The Prayers of Man

I watched the orange glow in the night. My first cigarette in, what, six years? The first drag had made me cough, but after that it was as if I’d never quit. I sucked in more smoke and watched the orange tip glow brighter; a few flakes of gray ash dropped off onto my lap, light snowflakes against my starched and creased blue uniform pants. I brushed them off, then smiled at the absurdity of that reflex.

It didn’t matter now.

I looked at my watch, the watch Joyce had given me for our tenth anniversary, in another lifetime. It was only mildly expensive, plain nickel, no diamonds. But the back was engraved with the date and a sappy quote, “Time has no meaning when two hearts meet. All my love, Joyce.” Well, maybe not all her love. But for 22 years, most of her love had been sufficient to obscure the ticking of seconds. Time had meaning now. It was 22:36.

At 21:22, the General Command had notified us that ICBM’s were on their way. It wasn’t really a surprise; the political tensions and minor military skirmishes had grown to the point where some resolution was necessary. Peace was too difficult. At 21:25 we’d launched our own ICBM’s, since it was unacceptable for us to be destroyed and the other guy remain standing. By 02:14, our country would be a pile of smoldering ruins and radioactive ash. By 2:52, their country would be likewise. Between now and then, various nations in between would cease to exist as allies on both sides were picked off and random nations decided that if they were to be destroyed, at least they could take someone else with them. Some parts of the Amazon Basin would be spared the initial holocaust, Science Division said, but within weeks radioactive rain would snuff out most life on earth. Those few surface-dwelling creatures who survived would last, at most, two years as disease, decay, and nuclear winter returned our planet to a nearly lifeless state; ten million years hence it would be ready, perhaps, for another round, and unicellular deep-sea creatures again might crawl out of the oceans onto land. Our writings, historical records, literary warnings, and even pop-culture cautionary tales would not survive long enough to demonstrate the wrong way to go about it.

I sucked on the cigarette again, enjoying the rush of toxic smoke into my lungs and feeling a bit of a buzz. That’s why it had been so hard to quit – after a few abstinent days, that first cigarette had a real kick. I felt the heat of the filter against my fingers and shifted the white cylinder to my left hand. Good thing Joey never quit; I’d asked him if I could borrow a cigarette as I’d signed out at the guardroom and the building, and he’d said, “Sure, Commander, take the pack. Hey, I didn’t know you smoked. Need matches?” He seemed happy to find out we shared this vice, a noncom sentry delighted to have a dirty little secret in common with a decorated Commander. I don’t know why I asked to “borrow” a cigarette, as if I’d return it when I was done with it. I wouldn’t be able to pay him back. But I didn’t think he’d care much after 02:14.

I’d walked down the road to the outside gate, exited with another flash of my officialdom and signature, and wandered down the winding two-lane road for a bit, until I saw a clearing that looked like a pleasant place to await the end of the world. I sat on this boulder near the treeline to smoke and think. It was a little bit too cool for just my uniform coat; it was bedecked with my ribbons and buttons and braids, hard-earned over the past 32 years, but wasn’t meant for warmth but for conformity. I should’ve grabbed my greatcoat on the way out, but I hadn’t been thinking about the routine chill of early October nights. I’d left the building so infrequently of late, I didn’t really know what the weather was. I should enjoy this, the last autumn night I’ll ever know - remember the briskness of previous Octobers, when the world was full of possibilities and my life was a cornucopia of choice and promise.

I smoked again, the cigarette nearly half gone. I should be doing something important with these, the last 4 hours of the world. But I couldn’t think of anything I could do that would matter. Once the ICBM’s had been sent, doom was inevitable. It was like suicide by pills – there’s too much time to contemplate, to reconsider, to regret; better to put a gun in the mouth or fly off the 16th floor, snuggle the consequences up against the decision. Unlike the teenager who is rushed to the hospital and saved after taking a bottle of aspirin and then calling her boyfriend to make sure he knows how much she hurts, there was no rescue possible here. The bombs were on their way; they could not be stopped or disarmed, even if those that sent them had the capacity to contemplate, reconsider, and regret; their arrival was inevitable. There was nothing to do but wait.

Maybe I should call Rebecca and Jonas. Beck would be home, most likely, preparing lesson plans for the troupe of third graders she faced every morning. As a first year teacher, she took her work very seriously and and wasn’t confident enough in thinking on her feet to go out on school nights; preparation was her way of beating down uncertainty and newbie nerves. I could call her; but what would I say? “Hello, sweetie, it’s Dad, how are you? Are you ready to die in 4 hours? Are you ready to hear that you’ve been teaching multiplication and reading and geography for nothing, that your clutch of young ones will never need to use them?” Still, it might be nice to hear her voice, cheerful and busy, to hear “Love you, Dad” once more. But I didn’t think I could maintain the façade of “just saying hi”, and I didn’t want her to be frightened and upset for the last 4 hours of her life.

Jonas, I couldn’t even call. He was in some remote jungle village trying to make life a little better for people who didn’t need much to improve their lot. It was a place where a bottle of clean water was a miracle, where a thin straw mattress was luxury. He disdained my military career, anyway; he’d told me long ago that I was responsible for the precarious state of world affairs, that if peace and love replaced suspicion and hatred the world would be happier, healthier, and more prosperous. I’d tried to explain to him once that until peace and love arrived, we needed to be prepared for suspcion and hatred. But maybe he was right. And maybe I should tell him that. But there was no way to get the message to him in time.

I inhaled another lungful of smoke, and jumped as the final ember dropped onto my triple-braided navy blue sleeve, then fell onto the random leaves and grass growing around the boulder. The foliage was too green to catch fire, I thought, relieved. Then amused. What difference did it make now? I started to put the nicotine-tinged butt back into the pack Joey had given me (a habit picked up from my three-pack-a-day life when I’d been criticized for spreading filthy butts all over the landscape as I finished each smoke), then smiled again as I deliberately dropped it into the greenery at my feet. I guess a little litter wasn’t going to matter now. Two smiles within 30 seconds. Lots of humor in the end of the world. It’s amazing how little most things, things that took up almost all our conscious time during our lives, how little they mattered, while the things we rarely thought about – Beck, Jonas, engravings on watches – suddenly assumed great importance. I hoped someone, 10 million years from now, would realize that more quickly than I had.

Should I smoke another one? Should I just sit here smoking until the sky glowed red and I knew nothing more? Should I go back to the compound and await the end of the world with my colleagues, offer what useless wisdom and comfort I could? Should I write a memo to no one listing the ways we could’ve avoided this, the turning points we missed as we headed down this tragic road? Should I try to call Beck? Or even Joyce, and her new husband, what was his name, Fred? Or should I just sit and inhale and exhale, hear sounds that wouldn’t exist for millennia hence, feel the cool October air and remember the sweaty heat of summers past, the sweet fresh water of a Maine lake in July, the scratchy tang of a California beach, the first sight of my son and daughter, the rush of wind as my convertible flew through the main street of my small hometown, the taste of grilled hot dogs and cole slaw, the joy of hearing “I love you” for the first time? What to remember? There wasn’t enough time to remember it all.

I lit another cigarette, the match flaring brightly before the tobacco caught it. I discarded the match with deliberate carelessness. I knew I was forfeiting compassion by smoking. Over the past generation, compassion had become a rare commodity, and few were entitled to it. Those who brought on their troubles themselves – by smoking, drinking or eating too much or the wrong things, not staying in school, not rising above disastrous origins, taking easy or self-destructive paths instead of shouldering responsibility, shouldering the wrong responsibilities, making the wrong choices (whether through ignorance, selfishness, or plain old damn foolishness), believing the wrong things, or believing nothing – they no longer merited mercy. Society had deemed blame to be more efficient than compassion. And now, men who scorned compassion, who worshipped power and their own vision and maintaining their own choices had decided that the world was better destroyed than loved. We’d done it to ourselves. There would be no compassion, no mercy for us.

If there was Anyone out there to feel compassion.

I remembered, unbidden, a song. Early in my marriage, I’d spent several Friday nights with Joyce’s parents enjoying their Shabbat dinner. It seemed exotic and beautiful to me, raised on vague, nondescript Christianity diluted to the point where religion meant nothing at all. But I enjoyed these Friday nights: the candles and prayers and singing and special foods, everything bursting with meaning and purpose. Joyce had grown up with it, and grown out of it as she moved into the world with so many other ideas, but she’d always enjoyed revisiting the ways of her youth. I loved the songs. They sang in Hebrew, of course, and I didn’t understand the words but the melodies were bittersweet and full of longing and hope and memory. Her father taught me one of the songs. And here, in this clearing as I awaited the end of the world, I started to sing, amazed that I remembered it: Eli, Eli, Shelo yigamer le'olam: Hachol vehayam, Rishrush shel hamayim, Berak hashamayim, Tefilat ha'adam. If I recalled correctly, it meant: “My god, my god, may it never end, the sand and the sea, the rustling of the water, the glitter of the sky, the prayers of man."

The prayers of man would end very soon.