The Nuclear Age (25 page)

He studied his notes, then nodded at Tina.

“Young lady,” he said, “front and center.”

Tina moved to the podium.

Deftly, with the tip of his thumb, Ebenezer lifted her yellow T-shirt. “Yummy,” he whispered. Tina’s stomach was conspicuous under the white fluorescent lighting. Fish-colored, it seemed, bloated and pale and slightly bluish. She wore a white bra. Her breasts, too, were large, but Ebenezer ignored them.

He chuckled and dipped a finger into the belly fat.

“Now, then,” he said, “let us discuss obesity. You porkers gross me out.”

He grasped Tina’s stomach with both hands.

“Piggies!” he said.

Tina squirmed but he held tight.

“Fatsos! Grease!”

Still smiling, Ebenezer bent down and put his mouth to her stomach and licked the flesh.

“Pigs!” he yelled. “Pigs and pork chops—I want to
eat
it! Gobble it up, all those good juices. Can I eat your fat, girl?”

Tina whimpered.

“Say the word, I’ll definitely eat it. Yes, I will. I’ll
swallow
it.”

“No,” said Tina.

“One bite?”

“No.”

She tried to back away, but Ebenezer Keezer had her by the fat. Oddly, I found myself thinking about Mars bars, the relations between fantasy and gluttony. Eyes half shut, Ebenezer was nibbling at her belly.

“Oink!” he said. “Go oink, babe. Give me a piggy squeal.”

“Oink,” Tina said.

“Louder!”

“Oink!” she cried.

“Oooo, good! Oink it up!”

Tina oinked and wept.

Later, when it was over, Ebenezer’s tone became philosophical. He dwelled on the need for physical fitness. Soldiers, he told us, are neither pigs nor pork chops. Resistance required resilience.

“For the next sixty days,” he said, “you lardballs are my personal property. I say oink, you definitely oink. I say don’t oink, you
definitely abstain from oinking. Same applies with Nethro. We own you. Questions?”

There were no questions.

“Wunderbar,” he said. “Sleep tight, kiddies. Tomorrow’s a weird day.”

That night, as in many nights, I indulged in fantasy. It was a means of escape, a way of gliding from here-and-now to there-and-then, an instrument by which I could measure the disjunction between what was and what might be. I imagined myself in repose beneath a plywood Ping-Pong table. I imagined my father’s arms around me. I imagined, also, a world in which men would not do to men the things men so often do to men. It was a world without armies, without cannibalism or treachery or greed, a world safe and undivided. Fantasy, nothing else. But I pressed up against Sarah, stealing warmth, imagining I was aboard a spaceship sailing through the thin, sterile atmosphere of Mars, and below were the red dunes, the unmoving molecular tides, and I smiled and stroked Sarah’s hip and whispered, “Bobbi.” There was guilt, of course, but I couldn’t stop myself. Stupid, I thought, all fluff and air, but then I remembered
Martian Travel
, and the grass, and the great calm as we flew high over the darkened seaboard of North America. I remembered that Leonardo smile—eyes here, lips there, the blond hair and soft voice. I imagined embarking on a long pursuit. Pick up the airborne scent and track her down and carry her away. A desert island, maybe, or the planet Mars, where there would be quiet and civility and poetry recitals late at night. Peace, that’s all, just a fantasy.

Over the first month it was all physical fitness. Reveille at dawn. Formation, inspection, waving practice. Then down to the beach for warm-up exercises. “Move it!” they’d yell. “Agility! Hostility! Make it hurt!” And it did hurt. Even Sarah felt it, even Rafferty. It was the kind of hurt that comes to visit and rearranges the spiritual furniture.

Unreal, I’d think, but I couldn’t ignore the pain.

There were jumping jacks, I remember. We ran and climbed ropes and took nature hikes at full speed. We learned to say “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” and little else. No use complaining, because the penalty was pain. There were push-ups and sit-ups and hot afternoons on the obstacle course. There was tear gas, too—I remember the sting. I remember Tina crying. All night, it seemed, she cried, and in the morning there was more pain.

“Maniacs,” I told Sarah. “Psychosis. Deep in the crazies.”

In the second week I came up hard against the barrier of self-pity. Here, I thought, was everything I’d run from. But you couldn’t run far enough or fast enough. You couldn’t dodge the global dragnet. The killing zone kept expanding. Reaction or revolution, no matter, it was a hazard to health either way.

Day to day, I did what I could. Arms and legs, just the bodily demands. The days seemed to skid by, and even now, looking back, I remember very little in the way of detail.

The fierce sun.

Mushiness in the extremities.

Ollie huffing, Tina straining under the forces of fat and gravity, Sarah’s lip swelling up in reaction to the tropical heat.

I remember intense thirst. Intense hunger, too. Yearnings for Coca-Cola and the air-conditioned wonders of a Holiday Inn. America, I’d think, but this was somewhere else. We were tutored in hand-to-hand combat. We ran mock relay races up and down the white beaches. Often, at night, we were awakened and made to stand at attention against the courtyard wall.

“A good waver,” Ebenezer Keezer told us, “is a rare cat in this day an’ age. Everywhere I go, I see half-ass waves that don’ truly emanate from the inner soul. A sorry commentary. Collapse of the social fabric, that’s what it is.”

“God’s word,” said Nethro. “Ebenezer and me, we just missionaries out to spread the wavin’ gospel.”

“Tell it.”

“I did. I tol’ it.”

A sunny afternoon, and Tina Roebuck sat in the sand and folded her arms.

She did not move.

Squatting down beside her, Ebenezer Keezer frowned and said, “Oh, my. Tuckered Tina. El mucho fatigo?”

She did not move and she did not speak.

Ebenezer lifted her shirt, very gently.

“I’m famished,” he murmured.

But even then she was silent. Arms folded, she gazed straight ahead, northward, where the sea curved toward the Straits of Florida.

Ebenezer pinched her stomach.

“Let me eat it,” he said softly. “Be a good girl now, let me eat that yummy tummy.”

But she did not move.

A drugged, dreamy expression. Her eyes were empty. It was the emptiness that follows upon surrender, and one by one it happened to all of us.

In mid-December, as we moved into our second full month, the curriculum turned increasingly technical. We learned the craft of crime: how to break and enter and spot surveillance and plant a bug and sweep a room and untap a telephone. The platitudes of felony, spoken straight, had the sound of wisdom. “Always travel first-class,” Nethro said, “ ’cause the law goes coach.” There were many such maxims, lessons passed on from Jesse James. The best disguise is a crowd. The best weapon is brain-power. “In God we trust,” said Nethro, “but don’ forget to frisk him.”

There was also a formal side to our training. Most evenings, after dinner, we would assemble in the lecture hall for a series of so-called political education seminars. Indoctrination, I suppose, but there was no haranguing; if anything, Ebenezer’s presentations had a low-key, almost professorial quality. In one instance he outlined and analyzed the ideological underpinnings of the American Revolution. He reviewed constitutional doctrine and explicated key passages from the
Federalist
papers and the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty. He reminded us that our republic had been born in disobedience, even terrorism, and that the
faces which decorate our currency had once appeared on English Wanted posters.

“The line between sainthood and infamy,” Ebenezer said quietly, “is the line between winning and losing. Winners become statues in public parks. Losers become dead.”

There was a pause.

“Dead,” he said.

Then another pause, longer, after which he smiled.

“
Dead
, children. Losers get embalmed. Our purpose here is to produce winners.”

Over the course of those evening seminars, it became clear that both Nethro and Ebenezer were true professionals. They never preached or proselytized; there was no evidence of ideology. Combat veterans, of course—nothing theoretical. They were mechanics. Turners of nuts and bolts.

“A guerrilla-type war,” Ebenezer told us. “Which means we take a page from our good brethren Uncle Charlie. No trenches, no battle lines.”

“Tell it,” said Nethro.

“Ghost soldiers. Invisible. Like in the Nam, we hit here, hit there, then beat sweet feet.”

“Oooo!” Nethro said.

“During the day we wear our civvies. We melt away, we nowhere to be found. And then at night—”

“Ooooo!”

“At night we do our business. Slick little operations. In an’ out, like surgery, then presto, we vanish, we
gone
. Nothin’ but boogiemen.
Ghost
soldiers.”

It was important stuff, I suppose, but I had a hard time digesting the implications.

Ghosts, I’d think.

Tombstones and cemeteries, all the consequences of ghost-hood.

I wanted out.

A motivation problem, I told Sarah. Not enough mobility or
hostility. A shortage of spirit. Turned around, I said. I’d walked in blind, I hadn’t understood the terms.

Sarah stepped out of the shower.

She toweled off, dusted herself with powder, examined her breasts in a mirror, and stood on the bathroom scale. One hundred and twelve pounds, but each ounce carried authority.

“Well,” she said, “you’re crawling up on a conclusion.”

“Hard to say.”

“Say it.”

I wiped off a damp spot at the small of her back.

“Everything,” I said. “Start with treason. And this boot camp thing—those two zombies. Like a death squad. Can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, they’re all gunslingers. Completely scrambled. But it’s lethal. I know that much, it’ll kill somebody.”

“Lethal?” Sarah said. She stood facing the mirror. Her skin was a glossy brown, freckled at the shoulder blades. I wanted to touch her but it seemed inappropriate. After a moment she turned. “Funny coincidence, William, but that’s exactly what the folks in Da Nang keep saying. When the artillery comes down. Kaboom. Lethal, they say.”

“Granted.”

“Lethal times. Take it or leave it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Leave it.”

“Walk?”

“Maybe.”

For a moment she looked at me without expression. Then she smiled. It was a neutral smile, not angry, just dense with indifference.

“Sissy-ass,” she said. “A sad case, man.” She aimed a hair dryer at me. “Anyhow, you wouldn’t last ten minutes out there on your own. What about cash? Connections? And this minor legal hassle with Uncle Sam—you guys had a date, remember?”

I nodded. “There are places I could go, maybe. Hibernate for a while. Wait for things to quiet down.”

Sarah dropped the hair dryer.

“Fucking hibernate!
Animals
hibernate, people
act
. That’s
why we’re here—to stop the goddamn
killing!
” She slapped her hip. “No lie, you amaze me. William the victim. Fuck conscience, fuck everything. Vietnam, you think it was cooked up just to ruin your day. That’s how you
think
. All the big shots, all the world leaders, they got together at this huge summit conference, and LBJ jumps up and says, ‘Hey, there’s this sissy-ass creep I want to fuck over,’ and Ho Chi Minh says, ‘I got it! Start a
war
—we’ll
nail
the son of a bitch!’ A persecution complex. Almost funny, except it’s so contemptible.”

“My error,” I said.

“Terrific. That’s your only comment?”

“Not quite. I get the feeling we’re growing apart.”

We stood facing each other.

The shower curtain was bright red. There was some steam in the room.

Sarah turned away. “This conversation,” she said slowly, “has outlived its utility.”

If you’re sane, you see madness. If you see madness, you freak. If you freak, you’re mad.

What does one do?

I froze. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move my bowels. At night I’d roam the villa’s hallways, thinking this: If you’re sane, you’re not completely sane.

By daylight, too, the bombs were real. Nethro explained the physics. He showed us how to make big bangs out of small household appliances. How to bait a booby trap and adjust the tension on a pressure-release firing device. All around us, for three days, there was the smell of cordite and gasoline.

Down on the beach, taking turns, we pitched grenades at mock enemy bunkers. We learned how to set up a Claymore mine—the angles of aim, a geometry lesson. If you’re sane, I decided, you can calculate the effects of petrochemicals on bone and tissue. If you’re sane, but only then, you understand the profundity of firepower.

“Blammo!” Ollie yelled.

Nethro folded his big arms. “Shit, man,” he said softly. “You don’ know shit.”

But Ollie did know shit.

And Sarah, too, and Ned and Tina. They knew the whys and wherefores of deadly force.

So I froze.

It happened first on the weapons range, where I locked and loaded, taking aim, pressing my cheek to the rifle’s plastic stock. I closed my eyes and drew a breath and squeezed the trigger. Then I froze. Full automatic—twenty rounds.

The rifle seemed to pick me up and shake me.

I heard myself squeal. I heard Sarah say, “Christ.” Behind me there was laughter.

I tried to release the rifle—drop it, throw it—but I couldn’t, because then the freeze came, and the panic, and I turned and watched the bright red tracers kick up sand all around me.

The black rifle kept jerking in my hands, I was part of the weaponry.

Then silence.

A soft, watery sound. The blue Caribbean, wind and waves, Sarah looking down and saying, “Christ.”

I was smiling. I dropped the rifle and squatted in the sand.

“Audie fuckin’ Murphy,” Ebenezer said.

Ollie giggled.

Ned Rafferty put his hand on my head, just holding it there, and there was still that silence.