The Heat of the Sun (22 page)

‘Bob’s the sultan of this desert kingdom,’ said the senator.

Yes, I thought, and isn’t happy that you’re taking it over.

I said to Oppenheimer, ‘So you’re the man who’s made the ultimate weapon?’

‘He’s making it,’ said the senator. ‘And he’s nearly there. We’d better hope so, anyway!’

‘Big test any day now,’ said Trouble. ‘
Boom!
’

Oppenheimer eyed them both disdainfully.

‘I wouldn’t say
ultimate
, Major.’ He drew on his cigarette. He had the sort of ascetic beauty one finds in a certain type of thin Jewish man. Cropped hair and prominent
cheekbones provided the frame for eyes of a piercing blue, incongruous in a face so Semitic. ‘Let’s say it’s the best we can do for now. Do you know anything about atomic
physics?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘But I hear it’ll change the world.’

‘It’s changed it,’ he said. ‘It’s already changed it.’

‘And this,’ said the senator, slapping me on the back, ‘is the fellow who’ll explain it all to the American people. Major Sharpless here is our new chief of
propaganda.’

‘Public relations, sir,’ said Miss Something in a motherly voice.

‘And why,’ I asked, ‘does a secret project need public relations?’

‘It will,’ said the senator, winking at me. ‘It will soon enough.’

‘So what do you think?’

It was early next morning and Trouble had insisted, against my protests, on driving me back to the airfield himself. I had half-expected to be told I was not allowed to leave Los Alamos, but it
seemed that – like Colonel B. F. Pinkerton II – I was under the senator’s protection and afforded special privileges. I had been given a week to tie up my affairs before returning
to New Mexico, more or less for ever, or until the world was obliterated.

‘Quite an opportunity,’ Trouble burbled on. ‘History in the making, and you’ll write the first draft.’

‘Tell lies, more like it. Was it your idea, getting me this job?’

‘You’re the best man, everybody says so. Besides, I don’t think you’ll end up like McKenna.’

‘My predecessor? Did he really go crazy?’

‘Me, I blame Dr Atomic.’

‘Oppenheimer?’

‘He’d turn anyone’s wits. We’re winning the war, that’s all we need to know.’

Trouble’s words seemed hollow to me. The night before, I had watched him undress for bed, laying out his things neatly for morning; he stripped to his shorts and, though I could have
stretched my hand between our cots and touched him, I felt as distant from him as if he were still in Japan.

That afternoon I had seen him play baseball. Miller pitched; Trouble hit a home run and pelted around the bases; all was as it had been at Blaze, yet all was not. After the cocktail party we
took in a movie show, a rowdy affair of hurled popcorn and squeaky folding chairs. Trouble seemed happy enough, laughing when the others laughed, groaning when they groaned, but his mind, I felt
sure, was not really on the trials of Rita Hayworth.

‘Aren’t you worried about the sniper?’ I said as we rounded a rocky corner. I should have been frightened, but Trouble had enfolded me in his magic again. He could do it so
easily. All he had to do was look at me and I lost all my strength. I might almost have believed we were still young, setting off on another reckless spree. ‘You never said why they’d
want to kill you,’ I added, but my voice was light. ‘Why you? Who are
they
, anyway?’

‘Jap agents. Maybe they’re getting at the senator through me.’

‘Japs, running around in the desert up here?’ It was too fantastic. ‘And you’re not worried?’

‘About dying? Wouldn’t it solve a few dilemmas?’

Shadows cut across the twisting road.

‘You can’t support all this, can you?’ I said after a moment. ‘One bomb that wipes out a city! It’s wrong. It’s evil.’

‘It’ll win the war, Sharpless.’

‘Tokyo’s flattened. What more can we do?’

‘Complete and utter destruction.’

‘Sink the islands into the sea? The Japs will surrender soon. They have to – they’re finished.’

‘Tell that to the kamikaze pilots.’ By now the mesa lay far above us, and Trouble swung the wheel sharply, trundling off the road on to a rugged track. The jeep jolted violently over
potholes.

‘What’s the idea?’ I said. ‘I’ve a plane to catch.’

‘One of the sights – well, one I like to see.’

A sign ahead of us read
RYAN RANCH
, but this was no ranch, or was a ranch no longer. We drew up before a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Inside, across a
tussocky field, was a line of barracks.

‘There’s a good view from here,’ said Trouble.

‘View of what?’ I said, but in a moment more I knew. A siren sounded, and lines of bowed, ragged-looking figures shuffled towards a parade ground. They were far away, and only slowly
did I register that all of them had black, sleek hair and Oriental faces.

‘Japs,’ I said, as if I werer surprised.

‘Americans’ – Trouble tore open a pack of Lucky Strikes – ‘of Japanese descent. Up at Los Alamos there are rumours we’ll use them for radiation research. Of
course, we wouldn’t do a thing like that. We’re Americans. But you see why we need public relations.’

Gazing at the prisoners, I thought of Nagasaki. How strange they had seemed, the days I spent there! I thought of Trouble as he was then and as he was now. I looked at the track behind us: red
earth, rocks, scrubby vegetation. My mind made a jump and I said, ‘You don’t want to be here.’

Trouble lit a Lucky and tossed the packet to me.

‘I have to be somewhere.’ He looped the fingers of one hand through the chain-link fence. ‘There’s an expression in Japan:
Shikata ga nai.
It can’t be
helped. Oh, well. Too bad.’

I said softly, ‘What are you saying?’

‘Only the senator protects me, you know.’ Trouble’s grip on the fence tightened – painfully, I thought. Many times he had perplexed me, but I thought I was on the brink
of revelation as he turned to me in that red morning and said, ‘What would you say if you never saw me again?’

My heart plummeted. I was frightened, but only said again, ‘What are you saying?’

He grinned. ‘Just kidding. Come on, slowpoke! We’ve a plane to catch.’

‘
I
have, you mean.’

‘Me too. I’m coming to Carmel! It’ll be like old times.’

‘Hey – Sophie Tucker.’

I nudged Trouble. The radio was low under the clamour of the bus. It was crowded: up front, a party of soldiers on leave sprawled at odd angles over several seats, guzzled beer, and played cards
with many a guffaw, many a scuffle. Girls at the back shrieked and laughed and encouraged the soldiers if they came that way. A college boy, earnest behind horn-rimmed spectacles, read Karl Marx
until a GI told him to lighten up and flung the book from the window. The summer afternoon was deep and long, and Sophie Tucker foghorned out the one about the blue river, blue river... did it hold
the memory of a vanished dream?

Trouble had not stirred. His head had fallen against my shoulder. The night before, in Los Angeles, we had reeled from bar to bar. It had been like the old days: I hadn’t laughed so much
in years. I almost suggested we didn’t come to Carmel, but I couldn’t let Aunt Toolie down.

Heat shimmered from the road and beat through the bus’s metal roof as we wound our way up the California coast. On one side was a vista of powdery, pale rocks; on the other, the blue
Pacific, foaming whitely.

I thought of all the time that had passed – thirty years, since we were boys at Blaze; for me, thirty years largely wasted. What had I done? First I had thought I would be a poet, then a
novelist; I was over forty and was neither. There are those, I suppose, who seize life early, who see at once what they should become and how to become it. For others, all is hazy. Perhaps we are
empty: still, we feel there is a core in us we can never quite grasp.

I closed my eyes. Again I was a boy at Blaze: I would always be a boy at Blaze. But not Woodley Sharpless, bookish Woodley with his bad leg. I was one of the Townsend twins, sprawling in the hay
with Trouble in the back of a farmer’s truck as we trundled down a road that led from Burlington, Vermont. Wild exploits had filled the night before, but never mind, it was another day; the
sun shone and the boys were coming home.

‘Uncle Grover?’

I tapped my uncle’s arm and he started. In bright sunshine, the little man had been sitting at the wheel of a red Cadillac Series 62 convertible, plump fingers laced across his paunch.
‘Dear me, I am sorry! Rather too much wine at luncheon.’

‘And our bus was late. This is Colonel Pinkerton.’

‘My friends call me Trouble. I don’t think we’ve met, Mr...’

‘Grayson – Grover Grayson the Third. I say, you’re not related to that senator, are you? But, no, you don’t look a
bit
like him.’ Uncle Grover adjusted his
spotted bow tie in the rear-view mirror. ‘Tallulah would have met you both,’ he explained, ‘but she’s frightfully busy. Theatricals! Tonight we’ll see the premiere
production of the Tallulah Grayson Players.’

I clambered into the convertible beside him. Trouble flung our knapsacks into the trunk and hoisted himself into the rumble seat.

‘Nice auto,’ he said to Uncle Grover. ‘What does she do?’

‘Do? What can’t she do!’ Hunching forward, Uncle Grover started the ignition. With his goggle-like spectacles, he had about him the air of a racing ace on the starting block.
If, at first sight, Grover Grayson III seemed an unlikely mate for Aunt Toolie, it was only at first sight. Many times she had told me how lucky she had been to find him. I believed her.

We tore along the coast, a red streak, the Pacific glittering below us in the afternoon sun.

Wobblewood West lay a mile or so out of Carmel. The house was a modernist castle of plate glass and concrete rising from lush, windblown gardens. Built in the twenties by an eccentric
millionaire who had later been ruined in the Crash, the place made me uneasy, as if its very fabric embodied my anxieties. It was too close to the cliff; one day, I feared, the rocky edge would
shake, shrugging the house into the sea in a powdery cascade.

‘Usual room, Woodley. Your friend can have the one next door.’ Uncle Grover pulled up with a jerk in the wide, gravelled drive. Four or five other cars, some rather shabby, had
parked there already. ‘Tallulah’s down at the amphitheatre. I’d better check on her. Join us when you’re ready.’

The house was silent. In my room I dropped my knapsack, loosened my tie. I went to the window. The sea glittered sharply, and I screwed up my eyes. Trouble moved in the next room. Bedsprings
squealed. Had he flung himself down? All through our drive with Uncle Grover he had been animated, but I knew something was wrong. I should speak to him. But I could not think where to begin.

The afternoon’s heat was at its height as I stumped out across the terrace. Carefully, I negotiated steps cut in rock. Voices drifted up from below, rising over swishing waves.

The millionaire who built Wobblewood West had been nothing if not determined. Developing a passion for Greek drama, he ordered the construction of an amphitheatre in the cliffs below; modelled
in miniature on the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, it had kept several dozen explosives experts and sculptors in work for years, according to the locals.

Today, the amphitheatre provided a fitting stage for Aunt Toolie. She was not acting, but directing. Swishing back and forth, red hair stuck up at angles, beads and scarves dishevelled,
half-moon spectacles halfway down her nose, she barked imperious orders to two masked actresses robed in white. Further masked figures, evidently a chorus, stood up on the
proskenion
, and
several others sat off to one side. One old fellow, who had removed his mask, smoked a cigarette. I recognized him from somewhere, but was not sure where.

‘Darling, it’s like
this
,’ cried Aunt Toolie, and read from a ring binder in a passionate voice:

High in the semicircle of tiered seats, I slipped in beside Uncle Grover, who explained to me that the old fellow with the cigarette was Mr Foster from the filling station up the road.
‘Quite a good Creon, actually. Eurydice, that plump matron next to him, is the local Sunday-school teacher – dubious about the Greeks on moral grounds, but Tallulah talked her around.
Did you know we did the translation ourselves? Well, with a few cribs. Antigone? Oh, she’s the daughter of the local real estate agent – Miss Hoity-Toity, but brave, I’ll grant
her that. In three hours’ time, these tiers will be filled with all the local worthies for miles around.
And
a few unworthies—’

Aunt Toolie saw me. ‘Woodley, is that you?’

‘The same!’ I made my way down the steps, meeting her halfway.

Fulsomely, she enfolded me in her clattering embrace. ‘But where’s your friend? I haven’t seen that naughty boy for years.’

‘Trouble’s resting,’ I said. ‘He’ll be down soon.’

‘I hope Grover put you boys in the same room. This
is
Wobblewood. Even if the floors don’t wobble.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I assured her.

‘Hah! The army’s rife with it, isn’t it? Quite a shock for the Kansas farm boys. Still, broadens their horizons – among other things.’ She clapped her hands.
‘Come on, everybody – one more time!’

The rehearsal had reached a stormy point. Here was Antigone facing Creon’s wrath, pleading that her dead brother had to be buried; here was Ismene, desperate to share in her sister’s
wrong, proclaiming that the blame was hers too – and here was the real estate agent’s daughter, stepping on a corn on the garage proprietor’s foot, while Aunt Toolie’s
cleaner, in the part of Ismene, stumbled over her robes and fell against Antigone, forcing her to step down even harder. The garage proprietor bellowed like a wounded bull and the chorus shook with
mirth.