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Max goes out in the desert when they need to think: they sit on the dunes and watch the grains spill into their shoes. There are signs against taking any sand; Max thinks about these when they shower off their dusty toes at home.

The bomb went off here, and downwinders in Alamogordo were its first victims. Max thinks about camping girl scouts who watched falling flakes of nuclear snow, and babies who weren’t ever born.

Trinity’s walled off, somewhere in the middle, though it opens twice a year. Max’s never gone. Barren begets barren; lonely begets lonely. Nothing grows out here, but not because of the bomb. It’s the sun’s harsh heat; and the night’s deep aching cold; and the dry, loose sand where roots can’t find purchase. There’s emptiness wherever they look: blinding hills of white on white on white.