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Authors: Noëlle Sickels

The Medium (32 page)

BOOK: The Medium
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“A correction, Miss Schneider,” said Captain Fitzpatrick. “This all started because you demonstrated that you knew things that you shouldn't have known.”
“Things I shouldn't have known?”
“How and where certain soldiers died. When a certain ship sank.”
“But I told you—”
“Yes, we know: the spirits.”
Now it was Captain Fitzpatrick's turn to go to the drawer in the table and pull something out. This time it was a thick sheaf of papers tied with a black ribbon. The automatic writings from Helen's boys. The instant she saw them, she put out her hand for them. Major Levy stepped forward. Fitzpatrick gave the papers to him.
“Tell us about these,” he said in a suspiciously gentle voice.
Helen lowered her hand.
“Haven't you read them?” she said.
“Yes, we have. The captain thinks they're stories you pieced together out of newspaper accounts and flights of fancy, to use in your seances with gullible parents and wives of servicemen.”
“What do
you
think?” Helen knew Levy outranked Fitzpatrick. She thought he also might have a more open mind, if only because he seemed honestly curious.
“I think that whether you made them up or not, they
sound
true.”
 
Helen clasped her hands tightly together in her lap.
“They
are
true,” she said.
“And you received this information how, exactly?”
“From the spirits,” Captain Fitzpatrick interrupted.
“That's right,” Helen said, ignoring his mocking tone. “Those boys came to me, unasked. I wrote down everything they said, and I didn't put in one word that wasn't theirs.”
“Why would they do that?” Levy said. “Come to you and tell these incredible stories?”
“I didn't ask them why.”
“Do you usually write down your … spirit communications?”
“Not usually. They wanted me to.”
“Again, Miss Schneider, one has to wonder why.” He turned to put the papers down on the table, then turned back to face her. “Quite apart, of course, from wondering if any such appearances really did—or ever could—occur.”
So, curious or not, the major had limitations on how far he'd go.
“All right, Captain,” he said, “I think we're through for the time being.”
The captain began stacking the papers and maps.
“What's going to happen to me?” Helen asked, getting up. It felt good to be on her feet rather than craning her neck up to look into the faces of the standing men.
“Your family will be here shortly to visit you,” said the major. “They've been advised to bring you a few personal items. Later this afternoon, you'll be sent to Camp Seagoville by train.”
“Seagoville? Where's that?”
“In Texas.”
“Texas!”
“It can't be helped. Seagoville's the only long-term facility for single women.”
“But how long will I be there?”
“That depends. We'd like to have some more discussions with you.”
“Why can't I stay here?”
Major Levy caught the eye of Captain Fitzpatrick, who had finished gathering the papers and was standing near the door.
“She's almost as inquisitive as we are, isn't she, Fitz?”
“Miss Schneider,” the captain explained, “Ellis Island is a transit facility. The people here are awaiting deportation or repatriation.”
“But don't I get a hearing?”
“You can put in to the Justice Department for a hearing at Seagoville if you like,” Major Levy said. “But you don't get to ask questions of a Hearing Board.”
Captain Fitzpatrick opened the door and went out into the hall, where he waited for his cohort.
“There are no locks here, Miss Schneider,” Major Levy said. “You're free to go to the main hall or the library, or to walk in the compound outside.”
Free, Helen thought miserably. That's a joke. It struck her that an island made a perfect prison. Levy gave her a curt farewell nod.
“Major,” she said, staying him. “I still don't know what it is you suspect me of.”
“Why, Miss Schneider,” he said, his strange and coldly beautiful smile materializing again, “we suspect you of exactly what you claim for yourself: that you have access to knowledge beyond the grasp of most people. And in this war, we can't afford
to ignore any possible advantage, however farfetched, now can we?”
Helen was too flabbergasted to respond. The major exited the room. Helen heard the receding clicks of the men's shoes against the hallway's cement floor, and then, through the open window, the screech of a sea gull.
Helen was on the train to Seagoville for three days, in the custody of a Border Patrol agent. She let Helen roam the train freely, but whenever they neared a station, Helen had to return immediately to her assigned seat, with the agent beside her. They'd been handcuffed together from the time they stepped off the ferry from Ellis Island to the moment the train pulled out of Grand Central Station, and the woman said she wouldn't hesitate to use the handcuffs again if Helen wasn't in her place every time the train arrived at a stop.
Miss Pierce wasn't a cruel person, as far as Helen could tell, only a very conscientious one. Not that she got to know her very well. They dined separately. They didn't converse beyond small talk about the passing countryside. Miss Pierce reminded Helen of her high school gym teacher. She had the same no-nonsense air, the same earnest attachment to the rules of the game. But when they were walking down the crowded Manhattan sidewalks and through bustling Grand Central, she'd hidden the fact of the handcuffs by linking elbows with Helen and laying a sweater over their manacled wrists so that they looked like two chums connected by affection, not law, thus sparing Helen deep embarrassment. She hadn't had to do that, and Helen was grateful to her for it.
Seagoville looked more like a college campus than a prison, though before the war it had been a federal reformatory for women. Six two-story, colonial-style red brick buildings connected
by paved walkways framed a grassy quadrangle. These buildings were where most of the camp's 700 internees lived. There were also sixty pre-fab wooden “victory huts” assigned to married couples, with and without children. Other brick buildings housed a library, a beauty shop and a barber shop, a hospital, the power plant and maintenance shop, and storehouses for food and household items. But the collegiate grounds were fenced, with a white line marking a “kill zone” ten feet in from the fence, and armed guards patrolled the perimeter on horseback.
The first thing Helen was asked when she arrived was what language she spoke. She was surprised to learn that the majority of Seagoville's internees had been brought there from Central and South America, and many of them spoke only German and Spanish or Japanese and Spanish. The Italians were long gone, Italy having surrendered in the autumn of 1943. It was the German army fighting the Allies on Italian soil. But on June 4th, while Helen was still on the train, the Allies had at last entered Rome.
An English-speaking Panamanian woman was appointed to show Helen around. Marta was a voluntary internee. Her husband, a German national, was interned at Camp Stringtown in Oklahoma.
“He's coming soon,” Marta told Helen as they walked across the lawn. “Then I shall move to the colony.”
“The colony?”
Marta pointed to the group of “victory huts” and their mess hall.
“You have a husband in another camp?” she asked.
“No.”
“You won't have to be waiting, then,” she said. “The waiting is hard. Also the not knowing what is our future. That you will have.”
Helen's negative reply seemed to have doused any remaining curiosity Marta had. She didn't venture more questions.
They entered one of the brick residences. Marta took Helen through the dining room, which was furnished with tables set for four, and into the kitchen.
“We make our own crews for the dining room and for cooking,” Marta explained. “They bring the food and we prepare it. We can make requests.”
“Oh?”
“Of course. You can't expect us to eat the same as the Japanese,” Marta said.
As they proceeded along the hall of the dormitory upstairs, Helen glanced into several rooms whose doors stood open. They were all identically equipped with one or two twin beds, a dresser, a desk, and a washstand. She spotted some individual touches—a few books stacked on the floor beside a bed; a flower in a vase; a large, framed photo of Adolf Hitler on a wall. When they arrived at her room, Helen was relieved to find she'd been given a single. She set down the satchel her mother had brought to Ellis Island.
Marta lingered in the doorway, counting silently on her fingers. Helen supposed she was checking that she'd covered everything she was supposed to.
“We have tennis and ballet, sewing machines, and more things,” Marta said. “You can go to the recreation building to ask. You remember which one?”
Helen didn't remember, but she nodded anyway, hoping Marta would leave. Now that she was in her room—she was tempted to call it a cell, but that would only make her feel worse—she yearned to be alone.
“The Quakers come sometimes with music and lectures.” Marta spoke staring at the ceiling, concentrating on her recitation. “There's jobs, too, but they can't force you to work. Ten
cents an hour. We get three-fifty a month clothing allowance. All in scrip. So we can't save up to bribe nobody.”
Marta lowered her eyes from the ceiling.
“Herr Stangl is the Speaker for the Germans to Dr. Stannard,” she continued. “But if you want to complain about anything, see Herr Wiedemann in our building. He is who we elected to the Council. He was a Bund official. Very strong man.”
Helen nodded again. She'd briefly met Dr. Stannard, the camp commander, that morning. The woman had struck Helen as patient and respectful, which was close enough to kindness in a place like this.
Finally, Marta left, promising to return the next day with Helen's slot on one of the meal crews. Helen immediately closed the door and sat down on the bed.
She took Lloyd's letter from her skirt pocket. She'd had to let someone in Dr. Stannard's office read it, but it had been returned to her uncensored. She'd already read it during the train journey, so censorship now would have been pointless, but she was glad nevertheless that none of it had been blacked out. It would have been painful to see it defaced. In the past few days, the letter had come to stand for all the sustaining connections in Helen's life—Lloyd, because he'd written it, and her family, because they'd had the consideration to bring the letter to her on Ellis Island, and even Rosie, because it was through the conversation with Rosie about Billy that Helen had decided to hold the series of seances that had led her to Major Fitzpatrick's office and ultimately landed her here.
She unfolded the letter. What a strange twist, she thought. In his letter, Lloyd had struck the pose of an explorer writing of a new world to someone secure at home. Yet here she was in a setting as novel and challenging, in its own way, as the one he was describing.
Lloyd was learning how to maneuver through the buildings and grounds of the hospital and through the streets, buses, and taverns of Phoenixville, probing and pushing against the limits of his blindness and against self-doubt. Helen, too, had involuntarily entered a kind of darkness, but in her darkness there were neither guideposts nor guides, Marta and Herr Weidemann notwithstanding. Lloyd had helpers and teachers. She had interrogators. The Army was trying to expand Lloyd's freedom. The same Army had fettered her.
Helen smoothed the letter flat on the desk. Most of it was typed, Lloyd having dictated it to a Gray Lady, but the final paragraph was in pencil. The handwriting had the unsteady, careful quality of a child's script, displaying an obvious effort at control. He explained, in the dictated section, that to write by hand he had to place a piece of corrugated cardboard under the letter paper and use the ridges of the cardboard to keep his lines straight. As he wrote, he followed the tip of the pencil with his left index finger, and when he finished a word, he moved his finger to the other side of the pencil point to create even spaces between words. It sounded like a laborious process.
Lloyd conceded he'd need to learn to write and read Braille. At first, he'd decided against it. He had enough else to master, he reasoned, and would simply rely on getting through that aspect of life by listening to talking books and getting people to take his dictation. But then he'd met a young amputee who was learning to read Braille with the stump of his wrist and another veteran who was using the tip of his tongue, so Lloyd figured he could and would do it, too.
The typed segment of the letter was full of stories like that. How you could tell if a lamp needed to be turned off by feeling if the light bulb was hot. How following a rubber mat in the mess hall with the edge of your foot led you to where you picked up utensils and food and where you dumped your garbage. He
went on at length about his new plastic eye and how much better it was than old-fashioned glass eyes—lighter in weight, unbreakable, able to move from side to side, more natural-looking and better fitting. Helen couldn't help but feel queasy at Lloyd's pleased declaration that he could smooth away any irritations with a nail file.
She skipped to the hand-written postscript, which was phrased like a telegram, probably because of the concentration required to shape every word.
Am going to Avon early. Bunch of new guys coming here need beds. Grapevine says Avon tough as nails. Hope I'm ready. Still working on how to hold a cane. But can light a cigarette. Will show off when I see you again. Miss showing off. Too many champs here. Kidding. Regards, L.
Helen wondered if Lloyd had left Valley Forge yet. She didn't know his new address, but if she wrote to Old Farms Convalescent Hospital in Avon, Connecticut, her letter would likely make it to him. But what should she say? She could tell Lloyd where she was, but not why. Would he think that the simple fact of her detention meant she must be guilty of something? Hadn't she herself once thought as much of Erich?
What she wanted to tell Lloyd was how she was feeling—confused, fearful, lonely. She had downplayed these feelings in front of her family. They were already worried enough. Her father had sworn to take every legal recourse to get her released. There'd been several successful court cases where German-Americans had protested orders from the Army that they move out of their homes and jobs in restricted military zones. Helen's wasn't an exclusion case, but Walter held up these examples as evidence that her plight wasn't hopeless. Helen had acted more reassured than she was.
She would go tomorrow, she resolved, to Dr. Stannard's office
and inquire when she could expect to be questioned again. Major Levy had said she would be. The sooner that happened, the sooner she'd know what was going on. Then she'd write to Lloyd.
Helen had spent many hours on the train going over her interview on Ellis Island. She'd become convinced that though her battle vision had activated Captain Fitzpatrick, it was not the real focus of his and Major Levy's interest. The questions about her loyalty seemed, in hindsight, beside the point. She kept turning over the major's parting words. He wanted something from her. But what? Surely not merely another promise to restrict her seances.
A sliver of optimism perforated Helen's gloom. When someone wants something from you, she thought, it gives you leverage, however moderate. You have capital to spend or trade. You are not defenseless. She opened her satchel and started unpacking her clothing and toiletries into the dresser.
 
The following morning, Helen was on her way to the commander's office when she heard a raucous honking of car horns. Through the chain link, she spied eight automobiles speeding along, horns blaring in a jumbled medley, headlights flashing on and off. Three men in a convertible were standing up in the backseat waving small American flags and shouting. The drivers kept making U-turns so that they could pass the front gate again and again, then they finally tore off down the road, still leaning on their horns. Helen saw nothing but fields and pastures on all sides. The cars must have come from Dallas, where she'd disembarked from the train, or perhaps from some small farm town nearby.
Other internees had stopped to stare at the noisy motorcade. Their quizzical expressions made Helen think this was not a regular occurrence. Some faces showed alarm as well as
bewilderment. Helen recalled reading about a murderously angry mob wielding hatchets and shotguns that had marched on a Santa Fe relocation camp for West Coast Japanese in 1942, when American troops were suffering terrible losses in the Philippines. The camp commander had turned the vigilantes away by convincing them that violence against the internees could backfire into the Japanese military mistreating or killing American prisoners of war. Yet the occupants of the honking cars at Seagoville's gate had seemed more exuberant than inflamed.
Dr. Stannard's office was crowded with staff gathered in a semicircle in front of a radio at the far side of the room. The clerk who'd registered Helen yesterday looked over at her when she entered, but the woman didn't come to ask what she wanted. No one paid Helen any mind at all. She went to stand at the edge of the group to find out what was captivating them.
“It's the cross-channel invasion,” a man whispered to Helen. She guessed he was a guard because of his Sam Browne pistol belt. “Started last night.” He pointed unnecessarily to the radio.
A stream of reports was being issued. Eyewitness accounts from reporters who'd dropped into France with paratroopers or landed on the beaches with the first or second wave of infantry. Bulletins from Berlin and London. Local reactions from all over the United States.
BOOK: The Medium
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