The word from Washington was that Truman’s military advisers claimed Trinity was a waste of time, that the bomb was a scientific boondoggle, a hoax, a dud. Oppy showed a brave smile.

“You’re not going to dance?” Anna asked Joe. She was no more than civil to him, as if they’d hardly met.

“No.”

“Joe’s different,” Oppy said. “He’s a progressive Indian. A bebop Indian.” He turned to Joe and lowered his voice. “By the way, when we get to Trinity, Groves wants you to patrol for Apaches. That incident in the snow seems to have lodged in his brain. He thinks it takes an Indian to stop an Indian.”

It wasn’t a major ceremony, not a saint’s day or a basket dance, just a dance for late planting, open to the public but unannounced. Maids from Santiago had told people on the Hill, “Something will be happening.” Among the hundred or so spectators, Joe saw Fermi and Teller. Foote sported British Army shorts and a sombrero.

The dancers moved with a step, half-hop, turn. There was an absence of young men, who were in the service. Grandparents and girls moved happily to the sonorous beat, gently beating up dust. Hop, shuffle. The monotony used to drive Joe crazy. A placid merry-go-round of tame Indians and corn. Shuffle, turn.

“Who are the painted ones?” Anna asked Joe.

“Clowns.”

“What do they represent to you?”

“Ancient Greeks.”

The clowns were performing feeble antics inside the dancers’ circle. Joe remembered when they were fierce mimics who imitated Navajos, tourists, Catholic priests, when clowns put at least some heat in the Pueblo milk.

Cottonwood leaves rustled; on the hottest day, a cottonwood could sound like rain. Ladies from Santa Fe, veteran watchers, opened folding chairs. Oppy murmured something that made Anna laugh, and Joe excused himself to take a walk.

Behind a low stone wall and a small graveyard the mission of Santiago sat at the west end of the plaza. With adobe walls seven feet thick at the base and thirty feet high, the church looked like a monolith. A fort, actually, from the days when the Apaches used to raid the Rio Grande Valley. On the roof was a graceful iron cross and a bell, both cast in Old Spain. The door was always shut during dances.

The graveyard had marked and unmarked mounds, and a scattering of new white crosses for soldiers. Their backs to the plaza, two cowboys sat on tombstones and smoked. They were wiry men in sweat-stained hats. The older was about sixty, with callused hands and a chickentrack neck. The younger had long blond hair and wore a vanity shirt like the kind Roy Rogers sang in. The satin had turned to a muddy iridescence, and strips of curlicue piping had fallen off.

“Sergeant Joe Peña,” Joe said and stuck out his hand. “I never saw cowboys at an Indian dance before.”