But it doesn’t feel like a date. It feels like the world is spinning out of control and flying apart and we’re trying to slow it down and hold the pieces together.
For the next hour, images parade across the screen. Some are unhelpful. Admiral Nimitz gets honored. Nazis retreat in Russia. Hitler and Mussolini smile and wave and probably argue over the claim of worst human ever. The Allies invade Normandy under an October 9, 1944, sunrise, finally, after a four-month-long series of weather and strategic delays.
But Cocoa might find other scenes useful. A convoy of supply ships leaves New York Harbor escorted by a pair of destroyers. Jewish refugees land at Ellis Island, skyscrapers and waterfront and bridges and then the Statue of Liberty visible in the background. Truman makes a speech on the steps of the New York Public Library. Military supplies leave the South Boston Army Base by train. An aircraft carrier with the number four clearly showing on its flight deck, accompanied by two smaller ships, steams into Boston Harbor. Crowds gather at a Red Cross rally in Boston. Naval ships take shape in the Newport News, Virginia, shipyards.
Would Virginia be hit again?
Three times Cocoa waves and Mel backs up the film to scenes featuring Ellis Island refugees and Red Cross workers and the aircraft carrier.
“I’m ready,” Cocoa announces.
The projectionist/owner/snoop meets us in the lobby. “I hope it was helpful,” he says, glancing from face to face, settling on Cocoa’s.
Fishing. I can’t blame him. Was it helpful?
“We really appreciate it, Mel,” the captain says, and again the theater owner has to bury his curiosity.
Once we’re in the car and moving, Pete breaks the silence, and the taboo. “You know you’re keeping us on the edges of our seats, right, Cocoa?” Next to me, she writes something in her notebook and closes it.
“I was waiting for fewer ears,” she says. “Loose lips and all that.”
“So?” Pete blurts.
I study her expression—guarded relief, a pinch of excitement. “Boston,” she says. “Three or four days after Norfolk. Another U-boat. Another Nazi hero and his submarine full of martyrs. New York next. Two days after Boston, while chaos still reigns and defenses are spread thin. Still another U-boat.” She breathes. We all breathe.
Pete whistles, almost drowning out the whistling wind.
“That’s wonderful, Cocoa,” the captain says. “Not that Boston and New York are in jeopardy, of course, but that you’ve given us a chance to respond. You’re terrific.”
“Unbelievable,” Pete says. “You’re gonna be a hero, future girl.”
“I wouldn’t like to be looked at as a hero, Peter. But Future Girl?” She doesn’t want to be a hero, but it’s a superhero’s name. “I like Future Girl.”
We all laugh, and then the captain says, “Sergeant, we need to make a detour.”
“To?”
“Kirtland. Thanks to Future Girl, we have urgent news to share. Face-to-face would be best.”
“Yes, sir.” Pete takes a right, then a left, setting a new course.
Kirtland Field is a place I know. It’s a huge Army Air Force base at the edge of Albuquerque, home to hundreds of planes and thousands of personnel. Dad once marched outside its gates with his pacifist friends. A week later he took me to the scene of the crime. Although, at the time, it wasn’t a crime. They marched, and nobody bothered them. Hardly anybody—except the MPs watching for trouble—even saw them.
If there’s interesting stuff going on at Kirtland, it must be far beyond the gate and fences. When Dad and I drove along the perimeter of the base, all I saw were distant buildings and hangars and row after row and swarm after swarm of big airplanes. Parked and taxiing and taking off and landing and circling overhead.
A novelty for a hick kid from the desert countryside. But to the residents of Albuquerque, the activities at Kirtland Field had become ho-hum.
Cocoa fidgets as we approach the gate and stop to show credentials to the MPs and Pete and Captain Nelson explain where we’re going. At the mention of General Groves, the conversation ends.
The captain directs Pete to a low building surrounded by other low buildings. Like everything else here, they look like they’ve been tossed up in a hurry.
Beyond the buildings, the runways are alive with activity. A huge plane—a B-29, is my guess—lifts off and banks into the sky heading south. I wonder if it’s headed for the Alamogordo Bombing Range—the site of Trinity—where not many days ago a mushroom cloud climbed into the morning sky and all of this began.
We park and get inside before Cocoa and I attract stares.
“General Groves in?” Captain Nelson asks the attractive young woman behind the reception desk. She’s wearing a uniform. A WAC, I decide. Her nameplate says Corporal A.E. Lewis. She returns the captain’s smile but saves a bigger one for Pete. Although he’s normally shy around women and we have bigger fish to fry, he smiles back. It looks good on him.
“He’s in a meeting, sir,” Corporal Lewis says.
“He needs to see us right now,” the captain says. “Captain Nelson. Sergeant Blakely. Bobby Hastings. And Cocoa.”
“It’s Pete,” my uncle says. Cocoa gives him a grin that he pretends not to notice.
“I hate to interrupt him, sir,” the corporal says.
“Trust me, he’ll thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” She goes to a closed door and knocks tentatively. A familiar voice barks out an “Enter!” and she does. A moment later a colonel walks out with his hat in his hand, eyeing us curiously. The corporal ushers us into the general’s office.
He’s up, pacing, chewing on an unlit cigar. His eyes are on Cocoa as he waves us into chairs. He sits behind his desk and opens a notebook. “Speak to me, young lady.”
She does. While he takes notes, she recounts her afternoon in Albuquerque, poring through maps and atlases and encyclopedias, reclaiming her memory of incidents through images and drawings and descriptions. Just being in the library helped, she says. “A catalyst,” she says.
She tells him about her first visit ever to a theater, seeing moving pictures of the cities and harbors of the Northeast, how the movies cemented what she’d already seen at the library, how they connected to similar movies she calls videos, ones she saw before her future world ran out of electricity for good.
“Boston,” she says. “Then New York. Not much time.”
She gives him her notepad. He frowns. “I’m glad I have my own notes,” he says with a grin.
“Three or four days after Norfolk, sir,” Captain Nelson says.
“So, two or three,” the general says. “Not much time, indeed.” He fixes Cocoa in an unwavering gaze. “You’re reasonably sure about this, young lady? I’m not about to stand by and witness another gutless assault on our country, but I’m also not interested in letting some doubting prick in Washington beat me up like a piñata for sounding a false alarm.”
“McCloy,” I say.
General Groves nods in my direction. “Even after what she’s done, there are still naysayers back there.”
Cocoa looks eager to answer the general’s question. “More than reasonably sure.”
“Good enough.” The general gets up and asks Corporal Lewis to join us. In an instant, she’s there with a notepad.
“First, get me Secretary Stimson,” the general orders. “Try his office, then his home. If you can’t reach him, call his aide, Robert Patterson, and if you can’t get him, John McCloy. After that, I’ll need to speak to Admiral King, chief of naval operations in Washington. They’re all in DC, for Christ’s sake. Where nothing gets accomplished. They’re all in the directory. Remember the two-hour time difference. If they’re eating dinner, even if it’s with Truman or Churchill or Jesus himself, tough shit. Got that, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir.”
He eyes the phone on his desk. “Leave the door open. If anyone gives you the runaround, I’ll come out there and reach through two thousand miles of phone line
and ream them a new asshole.”
Corporal Lewis tries unsuccessfully to rein in a grin. “Yes, sir.”
“Speed is essential, Corporal Lewis.”
“Yes, sir,” She does an about face and hurries to the door, allowing herself enough time to throw a new version of her grin in Pete’s direction.
Nothing escapes the general’s gaze. “You making eyes at my secretary, Sergeant?”
“No, sir. Not exactly.”
“You’d like to, though?”
“If the circumstances were right.”
“’If the circumstances were right?’ The circumstances are never right. You outrank her, for Christ’s sake. On your way out, ask her for her phone number.”
Pete glances through the open door at the corporal. She’s on the phone, concentrating. “I’ll do that, sir.”
“Good. Captain Nelson, there’s no reason to keep you hanging while I spread the word. Get these folks home, then call me. I’ll let you know where we stand.”
The general halfheartedly returns a couple of salutes and shakes my hand, rearranging my bones. With Cocoa, he’s gentler, and he holds on. “I can’t thank you enough, Cocoa,” he says. “In a war full of heroes, you might just rise to the top.”
I wait for her to say she doesn’t want to be a hero, but I have no ability to predict the future. “Thank you,” she says. Her eyes are glassy.
We follow her out of the general’s office just as Corporal Lewis says, “I’m transferring Secretary Stimson, sir. As soon as you’re done, I’ll try Admiral King.”
“Good, Lewis. But don’t try. Do it.”
“Yes, General.”
She transfers the call. The captain, Cocoa, and I head for the door, but Pete lingers at the receptionist’s desk. Glancing back, I see Corporal Lewis smiling, handing him a slip of paper.
Cocoa is ready for him when we get in the car. “’If the circumstances were right?’”
Pete turns and gives her a look. He’s grinning. “Shut up, Future Girl.”
TWENTY-SIX
Early Tuesday, July 24
Mom has decided to sleep on it. She’s listened to us and talked to her boss and prayed for inspiration, but still she’s torn.
Stay or go?
After she got home from work, and learned of Cocoa’s predictions, and had a little time to mesh that news with everything else that’s unsettling her life, she banished Dad to the sofa. She announced that she had a giant decision to make and she didn’t want him distracting her.
The good news: Her boss told her she’d have her job whenever she returned, that he’d bring in temporary help if she chooses to leave.
The bad news: She’d have no income, and Dad was quick to point that out. Even with the government’s promise of what the letter called a Basic Allowance for Separated Dependents, and food from the captain and Pete, money would be tight.
When I finally headed off to bed, Cocoa was in her room, Mom was in hers, Dad was on the sofa, and Pete and the captain were in their trailer. When we returned from Albuquerque the captain talked to General Groves, who told him that a massive operation was underway to secure Boston and New York Harbors. He asked that we talk to no one.
Loose lips, and all that.
By then, of course, Dad was in on it already, and Mom soon would be.
It’s after midnight. Mom might be sleeping. She might be deciding. I open a book, A Bell for Adano, and try to read, because that’s how I like to end my day. It’s a good book, but all I can do is roll the uncertainties around in my mind.
I close Adano and turn off my lamp. The images from the library and movie theater run through my head. The aircraft carrier cruising into Boston Harbor, its waterfront and buildings, the skyscrapers of New York, ferries crossing the water, bridges, the Statue of Liberty, people everywhere.
Dad’s predicament is also on my mind. Where will they send him? For how long?
At supper Cocoa offered to speak to General Groves about getting Dad out of it. The general wants her happy, she reasoned. Ditto the War Department bigshots. But Dad wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t consider getting special treatment while others are sent away.
I picture Dad, behind barbed wire in some godforsaken concentration camp, sleeping on a cot, eating crap, armed soldiers in guard towers watching his every move like he’s a criminal.
Except for Dad’s steady snoring, the house is quiet. I go to my parents’ room and knock.
“I’m awake,” Mom says.
She switches on her bedside lamp as I enter the room. “I need to talk to you, Mom.”
She sits up and pats the bed next to her. She’s wearing one of Dad’s white undershirts. There’s no sign of sleep on her face. I sit.
“What is it, Bobby?”
“I don’t know if you’ve decided.”
“How can I?”
“You have to go.”
Unconvinced, she waits for me to present my case.
“If you don’t go with him, he’ll just have his fanatical friends. And a bunch of trigger-happy soldiers.”
“His friends aren’t exactly fanatical.”
“Ask Pete.”
“Pete has an opinion. So does your dad. So do I.”
“Boring, then. Annoying.”
She smiles. “Probably.”
“Dad needs you.”
“What about you, Bobby? Don’t you need me?”
“I’m almost sixteen. Pete and Cocoa and Captain Nelson are all living here, for Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t need to use that language to show me how grown up you are. And you’re not almost sixteen.”
“I keep thinking of him all alone, Mom. Will they even let him have a typewriter? Paper? A pencil? Will they censor everything? He’ll die of a broken heart. You have to go with him.”
She takes both of my hands and closes her eyes. “What if we’re gone a long time? Years?”
“I’ll be even older. I bet they’ll let me visit.”
She goes silent. Dad’s suitcase, packed but open, sits on the floor next to the closet door. He has more to add, probably. A toothbrush. Shaving gear. A photo or two.
Hopes. Dreams. Principles.
“On the high shelf in the closet,” Mom says, “is my suitcase. Put it next to your dad’s.” She gets up. She’s wearing a pair of Dad’s boxers. They look like a skirt on her. She hugs me and I hug her back and we don’t let go for a long time.
“I’m going to miss you terribly, Robert Hastings.”
“I’ll miss you terribly, too.”
She opens a dresser drawer. “One suitcase. How am I going to do it?”
“Maybe they’ll let me send you things.”
“Maybe.”
She pulls out some items—underwear and socks, mostly—and puts them on the bed. “More decisions,” she says. “This could take all night. You don’t have to be here.”
“I know.”
“Promise me you’ll listen to Pete. He’s become wise, and he loves you, and he’ll do anything for you. Captain Nelson seems like a good man. I know he’ll help if you need it.”
“Okay.”
“Swear you’ll write?”
“I swear.”
“There’s one more thing I need to say, Bobby. I don’t know what time we’ll leave tomorrow, so I want to say it now.”
“I doubt the FBI gets up early.”
“Regardless.” She pauses. “I’ve seen how you look at Cocoa.”
“Cocoa?”
“You know, that skinny, mysterious, delightful girl from the future you found in the desert not long ago?”
“Rings a bell.”
“I know you care for her, but while we’re gone, you need to care for her. Watch out for her. And you need to be a gentleman, even if the memory of seeing her without her clothes on still haunts you.” Her smile is slight enough to tell me she’s not kidding. “She’s mature beyond her years,” she continues, “and she knows a million things we’ll never know, but she’s
also unwell and vulnerable. And the world, literally, is being asked of her.”
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to her.” I mean it as much as anyone can mean anything, but Mom isn’t wrong about me being haunted. Am I that transparent?
“I’m sure you will.” She studies my face. There’s something else on her mind. “But don’t let anything happen to yourself, either.”
“Like?”
“Love is a double-edged sword, Bobby. She’d never mean to, but don’t let her break your heart.”
I barely sleep before Cocoa and I get up to do the route. Her nearness brings back Mom’s words. I’ve never had a broken heart, but it doesn’t sound like a good thing.
How do you prevent it, though? Do you not give your heart away? Is that possible, when your heart has yearnings of its own?
We don’t hurry. We small-talk Leo, sit together close, but not close enough, on the bench and roll the papers methodically, pedal distractedly to the base.
Cocoa has her own bag now—a big help, you’d think—but we plod through the route. We have new customers, and it takes time to decide where to deliver their papers, and a lot of preoccupied workers are scurrying around, getting in our way.
But slow is okay. When I think about what’s coming—Mom and Dad leaving, and maybe more bombs—I can’t think of a reason to hurry.
When we get home, two suitcases rest on the front steps. On Dad’s is his brown fedora, on Mom’s her gray roundish hat with the brim that keeps her forehead from wrinkling. Lolly, figuring something’s up, watches from the porch. When we head for the back door, he tags along at Cocoa’s heels, nosing at the pocket of her shorts. She takes out the acorn and lets him sniff it.
Everyone is up, sitting around the table. Pete and the captain are dressed in civvies, Mom and Dad are dressed for a visit to town. But they’re not going to town.
“There they are,” Pete says. His voice is full of fake cheer.
Mom’s eyes are red and puffy. She’s holding Dad’s hand. Maybe she should be holding mine. I drop two copies of the Journal on the table. I glanced at it briefly in Leo’s headlights. The front-page articles continue to cover the Norfolk disaster. Rumors flow, real information is scarce. The evacuation of pacifists is relegated to a page-two story. Evacuation makes it sound like they’re being rescued. From what? Their freedom? Their happiness? Their rights?
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