Overland

by Graham Rawle

  “You’ve got to bend your knees when you hit the ground,” he said. “And keep your knees and feet together. I got a book from the library so I can be one step ahead when I start training.”

  Queenie stood on the lawn looking up at him with her arms folded across her chest. “A book just to learn how to jump?”

  “There’s more to it than you think. A parachutist can hit the ground at tremendous speed. If you don’t land correctly, you can easily bust a leg. We have to learn to do a forward or backward somersault as we land because the chute can pull you off balance if there’s a strong crosswind. You’ve got to dishrag it before it can drag you.” He liked using that phrase, dishrag it; it made him sound like an old hand.

  Jimmy prepared to demonstrate the basic jump, his rigorous study immediately apparent as he posed, chin up, eyes forward with his arms straight in the air as if controlling the lines of his imaginary chute.

  “What’s that? A ballet position?”

  Ignoring her, he launched himself from the roof and landed neatly, springing on his knees back into the upright position.

  “And you had to read a whole book to learn how to do that?”

  “Think you could do it?”

  “It’s a cinch. Stand aside.”

  “Better lose the heels unless you want a sprained ankle.”

  Queenie kicked off her shoes and climbed up the steps to the flat roof. She jumped without preparation. Landing heavily, she hit the ground with a jarring thud.

  Jimmy winced. “Ooh. Jeez. You didn’t bend your knees enough. You OK?”

  “Sure. Let me try again.”

  “OK, but listen, you’ve got to keep your knees and feet together.”

  Queenie climbed determinedly up to the roof again, clearly not listening.

  Jimmy looked up at her uneasily. “Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this, you being a girl and all.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It can be quite a jolt to your insides.”

  “Baloney.”

  Wilfully, she jumped again, but this time Jimmy caught her, breaking her fall.

  “I can’t let you do this; you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  Queenie remained locked in Jimmy’s embrace, but he could feel the tension in her, like a restrained animal taking stock of its options before deciding how to react. She suddenly flinched and broke free from his arms, walking quickly away without meeting his eye. Jimmy was taken aback.

  “Queenie! I didn’t mean to … I was only trying to … protect you. Queenie!”

  But Queenie wouldn’t answer. She snatched up her abandoned shoes, and marched off down the street in her stocking feet, pushing the buggy ahead of her.

  Jimmy stood, helpless and dejected, unsure what he had done to cause the upset. He watched as, a little further down the street, she paused to slip into her shoes, leaning awkwardly on a low wall to steady herself while she adjusted the heel straps with her forefinger. When she disappeared round the corner Jimmy followed, keeping his distance so as not to antagonize her further.

  From the corner of Main Street, he watched her making her way along one of the walkways known as South Ridge to a tree-lined field where she stood on the upper slope looking out. She was rocking the buggy back and forth, as mothers often do to lull the infant into a state of slumber. But then something inside seemed to take hold. Even from so far away Jimmy sensed it, some tightening knot of frustration. Suddenly, she gave the handle a hefty shove, sending the buggy down the slope.

  It rolled gently at first, gradually gathering momentum as it bounced unsteadily over the folds in the green turf. Queenie remained stock-still, watching the runaway carriage as it headed towards the edge of the field and finally disappeared silently from view over the edge.

  She continued to stare for a moment and then dropped her head forward, burying her face in her outstretched palms. Jimmy could see she was terribly upset about something. Despite his apprehension about how she might react, he headed on over.

  By the time he reached her, she was sitting on the grass, eyes blinkered, gazing despondently down at her feet.

  “What gives?”

  Queenie looked up and then turned away, unsure what Jimmy had seen.

  “Oh, hi, Jimmy. Just taking a breather.” She blew her nose on her handkerchief and tried to wipe the moisture from her mascara with her knuckle. “I must look a sight.”

  “I’m sorry if I said something …”

  “Oh, no Jimmy. It’s not you. I shouldn’t have acted that way.”

  “Something bothering you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. You could say that.”

  He sat down beside her, looking out across the hazy horizon ahead.

  “Feel like sharing?”

  “You don’t want to hear.”

  “Sure I do.”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side. “You don’t, trust me.”

  “Try me.”

  She inhaled deeply, holding her breath for a moment before blurting it out. “My friend’s in trouble. She needs an operation, but she’s broke. I’m just sore because I can’t help her.”

  “What kind of operation?”

  “Oh. You know. Women’s stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “No, I … I’m not …” Jimmy’s feigned nonchalance demonstrated just how embarrassed he was. “How much does she need, your friend?”

  “Fifty dollars. She’s got eighteen of it, maybe twenty. She gets paid in a couple of weeks, but she needs it right away.”

  “Another thirty? Thirty’s not so much.”

  “It is to her.”

  “I could loan it to her.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. Why not? I just sold my motorcycle. What with me going for my training and then probably overseas, I figured it would only sit around getting rusty.”

  He took a clip of folded bills from his pants pocket, peeled off three tens and offered them to her.

  “But that’s your dough.”

  “Nothing to spend it on in the army.”

  Queenie took the money, clutching it gratefully. “Oh, Jimmy. She’ll pay you back. In a week or so. I promise.”

  “That’s OK. Whenever.”

  “Whenever? That’s it? No further questions?”

  “If she needs help … I don’t want you to be upset.”

  Queenie took a moment to consider Jimmy’s kindness. Until then, she had not envisaged him as leading-man material, but his caring response to her crisis had been genuinely selfless. Now she was beginning to see him as a potential heart-throb, someone the fans might go for. He was not the obviously rugged type like Clark Gable, Robert Taylor or Tyrone Power; he was more the gangly-but-cute sort, like James Stewart in some of his early flicks: diffident, yet stalwart and morally resolute.

  “You’re a great guy, Jimmy.”

  He tried to shrug off the compliment, but she laid it right back at him.

  “A really great guy. Someday you’re going to make some nice girl very happy.”

  Jimmy smiled shyly. “Well, I’d better be getting back to my training. If you’re OK.”

  “I am now. Thanks to you. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  As he got up to leave, she pulled at his sleeve, bringing him closer, and planted a big grateful kiss on his lips. The gesture was meant to seem broad and playful, but Queenie found herself lingering in a moment of unexpected tenderness. She regarded him quizzically, trying to make sense of her emotions before letting him go. At the fence he turned to her.

  “Oh, and don’t worry about losing your baby. No one need know about it. I can get you a new one from Props.”

  TWENTY

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING a group of Residents were waiting in line outside the Orpheum movie theater—familiar faces from the Overland community: Effie from the diner, Tommy in his splendid check suit, the twins, old Doc with his little dog Chummy.

  Ray the do
orman was keeping things in order, letting one or two at a time enter the building, when Jimmy pitched up. He checked the line, seeing how long it was.

  “What’s happening?” he said.

  One of the Residents, a man wearing a check coat and a white homburg, answered. “We all got our marching orders. Courtesy of the United States Army.”

  “Where’s everybody going?”

  One of the twins answered. “Sent back down. All of us. Project Overland’s been terminated.”

  “Terminated?”

  “All Residents are surplus to requirements. They’re closing the place down.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  Another Resident, a woman on roller skates, piped up. “Where are we going to go now? We like coming here.”

  A big man in a battered straw hat and bib overalls echoed their frustration. “What’s gonna happen to it all? I was halfway through building a paddling pool. Told to drop everything and get back down to the factory. No debate. Finito.”

  One of the tennis players joined in. “We were in the middle of a match. I’d just fought back from being two sets down to lead five four in the third. We were at deuce.”

  The big man was less sympathetic to these more personal concerns. He responded with mocking sarcasm. “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  The tennis guy snapped back at him huffily. “Oh, screw you. And your paddling pool.”

  Ignoring the spat, Doc shook his head despondently. “I’m gonna miss this place.” He lifted Chummy up, affectionately tucking him under his arm.

  Jimmy was having a hard time catching up with the news. “Does Mr Godfrey know about this?”

  “Haven’t seen him around lately. I heard he was being sent to Seattle.”

  The line continued to shuffle forward, ushered by the doorman. What had at first looked like a line at a movie theater, now seemed more like some biblical expulsion of damned souls.

  Down in the factory, the one-armed man was at the barrier. Several women crowded round his desk. He raised his hand, trying to fend off their questions and referring them to the hastily written sign that he had added to the chain guard on the staircase: Closed until further notice. By Order, US Army. The factory workers waiting to go up top were confused and disgruntled.

  Above them, a straggle of expelled Residents slowly descended the staircase: the tennis players, no longer in tennis whites, no longer Residents, were back wearing their drab factory workwear; Doc, hardly recognizable without his multicolored shirts and his dog Chummy, now in greasy denim coveralls. Their vitality of spirit also seemed to have drained from them as they returned to face the drudgery of the world below.

  The one-armed man unhooked the chain only long enough to let them through before clipping it smartly back in place. Residents could come down, but they could no longer go up. As they passed the one-armed man’s table, each of them dropped their Resident pin into a little cardboard box.

  Two workers crossing the yard outside the wing and fin assembly shop were unsettled to discover what looked like a midget lying face down on the asphalt. One of the workers approached, looming hesitantly over the lifeless figure. It became clear then that it was some kind of doll. He wore striped pants and a felt tailcoat and had glossy black hair painted neatly on his composite head, which was cracked open like an egg. The worker flopped the doll over with the toe of his boot. The caricature face gazed fixedly back at him with wild goggly eyes exaggerated by painted brows and lashes. An ugly dark fracture ran diagonally from the upper lip across one eye to the crown. The lower jaw was gone, leaving a horrific-looking gaping red throat. A thick piece of knotted string protruded from its gullet, which the startled little man looked as though he might have choked on.

  The second worker looked around, trying to figure out where the doll had come from. When he looked up, he saw an upturned baby buggy entangled between a pair of tensioned wires fifty feet above them.

  Jimmy was tending to some detail on the model in Shangri-La Cottage, when the major burst in.

  “Hey, kid. Where’s Godfrey?”

  “Mr Godfrey’s not here, sir.”

  “Well, where the hell is he? He was supposed to be in Seattle two days ago.”

  “Isn’t he there? He set off on Saturday morning. He said he was starting work at the new plant on Monday.”

  “Well, he didn’t show. He’s not at his apartment. Nobody in the real world has seen him for weeks.”

  “That’s a puzzler.”

  “He was so reluctant to leave his precious little town, I thought he might still be here.”

  “No, sir. I’ve been here since Saturday. Mr Godfrey hasn’t been around.”

  “How come you’re still here?”

  “I’m about to do my special training, sir. Parachute Battalion. I’m just here for the next couple of days, tying up loose ends, making sure things are running smoothly.”

  “OK, son. If you see Godfrey, tell him to get his ass up to Seattle. And if he’s made other plans, tell him this is a military operation. We can have him arrested for non-compliance.”

  “Arrested? Mr Godfrey didn’t do anything wrong. He built this entire town for the war effort. Have you any idea how much work has gone into this—how much commitment?”

  “Commitment, my ass. If he were so committed, he’d be in Seattle now, doing the job he was recruited to do. If you ask me, all this was just his way to dodge the draft.” He looked at the model with a disparaging sneer. “Orange trees … riding round on a dumb kiddie car track. If he had his way, he’d be sitting here in Neverland with his thumb up his ass until the goddamn war is over.”

  “With all due respect sir, I think Mr Godfrey has got a little more dignity than that.”

  The major shook his head but decided to let the argument lie. He departed swiftly from the room, leaving Jimmy standing alone looking personally affronted by the attack on his boss.

  There was a long pause before George’s muffled voice could be heard from inside the closet.

  “Has he gone?”

  The major was walking back to his car, parked near the ramp. One of the Overland buses was passing by, but he refused to use it. Presently, he came upon a woman hanging her laundry on a clothesline.

  “What are you doing?”

  The woman turned, nettled by the accusatory tone. “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m hanging out laundry.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I do. I hang it up; I take it down.”

  “Yes, but you’re not supposed to be here now. Hasn’t anyone told you? Project Overland has ended.”

  “But I’m a Resident.”

  “Not anymore. You’re no longer needed. The project’s terminated. You can go home.”

  She stared at him, bemused. “… But this is my home.”

  The major was stuck for words. Perhaps the woman was deranged, a basket case. He had neither the time nor the patience to reason with her. He spoke dismissively.

  “Look. You can’t stay here. No one can stay here. It’s over.”

  Back in Shangri-La George was hunched over the model, his nose practically touching the buildings as he scrutinized one specific area with single-minded intent. Jimmy looked on, troubled by his boss’s increasingly neurotic behavior.

  George’s point of focus was the ramp used by Major Lund and Lieutenant Franks to gain access to Overland. The model version of it was a wedge shape resembling something that might be used to prop open a door. George let out a soft, low growl like a hostile dog.

  “This is the problem,” he said, tapping the ramp with the tip of his craft knife. He teased the little triangle from the model baseboard, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally he wrenched it free with brute force and held it aloft between forefinger and thumb. “We don’t need it,” he said. “We can get rid of it altogether.” He tossed the ramp out of the window, then grinned at the simplicity of his solution.

  Jimmy managed a feeble smile.

  “It won’t affect the Resid
ents since they all come up through the Orpheum theater,” George explained rationally.

  Jimmy broached the subject gently. “Mr Godfrey, you do know that all the Residents have gone?”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “They’ve been sent back down to the factory. Permanently. Major Lund’s orders.”

  “Really?” George sounded mistrustful of the information.

  Jimmy assured him it was so. He was puzzled how his boss could have failed to notice the recent eviction. He gestured to the window, inviting him to see for himself. George moved closer to it to look out. He checked the street in both directions and saw that the place was deserted. George turned, seeming a little dazed.

  “No Residents? Well that’s ridiculous. How can Overland function as a proper community without Residents?”

  TWENTY-ONE

  DESPITE MAJOR LUND’S decree to depopulate the Overland project, the next day the transport system was still running; the chain of passengerless vehicles endlessly circling the town like an abandoned carnie ride.

  A group of hikers, way up on the hillside, had perhaps not yet received the directive to leave, or had decided, like a handful of other Residents, to ignore it until pressure was brought to bear. Ray, the Orpheum doorman, had been appointed as agent in charge of chasing down the scattered few, and now spent his day roaming the ghost town like a vigilante. Once the last of the stragglers had been rounded up, he too would leave, closing the door behind him.

  George, as yet undiscovered, stood at the lakeside staring at the little hole in the middle of the tarp, willing his beloved to resurface. After waiting for almost a week, spending endless hours gazing across the water, he discovered, frustratingly, that on the day that she did appear he had not been there to meet her.

  It must have been on the following morning, Tuesday, as he lay in bed “considering things” while gazing distractedly around the room, when he had spotted the extra can of sardines sitting on the kitchen shelf. At first he thought it some kind of an optical illusion, the original sardines somehow reflected in a mirror, and had to get out of bed to check whether it was real. Sure enough there were two cans now instead of one. How had it got there? Later, he had found the apple.