The Nuclear Age by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online

skin.
    Or a tree house made of steel.
    A concrete igloo in Alaska.
    A snug spaceship heading for the stars.
    In the middle of the night I’d get up and wander out to the living room and shake dice or play solitaire. I’d roam from room to room. I’d fill the bathtub with hot water and ease myself in and practice floating.
    Once, around four in the morning, my mother found me there. I was half asleep, waterlogged.
    “Darling,” she whispered, “what’s
wrong?
”
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “William, please, it’s almost daylight.”
    I smiled.
    “No problem,” I said. “I need a bath.”
    October 1962, and things got ticklish.
    I looked at my father and said, “There, you see?” I wasn’t being a smart aleck. It was a serious question: Did he finally
see?
    How did we survive?
    We were civilized. We observed the traditional courtesies, waving at neighbors, making polite conversation in supermarkets. People counted their change. Vacations were planned and promises were made. We pursued the future as though it might still be caught.
    My mother vacuumed the living-room rug, dusted furniture, washed windows, told me to buckle down to my schoolwork—there was college to think about.
    “College?” I said, and my mother fluffed her hair and said, “We have to trust,” so I buckled down.
    We carried on.
    By looking loved ones in the eye. By not blinking when Kennedy said:
The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are
.
    And we were brave. We went to church. We paid attention to our bodies—the in-and-out movement of lungs, the sweet pulse of a toothache. We masturbated. We slept. We found pleasure in the autumn foliage. There was much kissing and touching, and the name of the Lord was invoked at Kiwanis meetings.
    My father made me get a haircut. “Shaggy-waggy,” he said, playfully, but he meant it.
    Birthdays were celebrated. Clocks were wound.
    One evening, at twilight, my mother and father and I sat in plastic lawn chairs in the backyard, scanning the sky, a peaceful pinkish sky rimmed with violet. No words were spoken. We were simply waiting. When darkness came, my mother took my hand, and my father’s hand, pressing them together. A modest gesture: Did she finally see? We just sat and waited. Later my father covered his eyes and yawned and stood up.
    “Oh, well,” he said. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
    I didn’t dream. I felt some fear, of course, or the memory of fear, but I had the advantage of having been there before, a kind of knowledge.
    At school we practiced evacuation drills. There was bravado and squealing.
    Hey, hey!

What do you say?

Nikita plans

To blow us away
.
    A convocation in the school gym. The principal delivered a speech about the need for courage and calm. The pep band played fight songs. Sarah Strouch led us in the Pledge of Allegiance, guileless and solemn, her hand teasing the breast beneath her letter sweater. The pastor of the First Baptist Church offered a punchyprayer, then we filed back to the classrooms to pursue the study of math and physics.
    How?
    By rolling dice. By playing solitaire. By adding up assets, smoking cigarettes, getting ready for Halloween, touching bases, treading water.
    A dream, wasn’t it?
    Jets scrambled over Miami Beach and warships cruised through the warm turquoise waters off St. Thomas.
    “How’s tricks?” my dad asked.
    “Fine.”
    “Flashes?”
    “What flashes?”
    He grinned. “That’s the ticket.
What
flashes?”
    We held together.
    By pretending.
    By issuing declarations of faith.
    “They aren’t madmen,” my mother said.
    “Exactly,” said my father.
    So we played Scrabble at the kitchen table, quibbling over proper nouns and secondary spellings.
    “They know better.”
    “Of course.”
    “Even the Russians—they don’t want it—politics, that’s all it is. True? Isn’t that true?”
    “Oh, Christ,” my father said.
    I wasn’t haunted by the nuclear stuff, I didn’t lose control,