Captain Nelson has an Italian grandmother. He recreates her homemade noodles while Pete crafts Mom’s spaghetti sauce—compliments of the Army.
Cocoa and I set the table and return to the living room. We share the couch. A foot of cushion separates us, spanned by the linking of our hands. Our fingers sweat, but neither of us lets go. Strength in numbers, but more than that.
Not for the first time, I wonder what it would be like to share a kiss.
But I’ve gotten used to not pushing her. And I’m a coward.
Mouth-watering aromas have saturated the living room air when the phone rings. We get to the kitchen in time to see the captain answer. Pete is at the stove, mothering his sauce, but all of his attention—and all of ours—is on the captain.
He listens. A grin appears and breaks into a smile, and he gives us all a thumbs-up.
A thumbs-up. I think of the Sinatra song. We all have a reason to smile, and we do.
“Yes, sir,” the captain says. “She did do it again.” His eyes go to Cocoa. “We will do something special for her.”
He hangs up. “Same story,” he says. “Same terrific story.” The words erupt. “With a twist. A Navy torpedo bomber—with the appropriate name Avenger—spotted the U-boat near the surface fifteen miles from New York. The bomber disabled it with a torpedo and sent it to the bottom with a two-thousand-pound bomb.”
We cheer. We pat Cocoa on the back. For the first time, I give her a real hug, and she hugs me back.
I can count every rib.
“Will they send divers down?” I ask, imagining that unexploded atomic bomb so close to our coast and remembering the heat and fire of the test bomb rising over the desert. I see images of Norfolk, ruined, in my head. “So it can be towed away?”
“Unless it’s too deep,” the captain says. “If it is, it’s unlikely to be a problem. Unless you’re a mackerel.”
“What about the news?” I say. “Will the newspapers and radio stations be told?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says. “They haven’t decided yet. We want people to know we’re protecting them from the bad guys, but we don’t want them to think the bad guys are everywhere.”
“The something special,” Cocoa says. “When can we do that?”
Pete chuckles. “You don’t miss a beat, do you, Future Girl?”
“Not tonight, unfortunately,” the captain says, glancing around the kitchen at the supper makings. “We’ve got our meal going, and it’s getting late.”
“Tomorrow, possibly?” she says.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” the captain says. “Perfect. What’s your pleasure?”
“I liked Albuquerque. I liked the library and movie theater. I liked Big Muddy.”
“Big Muddy?” the captain asks. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“An Army horse,” I say. “The day we met you, Pete rode her over from the base camp.”
“I remember,” the captain says.
“You want to see Big Muddy?” Pete asks Cocoa.
“I want to sit in her saddle.”
“You want to ride her?” Suddenly I’m jealous. Cocoa’s a hero and all that, and General Groves said she should get to do something special, but what about me? I’m her friend, or pal, or sidekick. And I’m practically an orphan.
“She’s a lady,” Pete tells Cocoa. “You’re a featherweight. A match made in heaven.”
Saturday arrives. Although the sinking of the U-boat in Boston Harbor was big news everywhere, there’s been nothing on the radio about New York, and there’s no mention in this morning’s Journal.
After breakfast, we all head to Albuquerque. At the library, Cocoa goes through the world maps and atlases again, but there’s no breakthrough this time. After lunch it’s the Ranch Theater, where she sits on the edge of her seat watching a new newsreel documenting the advance of Allied forces through Germany.
She enjoys the feature movie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, so much that we almost stay to watch it again. But it’s nearly a two-hour drive to the base camp, where she has a date with Big Muddy, and she doesn’t want to miss it.
The fact that Pete and the captain are wearing civvies doesn’t slow us down as we pass the base camp sentries. We continue on to the stables. As soon as Pete turns off the engine, Cocoa leaps out and hurries to the stable doors with me on her tail. Inside there’s warmth and gloom and a single horse, gazing at us curiously from her stall.
Big Muddy.
While Pete saddles her, we feed her carrots from our garden. Peace offering, but she’s been peaceful from the start. She could be one of Dad’s pals. But the government would probably lock her up, too. Guilt by association.
I’m sure we’re a curious sight as we emerge from the stable, but we’re a distance away from the main hustle and bustle of the camp, and nobody has time to come snooping.
After Pete helps Cocoa get her foot in the stirrup, she swings herself into the saddle like she’s been doing it her whole life. “I like this,” she says. An understatement.
Pete takes the reins and leads horse and rider around the area. They circle the stables, disappearing for a moment. When they reappear, Cocoa has the reins in her hands, coaxing Big Muddy left and right with the reins and her scrawny knees. Her smile won’t quit.
Eventually I get a turn, too. Not my first time on a horse, but my first time on Big Muddy. My first time with Cocoa watching.
In the lush light of the setting sun, she radiates a light of her own.
TWENTY-NINE
Saturday, July 28–Saturday, August 4
The days slip past. A letter finally arrives from Mom and Dad. Along with other pacifists and COs from southwestern states, they’ve been interned at Gila River Japanese American War Relocation Center in Arizona.
They have an apartment next to a Japanese American couple from California. The wife’s mother was living with them until recently, when the heat killed her. Since then, everyone has been warned to stay out of their living-quarters-turned-ovens during the day.
I recall reports of Allied discoveries in Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Belarus, and now Germany: concentration camps with real ovens, where humans were reduced to ashes.
Gila River must be a hellish place, but at least my parents aren’t facing extermination.
Mom has already been elected a block manager. Dad is cooking in the cafeteria.
He’s traded his typewriter for a stove.
I write back, keeping my words upbeat—battle victories for the Allies, Pete’s bad jokes, my bad cooking, the piglets’ weight gain, the Andrews sisters’ milk production, our trip to Albuquerque with Pete and Captain Nelson, Cocoa’s ride on Big Muddy. I tell them about Cocoa’s prediction coming true for Boston, but I leave them wondering about New York. So far, silence is the government’s official position on New York, and I’ll respect it.
A sunken ship shouldn’t lead to loose lips.
In her odd, homegrown handwriting, Cocoa adds a P.S.: We are missing you. Take care of yourselves. I can throw a newspaper better than Robert now.
Each day she looks healthier. More color, more weight. Her hair looks less cobwebby. It’s like she’s feeding off the news on the radio and in the Journal, news continuing what we saw in the newsreel—the Allies moving into Germany almost unopposed. A hundred thousand men have crossed the Rhine and are swarming into the Black Forest, on their way to Berlin.
But despite all the good news, despite the fact that Hitler’s plans were foiled in Boston and New York and no more bombs have shown up in US waters or blown up elsewhere, she’s convinced something bad is on the horizon.
Pete and Captain Nelson are away for the morning, getting the living room radio repaired and meeting with General Groves. The general has called the captain regularly, but there’s been little to pass on. Cocoa feels the burden.
Today’s Journal—Saturday, August 4, 1945—sits between us on the kitchen table. As usual, she’s gone through it and through it, but that doesn’t stop he
r from eyeing it again, looking for something to get her going down a path that will lead to something else.
“Nothing there?” I’ve also looked—several times. The kitchen radio was on, but the repetition grew annoying, and we turned it off.
“I don’t like this, Robert.” She points at a headline: ALLIES ROLL TOWARD BERLIN. And another: “INVINCIBLE” GERMAN ARMY ON RETREAT. Below that, a third: TONS OF INCENDIARY BOMBS RAIN DOWN ON TOKYO.
“What’s not to like?”
“The feeling I have. I had it for a moment when we were watching the newsreel at the theater, and in the days since, it has haunted me.” She gets out her good-luck acorn and sets it on the table. At our feet, Lolly stirs.
“A feeling,” I say.
“I feel even less adequate when you mock me, Robert. All of my recollections begin that way. This one simply doesn’t want to progress.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m just trying to understand what you’re experiencing.”
She jabs at the front page. “My feeling tells me something isn’t right with all this success.”
“Have you told the captain?”
“I told him what I’m telling you. He has passed it on, but what good is it? I have nothing specific. Does it make sense for good news to be bad news?”
I shake my head. Not to me it doesn’t.
“If I get something else right, will Peter and the captain let me ride Big Muddy again?”
“Even if you never get another thing right.”
“I have to get more things right, Robert.” She taps the front page again. “Hitler has something else up his sleeve.”
“You will,” I say. I get brave and put my hand over hers. It doesn’t feel as bony. She leans toward me, and for an exciting, frightening instant I think she’s going to kiss me.
But instead she brushes a crumb of toast away from the corner of my mouth, making me feel like a little kid. But she doesn’t pull her hand away from mine. “And in the meantime, I can keep your face clean.”
“They’re both important.”
“Do you think tomorrow will work, Robert? For Big Muddy?”
“As long as it’s okay with our soldiers, we should have all afternoon for her.”
She gets up from the table, holding onto my hand. “Let’s go outside, Robert.”
THIRTY
Pete and the captain return from town, but we’ve barely plugged in the radio and switched it on when the regular program—a soap opera called Front Page Farrell that Dad once listened to religiously—gets interrupted by a newscaster’s familiar but static-peppered voice. The broadcast comes from London, and although there’s no introduction, I’m pretty sure the man behind the voice is Edward R. Murrow.
“Treachery is the word from the Allied front tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Extreme treachery. Reports from the rear guard of an Allied force estimated at a hundred thousand men indicate that at approximately 9:15 p.m. German local time—3:15 in our nation’s capital—Nazi forces carried out a battlefield attack unparalleled in military history. In death and destruction, it is rivalled only by the bomb that exploded in Norfolk, Virginia, last month.
“The Allied force—chiefly American troops—was halted for the night when the attack occurred. Distant eyewitnesses with binoculars say a single plane—a suicide bomber—dropped a single bomb. All signs point to it being an atomic weapon similar to the one used in Norfolk. The immediate result was widespread annihilation. Some of those at the periphery of the impact are attempting to flee back across the Rhine and into France, but many are wounded or sickened. Many are dying. The German army and air forces, emboldened, are in pursuit.
“Your thoughts and prayers for our brave men, and for their families and friends, will be most welcome in the coming hours and days.
“I’m signing off for now to return you to your station, but as more information is forthcoming, either I or another CBS correspondent will dispatch it to you.
“So long, and good luck.”
We sit. Next to me, Cocoa melts into the sofa. Her face is pale. Her eyes are glassy. “Sorry,” she says. “Sorry, Captain Nelson.”
“It’s Jack, Cocoa,” the captain says, enlightening me, too. “Please call me Jack. And you’ve no reason to be sorry. Without you, we’d be oh-for-four. The Nazis would be dancing in the streets.”
“They are dancing,” she says. “Hitler. His monsters.”
“The Allies’ easy advance,” I say to her. “You weren’t fooled, but they were.”
“Suckered,” Pete says.
“I should have remembered,” she says. “The newsreel, the news reports. Now, too late, the memories return.”
“Does this trigger anything else?” Pete says.
“It should,” she says. “Because there is more. Much more. And something else has already happened. Something we don’t yet know about. Everything’s foggy. Dark.”
“The Germans have more bombs?” Captain Jack says.
“They do, and the raw materials to produce them. There is . . . a secret facility.” She closes her eyes and goes through all the facial contortions of straining to think. Reaching back.
“Not to put more pressure on you, Cocoa,” the captain says, “but if you could unearth only one more nugget, that facility would be everyone’s first choice. A matchless target. Twenty-four karat gold.”
She nods, taps at her temple. “I know it’s in here. But masked.”
“Would a map of Germany help?” I ask.
“There are maps at the base camp,” Pete says.
“Germany is now the focus for bomber pilots training at Kirtland,” Captain Jack says. “They’ll have maps of Germany in every ready room.”
“Will they let us have one?” Cocoa says.
“They’ll let us have whatever General Groves tells them to let us have,” Pete says.
On cue, the phone rings. While I turn off the radio, the captain hurries to the kitchen.
No surprise; it’s the general. After Captain Jack tells him we’ve heard the news, he asks about Cocoa. The captain tells him what she said about more bombs and a secret bomb-making facility. He asks the general about maps.
He returns to the living room with a plan. “In an hour and a half, we’re meeting the general’s courier in Socorro. The courier will bring maps and anything else the general believes will help. If you have anything you need to do before we leave, you have an hour to do it.”
THIRTY-ONE
Saturday, August 4, and Sunday, August 5
Our rendezvous spot is Slim’s Diner. Pete angle-parks at the curb. We roll down the windows and wait. Serious business, but Captain Nelson—Jack—has a spark of mischief in his eye.
After a few minutes, an army-green Chevrolet sedan parks next to us. When the driver gets out and tucks her hair under her hat, I grasp the reason for Captain Jack’s mood. The courier, looking snappy in her WAC uniform, is Corporal A. E. Lewis, the general’s secretary. Is the captain, or the general, trying to play cupid?
We get out. The corporal smiles in Pete’s direction. I wonder if he’s talked to her since the day they met at Kirtland. If he has, he’s kept it to himself. She has a large manila envelope under her arm.
“You have time for supper, Corporal?” Captain Jack says. “We have to feed this crew, anyway, and it would make your long trip worthwhile.”
“Oh, it’s already worthwhile, sir,” she says, glancing at Pete. “But supper would be a real treat.” She has a mild accent. Midwest, maybe?
Inside, we crowd into a booth. Corporal Lewis sits next to Pete, who tells us that the A. E. stands for Amy Elizabeth, which removes most of the formality attached to her uniform.
Despite the chilling report from the front, the meal—burgers and fries—is fun. And tasty. Pete practically floats all the way back to our place.
He comes down, though—we all come down—when we turn on the kitchen radio.
Bad news. Again.
A guy with a British accent reports that
at approximately the same time as the bomb fell on Allied forces in Germany, a similar attack was initiated on a massive assembly of Russian troops bivouacked in western Poland, preparing for the push to Berlin. There are untold casualties, and the survivors are in full retreat. The report was delayed because of the extent of destruction. Nearby civilian populations, many of them recently liberated from German rule, were also victims of the bomb.
In spite of everything that Dad has ever modeled for me and told me and tried to inject into my head, part of me suddenly itches to hitchhike to Socorro and go to the Army recruiting office and lie about my age and sign up. Another part of me feels like I’ve already been through a battle—shell-shocked and paralyzed.
Numb. Useless. Tits on a bull.
Cocoa has her own response. She removes a collection of maps from the manila envelope. Most are of Germany, but there’s one of the entire continent of Europe and at least one of all of the countries currently or formerly occupied by the Germans or on the German border—France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus. We help her thumbtack them to the walls of the kitchen. When we get short on space we hang the least likely three, France, Sweden, and Switzerland, in the living room. We’ve already kicked the Nazis’ asses out of France, and Sweden and Switzerland are supposedly neutral.
We tag along as Cocoa tours the maps, pausing at each. She spends extra time on Germany.
After her third time through, I risk sidetracking her concentration. “Anything?”
“I need two separate breakthroughs,” she says. “One for the location of the factory where the bombs are produced. And, even more urgent, for the location of the next attack.”
“Still not the US?” Pete says.
“I’m not certain. But something tells me—reminds me—that the Nazis’ attention has switched to Europe, where delivering a bomb will be easier.”
Morning arrives. By the time I get up and dressed, Cocoa is out of bed and pacing through the house. She must have raided the clean laundry basket, because she’s wearing one of my T-shirts and my Navy boxers.
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