The Cassandra Read online

  I swallowed, hard, realizing how this could very well be true: Hitler would win, and even more innocents would perish wretched, sinister deaths at his hand.

  But then a voice in my head, the voice of the heron, said resolutely, No.

  “He won’t win,” I said, but there was no cheerfulness in my tone.

  Dr. Hall smiled. “That’s the spirit. I have no doubt you’re right. Keep in mind, we’re trying to save people, not hurt them.”

  I paused, then said, “The people I saw weren’t from here. They were foreigners and—”

  “We’re saving the whole world, Miss Groves, yes, that’s true.”

  He would disregard my every word, I realized. I grew light with the familiar ghoulishness of rejection.

  “I’ll get your coffee,” I said, turning for the door.

  In the hallway to the break room I slowed. A crowd of men gathered there, pointing at the ground and laughing.

  “Mildred,” one of them said. “Come see this. A bird flew in through the shipment door.”

  I came forward, sensing what I would see before I saw it: the bird hopping on the ground, its wing sagging plaintively behind it. The bird tried to rise, tried to rise, failed.

  It was the yellow-breasted meadowlark I’d seen in Tom Cat’s rib cage.

  “Pretty little thing,” someone said. “What kind of bird is that?”

  “A western meadowlark,” I said. “They sing beautifully.”

  “The bird knows her birds,” someone joked.

  “My dad,” I said hollowly. “He loved the outdoors.”

  “Someone put it out of its misery, please,” someone said. “It’s pathetic.”

  A man came forward, raising his large black boot. The shadow fell cruelly over the bird and it stilled, perhaps sensing the doom at hand. The boot dropped and stomped and some of the men cheered. Only one of them turned away, holding a hand to his mouth as though he might be sick. I met his eye and frowned. It was the man who had dragged me from the river. He recognized me but didn’t say hello.

  I started to walk away when one of the men called me back.

  “Clean this up for us, would you, doll? We gotta get back to work.”

  I went to collect the mop from the janitor’s closet and filled a bucket of soapy water. I tried to clean up the meadowlark without looking at it, but the gore was inescapable.

  When I finally returned empty-handed to Dr. Hall’s office, he asked me what in Sam Hill I’d done with his coffee.

  I returned to the hallway. It gleamed now, the gruesome mortality wiped clean. I tried to forget about the meadowlark, about Tom Cat. But there was a small granule of excitement planted inside of me, and it glowed in my gut like a jewel.

  It hadn’t happened to me quite like this before, a vision so immediately manifesting itself in this way, as if I hadn’t merely envisioned the meadowlark but given birth to her. I was troubled by the fate of the meadowlark, of course, and what this might mean for Tom Cat, for myself, but I was also galvanized.

  I didn’t want to grow vain about my power, but I thrummed with it.

  THE GREEN NIGHTGOWN

  When I finished my typing, I dusted the shelves of Dr. Hall’s office and straightened his desk and my own small table. Now and again I glanced through the viewing window into the control room. Three men worked there, sitting dutifully before the labyrinth of control panels, checking their watches, preparing to hit a button or turn a dial at just the precise moment. I wasn’t friendly with any of the men, but I picked out my favorites from afar. The best of them was a man with a large brow and a bashful demeanor. When he wasn’t working, he read paperback books. He was nearly as big as Gordon but you could tell he wished to take up less space, and I liked that about him.

  Gordon worked in the unit core and the valve pit room. He told me that he usually wore a bodysuit and heavy gloves and boots, and when he handled the “metal,” as they called it, he wore a respiratory mask that made him look like a mad insect. It’s true that when I finally saw the men in their gear, passing them in the hallway as I delivered mail or searched for fresh typewriter ink, they no longer seemed human. They were lonely ghost-like creatures with the terrifying magnified faces of dragonflies. I could only guess what would happen to them if they didn’t dress in such constricting garb. There was imminent danger in what was referred to as the product. I wondered what the product looked like. In my dreams it was a green glowing orb with golden eyes and sharp teeth. It spun and hummed, waiting. I mentioned the product to no one, not even to Beth. I wanted to tell her more than anyone else, but I took what Dr. Hall said to me very seriously: Secrecy was paramount.

  A few more men entered the control room now, saddling up to their stations in large wooden chairs. These boys were young, fresh from high school. Their smooth-shaven faces reminded me of the Omak boys who rarely spoke to me in school. Most of those boys had been sent overseas, and I wondered what was wrong with these young men in Unit B, that they weren’t drafted. Myopia, weakness, femininity. I liked the idea that these were gentler beings, that they might make kind husbands and doting fathers, even if they didn’t look like Richard Quine. Surely these boys would be kinder than the ones back home.

  Those silly boys, I thought, standing there in the physicist’s office, ignoring the terrible pain in my feet, my mother’s shoes too tight and pinching. Those Omak boys called me spinster, even back then. They didn’t realize, of course, that I would become a great lady one day, married to a good, kind man from Hanford.

  When we return to Omak with our darling first child, I’ll be sure to be kind to all of those immature boys, to show them how I don’t take things too badly.

  I refused to be like my mother or like Martha, who believed too deeply in the strong grudge.

  I was one of the few women in the building, and a woman of any sort, even a woman as plain and shy as I was, caught their attention. They waved at me if they caught me gazing, and I responded with a lifted hand and a warm smile. But they didn’t come to speak to me, not in the office and not in line to clock in, and I wondered if this was because of Gordon, who stood beside me like a sentry, his big chest as rigid and intimidating as a Clydesdale’s. He put me on edge. He criticized what I wore and teased me relentlessly. He sometimes poked his finger into my waist and laughed, saying I was as soft as a sugared doughnut. Once Tom Cat noticed my discomfort and asked Gordon to lay off. Gordon responded by calling Tom Cat a meddling twit. He punched my defender in the shoulder, causing Tom Cat to take a few steps backward and embarrass me with his pained expression.

  I told Beth about how uncomfortable Gordon made me, and she formed a sort of fortress around me whenever he approached.

  Around Beth, Gordon behaved differently. He was quiet and observational, and if he did utter something crude, he shrank beneath her disapproving gaze and apologized quickly. He was an untamed sheepdog who benefited from a more disciplined owner, and I never managed to take up the whip with him. All I could do was ignore him. But I felt safe with Beth and Tom Cat nearby, and I tried to never go anywhere that Gordon might be without one or both of them at hand. Tom Cat, it became clear, had feelings for me, and I imagined that maybe I had feelings for him, too. How would I know? What did having feelings even mean? I tried to think of myself as falling in love. I knew Tom Cat would be a hard worker and a kind man to live with for the rest of my days, but the bloodied meadowlark returned to me, flashing its panicked yellow breast, beating its good wing against the glass bars of Tom Cat’s rib cage. Maybe that, in itself, was what love felt like.

  One evening during dinner I grew queasy. Beth and the others wanted to go to the beer hall, and I told them to go ahead without me. I wanted nothing more than to have a bicarbonate of soda and lie down until the tension in my stomach waned. Beth offered to walk me back to the barracks but I refused; I worried I might get sick en route and it terrified me to have a witness. I hurried off into the dusty wind of the gloaming.

  This was my favorite time of d
ay here, when the circle of the sun dropped behind the mountains, spikes of light tailing behind it, washing Rattlesnake Mountain and White Bluffs in a garland of pastels, daylily and periwinkle and gladiolus. The wind was eager but not so much that I couldn’t enjoy the view. The air smelled cleanly of rime and sage. Christmas was only a week away. I pulled my old sweater and coat closer around me and ambled along the frost-stitched earth. The mess halls emptied and the beer halls filled up, one building for the whites and another for the coloreds. The thought of beer disgusted me. My stomach churned and I slowed, willing myself not to get sick on the frozen sagebrush. As I moved, my muscles loosened: I began to feel better. The fresh night air was the best tonic.

  Along the perimeter of the women’s barracks, a group of men were finishing up their work for the day. Tall poles shot into the air as high as ponderosa pines.

  “What’s all this?” I asked.

  A man wearing cowhide gloves spooled a length of barbed wire. He continued his work but answered me in a friendly-enough tone. “We’ve had some events here. This is for your protection. We dug the holes before the ground froze too much. Now it’s just a matter of getting these wires stretched. Should be fairly quick now.”

  I’d seen them out here digging in the last few days, but I’d assumed it was for more latrines, more barracks. There were so many of us.

  “Events? Like what?”

  I marveled at the height and breadth of the fence, of the ferocity of its barbs.

  The man shook his head. “I’d rather not say. It’s upsetting.”

  “Murder?” I asked.

  All of the men laughed now, shaking their heads.

  “Nothing like that,” the man said. “The girl who was hurt is fine enough now. They’ve spoken to the guy about it. He’s sorry and all.”

  “But what—”

  A sharp whistle came from behind me and I turned to see Gordon there with his handsome wolfish face. He wore only a buttoned-up shirt and no coat, but he seemed perfectly comfortable despite the stinging chill.

  “Trying to keep us out, are you?” he joked to the men, and they laughed and joked in return that they were doing their best.

  “If a man wants a woman badly enough,” one of them said, and then trailed off with a chuckle.

  “She shouldn’t be walking out here alone at night,” another man said to Gordon, thumbing at me.

  “I know. Her friend sent me to fetch her home.”

  “Beth?” I said, incredulous.

  He winked an affirmation.

  It surprised and frustrated me that Beth would do such a thing. It was not like her to entrust someone else with my safety.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

  “Nonsense,” Gordon said. “All women are dames in distress.”

  It bothered me how handsome he was, how sharp-jawed and strong. His lips curled upward, cruel and inviting. For a moment I was Susan Peters, standing before my life’s love. I wanted to throw my arms around him and admit to him, yes, I was always in distress, I need someone, anyone, really, to take care of me, but then his face turned to the side and there was the coyote in his aquiline profile, and I turned away, half-jogging for my barrack.

  On all sides the night sky deepened and thickened, souped with stars. To the east the cliffs of White Bluff rose like knives from the dirt. The women’s barracks, rickety, makeshift, sat lonely in the dim light like so many discarded matchboxes, mostly emptied except for girls like me, the unfortunate ones who didn’t feel well, the timid ones with shaky nerves. Far away I heard the music of the beer halls. Their throbbing sound magnified my loneliness.

  Gordon fell into step beside me, menacing in his silence.

  When I reached the door of the barrack I turned to him and offered my hand. “Thanks, I guess,” I said.

  “You guess?” He ignored my hand and pushed past me through the door.

  “You’re not allowed here,” I said.

  A girl, lounging on her cot with a book, screeched. She was in her bathrobe and curlers. She jumped to her feet, scolding me. “You can’t bring your boyfriends here.”

  “He’s not a boyfriend,” I said.

  “Cool your jets, doll,” Gordon said to her, and he began poking around the room.

  The girl watched us sullenly for a moment before leaving the building entirely, either for the neighboring barrack, where she could complain about us to the women there, or for the cold toilets a quarter mile away.

  “You need to go,” I told Gordon when she’d gone.

  “You girls keep this place so neat. No wonder we hire you to make our beds.”

  “You’re grown men now,” I said. “You should make them yourselves.”

  “I’d pay you a tenner to fluff my pillow now and again,” Gordon said, and laughed loudly at his own joke.

  I loathed the sight of his teeth, yellow from too much coffee and hard and dull as river rock.

  “Bethesda’s?” He pointed to the cot next to my own.

  Beth had placed a photo of herself with her dead husband on the small dresser beside the bed. The photo captured all of her beauty, her wavy hair and long neck and generous, happy eyes. The dead husband was featureless beside her, already turned into a shapeless ghost by her very vitality.

  Gordon picked up the photo and studied it for a moment before laying it facedown on the little dresser. “He seems like a twit,” he said.

  “You need to leave. You’ll get me in trouble.”

  He opened up a drawer in Beth’s dresser and smirked, fishing around with his enormous hands.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  I stood beside him and pushed at him, trying to move him away.

  He captured a shining rayon garment. He brought it up to his face, sniffing it deeply. I recognized it as her green bias-cut nightgown, a flattering shape I’d been so envious of when she’d worn it to bed on our first night here.

  “This will do,” he said, grinning, and then he bid me good night.

  “Bring that back!” I shouted after him, but he waved his hand dismissively over his shoulder.

  Overwhelmed with my powerlessness, I called after him, pathetically, “Good riddance!”

  I readied for bed, finished by tying the bell onto my ankle, uncertain of whether or not I should tell Beth what he’d done. The woman with the book returned. She looked at me spitefully but I didn’t care. I was just happy to be in bed, warm and aching beneath the blankets. Sleep folded me inside and out, there, then not.

  I awoke later to Beth undressing and putting on her flannel nightgown. The returning crowd had snapped on all of the lights.

  “Go back to sleep, Milly,” she said to me. “We didn’t mean to wake you.”

  I squinted at her, my eyes adjusting. Other bodies rustled nearby, settling into their cots. The room smelled of perfume and beer.

  Beth scurried into bed, shivering, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.

  “How was your night?” she whispered.

  “I slept,” I said.

  “Your stomach?”

  “Better now.”

  “Too many doughnuts for breakfast,” she giggled, and I smiled.

  Someone flicked off the lights again and the room flattened.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I told her.

  She reached her hand out across the gap between our beds and I did the same. We squeezed each other’s fingers, mine toasty warm and hers like a bouquet of slender icicles. I willed my warmth into her body. I hated to think of her being cold.

  “Sweet Milly,” she sighed sleepily. “Are you wearing the bell?”

  “Kind Beth,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

  I didn’t mention the pilfered nightgown. I was ashamed I hadn’t been able to stop him.

  And I didn’t want her to think that Gordon and I had been alone in the barracks, that there was something happening between us. Or maybe I didn’t want her to laugh at me. Mildred as Gordon’s lover! How ridiculous!
>
  The secrecy kept me safe from her disapproval. I was a selfish, horrible person, just like Mother and Martha always said I was.

  “I love you,” she murmured, and I told her the same.

  I released her hand then and turned onto my side, the bell on my ankle jingling faintly.

  SAVE ME FROM THESE CRETINS

  I took the bus to Richland on Sunday, our only day off, missing the church service but wanting to phone Mother. I told the operator, “Okanogan 8-1521, please,” and I put in my pennies and waited while she patched me over. The phone rang for a long time, a surprise to me knowing how nosy all of the neighbors were on the party line, but everyone was at church, I supposed; Mother usually stayed home for one reason or another. Finally the phone lifted and I heard Mother’s labored breathing. I wanted to say hello but I didn’t. I just listened to her and closed my eyes, and for a moment I was back in Omak, next to her bed, reading Heidi to her, her favorite book, in a rare peaceful moment of togetherness.

  “If this is Angel’s boy,” she retorted, “I’ll let you know you’re in hot water for marrying that Indian. You broke your poor mom’s heart. She won’t speak with you.”

  “Mother,” I said. There was a moment’s silence. I put my palm against the wood of the phone booth and my skin came away sticky with the unknown.

  “Mother, darling. It’s me, Mildred.”

  “I know who it is, Ferret Brain. Don’t condescend me.”

  I squinted into the bright light of the road, the new, pretty buildings constructed by the government, the families in their finery hurrying along the sidewalk to worship. I thought it would be nice to leave the barracks and come here one day, to live in a real town by myself in a little house all my own. Husband first. Then house. Then children. Things I’d been told to desire my whole life. A mother yanked on her son’s hand not far from where I stood in the phone booth, her tone tense and disapproving. The poor child. I’d be so much more gentle with that little boy. I’d buy him an ice cream cone from the drugstore; I’d let him choose whatever toy he wanted.