by Tim O'Brien
The omens were obvious. It occurred to me that the world’s mainspring had tightened up a notch. Much later, when I looked up, the missile had vanished and there was a light snow falling, soft and deadly.
“No sweat,” I said.
Imagination, that was my strong suit. I pretended nothing had happened.
But it happened, and it kept happening.
In February I watched thirteen marines die along a paddy dike near Chu Lai.
I recall an encounter with napalm.
Voices, too—people shouting. In the hours before dawn I was awakened by Phantom jets. I saw burning villages. I saw the dead and maimed. I saw it. I was not out of my mind. I was in my mind; I was a mind’s eyewitness to atrocity by airmail. There were barricades before public buildings. There were cops in riot masks, and clubs and bullhorns, and high rhetoric, and Kansas burning, and a black bomb pinwheeling against a silver sky, and 50,000 citizens marching with candles down Pennsylvania Avenue. I heard guns and helicopters and LBJ’s nasal twang: This will be a disorderly planet for a long time … turbulence and struggle and even violence.
Disorder, I reasoned, begets disorder, and no one is immune. Even Chicken Little got roasted.
But I held tight.
Day to day, I waited it out. February was dreary, March was worse. Delusion seemed optional. I couldn’t quite choose; I couldn’t unburden myself. In the bathroom, pants at my knees, it was easy to envision a set of circumstances by which I would ultimately expire of unknown causes in the confines of some public toilet stall—in a Texaco station outside Tucson, or behind a door marked “Gents” in a Howard Johnson’s along the road to Cleveland. It made a poignant image. A night janitor would find my corpse; the autopsy would be brisk and businesslike. For a month, perhaps, my remains would lie unclaimed, and afterward I would go to a pauper’s grave, in an aluminum box, and there I would present my modest tribute to the worms.
No question, I was depressed. Scared, too. One evening I picked up a scissors and held it to my throat. It was a ticklish sensation, not unpleasant. I drew the blade upward. No blood, just testing.
The time had come, I decided, to seek help.
Quickly, I dropped the scissors and walked down the hallway to a pay phone and put in a call to Chuck Adamson.
No answer, though.
So while the phone rang, I talked about the facts of the case. I told him I was boxed in by disorder. I described the pressures. “I swear to God,” I said, “it’s like I might explode or something. I keep seeing things.” Then I told him about that missile over the Little Bighorn. Nothing mystical, I said. It was there. I went on for some time about napalm and Phantom jets, how things were accelerating toward crack-up, high velocity, how I couldn’t cope, how I couldn’t make any headway with Gromyko and LBJ, how it was down-the-tubes time, the scissors, the temptation to call it quits, how I couldn’t shit, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t find my place in the overall pattern of events. “Otherwise,” I said, “I’m doing pretty well.” Then I pressed the phone tight to my ear. There were cracklings on the line, long-distance buzzings, but I paid attention while Adamson explained that he’d gone through the same experiences back in college, a tough time, and that it was finally a question of maintaining mental traction, keeping purchase on slippery winter roads.
“The first step,” he said, “is to stop talking to yourself.”
I nodded and said, “What else?”
There was a pause.
“These visions of yours. You have to figure out what’s fact and what’s—”
“It is fact,” I said sharply. “The war, it’s a fact.”
“True.”
“So?”
Adamson seemed pensive. “Imagination,” he said, “that’s your special gift, but you have to use it. Take charge. And stay away from scissors.”
There was a sharp clicking sound. The phone kept ringing, no answer, but for a few moments I was back in his office again. He winked at me. His eyes were clear and lucid. Smiling, he swiveled in his chair and stood up and went to the window. And there it was: the shining dome on the state capitol, buffed and golden. “Politics,” he said, “give it some thought.”
I was no radical, not by a long shot.
But what does one do?
I recovered. I spent the next six months seeking traction. Finally, though, what does one do?
By the autumn of my junior year, October 1966, the American troop level in Vietnam exceeded 325,000. Operation Rolling Thunder closed in on Hanoi. The dead were hopelessly dead. The bodies were bagged and boxed. In Saigon, General Westmoreland called for fresh manpower, and at the State Department, Dean Rusk assured us that rectitude would soon prevail, a matter of attrition. Yet the dead remained dead. For the dead there was no rectitude. For the dead there was nothing more to die for. The dead were silent on the matter of attrition. So what does one do? Among the living, Richard Nixon peeled his eyes and bided time. Robert Kennedy waffled. Richard Daley ruled a peaceful city. Beneath the surface, however, premonition was evolving toward history. I was a witness. Like déjà vu in reverse, lots of backspin. In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan came into possession of a .22-caliber Iver Johnson revolver. I watched the transaction. In Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy reviewed his options; in Washington, Robert McNamara entertained misgivings; in Hollywood, Jane Fonda began setting an agenda. Hawks were at the throats of doves. It was a fitful, uncertain autumn, but the dead kept dying. They died on the six o’clock news, then they died again at midnight, and now and then I could hear the shearings of a great continental fault, I could feel the coming fracture.
In a time of emergency, the question will not be begged: What does one do?
I made my decision on a Sunday evening.
Politics, I thought.
On Monday morning I purchased some poster paper and black ink. The language came easily. In simple block letters I wrote: THE BOMBS ARE REAL.
Trite, I realized, but true.
At the noon hour I took up a position in front of the cafeteria. The place was crowded but there was the feeling of absolute aloneness. I lifted the poster with both hands. As people filed by, nothing much registered, just background noise, a brisk wind and giggles and wisecracks. That was the price. I knew it and I paid it.
Weird William, I thought.
In hindsight, it might seem silly, a kid holding up a sign that announced the obvious, but for me it represented something substantial. I felt proud. Embarrassment, too, but mostly pride.
I’m not sure how long I stood there. Twenty minutes, a half hour. I remember how bright the day was, no clouds, very crisp and clean, that wind off the river. I remember the sound of clanking plates in the cafeteria. There was laughter, but it didn’t bother me. In a sense, I suppose, I wasn’t entirely there. Drifting, maybe. The faces seemed to blend and dissolve. There was a war on—they didn’t know. There was butchery—they didn’t know. “Shit,” someone said, but they simply did not know, they had no inkling, so I smiled and let my sign speak sign language: the blunt, trite, unarguable truth. Real. The guns were real, and the dead, and the silos and hot lines and Phantom jets. The war was real. The technology was real. Even that which could not be seen was real, the unseen future, the unseen letting of unseen blood—and the bombs—the fuses and timers and tickings—and the consequences of reality, the consequences were also real. But no one knew. No one imagined. “What this brings to mind,” a voice said, “is shit.” And that, too, was real. And Sarah Strouch, who paused at the cafeteria doors, watching me with cool black eyes. Real, I thought. She wore blue shorts and a pink T-shirt scooped low at the neck. There was a hesitation, then she tilted her head sideways and said, “Such true shit.”
I was in control. Over the next two months, every Monday, I stationed myself at the same spot in front of the cafeteria. It was a feeble exercise, I realized that, but in conscience what does one do? Take a stance—what else?
I was alone until early December.
A frigid Monday
, another noon vigil, then Ollie Winkler tapped me on the elbow and said, “Bombs.”
I knew the voice.
A couple of years earlier, back in chem class, we’d shared a Bunsen burner, but that was the full extent of it. Ollie was not my kind of person. Very short, very plump. A Friar Tuck facsimile in a white cowboy hat and fancy high-heeled boots.
He gestured at my poster with fat fingers.
“This bomb shit,” he said, “a catchy tune. Who do we assassinate?”
He straightened up to his full height—maybe five foot two. His smile seemed thin. “Just narrow it down for me. Plastic explosives? Time bombs? You got to name some names.”
I was candid with him. I told him to fuck off.
Ollie flicked his eyebrows. “A sense of humor, ace, it goes a long way. Bombs, though. I guess you could say I’m halfway intrigued.” He winked and tipped up his cowboy hat. Circus material, I thought. Not quite a midget, but there was obvious evidence of a misplaced chromosome. “What I mean,” he said, then paused again. “I mean, you’ve had your one-man show out here, but maybe you could use a helping hand, so to speak. If I’m interested, that is.”
I nodded.
“That’s wonderful,” I said, “just don’t get interested,” then I turned and left him standing there.
But ten minutes later, in the cafeteria, he waddled over to my table and put his tray down and made himself at home. The wise thing, I decided, was silence. I opened up a book called Minerals of the Earth and studied the cubic structure of thorianite.
“The problem,” Ollie said cheerfully, “is nobody likes you.”
Thorianite had a specific gravity of 9.87. It was soluble in nitric and sulphuric acids. It had a hardness factor of 6.5.
“I mean, you prance around with this holier-than-thou outlook. Don’t even talk to nobody. And this bombs-are-real bull—people just laugh. You want results, you best retool your whole piss-poor attitude.”
I took a sip of lemonade.
Thorianite, I noted, often contained traces of cesium and lanthanum. The largest deposits occurred in Ceylon and the Soviet Union.
“You want to be laughed at?” he asked. “You want that?”
“Morons,” I said.
Ollie rubbed his nose. “Don’t I know it? Hayseeds. But like I said, results is the bottom line.”
“And?”
“Kick ass. Find yourself some allies and start punching tickets. Riots, maybe. Whatever’s necessary.”
“Allies,” I said. “Like you, I bet.”
“Maybe. First we talk.”
I snapped the book shut. The cafeteria was jammed with the usual lunchtime crowd. Behind me, a radio was booming out House of the Rising Sun, and there was the clatter of silverware and triviality. No one knew. At the next table Sarah Strouch was showing off her thighs to a linebacker named Rafferty.
I folded my arms and said, “So talk.”
“Straight?”
“However,” I said. “Quick would be nice.”
Ollie straddled his chair and spent the next several minutes outlining my character flaws. Too conceited, he said. Too wrapped up in myself. Too smug and pompous and high and mighty.
“I could go on,” he said, and smiled, “but you get the drift. And now this bomb nonsense.”
“The truth,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Truth. The war, right?”
“Partly. Other items, too.”
He shrugged. “Shrapnel, I know. You made your point, that’s why I’m here.”
“The point, Ollie.”
“Action. We team up.” He waved a pudgy hand at me. “In case you haven’t noticed, you and me got a lot in common. Two birds of the same fucked-up feather. Losers, that is. But I’ll tell you a basic fact. Losers sometimes get pissed. They get impolite, sometimes. That’s how revolutions happen.”
I put my coat on.
“Well,” I said, “it’s been fun.”
“Like in Moscow, 1917. Losers banging on winners. They didn’t wave no signs, they cut throats.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Losing sucks,” he said. “Losers lose.”
He removed his cowboy hat and brushed the brim with the back of his hand. His voice had a squeaky, hollowed-out sound, like an old 78 recording.
“So anyway,” he said, “let’s brainstorm a minute. Let’s say, for instance, we drop this peaceful-protest crud. Winning-wise, it don’t create the right impression. You got to wake people up—get their attention, basically—which means you blow a few socks off. Rig up some ordnance. Let the wreckage speak for itself.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“You don’t talk bombs. You show bombs. Scorch City. I guarantee, nobody laughs. Don’t hear jack.”
Then he listed some recent developments.
He talked about C-4 explosives and white phosphorus and the killing radius of a Claymore mine. A technical whiz, I thought, but what impressed me most was his little-man ferocity, and that gremlin voice, and the way he managed to present his own freakiness in a fairly convincing context. Sitting there, half listening, I was reminded of those old B movies with midgets dressed up as cowboys—the hero and the outlaws and the Shetland ponies—all midgets, but they play it straight, so after a while you begin to think that’s how the world is, it’s pint-sized, it comes at you in small doses. With Ollie Winkler, however, there was the added dimension of danger.
I finally stood up.
“One personal question,” I said casually, smiling at him. “When you were a kid, I mean, did you ever fool around with chemistry sets? Like testing nails for their iron content?”
He gave me a stare.
“Maybe so,” he said. “What if?”
“Just a question.”
“Yeah, but so what?”
“Fine,” I said, “don’t get defensive.”
“I’m not defensive. What if, though?”
I nodded soberly and picked up my tray.
“Those nails,” I said. “I’ve always wondered. Iron or no iron?”
Ollie slapped a fork against the palm of his hand. There was a pause, then he chuckled and rolled his shoulders.
“Super wit,” he said. “Chemistry sets, I like that, very shitty-witty. And here’s another funny one: What’d the chef say to the terrorist? There’s this chef, see, and there’s this jerkoff terrorist—real namby-pamby, can’t get no results—so the chef says, he says: Listen up, asshole. You don’t make a revolution without breaking a few legs.”
A week later he joined me on the line. He was carrying a home-made model bomb. “Audiovisual device,” he said, “like in show-and-tell.”
It wasn’t friendship, just an alliance. Two of us now—me with my poster, Ollie with his bomb—and together we established a makeshift front against the war. It was entirely my show. No broken legs, I told him, and although there were complaints now and then, he generally played along.
“You’re the boss,” he’d say softly, “but the time’ll come. You can mark it on your calendar.”
I didn’t let it influence me.
Slow and steady, I thought.
It was a routine. All through December, then time off for Christmas vacation, then the brittle cold of January. Long hours on the line, stiff fingers and tenacity. There was schoolwork, too, and exams and humdrum classes, but there was also a subtle new sense of command. I slept well. Fluid sleep, smooth and buoyant, a plush new laxity in my bowels. I was healthy. I was almost happy.
The only drawback, really, was Ollie Winkler.
“Letter bomb?” he’d say. “All I need’s a zip code. Send it COD.”
“No.”
“Yeah, but Jesus, we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Negative.”
“No, you mean?”
“I do. I mean no.”
By temperament, obviously, I was not inclined toward violence, and therefore even his mock-up bomb made me a bit queasy. A demo model, Ollie called it, but it had the heft
and authority of the genuine article. A steel frame with nasty appendages at each end, bright copper wiring, a soft ticking at its core.
“The bombs are real,” Ollie said, and tapped the hollow casing. “Say the word, I’ll arrange some surprises.”
I just shook my head.
In a way, though, he was right. The bomb had credibility. People made wide turns as they entered the cafeteria. The power of firepower: it delivered a punchy little message.
“What I could do,” Ollie said, “I could—”
“No.”
He grinned. “Oh, well,” he said, “live and learn.”
Mostly it was drudge work. We doubled our picket time—Mondays and Fridays. No theatrics, just moral presence. We were there. All around us, of course, the apathy was like cement, hard and dense, and to be honest there were times when I came close to chucking it. Goofy, I’d think. And futile. I was no martyr. I hated the public eye, I felt vulnerable and absurd. Fuck it, I’d tell myself, but then I’d remember. Headlines. A new year, January 1967, and eighteen GIs died under heavy mortar fire outside Saigon.
Goofy, perhaps, but the goofiness had an edge to it.
So what does one do?
Hold the line and hope. My dreams were honorable. There was the golden dome on the state capitol; there was the world-as-it-should-be.
When I look back on that period, it’s clear that my motives were not strictly political. At best, I think, it was a kind of precognitive politics. Granted, the war was part of it, I had ideals and convictions, but for me the imperative went deeper. Sirens and pigeons. A midnight light show. It occurred to me, even at the time, that our political lives could not be separated from the matrix of life in general. Joseph Stalin: the son of a poor cobbler in Tiflis. George Washington: a young neurotic who could not bring himself to tell a modest lie. Why does one man vote Republican, another Socialist, another not at all? Pure intellect? A cool adjudication between means and ends? Or more likely, does it have to do with a thick tangle of factors—Ollie Winkler’s garbled chromosomes, my own childhood, a blend of memory and circumstance and dream?