Fast Backward

by David Patneaude

  “What did he say?” Dad asks.

  “He seemed concerned but not worried. He said we’d deal with the legal questions at the proper time, but first we have to figure out her health issues and get them resolved.”

  “Did he say anything about how she looked?” I ask.

  “He did.”

  I wait for the rest of her response, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she swipes at her cheek and walks faster. But if she’s trying to shake us, it’s not working.

  Finally, Dad asks the obvious question. “Which was?”

  Her eyes are glassy as she turns to face us. “He said when he was still in training on the East Coast he cared for German and Polish refugees—people who had been liberated from death camps. People who had been abused and starved by the Nazis. He said Cocoa doesn’t look quite as undernourished, and her spirit seems better, but she wouldn’t seem out of place in the company of those unfortunates.”

  Mom is upset at the comparison, but I’m not shocked. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about how I’d seen Cocoa’s skeletal body and haunted eyes in newsreels, in photos in Life magazine.

  Dad puts his big arm around Mom’s waist. We resume walking. Lolly spots a roadrunner and halfheartedly chases it into the brush. By the time he rejoins us, we’re another quarter-mile down the road and his tongue is hanging out like a wet sock. I imagine what’s going on back at the house.

  We turn around and head back. Mom wants to be around when Doctor Kersey finishes, and she needs to get ready for work. When we arrive, the MG still sits driverless in the yard and there’s no sign of the doctor or Cocoa. We find shade on the porch and sit. Lolly stands at the door expecting to continue on in, but we ignore him.

  Eventually we hear voices, Doctor Kersey’s and Cocoa’s. It sounds like a normal conversation. On the surface, at least, the findings and explanations and revelations—whatever they are—haven’t caused any huge waves of emotion.

  The screen door opens. “You’re all here,” the doctor says, looking genuinely happy—or relieved—to see us. “All finished for today. Come in.” He grins. “Which sounds a bit strange, since this is your house.”

  I find Cocoa standing at the kitchen sink, sipping a glass of ice water. She drinks a lot of ice water.

  “Did you find any other naked girls out there, Robert?” she murmurs. “Anybody like me?”

  “Not this time.” I’m tempted to say “There is nobody else like you.” But would she take that as a compliment? “How did it go with Doctor Kersey?”

  “No surprises. He took his time listening to my lungs, but I could have told him they are not worth a shit. He checked my heart and abdomen and reflexes. If he found anything terrible, he did not let on. He used the word ’compromised,’ which does not sound so bad, does it? He did not raise an eyebrow during his examination. He is sure of himself, handsome, hot. He made me feel uncomfortable but then comfortable.”

  I could’ve skipped hearing about handsome. And what does hot mean? It’s New Mexico. It’s July. Aren’t we all hot?

  Voices carry to us—a question from Mom, a response from the doctor. But the words come in murky drips, and soon the conversation moves away.

  “When he asked me to tell him my story, or at least my memory of it, I had only one condition.”

  “That he’s someone who matters?”

  “That he will help—or at least not hinder—me when I tell it to someone who does matter. That he will tell the important people that I am not crazy.”

  “He agreed to do that?”

  “’I can see already you’re not crazy, Cocoa,’ he said. ’Tell me about yourself, and if I have a chance to speak to anyone in authority on your behalf, I’ll do it.’”

  “You told him?”

  “Yes. And the more I told him, the more I remembered. Like roots exposed along the path of a landslide.”

  “What did you say?”

  She goes to the living room doorway, and I follow her. The voices of my parents and Doctor Kersey carry from the front yard. “Let’s go visit the animals, Robert. I do not know how much your parents will share with you.”

  In the barn, the animals mostly ignore us. Lolly is probably with my parents. Cocoa sits on a bale of hay, but I stand, resisting the urge to pace.

  “What I told him,” she says, “is something fantastical. I did not know if he would believe me, but I had no choice. I will tell my story to anyone who has the power and willingness to do something about it.”

  I’m holding my breath. My legs are rubbery. I sit next to her, silent, afraid to push her off course with more questions.

  When she finally speaks, her words come in a torrent. “I told you I believe in time travel. Time slippage, really, because time travel implies that I had a hand in it. I believe in time slippage because I come from a different time. Do not ask me how, but I think the atomic bomb blast—this morning’s event was an atomic bomb test, Robert, the first one ever in the United States, as far as I can recall—was the impetus.

  “When I woke up, I was clueless. Except for some fading light simmering on the horizon and a giant purplish cloud high above everything, it was dark. I was naked on the ground in a desolate desert landscape. I thought I was dead. I thought I was in heaven, or hell, but I never believed in those places.

  “I got to my feet and began walking. I saw what I knew must be stars because I had seen them in photos and videos in the abandoned library that I call home. I read about them shining white and yellow and creating constellations.

  “I wondered how it could be possible to have cool air around me and be able to see stars and my first thought was that I had been transported to another planet but that seemed even less likely than my next thought, which was that I had traveled through time, but that seemed ridiculous, too, so I tried not to think. I just kept walking.”

  She takes a deep breath. I sense images forming behind her eyes.

  “Daylight crept into the darkness,” she says. “I saw a distant mountain peak and headed for it so I would not walk around in circles, and I came to the road and tried to decide if I should go left or right. Then you came along and made up my mind for me.”

  “Videos?” The word is the least important piece of her puzzling story. I should be asking about atomic bombs and slipping through time and how she got naked. But videos might have a reasonable explanation.

  “Movies. Moving pictures. Talking pictures.”

  “I get it.” I try not to look skeptical—even though I’m beyond skeptical—because I know she’s worried I’ll think she’s lost her mind and, if she thinks that, she won’t tell me more. “I’m glad I came along,” I add.

  She keeps studying me, and I figure she’s looking for a reason to go on, or not. “Where do you come from, Cocoa?” I say. “The past? The future? A faraway country?”

  She leans closer. A small array of freckles dots her sunken cheeks. I don’t remember seeing them before now. I want to touch them, but I don’t, because she’s wondering if I’m humoring her, and I don’t want to be anything but serious, and I’m afraid of how she’d react to my fingertips on her skin.

  “I told you I am from here,” she says at last. “But it is a different here. Nearly a hundred years from now. Not New Mexico, but New Dresden. Not the United States of America but the Subservient States of the Fatherland. Not blue skies and clean air and order and hope, but ashy skies and toxic air and chaos and hopelessness.”

  She’s gone all the way off the rails, I say to myself. But a small part of me doesn’t believe that. A small part of me believes her. “What happens?”

  “The Devil’s War. This war.” She pauses. “Hitler wins it.”

  She’s disturbed. Fantasizing. Brainwashed. “He’s on his last legs. The Nazi army’s in retreat, backed up nearly to Berlin from both sides—the Russians and us. He’s not winning. We’re winning.”

  “He has people fooled. He has aces up his sleeve, ready to be played. That is why I must talk to someone.”


  “What aces?”

  “Your generals believe they have won the race to build the first atomic bomb. This morning they successfully tested it. But, in fact, Germany won the race. The delays in the Allied invasion of France gave German scientists breathing room. Now Hitler has bombs of his own and the capacity to use them. He has a plan to move ahead. Soon.”

  “He wins?”

  “And loses. Civilization goes into a tailspin. You would not believe the outcome, Robert. But look at me.”

  I do as I’m told. The freckles provide a random layer of normalcy and even cuteness. But there are also the sunken cheeks and the bluish veins visible under the papery skin and the pained eyes and the dark shadows under them and the wispy hair framing it all. My gaze falls to her neck and shoulders and arms and the rest of her wasted body under the baggy clothes.

  “I am the face of Hitler’s legacy,” she says. “Your world is heaven; mine is hell. But unless I can get someone to listen to me, they will surely become one.”

  Her words frighten me, but I tell myself they shouldn’t. I tell myself they’re fiction—that they should be no more frightening than the words of H. G. Wells or H. P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe. I try to convince myself that Cocoa has been through some frightening event that’s left her irrational, and she can’t be from the future. I try to convince myself that Dr. Kersey has seen the nonsense in her story and he’s telling my parents she needs time to recover and if the recovery doesn’t take place she’ll need help from a different kind of doctor.

  But I study her face and I’m not convinced of anything. “I have a million questions.”

  “A million more?”

  “At least.”

  “I will answer any that I can, Robert, but not now. I do not know if this passage through time will allow me to alter history, but I have to try. I have to hurry. I must reach someone in power. Maybe that will be through Doctor Kersey, or your uncle Peter, or even your father the writer. But I must start.”

  Not now, she says.

  When, then? I ache to be convinced, one way or another.

  I follow her to the front yard, where Doctor Kersey sits behind the steering wheel of his MG, still talking to Mom and Dad. He sees us coming and waves, which I suspect is a signal to my parents that we’re getting within earshot.

  The MG’s engine crackles to life, and then the little car heads down the driveway, trailing a cloud of exhaust and dust. Again, I’m reminded of another cloud. Was it really just this morning that my life turned inside out and upside down and sideways?

  “Are you feeling okay, dear?” Mom asks Cocoa when we arrive.

  “What did the doctor say about how I feel?” Cocoa says.

  “He didn’t tell us how you feel,” Dad says.

  “He told us you’re doing fine,” Mom says. “But he wants to check out some things more thoroughly. He expects to see you in his office tomorrow.”

  “He was impressed,” Dad says. “He says you’re a smart girl with an unusual amount of knowledge.”

  They’re leaving out part of the whole truth. The part that matters.

  The time slippage part.

  “An unusual amount,” Mom echoes.

  “What else?” I say. “Anything about where Cocoa comes from and why she needs to talk to someone?”

  “I think he told us everything Cocoa told him, Bobby,” Dad says.

  “Did he believe what I told him?” Cocoa says.

  “Here’s what he said,” Dad replies. “He said, ’There’s no rational reason for me to believe her story. But I’m certain she believes it.’”

  “That’s it?” I say. “He’s not going to do anything?”

  “Wait and see,” Mom says. “As we told you, he wants her in his office tomorrow.”

  “We do not have time for wait and see,” Cocoa says.

  “Can we talk to Uncle Pete?” I say.

  “Peter’s a realist,” Mom says.

  “He’s been to war,” I say. “This war. He’s fought. He’s got scars. Do you think he wouldn’t listen to a story about Hitler winning?” This is the part of Cocoa’s story I can’t let go of. Which means I almost have to believe the rest of it. Will anyone else?

  “He’s not exactly open-minded,” Dad says.

  “About pacifism,” I say. “This isn’t pacifism.”

  “I’m running late,” Mom says. “I could take you and your bike to the newspaper shack, but you’d have to pedal the rest of the way and back home.”

  “Cocoa needs to tell him the story herself,” I say. She has me half-believing her, so maybe she can half-convince Uncle Pete.

  “I will ride behind you again, Robert,” Cocoa says.

  “Are you feeling up to it, honey?” Mom says.

  “No problem,” Cocoa says.

  I look at her and imagine plenty of problems, but she has a determined look. I picture her arms around me.

  “Put your bike in the back seat, Bobby,” Mom says. “Both of you drink some water. I’ll be five minutes.”

  “You might not be able to talk to Pete,” Dad says as Mom hurries away. “With all the excitement out there, he could be unreachable.”

  “We’ll wait,” I say, and Cocoa and I head off to load my bike.

  When Mom gets to the car we’re already sitting in the front and kind of close, but as she slides behind the wheel she nudges Cocoa a little nearer and I get a whiff of shampoo. It’s Breck, what Mom uses, but on Cocoa it smells different—stronger and sweeter but with a hint of bitter, too, like an apple picked too early.

  I like green apples.

  While Mom lead-foots it toward the shack, Cocoa catches me staring at her fingers, white-knuckled, digging into the seat. “I have never ridden in a car,” she says.

  Mom winces and slows.

  She drops us off. Now it’s pedal power. In two minutes I’m sweating, but Cocoa holds tight, humming something, and that’s about all I get out of her for the rest of the trip. When we near the base camp and pass the two sentries in their Jeep, I wave, and one waves back. They don’t seem concerned or impressed that the paperboy is bringing along a stranger. She’s a girl; she’s skinny; she looks ill. Couldn’t the kid do better for himself?

  No. I couldn’t.

  EIGHT

  Outside the enlisted men’s barracks we find Uncle Pete’s buddy, Joe Waller. He sits on an empty oil barrel he tipped on its side and rolled to the shade of the barebones building. He’s cleaning his rifle, which he uses for hunting game, not bad guys. I introduce him to Cocoa. He tries not to stare.

  “On patrol,” he says when I ask him about Uncle Pete. “Took off on horseback an hour ago.”

  “Horseback?” Cocoa says.

  “We don’t use ’em often except for broom polo,” Joe says. “Too much territory to cover. But today our vehicles are doing taxi duty.”

  “Can we see the horses?” Cocoa says.

  “Sorry, honey. All checked out.”

  She looks disappointed, but at least her mind is sidetracked for a moment. “When will Peter return?” she asks.

  Joe doesn’t answer right away. Maybe it’s her accent. He was in France kicking the Germans’ asses before a piece of shrapnel cut him down.

  “Not soon,” he says finally. “Horses don’t like heat. I’m guessing after midnight.”

  “Midnight?” Cocoa says. She turns to me. “Is there someone else?”

  I shake my head. Uncle Pete will listen, at least until the story turns ridiculous. Nobody else—especially someone who matters, like Lieutenant Bush or Dr. Bainbridge—will give this strange girl with the stranger story the time of day.

  “Can I leave Uncle Pete a note?” I say. “It’s important.”

  “Sure.”

  I bum paper and pencil and scribble a note in which I ask my uncle to call me right away because I have something big to tell him. Then Cocoa and I get back on the bike and head home. Again, she doesn’t say much, but three times—whether to me or to herself I can’t
tell—she murmurs, “We must talk to someone.”

  She’s dragging by the time we walk through the door, and Dad tells her to go to bed. She doesn’t argue. When I hear the bedroom door close, I sit at the kitchen table and fidget until Dad looks up from his typewriter. He’s trying to be patient, but whatever he’s working on is important.

  “What did Dr. Kersey really say?”

  He squirms. He rarely lies, so the bullshit he and Mom were spreading earlier must have been a struggle for him. The quiet is overridden by a news bulletin about a huge blast at the Army base caused by an accidental explosion of a stockpile of munitions.

  Speaking of bullshit . . . the light, the thunder, the wind, the cloud. That was no accidental explosion. Cocoa may not have all her marbles, but the bomb part of her story makes sense.

  “He wasn’t quite as positive as we let on,” Dad says.

  I wait for him to continue.

  “The doctor believes she’s been traumatized by some mystery event that’s affected her mentally,” Dad says. “But more concerning to him is her physical health. She’s malnourished, and her body systems are showing the effects of starvation combined with environmental factors akin to working in a mine. Has she said anything about that kind of history?”

  “A mine?”

  “Nonsensical, huh?”

  “He’s got nothing better?”

  “He says she has a murmur and arrhythmia, liver enlargement, lymph node enlargement, and lungs that function at half her predicted capacity. He’s puzzled, but tomorrow he’ll do a more thorough exam, including lab work.”

  “He thinks it’s okay to keep all that from her?”

  “He’s told her some of it. He’ll tell her more tomorrow.”

  “Can he make her better?”

  “He’s going to try,” Dad says. “And we can help with the nutrition part.”