The Nuclear Age (4 page)

“Actually,” I said, “if you want the truth, they might not be flashes at all.”

“No?”

“Well, sure, what I mean is, I mean, it always happens late at night, you know, real late, so maybe I’m just dreaming or something. Just dreams. Or else—”

“Crap,” he snapped.

A doctor, for God’s sake.

I couldn’t help it. Instantly, before I could stop myself, I was blabbering away about the flashes, elaborating, adding little flourishes here and there—how it always started with a high-pitched sizzling sound, like hot grease, like bacon on a skillet, and how my ears would start buzzing, and how I’d sometimes see an enormous silver-colored cloud spreading out for miles and miles. Weird rainbows, I told him. And a spectacular purple glow in the sky. Looking back on it, I’m not quite sure why I rambled on like that. To get sympathy, maybe. To give the story some credibility, to make him
believe
me. Or maybe, in some roundabout way, I was trying to clue him in on the real problem—real bombs, real danger. In any case, it went right over the old man’s head.

“Well, well,” he finally said.

Then he stared right at me.

I knew what was coming.

He started out by telling me that the flash stuff was total garbage, that I should be ashamed of myself for throwing a scare into my parents.

“Next time you hanker for a vacation,” he said, “just go play yourself some honest hooky. No more flash crap. Understood?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Understood?”

I nodded.

But he was dead wrong. I hadn’t
tried
to scare my mom and dad. Exactly the opposite: I wanted to make them feel better, give them something to focus on. They couldn’t understand the real issue—nuclear war and sirens and red alerts—and so I had to concoct the flashes as a kind of handle on things, something they could latch on to.

It was compassion.

But you couldn’t tell Crenshaw that. You couldn’t tell him anything.

When he was finished preaching at me, he packed up his equipment, went to the door, stopped, turned around, and looked at me for a few seconds.

Finally he smiled.

“By the way, young man,” he said. “How’s your penis?”

Then he cackled and limped away.

Murder, that’s all I could think. For a while I sat there slugging my pillow, but it didn’t help much, so I got out of bed and crept over to the doorway and listened in while he told my parents what a faker I was. I couldn’t hear much, just laughter, but then my father said something about the Ping-Pong table, and a few minutes later they trooped down to the basement.

Barefoot, I moved to the top of the stairs. And that’s when I heard my dad explaining to Crenshaw about the fallout shelter. Except he wasn’t explaining it. He was mocking it. Mocking me.

“Note the briquettes,” he said. “And the mattress. Safety cushion, right?”

Crenshaw laughed like hell, and so did my dad, and both of them kept making zippy little wisecracks. “Keep it down,” my mother said, but then she joined the fun.

“Piss,” I said.

I didn’t understand it.

The shelter was no professional job—I knew that—but wasn’t it better than nothing? Better than twiddling your thumbs?

“Right,” I said. “So
piss
on it.”

All that laughter, it hurt me. Partly embarrassment, partly anger. It hurt quite a lot, in fact.

The way I was feeling, I couldn’t face my parents right then. I couldn’t stop saying “Piss!” So very calmly, even though I wasn’t calm, I got dressed and hopped on my bike and pedaled hard until I reached Main Street. For a time I just sat on one of the green benches out in front of the county library. I kept hearing my mother’s giggle, Crenshaw’s high cackle. It didn’t make sense. What about the facts? The countdowns and silos—a question of simple jeopardy. Wasn’t my father always telling me to be careful crossing the street? Safety first, he always said. It baffled me. I wanted to scream; I didn’t know what I wanted.

Finally, to pass some time, I dragged myself into the library
and moped around for half an hour, thumbing through back issues of
Time
and
U.S. News
, studying photographs of bona fide, real-life fallout shelters. They were made of steel and concrete and asbestos, very strong and sleek, and by comparison my Ping-Pong table seemed a little pitiful.

And that made me feel even worse. Miserable, in fact. I’m not sure, but I must’ve sighed, or maybe groaned, because the librarian began shooting edgy glances at me. Eventually the woman wandered over and stared down at my pile of magazines.

She made a soft breathy sound.

“Ah,” she said. “Civil defense.”

I shrugged and turned away, but she leaned in for a closer look at the photographs. A nice-looking woman. Smooth skin and greenish eyes and a thick tangle of black hair. As she bent down, one of her breasts accidentally pushed in against my neck.

She frowned and said, “Frightening business, isn’t it? We tend to forget. I suppose we want to forget.”

“Sure,” I said.

“If you ask me, we should—”

The woman hesitated. I could almost feel her heartbeat.

“But anyway,” she said, “I’m always pleased to see youngsters taking an interest in these problems. It’s a rare thing. Very, very rare.”

“I guess.”

“War and peace. The issues of the day, it’s important. You enjoy politics?”

“Sort of, maybe. There’s other stuff I like better.”

The woman laughed. It was a husky laugh, like a cow’s moo, deep and throaty.

“No apologies,” she said, “I’m impressed.” She paused, straightening up, and I could feel that breast wobbling like water as it moved off my neck. “So then, here you are. No school today?”

It wasn’t an accusation, just a question, and I had the answer. I told her I’d been excused to do some special research. “Civil defense,” I said.

“Crucial topic.”

“It is?”

“A top priority,” she said, and nodded. “On my list it’s number one. The future. Everything. Crucial isn’t the word.”

I was starting to like the woman.

No giggles, no jokes, and that soft chest. For a few seconds it seemed she was getting ready to sit down for a long talk—I
hoped
she would—but then she reached out and tapped my knee and said, “Good luck with the research. And if you need help, just pipe up. I’m always here.”

Help, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I watched her move back to the circulation desk, all hips and breasts and brains.

For another twenty minutes I skimmed through more magazines, wasting time, wondering if maybe I should head for school. It hardly seemed worth the effort. Besides, I didn’t know if I could take it. There was a queasy feeling in my stomach, and my head hurt—not enough oxygen or something—and when I closed my eyes, things seemed to press in on me. My ears hummed. It wasn’t really a sound, just a dense heaviness as if I were sinking deep under water, a pressurized silence, and then, in the empty center of that silence, I heard somebody whimper.

I nearly laughed, but I didn’t, because I was sobbing.

I didn’t actually cry. But the whimpering sound got louder, and I kept telling myself to shut the hell up, kept trying to swallow, and then I felt something break open inside me, like a water balloon, and then I was sniveling and carrying on like a baby, like a little kid.

There was a hand on my neck. Her hand, the librarian’s.

“Say, there,” she said. “You all right?”

“Of
course
I am,” I told her, and I tried to laugh, and then it hit me.

A funny experience. Way down inside, I didn’t feel all that terrible. I could hear myself sobbing, I could feel the thump in my chest, but I didn’t have that crying urge.

The librarian hustled me into her office and sat me down and went straight for the telephone. She must’ve known my parents,
because she didn’t ask questions, she just dialed. Eyes closed, I listened as she told my mother the whole sorry tale. Dumbo, I thought. Sad and stupid. I could picture my mother’s face, and my father’s, and how their eyes would meet very briefly in panic, then separate, then slowly come together again.

I bawled until the librarian hung up, and then, like magic, it stopped. Just like that, it stopped. I was fine.

Stupidly, I wiped my forehead and then stared at the floor.

“There now,” said the librarian. “Better?”

She brought over a glass of water, but she didn’t make me drink, she simply sat there with the glass in one hand, the other hand lightly on my knee, and in that deep mooing voice of hers, cool and steady, she told me that things were under control, no problem. And she was right. Now and then I made a weak little moan, but not because I had to, not because I was feeling bad. I did it for her. So she’d know I wasn’t wasting her time. So she wouldn’t take that hand from my knee.

“There,” she kept saying, “just relax.”

When my parents showed up, they weren’t laughing anymore. They weren’t even smiling.

My mother kissed me, straight on the lips, and my dad took the librarian aside for a secret conference. I only heard one word: “sensitive.” A while later he came over and clomped me on the back and said we’d better get home.

“I’m okay now,” I told him.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, “I know you’re okay.” He locked his hands together, swaying back and forth on his heels. “Who says you’re not? Who? Up and at ’em—toss your bike in the trunk, we’ll give you a lift. Play her safe, right?”

He winked at the librarian.

It was one of those confidential, between-us-grown-ups winks, but, to her credit, the woman didn’t wink back at him. In fact she frowned, then almost scowled. I loved her for that. I wanted to crawl into her lap and curl up for a long sleep, just the two of us, cuddling, that gentle hand on my knee. All I did, though, was sigh and take a last fond look at her chest, then I headed for the door.

The ride home was tense. Every so often my father fired quick glances at me in the rearview mirror, jittery and unsure, almost shy, and my mother wouldn’t stop talking about how we really had to do something about that rattle in the car’s engine. She went on and on about it.

Then a crazy thing happened.

Quickly, without warning, my father offered to buy me a chemistry set. It popped right out of the blue. At first I wasn’t sure I understood him.

He was smiling.

“You know,” he said, “one of those elaborate jobbies. Beakers and bottles and everything. A chemistry set. A good one.”

I stared down at my fingernails.

Fathers, I thought.

His intention, I suppose, was to cheer me up, to get my mind off bombs and missiles, but even so it was hard to believe. I despised chemistry sets. I despised kids who played with them. Several years earlier, back in fourth grade, one of my ex-buddies used to own one, a chemistry set fanatic, and whenever you went over to his house you had to sit around and go gaga while he performed the dumbest experiments you ever saw—testing nails to see if they really contained iron. The guy was a turd. In fact, as far as I could tell, chemistry sets were originally invented for turds. Toy companies must’ve hired people to sit around and dream up ideas for goofballs like my ex-buddy—weirdos and losers and poor chumps who couldn’t play baseball.

But my father was enthusiastic about the idea, and all the way home he kept talking it up. It was obvious he had his heart set on it. “First-class,” he said. “A regular laboratory.”

“Can’t wait,” I told him.

I couldn’t hurt his feelings. By then I was mature enough, or wise enough, to understand that when your parents think you want something, they get upset when they find out you don’t.

My father was smart, though.

“Look,” he finally said, “what do you
really
want? Just name it.”

“Anything?”

“Anything, cowboy. Say the word.”

There was a short silence.

“A chemistry set,” I said.

I probably choked, because my dad’s eyes jerked up. He looked at me hard in the mirror.

“William,” he said.

“Well,” I admitted, “I
could
use a Geiger counter, too.”

Immediately I knew it was the wrong thing to say. My father blinked and squinted into the mirror. He wasn’t even watching the road.

The silence must’ve lasted thirty seconds.

“William,” he said, “we need to talk.”

I put it off as long as I could. For a while I holed up in the bathroom, which was the only place in the house where you could find any privacy. I locked myself in. I brushed my teeth and washed up and then sat on the can and read
The Saturday Evening Post
all the way through. Finally, though, I had to eat dinner.

Right away my parents started in.

“Here’s what disturbs us,” my father began. “It’s this. It’s the way you’ve been brooding. The Ping-Pong table, that episode at the library today. It’s not healthy, William, and that’s what we care about—your health.”

“Fallout,” I said. “I suppose that’s healthy?”

My father released a long, terribly patient sigh. “Of course not. Dangerous, I know. Scary as hell. And we understand—we’re on your side, got it? In fact … Hey, now,
look
at me … Your mother and I, we should’ve been paying closer attention to this—whatever you call it—this whole nuclear thing. Bombs and radiation, it’s enough to scare anybody. I mean
anybody
. So like I say, we should’ve noticed. I’m sorry we didn’t. Our mistake.”