The Nuclear Age (30 page)

Tina Roebuck looked up from the banana she was peeling. Her skin was sallow, her eyes small and beady.

“Maneuver,” she said, “you mean guns?”

“A possibility,” said Ebenezer.

Tina nodded. “You don’t do shit with parades. Guns, that
does
it. People tend to notice.”

Ebenezer crossed his legs professionally.

“Guns,” he said, smiling. “Now there’s a thought.”

I’d heard enough.

When the dishes were done, I excused myself, moved out to the living room, and turned on the television. I was feeling a little fuzzy. The midmorning fare of game shows seemed wanton and ill conceived—mostly static—happy winners and plucky losers, prizes for everyone. It all rang up as tragedy. There were automatic weapons in the attic, and out in the kitchen my colleagues were discussing crimes against the state, but here on the magic box
was a contestant in a clown suit squealing over an Amana self-cleaning oven. Where was the rectitude? And where, I mused, did comedy spill over into sadness? Hard to impose clarity. No theorems, no proofs. Just a war. And the clown-suited contestant bounced and danced in claim of a brand-new self-cleaning oven. Passions were stirred—laughter and greed, the studio audience found it amusing—and Bob Barker rolled his eyes, winningly, as if to absolve: Here it is, America, the fruit, the dream, and the price is right.

Happy birthday, I thought. Johnny Olsen’s deep baritone: William Cowling—
come
on down!

Curtain Number One: Rio! Cha-cha-cha!

Curtain Number Two: Shine on, William! A trip to the
moooon!
Samsonite luggage and deluxe accommodations along the unspoiled shores of the Sea of Tranquillity—Shine on!

Curtain Number Three: Hold tight now, because here it is—You’ll never
die!
That’s right! Never! A blond stewardess and the northern lights and life ever after. It’s all yours … 
iffff
the price is right!

But no consolation prizes.

Which made it hard. Risky choices, and if you guessed wrong the real-life game left you unconsoled.

I closed my eyes and dozed off.

At noon, when they called me in to prepare lunch, the table talk had turned toward acrimony. The issue, apparently, was guns. Tina and Ollie favored force, Ned Rafferty was urging restraint. At the head of the table, his eyes behind sunglasses, Ebenezer Keezer seemed to be enjoying the democratic ironies.

Tina’s face was flushed.

“Nobody ever
listens
to me!” she was saying. “Fat Tina, stupid Tina. I’m
not
stupid, though, I’ve got
brains
.”

“Look,” said Rafferty, “I didn’t—”

“You
did
. Ridiculous, you said, I heard it, you said fucking
ridiculous
.”

“The guns, I meant. The shoot-’em-up stuff.”

Tina crushed a napkin in her fist.

“There, you see? Nobody pays attention. I didn’t say anything
about shoot, I never once
said
that. I said action. Action, that’s all I ever said.”

“Gun action,” Rafferty muttered.

“And so?”

“So I object.” He looked warily at Ebenezer. “This quick-draw business. I don’t go for it. The rifles, they’re just a symbol, right?”

Tina hooted.

“Symbols,” she said fiercely. “What about Nixon? Our chief executive, he doesn’t
grasp
symbols. Power. That’s all he grasps. Just power. Symbolize all you want—sit on your ass and sing
If I Had a Hammer
—but I’ll tell you something, somebody has to drive home the
nails
.”

Ollie Winkler clapped.

“Nails! Beautiful!” He got up and circled around the table and ran a hand through Tina’s thin greasy hair. Lovebirds, I thought. I could imagine their children: midgets and Mars bars. “Pure beautiful,” Ollie said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Charmer,” said Nethro.

Ollie eased his fingers down the slope of her neck. “Nails, baby—say it again.”

“Nails!” Tina said.

Nethro yawned and said, “Fun couple.”

For two or three minutes the only sounds were my own, clanking plates and silverware.

Then Rafferty pushed his chair back.

Very gently, almost in a whisper, he said, “No guns.”

He started to add something, but stopped and tapped the table with his fingernails.

I admired him. Go for it, I thought. Curtain Number Three.

I sliced the sandwiches and laid them on a platter.

After a moment Rafferty pushed to his feet.

There was no movement in his face when he looked down on Ebenezer Keezer.

“The guns,” he said, “stay in the attic.”

“That so?”

“It is.”

Ebenezer lounged back in his chair. His eyes had a lazy, hooded quality.

“My friend,” he said politely, “take a seat.”

“No, thanks.”

“Be cool, child. Sit down.”

“No,” Rafferty said, “I don’t believe I will. If you want, we can settle it right here.”

Ebenezer kept smiling.

I delivered the sandwiches and went back for the mustard and mayonnaise. The price, I was thinking. You play, you pay. I admired him, and I wanted to say something, but it wasn’t my game.

Rafferty’s eyes were flat. He seemed perfectly at ease.

“I’m serious,” he said. “No gunplay.”

“Or else?”

“However you want it.”

“Oh, my.”

“Right here,” Rafferty said. “You and me. We settle it.”

Ebenezer seemed delighted. He stroked his tie and removed his sunglasses and winked.

“Violence,” he said mildly. “Love to oblige. Real pleasure, in fact.”

Rafferty shrugged.

“Pleasure an’ honor,” said Ebenezer. He glanced at Nethro. “Me, though, I’m nonviolent.”

“Peacenik,” Nethro said.

“God’s word. The nick of peace.”

Even then Rafferty did not move. Briefly, his eyes swung in my direction, but I busied myself with the coleslaw and potato chips.

There was a dead spot at the center of the kitchen.

“That’ll do,” Sarah said.

“I just want—”

“Point taken, Ned. We hear you.” She reached out and put her hand on Rafferty’s waist. “Let’s just table it.”

“The guns. I need an answer.”

“Ned—”

“Yes or no,” he said. “Do they stay in the attic?”

Sarah shrugged.

“The attic. For now.”

“And later?”

“Don’t press it,” she said, “later’s later.” She looked over at me and made a motion with her free hand. “Let’s do food.”

No problem, I served the sandwiches.

It wasn’t heroism or cowardice. Just noninvolvement: potato chips and coleslaw and iced tea.

After lunch I did up the dishes and slipped out the back door. Nowhere to go, really, so I hiked down to the plaza off Mallory Square and sat watching the gulls and sailboats. The first of October, approaching tourist season, and the Key was crowded with youth and polyester. Things seemed very clean. There was a war on, but you wouldn’t have known it, because there were happy faces and jugglers and shrimp boats and enterprising girls in halters and flowered skirts, blue sky and blue water, everything so pretty and polished and clean.

At midafternoon I drank a beer under one of the umbrellas at the Pier House.

Happy birthday, I thought.

Then I thought about Sarah and Rafferty. The signs were obvious. Sad, but there it was. They made a splendid match. I thought about the various comings and goings of age, how nothing ever lasted. Not romance. Nothing. I called the waiter and had another beer and then circled back to the house and sat on the porch and listened through an open window while my comrades mended fences.

I wasn’t a party to it.

At one point I heard Rafferty say, “All right, it’s settled. We don’t play with guns.”

I heard Tina Roebuck whine.

“Same old bullshit,” she was saying. “Tina-do-this, Tina-do-that,
but who ever
listens
to me? Dumb fat ugly Tina. Here’s a fact, though—I’ve read my Chekhov—and if there’s a gun in the story, it better go bang at the end. Better happen. Sooner or later.”

I heard Ebenezer’s mellow laughter.

“Tell it,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

“Nobody
listens
.”

“No matter, girl. Just keep tellin’.”

That night, while the others were out dancing, I baked a cake and opened a bottle of brandy and celebrated my birthday alone.

By midnight I was riding a chocolate high. I proposed toasts to my health and prosperity, to the stellar flight crews of Trans World Airlines. I was drunk, no doubt, but I was emotionally solvent. I retched and had a nightcap and fell asleep on the sofa.

It was a bouncy sleep, in and out. There was turbulence and disorder. “Fire!” someone screamed.

Late in the night I heard a door slam. Voices rose up, and then footsteps and darkness and silence again.

Nethro draped a blanket over me.

His face was calm and kind, almost brotherly. He put a hand on my forehead and held it there.

“Rockabye, babe,” he whispered. “Don’ mean nothin’.”

Then I was back in the turbulence.

“Fire!” someone yelled, and I dreamed the attic was burning. There were projectiles in the dark. Intense heat and gunfire. Holes opened in the walls and ceiling, then other holes, and the wallpaper curled and burned. I smelled flesh. I heard Tina calling the fire department, but the line was busy, and the attic crackled with red tracers and flame. “I’m dead!” Sarah screamed. She leaned out a window and screamed, “I
told
you so! I’m dead!” The house was unsafe. Smoke and calamity. Tina crawled into a burning refrigerator. Ollie Winkler danced on the roof, which was also burning, and Ollie danced and burned along with it. “Dead!” Sarah cried. She was gone from the window—the glass was burning and the beams and timbers were silver-blue like bones lighted by X ray—but even then, though the fire had her, Sarah was still yelling,
“Dead!” I couldn’t move; I was snagged up in long rubber hoses. “Alone!” she screamed. There were fire trucks now, and helicopters, and firemen wearing armored vests and silver badges, but the firemen were firing fire at the fire, it was cross fire, and the hoses hissed and shot fire, and Sarah screamed, “Dead!”

The sirens woke me up.

For a long while I lay there waiting for the dream to burn itself out. Not foresight, I thought. Just a preview. It was nearly dawn when I made my way to the bathroom. No sirens, and no smoke, but I could still feel the heat.

I showered and brushed my teeth and moved down the hallway to Sarah’s bedroom.

I undressed without thinking.

Outside, there were morning birds, slivers of pink light playing against the curtains, and when I slipped into bed, softly, trying not to wake her, Sarah curled alongside me and smiled in her sleep, her arms bare, the soles of her feet cool and dry, and after a time she turned and came closer and said a name that wasn’t mine.

It didn’t matter. I knew anyway.

“No,” I said, “just the birthday boy.”

In the morning there was little to say. By fortune I was scheduled to fly out that afternoon, and at one o’clock I finished packing and called a cab.

We were adult about it. At the front door Sarah handed me my itinerary, and we smiled and said our goodbyes, and even hugged, but when the cab pulled up she decided to tag along out to the airport. It was a pleasant eight-minute ride. She wore white shorts, and her feet were bare, and I noticed how nicely engineered the heels were, so narrow and elegant, and the unshaved legs, the ankles and arches, the exact relations among the toes. These details seemed important.

At the boarding gate, we sat in plastic chairs and made grown-up conversation.

I wished her luck with the moratorium.

Sarah rubbed her eyes.

“The truth is,” she said, “I did send out signals. Distress and so on. It isn’t as if I didn’t warn you.”

“Often. You did.”

“Your own damned fault.”

“I understand.”

“All those years, William, but you were never really there. Not totally.”

“And he was?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, he was.”

Again, briefly, her hand went to her eyes. There was the need to simplify things.

“Do you love him?” I asked.

“Such a question.”

“Do you?”

“Love,” she sighed. “Who knows? He cares about me. And he’s present. No qualifications.”

“Noble of him,” I said. “A nice guy.”

“Yes, that, too. He sticks. Completely there.”

I nodded. “Wonderful, then, he sticks, that must be a great satisfaction. Do you love him?”

“I get by.”

“That’s something, I suppose.”

“It is. Quite a lot, in fact.”

“Happy you,” I said.

When my flight was called there was a moment of regret and bitterness. My own fault, though. I kissed her lightly on the forehead and walked down the ramp, then came back and kissed her on the lips and said, “I’m sorry,” which were the truest words I’d ever spoken.

It was the era of Vietnamization. The war, we were told, was winding down, peace through transfer, and to date our government had turned over to the ARVN more than 700,000 rifles, 12,000 machine guns, 50,000 wheeled vehicles, 1,200 tanks, and 900 artillery pieces. For some, however, it was not enough. President Nguyen Van Thieu proposed that the United States equip his
nation with a modest nuclear capability. Others disagreed. Among them, Senator George McGovern took a fresh look at his options, and Senator Charles Goodell was legislating in behalf of final withdrawal. Others disagreed violently. Viet Cong flags flew over Sioux City. In Chicago, Judge Julius Hoffman presided over a discomposed courtroom, and in the streets, within shouting distance, the Weathermen went hand to hand with riot cops. There were gag orders and troop deployments. It was the year of upsets, and at the World Series, Gil Hodges and his fabulous Mets took Baltimore up against the center-field wall.

In Quang Ngai, the monsoons had come.

There were footprints on the moon.

Ronald Reagan governed California.

The Stones sang
Let It Bleed
.

On October 15, 1969, the moratorium came down on schedule. I checked into a Kansas City motel and watched it on television with the help of Magic Fingers. I’m not sure what I felt. Pride, on the one hand, and rectitude, but also a kind of heartache.