“Nineteen miles to Santa Fe, then a company car forty miles up to The Hill.”
“Company car?”
He finished chewing before answering. “You’ll see. Probably an old truck.”
“You’ve been here before?” Charlie asked.
“New as fresh paint. But the professor who hired me told me what to expect.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Same place as you.” The man turned the sandwich and bit the other side. He was making shapes. “Project Y.”
“I’m sorry. What’s Project Y?”
The man recoiled, then calmed. “A joke. Never mind.” He turned forward. “Thanks for the eats.”
Suddenly an idea occurred to Charlie. What if Brenda had left him a note in that basket? Any kind of good wishes would be wonderful. He opened the top wide, pushing away the last sandwiches, the jars of water. There didn’t seem to be anything.
But he wasn’t satisfied. He stared out the window. If the situation were reversed, he would certainly have left a note for her. He tore into the basket again, shoving things aside, digging everywhere, but there was nothing.
He slumped back in his seat. Of course. Brenda was not the hidden-note type. Damn desire, though, he thought. He had been fine all this long way, and now his imagination had made him miserable.
With a grinding of gears, the bus lurched forward. The driver slowed at a crossroads and the bus shook, a screech of metal on metal from the front.
“Have mercy,” the hungover man said, pressing his eyes closed.
A mile farther, the bus needed to turn onto a paved road, and it brought another shudder and screech. Charlie checked, and the other passengers dozed or conversed in quiet Spanish. The vehicle was clearly unsafe. Why were they not worried?
“We’re going to die on this bus,” the hungover man said before dozing off.
The ride to Santa Fe took an hour, Charlie trying to sleep, too, but he’d napped enough on the train. The bus rattled along. He hummed to himself, bits of a French song he’d learned in college, but it felt as false as whistling past a graveyard. Gradually they began to pass houses with small corrals in back, then clusters of homes, and eventually they entered the city. They passed adobe houses, shops, street markets, until the driver brought them to a final squealing stop.
“Bueno,” he said, clapping his hands as if in self-praise. “Bueno.”
“Here we go,” the soldier announced. “East Palace Avenue, number 109. Everybody off.”
The hungover man grabbed his suitcases and stumbled out of the bus. Charlie, his bags overhead, decided to let the other passengers off first. As they streamed past, he could not help noticing their dress: wide-brimmed hats, brightly colored cover-ups like blankets with an opening for their heads. Through the window he saw them line up outside the stores, where they sat against the wall and settled in to wait.
“You always a lollygagger?” the soldier asked.
“Not usually,” Charlie closed his picnic basket. “It’s a long ride from Chicago.”
“That’d take the wind out of anyone’s sails.” Hoisting Charlie’s duffels onto his shoulder, the soldier trundled down the bus steps. “Welcome to Santa Fe.”
A wooden canopy shaded the sidewalk, like something out of an old western movie. The gate of 109 East Palace hung wide, opening into a courtyard. The soldier set the duffels inside the gate. Charlie balanced the basket on top and sidled into the office.
“The top item is your pass for The Hill,” a woman was telling the hungover man, who slumped in a wooden chair. Striking, with bright red lipstick, she handed him a folder. “Don’t lose track of it.”
The room was sparsely furnished: filing cabinets, metal desks like he’d had in Chicago, a little corner fireplace in which quiet coals glowed. A boy occupied a chair to one side, his legs tucked up like some sort of elf. The walls were bare but for a calendar that, on closer inspection, was from 1941.
“I imagine you are unaccustomed to military ways,” the woman continued. “Few civilians are. But I promise, carrying your pass at all times will be as useful as wearing shoes.”
As she spoke, she handed the hungover man’s travel papers to the boy. He crumpled each page into a ball and dropped it onto the pile forming between his feet.
“Normally we have food for new arrivals,” the woman said. “Not today though. But most people prefer to have an empty stomach the first time they make the drive.”
“One question,” the hungover man said. “What is my mailing address?”
“The mail. How could I have forgotten? Everything is censored, incoming and outbound. Don’t seal your envelopes, please.”
“I’ll have no privacy?”
“No location information, no names of coworkers, no stories about what you’re working on.” She smiled. “We’re all encouraged to stick to our knitting.”
“If those topics are forbidden, what does that leave for a fellow to say?”
“I’d suggest focusing on the weather. It’s quite sunny here, as you’ll see.”
“The weather.” He rubbed his face. “I’d been hoping to share more than that.”
“I sympathize.” She touched her lipstick with the tip of a pinkie. “We are all learning to adjust our expectations. There are women on The Hill who do not know what their husbands do all day. That is the reality, and I live by it too.” She smiled again. “Your address is Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
“Sixteen sixty-three.” The man stood, tucking his folder under an arm as he moved away. “Thank you, I think.”
The woman nodded to the boy, who immediately tossed his pile of crumpled papers into the fireplace, where they smoked and then flared. Charlie watched the papers burn, until he noticed she had extended her hand toward him. He shook it briskly. “I’m Charlie Fish. How do you do?”
The woman gave a quick laugh. “Pleased to meet you, Charlie. I’m Dorothy McCay, and I was actually reaching for your papers.”
“Oh. They’re in my bag.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Be right back.”
“No hurry. I’m not going anywhere.”
But he did hurry. Charlie was nineteen, farther from home than he had ever been before. He suspected he was in way over his head. Even the hungover man had a self-possession Charlie envied. Digging out the documents, he resolved to do his best at every moment.
Dorothy opened his papers to scan the top. “I hope you enjoyed the trip from Chicago.” She flipped through the documents so quickly he could not imagine she was actually reading them, handing each page to the boy as she’d finished it, then rose and went to a filing cabinet. By the time she returned with Charlie’s folder, the boy had crumpled most of the travel papers.
“The top item is your pass for The Hill.” He peered in to see a cardboard rectangle the size of a driver’s license. Dorothy continued: “I think you heard my lecture on keeping it with you. Your housing assignment is in a barracks, for which I apologize.”
“Why would you say that?”
She smiled. “Construction on The Hill has not kept up with the flood of new babies, much less the growth in staff. Your assignment is in TA-6, Detonation. Your packet has a map so you can find it.” She handed him the folder. “Any questions?”