The Cassandra

by Sharma Shields

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t miss mine in the slightest.”

  Gordon laughed loudly at this. “Shameful, indeed, Tom Cat. Your sentimentality betrays you. As for you,” he said to me, “it’s cute when a girl’s independent.”

  It fascinated me, the way Gordon spoke, so poetic and vulgar both, like a drunk scholar. Falstaff, I thought. It would be easy to listen to a man like this every day, as easy as it was to look at his face. I admired his stridency. I wanted to bake it, to eat it like a large meat loaf so that it would enter my bloodstream and become my own. But I sensed already, beneath his easygoing manner, a cruelty that could crush Tom Cat and me in an instant, and, hesitantly, wrongly, I admired that, too.

  Gordon half-turned away from me then and I saw again how very much his face—especially in profile—looked like Richard Quine’s. He wasn’t the sort I could ever make a husband—I was too plain, too dull—but I was suddenly both happy and unnerved at the thought of being his intimate.

  A line of cattle cars pulled up on the dirt road, kicking up a dry cloud of dust. Several of us put our hands over our eyes and coughed. The wind sent the dust swirling, so that it stabbed and stung. We pushed into the vehicles, eager to escape the bad air. I didn’t understand why they called these simple buses cattle cars, why they would choose to insult us in this way, but when I mentioned this to my companions, they laughed and told me it was meant only as a friendly joke. Still, as we boarded, I thought about the cattle cars I’d heard about in Germany, the ones ferrying the damned to concentration camps and gas chambers. It made me grateful to be where I was—safe, appreciated, surrounded by new colleagues. I chose a seat directly behind Gordon. I assumed Tom Cat would sit with Gordon, but he scooted in with me, instead. I was flattered. We continued our conversation, with Gordon now and again pivoting in his seat to interject his many opinions.

  Tom Cat had already been working at Hanford for a few weeks now, and I had a dozen questions for him, but he was homesick, he only wanted to talk about Okanogan and Grant Counties: the drought, the majesty of Grand Coulee Dam, the tension between the tribes and local government.

  “I was at the Ceremony of Tears,” Tom Cat said, “when the rising water for the dam drowned Kettle Falls. The Indian chiefs moved all of the ancestral graves to higher ground. It was very touching.”

  Tom Cat asked me if I’d read Coyote Stories by Mourning Dove, an Okanagan woman. He said it was his favorite book.

  “I’ve heard of it,” I told him. I remembered reading something about her dying in the Eastern State Hospital at Medical Lake, but it was a sad detail, and I didn’t bring it up.

  “Ceremony of Tears,” Gordon interrupted. “Good grief. Indians are always crying about something. There’s a band of Wanapum complaining about the site here, too. Sacred fishing grounds and such. Say if they can’t get their salmon, they can’t live. They don’t give two shits about our war. Well, they should. We’re trying to save humankind.”

  His strong opinions reminded me of Mother. I wondered for a moment if she would like him and then thought, No, she hates any man who is too opinionated, and that was probably why she married my father. If she were here, she would argue with Gordon just for the fun of it, even if she was likely to agree with him.

  I glanced at Gordon nervously and he smiled in return. But when I blinked, his face blurred, then transmuted. The handsome squareness of his jaw narrowed. His heavy brow sharpened. It was the face of the silver-eyed coyote from my sleepwalking the night before, sly and too friendly. In the background, I heard Tom Cat arguing for the Wanapum’s rights, but I couldn’t follow his sentences. The bus released its brakes and began to accelerate. I put a hand over my stomach, feeling suddenly like I’d had too much breakfast.

  Tom Cat quieted for a moment and then asked, “Mildred, are you unwell?”

  “Oh, no,” I told him, “I’m just excited.”

  But I didn’t look up as I spoke. I feared I would find Gordon’s good eye staring back at me, an uninvited penetration.

  YOUR NEW GIRL

  The cattle car, people-choked, sand-choked, reeking of sage and flesh, moved through light so intense that my head ached. There was a whole line of buses like ours snaking the five miles to Unit B. If only the noise would quiet so that I could feel alone with the landscape, the ivory hills, the burnished sand, the blue sky with its bone-pale lacy edge. I brought my hands up under my hair, the strands bursting with static, and then pressed my palms hard over my ears. Now the voices dulled, there was only the sound of the engine and of my own inner washings. There was no shade here away from the tidy angles of the camp, and despite how early it was in the day, the dryness of the open plain enkindled my lungs with a heat both cleansing and suffocating. I remembered sprinting with my sister through a field of alfalfa just outside of Omak, the grasshoppers beating themselves senseless against our shins as we loped, shrieking with glee.

  We drew closer to Unit B, and I could see the gorge where the river ran, but not the river itself. I wished I could go there, remove my stockings and shoes, dip my sore feet in the chilly water. There it was again, a stab of lust for Susan Peters’s shoes.

  The line of buses paused one at a time at a gate a mile or so away from the unit. You could tell who was new on the bus and who was not: New recruits fell silent, reading the enormous signs on the fence line, while everyone else continued their conversations, the signs as mundane as any other quotidian display:

  HANFORD SITE. RESTRICTED GOVERNMENT AREA. KEEP OUT.

  PROTECTION FOR ALL. DON’T TALK. SILENCE MEANS SECURITY.

  TELL NOBODY. NOT EVEN HER. CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES.

  RESTRICTED ACCESS. GOVERNMENT VEHICLES ONLY.

  We didn’t have to wait long. The guard waved all of our cattle cars through swiftly, and soon, amidst the flat nothingness of the desert, we pulled up alongside the other vehicles. Their front windows all faced Unit B in a neat semicircle, as though arranged for worship.

  A few minutes passed. The heat in the cattle car grew onerous. Finally the driver gave a shout of farewell and drew the door open. We filed down the stairs and out onto the arid grassland. The dust settled enough for us to see the concrete fortress of Unit B, bigger and taller than a cathedral, its walls thick and gray like the face of a dam. From the center rose a long, dusky smokestack, and below it flapped the United States flag, whose vivid crispness brought much-needed spirit to the color-drained earth and concrete. The men near me must have felt similarly; some of them took off their hats and held them over their hearts. A whistle blew. The doorway of Unit B scraped open, and three official-looking men emerged onto the walkway. The first of them was dressed in military uniform, the second of them in a handsome three-piece suit, and the last in a crisp white lab coat.

  “Good morning, Patriots,” the taller of them—the military man—shouted. “For the many of you who are new here, welcome to Unit B. Your work here, your loyalty, and your discretion will help us win the war.”

  Tom Cat leaned in and whispered, “That’s General Smith. And behind him, Mr. Redding, the DuPont engineer, and there’s Mr. Farmer, the Italian scientist. They say that’s not his real name.”

  “Do they welcome us every morning?”

  “It’s rare to see Smith and Farmer. They’re very busy people. But someone greets us every day with the same message. They’re very firm about it, so you know it must be true.”

  The official men gave a brief wave, then withdrew back into the building. The large steel door crashed shut behind them.

  Our coworkers lined up at a much smaller side door some yards away.

  “We clock in over here,” Tom Cat said, motioning to the crowd, and Gordon started to move in that direction, but I stood rooted in place, staring at the massive blocky-shouldered edifice. Its firmness and coldness reminded me of something.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?” Tom Cat said, returning to my side.

  Mother. It reminds me of Mother.

  I let out a breath. “It’s enorm
ous.”

  “Women love big things,” Gordon joked, waiting for us just a few feet away. “That’s why they love me.”

  Tom Cat didn’t laugh, and I liked him for it.

  “Construction is almost finished here,” Tom Cat said, “and then there won’t be so many workers. I’m hoping they’ll move me to the valve pit room or the clinic, something indoors. I don’t like working outside. The wind is too much.”

  “It’s not bad right now,” I said.

  Tom Cat gestured at the road leading back to camp. “Look.”

  I couldn’t see anything, just a faint taupe smoke where the bluffs used to be.

  “It’s hazy,” I said.

  “That’s sand,” Tom Cat said, “heading this way. It’ll be here shortly. It gets everywhere, in your ears and hair, your eyelashes. In between your teeth.” He regarded the line of people working their way steadily into the building. “Hopefully we’ll get you inside before it hits.”

  I eyed the spreading haze and then the line of workers before us. The line moved quickly. Everything worked with a marvelous efficiency here, all polished gears and gadgets.

  “We’ll be there soon enough,” Gordon said.

  “Doesn’t help me at all,” Tom Cat said, sighing. “I’ll be working on the river pumps with no shelter.”

  To me, Gordon said, “Women are pampered, getting to work indoors all of the time.”

  “Gordon, you don’t even know,” Tom Cat said. “You’re being sent to the control room. You’ve got it easy.”

  I felt sorry for Tom Cat. He sounded miserable.

  “Maybe they’ll reassign you,” I said.

  “It’s a little bit of wind, Tom,” Gordon said. “You can handle it. This is baby stuff compared to what the better men are doing overseas.”

  I patted Tom Cat’s arm. He shot his eyes up at me, his mien softened. I dropped my hand and blushed.

  A little voice in my head spoke as clear as a bell, It’s him. Your future husband.

  “Mildred,” he said, “after you.”

  I was inside, just as the first grains of sand began to slide across the walkway. Joining that great workforce, the flimsy weight of my girlhood dropped behind me on the ground like a discarded shawl.

  I was handed a time card and given instructions for clocking in; I loved the time stamp adhered to the wall with its solid handle, how firmly it imprinted the time card and made my first working day official. I asked Tom Cat and Gordon if I could stamp their cards, too, and they allowed it, Gordon even saying, “Ain’t she adorable, Tom?” The clean cards came away marked with ink: September 16, 1944, 07:56. New hires were directed to a table on the side of the narrow hallway and there I spoke to a man with a clipboard. He told me to report to the physicist’s office. He looked very familiar to me.

  “Didn’t I just meet you in Omak?” I said. “At the US Employment Office? It’s nice to see you again.”

  The man puckered his lips, considering this. “Farthest north I’ve been is Wenatchee.”

  He was teasing me, I thought. He was identical to the man in the Omak recruiting office. He even wore the same dark brown tie.

  “You handled my paperwork,” I insisted. “I’m sure it was you. Don’t you remember me? Mildred Groves? You asked me about husband-hunting?”

  A few men in line heard this and snickered. One of them called out, mockingly, “Marry her! A little chunky but she’ll do!” More laughter followed.

  I was glad that Gordon and Tom Cat had already disappeared ahead of me into the giant concrete corridors.

  The man stubbornly shook his head. “Wasn’t me, lady. I’ve been stationed here since we started building eleven months ago.” Then with a wink, he added, “But regarding the husband thing, I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  “That’s exactly what you said in Omak,” I said excitedly, “wishing me all the world’s luck. It’s you, I just know it. And you have the same face.” I drew my hand over my face and did my best worm’s expression, puckering my lips and bulging my eyes.

  The man grew irritated. “Look, doll,” he said. “We’ve got three hundred people waiting in line. You asked if it was me and I told you it wasn’t. Give it a rest, will ya?”

  He came forward into the light as he spoke, angry now, and I realized with some embarrassment that he really wasn’t the man from Omak; he wasn’t the same man at all. They looked similar in the shadows and they certainly had the same taste in ties and the same bald, round heads, but in the light, one was a worm and one was a snake. I apologized, stuttering. The snake repeated where I was to go and sent me away with an annoyed wave.

  I didn’t go far: “Turn right, go straight, follow the hallway to the door that reads ‘Physicist,’ and then sit in the room and don’t touch anything.” I recited the instructions to myself as I walked, and I was tempted to do the opposite of everything I was told, only because I was free now for the first time in my life, and if I’d wanted to I could rebel against all of it. But I chose to be obedient. Just daydreaming of rebelling was an exhausting rebellion of its own.

  I found the office and went inside and sat down in one of the two chairs, facing the physicist’s large wooden desk. On the wall behind it there was a large picture window looking directly into Unit B’s control room. The picture window was hilarious to me, one room looking into another, with no real windows anywhere else to be found, zero natural light. I supposed it was so the physicist could keep tabs on the workers at all times. The rows of meticulous shining knobs and dials thrilled me. I imagined running my hands along those clockwork faces, putting my ear up to them and taking comfort in their tiny soothing heartbeats. A lone man puttered about the control room as I watched, bending at the waist now and again to peer at a set of numbers or a line of ticker tape. Eventually he must have sensed my eyes on him, and he turned, saw me, and waved in a friendly manner. I smiled self-consciously and glanced away. Off to the side of the office was a small square desk, like that in an elementary school. My own, I supposed. It had a new black typewriter on it and I fought the urge to go and type a long, heartfelt letter to myself on its firm keys. Dearest Mildred, it would begin, What a marvelous life you’re leading. What a brave, stupendous young woman you’ve become …

  On the physicist’s desk was a black iron fan and a ceramic container filled with identical Parker pens. I fingered a booklet of matches. Strike at the seat of Trouble. Buy war bonds. The desk was mostly free of papers except for a large open map of the facility and an unopened letter from someone—a woman, clearly—with exquisite handwriting. I returned the matches to their place near the container of pens. My hands itched, seeing the letter. It was a love letter, surely. I imagined the woman still lived in California or Paris or Belgium or some romantic place, and she was writing to tell him about the rain outside her apartment window and how its whisper sounded like his voice in her hair, and how soon she would return to his side, by plane or ship or something even more exotic—a camel—so that she could embrace him again and lock lips and hold him and be held. I raised up on my toes, not at all intending to read the letter but hoping to at least spy the woman’s name, but someone entered the room then, and I fell back into my chair, swiftly, and then leaned down to toy with my shoe buckle, as a means of explaining, however weakly, why I had half-lifted from my chair in the first place.

  The man who entered was neither short nor tall, thin nor fat, but smack in the middle, almost remarkable in how shapelessly average he was. For a moment he looked exactly like the sort of husband I envisioned for myself, everything about him cordial and ordinary, but then he moved into the room, adroitly, and the expression with which he regarded the room and myself was both perceptive and invasive. No, I would hate to be married to him; it would be an embarrassment to us both. He would loathe the way I ironed his shirts. I would go quiet beside him at dinner parties, terrified of saying the wrong thing.

  He looked at me and then at the letter. He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, li
fting out a small key. Swiftly, with an annoyed frown, he took up the letter and locked it away in a desk drawer.

  “But you didn’t read it,” I noted.

  “None of your business,” he said sharply. “You’re the new girl?”

  “Mildred Groves, yes. Are you Dr. Phillip Hall?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Dr. Hall, the physicist.”

  “I thought so,” I said, jumping to my feet. “I’m pleased to meet you.” I extended my hand and he shook it lightly. “I was Star Pupil at Omak Secretarial.”

  “Out of how many girls?”

  “Five,” I admitted.

  “Not such a great feat then. I’m less interested in talent than I am in loyalty, secrecy, and safety. Are you a loyal sort of person, Miss Groves? Are you discreet? Are you aware of how your discretion will keep us safe here?”

  I put my hand over my heart and swore on Mother’s life that I was all of those things, but then I saw her screaming as she plummeted into the Okanogan River, and I frowned and added, “Or maybe I can swear on my own life, or yours, if you’ll let me.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” he said. “Just remember what I told you: loyalty, secrecy, safety. Remember those three things and we’ll get along just fine.”

  “Loyalty,” I said. “Secrecy. Safety.”

  “There’s a pad of paper in your desk drawer. I’ll ask that you retrieve it now. Also, a pen. You are not allowed to use the pens on my desk. Good. I like your speed. Now, Miss Groves. Please take dictation.”

  I was excited to get to work. When I next looked up, happily busy, swiftly writing in rhythm to Dr. Hall’s musical voice as he spoke of cooling processes and productivity demands, Gordon Nyer stood at the large picture window, watching me with that wolfish look on his face. He held up his hand and waved and I, in turn, held up my hand, pausing in my writing.

  Dr. Hall noticed, turned, saw Gordon standing there, and glared at Gordon until he moved away.

  “What sort of person is that?” he asked. “A boyfriend of yours?”