“Course she will,” my mother said. “I’ll be here three more days, and then you’ll be back. Once this war is done, we’ll all be together in Chicago, happily arguing with one another.”
Charlie winced at that. Why would he not want the war to be over?
He gave my mother a long hug. “You’re family now, Charlie,” she said, patting him on the back.
“I like it,” he answered, grinning. “I’m a Dubie and she’s a Fish.”
She ducked back into the hallway while he came and leaned over me. “Your job is to get well, Brenda. We’ll both do our jobs, and everything will turn out all right.”
I caressed the side of his face. “Come back soon.”
He kissed me once more, and paused in the doorway, one hand holding the frame. “Now I know I am definitely a man in wartime.”
“Why is that?” I called weakly from the bed.
“Because I am leaving the woman I love.”
It was the first time he’d said it. He’d done it perfectly too. I saw his words register on my mother’s face in the hall. Charlie hesitated for half a breath, poised there, waiting. Then he knocked twice on the door frame and I heard him running down the stairs. By the time the outer door slammed I knew what his hesitation had been—a moment for me to announce something similar, to express my thanks for all his tender care, to say, “Charlie, I love you too.”
But my mother had been there, and I’d felt self-conscious. So even after all the devoted hours he’d spent by my side, long days and nights of steadfastness, Charlie went back to The Hill without a declaration of love from his wife. What kind of monster was I? What childish, selfish person?
My mother came in, tucking sheets and fluffing pillows, matter-of-fact. Which told me that she had noticed my failure to respond too.
“There,” she said when everything was snug. “I’m going downstairs for a smoke, then I’ll be back.”
Oh, Charlie. That moment, when my heart hurt more than any other part of my body? That was the first time this girl knew what it is like to lie in a bed of remorse.
46.
On the eighth of August, the bus to Los Alamos was nearly empty. Two local men sat in the rearmost seats, a canvas duffel of plumbing tools on the floor between them. The driver ground through the gears, swearing mildly at a reluctant clutch. Otherwise Charlie was alone. The route out of Santa Fe narrowed, the roadside homes and shops dwindling, and then none. The bus turned west across the Rio Grande, laboring as it climbed the winding road to The Hill.
Charlie showed his pass at the front gate, found himself waved summarily through, and thought the soldiers seemed less hostile. Maybe the Trinity test impressed them enough that they realized the scientists were not a complete waste of food.
The bus stuttered to a stop outside the mess hall, and Charlie descended into a strange quiet. Normally in midafternoon on a Wednesday, the place would be bustling. He heard two cooks arguing, but none of the other normal hubbub. No one was walking around. He’d been away nine days, an eternity in the tight timetable of The Hill. Now it seemed the world had ended while he was gone.
Hitching up his pants, he set out for the barracks. They were nearly empty, two men on cots at the far end, both snoring loudly enough that Charlie thought each should have wakened the other. On his tightly made bed, the blanket was unmarked by visits from Midnight. Changing his shirt, he headed for the lab. What assignment would Bronsky have for him, now that the detonators were finished?
As he passed Ashley Pond, he noticed a gathering in Fuller Lodge. Chairs stood in rows, many of them filled, while someone’s lecture droned at the front of the room. On a Wednesday. Normally he would have swept by to eavesdrop. Instead he picked up his pace till he reached the tech area gate. The guard barely glanced at Charlie’s pass before waving him in. Something was definitely going on.
When he reached his desk, the only orders on it were the usual weekly directions for dealing with documents—which to preserve, which to destroy. No checklist of tasks, no criticisms of recent work. Under that sheet, the mess of calculations and designs he’d left incomplete when he’d heard about Brenda. He fell into his chair, flummoxed.
“Hard to get comfy now, isn’t it?”
He turned and Mather sauntered in. The man was like a rash that would not quit. But Charlie knew he would explain things. “Where is everyone?”
Mather shrugged. “On a hike? Taking a nap? Drinking themselves blind?”
“On a Wednesday?”
“You poor boy,” Mather said, his grin revealing an evil delight. “You don’t know.”
“Know what? I’ve been at the hospital with Brenda.”
“I heard. Everything peachy now?”
“Not quite peachy,” Charlie said. “Please don’t be coy. What is going on?”
Mather held up one finger. “Wait right here.” And he scuttled away down the hall.
Had The Hill’s work been shut down? Had Truman done something? He went to fill his cup at the lab sink, but when he turned the knob nothing came out.
“The water shortage is worse,” Mather said, returning with his arms full of newspapers. “Apparently a tanker truck is on its way. But no more showers this week.”
He reached the assembly table, and dropped the papers so that they landed with a slap. “Feast your eyes, Fish. Come learn what Trigger has done.”
His heart fluttering, Charlie saw himself as if from outside his body, crossing the room and bending over the newspapers. On top, the New York Times. Its headline was in capital letters, stacked in three lines across the top of the page:
FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN;
MISSILE IS EQUAL TO 20,000 TONS OF TNT;
TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF A “RAIN OF RUIN”
“It happened,” Charlie said, rubbing his neck. “The blade came down.”
“What are you talking about?” Mather asked.
Charlie read on. On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., Japan time, the Enola Gay released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. It detonated while six hundred yards in the air. The fireball reached three hundred thousand degrees, making a ground temperature of five thousand four hundred. It demolished every building for two miles.
He opened to the inside pages. There were many stories, including one explicitly stating that the bomb had been developed in Los Alamos. “I need to warn Brenda.”
Mather chuckled. “She knows, I’m sure. Unless she’s been under a rock.”
“In fact, she has.”
There was no immediate estimate of the number of people killed, but the articles quoted President Truman at length. “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have aboveground in any city. We shall destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
Charlie sat back. “I can’t continue.”
“But we’re only getting started.” Mather flipped the Times aside, and there lay the Albuquerque Journal: “U.S. Announces Atom Bomb; Hope for Earlier End to War.”
Charlie pushed it away, only to see the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which also used capital letters. “deadly new atomic bombs begin devastation of japan.”