An Atomic Romance by Bobbie Ann Mason Page A

centrifuge this town will be going to its own funeral.” He pointed to the telephone cubicles. “Call her,” he said. “I dare you. It won’t hurt.”
    Reed did. If he had waited any longer, he would have thought too hard about it. He got Julia’s answering machine, and he left a brief tongue-tied blurt of need.
    T he Comet Hale-Bopp blazed westward, trailed by a twelve-billion-year-old star cluster and a young cluster of blue stars. Behind the stars were more stars, behind the galaxies more galaxies. Reed never tired of the Hubbles on his screen.
    In his daily life, Reed’s frustrations could send him to the wilderness with a pistol to shoot targets. But when he contemplated a spiral galaxy or a massive globular star cluster, or even something as common as a comet, he swelled with imagination. In some miraculous mode of transportation that transcended the speed of light—the Reedmobile, that little ego-cart of a vehicle his mind had possessed since childhood—he wandered through the gas clusters and nebulosities, a tourist cruising the cosmos, protected by a radiation-proof shield, with windows. The time would be now wherever he was. Somehow, he thought that if he went on such a voyage deep into the universe, he would never feel lonely.

7
    As his mother slowly improved, Reed got more sleep, but he still went to the hospital to see her every morning after his shift. In the early light, as he drove along the bypass from the plant toward the hospital exit, he had a clearer view of the changing city. It was growing, smothering and ingesting cornfields and pasture-land. A large farm that once sold its produce in a roadside stand had, in the last two years, transformed into a poultry-processing factory. Its water tower, a pale sphere on a tall stem, pressed against the sky like a painted moon. Dead chickens often littered the shoulder of the highway. Today Reed counted four white leghorns. Did they fall from the delivery trucks? Or did they escape from their coops at the factory, flapping and screaming in their short, hopping swoops toward the traffic? The dead chickens were becoming familiar, like icons on his computer screen. He considered scooping up a chicken for Clarence. But he didn’t stop.
    A bundle of bones topped with a red wig—a scarecrow—had shared his mother’s room for the past two days. In the bright light today, Reed realized that the wig was actually the woman’s own hair, bleached strawberry blond, the roots a gray shadow. The woman sat upright, open eyed, impassive. She looked at least a hundred, but yesterday Reed had learned—through eavesdropping—that she was only seventy-eight.
    “Is that you?” his mother asked, stirring from her sleep.
    “I just got here,” Reed said, giving her a quick kiss. “How are you feeling, Mom?”
    “Terrible. They keep poking me with cattle prods. I just get off to sleep and here comes another one. Is that candy over there?”
    “No. Mouth swabs.” They did resemble lollipops. He offered her one and she took it eagerly. “Did you know there’ll be an eclipse of the moon this week?” he asked.
    “I don’t care if they go to the moon,” she said, sucking on the swab. “If there’s not any grass, what’s the point?”
    Her speech was clearer and her color improved. Reed cranked the bed so that she slowly rose into a sitting position. Bunches of her frizzy silver hair aimed in several directions.
    “You look pretty today, Mom,” he said.
    “I’m not ready to head for the pea patch yet,” she said. “Hand me some water.”
    Her right hand flailed, tubes dangling from it like fringe. He removed the swab and held the plastic cup for her. The bend of the flexible straw was segmented like a hard-shell centipede. She took a few small sips, then eased herself back against the pillows. “Don’t you need to be at work?” she said.
    A lab tech with a lab tray interrupted, and Reed stood aside while his mother’s blood was drawn.
    “You’re going