The Nuclear Age (28 page)

If you’re sane, you’re scared; if you’re scared, you dig; if you dig, you deviate.

If I could—

You can’t
, the hole says.
If you could, but you can’t. Keep the faith—you’re my main man
.

“Right,” I mumble.

Speak up!

“Right,” I say.

The hole laughs.

Oh, yeah, you’ll show ’em, brother. When the shit comes down, they’ll sing a real different tune. Amazing grace! Sweet melodies! Your wife’s a grasshopper, man—you and me, we’re the ants. Fee fi fo fum—I smell uranium! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of blood! High diddle diddle, the fire and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the doom! Rome’s burning! Ding dong bell! Pussy’s gone to hell! Can you dig it, man? Can you truly dig it?

There’s a quaking sound. The granite walls seem to shrug.

Dig, dug, dead! Bobbi’s in her bed! Hickory dickory doom!

I’m perfectly calm. I ignore the chortling.

At two o’clock I knock off for the day. A cold shower, fresh clothes, then I sit down to prepare a shopping list. When it’s finished, I rap on the bedroom door.

“Get lost,” Melinda says.

“I am.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I bend down and open up the service hatch. Melinda’s hair is in curlers. She lies on the floor, belly-down, peering out at me with the smartest eyes on earth.

“Well,” she says, “I guess you’re here to kill me.”

I treat it as a joke.

I smile and tell her I’m heading into town—is there anything she needs?

“Poison,” she says.

“Anything else?”

She thinks for a moment. “Yeah,” she says, “I could use a new
father
.”

“Sure, princess. I’ll see what I can do.”

“A
good
one this time. Get me one that’s not so goddamn screwy.”

The swearing disturbs me but she’s out of spanking range. I tighten my smile and tell her to check with her mother.

“Final call,” I say. “You want it, you name it.”

Melinda slides away. Through the open hatch I can hear the soft tones of Bobbi’s voice; it’s a blond voice; the voice of art, or the inexplicable mysteries of art; the voice of a flight attendant, calm and calming in the high turbulence. The words, of course, don’t register. The meanings don’t mean. Like the grass she once gave me, like her poetry, Bobbi’s voice is pure timbre. She doesn’t make sense.

Still, I can’t help listening. In a way, she’s right, the meanings don’t matter, it’s the voice that counts.

But why would she leave me?

Why a separation?

“Hey, you,” Melinda says, “wake up.”

She passes a slip of notepaper through the hatch, a requisition in my wife’s neat, left-leaning script: mouthwash, asparagus, Raisin Bran, olives, gin, vermouth, spaceship, husband.

It tickles me.

“Yes,” I say gently, “I love you, too.”

Outside, as I hook up the Chevy’s battery, I’m feeling
pinched and out of touch. A little dizzy. Anything can happen. Eventually, given time, anything will happen.

No guts, no glory.

I fasten my seat belt and honk twice and point the car toward town. It’s a twenty-six-minute drive, all downhill, and I let my mind unwind with the road, curling west along the spine of the Sweetheart Mountains, through rock-collecting country, the canyons and shaggy stands of birch and pine, then south to the foothills which open into meadow and dusty ranchlands, then straight west to Fort Derry. Off to the left, beyond the new K Mart, I can see the grandstand and floodlights at the fairgrounds where my father used to die—once too often; he no longer dies. At the east edge of town I cross the railroad tracks and turn down Main Street. Here, nothing much has changed. My father’s real estate office is under new management, but otherwise the year could be 1958. Slowly, just tapping the accelerator, I cruise down a corridor of hitching posts and weathered storefronts, past the courthouse and the Strouch Funeral Home and Doc Crenshaw’s little clinic at the corner of Main and Cottonwood. The old fart won’t let loose. Over ninety now, and he’s out of the doctoring business, but he hangs in there like the town itself, cantankerous and stubborn. He doesn’t know his days are numbered. No one knows.

Grasshoppers!
the hole hisses.
The wolf is at the door! These jerks don’t know the score!

I pull into the parking lot behind Gordy’s Piggly Wiggly. I’m exhausted. A strange spinning. For several minutes I lean forward against the steering wheel.

“Christ,” I groan, but the hole tells me to snap out of it.

Sin and din! Lemme in! Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin! Time to pay the piggy!

Odd thing, but I’m dealing with disorder as I do the grocery shopping. Some sorrow, too.

I can’t find the fucking Raisin Bran.

Entropy and dissolution, it’s all around us.

I want to loot this place. But I don’t. I smile at the stock boys
and fill my cart with imperishables. Powdered milk for Melinda’s teeth. Frozen carbohydrates and vacuum-sealed proteins. Asparagus, olives, mouthwash. I know what I’m doing. I’m a sly fox. And the hole says,
You betcha, you’re no dummy. Just look at these assholes—smug motherfuckers! Don’t know doom from canned goods. Nitwits! They think it’s a joke. Can’t happen, they think. Won’t happen. Ding dong doom!

It requires some effort, but I locate the Raisin Bran.

Who’s crazy?

Who’s lost whose perspective?

Not you
, the hole says.
You’re a sharpie. This little piggy went to market. Those little piggies perished
.

In the checkout line I’m all business, cool and sober.

Higgily wiggily bang!

I don’t pay attention. The mental operations are strictly rote. Later, after I’ve stashed the groceries in the car, I check my lists and then cross the street to the Coast to Coast store.

I go down the agenda item by item.

One electric drill. One crowbar. Two sleeping bags. Two hammocks. Rope. Nuts and bolts. In a moment of inspiration I do some impulse buying—four strings of outdoor Christmas lights from last winter’s stock.

Up front, at the cash register, a young clerk gives me a wise-ass smirk. He looks at his calendar and says, “Smart decision, sir. Only six more shopping months.”

“Time flies,” I tell him.

The kid grins. “Plan ahead—I’ll bet that’s your motto, right?”

The question contains a subtle commentary, but I show him my brightest smile. Plan ahead, I think. If the poor cocksucker only knew.

“Merry Christmas,” I say.

The next part is difficult.

I hate to contemplate what might go wrong. Love, it’s my only defense. Purity of mind and motive. Outside the drugstore I stop to give it some final thought, then I shrug and walk in and present my prescription. My voice sounds reedy. It’s like listening
to myself on a tape recorder, that same distance and surprise, unexpected squeakiness in the higher registers, but I keep up a running banter while the pharmacist does his duty. Not a decent night’s sleep in weeks, I tell him. The man makes sympathetic noises and sends me away with a month’s supply of Seconal.

Not murder, I tell myself.

I won’t hurt anyone. A legitimate means to a noble end. Time capsules.

The idea, simply, is to live forever.

Next the liquor store—vermouth and gin—then down to the A&W for a quart of root beer.

The ride home is smooth. I lean back and floor it. If there were any other way—
Hush
, the hole says,
just go with the rhymes. High diddle diddle
.

“They’ll thank me,” I whisper. “When the time comes, they’ll wake up and thank me.”

Yeah, tiger, when they wake up. You bet your life
.

It’s a gorgeous afternoon, windless and warm, cattle grazing under a yellow sun, not a cloud, wheat and wildflowers growing in patches along the road. Here is the world-as-it-should-be. A constant universe. Harmony among all things, unchanging, without dynamic, just the unaging ages.

From now on it’s all black holes.

Twenty miles later, when I pull up the driveway, I’m feeling clearheaded. I remove the Chevy’s battery, hide it behind the tool shed, then lug my purchases into the kitchen. The house seems undisturbed. For a few seconds I stand there, watching bits of dust play in the late-afternoon window light. It’s a house at peace—the drowsy hum of deep July. I put the groceries away and move to the bedroom door.

“Hey, Flub-a-dub,” Melinda says, “is that you?”

“Safe and sound, baby.”

“Too bad. Thought you might get arrested.” Laughter rattles up against the summer quiet. Melinda’s tone is aggressive when she says, “So did you
buy
me anything?”

“Lots,” I tell her.

“Like what?”

“Raisin Bran. Asparagus. All kinds of stuff.”

“Wonderful.”

“And root beer.”

“Root beer,” she mutters, but I can tell she’s tempted. There’s a pause. “All right, then, I’ll try some, but you can’t bribe me. Pretty soon I’ll have to do something drastic.” Another pause, then a squeal. “Agghh! Can’t breathe—I’m a
goner!
”

“Good show, kiddo. Very impressive.”

She snorts and says, “Okay, I’m thirsty now.”

In the kitchen I become a chemist. A martini for Bobbi—a double, no holding back—a tall root beer for Melinda. I break open six sleeping pills, sprinkle in the white powder, stir gently, taste for bitterness, wipe my forehead, top off the glasses, and carry them on a tray to the bedroom door.

Radical times, radical remedies.

There is only the slightest hesitation before I open the hatch. “For you,” I say.

And then, for perhaps an hour, I lie flat on the hallway floor. I smoke a cigarette. I pay heed to the passing shadows.

A fleet of bombers circling over Omaha.

A burning safe house.

A planet lighted by glowworms and fireflies.

As if through Chuck Adamson’s toy telescope, faraway yet close, I see my father’s scalp floating in a punch bowl, my mother weeping at graveside, all the dead and dying, Tina and Ollie and Nethro and Ned, and there is no one left to grieve.

Outside, but also inside, the hole rumbles—

I am Armageddon
.

I am what there is when there is no more. I am nothing, therefore all. I am the before and after. I am the star which has fallen from the heavens. I am sackcloth, the empty promise, the undreamt dream, the destroyer of worlds
.

“Safe?” I ask, and the hole chortles and says,
You bet your booties! That, too—I am safe
.

When dusk comes, I make my way to the backyard. The stars
are out; the night is receptive. At the horizon, a crescent moon climbs over the mountains and the laws of nature insist:
Now
.

I strive for objectivity. Lucid, yes, and tingling-alert, but vertigo intrudes as I descend into the hole and begin rigging up the two hammocks. Familiar presences appear—Sarah’s silhouette flowing along the south wall, my mother and father holding hands in the dark. Rattling sounds, too, and a voice I can’t quite place until I realize it’s my own. “No sweat,” I’m saying. Then Sarah calls out to me—“Please!” she screams. But I concentrate on the operations at hand. Bolts into rock—ropes—attach the hammocks—lay out the sleeping bags. A deep breath. Step back. Survey the arrangements. A pity, I think, that the shelter will go unfinished, without roof or creature comforts, but for now I’ve done all I can.

“William!” Sarah shouts.

It’s unreal, though, like everything.

I climb the ladder and stand for a moment at the rim.

If I could, I tell myself, I would find another way. If I were a believer, if the dynamic were otherwise, if we could erase the
k
factor, if Fermi had failed physics, if at the nucleus of all things we might discover an inviolate, unbreakable heart.

The hole groans at this.

Poetry! Hop to it, man! Time is short, can’t abort! Holy night! Dynamite! What a sight!

Reluctantly, I go back to work. I string up the new Christmas lights in the trees and shrubs, along the roof of the tool shed, and when I push the switch, the backyard swirls in brilliant greens and reds and blues. I’m in awe. The night seems touched by something supernatural.

And now
, the hole whispers.
The family hour
.

I return to the house with my crowbar and drill.

The bedroom door can’t stop me. Board by board, I tear down the two-by-fours. I plug in the drill and blow away the lock in a single shot.

I’m in tears when I lift Melinda from her bed.

“Daddy,” she slurs.

Her eyes come partly open, a lazy blink. She has no weight. Warm and flannel-smelling, she curls against me and says, “What’s happening?”

“There, now,” I say.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Right here, baby. We’re all together.”

Melinda’s eyelids flutter. “Daddy?” she asks, but she’s sleeping.

I press my cheek to hers. I feel powerful. My daughter, I think, and I cradle her in my arms and carry her down the hallway and through the kitchen and out to the hole. I’m strong. I’m capable of anything. A one-arm hold, then down the ladder—it’s easy—and I zip her into a sleeping bag and kiss her and place my fingers at her throat and smile at the steady pulse, then I take her to a hammock and tuck her in and say, “Sleep tight, princess.”

And now Bobbi.

It’s a struggle but I manage it. She doesn’t wake. She’s a poet. Two arms this time, with great care, down the ladder face-forward as if descending a steep staircase. Risky, but it’s a time of risk. The night is deep and mysterious, and there is no limit to man’s appetite for atrocity.

I place Bobbi in her hammock, kiss the soft lips, then climb the ladder and pull it up after me. “Done,” I say, and the hole belches and falls silent.

And here at the edge I sit down to a nightlong vigil. The Christmas lights give me courage. I will not compromise; I’ll defend what I have. The moon is out and the stars are stable, and below, in the earth, my wife and daughter sleep without nightmares, and all around us there is the blessing of stillness and safe repose.