Dad’s Maybe Book. Tim O’Brien
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are at war right now. And once again, much like four decades ago in the midst of another war, the contradictions and complications of our universe have been reduced to black-and-white battle cries and a stockpile of pathetic old truisms, none of which is wholly true but each of which is framed in the language of hyperconfident certainty, without qualifiers, without historical amendment, without educative function, without humility, without skepticism, without the tempering tones of doubt or ordinary modesty. No one says, “I think I’m right,” or “I hope I’m right,” or “Maybe I’m right.” Instead, once again, the war rhetoric has the blaring, single-note sound of absolutism.
“No doubt,” said George W. Bush about his decision to go to war in Iraq. “I have no doubt.”
Similarly, from Dick Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”
No doubt?
No doubt about killing people for a reason that did not then and does not now exist?
My point is personal, not partisan. Plenty of Democrats, plenty of liberals, bought into the falsehood (maybe not the outright lie, but very plainly the falsehood) of Cheney’s “no doubt” absolutism, and I am sickened by the thought that ten or twenty years from now, as we still try to wiggle our way out of the Middle East, my precious sons, and yours, may be shot in the head or blown to pieces as a consequence of arrogant, one-headed, I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong, dead-sure, fear-mongering demagoguery.
Listen, Timmy. Listen, Tad.
It is important to be faithful to your values and to your opinions, but remember that your opinions are opinions. And remember that your values may reorganize themselves over time.
Watch out, in particular, for opinions that involve killing people, because one day you may change your mind, and if that day comes, as it has come for me, I do not want you lying awake at two in the morning wishing to Christ you could wake up a slim, dead, dainty-looking young man sprawled now and forever along a trail in Quang Ngai Province. Your two heads will be heavy. But carry them high. And use them.
Near bedtime one evening, when I was complaining to Meredith about still another book banning, Tad overheard and said, “I’ve got a good idea. Promise them you’ll wash out your mouth with soap. But then the book-banning people have to wash all the dead soldiers with soap.”
As a kid, through grade school and into high school, my hobby was magic. I liked making miracles happen. In the basement, where I practiced in front of a stand-up mirror, I caused my mother’s silk scarves to change color. I used scissors to cut my father’s best tie in half, displaying the pieces, and then restored it whole. I placed a penny in the palm of my hand, made my hand into a fist, made the penny into a white mouse. This was not true magic. It was trickery. But I sometimes pretended otherwise, because I was a kid then, and because pretending was the thrill of magic, and because what seemed to happen became a happening in itself. I was a dreamer. I would watch my hands in the mirror, imagining how someday I might perform much grander magic, tigers becoming giraffes, beautiful girls levitating like angels in the high yellow spotlights, no wires or strings, just floating.
It was illusion, of course—the creation of a glorious new reality. White mice could fly, and dollar bills could be plucked from thin air, and a boy’s father could say, “I love you, Tim.”
What I enjoyed about this peculiar hobby, at least in part, was the craft of it: learning the techniques of magic and then practicing those techniques, alone in the basement, for many hours and days. That was another thing about magic. I liked the aloneness, as God and other miracle makers must also like it—not lonely, just alone. I liked shaping the universe around me. Back then, things were not always happy in our house, especially when my dad was drinking, and the basement was a place where I could bring some peace into my little-boy world, a place where I could make the sadness and terror vanish.
When performed well, magic goes beyond a mere sequence of discrete tricks. As an eight-year-old I was certainly no master magician, but I tried my best to blend separate illusions into a coherent whole, hoping to cast a spell, hoping to create a unified and undifferentiated world of magic. I dreamed, for instance, that someone in the audience might select a card from a shuffled deck—the ace of diamonds. The card might be made to vanish, then a rabbit might be pulled from a hat, and the hat might collapse into a fan, and the fan might be used to fan the rabbit, transforming it into a white mouse, and the white mouse might then grow wings and soar up into the spotlights and return a moment later with a playing card in its mouth—the ace of diamonds.
There were other pleasures, too. I liked the secrecy. I liked the power. I liked showing my empty hands when my hands were not empty. I liked the expression on my father’s face when I asked him to slip his head into my magical guillotine.
More than anything, my youthful fascination with magic had to do with a sense of participation in the overall mystery of things. At the age of seven or eight, when I learned my first few tricks, virtually everything around me was still a great mystery—the moon, mathematics, butterflies, my father. The whole universe seemed inexplicable. Why did adults laugh at unfunny things? Why did my dad get drunk? Why did everybody have to die, and why could not the laws of nature permit one or two exceptions? All things were mysterious; all things seemed possible. If my father’s tie could be restored whole, why not one day use my wand to wake up the dead?
After high school, I stopped doing magic—at least of that sort. I took up a new hobby, writing stories. But without straining too much, I can say that the fundamentals seemed very much the same. Writing stories is a solitary endeavor. You shape your own universe. You deal in illusion. You depend on the willful suspension of disbelief. You practice all the time, then practice some more. You pay attention to craft. You learn to show your hands to be empty when they are not empty. You aim for tension and suspense, as when a character named Betty slips her finger into a wedding ring, knowing she is not in love and never will be. You try to make beauty. You strive for wholeness, seeking unity and flow, each movement of plot linked both to the past and to the future, always hoping to create or to re-create the great illusions of life. “Abracadabra,” says the magician, and a silk scarf changes color. “By and by,” says Huck Finn, and you are with him as he boards his timeless raft. “Forgive me,” says your father, without ever quite saying it, and you do.
After an intermission of many decades, I’ve taken up magic again in a pretty serious way. Timmy and Tad live in a house cluttered with birdcages, top hats, wands, explosive devices, floating steel rings, spotlights, dancing canes, and innumerable decks of playing cards.
For the past eight months, a roulette table has occupied a substantial portion of our foyer. It’s an illusion I purchased secondhand from a retired Atlantic City magician—a prop that entirely blocks the passageway between our front door and living room. Visitors hesitate. The pizza delivery guy suspects illegal gambling. But Timmy and Tad take it all in stride, as if every father on earth spends his waking hours cussing at candles that fail to appear