Fast Backward

by David Patneaude

  Whoever Pete is talking to has a change of heart. He or she sends out a “runner” to track down Mom and Dad.

  Ten minutes later, with the phone still to his ear, Pete’s face brightens. “Yeah, Dottie, it’s me. I’ve got Bobby here. He needs to talk to you.”

  I take the phone, half wishing Pete had given her the news, but knowing it’s my job. So, after saying hello and hearing how good I sound and how much she misses me, I tell her about Cocoa. I have a hard time saying the words, and at first she has a hard time grasping them. But she trusts me, she trusts Pete, and eventually she seems to accept the weird and troubling tale. She tries to sound calm as she relays my part of the conversation to Dad, but I hear the struggle—and the tears—in her voice.

  Pete and Captain Jack step into the hall and wander away, heads together. Dad gets on the line. He sounds mystified, and upset. He tells me how sorry he is. He says he and Mom are doing okay, and the direction of the war means the outlook for them is improving.

  Pete and the captain return. Pete takes the phone, says hello to Dad, asks to speak to Mom.

  The captain squeezes my shoulder. “There’s a place here called Fuller Lodge, Robert. Famous for its ice cream. Let’s go pay a visit.”

  He steers me away and outside while I puzzle over what Pete has to say to my parents that he doesn’t want me to hear. On foot, I get a better feel for the size of the settlement. More than six thousand people, the captain says. The lodge is impressive. And although I thought I’d never be hungry again, the ice cream is irresistible. When we get back to the captain’s office, Pete is done talking. I try to read his face, but it’s unreadable.

  Less than an hour later, my uncle and I are in Santa Fe, sitting in a nice restaurant called Mountain View, ready to spend General Groves’s twenty dollars. The ice cream is history. I’m hungry again, and I order like it. Pete seems distracted. “What he’s having,” he tells the waitress.

  “I need to get something out of the way, Bobby,” he says when she leaves. “Otherwise I’ll not be able to eat, and I’ll be too preoccupied to drive home. And I owe it to you. I’ve owed it to you for a long time. But I’ve . . . put it off.”

  My heavy heart stalls. This feels like another punch to the gut, on its way. “Is this about your talk with Mom?”

  “And your dad.”

  My dad? What’s going on?

  “I’ve always been proud to be your uncle, Bobby.” He takes a breath, gazes across the table at me. “But the thing that’s made me even prouder is being your father.”

  I hear the words, but they don’t register. It’s been an emotional day. An emptying day. “What?”

  “I’m your dad,” he says. “Your original dad, I mean. You have another one now, of course, and he’s been great. He is great. You’re so lucky to have him.”

  I can barely speak. My heart is lodged in my throat, quaking. But I manage one word. “How?”

  He takes another breath. My imagination soars. I know I’m adopted. I’ve known it forever. I’ve gotten used to the idea that I’ll never meet my first parents. But now? My mother’s brother is my father?

  “I don’t know what Dottie, your mom, has told you about my younger self,” Pete says. “Let’s just say it took me a while—too long—to grow up. In high school, though, I thought I was a finished product. A man. I had a job, a Model T Ford, a girlfriend.”

  He hesitates and I leap ahead. I know what kind of consequences having a girlfriend can have. And I know it’s worse for the girl. Guys don’t get pregnant and get gossiped about and deliver babies that they have to raise. Or give up for someone else to raise.

  Who was this girlfriend?

  Slowly the story comes out, interrupted only by the arrival of our food, which is mostly ignored until it’s gone cold.

  Her name was Martha. They loved each other. Or thought they did. By the time she told him she was pregnant, she’d already told her mother, who told her father.

  With the exception of chance encounters at school, she was forbidden to see Pete again. Her parents monitored her every minute, screened her friends, took over her life, and she wouldn’t defy them. By the end of the summer between their junior and senior years of high school, she was gone. But not before she and her parents agreed to let the boyfriend’s more-than-responsible older sister and her husband adopt the infant boy. Robert.

  “What happened to her?”

  “They didn’t tell anyone where they were going. Even her best friend claimed ignorance. She might’ve been lying, but it didn’t feel like it. Martha’s family had roots in the Midwest—Minnesota or Iowa—so that was most people’s guess. My mom—your grandma—was still alive at the time, and after I ran out of ideas, she poked around for me with Midwest relatives and friends and friends of friends. But Martha and her parents didn’t want to be found.”

  “You never heard from her? Mom never heard from her?”

  “I hoped. For a long time, I hoped. But hope has its limits.”

  I look out the window at the fading light. I pick at my food. For my whole life, I’ve thought of my original parents as faceless kids who’d made a mistake. Now I have a face, and it’s a familiar one.

  It’s one I love.

  What can be wrong with that?

  Only that the three most important people in my life have lied to me for fifteen years.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Mostly my idea, Bobby. Turns out I wasn’t a big shot after all. I was irresponsible. Immature. Barely employed. Embarrassed. I thought I’d be a poor example. I didn’t want you confused, wrenched in two directions.”

  It’s his turn to gaze out the window. But I’m certain he’s not contemplating the quiet street, the few people wandering past on the sidewalk. He’s looking backward, at his own life, decisions made, aftermaths.

  His eyes shift to me. “When your mom and dad agreed to adopt you, I thought the best thing I could do was stay in the background. Be a good uncle. Step in if necessary. Tell you someday. But it was easy to keep putting off the someday.”

  For a long, silent moment I return his gaze. He’s the same, but he isn’t. He has Uncle Pete’s face, but he’s my dad.

  Suddenly I have two.

  What do I call him? After years of Uncle Pete, I’m just getting used to Pete. “Why now?”

  “An awful day for you. I wasn’t trying to give you another load to bear. But the way you’ve handled everything has impressed me so much. Your courage in the face of all this, the way you treated Cocoa, the way you’ve handled losing her, it’s all been an inspiration. I decided that if my kid can be that brave, it was time for me to step up.”

  “Brave? You’re in the Army. You’ve fought. You’ve been wounded.”

  “Different. You do what you’re told and hope for the best.”

  “Mom and Dad didn’t mind you telling me?”

  “They were excited.”

  “Do you have a picture of her? My mother?”

  “The best I can do is my yearbook. Junior year. I’ll dig it out when we get home.”

  Back in the car, with my mind settling down after a day that’s emptied it and filled it and sent it gyrating wildly, I ask a question that’s haunted me since Cocoa vanished.

  “Do you believe in God, Pete?”

  Even to me, the question feels like it came out of left field. Like in the middle of an everyday conversation, someone asking about ghosts. Or time travel.

  He’s silent, eyes on the road and the twilit sky above it. “You should probably ask your other dad that one, Bobby,” he says finally. “You’d be more likely to get a positive response.”

  “I’m not fishing for a positive response. I want you to tell me what you think.”

  “I’ve prayed,” he says after a while. “When the bullets were flying and the shells were dropping, lots of guys prayed.”

  “Did you think the prayers would be answered?”

  “I hoped,” he says. “I hoped I’d live throug
h the hour, the day, the week. And if I didn’t, I hoped there’d be an afterlife.”

  “An afterlife,” I say. “I guess that’s what I’m most curious about. With Cocoa and all. She was here. She was alive. Where did she go? Where is she now?”

  No words. Road noise. Wind rushing in the open windows. Desert smells.

  “Cocoa was a special case,” Pete says at last. “In every way. And one of her most special qualities was making us question what we take for granted. Life. Death. Being.”

  “Time,” I say. “I’ll never think of it the same way.”

  “Future Girl,” Pete says. “She defied—defies—time.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Thursday, August 30

  A week can be a lifetime when you’re waiting for heartache to loosen its grip. I haven’t noticed time making a difference, but other things have. Looking in the mirror and detecting, for the first time, the resemblance between my chin and Pete’s. Seeing my original mother’s face in Pete’s yearbook and recognizing myself, and a glimmer of expectation, in her sixteen-year-old eyes. Having late-night talks with Pete about his life and Mom and Dad. And Cocoa.

  News of world events has also improved my frame of mind. Hitler’s death has been confirmed. Germany, and then Japan, surrendered. The front pages of the Journal are filled with uplifting stories and photos—victory parades, celebrations, smiles, embraces, kisses. Joy.

  Whenever I see a photo or read a story or hear something on the radio, I think about Cocoa. Without her, none of this would be happening. Without her, the venom of the snake would have spread throughout the world.

  Desert walks—Lolly and me, usually—have helped, too. Today Pete has already left when I get home from my route, so my lonesome buddy and I head right out into the cool of the morning. The rising sun casts long shadows. Lolly sticks close. He’s stuck close to me since the episode of the snake and closer since Cocoa left. He’s constantly on alert, as if he knows I’m searching and he wants to help.

  I am searching. Not consciously, because unlike Lolly, who regularly sniffs through Cocoa’s room for some trace of her, consciously I don’t dare to hope. But without intentionally thinking about it, I notice things that are not there—Nazi soldiers goose-stepping across the desert floor, Nazi tanks crushing cactuses and yuccas and chicken coops, Nazi concentration camps full of American undesirables.

  A skinny girl, standing naked at the side of the road.

  We walk on. I notice more things that are not there.

  Pocket gophers.

  Rattlesnakes.

  A girl riding toward me on a chestnut mare named Big Muddy.

  When I get melancholy, I recall the adventures we were supposed to have: returning to the cave; searching for meteorites; soaring through the skies in a B-29; shaking the president’s hand.

  Like Cocoa herself, vanished.

  But we got to kiss. And that makes up for all of it.

  A meadowlark spooks and darts straight up, warbling and whistling. I follow its flight—flashes of brilliant yellow—into the brightening blue and its cottony clouds. Still thinking of that girl, I continue to stare as the puffs of white and pink drift east to meet the sun.

  In the afternoon, the mailman brings a letter from my parents. Rumors have begun about releasing all of the internees—Japanese Americans, pacifists, and other threats to the war effort that no longer exists. The rumors say it could happen “soon.”

  I don’t know exactly what “soon” means. But for now, the word is enough.

  It’s the end of August, but the summer heat hasn’t backed off. I have all the windows in the house open, allowing a breeze to move the air. Allowing the sound of an approaching car to reach the kitchen, getting my attention, perking up Lolly’s ears. The car turns off the road, moves down the driveway. It’s not the sound of the DeSoto, not Pete. I think, Mom and Dad—have they somehow almost beat the letter home?

  I go to the front door, step out on the porch. The car stops. It’s not Mom and Dad. A man sits behind the wheel of a shiny black Pontiac. He’s alone, and disguised by the glare of the glass, but when he gets out, smiling, he looks familiar.

  “Bobby,” he says.

  And despite the fact that he’s in civvies and I’ve only met him once before, I put the voice together with the face and the smile and the easy way he moves when he comes over to shake my hand. “Colonel Oliver,” I say. “Are you here to see my uncle?”

  Lolly noses at the colonel’s pants pockets, his crotch. He laughs. “You,” he says. “I’ve come to see you.”

  I grab the scruff of Lolly’s neck. “Can you come in? We have lemonade. I could make popcorn.”

  “That would be great,” he says. “It’s a long, dry drive from Kirtland.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve come here,” I say as we climb the steps.

  “So sorry to hear about Cocoa,” he says. “To be honest, I don’t understand the whole thing. All I know is it’s beyond sad. And she was beyond brave. And without her, we all would’ve been screwed.”

  I nod. Other than that, I can’t answer. I’m too busy swallowing my tears.

  We go to the kitchen. I make popcorn, pour lemonade. I practically have to sit on Lolly to get him to quit pestering the colonel, but finally he curls up under the table.

  “The night you bombed the cave,” I say, “General Groves called to tell us. I thought my heart was going to explode I was so excited. Especially when he said you were okay.”

  “It was an adventure,” he says. “An honor.”

  “You’re a hero.”

  “I took orders. Fly the mission. Complete the mission. Come back alive, crew and plane intact. Heroes are people who go beyond that. Too often, they end up dead. I didn’t want to be a hero, or dead.”

  “You changed the world.”

  “Cocoa changed the world.”

  “And me,” I say. “She changed me.”

  “When I met her, I promised her a ride in a B-29.”

  “I remember.”

  “She won’t get that ride, now. But when she asked about it, she said us. She was asking for both of you, and I made a promise. If you’re interested, I want to offer you the chance to go.”

  “Interested?”

  He smiles. “That’s a yes?”

  “Who would say no?” I couldn’t. For a couple of reasons. Cocoa. Me. And a third: us.

  “We’ll arrange a flight for you, then,” he says. “The wild blue yonder and all that. I’ll talk to your folks. We’ll figure it out, schedule it on a school day. Get you a chance to play a little hooky.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  He smiles. For a long moment, we sit in silence.

  Finally, he has a question. “Dream about her at night?”

  His words feel like a punch to the chest, to the heart. But I recover. “Only when I’m asleep.”

  “You can tell her about it. The ride, I mean.”

  “I will.”

  “One other thing,” he says. He reaches into his pants pocket. Lolly sits up, points. And he’s not even a pointer. “Not for you, buddy,” the colonel tells him. He holds his closed fist palm-up over the table and unfurls his fingers. And for the zillionth time in the past month or two I feel my throat constrict. Lying in the palm of his hand is an acorn. A burr oak acorn. And I know where it came from.

  Unlike Cocoa, it’s still here.

  “It was my good luck,” Colonel Oliver says. “Now it’s yours.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Saturday, November 10

  I feared this day would always dangle out of reach, but finally it’s here. I’m outside with Lolly, doing chores, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun, and keeping my eyes and ears open for the approach of a car. The thermometer reads sixty; fall has definitely set in.

  Pete is still Pete, although he feels more like Dad every day. He left the house early for Trinity. He’s part of the skeleton crew of soldiers maintaining security, although there’s not much to keep secure. T
he workers and most of their equipment have departed. The buildings are mostly empty. I no longer have a paper route.

  The phone rings. I run to answer it.

  Doctor Kersey. I invited him to the homecoming, but he’s calling to say he’s stuck at the hospital with a woman in labor and doesn’t know if he’ll make it. He apologizes, but I tell him not to worry. We’ll be here for a long time.

  When we hang up, I think about the newborn baby, arriving in a better world.

  Because of Cocoa.

  I go back to waiting. I’ve had one false alarm—Mr. and Mrs. Unser returning from their Saturday shopping—but otherwise the road has been empty.

  Lolly senses something is up. Several times he’s trotted down the driveway and returned, still fidgety.

  Finally, a small dark object appears on the horizon, and then the sound of an engine rises above the shifting breeze and bird songs and my own heartbeat.

  After an eternity, an army-green Plymouth turns into our driveway. Lolly gives it an escort. From the porch steps, I notice that they’re all in the front seat. Mom and Dad. Captain Jack, who picked them up at the Albuquerque train station.

  The car stops, and they pop out, and in an instant, we’re all hugging and dancing around and saying how much we’ve missed each other and they’re telling me how much I’ve grown and I’m telling them they look good but skinnier and we have this big group embrace that even includes Captain Jack, who looks only slightly uncomfortable. Lolly completely forgets his manners, leaping up on everyone.

  I wish Pete were here, but duty calls.

  The reunion goes on and on, turning bittersweet when Cocoa’s name comes up, but still the sweet is there, overriding everything else for now. Later we can think about the person who isn’t part of the celebration and the void she left.

  “The place looks good, Bobby,” Dad says, finally getting a chance to look around.

  “Nothing died,” I say, and immediately regret it.

  But she didn’t die. She didn’t.

  “The Andrews sisters are making lots of milk,” I add, “the unnamed piglets are not really piglets anymore, the hens are still laying lots of eggs, and Franklin is still late—but no later—with his morning wakeup song.”