Overland

by Graham Rawle

  Though he had not initially spotted either of these additions, the previous night he’d sensed that something was amiss; he just couldn’t put his finger on it. And there was that lovely smell—in his bed. He had picked up the pillow and brought it to his face. Breathing in, he felt sure he could detect an unfamiliar perfume on the fabric, light and fragrant like some kind of sweet, exotic fruit. Figs? Passion fruit? Later he realized she must have been asleep in his bed. Traces of her dreams lingered on his pillow and now they were inside his head too.

  At first he had taken this as a sign that she would visit again, but now he feared that she might have gone forever, never to return. Queenie’s words echoed in his head. If you want to meet her you’re gonna have to go down there … into the underworld.

  He had a growing urge to look down into the hole in the lake, to see if she was there. He edged to a spot where the branch of a tree overhung the water. Holding tight, he stepped gingerly up to the water’s edge to test the surface with his toe. It felt reasonably firm so he dared to lean a little further out, allowing him to put more weight on the tarp, but when he felt it start to sag under his weight, he quickly stepped back onto the safety of dry land.

  Jimmy, who had been given special dispensation to help “wrap things up,” was in the middle pasture rearranging his sheep. Through the Overland speaker system up on the street came the romantic melody of Artie Shaw and his Orchestra with Helen Forrest singing “Summer Souvenirs.” He hummed along.

  Interrupting the calm, he heard someone calling his name. It was Ray from the Orpheum. He was waving an envelope in the air and was about to climb the fence. Jimmy quickly set down his sheep and gestured for him to stop. Ray complied, stepping back down and staying on the road side of the fence. He shouted across, but Jimmy couldn’t hear him properly.

  “Wait there! I’ll come over.”

  Jimmy approached the fence, distractedly checking his flock.

  “This field’s not safe underfoot if you’re not used to it,” he explained. Then he saw the envelope with his name written on it—no address. “What gives?”

  “Gate guard on the ramp brought it up. Hand-delivered. Must be important, huh?”

  Jimmy immediately recognized the writing.

  “It’s from my mom.”

  He opened up the envelope and found a telegram inside addressed to his mother. The paper had been folded back on itself so that only the address and the first line of the message were visible: The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret … Jimmy stuffed it back into the envelope without unfolding it.

  Ray had evidently caught sight of the sender’s address.

  “Washington? Must be about where you’re being stationed, huh? Where are you hoping for?”

  Jimmy stared into the middle of nowhere, scratching his ear. “It’s about something else.”

  “I got a buddy stationed in Bali—someplace like that. He says the women over there go bare-breasted—without a care in the world.” Getting no reaction, Ray nodded, taking in the view. “It’s nice up here. You’re in a swell position. Pity everyone has to go back down. You’ll be gone soon too?”

  “Yeah. Well. I got work to do. Thanks for bringing the telegram, Ray.”

  “No big deal. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bali?” He mimed an implausibly curvaceous female, jiggling her imaginary bosoms.

  Jimmy stared back vacantly, his mind elsewhere. He wandered over to his flock and continued to regroup his sheep until Ray was out of sight. Then he removed the telegram from its envelope again and unfolded it. The pasted strips of purple block capitals hovered before his eyes as though not properly glued to the paper. It was addressed to his mother so she must have decided to forward it on to him. He read it two or three times before he could make sense of the words.

  THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR SON PRIVATE FIRST CLASS CARL SHEPHERD WAS KILLED IN ACTION ON MAY 10 1942 IN PACIFIC AREA 15 LETTER FOLLOWS DUNLOP ACTING THE ADJUTANT GENERAL

  Jimmy’s breathing became choked in a shallow space somewhere between inhaling and exhaling. He let his hand fall to his sides. The telegram fluttered in the breeze like a flag of surrender. He swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to quell the rising distress, but his emotions overwhelmed him. He felt faint. All at once, the ground beneath him dropped away and he felt himself plummet like a dead horse on a cut rope.

  In reality it seemed he had chanced upon one of those gaps in the netting that until then he had been careful to avoid, for he now found that the lower part of his body had disappeared below the surface of the pasture as far as his armpits, the upper part of him saved only by his splayed arms. He repositioned his hands, using his elbows to try and gain sufficient leverage to haul himself back up through the hole, but it was no use; too much of his body had been lost to the world below for him to regain control of it.

  In the parking lot below, some of the factory workers had noticed the flailing legs dangling through the hole in the net that formed the canopy of vegetation overhead. They pointed and shouted, suddenly on high alert.

  Above the surface, with no one in sight to lend a hand, Jimmy desperately grappled for a firm handhold in the tight mesh of the netting. Over his shoulder he could make out the group of hikers climbing a path towards a hilltop ridge. He yelled for help, but they were just too far away; they seemed like those sketchy human figures added to a landscape painting merely to provide scale. At the ridge, they decided to take a break, removing their backpacks and scattering themselves on the ground in leisurely repose.

  Down below, Jimmy’s cries had escalated the urgency of the rescue operation. A fire truck was being maneuvered into position. One of the firefighters was frantically winding a big chrome wheel that extended the ladder into the air, while another controlled the angle and direction of its ascent. A man was already climbing the first section. Sure-footed and confident, he glanced up at the ladder ahead of him as he approached the distressed shepherd’s dangling lower half.

  Jimmy had found a seam in the netting, enabling him to get a firmer hand-hold, and was beginning to heave himself up when he heard the cries of someone beneath him.

  “Hang on, pal. I’m nearly there.”

  Puzzled, Jimmy peered through the gaps in the netting and could just make out the helmeted head of his would-be rescuer.

  The firefighter grabbed Jimmy around the thighs and began to pull him towards the safety of the ladder. “It’s OK, buddy. I’ve got you.”

  Jimmy lost his grip on the netting and felt himself starting to slip. He cried out.

  “Let go. You’re pulling me down. I’m trying to get back up.”

  “I’ve got you this side. Just let yourself drop. You’ll be all right.”

  “Let go! I’m trying to …”

  The professional firefighter is accustomed to victims in distress; he knows how they can be uncooperative and difficult. Just like a cat stuck up a tree, the minute the rescuer makes a grab for the poor animal, it will screech and scratch and wriggle and fight—do everything it can to get away. Survival instinct forces it to resist. It is scared and it doesn’t understand that the firefighter means it no harm; that he’s there to help. In situations like this, the rescuer must use a firm hand to take control, to overcome that resistance. The victim will thank him for it later.

  A few fields away, Howard Farmer’s tractor was still tootling steadily back and forth along the rows of crops in his field. Though Howard was no longer at the wheel, like the vehicles on Overland’s main transportation system, the tractor kept rolling along. But after weeks of following the same regimented to-and-fro pattern, it now seemed to be deviating from its routine. Instead of turning round at the end of the row to continue back up the slope in the opposite direction as it usually did, the tractor kept on going down the slope towards the edge of the field where the ground gave way to a sheer drop to the factory yard below, and it show
ed no signs of stopping. Whether through a wilfully self-destructive act—a response, perhaps, to having been left driverless—or through some mechanical failure that had caused the vehicle to become disengaged from its track, the outcome now seemed inevitable. And with so few Residents remaining, there was no one to avert, or even to witness, the impending catastrophe.

  As the tractor reached the furthest extent of the field, it toppled over the edge, quickly disappearing from view. And just like that, it was gone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A SERIES OF fifty-feet-high watchtowers had been erected just beyond a five-strand barbed-wire perimeter fence on flat, barren ground. From the observation platform of one of them, a guard in American army uniform with an M1 rifle slung over his shoulder leaned out over the balustrade idly surveying the area through binoculars.

  The main entrance gatehouse had a tiled pagoda-style roof. The decision to incorporate an architectural feature reminiscent of “the mother country” (a country most of them had never seen) was presumably the American government’s attempt to convince the prisoners as they first entered the camp that they had arrived at a veritable home from home. Beside the gatehouse was a painted wooden sign sticking up out of a pile of rocks. In big letters it said STOP, then underneath: Manzanar Internment Camp. No Admission except on official business. US Department of Justice.

  The camp extended over a vast area of open desert valley. Laid out in tightly regimented lines were seemingly endless rows of hastily constructed, tarpaper-covered wooden buildings like military barracks, each one twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. Many were still under construction. Beyond them in the distance was the towering wall of the Sierra Nevada mountains, pale blue-gray powdered with snow and shrouded by a hazy cloud of dust.

  Hanging from a piece of rope outside one of the buildings was a large piece of iron that had been bent into a triangle. A man struck it repeatedly with a club hammer, the dull clanging signaling lunchtime. The doors to one of the buildings were folded back; entry into it monitored by uniformed soldiers. Crowds of Japanese internees waited patiently in line.

  Inside was barn-like with exposed timbers and no ceiling. A long chain of prisoners, each clutching a plate and a mug, waited to be served food by fellow internees in aprons and little white caps. The dish of the day was a handful of rice with a ladleful of something brown on top.

  Accommodation in the barrack buildings was provided by basic iron-framed army cots with thin mattresses, lined up in long rows, little more than an arm’s length apart. Those that were unoccupied came with a pillow on top of a folded blanket. Most were already claimed, with picture postcards and snapshots pinned to the bare plywood wall above the bed. Among the keepsakes brought from home were several American flags and, above one bed, portraits of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and President Roosevelt.

  On her first day at the camp, Kay had been sent to a hut designated for single women (i.e. those with no family). She approached one of the vacant beds to which a handwritten number on a slip of paper was attached; she checked it against the raffle-ticket number she had been given. Hers, she noticed, was the only bed without a pillow.

  The bed next to hers was at the end of the row with a wall on one side and a window above the head end. A Japanese woman was already well “settled in.” She lay on her back, propped up by two pillows, her hands clasped behind her head and her eyes closed, a blanket wrapped loosely about her. She was wearing thick oversized wool socks that had lost their shape. All the other clothing she had managed to bring with her hung on display from a series of clothesline strings suspended above her head, like a market stall. There were dishrags and underclothes, scarves, skirts, socks. Hanging from nails between the two beds was a hat with flowers on it, a drawstring toiletry bag and a cardigan. More things were piled on the cross-beams of the wall’s studwork: an enamel plate propped up, a box of crackers, ointments, pills, photographs in frames—all of it encroaching on Kay’s limited allocated space. But she had no possessions with which to counter the infringement.

  By night the temperature dropped. Kay had been so cold the night before that she couldn’t sleep. She lay fully dressed in her factory overalls—all the clothes she had—huddled under the thin blanket. Throughout the long night she listened to the low whistle of the wind, which intermittently threw grit and dust in hissing sheets against the outside walls of the hut, the sound brittle and dry like radio static.

  She must have slept eventually because she awoke the next morning to the sound of someone sweeping the floor and found everything, including herself, covered in a fine layer of sand dust. It was everywhere: in her eyelashes, in her nostrils. When she scratched her scalp, she felt a gritty residue beneath her fingernails.

  In one of the women’s latrine blocks, she was among those waiting in line to use the facilities: a row of a dozen toilets which, like the beds, were an arm’s length apart with no partitions between them. All were permanently occupied in strictly supervised rotation, each vacancy quickly taken up by the next user from the line.

  Undercooked and unrefrigerated food had made diarrhea a pressing problem for many. A pair of middle-aged internees had volunteered to provide a modicum of privacy by holding up a bed sheet to form a curtain around one of the toilets. They stood with their arms raised, clutching the top of the makeshift canvas cubicle, heads discreetly turned to demonstrate their respectful detachment from the functions being carried out on the other side.

  The indignity was too great for some to bear. Offered no such privacy, one elderly woman, her underwear around her ankles, was so racked with shame that she had put a pillowcase over her own bowed head like a prisoner awaiting execution.

  Outside, Kay leaned against the wall of the latrine block, looking out over the barren landscape. There were no other buildings for miles: nothing but parched, open wilderness.

  It was strange to see so many Japanese faces. Here Kay looked like everyone else; she should have fitted right in, yet she felt strangely alien, like an imposter.

  It surprised her how compliant everyone was. They had been forced to relinquish their homes, their possessions, their rights, yet there was no rebellion, no revolt. Once they’d crossed the camp threshold, they seemed to accept their fate and make the best of things, learning the new rules and settling into the routines. Not that they had any choice, she realized. Besides, everyone was frightened; nobody knew what was going to happen to them. They were made to feel ashamed of being Japanese, and blamed for the heinous “yellow peril” attack on America. In response, the internees cooperated fully and followed orders as a way to prove their loyalty to the US. It wasn’t just the issei either—the older people who spoke Japanese among themselves. Even third- and fourth-generation Japanese like Kay—non-Japanese speakers who had never been out of America—seemed to have somehow inherited this shared passivity. Perhaps it wasn’t that exactly. Kay remembered Mrs Ishi sometimes using a Japanese phrase, shikata ga nai—it can’t be helped. It described the Japanese people’s ability to accept circumstances beyond their control and maintain dignity in the face of unavoidable tragedy or injustice. Kay wasn’t sure she really got it; perhaps, several generations removed, it had become too diluted in her blood.

  She saw how families in the camp clung together, finding solace and stability through the family union; it made her worry about Mrs Ishi, the nearest thing to family she knew. Sooner or later she too would be rounded up and sent to a camp somewhere to face the indignities and hardships alone. Kay couldn’t help thinking about the poor woman with the pillowcase over her head; she kept imagining how that could have been Mrs Ishi. It wasn’t—she saw the woman’s face later in the washroom—but the idea of Mrs Ishi being forced to suffer such humiliation was more than she could bear. Shikata ga nai could only go so far.

  Kay shook her head. “I’ve got to get out of here.” She was really talking out loud to herself, but a woman sitting on the ground nearby took up the conversation.

  “How?”
>
  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t escape. They’ll shoot you.”

  “People come and go all the time.”

  “You need a pass to get out of here. Anyhow, why would you want to escape? You know how you’ll be treated on the outside. It’s only going to get worse. At least you’re safe here.”

  “But for how long? We don’t know what they have planned for us.”

  “Where would you go? If you go home, they’ll find you. They’re gonna find you anyway. And even if you do get out, you’re in the middle of the goddamn desert. You’d have to walk for days to get to the nearest town—if there is one. You’d die of thirst. That’s why no one tries to escape. There ain’t nowhere to hide.”

  Kay folded her arms determinedly. “I know a place. If I can just get to it.”

  George sat alone at one of the tables in the Overland Diner. He was there more out of habit than anything else. No Effie or Residents to talk to and, more pertinent to his present needs, no food to eat. The donuts he’d found that morning behind the counter had a powdery coating of green mold on them. As for the coffee—that had all gone even before the last of the Residents had departed, whenever that was; he wasn’t entirely sure. On the first day of major hunger, he’d gone scavenging through the town and discovered a bag of peaches that someone had left on the tennis court. Later he found a real can of Hormel Ham among the dummy packaging in the window of Kaiser’s drugstore. The ham with the peaches was a surprisingly good combination: the saltiness of the meat, the sweetness of the fruit—he salivated, just thinking of it. The next day, despite promising himself that he wouldn’t, he ate both cans of Japanese sardines and the apple left in his fruit bowl at Lakeside Cottage. Now, with his rations all gone, he was running on empty.