The sun is dropping over Dad’s shoulder, and looking into it, I notice movement above the distant desert sand. Mirage-like. But it’s not the season for mirages.
I sense everyone, even Lolly, shifting to follow my gaze. The not-mirage takes shape, enlarges. It’s heading our way. A horse. A rider. A familiar horse. A familiar rider.
“Big Muddy,” I say. “Pete.” Maybe Pete’s name should’ve come first, but I see him every day, and I don’t remember when I last saw Big Muddy. I thought she was gone with the rest of the camp horses.
Mom’s face brightens. To my surprise, Dad’s does, too. Captain Jack looks pleased, but also distracted. Now what?
Grinning, Pete rides into the yard and dismounts, holding the reins. Mom hurries over and locks him up in a huge hug. Dad is right behind her, pumping Pete’s free hand.
“Your typewriter, Chuck,” Pete says. “It’s on the kitchen table. Hoping for attention.”
“Thanks,” Dad says. “I have some stories to tell. I’d like to tell one about a young girl who saved the world.”
“Who would believe it?” I say.
“Speaking of Cocoa,” Captain Jack says to me, “I’ve been asked to pass along a message. I’m doing so, but reluctantly.”
He has my attention.
“Because she isn’t able to make the trip to meet President Truman,” he says, “his staff is wondering if you’d reconsider your decision to accept the invitation.” He’s embarrassed. I feel sorry for him, not me. “They say something could still be arranged, if you’d prefer to go ahead with the visit.”
“I didn’t figure it would still happen,” I say. “I was nervous about it, anyway. Besides, my B-29 flight with Colonel Oliver should make up for a handshake with the president.”
The nervous part is true. Until now, though, I still entertained the idea of going. But I understand why the enthusiasm has cooled. Cocoa saved the planet. She was Future Girl. I was just the sidekick. Why would the president want to meet the sidekick?
“I know it was promised, Bobby,” the captain says, “and I apologize—”
“It’s okay, Captain Jack. Really. I’ve already met enough bigwigs for a lifetime.” I think about McCloy. Did he have a hand in putting the lid on his fellow politicians’ hospitality?
No matter. Cocoa would’ve said “Fuck it.”
“Tuesday, Bobby?” Mom says. “The B-29 flight?”
“I get to play hooky.”
My parents smile. Barely. Pete laughs. Maybe he hasn’t read the chapter of the Rule Book for Dads that suggests only restrained support for activities that aren’t quite aboveboard.
After Mom and Dad change into comfortable clothes, and we get Big Muddy fed and watered and hitched up in the barn, I announce that everyone has an important ceremony to witness.
Pete’s in on it, but I let the mystery linger for the rest as they follow me to the back of the house. From a spot near the barn I pick up a mess-hall-size coffee can and carry it to a sun-drenched little knoll fifty feet from my bedroom window. At the top of the knoll I’ve dug a hole, and next to it is a mound of loose dirt and a watering can full of water.
I show everyone what’s in the coffee can—a special concoction of desert soil and barnyard manure that Pete and I mixed together, and growing out of it, looking healthy and strong and raring to reach for the sky, is a seedling burr oak.
“From Cocoa’s lucky acorn,” I say.
Dad shakes his head. Like it wasn’t so lucky for her.
“It got her here,” I say. “To us. It was lucky for the world. And Colonel Oliver.”
Captain Jack knows all about Colonel Oliver, of course, but the blank stares I get from Mom and Dad remind me that they don’t. They know he’s a famous pilot who has invited me to take a ride with him, but that’s it.
So, I explain what he did and that Cocoa and I got to meet him before his mission and she gave him her acorn for luck and he took it with him when he bombed the cave and he came close to getting blown out of the sky and I’m pretty sure the acorn is what saved him and his crew. I tell them that he brought it back to me, that I planted it in the coffee can the next day.
“It’s the perfect time of year to plant it,” I say. “And this is the perfect place. It’s sunny, and a little higher than the rest of the backyard, and now that I’ve relocated the clothesline, I can see it perfectly from my bedroom. I can watch it grow. Someday it’ll be a tree, big and strong. We can hang a swing from it, and your grandkids can play in its shade.”
“Does this mean we can never move?” Dad says. He’s smiling. He loves this house.
“Why would we want to?” Mom says. She didn’t even blink at my mention of the clothesline. Or grandkids. After what she’s been through, it’s going to take a lot to bother her.
“Yeah,” my other dad says. “Why would you want to? The Unsers are thinking of selling soon, and they said they’d give me first crack at their place.”
News to me. Smiling to myself, I wonder if Pete has plans to share the Unser place with someone. A certain lady corporal, to be specific.
“You’d want to live that close to a pacifist, Pete?” Dad says.
“There’s enough elbow room,” my new dad says. “Besides, I learned some things from Cocoa. I learned that the pieces of life that I’ve always considered either right or wrong, black or white, real or unreal—lots of them aren’t. They’re gray. Marbled. Spotted. Striped. Sometimes they’re flipped. Black is white. White is black. The past is present. The future is now. Cocoa—Future Girl—taught me that.”
“She taught all of us something,” Captain Jack says.
“I taught her to swim,” I say, as the images of that day at the pool overwhelm my brain.
And my heart. “She taught me how to love,” I add, mostly to myself because the words catch in my throat and sound kind of dopey coming out. Through blurry eyes I see the others exchange glances, like they’re wondering if this kid is okay.
I am okay. Not good, not where I once pictured myself, but okay.
I turn the coffee can on its side, trowel out the cylinder of soil, and place it in the hole. Before the root ball falls apart I scoop in the loose pile of soil and manure and compact it until it’s firm and level with the surrounding ground. Then I give the little tree a long drink of cool water.
Like Cocoa, it’s upright, and perky and, for such a skinny little thing, sturdy.
I’ll do my fucking best to keep it that way.
Mom claps. Everyone else joins in. It’s a heartening way to say hello. And goodbye.
Pete and I were planning on making supper, but Mom insists on taking over. She’ll be back at work Monday and won’t get much opportunity—as if that’s an opportunity—to cook.
While she’s bustling around the kitchen and humming along with the radio, Lolly tags along at her heels, and Dad, Captain Jack, and Pete sit in the living room listening to football scores and summaries on the other radio. Number-one-ranked Army thrashed Villanova, which puts smiles on the soldiers’ faces.
I go to my room and look out the window at the sapling. Even from this distance it looks happy standing in the last of the muted sunlight. I imagine it growing, spreading, reaching up toward Cocoa’s blue sky.
Heading out, I pause at my dresser to study the framed photo Captain Jack took at the ranch house. Cocoa and me. Close. Touching. Smiles.
I leave the adults to their evening and go outside and get on my bike. I can’t help but notice Cocoa’s, leaning against the barn wall, gathering dust.
I start down the driveway. But before I get past the front door, Pete steps out, followed by everyone else. “Going somewhere, Robert?” he says.
“A ride. I’ll be back for supper.”
“Hold up for two minutes,” he says. He heads for the barn. There’s small talk, but I’m not part of it. I’m too curious.
After a long two minutes, Pete emerges from the shadows, leading Big Muddy. She’s saddled again. She looks rested. Ready.
They stop a few feet away. “Hop up,” Pete says, grabbing my handlebars. He’s not talking about the bike.
My heart thumps. I don’t hesitate. I grasp the saddle horn and slip my foot in the stirrup and in an instant, I’m high on the mare’s back, looking down at the grins.
“How’s she feel?” Pete says.
“Like a dream,” I say.
“Good,” Pete says. “Because she’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“Pete’s idea,” Captain Jack says. “The horses were surplus. I talked to the general. The least he could do, he said. He pulled a few strings. It was easy.”
There are no surprised expressions in the gathering. At some point, maybe during the drive from Albuquerque, Mom and Dad were let in on the scheme.
“I can’t believe it,” I say. The truth. I lean over and wrap my arms around Big Muddy’s neck, feel the warmth of her hide, her soft mane against my cheek.
Pete hands me the reins. “Take her for a spin.”
“You don’t have to hurry back,” Mom says.
Dad gives me a thumbs-up. His eyes are glassy.
“Have fun, Robert,” Captain Jack says.
“Thank you” is all I can manage past the knot in my throat, but I let my eyes wander from face to face to show that the words are meant for all of them.
The mare’s coat is velvety against my bare knees. I give her a gentle squeeze. She eases ahead. I can hardly believe she’s mine.
We start toward the road, but if you’re riding a horse, you don’t have to take the road. We veer left off the driveway and cross the yard and enter the shadowy vastness of the desert.
I don’t look back.
I don’t have a destination in mind. But I know what direction I’m going. The newspaper shack, and beyond that, the base camp—Trinity—and its empty buildings, and memories.
Already there’s no need for the shack or the buildings.
But the memories. There will always be a need for the memories. Even if you have to wrestle with them.
Ahead of us, the sun, already obscured by overcast, slips behind the mountains. The Mockingbirds. We move toward them, toward the place where desert meets sky, where time has a different meaning.
Twilight sets in.
I picture us—Big Muddy and me—returning here over and over. This sky, this terrain, this direction. If we stay away, there’s no telling what I might miss seeing.
And imagining.
There’s no telling what I might forget.
Auf Wiedersehen. Until we meet again.
I flick the reins, nudge Big Muddy’s ribs, and she picks up her pace. The smells of the desert fill my nose. My eyes water, but I keep them open wide, scanning my surroundings from side to side—sand, cactus, mesquite, yucca, willow, shadow.
Once upon a time, something different—not sand, not cactus, not mesquite, not yucca, not willow, not shadow—suddenly materialized in the heart of this landscape. Something, someone, that tested and then expanded the limits of what I understand and accept and feel.
Cocoa.
It could happen again.
You never know.
You never know.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go to all the citizens and soldiers, mostly gone now, who worked for peace and fought for peace during the “Devil’s War.” Your real-life stories provided immeasurable inspiration. To the good folks at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, where I spent a fascinating, too-short day touring and experiencing the exhibits and gathering valuable information. To the Army hosts at the Trinity Site, New Mexico, for allowing an intimate gathering of several thousand visitors (including me) to get a close-up look at history during your October 2015 open house. To the libraries of Seattle and King County, for providing resources for research and quiet spaces for a writer-guy to spread out and work. To the members of my critique group, who saw this story in its rough-and-tumble days and spotted the wheat amidst the chaff. And to publisher John Koehler, who discovered a manuscript and envisioned a book, editor Joe Coccaro, part story tuner, part detective, and part wizard of English usage, and Hannah Woodlan, proofreader extraordinaire and no friend of the wimpy, botched, or extraneous.
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