Harry made a fast escape after signing in with the coroner and delivering Dr. Randolph’s papers. “Won’t be but a second to unload him,” the coroner assured him, “and then you can have your truck back.” Harry’s expression told everything before he could find the words. He was lingering nowhere nearby for that scene, express unloading or not. The coroner understood, said, “Go watch the parade why don’t you. When you come back it’ll be like it never happened.” Harry didn’t shake the coroner’s hand and the coroner, thankfully, didn’t offer. He didn’t know about a parade but he played that he did. He strolled in the direction of the downtown, followed the noise and shouting until he crested a hill. He saw it down below. The bands and the marchers and especially the war veterans were stationed in the street in crisp rectangles. Harry thought the parade more beautiful this way, from this farther reach, with the different groups laid out like the perfect stanzas of a poem.
He thought of his brother, his real brother, who had made it through the war. Said he killed people and didn’t have any problem with it and he pooh-poohed all these mental vets drooling in wheelchairs, turned to stone. The VA got volunteers to dance with them, young pretty girls, that was what that was all about. Harry felt too untouched and naive to offer an opinion. He wanted to be able to disagree. The world was too cruel in his brother’s version. His brother was older, almost a father figure, and it pained Harry to disagree with him, even in his thoughts.
Here he was thinking of his brother and as he walked down the hill and followed the parade to the bandstand in Lincoln Park, he came upon one of his nieces. She was lined up on the outdoor stage in a bathing suit and he was shocked. The last time he had seen her she was as little-girlish as Beth. What was she now? She looked old and young at the same time. He could see the makeup from here. Maybe twenty-three. Maybe only sixteen. He tried not to look. He searched through the crowd for his brother.
A name was called and one of the girls in the bathing suits stepped forward. “Our new Miss Atomic Energy!” The winner of the Miss Atomic Energy contest received ten tons of uranium ore and got an airplane ride over the Colorado Plateau. His niece’s name was never called, even as a member of Miss Atomic Energy’s sizable court. He went up to the stage afterward and the girls were like the parade itself. Something off-kilter entered the picture up close but resolved itself at a distance— like the blare of trumpets and trombones where you couldn’t hear any tune until you stepped back. He found his niece and tried to ask where his brother was, but she was crying and didn’t answer. As he escaped into the crowd he glanced back. The garish slashes on the girls’ faces had settled back into smiles.
He returned to the coroner’s and retrieved the truck. A huge wet spot blemished the ground and although Harry knew it came from the ice he couldn’t help thinking in other directions. He had the liquor supplies to pick up for Miss Dazzle, but he first drove to the AEC field office. It was closed. They kept irregular hours. Perhaps they would return after the parade. The fellow who usually worked there was getting on in years and spoke with a heavy German accent. Harry wasn’t the only one to be struck funny by this, a German working for the U.S. government to help it find the mineral to make more atomic bombs in order, probably, to defeat the Germans again. But the man was a U.S. citizen born and bred. Just got the accent from his parents was all.
He patted his pocket to make sure Miss Dazzle’s check was there. He could try the liquor store first and then come here again, but the store was located out of town on his way home and he would hate doubling back. The dirt lot where he waited offered not a single spot of shade though the truck emptied of its ice retained a lingering coolness that felt good in the heat. Harry picked up the paper bag Miss Dazzle had given him. There were three sandwiches inside—three! He unwrapped one. Peanut butter and jelly. So this was his favorite kind. That was good to know. He took a bite. It tasted pretty good. He took another bite and then looked at the sandwich. The two slices of bread appeared to have been squashed down by bricks and mortared together by an even brown line. The jelly had started to dye the bread purple. It didn’t look like it should taste good, but it did.
A bowl of dust followed a jolting truck into the lot, and the old German got out. Harry stepped from his truck. “Hallo,” the German greeted, his wave a single mechanical flip from the elbow up. “Come on.”
Inside the office were shelves of Geiger counters and scintillation counters, labeled and explained and rated. Ore sample sacks and collecting bags were available for purchase. Maps covered every bit of wall space except for one inexplicable picture: Hermes, in a cheap bamboo frame.
On another set of shelving were ore samples carefully labeled— carnotite, autonite, tyuyamunite, roscoelite, vanadium, even torbernite from the Belgian Congo, different kinds of pitchblende, pitchblende with copper.
Ah, pitchblende with copper. Exactly what he was thinking. And where to find such pitchblende? An old copper mine, of course. No one went chasing such a thing these days because the pitchblende to be had was impure, and its impurity made it harder to detect any uranium. But Harry had the right instruments at his disposal.
“What can I do you for today, Harry?”
Why did the man have to call him Harry? Now Harry searched desperately for the man’s name. He was usually so good with names. That was part of his job. Here this guy remembered him. And he was old, too. And he had never made a show of being sociable. And yet he remembered his name and didn’t want any congratulations for it. Why did the man have to call him Harry? What was his name? No idea. None whatsoever. Total blank. Harry knew what he was going to do now. He was going to cover his embarrassment by acting overly, unduly friendly, to the point where he would probably actually frighten the man. He told himself not to do this. He pointed to the index of publications and asked for The Mineral Industries of Utah. He sounded like a twelve-year old, clearing his throat, asking for the prescription his mother had sent him to get, using the change to buy himself a chocolate soda. Looking guilty, staring at the floor. He told himself, Now, stop. Don’t say another word. Then he said the man’s suit looked nice. Whose suit? John’s suit? Jacob’s suit? He went through some Bible names, Cain, Abel, Adam, Samson. Hermes’ other name, what was that? Mercury.
“I was judging the parade,” the man said. He flung his hands along the lines of his suit, top to bottom. He moved to the back room. Harry assumed he was rooting for the publication, but when he came back out, he had changed into khaki work pants. He kept on the suit jacket. “For this parade I have score sheets to fill out. Columns with numbers I have to choose from, and rectangles I have to fill in with comments. If I’m assaying ore, I have an easier job. Big business, parades.”
“Did you judge the Miss Atomic Energy contest?”
“No,” the man said. He opened a cupboard of maps and publications. “You looking for something in particular, Harry?”
“Old copper mines,” Harry said.
“Hmm.”
Harry stole away toward a corner so he wouldn’t be tempted into friendliness. The German probably interpreted this as secretiveness. Everyone who came to this office had big secret plans. Harry had a secret plan, too: it wasn’t exactly get rich, it was more get respectable. If he could only get hold of a working mine, he’d have something to offer Jo.
Harry wanted to ask for the most recent map of field camps, but he was afraid he’d get too chummy about it and start talking and never stop. He checked over the ratings of the Geiger counters and scintillators to see if they had anything new to say that he could use in his sales pitch. Always his eyes came up against that jarring picture of Hermes with its uneven edges set unmatted in a bamboo frame. It must have been hand-ripped from a magazine like Look.. It belonged hanging in a restaurant above a booth. Hermes looked like a cover boy. Harry always did a double take, expecting to see Hermes’ autograph.
“There you have it,” the man said, slapping down the records.
Harry did another double take when the clock chimed. Another thing he had forgotten. A grandfather clock played one-quarter of its tune every quarter hour so that by the time an hour went by you had the whole tune. The trouble was that Harry had never been there for an hour (well, he had been once, but the clock wasn’t working; other times nearly an hour but the timing was wrong). The music it would play was tantalizing, and mountingly familiar. And truncated. Harry would be already stepping into the next note when it would stop. The tune was like a cough that wouldn’t come out. Harry, the man of songs, could not place this one. He’d inquired before of this man whose name he used to know, but the man just flung out his hand. “Not my clock,” he said.
Harry took his publication and map and hurried out. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He was a spectator to himself falling apart piece by piece in there. Couldn’t remember a name, or a song. A harmless mythological figure looked like a mobster restaurateur. Pretty soon he’d start mistaking the Geiger counters for kitchen mixers and he’d be selling them for S&H green stamps. Great idea, copper mine. Fantastic, Harry. Great idea. He started up the truck. Peter! He jumped out, ran back into the office, called, “Peter, I forgot to thank you. Thank you, Peter. Thanks very much, Peter. See you soon, Peter.”