by Lydia Millet
—Scavengers, said Ben.
Above them a bat flitted and swooped near a lamp post, and Ben followed it with his eyes as it vanished in the dark again.
—Do you think you know what’s happening anymore? she asked him.
—I have no idea what’s happening.
—How about when we get to D.C. and they do the demonstration? Is it over then?
—It’s already over, said Ben.
In the morning Szilard took the other scientists aside to discuss the request from the Christians. Ann and Ben were not privy to the conversation but afterward Oppenheimer came and sat at the picnic table and told them what his contribution had been.
—There’s no harm, he said, —in including them. To let them have a voice is not to submit to their direction.
—I think you’ll find, said Ben, —that is a naïve conclusion.
Oppenheimer exhaled smoke and cocked an eyebrow at him, mulling it over.
A few minutes later Larry and Big Glen came back from a second meeting in the orange pavilion.
—It’s going to be Bradley, said Glen.
In the bus office, combing through newspapers for stories about them and watching his wife sort mail as Tamika and Dory filed faxes in the scientists’ inboxes, Ben said softly: —This is going to change everything.
—I know, she said.
When he looked up from his stack of papers he saw Dory had the camcorder on her shoulder and was filming them, documenting their role. That was what she said when people asked her why she was taping them changing their clothes or applying deodorant. “Documenting your role,” she always said.
He knew the answer already but a mean impulse drove him to ask: —That wasn’t you, was it Dory? Washing Oppenheimer’s feet in the shower room up at the cabin on the mountain?
—What?
As his phone rang and he slipped his hand in his pocket to get it she snapped at the bait. —There was a woman washing his feet?
—The first request was banners, said Big Glen gruffly.
Ann and Ben pitched their tent beside the trees that flanked the rest room building and he came to talk to them there, where they sat in folding chairs eating sandwiches.
—Banners? asked Ben.
—It used to be against Szilard’s rules so now they want to decorate their vehicles with these, uh, testimonies to Christ.
She tossed away the last crust of bread and walked through the crowds camped out nearby. There were arts and crafts projects in progress, followers kneeling on the ground on long rolls of newsprint, painting signs.
Back West the women traveling in the church buses had worn skirts and low-heeled pumps every day. Their hair had been freshly permed in tight curls around their heads and they had smelled of cheap shampoo, girlish perfume and cloying deodorant. Now their hair hung lank, tied back in rubber bands, and instead of skirts and blouses they wore T-shirts, once-white sneakers and dappled acid-wash jeans with elastic waistbands that might have been briefly in style sometime in the early 1980s. They could not bathe often enough on the road and so they cleaned themselves with baby wipes, their faces and armpits. She had seen the evidence walking past their campsites, toiletries laid out on folding tables: razors for the men, plastic tubs marked baby powder scent and basins full of gray soapy water.
One or two of them recognized her and waved as she passed, leaning over them to look at their signs and banners. She read ALL HAIL THE NAZARENE as well as quotations from Scripture: THE GOOD SHEPHERD LAYS DOWN HIS LIFE FOR THE SHEEP. THE END OF ALL THINGS IS AT HAND; KEEP SANE AND SOBER FOR YOUR PRAYERS. CHILDREN, YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN. LEAD ME TO MOUNT ZION!!!
When the caravan moved on Ann and Ben decided to drive their own car. They sat on the hood in the clear chill of the morning, drinking hot drinks as the rest of the cars pulled out.
It took hours and Ann counted the banners and signs until she got bored. BE NOT AMAZED; HE HAS AGAIN RISEN. OPEN THE GATES, SAVIOR, WE ARE READY. HAIL THE REDEEMER. GOD’S LOVE GOES ON FOREVER BUT THE HUMAN RACE WILL END. There were Jamaican flags, Jews for Jesus, doves of peace and eagles clutching machine guns. There was a family in a station wagon, whose children made faces out the windows as they passed.
She was stunned by the numbers.
—Szilard must be livid, said Ben.
When all the cars, vans, motorcycles, and buses had passed Ann walked around the parking lot. Garbage was piled everywhere and there were puddles of liquid on the concrete, yellow, blue, coffee-colored, rainbows of gasoline. Crossing the lot to use the bathroom she noticed a window pane in the building was broken, cracks spidering out from a bullet-sized hole. She followed trampled cups and food debris down the corridor to the women’s bathroom, where a toilet was spilling water onto the floor and water was also running in a sink filled with wet cornflakes. She turned off the tap and looked at broken soap dispensers that had left pink pools on the counter, used tampons bursting from a metal box on the wall and one long bulb flickering over open stall doors that revealed mounds of sodden toilet paper wadded and trailing on the footprinted floor.
On her way out she passed a raccoon slinking along the wall of the corridor, leaving bloody tracks behind. Outside the door a smashed whiskey bottle lay on the concrete and she wondered if it had stepped on a piece of broken glass.
In terms of the sheer number of nuclear warheads, Cold War proliferation peaked for the U.S. in 1966, when the country had thirty-two thousand warheads active.
By 1967, when China detonated its first high-yield nuclear device at Lop Nur, that number dropped to a mere thirty thousand and continued to descend until it reached about ten thousand stockpiled weapons in 2003.
The Soviet Union’s stockpile did not peak until 1986, when it reached over forty thousand.
In Philadelphia they made camp beside the river in the sprawling parking lots of empty warehouses, the towering and rusted ghosts of refineries hulking over them. Ann thought silence must have reigned there before the followers started pulling in, filling the lots with the noise of their engines and brakes and radios and voices.
Sheila had called on the cell phone and requested an audience with the scientists, so they parked the car beside the bus, inside the perimeter fence, in a space that had been left clear for them. Ann went in to talk to Szilard with Ben trailing her.
He was sitting hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table, brow furrowed, glasses perched on the end of his nose.
—What do you think about all the religious slogans? asked Ben.
—I have more important things to think about, said Szilard, and spun the laptop to face them. A news headline ran Dead A-Bomb Physicists to Appear on Leno.
—You’re going on Leno? asked Ben in amazement.
—Oppenheimer’s agent booked it for him.
—Oppenheimer has an agent? asked Ann. —First I’ve heard about that. Where is he?
—New York, of course, said Szilard. —But with an L.A. office.
—No, I mean Robert.
—Check with Glen.
They found Big Glen in a tent behind the bus, talking to Bradley. The prosthetic arm had been removed and sat on a folding table between them.
—Glen, quick question—
—I’ll talk to you in a minute, said Glen severely, and turned back to Bradley.
When Bradley finally picked up his arm and left Glen watched him go and shook his head.
—What do they want now? asked Ann.
—They want a press conference.
Oppenheimer had become more and more passive. He was not distressed but content.
—I have a feeling these days of being carried, he said to Ann as they walked by the river. —I’m lying on my back being carried along.
Szilard was waiting impatiently near the reflecting pool in Rittenhouse Square when they got there. He grabbed Oppenheimer by the shirtsleeve and pulled him aside. Ann could hear his stage-whisper as they retreated: —They insisted. They had the nerve to claim that while we are “still
management,” they are the leadership.
She did not want to be part of the press conference so she took Ben’s hand and guided him to a nearby fountain where they could sit down. The followers had not been alerted to the occasion except for the Christian leaders, who huddled together with notes and cordless microphones.
Then the network news vans arrived and before Szilard could speak Bradley had called the press to attention and with the other leaders arrayed behind him had begun to pace back and forth talking about the Second Coming. Feedback crackled.
Ann and Ben were sitting too far away to hear every word, but beside her Ben shook his head. She had a feeling of detachment from everything, of something lost and dispersed and replaced by the strange.
But they were shaded and comfortable where they sat, and the trees were tall and broad and old.
—What are these? she asked him idly.
—There’s maples, of course, and oaks, and those are locusts. That one there is a plane tree, said Ben, pointing.
Bradley launched into a passage from the Book of Revelation and Ann looked at the reporters, expecting them to turn away. Instead they watched him with unchanging faces, their cameras rolling. Behind Bradley the three scientists stood in their Sunday best, proper in suits and ties, Oppenheimer cutting his usual old-fashioned and dignified figure in the porkpie hat. Their hands were clasped in front of them, except for Szilard who was rifling through a sheaf of papers.
The other two waited with patient expressions, as though they were not consciously present but dreaming where they stood.
Paper snagged on her leg. Sheets of it were fluttering across the square, caught by the breeze. Szilard had passed out press packets full of documents and reporters had dropped them.
—… What we say, said Bradley, —what Scripture says, that now is the time for the armies of light, for the lifting up to the final days. We will build this army greater and greater. All Christians everywhere should join us, and the unsaved too. This is a call to arms: join our quest for peace and salvation in the risen Jesus Christ Our Lord!
—Amen, chorused the Christian leaders behind him, nodding.
Ann saw a reporter near her mouth the word Amen silently, as though it was a reflex.
Bradley relinquished the microphone to Szilard, who snatched it from him with a flick of his wrist.
—We welcome volunteers and advocates of all kinds, he said through gritted teeth. —All that you have to believe in is peace. And now to the substance of this press conference. You have in your hands the proof that Dr. Enrico Fermi, standing here to my right, is who he claims to be and none other. This has been rigorously verified and attested to by a panoply of DNA experts and neutral third-party observers who monitored the testing process, including the chain of custody of all DNA samples during transportation and laboratory guardianship …
The reporters looked bored, moving their feet restlessly and making adjustments to their cameras and microphones.
—Look at Fermi, whispered Ben, and she stood up and leaned around the shoulder of a reporter for a better view.
Beside Szilard Fermi was turning round and round where he stood, his eyes wide, his arms raised slightly from his sides.
—… at that time, said Szilard, —we will press for recognition of our special status by the president and Congress—
—What the hell? whispered Ben.
Reporters were craning their necks too, squinting to try to see what Fermi was doing. When Oppenheimer noticed Fermi’s movement he leaned behind Szilard to whisper something to Fermi, but Fermi shook his head and kept turning.
—Something’s wrong with him, said Ben. —Something is wrong. I’m getting him down.
She watched as Ben pushed his way through the crowd, up to the front, past Szilard who was talking about reaching out through the United Nations to all the countries of the world. He took Fermi gently by the arm, leaning in close to whisper in his ear. Fermi nodded and Ben led him toward the street.
She skirted the throng to catch up with them.
—Enrico, are you OK? she asked softly when she reached them, touching his shoulder.
—OK, he said distractedly, but she caught Ben’s eye and he shook his head.
—What were you doing up there?
—The updraft, he mumbled.
—The updraft?
—You just need to rest, said Ben. —I think we’ll get you a hotel room for a couple of nights. It’s so crowded in the bus. Would you like that?
When the other scientists paid them a visit at the hotel that night they were confused.
Ann and Ben had taken a room next door and called Larry, who came with Tamika trotting beside him, ready for the hotel pool with her bikini over her arm.
—He’s not himself, Ben told Oppenheimer, who had requested a meeting in the cocktail lounge where he could smoke. Szilard was coming later. —He’s not here.
—I don’t understand what happened, said Oppenheimer. —Did something happen to him?
—Nothing that we know of, said Ben.
They went up to Fermi’s room together, the two of them with Oppenheimer, along a long dim corridor with a striped carpet in blue and beige and framed prints of flowers on the walls. Ann knocked lightly. For a long time there was no answer, and then she noticed the door was not clicked closed and pushed it open, calling his name.
—Enrico?
Fermi was sitting writing on hotel stationery at the small round table beside the air conditioner, under his window. The window behind him was open to the pool enclosure, a few lights looming tall over the shifting blue of the kidney shape.
—Enrico, said Oppenheimer, and walked ahead to the table while Ann and Ben sat down on the edge of the bed, a few feet back. —What’s happening?
—I’m writing them a letter, said Fermi, and Ann noticed that his face was sallow and he was sweating. At the corners of his mouth were flecks of spit. He wore only a button shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and boxer shorts and his socks.
He was usually fastidious in his neatness, but there were wadded balls of Kleenex on the carpet beside his feet.
—Whom?
—The ones who love the birds.
—You mean bird watchers? asked Oppenheimer softly, and sat down in the chair across from him. —You used to be a birdwatcher. Remember when you knew all the birds in the forest near the mesa?
—They love the birds, said Fermi. —They don’t watch the birds.
—Oh, said Oppenheimer, and nodded slowly.
After a few moments of silence Ben asked quietly, —What does that mean, Enrico?
But Fermi said nothing, only began to whistle between his teeth. Ann knew the tune from somewhere but could not place it.
—Where’s the paper? asked Fermi a few minutes later, impatiently. He had come to the end of the page and there were no blank sheets left.
—I’ll get you some, said Ann, —let me call the front desk.
When the bellhop came with fresh stationery Szilard was behind him, but Fermi had eyes for nothing but the paper, snatching it hungrily.
—What’s the matter with you? asked Szilard abruptly. —Snap out of it! I don’t believe this. You’re full of shit!
—Leo! barked Oppenheimer. —Don’t you dare to speak to him that way!
Fermi ignored them both, sitting down to write again.
—Can I take the pages you’ve already written and maybe put them in an envelope for you? asked Ben.
Fermi nodded absently. Ben picked up the sheets of paper and sat down beside Ann, leaning over her to flick on a bedside lamp.
—It’s in Italian, he said under his breath.
Szilard rummaged in the minibar and pulled out a bag of peanuts.
—I need to talk to you, he said to Oppenheimer, still seated at the table opposite Fermi, gazing out the window.
—And you too, he said to Ben, and the three of them rose and slipped out the door, closing it behind them.
Ann went to sit where Oppenheimer had sat and watched Fermi write, the blank pages secured under one arm for future use. He guarded them jealously.
She could not keep looking at him so she averted her eyes and looked out the window as Oppenheimer had, fleeing from contact. She tried to make out shapes in the dark beyond the room’s reflection. At the far corner of the pool enclosure Tamika sat in a hot tub. Only her head was visible above the water and the hot tub rim, dreadlocks piled high. She looked buried up to her neck. Nearer the water in the main pool moved dancelike, swaying and glittering with new emptiness. On the cement deck early autumn leaves had already fallen, gathered in narrow piles at the base of the white metal fence whose sign bore the words SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. Tamika seemed not to mind that it was night, growing cold, already fall.
Beyond her were the lights of other rooms across the way, past the swaying water. Most of the curtains were closed and only thin bars of light slanted out. On the third floor Ann could see a man standing stock-still and staring outward over his balcony, staring in her direction or possibly down at Tamika’s body in the water below. It was only his silhouette and the silhouette was of a big, thick man with no arms. Then he moved and the arms became separate from the body. They seemed to blur as he raised them over his head, as though they were not two arms but many.
Then he pulled the curtains together and disappeared.
She watched this with Fermi very slight on the other side of the table, pen scratching.
The next morning he would not come out of his room, which Kurt the Hut was guarding. They ordered him room service but he showed no interest in eating.
—We need to decide what to do about this, said Szilard.
Larry tried to hand around a joint, but heads were shaken.
—I think he needs medical care, said Oppenheimer. —Isn’t it that simple?
—The problem is, said Szilard, —we have a lot of business. He’s our biggest asset, DNA and fingerprints. We need him.
—He’s not an asset, Leo, said Oppenheimer.
—Why don’t we just get him some peace and quiet, said Ben. —He needs a rest from all this.