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

was not fear of death that motivated the people who were most alive, she thought, but some other force, say a capacity for delight.

—We do not have good intelligence on the culprit yet, said Szilard to the tabloid reporter. He squinted in the morning sun slanting into the food tent and stuffed pieces of stale-looking bagel into his mouth with his good hand.

Ann sat in a folding chair nearby, arms crossed on her chest, watching. Beyond Szilard, in the bus, Oppenheimer was sending out a press release. The door was closed and locked: he needed privacy. But he had opened a small window to let out his cigarette smoke, and she could see his dark head bent inside.

—Are the police investigating?

—Good question, said Szilard. —They took statements from us, but they did not seem overly concerned.

—Someone tried to kill you and the police aren’t even concerned about it?

—They seem to be taking a laissez-faire attitude.

—Do you have, uh, enemies?

—Elements of the military-industrial complex, clearly.

—You’re telling me that two men claiming to be resurrected A-bomb scientists—

—There are three of us, actually. Myself, Oppenheimer, and Enrico Fermi. He’s not here yet, but he’s coming.

—pose some kind of threat to the U.S. military, which has the largest weapons arsenal in the world?

—Exactly.

—The most powerful array of nuclear weapons known to man? And this Army would be threatened by—you?

—You said it all when you said it, broke in Larry.

Ann turned away and wandered past the breakfast picnic table, where Clint and Tamika sat discussing Adalbert’s incarceration.

—It’s because of the French accent!

—They probably don’t know he’s Belgian.

Over their shoulders Loni dealt out fried slabs of tofu on a spatula. Ann slid by her and walked out past the bush toilet, on which a small child was perched, blue sweatpants around his ankles, and wound through the dead-gray clumps of bursage beyond. The off-roaders had decamped leaving piles of milk and water jugs, juice cartons, crushed beer cans, cigarette butts, plastic bags, dirty rags of twisted cotton underwear and balled socks, and the odd rash of birdshot cartridges, bright red on the brown sand.

Three of them, fat as pigs, ate pancakes off a Coleman stove balanced on the tailgate of a truck.

Szilard would make his claims to anyone, she thought, make his claims baldly, unembarrassed by their absurdity. Others would be embarrassed to look the way he did, in preposterous insistence. But Szilard was not pinned down by concern for his own appearance.

The drum circle had formed again and she steered around it, walking out toward the road again, free and clear. Across the freeway in the distance she could see the Test Site buildings, a dull concrete pile. A dark van sped in her direction and then screeched to a stop on the road shoulder, raising dust, and behind it a bus had to brake hard, driver leaning on the horn. She turned away again and walked out into the flat of the desert, keeping the low mountains in front of her, her back to the road and the site, with Peace Camp on her right.

A few minutes later she stopped and sat on a rock. She could see back over the encampment, its makeshift tents and the trailers and trucks and motorcycles. Between her and it there were cholla trees with their toxic spines alit, awkward and sharp against the sky.

She watched people move in the camp, watched the drum circle and the stream of small crowds back and forth, cars pull up and drive away. A phalanx of cyclists in bright blue and yellow clothing approached along the freeway and passed by the camp without stopping.

She felt far away for a very long time.

Ben did not break the news to Fermi until they were almost there. He held off because he was reluctant to be the bearer of bad tidings: but then Fermi had to hear it now, in private, not later when there were people around them.

As the sprawl of Vegas hove into view he finally told him. Fermi said nothing for a long time, looking out the window. His fingers worked a frayed cord he had dug out of the glove compartment when he cleaned it.

—I mean, said Ben slowly, —he did ask you again since you refused initially, didn’t he?

—No, said Fermi.

If Fermi was not Fermi he would not care about Fermi’s family. Ben wondered how much he knew, whether he had covertly researched his descendants and learned the names of his grandchildren.

—It may not hurt them, said Ben softly.

—There’s nothing I can do, said Fermi.

—You can intervene.

—I’m not worried about exhumation, said Fermi. —That is nothing to me. I’m worried about what happens after. Will they contact me? The family?

—Don’t worry, because they won’t prove anything, said Ben. —So it won’t come to that. Szilard will be laughed out of court, if that’s where he’s going. Ann says it’s just a publicity stunt.

—I want him to succeed, said Fermi, —but this is not nice.

When she got back to camp, thirsty and sweating because she had taken no water with her, it was still and quiet. The wind had died down and the tents and the metal of the cars and motorcycles baked placidly in the sun. She saw hardly anyone anywhere until she noticed the crowd spilling out of the buses, lined up beside them, craning toward something within.

She went over but could not get through them to the front of the ranks, so all she could do was listen. It sounded like local news, except that Oppenheimer was speaking. She realized it was his speech from the demonstration, and behind his voice fireworks popped and engines gunned. She wished she could see the footage.

Then Szilard’s voice.

— … establish our identity through forensic pathology, which has made great strides since 1945, and with the apparent anomaly of our presence here widely acknowledged and recognized by the scientific community—

—I don’t get what he’s saying, whispered a woman next to her in a lime-green tube top and bellbottom jeans. —What’s he