THEY DROVE THROUGH the skull of time. Inside the skull, the penetrating light of experiments shone. The skull curved and inside it, dead cows lay with skin hanging. The wool of sheep clung to the wet parts of the skull, floating teeth attached to bone and ate it away, exposing the wire nerves. The world’s sand had been heated to glass. They drove along the glass jaw, the flashing nerve highway. This was Nevada, the atomic state.
Vivienne pulled out a piece of something hard sticking out of her jawline. She put it on her thigh, taking a photograph of it against her khakis. White, charred, sharp at the edges, folded in a small hem, with hairs sewn on it. Her bowels and lungs felt tornadic. It is the gas-filled organs that the atomic bombs affect first.
IN 1946, THE United States of America
