Early morning clouds that looked like rain, but didn’t make good on the threat hung above us as we drove west out of Indianapolis the next morning. I’d talked with Darnell the previous night and again that morning to make sure he was okay. Which, of course, he was. Thelma had raised strong sons. Christopher was due home later in the day.
Darnell assured me that all of Thelma’s funeral arrangements had been made…By Thelma, herself, of course…And there was really nothing I could help with. I promised him I’d be there for the wake, scheduled for Wednesday evening (Thelma had died Sunday night), and the brief graveside service on Thursday morning. So, we decided to take the day-trip I’d proposed to Tammy.
We’d driven U.S. Highway 36 a number of times. In my previous life here, we’d made the trip together only once, but since we had become a couple while still in high school this time around, Tammy had spent several weekends and a few summer weeks at my family’s lake cabin. Once we were halfway to Rockville, the cloud cover went from solid to broken, showing bigger and bigger patches of blue sky. Then, about the time we turned onto Highway 41 in the middle of “downtown” Rockville, the clouds had all but disappeared, leaving a beautiful fall day.
The driving was easy. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road, so we made good time on 41, crusing past little towns whose odd names I remember from childhood. Bradfield Corner, Mecca, Hudnut and Lyford slid past, separated by huge farm fields and unnaturally regular sections of trees. The bright, vivid greens and yellows of the corn, soybeans and other, unidentified (to a city boy) crops revealed artist-worthy subjects at almost every bend in the road.
I had promised Tammy the whole story when we got to Belton the mention of driving somewhere so I could show her something set her off. Tammy didn’t often blow her stack, but she did this time. After swearing to her that there was no other woman, no other family that I was hiding, and that what I wanted to show her was something that had been put where it is long before I was born, and that it would help explain this all, she calmed down. A little.
Driving out of town the next morning, I could tell that she was still uneasy, but the quiet freedom of driving on a beautiful day like this helped her relax a little and enjoy the trip. I think she could tell that I wasn’t overly freaked out about telling her what was going on, and that helped her not worry that her whole world might be about to change. My lack of anxiety was a little surprising to me, especially with the news we received upon arriving home the previous night, the news that Thelma had died. But, I was philosophical about it. She had died peacefully, with friends and family there, after living a long and mostly happy life. I did the math, and realized that with her time traveling, Thelma had actually lived 105 years, all but the last three or four of them without any serious infirmity. Not many of us get a century of good health. Though I missed her already, I knew Thelma wouldn’t have tolerated a lot of weepy mourning. She’d done a lot of that when her own grandmother died the first time, and I think, had decided that kind of attitude just wasn’t productive. She wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but if you knew Thelma, you knew that was the way she thought.
By the time we reached Belton, it was almost 11am. Slowly driving through town gave me the strangest feelings I’d had since traveling back to 1976. Feelings of deja vu and slight disorientation fought a battle in my head. It didn’t help that Belton looked exactly like it had, or will, in 2005. Which was exactly as it looked when I was a kid. The houses were, for the most part, neat and in good repair. There just didn’t seem to be any new ones, and the old ones I remembered from both the 1970s and 2005 were still there, looking…well…again, exactly the same. None of this had any impact on Tammy, of course, who had never been here. She’d been to our place on Long Branch Lake, but for her, Belton was just a benchmark on the way to the cabin.
We followed the same route I’d driven when I came here in 2005, driving by my Great-Grandmother Margaret’s house, and pointing it out to Tammy from the street. It had been vacant when I was last here, from 15 years in the future, but now it was clearly occupied, lace curtains on the windows and a car in the driveway that led to the detached garage. The paint was better this time, and even though it had structurally looked good, if a little threadbare, in 2005, on this day the house itself was neat as a pin. Once past Margaret’s house, I accelerated a little, heading toward my father’s boyhood home, where I’d met Annie Bennett and Liz Monahan, the mother and daughter who gave me the letter that started this whole thing, and where I would supposedly meet my Grandparents in 1933. Before today though, all of that seemed a slim possibility, unreal enough to be no more than the ghostly remnants of a dream I’d had years before. I’d lived with these odd and highly improbable possibilities for so long, they had ceased to feel like the certainties I knew they were. Driving into Belton on this fall day in 1990 however, what had seemed to be paused or in a kind of stasis suddenly jerked into forward motion, the clock alive and ticking once again.
I pulled the rented Ford to a stop at the same spot I’d parked my Chrysler Pacifica in 2005, and looked at my father’s old house. It looked the same as before, the color of the wood trim around the windows maybe a slightly different hue, and the red brick seemed a shade or two deeper and richer. The tree out front looked as big and full at it was (or will be?) in 2005, but this time, even though the day was every bit as beautiful, no one sat on the front porch as before. The doors and windows were all closed, the drapes drawn. The driveway was empty.
We got out of our car and walked across the silent street to the front walkway. Halfway to the door, I saw the reason the house looked so silent and deserted.
No one lived there, which meant this would be a little more complicated than I had planned. But then again, maybe not. I had planned to tell the current owner that there was a letter intended for me in their house, along with a one ounce gold coin. If they’d let me have the letter, they could have the coin.
Once I got past the big tree in the front yard, I could see the “For Sale” sign in one of the front windows. Tammy and I walked up the steps of the front porch and looked around, she slowly walking across the porch, trying to see in through the window while I took my leather notepad out of my pocket and copied down the real estate agent’s name and phone number, wondering if there was a pay phone somewhere along the main street of town. One of the enduring frustrations I felt, being in the past these 15 years, was the lack of a cellphone in my pocket. Of all the conveniences I knew in 2005, the one I most anxiously waited for and counted the days until its reappearance was the small cellular telephone. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to having another Motorola Star-Tac. As difficult as it was to not have instant global communications at my fingertips, there was no way I was going to lug around Motorola’s current idea of a “small” handset, known as a “brick.” Not worth it from a financial or payload perspective. I’d decided to just keep coins in my pocket and my eyes open for payphones until the Star-Tac came on the scene.
I flipped the notebook closed and looked up at Tammy, who was regarding me curiously. I smiled at her. She had been so patient. In her position, would I have stayed so quiet, just following her, waiting for the time she picked to let me know what the hell was going on?
“What, are we going to buy this place?” Tammy asked, an ironic smile on her face.
I seriously doubted that I would be so calm about this kind of thing, and the trust it implied made me love her all the more.
“No, I need to show you something inside,” I answered with a smile of my own.
My wife’s puzzled look returned to her face.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. “I’ve got a story to tell you,” I continued, turning and taking the porch steps down to the sidewalk. “And we need to find a pay phone.”
We walked down Parke Street toward the Belton Post Office at a pace that allowed us to talk and as she listened, not saying a word, I told Tammy the story of my lives.
* * *
90 minutes later, I was under the tree in the front yard of the house my father grew up in, my hand on the thick, rough bark, tracing the contours down the trunk. It was a beautiful tree, planted almost 60 years ago, now in the prime of its life. I had seen this same tree, virtually unchanged, 15 years in the future, and as I gazed upward into its branches six feet above me, it occurred to me that for this tree, time passed at a much slower rate. I would change dramatically in many different ways over the next 15 years, but to this tree, those years would be like a month. We occupy the same earth, use the same elements to live, but experience time in a much different way.
While examining the tree, and silently enjoying the beautiful afternoon, every few seconds, I’d throw a glance toward Tammy, looking for any kind of hint about how she was processing the story I had told her. She was sitting on the top step leading up to the porch, her arms wrapped around her knees, and her head turned to the right, away from me. This was how Tammy processed things that she didn’t understand, withdrawing from everything and concentrating all her mental energy on solving the problem confronting her. Though I’d never seen her wrestling with something this enormous, I’d been through the process before. Trying to get her to leave her isolation and communicate at best got no result, at worst brought down her wrath. I had learned patience, dealing with these silences. They were a pretty rare occurance, but not so rare that I hadn’t learned to recognize them in their early stages.
Two thirds of the way through my story, I had called the real estate agent from a payphone in front of the Post Office, and he said that he’d meet us at the house in about 90 minutes. We sat on a bench next there for the next 45 minutes or so, and I finished my narrative. While I spun out this story that I worried would lead Tammy to believe she was married to a lunatic, I realized that much like when I poured out my heart to her at the pizza restaurant in 1976, and several times since then, I felt like two people. I could feel the “me” that was living this life, telling this tale, and the “me” that was watching it all, somewhat sardonically, criticizing the performance and thought processes as they happened. Psychiatrists would probably call this the “observer,” that part of my consciousness that was the Ego, or Id, whatever Freudian construct applied.
It was times like this that a portion of my intelligence wondered if maybe one of these “me” entities was the “me” that had been living this life before the “me” from 2005 barged in and took over like an older brother who had lived longer, experienced more and thought he knew better. Would this transformation have split me into two people? Was the guy talking to Tammy the me from 2005, or was the observer the time traveler? Or the other way around? Was my observer the me who had been pushed aside and was watching what this interloper was doing with his life, sometimes impressed, sometimes thinking “what the hell are you doing?”
Or, did my time travel create two separate Rich Girrards, both a melding of memories, intelligences and knowings of the two original people. Somehow, that seemed more likely. And so, if through all this, my consciousness was divided into these separate psychological components that seemed to work pretty well in concert, could my experience be a much more common, more human experience? Could the separate people we all think we are be the truth, because we all travel in time and inhabit many, or even all of the separate, discrete versions of ourselves? Could the uniqueness of my experience not be that I traveled in time, but that I was aware that I had done it? Could what I have gone through simply been the result of faulty programming? Might I not be as special as I thought I was?
We had walked back to the house in silence, to wait for the real estate agent. I told Tammy that I wanted to get into the house and prove to her that my story was real. My Grandfather’s letter would be in a beam in the basement of the house. Liz had shown me the beam and where their son had removed the letter and gold coin from it. It had been a neat job, cutting a small compartment out of the wood and shaving the block down so that it fit snugly back into the hole. In order not to weaken the beam structurally, my Grandfather had cut the compartment out right above a post in the middle of the basement, and put two small steel posts in to further strengthen the beam. It would be easy to find, but you needed to be looking for it to even know the compartment was there. A naturally rough wood beam, it wouldn’t be a likely candidate for painting, so probably wouldn’t ever get any close scrutiny.
My plan was to tour the house with the real estate agent, discuss buying my father’s boyhood home, and surreptitiously unlock a back door before we left. We could then return later in the afternoon, I could retrieve the letter and show Tammy what had apparently set me on this path. Sure, it was unlawful trespass, but I felt circumstances warranted my breaking the law. How I would explain our presence to the police if we got caught, I had no idea, but I had to try this. I thought the letter would give Tammy the evidence that I wasn’t crazy, and after all, the course my life had taken was different enough that I wouldn’t be back here in 2005, unless I consciously decided I wanted to come back. With the letter in my possession, Annie and Liz wouldn’t find it, and their role in the story would be finished, at least in this timeline.
I looked over at Tammy, and this time saw her wiping tears away. I walked over to her, and she looked up at me, but instead of anguish, I saw anger in her red eyes.
“All this time, you’ve been carrying this around with you, not telling me?” She was clearly, very seriously pissed.
Spreading my arms in appeal, I answered “How was I supposed to do that? There were a lOT of times I wasn’t even sure it was all real!” That was true. Whether defense mechanism or serious belief, I couldn’t tell, but I would sometimes go entire years believing THIS life was real, the other one a figment of my imagination. At that point, I think the solid acceptance that both of my realities were in fact “real” was fairly new. Maybe five years old.
“So, this other wife, who is she? Do I know her? Do you see her? Does she know all this?” She demanded. Then, a slightly hysterical laugh and “I can’t even believe I’m thinking this is real. Jesus Christ.” I was starting to realize telling her this was a serious mistake, because when Tammy got this angry (for her to swear or say “Jesus Christ” was “outside her normal behavior envelope” as Pat would say) it was because she was hurting. Very confused and hurting. What amazed me, and apparently her too, was that she seemed to be accepting the time travel as real, her first thought not being that I was crazy. Maybe that would come later, but I had to admit that I felt a little off balance that my sanity didn’t seem to be in question, just my fidelity.
“No, I’ve never seen her,” I said, but then stopped. “Well, I saw her once, in college, but I DIDN’T EVEN TALK TO HER.”
“Really.” Tammy said, a declaration, not a question.
“She went to University of Iowa. We were there for a game and I looked her up in the student directory. A couple of the other guys and I walked around campus and I found her dorm. As we were walking up to the front door, she and some friends walked out. I saw her. That was it. I swear.”
What I didn’t tell Tammy was WHY I had never tried again to see or contact Molly. It simply hurt too much. I was with two of my Purdue teammates and when I saw her, my heart leapt to my throat, and as she walked by, not knowing or even noticing me, I felt the rawness of the emotions of five years (at that point) flood out. I had been in a fun little episode I assumed was a kind of lucid dream, and had been able to block out the reality of what I’d lost when I found myself back in 1976. Seeing the 18 year old Molly, my wife before I’d ever met her, and knowing that without considerable effort and luck she would never know me, brought 2005 back in a huge, destructive rush.
That night, I turned the ball over 6 times, didn’t score (missed two foul shots, which for someone who hit 94% of his free throws was unheard of) and fouled out. As I walked past Coach after the fifth foul, early in the second half, he didn’t even speak, I just felt his eyes on me as I found my seat at the end of the bench. Luckily, we won that night, no thanks to me. The Coach and I never spoke about that night, because by the time we had resumed practice the next week, I had made the conscious decision that the time traveling was all a dream, a fantasy, something I cooked up for some strange, psychological reason that I wasn’t yet ready to deal with. I focused on 1980 at that point, and tried everything I could to forget about Molly. I never played that badly again.
I didn’t tell Tammy about any of this. Nor did I tell her that after the game, on the way back to Purdue and for the next couple days before we were back in the gym for practice, I had decided to leave Purdue, transfer, redshirt a year and then play my last year in college for Iowa. I decided that I’d do that, even if it meant being a walk-on and riding the bench all season, since they probably wouldn’t waste a scholarship on a one season player. None of that mattered though, because I’d be close to Molly, could start a relationship with her in this timeline and hopefully have another life with her here.
I had thought all of this through, and was in the process of figuring out how to tell Tammy that I was going to transfer, when a realization suddenly swept over me. There would be no Samantha in that life with Molly. Sure, they would be a child or children, but no Samantha. Somehow, I knew that whoever that child was, it wouldn’t be my daughter, because we’re all unique at the moment of our creation. I realized that if I made a life here in this timeline with Molly, but not Samantha, it would be a burden that I alone would have to bear. The thought of that overcame me and alone in my apartment near campus, silently railing against the universe, for the first time since returning to my own past, I cursed whoever or whatever had done this to me. At that point, I decided that all of my “knowledge” of the future was bullshit, that I had never traveled back from 2005, and that I was the person I was to everyone around me. There weren’t two Rich Girrards, only one. Me. Now.
That was the beginning of my first period of denial.
I would never tell Tammy that as hard as it would be to do now, back then, I had decided not to keep traveling this path and intended to try and reconnect with the life I’d had in 2005. Confessing that now would be devastating to her. I also didn’t tell her any of this because though I’d been totally honest about never talking to Molly, I hadn’t been completely truthful about not seeing her, because in fact, I had.
And so had Tammy, but I kept that from her not because she’d be jealous, but because it would, for a number of reasons, throw my credibility and even sanity into considerable doubt.
On the front step of the house, Tammy was looking away, shaking her head. The tears were gone, the anger not even beginning to abate. She stood up suddenly and, without saying anything, started walking toward the car.
“What?” I asked. “The Real Estate agent will be here in a few minutes,” I said.
Without responding, Tammy crossed the street and got into the front passenger seat of the car, clearly leaving me to look at the house alone. As I stood looking at her from the front lawn of the house my father grew up in, a white Ford Explorer pulled into the driveway. The real estate agent was here.
He got out of the truck, a short, round, balding man in his 50s. Friendly-looking, in a short-sleeved checked shirt with a loosely tied tie, he held out his hand, introducing himself as John Wheldon, but letting me know everyone knew him as “Jack”. In his hand he held nothing but keys, no briefcase, no folder. Not even a sheet of paper. His office was in Terre Haute, half an hour’s drive away, and I felt a little guilty for bringing him all the way out here for this.
“So, Mr. Girrard. What brings you to Belton?” Jack asked, glancing at my car, my wife visible in the front seat clearly not interested in the proceedings here.
“Call me Rich,” I replied, looking back at the house admiringly. “Well, this was the house my father grew up in, and I thought it might be nice to get it back in the family,” I lied.
The real estate agent nodded, his eyebrows raised, but not smiling. He still seemed friendly, but didn’t appear to be buying this. “To live here?” he asked. “Or investment?” He smiled a little ironic smile, at the thought of someone buying property in Belton for “investment.”
I smiled an ironic smile of my own, glancing at my wife in the car across the street. “That’s what my wife wants to know,” I said, seeing a possible path through Jack’s doubt. “To be honest,” I said, lowering my voice to sound conspiratorial, “it’s a kind of nostalgia thing. My family’s scattered all over the country, and my job keeps me away for long periods of time. I’ve just been thinking about reacquiring roots.”
“What do you do for a living, Rich?” Jack asked.
“I’m a Naval Officer,” I answered. “Aviator. I’m a Bombadier/Navigator in A-6 Intruders.” With that, Jack’s eyes went a little wide.
“No KIDDING! Wow!” He said excitedly. I smiled and nodded modestly, in truth a little ashamed to be using my status as a commissioned officer in the Navy as a cover for bullshitting this guy.
“I was in the Corps,” Jack said eagerly, meaning he’d been a Marine. “Korea.” Then laughing, he added “you guys saved my ass a couple times!”
The A-6 saw its first combat in the Korean conflict. The Intruder was nearing the end of its service life, and we all knew the coming struggle could very well be the last for our birds. Jack’s reservations about my looking at the house had evaporated as our common culture, though separated by several decades of time, made him trust me implicitly. This made me even more ashamed of what I was doing.
“Well hell, you’re here to see the house,” Jack suddenly said, flipping through his keys and starting toward the front door.
“I’ll be there in a minute, Jack,” I said, as I turned to go and try to coax Tammy out of the car.
I walked briskly around behind the rental and up onto the sidewalk, to talk to my wife. She had the window open and was looking off into the distance.
“Tammy, I know you’re upset. Please come into the house. The real estate agent’s name is Jack Wheldon, and I need you to keep him busy as we’re leaving, so I can slip away and unlock the back door.” I held my breath as I waited for her response.
Still not saying a word, after a few seconds Tammy suddenly opened the car door and got out. We walked to the front door of the house, which Jack, now smiling broadly, held open for us. I’d only been in the house the one time, in 2005, since when I was here as a child, the ownership of the property had passed outside the family. “The current owners did some nice remodeling,” Jack was narrating. “Nothing structural, but nice work.”
I nodded appreciatively. It WAS nice. Comfortable. I looked over at Tammy, who was taking it in as well, her face impassive. At least she was there, I thought. As we walked through the kitchen, then the laundry room at the back of the house, I made the decision to unlock that door before we left. As we completed the circuit, Jack said “there’s a basement,” nodding toward a door that obviously led to the stairs. I nodded my surprise. “Oh! Yea, I remember my Dad telling me about them digging that after the house was built.”
“Really?” Jack asked. “How’d they do that?”
“Horses,” I answered, opening the door down to the basement. “They dredged the earth from underneath the house with big blade shovels pulled by horses, and carted the dirt away.”
Jack was clearly impressed. “Boy, I’d have liked to see THAT,” he said.
I nodded in agreement, starting down the steps to the basement. Jack was behind me as we descended on the narrow, unfinished wooden steps. It was mostly dark, but by the light coming down from upstairs, I could see a switch at the bottom of the stairway. I flipped it, and a single light came on, illuminating the basement. It was about half finished, with some exposed studs marking off a section of the room, as if someone had intended to create a separate space there, but abandoned the project halfway through. I saw the beams were still exposed, and located the center post in the middle of the room. A little thrill went through me as I realized the basement looked exactly as I remembered it from when I was here in 2005.
15 years in the future from that moment.
Having seen what I needed to see, I nodded and headed back to the stairway. Jack turned and started back up the stairs ahead of me. We reached the top, to find Tammy looking out the front window, her face still impassive. I was making progress, but this was not good. It had been so much better if I hadn’t had to explain this all to her. But what happened, happened and I’d done it. No time to bolter and take another shot at it.
Tammy turned to face us when the door to the basement shut, and asked Jack about what school a child living here would attend. As the real estate agent explained the county school system, I slowly made another circuit of the living room, dining room, kitchen area, quickly flicking the lock on the back door as I passed, unlocking it. Tammy was nodding at the answer about the school situation as I returned, and I nodded at him that I’d seen all I need to see. We made for the front door without Jack checking the doors before leaving.
Bingo.
* * *
Several hours later, we were back in Belton, having said our goodbyes to Jack, promising to think about the house and what we wanted to do and stay in touch. When we had parted, he warmly shook my hand and told me to “be careful” in what was coming. I smiled and said it’d be a “piece of cake.” Jack laughed as he started his Explorer, saying “don’t be coy with me, young man. I know where that comes from!” He meant, of course, the phrase “piece of cake.” Though it has now found its way into general use, those words were first used by British Pilots in the early days of the Battle of Britain. Jack was a WWII buff.
Tammy was still almost completely silent, not saying more than she had to the rest of the afternoon. We left Belton and drove to an even smaller town, an intersection of two highways, really. There were four businesses in the town, one on each corner. A combination post office, general store occupied one, a farm implement dealer another, a Tasty Freeze ice cream shop on the third, and a diner on the fourth. The restaurants specialty was catfish pulled directly from the nearby lake, filleted and deep fried, which I ordered when we sat down. The dining room was one big area, almost completely full of customers and loud, so Tammy’s silence wasn’t that uncomfortable. I don’t think I’d ever seen her this solemn and upset. The catfish was delicious, but dinner left me with a dark, ominous feeling.
After eating dinner, I paid the check and we walked out into the twilight. It would be dark in the next 30 minutes, and so, time to return to the house. Tammy still refused to speak to me, instead, looking out the window of the car into the night. I had been so sure I’d figured a way out of this, coming here, somehow getting the coin hidden in the beam at my father’s boyhood home and proving to Tammy that what I had told her was true. I hadn’t counted on the possibility that she might believe my experience was real, but be angry that in an alternative timeline we hadn’t been together. What a mess. But, first things first, and as I braked the rental car to a stop across from the house, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that the coin would be the first step in Tammy forgiving me for…What? Having the opportunity to do things differently and making the choice to be with her this time? I felt myself smile slightly as I realized that no matter how many times I lived through these years, I’d never truly understand women.
I shut the car off and looked at Tammy, sitting next to me, a streetlight casting some shadows from half a block away. My wife looked back at me, her expression neutral. She clearly wasn’t about to get out of the car again. I sighed, reached into the back seat, retrieved the flashlight, screwdriver and pocket knife, all of which I’d purchased at a convenience store before dinner. I got out, quietly shut the car door and crossed the street, heading around to the side door of the house, toward the door that I’d unlocked before we left.
I was relieved that the door opened easily, and I slipped in. There was enough light from the outside that I didn’t need the flashlight until I opened the door to the basement. I switched the basement light on, pulling the door shut behind me, and walked down the stairs. I didn’t want to waste time, and walked directly to where the beam intersected the post in the middle of the basement. This should be easy, and I wanted to get the coin out of the beam and get the hell out of the house.
When I reached the beam, I could tell that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t see any evidence of a compartment cut into the beam at all. Puzzled, I shined the flashlight at the place where the beam should have a section cut out and replaced, but it was solid. I couldn’t understand. What the hell? This was the house, it was the basement, and it was a time between when my Grandfather put the coin in the beam in 1933 and when it was taken out in 2005. I reversed the screwdriver, and tapped it against the beam, listening for the hollowness that would indicate where the wood wasn’t solid.
I couldn’t find it.
What the hell?
Then it hit me. It wasn’t here. There was no coin. My Grandfather had never put a gold coin in the beam of this house, because in this timeline, I won’t travel from 2005 to 1933 and meet him.
Why wouldn’t I? What would happen that would…
Oh, I thought, remembering talking to Thelma, almost exactly 24 hours ago. I will die before then, and I won’t be here to travel back to 1933.
Shit. Tammy. Aaron, Michael.
Tammy.
I turned and took the basement steps two at a time, leaving the basement door open and the light on. I crossed the kitchen, opened the door to the outside, and locked it before pulling it shut. In a few seconds, I was climbing back into the car, starting the Ford and pulling away from the curb before turning to meet Tammy’s eyes in the car.
“There was no coin,” I said.
She nodded, raising her eyebrows as if to say, sarcastically, no kidding.
“Clearly, this time, things are different. I don’t travel from 2005 to 1933,” I continued, trying to sound confident and like I knew what the hell I was talking about.
“Clearly.”
What the hell was I going to do? How was I going to get control of this situation? Not coming up with a simple answer to that question, I elected to remain quiet as we drove into the night toward Indianapolis. Tammy did the same, at least for a while. Maybe 20 minutes. Then, all at once, for the first time in several hours, my wife decided she wanted to talk about this.
We were on I-70, because I had figured it would be safer traveling back to Indy on the interstate, rather than on two-lane highways in the dark.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Tammy began. “No more talk about time travel, being 45 years old and waking up one morning 17 again. You’re not old enough for a mid-life crisis, so that’s not it. If there’s another woman, tell me now and we’ll deal with it.”
She paused for a couple seconds, but I could tell it wasn’t time for me to talk yet. Why was it always another woman? There’s a story in the squadron, probably made up, that a few years ago, a crew ejected after a catastrophic engine failure over the Puget Sound. They were rescued by Navy SAR (Search and Rescue) and brought in. Their wives were there when they stepped off the helicopter and both said simultaneously “who were you with? What’s her name?” We all knew it was an apocryphal story, but still it spoke a truth.
Then, Tammy continued. “I just don’t get it. I don’t think you’re crazy, but I just can’t believe this time travel thing. But I don’t know how you know all these things.” She started to cry, as much out of frustration of having such a huge, dark ominous unknown as anything else.
I sighed. “Sweetheart, I’ve told you everything I know. It’s the truth as I understand it.”
Then, more silence. I actually considered telling her about Micah, and about his research, but decided it would be grossly unfair to him to bring him into it. If this would somehow get “official,” I wouldn’t want to end my friend’s career over it.
More silence. Then, after a few minutes, Tammy had gotten her emotions under control and she said simply “The boys and I won’t be going back to Whidbey with you. We’re going to stay here for a few weeks.”
“What?” I said. “Why?” I was genuinely perplexed. I knew this was a difficult situation, and believe me, I silently cursed myself for leaving those “future journals” in my deks and not being more careful talking to Dennis the night before, but had I really done something that could mean the breakup of my family?
“Rich, I just don’t know what to make of all this. It’s just so weird and unbelievable.” Tammy looked at me with eyes that were sad, but reflected a mind that had been made up.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll fly back home after Thelma’s funeral tomorrow. You stay here at your Mom and Dad’s,” I replied, trying to be reassuring and non-threatening. “What about Aaron’s school?”
“I’ll figure it out,” she said.
We drove the rest of the way to Tammy’s parents without saying a word. Arriving, we got out of the car, walked, exhausted, to the front door, and let ourselves in. We both checked in on the boys, kissed Aaron and Michael on the forehead and went to bed ourselves. Tammy fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. I lay awake, thinking about all that had happened, and all that would happen in the next few months. I vowed to do everything I could to reassure my wife that I was a sane and faithful husband, go fight in the war, come back to my family and continue this life I had grown quite accustomed to. Whatever it took, I would do what was right for my family. I would always do that, no matter which timeline I inhabited.
* * *
Whidbey Island – One week later
Empty beer bottles sat in front of us on the coffee table between Pat and I in his den on Whidbey. Only two were mine, as I’d never been much of a drinker. Patrick Maney, however, was a different story. He had four empties to his credit, another in his hand. I’d lost my taste for the stuff tonight. “I really didn’t know you guys were having problems,” my best friend offered again, clearly looking for more information than I’d imparted so far.
“Old thing,” I lied. “Stupid misunderstanding,” I added, hoping to marginalize the problem so he wouldn’t ask any more about it. The message was apparently received, and Pat gave up trying to get the real story out of me.
“You need to bunk in here when Tammy comes back?” He asked. Tammy had called early today and we’d talked. She was cool to me, still believing there was more to this whole thing than my simple explanation that I was a time traveler living these years again. Who could blame her? She was coming back in two days, on Saturday, and thought it would be a good idea for me to be sleeping elsewhere while we sort this out. I’d asked her when we were supposed to do that, since the squadron was scheduled to be deployed soon. She didn’t have an answer to that question, and the conversation got quite tense after that.
“No,” I answered Pat, “I’m going to check into the BOQ. We’re telling the boys it’s Navy business.”
Pat nodded his understanding. “Okay, well, you need anything…”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”
“This shits really heating up,” Pat said, changing the subject to the topic we never strayed far from these days, Iraq. “I think we’re really going to be shooting over there.”
I nodded, trying, as always to appear like I didn’t already know what was going to happen. “I think you’re right.” My mood had been pretty dark since the call from Tammy.
“Crazy bastard Saddam,” Pat laughed, “going to be good to finally deliver some ordinance, huh?”
“I guess,” I nodded, “for all the good it’ll do…”
Pat looked at me, perplexed. “We’re going to end that bullshit. He’s going to be gone when we’re through.”
“No, Pat, he won’t be. Saddam will still be there. We’ll kick their asses out of Kuwait, and that’ll be it,” I said, a hint of disgust in my voice. The TV was on, sound off, and pictures of Marines disembarking from a C130 transport cycled on the screen.
“HA! Yea, right,” Pat replied, voice rising, “I’ve had my problems with George, God knows, but he’s one of us, and that means he won’t stop until Saddam’s dead or in chains.” President George Herbert Walker Bush had been a Naval Aviator in World War II, and as such got the support of pretty much the whole body of Navy flyers. He hadn’t been just a paper tiger, either. He’d been shot down in the Pacific.
The truth was on the tip of my tongue, but I wasn’t going to give in and spill my secret again, not even to my best friend. No way.
“You’re probably right,” I conceded, unconvincingly.
Pat nodded. “Of course I’m right. The Air Force boys will knock his Air Force out in the middle of the night with their little 117s, and we’ll sink out all his PT boats, deliver him a lifetime supply of Rockeyes, and somebody’s bound to eventually drop a 2,000 pounder on his greasy head.” Satisfied that he had completely laid out our Order of Battle, Pat then took a last pull off his beer and set the bottle down on the table noisily.
“My guess is, his Air Force will run to Iran before the shooting starts,” I countered, drawing a harsh laugh from my friend.
“Right. They’re such good friends,” Pat chuckled, thinking I was kidding.
“You just watch,” I told my friend, and silently saying to myself…Shut…Up…
Feeling, thanks to the beer, a little too “smooth” to argue, Pat let it go at that, and got up, collecting the bottles, asking me “want another one?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to go,” I said, pushing myself up and grabbing the bottles closest to me. We took the bottles out to the trash on the way to my car, depositing them in the trash.
It was Thursday night, and we had a light day scheduled on Friday. No flying, just paperwork, and so I had planned to talk with Micah about my last conversation with Thelma. It would add to his research. I was curious to see if he had found anything else out, but at the same time was pretty sure he’d already discovered as much as he was going to. Thelma telling me that she was pretty sure it was her death that caused her to return to her “native” timeline added one more bit of evidence that I would have to die to fully disengage from this timeline. I drove home in my Dodge Charger, a car that in my original timeline, I’d always regretted selling and promised myself that I’d never part with this time. Pulling into the garage at home, I shut the Charger down, got out and stood in the crisp, November night, lookeing at the stars overhead. I loved flying on a night like this, the dark closing in, insulating the cockpit, but yet opening up the universe to us. The air was usually so smooth at night, and everything just seemed quieter. I loved it.
I stood there for probably 10 minutes, looking up at that universe, realizing suddenly that the answer to all my questions are right there. It was clear that what I was in the middle of wasn’t just in my head. Looking into the night, the light from the stars I was seeing had, in many cases, been traveling for eons. Hundreds of years, thousands of year, in some cases, millions of our years had passed since the light left the star that created it. The light that was hitting my retina was a collection of snapshots, a collage of pictures of things as they existed when each bit of light left its origin, all along the timeline I was now traveling. I was seeing visions of reality that cut across the time between now and the beginning of the universe, and yet each and every event that I was seeing, every wave of light hitting my eyes right now, had been created at at a time different than all the rest. When you look into a night sky and can see both the star Polaris (the North Star) and Mars, you’re seeing the visual evidence of events hundreds of years apart. The light hitting your eye left Polaris 430 years before you saw it, while the sunlight that bounces off Mars and finally makes it to your eye shows you what that red planet looked like 16 minutes before. So when you look into the sky, you’re looking at a multitude of windows into the past.
That is reality, and when I thought about it under that canopy of light and black, my strange journey didn’t seem quite so strange. I tried to imagine what would come next. How would I get myself out of this complication I’d stupidly stepped into with my loose tongue in Indy? How would this all play out?
While I was thinking, hands in my pocket, still staring at the night sky, inside the house, the phone rang. I’m not sure how I knew, but I immediately knew this phone call would set it all in motion. Was it an endgame, or just the next chapter?
I hustled into the house, grabbed the phone and said “hello?
“Lieutenant Girrard?” A voice on the other end of the phone asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Ensign Crawford from Ops. Lieutenant, you are ordered by Commander Coleson to report at oh-two hundred for a squadron briefing,” the voice said.
“2am?” I asked. “Tonight?”
“That’s correct, sir.” A pause and then, “thank you, sir,” before he hung up.
I stood in the kitchen, the phone up to my ear for a good ten seconds, before replacing the handset back in the cradle on the wall.
Endgame or next chapter?
More to come…
