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

—It’s faith! said Mrs. Bradley, shocked.

—Where do they get these things? The glasses we drink out of? asked Szilard.

—I think maybe some of the guards, you know—pick them up and sell them.

—Come with us, said the man on the stage, —join with us and be redeemed. Join and be gathered up in the arms of Jesus.

—Can I ask you what you prefer to be called? asked Mrs. Bradley.

—Robert’s fine. What do the rest of them call me?

—Just, you know. He. Or Him.

Fermi had instructions to go to bed early but he asked Ben to play chess with him instead. They sat across from each other at a table by the window in his room and said nothing as they played, cups of tea at their elbows, the rain falling outside steady and light. Fermi did not touch his tea.

Ben had bought a pack of cigarettes after they climbed out of the lake and occasionally he smoked one in the corridor, thinking of Fermi who waited inside. Fermi was always in the same position when he came back, sitting with his elbows on the table, staring at the board.

But he seemed content.

Back in his motel room, the television droning in the background, Ben put in a call to Ann. She said she was watching a tent revival, that on the screen there were pictures of Oppenheimer, and that on the stage at the revival there were people testifying to Oppenheimer’s holiness. He laughed at that. They laughed together and in the background he could hear Oppenheimer laughing too.

Then he took out his Italian books and foolscap pad and went back to translating Fermi’s letter. It continued to detail the life cycle of the whooping crane, its migration patterns and strange-sounding call, its downward spiral toward extinction and recent efforts at recovery, which pulled its global numbers back into the low hundreds.

When he got tired of his clumsy translation he went to bed and with the covers pulled up to his chin thought of Fermi looking up at the sky from the murky water, Fermi’s invisible birds and the birds that Fermi called common, the birds he did not love because they were not rare.

He thought of these great, white, and common swans leaving their spreading wake behind them as they drew away from him.

They were cutting across the parking lot, Huts flanking them to the left and right and also up front and behind, followers waving from their tents, when headlights appeared in the distance, out on the fringes where there was still room to park.

—They’re coming, said Szilard.

Something made them walk faster, the Huts chirping away with the perimeter guards on their walkie-talkies.

—We got an influx, said Kurt to Szilard finally, as they came up to the bus. —Glen got a call on the cell. Thousands of them.

—Damn it, said Szilard. —I warned him!

He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket as the Huts unlocked the gate to the perimeter fence and they filed through it toward the bus. —Steve? What is this, you don’t call me? … My people? What’s my people? I don’t even know what that means. The Wackenhut staff? No, Steve. I need my information straight from the horse’s mouth. I hear thousands. Is this bullshit?

—We’re blocking the roads as it is, said Larry to Ann, and they sat down at the picnic table as Szilard paced, squawking. —You wouldn’t believe the fines I pay.

She reached for a granola bar from the basket in the center of the table as Szilard’s voice rose. —Four? Four thousand? He shouted indignantly. —More than twice what we have?

—I want to go to sleep, said Oppenheimer, and yawned as he stepped up into the bus. —Tell me about it in the morning.

—Wait! said Larry, and pointed above them as Oppenheimer turned to look. The moon was deep orange.

In the morning Ben stopped at the desk, where a nurse told him none of the doctors would have time to talk to him before he left. She was sorry.

—As long as you know, he told Fermi in the darkroom, —that whenever you want to get out of here, all you have to do is call us. You have the cell phone, and all the numbers are programmed. Even the sat phone in the bus and Glen’s number, in case of emergency. I just want you to understand that you’re only here now because you want to be.

—I know, said Fermi, nodding. He hesitated, and then said softly: —I like it. No one bothers me.

For a split-second Ben caught his eye in the dark and saw lucidity. It struck him that all of this could be pretense; and for a long time Fermi had longed for privacy.

He watched him, speculating, locked in place. Fermi picked a print out of the basin and his hands seemed deft. They moved with subtle authority.

—I wish I could stay with you, he said, testing the waters. —It’s good here. It’s like a high-end hotel. And maybe Ann could come too. It would just be us three.

Neither of them said anything for a while and Fermi did not make eye contact.

—Do you like this? he asked finally, and held up the new print. But it was dark and blurry and Ben had no idea what he was seeing.

Then he thought: nothing, of course. The content is irrelevant.

He couldn’t help smiling at Fermi, but Fermi did not smile at him.

There was disgruntlement. No one felt they could live with the new crowds.

—We’re at seven thousand, said Larry, perched on the side of Oppenheimer’s bed with Tamika seated behind him massaging his shoulders. Dory had got up long before and Oppenheimer was holding court in the bed alone, sitting with his back to the wall, drinking coffee. Big Glen leaned heavily against the wall opposite, his arms folded, next to Ann and Szilard at the door. —You can’t move with that. I don’t know what Bradley was thinking. They may be used to handling volume at these tent revivals,