Overland

by Graham Rawle

  It was a pleasant town. Passers-by smiled; men respectfully raised their hats and bid her good afternoon; they didn’t do that in the real world. Cars and trucks rolled quietly by, some with drivers, some without. From the speaker system, cheerful music—“I Know Why (And So Do You)” by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra—drifted through the streets. Lulled by the pervading air of tranquility, she had to remind herself that she was a prisoner on the run and that even though she could see no police or military presence, the soldiers in the factory might soon realize where she had gone and make their way up there to look for her. She needed a place to hide. She had hoped to find Queenie so that she could tell her what had happened and seek her advice, but so far she was nowhere to be seen.

  She came to an intersection with a sign pointing left To the Lake.

  When she found the spot, she stood on the top road looking down across the valley. It looked different from up here, but she soon identified the stretched tarpaulin lake with the little hole in the middle from which she had first seen Overland just a few days earlier.

  The lakeside cabin was there with the pink rowboat moored up beside it, just as picture perfect as she remembered it. It seemed like a haven, serene and secure—the ideal place for a fugitive to hide. No sign of the fisherman; the smoking chimney might have suggested that he was inside the cabin, though somehow she sensed that he was not.

  She took the steps down and followed the path to the cabin where she knocked on the door. Behind her, the surface of the lake billowed slightly with a soft flapping sound, presumably lifted by an updraft of air. It rose and then gently fell again as if letting out a contented sigh. When there was no answer to her knock, Kay turned the doorknob and tentatively opened the door. She tried a feeble Hello to announce herself, just in case, but there was no reply.

  The cabin had no interior walls; it was all one room and it had been furnished in a quaint country-cottage style. There was a rich smell of fresh timber from which the cabin had been built. A gentle breeze entered through the open windows, fluttering the pretty curtains. Kay stepped inside, her eyes adjusting to the subdued interior light.

  In the middle of the room, a lumber floor with a green two-seater couch faced a pink tiled fireplace. In the grate was a bundle of blackened logs cast from some sort of resin. She noticed that there was an electric cord attached to them with a little inline torpedo switch. She clicked the button and the fire came immediately to life with blazing red coals and fluttering amber flames. By shifting the grate a little from the fireplace, she was able to see behind the scenes, observing that the illusion was generated by an orange light bulb surrounded by a rotating sleeve of red and yellow tinted plastic. She found the effect enchanting and imagined how cosy it would be at night to curl up on the couch and gaze into the fiery glow.

  On a small table covered by a gingham cloth sat a little vase of plastic flowers and a bowl of wax fruit. There was a solid rocking chair and beside it, an old storage trunk on top of which was a globe and a wind-up phonograph with a few records in sleeves. The recording already on the player was “The Very Thought of You” sung by Al Bowlly.

  Kay was certain that this was the home of the fisherman. Its contents provided clues from which she could form a picture of the man he was and the things he valued. It was her way of getting to know him. The flowers and the choice of music told her that he was sensitive, romantic and caring, while the globe indicated both intelligence and an adventurous spirit. The rocking chair and the wood-burning fire, albeit fake, suggested someone who was at heart a home-loving traditionalist—solid, dependable and relaxed. And as she assumed that he had built the cabin himself, she surmised that he must be strong and capable—good with his hands.

  Slightly more difficult to assimilate into her profile of him was the life-size stuffed deer—an unexpected decorative choice—which stood looking out of the window as though, like Kay, it might be fearful of being hunted down in the outside world.

  Her fisherman was clearly well read; one wall was largely taken up by a library of handsome leather-bound volumes in oxblood and bottle green. She took a closer look and noticed that though the spines had various decorative gold-tooled patterning, none of the books had titles. She selected one to check its contents and found that they weren’t real books at all; they were merely the spines of books attached to wooden panels. In fact, she realized, the whole interior seemed to be decorated from a props department, yet it seemed no less appealing for all its artificiality.

  Kay was hungry. She flipped open the lid of her lunch pail and unwrapped the cheese sandwich that Mrs Ishi had prepared for her that morning. As she ate, she made herself at home, wandering around the room and gathering more evidence about the man who lived there. A shelf in the kitchen had an assorted display of empty storage jars. Her eye immediately fell upon an all-too-familiar can of Japanese sardines—the same one, she assumed, that Queenie had hooked onto his fishing line the other day when they’d been having lunch. Still unopened, the sardines appeared to be the only real food in the place. She took an identical can from her lunch pail and put it side by side on the shelf with the first one. Then she took her apple and set it in the fruit bowl atop the phony wax fruit.

  Behind a folding screen, there was a wood-framed sleigh bed sporting a quilted comforter and plump pillows. It looked both real and extremely inviting.

  Ten minutes later, Kay was lying in it, her shoes set neatly on the rug like bedroom slippers. She was pleasantly aware of the sound of birdsong from beyond the open window and the lilt of some distant romantic ballad carried on the drifting breeze.

  What if the handsome fisherman were to return home and find her there? Would he be pleased or angry? She liked to think that he would be glad, but she realized that this might be wishful thinking. She was, after all, an intruder and one with the outward appearance of “the enemy.”

  Would he recognize her from her brief emergence from the lake, or would he be so startled to find a stranger in his home that he would take the hunting rifle she imagined he would be carrying and shoot her? No, he wouldn’t do that. He just wouldn’t.

  MEANWHILE Gold-rush days when eggs sold for $10 each may soon be duplicated—for strawberry eaters. This was indicated yesterday by Harry Oakley, district Farm Security Administration officer. Oakley pointed out that in Southern California Japanese farmers have grown more than 95 per cent of the strawberries. And unless white truck farmers move more quickly to replace evacuated Nipponese a strawberry shortage is in sight. Oakley announced that losses in the production of tomatoes, carrots, green peas and onions also are in view.

  Blissfully untroubled, she closed her eyes and drifted. She was dozing rather than sleeping, wallowing in the comfort of the afternoon, no longer fearful of being caught. Here beside the lake it was almost as though something in the air was tranquilizing her, making her feel completely secure.

  Outside, First Lieutenant Franks was taking a short cut from the woods along the pathway that ran past the cabin. He paused to pick up a pebble from the lake edge and skimmed it across the surface of the tarp, watching it bounce three or four times before it cracked against a section of fence on the other side. Satisfied, he headed up the steps to the street.

  When Kay awoke, it was dark in the cabin. The flickering glow from the fire warmed the room. She must have been asleep for hours, yet she didn’t remember giving in to the notion of proper slumber. She had no idea of the time, but when she got up to look through the rear window she could see the darkening sky tinged with burnt orange from the setting sun, and the distant glimmer of lights from the city. She wasn’t sure whether they were part of the world outside or merely an illuminated feature on a backdrop, but the effect was so charming that she was incurious to know.

  She checked the front window—no sign of activity; everything seemed quiet. She stepped out the door and saw the pretty string of lights bordering the lake. Who turned them on, she wondered? Perhaps they came on automatically when it got dark, like
street lights. The evening breeze ruffled the feathery foliage of a nearby tree.

  With the factory running on a continuous cycle of eight-hour shifts, she realized that Queenie would by now have gone home and a new team of shift workers would be in place. Surely the soldiers would have left too. They must not have figured out where she had gone or they would have come looking for her. She still didn’t know how she was going to get past the one-armed man, but she knew she must go back down and figure out a way. Mrs Ishi would be worried—Queenie too, probably.

  She climbed the steps and headed along Lake Street towards the Orpheum theater to find her way back down into the underworld.

  Queenie was on the factory bus, the seat beside her empty. Having found no sign of Kay at her workbench, she had asked around the factory and learned about the military police’s recent visit. No one had actually seen Kay among those arrested, but Queenie feared the worst. One girl said she saw a group of orientals being loaded on a truck with wire mesh fastened to the windows. No one knew where they had been taken.

  Donaldson had been no help. Cold and aloof, he stood stiffly with his hands behind his back, his head held high. Unable to meet Queenie’s eye directly, he scanned the space above her head as though carrying out some formal sweep of inspection that could be neither interrupted nor postponed. He was not prepared to discuss the matter, saying only that it was “classified information.”

  “That’s no good,” she had said. “I need to find her. She’s my friend.”

  Donaldson had simply shrugged and walked away.

  So now she was heading home in the vain hope that Kay had somehow given them the slip and made her way back there. Queenie caught her own gray reflection staring glumly out of the bus window.

  It was true; Kay was her friend. And she was genuinely worried about her. But, though she was ashamed to admit it, it was also true that one of the reasons for her concern was that Kay had recently agreed to lend her thirty dollars, a sizable chunk of the dough needed to persuade Dr Young to perform his magic vanishing trick. Kay had arranged to withdraw the cash from her savings the next morning and Queenie had booked an appointment with Dr Young in anticipation of having the necessary funds. With Kay now arrested and sent away to a camp, Queenie was well and truly up the creek.

  Scraping together all of her own money, together with the few bucks she had managed to shake from the girls at work, had yielded little more than a third of the fee. She couldn’t ask Mrs Ishi because she owed her rent, and Queenie’s bright idea of asking Donaldson for an advance on her wages had recently been met with a derisive sneer. When, in desperation, she had ventured to suggest a personal loan, he had just laughed in her face.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding, right?”

  Queenie tried not to think selfishly, reminding herself that she was not the primary victim in Kay’s crisis. Nevertheless, time was running out for her. The woman who gave her Dr Young’s number had told her that he absolutely refused to terminate any pregnancy beyond twelve weeks. She had already lied a little, subtracting a week or two to stay within the specified limit, and now she was way over. If she didn’t raise the money soon, it would be too late and she’d be stuck with the damn kid for life. It was hard to picture such a thing. Much like her own mother, Queenie didn’t see herself as the motherly type.

  Ginger Rogers had taken to it pretty well in Bachelor Mother. The baby wasn’t actually hers; she just happened to find it on a doorstep. And now she was forced to deal with it. But despite the new responsibility, she managed to hold down a full-time job while carrying on a courtship with David Niven. How? By getting her kindly Jewish landlady to babysit. Maybe Queenie could get her own kindly landlady, Mrs Ishi, to look after the kid while she pursued her career, making movies by day, while at night she’d be out on the town, dancing the night away with her handsome co-stars.

  Who was she kidding? That was never going to happen; Queenie was stuffed, her career over before it had even begun. Twenty-two years old and her future was already behind her.

  The funny thing was that while she was in Overland she didn’t think that way. There, problems seemed to fade into the background, superseded by a vague yet reassuring notion that everything would somehow turn out fine. Really? Yes, she felt sure of it. A solution—she didn’t know what exactly—would present itself and her little problem would vanish like a puff of acrid black smoke from the factory below, carried away on a gust of fresh Overland wind.

  Now back in her coveralls, Kay cautiously approached the foot of the stairs. She saw that the one-armed man guarding the access point to the roof had been replaced by a man with two arms. He was up on his feet, deep in chin-wagging conversation with a fellow workmate, a white-haired man with thick glasses that looked like a pair of paperweights in a frame.

  It seemed that security measures regarding people coming back down from Overland, rather than those going up, were more relaxed, which made sense—a nightclub doorman checks customers on their way in, not on their way out. The man glanced casually over his shoulder as Kay approached the foot of the stairs; barely seeming to notice her, he turned back to continue yapping. On the table was the clipboard with a list of employee names and numbers—hers naturally was not among them—along with times in and times out. She picked up the pen, unscrewed the cap and scribbled some numbers in one of the vacant spaces.

  Kay crossed the factory floor towards the locker rooms. As she had anticipated, the evening shift was now in place: the same jobs being done by a duplicate workforce. There was another Donaldson, the alternative version shorter and with a thin moustache, doing the same job of section foreman, and, she presumed, another Queenie and another Kay. She looked across and saw two women at the station where she and Queenie usually worked—same coveralls, same welding helmets and doing the same jobs they did. The woman at her own bench was of similar build, and with her mask down could easily be mistaken for Kay. As she looked around her, she was struck by an odd sense of detachment, as though she were watching the movie version of her life in which all the characters, including herself, were being played by actors. The feeling was further compounded by the fact that no one was paying her any attention, as though she was no longer a part of this world and therefore could not be seen.

  But her invisibility was short-lived. As she entered the locker room to change out of her coveralls she heard a voice behind her.

  “Nashimura?”

  She turned to see the two military policemen standing at the door.

  NINETEEN

  QUEENIE WAS OUT pushing one of the baby buggies. Today she was feeling uncharacteristically dowdy in a plain loose-fitting housedress. Not quite maternity-wear, but heading in that general direction.

  While all the other Overland Residents were going about their daily business looking relaxed and cheerful, Queenie was tense and distracted. She saw Doc sitting under the library clock. He stood and graciously tipped his hat.

  “Ah, good morning, miss. I didn’t recognize you without your ballgown.”

  She put on a cheery smile. “Hi Doc. How’s Chummy today?”

  Chummy appeared to be fixated on something further down the street. Doc steered the little dog round to greet her. She bent and obligingly patted his head.

  Doc took in her chosen ensemble. “Well, what have we today? The proud young mother? Quite a different look.”

  She glanced down at her dress. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s not really me, is it?”

  Doc weighed up the overall effect. “Hm. I don’t know. I think motherhood rather suits you.” He peeked into the buggy and saw the doll lying there. “What’s the little feller’s name?”

  Queenie didn’t want to get into this.

  “Say, Doc. You haven’t seen a Japanese girl, have you? Chinese, I mean.”

  “In Overland?”

  “She’s my friend from the factory. She didn’t come home last night.”

  He winced regretfully. “I heard they were putting them all into
concentration camps.”

  Queenie felt guilty. “Yes, I heard that too. I thought maybe she got away … came up here to hide.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen any orientals.”

  “Her landlady is really worried.”

  “Did you ask Ray, the doorman at the Orpheum? He probably would have seen her if she’d come up here.”

  She nodded. “I’ve asked everybody. I guess they must have caught her. I don’t have any idea where they might have taken her. What am I supposed to do now?”

  Doc was full of sympathy, but could offer no solution.

  A short ladder leaned against the little flat-roofed porch over the front door of Shangri-La Cottage. Jimmy had climbed up there and it was from this vantage point that he spotted Queenie approaching. By the look on her face, he guessed she’d had no luck finding the friend she had asked him about earlier that morning. He watched as she parked her baby buggy out on the sidewalk and walked down the garden path towards him. He was still having a hard time getting used to her conservative young-mother image.

  She asked him what he was up to. He explained that he was getting a bit of practice in before he started his parachute training. Queenie listened distractedly to his enthusiastic explanations about altitudes, wind speeds and drop zones. Thinking he had her attention, he was now demonstrating the parachutist’s correct position for landing.