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

dark could not go on forever, even if, Ann thought, it was better than being at camp surrounded by the others. She touched the frayed straps of the chair beside her thigh, the frayed nylon threads stiff and sharp at the end, and reflected that she would not know this chair by daylight: she only knew it at night. Its colors were a mystery to her and yet they pressed against her cool skin.

The black limbs of the trees against the sky had stayed the same now for some time, unmoving, and the stars had not changed either. She was getting impatient with these unchanging trees and stars, as though the story of her night had stopped and was resting. But stasis could not be tolerated forever. Finally she had to do something new.

She got up slowly, testing the weight on her foot, standing on it for a few seconds to see if it hurt, and then started to walk back. Ahead there was little movement: most of the people had gone to bed. Good.

You always had to return to social life, she thought, defeated, because that was where events took place: but it was also the only place tragedy happened. People were taught to love themselves and each other instead of the world, themselves and each other and nothing else, believing all truths were their own. This was what had gone so dead wrong.

The morning was newer when you slept outside than inside, Ben thought as he woke up to birdsong from the meadow edge, his back aching from the hard ground, the edges of his sleeping bag wet with dew. Each morning was the only morning.

Shaking her awake, stooped over close, Big Glen was too big, mammoth, rough and stubbly. She pulled away from his grip on her shoulder and sat up and back, clutching sheets. Oppenheimer’s bed was comfortable. It had cradled her. She was not used to comfort recently.

—What?

—It’s Dr. Leo on the cell phone. He says the Army has the documents after all and the judge said it has to hand them over. The Army has Oppenheimer’s and Fermi’s fingerprints but not Dr. Leo’s but he says he expected that because he wasn’t exactly an employee of the Engineering District when they started the fingerprinting plus he wasn’t ever at Los Alamos. But so anyway the Army has five business days to give them to us. He says we won!

—Good, said Ann, and slouched down in the covers again. —That’s good but why does it mean I have to be woken up at—

She glanced at the digital clock on the indoor-outdoor carpet.

—6:13 in the morning? Isn’t it like 3 a.m. where he is?

—He wants you to start organizing the press conference. He wants you to fax him a list of all the numbers—

—Tough, said Ann, and turned her face to the wall. —It can wait.

Glen breathed slowly for a few seconds beside her and then got up and walked away.

They got back onto the trail in the early afternoon and it was late afternoon when they reached the cabin, a wooden building beside a waterfall with bunk beds, a dining room and a kitchen with a stone floor. There was a cook, a tanned, muscular college girl and an older man who did the cleaning and heavy work, emptying the cans from the outhouse and hauling out garbage.

—We have a very large group staying here, said the cook, —but there are thirty-five of them so there should be enough beds left for the four of you. The others will be back around dinnertime. It’s spaghetti. Make yourselves comfortable and just set up your beds wherever you find an empty bunk.

When the first sounds of the crowd reached his ears Ben was sitting beside Oppenheimer and Dory on the front porch. Oppenheimer was wearing his porkpie hat, smoking a pipe, and cautiously perusing a dog-eared romance called Sweet Jezebel. He had found it on the cabin’s one shelf of books.

—It’s them, said Dory.

—We can go, said Ben urgently. —We still have time to get away, if we grab our things and head down the mountain on the other side of the falls.

—I’m tired, said Oppenheimer, shrugging, and continued to read Sweet Jezebel.

But when the followers caught sight of them and teemed onto the porch—first a tall man with a blond beard carrying a cooler, then some chunky frat boys in T-shirts stamped with pictures of bikini-clad women—they were feverish. It was a euphoric mass with a tinge of hysteria, less a crowd than a mob, exuding a frayed energy that made Ben nervous instantly. The edges of the mob felt raw and uncontrolled, spun out by afternoon drinking and testosterone. They knew the names of the scientists, even Ben’s name and Dory’s, as though a mythology was in place and they had studied it. But the scientists did not recognize any of them and neither did Ben.

Fermi had been napping on his bunk but suddenly he was with them, borne aloft on the shoulders of two large men. Ben looked up to see them coming out the front door with him, the screen banging behind them. Fermi looked anxious, even panicked, clutching their shirt collars and shaking his head in protest as they whooped and spun him around.

Ben could hardly tell what was happening. Was something happening? There was motion but he did not know how to interpret it. The followers were clustered so tightly around Oppenheimer that he was hidden from view, and Dory, clutching her camcorder and filming with shaky hands, was huddled in a corner of the porch beside the door. He saw the cook inside, peering out through the screen with a yellow apron on, holding a wooden spoon.

—OK, let him down now, he said to the men carrying Fermi, and grabbed one of their arms to get their attention. —Put him down! He’s not a toy.

But they didn’t seem to hear him. Instead they were bounding off the porch, Fermi precarious