The Nuclear Age

by Tim O'Brien

  I believe it. The dead, perhaps, live in memory, but when memory goes, so go the dead.

  There is no remembering when there is no one to remember. Hence no history, hence no future. It’s a null set; the memory banks are wiped out; there is no differentiation—all the leptons look alike—believe it.

  For now, though, I have a dim recollection of Ebenezer Keezer briefing us on coming attractions. Volatile stuff, no doubt, because I remember the brittle sound to his laughter. There was talk about crime. At one point, when Ned Rafferty brought up the subject of penalties, jail and so on, Ebenezer removed his sunglasses and looked heavenward for some time. Then he shrugged. He grinned at Nethro. “Freedom,” he said, “is just a dependent clause in a life sentence. Don’ mean nothin’.” There was a pause before he entertained suggestions as to how the guns might be most properly used. “Let’s discuss climax,” he said, which is all I remember, except for walking away.

  And Sarah.

  Sarah in a cotton nightgown with lace and blue ribbons, her hair in curlers, puffy booties on her feet. Sarah sunbathing. Sarah baking cookies. In late January, I remember, she put on her old Peverson letter sweater to watch the Super Bowl, and afterward we went out for dinner, the two of us alone. It was a terrific time. We had some drinks, then several more, and on the way home she giggled and leaned up against me and asked if I believed in dreams.

  She seemed a little unsteady.

  “Dreams,” she said, “can they come true? Like with a crystal ball or something? Can you dream your own life?”

  “Well,” I said, “let’s hope not.”

  “No, I’m serious. Is it possible?”

  I smiled and took her arm.

  It was near midnight and we were walking through a park of some sort and I could smell flowers and cut grass. After a time Sarah stopped and looked at me.

  “What I mean is … I mean, there’s a dream I keep getting. Not a dream, really, just this wacky idea. You won’t laugh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Promise?”

  I nodded.

  There was a hesitation while she thought it over. Her eyes, I remember, were like ice; you could’ve skated on them.

  “All right, then, but you have to use your imagination.” She bit down on her lip. “War’s over. No more battles, it’s finished, we all pick up and go home. You and me, we get married, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Babies. Lots of travel. Settle down. But then what? I mean, I’m still young, I’m famous, I’ve got certain skills. So what do I do with myself?”

  “The dream,” I said gently, “let’s hear it.”

  Sarah sighed.

  “You’ll think I’ve flipped. It’s like—I don’t know—just weird.” She giggled again, then swayed and kissed me. There was the smell of gin and lipstick. Drunk, I thought, but something else, too.

  She shivered and hugged herself.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said. “Pretend it’s Super Bowl Sunday. Like today, sort of. Packed stadium. Bands and floats and celebrities. National holiday. Bigger than Easter, bigger than Christmas. Hospitals shut down. Nixon’s got his phone unplugged. All across America—people adjusting the color on their TV sets, opening up that first beer. Whole country’s tuned in. Showdown time—Dallas versus Miami. You have to close your eyes and just picture it.”

  I closed my eyes.

  When I looked up, she was sitting on a park bench. She gazed at the sky for several seconds.

  “Super Bowl,” she said. “Greatest show on earth. There I am. I’m a Cowgirl.”

  “Cowgirl,” I said.

  “War’s over, I’m bored, I need the spotlight. That’s me, isn’t it?—the glitter girl—this huge appetite—I just need it. Goose bumps. All the noise and dazzle and music. Very warm and mysterious, like having sex with ninety thousand people. Can’t explain it. Just Cowgirl magic—I’m wearing the blue and silver. Those little shorts, you know, and those sexy white boots. I’m there.”

  I sat down and put my arm around her.

  A hot night, but she was still shivering, and it occurred to me that this was a very desirable but very frightened woman.

  Presently she laughed.

  “So there I am,” she said. “Super Bowl. All the pre-game stuff goes as usual—welcoming ceremonies, lots of color and excitement—but then a funny thing happens. The teams don’t show up. Overslept or something—who knows?—they just don’t show. Two hundred million people waiting. No teams.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “No teams. No football.”

  “A good dream.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “True,” she said, “but here’s the stunner. Nobody cares. Nobody notices. Because yours truly is out there blowing their dirty little minds with cartwheels. Cartwheels you wouldn’t believe. Nobody’s even thinking football—cartwheels, that’s all they want. Crowd goes bananas. Super Bowl fever, they’re all screaming for more cartwheels … Curt Gowdy’s shouting the play-by-play … TV cameras zoom in on me—instant replay, slow mo, the works. I’m famous! Fans swarm onto the field and … And that’s when it finally happens. Cheerleading, the main event. No sidelines crap—it’s me they want—they came to see me. Just a billion beautiful cartwheels. They love me. They really do, just love-love-love. Who cares about football? War’s over. Just love. It’s all completely reversed. At half time the two teams trot out for a cute little twenty-minute scrimmage and then—bang—back to the action—me and my cartwheels.”

  There was a moment of quiet, then she nudged me and lifted up her sweater.

  “My breasts,” she said, “they’re nice, aren’t they?”

  “Fabulous,” I said.

  “For a Cowgirl, though. Not huge or anything, but they’re—you know—they’re nice. I don’t need a bra.”

  “I see that. Cover up now.”

  “I’m not too old?”

  “Just right,” I said.

  Sarah frowned and examined herself.

  “And my legs. I’d probably have to start shaving again, but they seem—”

  “Very pretty legs.”

  “You think so? Be honest.”

  “Perfect,” I said. I helped her up. She wobbled a bit, laughing, then straightened up and took my face in her hands and kissed me hard. I could feel the structure of her jaw. When she pulled back, there were tears in her eyes.

  “The dream,” she said softly. “You see the point?”

  I didn’t but I nodded.

  “Love,” she said.

  She didn’t cry.

  She smiled and said, “Love, that’s all. I want it. God, I do want it.”

  The rest seems to slide away.

  I remember her black eyes, flecks of orange and silver, how she kept smiling at me. “Love,” she said.

  And then what?

  Hindsight, foresight. But which is it? I can see her jerking up in bed that night, or perhaps another night, still trembling, hooking a leg around me, and maybe it’s then when she says, “I’m dead. I’m all alone.”

  Is it possible? Can we read the future?

  Do our bodies know?

  I remember holding her.

  “No,” I tell her, “just a dream.”

  Which is how it was and still seems.

  A curious year, fast and slow. I can see Sarah practicing cartwheels in the backyard. She winks at me and yells something—I don’t know what—then she goes up into a handstand, ankles locked, toes at the sky, and she holds it like that forever.

  Or I see her squinting into a mirror. She winces, shakes her head, and begins applying a coat of Blistex to her swollen lip. After a second our eyes meet in the mirror. Sarah cocks an eyebrow. She nods and says, “All right, tiger, Congress is in session. But no fancy lip action.”

  Naturally there were realignments in our relationship, certain taboos and touchy subjects, but over those months we more or less patched things up.

  It was an exercise in tact; the question
s were always implicit.

  One evening she found me paging through a world atlas. I was studying topography, tracking the Rhine toward Bonn. Sarah came up behind me. I didn’t see her, or hear her, and it was a surprise when she placed her fingertips against my throat.

  “Wrong continent,” she whispered, “wrong woman,” then she left the room.

  In the morning the atlas was open to South America. Rio was circled in red. Europe was missing. At breakfast, as we were finishing our coffee, Sarah sniffed and said, “Love and war. If necessary, I’ll wipe out the world.”

  For the most part, though, the days simply vanished.

  I remember watching the war on television.

  The same old reruns. There was a malaise, I remember, a weariness that imitated despair.

  Ned Rafferty came down with the flu—a vicious case, fever and diarrhea. I remember dipping a washcloth into a basin of cold water, wiping his face, thinking what a nice guy he was. Even sick he looked strong. I can see his gray eyes aimed at the attic, how his beard framed a smile when he turned toward me and said, “Get out, man. Go. You’re crazy if you don’t.”

  A slow recovery, but he made it.

  And then chronology.

  On Valentine’s Day, Ollie and Tina announced their engagement. They were married a month later—Nevada, I believe. The telegram mentioned a honeymoon in Mexico.

  On March 29, 1971, Lieutenant William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder.

  My father died on the twenty-first of April.

  “Sit down,” Sarah said.

  Then she told me. I forget the sequence—network sources in Montana—a hot line—and then she told me. All I remember is when she said, “Sit down.”

  Forty or fifty hours seemed to drop away.

  Daylight, then dark, then airplanes and a rented car and telephone poles and mountains and patches of snow. I suffered tunnel vision. Objects popped out at me: the A&W off Main Street, my father’s Buick parked in front of the house.

  “You understand the problem?” Sarah said. “About the funeral. We can’t … I mean, it’s a problem.”

  We spent the night in a motel up in the foothills. Rafferty was there, and Sarah, and the hours kept falling away. I remember sitting under cold water in the shower. Then daylight again, and Sarah cut my hair, and I was wearing a suit and a blue tie and black shoes.

  A car ride, I remember that.

  Then climbing.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “You understand, though?”

  I watched through binoculars.

  Ned held me by the arm. Sarah stood off to the side. We were on a hill overlooking the cemetery and I could see the entire valley below, the highway running east-west through town, the golf course and the water tower and the slim white cross over the First Methodist Church. The sky was a smooth, dusty blue. There were birds, too, and cattle grazing along the hillside, and a brisk wind that pressed Sarah’s skirt flat against her hip. Farther down, the sunlight made sharp elongated shadows where it struck headstones and human figures.

  I tried to focus on physical things. A good man, I thought. There was nothing worth dying for, but he always died with such dignity.

  The binoculars gave it perspective—close up but also distancing. I studied the lead-colored coffin. That square jaw of his. He never ran or wept. A brave, good man. The wind was high and chilly, but there was bright sunshine as I brought the binoculars to bear on a mat of artificial grass at graveside. My father would’ve laughed. “Plastic grass,” he would’ve said. He would’ve looked at me and rolled his eyes and muttered, “Plastic.” I felt myself smiling. I could see him dying under floodlights at the county fairgrounds. He always died so beautifully. “Well,” he’d say, “let’s get this show on the road.” He’d wink. He’d tell me to look smart. “What the hell,” he’d say, “at least you got yourself a haircut.”

  But it wasn’t worth dying for.

  Nothing was, and I would’ve told him that.

  Sarah touched my arm.

  “All right?” she said.

  I nodded and gave her the binoculars. After a moment she handed them back.

  “If you want,” she said, “there’s some brandy. He wouldn’t mind, would he? Your dad?”

  “I guess he wouldn’t,” I said.

  “Just a drop, then. To beat this wind.”

  “One drop,” said Rafferty.

  We moved to a cluster of granite boulders and passed the flask. Rafferty slipped an arm across my back. It was a brilliant day, but the wind made my eyes ache.

  I fixed on dignity.

  Down below, things seemed much too small. I recognized Doc Crenshaw and Sarah’s father. It was all in miniature, the coffin and the hearse and the flowers and my mother. Even with the binoculars, she looked curiously shrunken. Worn down, I thought, and much too old. She wore gloves and a brown coat and a small dark hat, but no veil, and she stood slightly apart from the others, facing my father’s coffin. She seemed nervous. When someone offered a chair, she made a quick motion with her hand, as if startled, then shook her head and remained standing. Surprise, I thought. We know it can happen but when it happens there is always surprise. I felt it myself. Grief, too, but the surprise was profound.

  “Your mother,” Sarah said, “she seems okay.”

  They were praying now.

  To the north and east the mountains were bright purple. While they prayed, I thought about chemistry sets and lead pencils and graphite. Odd thing, but I finally saw the humor in it. I was an adult now; it didn’t matter. I would’ve told him that. “Graphite,” I would’ve said, “what a moron.” I thought about how things happen exactly as they have to happen, but how even so you can’t help feeling some bewilderment.

  When the prayer was finished, the minister moved to the head of the grave, the wind ruffling the pages of his Bible. There were no voices, of course, but it was easy to imagine.

  The binoculars helped.

  I brought the hole into focus. I saw my father kneeling in front of a Christmas tree—colored lights and ornaments—and he was smiling at me, holding out a package wrapped in silver paper. He wanted to say something, I know, but he couldn’t move or speak … I saw him mowing grass in deep summer. He had his shirt off, the hair wet against his chest, the smell of gasoline and cuttings, but he was locked behind a lawn mower that wouldn’t move … I remembered a game we used to play. The Pull Down Game, we called it. He’d lie on his back and I’d hold him by the arms and he’d struggle and try to get up, but I’d keep pressing down—I was a child, six or seven, I didn’t know my own strength or his—and after a while he’d give up and say, “You win, you win.” I had him pinned. He couldn’t move, like now. I saw him lying flat and looking up at me without moving … I saw him that way … At night sometimes, when he drove off to sell real estate, he’d flash the taillights at me—it was a special sign between us—but one night he forgot to flash them, and I was furious, I couldn’t sleep, and when he came home I wanted to grab him and hit him and ask why he forgot to flash the goddamn taillights. I wanted to yell, “Why?” And there were other questions, too. A million questions I didn’t dare ask and never would. What about Custer Days? The fairgrounds—why did he die? What was the point? Honor? Irony? What? I wanted to know. “I was just a kid,” I would’ve told him, “I hated it, every fucking summer you always died.” I would’ve pinned him down. I would’ve demanded answers. The Ping-Pong table—better than nothing, wasn’t it? Why the jokes? Why bring up graphite? What about the bombs? Real or not? Who was right? Who was wrong? Who’s crazy? Who’s dead? I would’ve climbed all over him. “You son of a bitch!” I would’ve screamed. I would’ve yelled, “Why?” Why so gallant? Those bright blue brave eyes—the world could end—he didn’t flinch—no one did—why? The world, for Christ sake. Why didn’t he cry? Why not dig? Why not do something? Dig or cry or something? Right now, it could happen, couldn’t it? Yes or no? Why such dignity? Why not anger? Why did he have to go and die? “Bas
tard!” I would’ve yelled. Through the binoculars I could see him squirming. I had him, though—he couldn’t move—so I’d fire the questions at him. The war, for instance. The whole question of courage and cowardice. Draft-dodging: Was he embarrassed for me? What did he tell people? Make excuses? Change the subject? Secretly, in his heart, would he prefer a son with medals and battle ribbons and bloody hands? I would’ve kept after him. I would’ve hugged him and held him down and asked all the questions that had to be asked. I would’ve told him what a great father he was. Such a good man, I would’ve said. I would’ve said all the things I wanted to say but could never say.

  You brave son of a bitch, I would’ve said. I love you.

  I tried to say it but I couldn’t.

  It was all grief now. I looked away, at the mountains, and later Sarah laced her fingers through mine and said, “I think it’s finished.”

  Below, people were mingling and shaking hands, sliding off toward their cars. Doc Crenshaw had my mother by the elbow. For a long time I kept the binoculars up, but finally there was just that relentless wind.

  “William,” Sarah said.

  I nodded.

  “Another minute,” I told her. “Go on ahead, don’t worry. Just one minute.”

  I smiled to show I was in control.

  When they were gone, I watched the sky and tried to find some words. A bright, sunny day, but the wind made it hard. I wanted to talk about my life. Apologize, maybe. Tell him I’d be making some important changes. How it was time to stop running, and how I’d need help, but how, when the moment came, I’d pretend he was right there beside me under the yellow spotlights.

  I had a last look through the binoculars.

  The coffin was still there, unburied. I studied it for a while and then said goodbye and followed Sarah and Rafferty down the hill.

  The hours fell away.

  We had dinner that night at a restaurant near the motel. Around midnight Sarah went to bed and Rafferty and I stayed up late making plans. When I mentioned the guns, he looked at me and said, “You’re sure?” and I said I was, and he smiled and said, “Positive thinking.”

  I slept hard for the rest of the night.

  In the morning I took a wrinkled scrap of paper from my wallet, went to a pay phone, dropped in some quarters, and placed the call.