The Atomic City Girls: A Novel

by Janet Beard

  ***

  SAM HAD FALLEN asleep without meaning to in the peaceful quiet of his new room at Ann and Charlie’s house. He was awakened by the sound of Ann screaming. “It’s loose, Charlie! Do something!” Sam felt around the unfamiliar nightstand for his glasses and leapt off the bed, heading toward the living room. He stopped abruptly in the hallway when he saw a live chicken, hopping and flapping around the living room. Ann was squealing by the front door, while Charlie stalked the bird from behind. “Sam!” called out Ann. “Do you know how to kill a chicken?”

  “I’m from Brooklyn,” was all he could manage.

  Charlie lunged forward and grabbed the bird by a wing. It made a terrible squawk, and he grabbed its leg. “Get a knife, Sam,” he commanded, “and meet me out back.”

  Sam opened the kitchen drawers in search of a knife, still groggy from his nap. He saw steak knives, butter knives, nothing really appropriate for killing a chicken. “Here!” Ann called out. “We hadn’t unpacked it yet.” She appeared in the kitchen, holding out a butcher knife for Sam. Dutifully he took it and went out back.

  Charlie was standing by the coal box, holding the chicken as far out in front of himself as possible. He gave Sam a desperate look. “I think we chop its head off.”

  “Why do we have a live chicken, Charlie?”

  “Apparently, that’s all they had at the market. Ann wanted dinner to be special, and she somehow managed to carry this thing all the way home. Then it got loose, and well, you know the rest.”

  They stared at the mass of feathers and flesh. Sam wished he’d ignored the shouting and stayed in his room. “Why don’t you hold it down on the ground?” he ventured.

  “All right.”

  Charlie bent his long legs and hunched over to place the chicken on the ground. Sam stood over it with the knife, took a deep breath, and whacked at the creature’s neck. A spray of blood spurted up into his face. “Goddamnit!”

  Sam wiped his face with his hands. Charlie was still holding the now-headless creature down as it lurched and kicked out its final moments. “What do we do now?”

  “I guess we have to get rid of the feathers.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  When they got the bird to a state they hoped would no longer horrify Ann, Sam went to the bathroom to scrub off the blood and feathers. He never wanted to see a chicken again. Nevertheless, after a couple of hours, a delicious smell began to waft from the kitchen. Sam helped set the table, and he and Charlie sat across from each other until Ann brought it out, placing it proudly in the middle of the table: a lovely hump of bronzed, dripping meat. There were carrots and mashed potatoes, too, all served on elegant plates.

  “It looks marvelous,” said Sam.

  “Certainly better than when we left it,” said Charlie. He stood and dug the same knife he had used earlier to dispatch the bird into its roasted flesh.

  “Well,” said Ann, “this is real country living, after all, I suppose!”

  “I can’t believe you made it home with this thing,” Charlie spoke with affection.

  “I was determined to have chicken. And when I asked the man at the store for one, he went to the back and brought it out. At first I panicked, but then I realized lots of people must kill chickens every day for dinner.”

  Charlie sat back down and raised his water glass. “A toast! To our new house!”

  They clanked glasses. Sam dug his knife and fork into the meat; it was delicious. “It’s good to have a home-cooked meal.”

  “Poor Sam,” said Charlie, pointing at him with his knife, “needs a woman to look after him.”

  There had been a woman in California off and on, a secretary at the university who had been conveniently married to an accountant Sam had never met. He didn’t have to worry about marrying her or making her think he wanted to marry her or any of that. Bored with her accountant husband, she had pursued Sam, another handy aspect of their relationship, since he had never been particularly adept at wooing women. Back in college, he had passionately chased after one girl for almost two years, but her unrelenting rejection had dampened his romantic spirit. There had been dates and a couple of minor courtships in graduate school, but they had been achieved only with great discomfort. All ended badly. “I’m afraid that’s too great a task for any woman,” Sam replied.

  Ann’s brow furrowed. “Nonsense! I’m sure you’d make someone a lovely mate. And this is the perfect place to look. They say when the facilities are all up and running, we’ll have eight women to every one man here in Oak Ridge.”

  “What, you think I should marry one of these local girls?”

  “There are girls from all over,” replied Ann. “Secretaries, teachers, I’ve even met a chemist.”

  “Ann is vice-president of the Oak Ridge Woman’s Club,” explained Charlie. “And she sings in a choir.”

  “I had no idea we had clubs and choirs in Oak Ridge.”

  “Well, we’re only just getting going, of course, but you’d be surprised at what goes on. There’s a real thirst for community involvement, maybe since the community’s so new.”

  “Take a look at the Oak Ridge Journal, Sam. You’ll get a real laugh from the list of organizations. There’s a folk dancing group, a rabbit breeders association . . . What do you think? Ready to take up an extracurricular activity?”

  “I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied at work.”

  “Oh, come on, Sam!” said Ann. “You can’t work all the time!”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie. “He came pretty close at Princeton.”

  “I’m just doing my part for the war effort,” said Sam.

  Charlie hooted. “Sam Cantor, patriot! I like it.”

  After dinner, they drank tea in the living room and listened to the news on the radio, mostly reports of the Allied bombing of Berlin. When Ann retired to her bedroom, Charlie took Sam’s teacup from him, placed it on a shelf, and asked, “Shall we continue celebrating?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Charlie opened a trunk below the shelf, dug through it, and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Sam sat up, astounded. “You rascal! How did you get it here?”

  “I smuggled it in. I’ve only had the nerve to with this one bottle, and look, I’ve drunk hardly any of it after getting it in.” Charlie poured a slug into each of their empty teacups and replaced the bottle in the trunk. “I rolled it up in the middle of Ann’s undergarments, hoping that would dissuade security from taking too close a look.”

  Sam sniffed the whiskey appreciatively, letting it tickle his nose for a long moment. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Charlie.”

  “To the future.” Charlie held out his glass.

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “The future.” He took a long sip and felt the sweet familiar burn slide down his throat.

  Charlie went over to a record player and put down the needle. Big brassy jazz suddenly filled the room. The sound perfectly matched the buzz in Sam’s head. A trumpet wailed out, and he took a second sip.

  Charlie sat and leaned in toward him. “What do you think? Ann’s a light sleeper, so I don’t want to talk too loudly. But what do you think? Is this going to work?”

  “What?” asked Sam, completely absorbed in the music and his scotch.

  “This!” Charlie motioned around them with a sweep of his hands. “Can we do this thing?”

  Sam caught his drift. “You mean build a bomb?”

  “I haven’t said the word since I got here. The security talks really get to you, don’t they? I mean, for all I know, you’re an undercover security agent.”

  “Please, don’t be ridiculous. For all we know, Ann is.”

  “I’m fairly certain we’re working in different areas. I’m at X-10.”

  “I’m at Y-12.” Perhaps it was the whiskey, but he actually felt his heart rate speed up a little. Charlie was right; the security talks did get to you. He’d been told so often not to talk about what he was doing that he felt nervous even here. “Let
me guess,” Sam said. “You’re working on a graphite reactor.”

  “We just went critical.”

  Sam sipped his whiskey. The graphite reactor was designed to turn uranium into a new element, plutonium, which could also be used in a bomb. The Army was trying more than one method to get what it needed.

  “We’re a pilot program,” Charlie went on. “There’s a facility going up in Washington State just to produce plutonium.”

  Sam drank a final gulp of whiskey. “Yes. To answer your question, Charlie, yes, I think we will definitely do this thing. God forgive us.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Charlie poured more drinks. They sat there for some time silently, sipping their scotch, listening to the trumpet shriek and sputter.

  (Courtesy of the Department of Energy)

  Chapter 6

  JOE COULDN’T SEE RALPH ANYWHERE IN THE REC HALL, BUT HE did find the boy’s friend, Otis, leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. As best Joe could tell, Otis was always in the rec hall. He reckoned the young man must work some time, but Joe never saw much evidence of it. As usual, Otis was immaculate, dressed like he was on his way to a nightclub—shiny suit and tie, polished shoes, fedora tilted back on his head, carefully crafted mustache traversing his face. You’d think he was a gangster or a musician the way he presented himself, not a construction worker. Otis came from Memphis and had a citified walk and talk that left Joe feeling dizzy. He was always smiling, but not in a friendly way, more like he was laughing at you.

  “Evening, Joe.” Otis sneered at him.

  “Evening. Have you seen Ralph?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s with Shirley.” Otis’s suggestive tone somehow made the girl’s name sound indecent.

  “I see. They at one of them meetings?” Ralph had taken to attending the Colored Camp Council.

  “No, sir. They’re going for a walk.” He made the word walk sound even worse than Shirley.

  “What you make of Shirley?” Joe asked Otis. She was a girl from Atlanta Ralph had been chasing for months now.

  Otis shrugged. “She a fine-looking woman.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Does there need to be a besides that?”

  “You ain’t go in for them meetings, do you?”

  “Only meetings I attend be about cards or dice.”

  “Ralph gambling, too?”

  “Ain’t you worry, preacher man. He on the straight and narrow.” He grinned. “Despite all my best efforts.”

  Joe felt foolish for trying to talk to Otis, for thinking he cared about Ralph as anything more than an impressionable country boy he could impress with his Memphis swagger. He said a quick good-bye and went back out into the cold November night.

  Shirley had first come on the scene a few months ago. It had already been summertime hot even though it was only the first week in June, and Joe and Ralph had started their shift in the thick heat of midafternoon. Their crew was digging trenches, laying pipes, and then digging some more, and after five minutes in the early summer sun, the men’s shirts were dripping with sweat. Joe knew how to take his mind off the heat—he’d spent his life sharecropping in Alabama. The key was to find a thought or song or Bible verse to focus the mind on, away from the discomfort, the aching back, the burning feet. Some men in the crew sang out loud and that was a help. Joe couldn’t carry a tune, but he liked to listen, and the music helped the time pass.

  The sun set, but the air stayed sultry. They were still digging into the night—the digging, pouring, lifting, building, none of it ever enough for this city in progress. An hour before the end of their shift, Joe heard a rumbling in the distance and felt a slight movement in the humid air. He knew the storm would cool them down, which was almost worth getting soaked for.

  Men hooted and hollered in the rain. The dirt became mud in a matter of minutes, and the foreman shook his head helplessly. “Go on home,” he shouted over the storm. “Shift is almost over, and it’s no use getting anything done now.”

  Ralph began walking fast toward the bus stop. “I’m starving,” he muttered. Ralph still ate like a growing boy.

  “Hopefully, we’ll miss the rush on the bus,” Joe said.

  A couple of white laborers were already waiting at the bus stop. Ralph, Joe, and three more men from their crew hung back from the white fellows. They couldn’t have been any wetter submerged in a bathtub. Joe kept his hand around the wad of money in his pocket to keep it as dry as possible.

  All the seats on the bus were full, but it wasn’t bad compared to what they were used to at shift change. They often had to wait for two or three buses to go by before getting on. Of course they had to let the white folks on first, and some bus drivers didn’t even stop if they saw only Negroes waiting.

  The white men got on, and Joe and Ralph followed. The back of the bus was already filled with straphangers, so they stood in the middle with the others from their crew. The bus lurched forward. Joe thought about what he would get for supper in the cafeteria. Beans and rice again, probably, which was fine with him, as long as it was hot.

  A big crowd was waiting at the next stop—the shift must have ended. The bus driver, middle-aged, scrawny, with brown stubble on his face, stopped and turned back slowly to look at Joe and the other men from his crew. “You boys best get off and make room for these here passengers.”

  Joe looked at Ralph, whose whole body tensed. “Sir, we are passengers,” the boy replied, calm, cool.

  The bus driver was chewing gum. “You colored boys best get off and make room for the white passengers.”

  “Get off the bus, niggers!” a man shouted, Joe couldn’t see who. He was already moving, dragging Ralph with him toward the door, following the other Negroes. Joe knew exactly what would come of trying to stay on that bus, and he feared Ralph didn’t fully comprehend it. The boy had fought his stepfather, sure enough, but it seemed he didn’t yet know that no luck could be depended on to save you in a struggle, especially when faced with twenty white men slicked with wet and hate.

  “I will report this to the Army!” Ralph shouted as Joe got him off the bus. The other Negro men shook their heads at him, and the whites in line watched them walk off with confusion.

  “Army don’t give a shit, son,” said one of the men from their crew, and Ralph kicked a Coke bottle hard as he could—the glass smashing loud enough to be heard over the pounding rain.

  They walked a mile in silence, rain pelting them the whole way to the cafeteria. Ralph stopped at the door.

  “Ain’t you coming in?” asked Joe.

  Ralph shook his head.

  “You need to eat.”

  “Ain’t hungry.”

  Ralph turned and walked away. A couple of the other men from their crew laughed. “I sure am!”

  “Let’s get out of this rain!” said another.

  Joe held the door for them, still watching Ralph disappear into the storm.

  The rain had cleared up by the time Joe finished supper, but he was still sopping, his damp shirt clinging to his skin. He was desperate to go back to the hutment and change into dry clothes but figured Ralph had gone to the rec center and wanted to check on the boy.

  He could hear voices and music spilling out of the center as he approached—laughter, hoots, Billie Holiday crackling out of a speaker. The storm had gotten folks excited. Inside, it was hot; a feeble ceiling fan twirled above them, no contest for the fifty-odd bodies mingling in the humid space. Most men sat at tables playing cards. A few took turns at the two punching bags in the corner.

  He found Ralph sitting at a table across from Otis. Smoke from their cigarettes billowed upward. Otis was laughing at some just-told joke, but Ralph didn’t appear amused.

  “Well, if you ain’t as wet as Ralph here!” said Otis, leaning back in his chair to make room for Joe to sit.

  “Got caught out in a real frog strangler.”

  Ralph let out a short, angry laugh. “Got throwed out into it, you mean.”

  Joe shr
ugged and reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

  “Welcome to the U.S. Army, son. At least we ain’t getting shot at in Normandy. I’d just as soon not die for the privilege of getting throwed off a bus to serve my country.”

  Ralph’s jaw twitched.

  “Anyone want a Coca-Cola?” asked Joe.

  Otis smiled, as though he’d told a joke. “Sure, Joe.”

  What did that grin mean? Joe had a mind to slap it right off Otis’s face. When he returned with the Cokes, Joe slammed Otis’s down in front of him hard, though he didn’t seem to notice, taking a big swig from the bottle. Otis then pulled a glass bottle out of his pocket, winked at Joe, and poured a clear liquid into the soda. “Want a little taste?”

  Joe shook his head, and Otis’s taunting grin returned. “I forgot. You’re a good, churchgoing man. Ralph?”

  Otis motioned toward the liquor.

  “No thanks,” said Ralph.

  Otis shrugged and took a long sip. “I feel like dancing.” Duke Ellington blared from the jukebox, but no one was moving.

  “What do you think of them ladies over there?” he continued. “Reckon they’d like to dance?”

  Both Ralph and Joe looked over. They were the only women in the room of rough characters, about eight nice-looking girls sitting around a table, sipping on Cokes. One of the girls noticed the three men staring at them and raised an eyebrow at Otis. She turned back to the others, and they all laughed.