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

She did not think of religion when she thought of adoration. Religion was a place that feeling went, but it was not feeling itself. She meant something that was not religion and also was not love, because there was no reflection of the self in it. At least there was no enlarging of the self.

In the face of the unnameable the self became very small, and then it t turned buoyant.

—The test was a match, said Szilard softly to Oppenheimer and Ben. —Fermi’s DNA and the corpse of Fermi. I haven’t told him.

For a few moments Ben considered the possibility that Szilard was lying, that in fact everything Szilard ever said was a lie, with elaborately fabricated documentation. Then he realized it did not matter what he thought.

—No one’s going to believe it, Leo, he said.

He was standing with Oppenheimer beside a picnic table at the rest stop, smoking. Two burly Huts guarded them, telling loud racist jokes. Szilard sat on the table, his feet on the bench, his laptop on his lap, fingers on the keyboard.

—We have independent third-party verification, said Szilard, eyes scanning the screen rapidly. —From four different sources. We subcontracted four separate analyses at four separate labs. There was oversight. They all got the same results!

—It doesn’t matter, Leo, said Ben. —No one’s going to buy it. It won’t mean anything to them. You can’t prove what no one wants to believe. If some guy stepped up to a microphone and claimed there was proof that little green men had come down and killed Elvis, people would just laugh. Even if he had the proof. You see?

—But that’s ridiculous.

—I’m telling you, the media won’t buy it and neither will the public.

—That’s where you’re wrong, said Szilard. —People want to believe. Didn’t you ever see The X-Files?

Clint came up to her while she was in a conversation with Sheila. She had started to dread his approach, but she never found it easy to raise her voice or speak harshly.

—So, you still stoop to talk to the little people.

—If you resent it all so much why don’t you just take off?

Exasperated was the best she could do, though she still wanted to slap his face. If she had been the bitch he thought she was, she thought, she would have called over the nearest Hut and had him dragged off screaming.

—I mean no one is keeping you here, she went on. —And you can stop with the attitude, too. None of this was my idea. I’m not the boss.

—Come on, I’m just pickin’, he said, and punched her arm with a gesture that was supposed to pass for light. But it hurt and she felt the sharpness of his hairy knuckles and put her hand on the bruised-feeling place. He leered. He had taken to wearing a white ribbon on the end of his greasy ponytail, tied into a bow. It hung down his chest now, a bizarre complement to his greasy black leather cap. —Dontcha even got a sense of humor?

In eastern North Carolina Szilard did campus recruitment, taking Oppenheimer along for a mascot. Together they made the rounds: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, Duke University. Often Szilard would make his stump speech and then Oppenheimer would step up to the microphone and pronounce a sentence or two. It was all that was required of him.

The caravan gained in numbers, camped out in a moist small-treed private forest outside Durham. Permission had been given by a wealthy local landowner with ties to a fast-food chain, so the caravan waited with its generators and satellite dishes for Szilard to decide it was time to move on.

—His press conference about the DNA was a failure, said Ben, coming back to camp after a day in downtown Raleigh.

Ann was entering phone messages into a database on the computer in the bus while Dory opened fan mail for Oppenheimer. You rule the starry night king of Kings lord of Lords. Pray for my son he has spina bifida. Can you sign this piece of cloth with Ballpoint Pen and send it back, I will keep it with me every waking moment.

Having Dory help her with menial tasks made Ann feel like a little woman, like one of a huddle of submissive females enlisted to back up the great men. For that reason she preferred to work alone. But lately Dory came toward her in the morning saying —How can I help?, asking questions and bustling around till she was given a task.

—How do you mean, a failure?

—There was a good turnout but I don’t think anyone’s going to take it seriously. I mean how could they?

Fermi decided to lead a weekend hike along the Appalachian Trail. He would not be dissuaded: it was all he wanted.

The leaves of trees were beginning to turn yellow and a coolness descended at night. He had read that there were wooden cabins to sleep in up near the peaks and bright waterfalls flowing over smooth stones.

While the other scientists went to court in Albuquerque he would be breathing the air of the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains, he told Ann. But then Oppenheimer wanted to go into the hills too and Szilard was forced to fly out West by himself.

Four of them went to hike the trail, the two scientists and Ben and Dory. Ann had to stay behind at camp because of her ankle, which was not yet strong enough for mountains. Szilard had insisted that the hikers take Huts along themselves for protection, but once he was gone Fermi ignored the suggestion. —I do not hike with bodyguards, he said resolutely.

She watched them get ready to leave, feeling left out. Ben packed two day’s worth of nuts and dried fruit and Oppenheimer took a walking stick with a carved wooden parrot’s head for a handle. Fermi was sporting an absurd pair of Bavarian lederhosen he’d found in a vintage clothing store. Apparently the lederhosen