The Heat of the Sun
ready for introductions, but all I could do was stand, swaying a little, in the
middle of the carpet, and say softly, almost to myself:
‘Trouble. You’ve come home.’
ACT FOUR
The Gravity of Americans
Trouble had said he would pick me up in Albuquerque.
Making my way across the army airfield on a cloudless day in early summer I saw no sign of him, and my spirits sank; Los Alamos was – what? – eighty, ninety miles away and I
didn’t like the idea of arranging my own transport from this sleepy-looking base. The sun beat down hotly.
In the airfield’s only building, a long, low, galvanized-iron shed, a young sergeant with too many freckles stirred himself behind a counter that looked like a bar, saluted sloppily, and
told me in a drawling voice that no, no sir, nobody had come for me. Grinning, he added, ‘You part of that show at Los Alamos, sir? What do you make up there – rockets to the
moon?’
The fellow annoyed me, but I let him fix me coffee in a chipped enamel mug, while I sat and waited on a pew-like bench. Mechanics and a pilot came and went. Some stopped to chat with the
sergeant, leaning, elbows crooked, across the counter, as if with tankards of beer; none paid attention to Major Sharpless and I had begun to wonder if Trouble would ever come when a vehicle
squealed up outside, cheers broke out, and a voice I knew well cried in triumph, ‘Forward to victory!’
It had been the senator’s campaign slogan in 1928.
Colonel Ben Pinkerton (as Trouble now was) bounded into the shed. Immaculate in his well-pressed uniform, he remained lithe and slender, the hair visible beneath his cap still blond; only later
did I see strands of grey and cracks in the skin around his eyes.
He pumped my hand enthusiastically, shouldered my knapsack, and led me out to the jeep.
‘I could have got a driver,’ he said, ‘but I thought it’d be better if we could talk properly. You’re looking good. The uniform suits you – Major
Sharpless!’
As I hauled myself into the passenger seat, the mechanics, hunkered in a row by the shed, studied us idly; one, a sunburned fellow with a wrench in his hand, made some smart-aleck comment I did
not quite hear. Trouble only smiled, flung my things into the back of the jeep, and blasted the horn three times as he tore out of the base with a spray of gravel.
‘Popular fellow, aren’t you?’ I observed.
‘It’s not about me. It’s Los Alamos. They’ve guessed something’s up and they’re dying to know. Some of the stories you wouldn’t believe – Flash
Gordon, I tell you!’
We passed through a checkpoint and swung northwards. Trouble wore dark glasses and chewed gum. On an unpaved highway he put on speed, and I snatched off my cap before the wind snatched it
instead. Dust churned under our wheels, and I had to shout, ‘So it’s some big scientific show, this place at Los Alamos? You’re up there all the time these days – and the
senator too?’
‘Let’s just say we’re going to end this war – and soon.’
I had never doubted it. Already the Nazis had surrendered in Europe; Japan, after the firebombing of Tokyo, seemed hardly likely to hold out much longer.
I said, ‘Do you think the Japs ever really had a chance? They didn’t, did they?’
‘Remember Pearl Harbor? Remember Singapore? An Eastern country, raining down ruin on the Empires of the West! I wouldn’t bet it’s over yet.’
Often I had imagined the firebombing of Tokyo: the B-29s crossing the dark skies like monstrous, malevolent insects, the bombs pounding unceasingly, the fires rampaging, consuming mile after
mile of flimsy wooden buildings. How many thousands had died in the inferno? Roads had become rivers of boiling tarmac. There had been no escape.
Once it would have seemed monstrous that such destruction should be unleashed upon civilians. Today, air raids were commonplace: Guernica. Chungking. London. Rotterdam. Berlin. Coventry.
Dresden. The list went on and on. And Tokyo had been the worst so far.
We cut along Albuquerque’s broad, straight streets, then out again towards blue-green mountains. There was something fantastical in our surroundings, something unearthly, and I wondered
what the senator and a scientific base could be doing in these ancient Indian lands.
‘You’re happy?’ I asked Trouble. ‘In your role now?’
‘Role? Well, I like that!’
He had said we could talk properly. I wanted to ask him why he had come home. He
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