by Lydia Millet
They had all slept on the couches and floors of the so-called recreational vehicles, which Oppenheimer declined to refer to by that name and insisted they call simply the buses. —There is nothing recreational here, he said. —What a ridiculous moniker. It is a house on wheels.
She was standing outside one of the buses in the morning, drinking coffee and trying to shrug the kinks out of her neck, when she looked up to see a man getting out of a car on the side of the road. The car pulled away and he swung a duffel bag over his shoulder and began to walk toward them.
She couldn’t recall what made him so familiar till he was just a few paces away from her, from the shade of the gray tarp over the scarred particleboard table with the two propane stoves, the coin plate for contributions to the food bill and the crowd of plastic Thermos mugs. By coincidence Oppenheimer was descending from the bus behind her in his wrinkled dress shirt and pants, yawning and stretching out his arms, as the man approached them.
—No fucking way, said Ann under her breath.
—Ann! Language! rebuked Oppenheimer, shocked, and then followed her gaze as she reached to push him back toward the trailer.
It was the weeping man from the hotel lobby.
The desert and the far north were both popular sites for nuclear testing. Even after Project Chariot was abandoned, Alaska was not forgotten by the men running the American nuclear testing program. In the Aleutians, in 1965, 1969, and 1971, three massive nuclear tests were conducted on Amchitka Island. Cannikin, in 1971, was the largest underground test the U.S. ever conducted on domestic soil at five megatons.
Cannikin was detonated with such force that thousands of animals were killed and whole lakes on the island were drained. Seabirds standing on the beach when the ground rose beneath them had their legs driven upward into their bodies, and the eyes of sea otters and seals exploded out of their skulls.
—If you’ll just stay quiet, reasoned Larry, —you can hang out, OK? But don’t be messing around with my man Oppie. Else Big Glen will have to pick you up and throw you out. And believe me, you don’t want to deal with Big Glen.
The weeping man slowly nodded his assent. He was sitting at a picnic table with Glen standing behind him, arms folded, and the others in a semicircle around them. His head was bent and his eyes downcast, as though he was ashamed.
—And what was your name, if you don’t mind? asked Oppenheimer warily, standing a few feet away.
—David, Lord.
David lifted a squirt bottle to his lips—Ann noticed the word Speedracer was printed on it—and delivered a jet of water into his open mouth. His duffelbag, beside him on the table, was covered in buttons. On a Recon Mission from the Kingdom of Heaven, Soldiers of Christ: Armor Up! and The Bible: It’s a Spiritual .357 Magnum. Last Day Warriors. I Don’t Know About You, But Heaven’s MY Neighborhood. Also Viva! Reagan, Reagan-Bush Pioneers, Reagan-Bush: Cut Taxes, Not Defense, Bush/Cheney.
—And as far as you thinking he’s Jesus goes—
—The new messiah, said David quietly. —The deliverer of the righteous, the messenger of the Rapture. The reaper.
—Whatever, said Larry. Ann could tell he was relishing his role as mediator. —I don’t care what your fantasies are. What I’m saying is, try to keep a lid on it. We’ve got work to do here, you know? These guys have a mission.
—World peace, said Ann drily.
—Exactly, said Larry, and nodded.
—I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Matthew 10:34. I am coming soon; hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Revelation 3:11. Jesus did not know he was the son of God. Dr. Oppenheimer, you do not know you are the herald of the end of time.
—No indeed, said Oppenheimer.
—You think your earthly work is peace, but your work has always been war. Your work is oblivion!
—Hey Lar, is there any soy sausage left? called Tamika, coming toward the kitchen area in her bikini and flip-flops.
—It’s in the cooler! yelled Larry, and turned back to his prey. —So David, man, we need you to pretty much keep a lid on the fire and brimstone if you want to stick around here.
—And please, said Oppenheimer, —no touching.
Ben was rinsing the egg off his plate when there was a loud knock on the door. He crossed the room with plate in hand and opened it to two men in uniform, one of whom he recognized from the restaurant. He wondered if he could slam the door but felt frozen, and meanwhile they flashed their badges too quickly for him to read.
—You’re the ones that are following me.
—We apologize for the inconvenience. Is Dr. Fermi in?
Ben was ready to shake his head when Fermi came up behind him and peered out over his shoulder, fully revealed.
—I am Fermi, he said flatly.
—Enrico Fermi, is that correct sir?
—Wait, said Ben. —Show me your badge again before we answer any more questions. Who do you represent?
He leaned in close to read it.
—USAIC Fort Huachuca? What’s that?
—Army Intelligence.
—And what do you want with Fermi?
—We need to take him in for questioning.
—Just a moment, said Ben.
He closed the door on them and reached for the telephone.
The drumming started up before 10 a.m., a solemn and dirgelike thumping in the background. Wind moved the yuccas and the sagebrush and every few minutes a cloud of dust rose and swept through the camp, flapping tents and blowing clothes off the laundry lines.
A few feet away from Ann Tamika was doing jumping jacks. She had cut the legs off her jeans, and now they hung in strips above the knees. She also wore a bikini top that featured the Stars and Stripes. Ann watched her jumping.
—I’m Father Raymond. Would you like to join us at the prayer circle?
It was a gentle, stooped man with a weak chin, a small button nose and a clerical collar, standing a few paces away from them and clutching to his concave chest a Book of Common Prayer and a sheaf of sheet music. His faded baseball cap bore a peace sign.
—What kind of prayer circle? she asked warily, and lifted her metal coffee cup to her mouth for cover.
—We’re not into that, said Larry.
Tamika was breathing hard as she jumped, dreadlock ponytail and breasts flopping. She scissored her legs and raised her arms as she waited for her answer.
—I’ll come, said Ann, shrugging. She had been hunched on a rock for the last half hour listening to the faint drone of Szilard inciting the Peace Camp crowd to join his campaign and staring glassily at Tamika’s movements. She was sore from the deep ridges on the sandstone.
—All are welcome to worship in their own way, said Father Raymond in a near-whisper. —What joins us together is a fervent wish for an end to conflict all over the globe.
—Are you guys gonna sing? asked Tamika, still jumping.
Her flag bikini seemed to stun him: he gazed at it with an expression of wonder.
—We will sing hymns, yes, said Father Raymond. —All are welcome.
Under the gray tarp of the kitchen tent people sat in a circle on blankets and cushions. A couple beat drums with their hands, and a teenage girl half-heartedly shook a tambourine.
—Uh, the tambourine? That’s not really working for you, honey, Clint told her. —No offense. What’s your name?
—Nikki, she said, and let the tambourine rest as Clint sat down beside her and she smiled up at him.
—Big Daddy gonna—whoooo!—show you how to play, said Clint in a hearty voice, leaning in close.
—She’s real shy, said Loni, in a warning tone.
—All right! announced Father Raymond, and smiled beatifically. —I’d like to open our prayer session today with a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi.
—Pervert!
Nikki turned to Clint and punched him in the face.
—I can’t believe you have the gall to come into my clients’ house, said Ted. He strode into the
room officiously, suit jacket flapping for all the world, Ben thought, as though he was high-powered. —This is an egregious violation of their civil rights. Ever heard of Posse Comitatus?
—Calm down, sir, said the Army Intelligence man. —We’re here under the authority of HR 3162, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
Ted turned to Ben.
—The PATRIOT Act.
The other man smiled hopefully, as though offering up a gift. —He’s not under arrest. We just want to question him in a secure environment.
—You’ve been following us for days and that doesn’t constitute coercion? squeaked Ted. —It’s ridiculous. And you argued in your brief that my clients are dead. Now you’re here asking to take a dead man in for questioning? Here what I’m going to do. I’m going to call a friend of mine at the FBI Field Office in Albuquerque. Find out the Bureau’s position on this.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed.
—That won’t be necessary, hurried the second man. —We will leave.
Ben let them out the front door and as he was closing it behind them the first man turned and whispered, far too close to his face, —But we’ll be back.
—All we are saying, is give peace a chance, sang the prayer group, swaying with arms raised over their heads.
Ann was mouthing the words without emitting a sound and her hands were at her sides, hanging uselessly. She looked over the shoulders of her swaying companions to Szilard, who was pacing with his cell phone beside the bus. On the threshold of the bus Oppenheimer sat smoking, porkpie hat shading his face, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. She stepped out from under the shade of the tarp and walked toward the scientists.
A freckled, broad-faced woman stepped in front of her, wearing glasses. She was frumpy in cargo pants and a pair of well-worn leather sandals, but she carried a small, neat laptop slung over her shoulder, and held a sleek microphone.
—I’m an oral historian affiliated with a larger research project, she said. —A group of archaeologists that are studying this site. Name’s Dory Greer. May I talk to you?
A few minutes later Ted the lawyer had Szilard on speakerphone.
—They’re not Army Intelligence, said Ted. —At least, Fort Huachuca had never heard of them when I called. They may be connected or they may not. My guess is they wanted to take Dr. Fermi into custody to use as a bargaining chip.
—You need to come join us, Enrico, came Szilard’s voice over the speaker. —You won’t be safe until you do.
—Why would he be safe with you, Leo? asked Ben.
—We’re hiring bodyguards.
—Anyway, I just came when Ben called me as a courtesy. I’m off the case, said Ted.
—I am now in a position to offer you a fifty-thousand dollar retainer, said Szilard.
—Oh.
—Enrico’s coming, announced Szilard, pocketing his cell phone as Ann approached the bus with Dory the oral historian. —Who are you?
—Dory Greer. We’re working with the Shoshone and other tribes, studying the rock art and graffiti. In the culverts?
—Our work is what you should be documenting, said Szilard. —I will be glad to grant interviews.
—Szilard, I don’t think that lawyer is competent, murmured Oppenheimer, his face shadowed in the dark doorway. He was sitting at the top of the step, cigarette ember glowing and metal glinting on his knees. Szilard’s laptop was balanced on his lap.
—I hired him for his face, said Szilard. —He looks honest.
—Ted? asked Ann. —He looks like Jim Nabors. You know. Gomer Pyle?
They stared at her blankly.
—Whatcha doing? she asked Oppenheimer.
—Email.
—Since when?
—Leo’s teaching me.
—He has responsibilities, said Szilard. —To his fans.
—You’re kidding me.
—Szilard started a web page, said Oppenheimer, as Ann craned her neck to look over his shoulder. —See? There’s a picture of me!
Szilard shrugged. —Larry bought us a digital camera.
Dory drifted off toward a tribal elder hovering at the food table and out of the corner of her eye Ann saw David creeping slowly nearer, stopping periodically to lift his binoculars and scribble.
—He’s getting closer, she said.
—It’s OK, said Szilard. —We established a minimum allowable distance. Big Glen’s monitoring it, and he has a sidearm.
—What?
—A gun.
Ann gaped at him.
—I can’t believe you, she said finally.
He pointed. Big Glen stood beside his coffin-shaped one-man tent with a bulge at his hip, concealed under a windbreaker.
—I thought he wouldn’t lift a hand in anger, she said.
—He has to look the part though.
A roar of noise pulled along the road toward them and Ann squinted past David, hunched down and turning with his specs to the noise, to make out a long column of bright all-terrain vehicles approaching along the road shoulder, clouds of dust in their wake.
—Oh no! cried Loni, coming up to the bus with a crowd behind her and a wadded dishtowel in her hands. —It’s the off-road vehicle guys! They’re very violent. They act out. And I mean, sometimes there’s hundreds of them.
—Even thousands, said Clint.
He had a swollen, red-black eye where the teenage girl’s fist had landed.
—This is public land, said Szilard pompously. —We welcome all of our fellow Americans.
—I don’t mean to be unloving? said Loni. —But they’re pigs.
—I got a cousin who’s into it, said Clint. —Every year they go to these dunes in California to party and they get drunk and high and run over their own kids by mistake till they’re dead.
Before she could retreat the all-terrain vehicles were pulling into the camp, around them on both sides, coming in further, in hordes it seemed to her, more and more surging past, sending up dust clouds that choked her and filled her eyes with stinging grit. Some of the drivers were children.
—I’m going in, she said, and Oppenheimer got up with his laptop and stepped back inside the bus. She followed, closing the thin door behind them and failing to shut out the noise of roaring engines.
After Ted left Fermi sat on the couch for a long time, his hands clasped politely in his lap. Finally Ben sat down beside him.
—We have to go now, said Ben.
—I don’t want to, said Fermi.
—I know.
Peace Camp was a hub for civil disobedience actions while the Nevada Test Site was in full swing. Between 1986 and April 1994, for instance, government documents indicate that five hundred and thirty-six American Peace Test demonstrations took place near the Site. They involved more than thirty-seven thousand participants and resulted in nearly sixteen thousand arrests.
When testing in Nevada went subcritical the settlement at Peace Camp dwindled. Soon after that it was more or less abandoned.
Ann curled up on Szilard’s bed, the wall unit air conditioner humming beside her.
When she woke up the sun had set and she could smell smoke and barbecue and gasoline. Competing musics played, thudding boomboxes and pounding drums. She looked out through the bus bedroom’s small sliding window and saw fires dotting the desert in the dark, tall pyres with ORVs parked around them and men hunkered down beside them in silhouette, glittering beer cans rising in slow arcs from waist to chin.
—It reminds me of Burning Man! said Tamika, bursting in the door clad in a flowered shawl, balancing three paper plates. —Aren’t you totally starving, you poor girl? I saved you a soy dog.
—I am hungry, said Ann. —Thank you.
Sitting up she turned off the blasting AC and took one of the plates gratefully as Tamika sat down beside her on the flimsy mattress. They huddled close in the refrigerated air and ate with legs crossed on the foam, sinking. On the dingy ligh
t-blue carpet stood a tortoiseshell floor lamp. Ann leaned forward and pulled its cord, and warm light shone down on her paper plate through green and brown panes.
—They’re having a protest tonight, said Tamika. —You know those people from the Marshall Islands? The ones whose parents and grandparents got bombed and all that? They called and said they’re flying here in a plane! Larry’s getting kegs delivered from a party place. Kegs and ice. Plus there’s a bunch of Indians coming too.
—What kind of protest? asked Ann, reflecting that she had never liked sauerkraut as much as she did now.
—What did Leo call it. That thing that debutantes have? Like a coming-out party?
—In the middle of nowhere? asked Ann with her mouth full of dog.
—See but Leo’s got all the local TV stations coming in!
Fermi hardly spoke as they drove and Ben could not bring himself to break the silence. Ahead there was Ann, who needed him to keep driving.
—How about we stop and get dinner, he said finally.
—That will be fine, said Fermi politely.
—You know, I would have let you stay back at the house if I could.
—Why couldn’t you?
—You’re not safe all alone, Enrico. You know that now. You could disappear overnight and we might never see you again.
—It would not be a tragedy, said Fermi quietly.
Ann followed Tamika out of the bus only because it was cloying. She had started to feel she was breathing her own recycled breath, sweating into her own skin. She did not want to be outside with the crowds, the off-road vehicle enthusiasts and Deadheads and bikers and spinners with their colored balls, but unless she decided to hitchhike she had no other choice. She would look for a beer of her own to drink, she decided, and maybe she would ask Oppenheimer for one of his cigarettes. Maybe she would come to understand why he liked them.
She felt a lift at the thought.
A big truck was pulled up beside the bus, open at the back, and stocky men were unloading beer kegs. In the distance, beyond a row of campfires, a firework burst in the air. White rockets showered down above a row of ATVs and Harleys. Someone was stringing Christmas lights across the food tent and Big Glen was standing in a guard stance outside the bus, his feet wide apart, hands on hips. Beside him sat Webster on a yoga mat, meditating beside a flickering votive candle, and a few feet from him she could make out David, squatting in the dirt in his usual stance, a scope lifted to his eyes.
