Fast Backward

by David Patneaude

  She knows the way to the shack, which we passed when we visited the base camp. So I’m happy to lag behind and watch her shadowy outline. I don’t need to be reminded that she’s got the lungs of a miner. The last thing I want to do is push her.

  Cocoa and I are sharing the bench when Leo’s Ford crunches to a stop. He pops out. He’s killed the motor but left the lights on, allowing me to glimpse his not-so-insightful grin.

  “Got help today, Bobby?” he says, opening the back door.

  “This is Cocoa. My bodyguard. Cocoa, this is Leo. My boss.”

  We get up from the bench and Leo does a double take. My bodyguard was a joke, of course, so I’m glad he doesn’t remark on her lack of bodyguard characteristics. They shake hands. “Any friend of Bobby’s,” he says. “I like your name, Cocoa. Live around here?”

  “Thank you, Leo,” she says. “I do live around here. Kind of.”

  He gives her a curious look, but luckily she doesn’t explain kind of, and he doesn’t give her an accounting of how many days it’s been since Mrs. Leo let him have his way with her.

  “Helluva thing about the ships going down, huh?” he says. “It’s all in here,” he adds, holding up a Journal.

  Cocoa gives me a look, like it’s not all in here. But explaining that to Leo would take half the day. And fall under the heading of loose lips.

  We grunt to show him we’re listening.

  “Some good news, though, Bobby,” he says. “For some reason, they’re not emptying out the base camp. In fact, my boss told me the population may increase over the next few months. So, you’ll have your job for a while.”

  “That’s great,” I manage, even though the reason for the improvement in my employment prospects is anything but great. Two of the most powerful weapons in the history of the world lie at the bottom of the ocean. They have to be replaced. Quickly. And that won’t happen without more scientists and support people and long hours and, once in a while, a Journal to provide news of the outside world.

  Soon Leo’s back in the car. He gives me a conspiratorial wink and Cocoa a nice-to-meet-you nod. I watch his taillights for a moment, afraid he’s going to realize he didn’t give me his marital-relations update. But the old Ford rattles on.

  I show Cocoa how to roll the papers, and she catches on quickly. Soon we have the bag stuffed and we’re heading for the base camp.

  What did General Groves call it? Trinity? As in holy?

  Again, the sentries near the camp entrance aren’t bothered by the presence of my sidekick. As we continue, two civilian cars and an Army truck roll by. A sign that Leo’s right: the loss of the cruisers has changed some high-level minds about the fate of Trinity.

  The newspaper route goes faster with Cocoa helping, even though the renewed urgency means more people are in our way. She gets to use her arm—infrequently accurate but always strong—and I have more time to gaze through the gloom, hoping to spot Pete or Captain Nelson or even Dr. Bainbridge.

  But I don’t see any of them, not even when I peek inside Pete’s barracks.

  When we get back to the house, the car is gone. At first, puzzling. But then I remember. “Dad’s on his way to Santa Fe,” I say as Cocoa and I lean our bikes against the barn.

  “His march.” The word makes me anxious.

  I picture him there, pissing people off. I recall John McCloy’s not-so-subtle threats. I wonder what he meant and whether he was just being an egomaniac and not used to a small-town reporter in worn jeans and boots giving him shit.

  “He thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

  “It is the right thing,” Cocoa says. “If only everyone believed it.”

  Inside, the house is quiet. We sit while the coffee percolates. I unfold the paper. Cocoa scoots her chair closer, and I find myself wishing I’d showered off the sweat from the bike ride and the anxiety that’s been pestering me for days. It wouldn’t have helped with the anxiety I’m feeling at her nearness, but I pretend it doesn’t affect me, and she pretends I don’t stink.

  Leo was half right. The headline TWO US WARSHIPS SUNK accompanies an article that follows what we’ve heard on the radio—two cruisers and hundreds of crewmen lost, rescue efforts ongoing, routine missions. The word coincidental is in there, but what isn’t in there is any mention of cargo, bombs, a local connection.

  What isn’t there is the whole truth.

  Whoever wrote the article made up for the missing facts with a shitload of chest-thumping—boasts about how vermin are no match for an eagle, that the German and Japanese forces will pay for their treachery ten times over.

  “It makes you wonder about the bullshit ratio in all these war articles,” Cocoa says.

  “Beyond wonder.” Dad has often hinted at below-the-surface mischief. “An unhappy but convenient marriage between the government and the fourth estate,” he calls it.

  At the bottom of the front page a smaller headline catches my eye. STATE’S PACIFISTS TO MARCH TODAY. I’ve just begun reading when Cocoa lets loose with a punctured-tire hiss. When I look up she’s staring at the headline. “What is it?” I ask.

  “Not good,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have seen this headline before. One like it, anyway.”

  “So?”

  “McCloy. What he said yesterday wasn’t an empty threat. Something happens.”

  “To the peace marchers?”

  “Marchers. Conscientious objectors. Religious groups that preach peace.”

  “What happens?”

  She gets us coffee and returns. “If you could open up my skull, the answers would be in there, cut from old stories, pasted into the folds of my brain, where shadows and time obscure them. The Nazis, the Japanese, the peacemakers. Not Chuck’s name, but Chuck’s people.”

  “When?” I say.

  “Soon. But overshadowed by a bigger event.”

  “That’s all you know?”

  “This is maddening, Robert. This fog.”

  I don’t push her. We get through most of the day doing laundry and other routine stuff and thinking about Dad and whatever’s buried in Cocoa’s head. Captain Nelson calls twice, but beyond her anxiety over the bigger event, she has nothing to tell him.

  Mom tries to be cheery. But as the afternoon wears on, she spends more and more time glancing through windows that give her a view of the car’s usual parking space and the approach from the road.

  Finally, we hear the sounds of the DeSoto rolling down the driveway. Pretending not to be relieved, we’re slow to look up when Dad steps through the kitchen door. But, when we do, we gasp.

  He tries to smile, but his right cheek is puffy and bandaged. The eye above it is swollen nearly shut and surrounded by reds and purples. His glasses are lopsided. The right lens is missing.

  Before he can take another step, Mom is there. “I was afraid of this,” she says, fingering his cheek.

  “How do you know I didn’t just fall down?”

  “Did you?”

  “After the cursing and spitting and rocks.”

  Mom pushes him to a chair. Up close, he looks worse.

  “This movement will come to no good,” Cocoa says.

  “What do you mean?” Dad says.

  Cocoa tells him what she told me.

  “What can they do to you?” Mom says. She sets a bowl in front of him. In it is a glob of red Jell-O crammed with canned fruit cocktail. For some reason, one of his favorites. She peeks under the bandage, frowns, hurries off before he can answer.

  “You’re a citizen,” I say.

  “Not in good standing,” he says.

  Mom returns with the first aid kit. She yanks the bandage away with more force than necessary, revealing a nasty scrape. She sets on the table her instruments of torture—cotton swabs and alcohol and iodine—and goes to work on the wound. “No more marching.” She intends it to be an order, I’m sure, but it sounds like a plea. It would’ve been more effective delivered in a German accent. Cocoa should
’ve done it.

  “We’ll see,” Dad says. Mom replies with extra alcohol, extra iodine.

  After we finish supper, Pete and Captain Nelson show up. Following a question and answer session about the origins of Dad’s wounds, we go to the living room for coffee and tea. Even if Cocoa has nothing to tell them, they’ll get something for their trouble.

  Before he sits, Pete takes a closer look at Dad’s face under the glow of a floor lamp.

  “My first war wound, Pete,” Dad says.

  “I hope it’s your last, old man,” Pete says. He finds himself a chair next to the captain, who has a notebook on his lap and a pen in his hand. An optimist.

  “Have you thought about shelving the activism for a while, Mr. Hastings?” he says. He’s young—still in his twenties, probably—but his bearing makes him seem older. “There’s a lot of anger over the sinkings and, if our setbacks continue, it will overflow. Anyone who’s seen as acting against the war effort could get drowned.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Captain. But I appreciate your concern.”

  “He thinks God’s on his side,” I say. “Or Jesus. Or somebody.”

  “The Constitution,” Dad says.

  “None of those is going to pay for your glasses,” Pete says. “Or your next hospital visit. Or your funeral.”

  “Peter,” Mom says.

  “It’s true, Dottie,” Pete says. “He needs to think of you and Bobby. And Cocoa, now.”

  “Something bad is coming,” Cocoa says.

  “What?” I say. “What kind of bad?” Her somethings are getting annoying.

  Captain Nelson fingers his notebook and pen.

  “If I knew, Robert, I would say. I only want Chuck to be careful.”

  “Yes, honey,” Mom says. “We all do.”

  “Are you listening, Dad?” I say.

  “Both ears,” Dad says. “There’s nothing else planned, anyway.”

  “And if there were?” Mom says.

  Dad focuses on the view through the window. Desert twilight. “It’s good to be home.”

  Although Cocoa’s admitted she doesn’t know anything specific, the captain asks her if there could be even one hazy image in her head that might be contributing to her worries.

  She says no but tells him that her journey to enlightenment isn’t necessarily a steady process. The memories could materialize out of the constant stirrings of a gentle breeze or the sudden violence of a tornado.

  Captain Nelson puts his notebook away. When our small talk ends, the two soldiers head for the door.

  Before we go to bed, the captain calls again. Just checking in.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday, July 21 and Sunday, July 22

  Whimpering—a girl’s whimpering—pulls me from sleep. Cocoa, wrestling with another nightmare.

  I lie in my bed and listen. Breathe. Clear my head. I hear nothing. Maybe this was my nightmare.

  Maybe not. Dressed in only my shorts but sweating, I head for her room.

  She’s not there. Lolly is gone, too. I walk back down the hall. Light spills from the kitchen, and when I get there Cocoa is sitting at the table studying a pad of paper. She’s wearing her pink pajamas. Her hair is pressed flat to her head on one side. I stand at the door and clear my throat, but it takes her a moment to look up. Lolly, stretched out at her feet, doesn’t bother.

  “Robert,” she murmurs.

  “Another nightmare?”

  “Yes, but riddled with memories. Before the last of our library’s video players died, I saw old newsreels of the first Nazi atomic bomb, wiping out a city.” She jots something down. “I’m chronicling my impressions before I lose them again.”

  “What city?”

  She shakes her head. “No interruptions.”

  I can take a hint. While she writes and sighs and stares, I get the coffee pot going and settle at the table, silent. Lolly lifts his head, and I give him a scratching.

  The kitchen clock says one-twenty. In three hours I’ll need to be on my way, and the lack of sleep will be even more noticeable on a Sunday, when the papers are twice the size of dailies. But compared to what Cocoa’s going through, that kind of burden seems insignificant. I’ll keep her company until she tells me to get lost.

  I fill two mugs halfway with cream and top them off with coffee. Brain food. Cocoa takes a sip, thanks me, and gets back to her notes, which now fill close to a page. But soon she’s doing more frowning than writing. She exhales hoarsely and lays down her pencil.

  I raise my hand like I’m in school.

  “You may interrupt now, Robert. There is no longer anything to interrupt.”

  “Should we call Captain Nelson?”

  “You decide,” she says, and pushes the notebook over to me.

  I’ve seen her penmanship before, but still it takes me a few seconds to realize she’s written shorthand descriptions of images she’s seen in her nightmare, her awakening: Massive harbor city, boats and ships adrift, sinking; water blazing with burning fuel; vast stretches of smoldering land surrounding the harbor; scores of docks in shambles and sunk; low waterfront buildings, roofless and turned to rubble; a ruined ferry boat high and dry against a burning warehouse; standing water, thick with bodies, where the harbor has erupted and pushed ashore; taller structures inland, toppled and crumbling; vehicles overturned in streets and parking lots; fire licking out of demolished buildings; smoke everywhere; more bodies lying in the street and on the sidewalk under a movie theater’s marquee advertising a Noel Coward movie; women and children running from a waterfront area where an inferno rages; their clothes and skin hang from them in shreds, their hair smokes; a church the size of an entire city block, collapsed except for its bell tower; streets and bridges unusable; cars, trying to leave the city, piled up at intersections and waterways; panic; chaos; a huge airfield littered with broken planes; more docks, more sinking ships; dead bodies everywhere, most in uniform; buildings surrounding the field on fire or blown apart or both; a huge fighting ship, its superstructure twisted above a flat deck, lists at the remains of a dock; more bodies, sliding into the burning water; flashes of lightning; a roiling cloud; no sounds, but I can imagine them all; no smells, but I breathe them in with every breath; I don’t know the date; I don’t know the place; I believe it is one city but it might be more.

  “We can’t keep this to ourselves,” I say. “Even for tonight.”

  “How will it help?”

  “It’s a city. It’s on a body of water. If there’s a fighting ship moored at a dock, the Navy probably has a base there. The scenes shocked you awake, so you’re probably describing America. An atomic bomb, somewhere in America.”

  “I can’t remember where. Or when.”

  “This narrows it down, though. It doesn’t mean much to us, but maybe it will to the captain, or the fellows he reports to.”

  She sips her coffee. “Call them.”

  Captain Nelson answers on the second ring. A minute later he’s done listening to my Reader’s Digest version of Cocoa’s notes. He promises to get “Sleeping Beauty” out of bed and be on the road in ten minutes, and before hanging up tells me that a cup of strong coffee sure would hit the spot.

  We have time to step outside. Lolly stays put, confident we’re not going far, and we don’t. But, even shirtless and barefoot, it feels good to be out in the cool, breathing in desert smells.

  We move away from the lights of the house. The stars come alive. Cocoa stares up at them for so long I begin to think she’s hypnotized.

  “It’s like a giant blanket, Robert. Millions of tiny holes. Light shining through them.”

  “Shooting stars are the best. On a night like this you don’t have to wait long to see one.”

  “Meteorites?”

  “A rancher found one nearby. Size of a grapefruit. They say it traveled through space for millions of years. It’s in a museum now.”

  “We should look for one,” she says. “When this is over.”

  “Ours w
ill be the size of a watermelon.” I follow her gaze upward, hoping for fire in the night. But nothing appears, and we return to the kitchen.

  The coffee has just finished perking when car sounds get our attention. I grab a T-shirt, half expecting to see a light under Mom and Dad’s door, but there’s no sign they’re awake. Recent events have caused me sleepless nights, but all the excitement and worry and shit must be having the opposite effect on them.

  We sit at the kitchen table, voices hushed. Cocoa slides her list to the captain and Pete. I study their faces, waiting for reactions, but Pete’s not exactly demonstrative, and when Captain Nelson’s only response is a mild frown, I decide he got chosen for this assignment because of his ability to keep a level head.

  “Distinctive handwriting, Cocoa,” he says finally, grinning.

  “I taught myself, mostly. You can read it okay?”

  “Perfectly.” He glances at the phone. “Your dream prompted this?”

  “So vivid. Tied to memories. Books. Photos. And movies I saw when I was younger. The memories survived the dream. I had to preserve them.”

  “I found her here, writing everything down,” I say. “She wouldn’t talk to me until she was done.”

  “I was not done. I simply ran out of images.”

  “There’s nothing here we can use to pinpoint location or time,” Captain Nelson says.

  “Sorry,” Cocoa says. “Robert thought we should call you anyway.”

  On the table, Pete’s big hands make fists and open, make fists and open. “Robert was right,” he says.

  “This gives us way more than we would’ve had,” the captain says. “But can I ask you a few questions?”

  “Maybe they will be ones I have not asked myself.”

  “I won’t guarantee that. But we’ll see.”