“I don’t believe this,” Oppy said and stared first at the bomb and then at Foote. “It isn’t possible. You measured wrong?”

The tent walls shook. Measured wrong? Wouldn’t fit? Joe pictured someone telling this to General Groves, and he suspected that every man was imagining the same scene.

Harvey laughed. “It’s the desert heat. The plutonium’s hot, expanded. Grade-school physics. Leave the core where it is; it will cool.”

It took five minutes, but the temperature of the plutonium and high explosive finally equalized and the core slipped meekly into place. Jaworski unsealed the vacuum cup, and as Foote raised the chain Harvey inserted a three-foot-long manganese wire down to the resting core to check its neutron count. Connected to a Geiger counter, the wire detected a cascade of ions, a noise like a hive.

“I’m done.” Harvey withdrew the needle. He paused at the hole as if he couldn’t trust the moment, then slipped quickly out of the tent.

At once Foote and Jaworski began replacing high explosive. Lenses that appeared loose they made snug with Scotch tape. As the work went on into the evening, lamps were brought in. Thunder could be heard walking across the valley.

“Italy has just declared war on Japan.” Harvey had returned to the tent.

“Hell, this war is almost over,” Joe said.

SATURDAY,
JULY 14

26

Joe ran in the early morning; he did roadwork whenever he had the chance now. Punching the air, ducking, slipping punches right, left. Cool sweat ran down his chest.

As he ran he played music in his head. He worked on a “Fugue for Night.” He thought it could be bebop, but it became a double waltz for minor chords, constantly changing, rising and falling because there were so many kinds of night. Mountain night. Desert night. Even the deep, fungal night of the Philippines had variations. Then there was the interior void without moon or heart that was life without Anna. Sometimes the physical reaction came before the thought itself: a burning in the throat, a hollowness in the chest, then memory. If she was drivings to Chicago, she was still on the road. It was as if his body were actively betraying him. Sometimes his eyes told him they actually saw her in the dark, as if hope could gather shadows and take on human form. Then the shadows would fade and he’d be alone again in a flat void.

Sometimes, with sweat and concentration, he didn’t think of her at all.

He brought down the moon on flatted fifths. The sweat poured.