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

the most part these Christian Pantex employees were not disturbed by any moral contradictions in their work building bombs, because there were none. Their convictions told them they were doing God’s work, for building nuclear weapons was a noble task that would serve to bring the glorious Rapture closer.

The simple return of his marriage released him from other worries. Ann was nearer than she had been for months and between them was a sure bond of relief, a comfort that flowed over everything. At times when he caught sight of her ankle he felt shamed; but then he looked at the rest of her and the warmth swallowed them both again. During the day when the bus was moving he stacked cushions beneath her foot and brought her drinks and books to read, and she thanked him and gazed at him with eyes that absorbed, as though nothing had ever been wrong after all.

One night in Oklahoma he pitched a two-man tent for them in a copse of beeches and dogwood.

—People, said Oppenheimer to Ann one evening, when Dory and Ben had both gone to bed early inside the bus and the two of them were sitting outside with a campfire in front of them, smoking and drinking decaffeinated tea. They were near the Ozark National Forest. —The more of them there are, the worse it is.

Even then, in a moment of tranquility, there were Huts on the perimeter, patrolling at a forty-foot radius around the campfire, outside the rent-a-fence they always erected when the bus pulled in for the night. Ann wished they were invisible. She did not trust them and it was hard to forget they were there. Sometimes she watched them and wondered what sordid punishments they had endured to become who they were. Or maybe, she thought, she was wrong and the Huts were not violent: maybe they were just doing their job.

But she did not believe this. They gave the impression of always waiting for violence, not out of vigilance but anticipation.

Camp was quiet: even the followers had gone to sleep.

Tomorrow was going to be her first day without crutches. She would still have a bandage and wear homely sandals, but the ankle could bear weight, slowly, tentatively growing strong again.

—Did you hear about the gospel group? asked Oppenheimer. —They’re from a church in Alabama. They joined the convoy yesterday. Their specialty is songs about the Apocalypse.

—Zealots and deluded people are the only ones who believe in you, aren’t they, she said.

—And you.

She cuffed his arm. There was nothing untrue.

—They asked Glen if they could give a public concert to raise money for the campaign. Leo made him turn down the request, of course. He doesn’t want that kind of attention. He doesn’t want us connected to Armageddon as though we’re celebrating it.

—No kidding.

—He says we’ll leave that up to the president.

They gazed out past the rent-a-fence. A group of teenagers were drinking and smoking and staring at them, leaning against their cars. Some of them, Big Glen had told her the day before, smoked Dunhills to emulate Oppenheimer. They would save up to buy Dunhills instead of their usual brand. They would accept no substitutes.

In Roswell the caravan had picked up a urologist from Santa Cruz who offered to write prescriptions, and Ben began to take pills at night to fall asleep.

The people close by in the busy dark of the bus made him restless, the sounds of their sleeping or not sleeping, the faint smells of their soap or deodorant or shampoo. A ban on incense in the bus had rid the atmosphere of Tamika’s sandalwood, but there were still other offenders: Oppenheimer’s cigarette smoke, which lingered on his suit jackets, and Szilard’s unfortunate cheap cologne. It had been presented to him by a follower as a token of her esteem, and though Szilard had never worn cologne before he now splashed it on his neck and jowls all too liberally.

Ben could rarely find a comfortable position on his sleeping pad. Even when he did manage to fall asleep without the pills he was a light sleeper and so the movements and exhalations of others in the night often brought him awake again. He did not want to hear what the others did when their guard was down, he shied away from intimacy with them because they tended to repulse him, but he could not help hearing. And camped in the Ozarks, around one in the morning, he heard Dory get up from her futon and tiptoe into Oppenheimer’s room.

Alone among them Oppenheimer had his own room. Szilard and Fermi slept in the space next to it, on the other side of a thin wall on a foldout bed. Szilard was snoring and it obscured Dory’s whisper, but Ben thought he heard her say —Is this OK? Do you mind?

Then the springs creaked and he heard the sound of her settling onto the mattress, a rustle of sheets and—he was grateful—silence.

Near Little Rock, beside a campfire, the gospel chorus gave a special performance. They were large black women with one elderly white man, and stood in purple robes holding hymnals with small lights on them. They sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and another hymn that went O that will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me; when by His grace I shall look on His face, that will be glory, be glory for me!

The followers gathered as the sound of the hymns floated over the camp. They stood silent outside the rent-a-fence while the songs were sung, listening respectfully. I will know my Savior when I come to him, by the marks where the nails went in.

—It’s beautiful, said Ann to Ben, who had come out of the bus to listen with a sheaf of membership applications in hand.

—With music it doesn’t matter what they’re actually saying, said Ben.

Ann was thinking that even what the songs said was beautiful, but she added nothing. Shall we gather by the