Fast Backward

by David Patneaude

  “He seemed to, dear. And even more encouraging was when he said he may call his Army buddy at Los Alamos to get his reaction.”

  “Do you think he will?” Cocoa says.

  “He brought it up,” Mom says.

  “How’s that going to fit with our mysterious letter story?” I ask. Maybe the Los Alamos Army guys won’t talk to the base camp Army guys.

  “I told him about my nightmare, Robert.”

  “Any advice?”

  “No. But he asked about the date of the sinkings. I told him. He told me I’ll sleep better when tomorrow passes uneventfully.”

  “I hope he’s right,” I say.

  FIFTEEN

  From the road, we spot an Army truck parked next to our house. Uncle Pete’s sitting on the front porch. My heart stalls.

  When we get out of the car, I study his face, but he doesn’t tip his hand.

  Dad nods in Pete’s direction and heads to the barn. Mom hugs Pete and invites him in, but he says he’d rather inhale the desert where the best inhaling is. Cocoa and I bookend him, close enough that he can put his arms around our shoulders.

  Mom comes out with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses and heads back inside. Lolly, ignored, goes looking for Dad. We sip. Finally, Pete speaks.

  “I wanted to see you, but I don’t have anything positive yet. Nothing negative, either, though.”

  “Has Lieutenant Bush talked to Doctor Bainbridge again?” I ask.

  “He’s trying not to be a pest, but he’s been making himself visible.”

  “Do you know who Doctor Bainbridge talked to?” Cocoa says.

  “He was going to try a couple of options, General Groves or someone on his staff, as well as somebody at the War Department. If not Secretary Stimson, then one of his assistants. Patterson or McCloy. Someone with clout. And an open mind, I hope.”

  “Tomorrow is July 20,” Cocoa says.

  “Believe me, Cocoa, I know it,” Pete says. “Could you be off on the date, though?”

  “I do not think so. It is the date the ships sank, the tide turned, the Nazis seized an opportunity to cause death on an even wider scale.” She stares off into the desert. “Widest.”

  I can practically hear her thinking, remembering. Imagining.

  No. I don’t believe she’s making up shit. What about Pete? He passed on her warning, but was he, is he, humoring her like Dad? Going along because the stakes are too high not to?

  “For anyone who pays attention to history, it is a memorable date,” she says. “For a while, after time slipped backward, it escaped me, but I have it back.”

  “I was hoping you’d say yes,” Pete says. “Failing that, we’ll have to pray that the right people make the right decisions in time, or—”

  “Or that she’s inventing everything?” I say.

  “She’s been through a lot.”

  “I am a survivor,” she says, “with no reason to be devious.”

  “Not devious,” Pete says. “Mistaken.”

  “I guess we’ll see,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “On July 21, I hope all of you will be able to say ’I told you so.’”

  I do hope she’s wrong, but I don’t like being lumped in with all the skeptics. The last thing I’d tell her is “I told you so.”

  “Can you relate your story for us once more, Cocoa?” Pete says. “I’ve got time, and Bobby and I would like to hear it again.”

  I would like to hear it again. But I’m pretty sure his reason for asking doesn’t have much to do with me. One of his former duties was interrogating German prisoners, and the main thing he looked for was consistency. Is your story the same now as it was an hour ago? Yesterday?

  Cocoa’s is. Between sips of lemonade she recounts her existence in a ruined civilization a hundred years from now. She tells of genocide and political upheavals and nuclear wars and killer pollution and the depletion of resources and government failures and anarchy and the collapse of infrastructure. She describes the invention and eventual demise of innovations I can barely comprehend. She talks about lack of food and unbearable heat and disease, about survivors being lucky to reach sixteen and facing old age at twenty.

  If she’s making this up she’s got an imagination that goes way beyond devious.

  She recounts the day it happened. An ordinary morning, until an odd cloud suddenly appeared and there was a crack like thunder and the sky opened up and she was sucked away and found herself lying on a desert floor, naked and alone. For the first time, she was breathing clean air and seeing stars and smelling plants and watching a rabbit look at her curiously and then duck behind a yucca, names she knew only because she’d seen pictures of the small animal and the spiky plant.

  After that, she walked. She found me. The rest is shared history.

  When she’s finished talking, she slumps back in her chair. I go inside and get soda crackers and cheese and hurry back. Cocoa and Pete are still sitting silently. Cocoa digs into the cheese and crackers. Pete nibbles.

  “They have to warn those ships,” he murmurs finally. He gets up, and Cocoa and I stand, too. She looks unsteady on her feet, exhausted. He gives her, then me, drawn-out hugs, and heads down the porch steps.

  “Call if anything happens?” I say.

  “The minute I hear.”

  He climbs in the truck and drives off, trailing a cloud of dust. Once again, I’m reminded of seeing another cloud, only three days ago, and how, in that short time, that cloud and that morning have changed everything.

  SIXTEEN

  Friday, July 20

  I lie awake most of the night, thinking doomsday thoughts and listening for Cocoa’s screams, which don’t come. I wonder if she’s stifling them in her sleep.

  I’m up before the alarm sounds, beating Leo to the shack. When he arrives, he’s in a talkative mood. Although he’s well aware of my dad’s beliefs, he rambles on about pacifists who accomplish nothing but giving comfort to the enemy.

  When I steer him away from that subject, he switches to his wife and how deprived he is. I listen to his complaining until I can’t anymore. Before the papers are rolled, before I say something harsh, I take off.

  At the base camp I find Pete, but his news isn’t calming. According to Lieutenant Bush, Doctor Bainbridge spent a good deal of time on the phone trying to get the message across, but whether he did is anyone’s guess.

  I finish my route and race home. By the time I start up the back steps, I stink from exertion and nerves and not having showered in two days, and I wonder who will notice.

  Nobody.

  I’ve barely opened the door when Dad traps me in a hug that I know means something awful has happened. Mom and Cocoa are at the table, slack-jawed and teary. And on the radio a newscaster relays the story of a Mayday in the far reaches of the Pacific, and an American ship—a cruiser—being torpedoed and sinking almost immediately, and many of the officers and men going down with it, and survivors in life rafts and in the water awaiting rescue.

  In my brain, a neon sign flashes: Loose lips sink ships!

  Dad lets go, and then it’s Mom’s turn. When she finally slips away, I wait for Cocoa to follow my parents’ example. I wait for the chance to hug her back, because I know we’d both feel better. But she doesn’t, and I don’t, and we don’t. Even though she’s the only one who was sure this was going to happen, she seems to be in shock.

  I take advantage of her distracted condition and stare at her. I can’t help myself. Any remaining doubts I might have had about her and her story vanish. Swept away by the truth.

  She’s not mistaken or mentally ill or devious. She’s a time slipper. Practically a superhero. To her, what’s happening now, what’s going to happen in the days ahead, really is history. Until the past few days, she really has lived her life in the hellish place she described.

  Which makes me want to hug her even more.

  But I don’t.

  While the newsman continues talking, I get coffee, add some to ever
yone else’s cup, and sit. Mom holds my hand. Cocoa’s hands are in her lap. She’s in a white robe over her pink pajamas. Her hair is a mess, her face tortured.

  A cruiser is a large ship, the newscaster says, typically named after a US city. In this case, the Indianapolis.

  A haunting name. I remember Cocoa using the list of states to try to prompt her memory, pausing on Indiana, saying it’s not quite right. But it was close enough to get her attention. Indianapolis is the capital of Indiana. The name Indianapolis is a cousin-word to Indiana.

  In Cocoa’s eyes is a question. What if Indianapolis hadn’t eluded her?

  “You gave them plenty to go on without the name,” I say.

  A hint of a smile, but I wonder if she believes me.

  “Of course,” Dad says. “There was no need to tell them what they already knew.”

  Mom nods. The newsman goes on. The Indianapolis, the first cruiser to be sunk since the July 1943 sinking of the Helena, had a crew of approximately twelve hundred officers and men. It was on a routine mission when it was apparently attacked by a Japanese submarine. Rescue vessels and aircraft have been dispatched, but the ship is in a remote area, and getting to the survivors will take time.

  I recall Cocoa’s nightmare, the men doing a death dance with the beasts of the deep. I think about the next sinking. Will the next ship be on a routine mission, too? Has it already happened? Cocoa said the sinkings were coordinated.

  The phone rings. I know who it is, but when I say hello I want it to be someone from the War Department, calling to say that the news on the radio is part of a secret plan to sucker the Axis powers.

  “Have you been listening to the radio, Bobby?” Everyone’s eyes are on me.

  “Is it true, Pete?”

  “Afraid so. Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry. Sorry the brass dropped the ball. Is Cocoa there?”

  “Upset. Why didn’t they listen?”

  Silence.

  “Is it too late for the other ship?”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Pete says.

  “Has anyone talked to Doctor Bainbridge?”

  “Lieutenant Bush is trying. The camp’s in an uproar. By now nearly everyone knows what the Indianapolis had in her hold.”

  “Cocoa told the truth,” I say. She shuffles over, holding out her hand.

  “I know,” Pete says.

  Cocoa takes the phone. “Peter?”

  I hear him respond, “Yes,” then, “Sorry, Cocoa.”

  “My feelings don’t matter,” she says. “What matters is that there will be more of this . . . this shit. If the assholes do not start listening, we will experience the ultimate shit.”

  She’s trembling. I take the phone back. “They have to listen,” I say to Pete.

  “By the end of the day, you’re going to have visitors—Army brass and government bigwigs—and your dad is going to be in the spotlight. He’s not going to be able to keep up the ruse. The government will be watching your house, and listening to your phone calls, and there won’t be an opportunity for a mysterious stranger to deliver warnings in the middle of the night.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Cocoa needs to tell her story, outlandish or not, and if she can detail the coming trouble, she needs to do that.”

  Mom stands at my shoulder, eyeing the phone.

  “You have time to talk to Mom?” I ask.

  “Put her on.”

  From the table I listen to her end of the conversation and the news throbbing out of the radio and wait for the other shoe to drop.

  She hangs up and comes back. “Tell them, Bobby,” she says. “What Pete told you, I mean. He had to go. He says he gave you his thoughts.”

  I tell Dad that getting another mystery letter isn’t going to work—that everything he does from now on is going to be under a microscope. I tell Cocoa that when the government guys show up, she needs to tell her story, crazy or not, and if she can recall anything else about the future actions of the Axis powers, she’ll have a rapt audience.

  “It was worth a try,” Dad says. “The letter. But Pete’s right. If Cocoa has more to tell, she should tell it.”

  Mom sits, takes Cocoa’s hand. “Do you, honey?” she says. “Do you have more to tell?”

  Cocoa looks even paler than usual. She nods. “During the night, I awoke and could not get back to sleep. I kept thinking about the ships and the men, that I could do nothing to help. But the thinking, and the images, led me to more images, and memories.”

  “Enough to be useful?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Blurry impressions. But that’s how the memories seem to start. I once read that people who have seizures often have a sensation first—an aura. This morning I have the aura. Later on, who knows?”

  “Would a nap help?” Mom says.

  “I couldn’t sleep. Your radio has me all hyper. The words echo in my head while I wait for the next words. And think about the government men coming to pick our brains.”

  That’s. Couldn’t. In close proximity, she’s used examples of what my English teachers call contractions. A weird thing to notice. But what if dropping her charmingly formal speech means she’s even more upset than she appears?

  Or maybe we’re rubbing off on her. I’ll go with that.

  Dad starts a pot of coffee. I turn up the volume on the radio and help with breakfast. We’re all focused on the newsman’s voice. He seems on edge. The war has been going our way lately, and now, suddenly, it’s not. Now a Japanese submarine has sunk one of our ships and sharks are eating our men, and if those things can happen, anything is possible.

  Just before noon there’s an ominous pause in the broadcast. Outside, the sun shines on the green and brown of yard and desert, and part of me wants to be out there.

  Most of me wouldn’t be anywhere but here.

  “With regret,” the newsman murmurs, “we bring you news of another sinking. A second cruiser, the USS Augusta, has been torpedoed, presumably by a German U-boat, in the international waters of the North Atlantic. The Augusta was on a routine mission, on a heading toward port in England, when attacked.” He sighs. “Because the vessel was unaccompanied, the survivors of its crew of approximately eight hundred are still in lifeboats, awaiting rescue. More complete news of this sinking, and the nearly simultaneous sinking of the Indianapolis, will be forthcoming as soon as particulars are available to CBS News.”

  Another routine mission. We all expected this. Cocoa knew it. She’s propped up against the refrigerator, but with every word from the newscaster she seems to sink lower, until finally I grab her arm and steer her to a chair.

  Two years since the last sinking of a cruiser. And now two of them—and two thousand men—go down in one day. Routine missions? Coincidence? Nah.

  On the table is a bottle of cod liver oil, unopened. I put it in a cupboard on a high shelf. We’ve had enough torture for the day.

  SEVENTEEN

  Saturday, July 21, Morning (Sixteen Hours Ahead of New Mexico)

  The big engines shift from four-part harmony to dissonance. They sputter. Gasp. Die. One by one, the props rotate to a stop. In the pilot’s seat, Colonel Tibbets grins and gazes through the windshield at Tinian Island’s North Field. Another flight in the books. He has no use for overconfidence, but he’s pleased that all the studying, planning, flights, practice drops, debriefings, fine tuning, repeat, repeat, repeat has paid off.

  Today’s trial run went particularly well. Even with a full load of fuel, and the five tons of rebar simulating the weight of the bomb, the big warbird lifted off smoothly and reached safe flying speed well before panic set in. And the climb to thirty-one thousand feet was uneventful. Uneventful is exactly what they’ll need once the real cargo—precious, fragile, and beyond dangerous—comes aboard.

  He grabs a notebook and jots down a few notes for the debriefing. All the pieces of this morning’s rehearsal—loading, positioning, arming, sighting, opening, double-checki
ng, releasing—went off like clockwork, and the B-29, not known for its agility or the reliability of its engines, responded like a champ when he goosed it and banked away from the imaginary descent path of the imaginary bomb dropping toward its imaginary target.

  Soon, none of this will be imaginary.

  Tibbets and Captain Lewis, his co-pilot, have barely gotten their boots on the ground when a familiar figure approaches. General Lemay. A fine day ruined.

  Waves of heat rise from the tarmac, thinning the general’s fleshy body and making him shimmy like a drunken bar girl. His shoes appear to be suspended a foot off the ground, giving false credence to his overinflated ego.

  Tibbets offers the general a half-assed salute, and Lewis follows suit. By the time Old Ironpants has returned their greetings, they’ve come to a halt, an arm’s length apart. The general radiates the pleasant aroma of Old Spice, but he looks unhappy.

  “Get lost, Lewis,” he growls. “I need a word with Colonel Tibbets.”

  “Yes sir,” Lewis says. He manages another salute, gets a dismissive grunt in return, and hurries off.

  “What is it, General?” Tibbets says when the captain is out of earshot.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid, Tibbets. You’re going to have to put off the heroics for a while longer.”

  “The special delivery?”

  “Suddenly there’s nothing to deliver.”

  “The bomb?”

  “The fucking bomb. A Jap sub sank the Indianapolis on its way here. Fat Man—your surprise package for the Emperor—and the ship are at the bottom of the Pacific. A thousand or more sailors might be dead. At approximately the same time, Little Boy, on its way to England, suffered the same fate. A U-boat sank the cruiser Augusta. Ship and cargo are lost. Lots of dead sailors. No one believes the timing was coincidental.”

  “How could they know?” Tibbets’s mind is crowded with images: fiery explosions, oily waters, panicked crews, fighting ships turned into great gray coffins—for men and bombs.

  The general fixes Tibbets in a glare. Almost accusing. “Loose lips, Colonel.”