Stallion Gate (2 page)

Harvey had stood through “A String of Pearls,” clarinet raised and trembling and utterly mute. During “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” he licked the reed, forced a squeak, two notes in a row, then three. Halfway into “This Joint Is Jumpin’,” Joe switched to a bass stride, forcing Harvey to blow erratically through a riff like a butterfly flying for its life; at the end he beamed, red-cheeked and triumphant.

“ ‘White Christmas’?” he suggested.

Joe groaned. “A little knowledge is a gruesome thing.”

There was a stir across the room as Oppy and Kitty arrived. Better than a stir: veneration. The director of the Los Alamos Project was a spindly six feet tall with a close-cropped skull and beak of a nose that emphasized tapered eyes of startling blue. Younger physicists followed him, copying the hunch of his shoulders, his air of distraction. Kitty Oppenheimer had a flat, pretty face, a frowsy dress and dark, thick hair. Her friends were European wives, who surrounded her like bodyguards.

A fingertip slid down Joe’s spine. There were people at the end of the piano, but they were watching the dancers or the Oppenheimers. Harvey was concentrating on his clarinet. The fingertip turned to fingernail. Joe glanced up at Mrs. Augustino, the captain’s wife. She looked like a cover of
Life
magazine, maybe “
Life
goes to Magnolia Country,” with her blond curls, blue eyes and polka-dot dress with ruffled shoulders. She seemed to be intently watching the couples on the floor, but it was her finger, nonetheless.

“What is this secret project, Sergeant?” she asked in a voice just loud enough for him to hear. “What do you think they’re making?”

“Why don’t you ask your husband?”

“Captain Augustino took me to a nightclub in Albuquerque last week.” Her nail continued like a little blade down the groove of his back. “You were playing. I was struck by how gently you played. Is it because your fingers are so big?”

“Not gently. Carefully. I stay out of trouble.” By twisting on the bench to look at her, he managed to dislodge her nail. Sad: nineteen, twenty years old, and already a bored Army wife. “What do you think they’re doing here, Mrs. Augustino? What’s your opinion?”

She brushed curls from her face and surveyed the room. “I think the whole thing is a hoax. They’re dodging the draft. All these so-called scientists got together and pulled the wool over the Army’s eyes. They’re smart enough to do it.”

“Yeah,” he had to agree, “they are.”

During the break, Joe maneuvered around some of the “so-called scientists” to get to the bar. The Hungarian, Teller, his eyebrows rising like fans, brayed over a joke told by Fermi. A short man, Fermi was fit and balding and wore a rough double-breasted suit and thick-soled shoes that curled at the toe like an Italian peasant’s. Other physicists called him the Pope.

Oppy was showing a circle of admirers how to build the perfect martini. “Firm instructions should always be in German.” He had the trick of lowering his voice so
that listeners had to lean forward, and as they did he poured gin to the brim of the glass. “
Am wichtigsten, der Gin sollte gekühlt sein, kein Eis
.”

“Bourbon,” Joe told Foote, who, drunk or not, was tending bar.

“
Zwei Tröpfeln Wermut, nicht mehr, nicht weniger, und eine Olive
.” Oppy added enough vermouth to cause an oily swirl in the gin, then handed his concoction to a woman who would have been noticeable simply because she wore black coveralls that suggested she was a member of an army of Amazons, or labored in a factory of mourners, or had been dipped in ink. But it was the sheer intellectual cast of her face that really set her off. Blacker than black hair cut in severe bangs around eyes that were blue-gray with dark edges that dilated with dislike, like a cat’s. Strong nose, full mouth and the sort of fair complexion that scorned the sun.

“A double,” Joe told Foote.

Oppy said, “Joe, this is Dr. Anna Weiss. Joe is my oldest friend here, Anna.”

Drinks in hand, Anna Weiss and Joe dismissed each other with a nod.

“I missed my first year at Harvard,” Oppy persisted. “My family sent me to New Mexico for my health. They contracted with Joe’s father, a renowned bootlegger.”

“So?” She had a low voice, a German accent and no interest.

“Tell her, Joe,” Oppy said.

“My dad also rented packhorses and experienced guides for dude parties,” Joe said. “I was the experienced
guide. I was twelve. One of the first times I went out, I had a kid from New York. Sixteen and so tall and skinny that the first time I saw him in swimming trunks I thought he was going to die on the trail.”

“I couldn’t ride,” Oppy said.

“He couldn’t ride to save his life,” Joe said, “but he liked to go out at night to see stars, and he was so damned night-blind I had to hold back every branch on the way. One night we got caught in a rainstorm and I got under my horse to stay dry. I heard this guy yelling in the rain.”

“I thought he’d left me,” Oppy said.

“I told him to come down under the horse with me. He came down, soaked, and said, ‘Gee!’ He’d never thought of the possibility of getting under a horse in the rain. It loomed like a brilliant idea to him.”

“It struck me as an offer of eternal friendship,” Oppy said. “At the end of the rain, he led me up to the Ranch School here, to this very place, for some coffee and dry clothes. That was twenty years ago.”

Her eyes moved from man to man as if they were describing a previous life as idiots.

“Better switch back to German,” Joe told Oppy and took his drink out to the patio. There was a low moon over the mountains and a liquid coolness to the air. By the flagstones was a garden shadowed by poplars.
Los Alamos
means “the poplars.”

What are they doing here? An atomic bomb, a nuclear device—whatever those words signified. He couldn’t help knowing the terminology from being Oppy’s driver
and overhearing incomprehensible conversations in the backseat. Chain reaction? Fast neutrons and slow neutrons? It was all a different language, like Sanskrit. Of course, Oppy knew Sanskrit.

Joe set his drink on a flagstone and lit his first cigarette of the day. He still had the habits of a fighter trying to stay in shape, although for what he didn’t know.

As Teller came out the doors, he said, “Joe, you could take lessons and become a real pianist. You could play Beethoven.”

“Ah, the big-band sound,” Joe said. As soon as he could he picked up his drink and slipped away from a fierce analysis of the American jitterbug. Teller had a wooden leg.

Joe was nearly at the doors when his way was blocked by Anna Weiss, the woman Oppy had been instructing in the manufacture of martinis. She was now in the company of another émigré with a bland and pasty face, straw-colored hair and rimless glasses. His name was Klaus Fuchs. Joe couldn’t remember ever passing a single word with him, but apparently Fuchs had been giving Fräulein Weiss the usual Los Alamos tour: There are the mountains, there are the mesas, there is the Indian.

“You were, in fact, the one who first brought Oppy here?” she asked Joe.

Joe nodded. “This was a private school then. A year at the Ranch School cost more than Harvard. The war wiped it out.”

“And led you back. That is irony?”

“No, that’s pure Army.”

The two of them seemed to stare at Joe from the far end of a scale of intelligence.

“Kitty is telling everyone you are musical,” she said. “Klaus says you have no actual ability.”

Fuchs shrugged. “It should be enough to be a war hero.”

“You’re kind,” Joe said. “Of course, it’s important to be on the right side of the war.”

“They grow up with rifles here, Dr. Fuchs,” a voice said from the dark of the garden. “It’s a simple thing to be a war hero if you can fire a rifle.”

“I have never shot anything,” Fuchs said.

“Of course not.” Captain Augustino took a step toward the patio, just enough for them to see him. “In fact, we’re in hunting season now. I wouldn’t go wandering in the woods.”

“Naturally,” Fuchs said.

“A moon like this, maybe snow, every Indian is going to be out for his deer tonight. It could be dangerous.”

“Yes, yes.”

Fuchs seemed to regard Augustino the same as he did Joe. The captain had a sallow face but his hair was thick and glossy as fur, so he had the animal quality that also clung to Joe. It was as if Fuchs and Anna Weiss had evolved to the next step in human development, leaving Joe and the captain behind, a pair of Stone Age predators.

“Do you mind if I speak to the sergeant alone?” The arc of Augustino’s cigarette waved Joe out.

“Please,” Fuchs said.

Although the ground was frozen, Augustino was in his tunic. Joe couldn’t tell how long he had been listening.

“Our Germans. I’ll say one thing for Fuchs, he’s scrupulous about security, unlike some people. Sergeant, are you aware of the improvement in the living standards of the people in the local pueblos since you arrived on the Hill? Cigarettes, tires from the motor pool, sugar from the commissary. Particularly disturbing is the rumor that Indians have opened some of the old turquoise mines.”

“You don’t like Indian jewelry, sir?”

“What I don’t like is the idea that they’re blasting open the mines with high explosive. There’s only one place in this part of the country for them to get explosives, Sergeant, and that’s the Hill. I’d hate to think any of my men were stealing Army property to sell for personal profit.”

“Indians are pretty poor, sir. He can’t be making too much profit.”

“Then that makes him stupid, too.”

“If he’s that stupid, he’ll make a slip. I’ll watch for him, sir.”

“Do that. In the meantime, General Groves has arrived at the guesthouse. Wrap up the music. Since you’ll be taking the general and Dr. Oppenheimer to see the Alamogordo range tomorrow, I want you to get a good night’s sleep. The fate of the world will be riding in the
car you’ll be driving, so it would be nice if you were bright and sober. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please be aware, Sergeant, that I am unhappy with the quality of information that you’ve been giving me lately. We have a deal. You’re on provisional assignment to me. That’s probation. You go back to the brig anytime I say. Now, you return inside and give them a couple more tunes and send our civilians home happy. By the way, do you know the difference between a nigger playing the piano and an Indian playing the piano?”

“No, sir.”

“Funny, neither do I.”

Joe tried to get his mind on the music for the last set. He did a little serious work on “I Got It Bad,” turning the chorus into bebop flat fifths, followed with the tomtom rhythm of “Cherokee,” then moved into the placid waters of “More Than You Know.” The jitterbuggers got one last shot with “The G.I. Jive” before he U-turned through “Funny Valentine” and slid into the final tune of the night, “Every Time We Say Goodbye.” Fuchs was doing a Hapsburg ballroom number with Anna Weiss, as if he were waltzing to “The Blue Danube.” She seemed graceful enough in his arms, and smiled as if she found him either amusing or ridiculous. Across the floor, Oppy had his eye on Fuchs and the girl with a concentration that was unusual even for him. At the same time, Kitty was behind Oppy and watching him and the girl. Perhaps it was the novelty of a new
face or her bizarre coveralls, but everyone seemed to watch Anna Weiss; on the dance floor she seemed to be the only one completely alive. It was a trick of the light that followed one person around. Joe had seen the quality before; it was rare, but not unknown.

Every time we say good-bye
.… Porter had written an intimate ballad for lovers parting at train stations, troopships, bedrooms. At previous dances, Fuchs’ style had struck Joe as ludicrous; tonight it was irritating. When he saw them heading for a dip, he skipped a bar, went on four bars, inserted the missing notes and continued. Fuchs looked like a man trapped by a traffic signal. The girl looked at Joe. The other dancers didn’t notice because they were all dancing close and slow. As Fuchs stared at the piano, Joe drew the tune out. It was full of the loveliest A-minor chords. He got Harvey to sustain an E and came down the whole keyboard on the ninths like Tatum, returning to catch Harvey’s dying note and stretch it into melody with the right hand while he brought the left softly up the keys like a rabbit. Harvey stopped playing and stood with the reed in his open mouth, eyes big. Joe turned the rabbit into a bebop bopping from chord to chord as softly as a lullaby until he merged the melody again and made it swell until Fuchs couldn’t help but start dancing again. When the German was in full spin, Joe dropped into “The Skaters’ Waltz,” still in A-minor. The girl was laughing, taking him up on it. Fuchs tried to stop, but she wouldn’t let him; Oppy wiped tears of laughter.

Slowly, as if it were a force taking control, syncopation
came out of the bass and the waltz became a dreamy rag, then escaped into a comic stride that left Fuchs not knowing whether to put down his left foot or his right until Joe marshaled the notes into a resolute two-four and marched them into a proper waltz, where he left them for dead and reprised Porter as if nothing had happened, no Strauss, no bebop, and when he cut it short he nodded to Harvey, who came through with a fluty arpeggio, and Joe hit a last chord and that was that.

In the beginning, Oppy thought he could build the bomb with just five other physicists. They could take over the schoolmasters’ houses and eat at the school lodge. What laboratories were needed could be squeezed in between the canyon rim and the little man-made pond that graced the front of the lodge.

After deeper thought, Oppy doubled and redoubled the number of physicists and added some mathematicians, chemists and metallurgists. The Army brought in an engineers detachment to man the labs, run the power plant, maintain the roads and drive the trucks. Two hundred MPs were shipped in for security. WACs came for clerical work, and the labor force had to be expanded because work that had been expected from the outside world, the real world so far away from New Mexico, couldn’t be done there. Volcanic tufa was bulldozed for foundries. Cyclotrons and particle accelerators were jimmied up the canyon road. The British mission arrived. Dormitories, hospital and school were built and babies born. Soldiers, MPs and WACs were
again doubled in number and needed more barracks, cafeterias, commissaries and theaters. The civilian machinists who cut high explosives would leave if they didn’t have their own housing. Civil servants had to be housed. By December 1944, five thousand people were crammed onto the mesa and in the dark without street-lamps because the Army was still trying to hide its most secret project.