"Let me tell you the kind of monument I want," Groves said. "I've seen the estimates of the casualties we're going to suffer in the invasion of Germany and Japan. I wouldn't mind a monument of a million American lives saved." .
Groves' sincerity was ponderous and real and demanded silence. Embers slipped and rose.
"The Hindus say that the final vision of Brahma will be mist, smoke and sun, lightning and a moon." Oppy paced in front of the fire, too excited to be still. "Brahma would be a good name for the bomb."
Joe stood on the arc of the fire's light. Outside the arc were rattlesnakes curled up, cold and asleep under the snow. There was a whole map of winter sleep: mice balled up in burrows, toads suspended in mud, night jars tucked into the folds of the earth. Memory was out there, a map of women curled up in the dark. Japs. Actually, life was very nice when he got to Manila. Mostly what the Army wanted him to do was box. Tour the airfields giving exhibitions against the local champions. Fight in the annual Boxing Festival at Rizal Stadium. Play piano at the Officers Club. When dependants were shipped out, the officers, like men freed from a domestic garden into paradise, came in with the most beautiful whores, coffee-coloured Filipino girls and White Russians with paste jewels. When the invasion came, three days before Christmas, Joe led a platoon of Philippine Scouts. The first night they made contact was in a banana plantation and in the dark among the rustling fronds he heard, "Hey, Joe! Over here, Joe." He'd figured out that Japs called all Americans "Joe", that the Japs hadn't come across the Pacific for him personally, but the voices were unnerving, like the dark come to life. "Joe…"
He wished he could listen to the car radio and hear some big band from Albuquerque or, if the ether gave a lucky bounce, a jazz station from Kansas City. Ellington, like a black Indian in an invisible canoe, paddling through the clouds. Paddle, Duke! Rescue me.
Groves was down to his last toffee. "The big picture is, no one else has the industrial base or the technology. Never forget the inherent inefficiency of the Soviet system. It will take them twenty years to develop an atom bomb, if ever."
There was something in the clouds, dim lights moving in and out, and there was the sound of distant thunder.
"A world without war," Oppy said.
"A Pax Americana," Groves agreed.
Lights appeared in the stars between the clouds. A more diffused glow grew in the snow below the lights. Nearer. The general's final caramel grew sticky between his fingers. Oppy cocked his head limply in the manner of the most ethereal saints. Fuchs stared through the flames reflected in his glasses. Joe counted until he heard thunder again.
"Bombers, about six miles off."
"Here?" Groves asked.
"It's a bombing range, sir. Night practice."
"What do they bomb, exactly?" Oppy asked.
"At night," Joe said and looked at the campfire, "illuminated targets."
He broke for the car, dived into the front seat and cranked up the field radio. Through the Buick's windshield he watched the three men kicking apart the fire. Groves was surprisingly nimble, Oppy disjointed as ever. Beyond, blooms of light moved laterally on the horizon. The radio held a roar of static untainted by any coherent transmission.
By the time Joe returned, all that was left of the camp fire was a circle of soot. Fuchs was on his knees, slapping the last embers. With the fire out, the party could see how the moon had escaped the clouds and filled the range with an opalescent haze.
"Can we get away?" Groves asked Joe.
"I noticed on the way in that they like to bomb the stretch of road behind us. If we blink headlights at them, they'll try to drop a fifty-pounder on the hood. Run without headlights and we'll turn over in a ditch. We may as well stay here."
"What if you're wrong?" Fuchs' face was smudged and his hair stood up straight. "This entire project should not be put in jeopardy because of a stupid Indian."
"Shut up, Klaus," Oppy said softly.
Joe said, "B-29s."
The approaching bombers were huger than anything he had ever seen in the air. Superforts, twenty tons of steel, twice as big as Flying Fortresses, each of their four engines the size of a fighter. Chutes spilled from the bays, floated, and sputtered into flares.
"Good Lord," Oppy said, "this is beautiful."
Why flares? Joe wondered.
The lead bomber lifted reluctantly and the next in line took its place, settling lower with closer attention to the ground. Why so low? Joe wondered. The belly turret turned, its .50-calibre barrels swinging back and forth. He could make out the green light within the Plexiglass nose. A green bombardier not even bothering with his sight pointed straight down, and as if there were a magical connection with his finger a phosphorus bomb lit the valley floor. From the bomb came running shapes, horses, brilliant with lather and the glare of the bomb, racing under the wing. Mustangs out of the mountains for the night grazing and the mares the ranchers had left behind. Joe couldn't make out individual horses, only the motion of their rocking and straining, urged by the dazzle of tracers, and the way they wheeled from rays of burning phosphorus. At a distance of a mile, he thought he could hear not only their hooves but their breath, although he knew they were drowned out by the various sounds of pistons and hydraulics and .50-calibre rounds in the air. Then the mustangs and bombers moved on together, like a single storm, distance muting the sound, and nothing could be seen except a flash that resembled an occasional faraway stroke of lightning.
What Joe remembered best was what Oppy said when they were alone in Alamogordo, after the half-track and jeeps had finally appeared and towed them to the base.
"It was awful, but it was still… beautiful."
JUNE 1945
6
In Santiago, calves were cut and branded in the hour before dawn so that the men could catch the morning bus to Los Alamos, where they worked as custodians and furnace stokers. Joe was alone in the second corral, where steers were brought in for sale. With meat rationing, there was a market for Indian cattle and it was Joe's job to go over them with a Geiger counter. It consisted of a metal wand, wire, and a case with 20 lbs of batteries and a micro ammeter that was useless in the middle of a herd in the dark. The Geiger counter was emitting the audible clicks of gamma rays. At least from one cow. Joe slipped a rope over its head and led it out of the corral and around a hay rick, where a path led to a copse of cottonwoods and willows. A rare rain had fallen the day before and mud sucked on his shoes. In the middle of the copse were cans, mattress springs, shoes and bones cemented in a great mound of sodden ash. He yanked the cow into the pile up to its knees, put his .45 where the vertebrae of the neck joined the dome of the skull and fired. At the last second, the cow, curious, looked up and the bullet tore through the artery of its neck. Blood shot in a solid, black stream over Joe's chest and arm. He held the animal tight and fired again. The cow dropped like a weight. Joe picked up a can of kerosene and poured it over the dead animal, lit it and staggered back from the blaze. In the yellow flames, Joe could see two things. The cow was mottled, its hide half-bleached. Every canyon around Los Alamos had cattle and every canyon had sites where poisonous isotopes were vented or exploded; either way, the isotopes were sown into the soil and water. Which was why the personnel on the Hill underwent nose wipes, ass wipes and radioactive urine checks, but as for the ignorant animals that wandered the sites, Army policy was "kill them, burn them, bury them", and the perfect instrument was Joe. A hide turned white? That was new. The other thing was that through the greedy roar of the fire he could see that the cow was pregnant. He remembered why he was so upset with Augustino when they'd gone hunting. He'd never thought of it since then. Not shooting an animal that was carrying was an Indian stricture, a primitive taboo. Not against the killing the life, but against killing the seed of life. He started for the cow as if he could pull it out of the flames. Realized how stupid it was. Staggered back. Jesus, what a butcher. The way the cow had turned its large, marble eyes up to him. The sideways fountain of blood. As the pyre burned and crackled, he thought of the second heart within the cow.