Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

My father almost smiled. I could tell he was trying not to.

“No,” he said carefully, “you’re not stupid. A bright boy, I’d say.” He paused, absently tapping a spoon against his plate. He cleared his throat. “One thing, though—one thing I’m curious about. The pencils. What are all those pencils for?”

“Lead,” I told him.

His eyelids fluttered. I could tell he didn’t get it.

“Lead, it stops radioactivity. I bet you didn’t even know that.”

Again, my father tried to stop from smiling, but this time he didn’t quite make it.

“Ah, yes,” he said softly, “I see.” He made a funny whistling sound through his teeth. “A smart, smart cookie.”

I grinned at him. For an instant it seemed that I’d wrested an important admission from my father, almost an apology.

He gazed at me for a long time.

“Just one tiny problem,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Nothing much. Tiny.”

He looked at my mother. Something odd passed between them, a kind of warning. My mother got up and moved to the stove.

“Forget it,” said my father.

“No, let’s hear it. Like what?”

“Well,” he said. His shoulders were rigid. His hands whitened against the tablecloth. “I hate to break the news, kiddo, but pencils don’t contain real lead. They call it lead, but in fact it’s graphite or something.”

“Graphite?”

“Afraid so.”

I took a bite of chicken and chewed and swallowed. It was the driest, most tasteless chicken I’d ever eaten.

“Well, sure,” I mumbled, “I knew that all along.”

“Of course.”

“I did .”

Down inside, though, I felt like strangling myself. Graphite, I thought. Parents could be absolutely merciless. They just kept coming at you, wearing you down, grinding away until you finally crumbled.

“Graphite,” I said. “I knew that.”

My dad nodded.

He was a decent man—an ideal father—but for an instant I felt killing rage, the same venom I felt for Crenshaw. That stone-hard face of his. And those eyes, so smart and unyielding. I loved him, but I also hated him. I hated the whole grown-up world with its secret codes and secret meanings. As if for the sport of it, adults were always keeping important information up their sleeves, and then, bang, when you least expected it, they’d zap you right between the eyes: “Hey, dumbo,” they’d say, “didn’t you know that lead pencils are made out of graphite?” It was cruel and senseless. Why not come straight out with things? Bombs, for instance. Were they dangerous or not? Was the planet in jeopardy? Could the atom be split? Why wasn’t anyone afraid? Why not clue me in? The truth, that’s all I wanted. The blunt facts.

My father’s hands came apart. Only the fingertips were touching. His lips curled: a smile or a smirk? How could you be sure?

“Anyway,” he said.

It was bewildering and sad. Sitting there at the kitchen table, I suddenly didn’t give a damn about fallout or nukes or civil defense. All I wanted was to get back to normal. The way things were going, I was afraid I might end up like that ex-buddy of mine, a chemistry set bozo, testing nails for their iron content.

“Graphite,” I said. “ Piss on it.”

After supper I stayed away from the basement. I helped my mother with the dishes, knocked off some homework, watched the last ten minutes of You Bet Your Life , then went to bed.

Except I couldn’t sleep.

I was afraid. For myself, for my prospects as an ordinary human being. It was like getting on a tightrope. You start tiptoeing across, very slowly, feeling your way, but you know you can’t make it, you know you’re going to fall, and it’s only a question of which way you’ll go, left or right. I could either end up like my ex-buddy, a screwball, or like my dad, a regular guy. No other options.

And the nuclear stuff. I was afraid of that, too.

Lying in bed, pillow tucked up against my belly, I couldn’t push the terror away. I wasn’t nuts. I wasn’t seeing ghosts. Somewhere out there, just beyond the range of normal vision, there was a bomb with my name on it.

I tossed around in bed, curling up, uncurling, trying out different sleep positions.

Perhaps I did sleep. Not for long. A Soviet SS-4 whizzed right over the house. I almost died. There was a rumble, then a whine, then a shrill sucking sound. Far off, the earth’s crust trembled; continental plates shifted in the night. The mountains above town, so solid and ancient, began to groan like the very deepest summer thunder. I held my breath. In the distance, a mile away, a trillion miles, I could hear the sizzle of a lighted fuse. I could smell hot bacon. Then suddenly the sky was full of pigeons, millions, every pigeon on earth—screeches and wings and glowing eyes. I jerked up in bed. I was stunned. I just watched. Against the far window a single fly buzzed and hissed. The planet tilted. Kansas was burning. Hot lava flowed down the streets of Chicago. It was all there, each detail: Manhattan sank into the sea, New Mexico flared up and vanished. All across the country, washing machines kicked into their spin cycles, radios blared, oceans bubbled, jets scrambled, vending machines emptied themselves, the Everglades went bone dry. Oddly, I felt no fear. Not at first. It was a kind of paralysis, the curiosity of a tourist. There were dinosaurs. The graveyards opened. Marble churches burned like kindling. New species evolved and perished in split seconds. Every egg on the planet hatched.

Clutching my pillow, I watched the moon float away.

And then the flashes came. I almost smiled—here it was. Continent to continent: red flashes and silver flashes and brilliant un-colored flashes, raw energy, the blinding laws of physics, green and gold flashes, slippery yellow flashes that fuzzed like heat lightning, black flashes in a chrome sky, neutrons, protons, a high pop fly that never quite came down, a boy in a baseball cap shielding his eyes, circling, waiting forever, pink flashes, orange and blue, powdery puffs of maroon and turquoise opening up like flowers, a housewife running for the telephone, a poet puzzling over a final line, a grounded submarine, a silent schoolhouse, a farmer frozen on his tractor, cobalt flashes, bronze and copper and diamond-white, and it was raining upside down—but the rain was burning, it wasn’t really rain, it was wet and burning—loud noises, electricity, burning mountains and rivers and forests, and those flashes, all colors, the melted elements of nature coursing into a single molten stream that roared outward into the very center of the universe—everything—man and animal— everything —the great genetic pool, everything, all swallowed up by a huge black hole.

The world wasn’t safe.

I grabbed my pillow and ran for the basement. No time to think. It was cold down there, mildewy and damp, silent as outer space, but I crawled under the Ping-Pong table and hugged myself and waited.

“Yo-yo,” I whispered. “You poor sick yo-yo.”

But even then I couldn’t leave the fragile safety of my shelter. I tried but I couldn’t.

“Crazy,” I said.

I said it loud. Maybe I even shouted it. Because right away my father was there, he was there with me, under the table.

“William,” he was saying, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”

He held me tight, cradling me, arms around my shoulders. I could smell the heat of his armpits.

“It’s okay now,” he purred, “no problem, you can keep the shelter, honest, you can fix it up like a fortress—why not, why not? Better than nothing, right? Right? Take it slow, now.”

All the while he was massaging my neck and shoulders and chest, cooing in that soft voice, warming me, holding me close. We lay under the table for a long time.