I gave her a look that said whole paragraphs.
She shrugged. “They had a son. Dean. We never met, but word is that he was quite the looker. Anyway.” She sighed again. I wanted to urge her to hurry, but I bit my tongue. “Anyway, he died on D-Day. Third wave on Omaha Beach. Reverend Morris took it very hard—they both have, but him especially. And because it has made him question his faith, he’s tried to keep it a secret from his congregation. From everyone, actually.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
“I was at the breakfast table when the telegram came. Mrs. Sanchez was there, too, to pick up her paycheck. They swore me to secrecy.”
I went to the window and Mrs. Morris was hanging laundry again. She worked with an intensity, a tension, that now made sense. “I guess that explains all the hugs at the end of worship each week.”
“This is a small town,” Lizzie said, rising to stand beside me. “Everyone knows.”
“Except me.”
“After Dean died, Mrs. Morris started crying whenever she played the organ. The congregation could hear. Also she kept playing tons of wrong notes. The reverend told her to give it time, but she resigned.”
“And they hired Brenda from Chicago.”
“You were the first person to answer the ad.”
I watched Mrs. Morris clothespin one of her husband’s shirts to the line. What an agony she must have been carrying. “Why haven’t I seen any photos of Dean in the house?”
“The reverend took them all down,” Lizzie explained. “They’re in a tug of war. She wants to build a shrine to their son. He wants to pretend the whole thing didn’t happen. Once last fall, maybe six months after D-Day, I overheard him telling a visitor that Dean was off fighting in France.”
“Why did they argue over her washing his clothes?”
“I don’t know.” Lizzie gnawed on a thumbnail. “Maybe if you put his things away all cleaned and folded, it means he’s really gone.”
“No wonder she resents me. I’m a constant reminder of her sadness.”
“Maybe. But also she’s a musician too. Imagine how you would feel if you weren’t allowed to play anymore.”
I leaned my head on the window frame, studying the woman below. “Maybe the purpose of war is not to kill soldiers on the battlefield, but to break hearts at home. Breaker of the most hearts wins.”
Lizzie went back to the dresser, opening the top drawer, her fingers moving through the socks like she was looking for something. “All I know is I want my husband home, and a chance to have a future with him. That’s my definition of victory.”
“I need to be nicer to her.”
“No harm in it, kid. But it won’t make much difference.”
“Why not?”
She closed the drawer without taking anything out. “Cause it won’t bring Dean back.”
40.
Monroe settled himself between Charlie and Giles at the crowded breakfast table. “I got it, fellas. The thing to do.” He raised one finger. “We should all resign.”
Charlie lowered his coffee cup. “What are you talking about?”
Monroe leaned closer, his bald pate shining from the overhead lights. “Pull a Rotblat, and quit this place. No us? No Project Y. No flattening of Japan.”
Charlie shrugged. “I think the milk would still be sour.”
“I’m dead serious,” Monroe insisted. “Simple as opening a can of beans.”
Giles shook his head. “Not simple, my friend. I wish it were.”
“Name me one reason it wouldn’t work.”
Giles raised his head, scanning the crowded mess tent, soldiers at the entry while technicians and scientists poured in and out, or threaded through the lines looking for an open seat. “Brilliance adores momentum,” he replied. “Do you see anyone here on the verge of quitting?”
Monroe panned the throng. “Not a dang one.”
“Well,” Charlie said. “I’d love to not have to build my part of the Gadget.”
“But you will,” Giles answered. “Won’t you?”
Charlie stared at his plate. “Don’t depress me.”
“It’s all right.” Giles gave a wan smile. “‘Conscience makes cowards of us all.’”
“Lemme guess,” Monroe said. “Shakespeare.”
“Well, look at you,” Giles marveled. “Macbeth.”
“Red alert.” Monroe pointed with his fork. “Competition’s here.”
Charlie glanced over his shoulder, spotting two men at the mess hall entrance: Bronsky and his star pupil, David Horn—brought to build the detonator assembly that the one person working on the task seemingly could not complete.
“Ain’t got one-tenth your smarts, Mister Charlie,” Monroe said, before shoveling a heap of scrambled eggs into his mouth, some of which spilled back on the plate.
“Must you always be such a perfidious mess?” Giles complained.
“Do you always got to talk like some kind of snob?” Monroe snorted. “Where I come from, a person says, ‘You dang fool slob.’”
“Well then, you dang fool slob,” Giles said. “Whatever makes you stop talking with your mouth full. Charlie, I think they’re looking for you.”
Charlie snuck a look, and both men were indeed scanning the crowded hall. Their stillness stood out amid the bustle. Horn was short, with thinning hair though he wasn’t yet twenty-five, a crease between his eyes like you’d see on an old man, probably from thinking hard all the time. Charlie ducked low. “Do you think he solved it?”
“Doubtful,” Monroe said. “But if he did, you’re off the hook. Won’t be Charlie Fish blowing the world to kingdom come.”
Giles shook his head. “We haven’t even built a Gadget yet, yet you keep saying it’s murdering half the planet.”
“You tell me, now that them Nazis are done for, one decent reason this project keeps going.”
“Because the Soviets are probably racing to build a bomb too.”
“For a war that’s ended? To kill guys what are already dead?”
“For the world that will exist when this war is over. And they’ve spotted you.” Giles gestured with his chin.
Charlie peeked, and both men were working their way through the maze of chairs. He stood. “Would you guys please take care of my tray?”
“All clears, Mister Charlie,” Monroe said. “This goes right, you’re gonna lose ten thousand pounds.”
As soon as Bronsky saw Charlie stand, he changed direction, back toward the entry, with Horn in tow. Charlie understood: this was not a conversation to be had in public. As he followed them outside, a bead of sweat ran down his ribs.
Bronsky chose a bench uphill of the entrance, sitting comfortably. Everyone who passed would see them, sending as strong a message as if they’d met on the stage of Fuller Lodge. Horn stood a few paces off, unwrapping a stick of gum.
“Gentlemen,” Charlie greeted them. “How’s your day today?”
“Good news, Fishk,” Bronsky said. “Very excellent news.”
“Japan surrendered?”
Bronsky chuckled. “No, but we have cross a line today, from which is no retreat.”
“What line was that?”
“Horn here.” He waved a few fingers. “Have make an invention.”
Bronsky, to Charlie, seemed as casual as a man on vacation—which made his stomach flutter. “Oh?”
“Doubler.” Bronsky smiled, the first time Charlie had seen him do it. The man’s teeth were crooked and gray, vestiges of a Russian childhood early in the century. “He invents device to split charge with precisely same delay in both signals. So: thirty-two detonators is work with two sixteen-part devices made attach to doubler.”
“The same delay? How did he manage that?”
Bronsky shrugged. “Hard work. Now you build sixteens and problem is solve.”
Charlie looked around slowly. Giles and Monroe were well down the lane to the barracks, arguing and laughing in a way that filled him with affection. A few feet
away, Horn stood chewing his gum, eyes fixed on something in the distance.
“You are upset about wasted effort to reach twenty-four?” Bronsky asked.
Charlie shook his head. “We’re going to be able to detonate it now, aren’t we?”
Bronsky nodded, Horn hovering without bothering to conceal his eavesdropping.
Charlie ran his tongue over his lips, discovering that they were dry. Here it was. The Gadget would happen. The war with Japan was not over, the detonation problem was solved. He would build the arrays. This is what was going to happen with his life.
“In a way, it’s a relief,” he said eventually. “Now I know my part.”
“Relief? It is excellent. We are need ten assemblies of sixteen, please.”
“Ten? What for?”
Bronsky made a face, as if the question was insultingly stupid. “Five Gadgets.”
Charlie stood stupefied. He had never imagined there would be more than one.
“You will please to inform Dr. Horn when you have finish? Perhaps five days?”
“That’s possible.”
“Good.” Bronsky stood, brushing his pants legs as though he had spilled crumbs in his lap. “Then we are schedule assembly and test.”
Charlie held as still as a pillar until they were a few steps away. “Hey, Horn, don’t you have anything to say?”
The young man smiled, a bright and optimistic grin. “Nice to meet you, Trigger.”
The Battle of Okinawa ended on June 22, 1945, after eighty-two days, a decisive Allied victory. Charlie read the papers closely. There were no signs of Japanese surrender—despite more than one hundred thousand casualties. Nor did the seventy-five thousand American casualties deter any plans for the invasion.
Then there was Ralph Bard’s widely leaked appeal opposing any use of the Gadget. Charlie felt giddy at what the undersecretary of the navy had written to the secretary of war: “The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation, and the fair play attitude of our people generally, is responsible in the main for this feeling.”
This plea fell on deaf ears. There was no way out. One by one Charlie constructed the assemblies, built with care and arrayed on his lab’s long table. By then his soldering was as skilled as Beasley at his best. The devices were seamless and snug. Tested ten times, they worked infallibly.
Finally the night arrived when he finished the tenth one. Charlie put it through final testing, and it worked six times in a row. At that he switched off his iron, covering the hot tip with a welding mask as ever, and dropped into the wooden chair at his desk.
There was no one around, no one else working at that hour. There was no Brenda, no family back home in Boston. His work finished, Charlie was utterly alone.
Switching off the light to his work area, he navigated outside, through the tech area security fence, around Ashley Pond and away from all the buildings. He wandered past the junkyard, strange shapes of metal and wood in the dim light of a moon nearly set, until he reached the place where the outer fence passed closest to the cliffs.
And there he heard singing. Something classical, he recognized the melody from college choir, which felt like ages ago, and the person had a decent voice. Stepping with care over the rough rocks, he ventured toward the singer.
When he stumbled on a stone, the melody stopped. “Hello? Is someone there?”
He recognized the voice. “It’s me, Charlie.”
“My fine sir,” Giles hailed him. “Don’t jump.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Excellent. Climb up this gully and join me.”
Charlie scrambled on all fours to the knob, which overlooked the fence into a deep canyon. Warm air rose up the cliff face, smelling of desert honeysuckle. Giles sat on a flat rock, clutching a large brown bottle.
“Are you all right?”
“A relative question,” Giles answered. “I’m doing fine, for one of the damned.”
Charlie had no answer for that one.
“Remember when I used to talk about alchemy?” Giles continued. “The old lunatics trying to turn lead into gold?”
“Of course I do.”
Giles raised the bottle to his mouth and took a long draw. When he’d finished, he ducked his chin back as if a boxer had jabbed his jaw, but his posture quickly recovered. “What a paradox, to discover that it was not mere analogy. We seek to divide uranium and plutonium, to make not gold but even rarer metals, plus the not-so-little pop that division makes. And just as in the days of alchemists, this is an upsetting of the natural order. Anyone who declares he can predict how much force our toying with nature will generate, well, he is lying to you. It’s like a Zen koan: He who says he knows . . . does not know.”
“Can I have a sip?”
“Of this rot?” Giles laughed. “You’ll regret it.”
“I finished the last detonator assembly.”
“No wonder you’re out walking where you shouldn’t.” He handed the bottle over. “For how many Gadgets?”
Charlie tipped the bottle and took a good slug. “God almighty,” he sputtered. “This stuff is awful.”
Giles nodded. “Agreed.”
“Ugh.” Charlie shook his head. “Anyway, five.”
“Five?” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “We’d better drink more.”
Charlie winced and tried again, afterward lowering the bottle with a shudder.
“Does that help?”
Charlie chuckled. “Not a bit. Where on earth did you get this nastiness?”
“Whiskey was Monroe’s parting gift.”
“Parting?”
Giles nodded. “Resigned at dinner. Waltzed up to a table of senior guys, and told them off in colorful terms. They had his gear and his carcass on a bus in under an hour.”
“Monroe is gone.”
“He said we would be murderers merely to satisfy our curiosity. He told two division directors their morals were ‘lower than pig shit.’” Giles reached for the bottle, raising it in salutation. “Tonight’s drunk is in his honor.”
“Someone will make one of these weapons first. Our success might scare the others off.”
“That justification and ten more are rattling around in my head. But we’re probably wrong.”
“Should we join Monroe, then? Next bus to Santa Fe?”
“Not all of us have Brenda waiting at the bus stop,” Giles teased. “But no, Charlie. We’re destined to complete this job. We’ll end the war, and perhaps all wars. Or we’ll bring on the ruin of humanity. There is only one way to find out.”
“What about Oppie’s idea of a demonstration?”
“I pray for that every day, and I am not a religious man. Ultimately, if your part of the business is finished, there’s no turning back.”
“None?”
“I have a suspicion that the exact point at which a scientist is satisfied is the exact same point at which a general becomes acutely interested.”
“You think the army will take the Gadget and run.”
“Five Gadgets,” Giles corrected. He tossed a stone into the darkness. “Five.”
After a long pause they heard the rock strike down below, one place and another, or perhaps the echo. Charlie imagined all the critters that would scatter at the sound. “Hey, what do you think became of Midnight? I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“The same thing that will become of all of us,” Giles replied with a bitter laugh.
“You are in a dark place, aren’t you?”
“All clears,” Giles said, as he tipped the whiskey over his head, pouring it into his open mouth and all across his face.
“Come on.” Charlie yanked the bottle down. “That’s enough.”
They sat in a long silence. Eventually Giles pointed out at the landscape. “Do you know why I came here tonight?”
“No idea.”
“You can only tell where the canyon is by what’s not there. Where you see darkness, that’s the end of The Hill. The roads
have stopped, fences and guards and lights. You know what is left, out there? Do you?”
“Giles, maybe we should head back to the barracks now.”
“An abyss, Charlie.” He held his arms wide. “Everything past here is an abyss.”
When Horn came for Charlie’s detonators, he brought four men. They carried steamer trunks, into which they packed the assemblies like crown jewels. One of them did nothing but crumple papers to cushion the devices. Charlie sat at his desk, pretending to calculate arcs, unable to look away.
Horn stood by the door, observing. At one point he interrupted the packers. He reached into the trunk and rearranged one piece.
“Show more care,” he said. When they had loaded everything, he nodded to Charlie and followed the others down the hall.
Charlie exhaled. He had not known he was holding his breath.
The next resistance came in the form of an official dissent. The Franck Report—written by senior scientists, Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and physics who had held secret meetings—issued a letter to President Truman opposing a bombing of Japan. The outcome, this document predicted, would be widespread international destabilization. Other nations would eventually develop their own atomic weapons, spawning a global arms race. The committee urged Truman to approve no more than a demonstration, on a deserted island and with the whole world witnessing, after which regulation of atomic weapons would be given to the brand-new United Nations, with a worldwide prohibition on the use of these bombs.
Charlie had great hopes. Franck was actually his uncle’s boss. He watched in frustration, however, as the report had no impact. Preparations continued. Starting July Fourth, he began making trips to Alamogordo—a giant plain beside the mountains that the original inhabitants had called Jornado del Muerto, the Trail of Death. It was a six-hour drive, down The Hill through flatlands, then out into open desert.
Hundreds of workers had preceded him. Project Y had purchased the land from a cattle rancher, and they turned the house into a command post, erected a tent city for scientists and technicians, and dispatched guards over the surrounding country. The original plan had been to patrol on horseback, but the land was too vast and water too scarce, so soldiers did the job in jeeps.
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