by Lydia Millet
—We have been forced to call in some recruits. For protection.
—They don’t want to be at the mercy of the government, said Szilard, and looked at Bradley. —Right?
—Not exactly. Parts of the government are friendly. We have friends there. But in the broader establishment we have powerful enemies.
—Like who? asked Szilard. —The Jews?
—Come sit by me, said Oppenheimer to Ann, and patted a folding chair beside him.
She moved over toward him and stood. She was reluctant to sit.
—Whatever, went on Szilard impatiently. —We’re not happy that you’re playing with guns. But the matter at hand is this potential influx of new bodies.
—Believe me, we know how to handle it, said Bradley. —I assure you.
—The Baptist Collective is highly organized, said a thin man wearing thick-rimmed glasses. —We’re used to dealing in volume.
—Now if you’ll excuse me, said Bradley, —I have to make this call now, and he lifted his cell phone with his good hand. —I got organizing to do.
Fermi was in art therapy.
—Would you like to go visit him?
—Yes I would, said Ben.
—Follow me.
They walked quickly along the sleek halls hung with muted landscapes and medieval pastures. All he could hear was her heels clicking and somewhere a piano.
—Is there anyone who can tell me if there’s a diagnosis?
—You’ll have to speak to his doctor when he gets in tomorrow, said the nurse, —since you’re not family. But I think what you’ll hear is, it’s too early for anything definitive. He’s only had two full sessions.
The art therapy room was vast and flooded with gray daylight, with one whole wall a window. In the distant sky clouds were massing, silver and heavy over a land of trees and far-off office buildings. It was going to rain.
He could see no one. Easels and chairs were grouped around a platform but there were no painters behind the easels and no models on the platform. It smelled of turpentine.
—Where is he?
—He stays in the darkroom mostly. It’s the door at the end, you can’t miss it. Two doors in a row.
He knocked on the inner door so that Fermi would not be startled. Inside was red and black and his eyes adjusted slowly.
—Enrico?
The darkroom was simple and old-fashioned, with enlargers hunkered down on a counter against a wall and three shallow plastic basins of chemicals on a waist-high plywood table. Fermi stood at one of these, dunking a print in the liquid with a pair of tongs.
—Enrico, it’s Ben. You can probably see me better than I can see you.
Fermi said nothing, only lifted the print out of the chemical bath and clipped it onto a line.
—You’ve already had time to take pictures?
He moved closer to look at it, but the paper was blank.
—It’s blank, he said flatly.
—So, said Fermi, and moved to the first basin. Ben leaned over it too, and was relieved to see an image forming.
—Is it the lake outside your window?
—It’s them, said Fermi. —But they’re small.
Ben watched the reeds by the lake grow into contrast, their fine, sharp lines darker and darker. The picture was black-and-white and the lake itself grew black against the light sky.
—I don’t see them, said Ben slowly. —Can you show them to me?
Fermi ignored him at first so he repeated the request.
—Here, said Fermi, jabbing with a forefinger. —And there and there and there.
He seemed to be identifying invisible points above the lake, where there was nothing.
—I’m trying to see, said Ben, leaning in close. He could detect no marks on the paper’s porous surface, no texture but whiteness.
—They’re flying south for the winter, said Fermi.
—Oh! Is it—the whooping cranes?
Fermi stepped back suddenly, as though slapped.
—You know them?
—You wrote it down, said Ben. —Remember?
Fermi looked at him for a long time and then stooped down to pick the print out of the developer with his tongs.
—So are you liking it here?
—I can show you the pond.
They left the darkroom and walked through the studio. Fermi led Ben down the hall to a stairwell but once they were going down the stairs he changed his mind and turned around, and they were going upstairs again. Ben followed without questioning until they came to a door marked FIRE EXIT EMERGENCY ONLY.
—But we can’t go out this exit, Enrico.
—Don’t worry, said Fermi, and pushed on the bar. The door opened easily and no alarm sounded.
The roof was a garden, planters of herbs and flowers in individual plots with names on them.
—Do they let you have your own garden? he asked, pleased.
—They will if I ask them, said Fermi, and shrugged.
He walked through the tables of basil and rosemary toward the edge of the roof. This made Ben nervous so he stayed close.
—That’s where we are going, said Fermi, and pointed down at the lake. On the surface large white birds sat and appeared to drift.
—It’s beautiful up here, he said gently.
Fermi was standing with his arms crossed on his chest, scanning the sky. Ben looked up also and saw the clouds were low.
—We should probably go now if we’re going, he said. —Before the rain begins.
The tent was like a white city, swooping up to a pinnacle. All of them stood beside their parked car on the shoulder of the highway staring at it.
—I don’t think I can stand the crowds, said Oppenheimer. —I’m curious but I can’t endure all those people.
—Me either, said Ann.
—Bradley’s got these Christian rock bands that do musical accompaniment, said Szilard. —They’re calling it the Soul Harvest Crusade. And you know how many people he had at his last revival? Fourteen thousand.
Fermi waded into the marshy edge of the lake in his good leather shoes, suit pants rolled up to the knees. Overhead the bank of clouds was a heavy bruised color, brown and pending.
—You can look for them from the water, he announced, beckoning.
—Do you see the swans, Enrico?
—Swans are everywhere, said Fermi, dismissive.
Ben liked to look at the swans, gliding out calmly toward the horizon and away from them.
Fermi was up to his armpits now and Ben thought: What if he goes under and doesn’t surface again? Stay with him. Stay with him.
He took off his own shoes and waded in behind. The cold was stunning.
—I’ll look for them with you for a minute, he called, gasping and curling his fingers with the freeze rising up to his thighs, —but then we need to go back in. There could be lightning.
Fermi stopped with the water up to his shoulders and tipped his head back to squint into the sky. Coming up behind him, teeth chattering, treading water because he had to hold his feet off the slimy lake bottom, Ben leaned back too.
Even with the clouds massed over them the brightness of the sky was still too much for his vision, so he closed his eyes and felt the first light raindrops on his cheeks and forehead.
—It’s raining, he said. —We should really go in.
—Wait! said Fermi.
Now the rain was audible on the water and Ben looked around him at the pinpricking of the surface, spread out around him in a gray and complex infinity.
—Do you see? said Fermi solemnly, and pointed up at the clouds, rainwater coursing down his long nose and dripping off the end. —They are everywhere! Everywhere!
Ben followed his finger but there were no birds visible overhead. It was only a silver blur.
—What? asked Ben.
—The cranes! crowed Fermi, smiling. —They cover the sky. Can’t you see them?
—I don’t see them at all, said Ben sadly.
T
hey watched the revival from Bradley’s trailer, on a live feed. It was a minimal trailer, unlike the bus, without wings that opened to make it broader, without even a full bathroom. In the closet-sized space between the main room and the bedroom there was only a flimsy blue toilet, and the strong smell of disinfectant. On the back of the toilet there was a basket of fake flowers and sitting among them a yellow chick made of felt. Its beak held a leafy sprig.
The walls were fake wood-panel dark and there were piles of papers spread over the table, flyers, leaflets, even grim religious comic books in black and white, and against the wall a case of prayer books, Bibles and Concordances.
Oppenheimer lay back on the couch and stretched out his long legs.
—And now we have the beautiful Crystal Night to sing for us, said Bradley, onstage with a microphone.
The picture was fuzzy and handheld, jogging up and down.
—Let’s give glory to the Lord for the first song she’s going to perform for us tonight, “Come for me, Jesus.”
—I think I’ll take a walk, said Oppenheimer, and disappeared into the darkness beyond the steps.
—Potty break for me, said Larry.
In the early 1950s, while the Cold War was accelerating and Congress was considering the details of a new Air Force budget, Representative John Rankin, a Democrat from Mississippi, stood up to speak in the House. Rankin supported a massive increase in Air Force spending, which the Air Force had requested. To explain his position—which was a popular one—he said; “We have reached the time when our Air Force is the first line of defense. The next war will be an atomic conflict. It will be fought with airplanes and atomic bombs. It may mark the end of our civilization. I shall vote for the top amount offered here.”
—Dr. Oppenheimer! said Mrs. Bradley, at the open door to the trailer. Ann recognized her: she had brought them Coca Cola at the first meeting.
She stepped inside and reached out for him shakily.
Confused, he extended his right hand and took hers.
—Remember, said Szilard drily, —You’re the risen messiah.
—Seeing you up so close! said Mrs. Bradley. —Mercy! I think I need to sit down.
She stumbled over to the sofa and perched on the arm, where Ann saw her arms were trembling, thin and brought out in goose bumps. She clasped her hands onto her knees but the trembling went on.
On television Bradley had brought a man on stage to testify. Behind them was a black-and-white photograph of the porkpie hat.
—When I met him, when I saw the light that hovers around him, said the man into the microphone, —I knew the truth!
—What is he talking about? asked Oppenheimer, straining to see the television.
—And no matter what the demons of doubt tried to whisper in my ear, I knew this was him!
—What does he mean, he touched me? asked Oppenheimer. —I’ve never met the man in my life!
—They have pieces of your clothing, said Mrs. Bradley, and they all stared at her.
—What are you talking about? asked Ann.
—Articles of his clothing get passed around. They have a suit they keep in this clear plastic box. It travels in a special car, you know, one of those black ones for funerals.
—Leo? Did you know about this? asked Larry. —How come no one told me?
—First I’ve heard, said Szilard.
—They have one of my suits? asked Oppenheimer vaguely. —I didn’t notice there were any missing. Must be one of the old ones.
—There’s also pieces of things you’ve touched, towels, glasses, cigarette cartons. When you’re in public they pick up your cigarette butts. The followers touch those things and then they can say they’ve touched you. They call them articles of worship. Some people have displays.
—Fetishistic, said Szilard. —Primitive superstition.
—It’s faith! said Mrs. Bradley, shocked.
—Where do they get these things? The glasses we drink out of? asked Szilard.
—I think maybe some of the guards, you know—pick them up and sell them.
—Come with us, said the man on the stage, —join with us and be redeemed. Join and be gathered up in the arms of Jesus.
—Can I ask you what you prefer to be called? asked Mrs. Bradley.
—Robert’s fine. What do the rest of them call me?
—Just, you know. He. Or Him.
Fermi had instructions to go to bed early but he asked Ben to play chess with him instead. They sat across from each other at a table by the window in his room and said nothing as they played, cups of tea at their elbows, the rain falling outside steady and light. Fermi did not touch his tea.
Ben had bought a pack of cigarettes after they climbed out of the lake and occasionally he smoked one in the corridor, thinking of Fermi who waited inside. Fermi was always in the same position when he came back, sitting with his elbows on the table, staring at the board.
But he seemed content.
Back in his motel room, the television droning in the background, Ben put in a call to Ann. She said she was watching a tent revival, that on the screen there were pictures of Oppenheimer, and that on the stage at the revival there were people testifying to Oppenheimer’s holiness. He laughed at that. They laughed together and in the background he could hear Oppenheimer laughing too.
Then he took out his Italian books and foolscap pad and went back to translating Fermi’s letter. It continued to detail the life cycle of the whooping crane, its migration patterns and strange-sounding call, its downward spiral toward extinction and recent efforts at recovery, which pulled its global numbers back into the low hundreds.
When he got tired of his clumsy translation he went to bed and with the covers pulled up to his chin thought of Fermi looking up at the sky from the murky water, Fermi’s invisible birds and the birds that Fermi called common, the birds he did not love because they were not rare.
He thought of these great, white, and common swans leaving their spreading wake behind them as they drew away from him.
They were cutting across the parking lot, Huts flanking them to the left and right and also up front and behind, followers waving from their tents, when headlights appeared in the distance, out on the fringes where there was still room to park.
—They’re coming, said Szilard.
Something made them walk faster, the Huts chirping away with the perimeter guards on their walkie-talkies.
—We got an influx, said Kurt to Szilard finally, as they came up to the bus. —Glen got a call on the cell. Thousands of them.
—Damn it, said Szilard. —I warned him!
He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket as the Huts unlocked the gate to the perimeter fence and they filed through it toward the bus. —Steve? What is this, you don’t call me? … My people? What’s my people? I don’t even know what that means. The Wackenhut staff? No, Steve. I need my information straight from the horse’s mouth. I hear thousands. Is this bullshit?
—We’re blocking the roads as it is, said Larry to Ann, and they sat down at the picnic table as Szilard paced, squawking. —You wouldn’t believe the fines I pay.
She reached for a granola bar from the basket in the center of the table as Szilard’s voice rose. —Four? Four thousand? He shouted indignantly. —More than twice what we have?
—I want to go to sleep, said Oppenheimer, and yawned as he stepped up into the bus. —Tell me about it in the morning.
—Wait! said Larry, and pointed above them as Oppenheimer turned to look. The moon was deep orange.
In the morning Ben stopped at the desk, where a nurse told him none of the doctors would have time to talk to him before he left. She was sorry.
—As long as you know, he told Fermi in the darkroom, —that whenever you want to get out of here, all you have to do is call us. You have the cell phone, and all the numbers are programmed. Even the sat phone in the bus and Glen’s number, in case of emergency. I just want you to understand that you’re only here now because you
want to be.
—I know, said Fermi, nodding. He hesitated, and then said softly: —I like it. No one bothers me.
For a split-second Ben caught his eye in the dark and saw lucidity. It struck him that all of this could be pretense; and for a long time Fermi had longed for privacy.
He watched him, speculating, locked in place. Fermi picked a print out of the basin and his hands seemed deft. They moved with subtle authority.
—I wish I could stay with you, he said, testing the waters. —It’s good here. It’s like a high-end hotel. And maybe Ann could come too. It would just be us three.
Neither of them said anything for a while and Fermi did not make eye contact.
—Do you like this? he asked finally, and held up the new print. But it was dark and blurry and Ben had no idea what he was seeing.
Then he thought: nothing, of course. The content is irrelevant.
He couldn’t help smiling at Fermi, but Fermi did not smile at him.
There was disgruntlement. No one felt they could live with the new crowds.
—We’re at seven thousand, said Larry, perched on the side of Oppenheimer’s bed with Tamika seated behind him massaging his shoulders. Dory had got up long before and Oppenheimer was holding court in the bed alone, sitting with his back to the wall, drinking coffee. Big Glen leaned heavily against the wall opposite, his arms folded, next to Ann and Szilard at the door. —You can’t move with that. I don’t know what Bradley was thinking. They may be used to handling volume at these tent revivals, but that’s not the same as camping out along the interstate. The guy’s clueless.
—We may want to split up, said Szilard.
—What else? said Larry. —We can’t have this. I’m the one that has to deal with the cops, me and Glen.
—I’ll talk to him.
—You do that! The guy’s an asshole. Four thousand converts?
—There may be accretion, of course, said Oppenheimer. —They may have been brought into the spirit by the preachers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re with us for the long haul.
—I need you with me, said Szilard to Oppenheimer. —But no one else.
Ann watched them go with a hand shading her eyes, their dark suit tails flapping. Beside them walked the Huts in lock step. When they first came to work for Larry they had lounged around without guns in the shade; they had spent their breaks smoking and drinking beer from cans they crunched afterward and left in piles. But since the arrival of Bradley’s army they had sharpened their attitude, standing straight, practicing target-shooting, jogging in formation in the early mornings. Now they kept their weapons polished, their hair buzzed and their cheeks shaven.