The Green Glass Sea (13 page)

“That's great. Sorry I didn't make it back for dinner.”

“I know. How was your meeting?”

Jimmy Kerrigan sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “Long. It was long. I don't like politics. ” He looked at her for a minute, then reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. For a second, Dewey thought, he looked like he might cry. Then he dropped his hand and took a drink of coffee. He sighed again. “I'm going to take a shower, see if I can get my head to stop pounding. Then I'll tell you every—” He stopped himself. “Then I'll tell you what I can. We'll have a long talk. ”

Dewey loved talking to Papa, more than just about anything. But his voice sounded odd—sad, and a little distant.

“Okay, Papa, ” she said, and wrapped the bulky arms of her sweater tight around her, as if she were shivering.

He came back from the Lodge at 11:00 carrying a white box tied with string.

Dewey looked around, but there was no one with him. “Is it just us?” she asked. Gas was such a scarce commodity, even on the Hill, that Sunday drivers rarely left the gate without stopping at the Lodge to round up a full load of passengers—soldiers, women from the dorms, and other people without families.

“Not very patriotic, I know. But I thought it would be nice if we could be by ourselves today. Just the two of us. Hop in. ” He held the car door open for her.

They drove slowly through the populated part of the Hill, turned right at the Tech Area, and took the winding road through scattered trees and green buildings to the West Gate. Many sites that had been wooded last fall were now cleared, and there were more buildings every week as the labs spread out farther and farther.

The Hill was a natural fortress, a flat mesa fissured with canyons on three sides. The land didn't slope down, it dropped off abruptly, vertically, with sheer cliffs that ended in tree-lined streams hundreds of feet below. It was pretty, but a little alarming. Dewey moved to the middle of the seat, away from the canyon-side door.

She looked out at the tall Jemez Mountains to the west, peaks covered with white snow against the blue sky. It seemed to her that the sky was bluer than the sky back in St. Louis. The light was different too. Everything seemed crisper, clearer, as if the world up here were a little more than three-dimensional. Maybe it was the altitude.

They drove southwest for almost an hour as the road skirted the edge of canyon after canyon before Dewey saw the sign for Bandelier National Monument. A red sign nailed diagonally across it said LODGE CLOSED.

“It's not open, ” she said, disappointed.

“Not to the public, ” said Papa. “It's closed for the duration. We took over the lodge for housing in '43. That is, the government did. I don't think anyone in the project's still living here, but until the war ends, we've pretty much got the run of the place. ”

Dewey nodded. By now the army probably owned most of New Mexico.

Two adobe-style buildings flanked the entrance road, a dirt track that wound steeply down into the canyon. At the bottom, Papa parked the car in front of another adobe building that was dwarfed by the towering cliffs behind it. He got his knapsack out of the trunk and put a blanket, a flashlight, and a green metal thermos into it, then stacked the lunch box on top and cinched the top shut. “Let's take a walk, ” he said, and threw the pack over his shoulder.

The path led away from the broad parking area, and the world soon narrowed to a V. The blue sky was a triangle with low brown mountains on one side and steep brown cliffs on the other. Except for a fringe of gray-green oak trees along the creek, and some low scruffy bushes, everything was one of a thousand shades of brown, from pale beige to reddish ochre to chocolate in the shadows. The cool air smelled like pine and juniper, and was so dry that Dewey could feel its sting in the middle of her head when she breathed through her nose.

It was quiet, still. The gritty dirt path scritched under the soles of her shoes, and she could hear the creak of the leather straps on Papa's pack as they walked. A hundred feet to their left, unseen, Frijoles Creek murmured gently as the water flowed over stones on its way down to the Rio Grande. On their right, knee-high grass and saltbush grew around rough-pitted angular boulders at the base of the cliffs. Dewey had to bend her neck as far as it would go to see the cliff tops, where the road was.

At the base of the cliffs, the rocks looked like they had been sculpted out of wet clay, squeezed into formations by giant hands, like geologic snowmen left to dry in the New Mexico sun.

“What kind of rock is this?” asked Dewey. She picked up a small chunk lying in the path and found that she could crumble bits off between her palms.

“It's called tuff. It's volcanic ash, compressed for thousands of years, and it's pretty soft. Porous, like the pumice stone I use on my feet. ”

“There's a
volcano
here?”

“There was. Still hot springs around, so some thermal activity's going on, but nothing to worry about. Hey, look, ” he said, pointing at the cliffs. “Take a look at that!”

Dewey looked, but didn't see anything to get excited about.

“Gotta get closer, ” Papa said. He boosted her up onto a low ledge a few feet above the path and clambered up after her. “Now can you see it?” He pointed to a flat place on the rock wall, in the shadow of an overhang.

Dewey stared into the dimness. It just looked like ordinary rock, with faint veins of other minerals. Then she saw it, a cluster of crude drawings. A spiral, a stick-figure man, a bird. Or maybe a dog. It was hard to tell. She moved closer and ran her fingertips gently along the incised outline of one of the figures.

“Who drew these?” she asked.

“The people who used to live here. The Anasazi. ”

“People
lived
here?”

Papa nodded. “A long time ago. They vanished without a trace. Maybe they got sick. Maybe there was a war. Nobody really knows, but they've been gone for about four hundred years. ”

“Is this their art?”

“Possibly. Or it could have been a message. For all we know, it's all that's left of an Anasazi billboard. Drink Swirly-Bird Cola. ”

“
Papa.
” Dewey giggled.

“Well, maybe not. ” He looked up at the cliff face. "C'mon. Let's have lunch in one of their houses. ”

“Okay, ” agreed Dewey. She looked around, but didn't see any buildings. “Is it much farther? I'm getting kind of hungry. ”

“It's right here. ” Papa pointed to a narrow path that led up the cliff. “You up for a little bit of climbing? Not too far. ”

“Sure, ” said Dewey, although she wasn't really sure. Not about the climbing part, that was okay. But she still didn't see any house.

They were puffing a little when they got to the top of the path, which opened out onto a small ledge. A crude ladder about eight feet high, thick branches lashed together, leaned against the wall of the cliff. Its top rested inches below a dark opening. A cave?

“After you, ” said Papa, and reached out one hand to steady the ladder.

Dewey climbed. The ladder was sturdier than it looked. It didn't even creak under her weight when she put her foot on the first rung. But the rungs were pretty far apart for someone her size, and she had to stretch to climb up each step.

At the top, she stepped into a small rounded room, about six feet on a side, and tall enough that she could stand up without ducking. Papa climbed up behind her and tossed his knapsack onto the crumbly stone floor.

“Hey, it's a suite, ” he said. He ducked through another opening in the right-hand wall. Dewey followed, and was surprised to find a second room, and a third beyond that. The air was cooler and felt a little damp, although the stone walls and floor looked dry. Dewey was glad she had her plaid wool jacket on.

Papa spread a green army blanket on the floor of the first room and put the lunch box on it. He sat down, cross-legged, and opened the thermos.

“Tea? I made it the way you like, lots of milk and honey. It'll warm you up a little, while I go get some wood to make a fire. ” He poured some of the steaming liquid into the metal top and handed it to her.

He climbed back down the ladder and was back in a few minutes with an armful of big sticks and branches. He piled them against the opposite wall, where the dirt was blackened, making a loose teepee shape with the larger branches on the outside. He scratched a kitchen match on the rock wall and held it to the base of the teepee. Dewey watched the little yellow flames lick the dry wood and change to orange as the fire grew. She wondered about the smoke, and was surprised to see that it rose straight up into a small soot-rimmed hole in the ceiling of the room.

They sat on the blanket, their backs against the other wall, passing the tea back and forth because there was only one cup. Dewey felt snug and cozy, and could almost imagine people living like this, waking up every morning to the sky and the mountains just outside the door.

“I like this, ” she said. “It feels like a secret hideout. ”

“Our special private place, ” said Papa. He nudged the lunch box over with the toe of his boot, then reached down and opened it. “Looks like they gave us ham-and-cheese sandwiches, a couple of apples, and . . . what's this?” He opened the wax paper around a dark square. “Mmm. Chocolate brownies. A fine feast. ” He handed Dewey a sandwich.

She ate in contented silence, listening to the crackling of the fire. Then she noticed Papa wasn't eating. He had taken one bite out of his sandwich, but now it lay in his lap, and he was just staring out the doorway into the distance.

“Papa? Is something wrong?”

He didn't respond for a few seconds, then turned to her and sighed. “I need to tell you some things that I'm not supposed to talk about. That's why I wanted us to be alone, and why I wanted to be someplace very private. ”

“Are you going to tell me about the gadget?”

“No.
That
I can't tell you. But this has to be a secret too. ”

“I won't tell anyone. Promise. ” Dewey made an X across her chest. “You can trust me. ”

“I know I can. ” Papa leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. After a moment he took a deep breath and, without opening his eyes, began to talk.

“Before the war, when you were just a tiny baby, I worked on a project with two other men. David was at Princeton, and Josef was in Berlin. ”

“You worked with a Nazi?” Dewey was shocked.

“No. I worked with a German mathematician. A good man. A good friend. Math is its own language, Dews, its own elegant world. But the rest of the world changed around us. Some professors, like Einstein and Fermi, escaped and came over here. And others, like Heisenberg and my friend Josef went to work for their government, the way I'm working for mine. ”

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of Camels, and lit one. Dewey was surprised. He rarely smoked, only when he was working on a very stubborn problem, or when he was upset. She didn't say anything, but reached out and held his other hand.

“I didn't want this war. None of us did. But what we're doing here is critical. I believe that, ” he said, blowing out a stream of blue smoke. “So I came to New Mexico to work on the most challenging problem I've ever been posed. And I love that. I've gotten up every morning excited to go to my desk, hoping it's the day a pattern starts to emerge, and the pieces begin fitting together. ” He stopped and looked out at the sky.

“If we win this war, I'll always be free to do what I love. To solve problems, to teach, to share my discoveries. A lot of my colleagues can't. Some of them have died for it. ”

“Because they did math?”

“Because they were Jewish. ” He shook his head slowly. “Before the war, we—the scientific community—could talk about our ideas. We were trying to understand how the world works, and borders didn't matter. But they do now. And a lot of the work we're doing here, on the Hill, is based on discoveries German scientists made in the thirties. So it's likely Josef and the others are trying to solve the same problems. But god help us if they get there first. ”

His cigarette burned down to his fingers and he flipped the butt into the fire. “That's part of what yesterday's meeting was about. ”

He put his arm around Dewey, pulling her tight to him, and leaned over so his head was touching hers.

“I love you so much, ” Papa said, his voice barely above a whisper. “But I have to go away again. A couple of weeks. The General's asked me to help them make sense of some German papers they've found. ”