The Heat of the Sun

and dials. In one corner, a radio operator with cans over his ears yelled into a bulky microphone.
The walls were grey untreated concrete, stained copiously by intrusive rain. ‘Zero minus five minutes, gentlemen,’ called the radio operator, exchanging a thumbs-up with the famous
general.
    ‘You sent for me, sir?’ I had to interrupt the senator.
    ‘Ah, Sharpless. One of you press fellows had to see it up close. Did you bring your black specs?’
    I patted my breast pocket and listened respectfully as the fat congressman expatiated on the project as if it had been his own idea and the senator nodded, wryly perhaps, in agreement. He
offered me a cigar, and I let him light it. I despised myself. I had never wanted to be in Los Alamos; I had never wanted to be in Alamogordo. Something was dying inside me and I was powerless to
resist it. Impassively, I gazed into the senator’s bland, broad face. We could have been businessmen at a Rotary meeting, gathered in the bar.
    ‘Zero minus four minutes,’ said the radio operator.
    ‘A stiff shot, that’s what we need,’ said the congressman, indicating the drinks tray in the corner.
    I moved to assist him, but the senator drew me back. Through the window, the steel tower flamed like a beacon in the rising sun. He draped an arm about me. ‘You thought I never cared for
my son, I suppose.’
    ‘He isn’t in Washington, is he?’ I said. The arm was heavy across my neck, like a yoke.
    I had stayed at Wobblewood West for four days after Trouble left. Aunt Toolie, unhurt, seemed pleased to have been at the centre of a drama that, undoubtedly, was a bigger hit than Antigone. With admirable panache, she applied steaks to her black eye and worried about Trouble. Uncle Grover’s red convertible had been found abandoned, some ways down the coast.
    When I got back to Los Alamos, Trouble had not returned. Fearing the worst, I said to one of the senator’s staff, ‘He’s AWOL, isn’t he?’
    ‘AWOL?’ The fellow shook his head. ‘He’s back in DC.’
    Even then, I knew this was a lie.
    Now, in the bunker, the senator rubbed his eyes as if with fatigue, and I almost laughed; for the first time I saw him as an old man, pathetic and defeated. I drew back on my cigar. I felt
sick.
    ‘You don’t know where he’s gone,’ I said.
    ‘Of course I know. He’s been spotted in Mexico. Lying low, the little fool! The only question is how to handle things delicately.’
    ‘You’re thinking of publicity.’
    ‘Damn right I am! But I’d gladly have him court-martialled.’
    ‘He’s cracked up. He needs help, not punishment.’
    ‘Mr Sharpless! Are you really so naive?’
    I flushed and wanted to ask him what he meant, but the radio operator gave the three-minute warning, the congressman returned with the drinks, and we clinked glasses together, toasting the
detonation.
    ‘Those Russkies won’t know what hit ’em,’ said the congressman.
    ‘We’re not at war with the Russians,’ I said.
    The senator stared out at the desert. He sipped his bourbon and swilled it around his teeth like mouthwash. ‘Strange, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘the way time passes? Fifty
years ago I sailed from San Francisco. It was the first time I’d left the States. The world seemed so wide – stretched before me, all there for the taking! So long ago, but sometimes I
think no time has passed at all; other times, it seems that everything I knew then is gone, crumbled like a collapsing wall.’
    The congressman, looking uneasy, shifted his attention to the chaplain, who had opened his little book and was intoning prayers. The general and other top brass bowed their heads; the scientists
continued with their instruments; the radio operator said, ‘Zero minus two minutes,’ and the senator pulled me close. ‘I love my son,’ he said. ‘And all you’ve
ever done is poison him against me.’
    Uneasily, I looked around. No one had turned to watch us.
    ‘You’re hurting me,’ I said. Still the heavy arm bore down on my neck.
    ‘You’ve got to make him understand, I love him.’
    ‘What can I make him do?’ I dropped my cigar to the concrete floor and ground it out with my lame foot. Desolately, as if knowing it for the first time, I said,
‘I’m nothing to him.’
    The senator might not have heard me. He was muttering, talking to himself, and I was mortified, though still nobody saw. ‘Ben, Ben!’ he said. ‘You’ll do anything to
disgrace me. Am I to forgive you?