The Nuclear Age

by Tim O'Brien

  “And then?”

  Absently, Sarah traced a design in the sand.

  “Nothing, really. New papers, new citizenship. We’re all émigrés here.”

  She wiped the sand clean and started over, drawing an airplane, wings tilted at a steep downward angle. Her eyes, I thought, were wired.

  “One of these days,” she said slowly, “you’ll have to stop grieving for the old country. It’s gone. Not there anymore.”

  “A new world,” I said.

  “Believe it.”

  “New friends, too?”

  She gave me a sharp look.

  “Friends, too,” she said. “Who you think pays for all this? Those papers—the house, the groceries—somebody has to pick up the tab. They aren’t bad people.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied.”

  “All right,” I said. “Generous people. What I’m curious about, though, is the repayment schedule. The fine print, the terms of agreement and all that.”

  “A few favors. Odd jobs here and there.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Complaints?”

  I shook my head. “No, just apprehensive. The law.”

  “Well,” she said, “it takes some savoir-faire.”

  Sarah studied her airplane in the sand. It wasn’t what she wanted, apparently, because she hit it with her fist and then flipped onto her back and watched the circling gulls.

  “Savoir-faire?” I said.

  “You know.”

  “I don’t know. I’m stupid.”

  She made an impatient movement with her chin. “Survival skills. How to cope. How to avoid handcuffs. Like grad school except it’s strictly pass-fail. Anyway, you’re enrolled.”

  Her voice trailed off. She kept fidgeting, tight and restless.

  Presently she sighed.

  “You’re right,” she said, “there’s always a price. But listen, you made the decision, you walked, so pretty soon you’ll have to get off your butt and start showing me some involvement. You do or you don’t.”

  “A war,” I said.

  “True enough.” She took off her sunglasses and looked at me. “Things change, William. All that pom-pom garbage, it’s history, I’m in this for keeps. I’m in. And what I mean is, I mean you have to grow up. Crawl out of your goddamn hidey-hole.”

  “Black or white,” I said. “Sounds so simple.”

  “It is simple. Pull your own weight or pull out. I need a commitment.”

  For a moment she was silent, letting it hang, then she tapped the wallet.

  “Commitment,” she said softly. “Know what it means?”

  There was a subtle undercurrent. She shook out her hair and stood up and waded out into the Atlantic.

  Commitment, I thought.

  Two different value systems. She was out to change the world, I was out to survive it. I couldn’t summon the same moral resources.

  I dozed off for a time, and when I looked up, Sarah was standing over me, toweling off, the sun directly behind her head.

  “Who’s Bobbi?” she said.

  Her face was all angles. She knelt down, opened the wallet, and pulled out Martian Travel.

  “Found it this morning. Naïve Sarah. Went to reload your billfold. Switch papers—some switch. What do I find? I find this. All about airplanes and safe landings. Maybe I should read it out loud.”

  “No,” I said, “don’t.”

  But she went ahead anyway, in a soft, measured voice, and at the final line she nodded and placed the poem in my lap.

  There was some stillness.

  “Snazzy stuff,” she said shortly. “Mars and stars. Dah-dee-dah, et cetera. Nice metrics. Content-wise, it seems a little ambiguous, but I guess that’s literature for you.”

  “Sarah, it’s not—”

  She shook her head and laughed.

  “Fidelity?” she said. “Offhand I can’t think of a decent rhyme. True? Blue? Shit.” Her eyes were closed. “I guess I’m just hypersensitive. The whole thing, it strikes me as—how do I say this?—a little cheesy. And there’s that cute P.S., too. Something about grass. The regular cow kind. She says it expresses her deepest feelings for you.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know.”

  “Cheesy.”

  “I know.”

  After a time, Sarah put on her sunglasses and stretched out beside me.

  The afternoon was hot. A fine clean sky, and for a long while nothing more was said. All whimsy, I thought. It wasn’t what it seemed. Out on the horizon a white cruise ship was toiling south, and we lay quietly until it disappeared over the rim of the world.

  Sarah touched my arm.

  “I’m not poetic, William. You and me. I thought we had something. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Love. Rio and babies. That was the plan, I thought.”

  “It still is. A good plan.”

  She sat up.

  “Fucking Martians,” she said. “Fucking grass. I don’t get it.”

  “No meaning,” I said. “All air.”

  “I love you.”

  “Just air.”

  “Love,” she said, then paused. “So who’s Bobbi?”

  I gazed out at where the cruise ship had been, but there was just the thin, unbroken edge of things.

  “Bobbi who?” I said.

  9

  Underground Tests

  NOVEMBER 6, 1968, A DISMAL DAY in paradise. Dark and drizzling and steamy hot. After breakfast Sarah dressed in mourning. She wore a black hat and a black bikini and a long black widow’s veil.

  “Nixon’s the one,” she said. “Let’s walk it off.”

  Outside, there was fog and thunder. We unfurled an umbrella and strolled past bait shops and boutiques, along the waterfront, down to a deserted beach at Land’s End. The rain was steady. Sarah lifted the veil and spat and said, “Not that it matters. We needed a classy new villain.”

  She lay down and made angels in the sand, then stiffened and folded her arms.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Bury me.”

  “Deep?”

  “Use your judgment.”

  I dug a shallow grave and rolled her in and tamped down the wet sand. At the end, only the hat and veil were visible.

  She nodded.

  “A prayer might be appropriate. Talk about my free spirit, how much you adored me.”

  I knelt down and uttered a blessing.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  There was gloom at Land’s End, and the day smelled of salt and mildew and troubled times.

  Sarah’s eyes were dark behind the veil.

  “Our beloved, misgoverned Republic,” she said. She attempted a smile. “And me, William? You do care?”

  “A lot. Don’t be silly.”

  “Silly me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Bobbi?”

  “I explained that. Just this thing.”

  Her head shifted slightly in the sand.

  “Heavenly bodies,” she said.

  It was a day for sobriety. I propped up the umbrella and leaned back and studied the rain. Things were pasty-gray. The ocean was part of the land and the sky was part of the ocean. Far off, there was lightning.

  “The thing that gets me,” Sarah said, “is the broad’s guile. I’d give anything to watch her work a singles bar: ‘Hi, there, my name’s Bobbi. Here’s a delicious little poem I wrote just for you.’ A huckster, William. And you fall for it.”

  “I didn’t fall.”

  Sarah grunted. “Fall, flip, what’s the difference? I mean, Christ, I can knock out my own little beddy-bye rhymes. The grass, the grass! Bobbi, baby, kiss my ass!”

  “Talent,” I said.

  “Talent. You bet.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “No?”

  “I told you, we barely even … Nothing.”

  The rain was vast and undramatic. America had misstated itself—Nixon was the one—and at
Land’s End there was only Real Politic.

  Sarah made a clucking sound.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Like Mother Goose. Now you see her, now you don’t.”

  “Stop it.”

  “The competition, man, it’s too celestial.”

  “No competition. I’m here.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I am.”

  She laughed.

  “Half here, half there,” she said. “A little of both. The Martian Travel trick.”

  Then she cried.

  There was definite slippage. Along the surface of the grave I could see bits of brown flesh where the rain had made fissures in the sand. Sarah cried quietly, inside herself, then closed her eyes and lay still. “You never look at me,” she said. “Not really. When you love somebody, you keep looking, you can’t help it. But you never do that. You never look at me or ask questions about how I feel or … Just things. You know? I’m a real person.”

  “You are,” I said.

  I looked at her, then looked away.

  She was not, I realized, beautiful. Hard and pretty but not beautiful. I pulled the veil up and kissed her and told her it was just circumstance. A random encounter, I said. Nothing to hold on to. A martini, a voice without language: I couldn’t remember words.

  Sarah cradled her legs and began rocking. For some time she just watched the weather.

  “It’s foolish,” she finally said, “but I need promises. You have to promise me things.”

  “Things?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever seems possible. The future. We keep doing this evasive dance together, all kinds of intricate footwork, but just once I’d like to stop the waltz. Just once. Tell me there’s a future for us. You have to promise.” She removed her hat and veil. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Promise?”

  “I do. I promise.”

  “Say it.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “More.”

  “I don’t know more.”

  “Make it up, then. Tell me we’ll be happy. Tell me it’s perfect love, it’ll last forever.”

  “It will.”

  “Swear it, though.”

  “I swear. Forever.”

  “Forever,” she said, and nearly smiled. “I like that.”

  The next evening Ollie Winkler hit Key West aboard a sleek thirty-eight-foot Bertram cabin cruiser. He was in the company of a slim, mustachioed Cuban without a name. Compadre, Ollie called him. The man did not speak English. He touched his cap and stepped back while Ollie gave us a tour of the boat. It was brand-new and expensive-looking.

  “A real attack vessel,” Ollie said proudly. “Fast, you know? All we need’s a torpedo or two.”

  “And depth charges,” said Tina.

  “You got it, kid. Charges for the depths.” Ollie beamed as he showed us the galley and the teak decks and the two big Evinrude engines. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a sequined T-shirt that said MOON IN MIAMI. “No joke,” he said, “these babies cost a pretty penny. Had to shop around almost a week.”

  “But?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, but.”

  “A steal, I’ll bet.”

  Ollie’s smile was modest. “You know me. Mr. Thrift.”

  “Problems?”

  “Zero problems. Compadre and me, we drove a hard bargain. You like it?”

  Sarah pecked his cheek.

  “It’ll float,” she said.

  Then it was all action.

  We had a quick dinner, packed our suitcases, locked up the house, and headed down to the boat. We spent the night on board. It was a reunion of sorts, and there was champagne and comradeship, but there was also the certainty that we had come up against departure. I slept badly. Late in the night I woke up and took a pee over the bow and then stood there for a long time. Coward, I thought. I watched the water and stars. I thought about the things I valued. I valued the love of my father and mother. I valued peace. I valued safety. I did not want to kill, or die, yet I did not want to do this thing we would now be doing. I had no zeal. For me, it was just a ride, and there were no convictions beyond sadness.

  At dawn Tina Roebuck served omelets and orange juice.

  “I won’t make speeches,” Sarah said. “Anyone wants out, now’s the time.”

  Ollie reached for the jam.

  “Love it!” he said.

  “William?”

  “I heard.”

  “What I mean is—” She looked at Tina. “Go on, tell him what I mean.”

  “Business,” Tina said, smiling at me. “Get with the program, she means. We’re tired of jump-starting your conscience.”

  Ollie laughed and said, “Love it!”

  It was a smooth seven-hour crossing.

  Too smooth, I thought: a weekend boating party. The young Cuban manned the helm, and there was a polished sky and fair winds and the Gulf Stream running green to blue. A radio boomed out calypso. When the Keys sank away, I took off my shirt and pondered ticklish points of international protocol. It occurred to me that our passage held historical hazard—the Monroe Doctrine and piracy on the high seas. Also, in these same warm waters, the world had once squared off in preparation for expiry, causing prayer and the contemplation of final causes. What, I wondered, had happened to memory? Here, I thought. Idle musings, perhaps, but I couldn’t shake the sense that there was a pursuit in progress. The fugitive jitters, obviously. I imagined a helicopter high off our stern. A warning shot, and demands would be issued, and we would go eyeball to eyeball, and then it would happen as it nearly happened and finally must.

  But no one knew.

  Among the sane, I realized, there is no full knowing. If you’re sane, you ride without risk, for the risks are not real. And when it comes to pass, some sane asshole will shrug and say, “Oh, well.”

  Events had their own track.

  At noon we established radio contact. A half hour later a small gray pilot boat pulled alongside. There were guns and khaki uniforms.

  Ned Rafferty touched my arm.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Just fine.”

  “That’s good, then. Steady as she goes.” He squeezed my arm. “Clear sailing. Just us and the wild red yonder.”

  We made Havana in time for a late lunch.

  Afterward there was paperwork, then our hosts arranged for a bus that took us along a coastal highway, past poverty and palms and vast fields of sugarcane. The ride lasted four hours. We stopped once for water, once for fuel, but otherwise it was exactly as Rafferty predicted, clear sailing, just us and the wild red yonder.

  For six days, which I marked off on a pocket calendar, we lazed away the time at an orientation compound situated beachside a few miles west of Sagua la Grande. It was an old plantation house that had been converted into a combined resort and training facility, with colorful flower beds and neatly tended grounds sloping to the sea. The rooms were spacious, the tennis courts lighted for night play. Plush, to be sure, but there was also menace. The watchtowers and barbed wire and armed cadres.

  “Mix and match,” Tina said. “Half Che, half JFK. Two stars for originality.”

  Then six relaxing days.

  We devoted our mornings to the sun, swimming and snorkeling, idling. Tina built elegant sand castles; Ollie demolished them; Sarah snoozed behind sunglasses; Ned Rafferty taught me the elements of killer tennis, yelling encouragement as he fired cannon shots from point-blank range. A languorous time. Rum punch at sunset, dinner by lantern light in the villa’s pink-tiled courtyard, linen tablecloths and Russian wine and Swiss crystal. The service was cordial and efficient. Why? I’d sometimes wonder. Then I’d think: Why not? A holiday, I’d tell myself, but late at night I’d hear machine guns, or voices counting cadence, and on those occasions I’d find myself engaged in serious speculation.

  No answers, though, just questions.

  “Play it by ear,” Sarah advised. “Mouth shut, eyes open. That’s all I
can say right now.”

  It was no use pressing. I was afraid of the answers, no doubt, and I was also a little afraid of Sarah herself. She seemed cool and distant. Small, subtle things that added up to large, obvious things. The way she moved; her silences; a tactical precision to her love-making.

  The hardness factor, too.

  A power disequilibrium. She had it, I didn’t.

  “You know something?” she said one evening. We were in bed, windows open, and there was the nighttime rustle of wind and ocean. “I was born for this, William.”

  “This?” I said.

  “Right here, right now. The whole decade. Like destiny or something. I honestly believe it couldn’t happen without me.” She made a pensive sound, then ran her tongue along my hipbone. “The cheerleading and the funeral home—all that—when I look back, I think, God, it was all planned, it was like a ladder up against a high wall, and I couldn’t see the top, but I started climbing, I had this incredible drive, I didn’t know why, I just had it, so I kept climbing, and here I am. It was planned for me.”

  “Destiny,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Laugh. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “I’m not laughing. Wondering.”

  “All I know is what I feel,” she said. “It’s in the stars, somehow. The DNA. I can’t explain it any better. This goddamn war. I hate it, I do hate it, but it’s what I’m here for. I hate it but I love it.”

  She swiveled out of bed and went to an open window. For several minutes she simply stood there, framed by the future, whatever it was.

  Then she sighed, squatted down, and pulled a pillowcase over her head.

  “A long time ago,” she said, “I told you something. I want to be wanted. By you, by Interpol. Those handsome dudes on the FBI—doesn’t matter, just wanted. Do you see? I need that.”

  “Of course.”

  “Here, too. They want me.” She made a broad gesture with her arm. “What I’m trying to say is, I mean, I’m not the strongest person in the world. I get overwhelmed by all this. You know, this Red connection, Cuba and all that. I don’t know where it’s headed. Guns or jail. I’m committed, though, and it’s necessary, but sometimes I get the creeps, I get scared. You understand? Part of me wants to run away. Like to Rio, or anywhere. Have babies and clip coupons. Be your wife, maybe—something normal—anything.”