Read The Nuclear Age for Free Online

colors, the melted elements of nature coursing into a single moltenstream that roared outward into the very center of the universe—everything—man and animal—
everything
—the great genetic pool, everything, all swallowed up by a huge black hole.
    The world wasn’t safe.
    I grabbed my pillow and ran for the basement. No time to think. It was cold down there, mildewy and damp, silent as outer space, but I crawled under the Ping-Pong table and hugged myself and waited.
    “Yo-yo,” I whispered. “You poor sick yo-yo.”
    But even then I couldn’t leave the fragile safety of my shelter. I tried but I couldn’t.
    “Crazy,” I said.
    I said it loud. Maybe I even shouted it. Because right away my father was there, he was there with me, under the table.
    “William,” he was saying, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”
    He held me tight, cradling me, arms around my shoulders. I could smell the heat of his armpits.
    “It’s okay now,” he purred, “no problem, you can
keep
the shelter, honest, you can fix it up like a fortress—why not, why not? Better than nothing, right? Right? Take it slow, now.”
    All the while he was massaging my neck and shoulders and chest, cooing in that soft voice, warming me, holding me close. We lay under the table for a long time.
    Later, he led me over to the stairs and sat beside me. He was wearing undershorts and slippers, and he looked silly, but I didn’t say anything. I just rocked against him.
    “No kidding,” he said, “I think it’s a terrific shelter. Absolutely terrific.”
    Then the embarrassment hit me.
    To cover up, I began jabbering away about the flashes, the pigeons, the sizzling sounds, whatever came to mind, and my father held me close and kept saying, “Sure, sure,” and after a time things got very quiet.
    “Well, now,” he said.
    But neither of us moved.
    Like the very first men on earth, or the very last, we gazed atmy puny shelter as if it were fire, peering at it and inside it and far beyond it, forward and backward: a cave, a few hairy apes with clubs, scribblings on a wall.
    “Well, partner,” he said. “Sleepy?”
    I wasn’t, but I nodded, and he clapped me on the back and laughed.
    Then he did a funny thing.
    As we were moving up the stairs, he stopped and said, “How about a quick game? Two out of three?”
    He seemed excited.
    “Just you and me,” he said. “No mercy.”
    I knew what he was up to but I couldn’t say no. I loved that man. I did, I
loved
him, so I said, “Okay, no mercy.”
    We unloaded the bricks and charcoal and pencils, set up the net, and went at it.
    And they were good, tough games. My dad had a wicked backhand, quick and accurate, but I gradually wore him down with my forehand slams. Boom, point. Boom, point. A couple of times it almost seemed that he was setting me up, lobbing those high easy ones for me to smash back at him. But it felt good. I couldn’t miss.
    “Good grief,” he said, “you could be a
pro
.”
    Afterward he offered to help me rig up the shelter again, but I shrugged and said I’d get to it in the morning. My father nodded soberly.
    It was close to dawn when we went upstairs. He brewed some hot chocolate, and we drank it and talked about the different kinds of spin you can put on a Ping-Pong ball, and he showed me how to grip the paddle Chinese style, and then he tucked me into bed. He said we’d have to start playing Ping-Pong every day, and I said, “It sure beats chemistry sets,” and my father laughed and kissed me on the forehead and said it sure did.
    I slept well.
    And for the next decade my dreams were clean and flashless. The world was stable. The balance of power held. It wasn’t until after college, on a late-night plane ride from New York to Miami,that those wee-hour firestorms returned. The jet dipped, bounced, and woke me up. I pushed the call button. By then I was a mature adult and it really didn’t matter. The stewardess brought me a martini, wiped my brow, and then held my