Battle Fatigue

by Mark Kurlansky

  No. Kathy wouldn’t understand. I could have talked to Angela about that, but not Kathy, and it is Kathy I want to talk to. Could I talk to her about my fear of nuclear war, something I am thinking about all the time now? No, she would not like someone who is afraid, even though it seems to me that an exception should be allowed for being scared of the total destruction of the planet.

  Maybe I can talk to her about the Kennedys. We all like talking about Jack and Jackie. This is Massachusetts.

  But when I start to talk to Kathy she looks at me with her jade eyes. The LePines went on a car trip to the Rocky Mountains and Donnie came back with these dark green stones—one for him, one for Stanley, and one for me—for Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. It was jade, Montana jade, and the rocks were to be the symbol of our special bond.

  Kathy’s eyes were the color of Montana jade and when she looked at me, I couldn’t speak. One time Tony Scaratini took my pen. I was going to tell him to give it back but before I could say a word he punched me in the stomach and I felt so sick I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe for a few seconds. Kathy Pedrosky’s green eyes have the same effect on me.

  This morning the siren is sounding. It often does and we know exactly what to do. We all get under our desks. Or anyone’s desk. It is a quick scramble like when the music stops in Musical Chairs. But you don’t want to be the one who’s out because it might be a nuclear war. So we all dive pretty hard for a spot.

  We are preparing for the day when the Russians hate us so much that they decide to come over and drop a nuclear bomb on our school. I am not sure why, of all the schools in America, they would pick ours, but it is better to be ready. Mr. Shaker says, “In the next war, the front line could be right here!” Why would Haley be the front line? It wasn’t the front line in anything. Even in the French and Indian War Martin Haley had to go up to Canada.

  We know what nuclear weapons could do. We have seen films of that sickeningly slow mushroom spreading upward—something evil eating up the sky. We see films over and over again about the Nazi concentration camps and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. It is a little strange, these two subjects, because the one had been done by Nazis and the other by us. But we have to do it—because of Pearl Harbor, my birthday.

  Because we have seen these films of the bombed cities in Japan, we do not think hiding under desks with our hands over our heads is really going to work. It is hard to see how this is a safe hiding place from the destruction of the entire planet. We don’t talk about this, but somebody must be lying to us, and it is probably the school.

  There is a lot of talk about being ready to hide in the basements of our houses with enough food and supplies to wait it out until the radiation is gone. The Panicellis built an elaborate shelter with a door that can be shut so tight, Dickey says radiation cannot get in. Popeye and Dickey built it. And Mrs. Panicelli filled the shelves with gallon jugs of water and cans of food, especially tomato sauce and boxes of dried spaghetti. They are prepared to live on spaghetti and survive the destruction of the planet.

  It bothers me a little that my family is not prepared. We have not built anything in the basement though there is a closet there, where my parents store canned food and wine. We had always called it the “cold storage” but when I ask my parents about a shelter, they claim that this is it and we all start calling the cold storage “the shelter.” My mother says, “Joel, could you go down to the shelter and bring up two cans of tuna fish?” There is no water in the shelter. Only wine, vegetable oil, cans of lima beans, and an inexplicably large supply of canned tuna fish. This worries me.

  I suppose, when the attack comes, the Panicellis will let us in. The Wiszcinskis also have a well-supplied shelter. The Wiszcinskis always have a lot of food, which is surprising because Stanley is so skinny. Stanley did not think much of the food in our shelter and told me that when the attack comes I could come to his. I could even bring Sam if I wanted. We clicked our pieces of Montana jade and smiled.

  So when the attack comes I will have a number of possibilities. Hiding under a desk, on the other hand, is hard to take seriously. We are told to do it and we do it. You have to do something to be ready for the Communists.

  When the alarm sounds, Stanley Wiszcinski often dives under the same desk as I do. We look out from the bottom of the desk to see Miss Norris’s legs. They are an architectural wonder. She is so fat that from her knees to her ankles her legs are all the same thickness, like two pillars. And then all of this is held up by shoes with the thinnest, highest heels imaginable. They must hurt her.

  “How can she stand in those shoes?” Stanley whispers to me.

  “They’re going to snap,” I say.

  “When she comes falling down we’ll be safe here under the desk. See, Joel, it’s safe here.” We both start laughing.

  “You won’t be laughing when the Russian Communists come with atom bombs,” Miss Norris snaps. She’s right. That is not going to be funny. But now I recognize Myrna Levine’s giggle and know that Kathy must be nearby.

  “Are your hands over your heads?” Miss Norris says in a threatening tone. We quickly put our arms back up, at that moment more afraid of Miss Norris than the bomb.

  But today when the siren goes off and I dive under a desk, instead of Stanley being there it is Kathy Pedrosky. And Myrna is nowhere in sight. I don’t know what to say. Of course, we’re not supposed to be talking, so I don’t have to say anything. But it is an opportunity, if I could only think of the right thing to say. Something good could come from the Cold War.

  But what? I know she will not be interested in Miss Norris’s legs.

  Then Kathy Pedrosky turns her eyes to me and says, “Joel, I feel safe here with you.”

  I want to say something. I almost say “I feel safe with you too.” But then, just in time, I remember that this would be a huge mistake. I am the man. She doesn’t want to make me feel safe. I am supposed to save her from a nuclear attack. I think of saying something like “Don’t worry, I will save you.” Save her from the Russians. But how do you save someone from a nuclear attack? So I do not say anything.

  After school she is standing by the front door—just standing there, as if she is waiting for me. She holds out her hand and I take it and we walk out together holding hands.

  Now I am mostly thinking about Kathy. I take my allowance and buy a pin with a gold circle, which she wears. I feel grateful to the Communists in Russia.

  Chapter Seven

  My Cuban Love Crisis

  I was grateful to the Cold War for getting me Kathy but then it took her away. I suppose I can blame Khrushchev.

  Nikita Khrushchev, who looks like my uncle, bangs his shoe on the table and can’t go to Disneyland. That is what I know about the head Russian, Nikita Khrushchev. It does not seem like enough to hate the man, unless it is true that he wants to drop an atomic bomb on our school. No one likes an A-bomb dropper. But I don’t believe that he does, and in fact he never has dropped an A-bomb on anyone. We did, but he didn’t. I just don’t understand this Cold War. It is between the free world and the Communist world, and the Communist world wants to make us not free. But a lot of dictators are on our side, including the one in Spain who used to be a friend of Adolf Hitler.

  There are only two facts about Khrushchev that I know are true. One day at the United Nations, in front of television cameras, he took off a shoe and banged it on his desk to drive home a point. They show this on television from time to time and it always makes us kids laugh. But adults want us to take it more seriously. One day in school Mr. Shaker says we all have to write essays about Russia, and Stanley takes off a shoe and pounds it on his desk. We all laugh but Stanley is sent to detention.

  The other thing I know about Khrushchev is that he was not allowed to go to Disneyland. I am not sure if this was punishment for pounding his shoe. I find that hard to believe but I wouldn’t have believed he really did pound his shoe if I hadn’t seen it. I only know
that he was visiting the United States and he wanted to see Disneyland and they turned him down.

  But now something else has come up with the tough bald Russian leader. It turns out that he is ready to use nuclear weapons to destroy the world because of Cuba. For an instant I think I finally know why I am supposed to hate the Communists. The problem is that Kennedy is ready to do the same thing.

  The Russians started it. They put nuclear missiles in Cuba. Now we have to make them take the missiles away. We could get their nukes in Cuba with our nukes, but then they have more nukes to get us and we have plenty more to get them. It sounds like the games we used to play as kids.

  So now I go to bed at night wondering if I am going to wake up in the morning. Or will I be “the last man left,” like in a movie I saw about the only survivor of a nuclear war, wandering the earth finding nothing but dead people. Or would it be like another movie I saw, in which lots of people survived but they were all dropping over, one by one, from radiation.

  I know that I am angry probably because I am scared and because I don’t want the world to end over Communists. Kennedy is ready to blow up the world, but he has already gotten to do a lot of things. He has gotten to marry Jackie and drive a PT boat and be elected president. But what do I have to show for my life now that the world is about to end, now that “life as we know it”—they always use that exact phrase—is about to end? I have held hands with Kathy Pedrosky and have been punched in the stomach by Tony Scaratini. I am thirteen years old so I have barely gotten to be a teenager. I want more time than that. Even if it means leaving missiles on the island of Cuba.

  And what about that island? Isn’t Cuba a little island? What would it be like to be on a small island with all the world’s nuclear weapons pointed at you? The kids in Cuba must be even more scared than we are. They really do have nuclear weapons pointed at their school.

  Nobody talks about the Cubans. It is only about the Americans and the Russians. Everything is about the Americans and the Russians. No one else matters. As for the Cubans—the Cubans are Communists, so everybody figures they have it coming just like the Japanese had it coming because of Pearl Harbor.

  What is it all for? We fought the Germans and the Japanese because they were evil. But as soon as we beat them, they were our friends. So couldn’t we just skip ahead to that point? Couldn’t we say, right now, “The Communists are our friends,” and skip the part about the nuclear war?

  I say this to Stanley and Donnie. I even say that President Kennedy is going to get us all killed. But they are not listening. They take out their green stones and talk about “getting the Russians.” I click my stone with theirs. I am promising to get the Russians too.

  We talk about the situation a lot in school. I don’t say much. I might if someone else was saying things that sounded anything like the things I’m thinking. But I am alone. No one else is having these thoughts and that tells me something. Somehow I have taken a wrong turn that no one else has taken and I am going to be quiet about it until I understand how I have gotten it all wrong. In my school, you don’t say bad things about President Kennedy. Not in my school. Not in Haley.

  “So, cats,” says Mr. Walter. “What are we going to do about Cuba?”

  Donnie LePine is right there with his hand straight up in the air, snappy like a salute, proud that he knows the answer. “We have to make the Russians back down.”

  “Nuke ’em! Nuke ’em right in Cuba!” shouts Stanley Wiszcinski. All those early years spent surrendering the Japanese flag have somehow damaged Stanley’s mind.

  “We have to stop them,” says Kathy Pedrosky. She always says everything so well. If only I agreed with her. But I just keep quiet. A lot of the kids agree with her. They don’t like the idea of the Communists pushing us around. But I don’t see them pushing us around. Khrushchev just wanted to go to Disneyland. Well, he also wanted to have a lot of missiles—as many missiles as we have, and we want to have a lot of missiles too. But why aren’t the other kids talking about life as we know it ending on the planet?

  I can see that, despite what they say, a lot of them are worried. The whole school is acting like Rocco Pizzutti, somber and silent.

  The school gives us regular updates on the situation and I can tell that the teachers are scared too. That makes me feel better but also worse. I am glad that I am not the only one scared, but it also confirms that I have good reason to be scared. Wouldn’t it be better if I were just crazy and weird and there is nothing to be scared of?

  Kathy is scared. I can tell by the way she hangs on to me. I like that. But today, for no reason, she starts crying. I lie and tell her it will be all right.

  She cheers up and says, “President Kennedy will know what to do.” I nod, but I don’t want to answer because I am not at all sure that is true.

  And then suddenly it’s over. The Russians back down. I’m glad that someone has.

  “There is no stopping America,” Stanley says.

  “Not as long as we have President Kennedy,” says Kathy. “He knows how to handle the Russians.”

  “Are you sure?” I say. “He nearly got us all killed.”

  “But he didn’t,” says Kathy. “And now we’re a lot safer.”

  “I don’t feel safer. Life as we know it on the planet could end.” A look comes over Kathy Pedrosky’s lovely face. It is disdain. “Kathy, you were scared. We both were scared.”

  “Joel, you can be so creepy,” she says. And she walks out of the room with Stanley Wiszcinski.

  I had been right in the first place. Girls don’t like guys who are afraid of things. Even if they are just afraid of the end of the world.

  Chapter Eight

  A Live German

  I remember my father once saying “The more money you have, the more money you can get.” This, of course, is very bad news for poor people. Well, there is also some bad news for lonely people: the more friends you have, the more friends you can get.

  Ever since the Cuban missile crisis, when Kathy declared officially that I was creepy—and everyone heard her—I haven’t been popular. Let me be clear. I am fourteen years old, well into my teenage years, and for teenage boys, popularity means being liked by girls. I still have my friends Athos and Porthos. We click our stones and talk about fighting the Russians and even debate whether we will do this from the army, the navy, or the air force.

  I am not sure about fighting the Russians but these are my friends and I don’t want to be alone. The winter of my unpopularity would have been the perfect time to meet someone new, but that was not when Karl Moltke showed up. Instead he came along in the spring after I made my comeback.

  I owed my new standing to the correct application of my two pinkies. It had started during baseball practice. Mr. Bradley watched me at bat and then called me over. “I told you what your problem is,” he said while his fingers kneaded the sinew in his damaged shoulder as though he were looking for something lost in there.

  I knew the problem. He had been telling me all spring. I gripped the bat too tightly and it choked my swing. I tried to loosen up but every time the pitcher stared at me, my fingers tightened.

  “That’s why they stare at you like that, Joel,” said Mr. Bradley, still searching through his shoulder.

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Tell you what you do. Hold your pinkies out.”

  “What?”

  “Just try it.”

  He had me swing the bat with my little fingers pointed out and suddenly my swing felt so easy that when I connected with a ball it just leaped off the bat into the air to the far end of the park and beyond.

  I have become a home run hitter. I have more home runs and a better batting average than Donnie LePine. Of course he is still a better fielder and a better base runner. But everyone loves a home run hitter. I am going to get a varsity letter, a big orange letter that you sew on the pocket of an ivory-colored buttoned sweater. There are twenty-five team members and twelve varsity letters. I have never
gotten one. Tony Scaratini always gets the one for my position. But maybe not this year.

  We have a good team this year because Mr. Bradley finally realized that Rocco Pizzutti is not a third baseman. Mr. Bradley stood on the mound, fingers working his shoulder, and said, “Come over here, Rocco.” He turned him toward home plate and told Stanley to hold up a mitt. Then Rocco pulled back his left arm and threw.

  Stanley screamed and dropped the glove in pain. And that was it. Rocco has become a pitcher. No one can hit him. No one even wants to be standing there when he throws—not the batter, not the catcher, not even the umpire. If the catcher misses and the pitch hits the backstop fence it gets stuck there, wedged in the chain links.

  This is my first winning team and my hitting streak is one of the reasons why. Mr. Bradley smiles at me and jokes with me. All my teammates want to be around me. Girls want to be around me, though Kathy still thinks I’m creepy. Suddenly Susan Weller is talking to me and not just neighing and spitting. And I notice that she doesn’t look a bit like a horse. She looks very nice.

  I enjoy my new standing. Of course I will have to learn soccer and get a lot better at basketball if I want to maintain this position all year—like Donnie, who has varsity letters in all three sports.

  I might write about this in my diary. For my birthday my parents gave me a red leather book with a strap across the pages that locks with a small brass key. Every few weeks I carefully unlock the book, examine its blue-lined empty pages, and just as carefully lock it up. I do this over and over again. I have for months now. But I’ve been thinking that I might write about events. What Fidel Castro said that day. How the astronaut training program will someday send the first men to space—if the Russians don’t get there first and make the moon Communist. How Ted Williams hit three home runs in the same day for the Red Sox. I have become an enthusiast for power hitters now that I am one. And who else is there to root for, now that the Dodgers are gone?