Free The Nuclear Age by Tim O’Brien Page B

shoulder, a foot, like on television. Storm in and pin them to the bed and grab those creamy white throats and make some demands. Demand respect and tolerance. Demand
love
.
    I kiss the door and walk away.
    Supper is cold chicken and carrot sticks. Afterward, I do the dishes, smoke a cigarette, prowl from room to room. A lockout, but why? I’m a pacifist, for God’s sake. The whole Vietnam mess: I kept my nose clean, all those years on the run, a man of the most impeccable nonviolence.
    So why?
    There are no conclusions.
    Much later, at the bedroom door, I’m pleased to discover thatthey’ve laid out my pajamas for me. A modest offering, but still it’s something. I find a sleeping bag and spread it out on the hallway floor.
    As I’m settling in, I hear a light scratching at the door, then a voice, muted and hoarse, and Melinda says, “Daddy?”
    “Here,” I say.
    “Can’t sleep.”
    “Well, gee,” I tell her, “open up, let’s cuddle.”
    “Nice try.”
    “Thanks, sweetie.”
    She clears her throat. “I made this promise to Mommy. She said it’s a quarantine.”
    “Mommy’s a fruitcake.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” I murmur. “We’ll straighten things out in the morning. Close your eyes now.”
    “They
are
closed.”
    “Tight?”
    “Pretty tight.” A pause, then Melinda says, “You know something? I’m scared, I think.”
    “Don’t be.”
    “I am, though. I hate this.”
    There’s a light trilling sound. Maybe a sob, maybe not. In the dark, although the door separates us, her face begins to compose itself before me like a developing photograph, those cool eyes, the pouty curvature of the lips.
    “Daddy?”
    “Still here.”
    “Tell the honest truth,” she whispers. “I mean, you won’t ever try to kill me, will you?”
    “Kill?”
    “Like murder, I mean. Like with dynamite or an ax or something.”
    I examine my hands.
    “No killing,” I tell her. “Impossible. I love you.”
    “Just checking.”
    “Of course.”
    “Mommy thinks … Oh, well. Night.”
    “Night,” I say.
    And for several minutes I’m frozen there at the door, just pondering. Kill? Where do kids get those ideas?
    The world, the world.
    I groan and lie down and zip myself into the sleeping bag. Then I get jabbed in the heart. Another poem—it’s pinned to the pajama pocket.
    T HE B ALANCE OF P OWER
    Imagine, first, the high-wire man
        
a step beyond his prime
,
        
caught like a cat
,
        
on the highest limb
,
        
wounded, wobbling
,
        
left to right
,
        
seized by the spotlight
        
of his own quick heart
.
    Imagine, next, the blue-eyed boy
        
poised on his teeter-totter
        
at the hour of dusk
,
        
one foot in fantasy
,
        
one foot in fear
,
        
shifting, frozen
—
        
silly sight
—
        
locked in twilight balance
.
    Imagine, then, the Man in the Moon
,
        
stranded in the space
        
of deepest space
,
        
marooned
,
        
divorced from Planet Earth
        
yet forever bound to her
        
by laws of church
        
and gravity
.
    Here, now, is the long thin wire
        
from Sun to Bedlam
,
        
as the drumbeat ends
        
and families pray:
        
Be quick! Be agile!
        
The balance of power
,
    our own
,
the world’s
,
grows ever fragile
.
    Horseshit of the worst kind. Bedlam—unbalanced, she means. Marooned, divorced—a direct threat, nothing else. At least it rhymes.
    Lights off.
    Sleep, I tell myself, but I can’t shut down the buzzings. The issue isn’t bedlam. Uranium is no figure of speech; it’s a figure of nature. You can hold it in your hand. It has an atomic weight of 238.03; it melts at 1,132.30 degrees centigrade; it’s hard and heavy and impregnable to metaphor. I should know, I made my fortune on the stuff.
    We were all in on it, Sarah and Ned and Ollie and Tina—we followed the trail and plundered those ancient mountains and now we’re left