All of this took place in my morning before Charlie. Sometimes life is a heart filled to the brim. So I went wandering, and of all places, I found my way to the church.
Reverend Morris had given me a key to the side door, to practice the organ or conduct choir rehearsal. That Saturday the door was already open. I hadn’t been there since Wednesday, so I knew I was not to blame. But that was only part of my concern.
I peered around in the gloom, but no one was inside. In the nave, I called loud and plain: “Hello?” It reverberated in the stone chamber. “Anybody here?”
When there was no answer, I decided someone had simply forgotten to lock up. Perhaps the minister, perhaps Mrs. Sanchez—the lovely local woman who dusted the stone floors every Friday. Often I’d heard her singing to herself, a soprano high and light, but could not convince her to join the choir. Whenever I asked, she ducked her head shyly and redoubled her stroking of the floor with the silent dust mop.
I switched on the organ, pulling a few stops into action, and heard a new cipher. Already I’d had to forgo one manual, thanks to an A-flat key that would not stop playing, whether I touched it or not. Now there was one in the second manual, G above middle C. So not only were two keyboards broken, but the notes were dissonant with each other. If the ciphers started up in the middle of a song, together they would ruin it.
I changed stops to silence both manuals, and confined myself to the remaining one. Normally I like to make contrasts with the stops, for example giving a background chord in reeds, while the melody plays in a high, clear flute. With one manual, there could be only one sound. It would be like playing a violin with one string: You might get all the notes, but reaching them would have you running up and down the neck all day.
I felt at a particular disadvantage because I wanted to work on the Bach toccata. Someday I might apply to Oberlin again, and I ought to keep ready. I opened the sheet music, checked my posture, and began.
The opening was an announcement, a trumpet declaring the arrival of a king. Next, the melody was doubled with another octave. But in a few bars, the piece became complex, layered, and Bach’s brilliance took over. Intervals I’d never encountered anywhere else not only happened often, but made sense and propelled the music in new directions. Too soon I reached the difficult fugue passage in the middle. The coda at the end was a madness of tempo changes, but the fugue was where I stalled. Nearly all of it was in sixteenth notes. I dropped to half tempo, I tried one hand at a time, I closed my eyes and envisioned the correct motions. No dice. I dropped to quarter tempo, as though the fugue were a dirge, a funeral march. Suddenly there emerged a song of sorrow, a mourning that Bach had hidden beneath the clip-right-along version. The more I played that passage at quarter speed, the more I imagined a man in 1700s Germany, hugely successful yes, but still someone who knew something about sadness.
Naturally I felt that same emotion welling in me. There was no hiding from it. My eyes teared up, and I lifted my hands from the keys.
“Thank God,” I heard, and jumped in my seat.
“Hello?” I called out. “Who’s here?”
“Reverend Morris.” His voice boomed from the balcony. “No need to worry.”
“I thought I was alone.”
“That last passage was quite moving.” Loud as ever, even in an empty church.
“Thank you. It’s so difficult, I have to play it slowly.”
At first he did not respond. I saw him moving from one side of the balcony to the other, before he came to the railing. “You witnessed my tantrum this morning.”
“It wasn’t my intention, sir.”
“You could have held pillows over your ears and still heard it.”
It felt strange to have so personal a conversation shouted back and forth between the ends of a church. “It’s between you and Mrs. Morris and none of my business.”
Again he did not answer right away.
“Whatever it is, I hope the pain lessens for you over time.”
“No,” he barked. “I do not hope that. It would mean that my love for my son had diminished. It would mean that his sacrifice had lost its power to scour the soul.”
This time I was the one who didn’t answer. His son? His sacrifice?
“I cannot promise that I will never lose my temper again,” he continued, the volume a trifle lower. “But your presence here has given my wife a break and me a bit of solace. I do not want you to leave. So I can promise you that at least I will try.”
“It had never occurred to me to leave.”
Well. He let that one echo around for a bit. He sat down, in the last row of the balcony, and then he knelt.
I closed the sheet music and made my way back outside. That church was full to the brim of things I did not understand. Oh, Charlie, it was April, where were you? I found a bench, watching the pigeons strut and coo, and waited for my life to begin.
When Charlie stepped off I was standing there, in people’s way I suppose, but I did not care. I did not want him to spend one second searching for me. Before he had come all the way down the steps, I was moving—arms around his neck, kisses on his face.
“Brenda,” he chuckled. “I’m blocking everyone.”
I pulled back, still holding one of his arms, drawing him away from the crowd and down the sidewalk. Then I kissed him on the mouth.
Now I had smooched my fair share over the years, I make no apology for it. The boys were heading to war, or home on leave, and desperate for a little female touch. Nor did I mind, thank you. I knew tall, short, fat, and thin, good kissers and bad. You never knew how it would be with someone, no predicting till you were actually lips to lips.
But kissing Charlie was of a different order. I knew it then, I marvel at it now. The chemistry, the way he defied my ideas of manliness right up to the second our lips touched. Then he was the full ticket, and a ride in a jalopy too. When Charlie kissed me, I felt like I was falling, and the only answer was to hold on tight and keep kissing.
My letter had melted Charlie, and now he was giving me another chance. There in his embrace I promised myself, the world, the sky: I will not hurt this man again. I will not hurt this man again.
Here is the thing you learn when you don’t interrupt, when you’re not perpetually barging in on someone’s ideas and speech: they finish their sentences just fine, and their thoughts are not weaker for reaching completion. I spent those hours with Charlie genuinely listening for what felt like the first time in my life. When I answered him, I was as opinionated as ever, but not so brash, not quite so certain. He did not have to play defense. I think I could feel him begin to relax.
Also I could not take my hands off him. Touching was like being fed. We spoke in low voices, almost whispers, and we ambled for hours, keeping to the shady sides of the street. We saw marigolds, and paintbrushes, and a kind of daisy that grew in clumps low to the ground. Had the people of Santa Fe planted a path for us? It felt that way.
And as long as I kept my restraint, Charlie opened.
“It’s a kind of weapon we’re building,” he confided. “A new kind.”
“Why is it difficult for you to participate?”
“Imagine a gun that you can shoot, but not aim. Maybe its bullets knock out an entire foreign battalion. Or maybe it will kill all the babies in an orphanage.”
“But you’re not the one firing it, are you?”
He shook his head. “I make a minor component. Which is also a crucial one.”
“Well.” I stayed close with him, thinking about what I was going to say before I said it. “The people shooting it are on our side, right?”
He nodded. “Very much so.”
“Then we have to trust them, Charlie. You can do your part, and know that you are helping the war effort in a way that you know best. Then you can be done with it, and let them do their part in a way that they know best.”
“Quite a few people on The Hill feel as you do.”
“But you don’t.”
&n
bsp; We kept walking, in a city that seemed strangely deserted. Where was everyone? At one point we turned onto a lane bordered with forsythia, one whole flank of the road a riot of flowers. Charlie paused by one of the bushes, the yellow sprays dangling toward us as if wanting to be touched. He brushed his hand against a branch, making it swing. “That Bach piece you’ve been working on. Imagine if you had a chance to play it on the organ Bach himself used, the one he composed it on. You’re outside the cathedral, and you can hear it playing. Not much would stop you from getting inside and having a try, right?”
“It would be the dream of a lifetime.”
“That’s where the fellows are with this weapon. They are dying to get inside the church. In fact, they want to be the first ones in.”
“But not you.”
He smiled. “But not me.”
I reached into the bush and pulled at a stem of forsythia. It didn’t give easily, but I worked it back and forth until it snapped free, and then I gave it to him.
“Brenda. We shouldn’t take—”
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I planted this whole street here, last fall, so that we could walk here today. No one will mind.”
We had a late-afternoon meal, enchiladas sharp with spice. While I’d grown accustomed to the local food, it was obvious Charlie had not been eating it. After an especially hot bite, his face reddened and he glugged down water. Afterward we meandered, wasting minutes like a millionaire dropping pennies. We kept time by the church bells tolling the hour, no more exact than that. Still, I felt a knot in my belly when they rang seven, his bus leaving at quarter after. As we rounded a corner onto East Palace, it was already idling in place. Boys with suitcases climbed aboard.
“More arrivals for The Hill?” I asked.
“They never stop coming.”
There was a calm between us, a mending of our affections. Until I saw something out of place: Lizzie, her hair unkempt, running up the street. I grabbed Charlie’s arm, as if to brace myself.
“There you are,” Lizzie said. She was panting.
“What is it?” Charlie asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Reverend Morris needs you right away. The memorial begins at seven thirty.”
“Memorial? We don’t have any funerals this week.”
“You don’t know?” Lizzie’s eyes went wide. “It’s been all over the radio.”
“What happened?” Charlie said. His tone was dark, as if he already understood.
“The president’s dead,” Lizzie said.
“What?” I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”
“Roosevelt died of a stroke. Truman is president, and nobody knows who he is.”
Charlie flopped his hands against his sides. “Now everything is up in the air.”
“Come right away, will you, kid? The Morrises are on the warpath.”
“Tell them I’ll go straight to the church.”
“Good to see you again, Charlie,” Lizzie said, trotting off.
The last people were boarding the bus. Charlie glanced their way. “I should go.”
“Me too.” But I grabbed both of his arms at the elbow, holding on.
“Do you still think I should be a man, Brenda?”
That again. I had to be honest. “More than ever.”
Charlie handed me the forsythia bough. Then he turned and took his place in line. I stood waiting, ready to wave the flowers and blow him a kiss at the perfect moment. But it never came: when he climbed up into that bus, Charlie did not look back.
34.
The barracks was in an uproar. Boys were yelling at one another, arguing, a few came to shoves.
“I am willing to bet you,” an Electronics technician bellowed, “I will bet anyone here that Truman does not know we exist.”
“Don’t be stupid,” a Chemistry guy snapped. “You have no way of knowing what he does and doesn’t know.”
“You wanna bet me?” The first boy charged up the aisle, hand out to shake on the wager. “You wanna bet?”
“We overlooked something massive,” Giles said in normal tones, yet it silenced the whole room. “Of all the variables we’ve been considering—thousands of them—FDR dying was nowhere on the list. That’s a fairly gigantic thing to miss.”
“Well, the horse already run off,” Monroe said from his bunk, where he lay with his hands behind his head. “What in hell do we do about it now?”
Giles stood, stretching as though his back hurt. “Some of us need to go somewhere, away from the Gadget mission, and see if we can think of anything else that goddamn important that we completely missed.”
He marched out of the place, which remained silent for half a minute, before the technician from Chemistry said, “What if they shut us down?”
“What if they want to use the Gadget right away?” the Electronics guy yelled.
And the top-volume argument picked right back up again. Charlie remained on his bunk, petting Midnight—who raised her head to make him scratch under her chin.
Business as usual, that was the order in the following morning’s memo. “Our enemies may see this interval of political transition as a moment of weakness. But we know that the peaceful succession of leadership is a hallmark of American democracy. The military remains fully engaged, with a stable chain of command, which includes all work here on The Hill. Reckless rumors to the contrary, orders are to stick to your knitting, and continue with business as usual.”
The memo would have carried greater weight, the boys agreed in the mess hall that morning, had it been signed.
“There’s no names at the bottom,” one fellow said.
“No authorizing office identified at the top either,” another replied.
Charlie thought the memo created more suspicion than it allayed. Besides, the day was anything but business as usual when he arrived in his tech area, and found a man sitting in his chair. “Hello, Charlie.”
It was his professor John Simmons, all the way from Chicago. He gave that same trademark smile that had won over so many young mathematicians eighteen months ago. But Charlie saw something different upon seeing it this time—not warmth and fellowship, but calculation and manipulation, and it stopped him halfway to his desk.
“Uncle John. What brings you to The Hill?”
“Well, I expected to hear a hello, first.” He rose and held out his hand.
Charlie shook it, but warily. “Of course. Pardon me. Hello.”
Uncle John released his grip and turned to the table where Charlie’s latest assembly effort lay splayed on large sheets of plywood. “You’ve come a long way since the Dungeon, I see.”
Charlie inched up to his side. “What is Beasley up to these days?”
The professor’s face darkened. “It’s none of your business.” Then the smile returned, winsome and bright. “Nothing like this work here, I can tell you that.”
Charlie found himself wondering: Had the man always been a phony, only now he was somehow able to see it? Or had his uncle’s warmth been sincere, until the war had tainted it?
There was a long silence, and as always when he did not understand a situation, Charlie kept quiet. But Uncle John said nothing, surveying the wires and switches before him, while the moment stretched longer and grew more awkward.
“Back in Chicago,” Charlie said at last, “I was hard pressed to build one device. Now I construct whole arrays. This circuit here, if you can believe it, controls—”
“Twenty-four detonators.”
Charlie caught himself. “Twenty-four, yes, sir.”
“You know, son.” The professor crossed his arms, casual as could be. “You seem to have found yourself right in the bull’s-eye of this project.”
“I don’t know about that, sir. I just—”
“No point being humble,” he interrupted again. “I’ve been briefed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Some very senior fellows asked me to fly down from Chicago just to see you. It’s rare that
a pawn determines the checkmate.” He smiled. “I hear they call you ‘Trigger.’”
“Not so much to my face.”
“It fits, if you ask me. But only.” The smile vanished again. The man turned his warmth on and off like a lamp. “Only if the things you build actually work.”
Suddenly Charlie knew why his uncle was there, and what this conversation was intended to accomplish.
“Before me,” Charlie said, “no one had ever built a switch with more than eight detonators. I have managed to set one new standard after another.”
“All the way up to twenty-three.”
“Do you know how difficult it is to make two things happen at exactly the same time? Much less twenty-four things?”
At that Simmons turned to face Charlie. He tilted his head to one side as if he was about to tell a story—maybe a nostalgic one from Thanksgiving years ago, or one about an old friend from school days. Yet Charlie set his stance as if to dodge a punch.
“I don’t know about you, but in these last few months I have really come to hate war. I’ve known too many people who died, or had loved ones die. We’ve won great victories, but the enemy remains as dangerous and determined as ever. It’s ugly. Very ugly. Nothing would make me happier than to see the world at peace.”
“I agree completely, sir.”
“Do you really? Because it seems like you are standing in the way. The pawn has become an obstacle. Not only to ending this war, but ending all war. All war, Charlie.”
“I’m not sure I follow you, Uncle John.”
The professor leaned over the table, opened an assembly, and began flipping its switch on and off. Charlie raised a hand toward him, but the switching continued.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said at last, “but that piece took ten hours to build.”
“What’s that?”
Charlie pointed. “It has to be ready for testing in two days. The whole assembly.”
Simmons closed the switch without apology, and began to pace at the end of the table. “What does it mean to be at war, Charlie?”
Universe of Two Page 27
