Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [81]
“That’s just the opposite of how my dad told it.”
Delfino drew a palm across his mouth and down his chin, then dropped his hand into his pocket. “Go on.”
“He never said it was beautiful, but he remembered being awed and flabbergasted that it’d worked. He changed his mind later, as time went on and the war was over and instead of building down the Project they went on to hydrogen and thermonukes. He had a hand in the Nevada tests but eventually withdrew himself and moved over to theoretical work.”
“He still on the Hill, your father?”
“He’s been dead for going on thirty years.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m sorry he had a hand in causing you whatever trouble you’re talking about. I know he’d apologize if he were still around. He used to be proud of his role in the Manhattan Project. Then one day he just wasn’t.”
“What changed his mind?”
“Winning that war was what mattered to the Hill, and nothing got in the way. Among the victims who survived Hiroshima were people like my father. Alcoholism, depression, suicides hit more than one Hill family after the great victory. Not that my father went that way, he didn’t. But privately he renounced the whole business, mostly the tactics of deployment.”
“Japan was a ruthless enemy that might have won. That’s what they always said.”
“Little girls in their school uniforms going to class that morning? Their mama-sans washing the breakfast dishes before going to market? Soldiers, sure. They’re supposed to kill each other’s asses. But more often than not, civilian deaths outweigh military ones, certainly in modern war. Soldiers should slay each other by definition, not shoot civvy fish in the barrel. I don’t see why generals and career men shouldn’t be the ones forced to step into the fray, instead of conscripted privates. But that’s war for you. Chop down the innocent. Even Darwin would have been ashamed of the formula.”
Delfino held his tongue, thinking, Here’s a like-minded man if ever I met one. “You were going to show me the fieldhouse.”
Coffee cups in hand, they walked past the horno, down to the path that flanked Rio Nambé and the lower corral.
“Will you look at that,” Delfino exclaimed sincerely at the sight of the adobe, now pale pink in the sunrisen light. “You really have done a job of it. I don’t think it ever looked so sharp, even back in the old days.”
The house did look good, Kip saw. Relevant was the word that came into mind. It sat low, clean, modest under the massive trees. “Had a lot of help.”
“That’s not what Sarah says.”
They went inside. “Sarah exaggerates. Marcos and Franny did most of the work. Carl, too.”
The men looked the place over, each noticing, though never commenting, that the other seemed oddly distanced from what was being admired. Each had his strong connection to these walls, but more than that, an ineffable harmony flowed between them. They heard it, saw it in each other’s eyes. Something shared beyond personal histories around the Jornada and its Trinity grounds, the commonality of nearing demise. Each was mortal and had lived beyond what he expected or even wanted. This passed between Kip and Delfino, unspoken. Not even wholly formulated in either’s thoughts.
“When we were young, Carl and me, we always heard this adobe was haunted, but I never saw nothing.”
“Don’t look at me,” Kip smiled.
“Well?”
“No such thing as ghosts, just dead people and ones that are alive. I might have thought there were ghosts once, but I don’t anymore.