Читать книгу We Live Forever - PMH Atwater - Страница 9

“Nothing in life is to be feared, only understood.”

—Madame Marie Curie

I walked the path of death as a youngster, and it terrified me so much that it imprinted all the years that followed. Knowing about what happened then, as well as a few other incidents that occurred later on, will help you to understand why death came to overshadow my life.

Pearl Harbor. Two words that even now bring back vivid memories of people screaming and crying, in the house where I lived and outside on the streets. It’s as though the bombs were dropped in our own neighborhood; that’s the impact that one event had on my world.

Rationing, air raid drills, collecting metal, and victory gardens were the order of the day. Grocery stores had sparsely filled shelves but boasted large tables and vats at the ready in case you had enough produce from your garden to can. Along with paying for the items you wanted to purchase at the checkout stand, you also paid for any tin you used in canning. My mother and I sometimes walked to the local library where, in the basement, women gathered to roll bandages for the troops. My job was making Q-Tips. I wasn’t very good at it.

Every morning I passed signs of death on my way to school. At that time if anyone in your family died in the war effort, you placed a large decal of a gold star in your living-room window. I knew what those gold stars meant. Once I passed a house where six new gold stars had been added overnight. I just stood there sobbing. I do not recall a single morning in my entire first-grade experience that wasn’t spent quieting my sobs and shudders and feigning bravery as I walked into my classroom.

After that, I could never understand why teachers used gold stars to reward good behavior or a job well done. To me, gold stars were a symbol of death and horror and loved ones who never came home to their families. Because of this association, I grew up avoiding anything that might entitle me to a reward. I didn’t make peace with gold until I was in my late fifties; I couldn’t even wear the stuff until I turned sixty.

I was in the third grade when my mother finally found the right man and settled down. Our house was near the lip of Rock Creek Canyon, south of Twin Falls. Mostly we raised, canned, or froze our own food, including meat. My job was the chicken coop; I gathered eggs and removed the carcass of any hen who died overnight. I’d go screaming into the house, completely undone at the trauma of picking up a dead chicken, only to have its guts spew out in a flood of maggot-thick fluid. Mother would say, “Clean it up. That’s your job.” We lost a lot of chickens and other animals, too. I grew tired of screaming about this, no one paid much attention to me anyway, so I decided to learn everything I could about life’s specter. It wasn’t long before I found myself sitting, front row and center, in the most incredible classroom imaginable: my second home, the police station. My mother had married a police officer.

I spent many hours waiting around inside the police station for my new father to take a coffee break so that I could hop a ride home in the squad car. If a call came through while I was with him, I’d have to go along, too, and with strict orders for my behavior: “Don’t move, keep your mouth shut, and never tell anyone what you see.” I pretty much did what I was told, except for one time when I passed on some information to a cousin who blabbed the story all over the school. Needless to say, I never again mentioned police business after that.

When I was young, television hadn’t been invented, so my view screen on the verities and extremes of life was the squad car windshield. I saw a lot, from the more basic scenes of ongoing investigations to the complexities of muggings, attempted murders, beatings, animals run amuck, drunken parties, and the like. Especially during night calls, I’d be utterly transfixed. Since my role was to be invisible, I became the consummate observer, soaking in everything: how people used their bodies, what they said, their expressions, interactions among people, specific movements and what resulted from them.

This early exposure fed my insatiable curiosity. Sometimes during long waits I’d even sneak a peek through the keyhole of the interrogation room. When that wasn’t enough, I’d stick my ear to the keyhole. Repeatedly I heard victims telling detectives things like: “I just knew if I turned that corner something awful would happen to me”; or “I had a feeling not to trust that guy.” Premonitions, dreams, feelings, almost everyone knew in advance what might happen to him or her if one did this or that. And that puzzled me. Why, I wondered, did people go ahead and do the things they already knew would harm them? Eventually I concluded that all adults were stupid and I never wanted to become one when I grew up.

Such notions were drilled out of my head by my father who had a peculiar way of raising me. We’d go shopping in the five-and-dime stores on Main Street (either Newberry’s or Woolworth’s) and I, like any kid, would be agog at all the glitter. In those days, most of the counter space was single level and covered with glass. Stacked shelving, what there was of it, was located in the back of the store. The “M.O.” (mode of operation) was always the same. Dad would grab me by the shoulders, twirl me around, look at me straight in the eyes, and ask about a passerby: “What was the color of the hair, was it parted, any glasses, describe the face, how about the clothes, any belt, purse, how about the shoes, socks, any wristwatch, what else can you tell me?” We’d cross the intersection of Main and Shoshone Streets, and Dad would do it again. Same checklist. This continued off and on for three years. I got to the point where I was always staring, never knowing when I would be tested again. Decades later Dad claimed it was all a game. Well, it wasn’t a game to me. I swear the man was trying to raise the world’s most perfect witness.

As you can see, the groundwork was laid early on for me to launch search-and-investigative missions just for my own edification. Adults insisted on silent obedience, but I wanted to know things, so I reached out and probed, examined, studied, and experienced. The more I did this, the further away from “the established order” I moved and the closer I came to uncovering what haunted me as a child.