The Nuclear Age (34 page)

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 questions 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?
“Bastard!” 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.

“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.