Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

  —Good, said Szilard hastily, nodding.

  Still flushed, smiling dazedly, she sat down on the picnic bench again.

  —I don’t know, Leo, said Ann, and drank from her mug of wine. Sheila had brought over a cardboard box of Zinfandel, which sat on the table between them. —They can still claim forgery, I think. Most people aren’t going to buy that you guys were transported in time, or rose from the grave, or whatever.

  —The anomaly? said Szilard. —Yes they will. With the fingerprints and Fermi’s DNA test—Glen, did you set up the next press conference yet?

  Big Glen, hunched over the campfire with a cup of coffee, glanced up guiltily.

  —We were waiting to get more direction from you, he said gruffly, shooting an accusing look at Ann.

  —You’re kidding! We have to move on this immediately. Are you joking with me?

  —Without you, Leo, said Ann, —we’re just useless.

  Szilard looked slightly mollified as he gestured imperiously at the Huts to take his luggage inside. Then he sat down at the end of a picnic bench and grubbed around on the table until he found a mixed bag of cookies.

  —Of course, we may want to combine it with the march on Washington, he conceded, and discarded an oatmeal raisin carelessly to grab a chocolate chip.

  Later she brushed her teeth at the edge of the trees because Szilard was monopolizing the bathroom. She rinsed her mouth with water from a plastic cup and was standing staring at nothing when she noticed Father Raymond in the distance, saying an evening prayer with a small congregation kneeling in the grass in front of him. She walked over slowly, toothbrush and plastic cup in hand, skirting the chain-link fence that surrounded the bus.

  —Once again, as the end of the day falls upon us and upon all of God’s creatures under this wide, great dome of a sky, we beg to gain strength in our sleep, to fortify us for the new dawn. We beg for the will to help make peace a shining force in all of our lives, for the fortitude to keep steadfast in our faith that all is not lost and that brotherhood and goodness can still reign on this sad and battered earth. And now please join me in the Lord’s Prayer.

  She mouthed the words with the rest of them, looking at their closed eyes, and was reminded of a saint Ben had described to her. It was a saint his mother had made a pilgrimage to see when she was a little girl, whose sparkling image she had brought home depicted on a postcard and kept to show to her son many years later. The saint had been exhumed on the whim of some potentate in the church who had seen a vision of her purity. Miraculously it was found that her body never decomposed: her face and body were pure and unlined. She was buried and exhumed again and still there was little decay.

  Finally the corpse was coated in wax, laid in a glass box like Snow White and put on display. This was in a church in southern France. The saint’s large white eyes were closed but still luminous, and she was known far and wide as an incorruptible.

  —For thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.

  The congregation rose with wet patches on the knees of their jeans and skirts, said quiet goodnights to Father Raymond and wandered off toward their tents and cars and vans.

  —I have noticed, said Father Raymond to Ann, closing his book and zipping up his pale windbreaker against the evening, —that more and more of the followers here are turning to God. Have you noticed that?

  —What I see is more and more of followers joining us because of their religion, said Ann. —It seems to me the tone has changed, the new people are on some kind of crusade. The scientists don’t understand it and neither do I. I mean these are secular men.

  —Would you like to walk and talk?

  —I have some wine over at the picnic table if you’d like a glass.

  He was patted down by the Huts as they passed through the gate in the chain-link. When he raised his right arm, holding the Bible, its pages fell open and dried flowers fluttered out.

  —I’ll get those! said Ann apologetically. She lent down to pick them up off the grass, but they were old and turned to dust in her fingers.

  —Don’t worry, said Father Raymond, —there are plenty more where those came from.

  —This red one, said Ann, —what is it?

  —I never learn the names of flowers.

  They sat down across from each other at the picnic table and she poured him wine into a chipped mug. He took it gratefully.

  —My feeling is, he said, —the names people give to things are their own names.

  —What do you mean?

  —For example, you say that the scientists are secular men. This is what they say to themselves, but it is not necessarily the way that others see them.

  —I guess not, she said. —I guess they can’t choose how other people see them.

  —None of us can, said Father Raymond, and drank. —It’s an illusion we live with, that we can control the way we’re seen. But in fact the way we feel that we are and the way we exist before others, these phenomena are distinct. They are separate apparitions.

  —That’s sad.

  —It is sad only as long as you are afraid of it.

  Ann decided to pour herself a glass of wine despite the taste of toothpaste in her mouth. It had already started to fade anyway.

  —Raymond! Working for the cause these days? called Szilard from the bathroom window. His face was framed as though by a porthole: he was a man in a ship, out to sea. Darkness surrounded him, tossing.

  —Always, brother Leo.

  —I’ll be with you two in a minute, said Szilard, assuming that they, like all people, were waiting for him.

  It was a quiet meal, as if the baptism was all the mob had wanted and now they were content. In the dining hall the blond man and the woman with the polka dot hat brought neatly folded piles of dry clothes to the scientists, who accepted them without comment, almost meekly, heads bowed. Oppenheimer went into the bunkroom to change and came back transformed, sporting a purple T-shirt that said LONG LIVE THE LIZARD KING. Fermi put on a garish tie-dye and paint-splattered overalls. They ate their dinner with wool blankets draped over their shoulders, muddy feet wrapped in donated towels beneath the table.

  Ben ate two helpings of the spaghetti. He ate buttery garlic bread and a heap of salad, relishing all of it. The low hum of conversation in the background was a lullaby for tired legs and arms, for the end of a long climb, and no one said much.

  After dinner Oppenheimer smoked a cigarette, since his pipe had fallen off the porch rail and broken. He announced he was going to take a shower and walked back into the building; and a few minutes later Ben wandered past the shower room on his way to the outhouse. Turning his head he caught a glimpse of Oppenheimer sitting hunched on a bench beneath a showerhead, naked and thin, the water coursing over him.

  On the tiled floor knelt a woman, washing his feet. Wet dirt streamed down into the round grate of the drain and Ben watched the brown grit carried, swirling. He thought he could hear the woman crying, but he was not sure.

  Not stopping, walking past and seeing this only in a quick flash of perception, embarrassed by the intimacy, Ben was thinking only a few seconds later that he must have imagined it. After all Dory had been on the cabin porch, reading with a sharp-scented citronella candle burning on a small wicker table beside her.

  On his way back from the outhouse he peered into the shower room again, but this time it was dark and both Oppenheimer and the washing woman had disappeared.

  Over breakfast Szilard announced they would tour the eastern seaboard before turning back and making their way to the capital.

  He insisted on bacon with his pancakes and the bus was filled with smoke and the smell of bacon grease. Ann opened the door for fresh air and saw Big Glen approaching at a rapid clip, sweating, with four Huts arrayed behind him.

  —We got problems, he said, stepping up into the bright-white vinyl kitchen.

  —What problems, man? asked Larry, who was rolling a joint.

  —There’s a situ
ation developing with the Christians.

  All of them looked up at him then, waiting.

  —Which Christians? asked Szilard.

  —The Fundamentalists, said Big Glen. —They sent a representative to bring a message to us. I just met with him. Guy with a prosthetic arm?

  —Go on, said Szilard, forking up bacon.

  —They want, uh, what did they say. “A Christian voice in the leadership.”

  —What? asked Szilard.

  —They say they make up 85 percent of the followers. That’s what they claim. And they say that as the majority they deserve representation in the leadership of the campaign. Which they call the mission.

  —Tell them if that’s what they want they can just leave, said Szilard. —They can clear out today. There’s no way.

  —But it’s most of the followers, said Glen, and pulled a small notepad out of his breast pocket. He flipped it open and traced a finger down some figures scrawled on the page, Ann craning her neck to see over his arm. His printing was careful and labored, all in capital letters. —According to them, it’s now about twenty-three hundred out of three thousand. And they say the percentage is growing.

  —I will not be blackmailed, said Szilard.

  —At least meet with them, said Ann. —Show them some respect.

  —Exactly, said Tamika. —People just want to feel included, Dr. Leo. You know? It’s probably a cry for help.

  They went down the mountain at dawn while the mob was still asleep. With the weakly lit sky below them they crossed a bog by teetering on rotting logs between hummocks and jumping from mound to mound, feet sinking into the wet turf.

  Ben looked into the brown water and saw insects dimpling the surface with their hair-thin feet. Then he glanced up at the trees on a ridge in front of them, where the ground would be dry again. When the mud sucked at his feet and he had to pull them loose from the suction he looked ahead to the dry ground and tried to think he was already there.

  Later he sat on a damp tree stump batting at mosquitoes while they waited for Dory to finishing peeing, just out of their line of sight.

  —Robert, he said into the silence, —excuse me, but I want to know if something I saw was real. Was there a woman in the shower with you last night? Kneeling on the floor and washing your feet?

  —I think there was! said Oppenheimer, as if it had just occurred to him as a possibility. He pondered the question further and nodded vaguely, at a memory far too ancient to be clearly recalled.

  2

  The Christians had set up a large, square pavilion of pale orange. Walking up to the tent with Szilard, Huts marching alongside, Ann thought of medieval battlefields she had seen in movies, of the French Foreign Legion, the temporary quarters of generals and sheiks.

  In front of the tent coolers of drinks were arrayed, and fabric folding chairs with cupholders built into the arms.

  The door of the tent was furled open, and they went in single-file. At a table sat a row of white men in sweatpants and pastel-colored windbreakers, pasty-faced and middle-aged.

  —Please, Dr. Szilard, have a seat. And y’all other folks too.

  —Ann, said Ann, reaching out her hand, —and this is Larry and Glen, and they shook hands it in turn.

  —Steve Bradley, said the man in the center, who had a fat, ruddy face and a comb-over on his balding pate. He was the one with the prosthetic arm, and it did not have a hook. Ann looked at the prosthetic fingers discreetly. —I’m with the Love of Christ Redeemer. This is Rob with Sixth Pentecostal, and then the fella with the Confederate flag tattoo on his arm—

  —Indiscretion of youth!

  —that’s Denny with the Baptist Collective. There are almost five hundred Baptists with us today. We are richly blessed with Baptists!

  The men laughed heartily.

  —So, said Szilard. —You wanted to talk to me?

  —We have a proposal, said Bradley.

  —Yes?

  —What you need to realize, said Bradley, —is that for most of the people here, this is not a political campaign. This is a holy crusade. It is a pious journey, a sacred pilgrimage. It is a pouring forth of faith, a sacrament in blood.

  —In blood? asked Ann.

  —Blood, sweat and tears, said Bradley, looking only at Szilard. —Let me tell you something. These people have given up jobs. They have taken their children from their schools and away from their homes. They have left everything that they know, they have sacrificed the guarantee of the lives they gave up back there, just to join up and to march behind the three of you.

  —Why? asked Szilard.

  —Because these people believe. These people know. They know the last hours are at hand, they know the Rapture is almost upon us, and they also know why.

  —We are working for peace, said Szilard. —Is that what you’re talking about?

  —What I’m telling you, said Bradley, wiping at his forehead as the sweat trickled down, —is that our people have their own vision of the mission here. They have a powerful vision. Some of them even believe in the Trinity.

  —Trinity? The test?

  —The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. To some of them, you are the Father. Dr. Oppenheimer is the messiah who died for us and comes back bringing the revealed truth of God. And the spirit, often invisible, the Holy Ghost, is of course Dr. Fermi. This is what many of the followers believe.

  —As long as they want to work for peace, said Szilard, —we should be able to coexist. Do they want to work for peace?

  There was a silence, oddly long.

  —We are not interested in worldly matters, said Bradley. —We are interested in the Rapture. Our people will work for you. They want to see you attain your rightful stature. They believe in your divinity.

  —But not peace? asked Ann.

  Bradley shot her a sidelong look.

  —I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. That’s gospel. My people believe you are the ones who will bring the kingdom of God to earth.

  —What Steve means, said the small man to the right of him, with a pinched face and a pink polo shirt, —is we feel, and the people we speak for feel, that they should be able to express their vision as part of the parade. That there should be a more democratic thing going on here, where people can express their own faith.

  —Way it is right now, said another, —you folks decide everything. Which, if you consider you’re only three guys, plus your staff, and we’re maybe twenty-five hundred and growing all the time, isn’t real fair.

  —Janey! Could I get a Coke in here? bellowed Bradley, and a woman came bustling in with a plastic jug.

  —I enjoy Coca Cola, said Szilard.

  —I’ll have some too, said Larry.

  —We in the Redeemer Conference, said Bradley as his wife poured Coke into plastic cups, —have felt very frustrated by the lack of Christian guidance in this mission.

  —The reason there hasn’t been Christian guidance, said Szilard, —is we’re not Christian. I myself am Jewish, as is Oppenheimer.

  —What I’m saying, Dr. Szilard, said Bradley, —is the mission is Christian. Now.

  Szilard lifted his plastic cup of Coke and drank deeply.

  —I’m not sure I follow you, he said finally, when he set the cup down.

  —The numbers speak for themselves. And we feel it is a moral imperative for the Christian following to take a leadership role. If there’s no effort made by management to include us, we will have to take action.

  —When you say leadership role, said Szilard, —what exactly do you mean?

  —For example, when you talk about the mission on TV, said the man in the pink polo shirt, —the name of Christ is hardly ever mentioned.

  —Of course it isn’t mentioned, said Szilard irritably. —Why would it be?

  There was another silence, and the men at the table looked at each other and then faced Szilard again.

  —We didn’t want to have to put it this way, said Bradley, —but what the situation is here? Unless we g
et a Christian person in management, with decision-making power, we’re going to have to break off.

  —Break off? asked Szilard, picking up his empty cup.

  —Take our twenty-five hundred followers in Christ and leave the mission. We know what we know, but we have to work to spread the word in a Christian way.

  There was a silence. Szilard studied the cup, turning it in his fingers as though it contained an answer.

  —Well, said Szilard, putting the cup down again, pushing his chair back and rising, —thank you for your frankness. We’ll certainly think it over.

  Ann felt he had been uncharacteristically tactful.

  The Christians sent them a note later that day at a crowded fuel stop. They had received permission to camp in a vacant business park in a suburb of Baltimore for the next week. The CEO of the landlord company was a believer, the note said, and the business park was between tenants. There was a map included.

  When the buses pulled into the parking lots in the dark, a chain of concrete lakes around an island of sleek glass buildings, Oppenheimer and Fermi were already asleep. They parked at the edge of the lot, beneath a tall lamp, and got out to explore as the Huts set up the perimeter fence and the other trailers began to pull in after them.

  One of the buildings in the complex was standing open so that the followers could use the toilets. Its interior lights had been left on too, glaring out through plate-glass windows and flooding the parking lot with an eerie fluorescence. As cars and vans streamed in the eeriness was lost and the park became gritty and glaring, a dirty fairground at night.

  Walking with Ben down a gravel path that skirted the building, Ann was slow and careful on the bad ankle. Behind them followers set up their tents with a streamlined efficiency and were quickly roasting hot dogs and singing prayers.

  —Look at that, said Ben, and pointed to a pile of trashcans beside a service entrance. A family of raccoons moved among them, two adults and five young.

  —They’re beautiful! said Ann, as they purred and hissed and tore at garbage with their sharp teeth, their black eyes wide and vigilant, having known her presence before she knew theirs.