Don DeLillo - End Zone

I began to worry seriously about the fact that the season was nearly over. There would be no more football until spring practice in April. Without football there was nothing, really and absolutely nothing, to look forward to.

In class Major Staley lectured on the firststrike survival capability of our nuclear arsenal, ranging from the landbased Minuteman and Titan missile silos to the nuclearpowered Polaris submarine missilelaunching fleet to the more than five hundred combatready bombers of the Strategic Air Command. There were about fortyfive student cadets in Major Staley's class and they were all very conscientious. But somehow, without even trying, I was by far the best student in class. I knew the manual almost by heart and I had read everything the school library had to offer on aspects of modern war. I asked the most penetrating questions. I got perfect scores on every quiz. After his talk on survival capability, the major asked me to remain after class for a moment. I walked up front and stood by his desk. He seemed to be looking into my nostrils.

"Gary, you're wasting your time just auditing this course. You could be getting two credits for it. Join the cadet wing. It's a good wing. We need your kind of mind in the wing. Two credits. A meaningful future. The Air Force is the most selfactualizing branch of the military. Do one thing for me. Think about joining the wing. Just think about it. No more, no less."

"The wing," I said. "You want me to join the wing."

"You've got the mind. You've got the good body and the good eyes."

"I don't really, sir, think that I want to go that far in my commitment to this interest I have, seem to have, in the subject matter we've been involved in here. I'm interested in certain areas of this thing in a purely outside interest kind of way. Extracurricular. I don't want to drop Hbombs on the Eskimos or somebody. But I'm not necessarily averse to the purely speculative features of the thing. The hypothetical areas."

"Gary, I'm not asking you to drop bombs on anybody."

"Major, you join an organization like the United States Air Force and before you know it-"

"The leg's been giving me trouble," he said.

"What leg is that, sir?"

"The right leg. I don't know what's the matter with it. I'll have to have it looked at again. They looked at it once before. But I guess they'll have to look again."

"What did they find the first time?"

"Tests were inconclusive."

"You'd better be sure to have it looked at," I said.

"Gary, you've got the seekingout kind of mind we need in this branch of the service. This arm of the service. Whatever you want to call it."

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"You've got the good eyes. You're an athlete and that's always a plus factor. You've got the body. You've got the probing mind."

"I'm here to play football, major."

"It won't interfere very much. Two hours of drills a week. You're already taking the required classroom work. We've got nine football players in the wing."

"Sir, it's the hypothetical part of it that interests me. I really wouldn't want to get too close to it. I wouldn't want to put on a uniform or anything like that. I wouldn't want to march or visit air bases. I'm interested in certain provinces, areas, and I don't want to get any closer than that. I don't want to get any closer at all."

"Do one thing for me. Think about it. Just think about it. It's a damn good wing for a school this size. Do that for me, Gary. Think about it."

"No," I said.

"You can't say I didn't try. I tried, didn't I?"

"You were very convincing, major. Really, you almost had me there for a minute."

We walked across campus together. I had a class in exobiology coming up and I didn't want to be late. But although I was hurrying right along I had trouble keeping pace with the major. We said goodbye to each other and as he turned to head for the barracks his right leg suddenly buckled and he almost went down. I watched himas he regained his balance and then tried to continue on his way, not looking back at me, limping badly, trying to adjust to the burden of his own weight. I turned and saw Myna Corbett fifty yards ahead. I ran to catch up with her, picking up speed the last ten yards and then coming to an abrupt stop in order to frighten her. It worked beautifully: her startled body was lifted an inch off the ground.

Zapalac circled his desk as he spoke.

"It should be interesting to ask what our life on earth owes to all those comets which deposited so many millions of tons of chemical materials when they crashed into us in the formative years of our history, our growingup years, and it's probably not too overly poetic to maintain that we were being nourished by the heavens, helped along for our first two billion years or until we could finally do it ourself, synthesize basic materials, take the first step in returning the favor, heading out into space with chow mein dinners fresh from the freezer. But if the truth be known, I'm not really all that fascinated by the carbon content of meteorites or arguing about exactly when the first living organisms appeared on earth. My own feeling is twoseventeen b.c. at Kearney, Nebraska. But what about the last living organisms, the spores and hydrozoans left behind after our protectors protect us into oblivion? We'll all end as astroplankton, clouds of dusty stuff drifting through space. Let me ask. What's the strangest thing about this country? It's that when I wake up tomorrow morning, any morning, the first bit of fear I have doesn't concern our national enemies, our traditional coldwar or whateverkindofwar enemies. I'm not afraid of those people at all. So then who am I afraid of because I'm definitely afraid of somebody. Listen and I'll tell you. I'm afraid of my own country. I'm afraid of the United States of America. It's ridiculous, isn't it? But look. Take the Pentagon. If anybody kills us on a grand scale, it'll be the Pentagon. On a small scale, watch out for your local police. Look at you looking at me that way, some of you. Question. Will two polite collegeeducatedofcourse friendly agents of the brainwash squad knock on my door at three in the morning? You see my winning infectious smile and you know I'm not worried. This is America. We say what we want. I could talk all day, citing chapter and verse. But when the true test comes, I'll probably go running to a beauty shop, if you can find one in this neck of the world, and I'll get my hair dyed blond so everybody will think I'm one of those small blondie boys with that faraway look in their eyes who used to be so big on the Himmelplatz three or four decades ago. We're supposed to be talking about biotic potential in today's session as it applies to organisms in farflung environments, far beyond the highways and byways of our solar system. Man's biotic potential diminishes as everything else increases. That pithy little formula may well earn me a research grant to study modes of survival on the other side of the atmosphere. The first orbiting fellowship. I have a deep thought for you. Science fiction is just beginning to catch up with the Old Testament. See artificial nitrates run off into the rivers and oceans. See carbon dioxide melt the polar ice caps. See the world's mineral reserves dwindle. See war, famine and plague. See barbaric hordes defile the temple of the virgins. See wild stallions mount the prairie dogs. I said science fiction but I guess I meant science. Anyway there's some kind of mythical and/or historic circlething being completed here. But I keep smiling. I keep telling myself there's nothing to worry about as long as the youth of America knows what's going on. Brains, brawn, good teeth, tallness. I look at your faces and I have to let out a controversial little grin. Some of you in your nifty blue uniforms here to learn about outer space and how to police it. Uniforms, flags, battle hymns. I offer you my only quotable remark of the entire fall semester. A nation is never more ridiculous than in its patriotic manifestations. Why should I be afraid of my own government? There's something wrong here. But I'm not worried. Fortunately I'm good at ducking. I can bob and weave with the best of them. It takes a lot to stop a little man. Let's open to page seventyeight. The panspermia hypothesis and its heartwarming implications."