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

—The anomaly? said Szilard. —Yes they will. With the fingerprints and Fermi’s DNA test—Glen, did you set up the next press conference yet?

Big Glen, hunched over the campfire with a cup of coffee, glanced up guiltily.

—We were waiting to get more direction from you, he said gruffly, shooting an accusing look at Ann.

—You’re kidding! We have to move on this immediately. Are you joking with me?

—Without you, Leo, said Ann, —we’re just useless.

Szilard looked slightly mollified as he gestured imperiously at the Huts to take his luggage inside. Then he sat down at the end of a picnic bench and grubbed around on the table until he found a mixed bag of cookies.

—Of course, we may want to combine it with the march on Washington, he conceded, and discarded an oatmeal raisin carelessly to grab a chocolate chip.

Later she brushed her teeth at the edge of the trees because Szilard was monopolizing the bathroom. She rinsed her mouth with water from a plastic cup and was standing staring at nothing when she noticed Father Raymond in the distance, saying an evening prayer with a small congregation kneeling in the grass in front of him. She walked over slowly, toothbrush and plastic cup in hand, skirting the chain-link fence that surrounded the bus.

—Once again, as the end of the day falls upon us and upon all of God’s creatures under this wide, great dome of a sky, we beg to gain strength in our sleep, to fortify us for the new dawn. We beg for the will to help make peace a shining force in all of our lives, for the fortitude to keep steadfast in our faith that all is not lost and that brotherhood and goodness can still reign on this sad and battered earth. And now please join me in the Lord’s Prayer.

She mouthed the words with the rest of them, looking at their closed eyes, and was reminded of a saint Ben had described to her. It was a saint his mother had made a pilgrimage to see when she was a little girl, whose sparkling image she had brought home depicted on a postcard and kept to show to her son many years later. The saint had been exhumed on the whim of some potentate in the church who had seen a vision of her purity. Miraculously it was found that her body never decomposed: her face and body were pure and unlined. She was buried and exhumed again and still there was little decay.

Finally the corpse was coated in wax, laid in a glass box like Snow White and put on display. This was in a church in southern France. The saint’s large white eyes were closed but still luminous, and she was known far and wide as an incorruptible.

—For thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.

The congregation rose with wet patches on the knees of their jeans and skirts, said quiet goodnights to Father Raymond and wandered off toward their tents and cars and vans.

—I have noticed, said Father Raymond to Ann, closing his book and zipping up his pale windbreaker against the evening, —that more and more of the followers here are turning to God. Have you noticed that?

—What I see is more and more of followers joining us because of their religion, said Ann. —It seems to me the tone has changed, the new people are on some kind of crusade. The scientists don’t understand it and neither do I. I mean these are secular men.

—Would you like to walk and talk?

—I have some wine over at the picnic table if you’d like a glass.

He was patted down by the Huts as they passed through the gate in the chain-link. When he raised his right arm, holding the Bible, its pages fell open and dried flowers fluttered out.

—I’ll get those! said Ann apologetically. She lent down to pick them up off the grass, but they were old and turned to dust in her fingers.

—Don’t worry, said Father Raymond, —there are plenty more where those came from.

—This red one, said Ann, —what is it?

—I never learn the names of flowers.

They sat down across from each other at the picnic table and she poured him wine into a chipped mug. He took it gratefully.

—My feeling is, he said, —the names people give to things are their own names.

—What do you mean?

—For example, you say that the scientists are secular men. This is what they say to themselves, but it is not necessarily the way that others see them.

—I guess not, she said. —I guess they can’t choose how other people see them.

—None of us can, said Father Raymond, and drank. —It’s an illusion we live with, that we can control the way we’re seen. But in fact the way we feel that we are and the way we exist before others, these phenomena are distinct. They are separate apparitions.

—That’s sad.

—It is sad only as long as you are afraid of it.

Ann decided to pour herself a glass of wine despite the taste of toothpaste in her mouth. It had already started to fade anyway.

—Raymond! Working for the cause these days? called Szilard from the bathroom window. His face was framed as though by a porthole: he was a man in a ship, out to sea. Darkness surrounded him, tossing.

—Always, brother Leo.

—I’ll be with you two in a minute, said Szilard, assuming that they, like all people, were waiting for him.

It was a quiet meal, as if the baptism was all the mob had wanted and now they were content. In the dining hall the blond man and the woman with the polka dot hat brought neatly folded piles of dry clothes to the scientists, who accepted them without comment, almost meekly, heads bowed. Oppenheimer went into the bunkroom to change and came back transformed, sporting a purple T-shirt that said LONG LIVE THE LIZARD KING. Fermi put