RIFLING WITH My father moved to New Mexico in 1944 to work on the Manhattan Project. He was a steamfitter. In 32 Clinton St. Quarterly—Summer, 1988 nightmare terrorize a limitless dark, a spectre gray, dead and gnarled. A i toward the tree, filling me helpless to change what a The tree exploded in a blh I trudge past neon palms and twittering slot machines in Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport on my way to get arrested. Nukes, I mutter. Nukes have been in my face since the day I was born. Why am I doing this? My protest against nuclear weapons testing isn’t likely to change the inevitable. My companion is a doctor and veteran anti-nuker. We drive through Vegas, looking for “ Nucleus Plaza,” where a rally will be held. We catalog the latest outrages: “They” this, “ they” that. My mind wanders. The sun shines brightly on the garish venues for silly sin. What better place to test nuclear weapons than Las Vegas? Here’s a bet for you, sucker: Will we or won’t we destroy the world? 77 arch of ‘45 I was born, antedating the other Little Boy, the the one that went to Hiroshima, by six months. Growing up, I looked out the windows of our hilltop home in Santa Fe at the lights of Los Alamos, twenty miles across the Rio Grande gorge. Every morning my father drove off to his job on the “Hill, ” building new facilities for The Lab, his fate seemingly linked to the success of The Bomb. Occasionally he took me with him. Once he stopped his Chevy at the gate with the thirty-foot-tall machine-gun tower while a guard poked his face in the window to look at my father’s security pass. I jumped up from the back seat and drew down on the guard with my cap pistol. He leaped back, hitting his head on the window frame, and his hand flew down to the gun he wore. My father laughed. The guard didn’t.
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