from In a Time of Peace

38 the minnesota review Peter Oresick from In a ???ß ofPeace In Esquire, The New Yorker, even in the Sunday supplement I've read this: how America may end in fire and how the President prepares for it. While we lie down or stand up, while we swim orjog or watch movies on the cable, the President thinks, consults advisors, plans for any and every contingency. He must be smart, be tough, be thinking in fists ofthought, because a specter is haunting the worldnuclear exchange . . . Millions will die, he assumes. 130 million Americans. Burned and injured: 30 million, and 70 million will survive. In the President's thinking rationing will go smoothly, meat, milk, fuel, grains. All America underground, toughing it out. Meanwhile, at 30,000 feet, the President circles and circles and circles. He thinks: Federal Reserve. He thinks: Plan A or Plan B. He thinks: Post-attack inflation. The President thinks and trucks emerge from hollowed out mountains. Ifroads are bad, he thinks,./»t