Visitations (13 page)

I wondered if I was losing my mind. Could I have dementia, or had I seen the future?

So, because I have a strong belief in what I read in yesterday’s newspaper (I’m anal like that), I drove out to the fair and parked in the section where the accident was supposed to happen… or to have happened. I don’t know what the women look like, since the newspaper didn’t provide that handy detail. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or how I’m going to do it.

The fair started thirty minutes ago - in the hour I’ve been here, a number of people have come and gone.

To my right, an old Pinto entered the lot and angled into a parking spot backwards. Its tail end sat a few feet from the highway, a small grassy area separating the two. The Pinto’s doors opened and four women stepped out.

Here we go. This must be them.

I opened my door and started hustling toward them. A Pinto made sense, since everyone knows those cars are bombs when hit from behind, due to the unfortunate placing of the gas tank. The only information I had about the women was that they comprised a mother and her three teenage daughters.

Walking toward them, I realized how crazy this was. But if I was wrong, no harm done. If I was right, and didn’t do anything, these four women would be in tomorrow’s newspaper.

“Excuse me,” I said, as I hustled closer, my arm raised. “May I ask you a question?”

They turned their heads to look at each other and then back at me. One of the daughters, the youngest one, seemed to be having trouble breathing. She gasped twice and stumbled a little into her sister. I’d normally ask if she was okay, but more pressing matters were at hand.

The woman who looked the oldest told me to go ahead and ask.

“This is going to sound strange, but are the four of you related? What I mean is, are you a mother, and these are your daughters?”

The mother looked more somber. My stomach was doing flips. This could possibly be classified as the stupidest thing I’d ever done. If they were to ask why I needed to know and I told them the truth, they would think I’d lost my mind. I looked over my shoulder and scanned the two-lane highway for any big rigs barreling our way, and was quite relieved not to see any.

“You know,” the mother said, “it’s pretty lame that you would ask us questions in the parking lot before we get our readings done. Tell your fake psychic that they won’t be able to wow us with knowledge about our family status, because we’re not going to tell you. During our readings, if the psychic doesn’t know what’s what, then they aren’t authentic.”

And with that, all four women walked away. This was now in my top three for the most embarrassing things I’d ever done (I will not reveal the other two here). I’d never have thought they would take me for a psychic’s aid of some kind, trying to glean information from people before they enter the fair.

Dejected, I turned around and walked back to my car. I guess I was wrong. The fair had started. There’d been no accident. No explosions. I figured I’d stick around for ten more minutes and then head home.

I looked down at the clock in the dash and changed my mind. I’m leaving now. That’s it, I’m outta here.

I started the car, put it in gear, and drove to the exit. With one final glance over my shoulder, I saw that everything was fine. My foot pressed the accelerator and I merged onto the two-lane highway.

And that was when I saw the rig. I also saw, in my rearview mirror, one of the three teenagers ran behind me, waving her arms frantically.

What was that about?

I looked forward again. Half a kilometer ahead, the large tanker truck wobbled back and forth. I applied the brakes as I watched the truck swerve into oncoming traffic and knock what looked like a Buick, off the road. The rig continued on its path toward me. I got my vehicle stopped and then I performed a U-turn. I headed back toward the fair’s parking lot.

All four women were standing on the edge of the road now, waving at me.

What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way. Don’t let the newspaper be right.

The truck was gaining fast. The driver must have be having a problem with his brakes to be gaining like that. If he’d fallen asleep, he would’ve woken up by now.

To my horror, the four women were running toward their Pinto. I laid on the horn as I entered the parking area. My window protested a little as I rolled it down with the old windup handle.

“Get out of the way! Move away from your car or you’ll be killed!” I screamed.

I was still fifty yards from the women when they slowed their steps. I knew they saw me waving my arm out the window. In that second they must’ve taken me for a nutcase because I saw them continue to jog as a group for their car. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I tore my eyes away from them and saw the rig in my rearview mirror. It was amazingly close. I also witnessed it trying to slow down by driving on the shoulder and the grass. The driver was using the softer earth to ease the speed back.

I realized then that what I had read yesterday was tomorrow’s paper. If the truck driver couldn’t put his rig back on the highway, he was going to hit the line of parked cars, starting with the Pinto. None of us would escape the tragedy.
 

It was my last chance to do something useful. I aimed my car at the women. I then sat on the horn. Now I had their attention. In seconds I would hit them if they didn’t stop running and turn back toward the hotel. That was the defining moment.

All four of them turned around. I don’t know if it was because they thought I’d completely lost my mind and was trying to kill them, or maybe, as a group, they saw the transport, and recognized the danger that I was attempting to avert.

All I do know was that the next day’s newspaper had all the same information on the second page that I had read two days prior. Some of the details were different now. All four women were unhurt. No one died in the accident. Two people were sent to hospital with non-life threatening injuries: the truck driver and me.

The Pinto blew up and the shock wave knocked out my car’s back window. A large chunk of glass made a home in my shoulder. Other than scarring, I’ll be fine.

My first night in the hospital was painful. I couldn’t sleep well with my injury throbbing like it was. Where did I get the idea that I was Steve McQueen come back to life? The harrowing act I performed to save complete strangers wasn’t heroic, it was stupid.

Sure, I’m happy everyone made it out okay, so my actions weren’t fruitless, but I could spend the rest of my life not doing anything remotely close to what I did yesterday, and be okay with it.

The hospital door opened slowly and an old woman walked in. She turned and quietly closed the door behind her. The sun was high enough in my window to shine on her whole body. I could tell right away she wasn’t a nurse. As far as I could tell, she probably had the wrong room.

“Can I help you?” I asked, the pain rising a bit at the use of my voice.

She turned and faced me, both hands clutching her large handbag suspended in front of her waist.

She didn’t say anything at first. She stepped forward and walked to the end of my bed. I didn’t talk because it was too painful. So I waited.

A tear sprung from her eye. She wiped it and said, “So this is what you look like.”

What the hell does that mean? Taken literally, what could I look like if not myself? I am me and no one else is, but me.

“What?” I managed.

“After all these years, you still look good. I’ve really missed you.”

Okay, bizarre I don’t like. Walking in my hospital room and acting like you know me, dropping compliments and expecting me to rejoice in our reunion, without the obligatory “
getting to know you”
first
,
led me to the question:
what side are your crackers salted on?

“Do I know you?” I asked.

Her head nodding up and down was the only answer I got.

“Great. Since I know you, I’m pleased to meet you.” There, I’m being polite, all the while adding to my pain by talking. At least the pain is in my shoulder and not my ass. If this woman didn’t start explaining things, the pain would soon be in my ass.

“We met a long time ago. I’ve looked, long and hard for you.”

I responded by frowning. I didn’t want to talk anymore.

The woman looked to be my age. She was easily in her sixties. Maybe Alzheimer's had gotten to her. Perhaps some other mind-altering ailment had befallen the old woman. I chuckled inside at the notion that I was calling her “
old
”, when I was probably older than she was.

She moved along the bed and stood beside me. I wasn’t sure if I should grab the button thingy to call a nurse, or wait to hear what the woman wanted.

“You don’t remember, do you?”

I rolled my head back and forth along the pillow.

“How did you know about Margaret and her daughters? How could you know?”

“I don’t know anything. You are very confusing.” I winced and decided I really needed to stop talking.

“The summer of 1965. We were both twenty-years-old. Do you remember the fair that came to town that June?”

I pushed my head back into the pillow, but I couldn’t escape. This woman was talking nonsense. Summer of ’65? Fair in town? Ancient times. I’d been married and widowed since then. No kids. Lived a full life. And now I’ve got an old woman in my hospital room talking stupid. Woe is me.

She turned and looked around the room. Her head stopped at the chair by the window. She walked over, grabbed it and set it down beside the bed. After sitting on it, she said, “oh, Michael, didn’t we have a great time that summer?”

I had a lot of great summers. With a few girls, I might add. There was one girl, but…nah, it couldn’t be.

“Do you remember taking me to the drive-in theatre when it opened? The memories of that summer never left me. I had to leave for school in September. Can you remember what you gave me as a going-away present?”

My hallway of memories has many doors. I could almost feel the old, broken down, and musty doors unlocking themselves as they slowly opened and allowed me to rummage through their contents. Things began to click in place.

Jackie Stevens. The love of my life. The girl who I thought would be my wife one day. I fell in love instantly. Then she left me. I never heard from her again. It didn’t help that my parents moved us away right after school started that year.

Jackie Stevens. The woman that I compared all future women to. My wife, God rest her soul, and I had a glorious relationship. She was like Jackie in many ways. There was always a small spot in my heart for the Jackie I knew at twenty. I used to think of it as history. She was in there because there
was
a history. Thinking about her now, I realized that there was always a spot in my heart because I always have, and always will have, loved Jackie Stevens.

Could it be that this woman knew something about Jackie, or was she saying she was Jackie?

“I left you that summer with a special present,” the old woman continued. “I was pregnant with Margaret, who became Margaret Stevens. She grew up and had three daughters herself.” The woman stopped to wipe at her eyes. “How did you know?”

Was she saying what I thought she was?

“The four women I saved yesterday?” Painful, I know, but I had to ask.

The woman nodded.

“Are related to me?”

She nodded again.

“Margaret is my daughter and the three girls in their late teens are my granddaughters?”

The woman nodded again, wiping at more tears.

“I married in my twenties and never had any more kids. My husband died a few years ago. I started looking for you again, but came up empty-handed. Margaret has always wanted to meet her real father. I told her wonderful stories about how kind you were. Everything I could remember. Then you pop up out of nowhere and save their lives. It’s a miracle, Mike, a miracle.”

I could not believe what she was saying. The more I looked at her, the more I could tell it was Jackie. The slope of her cheek, the look in her eyes. I’d stared into them long enough all those years ago.

The hospital door opened. The women I saved yesterday, my family, entered and stepped up to the bed.

I felt like I’d lost any sense of direction I had and I was lost at sea, drifting in a familiar, but unknown reality.

The youngest girl held a newspaper. She pushed through and held it up for me to see.

It was the same paper from two days ago. The one I had read that showed them all dead in the parking lot of the psychic fair.

“I saw you,” she said. “On page two.”

“I saw you too,” I responded.

“The paper said my grandfather would be in an accident in the parking lot of the psychic fair. I dragged my mom and sisters there so we could meet you. I didn’t tell them anything, only that I had a lead on where you’d be. After you approached us in the parking lot, it took me two full minutes to convince them to turn around and find you before you had your accident or left the area.” She stopped and looked down at the paper. “When I turned back to page two, everything I had read was gone, as if it wasn’t there in the first place.”