An Atomic Romance

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  Apparently Burl was speechless.

  “Hello. Earth to Burl.”

  “Man, oh, man. Awful stuff.”

  “Maybe you can eat it, but you sure can’t breathe it.”

  “How do they think up stuff like that?”

  They finished the burritos and went to the living room.

  “You know, Reed, there’s no telling what the government’s still up to.”

  “Right.” Reed nodded.

  Burl said, “If the government did it back then, why wouldn’t they do such a thing now? It might not be plutonium. It might be something else.”

  He flapped his sheet mural in Reed’s face. “This calls for church,” he said.

  The church pageant had slipped Reed’s mind. Burl had wanted him to go along. “When is this bacchanalia, anyway?”

  “Tonight. I reckon you could go with me.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I promised Sally I’d clean up and go.”

  “Why don’t you get Rita to go with you?”

  “Oh, she’s gone to a family reunion, one of those genealogy weekends. I told her my family tree had dry rot.”

  Reed helped himself to another beer from Burl’s refrigerator and stood at the window watching a group of children walking along in a crowded, tight bunch. They seemed to be little grade-schoolers, and they struggled along under backpacks, even though it was Sunday. When his kids were little, they traveled light; he recalled them jumping around, unencumbered. But now it seemed as though children were beasts of burden, hauling their essential material possessions, as if they had to be prepared for a quick escape from the nuclear cloud. The hobgoblin of little minds, he thought, visualizing the backpack as a hobgoblin that had hitched a ride.

  Still watching out the window, Reed saw a little girl stumble and fall. Another girl tried to help her up, but two small boys skirted them, laughing. The child who had fallen kicked at the boys, like a bug thrown onto its back, her tiny foot drumming the air.

  Reed turned to face Burl’s mural. He couldn’t see Jesus and the Apostle Paul in it. He scrutinized the figures, realizing he should give Burl some credit for his artistic effort. “I didn’t know you could paint,” he said.

  “Neither did I.” Burl surveyed his work. “But why not? We can do a lot more than we think we can. Maybe I’ll start a website and sell sheet paintings.” He laughed.

  Burl’s schemes were sometimes so extravagant that he was paralyzed by their very grandeur, Reed thought. But the enthusiasm of the plutonium experimenters obscured their vision, and they sprinted ahead, their perversity an energy source, like radium. Not Einstein. He balked at the atomic bomb; he resisted quantum mechanics.

  “Where does Sally’s church stand on Einstein’s theory of relativity?” Reed asked.

  Burl laughed, spurting out some droplets of beer. He had been washing dishes but then forgot and was wandering around with a wet dish mop.

  “Einstein believed in God, didn’t he?” Burl said.

  “Well, he looked like God anyway, with that hair.”

  “Like God had been traipsing through the universe like a hobo for about a hundred million years. Like he’d lost something out there in one of those galaxies and couldn’t find it.”

  They laughed.

  “Maybe that’s where Jesus is,” Reed said. “Maybe he took a wrong turn. He could be in imaginary time. One of those books I read said imaginary time is at a right angle to regular time—if you can believe that.”

  “That’s no way to talk about Christ the Savior!” Burl said.

  “Who bailed you out of jail, me or Jesus?”

  Burl fell onto the sofa laughing. This kind of banter with Burl had long been a chief source of entertainment for both. It felt good to go at it again.

  “You’re full of shit, Burl.”

  “You’re full of shit, Reed.” Burl shook the dish mop at Reed. “If Jesus came back here now, he’d be in over his head. Just the cleaning alone.”

  “He’d need more than a dish mop,” said Reed, draining his beer.

  “Come with me to the pageant,” Burl said. “It’ll be fun. It’ll cheer you up. You’ll see. There’ll be lots of singing—and eats.”

  “Why the hell not,” Reed said. “If there’s food, how can I go wrong?”

  Before leaving, they finished the six-pack and painted for a while on Burl’s mural. Now Goliath had a crown of flowers and David was standing in a soybean field. Burl still insisted they were Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Reed thought the painting resembled the work of two schizophrenic monkeys at a research lab engaging in self-expression on Art Day.

  Burl showered and dressed in Sunday rigging—khaki pants and a clean short-sleeved plaid shirt. Reed was still in his red T-shirt and black jeans, which he considered might not be appropriate for church, but Burl assured him it was. “Sally says that some Sundays everybody wears overalls, or another Sunday they’ll come in old-fashioned costumes. Sometimes it’s Hawaiian-shirt Sunday.”

  The parking lot at the church was enormous, the size of the lots at the big-box stores. Burl, in a bubbly mood, introduced Reed to half a dozen people in the throng as they made their way into the church, a big box with a spire. Burl greeted people with backslaps as if he had known them for years.

  “See, these are just good folks,” said Burl, sending ebullient greetings all around. “They’ve got the spirit.”

  Reed felt buoyed by the beer, but unscrewed. “Holy shit,” he said to Burl.

  “There’s my ever-loving brother!” cried a woman in a red blouse, white pants, and blue shoes. It was Sally, Burl’s sister, all smiles and suntan. She had a gang of small children in tow, and they all jumped on Burl, tugging and squealing. He hugged them all and teased them. Sally acknowledged Reed and whispered “Beer on your breath” in Burl’s ear—loudly enough for Reed to hear, but the children didn’t notice.

  Sally and her brood joined a group of children in front, and Burl and Reed found plush seats in the middle of the basketball-arena-sized auditorium, where American flags adorned the walls.

  On the stage a painted scrim represented a blue sky with a scattering of cumulus clouds above a broad desert. At one end the desert became a seashore, with stark tropical trees scattered about and white seabirds hanging in the air above the greenish water.

  “Sally didn’t want my sheet messing up the scenery,” Burl said. “It’s a pageant-in-a-box. They rent it and put it together like a piece of furniture you get from a warehouse store. It’s got the costumes, the stage sets, the play, the whole works.”

  “Batteries included?”

  “Right!”

  A minister kicked off the evening with an exuberant prayer. Surveying the bowed congregation, Reed thought of the flock of praying mantises caught up in the filter rooms. He had liked those big bugs.

  The crowd hushed under the abruptly dimmed lights, and the drama began. The pageant—The First Missionary—was about the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Damascus was represented by a large tropical plant resting on a beige blanket—a palm tree in the desert. A teenager in a burnoose was walking along a winding, gray cardboard road. He was gasping with fatigue and thirst, and when he spotted the palm tree, he staggered across the stage, then knelt and drank from a bucket of water next to the tree.

  Suddenly a spotlight beamed down from the ceiling, and a voice from above said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

  “Who art thou, Lord?” Saul jumped in fear, shielding his eyes from the bright light.

  “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

  Reed elbowed Burl.

  “Lord, what wilt thou have me do?” said the man Saul.

  The voice said, “Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”

  From the shadows a bearded man in a white robe, trimmed with gold glitter, appeared, gesturing kindly to the thirsty man. It was Jesus. The audience gasped. The lights played on his gold gl
itter.

  As the play progressed, Reed began to fidget, and the seat grew less comfortable. The beer buzz wore off. He was hungry and agitated. He was stranded, perhaps like a traveler on the road to Damascus. He had placed his faith in science, and he felt it had eluded him. He had pledged his allegiance to big institutions, and they had fucked him over. His best friend was living on the edge. He missed Julia.

  Saul, who had become the Apostle Paul, was being persecuted. Escaping his pursuers, he was lowered out of a high window in a large basket. A live donkey was led onto the stage to whisk Saul out of Damascus.

  “I know that donkey,” Burl whispered. “Pedro. Belongs to a guy I know.”

  At one point Reed misheard “the Apostle Paul” as “Parsifal,” and his imagination inserted the Celtic warrior he had met in the refuge, or perhaps the Green Knight, waylaying Parsifal from behind a tree. Reed imagined the factory worker who packed the pageant into the box accidentally mixing up the parts from two or three different pageants. Reed considered how the pageant committee might accommodate the Green Knight in the drama. In church, Reed’s mind had always wandered.

  In his mind were vials of liquid stuff that could blast into fire if improperly handled. He saw heavy black rubber gloves jamming plungers into flesh. He could see Jesus on the cross, the thorns dripping poison into his eyes, the nails driven in like fuel rods. What was the fatal dose? How much could hide in your body before it made itself known?

  Reed wondered if he would end up filing a medical claim. He wondered if Sammy Blew had had any bad exposures at the plant. Hot Mama had said he was pitiful. What did that mean?

  It was odd to be in church. He was happier cruising the ether in his jaded Reedmobile, knowing that he didn’t know shit, than he would be nestled in a silk bed of blind certainties. Religion could explain a billion angels dancing on a pinhead but reject subatomic structure as a blasphemous fantasy. The chasm inside him, the emptiness that made him cry out in the night and dream Salvador Dalí paintings, wasn’t for lack of a faith.

  The play ended with a crowd onstage, representing the multitudes the Apostle Paul had converted to Christianity. When they burst out singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” the audience rose and joined in. Next was “God Bless America.”

  Reed sang along. He hadn’t sung in church in a long while, and he felt nostalgic about the times his mother used to take him to church. He couldn’t read the meaning of the rapture on Burl’s face—whether Burl badly needed to belong, or whether this church reminded him somehow of going to church in Detroit when he was a kid, or even whether he was inwardly amused.

  T he buffet line was long and boisterous, and people were piling their plates high. Reed and Burl were chagrined to realize they hadn’t contributed any food, but they were hungry. Besides meat and vegetables, there was a generous selection of processed snacks, arranged with the bags open-mouthed, like cornucopias. A whole table was laden with pies and cakes in supermarket packaging.

  “I’ve died and gone to heaven,” an older woman in front of Reed in the buffet line said with a sigh as she loaded her plate.

  “I feel an urge to go ride a camel across the desert,” said Reed.

  “Don’t rely on a donkey,” Burl said.

  In the parking lot after they ate, Burl sneaked a swig of whiskey from his truck. Sally sailed past, a couple of cars away. She waved and called out, “It just thrills my soul to see all these good people out here celebrating the Lord. You come back now, Reed.”

  “Didn’t I tell you she had the holy spirit?” Burl said.

  Reed waved to Sally. He leaned against the truck and observed the people streaming out of church. The parking lot was a traffic jam.

  He said to Burl, “You can’t see the stars out here with all these Florida-orange vapor lights.”

  Burl lifted his eyes skyward. “People don’t worry much about the stars out here,” he said.

  Suddenly emotional, Burl said, “You’re my best buddy, Reed.” He touched Reed’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. Look at that. I’m weeping tears. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right, Burl. Nowadays men blubber and hug.”

  “Thanks, Reed, good buddy.” Burl laughed and banged on the truck door. “Sometimes, life is just so—you know, goddammit— whatever, that the best thing to do is just enjoy the spectacle.”

  38

  Reed reached home shortly after nine. The day had not smoothed his disquietude. He was restless and disturbed, still wondering if he should take off for Chicago. But surely Julia would be back for work the next day, Monday, after her three-week absence. Regretting that he had called her previously at three a.m., he refrained from dialing her now. If she had returned, she would be tired and busy, preparing for work the next morning. She wouldn’t want to hear his mood.

  He contemplated the solar system—Uranus close up with its halo askew, the thousand-faceted face of Jupiter’s moon Callisto, Venus unmasked. The planets seemed so watchful, a steady presence, but as full of mystery as the human soul. As Mercury faded from the screen, he clicked on his e-mail. Hot Mama had written at two-thirteen p.m., “I checked my horoscope just now; usually I would have done it first thing in the morning. It told me to avoid Geminis today, and I have a feeling you are a Gemini. No offense, but you have this expression on your face, like you’re whistling some private tune to yourself. I got the feeling that for you life is just a show, everything is for your entertainment. I was a sideshow.”

  Reed zipped back: “Now why would you think that? I am known as a kind and tolerant person. I gave you my time and interest. Everybody I know is fucked up. Do I need to add an opinionated loser to my list of troubles?” He paused for a moment, then wrote, “My best friend always says the best thing to do is enjoy the spectacle of life. I know he’s right.”

  He clicked SAVE and shoved his message into the Drafts file. Don’t act in haste, he said to himself. Did Jesus say that? Or Burl?

  He decided to call Sammy Blew. Sammy was a night owl and something of an eccentric. He made collages of cut slivers of mirrors. He frequently cut himself and feared he was getting quicksilver poisoning from the backing on the mirror. “I’m O.K.,” he had said to Reed once. “I got a tetanus shot.” Reed hadn’t seen Sammy lately, and he was troubled by what Hot Mama had said about him. Reed had never thought of Sammy as “pitiful.” Sammy began working at the plant not long after Reed signed on, but after he transferred to utilities Reed seldom saw him.

  Sammy was home, watching a movie, and he seemed glad to hear from Reed. They chatted for a while. He sounded O.K., and Reed was uncertain what to ask him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask about Sammy’s health. He told Sammy about Hot Mama.

  “I don’t know who you mean,” Sammy said.

  “Great big woman? Likes Beethoven and cures her own hams?”

  “Bettina,” Sammy said. “Yeah, I used to go with her. But she’s not that big.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Might be a matter of perspective. You know I always went out with big girls.”

  “But why?”

  “Reed, you don’t know till you’ve tried it. But big women are—well, comfortable. And they’re a challenge to make it with.”

  “Comfortable. Hmm.”

  “Big women will make good babies.”

  “I bet,” Reed said, picturing a row of corpulent cherubs.

  “How did Bettina seem, Reed? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

  “She seemed nice.”

  “Happy?”

  “Hard to tell. She seemed . . . aggravated.” Clarence was nuzzling at Reed’s arm. Reed patted the dog’s head. “How are you doing, Sammy?”

  “Great, just great, Reed. I’ve turned a corner, getting my life together, that whole story.”

  “Good, Sammy. That’s really good to hear.”

  Reed decided not to ask Sammy about his exposures. He went out with Clarence for a moment. The insects outside were louder than the traffic on the
boulevard. The night was overcast and humid. He went inside. Something from the church supper had given him heartburn, and as he sought out a remedy from his vintage collection of patent medicines, he began talking aloud to himself and storming around his place. He was angry with Hot Mama and angry with himself for getting into such ticklish tangles with women. He was mad at the world. After locating a plastic shopping bag, he began ditching his expired medicines. Slam, dunk. Cough syrup, antacids, salves, all partially used. A packet of douche powder someone had left, hair conditioner. Tooth whitener, dead. Mouth rinse, dead. Some allergy medicine he had inherited from Glenda. She snored like the devil! He remembered an occasion when he was still married to her—he was throwing things around, cursing and yelling at her. For what? He couldn’t remember. It wasn’t important. Or maybe it was. Maybe he wasn’t paying enough attention to the nuances of her femininity.

  39

  The digital clock said six twenty-five. The telephone was ringing, not the alarm.

  “Reed.” His mother’s voice was calm and clear, as firm as she sounded twenty years ago. “I was awake all night thinking things through,” she said. “I’m fully recovered from my stroke. Why, I could play basketball. I don’t need to be in this place anymore.”

  “Ma. It’s six-thirty in the morning. At least I think it’s morning.”

  “Good. That will give us all day to get me moved.”

  Reed groaned. “Let me get some coffee. I’ll come over there later.”

  Unhurriedly, he made a pot of coffee and prepared some eggs and cereal. He read the newspaper. He thought about exercising. He should take Clarence to the park or the country. He was active enough on the job, but he needed to work out more. It had been too hot. A slight midriff pudge had crept up on him. At seven he turned up the radio to hear the news. It occurred to him that he liked for the big things to be simple and clear. He liked for the small things to be intricate and complicated. Wasn’t that what Julia was saying to him?