The Nuclear Age

by Tim O'Brien

  “What you have to do,” Chuck Adamson said, “is make it quick and clean. Cold turkey. Move, that’s all I can say.”

  “I’ll need time,” I said.

  “Time. That can be arranged.”

  “A place to go.”

  “That, too,” he said. “Time and place, I’ll handle it. From there on you’ll have to draw your own map.”

  Behind him, the capitol dome had lost some of its shine. Otherwise not much had changed.

  Adamson slouched in his chair, taking notes.

  He was older, of course, and balding, but he still had those sad copper-colored eyes. Still jittery and preoccupied. I felt at home. I could almost hear him groaning—“You think you’ve got problems”—but instead he opened a desk drawer and took out a photograph and examined it for a moment and then handed it across to me. Surprise, but I was smiling. A handsome child: blond hair and a cowboy shirt and a big smile.

  Adamson reached out and touched the photograph.

  “Square one,” he said, “tell it to me.”

  It took nearly a week. I started with the binoculars; I told him that I’d come to appreciate his fascination with telescopes. “That’s what it feels like,” I said. “My life, it feels like it’s happening inside a telescope.”

  Over that first afternoon I laid out the chronology, or what I could remember of it. Peverson State and my poster and Ollie and Tina, and then Sarah, and the war, and Ebenezer Keezer and Nethro and life on the run, and then Bobbi—it was hard to get the order straight—but then Bobbi—and a missile rising over the Little Bighorn, and guns in the attic, and uranium dreams, and my father, and a sleek black submarine, and how in retrospect it all had the shape and logic of a chain reaction, cause becoming effect and then cause again.

  When I finished it was dark.

  “Well,” Adamson said. Then he rubbed his eyes and took me home with him.

  It wasn’t what I expected: a huge old house on the outskirts of Helena, white clapboard with black shutters and a wraparound porch, and a cocker spaniel and a pretty wife and four terrific kids, the youngest just a baby. He put me up in a spare bedroom. At dinner that night, it felt as if I’d rejoined the world. Lots of laughter. Adamson clowning with the kids, a parakeet diving through the dining room, his wife shaking her head and smiling at me—a madhouse, she meant.

  After dinner we played Careers. And then late at night, when we were alone, Adamson dished up ice cream and we ate it standing up at the kitchen counter.

  I laughed.

  “Well,” I said, “this explains it.” I made a gesture that encompassed the entire house. “I mean, listen. Now I know why you’re so miserable.”

  Adamson licked his spoon.

  “Right,” he said. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  But we never did. For the next five or six days I led him through the chronology again, slowly. It wasn’t therapy; it was purely practical. When I told him about Sarah, he asked the essential question: Why didn’t I go with her? There was no answer for it. Trust, I said. Or no trust. Did I love her? I did. Did she love me? She no doubt did. Then why? I shrugged: there was no answer for it. It wasn’t our universe. I didn’t know. Not our universe, that was all I could say, except no trust, or not enough, or the inability to see how it could end happily. But I didn’t know.

  If you can’t imagine it, I said, it can’t happen.

  I told him about Bobbi.

  That much I could imagine. Why? he said. I didn’t know. It seemed possible.

  I told him about Ned Rafferty. A person is defined by the quality of obsession, I said, and Ned Rafferty was a quality person. Ollie Winkler was not quality. Nor was Tina Roebuck, nor Ebenezer Keezer. Sarah was high quality.

  “And you?” Adamson asked.

  I thought about it. Up in the air, I told him. My obsessions were sometimes quality and sometimes not. Nothing lasts: that was not a quality obsession. But there was also Bobbi, and peace, and that was quality.

  For many hours we went over these things, shifting back and forth, but the purpose was never therapeutic, it was always practical.

  A serious problem, Adamson said. There were legal issues. There was the question of surrender. How exactly to go about it, and when and where, and all the attendant logistics. There were consequences to consider. Prosecution, maybe. Maybe jail. And beyond that, he said, there was the whole matter of deciding on a future for myself. “Not just any future,” he said, “we’re talking quality” and then he asked the simple, practical questions. Did I want a house to live in? I said, Yes, I did, very much. Did I want children? I did. What about a career? Geology, I said. What about love and happiness and peace of mind?

  “The point,” he said quietly, “is that you have to try to picture the exact circumstances. The shapes and routines, the things you want. A blueprint. Then go out and make it happen.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I think so. Take charge, you mean.”

  Adamson shook his head.

  “What I mean,” he said, and paused. “I mean you’re not a child anymore. Nowhere to hide. It’s a grown-up bitch of a world.”

  On the last day we spent a few hours in his office and then he drove me over to the bus station.

  It ended where it began.

  “Cold turkey,” he said. “Time and place, I’ll set it up. From then on it’s your life.”

  There was a final trip to Key West. When I explained my decision to Sarah, she nodded and said she’d been expecting it. “No hard feelings,” she said.

  It took a full day to pack up my things.

  That evening we sat in the backyard, just holding hands, letting the sim go down.

  In bed, she said, “I have to ask this. Did you ever love me?”

  “Right now,” I said.

  The next day she took an early-morning flight for Miami. She was gone when I came down to breakfast.

  “It’s you and me,” Ned Rafferty said.

  We ate pepper omelets and drank Bloody Marys. In the afternoon we switched to gin, and then later, after dark, we rinsed our glasses and drank vermouth.

  “Among the spirits,” Rafferty said, “we are presently well spiritualized, I would say.”

  “I would say so.”

  “To the spirits, then. To spirituality in all its diverse guises. To firewater.”

  “And firesticks,” I said.

  “Of course. Firesticks, too. But that comes later, does it not?”

  “Later, I apologize.”

  “Think nothing of it.” He bowed and smiled. “Firewater now, firesticks later. One must approach it with orderly spirit, must one not?”

  “One must,” I said.

  We drank vermouth on ice until the ice ran out. There was a winding-down feel to the occasion, a happy sort of sadness, and for a while we permitted ourselves the quiet to let it happen.

  Later I felt myself smiling.

  “You want the gist?” I said.

  “Definitely. Couldn’t do without it.”

  “The gist,” I said, “is I’m pretty damned fond of you.”

  “That’s the gist?”

  “That’s it.”

  He looked at me. “I accept with pleasure. Finest gist ever spoken. I recommend we spiritualize it.”

  “We shall,” I said.

  There was no ice but I stood and made a speech about how we had become like brothers over the years, many scrapes, many untold thicknesses and thinnesses, and then Rafferty made his own speech, which was eloquent, and then we paused to remember our absent colleagues, which required solemnity and the last of the vermouth.

  “To dear Tina,” Rafferty said, “and to Ollie, our honeymooning brethren. May they find joy in the overripened flesh.”

  “Poignant,” I said.

  “I thank you, sir. And to Nethro. And—let me think—and let us praise Ebenezer Keezer. May he stew in stir. May his darkest dreams come true.”

  “A
nd Sarah,” I said.

  “Certainly. And God bless Sarah Strouch.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “So now?” I said. “I believe firesticks might be in order.”

  “I believe so. Shit-faced, I believe.”

  “The attic, then.”

  “Most definitely,” said Rafferty. “The spirit most definitely beckons.”

  It was a two-hour job. Earlier that morning, after Bloody Marys, we’d rented a van and tacked up curtains along the rear windows. The Gunmobile, Rafferty called it. We worked as a team, hauling the plywood crates down to the kitchen, then pausing for spiritual sustenance, then loading up the van.

  I drove, Rafferty rode shotgun.

  “Advance to the front,” he said loudly, “we must commence without compunction. Destiny, all that. Compunctionless. No more compunctions.”

  I was intoxicated but not stupid. I took it slow up Roosevelt Boulevard, past a glitzy strip of neon along the Gulf side, both hands on the wheel, one eye closed, hitting the turn signal when I swung north onto Highway 1.

  The road went dark after a mile or two. Rafferty switched on the radio and sang with The Doors.

  After a time he put his head back.

  “I am overindulged,” he said. “I am not well. I am the victim of impacted spirits.”

  “Pull over?”

  “No. Commence. Impacted upon.”

  Then he chuckled and sang with the music. I measured the road with one eye. The hour was late and the universe was not entirely stable. To our left, I calculated, was the Gulf, the Atlantic to our right, but otherwise we were navigating a course between topographical unknowns. The Doors sang and Rafferty harmonized—We’re gonna set the night on firrrre. I concentrated on the center line.

  The darkness was not altogether comforting, nor the unknowns, and I was down to one eye.

  “How far?” I said.

  “Firrre!” Rafferty sang, then shrugged. “I have no compunctions. Two miles, I would gauge. The running of guns is not—how shall we say it?—not yet an exact science.”

  “An art,” I said.

  “Quite so. Art. Artsy craft, even crafty craft. Could be a song in it.”

  “There could.”

  “Shall I sing?”

  I took a bead on the center line.

  “Firrre!” he sang.

  There was no traffic. The road was flat and seamless, very narrow, and the sound of the engine mixed nicely with his baritone. The darkness amazed me. I thought about Sarah for a while, with something like passion, but then I decided it would be better to stop thinking. Then I thought about Ebenezer. This would not please him, I thought, nor Tina, nor Chekhov, so why then think about it?

  Ahead was the smudge of Lower Sugar Loaf Key.

  Deceleration, I thought, and I let it glide. I pulled off onto the shoulder, backed into a rest area at the Atlantic side, cramped the wheel, set the emergency brake, switched off the systems. Each operation demanded diligence.

  For a few minutes we sat listening.

  The blackout was total. Rafferty sat up straight beside me, holding his head.

  “I detect no light,” he said soberly, “at the end of this particular tunnel.”

  “Ready?”

  “Of course. No light, no compunctions.”

  Outside, there was a strange sort of silence, flying insects and tidal splashings along the roadbed. Commando vibrations: comportment was paramount. Dignity, I decided, and I felt brave and competent as we established a beachhead.

  When the guns were unloaded, we took off our clothes and waded in with the first crate.

  It rode low and heavy. Awkward but it floated. Close in, the water was warm and marshy-smelling, barely up to the knees, then cooling as we waded out. I had both eyes open. I could see birds and fireflies off in the mangrove. Vaguely, I wondered where the stars had come from; there were flashings, too, and reflections, but for once I felt powerful.

  We steered the crate straight out.

  When the water came thigh-high, we pried open the lid. The guns lay muzzle-to-stock, oiled and fleshy, overlapping, like tinned sardines.

  “Such beauties,” Rafferty said. “You’ll have to grant the obvious. They are true, ball-breaking beauties.”

  He touched a tooled barrel.

  “Works of art,” he whispered.

  Then he said, “Oh, well.”

  We tipped the crate sideways and pushed it under and waited for final sinkage. There were soft bubbling noises. Presently a sheet of oil rose up and gathered in flecks of orphan light.

  “In a way, you know,” Rafferty said, “it amounts to tragedy. Just in a certain way.”

  “It’s a token,” I said.

  “That’s what I mean. Tragedy. Fucking token.”

  He ducked underwater. While he was gone I watched the oil spreading out, smooth and shiny. Even in the dark it had some color.

  Rafferty came up smiling.

  “Token,” he said, “I guess that’s something. Something positive, isn’t it?”

  “I think it is,” I said.

  “No compunctions?”

  “None.”

  There were fourteen crates altogether, then the ammunition. It was sobering labor. The footing was slippery with turtle grass and coral; in the mangrove to the east there was the nighttime babble of birds and reptiles and creatures I didn’t know. Mostly, we sank the crates whole. Once, though, we took turns disposing of the weapons individually, which was gratifying, standing naked in salt water and grasping a cool black barrel in both hands and using the shoulders as a pivot and spinning with the arms, then a howl and a snap of the wrists, then listening for the splash, and then saying, “Well done,” or saying, “Positive dynamics,” and then laughing.

  Otherwise it was mechanical, just sinking guns. We inclined toward silence. We pressed the crates under and watched the bubbles. At one point, as we waited for a car to pass by, I found myself telling him about Chuck Adamson. Cold turkey, I said. Had to be a clean break. Too bad about Sarah—I did love her, I said—it just wasn’t our universe. Did he understand this? I shook my head and said I didn’t understand it myself, but did he understand? She was in the world. I was out of it. Did he understand this? She wanted engagement, I did not—was this understandable? Different universes, I said. Rafferty lay back in the shallows, floating faceup, and after a moment he said he understood, but he reckoned he would have to stick with her anyway, because he only knew about one universe, and here it was, and that was his way of looking at it. But he understood. Then he asked what my plans were and I told him I was trusting Adamson to work things out. “Just go,” I said, “anywhere but crazy.” Rafferty laughed and said crazy was a wonderful place not to go.

  Then we hauled out the last crate and pried it open and committed it to the bottom.

  In the van, heading for town, I thanked him for his partnership. More than a token, I said. Something positive. For my father, partly, but mostly for myself.

  He sat with his eyes closed.

  “Men of virtue, are we?”

  “No,” I said. “Just positive.”

  At the house I showered and put on a coat and tie and inspected myself in a full-length mirror. I looked presentable. The smile was straight and full, almost happy. The skin was copper brown, the hair was just a shade short of blond, and the eyes had a bright blue clarity which gave me pleasure.

  I have a theory. As you get older, as the years pile up, time takes on a curious Doppler effect, an alteration in the relative velocity of human events and human consciousness. The frequencies tighten up. The wavelengths shorten—sound and light and history—it’s all compressed. At the age of twelve, when you crouch under a Ping-Pong table, a single hour seems to unwind toward infinity, dense and slow; at twenty-five, or thirty-five or forty, approaching half-life, the divisions of remaining time are fractionally reduced, like Zeno’s arrow, and the world comes rushing at you, and away from you, faster and faster. It confounds computation. You lose y
our life as you live it, accelerating.

  Which is my theory, and which is how the next eight or nine years went by.

  Chuck Adamson’s word was gold. Time and place, he’d promised, and he set me up in a small cottage in the foothills outside Fort Derry—no frills, but comfortable—eight miles from home, close to the old sources but far enough away. Always, to his credit, he was practical. He covered the rent, helped to furnish the place, bought me a pair of hiking boots and a beat-up Volvo and a Geiger counter. “Time and place,” he said, “so draw your map.” He never pressed me; he let me surface in my own way. On weekends, sometimes, he’d come to visit, but for the most part the time was my own. I became a householder. I learned how to regulate a wood-burning stove and how to spend the hours of night without terror. Just the simple things. Doing dishes became an important piece of business; it seemed civilized and honorable, a matter of consequence. Once a week there was garbage to dispose of. There was a floor to sweep, a woodpile that required vigilance and wise husbanding. Eventually, I knew, I would have to begin squaring the legal circles, but for that first year it was enough to let the days accumulate. I camped out and collected rocks and devoted many hours to my Geiger counter. It was all acceleration. Alone, listening through headphones, I followed the trace elements along a stream that led where it had to lead, as I knew it would, and at the source there was just the steady click of a geological certainty. It was my secret, though. I lived with it. Naturally there were times when the solitude pressed in hard, and I’d think about Sarah and the others, but then I’d think about the mountains and tell myself, No, that’s finished. Here it is, I’d think. Right here. Lying in bed at night, or sitting at the stove, I’d take satisfaction in the shadings of sound and temperature, the most minute increments in the density of silence. I noticed how even cobwebs cast shadows. I noticed how geopolitics made no perceptible difference in the movement of dust against a lighted lamp. For me, at least, the war was over.

  The rest was a silhouette.

  June 1971. I drove into town, parked on Main Street, and walked home. My mother did not seem much surprised. When I came in the back door, she said, “I knew it.”