Read Online A Brief History of Male Nudes in America by Dianne Nelson, Dianne Nelson Oberhansly - Free Book Online Page A

wheels, and from some indeterminate distance we heard a cow bellowing, low and sorrowful, then echoing back to itself off the high sandstone cliffs.

    Some said the sky turned liquid; others, that it flexed and burned like at the beginning of time, but what we had seen from our ranch many times before were sudden long flashes as if a huge brilliant light had been turned on and then off in the distance. Ninety-eight miles away as the birds fly was the Nevada Test Site and in the middle of that was Yucca Flat, ground zero. From hillsides on our property we had watched the explosions of test bombs Ruth, Dixie, Ray, Badger, and Simon. Sometimes we packed fruit or a small picnic to take along, we threw an old blanket on the ground, stretched out and waited, but we had grown bored with those events, stopped watching, and accepted the bulletins which said everything was safe.
    That morning, predawn, 1953, as part of the series of bombs code-named Upshot-Knothole, Harry had been detonated, a shot that was named to sound as if you were talking about a friendly next-door neighbor. It hung from a 300-foot steel tower out there on Yucca Flat. At the end of the countdown, soldiers positioned three miles away as firsthand observers heard a loud click and then felt the raving heat of a new sun. They had been ordered down on one knee, left arms tight over their closed eyes, heads tucked. In those first two seconds of Harry, some of them saw the bones in their own arms—everywhere a huge luminous X-ray spreading outward. The ground shook and then the shock wave hit, knocking some of the men back, a wave that theyeerily felt pass right through their bodies, front to back. And then the sound.
    Some soldiers put their hands over their ears, though they had been instructed to keep their eyes covered. Others held their heads against the intense pressure of the blast. They felt a sudden heat in places like their kneecaps and the backs of their hands, and a slow—almost pleasant—tingling in their crotches that shortly, however, turned to painful needling. A private first class jumped up, hollering, holding himself between his legs, but a buddy pulled him back down where he crouched and covered his head and moaned.
    Little by little the roaring diminished and the soldiers’ heads came up. They uncovered their ears and were ordered to stand. By that time darkness was ebbing and against the mauve sky they saw a swirling golden fireball, alive, kinetic. The gaseous ring around it shimmered red, green, and blue and even the most nervous and frightened soldiers saw it as beautiful, mesmerizing. They watched as the fireball was lifted higher and higher in a mass of roiling gray-black clouds, which didn’t mushroom as they usually did, but spread and then drifted.
    A sergeant yelled for the men to double-time it into nearby assault vehicles, and when loaded, they headed for ground zero. They drove past a line of mannequins that had been planted upright on metal poles. The mannequins had been suited up in utility jackets and helmets and then placed in formation like a scraggly half-wit battalion. The helmets had been blown off, the jackets were burning, and the mannequin faces had melted into flesh-colored pools onto the desert floor. The vehicles slowed. Some of the soldiers laughed as they went by, but most were quiet.
    Not far from there they passed a small reconnaissance team already at work herding pigs out of an experimental trench. These were important pigs. They wore specially tailored uniforms that were made from a new synthetic fabric that the Army was testing, supposedly durable and lightweight, a promise for all future soldiers. The scientistshad been disappointed when they failed to train the pigs to stand on their hind legs—more closely simulating humans—but the moment that Harry went off, the pigs were suddenly upright, standing, squealing, urinating, front hooves pawing the air. Dogs, monkeys, and burros were