Time Flying (20 page)

“Big John was blue water, so they had to do the best they could onboard,” Dennis said, meaning when the accident happened, the ship was in the middle of the cruise, too far away from land to evac him to a better equipped medical facility. I nodded, appreciating the quick reaction this big guy had to make, and his courage, jumping off the side of an aircraft carrier, hoping to hit a narrow metal catwalk 12 feet or so down, or missing, ending up in the water at night.

Dennis turned to Allison, smiled and hugged her with his right arm. “It could have been a LOT worse.”

I nodded, remembering reading the incident report, no idea I had gone to high school with the yellow shirt involved. Most Air Wings stood down for a day to reevaluate and refresh deck operations and make sure the series of events leading up to the accident didn't happen to them. A similar accident had happened a few years before and a sailor, a green-shirt fuel handler, I think, lost his life. In both cases, the Pilot and RIO had been recovered with only minor injuries.

A few minutes later, our pizza came and we ate, talking about Indy, changes to our hometown, and things that hadn't changed. Nobody said anything about Nicky, who Dennis had been acquainted with in high school, but I'm sure we all reflected on him as part of the latter group — things that hadn't changed. I realized Dennis and Allison had been two of those “nameless faces” belonging to people I'd gone to high school with, who I passed in the hallway almost every day, but had no idea of their names. I didn't think I'd ever had a conversation with either of them, until Dennis reminded we had.

We were talking about Coach MacLaren, when Dennis said, “You know, I was there the day you passed out in the hallway.”

I nodded, the memory of a much shorter and thinner Dennis and his underclassman friend standing over me in the hallway finally dropping into place in my head, satisfying the irritating feeling I knew him, but not able to place him. I replied with a laugh, “Well, I didn’t completely pass out.”

The now big man frowned and said, “Yes sir, you did. You kind of went rubbery at the knees, fell against the lockers and slid down. I had to shake your shoulder for at least 10 seconds before you opened your eyes,” he said with confidence.

I laughed. “Okay, I guess I passed out. I remember you being there. You were a lot shorter and skinnier then!”

Dennis shrugged. “I had a big growth spurt my senior year, and started weight training. I tell you, that was a big day! Talking to Rich Girrard, and then Coach MacLaren came up to us and asked what happened. A pretty big day!”

I smiled, a little embarrassed about being referred to as some kind of celebrity. “Yea, I remember it,” I said, looking away, thinking back, “It was my first day back here, and everything was...so strange…” I left off, glancing at Amanda, who had a puzzled expression on her face.

Dennis and Allison were listening and curious about my choice of words, too, but not as intent as my wife. “I mean, I'd been sick for a couple days, and it was my first day back at school...I probably went back too soon.”

They both accepted my explanation, but by the expression on Amanda's face, she didn’t. Furious with myself for after all these years keeping the secret of what had happened to me, and how I came to be living 30 years in my past, slipping up and saying what I said. 

I couldn’t believe it.

After good-naturedly arguing over the check and extracting a promise to send us a birth announcement, we said good-night to Dennis and Allison in the parking lot. Amanda hugged both of them, before Dennis threw me a quick but sharp salute. I returned it, and offered him a handshake as well, thanking him again for handling Nicky Collins so well. We wished each other well on our upcoming deployments and left.

Amanda and I drove in silence for several minutes before she finally started talking.

“Rich, we need to talk about something,” Amanda began. When I started to open my mouth to interrupt, she said, “No, let me finish.”

I nodded, not saying anything.

“I love you. You're the most wonderful father and husband I can imagine, and you've made me very, very happy.” Amanda paused, looking at me, waiting for my eyes to meet hers. “I love our life together,” she said.

My attention returned to the road ahead, and I nodded.

“I’m worried because I think something important is going on you’re not telling me about.”

Again, I nodded, my eyes still on the road.

“A few months ago, I was looking for some stamps, and found two notebooks in your desk. Hon, I wasn't snooping, really. But, I flipped through one of them and started reading. After a few minutes, I realized it was some sort of a journal with notes...about the future…”

Amanda paused, obviously waiting for me to say something in response.

“Yeah,” was the only thing I could think of to say.

Amanda signed and continued. “If the dates are accurate, you wrote 5 years ago, about Iraq invading Kuwait, and according to the news, you’re going to be right.”

I had no response, because what she said was true. Amanda had found my “future history” journals I'd been writing to help exercise my memory and, I don't know, maybe at some point prove to myself what I had experienced really happened. I kept my mouth shut and decided to let her talk until she had said everything on her mind. I needed to know what Amanda had figured out.

After a couple seconds' pause, Amanda continued as I drove the car. “Is it some kind of trick? Are you psychic? How do you know what's going to happen?” Amanda asked, still calm, but the intensity in her voice rising. “And what you wrote about this man who is going to become President, Bill Clinton? I never heard of him until I read what you wrote…This 'dot com' stuff you say is coming…” She paused, but I remained silent.

“Until tonight,” she continued, “ it was just a little weird, but when you said to Dennis that the day you passed out at school was your first day back here…” Amanda trailed off for a second, before saying in a shaky voice, “What the hell is going on. What has BEEN going on, Rich?” 

It was a situation I had hoped to never be in, having to explain to my wife about my time traveling, about living a life that didn’t include her past the age of 18, about a life where we weren’t married and Michael and Aaron didn’t exist. My plan? Never having to deal with the issue, but I realized now I had been a fool, thinking I could simply slip by without needing to tell the story, and a bigger fool for not coming up with a plan to do so.

Amanda deserved the truth, even if hearing the truth convinced her of my insanity, which after all these years, was a possibility I still didn’t discount.

The last five minutes of our conversation took place in Amanda's parents’ driveway, where we sat with the car running.  I took half a minute or so to gather my thoughts. Amanda deserves the truth, I thought, but not quite yet.

“Amanda, you and the boys are everything to me. You've made me happy, too. I promise, I'll tell you everything.” I turned to the right and now took Amanda's hands in mine. She gave me a sad, worried half-smile.

“Can your folks watch the boys tomorrow?” I asked.

“Sure. They'll love it.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Let's take the boys to visit Thelma in the morning, and then you and I take a road trip. I want to show you something.”

This time, Amanda nodded without saying anything.

We got out of the car and walked arm in arm up to the house. We walked arm-in-arm up to the house, Amanda wrapped up warm in my flight jacket, since the temperature had fallen more than we expected. We were met by Jeanette and Gene when we walked into the living room. Their expressions told me something was wrong. A chill of fear knifed through me, the boys. Amanda must have flashed a similar reaction to the expressions on their faces, because right off, Jeanette said, “The boys are fine.”

I looked at Amanda, both of us heaving sighs of relief. But then, another sinking feeling washed over me. Amanda's mom said, “Rich, I'm so sorry. Darnell Coleman called about an hour ago.”

I nodded, understanding.

“Thelma passed away this evening.”

EIGHT

Angels 30

The sky threatened rain the next morning, but as we drove west out of Indianapolis everything remained dry. I had talked with Darnell the previous night and again in the morning to make sure he didn’t need anything. He didn’t, of course. Thelma raised strong sons. Darnell expected his brother Christopher home later in the day.

Darnell assured me all of Thelma's funeral arrangements had been made...By Thelma, herself, of course…So nothing except some signatures remained left to do, nothing I could help with. I promised him I'd be there for the wake, scheduled for Wednesday evening, and the brief graveside service on Thursday morning. So, we decided to take the day-trip I had proposed to Amanda.

We had driven US Highway 36 several times. In my previous life here, Amanda and I made the trip together only once, but since we became a couple while still in high school this time around, Amanda spent several weekends and a few summer weeks at my family's lake cabin. By the time we hit Rockville, the cloud cover went from solid to broken, showing bigger and bigger patches of blue sky. When we turned onto Highway 41 in the middle of “downtown” Rockville, the clouds had all but disappeared, leaving us with a beautiful fall day.

The driving proved easy, with little traffic on the road, so we made good time on 41, cruising 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, anyway) crops revealed artist-worthy subjects at almost every bend in the road.

The night before, I had promised Amanda the whole story when we got to Belton. Now that we were on the road, I had to swear to her there was no “other woman,” no other family I had been hiding, and all what I wanted to show her had been put there long before my birth. I promised what I was about to show her would help explain this all, she calmed down a little.

Now, with the sun shining as we left the outskirts of Rockville, I still sensed her uneasiness, 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 I wasn't overly concerned about finally coming clean about what was going on, and which helped keep her from worrying her whole world was about to change. My own lack of anxiety was a little surprising to me, especially with the news we received upon arriving home about Thelma passing away. She died peacefully, with friends and family around her, after living a long and mostly happy life. I did the math, and realized with her time traveling, Thelma 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, she wouldn't have tolerated a lot of weepy mourning. From hearing her stories, I think Thelma had done more of that than she was comfortable with when her own grandmother died the first time, and I think she decided excessive mourning did no one any good. 

We reached Belton about 11am. Driving through town slowly caused feelings of déjà vu bordering on a physical dizziness. Not helping was that Belton appeared almost exactly like it had, or will, in 2007, which happened to be the same as when I was a kid. The houses, for the most part, were neat and in good repair, but none of them were new. The old houses I remembered from both the 1970s and 2007 still stood, looking...well...again, the same. None of this had any impact on Amanda, of course, since this was her first time in Belton. She'd been to our place on Long Branch Lake, but for her, Belton was just a turnoff on the highway to the cabin.

We followed the same route I'd driven when I came here in 2007, driving by my Great-Grandmother Margaret's house, and pointing it out to Amanda from the street. The house had been vacant when I last passed by, 17 years in the future, but now, was clearly occupied, lace curtains on the windows and a car in the driveway. The paint looked better this time, the house itself 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 which put this whole thing in motion, and where I would supposedly meet my Grandparents in 1933. Before today though, my traveling back to 1933 seemed a slim possibility, unreal enough to be no more than the ghostly remnants of a dream from years before. Living with these odd and improbable possibilities for so long, they ceased to feel like the certainties the letter attempted to prove. Driving into Belton on this autumn day in 1990 however, everything which seemed to be paused or in a kind of stasis suddenly jerked into forward motion, the clock alive and ticking once again. A fleeting, dark thought wondered if I had triggered something by coming here.

I pulled the rented Ford to a stop in the same spot where I had parked my Chrysler Pacifica in 2007, and regarded my father's old house, which appeared the same as before, the color of the wood trim around the windows maybe a slightly different shade, and the red brick a little deeper and richer. The tree out front seemed as big and full as when last I saw it, but this time, even though the temperature was every bit as comfortable, no one sat on the front porch as before. The doors and windows were all closed, the drapes drawn, and the driveway empty.

We got out of our car and walked across the silent street to the front walkway. Halfway to the door, I understood. No one lived in the house, which meant this would be a little more complicated than I had hoped, but then again, perhaps not. I planned to tell the current owner there was a letter intended for me in their house, along with a one ounce gold coin. If they would let me have the letter, they could keep the coin.

Once I got past the big tree in the front yard, the 'For Sale' sign in one of the front windows became visible. Amanda and I walked up the steps of the front porch and looked around, Amanda walking across the porch, trying to peer 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 I would be able to find a pay phone somewhere along the main street of town. One of the enduring frustrations I endured, being in the past these 15 years, was the lack of a cellphone in my pocket. Of all the conveniences I enjoyed in 2007, the small cellular telephone topped the list I can't tell you how much I looked forward to having another Motorola Star-Tac.