Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

We sit facing each other from opposite sides of the hole. She’s crying now; I can see her shoulders shaking. “Daddy, please!” she says. “Let’s get out of here!” And if I could, I would do it. I would take her in my arms and be calm and gentle and find safety by saving. God, yes, I would. “A joke,” I’d say, “just a big silly joke,” then I’d carry her up the ladder, and Bobbi, too, both of them, one in each arm, and I’d laugh and say, “What a joke.” I’d be a hero. I’d do magic. I’d lead them into the house and brew up some hot chocolate and talk about the different kinds of spin you can put on a Ping-Pong ball. And the world would be stable. The balance of power would hold. A believer, a man of whole cloth, I would believe what cannot be believed. The power of love, the continuing creation—it cannot be believed—and I would therefore believe. If you’re sane, the world cannot end, the dead do not die, the bombs are not real.

Am I crazy?

I am not.

To live is to lose everything, which is crazy, but I choose it anyway, which is sane. It’s the force of passion. It’s what we have.

When I get to my feet, Melinda whimpers and says, “Stay away from me.” But I’m willing to risk it. I’m a believer. The first step is absolute. “Daddy,” she says, “you better not!” But I have to. I cross the hole and kneel down and lift the firing device from her lap and hold her tight while she cries. I touch her skin. It’s only love, I know, but it’s a kind of miracle.

In the dark, Sarah’s smile seems hopeful.

“Another universe,” she says. “A nice little miracle, that’s all I want. You, William. I’ll never stop wanting.”

But it isn’t real.

Not Sarah, not the Bomb. Nuclear war: just a fault line in the imagination. If you’re sane, you accept this. It’s easy. Sarah winks at me, still flirting, and I nod and embrace my daughter.

At daylight we climb the ladder.

And that, too, is easy.

I hustle Melinda into the house, turn on the shower, test the temperature, and tell her to hop in.

She looks at me through the steam.

She nearly smiles, but doesn’t.

“I’m a grown-up girl ,” she says. “You can’t just stand there and watch .”

“No, I guess I can’t.”

“God. What a father.”

“Right,” I say.

I close the bathroom door, listen for a moment, then return to the hole. It’s a fine summer morning. I take Bobbi from the hammock, holding her as if we’re dancing, and when she opens her eyes, the hole seems to laugh and whisper, One more clown in the screwy cavalcade. Hickory dickory hope .

It doesn’t matter.

I’m a realist. Nothing’s real.

Bobbi goes first, up the ladder, I follow behind with the firing device. I turn off the Christmas lights. The sky at this hour is purple going to blue. The mountains are firm and silent. There are morning birds in the trees, and the grass is a pale dusty green, and I love my wife. She leans against me. For some time we stand together in the backyard, and later I lead her into the house and make coffee and sit with her at the kitchen table. There is little to say. I ask how much space she needs; I ask if we could stay together a while longer. Bobbi touches my hand. Her eyes, I notice, don’t quite focus. Her voice, when she says anything’s possible, comes from elsewhere. She’s thinking of other worlds. But she does smile. She lets me love. In her heart, I suppose, there’s a lyric forming, but even that doesn’t matter.

I have a last piece of business.

Outside, I pick up the firing device and take shelter behind the tool shed. Nuclear war, it’s a hoax. A belly laugh in the epic comedy. I flip up the safety catch, crouch low, look at the sky, and put my finger against the yellow button.

I know the ending.

One day it will happen.

One day we will see flashes, all of us.

One day my daughter will die. One day, I know, my wife will leave me. It will be autumn, perhaps, and the trees will be in color, and she will kiss me in my sleep and tuck a poem in my pocket, and the world will surely end.

I know this, but I believe otherwise.

Because there is also this day, which will be hot and bright. We will spend the afternoon in bed. I’ll install the air-conditioner and we’ll undress and lie on the cotton sheets and talk quietly and feel the coolness. The day will pass. And when night comes I will sleep the dense narcotic sleep of my species. I will dream the dreams that suppose awakening. I will trust the seasons. I will keep Bobbi in my arms for as long as she will stay. I will obey my vows. I will stop smoking. I will have hobbies. I will firm up my golf game and invest wisely and adhere to the conventions of decency and good grace. I will find forgetfulness. Happily, without hesitation, I will take my place in the procession from church to grave, believing what cannot be believed, that all things are renewable, that the human spirit is undefeated and infinite, always. I will be a patient husband. I will endure. I will live my life in the conviction that when it finally happens—when we hear that midnight whine, when Kansas burns, when what is done is undone, when fail-safe fails, when deterrence no longer deters, when the jig is at last up—yes, even then I will hold to a steadfast orthodoxy, confident to the end that E will somehow not quite equal mc 2, that it’s a cunning metaphor, that the terminal equation will somehow not quite balance.

If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973)

Northern Lights (1975)

Going After Cacciato (1978)

The Nuclear Age (1985)

Portions of this novel appeared in different form in The Atlantic, Esquire, Ploughshares , and The Pushcart Prize 1985 . The author wishes to thank the editors of those publications and to express gratitude for support received from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

The principal characters and incidents in this book are wholly imagined. By and large, the author has tried to remain faithful to the flow of public events between the years 1945 and 1995, but on occasion it has seemed appropriate to amend history, most conspicuously by addition. What is important, the author believes, is not what happened, but what could have happened, and, in some cases, should have happened.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985 by Tim O’Brien

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Those Were the Days: Words and music by Gene Raskin; TRO © Copyright 1962 and 1968 Essex Music Inc., New York, New York

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

O’Brien, Tim.

The nuclear age.

I. Title.

PS3565.B75N8 1985 813′.54 85-40211

eISBN: 978-0-307-82968-9

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