Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📕

—A group of archaeologists that are studying this site. Name’s Dory Greer. May I talk to you?

A few minutes later Ted the lawyer had Szilard on speakerphone.

—They’re not Army Intelligence, said Ted. —At least, Fort Huachuca had never heard of them when I called. They may be connected or they may not. My guess is they wanted to take Dr. Fermi into custody to use as a bargaining chip.

—You need to come join us, Enrico, came Szilard’s voice over the speaker. —You won’t be safe until you do.

—Why would he be safe with you, Leo? asked Ben.

—We’re hiring bodyguards.

—Anyway, I just came when Ben called me as a courtesy. I’m off the case, said Ted.

—I am now in a position to offer you a fifty-thousand dollar retainer, said Szilard.

—Oh.

—Enrico’s coming, announced Szilard, pocketing his cell phone as Ann approached the bus with Dory the oral historian. —Who are you?

—Dory Greer. We’re working with the Shoshone and other tribes, studying the rock art and graffiti. In the culverts?

—Our work is what you should be documenting, said Szilard. —I will be glad to grant interviews.

—Szilard, I don’t think that lawyer is competent, murmured Oppenheimer, his face shadowed in the dark doorway. He was sitting at the top of the step, cigarette ember glowing and metal glinting on his knees. Szilard’s laptop was balanced on his lap.

—I hired him for his face, said Szilard. —He looks honest.

—Ted? asked Ann. —He looks like Jim Nabors. You know. Gomer Pyle?

They stared at her blankly.

—Whatcha doing? she asked Oppenheimer.

—Email.

—Since when?

—Leo’s teaching me.

—He has responsibilities, said Szilard. —To his fans.

—You’re kidding me.

—Szilard started a web page, said Oppenheimer, as Ann craned her neck to look over his shoulder. —See? There’s a picture of me!

Szilard shrugged. —Larry bought us a digital camera.

Dory drifted off toward a tribal elder hovering at the food table and out of the corner of her eye Ann saw David creeping slowly nearer, stopping periodically to lift his binoculars and scribble.

—He’s getting closer, she said.

—It’s OK, said Szilard. —We established a minimum allowable distance. Big Glen’s monitoring it, and he has a sidearm.

—What?

—A gun.

Ann gaped at him.

—I can’t believe you, she said finally.

He pointed. Big Glen stood beside his coffin-shaped one-man tent with a bulge at his hip, concealed under a windbreaker.

—I thought he wouldn’t lift a hand in anger, she said.

—He has to look the part though.

A roar of noise pulled along the road toward them and Ann squinted past David, hunched down and turning with his specs to the noise, to make out a long column of bright all-terrain vehicles approaching along the road shoulder, clouds of dust in their wake.

—Oh no! cried Loni, coming up to the bus with a crowd behind her and a wadded dishtowel in her hands. —It’s the off-road vehicle guys! They’re very violent. They act out. And I mean, sometimes there’s hundreds of them.

—Even thousands, said Clint.

He had a swollen, red-black eye where the teenage girl’s fist had landed.

—This is public land, said Szilard pompously. —We welcome all of our fellow Americans.

—I don’t mean to be unloving? said Loni. —But they’re pigs.

—I got a cousin who’s into it, said Clint. —Every year they go to these dunes in California to party and they get drunk and high and run over their own kids by mistake till they’re dead.

Before she could retreat the all-terrain vehicles were pulling into the camp, around them on both sides, coming in further, in hordes it seemed to her, more and more surging past, sending up dust clouds that choked her and filled her eyes with stinging grit. Some of the drivers were children.

—I’m going in, she said, and Oppenheimer got up with his laptop and stepped back inside the bus. She followed, closing the thin door behind them and failing to shut out the noise of roaring engines.

After Ted left Fermi sat on the couch for a long time, his hands clasped politely in his lap. Finally Ben sat down beside him.

—We have to go now, said Ben.

—I don’t want to, said Fermi.

—I know.

Peace Camp was a hub for civil disobedience actions while the Nevada Test Site was in full swing. Between 1986 and April 1994, for instance, government documents indicate that five hundred and thirty-six American Peace Test demonstrations took place near the Site. They involved more than thirty-seven thousand participants and resulted in nearly sixteen thousand arrests.

When testing in Nevada went subcritical the settlement at Peace Camp dwindled. Soon after that it was more or less abandoned.

Ann curled up on Szilard’s bed, the wall unit air conditioner humming beside her.

When she woke up the sun had set and she could smell smoke and barbecue and gasoline. Competing musics played, thudding boomboxes and pounding drums. She looked out through the bus bedroom’s small sliding window and saw fires dotting the desert in the dark, tall pyres with ORVs parked around them and men hunkered down beside them in silhouette, glittering beer cans rising in slow arcs from waist to chin.

—It reminds me of Burning Man! said Tamika, bursting in the door clad in a flowered shawl, balancing three paper plates. —Aren’t you totally starving, you poor girl? I saved you a soy dog.

—I am hungry, said Ann. —Thank you.

Sitting up she turned off the blasting AC and took one of the plates gratefully as Tamika sat down beside her on the flimsy mattress. They huddled close in the refrigerated air and ate with legs crossed on the foam, sinking. On the dingy light-blue carpet stood a tortoiseshell floor lamp. Ann leaned forward and pulled its cord, and warm light shone down on her paper plate through green and brown panes.

—They’re having a protest tonight, said Tamika. —You know those people from the Marshall Islands? The ones whose parents and grandparents got bombed and all that? They called and said they’re flying here in a plane! Larry’s getting kegs delivered from a party place. Kegs and ice. Plus there’s a bunch of Indians coming too.

—What kind of protest? asked Ann, reflecting