The Nuclear Age (17 page)

And there was Ned Rafferty, too, whom I hated, but whose strength and modesty I would one day come to admire.

That afternoon, however, my thoughts were unkind.

I remember Rafferty sitting on a window ledge, quiet and composed. The conversation had come to departure points. Unfinished business, Sarah was saying. College was one thing but the world was something else. We had to grow up. Time to make commitments. Turning, she looked straight at me. Bombs, she said. The war—did we care? Active or passive? Were we in for the duration? Were we serious? Then she smiled and looked at Rafferty. Her voice was low. She had access to certain resources, she told us. A network. Connections: people and places. First, though, we had to resolve the basic question. In or out?

A stirring little speech, I thought. The ambiguities alone carried weight.

I was considering the risks when Ned Rafferty cleared his throat.

“I’m new at this,” he said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what you’re saying is we have to put up or shut up. Make a choice. That’s the gist, right?”

And then for the next five minutes he completely dominated the proceedings. A smooth talker, I thought, slow and deliberate, but there was a glibness that made me uneasy. Like grease. The whole time he kept his eyes fixed on Sarah.

“So anyhow,” he’d say, “here’s the gist of things.”

The gist of things: that was his favorite expression. The same phrase over and over, like dripping water. This gist, that gist. It was amazing how long I kept my composure. No doubt I was looking for an opening, some flaw in all that niceness, but the sheer enormity of it surprised me. The gists kept piling up. Whenever Ollie or Tina made a comment, he’d mull it over for a while and then smile and say, “I see what you’re driving at, but what you
really
mean is this—here’s the gist of it.” A couple of times I almost laughed. I couldn’t understand why Sarah kept nodding and taking notes.

Finally I had to cut him off.

“Hey listen,” I said, “you lost me somewhere. I see what you’re
driving
at, but what’s the
gist
of it?”

“Gist?” Rafferty said.

“The nub. The nutshell. I need the goddamn gist.”

A little muscle moved at his jaw. “William,” he said slowly, “I just
gave
you the gist.”

“You did?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

For a moment I came close to backing down.

“Well, fine,” I said, “you gave me the gist, but I need the
absolute
gist. The gist of the gist. You have to step back and boil it all down for me.”

“Now listen—”

“Sum it up, put it in perspective.”

Rafferty’s eyes fell. There was puzzlement in his face, even hurt. I wanted to stop but I couldn’t.

“Nail it down solid,” I said. “The bottom line. I need the ultimate, final gist.”

Sarah stood up.

“Enough,” she said.

“Let’s get to the
heart
of it. Real fundamental basics.”

“William.”

Something in her voice stopped me. Apparently Ollie felt it, too, because he laughed and then busied himself with a fingernail clipper. Tina Roebuck studied the fashion models across the room.

After a moment Rafferty shrugged.

“A comedian,” he said. “Humor, I can appreciate that.”

“It wasn’t humor,” said Sarah. She looked at me for a long time. “Unnecessary. Whatever it was.”

“A joke,” Rafferty said. “No harm.”

“Harm, bullshit,” she hissed.

I felt some tension. There were things I could’ve said, and wanted to say, but I was already out the door.

That night, in bed, Sarah faced the wall.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re not sorry.”

“All right, I’m not. Slimy bastard. The way he looks at you, it’s almost like—” I waited a second, then said, “Are you sleeping with him?”

Sarah rolled sideways.

“And what does that mean?”

“What it means.”

“Cry wolf, William.”

“The truth.”

There was a long quiet. She leaned on her elbow and stared down at me. Her eyes, I thought, were a little puffy.

“Am I sleeping with him?” she said softly. She made it sound like a problem in mathematics. “Well, it’s not something a nice girl talks about, but let’s hypothesize. He likes me, I like him. It’s mutual. I said it before, life has this weird built-in factor called shortness. All this time I’ve been waiting and waiting, for
you
, just
waiting, but the joyride never showed up. So maybe—it’s all hypothetical—maybe I decided to stick out my thumb and pull up my skirt and see if I could stop a little traffic. Conjecture. But what if?”

“I’m asking.”

“Ask.”

“Are you?”

Sarah closed her eyes.

“You know what it is, William? It’s a sickness.”

“Yes or no?”

Again, there was silence.

“Funny thing,” she finally said, “I thought I was sleeping with
you
. Appearances deceive.” She lay back and watched the shadows. “I care about you, William. A whole lot—too much. But this sickness I mentioned. There’s a name for it. Shall we call it by its name?”

“No,” I said, “let’s not.”

“But you know?”

“I know.”

Sarah touched me.

“So then,” she said. “Imagination time. Am I sleeping with him?”

“You’re not.”

“Sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I’m
not
,” she sighed. “More’s the pity.”

Then she turned away.

It was a bad night. I kept turning the unnamed name over in my head, just letting it tumble. I thought about pigeons and bombs. Crazy, I thought, but that wasn’t quite the name.

In the morning Sarah got dressed and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Rafferty,” she said. “He’s in. You realize that?”

For a few moments she looked away, then she shrugged and pulled the bedspread over me. “The strange thing about it, William, is he likes you. Thinks you’re extraordinary. Extraordinary—
his word. The bombs-are-real stuff, that poster of yours, he says you started it all. Says he respects you.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s very genuine.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“Very sweet.”

“He is.”

“A nice guy,” I said. “I’ll bet that’s the gist of it.”

We graduated on May 27, 1968.

There were hugs, I remember, and slapped backs and promises, and on May 28 there were departures. In a way it was sad, in a way it wasn’t.

Ned Rafferty headed for his father’s ranch in Idaho.

Ollie Winkler and Tina Roebuck went west to hook on with the McCarthy campaign in California.

Sarah had appointments in Florida.

I knew better than to ask for details. She’d be in touch, she said, but for now there were numerous housekeeping chores, loose ends to attend to. At the bus station she put her hand on my cheek. She said she loved me. She told me to pay attention to my dreams. “It’s a tough call,” she said, “I know that, but you can’t straddle fences forever. In or out. Let me know.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that.”

“Oh, it’ll come,” she said. “No neutrality.”

For me it was a holding pattern.

I spent the summer in Fort Derry, a terrifying summer, a split between black and white. I couldn’t decide. Like sleepwalking, except I couldn’t move, the dynamic was paralyzing.

The war, of course.

The world as it clearly was.

There was violence in Grant Park. There was Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Robert Kennedy, and there was Robert Kennedy, who died. I saw it in slow motion, as we all did, but I also imagined it, and still do, how it can happen and will happen, a twitch of the index finger, a madman, a zealot, an aberration in human history, Kennedy’s wide-open eyes, a missile, a submarine off Cape Cod, a
fine bright expansive day in June when the theater of things becomes a kitchen, and there’s a chef and there’s a terrorist, so it happens, a twitch, or it’s a balmy evening in midsummer and a finger comes to rest on a button in that cruising submarine—is it malice? spite? curiosity?—just a trigger finger that comes to perfect rest, then twitches, it’s reflex, it’s Sirhan Sirhan, and Kennedy blinks as we might blink, a sudden flash and a blink and then wide-open eyes. Which is the dynamic. Which is how it happened and will happen. We are immortal until the very instant of mortality. I imagined dying as Kennedy died, and as men died at war that summer.

But no decisions. Vaguely, stupidly, I was hoping for a last-minute miracle. In Paris they were talking peace, and I wanted the miracle of a decision deferred into perpetuity. I wanted resolution without resolve.

One evening Sarah called.

“So?” she said.

It was a long-distance connection broken by static, and I could hear coins clicking somewhere in the tropics. I told her I was frightened. I talked about the pros and cons and the shadings at the center. Like a teeter-totter, I said, or like a tightrope, I couldn’t make up my mind.

“Time,” I said.

In the background I heard someone laugh—the operator, maybe—then Sarah whispered, “Teeter-totter,” and hung up.

But mostly it was just waiting. During the days I’d drive up and down Main Street in my father’s Buick, watching the small-town silhouettes. I thought about Paris; I thought about Canada. There was Vietnam, too, and Uncle Sam, but I tried not to think about those things. Around dusk, sometimes, I’d stop at the A&W for french fries and a Papa Burger. I’d push the intercom button and place my order and then sit back listening to the radio. Peace, I’d think. Then I’d think: What does one
do
?

At night, with my parents, I’d watch the news on television.

“Whatever happens,” my mother said, “we’re with you all the way. A thousand percent.”

“Two thousand,” said my father.

He stared at the TV screen.

There were flags and limousines at the Hotel Majestic. Averell Harriman was shaking hands with Xuan Thuy.

“Assholes,” my father said, very quietly. “Shit or get off the pot.”

My mother nodded.

“Your decision,” she said.

But it was not my decision. The dynamic decided for me.

When I think back on the summer of 1968, it’s as though it all occurred in some other dimension, a mixture of what had happened and what would happen. Like hide-and-go seek—the future curves toward the past, then folds back again, seamlessly, and we are locked forever in the ongoing present. And where am I? Just digging. The year, for instance, is both 1968 and 1971, and I see Ollie Winkler tipping back his cowboy hat, squinting as he kneels down to rig up a bomb. I can hear the whine in his voice when he says, “You don’t make a revolution without breaking a few legs.” But the bomb is real. Legs get broken. And I see Tina Roebuck storming a radio station, except she’s older now, and meaner, and there is an impulse toward bloodshed. I see Robert Kennedy’s wide-open eyes, a twitch, a flash, Sarah oiling an automatic rifle, sharpshooters and a burning safe house and the grotesque, inex-pungible reality of the human carcass. Odd, how the mind works. It goes in cycles. The year is 1968, and 1958, and 1995, and I’m here digging, I’m sane, I’m trying to save my life.

What can one do?

Safety first.

It was no surprise when I received the draft notice in late August. “Run,” Sarah said, and I did. First by bus, then by plane, and by the second week in September I was deep underground.

7
Quantum Jumps
 

M
Y WIFE THINKS SHE
’
S
leaving me. Already the suitcases are packed, and in the bedroom, behind a locked door, Bobbi spends the afternoon sorting through old letters and photographs. Her mood is truculent. Two months since she last spoke to me. When necessary—today, for instance—she communicates by way of the written word, using Melinda as a go-between, dispatching fierce warnings like this one: