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

river, where bright angel feet have trod? With its crystal tide forever, flowing by the throne of God?

Ben watched the singers in the dark and wondered how they had decided to come here, what brought them away from the rest of the faithful.

—This is the march on Washington, said Szilard to reporters in Memphis, Tennessee.

He wanted to make the speech outside Graceland, because, he told Ann earnestly, it had once been the home of a well-known dead singer named Elvis Presley.

The others dissuaded him.

—And what do you plan to do when you get there?

—As we tour the country we make an average of six stops a day. Campaign volunteers gather signatures for our petition, which we plan to present to the president and Congress. And there will be a demonstration, said Szilard. —We are planning a spectacular event.

Later she asked him what he meant by that, but he would not tell her how spectacular the event would be.

But Szilard insisted on visiting Graceland, trouping through the house’s narrow halls with the rest of the tourists, marveling at the gold records on the walls and the meditation garden. And that night, in a rare digression from his usually narrow focus, he sat outside the bus reading a book about Elvis that detailed the singer’s exploitation and victimization by Colonel Tom Parker, who had managed his career.

—A very charismatic individual, said Szilard admiringly as he read. —And surprisingly intelligent.

—Elvis?

—Of course not! The colonel.

They were eating lunch in a diner in Nashville when they heard Szilard from all the way across the room.

—They said yes to the DNA! he whooped, jogging over with a crumpled fax in his hand. He leaned over and clasped Fermi’s shoulder in a rare display of emotion. —Your family!

Fermi paused in his eating and looked up into Szilard’s face for an instant. Then he nodded, looked down at his food again and continued to eat.

—In return for very generous compensation, of course, went on Szilard. —Thanks to Larry.

Fermi nodded and refused to meet his eyes again, focussing on his hamburger. He was cutting it up with a knife and fork and chewing slowly, with distaste.

—The logistics are extremely challenging, said Szilard. —We have to send out the samples to multiple labs, the whole testing and comparison process has to be overseen by neutral parties for verification purposes, and when they collect your present sample, Enrico—Glen’s setting it up for Greensboro—there will be a lot of witnesses, some of them probably hostile. But don’t worry. It will go quickly.

—I will submit to this, Leo, said Fermi curtly. —But I don’t wish to discuss it further.

Ben watched as Szilard stood crestfallen. Then his hurt shifted to disappointment, and he trudged around to the other side of the booth and slid in.

—Do they have ice cream? he asked quietly, and reached for a menu. —I want a sundae with hot fudge and whipped cream.

Watching as he trailed a finger down the menu selections, looking over the glasses that were perched halfway down his nose and pretending to concentrate on what he was reading, Ben felt a rare pang of affection for him.

Later Fermi said, —They paid my family to let my body be dug up.

—Don’t judge your relatives for it though, said Ben. —I’m sure Larry offered them so much they couldn’t refuse. They may be giving the money to charity, for all you know. They may be endowing a physics program. We don’t know.

—It’s not that I care about my body, said Fermi. —It’s that Larry knows more about them than I do.

—It’s best for them, said Ben.

Fermi nodded. —But not for me.

Ann discovered a lack of order in the office of the bus. Big Glen’s approach to filing was whimsical: he piled all file folders of the same color together, reds with reds, purples with purples, moss-green with moss-green. But the colors were not a code. They had no meaning.

As she labeled the files and arranged them in the drawers the bus traveled east from Knoxville at its usual sluggish speed of forty and it struck her that she had turned into a secretary. She had demoted herself from librarian to executive assistant, a groupie with secretarial skills.

She sat down heavily next to Oppenheimer, who was reading the news off his laptop, and thought: I joined a cult. Next came the Kool-Aid and the mass suicide.

Fermi wished that he could isolate himself, Ben could tell. But he did not want to be alone with no tasks. He wanted work to do; he wanted to keep busy. And in the bus there was nothing for him to do except respond to his public—which duty he refused—or endure Szilard.

He educated himself with gardening magazines and a few books on contemporary physics. In general, he told Ben, he found them highly speculative, all math and no mechanics. Physicists ceased to value experimentation, he said, and had apparently begun to think of themselves as philosophers or high priests, due in part to the ascendancy of their field of study.

Many of them were concerned with the origins of the universe, said Fermi, and because of this they confused mathematics with theology.

—Hey Ann, said Clint, waving in to her from outside the window. —You want to come slumming and drink with us later? We’re celebrating. Webster’s divorce came through.

—I didn’t even know he was married, she said to the window. Behind Clint she could make out Leslie, looking in at her with arms crossed on her chest. She could not see Webster and she wondered if he was somewhere in a yoga pose, his head beneath his feet, celebrating in his own way.

—What?

—I didn’t know he was married in the first place! she said more loudly.

—Yeah, well. He’s just one of the little people to Queen Ann.

Clint strode out of the frame of the window and she went back to her filing. She moved her ankle slightly in the sandal, stiff and faint. She wondered whether Webster’s wife had been stiff and faint or a