No one knew for sure where the name Arrowhead Project came from and no one could tell you for one hundred percent sure that that really was the name of the project-if there was a project. Bill Giosti said there was, but when you asked him how and where he came by his information, he got vague. His niece, he said, worked for the Continental Phone Company, and she had heard things. It got like that.

«Atomic things,» Bill said that day, leaning in the Scout's window and blowing a healthy draught of Pabst into my face. «That's what they're fooling around with up there. Shooting atoms into the air and all that.»

«Mr. Giosti, the air's full of atoms,» Billy had said. «That's what Mrs. Neary says. Mrs. Neary says everything's full of atoms.»

Bill Giosti gave my son Bill a long, bloodshot glance that finally deflated him. «These are different atoms, Son.»

«Oh, yeah,» Billy muttered, giving in.

Dick Muehler, our insurance agent, said the Arrowhead Project was an agricultural station the government was running, no more or less. «Bigger tomatoes with a longer growing season,» Dick said sagely, and then went back to showing me how I could help my family most efficiently by dying young. Janine Lawless, our postlady, said it was a geological survey having something to do with shale oil. She knew for a fact, because her husband's brother worked for a man who had Mrs. Carmody, now … she probably leaned more to Bill Giosti's view of the matter. Not just atoms, but different atoms.

I cut two more chunks off the big tree and dropped them over the side before Billy came back with a fresh beer in one hand and a note from Steff in the other. If there's anything Big Bill likes to do more than run messages, I don't know what it could be.

«Thanks,» I said, taking them both.

«Can I have a swallow?»

«Just one. You took two last time. Can't have you running around drunk at ten in the morning.»