Fast Backward Read online

“What?”

  “My name is Cocoa.”

  “That’s a new one on me.”

  “Not so new,” she says.

  “Where you come from.”

  “I come from here,” she says. “And there.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  More silence. But it won’t last. The sun peeks over the mountains, revealing in the distance a couple of familiar outbuildings and a familiar house. In a few minutes, when I bring this strange girl to the door of that house, we won’t be greeted with silence.

  THREE

  When I open the front door, I smell coffee and hear the grumble of the kitchen radio. Lolly, our yellow lab, pads down the hall and sticks his big muzzle in my crotch. I flinch. My boxer shorts don’t offer much protection against dog greetings. He and Cocoa size each other up.

  “Mom?” I call. I don’t want to walk in on her unannounced. She’s warmhearted and open-minded, but there’s a limit.

  “Your father’s still asleep, Bobby.” The words flow from the kitchen. We shuffle closer. Cocoa’s eyes are wide.

  “We have a visitor.”

  A chair scrapes. Slippers scuff across the linoleum. Cocoa shadows me as I step through the doorway. When Mom sees us, she freezes, dressed in a nightgown that’s longer than her faded housecoat. Her eyes are on Cocoa, her gaze unwavering.

  “This is my mom,” I say. “Dottie Hastings.”

  “Where did you come from, dearest?” Mom says.

  Cocoa doesn’t answer, but there’s a hint of a smile to match Mom’s.

  “She can’t explain it,” I say. “I found her out in the scrubland, standing by the side of the road.” I glance at Cocoa. “She wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

  Mom shifts her gaze to me, to my Navy-issue boxers. “You could’ve given her your shirt, Bobby.”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. My head was spinning.”

  Mom’s smile broadens. “I can understand that.”

  “I’m Cocoa,” Cocoa says. I realize that my nervousness has short-circuited my manners.

  “What a lovely name,” Mom says. She crosses the space between us and gives Cocoa a hug. She winces when she feels Cocoa’s bones through the canvas of my bag. Her fingers graze Cocoa’s wispy hair.

  “My mother found it.”

  “Found it?” I say.

  “On a box. In a dumpster.”

  “A dumpster?” Mom says. She leans back but maintains a grip on Cocoa’s spindly hands.

  “For garbage,” Cocoa says. “A garbage receptacle. Big enough to live in.” Cocoa’s accent leaks through, and Mom seems to notice. Her head tilts; her mouth opens.

  “She has no family,” I say.

  Mom stares at Cocoa’s blank expression. I’ve seen pictures of soldiers suffering from shellshock, from mistreatment in POW camps. Hers isn’t the same as theirs—there’s a stubborn light in her eyes—but it’s close.

  “How did you get here, honey? Who left you at the side of the road?”

  Cocoa and I have gone over some of this, but how could Mom not ask? Lolly plops down nearby.

  Cocoa shrugs an I don’t know. She’s discovered the newspaper in the carry bag, and hands it to me.

  “There was something else,” I say. “Something huge. Scary. Just before I got to the base.”

  “What was it, Bobby?” Mom asks. Both sets of eyes are on me.

  “A giant explosion. Lit up the whole sky and made its own weather—clouds and wind and heat and thunder.”

  Mom nods. “The sound woke me. I thought it was thunder.”

  “Did you see it, Cocoa?” I say.

  “I saw . . . something.”

  “The base is okay?” Mom asks me. “The men?” Her question carries extra urgency. Her kid brother is stationed there.

  “I didn’t see Uncle Pete, but everything’s normal. Except the whole camp was up. Excited. They witnessed something. Expected it. But it was far enough away that nobody got hurt.”

  “An extraordinary morning.” Mom shifts her gaze back to Cocoa. “But we can continue talking about it later. Right now, you could use a bath, sweetheart, and some real clothes. I have—”

  Mom glances at Cocoa’s body and then her own large chest and wide hips. “I might have something that won’t look like a tent on you. And I’ll dig through the things Bobby’s outgrown. Not glamorous, but they’ll do for now.”

  “Thank you,” Cocoa says.

  “Bobby, why don’t you get down that box of your clothes from the extra bedroom closet and put it on the bed. Then boil a dozen eggs. Cocoa and I are going to be occupied for a while.”

  She takes Cocoa’s arm and steers her toward the bedrooms and bathroom. Before I lose sight of them, Cocoa gives me a look of gratitude that’s clouded with emotion—uncertainty, wariness, bewilderment, loneliness, fear.

  They disappear, and I drop the Journal on the table and go to the extra bedroom, where I move the box of clothes to the bed, imagining Cocoa slipping into them. Then I go to my room to put on some jeans before heading out to the chicken coop with Lolly, always hopeful that I’ll toss him an egg.

  He was born hungry. When he was so new to our house that he was still nameless, he got into a bag of lollypops and ate every one, sticks and all, pretty much naming himself. Since then, we’ve mostly kept him away from candy, and eggs have become his favorite food.

  The hens have been busy. I gather up a baker’s dozen in no time and loft the thirteenth to Lolly, who wolfs it down. He licks his lips to clean up the last of the shiny yellow yolk and shows off his lover-boy pose—long grin, sweeping tail, brown liquid eyes. A familiar comfort on an otherwise unworldly morning.

  When I return to the kitchen I hear voices down the hall and the sound of running bathwater. I get the eggs on the stove and sit at the table to read the newspaper, which Dad calls his paper, even though he gets it free from me every day. But it’s hard to concentrate. The news—national, state, local, war, even sports—seems insignificant. Something happened this morning. Something is happening now, here, in my house.

  Dad wanders silently into the kitchen, startling me. Lolly gets up from under the table, gives him the nose-in-the-crotch greeting, and gets a head-scratching in return. Dad is still wearing his pajama bottoms—striped in faded black and white, like a prisoner’s—and an old white undershirt, tight across his chest. His forearms are like melons. He grew up on a farm, plowing fields and bucking hay and chopping wood and wrestling livestock, and he can still walk around our barnyard carrying a half-grown hog under each arm. Put a rifle in his hands and he’d put the fear of oblivion in any Nazi. But that won’t happen, thank God.

  His graying hair sticks out in three or four directions. His glasses ride low on his nose.

  “Who’s in the bathroom, Bobby?” He pats his abdomen in the general location of his bladder, signaling his need to pee. “I heard two voices. Your mother and—”

  I’m not sure how to answer. I haven’t yet explained it—her—to myself.

  “Go outside, Dad. The pigs won’t care.” And neither will our neighbors. The closest ones—the Unsers—are a half-mile away and old and mostly keep to themselves and probably couldn’t tell Dad’s weenie from a prickly cactus.

  “Thanks for the suggestion, but I can hold it. Who’s in there, though?”

  “A girl. Her name’s Cocoa. She was lost. Confused. I brought her home.”

  “Lost?”

  I tell him almost everything. I don’t tell him she was naked. The image might offend his Quaker sensibilities and make him worry about how much I saw, which was everything, although my own sensibilities aren’t offended.

  If he finds out, it will have to be from Mom.

  “Quite a morning, huh, Bobby?” Dad says when I’m done telling the story of the non-naked girl. He gets some coffee and sits. The cup looks like a plaything in his big hand.

  “That’s only half of it.” I go on to tell him about the explosion, the reaction on the base, how go
od it felt to get away from there.

  “The girl,” Dad says.

  “Cocoa.”

  “Yes, Cocoa. Do you think she was too close to the blast? That it disoriented her?”

  “Could be. But it was far beyond the base camp. And she wasn’t in that direction. I was homeward bound when I spotted her.”

  I imagine her near the explosion, being tossed in the air like a rag doll and flying over the base shedding clothes and landing unharmed—mostly—where I found her. But that’s ridiculous. This is real life, not a cartoon.

  “Maybe she’ll remember more after she has a bath and some rest,” Dad says.

  “She has to eat.” I remember the eggs. They’re boiling away, almost high and dry. I wonder how rubbery they’ll be. I fill the pan with cool water. “She’s got roadrunner legs,” I add, trying to prepare him. “She almost looks like one of those concentration camp people.”

  Dad shakes his head, glances at the front page of the Journal. “The world has turned ugly, Bobby. Madmen and sheep. Madmen and sheep. Where are the good shepherds?”

  FOUR

  By the time Mom and Cocoa return to the kitchen, Dad has put on khakis and a blue work shirt and is pretending to study the sports pages. Lolly is outside, looking for shade. I’m at the stove, stirring a saucepan full of Cream of Wheat. It will take more than boiled eggs to put some meat on this mystery girl.

  She looks better. Not normal, but better. Her hair is clean and mostly dry, no longer matted. Still short, of course, but it doesn’t look as sparse. She’s wearing a seventh-grade school shirt of mine, short-sleeved so her spaghetti arms show, and an old pair of my jeans, hiding her concentration-camp legs. I imagine what she’s wearing underneath.

  On her feet are some of Mom’s white bobby socks, no shoes.

  When Dad sees her, he lurches to his feet. He tries to keep his expression under control as Mom introduces them, but he’s got an expressive face and right now it’s concerned and sympathetic and curious and most of all stunned—even with the background I gave him.

  “Good to meet you, Cocoa,” he says, doing his best to sound breezy. “Dottie get you all fixed up?”

  She nods. “I left a ring of grime in your . . . bathtub, I am afraid.” She hesitates on bathtub, and I wonder if it’s the word or the object. Who doesn’t know what a bathtub is?

  “Gone in a jiffy while you were dressing, honey,” Mom says. “Anyway, with Bobby around here, we’re used to grime.”

  “Honest dirt from honest work,” I say, borrowing the expression Dad uses when he brings the filth and stink of the barnyard into the house and Mom banishes him to the bathroom.

  Dad gestures to a chair and Cocoa sits. “Should we call the sheriff?” he asks. “See if he can help locate Cocoa’s family?”

  Cocoa shakes her head.

  “She has no family,” Mom and I chorus. She and I carry dishes and utensils and eggs and Cream of Wheat and milk and sugar to the table.

  “No family,” Dad echoes, studying Cocoa’s face. “None?” He gets no help from her—a raised eyebrow, an apologetic half grin. He glances at me. I was once, briefly, in the no-family club. I see the questions in his eyes, but he’s considerate and patient and willing—if not happy—to wait for Cocoa’s story. “No need for the sheriff, then.”

  “This sheriff,” Cocoa says. “Is he influential in the government?”

  “The government?” Dad says.

  “Is he someone who can talk to your president?” she says. “The others? The Congress?”

  Dad stifles a laugh. “Sheriff Wally’s just a county cop, Cocoa. I doubt he’s ever been out of New Mexico.”

  “Do you know anyone else in the government?”

  “Why, honey?” Mom says.

  “I must talk to someone with influence; someone with connections.”

  “This family isn’t exactly in the good graces of the government,” Dad says. “And by family, I mean me.”

  Cocoa goes silent. We sit, and three sets of eyes watch as she raises a glass and drinks deeply, the milk trickling around the rim of the glass and down her chin in a way that makes me recall Leo’s French playing cards.

  I send that thought packing. She puts down her glass and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Mom hands her a napkin. “You must be hungry, Cocoa. Please start.”

  Still she hesitates. Her foreignness, her stick-figure body, whisper to me that she might not know how to eat, at least not this food with these utensils at this table with these people.

  I ladle a glop of Cream of Wheat into my bowl and add milk and sugar and raise a spoonful to my mouth and make contented sounds like I’m trying to encourage a baby to eat something disgusting from a jar. Dad catches on. He cracks a hardboiled egg on his plate and picks away the shell and takes a bite. It looks rubbery. Mom butters a piece of toast and munches away.

  Cocoa decides to follow my lead. A glop of Cream of Wheat. Milk and sugar. A tentative bite. A swallow. A smile. Then she gets serious, rapidly emptying her bowl. Her smell—shampoo and bath soap and laundry soap and mothballed air trapped in my outgrown clothes—sweetens the breakfast smells.

  She starts on the eggs. Unlike Lolly, she peels hers before wolfing them down. She grabs a piece of toast while Dad and I try not to gawk. Mom puts more bread in the toaster.

  “Mom’s brother Pete is in the government,” I tell Cocoa. “He’s in the Army. He works with some big shots. He could talk to them, maybe. If he had a reason.”

  “Pete doesn’t exactly work with them, Bobby,” Dad says. “He protects them. And whatever it is they’re doing.”

  “He knows them, though,” I say. “I’ve seen him talking to Dr. Bainbridge, and he runs the whole place.” I recall the morning sky coming alive with light and color. My eyes still sting.

  Mom returns with more toast. “Why do you need the government’s help, honey?” She’s as inquisitive as Dad but lacks his patience. “Does it have something to do with where you’re from? Did someone bring you here illegally? Against your will?”

  Cocoa shakes her head. “I am from here.” She sighs. “And not.”

  Mom and Dad exchange glances and then look at me, like I’d have a solution to the puzzle.

  “What?” Dad says to her.

  Cocoa taps her head. “Foggy.”

  We wait.

  “I think something—not someone—brought me here,” she says. “But my idea for how it happened is crazy. So maybe my brain has been injured.” Tears return, and Mom lays her hand over Cocoa’s. Instead of being appreciative, I decide it should be my hand there.

  “You don’t have to tell us now,” I say.

  “When you’re feeling up to it—” Dad begins.

  But Mom jumps in. “You might feel better if you talk about it, dear. We won’t judge or share your story with anyone unless you want us to.”

  Cocoa nibbles at a piece of toast. Then she puts it down and fingers her stomach like she’s overwhelmed it with something it’s not used to—food. “You could decide to return me to the desert, if you think I am mad.”

  “Never,” Mom says, squeezing Cocoa’s hand.

  “We kept Bobby,” Dad says.

  Cocoa almost giggles, and then shakes her head. “When my thoughts are less tangled, we will talk.”

  “We’re not in a hurry,” I say. Dad and Mom hold their tongues.

  Cocoa studies Dad’s weathered face. “How many years do you have, Mr. Hastings?”

  “It’s Chuck,” Dad says. “And what do you mean, Cocoa? How many more years I’m going to be around?”

  Cocoa smiles. “I know you do not have a crystal ball.”

  I decide to interpret. “She wants to know how many years you’ve been around.”

  “Much easier,” Dad says. “I’m forty-five.”

  Cocoa whistles. “I have never known anyone with forty-five years,” she says. Again, Mom and Dad exchange looks and eye me.

  “But you are still handsome . . . Ch
uck,” Cocoa says. Dad’s already ruddy complexion gets a shade redder. “For someone with forty-five years, you look good.”

  Mom’s enjoying Dad’s embarrassment. She’s six years younger and fond of reminding him of the difference. “And you, Cocoa?” she says. “How many years do you have?”

  “According to my mother, I had seven years at the time she died. So now I have . . . now I have sixteen.”

  “Sorry,” Mom and Dad say.

  “I have almost sixteen,” I say.

  “We’re sorry about your mother,” Mom clarifies, ignoring me.

  Dad glances at the wall calendar—July, with a picture of a beach scene. Surf and sand and people and umbrellas. “Nine more months, Bobby,” Dad says.

  “She has no family,” I remind my parents, hoping to move past the topic of my age.

  Cocoa’s gaze settles on Mom’s face. “You also look good, Dottie,” she says, and then glances down at her own body and limbs, all narrowness and angles under the baggy clothes. “And then there is me.”

  What I want to say is, What about me? My parents look good—for their years, anyway—and you don’t look so good—except in my eyes. But what do you think of me, Cocoa?

  FIVE

  Lolly bangs his nose against the screen door and whimpers, signaling the end of breakfast. But Mom has one more thing to say to Cocoa as Dad and I start carrying dishes to the sink.

  “I’m going to ask the doctor to come here, sweetheart. I won’t be revealing any secrets when I tell you that you’re as skinny as a fencepost and not very strong and your color isn’t so good. Before he arrives, you should take a nap. Sleep cures many an ill, my mother used to say.”

  “Grandma?” I let Lolly in. “Grandma never slept.”

  “Up late every night,” Dad says. “Reading her mysteries, smoking her Chesterfields, drinking her Jim Beam.”

  “Not until after my dad died,” Mom says. “Besides, all that’s got nothing to do with Cocoa. Look at the darkness under her eyes. If my mother had followed her own advice, she’d still be around.” Mom gets teary, so Dad and I back off.

  “A doctor,” Cocoa says, pronouncing the word slowly, as if it’s foreign, and it probably is, to her. But she said she’s from here. And not? The day continues to make no sense. “I am okay with seeing a doctor.”