eased his fingers down the slope of her neck. “Nails, baby—say it again.”

“Nails!” Tina said.

Nethro yawned and said, “Fun couple.”

For two or three minutes the only sounds were my own, clanking plates and silverware.

Then Rafferty pushed his chair back.

Very gently, almost in a whisper, he said, “No guns.”

He started to add something, but stopped and tapped the table with his fingernails.

I admired him. Go for it, I thought. Curtain Number Three.

I sliced the sandwiches and laid them on a platter.

After a moment Rafferty pushed to his feet.

There was no movement in his face when he looked down on Ebenezer Keezer.

“The guns,” he said, “stay in the attic.”

“That so?”

“It is.”

Ebenezer lounged back in his chair. His eyes had a lazy, hooded quality.

“My friend,” he said politely, “take a seat.”

“No, thanks.”

“Be cool, child. Sit down.”

“No,” Rafferty said, “I don’t believe I will. If you want, we can settle it right here.”

Ebenezer kept smiling.

I delivered the sandwiches and went back for the mustard and mayonnaise. The price, I was thinking. You play, you pay. I admired him, and I wanted to say something, but it wasn’t my game.

Rafferty’s eyes were flat. He seemed perfectly at ease.

“I’m serious,” he said. “No gunplay.”

“Or else?”

“However you want it.”

“Oh, my.”

“Right here,” Rafferty said. “You and me. We settle it.”

Ebenezer seemed delighted. He stroked his tie and removed his sunglasses and winked.

“Violence,” he said mildly. “Love to oblige. Real pleasure, in fact.”

Rafferty shrugged.

“Pleasure an’ honor,” said Ebenezer. He glanced at Nethro. “Me, though, I’m nonviolent.”

“Peacenik,” Nethro said.

“God’s word. The nick of peace.”

Even then Rafferty did not move. Briefly, his eyes swung in my direction, but I busied myself with the coleslaw and potato chips.

There was a dead spot at the center of the kitchen.

“That’ll do,” Sarah said.

“I just want—”

“Point taken, Ned. We hear you.” She reached out and put her hand on Rafferty’s waist. “Let’s just table it.”

“The guns. I need an answer.”

“Ned—”

“Yes or no,” he said. “Do they stay in the attic?”

Sarah shrugged.

“The attic. For now.”

“And later?”

“Don’t press it,” she said, “later’s later.” She looked over at me and made a motion with her free hand. “Let’s do food.”

No problem, I served the sandwiches.

It wasn’t heroism or cowardice. Just noninvolvement: potato chips and coleslaw and iced tea.

After lunch I did up the dishes and slipped out the back door. Nowhere to go, really, so I hiked down to the plaza off Mallory Square and sat watching the gulls and sailboats. The first of October, approaching tourist season, and the Key was crowded with youth and polyester. Things seemed very clean. There was a war on, but you wouldn’t have known it, because there were happy faces and jugglers and shrimp boats and enterprising girls in halters and flowered skirts, blue sky and blue water, everything so pretty and polished and clean.

At midafternoon I drank a beer under one of the umbrellas at the Pier House.

Happy birthday, I thought.

Then I thought about Sarah and Rafferty. The signs were obvious. Sad, but there it was. They made a splendid match. I thought about the various comings and goings of age, how nothing ever lasted. Not romance. Nothing. I called the waiter and had another beer and then circled back to the house and sat on the porch and listened through an open window while my comrades mended fences.

I wasn’t a party to it.

At one point I heard Rafferty say, “All right, it’s settled. We don’t play with guns.”

I heard Tina Roebuck whine.

“Same old bullshit,” she was saying. “Tina-do-this, Tina-do-that, but who ever listens to me? Dumb fat ugly Tina. Here’s a fact, though—I’ve read my Chekhov—and if there’s a gun in the story, it better go bang at the end. Better happen. Sooner or later.”

I heard Ebenezer’s mellow laughter.

“Tell it,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

“Nobody listens .”

“No matter, girl. Just keep tellin’.”

That night, while the others were out dancing, I baked a cake and opened a bottle of brandy and celebrated my birthday alone.

By midnight I was riding a chocolate high. I proposed toasts to my health and prosperity, to the stellar flight crews of Trans World Airlines. I was drunk, no doubt, but I was emotionally solvent. I retched and had a nightcap and fell asleep on the sofa.

It was a bouncy sleep, in and out. There was turbulence and disorder. “Fire!” someone screamed.

Late in the night I heard a door slam. Voices rose up, and then footsteps and darkness and silence again.

Nethro draped a blanket over me.

His face was calm and kind, almost brotherly. He put a hand on my forehead and held it there.

“Rockabye, babe,” he whispered. “Don’ mean nothin’.”

Then I was back in the turbulence.

“Fire!” someone yelled, and I dreamed the attic was burning. There were projectiles in the dark. Intense heat and gunfire. Holes opened in the walls and ceiling, then other holes, and the wallpaper curled and burned. I smelled flesh. I heard Tina calling the fire department, but the line was busy, and the attic crackled with red tracers and flame. “I’m dead!” Sarah screamed. She leaned out a window and screamed, “I told you so! I’m dead!” The house was unsafe. Smoke and calamity. Tina crawled into a burning refrigerator. Ollie Winkler danced on the roof, which was also burning, and Ollie danced and burned along with it. “Dead!” Sarah cried. She was gone from the window—the glass was burning and the beams and timbers were silver-blue like bones lighted by X ray—but even then, though the fire had her, Sarah was still yelling, “Dead!” I couldn’t move; I was snagged up in long rubber hoses. “Alone!” she screamed. There were fire trucks now, and helicopters, and firemen wearing armored vests and silver badges, but the firemen were firing fire at the fire, it was cross fire, and the hoses hissed and shot fire, and Sarah screamed, “Dead!”