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October 6, 2014
Petey didn’t pity whores. “Son of a….”
Pitched low like that, her voice dissolved in growls.
“Peckerhead.” She had Groves pegged. His S.O.
P. bypassed morals, even common sense.
Prostitution? If his precious bachelor
physicists pushed hard enough. And how they
pushed! They made WAVs wash up at my clinic,
posed shyly with eyes raised heavenward, feet
propped in steel stirrups, complaining of a
pain “down there,” a hellish stench. I calmed them,
plumbed and cultured hurt vaginas, wiped
puffy lips that wept raw umber butter.
Penicillin bought me names. I brought them
post haste to the base C.O., whose sworn “I’ll
pin those bastards to the wall like bugs” proved
premature. Groves pondered the facts, the girls’
persuasive tears, the young men’s equally
passionate appeal, and then our General
pandered to the young folks’ “basic needs,” though
previously, his stout Victorian
politics taxed Petey’s knack for nicknames:
“Pecksniff.” “Gigi.” “Prissy prima donna.”
Pained by the base’s birthrate data, he’d
prohibited “all these unauthorized
pregnancies.” The wives were livid, or laughed.
Privately, I wished Groves’ foolish fiat
possible. The hospital nursery
pilfered beds from other wards; left injured
patients waiting; shunted doctors to new
posts; deferred research; defied the mortal
purpose of a weapons lab. Instead, while
parents dandled puckered newborns, colleagues
proved blast estimates in nearby canyons.
Percussive shockwaves echoing across
Pajarito Plateau shook iron roofs,
preaching the ethics of war, its excess
productions. Reproduction, sex, love, all
perversions, surplus, excrescences. Yet
piled in bassinets, cribs, bureaus, babies
poured from our assembly line, swaddled in
patinas of grease, bleating like lambs, limbs
plump, sprouting the finest, buttery fleece.
THE BABY BOOM
James Nolan, captain, US Army, and Los Alamos obstetrician
By John Canaday