The Nuclear Age (20 page)

We avoided specifics. There was great courage in what was not said. We listened to records, made small talk about neighbors and old times, and then later, on the spur of the moment, my father challenged me to a game of Ping-Pong. “Two out of three, no mercy,” he said, and he winked, and I said, “You asked for it,” and we moved down to the basement and set up the net and played hard for almost an hour.

At eight o’clock I asked for the car keys.

“Right,” he said. “Absolutely.”

There was a clumsy moment when he handed the keys over. He followed me outside and stood on the steps as I backed the Buick down the driveway, then he waved and held up two fingers.

A good man, I thought. A veteran of foreign wars and a good man.

Twenty minutes to kill, so I drove up Main Street to the railroad tracks at the east edge of town, then circled around and came back again, slowly, elbow out the window. The air was warm and calm. A big red moon presided over the mountains, a Friday night, and the shoppers were out. There was commerce and goodwill. I drove past the Ben Franklin store, the Thompson Hotel with its old hitching post, my father’s real estate office, the courthouse and the library and Doc Crenshaw’s little three-room clinic. The streets were safe. It could’ve been anywhere, small-town America.

Nobody knew.

I turned on the radio. Rhythms, I thought,
Surfin’ Safari
, and I tapped the steering wheel and watched the mountains above town, the safe streets and storefronts. I was afraid, of course, but it was mostly homesickness. I thought about the things I’d be losing. Little things, like backyard barbecues, but big things, too, family
and history, all of it. For me, at least, it would not be an act of high morality. My father understood that. “It’s a mess,” he’d said, “it’s all upside down, a real hornet’s nest. If it were up to me … It’s not, though. What can I tell you? That damned war. What the hell are we fighting
for?
That’s the bitch of it, I guess, but I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

Certain blood for uncertain reasons.

It was a phrase I’d picked up in college, one of Sarah’s favorite lines, and now, as I turned past the A&W, I said it aloud. I whistled
Surfin’ Safari
.

I did not want to die, and my father understood that.

It wasn’t cowardice, exactly, and he understood that, too, and it wasn’t courage.

It wasn’t politics.

Not even the war itself, not the coffins or justice or a citizen’s obligation to his state. It was gravity. Something physical, that force that keeps pressing toward the end.

Certain blood, uncertain reasons, but finally you have to choose.

At eight-thirty I stopped at a pay phone outside the State Bank building. Sarah was all business. “On or off?” she said.

“On,” I said, “I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty?”

“Yes, I think so.”

There was a pause before she said, “Class dismissed. Call me back if—”

“On,” I said.

“Louder, man. Bad connection.”

“It’s go, almost positive. A couple of things to take care of first.”

“Medically, you mean?”

“My dad thinks it’s worth a shot.”

Sarah seemed pensive. In the background, barely audible, I could hear a tinkling sound, ice cubes or wind chimes.

“Flat feet,” she said, and sighed. “Or cold feet. What you should do, maybe, is buy yourself some cute pedal pushers. Have Congress with a butcher knife—works every time.”

“That isn’t quite fair.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “Stick an ice pick up your weewee. Tell them you’re two months pregnant.”

There was a moment of problematic silence. I watched a tractor turn left off Main, a big John Deere painted green with yellow trim. I was hurting. When the tractor was gone, I told her how sick I felt. Turned around, I said. Lost, too, and trapped, and I needed something more than smart-ass bullshit.

Sarah chuckled.

“You’re not pregnant?” she said.

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Pity.”

“Sick,” I said. “Lost.”

There was that wind-chime sound again.

“All right, then, you’re lost,” she said, and her voice seemed to back off a bit. “That’s understandable. Problem is, we need a commitment, something firm. These things get complicated. Heat’s on, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to—I hate to press—but you’ll have to … I
am
sorry.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, on. Tomorrow night.”

“That translates to Saturday?”

“Saturday.”

“Firm?”

“Yes,” I said, “I guess so.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “That’s what I admire. All that boldness and fire.” She waited a moment, then told me to take notes. “Number one, you’ll have to bus it to Chicago. Number two—write this down—TWA, flight 233, Chicago to Boston, nine o’clock Monday morning. Nine sharp. Miss that flight, the whole deal’s off.”

“Tickets?” I said.

“At the check-in counter. Your name’s Johnson, L. B.”

“That’s comic.”

“We thought so. Anyhow, nine o’clock Monday. You’ve made financial arrangements?”

“My parents.”

“They know?”

“Not the details.”

“But they know?”

“A little. I couldn’t just walk away.”

Sarah snorted. “I thought it was clear. Mouth shut, I said. Didn’t I
say
that?”

“I was careful. No names.”

“Careful, shit,” she said. There was a brittle sound on the line, a clicking, as if someone were transmitting in code. Voices, too. I heard a whisper, or thought I heard it, then a soft buzzing. After a moment Sarah said, “So where was I? Number three. We’ll have a watchdog waiting in Boston—TWA, main lobby. Find a comfy chair and sit tight. Simple enough?”

“Like cloak-and-dagger.”

“You think so?” Her tone was perfectly neutral. “Because, listen, we can call it a bust right now. You think that?”

“Trans World,” I said. “Sit tight.”

“Exactly.”

“And?”

“Bring a book or something. The watchdog, he’ll find you.”

“Who?”

“No can say. A familiar face.” She made an indistinct sound, almost motherly, but her voice remained firm. “It’s not easy, we both know that. But flat feet don’t cut it. Sooner or later you have to walk.”

Breakfast was a ceremony. There was great decorum in the scrambling of eggs, cups on saucers, pourings and stirrings and fussings over fresh-squeezed orange juice.

“Socks,” my mother said.

“Plenty,” I told her, “no more socks,” but she smiled and shook her head and added socks to the shopping list. “Towels,” she said, “you could use towels.”

We spoke in ellipses.

My father stirred his coffee, glanced at the clock, yawned,
stretched, folded his arms, and said, “Goddamned idiots. The whole jackass crew—the Pentagon, the jackass diplomats—give me a chance, I’d strangle the whole crew, one by one, line them up and start—” He strangled his napkin, then shrugged. “I
would
. My own two hands. March in and murder the sons of bitches, all those whiz-kid bastards. You think I’m not serious? Westmoreland, I’d nail him first, and then Bundy and Ho Chi Minh. I swear to God, I’d do it. Just like that. I’d do it.”

“Towels,” my mother said.

“Towels, right.” My father winked at me. “Towels, to mop up the gore.”

At noon they dropped me off at Doc Crenshaw’s office.

It was hopeless but I went inside and stripped down and closed my eyes while Crenshaw searched for flat feet and asthma and disturbances in the heart. I felt drowsy. Lying there, I wanted to curl up for a decade-long nap, an iron lung breathing for me, fluids flowing in and out through rubber tubing. I held my breath as the old man listened through his stethoscope.

“Thump-thump,” Crenshaw said. “Always the same old tune. Just once I’d like to hear
Rhapsody in Blue
.”

Later, when I was dressed, he took me by the arm. He squeezed hard, his eyes sliding sideways.

“You could go mental,” he said. “Start seeing flashes.”

“No,” I said.

“Just a thought.”

He released my arm and stepped back.

“I’m a doctor,” he said, “I can’t—”

“No problem.”

“A crazy world, but I can’t fake it. Tell your dad I’m sorry. Don’t blame him for asking—leaning hard. I’d do the same myself. Tell him that.”

“Sure,” I said, “you’re a doctor.”

In my bedroom, as I finished packing, there was the feel of a performance gone stale, too many rehearsals.

“Bag money,” my father said. He slipped a thick envelope into my pocket. “Tens and twenties, hard to trace.”

“Unmarked, I hope.”

“Slick as a whistle. Ran it through the scanner, it’s clean.”

My mother folded shirts; my father sat on the edge of the bed, head down, hands carefully pressed to his knees. Now and then he’d take a quick peek at his wristwatch.

“You know what this reminds me of?” he said. “That TV show—
I Led Three Lives
. Herb Philbrick, remember? That trench coat of his. Always pulling up the collar and ducking into phone booths, sweating to beat holy hell. Remember that?”

“Richard Carlson,” I said.

“Yeah, Richard Carlson. Subversives everywhere. FBI agents, too, all over the place, in the closet, under the bed. And that poor slob Philbrick, the way he’d slink around in that damned spy coat, just sweating up a storm—like a flood, I mean
gallons
—the guy couldn’t turn it off.”

“I’ll go easy on the sweat,” I told him. “No trench coats, either.”

My father smiled.

“Comrade,” he said.

Late in the afternoon I took a shower and dressed up in my new clothes. There was a short picture-taking session, fierce smiles straight at the camera, then my father said, “Ready, comrade?”

The ride down to the bus depot was almost jolly. We talked about David Janssen in
The Fugitive
, how it was the greatest TV program in history. My mother said she’d start looking for me in the next episode.

We were tough people. Scared, a little dazed, but we followed the script.

When the bus rolled up, my parents took turns hugging me.

“Postcards,” my mother said. “Don’t forget.”

“Invisible ink,” I said.

“Microdots under the stamps.”

My father turned away. It was a wobbly moment but he didn’t lose control.

“One favor,” he said. “Keep that hair trimmed.”

“For sure.”

“What I mean is, we’re proud of you. Not a single thing to be ashamed about.”

He kissed me on the forehead.

“Pride,” he said, “and love, that says it all, cowboy.”

I made Chicago at six o’clock Monday morning. Thirty-five hours on the run, and already I was feeling the side effects. Stomach problems and a crushing headache. I splurged on a cab out to O’Hare, ate breakfast, spent a half hour in the men’s room, then popped an aspirin and made the hard walk up to the TWA counter. “Johnson,” I said, and felt a telltale grin coming on. The girl didn’t look up. Her lips moved as she counted my tens and twenties, then she cranked out a ticket and waved me on. It was almost a disappointment. Over and over, during that long haul through North Dakota and Minnesota, I’d played out the various scenarios. A cop asking for my driver’s license, a Herb Philbrick sweat, then handcuffs and fingerprints.

“Gate Twelve,” the girl said. “Safe trip.”

Too ordinary, I thought. The effortless takeoff. Tweedy seats and canned music, the flight attendants with their rubber smiles and toasted almonds. It was unreasonable, of course, but I felt cheated. I wanted something more. A clot in the fuel lines. An instant of daffy panic. I wanted contact with my own emotions.

But the plane nosed up through a pale morning sky, banking eastward, leveling off at thirty thousand feet.

Automatic pilot, no pain.

I levered back my seat and slept through to Boston. It was a purring sleep, like the engines, not even a bad dream.

At Logan, Ollie Winkler was there to meet me at the gate.

“Well,” he said, “you look like snot. Green and rancid.”

There was no hugging or handshaking. We collected my luggage, took an elevator up to the main ticketing area, dropped quarters into a vending machine, and sipped our coffee standing up near a window.

“I kid you not,” he said, “you look sick. Like fried oysters.
Real nice haircut, though.” He grinned and put his nose to the window and watched a plane lift off. “So anyhow, welcome to the depths. Depths—underground, get it? I’m real keen on the lingo.”

“Watchdog,” I said, “that’s another good one.”

Ollie shrugged. “Sarah, she goes in for the spook stuff. You ask me, it’s too James Bond-y, slightly paranoid, but I guess that’s her style. Like right now—today—I’m not even supposed to talk to you, just drop messages. Screw it, though. I figure you got to go with the normal flow, otherwise you start … Listen, maybe you better sit down.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Worse than sick.
Dead
fuckin’ oysters.”

I let him lead me over to a bench in the main lobby. Jet lag, I thought. I closed my eyes and leaned back while he filled me in on his doings since graduation. Most of it I already knew. He explained how the McCarthy business had gone bust after California. Clean-cut candidate, clean-cut defeat. “Tidy Bowl Politics,” he said, “it makes you yearn for the pigpen. Crack a few skulls, you know?”

“I do know. Like RFK.”

“Right, Bobby. Messy shit. Didn’t do much for morale.”

“But you stuck?”

“Oh, sure, me and Tina both. The holy wars.”

Ollie was silent for a time. He’d lost some weight, and he seemed taller now, and stronger, and a little more subdued. He wore a buckskin jacket and boots, but no cowboy hat. At the crown of his head, I noticed, there was evidence of aging. After a moment he sighed, snapping his fingers, and talked about life on the campaign trail, mostly the disappointments. “The Windy City,” he said, “that was an eye-opener for all of us. Yippies here, Dippies there. Turns out clean-cut isn’t trendy. No offense, I do love that haircut.”

“And now?”

“You know. Politics as usual.”

“Meaning?”

He looked at his fingernails. “The chef, remember? I said it before, you got to break some legs. Three years ago. Nobody listened, but I said it.”