My deaf cousin had a hand in designing the Tomahawk Missile.



The blueprints open on his desk for what was to become



a show-and-tell-style reunion.







I hadn’t laid eyes on this exuberant man since chance



threw us together at a party given by his best friend



whose brother was your real father’s best friend,







and whose blind nephew appeared, shook my hand,



and, unprompted, said my name:—it was like a blessing.



The deaf men nodded at the blind boy’s recognition.







They held me captive, these two deaf friends, and took forever



with frantic mimicry explaining how they knew each other,



firmly guiding the silent dialogue toward the bizarre







intersection of fates: theirs, mine, my father’s, my mother’s....



The deaf find ways of contacting each other.



They have their on watering holes.







Did he place this decisive warhead above all other



constructions executed during a working life spent



gratefully, perhaps too gratefully, in the government’s







employ designing, mainly, destroyers...?



Final proof he was not handicapped by his handicap?



He married a deaf woman, but his two daughters







are normal; I mean not deaf.... Both were present



and married. One was pregnant. The other became



more and more voluble as this Sunday marathon wore on.







Conversation meant—: asking each other questions.



My cousin scribbled answers alongside the next question



on a pad that rustled like a pet hamster in his back pocket.







It was work, talking to that generation’s deaf.



It was hard not to raise your voice.



I caught my mother trying to catch my eye







across the smoked fish infested spread



as she mouthed a lipsticky YOU MUST E NUN CI ATE



Brain-dead from the labor of “catching up”







with veritable strangers with whom I was linked



by blood, I wandered, coffee balanced in saucer,



toward my cousin’s study, in vain hope of tête-a-tête.







He followed, hauled down sheafs from shelves,



while I studied the framed sketches of ship’s interiors.



Had deafness helped him achieve these heights of invention?







His face brightened. He strained with strangled voice to answer.



Even I could understand “That’s the ticket,”



before he scrawled with Bic on pad. “Deaf...can think better....”







I was about to say “Not all,” that I was asking



about him personally, when his daughter intervened



and said, aloud and in sign, that this was “deafism.”







He signed: “No no, not hearing forced me...”



She signed and spoke, indulgent, resigned, admiring:



“So deafness makes you superior?”







I liked the way she stood up to him, and the way he took it.



Trying not to sound like a boorish upstart in a Q & A



disingenuously grilling Oppenheimer, Einstein or Bohr







with how they felt about their elegant theorems



culminating in so much death, I asked if



he was ambivalent about designing warheads. Question







from left field. Bewilderment squared.



His honked “Wa” was like an inaudible “Come again?”



Forehead painfully wrinkled. Deep-set ridges.







My stomach contracted: Oh God, what have I done?



It wasn’t me asking discomfiting questions to hound



this dear, sweet, ebullient man, who had done his best...;







it was my...duty to ask, which appeared to perplex



this...disembodied intelligence...schooled in



focusing on the problem to be solved just as







Husserl bracketed words, [postponed]



this longing to belong to sentences that mimicked



meaningful action, and to block out the politics and social







contexts that could...derail...the (beautiful) concord



between pure thought and necessity. He had the right to think:



Anyone can design a ship, or a missile, that works







like a bigger bullet shot from a bigger gun;



but to invent one that can stop, turn around,



change directions, now that’s—invention.







She repeated the question in sign and came back



with: “My father doesn’t understand your question.”



I spoke more slowly. “You must feel proud at how







the Tomahawk conducted itself during the Desert War.”



The praise sent him rocking. So that’s what I took so long



to say! He nodded exuberantly in accord.







“Wait. Even though it was for a good cause



doesn’t it bother you that the missile



killed many people.” Question from left field.







Flurry of signs between father and daughter.



“My dad says war is horrible but once you’re in



it’s important to win.” “That was true before,







and true as it pertained to the two world wars,



but Southeast Asian...was another story.”



Groan of dismay. Why should a deaf engineer







be forced to deal with relative ethics too...? War



made the mental challenge of his work more



challenging, as it did the group holed up at Los Alamos.







The heart sinks when these higher mathematical formulations



become subject to weather, and the stray jackrabbits and homo sapiens



“who weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the test site...”







This pacific man could not have thought about what the Tomahawk



did to real live—now dead—people.



He was too immersed in the question of how







to get the missile to think, to take into account—the wind.





