Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

  —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 reminded him of the Tyrolean gear he had worn for his Alpine hikes in the 1930s.

  They had walked for hours and were sitting beneath a canopy of oak and hickory trees a few paces off the trail, eating sandwiches and apples, when Fermi looked up, vigilant, his head cocked.

  —We are not alone, he said. —Be quiet.

  Ben followed his gaze and saw a deer in the shade of thin, close-growing trees, and then a fawn beside it. As he stared they moved a little closer: then there was a faint shout and they bolted. He turned and squinted and could barely make out a figure a few hundred yards down the trail. Soon he saw more of them, a dark mass of figures behind the first one. The noise was growing.

  They were legion.

  —Oh no, said Oppenheimer. —It’s them.

  Dory lifted her camcorder and pointed it at the far-off crowd.

  —Let’s get out of here, said Fermi, stuffing the lunch remnants into his backpack. —I have a compass and I think I can get us to the cabin bushwhacking.

  They took off after him through the trees and down the hill of a steep ravine, leaving the trail and the crowd behind them. Ben looked at his feet as they descended, sidestepping. He watched his stiff industrial running shoes crushing leaves, stomping through mountain laurel. They were out of place there.

  Ann sat outside the bus by the fire, her lame foot up on a folding chair. She stared up at the stars, obscured by artificial light.

  Clint and others from Tokyo were playing cards at a small table outside the second bus, parked inside the perimeter fence. They hunched over, shutting out the world with their backs. Out of necessity they maintained a respectful attitude toward Larry and the scientists, but the others in the first bus had become objects of their scorn. A bunker mentality had settled among them.

  The wind shifted and she had to lean out of the column of smoke, move her weak foot off the chair and then rise. She hobbled away from the ring of fire coughing and squinting and saw Sheila waving from across the highway, so she lifted an arm and waved back briefly. She wished she was up in the mountains of Virginia with the others, far from the trailers and the fences and the Huts patrolling.

  She limped slowly outside the fence into a fringe of trees. She wanted to be clear of the lights of the road and the camp, of the fluorescent seep of the Walmart parking lot. It was impossible to walk far on the weak ankle but she wanted to see the sky straight above her, to make out the stars and guess how many eons away they were, how deep and far in time.

  The give of soil and pine needles beneath her feet was a relief from the parking lot.

  —I brought this for you, said a man behind her, and she shrieked, jumping as she turned. But it was Webster, smiling and apologetic, holding up a frayed lawn chair. —Sorry!

  —No, I’m just—

  —Of course you’re nervous, I’m really sorry. After what happened to you I shouldn’t have surprised you like that. Anyways. I thought you might want to rest.

  He bent over and set down the chair carefully in the humus and dead leaves, grinding the aluminum legs into the ground for stability.

  —I heard your divorce came through.

  She sat down in the chair as he shuffled around to stand in front of her.

  —Oh, yeah, he said softly. —She was a nice lady. I mean, she is.

  —Are you sorry?

  —You know, she found another guy she liked better, said Webster, and shrugged. —People choose.

  She looked up at him but could not see his face well in the dark. The trees barely swayed above them.

  —Anyways, I’ll be getting back, he said. —You can just leave the chair here when you’re done, I’ll pick it up in the morning.

  —Thank you, she said again, and did not watch as he walked past her and out of the trees again.

  She could see the stars now, faintly, through the gaps in the branches above. It was astounding, when she thought about it that not everyone among the two thousand wanted to sit here, away from each other, in the quiet dark with the air that whispered through conifers, seeing the light all those impossible light years away. It was astounding that they stayed close to the vehicles, close to the asphalt and the fumes. She remembered reading about couples who took their children power-boating on Lake Powell, the massive reservoir in the desert above Glen Canyon Dam. They let their small children swim in the water and the gasoline fumes until one of the children actually asphyxiated and died right there, in the middle of having fun in the artificial lake with gasoline fumes floating along the surface.

  The mothers and fathers of the children did not think that bathing their children in the exhaust from the boats was the wrong thing to do. The exhaust stank and grayed the air and slicked the water with a rainbow of oils, but until the child suddenly died that had not bothered them. They were vacationing.

  Fermi had not found the trail or the cabin again and they had not brought their tents, so they unrolled their sleeping bags onto the dewy grass in a small meadow.

  —We will find it tomorrow, promised Fermi.

  Dory wandered off into the trees with a flashlight, leaving the men to arrange themselves around the pile of backpacks and boots.

  —So, said Ben to Oppenheimer when they lay down, —where is this all going?

  —After the march on Washington, said Oppenheimer, —I don’t know. I just follow orders from Leo.

  —What’s it for?

  —What’s anything for? We’re here. We have to do something with our time. We don’t have our families anymore.

  —That must be the hardest.

  —It is. That and the world gotten old and ugly.

  —I’m sorry you have to go through this.

  —I’m just waiting, said Oppenheimer softly.

  —What are you waiting for?

  —I don’t know yet.

  Sitting in the 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 above them, and heading toward the waterfall with others streaming after, cheering. Then the people around Oppenheimer lifted him up too, and before Ben could even reach out to try to stop them they were taking him off away. Its front cover ripped off, Sweet Jezebel was left face-down, mashed, spine broken on the wooden slats of the porch where Oppenheimer had been. His pipe was still perched precariously on the wooden railing and his hat had fallen into the shrubbery.

  After a panicked glance at each other Ben and Dory went jogging after them, stunned and speechless at first. Then Dory let her camcorder fall to her side to call after the men: —What are you doing? You can’t do that to him! We can call the police! Are you even listening?

  Ben caught up to the men carrying Oppenheimer but could not catch Oppenheimer’s attention, and pulling on sleeves and jabbing at ribs had no effect: no one even turned to look at him. Then they were scrambling over a flat, jutting slab of slate-gray rock, looking down at the whitewater a few feet away to the left, watching it course down the mountainside, sparkling in the calm light of dusk. There was a purple cast to the water, reflecting the eastern sky.

  —Here! There’s a shallow pool over here! called a woman in a broad straw hat with a polka dot band, and the men bearing Fermi splashed over to the right, stepping on a chain of rocks through shallow rivulets. The others followed them.

  —What are you doing? yelled Ben, but the sound of the rushing was loud and no one was listening anyway. He reached up and grabbed at the back of Oppenheimer’s shirt, tugging it and saying, —Just kick out at them! I’ll help you get down! but Oppenheimer did not seem to hear him. Instead he seemed to be calmly gazing at the horizon above all their heads, where the sun was setting dimly behind a thin streak of gray cloud. He gazed as though there was nothing to be done, as though all he could do was look at the sky. Fermi was twisting on the shoulders of his captors and hitting their shoulders, trying to get down.

  —Let’s put them in! called the blond man.

  The scientists were being lifted down and carried, more hands on their bodies than there was room, and then dropped in the shallow pool of water above the falls. Fermi looked rigid with fear as they put him down but Oppenheimer’s face was tolerant, as though nothing anymore had the power to surprise him.

  —Repentance is yours! I herewith baptize you in water, said the blond bearded man, and dripped water from his hand onto Fermi’s balding head.

  —Oh no, said Ben.

  But he saw that Fermi was relieved: at least no one was trying to drown him. He stood in the rocky pool blank-faced, staring through the legs of the crowd around him.

  Dory hesitated but then raised the camcorder to record the event, apparently satisfied that there was not going to be further violence.

  —Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, said the blond man, and tipped water onto Oppenheimer’s head as the woman in the straw hat poured water on Fermi.

  There was no escaping it, thought Ben. He was glad Ann was safe at the bus.

  —Now you are ready! In the light of your repentance we hereby baptize you Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, said the woman in the straw hat, and then the crowd was clapping and hooting, and Fermi and Oppenheimer stood beside each other in the shallow pool, soak
ed and tired.

  A bell rang and the cook’s voice called them faintly to dinner. The people wandered away leaving Ben and Dory alone with Fermi and Oppenheimer, still standing in the pool where the baptists had left them. Ben went and knelt on the rock ledge, leaning down to offer them a hand up.

  —I don’t think we brought any towels but you can wear my big sweater, said Dory to Oppenheimer as he stepped out.

  He shook his head.

  —No, you need it yourself, he said, his teeth chattering. —I’ll be fine.

  —It’s fall, said Dory. —You could catch a cold!

  —Americans are mentally disturbed, said Fermi, wiping the back of his hand over his wet forehead. His long nose was dripping. —All of them. They have mental problems.

  —You may have a point there, said Ben.

  —They are hysterical, said Fermi.

  —Drugs, said Ben.

  —Should we leave? asked Dory.

  —I’m not going down the mountain in wet clothes, said Oppenheimer. —I want to be warm. And sleep.

  —Let’s eat some spaghetti and talk about it, said Ben.

  —Do you want to press charges? At least we could sue them in civil court, said Dory.

  —Forget it, said Oppenheimer wearily, as they headed toward the cabin. His wet leather shoes squeezed water onto the rocks.

  By the turn of the millennium, nuclear weapons production facilities occupied over three thousand square miles of U.S. territory.

  Szilard was flushed with victory when he got in from the airport, striding up to the picnic table flanked by two Huts who were carrying his briefcase and overnight bag. —This is the linchpin! he told Ann. —We will be triumphant!

  —Aren’t you counting your chickens?

  —The only remaining hurdle to our widespread acceptance has been jumped.

  —Omigod, said Sheila, standing up. —Dr. Leo. It’s such a total honor to meet you, my name’s Sheila, and she stuck out her hand, which Szilard flapped by the fingers and then dropped quickly. —I’ve been following you since Albuquerque.