The Nuclear Age (33 page)

“Yes,” I said.

“I
am
a nice guy.”

“Of course. But you’d have to drown me.”

“You understand, then.”

“Completely and absolutely,” I told him. “Obsession, it’s nothing personal.”

Rafferty laughed and stood up to light the joint. He seemed stable enough. The boat was sliding sideways to the current but he kept his balance, passing the smoke and then turning and staring out at the sad lights across the water.

“Stoned,” he said, “but not all that stoned. You want to hear my fantasies?”

“Very much,” I said.

“Get the hell out of here. That’s the A-one deluxe fantasy, just split. With Sarah. Drown your ass and kidnap her—drugs or something—a sea voyage—take her away.” He paused a moment, shook his head violently, then pointed at the town lights. “I
hate
this place. Key West, it sucks. Everything we’re doing, the gangster shit and the guns and Ebenezer Keezer, everything, I hate it. Don’t believe in it. Got to believe, man, and I don’t. Never did. Ranch kid—I ever tell you that? Grew up on a ranch. Dumb cowboy. Home on the range. All I ever wanted, some cows and dope and git along little dogie. And Sarah. Not a damned thing else. That’s why I’m
here
. No other reason. Just Sarah.”

“A good fantasy,” I said.

“Nifty lady, Sarah.”

“She is.”

“Different fantasies, though. I want her, she wants Rio. That’s the thing, nobody has the same fantasies.”

Rafferty swayed and sat down heavily.

“Anyway, there it is,” he said. “Obsession. You and me, two peas in the same dipshit pod.”

“Crazy,” I whispered.

There was a short silence. When he spoke, his voice seemed firm and exact, fully sober.

“Not crazy,” he said, “but here’s a word of advice. Sarah, she’s
real
. Take it and run. Get out. This whole situation—the guns and shit—we both know how it ends. Badness, that’s all. Graveyards. Forget the dreams, man, do something positive. Grab her and start running and don’t ever stop. The world-famous gist: Go with reality. Take off.”

“And you?”

“Gone. First chance, I’m gone. Home on the range.”

“What about—”

“Just
go
.”

He smiled and held up a hand, palm forward.

“Peace,” he said, “the gist of the gist.”

There was a feeling of comity and goodwill. A fine human being, I thought, and we sat back and smoked, and for a long while I concentrated on the hemispheres. I watched the scheme of things, the constellations, the moon veering toward Europe, peace with honor, Bobbi and Bonn and Rio and Vietnam and the violet glow of uranium dioxide in the Sweetheart Mountains. I was not afraid. I knew where the future was. Later, as Rafferty slept, I watched without alarm as a black submarine surfaced to starboard, its conning tower cutting like a fin through the placid dark. I felt no dismay, only wonder. Here, I deduced, was how it would be when it finally came to be. It would be quick. Out of the blue, a blink and a twitch, here then gone. I could see it. I could hear the sonar. The submarine rose up in profile, buoyant, circling the skiff, and I nodded and closed my eyes and gave myself over to how it had to be. There was a slight trembling. A shower of yellow-white sparks, then the missiles ascended, but to my credit, I stood fast. I studied the ballistics. I admired the gleamings—reds and pinks spilling in the Gulf. There was grace in it, I thought, and the beauty that attends resolution, as fire is beautiful, and nuclear war,
things happening as they must happen and always will. I was brave. I’d seen it all before, many times, and now there was just gallantry.

The question declared itself: Who’s crazy?

Not me.

When the submarine slipped away, I was smiling. Imagination. I had the knack again.

For the next year, up to April 21, 1971, the casualties kept piling up on all sides. People were dying. In Vietnam, there was steady concussion; in Paris, the peace talks dragged on into the third year of stalemate; in Georgia, Lieutenant William Calley went on trial for murder; in Cambodia, there were fires. There was a war on, yes, but for me it was mostly blank time. Which is to say I can’t remember much—the present never quite became the past.

What happened? How much is memory, how much is filler?

If I close my eyes, if I ignore the hole, I can see Sarah reclining in a lawn chair on the back patio at Key West. We’re lovers again, though not exactly in love; we’re both waiting, though for what I don’t know. She just lies there in sunlight. She wears a blue bandanna and a white muslin blouse. Her skin is dark brown. The hair at her calves is bleached silver, and at the corner of her mouth is a lumpish blister—herpes simplex, but the complications will prove unhappy. In her lap is a copy of
Newsweek
. A celebrity now, she smiles at me from the magazine’s cover, or seems to smile, and says or seems to say, “I warned you. Years ago, I told you I was dangerous, big dangerous dreams, and here’s the proof. Now I belong to the ages.”

Blank time, but great speed, too. I can see Sarah’s eyes going cold. “I’m dead,” she whispers.

Mid-November 1970, and a butchered pig was deposited on the steps of the FBI building in downtown Washington.

There was a bombing in Madison.

A startling image—is it real?—but I can see Ollie Winkler in a rented airplane. He’s wearing his cowboy hat and aviator goggles,
a yellow scarf flapping behind him, and he’s squealing and dumping homemade ordnance on the nation’s Capitol. It did not happen that way, but it could’ve happened, and still can, and therefore I see it.

“I’m dead!” Sarah cries. That much did happen.

In December they redecorated the Lincoln Memorial.

In January 1971, they released a dozen skunks in the carpeted hallways of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Not quite terrorism.

“Skunks,” Sarah said, “that’s a prank. TNT, that’s terror. You have to know where to draw your nice fine lines.”

I remember nodding.

Pathetic, I thought, but things were clearly moving toward misadventure.

The guns, for instance.

When I look back, I can see those plywood crates stacked in the attic. One night I heard noise up there, so I investigated, and I found Ned Rafferty sitting cross-legged before a candle, alone. Just cobwebs and guns. “How’s tricks?” I asked, and Rafferty snuffed the candle and told me to get the fuck out. “Just go!” he said, and he sounded angry.

What else?

A minor hurricane named Carla.

I can hear the wind, I can feel Sarah up against me in bed. Maybe it’s then when she says, “My God, I’m dead.”

Slow time, but it seems fast.

I remember Ollie eating grapes at the kitchen table. The seeds make plinking sounds in a metal wastebasket; he talks about hitting banks; he seems serious; he doesn’t laugh when he says, “Why not?” A seed goes
plink
in the wastebasket and he says, “Why not?”

Tina Roebuck on a crash diet.

She’s determined. She papers the refrigerator with photographs from
Vogue
. “Just once in my rotten life,” she says grimly, “just this once, a lean mean killing machine.”

But it doesn’t happen. The pressures intervene and she checks out as a heavyweight.

Are the dead, I wonder, ever dead?

The hole laughs and says,
Believe it
.

I believe it. The dead, perhaps, live in memory, but when memory goes, so go the dead.

There is no remembering when there is no one to remember. Hence no history, hence no future. It’s a null set; the memory banks are wiped out; there is no differentiation—all the leptons look alike—believe it.

For now, though, I have a dim recollection of Ebenezer Keezer briefing us on coming attractions. Volatile stuff, no doubt, because I remember the brittle sound to his laughter. There was talk about crime. At one point, when Ned Rafferty brought up the subject of penalties, jail and so on, Ebenezer removed his sunglasses and looked heavenward for some time. Then he shrugged. He grinned at Nethro. “Freedom,” he said, “is just a dependent clause in a life sentence. Don’ mean nothin’.” There was a pause before he entertained suggestions as to how the guns might be most properly used. “Let’s discuss climax,” he said, which is all I remember, except for walking away.

And Sarah.

Sarah in a cotton nightgown with lace and blue ribbons, her hair in curlers, puffy booties on her feet. Sarah sunbathing. Sarah baking cookies. In late January, I remember, she put on her old Peverson letter sweater to watch the Super Bowl, and afterward we went out for dinner, the two of us alone. It was a terrific time. We had some drinks, then several more, and on the way home she giggled and leaned up against me and asked if I believed in dreams.

She seemed a little unsteady.

“Dreams,” she said, “can they come true? Like with a crystal ball or something? Can you dream your own life?”

“Well,” I said, “let’s hope not.”

“No, I’m serious. Is it possible?”

I smiled and took her arm.

It was near midnight and we were walking through a park of some sort and I could smell flowers and cut grass. After a time Sarah stopped and looked at me.

“What I mean is … I mean, there’s a dream I keep getting. Not a dream, really, just this wacky idea. You won’t laugh?”

“Of course not.”

“Promise?”

I nodded.

There was a hesitation while she thought it over. Her eyes, I remember, were like ice; you could’ve skated on them.

“All right, then, but you have to use your imagination.” She bit down on her lip. “War’s over. No more battles, it’s finished, we all pick up and go home. You and me, we get married, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Babies. Lots of travel. Settle down. But then what? I mean, I’m still young, I’m famous, I’ve got certain skills. So what do I
do
with myself?”

“The dream,” I said gently, “let’s hear it.”

Sarah sighed.

“You’ll think I’ve flipped. It’s like—I don’t know—just weird.” She giggled again, then swayed and kissed me. There was the smell of gin and lipstick. Drunk, I thought, but something else, too.

She shivered and hugged herself.

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “Pretend it’s Super Bowl Sunday. Like today, sort of. Packed stadium. Bands and floats and celebrities. National holiday. Bigger than Easter, bigger than Christmas. Hospitals shut down. Nixon’s got his phone unplugged. All across America—people adjusting the color on their TV sets, opening up that first beer. Whole country’s tuned in. Showdown time—Dallas versus Miami. You have to close your eyes and just picture it.”

I closed my eyes.

When I looked up, she was sitting on a park bench. She gazed at the sky for several seconds.

“Super Bowl,” she said. “Greatest show on earth. There I am. I’m a Cowgirl.”

“Cowgirl,” I said.

“War’s over, I’m bored, I need the spotlight. That’s
me
, isn’t it?—the glitter girl—this huge appetite—I just
need
it. Goose
bumps. All the noise and dazzle and music. Very warm and mysterious, like having sex with ninety thousand people. Can’t explain it. Just Cowgirl magic—I’m wearing the blue and silver. Those little shorts, you know, and those sexy white boots. I’m
there
.”

I sat down and put my arm around her.

A hot night, but she was still shivering, and it occurred to me that this was a very desirable but very frightened woman.

Presently she laughed.

“So there I am,” she said. “Super Bowl. All the pre-game stuff goes as usual—welcoming ceremonies, lots of color and excitement—but then a funny thing happens. The
teams
don’t show up. Overslept or something—who knows?—they just don’t show. Two hundred million people waiting. No teams.”

“Nice,” I said.

“No teams. No football.”

“A good dream.”

Sarah shrugged.

“True,” she said, “but here’s the stunner. Nobody cares. Nobody
notices
. Because yours truly is out there blowing their dirty little minds with cartwheels. Cartwheels you wouldn’t believe. Nobody’s even
thinking
football—cartwheels, that’s all they want. Crowd goes bananas. Super Bowl fever, they’re all screaming for more cartwheels … Curt Gowdy’s shouting the play-by-play … TV cameras zoom in on me—instant replay, slow mo, the works. I’m famous! Fans swarm onto the field and … And that’s when it finally
happens
. Cheerleading, the main event. No sidelines crap—it’s me they want—they came to see
me
. Just a billion beautiful cartwheels. They love me. They really do, just love-love-love. Who cares about football? War’s over. Just
love
. It’s all completely reversed. At half time the two teams trot out for a cute little twenty-minute scrimmage and then—bang—back to the action—me and my cartwheels.”

There was a moment of quiet, then she nudged me and lifted up her sweater.

“My breasts,” she said, “they’re nice, aren’t they?”

“Fabulous,” I said.

“For a Cowgirl, though. Not huge or anything, but they’re—you know—they’re nice. I don’t need a bra.”

“I see that. Cover up now.”

“I’m not too old?”

“Just right,” I said.

Sarah frowned and examined herself.

“And my legs. I’d probably have to start shaving again, but they seem—”

“Very pretty legs.”

“You think so? Be honest.”

“Perfect,” I said. I helped her up. She wobbled a bit, laughing, then straightened up and took my face in her hands and kissed me hard. I could feel the structure of her jaw. When she pulled back, there were tears in her eyes.

“The dream,” she said softly. “You see the point?”

I didn’t but I nodded.

“Love,” she said.

She didn’t cry.

She smiled and said, “Love, that’s all. I want it. God, I do want it.”

The rest seems to slide away.

I remember her black eyes, flecks of orange and silver, how she kept smiling at me. “Love,” she said.

And then what?

Hindsight, foresight. But which is it? I can see her jerking up in bed that night, or perhaps another night, still trembling, hooking a leg around me, and maybe it’s then when she says, “I’m
dead
. I’m all
alone
.”