Free The Nuclear Age by Tim O’Brien Page A

Mommy said?”
    “What else?”
    “She says if you don’t stop digging that hole, she says we might have to go away.”
    “Away where?”
    “I don’t
know
where, just
away
. That’s what she told me, and she means it, too. That poem you ate—that’s what it was
about
.”
    I nodded. “Well, listen, right now your mother and I have this problem. Like when the telephone doesn’t work. Like a busy signal, you know? But we’ll get it fixed. That’s a promise.”
    “Promise?”
    “On my honor.”
    Later, when the school bus came grinding up the road, Melinda generously offered me her cheek, which I kissed, then I watched her ride away. A beautiful child. I love her, and Bobbi, too.
    Isn’t that the purpose? To save those smooth blond hides?
    Split?
    Doesn’t make sense.
    Dig.
    That makes sense. All day long I’ve been at it, sweat and calluses, and my back hurts, but there’s pleasure in the pain. It’s duty-doing; taking charge. Tension translates into doggedness, anxiety into action, skittishness into firm soldierly resolve.
    I feel a nice tingle as I rig up the dynamite.
    Ollie Winkler taught me—I learned from a pro.
    Two sticks and the primer. Wire it up. Crimp the blasting caps. Take shelter behind the tool shed. Think about Ollie and his Bombs for Peace.
    “Fire in the hole!” I yell.
    The kitchen windows rattle. A muffled explosion, just right. Bobbi comes to the back steps and stands there with a mystical smile on her lips. In the backyard, like smoke, there’s a light dusting of powdery debris, and my wife and I stare at each other as if from opposite sides of a battlefield. Bobbi bites her thumb; I smile and wave. Then it’s over. She goes inside, I go back to digging.
    The dynamite, that’s what disturbs her. She thinks I’ll miscalculate. Crazy, but she thinks I’ll blow the house down, maybe hurt someone. Dangerous, she thinks. But what about the bomb, for Christ sake? Miscalculations? If that’s the stopper—miscalculations—I’ll be happy to show her a few. Four hundred million corpses. Leukemia and starvation and no hospitals and nobody around to read her miserable little jingles.
    Screw it. Dig
.
    A pick, a garden spade, a pulley system to haul out the rock.
    When Melinda returns from school, I’m still on the job. I straighten up and smile over the rim of the hole. “Hey, there,” I say, but she doesn’t answer. She kicks a clod of dirt down on me and says “Nutto” and scampers for the house.
    I don’t let it rattle me. At dusk I plug in the outdoor Christmas lights. I skip supper. I keep at it, whistling work songs.
    It isn’t obsession. It’s commitment. It’s me against the realities.
    Dig
, the hole says, and I spit on my hands. Pry out a boulder.Lift and growl and heave. Obsession? Edgar Allan Poe was obsessed.
    At ten o’clock I tell myself to ease off. I take a few more licks at it, then a few more, and at midnight I unplug the lights and store my tools and reluctantly plod into the house. No signs of life, it’s eerie.
    In the living room, I find only the vague after-scent of lilac perfume—a dusty silence. I stop and listen hard and call out to them. “Bobbi!” I shout, then “Melinda!” The quiet unnerves me, it’s not right.
    Melinda’s bed is empty. And when I move to Bobbi’s bedroom—my bedroom—I’m stopped by a locked door.
    I knock and wait and then knock again, gently.
    “All right,” I say, “I know you’re in there.”
    I jiggle the knob. A solid lock, I installed it myself. So now what? I detect the sound of hushed voices, a giggle, bedsprings, bare feet padding across oak floors.
    Another knock, not so gentle this time.
    “Hey, there,” I call. “Open up—I’ll give you ten seconds.”
    I count to ten.
    “Now,” I say. “Hop to it.”
    Behind the door, Melinda releases a melodious little laugh, which gives me hope, but then the silence presses in again. It occurs to me that my options are limited. Smash the door down—a