Once Beyond a Time (26 page)

The man clears his throat, takes one last nervous pull on the cigarette, crushes out the half-smoked stick in the ashtray. The woman’s eyes have come to a standstill on my face. Her mouth is open slightly, her brow furrowed. I can only guess at the thoughts passing through her mind, but I have a sense that they are tumbling, somersaulting over themselves in a bid to understand what I have said.

And then she smiles. So small, it almost isn’t there. But that, coupled with a growing light in her eyes, tells me she has heard what I was trying to say.

I have just preached my first sermon in the used car lot of Birchfield Chevrolet.

Tuesday, December 24, 1968

A
ND SO TIME
passes. Minutes and hours. Days and weeks. And now months.

I will always figure time now from the day Digger disappeared.

A light snow drifts down from the night sky. Winter is here. Tomorrow is Christmas day. No one can survive four months alone in these mountains, especially a child.

Why then does my heart still hope?

Simply because I wouldn’t otherwise be human?

Sheldon tells me, “God is with him, or he is with God. Either way, God is holding Digger in the palms of his own two hands.”

That is what Sheldon says. And part of me believes him.

We stand here now, the three of us, in the backyard where I last saw Digger. Bundled up in coats, scarves, gloves, and knitted hats, Linda holds one of my hands, Sheldon the other. We lift our faces to the sky, to the shining star that has been here since that day. The day everything changed and from which we measure our new lives.

We’ve been quiet for several long minutes, but finally, Sheldon says, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.’”

Then, silence again as we consider that. It’s cold enough that our
breath forms small clouds in the air.

“Dad?” Linda asks.

“Yes, honey?”

“Do you really think it could be the Star of Bethlehem?”

“Yes, honey, I do.”

“But, I mean … that was two thousand years ago.”

Sheldon nods. “That seems to be the gift of this house, doesn’t it? If you go into town, or anywhere else, you can’t see the star. Only here.”

“But why?” I whisper. “What is the star supposed to mean for us?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“Do you think we’ll ever know?” I ask.

Sheldon nods again. “Yes. At the right time.”

“When will that be, Dad?”

Sheldon’s profile lights up with a small smile. “You’re asking the wrong person, Linda. God alone knows the answer to that. Right now, all I know for sure is if we could peel back time, go through yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, all the way to two-thousand years ago, we’d come to the moment when God put skin on and entered the world.”

Linda sighs heavily, her breath drifting off into the night air. “I never really thought of it as true,” she says. “It just always seemed like another story; something somebody made up.”

Sheldon nods but says nothing. I wish the angels would appear to us the way they did to the shepherds and tell us what it means.

“What I really don’t understand,” I say, “is, why us? Who are we that such an extraordinary thing should happen to us; that we’d be the ones chosen to look into time? You’d think God would pick people who are—I don’t know—famous, or important somehow.”

Sheldon doesn’t look at me, but I can tell he’s thinking about that. Finally, he says, “Maybe we’re more important to him than we think.”

I feel Linda squeeze my hand. “Well, Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.”

My heart lifts with an unexpected joy. “Merry Christmas, Linda,” I say.

“Merry Christmas, honey,” Sheldon adds.

We need to go in now. It’s late and we’re getting cold.

But Linda thinks of one more thing. Looking up at the star one last time, she says, “Merry Christmas, Digger.”

The star twinkles overhead. The heavens are silent and yet, we go to bed carrying something like hope in our hearts. It shines like a point of light in an otherwise dark place.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is.
If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

—Saint Augustine

Sunday, April 6, 1969

I
T’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT
, but I can’t go to bed until I’ve finished writing this stupid English paper that’s due tomorrow. All year the teachers have treated me kind of special, in a good way I mean, because of what happened. They’ve always said if I needed extra time to get an assignment done, I should take it. But I never have. Not once. And I’m not going to start now. I couldn’t do that to Digger.

Mom and Dad went up to their rooms a couple hours ago. I’m sitting here at the dining room table with books and papers spread all over the place. I’m trying to write about what an Emily Dickinson poem means, and I don’t know if what I’m saying makes any sense. When I chose this poem, Mrs. Crowell looked at me all funny and asked if it was really the poem I wanted to write my paper on, and I said yes, because it’s one poem of Emily’s I may actually identify with. I mean, I know she’s talking about someone dying in their house, and how she has to sweep up her heart and put her love away because she won’t want to use it again until eternity—yeah, I think I understand that. I just hope what I’m writing makes sense to Mrs. Crowell, since she’s the one grading it.

Mom won’t accept that Digger’s gone. She says she thinks he’s still alive. I wish I could say I agree with her, but I don’t see how he could
be alive after all this time. I mean, really, what kind of miracle could be keeping an eight-year-old kid alive out in the wilds by himself? Digger wasn’t even a boy scout, for crying out loud. It’s not like he knew how to make a fire or scrounge for food or make a tent out of leaves or whatever. And if he did get lost out there, it’s not like he wouldn’t have wandered into a town somewhere, begged a dime from someone, and called us to come pick him up.

Face it. Digger’s gone and he’s not coming back. He’s dead and we’re never going to see him again.

I think Dad thinks the same way I do, but I’m not sure. Still, I don’t see him trying to convince Mom to accept that Digger’s gone. He’s just kind of letting her go on hoping if she wants to.

Carl will be coming home from Vietnam soon. Maybe he can get through to Mom, help her to accept what’s happened. At least she’ll be happy he’s home.

The house has been mostly quiet since Digger left, as far as that time thing goes. The star still shows up every night, but we don’t see people very often. I’ve seen Austin a few times, and Mom and Dad have seen their own people a couple of times. But that’s it. If it’s God who’s running this show, he’s playing out a pretty long intermission.

Okay, I’ve got to wrap up this final paragraph and get ready for bed. How to sum up what I said Emily’s saying, which may not be what she’s saying at all, but who knows what anyone’s saying when they’re speaking in poetry? I—

“Hello, Linda.”

I jump about a foot at the sound of my name. “Austin!” I holler, and it comes out so loud I wonder whether Mom and Dad will wake up. But I can’t help it. I’m so happy to see him. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

It’s probably a stupid question. He’s not doing anything other than sitting across from me at the table. He’s drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop.

“I wanted to see you,” he says. “I was hoping I could … somehow.”

“Is something wrong?”

He stops drumming. “No. I mean … well, listen, Linda, I’m going to war.”

“You’re going to war?”

“That’s right. Today President Wilson called for war on Germany and the Congress declared it. I’m going to sign up.”

I knew it was coming, but I don’t want to believe it. “But aren’t you a pacifist, Austin? You told me yourself, you don’t believe in war.”

“I don’t.” He shakes his head hard. “I don’t. But now that it’s here, I can’t run from it like a coward. I’ve got to go.”

“Well, why don’t you at least wait until you’re drafted?”

He’s still shaking his head like he can’t stop. “I’m going now. I’m not waiting.”

I can’t change the past. If I say anything wrong, he’ll disappear. So all I do is nod.

“Listen,” he goes on. “I know you know who wins this war, and I also know you can’t tell me. So I’m not here to find out.”

“All right,” I say. I feel stupid, but I don’t know how else to respond. Anyway, I don’t care about telling him who wins. I just want to beg him not to go. Because I know he’s buried in France, and he’ll never see America again.

“So I’m here to say good-bye,” he finishes.

We look at each other a long time. There are tears running down my cheeks. His face looks calm enough, but his hands are clenched up into fists like he’s already looking for a fight.

“I’ll miss you, Austin,” I say. I’m so choked up it’s no more than a whisper.

“I’ll miss you too.” Now his eyes shimmer, and I think maybe he’ll cry, but he manages not to.

“What do your parents think about you signing up?” I ask.

“I haven’t told them yet.”

I nod. “Guess they’ll find out soon enough though, huh?”

“I’m going into Asheville to sign up in the morning.”

I pick up the pen that had fallen out of my hand when he appeared and tap it nervously on the notebook in front of me. “I wish I could ask you to write to me but …” I finish by lifting my shoulders.

He understands. “Of course I can’t. So I wanted to give you something. To remember me by.”

“How?” I ask. “How can you give me something?”

“I left it somewhere for you to find,” he says, nodding toward the kitchen. “On the hearth there’s a yellowish colored stone shaped like an oval. If no one has fixed it between my time and yours, then it may still be loose. Lift it up, and you’ll find what I left you.”

“Should I look now?”

“Yes. I want to know whether you get it.”

I nod and push my chair back from the table. He follows me into the kitchen where I kneel at the hearth and look for the stone.

“There,” Austin says, pointing. “To the right.”

I follow the line of his hand and find a stone that is yellow and oval. I touch it with my fingertips. “Is it this one?”

“Yes. See if you can lift it.”

I can. It slips easily out of place. Beneath it, I find a piece of cheesecloth wrapped with a white ribbon. I lift it gently.

“You left this for me, Austin?”

He laughs lightly. “Open it, silly, so you can see what it is.”

My fingers tremble as I pull on the ribbon and unwrap the cloth. I lift a necklace by its long chain until a slightly tarnished heart is dangling over my palm. “It’s beautiful,” I say.

“Can you put it on?”

I look at the lobster claw clasp. “Yes, I’ll try.” In another moment, it is fastened around my neck. I rise and smile, holding Austin’s gaze. “Thank you.”

“Don’t forget me, please.”

I’m crying again, softly. “How could I ever forget you?”

He lifts a hand to his mouth, blows me a kiss. I press my fingers to the necklace that lies against my chest.

“Good-bye, Linda.”

“Good-bye, Austin.”

And with that, he literally fades and disappears, like a dream that goes away when you open your eyes.

Monday, April 7, 1969

“J
UST TWO AND
half months and I’ll be a married woman.” Celeste smiles at me as she fingers the diamond ring on her left hand.

“I haven’t seen you in awhile,” I say. “Is everything ready for the wedding?”

“Almost.” She nods and sighs happily. “Just this morning I picked up my dress from the seamstress who did the alterations. You should see it! It’s just beautiful.”

“I wish I
could
see it,” I say. “I wish I could be there at the ceremony. I know it’s going to be lovely.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll …” She pauses a moment, as though brought up short by a thought. Finally, she says, “I’ll fill you in on all the details afterward. I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to stop talking about it for some time to come.”

She radiates joy, and I’m surprised to find myself warmed by it. It’s good to remember that joy is possible.

Linda left for school in tears this morning. “Austin’s gone,” she said. That’s all she would tell me. Even then, the words came out in a choked whisper, as though her heart was breaking.

After Linda left, I sat down here by the hearth in the kitchen to have
a cup of coffee and to go through my morning ritual of calculating time. Today is April 7, 1969. Digger disappeared on September 7, 1968. This marks the seventh month. I have not seen my son in seven months. Still, the sheriff calls once a week, sometimes twice, to give us an update. What he says is always the same. No fresh leads. No clues. Nothing.