Curse the Names

by Robert Arellano

  I sat at the PC. I was a dot of light burned onto an empty screen, and there were all these other dots burning around me. I could no longer distinguish myself from the static all over me. I knew that all of us together made a code, spelled a name. Connect the dots.

  I closed my eyes and I saw them. I saw the blood tech and the bandage on the crook of my elbow. I saw the Johnson boy with his axe. I saw Ritchie Motherfucker and the wall of water. I saw the smoke, the rolling wall of smoke. That’s the one thing that was mine. I have to warn them.

  Monday, July 15

  When I got to the community health center, the receptionist was on the phone. I asked the unsmiling records manager to check for a blood-draw order and she asked for my ID.

  The records manager went back to the file cabinets and I watched her rifle efficiently through the middle drawer. When she got to the right file, she pulled it out and flipped it open. Her mouth and nose pinched like she smelled something foul and she peered over the edge of the folder at me. What note had the blood tech left? What trouble was recorded there to make the records manager look so dour?

  She went into the back office of the supervisor, another beauty-marked ogre with a beehive hairdo. A conversation ensued which I could not hear, but with my nerves already edgy as hell, plus the gesticulations of the records manager and her supervisor and the frequent glances through plate glass at me, I felt like an offending bug pinned on a tray. I rubbed the painful welt on my chest.

  The supervisor came out. The records manager stood beside and a little behind her boss, as if she felt she might be needed for backup.

  “Mr. Oberham?”

  “Yes. Oberhelm.”

  Both ladies grimaced. “Could I see some ID, please?”

  “I just showed it to—”

  “I’m going to need to see your ID.” So again I pulled out my wallet. The supervisor studied name, address, birth date, and again glared at my face. “Are you sure this is you?”

  “Of course it’s me. Doesn’t it look like me?”

  The supervisor glanced around. She didn’t want to say what she had to say aloud in the reception area, but she didn’t want to invite me back to her office, either. She just wanted me to leave.

  “Let’s step over here.” She took me by the elbow and got me in the eye of the automatic exit doors. Open they slid, which made it natural, however awkward our interposition, to step through the vestibule into the blinding light of the parking lot together. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Why not?”

  “These health records have been sealed.”

  “But they’re my files. I can sign.”

  “Even if you are who you say you are, there’s a lien on this file. These records have been sealed by the county medical examiner.”

  “I don’t understand.” As I said it, her words rang in my mind: medical examiner. It’s the euphemism for coroner. “They’re saying I’m dead?”

  “Your file has been closed.”

  “This is preposterous—I’m standing right here!”

  “You have to clear this up with the county. I can’t do anything for you now.”

  I stood in the clinic parking lot. Nobody could help me. I had nowhere to go.

  Driving. Driving was the way to stay awake. I got in the Spider and turned left onto 68. I stopped at Blue Heron Brewery and asked the ale wife for a sample.

  Back in the Spider my cell vibrated. Caller ID said OGAWA H. Just seeing his name there was like a greeting from a time not too long ago, before everything had started going to shit, so I answered.

  “Hello, Harumi-san.”

  “James Oberhelm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank god! You still have that pen I gave you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, I forgot to thank you. It’s a very nice—”

  “Would you please come to my house immediately and bring it with you?”

  I drove back through the valley and up the Hill. When I got to Ogawa’s house, he was in the doorway leaning on a walker, his wife also supporting him. “You have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank god!” He slowly struggled to his chair in the living room and I followed. I sat across from him in the same chair I had used before. After Ogawa was settled, his wife sat down on a sofa that faced the space between us. The great chief criticality officer said, “I don’t know how I could have let this happen. I unintentionally gave you something of great personal value that also may be hazardous to you.”

  “The pen?”

  “It is an atomic pen. We made a handful of prototypes in the 1960s for the Parker Company. There is a brief scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where one of the astronauts floats with the pen in a weightless chamber. As I was a consultant on the film, Mr. Kubrick made me a gift of one of the prototypes. When I told my wife to bring a boxed gift from the shelf in my library, I never considered that she may have picked up the pen, which I had taken out to look at that morning.”

  He glanced at his wife and for the first time I could see that she had been crying.

  “I left it on my desk instead of replacing it in the safe. Only now did I discover it missing. In a metal safe it does no harm …” He frowned, staring at my shirt.

  I looked down and there it was in my breast pocket, right over where the welt was rising. I pulled it out, walked over to him, and handed him the pen.

  He put it gently down on the table. “Please, sit down,” he said.

  “I’m afraid … my clothes are not very clean.”

  “No formalities, please. Have a seat.”

  I sat.

  “I am terribly sorry that this happened. I cannot explain it. You of course have excellent medical care through the Lab, but I would personally like to urge you to see a specialist. With your permission, I will call to make the appointment …”

  At that moment, with Ogawa and his wife in their living room, behind walls thickly insulated and a floor plush-carpeted by a luxurious retirement, I felt so far away from the chaos of Los Alamos—a Los Alamos that Ogawa had helped build, that his team had stewarded through some of its most tumultuous passages, and that nevertheless continued to thrive, however tenuously, as a bucolic bedroom community built on back of the Bomb—that I realized I needed to turn to him for something I wasn’t sure I could get anywhere else: not from my boss, not from my doctor, not from McCaffery, and certainly not from Sunshine or the blood tech. “Harumisan, may I speak freely?”

  “Of course.”

  “When the incidents occurred with the Demon Core …”

  Ogawa winced to have this brought up so abruptly, haphazardly, although of course, in the acuity of the former chief criticality officer of Los Alamos National Laboratories, the possibility of a connection to what had happened with the pen would be anything but random.

  I continued: “Before either one of the events, did you ever have a sense of foreseeing the tragedy?”

  Ogawa’s wife turned her chin to look at him sharply, giving me my answer. I knew I had hit upon an essential question—one which the subject had long wondered if it would ever be asked. The question he had feared every day for six decades might eventually arise, but he had also come to understand after a time that most interlocutors would be too polite to consider voicing it aloud, and so it could be that in half a century he had become complacent about the question, resigned to living with the answer a secret between his wife and himself. Probably not even their children suspected there was a secret, and now, in good health for their station but nevertheless advanced in years, the Ogawas could perhaps look calmly at the horizon and know that it was going to die with them. Until I asked it.

  “You mean as in dreams?”

  “Yes … or nightmares.”

  Mrs. Ogawa put her head in her hands and began weeping softly. Ogawa said something to her gently in Japanese, and she stood up without looking at either of us and withdrew into the kitchen.

  “Naturally, I experienced traumatic stress and great s
leep difficulty after the accidents, but there is something that Sumi and I have not spoken about, and that has been troubling to us for some time … Before the first incident, I dreamed of Daghlian having an accident. I told Sumi about it over breakfast, and she agreed that because Daghlian had a reputation for sloppy work, it was normal that I, the criticality officer, should bear the burden of conscience and be concerned. I made a note to schedule additional safety training for Daghlian and some of the others in our division, but I did not remember the dream again until after the accident—which, as you know, took place while Daghlian was working alone with the core.

  “When the circumstances were reconstructed, the accuracy of my dream was what I found most disturbing. It was all there: the beryllium in Daghlian’s hand, the brick dropping with a hideous flash onto the plutonium core …”

  “If you will allow me just one further query, Harumisan. It has to do with a matter of great importance to me, although I fear there is nobody else I can speak to about it …”

  “Go on.”

  “If you could go back to that morning in 1945—”

  “Yes,” Ogawa interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I would tell Daghlian about the dream.”

  “Even though you might bring upon yourself some … ridicule?”

  He fixed my gaze with the intensity of the confident physicist who had overcome a thousand obstacles—not least the unapologetic suspicion of even his closest colleagues for being Japanese—to earn one of the top classified positions in the military-scientific complex during the headiest war in modern history. Ogawa leaned forward and I saw a flash of temerity in his eyes. “It has been more than sixty years, and not a day has gone by that I wished I hadn’t chosen to live with the shame of public disgrace over the guilt of my silence.”

  I assured Ogawa I would go right to the hospital for an evaluation and that I would call him as soon as I had news. We were both a little stunned. The esteemed officer of risk abatement gave me a strange look as if to say, Criticality is high around you. He let me leave with these words: “The scorn of others, even their utmost contempt, softens with each day. But the edge of remorse cuts sharper with every waking.”

  In strict observation of custom, he gave me another gift to replace the one he had requested be returned. Salad tongs.

  I left Ogawa’s house feeling strangely elated. Certainly the oxycodones were contributing something, but a simple judgment of “drug-induced” cannot overshadow what I experienced as a delicate combination of complex perceptions: exhaustion, terror, hope, duty. I was past thinking I had to tell someone about these dreams. I was thinking I had to tell everyone about these dreams.

  What if it turns out to be a false alarm? It doesn’t matter, just so long as you get this nightmare off your back. Spread the nightmare, distribute the burden of seeing what you see, knowing what you know. If it’s just a delusion it won’t hurt anyone else, and what else have you got to lose?

  And if it really is a sign … then there is no time to waste, and you have to send the message. There is someone with a gun to your head, and that someone is you, and the gun is inside your head.

  I stopped by Pajarito Road. Gently I massaged the welt on my chest and woke up the PC. My eyes were weary, so I dimmed the screen before typing. I opened a blank Word document and started writing down the list of things that had gone wrong—laptop, camera, wife, dog, money … Under job I typed: life.

  What good does it do me, knowing what I know, seeing what I’ve seen? What had it taken, a little over a week? Just like Ritchie Motherfucker and his gangrene, his visions.

  As I typed I felt myself letting go. Things had spun so far out of control that there must be a story to work through. Maybe I would come out ahead on the other side. Something that could salvage this experience: I could write about the nightmare. Maybe a scientist would read it and see some kind of clue, something that would mitigate risk on the Hill and save lives down the line. Things were going badly, but in a nice, simple way I was ready to do anything. I was ready to do what had to be done.

  I chewed three or four more oxycodones and drank off the liter of scotch. I typed: who? who is responsible for this?

  Not Mel Woburn. Not Sunshine. Possibly the blood tech. Each could be said to have urged me along, but did I believe any one of them was actually responsible? I had some questions for the blood tech, though the house was a different story. Maybe whether or not I believed in the house, the house believed in me. I thought about the articles hanging on the wall. I typed: Johnson. Old man Johnson.

  My job is telling a story, just a little different from the story others tell. What if sanity is the same thing: a story that is a little different? Should the sane man gloat over it? And what if crazy is right some of the time, like Ritchie Motherfucker on the way to Church Rock?

  Again I thought about Surge. Had the Lab really shut off all the passwords? Five years ago, when I started at Surge, I had set up the site as administrator. That had been a separate login than my contributor account. It was possible the administrator login still functioned.

  I had been new at the job and there was a strange image in my head: a long roll of quilted toilet paper to pamper the asses of the Frankensteins of war. Username: charmin. The password had to have both numbers and capitals, and the first thing that had come to mind was some graffiti I admired down the Hill in Española. Password: Sk8rDie!

  Up came the full-access screen for Surge. So that was it. I was in the system, and I reactivated my regular username, and next thing I knew I was back in as JamesO and prompted to create a new password.

  I started typing.

  A great wall of ash and smoke rolling up Pajarito Road from Technical Area 54, Area G. A storm of radiation. Just another MEOI.

  A light changed. Did that come from outside or in?

  I don’t know what I typed. I heard things. I heard things I didn’t type, and I heard things I did type. I wasn’t sure I actually typed the bit that caused all the trouble.

  Be the instrument, for I have already killed them. Abandon the community that has forsaken you. Abandon them to ashes.

  I felt the physical manifestation of despair in my bones and in my viscera. Joy is no less pathetic than the worst grief.

  I let myself type. Do not sleep until it’s through. Make the nightmare go away. You won’t have to look at it every time you close your eyes. You won’t have to hear their cries echo in the room when you open them.

  I don’t remember all I typed, but when I was done I hit Save, not Send. I made it to the bathroom and flicked on the light. I heard the little voice go, Poor Dad. I draped my arm over the toilet, my head in the bowl. Heave … Heave … Heave.

  I get in the Spider and drive. The skies are dark over the Sangre de Cristo. Heavy clouds are rolling in from the west, moving in with me.

  Who put my name on the wall? What does it matter who, now? The problem isn’t the hunter. The problem is the trap. There is something about the house that makes me go to the dark. I keep going back. I blame myself. Nobody is doing this to me. Nobody but my own ghosts.

  I drive into Mora and stop at the Mustang.

  I scavenge $1.79 from the cracks of the seats and find myself a mini of the cheapest stuff: schnapps. It rings up $1.99, and I pick the last two dimes from a dish next to the register with a hand-lettered sign that reads: If you need a penny, take it. If you need more, get a job.

  I say thanks and the Mustang attendant says nothing. I can tell from her expression that I must look like a madman.

  I get back in the car and catch the weather forecast on the radio:

  A weak upper-level disturbance will slide east across New Mexico today bringing rain showers along and west of the central mountain chain. Only light precipitation is expected with this first system above 7,500 feet. A more powerful storm system will move in quickly behind the first system with drenching rains at high elevations.

  I look up and see charcoal sheets of rain on t
he Sangre de Cristo.

  I pull off into an arroyo behind a willow tree on Aplanado, breaking the branch of an evergreen to conceal the chrome bumper from the road.

  I have ceased to be concerned about trespassing. I come to the house this time like a natural son.

  I step onto the portal. Again I feel the pressure drop, even in the cold, clammy air, even as I swoon from the pain in my chest, from the headache of insomnia, from the burden of a world collapsing on my shoulders. It is like the house draws you in to make you sleepy so that it may whisper its story in your ear.

  I look at the walls. There are drugs in those walls. It’s the east wall where my articles are hanging, the wall that contains the remains, the one that stands in the shadows.

  I walk inside and the birds start peeping.

  You still here? Your mother is stuck somewhere away from home, or else really dead. Maybe she’s been dead since the day I first came back.

  The padlocked hinge I pried off is still there on the floor. I stand before the wall with my articles tacked all over it, the pages fluttering.

  There are bones in these walls.

  The air smells beautifully of rain. How the hell did it get so cold all of a sudden?

  It is time to get started. It will not be difficult to take the pages off the wall. Only Scotch tape sticks them to the hard plaster. I could tear them down in a fury, or hold a lighter beneath the bottom row of sheets and set the wallpaper ablaze.

  I remove them one by one, remembering every subject through each headline, my name at the top of every page.

  When I am done I have a neat pile of pages from Surge to take with me. Now it’s over. You can drive away. Catch that plane.

  I stand back and look at the wall. I look at the dingy paint.

  This is crazy. You’ve taken the pages down. You can drive away, stop this stupidity, break the chain.

  I get the tire iron from the trunk and dig a little at a cracked spot in the plaster.