The Nuclear Age (24 page)

But no one knew.

Among the sane, I realized, there is no full knowing. If you’re sane, you ride without risk, for the risks are not real. And when it comes to pass, some sane asshole will shrug and say, “Oh, well.”

Events had their own track.

At noon we established radio contact. A half hour later a small gray pilot boat pulled alongside. There were guns and khaki uniforms.

Ned Rafferty touched my arm.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just fine.”

“That’s good, then. Steady as she goes.” He squeezed my arm. “Clear sailing. Just us and the wild red yonder.”

We made Havana in time for a late lunch.

Afterward there was paperwork, then our hosts arranged for a bus that took us along a coastal highway, past poverty and palms and vast fields of sugarcane. The ride lasted four hours. We stopped once for water, once for fuel, but otherwise it was exactly as Rafferty predicted, clear sailing, just us and the wild red yonder.

For six days, which I marked off on a pocket calendar, we lazed away the time at an orientation compound situated beachside a few miles west of Sagua la Grande. It was an old plantation house that had been converted into a combined resort and training facility, with colorful flower beds and neatly tended grounds sloping to the sea. The rooms were spacious, the tennis courts lighted for night play. Plush, to be sure, but there was also menace. The watchtowers and barbed wire and armed cadres.

“Mix and match,” Tina said. “Half Che, half JFK. Two stars for originality.”

Then six relaxing days.

We devoted our mornings to the sun, swimming and snorkeling, idling. Tina built elegant sand castles; Ollie demolished them; Sarah snoozed behind sunglasses; Ned Rafferty taught me the elements of killer tennis, yelling encouragement as he fired cannon
shots from point-blank range. A languorous time. Rum punch at sunset, dinner by lantern light in the villa’s pink-tiled courtyard, linen tablecloths and Russian wine and Swiss crystal. The service was cordial and efficient. Why? I’d sometimes wonder. Then I’d think: Why not? A holiday, I’d tell myself, but late at night I’d hear machine guns, or voices counting cadence, and on those occasions I’d find myself engaged in serious speculation.

No answers, though, just questions.

“Play it by ear,” Sarah advised. “Mouth shut, eyes open. That’s all I can say right now.”

It was no use pressing. I was afraid of the answers, no doubt, and I was also a little afraid of Sarah herself. She seemed cool and distant. Small, subtle things that added up to large, obvious things. The way she moved; her silences; a tactical precision to her love-making.

The hardness factor, too.

A power disequilibrium. She had it, I didn’t.

“You know something?” she said one evening. We were in bed, windows open, and there was the nighttime rustle of wind and ocean. “I was born for this, William.”

“This?” I said.

“Right here, right now. The whole decade. Like destiny or something. I honestly believe it couldn’t happen without me.” She made a pensive sound, then ran her tongue along my hipbone. “The cheerleading and the funeral home—all that—when I look back, I think, God, it was all
planned
, it was like a ladder up against a high wall, and I couldn’t see the top, but I started climbing, I had this incredible drive, I didn’t know why, I just
had
it, so I kept climbing, and here I am. It was planned
for
me.”

“Destiny,” I said.

She shrugged. “Laugh. It doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m not laughing. Wondering.”

“All I know is what I feel,” she said. “It’s in the stars, somehow. The DNA. I can’t explain it any better. This goddamn war. I hate it, I
do
hate it, but it’s what I’m here for. I hate it but I love it.”

She swiveled out of bed and went to an open window. For several minutes she simply stood there, framed by the future, whatever it was.

Then she sighed, squatted down, and pulled a pillowcase over her head.

“A long time ago,” she said, “I told you something. I want to be
wanted
. By you, by Interpol. Those handsome dudes on the FBI—doesn’t matter, just wanted. Do you see? I need that.”

“Of course.”

“Here, too. They
want
me.” She made a broad gesture with her arm. “What I’m trying to say is, I mean, I’m not the strongest person in the world. I get overwhelmed by all this. You know, this Red connection, Cuba and all that. I don’t know where it’s headed. Guns or jail. I’m committed, though, and it’s necessary, but sometimes I get the creeps, I get scared. You understand? Part of me wants to run away. Like to Rio, or anywhere. Have babies and clip coupons. Be your wife, maybe—something normal—anything.”

I smiled at the pillowcase.

“Except?”

“Yes,” she said. “Except there’s still that ladder I told you about.”

“And me?”

“You.”

“No grand destiny, Sarah. A guy on the run.”

“Agreed.”

“So where do I fit?”

She waited a moment. Outside, there were crickets and night birds.

“Difficult question,” she said. “There’s always Sweden or Hudson Bay, right? Hide your head. Cover your eyes and wish the war away.”

“I didn’t say—”

“William, listen to me. I love you, you know that, but sometimes—lots of times—I can’t help wondering about your backbone. All that bullshit about a dangerous world. The bombs are real, la-di-dah, but you don’t ever
do
anything, just crawl under
your Ping-Pong table. That jellyfish attitude, I despise it. Despise, that’s the only word. I love you, but the despising makes it hard.”

Sarah turned and made her way toward the bed. She was attractive, I thought, in her chrome bracelet and white pillowcase.

For a few moments we lay still.

“Involvement,” she said. “In a day or two, I’m afraid, it’ll get very rough around here, and if you can’t hack it—”

“A warning?”

“No, just a statement. Love and war. Sooner or later you have to choose sides.”

Six splendid days.

On the seventh we were roused a half hour before dawn.

A bell, a shrill whistle. “Up, up!” someone yelled, and then another voice, much louder: “Haul ass!”

We assembled in the courtyard.

A single rank, stiff at attention. All around us were khakied soldiers with heavy boots and bad tempers. “Freeze!” someone shouted, and we froze.

Dream time, I decided.

I concentrated on the sounds. Across the courtyard, in shadows, a door slammed shut. There was the squeal of a bullhorn.

We stood with our backs to a tile wall.

At noon we were still there.

Near midnight Tina said, “Wow,” then smiled and collapsed. But infirmity was not allowed. After a moment one of the soldiers hoisted her back to a standing position. No explanations, just blood in the feet. Speech was prohibited. Eighteen hours, I thought, then later I thought: twenty hours. Mostly, though, I tried to keep from thinking. Don’t think, I’d think. Then I’d think: this world of ours. But I refused to think about it. A matter of moral posture. Shoulders square, spine stiff. I calculated the precise specifications of pain, quantifying things, squaring off the roots, letting the numbers pile up as a kind of insulation.

And then the zeros came. Blank time, nothing at all. When I looked up, it was full daylight.

Two men stood staring. They were dressed identically in
combat fatigues, jungle boots, and black berets. Their skin, too, was black, and their eyes.

“Oooo, lookie,” one said, and smiled.

The other did not smile.

They surveyed us for a time, then the first man—the smiler—stepped forward and said, “Hi, there, kiddies. Welcome to camp.”

His companion snorted.

The smiler kept smiling. It was an extraordinary smile, sharp-toothed and wolfish. He prowled back and forth, gracefully, stopping once to wipe sweat from Ollie’s forehead, once to inspect the fat at Tina’s stomach.

“These campers,” he said gently, “are in sore need of outdoor recreation.”

“Bullshit,” said the second man.

The first man chuckled.

“Pitiful, I concur.” He smiled and make a tsking noise. Stooping, he ran his hand along the surface of Tina’s stomach. Then suddenly he stopped smiling.

“My name,” he said, “is Ebenezer Keezer. This here gentleman is Nethro.” He paused to let these facts take shape. “So let’s everybody get acquainted. Real loud an’ happy. Say hi to my pal Nethro.”

“Hi,” we said.

“Loud, children.”

“Hi!” we shouted.

“Bullshit,” said Nethro. “Can’t hear nothin’.”

“Volume, people. Blow it out. On three—ready?”

On three we yelled, “Hi!”

Nethro shook his head. He was a large, unhappy man. “Fuckers forgot my name. They s’posed to say, Hi, there, Nethro.”

“Legitimate truth,” Ebenezer said. “Repeat them your name.”

“My name,” said Nethro, “is fuckin’ Nethro.”

“Again,” said Ebenezer.

He counted to three, and on three we shouted, “Hi, there, Nethro!”

Nethro seemed unimpressed.

“Nobody waved.”

“Beg your pardon?” said Ebenezer.

“Didn’t
wave
,” Nethro said. “Not one wave in the whole bullshit crowd. My ego’s hurt.”

Ebenezer Keezer sighed. Carefully, he took off his beret, inspected it for dust, put it on again, then stepped up to Ned Rafferty and stared at him with an expression of solemn perplexity. His nose was a half inch from Rafferty’s forehead.

“A level answer,” he said softly. “You forget to wave?”

“I guess.”

“Oh, you guess,” Ebenezer purred, smiling again. “First day at camp an’ you don’ display no fundamental politeness. Where’s your salutations, shithead?”

“Sorry,” Rafferty said, and grinned.

“Oooo! Man’s sorry, Nethro.”

“I overheard.”

“Man claims sorryhood.”

Nethro shrugged and scuffed the toe of his boot against the courtyard tiles. He seemed genuinely aggrieved.

“Sorry don’ do it,” he said. “Don’ help the hurt none.”

“Shitheads,” said Ebenezer Keezer. “What they require, I submit, is politeness practice.”

“Let’s practice ’em,” said Nethro.

There was distress in the courtyard. Reality, I surmised, was passé. Here was a new dimension. Over the morning hours we engaged in supervised waving practice. “Hi, there!” we yelled, and we waved with both hands, vigorously. The courtesy was painful. I could feel it in my throat and shoulders. Nethro counted cadence, Ebenezer Keezer smiled and offered instruction in matters of form and posture, schooling us in the complexities of camp etiquette. It was a kind of basic training, clearly, but with numerous innovations. Standing there, waving, I recognized the diverse and intricate plenitude of a world on tilt.

At noon Ebenezer Keezer clapped his hands and said, “Recreation time, people. Fun an’ games.”

Single file, we marched through the courtyard and down a long grassy slope to the tennis courts. There were no rackets or balls. The game was called Fictitious Tennis, and the rules, I thought, were capricious. “Advantage, Shithead!” Ebenezer cried—“Quiet, please!”—and then we pantomimed the mechanics of serve and volley, rushing the net, backpedaling in pursuit of high phantom lobs. “Out!” Nethro would yell. Or he’d yell, “Let! Two serves!” There were no disputed calls. For me, at least, it was hard to maintain a keen competitive edge.

The match went five sets. An awards ceremony, a quick lunch, then we convened on the volleyball court.

“No net,” said Ebenezer.

“No problem,” said Nethro.

In the late afternoon they led us on a nature hike. The pace was brisk, mostly running, and by dusk, when we trooped into the villa’s courtyard, things had approached the point of shutdown.

We ate supper standing up.

Afterward we were escorted into a small lecture hall. The room was bare except for a podium and five metal chairs.

Ebenezer Keezer smiled at us.

“This concludes,” he said, “our first day at camp. I trust we’re all relaxed.”

His beret was gone. He wore a dark blue suit, a blue tie, a crisply starched white shirt with gold cuff links. His voice, too, had changed. There were no dropped consonants, no ghetto slurrings; it was the precise, polished voice of a corporate executive. Smoothly, referring now and then to notes, he outlined the program that lay ahead. He stressed its rigors. The idea, he said, was to stop a war, which would require certain skills, and certain qualities of a physical nature, among them stamina and strength and the capacity to resist hardship. “Resistance,” he declared, “entails resistance.” Then he discussed the particulars of Vietnam. It was a firsthand account, largely anecdotal. He talked about the effects of white phosphorus on human flesh. He talked about anatomy. He described the consequences of a foot coming into contact with the firing mechanism of a Bouncing Betty, the reds and whites, the
greenish-gray color of a man’s testicles in bright sunlight. He smiled at this, and winked. He leaned forward against the podium, adjusting his tie, and spoke quietly about a morning in 1966 when his platoon of marines had gone on a buffalo hunt in Quang Ngai province, how they’d entered the village at dawn, and burned it, and how, afterward, with the village burning, they had moved out into a broad paddy where the buffalo were—big slow water buffalo, he said, maybe a dozen, maybe twenty—and how the platoon had lined up in a single rank, as if on a firing range, and how without hunger or provocation the platoon had gone buffalo hunting—like the Wild West, he said, like Buffalo fucking Bill—how they put their weapons on automatic, M-6os and M-16s, how it was slaughter without aim, just firing to fire, pistols, too, and M-79s, and grenades, and how those slow stupid water buffalo stood there and took it broadside, didn’t run, didn’t panic, just
took
it, how chunks of fat and meat seemed to explode off their hides—how the horns exploded, and the tails and heads—but those ignorant damned buffalo, he said, they
took
it, they didn’t make sound, and how there was the smell of a burning village and munitions and those buffalo that wouldn’t run or die, just took it. Ebenezer paused and shuffled his papers. “That’s the Nam,” he said softly, “and it’s unbecoming. I’ve seen my share of buffalo. And you folks—you nice folks have not seen shit. Understand me? You have not
seen
shit.” There was conviction in the room. There was also, I thought, anger. Ebenezer Keezer folded his hands and smiled and went on to discuss evil. He was specific about atrocity and saturation bombing. The war, he told us, was a buffalo hunt, and we would be wise to disabuse ourselves of romantic notions regarding the propriety of peaceful protest and petitions of grievance. We were soldiers, he said. Volunteers one and all. It was an army. “Like in wartime,” he said, and his smile was cool and pleasant. “When there’s evil, you learn to absorb it. You build up your resistance. This here’s buffalo country.”