The little white church had what my mother called “low back pews.” That meant that if you felt like leaning back during the sleepier portions of the service, you had better not. If you tried, the pew would catch you across the part of your back that wasn’t made for resting. The practical result was a worship posture that was forward and hopefully attentive.
I don’t remember ever sleeping through church back then. It was so fresh and new.
It was 1967. I was in the fifth grade and was enjoying my first “man teacher.” My folks had bought the first new house of their ten-year marriage. Dad put up a pool with an attached deck. My three-speed Schwinn Stingray with the slick back tire was the coolest. I was vaguely aware of a cousin and step-brother who were shipping out to Vietnam, but all in all life was good.
My first impression of the church was that it looked and smelled like the oldest building in town. A simple sanctuary sat on ground level above a full basement. Steep stairs led down to a pair of one-person-at-a-time restrooms, an open area partitioned into four classrooms for children, and a kitchen.
That church served as a spiritual anchor for the next four years. I don’t remember anything extraordinary happening. Just regular Sunday services and annual Vacation Bible Schools. My life beyond church was filled with summer little league and winter bowling. I ran away from some bullies and punched others in the nose. Unrequited romances over girls named Kim, Paulette, and Ellen swept me away. On fall weekends I took long bike hikes that would terrorize today’s mothers. I began to wonder what I would be when I grew up: a police officer, computer programmer, or baseball player. I watched Captain Kirk and Neil Armstrong on TV. Huntley and Brinkley reported the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. My summer visit with my aunt and uncle was put off by riots in Detroit.
Every Sunday we went to church where we heard the message that God loved us and that the Bible was a practical guide for life. Each week, Mr. Copp would descend to the basement and hand out candy to the children. We sang the same song before Communion every week – Lead Me to Calvary – and another to close the service – Bless Be the Tie That Binds. I would lean forward in the front pew while Pastor Gill announced the Good News and urged us to take it personally. Caught up in a radically changeable world, I heard that there was a reliable God whose eternal plan included me.
I was exhilarated and terrified. Exhilarated because it meant that by God faith, hope, and love would win out in the end. Terrified because I knew I faced a decision that would impact eternity. I had the opportunity to trust God enough to let him have his way with me. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.
Childhood faith decisions were an expected part of life in that church. Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King? That is a lot to expect of a 1960s middle-school kid. Life was filled with guns and war, and everyone got trampled on the floor. I wish we’d all been ready. There’s no time to change your mind. The Son has come and you’ve been left behind. Truth is, I resisted God’s gracious challenge until three years later when I was living in another state and going to another church. Yet, it was those years in that plain but faithful little church that laid the foundation for all the adult commitments that would come later.
Forty years have passed and many of those good people are enjoying their heavenly reward. The congregation outgrew its building and relocated. I haven’t been back there since -- except in my heart when I need a fresh experience of what Jesus means when he invites me to enter his Father’s kingdom as a little child.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Hit Single
I write the songs that make the young girls cry,
I write the songs, I write the songs
Bobby Devine had been in the trade long enough to know. No one hits a home run every night, but he lied to himself whenever he blew off lukewarm audiences as if they didn't matter. As the last note of his music ascended beyond the spotlights, he lifted his fingers from the piano keys. This was the moment when everything hung in the balance. Would his listeners serve as the tinder for the spark in his soul?
It seemed that he had been working with wet wood for a long time.
He scanned the late morning audience at The Mosaic, one of the casino's smaller lounges. A dozen or so people sat scattered at tables staring into their drinks – refugees from bored lives hauled by charter buses from small Illinois towns like Kankakee, Ottawa, and Pontiac. Each had spent his wad in another try at bringing something real back into his life. Tonight they would be asleep on the bus home. God bless 'em.
He exhaled, smiled, and shifted into advertising mode. "That's it for me. I'll be back here tomorrow morning at 10:00 with more soft hits and smooth jazz. Until then, enjoy your stay with us at Harrah's Joliet." He grabbed his tip bowl and exited stage right toward the dressing room. If wishes were horses he would have enjoyed more stage time, but it had been a while since the name "Bobby D" had held sway on marquees from Vegas to Atlantic City. Those were the days before the club scene was oversold and the public's taste diluted. A good piano man used to have the run of things.
“How was the crowd today?” Bobby recognized the voice of the attractive brunette in her early thirties sitting in a peach-colored dressing gown at the mid-point of the make-up counter. Her image reflected back at her from a row of mirrors illuminated with 100-watt bulbs. She held a spray bottle and the fragrances of freesia and peony drifted to him. Her name was Lacy Edwards. They had shared drinks at The Mosaic’s bar a couple of times and she carried herself like an old pro on the circuit, calculating and shrewd.
He remembered how her audition had impressed the manager a few weeks ago. He rewarded her with the early afternoon set at The Mosaic. It was the first step to better gigs at the larger Stage 151 on the other side of the hotel. Unless they screwed her over, she had a good enough voice to earn it. Bobby didn’t think that would happen.
He removed his sunglasses and propped himself against the thinly-painted wall. "About the same. Like usual."
She turned one eye towards him like the jack of hearts. "So the applause was small and the tips even smaller."
Bobby slipped a hand into his pocket where three one-dollar coins and six quarters clinked dully against each other. At least the food was cheap where the gaming was hot. God, he was even starting to think like a commercial!
She looked back into the mirror. "How many places like this have you worked?”
“Enough. Why?”
“I was listening to your last song this morning. You do Manilow really well. I saw him once as a kid. Back in '88 he played at what they called the Wolf Trap Arts Center outside of D.C. It was crazy. My mom and the other women acted like he was Elvis reincarnated or something. But even Elvis changes with the times. That’s the trick Bobby. Your style can change but the substance always shows.” He watched her run a brush through her shoulder length hair. Each smooth stroke seemed to deepen its sheen from the reflected lights. “Have you ever heard of Fanilows?” Bobby grunted. “It’s what they call his fans. I read it on a website.” She laughed a silly laugh that flittered across his skin before evaporating.
Bobby had long ago given up hope of an "Elvis experience." Especially after Annie left him that note on the bathroom sink. He had known from the beginning that they were too different. While his highs were mediated through a musical scale, she sought hers through running shoes and tennis courts. The relationship was abrasive and she had threatened to leave him more than once. Things came to a head the weekend of their third anniversary when he stayed on in Vegas for a great day of recording and even greater night of partying. When he finally got home on a Monday dawn, he weathered a hell of a storm. He consoled himself with the knowledge that she just couldn’t know the power of a perfect song.
He found her six weeks later giving her love to a dancer from Des Moines with a perfect smile. He punched out the jerk and spent the next week in drunken oblivion. It was lucky he hadn’t been thrown in jail. When he got back to the circuit, the best promoters had moved on to fresher voices. How quickly had he fallen off their radar. His so-called friends told him that he had been a fool to risk his career on a jealous rant. Since then, he had been playing a slow game of catch up.
He brought himself back into the present, spread his feet apart and looked up into the ceiling in a stage move, one hand raised as if in supplication to God.
Tryin' to get the feel-ing again, The one that made me shiver,
Made my knees start to quiver every time she walked in.
When he looked back, Lacy was staring into the mirror, her hands resting in her lap.
“Lacy?”
She turned her head slowly and looked at him with both eyes, a smile turning the corner of her lip like the Mona Lisa. “Cool.” He searched her face for some clue of meaning. Instead of her familiar calculation of advantage, he saw understanding -- even compassion.
“It’s something when it happens, isn’t it? Whatever side of the stage lights you’re on, you want it to last forever. You know what I mean, don't you?”
“Yeah.” Bobby felt something pass between them and wondered if she had anyone in her life.
“Stay with me Bobby. Sammy doesn’t usually get here for his shift until 3:00.” He nodded, his breath shortening and quickening. When Lacy stood up, the light from the bulbs revealed how sheer her dressing gown was. She stepped behind a changing curtain, slipped it off, and sat down on the single bed there. Bobby locked the doors and then moved to join her.
Afterwards, he watched her eyes roam past him. The flame was already fading. He rolled away from her and stood up, pulling on his slacks. He reached for the door that opened upon a short hallway that led to the employee exit to the lobby.
“I've got to go.”
Lacy sat up, wrapped in the sheet. “Where to?”
“Lunch. After that, who knows? Got to follow the muse.” He gathered the rest of his clothes. “I’ll see you around.”
“Sure, Bobby D.”
He paid the waiter, pushed away from the table, and left the snack shop. As he passed the hotel entrance he saw a billboard as tall as he was announcing opening night for The Legendary Smokey Robinson at the Rialto Theater.
"Bob! Hey, Bobbo!" Bobby turned and saw Jake the head desk clerk, dressed in his gold vest, black slacks, and silver name pin. The young man was one of Bobby’s less distant acquaintances and they had shared a few late night movies and pizzas. "Elle wants to see you." He looked at the clock on the wall behind him. "She said she'd be in her office until 1:00."
Bobby put on his confident face. "Oh, yeah? Well it's about time she gave me a better time slot."
"Yeah, Bobby. Whatever you say."
He entered the administrative office area and found the door with a plate on the wall beside it: Elle Stronman, Vice-President of Entertainment. Stronman's assistant let his boss know that he had arrived and Bobby disappeared into her office. He came out five minutes later, dropped a sheet of paper into the secretary’s wastebasket and left Joliet for good.
Something about the bus's motion stirred Bobby awake. He had found it useless to try to sleep until the Greyhound cleared the Chicago metro area. An interstate sign rolled past and then one reading Purdue Stadium Next Exit. He checked his watch: 9:00 P.M. The bus was quiet. He knew it wouldn't stop until Indianapolis where he would change for the bus to Dayton and points east. He found a less tender place on his temple, leaned his head over, and closed his eyes again.
Sleep resisted him. He could still hear Stronman’s voice droning on in her pointless explanation about why she needed to let him go. She needed! What a crock! What about what he needed?! It was the same old thing. He was nothing more than a small cog in the wheel of business that she spun. She herself was a little bigger cog connected to an even larger one at corporate headquarters. What did she expect of him anyway? He had done his best with the shift she gave him. It was getting tiresome being screwed over by women.
At 10:30 P.M. the bus rolled into Union Station. Four other buses already waited at the gates for fuel and passengers. Bobby tramped through the terminal doors into the waiting area where a dozen people camped on benches. A woman in a wrinkled ankle-length dress stared at a coin-operated television mounted in the arm of her chair and held two sleeping toddlers on her lap. He walked past her toward a small lunch counter on the far side of the lobby that offered hope of a meal. Thankfully, he had only a thirty-minute layover until his next bus left.
He ordered a sandwich and decaf and shifted his mind into neutral. Or at least tried to. His thoughts returned again to his dismissal from the casino. He should be thankful that he had lasted there as long as he had. It had squeezed the last juice out of Crossing Wind to get onto Harrah’s stage. It was two years ago that the song rose to number twenty-seven on the Billboard charts. An eternity ago. Annie left three weeks later and he had written nothing since.
Last night I said goodbye, now it seems years.
I’m back in the city where nothing is clear.
He remembered the moment’s escape from pointlessness he and Lacy had conspired to snatch together. A pang of regret tried to surface in his conscience and he shoved it down. It was becoming easier to do that. It seemed that any price had become worth paying even for just a taste of the real – even if it was a saccharine substitute.
Someone sat down on the stool next to him. "They got any more of those?" the man asked, eyeing Bobby's overloaded chicken salad on wheat.
Bobby grunted. "Don't know. It's alright though, as late it is." He took a bite.
"Where're you headed?" the man persisted.
“I've got people in Virginia," Bobby answered and reached for his cup.
"Oh, yeah? It's good to have people."
"Yeah."
The waitress came over and told the man that she had one more sandwich left. He could have it for half price. "I'll take it,” the man said. “And a pop."
Pop? “Where are you from?” Bobby asked. His mind ran the possibilities. Midwest for sure.
"Ever heard of Grayling, Michigan? It’s about half way between Bay City and Mackinaw."
"I thought as much. They say coke down here." He took another bite.
The counterman placed the man’s food in front of him. "Looks good, but I'll be glad to get home to my wife's cooking."
Bobby's mouth turned down in a grimace before he could catch himself. "What's the matter? You sick or something?" The man’s eyes dropped back to his plate.
"No. It’s just . . .” A blob of chicken salad fell from Bobby’s sandwich and landed square on his fly.
“Oh crap!” He wiped off the mess with his napkin. The man handed him another napkin and Bobby felt his face get red. He extended his hand. "I’m Bobby Devine."
As they shook hands, recognition fluttered across the man's face. "The Bobby Devine? Crossing Wind and all that?"
Bobby smiled. "That was a while ago, but yeah."
"Great song, man. Spoke to me and my wife at the right time." He pulled piece of paper from his back pocket, heavily creased and gray at the edges from lint. Lines of flowing script filled one side. He turned it over. "Would you sign this?"
Bobby took out a pen and quickly scribbled his name. "A letter from your wife?"
"She wrote a poem after we worked things out. My name's Sam. Sam and Katy Ketchen." A voice announced over the loudspeaker, Bus for Dayton, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and points east loading at this time at Gate 1.
Bobby slugged down the rest of his coffee. "That's me. Have a nice life, Sam."
"You too, Bobby D."
Bobby gathered his duffel and shoulder bag. He had taken three steps when Sam called, "You got another song coming out?"
Bobby turned around. "Maybe. I'm working on it."
A green sign flashed past his window: Dayton 45 Miles. He leaned his tired head against the glass and felt the vibration of the bus’s tires through the axle and into the frame as they surrendered microscopic bits of rubber against the abrasive surface of Interstate 70. He thought he felt the start of a belt separation and imagined the tread peeling off and flying wildly through the air to join the other alligators lying in wait in the cruising lane.
“People in Virginia” amounted to a cousin he hadn't seen in five years. What really interested him was Maryland's booming horse track industry. Every new track included a full-service casino in order to guarantee profitability. Even down-home conservative states like Indiana had them these days and gamblers wanted good food and good music to go with their sport.
He pulled a folded scrap of paper from his left pocket. Before he had left Joliet, he had called his former agent and cashed in one remaining favor. The scrap held two addresses: a casino at a horse track called Fort Washington Park outside D.C. and that of his cousin Jack who lived a few miles away in Alexandria, Virginia. His agent had gotten him an audition with the casino manager. His cousin said he could stay with him until he got his own place. The seat next to him was vacant so he stretched his legs toward the aisle. Ten more hours and he’d be there.
Bobby groaned and became aware of the sound of bass drums being pounded close by. Dried tears matted his eyes shut but he could tell it was daytime. He pried his eyes open in time to see a blurry wall of green rush past his view and vanish. Something like a huge spear planted butt first in the soil appeared in the bus window, its sharp point thrust into the clouds.
“Either use your earphones or shut that damn thing off,” a man shouted two rows behind him. "I’ve listened to that crap all the way from Hagerstown!”
“Screw you, old man! It’s a free country!” a younger man hollered back with a voice distorted by too much of something inhaled or swallowed. Bobby twisted his stiffened neck until he saw a man in his early twenties, dressed in worn jeans and a stained gray athletic T-shirt with a knit cap pulled low across his forehead sitting across the aisle from him. Sound blared from a boom box he held in his lap, held together with duct tape, a relic of pre-mp3 days. Bobby recognized the music genre: grunge – a version of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s, sung by angry young men inspired by hardcore punk and heavy metal. It had been a long time since he had met anyone who still sang the stuff. The older man was right. It was too early in the day for distorted guitars and angst-filled lyrics.
“I’ll show you a screw or two . . .” The older man stepped into the aisle -- 5’3” but determined looking. The punk turned toward him just in time to catch a hardback version of James Mitchner’s Alaska against his jaw. Bobby jerked backward and his phone fell out of his shirt pocket to the floor.
The injured man roared to his feet and Bobby heard the sound of his phone crunching under the weight of the young man’s shoe. The boom box fell from his lap and hit the floor. The station switched and Bobby recognized the tune:
You came along just like a song and brightened my day.
Who would have believed that you were part of a dream?
Now it all seems light years away, and now you know . . .
I can't smile without you. I can't smile without you.
I can't laugh and I can't sing. I'm finding it hard to do anything.
The bus lurched to a sudden stop as the two men squared off for round two. The driver moved quickly to quell the action. “Sit down or you can walk the rest of the way to the station!” When they saw the Louisville Slugger in his hand they returned to their seats.
Bobby collected the remains of his phone and then turned back toward the window. By now his eyes had cleared enough to see that the giant spear was actually the Washington Monument framed by a sky of blue and white clouds.
It was a beautiful morning in the nation’s capital.
Ten minutes later they arrived at the bus station. Bobby collected his bag from the cargo hold beneath the bus and waited for the green Explorer that his cousin Jack said he would be driving. Twenty minutes later and no Explorer, Bobby found a city bus heading for Alexandria.
An hour later, the bus let him off six blocks from his cousin’s address. He saw a sign in a convenience store that advertised soft drinks any size for sixty-nine cents. He went inside and served himself a large root beer at the fountain. He drew three deep slugs of the beverage and his throat thanked him. There was no line at the counter and a disinterested high-schooler put down a magazine and rang him up. Bobby couldn’t help staring at the metal stud in the boy’s lower lip and three small rings that adorned the lobe of his left ear.
“Donut your change for miclur scrosis?”
“Excuse me?” The boy gestured toward a scratched plastic box with a slot in the top next to the register. A photo of a portly Jerry Lewis smiled at him from inside. “OK, though the condition is muscular dystrophy.” The boy looked up at him through drooping eyelids. “That’s the charity Jerry Lewis sponsors. You know, ‘Jerry’s Kids’?”
“Whatever. Just doin’ my job.” The boy dropped the remaining thirty-one cents through the slot and Bobby left the store. He noticed a brick building with tall narrow windows sat across the street. Its glass-paned front door opened and an attractive woman in a cream-colored overcoat exited. She carried a bundle wrapped in brown paper. When her eyes fell upon him he thought he saw anger, as if she had lost something to him simply in his noticing her first. Four purposeful strides brought her to her car – a navy blue Audi. Moments later she was gone.
Bobby looked again at the building. It seemed old, but not dilapidated. He thought he heard something like music coming from it and felt a sudden curiosity. He crossed the pavement and read the sing that hung over the entrance: Xavier’s Gifts.
He should call Jack and have him come pick him up. Maybe in a minute. There’s probably a phone inside. He moved up the steps and grabbed the doorknob. The sound of music came to him from within. Not Manilow. Something much older. The sound quality dated it as an LP, maybe even a 78, being heard through a single speaker. The sound seemed to flow to him through the crack in the double door. He saw movement through the glass as several customers moved about.
He pulled open the door and the music grew louder. He stepped inside and felt the warmth of furnace heat rising up through the floor grates. Tall shelves held items of various kinds. He followed the sound of the music into a smaller room to the right. A piano sat in the middle of the room. Across the way near a window sat a wind-up record player with the characteristic horn, the kind that the RCA Company had a dog sit in front of on its label. The voice coming from the record belonged to Bing Crosby.
Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, someone waits for me.
And the gold of her hair crowns the blue of her eyes, like a halo, tenderly.
If only I could see her, oh how happy I would be.
Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, someone waits for me.
The song ended and Bobby lifted the needle.
“A special composition for a special time, don’t you think?” a voice said from behind him. Bobby turned and saw a thin man with glasses. His name badge read Xavier.
“Yes, it was.”
“Are you looking for something in music?”
“Man, you don’t know the whole of it.”
“Are you a musician?”
“I sing, play the piano, and write a little.”
“Then it was fortunate that this record was playing today.” The man looked at Bobby as if he knew a secret. “You write a little?”
Bobby shifted his weight and looked past the man to the street outside the window. A garbage truck rumbled past, blocking the view. “It’s tough out there. A lot of songs get written that never get heard. Other songs get heard that should never have been written.”
“Are you writing something, Mr. ?”
“Bobby. Just Bobby. And yeah, I’m writing something. It’s not like you can just sit and compose. The muse comes when she’s ready.”
Xavier picked up the record and slipped it into its protective sleeve. “Did you know that Bing Crosby considered this song his theme? Do you have a theme song, Mr. . . . Bobby?”
Evidently the man would go away only when he was good and ready. “That’s the million-dollar question. I’ve got a gig over at Fort Washington Park. I’m staying with a friend until I get set up.” A thought came that might finally satisfy the storekeeper. “It would be nice to get my friend something for his trouble. He likes classic country. Do you carry any old sheet music?”
Xavier smiled broadly. “Certainly. Right over here.” Bobby followed him to a chest of drawers full of papers. “Take your time. Any price you find is negotiable.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell you if I find something.” He started sorting though the scores of compositions.
The storeowner walked away toward the main room. “I hope you find enough fuel for your fire.”
Bobby’s head jerked around. “What was that?”
Xavier replied without turning around, “I said that I hope you find a few for your friend.”
The cabinet held a sizable collection of American sheet music for a small shop. They were arranged in alphabetical order and each piece had been slipped into a protective sheath of clear plastic. Bobby started with the As and leafed through to the Ds: Paul Anka, Harry Belefonte, Mama Cass, Bob Dylan.
He pulled some hopefuls. From them he would choose semi-finalists, then a top ten, and then finally narrow the choice to the one for Jack. His eye fell upon a yellowed page halfway through the Es: Everyone’s Song. He pulled it and looked for the composer’s name but found none. Nor was there a date or place of publication. He removed the pages from their plastic cover and searched each one thoroughly. At the bottom of the back page he found the word Genesis written in flowing script. Nothing more.
It was a simple tune, just four pages long. He started reading the words. By the end of the first stanza the lyrics flowed through his mind as if they had been birthed there. It took him to places in his memory and out to his surroundings. He felt connected to everything around him – the other customers whose voices carried across the hard wood floors to him, and even to the floors themselves as if filled with the spirit of the trees they once had been, planted in the vibrant soil of the earth. As he reached the last stanzas he seemed to be everywhere at once – on the far side of the world, at the bottom of the ocean, soaring at the edge of space.
He turned the manuscript over with trembling hands and checked his watch. Only a few minutes had passed. He was still alone and unobserved. He looked again at the first line of the manuscript and found that he could not recall what it had said. He started reading through it again. This time his experience was even more profound. When he finished he dropped the pages onto the cabinet. What was going on?
He could not take his eyes off the piece. What about the notes? He approached the spinet in the middle of the room. A shaft of light seemed to encircle the instrument like a spotlight. He looked up and saw a window in the ceiling directly above that let in the noontime sun. He sat on the bench and spread the music before him. He tested the feel of the keys, checked the piece’s signature, and started to play. He did not sing, preferring to focus on the notes, though he read the words silently for the third time. They seemed new to him as before, but this time in the company of the melody and harmony, they carried even more power.
Afterwards, he wondered if he had even breathed during the minutes it took to play the piece. The world beyond the music had seemed to both disappear and become more real at the same time. His hands tingled and a tear ran down his right cheek.
He heard a muffled cry behind him; a soft sound, almost childlike in its vulnerability. He turned slowly and saw a woman. She was around his age, dressed in a tan long-sleeved blouse and brown pants, with shoulder-length hair. A boy no older than eight stood beside her, holding her hand. They seemed to look at him and through him at the same moment.
“Hello.”
The woman seemed to shudder and took a deep breath, as if she were rising from a dive into a deep pool. “What was that song you just played?” The child pulled his hand from the woman’s and approached the piano. He began stroking the warm mahogany wood of the piano’s leg with his right hand as if fascinated with it.
Bobby glanced down at the boy. “It is called Everyone’s Song. It’s the first time I played it.”
“It’s beautiful.” Though her face seemed relaxed, he saw the start of lines around her eyes.
The boy continued caressing the piano leg. “Is this your son?” Bobby asked.
“Yes.”
Bobby noticed how, unlike some mothers who kept their children on short leashes lest they become an embarrassment to them, this woman did not get after her son for crowding this stranger. He did not mind as he was still feeling the congenial effects of the music. “What is his name?”
“Scott. I’m Lisa.” Her lips parted and a sigh escaped, followed by tears from both eyes.
“Is something the matter?” Bobby started to rise in concern for this woman who seemed on the verge of some distress.
Anxiety flooded her face. “Don’t get up! Play it again, please. It’s been so long.”
“So long?”
Her eyes shifted to her son who remained at the piano. “We’ve been alone since his father left us. During your song, I felt that we would be okay. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
Bobby saw the need in her face and something at the edge of his consciousness urged him to be careful. Careful of what? He lived for moments like this. He turned to the manuscript and stretched his fingers over the keys. The words above the notes seemed to blur, taking on new meaning. Was the miracle in his voice or in their ears? Did it really matter?
By the time he reached the end, a small crowd had gathered. Lisa applauded as did the others. Bobby stood and gathered up the manuscript. He knew that they would keep him singing all day if he did not leave. He brushed past his audience and approached the main desk where Xavier stood waiting. Lisa and the others remained at the piano talking together and touching the instrument with a devoted tenderness.
“I’ll take this piece of music. I’ve never heard anything like it,” Bobby said.
“I would say not. You have made quite an impression with it.”
Bobby reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Do you have any information on the composer. It doesn’t say.”
“Really?” Xavier picked up the manuscript. “That is strange. I can tell you that one of our buyers found it only yesterday at a flea market outside of Gettysburg.”
“So I am the first customer to consider it?”
“That is true.”
Bobby retrieved the composition and turned it over. “Someone wrote the word Genesis on the back. Do you know what it means?”
“Apart from the Biblical reference? No, I am sorry. Unless it is written by someone famous, such additions usually reduce the value of collectibles.” Xavier paused and Bobby thought he was going to give him his price. “Mr. Devine, do you believe in the words follow your heart?” He looked at him intently.
“What? How do you know . . .?”
“I would think that a musician would be familiar with the idea. If your listeners don’t feel anything when you sing, then what is the point? People who want facts read almanacs. If they need to total a sum, they can find a calculator. Hearts are moved only by drama, comedy, or tragedy. Why else do you think country music remains so popular?”
A Hank Williams song began to trundle through Bobby’s memory like a broken-down jalopy driven by Jethro Bodine. “So . . .?”
“I have operated this establishment for quite some time. Every once in a while something special takes place. I thought it had already been a significant day. But then you arrived.”
Something slivered through Bobby’s gut like the time he was swimming as a kid and plunged down to touch the bottom of a lake but couldn’t. How much farther was it before he could push off again to the surface? “You are making a big deal of a simple sale,” he managed.
“Antiques are just my commodity. My real business is in appointments. I arrange them for people who need them.” He offered a price and Bobby decided not to quibble. Xavier ran the credit card and Bobby signed the slip. “I hope that you enjoy your new music,” the storeowner said shaking Bobby’s hand.
When Bobby’s cousin Jack saw him standing on the porch of his house, he launched into an apology for failing to pick him up at the bus station. Bobby let him off easy, being glad to have a place to be for a while. The next day, Jack drove him to Fort Washington to meet the casino’s manager. The favor Bobby’s agent had offered held good. He was cast as the new second act for the afternoon shift of two shows.
It was on Tuesday of the second week that he added Everyone’s Song to his set. Within a half a minute of his first note, conversations lowered and then stopped. By sixty seconds, every face had turned his way. Patrons that normally hurried to the tables and slots appeared in the doorway and then found seats. From that point on, the lounge was filled to capacity every time he was on.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep it up,” the casino manager said one morning. After the customers listen to you, they play more games than others. We need to get you on stage more often.”
Bobby moved to the Monday to Thursday evening shift when higher rollers normally played. When winter ended the horse racing season the casino stayed open with Bobby as the Friday to Sunday evening lead act.
He saved enough by New Year’s to move out of Jack’s place and into a nice condo. An added benefit was the regular offers of female company following every performance. His life took on a rhythm of evenings on stage, nights partying with people he didn’t remember, and days sleeping. He still could not remember the words from one performance to the next, but it didn’t matter anymore as long as the audiences kept coming. The fire was raging now and he hungered to feel its strength night after night.
Two days after Valentine’s Day his alarm woke him. “This is oldies 100.3. W-Big.” Music began playing and he swung his legs around until his feet hit the carpeted floor. His phone started to ring from where it lay on the nightstand. He slid the cell’s cover back: Unknown number, the display read. He turned the music down a little. “Yeah, Bobby D. here.”
“Bobby! How are you doing man?”
Bobby yawned and recognized his former agent’s voice. The man must have heard about his rebound from oblivion and wanted in on it. He rolled out of bed and moved toward the window.
“Good enough, I guess. You know it’s kinda early yet.”
“That’s funny Bobby,” the man chuckled. “You’re making news, man. How long are you going to stay in the bush leagues singing for the old folks? I can get you a spot at Trump’s Atlantic City for a fair share of the first month. I’ve heard . . .”
Bobby pulled back the curtain and took in the panoramic view of the Potomac that had sold him on the place. “What you’ve heard is that Bobby D is back! Thanks for the call, but what do I need you for now?”
The sound of the man’s swallow passed over the line. “That’s low, Bobby. I get you in the door at Fort Washington and you’re gonna drop me?”
Bobby’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I don’t need you or anybody else! All I need is my music!”
The line stayed silent for long seconds. Then the agent’s voice continued more softly. “What will you do when they want to hear something new? A singer has to grow. One hit wonders fade fast.”
“That’s not me.”
“What are you Bobby? So you’ve got some audiences screaming your name. Is that all there is -- singing a song somebody else wrote who knows when? What have you written lately?”
Bobby swallowed against the dryness that filled his throat.
“Crossing Wind was a great song because it came from your heart. I know you’ve got more like it in there.”
Bobby sat down. “I thought so, but then Annie . . .”
“Yeah, Bobby. I know that was hard. I was afraid for you when you stopped returning my calls.”
“I tried writing, but when I found Everyone’s Song it was like . . .”
“Easier?”
Bobby almost threw the phone through the window. “You don’t know what it is like to connect with an audience like this again!”
“But is it real?”
“What are you? A psychologist?”
“No -- your agent. It’s my job to look out for you.”
Bobby looked down from his window and saw a young family walk from the building to their car: a man, woman, and a girl about ten years old, each with a sets of ice skates with the laces tied and slung over their shoulders. They were bundled against the weather and wore broad smiles as they climbed into the car and drove away.
He heard the song from the radio:
My home lies deep within you,
And I’ve got my own place in your soul
Now, when I look out through your eyes,
I’m young again, even though I’m very old.
His throat grew tighter as once again he missed the life he could have had with Annie. Something had gotten in the way. One of them had changed and the other couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up. The pain had hollowed him out, like an empty grave. Then he had found the song. At first, it was almost felt like his music was helping them. But then the same people kept coming to his shows long after they should have gone home. Didn’t they have jobs, families and lives? He also found himself thinking constantly about his nightly shows, as if he couldn’t wait to get on stage again and sing. His life seemed to be shrinking onto the pages of the manuscript. When he stepped off the stage it was as if he stepped into nothing. What good was it to sign autographs for people whose faces he could not carry with him? He wasn’t serving them. He was serving only himself.
His voice lost its power. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be OK.”
“You can’t write what you used to because you’re not there anymore. Honor where you are now and the fans will come.”
“Now you sound like a preacher.” Bobby felt his breathing slowing and the hostility draining from him.
His agent chuckled. “I wasn’t talking about singing Gospel, but if that’s what it takes . . .”
“I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”
“Take care of yourself, man. You know what they say -- a heart is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Who says that?”
“I just did. You never know. It might catch on.”
Bobby grunted. “Bye, man. I need a shower.”
He closed the connection. On his way to the bathroom he saw Everyone’s Song on the nightstand. Funny how it was the only song in his set for which he needed the music. The well-worn paper sat lightly on his fingers, almost as if it weighed nothing at all. Once again tonight he would hold sway over two hundred or more enraptured listeners. Didn’t that mean he was on his way up again?
He looked at the song’s first stanzas and they blurred as if resisting him. He entered his living room and sat down at the baby grand piano around which he had built his condo’s décor. He spread the music on the cabinet but found that he did not know where to begin playing.
He found himself humming lines from a song Manilow wrote during his comeback after enduring the obscurity of the 1980s.
You remind me I live in a shell,
Safe from the past, and doing' okay, but not very well.
No jolts, no surprises, no crisis arises:
My life goes along as it should,
It's all very nice, but not very good.
He turned Everyone’s Song over and read what someone had written by hand: Genesis. The word seemed to stand out clearly in contrast to the distortion of the rest of the manuscript.
Annie’s leaving was an ending, but it was also a new movement in his life; something he could not find until he came to the end of his demandingness. He lay the manuscript on the bench beside him. Then he placed his hands upon the keys, and -- humming the first bars of a new original song -- began to play.
It was past closing time. The customers had left and then also his small group of employees. Xavier walked through the shop, as was his way. He entered the conservatory -- the name given to the room he had laid out to accentuate the 1899 Christman piano -- and saw a mailing envelope lying on the piano’s bench. It was addressed to him. There was no stamp or return address. He opened it and found Everyone’s Song with a handwritten note.
“Return this to your collection for your next appointment. However, this time you might add a warning label. Sincerely, B.D.”
I write the songs, I write the songs
Bobby Devine had been in the trade long enough to know. No one hits a home run every night, but he lied to himself whenever he blew off lukewarm audiences as if they didn't matter. As the last note of his music ascended beyond the spotlights, he lifted his fingers from the piano keys. This was the moment when everything hung in the balance. Would his listeners serve as the tinder for the spark in his soul?
It seemed that he had been working with wet wood for a long time.
He scanned the late morning audience at The Mosaic, one of the casino's smaller lounges. A dozen or so people sat scattered at tables staring into their drinks – refugees from bored lives hauled by charter buses from small Illinois towns like Kankakee, Ottawa, and Pontiac. Each had spent his wad in another try at bringing something real back into his life. Tonight they would be asleep on the bus home. God bless 'em.
He exhaled, smiled, and shifted into advertising mode. "That's it for me. I'll be back here tomorrow morning at 10:00 with more soft hits and smooth jazz. Until then, enjoy your stay with us at Harrah's Joliet." He grabbed his tip bowl and exited stage right toward the dressing room. If wishes were horses he would have enjoyed more stage time, but it had been a while since the name "Bobby D" had held sway on marquees from Vegas to Atlantic City. Those were the days before the club scene was oversold and the public's taste diluted. A good piano man used to have the run of things.
“How was the crowd today?” Bobby recognized the voice of the attractive brunette in her early thirties sitting in a peach-colored dressing gown at the mid-point of the make-up counter. Her image reflected back at her from a row of mirrors illuminated with 100-watt bulbs. She held a spray bottle and the fragrances of freesia and peony drifted to him. Her name was Lacy Edwards. They had shared drinks at The Mosaic’s bar a couple of times and she carried herself like an old pro on the circuit, calculating and shrewd.
He remembered how her audition had impressed the manager a few weeks ago. He rewarded her with the early afternoon set at The Mosaic. It was the first step to better gigs at the larger Stage 151 on the other side of the hotel. Unless they screwed her over, she had a good enough voice to earn it. Bobby didn’t think that would happen.
He removed his sunglasses and propped himself against the thinly-painted wall. "About the same. Like usual."
She turned one eye towards him like the jack of hearts. "So the applause was small and the tips even smaller."
Bobby slipped a hand into his pocket where three one-dollar coins and six quarters clinked dully against each other. At least the food was cheap where the gaming was hot. God, he was even starting to think like a commercial!
She looked back into the mirror. "How many places like this have you worked?”
“Enough. Why?”
“I was listening to your last song this morning. You do Manilow really well. I saw him once as a kid. Back in '88 he played at what they called the Wolf Trap Arts Center outside of D.C. It was crazy. My mom and the other women acted like he was Elvis reincarnated or something. But even Elvis changes with the times. That’s the trick Bobby. Your style can change but the substance always shows.” He watched her run a brush through her shoulder length hair. Each smooth stroke seemed to deepen its sheen from the reflected lights. “Have you ever heard of Fanilows?” Bobby grunted. “It’s what they call his fans. I read it on a website.” She laughed a silly laugh that flittered across his skin before evaporating.
Bobby had long ago given up hope of an "Elvis experience." Especially after Annie left him that note on the bathroom sink. He had known from the beginning that they were too different. While his highs were mediated through a musical scale, she sought hers through running shoes and tennis courts. The relationship was abrasive and she had threatened to leave him more than once. Things came to a head the weekend of their third anniversary when he stayed on in Vegas for a great day of recording and even greater night of partying. When he finally got home on a Monday dawn, he weathered a hell of a storm. He consoled himself with the knowledge that she just couldn’t know the power of a perfect song.
He found her six weeks later giving her love to a dancer from Des Moines with a perfect smile. He punched out the jerk and spent the next week in drunken oblivion. It was lucky he hadn’t been thrown in jail. When he got back to the circuit, the best promoters had moved on to fresher voices. How quickly had he fallen off their radar. His so-called friends told him that he had been a fool to risk his career on a jealous rant. Since then, he had been playing a slow game of catch up.
He brought himself back into the present, spread his feet apart and looked up into the ceiling in a stage move, one hand raised as if in supplication to God.
Tryin' to get the feel-ing again, The one that made me shiver,
Made my knees start to quiver every time she walked in.
When he looked back, Lacy was staring into the mirror, her hands resting in her lap.
“Lacy?”
She turned her head slowly and looked at him with both eyes, a smile turning the corner of her lip like the Mona Lisa. “Cool.” He searched her face for some clue of meaning. Instead of her familiar calculation of advantage, he saw understanding -- even compassion.
“It’s something when it happens, isn’t it? Whatever side of the stage lights you’re on, you want it to last forever. You know what I mean, don't you?”
“Yeah.” Bobby felt something pass between them and wondered if she had anyone in her life.
“Stay with me Bobby. Sammy doesn’t usually get here for his shift until 3:00.” He nodded, his breath shortening and quickening. When Lacy stood up, the light from the bulbs revealed how sheer her dressing gown was. She stepped behind a changing curtain, slipped it off, and sat down on the single bed there. Bobby locked the doors and then moved to join her.
Afterwards, he watched her eyes roam past him. The flame was already fading. He rolled away from her and stood up, pulling on his slacks. He reached for the door that opened upon a short hallway that led to the employee exit to the lobby.
“I've got to go.”
Lacy sat up, wrapped in the sheet. “Where to?”
“Lunch. After that, who knows? Got to follow the muse.” He gathered the rest of his clothes. “I’ll see you around.”
“Sure, Bobby D.”
He paid the waiter, pushed away from the table, and left the snack shop. As he passed the hotel entrance he saw a billboard as tall as he was announcing opening night for The Legendary Smokey Robinson at the Rialto Theater.
"Bob! Hey, Bobbo!" Bobby turned and saw Jake the head desk clerk, dressed in his gold vest, black slacks, and silver name pin. The young man was one of Bobby’s less distant acquaintances and they had shared a few late night movies and pizzas. "Elle wants to see you." He looked at the clock on the wall behind him. "She said she'd be in her office until 1:00."
Bobby put on his confident face. "Oh, yeah? Well it's about time she gave me a better time slot."
"Yeah, Bobby. Whatever you say."
He entered the administrative office area and found the door with a plate on the wall beside it: Elle Stronman, Vice-President of Entertainment. Stronman's assistant let his boss know that he had arrived and Bobby disappeared into her office. He came out five minutes later, dropped a sheet of paper into the secretary’s wastebasket and left Joliet for good.
Something about the bus's motion stirred Bobby awake. He had found it useless to try to sleep until the Greyhound cleared the Chicago metro area. An interstate sign rolled past and then one reading Purdue Stadium Next Exit. He checked his watch: 9:00 P.M. The bus was quiet. He knew it wouldn't stop until Indianapolis where he would change for the bus to Dayton and points east. He found a less tender place on his temple, leaned his head over, and closed his eyes again.
Sleep resisted him. He could still hear Stronman’s voice droning on in her pointless explanation about why she needed to let him go. She needed! What a crock! What about what he needed?! It was the same old thing. He was nothing more than a small cog in the wheel of business that she spun. She herself was a little bigger cog connected to an even larger one at corporate headquarters. What did she expect of him anyway? He had done his best with the shift she gave him. It was getting tiresome being screwed over by women.
At 10:30 P.M. the bus rolled into Union Station. Four other buses already waited at the gates for fuel and passengers. Bobby tramped through the terminal doors into the waiting area where a dozen people camped on benches. A woman in a wrinkled ankle-length dress stared at a coin-operated television mounted in the arm of her chair and held two sleeping toddlers on her lap. He walked past her toward a small lunch counter on the far side of the lobby that offered hope of a meal. Thankfully, he had only a thirty-minute layover until his next bus left.
He ordered a sandwich and decaf and shifted his mind into neutral. Or at least tried to. His thoughts returned again to his dismissal from the casino. He should be thankful that he had lasted there as long as he had. It had squeezed the last juice out of Crossing Wind to get onto Harrah’s stage. It was two years ago that the song rose to number twenty-seven on the Billboard charts. An eternity ago. Annie left three weeks later and he had written nothing since.
Last night I said goodbye, now it seems years.
I’m back in the city where nothing is clear.
He remembered the moment’s escape from pointlessness he and Lacy had conspired to snatch together. A pang of regret tried to surface in his conscience and he shoved it down. It was becoming easier to do that. It seemed that any price had become worth paying even for just a taste of the real – even if it was a saccharine substitute.
Someone sat down on the stool next to him. "They got any more of those?" the man asked, eyeing Bobby's overloaded chicken salad on wheat.
Bobby grunted. "Don't know. It's alright though, as late it is." He took a bite.
"Where're you headed?" the man persisted.
“I've got people in Virginia," Bobby answered and reached for his cup.
"Oh, yeah? It's good to have people."
"Yeah."
The waitress came over and told the man that she had one more sandwich left. He could have it for half price. "I'll take it,” the man said. “And a pop."
Pop? “Where are you from?” Bobby asked. His mind ran the possibilities. Midwest for sure.
"Ever heard of Grayling, Michigan? It’s about half way between Bay City and Mackinaw."
"I thought as much. They say coke down here." He took another bite.
The counterman placed the man’s food in front of him. "Looks good, but I'll be glad to get home to my wife's cooking."
Bobby's mouth turned down in a grimace before he could catch himself. "What's the matter? You sick or something?" The man’s eyes dropped back to his plate.
"No. It’s just . . .” A blob of chicken salad fell from Bobby’s sandwich and landed square on his fly.
“Oh crap!” He wiped off the mess with his napkin. The man handed him another napkin and Bobby felt his face get red. He extended his hand. "I’m Bobby Devine."
As they shook hands, recognition fluttered across the man's face. "The Bobby Devine? Crossing Wind and all that?"
Bobby smiled. "That was a while ago, but yeah."
"Great song, man. Spoke to me and my wife at the right time." He pulled piece of paper from his back pocket, heavily creased and gray at the edges from lint. Lines of flowing script filled one side. He turned it over. "Would you sign this?"
Bobby took out a pen and quickly scribbled his name. "A letter from your wife?"
"She wrote a poem after we worked things out. My name's Sam. Sam and Katy Ketchen." A voice announced over the loudspeaker, Bus for Dayton, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and points east loading at this time at Gate 1.
Bobby slugged down the rest of his coffee. "That's me. Have a nice life, Sam."
"You too, Bobby D."
Bobby gathered his duffel and shoulder bag. He had taken three steps when Sam called, "You got another song coming out?"
Bobby turned around. "Maybe. I'm working on it."
A green sign flashed past his window: Dayton 45 Miles. He leaned his tired head against the glass and felt the vibration of the bus’s tires through the axle and into the frame as they surrendered microscopic bits of rubber against the abrasive surface of Interstate 70. He thought he felt the start of a belt separation and imagined the tread peeling off and flying wildly through the air to join the other alligators lying in wait in the cruising lane.
“People in Virginia” amounted to a cousin he hadn't seen in five years. What really interested him was Maryland's booming horse track industry. Every new track included a full-service casino in order to guarantee profitability. Even down-home conservative states like Indiana had them these days and gamblers wanted good food and good music to go with their sport.
He pulled a folded scrap of paper from his left pocket. Before he had left Joliet, he had called his former agent and cashed in one remaining favor. The scrap held two addresses: a casino at a horse track called Fort Washington Park outside D.C. and that of his cousin Jack who lived a few miles away in Alexandria, Virginia. His agent had gotten him an audition with the casino manager. His cousin said he could stay with him until he got his own place. The seat next to him was vacant so he stretched his legs toward the aisle. Ten more hours and he’d be there.
Bobby groaned and became aware of the sound of bass drums being pounded close by. Dried tears matted his eyes shut but he could tell it was daytime. He pried his eyes open in time to see a blurry wall of green rush past his view and vanish. Something like a huge spear planted butt first in the soil appeared in the bus window, its sharp point thrust into the clouds.
“Either use your earphones or shut that damn thing off,” a man shouted two rows behind him. "I’ve listened to that crap all the way from Hagerstown!”
“Screw you, old man! It’s a free country!” a younger man hollered back with a voice distorted by too much of something inhaled or swallowed. Bobby twisted his stiffened neck until he saw a man in his early twenties, dressed in worn jeans and a stained gray athletic T-shirt with a knit cap pulled low across his forehead sitting across the aisle from him. Sound blared from a boom box he held in his lap, held together with duct tape, a relic of pre-mp3 days. Bobby recognized the music genre: grunge – a version of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s, sung by angry young men inspired by hardcore punk and heavy metal. It had been a long time since he had met anyone who still sang the stuff. The older man was right. It was too early in the day for distorted guitars and angst-filled lyrics.
“I’ll show you a screw or two . . .” The older man stepped into the aisle -- 5’3” but determined looking. The punk turned toward him just in time to catch a hardback version of James Mitchner’s Alaska against his jaw. Bobby jerked backward and his phone fell out of his shirt pocket to the floor.
The injured man roared to his feet and Bobby heard the sound of his phone crunching under the weight of the young man’s shoe. The boom box fell from his lap and hit the floor. The station switched and Bobby recognized the tune:
You came along just like a song and brightened my day.
Who would have believed that you were part of a dream?
Now it all seems light years away, and now you know . . .
I can't smile without you. I can't smile without you.
I can't laugh and I can't sing. I'm finding it hard to do anything.
The bus lurched to a sudden stop as the two men squared off for round two. The driver moved quickly to quell the action. “Sit down or you can walk the rest of the way to the station!” When they saw the Louisville Slugger in his hand they returned to their seats.
Bobby collected the remains of his phone and then turned back toward the window. By now his eyes had cleared enough to see that the giant spear was actually the Washington Monument framed by a sky of blue and white clouds.
It was a beautiful morning in the nation’s capital.
Ten minutes later they arrived at the bus station. Bobby collected his bag from the cargo hold beneath the bus and waited for the green Explorer that his cousin Jack said he would be driving. Twenty minutes later and no Explorer, Bobby found a city bus heading for Alexandria.
An hour later, the bus let him off six blocks from his cousin’s address. He saw a sign in a convenience store that advertised soft drinks any size for sixty-nine cents. He went inside and served himself a large root beer at the fountain. He drew three deep slugs of the beverage and his throat thanked him. There was no line at the counter and a disinterested high-schooler put down a magazine and rang him up. Bobby couldn’t help staring at the metal stud in the boy’s lower lip and three small rings that adorned the lobe of his left ear.
“Donut your change for miclur scrosis?”
“Excuse me?” The boy gestured toward a scratched plastic box with a slot in the top next to the register. A photo of a portly Jerry Lewis smiled at him from inside. “OK, though the condition is muscular dystrophy.” The boy looked up at him through drooping eyelids. “That’s the charity Jerry Lewis sponsors. You know, ‘Jerry’s Kids’?”
“Whatever. Just doin’ my job.” The boy dropped the remaining thirty-one cents through the slot and Bobby left the store. He noticed a brick building with tall narrow windows sat across the street. Its glass-paned front door opened and an attractive woman in a cream-colored overcoat exited. She carried a bundle wrapped in brown paper. When her eyes fell upon him he thought he saw anger, as if she had lost something to him simply in his noticing her first. Four purposeful strides brought her to her car – a navy blue Audi. Moments later she was gone.
Bobby looked again at the building. It seemed old, but not dilapidated. He thought he heard something like music coming from it and felt a sudden curiosity. He crossed the pavement and read the sing that hung over the entrance: Xavier’s Gifts.
He should call Jack and have him come pick him up. Maybe in a minute. There’s probably a phone inside. He moved up the steps and grabbed the doorknob. The sound of music came to him from within. Not Manilow. Something much older. The sound quality dated it as an LP, maybe even a 78, being heard through a single speaker. The sound seemed to flow to him through the crack in the double door. He saw movement through the glass as several customers moved about.
He pulled open the door and the music grew louder. He stepped inside and felt the warmth of furnace heat rising up through the floor grates. Tall shelves held items of various kinds. He followed the sound of the music into a smaller room to the right. A piano sat in the middle of the room. Across the way near a window sat a wind-up record player with the characteristic horn, the kind that the RCA Company had a dog sit in front of on its label. The voice coming from the record belonged to Bing Crosby.
Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, someone waits for me.
And the gold of her hair crowns the blue of her eyes, like a halo, tenderly.
If only I could see her, oh how happy I would be.
Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, someone waits for me.
The song ended and Bobby lifted the needle.
“A special composition for a special time, don’t you think?” a voice said from behind him. Bobby turned and saw a thin man with glasses. His name badge read Xavier.
“Yes, it was.”
“Are you looking for something in music?”
“Man, you don’t know the whole of it.”
“Are you a musician?”
“I sing, play the piano, and write a little.”
“Then it was fortunate that this record was playing today.” The man looked at Bobby as if he knew a secret. “You write a little?”
Bobby shifted his weight and looked past the man to the street outside the window. A garbage truck rumbled past, blocking the view. “It’s tough out there. A lot of songs get written that never get heard. Other songs get heard that should never have been written.”
“Are you writing something, Mr. ?”
“Bobby. Just Bobby. And yeah, I’m writing something. It’s not like you can just sit and compose. The muse comes when she’s ready.”
Xavier picked up the record and slipped it into its protective sleeve. “Did you know that Bing Crosby considered this song his theme? Do you have a theme song, Mr. . . . Bobby?”
Evidently the man would go away only when he was good and ready. “That’s the million-dollar question. I’ve got a gig over at Fort Washington Park. I’m staying with a friend until I get set up.” A thought came that might finally satisfy the storekeeper. “It would be nice to get my friend something for his trouble. He likes classic country. Do you carry any old sheet music?”
Xavier smiled broadly. “Certainly. Right over here.” Bobby followed him to a chest of drawers full of papers. “Take your time. Any price you find is negotiable.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell you if I find something.” He started sorting though the scores of compositions.
The storeowner walked away toward the main room. “I hope you find enough fuel for your fire.”
Bobby’s head jerked around. “What was that?”
Xavier replied without turning around, “I said that I hope you find a few for your friend.”
The cabinet held a sizable collection of American sheet music for a small shop. They were arranged in alphabetical order and each piece had been slipped into a protective sheath of clear plastic. Bobby started with the As and leafed through to the Ds: Paul Anka, Harry Belefonte, Mama Cass, Bob Dylan.
He pulled some hopefuls. From them he would choose semi-finalists, then a top ten, and then finally narrow the choice to the one for Jack. His eye fell upon a yellowed page halfway through the Es: Everyone’s Song. He pulled it and looked for the composer’s name but found none. Nor was there a date or place of publication. He removed the pages from their plastic cover and searched each one thoroughly. At the bottom of the back page he found the word Genesis written in flowing script. Nothing more.
It was a simple tune, just four pages long. He started reading the words. By the end of the first stanza the lyrics flowed through his mind as if they had been birthed there. It took him to places in his memory and out to his surroundings. He felt connected to everything around him – the other customers whose voices carried across the hard wood floors to him, and even to the floors themselves as if filled with the spirit of the trees they once had been, planted in the vibrant soil of the earth. As he reached the last stanzas he seemed to be everywhere at once – on the far side of the world, at the bottom of the ocean, soaring at the edge of space.
He turned the manuscript over with trembling hands and checked his watch. Only a few minutes had passed. He was still alone and unobserved. He looked again at the first line of the manuscript and found that he could not recall what it had said. He started reading through it again. This time his experience was even more profound. When he finished he dropped the pages onto the cabinet. What was going on?
He could not take his eyes off the piece. What about the notes? He approached the spinet in the middle of the room. A shaft of light seemed to encircle the instrument like a spotlight. He looked up and saw a window in the ceiling directly above that let in the noontime sun. He sat on the bench and spread the music before him. He tested the feel of the keys, checked the piece’s signature, and started to play. He did not sing, preferring to focus on the notes, though he read the words silently for the third time. They seemed new to him as before, but this time in the company of the melody and harmony, they carried even more power.
Afterwards, he wondered if he had even breathed during the minutes it took to play the piece. The world beyond the music had seemed to both disappear and become more real at the same time. His hands tingled and a tear ran down his right cheek.
He heard a muffled cry behind him; a soft sound, almost childlike in its vulnerability. He turned slowly and saw a woman. She was around his age, dressed in a tan long-sleeved blouse and brown pants, with shoulder-length hair. A boy no older than eight stood beside her, holding her hand. They seemed to look at him and through him at the same moment.
“Hello.”
The woman seemed to shudder and took a deep breath, as if she were rising from a dive into a deep pool. “What was that song you just played?” The child pulled his hand from the woman’s and approached the piano. He began stroking the warm mahogany wood of the piano’s leg with his right hand as if fascinated with it.
Bobby glanced down at the boy. “It is called Everyone’s Song. It’s the first time I played it.”
“It’s beautiful.” Though her face seemed relaxed, he saw the start of lines around her eyes.
The boy continued caressing the piano leg. “Is this your son?” Bobby asked.
“Yes.”
Bobby noticed how, unlike some mothers who kept their children on short leashes lest they become an embarrassment to them, this woman did not get after her son for crowding this stranger. He did not mind as he was still feeling the congenial effects of the music. “What is his name?”
“Scott. I’m Lisa.” Her lips parted and a sigh escaped, followed by tears from both eyes.
“Is something the matter?” Bobby started to rise in concern for this woman who seemed on the verge of some distress.
Anxiety flooded her face. “Don’t get up! Play it again, please. It’s been so long.”
“So long?”
Her eyes shifted to her son who remained at the piano. “We’ve been alone since his father left us. During your song, I felt that we would be okay. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
Bobby saw the need in her face and something at the edge of his consciousness urged him to be careful. Careful of what? He lived for moments like this. He turned to the manuscript and stretched his fingers over the keys. The words above the notes seemed to blur, taking on new meaning. Was the miracle in his voice or in their ears? Did it really matter?
By the time he reached the end, a small crowd had gathered. Lisa applauded as did the others. Bobby stood and gathered up the manuscript. He knew that they would keep him singing all day if he did not leave. He brushed past his audience and approached the main desk where Xavier stood waiting. Lisa and the others remained at the piano talking together and touching the instrument with a devoted tenderness.
“I’ll take this piece of music. I’ve never heard anything like it,” Bobby said.
“I would say not. You have made quite an impression with it.”
Bobby reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Do you have any information on the composer. It doesn’t say.”
“Really?” Xavier picked up the manuscript. “That is strange. I can tell you that one of our buyers found it only yesterday at a flea market outside of Gettysburg.”
“So I am the first customer to consider it?”
“That is true.”
Bobby retrieved the composition and turned it over. “Someone wrote the word Genesis on the back. Do you know what it means?”
“Apart from the Biblical reference? No, I am sorry. Unless it is written by someone famous, such additions usually reduce the value of collectibles.” Xavier paused and Bobby thought he was going to give him his price. “Mr. Devine, do you believe in the words follow your heart?” He looked at him intently.
“What? How do you know . . .?”
“I would think that a musician would be familiar with the idea. If your listeners don’t feel anything when you sing, then what is the point? People who want facts read almanacs. If they need to total a sum, they can find a calculator. Hearts are moved only by drama, comedy, or tragedy. Why else do you think country music remains so popular?”
A Hank Williams song began to trundle through Bobby’s memory like a broken-down jalopy driven by Jethro Bodine. “So . . .?”
“I have operated this establishment for quite some time. Every once in a while something special takes place. I thought it had already been a significant day. But then you arrived.”
Something slivered through Bobby’s gut like the time he was swimming as a kid and plunged down to touch the bottom of a lake but couldn’t. How much farther was it before he could push off again to the surface? “You are making a big deal of a simple sale,” he managed.
“Antiques are just my commodity. My real business is in appointments. I arrange them for people who need them.” He offered a price and Bobby decided not to quibble. Xavier ran the credit card and Bobby signed the slip. “I hope that you enjoy your new music,” the storeowner said shaking Bobby’s hand.
When Bobby’s cousin Jack saw him standing on the porch of his house, he launched into an apology for failing to pick him up at the bus station. Bobby let him off easy, being glad to have a place to be for a while. The next day, Jack drove him to Fort Washington to meet the casino’s manager. The favor Bobby’s agent had offered held good. He was cast as the new second act for the afternoon shift of two shows.
It was on Tuesday of the second week that he added Everyone’s Song to his set. Within a half a minute of his first note, conversations lowered and then stopped. By sixty seconds, every face had turned his way. Patrons that normally hurried to the tables and slots appeared in the doorway and then found seats. From that point on, the lounge was filled to capacity every time he was on.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep it up,” the casino manager said one morning. After the customers listen to you, they play more games than others. We need to get you on stage more often.”
Bobby moved to the Monday to Thursday evening shift when higher rollers normally played. When winter ended the horse racing season the casino stayed open with Bobby as the Friday to Sunday evening lead act.
He saved enough by New Year’s to move out of Jack’s place and into a nice condo. An added benefit was the regular offers of female company following every performance. His life took on a rhythm of evenings on stage, nights partying with people he didn’t remember, and days sleeping. He still could not remember the words from one performance to the next, but it didn’t matter anymore as long as the audiences kept coming. The fire was raging now and he hungered to feel its strength night after night.
Two days after Valentine’s Day his alarm woke him. “This is oldies 100.3. W-Big.” Music began playing and he swung his legs around until his feet hit the carpeted floor. His phone started to ring from where it lay on the nightstand. He slid the cell’s cover back: Unknown number, the display read. He turned the music down a little. “Yeah, Bobby D. here.”
“Bobby! How are you doing man?”
Bobby yawned and recognized his former agent’s voice. The man must have heard about his rebound from oblivion and wanted in on it. He rolled out of bed and moved toward the window.
“Good enough, I guess. You know it’s kinda early yet.”
“That’s funny Bobby,” the man chuckled. “You’re making news, man. How long are you going to stay in the bush leagues singing for the old folks? I can get you a spot at Trump’s Atlantic City for a fair share of the first month. I’ve heard . . .”
Bobby pulled back the curtain and took in the panoramic view of the Potomac that had sold him on the place. “What you’ve heard is that Bobby D is back! Thanks for the call, but what do I need you for now?”
The sound of the man’s swallow passed over the line. “That’s low, Bobby. I get you in the door at Fort Washington and you’re gonna drop me?”
Bobby’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I don’t need you or anybody else! All I need is my music!”
The line stayed silent for long seconds. Then the agent’s voice continued more softly. “What will you do when they want to hear something new? A singer has to grow. One hit wonders fade fast.”
“That’s not me.”
“What are you Bobby? So you’ve got some audiences screaming your name. Is that all there is -- singing a song somebody else wrote who knows when? What have you written lately?”
Bobby swallowed against the dryness that filled his throat.
“Crossing Wind was a great song because it came from your heart. I know you’ve got more like it in there.”
Bobby sat down. “I thought so, but then Annie . . .”
“Yeah, Bobby. I know that was hard. I was afraid for you when you stopped returning my calls.”
“I tried writing, but when I found Everyone’s Song it was like . . .”
“Easier?”
Bobby almost threw the phone through the window. “You don’t know what it is like to connect with an audience like this again!”
“But is it real?”
“What are you? A psychologist?”
“No -- your agent. It’s my job to look out for you.”
Bobby looked down from his window and saw a young family walk from the building to their car: a man, woman, and a girl about ten years old, each with a sets of ice skates with the laces tied and slung over their shoulders. They were bundled against the weather and wore broad smiles as they climbed into the car and drove away.
He heard the song from the radio:
My home lies deep within you,
And I’ve got my own place in your soul
Now, when I look out through your eyes,
I’m young again, even though I’m very old.
His throat grew tighter as once again he missed the life he could have had with Annie. Something had gotten in the way. One of them had changed and the other couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up. The pain had hollowed him out, like an empty grave. Then he had found the song. At first, it was almost felt like his music was helping them. But then the same people kept coming to his shows long after they should have gone home. Didn’t they have jobs, families and lives? He also found himself thinking constantly about his nightly shows, as if he couldn’t wait to get on stage again and sing. His life seemed to be shrinking onto the pages of the manuscript. When he stepped off the stage it was as if he stepped into nothing. What good was it to sign autographs for people whose faces he could not carry with him? He wasn’t serving them. He was serving only himself.
His voice lost its power. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be OK.”
“You can’t write what you used to because you’re not there anymore. Honor where you are now and the fans will come.”
“Now you sound like a preacher.” Bobby felt his breathing slowing and the hostility draining from him.
His agent chuckled. “I wasn’t talking about singing Gospel, but if that’s what it takes . . .”
“I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”
“Take care of yourself, man. You know what they say -- a heart is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Who says that?”
“I just did. You never know. It might catch on.”
Bobby grunted. “Bye, man. I need a shower.”
He closed the connection. On his way to the bathroom he saw Everyone’s Song on the nightstand. Funny how it was the only song in his set for which he needed the music. The well-worn paper sat lightly on his fingers, almost as if it weighed nothing at all. Once again tonight he would hold sway over two hundred or more enraptured listeners. Didn’t that mean he was on his way up again?
He looked at the song’s first stanzas and they blurred as if resisting him. He entered his living room and sat down at the baby grand piano around which he had built his condo’s décor. He spread the music on the cabinet but found that he did not know where to begin playing.
He found himself humming lines from a song Manilow wrote during his comeback after enduring the obscurity of the 1980s.
You remind me I live in a shell,
Safe from the past, and doing' okay, but not very well.
No jolts, no surprises, no crisis arises:
My life goes along as it should,
It's all very nice, but not very good.
He turned Everyone’s Song over and read what someone had written by hand: Genesis. The word seemed to stand out clearly in contrast to the distortion of the rest of the manuscript.
Annie’s leaving was an ending, but it was also a new movement in his life; something he could not find until he came to the end of his demandingness. He lay the manuscript on the bench beside him. Then he placed his hands upon the keys, and -- humming the first bars of a new original song -- began to play.
It was past closing time. The customers had left and then also his small group of employees. Xavier walked through the shop, as was his way. He entered the conservatory -- the name given to the room he had laid out to accentuate the 1899 Christman piano -- and saw a mailing envelope lying on the piano’s bench. It was addressed to him. There was no stamp or return address. He opened it and found Everyone’s Song with a handwritten note.
“Return this to your collection for your next appointment. However, this time you might add a warning label. Sincerely, B.D.”
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Listening for a Change
When I was a child, I listened as a child – intently to the inflections of tone and responding authentically to first impressions. I had not yet developed the adult ability of feigning interest for courtesy’s sake.
My mother would read to me and I would hang onto every word. I loved shows like Star Trek, Lost in Space, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that told stories of new life and new civilizations beyond my experience. Forty years later, I miss the special uncle who would spin tales of his work life and fishing trips. Those stories told me things about him that I could not have learned any other way.
Being a child is about change and transformation. It happens through a very forthright process -- by attending to and engaging everything in their worlds, often to the distraction of parents who have learned to be selective, cautious, and somewhat detached.
Adulthood started for me when I began to lose my hearing. As a teenager I thought I had arrived at final answers. My deafness grew worse as I graduated from college, ready to set the world and the church aright – if only people would listen to (i.e. “agree with”) my Biblical insights and strategic plans.
What I lost was the opportunity to be a true change agent. I was into monologue, not dialogue. I didn’t appreciate the importance of valuing where persons were and how they got there. Frankly, I doubted that I had anything to learn from those I professed to be serving.
Every encounter between two human beings is a cross-cultural experience in which two unique worlds come together. If redemptive change is to take place at least one person must engage the other with a determination to understand. True change is possible when I a meet, understand, and value the other person and to the extent that I am willing to be changed by the encounter. By first seeking to understand, I show a high level of respect for the other person. This is a form of agape love.
What I advocate is Listening Evangelism. This is a phrase from the book Listening and Caring Skills by John Savage. Listening Evangelism happens when I enter into another’s story in a way that demonstrates grace and truth. Spiritual encounters can happen everywhere -- in living rooms, coffee shops, church sanctuaries, and hospital rooms. Every Sunday is an encounter between hearers and the preacher. Worshippers are listening in the hope of hearing that the speaker (and God) comprehends the story they are living.
The work of a Listening Evangelist is to develop eyes that see and ears that hear the clues that people are scattering about all the time. Everyone tells stories. Hidden inside those stories, like diamonds in the rough, are the deep truths of the unconscious. Storytelling is a form of self-disclosure. When you learn how to hear the deep structure of stories, you never can be quite the same again.
What makes Listening Evangelism a powerful occasion for transformation is also the thing that makes it difficult. This is because I cannot communicate on the soul-level with another person and remain detached. I can maintain a sense of being in control if I remain more focused upon effective technique rather than meaningful relationship. However, the result is that I will remain relationally ineffective.
Listening is risky because if I succeed, a counterstory will rise up in me. Counterstory can become a problem because many if not most persons are in a lot of personal pain, and we tend not to want to hear their painful stories. The reason is that they remind us of our own pain. This tendency to avoid inward examination forms a barrier to real listening. While some say that they do not want to be pushy about their faith, what is really happening is that they are anxious about the counterstories that could be triggered.
This counterstory is my half of the bridge over which our two narratives meet. It is where the truth and grace of God can pass both ways. It is dangerous, yet holy ground.
Jesus knew what the suffering saints of Pergamos needed to hear: “To him who overcomes . . .I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.” Notice that it is the one who receives the name who understands its meaning. No one else can or will. Jesus doesn’t explain anything. He just shows the name to the person and the person knows.
Jesus was a skilled listener. People heard him gladly because he was the “Wonderful Counselor” who knew what was in people (Isaiah 9:6; John 2:24). The Woman of Sychar, Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, Nathaniel, Mary, and Martha are some of those who heard the Good Shepherd call them by name.
This is a profound moment of intimacy -- one that all of us crave. I have spent every day of my fifty-three years living a story that I hope will be attended and valued. I seek and maintain relationships with parents, spouses, friends, and family for a reason -- I need someone to help me comprehend the story I am living. I am a mix of blunders and accomplishments, doubt and faith. Some parts I hide in shame. Other parts I show off with pride. Part of my grief is that my deceased parents only understood bits and pieces of it (or perhaps they knew more than I was ready to accept). Part of my frustration is that I desire a deep and mutual awareness with my wife and children that does not always happen.
Jesus’ promise is that at the end of my earthly faith journey, all I have been will be summed up in a name that Christ will speak privately into my ears. When I hear that name, all the pieces will come together. “Then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
It will be heaven.
But heaven does not have to wait.
It is my hope and responsibility to encounter people in way that provides both of us an chance to hear even a faint whisper of our true names. It is then that we can be converted and become like little children. The moment we hear our Creator’s voice, the door to change is opened wide. It is then that we can respond like the man who found the treasure buried in the field and sell all they have to possess it.
It is in that moment that the Kingdom of God comes.
My mother would read to me and I would hang onto every word. I loved shows like Star Trek, Lost in Space, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that told stories of new life and new civilizations beyond my experience. Forty years later, I miss the special uncle who would spin tales of his work life and fishing trips. Those stories told me things about him that I could not have learned any other way.
Being a child is about change and transformation. It happens through a very forthright process -- by attending to and engaging everything in their worlds, often to the distraction of parents who have learned to be selective, cautious, and somewhat detached.
Adulthood started for me when I began to lose my hearing. As a teenager I thought I had arrived at final answers. My deafness grew worse as I graduated from college, ready to set the world and the church aright – if only people would listen to (i.e. “agree with”) my Biblical insights and strategic plans.
What I lost was the opportunity to be a true change agent. I was into monologue, not dialogue. I didn’t appreciate the importance of valuing where persons were and how they got there. Frankly, I doubted that I had anything to learn from those I professed to be serving.
Every encounter between two human beings is a cross-cultural experience in which two unique worlds come together. If redemptive change is to take place at least one person must engage the other with a determination to understand. True change is possible when I a meet, understand, and value the other person and to the extent that I am willing to be changed by the encounter. By first seeking to understand, I show a high level of respect for the other person. This is a form of agape love.
What I advocate is Listening Evangelism. This is a phrase from the book Listening and Caring Skills by John Savage. Listening Evangelism happens when I enter into another’s story in a way that demonstrates grace and truth. Spiritual encounters can happen everywhere -- in living rooms, coffee shops, church sanctuaries, and hospital rooms. Every Sunday is an encounter between hearers and the preacher. Worshippers are listening in the hope of hearing that the speaker (and God) comprehends the story they are living.
The work of a Listening Evangelist is to develop eyes that see and ears that hear the clues that people are scattering about all the time. Everyone tells stories. Hidden inside those stories, like diamonds in the rough, are the deep truths of the unconscious. Storytelling is a form of self-disclosure. When you learn how to hear the deep structure of stories, you never can be quite the same again.
What makes Listening Evangelism a powerful occasion for transformation is also the thing that makes it difficult. This is because I cannot communicate on the soul-level with another person and remain detached. I can maintain a sense of being in control if I remain more focused upon effective technique rather than meaningful relationship. However, the result is that I will remain relationally ineffective.
Listening is risky because if I succeed, a counterstory will rise up in me. Counterstory can become a problem because many if not most persons are in a lot of personal pain, and we tend not to want to hear their painful stories. The reason is that they remind us of our own pain. This tendency to avoid inward examination forms a barrier to real listening. While some say that they do not want to be pushy about their faith, what is really happening is that they are anxious about the counterstories that could be triggered.
This counterstory is my half of the bridge over which our two narratives meet. It is where the truth and grace of God can pass both ways. It is dangerous, yet holy ground.
Jesus knew what the suffering saints of Pergamos needed to hear: “To him who overcomes . . .I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.” Notice that it is the one who receives the name who understands its meaning. No one else can or will. Jesus doesn’t explain anything. He just shows the name to the person and the person knows.
Jesus was a skilled listener. People heard him gladly because he was the “Wonderful Counselor” who knew what was in people (Isaiah 9:6; John 2:24). The Woman of Sychar, Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, Nathaniel, Mary, and Martha are some of those who heard the Good Shepherd call them by name.
This is a profound moment of intimacy -- one that all of us crave. I have spent every day of my fifty-three years living a story that I hope will be attended and valued. I seek and maintain relationships with parents, spouses, friends, and family for a reason -- I need someone to help me comprehend the story I am living. I am a mix of blunders and accomplishments, doubt and faith. Some parts I hide in shame. Other parts I show off with pride. Part of my grief is that my deceased parents only understood bits and pieces of it (or perhaps they knew more than I was ready to accept). Part of my frustration is that I desire a deep and mutual awareness with my wife and children that does not always happen.
Jesus’ promise is that at the end of my earthly faith journey, all I have been will be summed up in a name that Christ will speak privately into my ears. When I hear that name, all the pieces will come together. “Then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
It will be heaven.
But heaven does not have to wait.
It is my hope and responsibility to encounter people in way that provides both of us an chance to hear even a faint whisper of our true names. It is then that we can be converted and become like little children. The moment we hear our Creator’s voice, the door to change is opened wide. It is then that we can respond like the man who found the treasure buried in the field and sell all they have to possess it.
It is in that moment that the Kingdom of God comes.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Select Poems #1
"Reflecting on a Tattooed Man"
When we color outside the lines of our accepted lives,
Who knows what might appear.
Picasso was crazy and Warhol was nuts, some say –
Unless they saw what had always been.
“There be dragons there!” mappers drew sitting in safe ports,
As Columbus sailed off the map.
When staying within lines fails to keep faith alive, why linger?
That would be the true insanity.
Draw on, Tattooed Man! Sketch your life for all to see.
Show your spirit in your flesh.
One day the Father will take your art and mine,
And tack it on His great refrigerator.
"On the Edge of the Dark"
It’s dark where he sits.
A black hole sucks the life from him.
It’s an emptiness that looks familiar.
He invites me to sit with him, but I squat near the door instead.
I must be ready to move if the gravity well shifts,
As my heart balances on the abyss’s edge.
We swirl like specks of dust on the event horizon, our fates inevitable.
Perhaps we should connect to find a way through,
Hoping that God will be there where nothing else can.
"This Little Light"
The surrounding darkness swells so large.
My eye turns away from the devouring lust
That creeps over sills and through keyholes
Like a mindless virus that will die with its host.
The Son shines in His irrepressible way,
But my eye cannot bear His full glory.
So lesser lights must shine out of the opposing shadow
Like stars whose beams bless as they fall.
The ebony gloom does not grasp that its power is annulled.
Like a quenched dragon it rages its futility
While life's sailors and lovers use steady pinpoints,
Finding their way to the inevitable day.
When we color outside the lines of our accepted lives,
Who knows what might appear.
Picasso was crazy and Warhol was nuts, some say –
Unless they saw what had always been.
“There be dragons there!” mappers drew sitting in safe ports,
As Columbus sailed off the map.
When staying within lines fails to keep faith alive, why linger?
That would be the true insanity.
Draw on, Tattooed Man! Sketch your life for all to see.
Show your spirit in your flesh.
One day the Father will take your art and mine,
And tack it on His great refrigerator.
"On the Edge of the Dark"
It’s dark where he sits.
A black hole sucks the life from him.
It’s an emptiness that looks familiar.
He invites me to sit with him, but I squat near the door instead.
I must be ready to move if the gravity well shifts,
As my heart balances on the abyss’s edge.
We swirl like specks of dust on the event horizon, our fates inevitable.
Perhaps we should connect to find a way through,
Hoping that God will be there where nothing else can.
"This Little Light"
The surrounding darkness swells so large.
My eye turns away from the devouring lust
That creeps over sills and through keyholes
Like a mindless virus that will die with its host.
The Son shines in His irrepressible way,
But my eye cannot bear His full glory.
So lesser lights must shine out of the opposing shadow
Like stars whose beams bless as they fall.
The ebony gloom does not grasp that its power is annulled.
Like a quenched dragon it rages its futility
While life's sailors and lovers use steady pinpoints,
Finding their way to the inevitable day.
Wavelength Excerpt
Arecibo Observatory, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
October 12, 1992
“Gentlemen and ladies, what you are looking at is the archeology of the future. Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus left a stagnating Europe and discovered a new world. Because of his bold venture, the political, religious, and scientific world was changed forever. Today marks the beginning of another such adventure.
“From the moment the first human raised his eyes above the ground out of which he sprang, he has sought physical and spiritual guidance in the stars. Today instead of looking at the stars, we will listen to them. We do this to answer mankind’s greatest question: ‘Are we alone?’ The enthusiastic cooperation of dozens of nations is evidence that humanity is united as never before by this quest.
“No one can predict when or if we will hear anything, but the quest stands as its own reward. Who knows? Perhaps we will happen across a broadcast relic -- or better yet -- receive a message meant especially for us.”
Downrange, Cape Canaveral, USA
March 21, 2030
“Everything looks good, Colonel,” the co-pilot of the Achilles announced. His faceplate pointed downward as he focused on the dozens of readouts that made up the control panel.
“Agreed,” a woman’s voice responded. Her faceplate was turned upward. Even though the ship’s computer brain steered the Achilles during takeoff far more accurately than any human pilot, the age-old admonition to “keep your eyes on the road” was a compulsion that few pilots had been able to resist since Kitty Hawk. Besides that, the baby blue Florida sky was giving way to the sparkling cobalt of space as the Space Plane climbed out of the atmosphere.
Colonel Samantha Jacobs removed her helmet and the motion drew her auburn hair to the top of her head where it floated in the absence of gravity as if she were underwater. Its length was just beyond regulation, but the way her co-pilot looked at her told her that he didn’t mind at all. Sam had gotten used to attracting attention from men over the years. A rare few of them had been dangerous and the rest were merely boorish. Paul was a mostly enjoyable flirt. After all, if he had really been interested in something more intimate, he would have made a move during the two years they had practically lived together in the flight school that served the United Space Agency.
She smiled knowingly. “If you don’t keep your mind on your work, you’ll end up sticking this thing where it doesn’t belong.” She stroked her hair down into place. “This is your maiden voyage after all.”
“Yes, Commander. And as you know, it is most exciting the first time,” his mock sheepishness sounded thick in his Russian accent.
Ten minutes earlier, at 12:14 PM, a signal from Mission Control raced at nearly the speed of light through the DNA-laced circuits that formed the Achilles’s nervous system, and its engines roared to life in a pulse of chemical ecstasy. Unlike its predecessor, the Space Shuttle, the Space Plane launched toward the stars horizontally down a five-mile runway. Also unlike the shuttle, this next generation of manned orbital vehicle would make its return to the Kennedy Space Center in one piece. Named the “Black Horse,” it had quickly become the primary transport vehicle between the surface and the International Space Station, “Freedom.” It hadn’t taken Runway #3 long to become as familiar to space enthusiasts of the 21stcentury as Launch Pad 39A had been during the moon race of the 1960s.
Sam glanced into a mirror at the dark-mustachioed passenger who sat in the seat normally reserved for the mission specialist. Hachiro Monda was already turning green as he sank deeper into his seat as the Achilles reached the end of the runway, pulled three Gs, and clawed its way into orbit. It was the first trip off earth for the Japanese engineer.
Although there had been instances of cooperation between the major space-faring nations, it took until the year 2020 for the United States, the Russian Federation, and Japan to grasp that unless they consolidated their resources, none would enjoy a profitable future.
“I apologize for my temporary distraction,” Zimrovich continued. “You are right that I am new to this vehicle. But you are forgetting my experience in the Russian space program. Say what you want -- back then we truly had to fly ourselves in and out of space. Today’s ships run themselves.”
The computer shut down the engine at the precise moment required. The resulting loss of g-forces propelled all three astronauts upward against their restraints and then bounced them back into their seats.
The Japanese passenger spoke in a weak voice, “What do you do if you think you’re going to throw up?”
“Right now you have only two options,” Sam responded. “The first is to hold it down. I would advise taking the first option, because you don’t want to experience the second.”
“Okay.” The engineer made a gulping sound.
“Thirty seconds from orbital insertion,” Sam announced into the microphone that connected her to the co-pilot and to ground control. “Prepare for burn.” When the appropriate thrusters fired, the ship turned its belly toward the sun so that the heat shield could provide protection against solar radiation. “Control, we have achieved our initial orbital path,” she reported to those who were monitoring from earth.”
A voice with a west Texas accent sounded in her earpiece. “Roger that, Achilles. We show you on path for cargo deployment in T-minus three hours, 16 minutes. Mark.”
“Affirmative, control. Will check in as scheduled. Out.”
“That was one smooth ride you gave me, Colonel,” co-pilot Major Paul Zimrovich said. He pulled his own helmet off and turned toward her.
Sam hooked her helmet into its niche and unbuckled her harness. She gave a slight push off the seat and began floating toward the ceiling. “Just keep your fingers off the wrong buttons.” She grabbed a support ring and turned herself around to face aft. “Are you alright, Hachiro?”
The Japanese scientist had removed his helmet. He looked toward Sam but kept his head still, as if afraid that any sudden motion might increase his nausea. “I will be fine.” He turned toward Paul and offered a weak smile. “I agree with you. She handled the launch very well.” He unfastened his harness. The action caused an equal and opposite reaction. He floated upward from his chair. His face flushed and his eyes widened.
Zimrovich opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic bag. “I think you are going to need this,” he said just before the scientist’s cheeks swelled. The engineer took the bag and bent to the task while Sam and Paul turned their attention to other matters.
Three hours later, Sam studied their cargo through a six-inch diameter window in the airlock door. The satellite sat small and nondescript in the middle of the payload bay, temporarily fastened to the floor by clamps that would release during its disposition. Its owner, an obscure firm located in rural south Florida, had agreed to the United Space Agency’s significant surcharge for adding it to the mission at late notice. Satellite deployments were a rare assignment for manned spacecraft. Most companies employed what had come to be called “orbital launch firms.” Deregulation and the cheapening of formerly high-priced technology had resulted in the proliferation of many such companies. Poorer nations such as Somalia and Paraguay had found the industry to be an uncomplicated way to generate much-needed revenue.
“You know this is my last trip,” Sam said to Zimrovich over her shoulder.
“Da,” Paul answered. “You haven’t changed your mind, I see.”
She turned around. “I guess I’ve seen enough of things up here.” Her focus moved past him to the huge blue planet that drifted in space beyond the front shield window. North America spun slowly past two hundred miles below. She pointed toward the sphere. “My place is right there.”
Zimrovich turned to look. “Where exactly? It is a big planet.”
“Western South Dakota. The summer my older brother left for college, our family spent a week vacationing there. We spent Independence Day on Mount Rushmore. Then we took the road through Spearfish Canyon on our way to Devil’s Tower.”
“And this Spearfish Canyon was a special place to you?”
She nodded. “It is one the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I guess I was like a lot of other kids at that time, their eyes locked onto video screens. But when I saw that mountain stream and those tall pines, I knew I would come back. Last month I bought a forty acre place – of course thirty of those acres are straight up.”
“You bought the side of a mountain?”
“Yeah.” Sam turned toward the sound of tapping keys and saw Monda hunched over a laptop computer working an equation. The barf bag was nowhere in sight. “A few hours more and Japan will appear over the horizon. But we don’t have the time to wait. Suit up,” she ordered.
“That includes you, Monda. We have a satellite to launch.” At her signal, her co-pilot pressed a switch and opened the cargo bay doors. Reflected light from the earth bathed the inside of the bay. She preceded Zimrovich into the cargo bay while Monda stayed in the cockpit and observed them through the airlock’s window.
She drifted toward the satellite while he remained at a small console. The plan was simple. Press one switch and the clamps would release. Press another and the satellite would ascend on a blast of high-pressure air. When it reached a safe distance, small rockets would ignite and send it on a trajectory that would conclude in a geo-synchronous orbit over somewhere that Sam and Paul were not privy to.
“Achilles, this is command,” a voice spoke from hundreds of miles beneath the shuttle. “We show one minute to satellite insertion.”
“Roger that,” Paul answered. “Our boards are green.”
Sam gave him a thumbs-up signal. Sixty seconds later, Paul pressed a button and the securing clamps rotated back silently in the vacuum.
“Board remains green,” he reported.
“Command, we are ready to deploy payload,” Sam announced.
“Proceed, commander. Our telemetry remains good.”
“Deploying,” Paul said and pressed another button. The satellite rose out of the bay on a stream of compressed air. Particles of dust swirled around in the light as the satellite cleared the Achilles and shrank to little more than a speck against the greenish brown of the American plains. Sam turned her attention to the work of locking down the now empty bay and closing the doors. She looked at where the satellite had been and paused.
Something didn’t look right.
“Do you see anything out of the ordinary?” she asked Zimrovich.
He gave a cursory glance around the bay and shrugged. “Looks like an empty cargo bay to me.”
“Is your board still green?”
He looked down. “Da. No problems here.”
She shrugged and started toward the exterior door of the airlock. Her fingers closed around the handle of the airlock door as her mind put the pieces together and realized what was wrong. She spun slowly around and saw a gray block of metal on the floor of the cargo bay where the satellite had left it.
Five hundred yards above the Achilles, a countdown inside the satellite reached zero and a beam of invisible light raced back toward the Space Plane.
“What is that?” Sam pointed.
Her co-pilot turned to see what his commander was concerned about. “What . . .?”
The small but powerful device hidden within the metal block detonated and blew a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing the fuel and oxygen lines that ran along the wall. The mixture erupted into a ball of fire that carried Samantha Jacobs and Paul Zimrovich into space. A second explosion blew the airlock door apart and separated the command cabin from the rest of the ship. Hachiro Monda might have survived a while longer had he followed his commander’s order and secured his helmet to his space suit. The vacuum of space sucked his final scream out of his ruptured lungs.
Mortally wounded, the Achilles began an unplanned descent that would deposit its remains in the Pacific Ocean seventy-five miles southwest of Samoa.
Fifteen minutes later, the satellite received a signal from a ground station and responded by opening a hatch in its side. Several panels of radar-absorbing material swung forth and wrapped around it, leaving only a small antenna exposed. A series of rocket burns moved it into a higher geo-synchronous orbit above the Aegean Sea where it powered down and awaited its next orders.
Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
October 8
Jim Talbot stood on a walkway and looked down at the Arecibo radio telescope. Thousands of highly polished aluminum panels reflected the sub-tropical sunshine back into his eyes. It was the oldest and still largest of its kind.
He leaned his almost two-hundred-pound, six-foot frame confidently against the sturdy railing and listened as an intern spoke to a group of visitors lined up along a lower catwalk.
“Gentlemen and ladies, thirty-eight years ago someone else stood in this very spot and referred to what you see as ‘the archeology of the future,’” the white-coated woman said. “It is an appropriate term. We are digging among the stars and what optical telescopes cannot see, we can hear.” The visiting members of the United World Council’s Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space had heard all of this before. Nevertheless, they appeared impressed.
“The collapse of the large dish at Green Bank in 1988 set the International Search for Intelligence in Space back for a while, but through the determined efforts of the late Senator Robert Byrd, an even larger and more useful dish was built in its place. When Ames, California, and Jodwell, England, joined Green Bank and Arecibo, ISIS transformed a third of the Northern Hemisphere into one huge interferometer.” The observer team nodded in apparent awe.
Jim lingered behind as the intern led the group ahead to another observation point. He wasn’t really needed. These observers were little more than tourists -- feed them generic descriptions of the scope’s operations, let them snap a few harmless pictures, and on they would go to the souvenir shops, restaurants, and beaches.
Reporters were another matter. They could be difficult, especially those who worked for smaller papers. They didn’t consistently follow the rules of the media game and could ask simplistic and sometimes embarrassing questions. “How far away can the dish pick up signals? How were ‘cosmic static’ and intelligent signals differentiated? Even if a signal were received, how would it be translated? How was the fifty billion dollar annual price tag justified in the national budget in light of the recent global crash?” How seldom it was that Jim heard a question that addressed the deeper and truer issues of the project, even of life.
Jim arched his back, enjoying the warmth of the sun after having spent the last two weeks in his office buried deep in the hill that surrounded the dish. He reflected upon how ambition and happenstance had come together to bring him to this island at the eastern entrance of the Caribbean. When ISIS came calling, it was the culmination of his ambition. Let the media fixate upon project budgets and technical trivia. That’s not what had secured the commitment of his career and life.
Jim looked past the railing at rolling acreage surrounding the dish. Ninety-five percent of the Arecibo installation was underground. A ten-foot electrified fence marked the perimeter, its two gates watched by small guardhouses. All incoming vehicles were routed along a ribbon of asphalt that ended at a tunnel sealed by a steel door. ISIS had to keep a low profile in the fierce techno-war being fought by several corporations, non-profit groups, and national space agencies who vied to be the first to answer mankind’s oldest question, Are we alone in the universe? Several of these groups employed surveillance satellites as well as human agents in the hopes of stealing even a micron of information. Concerns far beyond the financial mandated such protection. The wrong people could misuse, alter to suit their purposes, or announce such information in an ill-timed manner. Its gathering, understanding, and distribution had to be carefully managed.
That was Jim’s job.
Those who criticized the Project just did not understand. Jim knew why they had to spend such large amounts of time and money listening into space, even when the needs of America’s urban battle zones screamed for funding. The end of the cold war had only served to expose man’s tendency to find hot wars to fight. The Pakistani-Indian Crisis of 2014 had nearly brought about the nuclear winter that most thought had been left behind in the successes of Reagan and Gorbachav. It was ironic that the Kashmir region over which the two countries had fought so bitterly would remain uninhabitable for at least another seventy years.
ISIS was needed because the answer to man’s problems was not in man. If it was, humans did not know how to access the key that would unlock their potential. Even if the human race did manage to avoid Armageddon, it seemed doomed to the misery of having to relearn the same lessons century after century. Science, philosophy, literature – each kept coming up empty. Even religion had proven itself impotent – nothing more than a distraction. Orthodox Jews longed for the worldwide acceptance of the Torah that would usher in a messianic age. Astrologers divined planetary alignments. Buddhists sought personal Nirvanas through the obliteration of desire. Christians identified signs of the imminent return of Jesus to earth. New Age self-help gurus were pronouncing that the Christ was already here.
Mankind had proven its inability to take the next step in its evolutionary process. This was the real driving purpose of ISIS. If it was true that Man was alone, then the universe was headed for a cosmic dead end. Jim rejected that. Certainly someone in the cosmos had found “The Answer.” Such an advanced society would not be stingy with such life-giving information.
October 12, 1992
“Gentlemen and ladies, what you are looking at is the archeology of the future. Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus left a stagnating Europe and discovered a new world. Because of his bold venture, the political, religious, and scientific world was changed forever. Today marks the beginning of another such adventure.
“From the moment the first human raised his eyes above the ground out of which he sprang, he has sought physical and spiritual guidance in the stars. Today instead of looking at the stars, we will listen to them. We do this to answer mankind’s greatest question: ‘Are we alone?’ The enthusiastic cooperation of dozens of nations is evidence that humanity is united as never before by this quest.
“No one can predict when or if we will hear anything, but the quest stands as its own reward. Who knows? Perhaps we will happen across a broadcast relic -- or better yet -- receive a message meant especially for us.”
Downrange, Cape Canaveral, USA
March 21, 2030
“Everything looks good, Colonel,” the co-pilot of the Achilles announced. His faceplate pointed downward as he focused on the dozens of readouts that made up the control panel.
“Agreed,” a woman’s voice responded. Her faceplate was turned upward. Even though the ship’s computer brain steered the Achilles during takeoff far more accurately than any human pilot, the age-old admonition to “keep your eyes on the road” was a compulsion that few pilots had been able to resist since Kitty Hawk. Besides that, the baby blue Florida sky was giving way to the sparkling cobalt of space as the Space Plane climbed out of the atmosphere.
Colonel Samantha Jacobs removed her helmet and the motion drew her auburn hair to the top of her head where it floated in the absence of gravity as if she were underwater. Its length was just beyond regulation, but the way her co-pilot looked at her told her that he didn’t mind at all. Sam had gotten used to attracting attention from men over the years. A rare few of them had been dangerous and the rest were merely boorish. Paul was a mostly enjoyable flirt. After all, if he had really been interested in something more intimate, he would have made a move during the two years they had practically lived together in the flight school that served the United Space Agency.
She smiled knowingly. “If you don’t keep your mind on your work, you’ll end up sticking this thing where it doesn’t belong.” She stroked her hair down into place. “This is your maiden voyage after all.”
“Yes, Commander. And as you know, it is most exciting the first time,” his mock sheepishness sounded thick in his Russian accent.
Ten minutes earlier, at 12:14 PM, a signal from Mission Control raced at nearly the speed of light through the DNA-laced circuits that formed the Achilles’s nervous system, and its engines roared to life in a pulse of chemical ecstasy. Unlike its predecessor, the Space Shuttle, the Space Plane launched toward the stars horizontally down a five-mile runway. Also unlike the shuttle, this next generation of manned orbital vehicle would make its return to the Kennedy Space Center in one piece. Named the “Black Horse,” it had quickly become the primary transport vehicle between the surface and the International Space Station, “Freedom.” It hadn’t taken Runway #3 long to become as familiar to space enthusiasts of the 21stcentury as Launch Pad 39A had been during the moon race of the 1960s.
Sam glanced into a mirror at the dark-mustachioed passenger who sat in the seat normally reserved for the mission specialist. Hachiro Monda was already turning green as he sank deeper into his seat as the Achilles reached the end of the runway, pulled three Gs, and clawed its way into orbit. It was the first trip off earth for the Japanese engineer.
Although there had been instances of cooperation between the major space-faring nations, it took until the year 2020 for the United States, the Russian Federation, and Japan to grasp that unless they consolidated their resources, none would enjoy a profitable future.
“I apologize for my temporary distraction,” Zimrovich continued. “You are right that I am new to this vehicle. But you are forgetting my experience in the Russian space program. Say what you want -- back then we truly had to fly ourselves in and out of space. Today’s ships run themselves.”
The computer shut down the engine at the precise moment required. The resulting loss of g-forces propelled all three astronauts upward against their restraints and then bounced them back into their seats.
The Japanese passenger spoke in a weak voice, “What do you do if you think you’re going to throw up?”
“Right now you have only two options,” Sam responded. “The first is to hold it down. I would advise taking the first option, because you don’t want to experience the second.”
“Okay.” The engineer made a gulping sound.
“Thirty seconds from orbital insertion,” Sam announced into the microphone that connected her to the co-pilot and to ground control. “Prepare for burn.” When the appropriate thrusters fired, the ship turned its belly toward the sun so that the heat shield could provide protection against solar radiation. “Control, we have achieved our initial orbital path,” she reported to those who were monitoring from earth.”
A voice with a west Texas accent sounded in her earpiece. “Roger that, Achilles. We show you on path for cargo deployment in T-minus three hours, 16 minutes. Mark.”
“Affirmative, control. Will check in as scheduled. Out.”
“That was one smooth ride you gave me, Colonel,” co-pilot Major Paul Zimrovich said. He pulled his own helmet off and turned toward her.
Sam hooked her helmet into its niche and unbuckled her harness. She gave a slight push off the seat and began floating toward the ceiling. “Just keep your fingers off the wrong buttons.” She grabbed a support ring and turned herself around to face aft. “Are you alright, Hachiro?”
The Japanese scientist had removed his helmet. He looked toward Sam but kept his head still, as if afraid that any sudden motion might increase his nausea. “I will be fine.” He turned toward Paul and offered a weak smile. “I agree with you. She handled the launch very well.” He unfastened his harness. The action caused an equal and opposite reaction. He floated upward from his chair. His face flushed and his eyes widened.
Zimrovich opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic bag. “I think you are going to need this,” he said just before the scientist’s cheeks swelled. The engineer took the bag and bent to the task while Sam and Paul turned their attention to other matters.
Three hours later, Sam studied their cargo through a six-inch diameter window in the airlock door. The satellite sat small and nondescript in the middle of the payload bay, temporarily fastened to the floor by clamps that would release during its disposition. Its owner, an obscure firm located in rural south Florida, had agreed to the United Space Agency’s significant surcharge for adding it to the mission at late notice. Satellite deployments were a rare assignment for manned spacecraft. Most companies employed what had come to be called “orbital launch firms.” Deregulation and the cheapening of formerly high-priced technology had resulted in the proliferation of many such companies. Poorer nations such as Somalia and Paraguay had found the industry to be an uncomplicated way to generate much-needed revenue.
“You know this is my last trip,” Sam said to Zimrovich over her shoulder.
“Da,” Paul answered. “You haven’t changed your mind, I see.”
She turned around. “I guess I’ve seen enough of things up here.” Her focus moved past him to the huge blue planet that drifted in space beyond the front shield window. North America spun slowly past two hundred miles below. She pointed toward the sphere. “My place is right there.”
Zimrovich turned to look. “Where exactly? It is a big planet.”
“Western South Dakota. The summer my older brother left for college, our family spent a week vacationing there. We spent Independence Day on Mount Rushmore. Then we took the road through Spearfish Canyon on our way to Devil’s Tower.”
“And this Spearfish Canyon was a special place to you?”
She nodded. “It is one the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I guess I was like a lot of other kids at that time, their eyes locked onto video screens. But when I saw that mountain stream and those tall pines, I knew I would come back. Last month I bought a forty acre place – of course thirty of those acres are straight up.”
“You bought the side of a mountain?”
“Yeah.” Sam turned toward the sound of tapping keys and saw Monda hunched over a laptop computer working an equation. The barf bag was nowhere in sight. “A few hours more and Japan will appear over the horizon. But we don’t have the time to wait. Suit up,” she ordered.
“That includes you, Monda. We have a satellite to launch.” At her signal, her co-pilot pressed a switch and opened the cargo bay doors. Reflected light from the earth bathed the inside of the bay. She preceded Zimrovich into the cargo bay while Monda stayed in the cockpit and observed them through the airlock’s window.
She drifted toward the satellite while he remained at a small console. The plan was simple. Press one switch and the clamps would release. Press another and the satellite would ascend on a blast of high-pressure air. When it reached a safe distance, small rockets would ignite and send it on a trajectory that would conclude in a geo-synchronous orbit over somewhere that Sam and Paul were not privy to.
“Achilles, this is command,” a voice spoke from hundreds of miles beneath the shuttle. “We show one minute to satellite insertion.”
“Roger that,” Paul answered. “Our boards are green.”
Sam gave him a thumbs-up signal. Sixty seconds later, Paul pressed a button and the securing clamps rotated back silently in the vacuum.
“Board remains green,” he reported.
“Command, we are ready to deploy payload,” Sam announced.
“Proceed, commander. Our telemetry remains good.”
“Deploying,” Paul said and pressed another button. The satellite rose out of the bay on a stream of compressed air. Particles of dust swirled around in the light as the satellite cleared the Achilles and shrank to little more than a speck against the greenish brown of the American plains. Sam turned her attention to the work of locking down the now empty bay and closing the doors. She looked at where the satellite had been and paused.
Something didn’t look right.
“Do you see anything out of the ordinary?” she asked Zimrovich.
He gave a cursory glance around the bay and shrugged. “Looks like an empty cargo bay to me.”
“Is your board still green?”
He looked down. “Da. No problems here.”
She shrugged and started toward the exterior door of the airlock. Her fingers closed around the handle of the airlock door as her mind put the pieces together and realized what was wrong. She spun slowly around and saw a gray block of metal on the floor of the cargo bay where the satellite had left it.
Five hundred yards above the Achilles, a countdown inside the satellite reached zero and a beam of invisible light raced back toward the Space Plane.
“What is that?” Sam pointed.
Her co-pilot turned to see what his commander was concerned about. “What . . .?”
The small but powerful device hidden within the metal block detonated and blew a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing the fuel and oxygen lines that ran along the wall. The mixture erupted into a ball of fire that carried Samantha Jacobs and Paul Zimrovich into space. A second explosion blew the airlock door apart and separated the command cabin from the rest of the ship. Hachiro Monda might have survived a while longer had he followed his commander’s order and secured his helmet to his space suit. The vacuum of space sucked his final scream out of his ruptured lungs.
Mortally wounded, the Achilles began an unplanned descent that would deposit its remains in the Pacific Ocean seventy-five miles southwest of Samoa.
Fifteen minutes later, the satellite received a signal from a ground station and responded by opening a hatch in its side. Several panels of radar-absorbing material swung forth and wrapped around it, leaving only a small antenna exposed. A series of rocket burns moved it into a higher geo-synchronous orbit above the Aegean Sea where it powered down and awaited its next orders.
Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
October 8
Jim Talbot stood on a walkway and looked down at the Arecibo radio telescope. Thousands of highly polished aluminum panels reflected the sub-tropical sunshine back into his eyes. It was the oldest and still largest of its kind.
He leaned his almost two-hundred-pound, six-foot frame confidently against the sturdy railing and listened as an intern spoke to a group of visitors lined up along a lower catwalk.
“Gentlemen and ladies, thirty-eight years ago someone else stood in this very spot and referred to what you see as ‘the archeology of the future,’” the white-coated woman said. “It is an appropriate term. We are digging among the stars and what optical telescopes cannot see, we can hear.” The visiting members of the United World Council’s Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space had heard all of this before. Nevertheless, they appeared impressed.
“The collapse of the large dish at Green Bank in 1988 set the International Search for Intelligence in Space back for a while, but through the determined efforts of the late Senator Robert Byrd, an even larger and more useful dish was built in its place. When Ames, California, and Jodwell, England, joined Green Bank and Arecibo, ISIS transformed a third of the Northern Hemisphere into one huge interferometer.” The observer team nodded in apparent awe.
Jim lingered behind as the intern led the group ahead to another observation point. He wasn’t really needed. These observers were little more than tourists -- feed them generic descriptions of the scope’s operations, let them snap a few harmless pictures, and on they would go to the souvenir shops, restaurants, and beaches.
Reporters were another matter. They could be difficult, especially those who worked for smaller papers. They didn’t consistently follow the rules of the media game and could ask simplistic and sometimes embarrassing questions. “How far away can the dish pick up signals? How were ‘cosmic static’ and intelligent signals differentiated? Even if a signal were received, how would it be translated? How was the fifty billion dollar annual price tag justified in the national budget in light of the recent global crash?” How seldom it was that Jim heard a question that addressed the deeper and truer issues of the project, even of life.
Jim arched his back, enjoying the warmth of the sun after having spent the last two weeks in his office buried deep in the hill that surrounded the dish. He reflected upon how ambition and happenstance had come together to bring him to this island at the eastern entrance of the Caribbean. When ISIS came calling, it was the culmination of his ambition. Let the media fixate upon project budgets and technical trivia. That’s not what had secured the commitment of his career and life.
Jim looked past the railing at rolling acreage surrounding the dish. Ninety-five percent of the Arecibo installation was underground. A ten-foot electrified fence marked the perimeter, its two gates watched by small guardhouses. All incoming vehicles were routed along a ribbon of asphalt that ended at a tunnel sealed by a steel door. ISIS had to keep a low profile in the fierce techno-war being fought by several corporations, non-profit groups, and national space agencies who vied to be the first to answer mankind’s oldest question, Are we alone in the universe? Several of these groups employed surveillance satellites as well as human agents in the hopes of stealing even a micron of information. Concerns far beyond the financial mandated such protection. The wrong people could misuse, alter to suit their purposes, or announce such information in an ill-timed manner. Its gathering, understanding, and distribution had to be carefully managed.
That was Jim’s job.
Those who criticized the Project just did not understand. Jim knew why they had to spend such large amounts of time and money listening into space, even when the needs of America’s urban battle zones screamed for funding. The end of the cold war had only served to expose man’s tendency to find hot wars to fight. The Pakistani-Indian Crisis of 2014 had nearly brought about the nuclear winter that most thought had been left behind in the successes of Reagan and Gorbachav. It was ironic that the Kashmir region over which the two countries had fought so bitterly would remain uninhabitable for at least another seventy years.
ISIS was needed because the answer to man’s problems was not in man. If it was, humans did not know how to access the key that would unlock their potential. Even if the human race did manage to avoid Armageddon, it seemed doomed to the misery of having to relearn the same lessons century after century. Science, philosophy, literature – each kept coming up empty. Even religion had proven itself impotent – nothing more than a distraction. Orthodox Jews longed for the worldwide acceptance of the Torah that would usher in a messianic age. Astrologers divined planetary alignments. Buddhists sought personal Nirvanas through the obliteration of desire. Christians identified signs of the imminent return of Jesus to earth. New Age self-help gurus were pronouncing that the Christ was already here.
Mankind had proven its inability to take the next step in its evolutionary process. This was the real driving purpose of ISIS. If it was true that Man was alone, then the universe was headed for a cosmic dead end. Jim rejected that. Certainly someone in the cosmos had found “The Answer.” Such an advanced society would not be stingy with such life-giving information.
I Feel Young
Our family chose the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains as our vacation destination during the summer of 2007. I welcomed the break from the routine of job and chores. The younger two of our children were going to college in a few weeks and I knew that this trip might be the last one my wife and I shared with them for some time.
Our first campsite was at 5,300 feet with no facilities except for flush toilets and cold water. Our last campsite was alongside a beautiful stream with blessed hot showers. We hiked trails through four kinds of forest environments and waded up to beautiful waterfalls. Through drama re-enactments, we came to appreciate the culture of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee People that dates back to pre-history in North America.
As we passed along one of the hiking trails, a mountain rose up to our right and a stream rolled by to our left. I heard another hiker behind us. “It all makes you feel kinda small.”
I appreciate what that person meant, but in that moment another awareness came to me. “It makes me feel kinda young,” I said to my wife.
“Small” can feel like helpless or insignificant or unimportant. In comparison to the huge universe, what is the earth or me for that matter? Compared to a river that can cut a Grand Canyon out of ancient rock, what can I do to make a difference? “Feeling small” can incapacitate me. It can steal opportunity from my life and tempt me to escape my responsibility.
On the other hand, “feeling young” means that compared to the rocks and trees and seas, I’m just getting started and I don’t have a lot to protect or preserve. Long before the Great Smokies became a national park, settlers built the cabins that now sit on display. The Europeans arrived to find the Cherokee already there.
Thousands of years before that were the deer, the wolf, and the bear. I was only the most recent in a long line of travelers. Who am I to think that I am further along or more important than any of them? Why do I think I have to be? If I am “young” maybe the pressure is off and I don’t have to know all the answers or have it all together. If I am “young” maybe I can still take risks with new ways of thinking and acting.
Long ago in a faraway land, a Jewish carpenter-turned-rabbi revealed that it takes a youthful heart to thrive through this life and into the next: “Unless you are converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He knew what He was talking about because He had stepped out of eternity into our time frame for a little while. He brought the perspective we needed.
God help me to stay “young:” wise enough to realize that the goal of life is to receive it as the gift it is -- especially when I’m not on vacation.
Our first campsite was at 5,300 feet with no facilities except for flush toilets and cold water. Our last campsite was alongside a beautiful stream with blessed hot showers. We hiked trails through four kinds of forest environments and waded up to beautiful waterfalls. Through drama re-enactments, we came to appreciate the culture of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee People that dates back to pre-history in North America.
As we passed along one of the hiking trails, a mountain rose up to our right and a stream rolled by to our left. I heard another hiker behind us. “It all makes you feel kinda small.”
I appreciate what that person meant, but in that moment another awareness came to me. “It makes me feel kinda young,” I said to my wife.
“Small” can feel like helpless or insignificant or unimportant. In comparison to the huge universe, what is the earth or me for that matter? Compared to a river that can cut a Grand Canyon out of ancient rock, what can I do to make a difference? “Feeling small” can incapacitate me. It can steal opportunity from my life and tempt me to escape my responsibility.
On the other hand, “feeling young” means that compared to the rocks and trees and seas, I’m just getting started and I don’t have a lot to protect or preserve. Long before the Great Smokies became a national park, settlers built the cabins that now sit on display. The Europeans arrived to find the Cherokee already there.
Thousands of years before that were the deer, the wolf, and the bear. I was only the most recent in a long line of travelers. Who am I to think that I am further along or more important than any of them? Why do I think I have to be? If I am “young” maybe the pressure is off and I don’t have to know all the answers or have it all together. If I am “young” maybe I can still take risks with new ways of thinking and acting.
Long ago in a faraway land, a Jewish carpenter-turned-rabbi revealed that it takes a youthful heart to thrive through this life and into the next: “Unless you are converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He knew what He was talking about because He had stepped out of eternity into our time frame for a little while. He brought the perspective we needed.
God help me to stay “young:” wise enough to realize that the goal of life is to receive it as the gift it is -- especially when I’m not on vacation.
Keeping Time
Jacqui felt the shopkeeper stop a polite four feet behind her and waited another three seconds before she acknowledged his presence. “Does it run?” she asked over her shoulder. She waited to hear the surprised breath most people took when they discovered that she had disarmed them and they were no longer the primary actors. This time, she heard nothing. Perhaps she had inherited the ability from her mother. Nothing escaped that woman’s notice. She had always seemed to know exactly where her children were no matter how carefully they planned their escapes into the neighborhood. Like Jacqui, her sense of security came from her uncanny knowledge of when and from what direction to expect everything.
“If you are referring to the clock,” the man said, “it certainly does. All of our merchandise is in good working order.”
She heard an undercurrent of pride in his voice, absent of the cloying smugness in most that left a bad aftertaste. “Does it keep time?” she continued, keeping he eyes forward.
“I did not know that one could ‘keep’ time, Miss . . .”
She allowed a quarter turn toward this peculiar man and looked into his round face with one eye. He returned her gaze with an inviting smile. She dropped her eyes a degree and read the badge on his dark green shirt: Xavier. She completed her turn and faced him. “My name is Jacqueline Kimble. I don’t see a price tag. How much are you asking?”
Xavier paused just long enough for her to understand that negotiations would not be simple today. “To answer your first question, be assured that the mechanism is very precise, especially for the era of its creation. And yes, it is for sale.” He quoted her a price ten percent beyond what she had in mind to pay.
“Tell me about its previous owner. I purchase only those things that have been well-cared for.”
His smile grew even larger. “I am delighted that you are interested in this piece’s story. Too many these days think that time’s turnings begin and end with them.” Xavier adjusted his stance like a fencer preparing for a counter stroke. “We obtained the clock at auction from the estate of a Mr. Harold Armbrister.”
“Armbrister -- the millionaire who disappeared?”
“Yes, sadly so. It was the admirable and yet lamentable fact that he outlived the rest of his family that occasioned the auction. This particular clock hung in his library.” Xavier paused and looked past her. “The total in the library was well over twenty-five thousand.”
“Clocks?” She envisioned a cavernous hall covered with timepieces. Something out of Wonderland. The ticking would be raucous.
Xavier shook his head. “Books, Miss Kimble. No one can manage that much time.”
Mildly flustered, Jacqui turned back to the clock. Its twelve-inch face perched above a rectangular wooden box that held the gears and the pendulum. A glass pane edged with a gold covered the face and opened on two light metal hinges. Simple hands pointed at black numerals marking the time. Small block numbers denoted the date, month, and year.
“It is a attractive piece,” she admitted.
“Perhaps you feel it reaching out to you.”
Jacqui turned around a little more quickly than she planned. “What do you mean?”
She felt Xavier’s eyes lock onto hers. “The pearl of great price,” he said. Jacqui looked at him, waiting. “From the Biblical story, Miss Kimble. When you come across such a treasure, all else will lose value compared with it.”
Her brow twisted upward as she puzzled out his meaning. “It’s not like I’m going to sell my soul or something. It’s just a clock.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Something made her start to take a cautious step back, but she caught herself before she actually moved. “You must admit that the price is modest compared to others of its generation.” He reached around her and she leaned away as his hand brushed past her breast. He opened the little door and revealed the pendulum. “Here you can see a note saying that it was crafted in the year 1910 in Kobe.”
She bent closer to read and her nose picked up a scent of some woody spice from within the small space. “Japan?”
The shopkeeper inclined his head in a slight bow. “A product of shall we say, a more reflective era?”
Jacqui pointed at a tiny lever mounted on the right wall of the works compartment. “What is this for? It looks like a kind of switch.”
“Some clocks were customized to the buyer’s specifications. Does the note give any instructions?”
She squinted again. “Much of the writing is smeared or worn off.” Near the bottom she found small words written in English script and read them aloud. “‘Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn.’ Is that a poem or something?” She pressed the lever up with her finger and it clicked into place. She pressed down until it passed two clicks through its original location and settled in the lower position. Nothing happened. “I guess I’ll find out what it does later.” She checked her watch and set the time: 10:01. She tapped the pendulum to start the clock.
“I’ll take it. It will look good in my entry way.”
“You are furnishing a new house?”
She twisted her head around. How . . ? She drew a breath to slow her suddenly pounding heart. “There was a fire. We tried to go back in and save what we could, but . . .”
“We? Is there a Mr. . . .?”
“No. Yes. I mean, not for much longer. The divorce was already in process and the fire simplified things.” Her eyes dropped to the floor before she could catch herself. “There wasn’t much left to fight over.”
“I am sorry, Mrs. Kimble. I do not mean to pry. I cannot imagine how . . . “
Her jaw hardened and she raised her eyes to meet the shopkeeper’s. “He’ll be fine with his part of the insurance money.” She turned back around to the clock. “This is not quite the same as the one I lost. It will help me start over.” She countered with the price she originally had in mind.
Xavier nodded. “I hope that you find that to be true.” She walked to the front desk to complete the transaction and the chimes of the clock rang out ten times as the hour struck.
Simpler times. Jacqui pulled into the driveway of the two-bedroom ranch house where she would start her new life with work and friends. She cradled the clock in her left arm as she slid her keycard through the electronic lock of her front door. She heard a reassuring click as the security system disengaged. She pressed down on the handle and the door slid silently open. Most of the necessary furnishings were already in place – appliances, living room and bedroom furniture. A new wardrobe hung in the walk-in closet and dishes, pots, and pans filled the cabinets along with groceries. Curtains dressed up the windows. She unpacked the clock and set it on the table. It was the first piece that would start giving the place character. Just in time for her favorite time of year -- autumn.
Character. Charm. Appeal. Those were the things that made life interesting. Bill’s lack of the above had provoked her decision to leave before she wasted any more of her life. Six months into the marriage all he could talk about was work and bills. And then there was all his nagging about starting a family. They had agreed to wait at least five years. How had getting married turned a fun-loving man into such a bore? The pre-nuptial would restore some of the money but there was nothing to do about the lost time and energy. If only she had known . . .
She found a place on the wall between the coat closet and the hallway bathroom and drove a nail through the drywall into a stud. With the clock mounted, she stepped back to view it. She visualized herself waking in the early morning to the sounds of its chimes striking six o’clock -- or seven if she had come in late the previous night. She set the time and opened the little door. The lever was still set in the lowest position. She placed her fingertip under it and popped it two clicks into the upper position, started the pendulum, and closed the door. “What are you for?” she said to the tiny piece of brass. “Maybe I can find something about you on the Internet.”
Minutes later, she changed her mind. Instead of searching the Internet, she ate a light dinner in the company of a good book and finished the evening with a hot bath. On the way to the bedroom she noticed the time: eleven o’clock.
The next morning she awoke with a headache and sunlight streaming through her window. She threw back the covers and stumbled into the bathroom. She had never slept this late! Ten minutes later she plunged through her front door, almost falling over a pile of newspapers individually wrapped in plastic on her small porch.
Someone’s idea of an early Halloween prank? Thirty minutes later, she drove into her building’s garage and found an unfamiliar car parked in the spot she had won and kept for eight months as the company’s high producer. She rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked into her office -- third on the left. The door was open and a man was sitting behind her desk talking on the phone.
“Who are you?” she said from the doorway.
“I’ll get back to you,” the man said into the phone and then hung up. “Excuse me?”
“Who are you?’”
“Rob Keener. Why?”
“What are you doing here?”
“This is my desk.”
“No, it’s not.” She looked at the bare walls and nearly empty bookshelf. “What have you done with my things?”
“Wait a minute! I’ve worked here since I was hired two weeks ago. I’ve never seen you before.”
She reared back, her shoulders straightening. “I am Jacqueline Kimble, the top sales generator at this company!”
A shocked voice announced itself over her shoulder. “Jacqui? My God! Is it you?”
She turned around and recognized Lori Stine, the office manager. “Who else did you expect? What’s going on? First somebody’s taken my parking space and now this guy’s in my office.”
Lori led her into the hallway and spoke in a lowered voice. “Jacqui, where have you been?”
“What do you mean? You know that I had to spend the weekend setting up my new house. I’m sorry that I missed the trip to Chicago with you and Ben, but now its Monday and I’m back.”
“No, it’s not.” Lori shook her head.
“It’s not what?”
“It’s not Monday.”
“Sure it is. Last night was Sunday and I woke up this morning. Monday.”
Lori shook her head again as if she was trying to clear her thoughts. “After a week, John tried to call you but you didn’t answer. He sent Ben over to see if you were OK but your house was locked up. He found your car in the drive, but not you. After another week he called the police but they said that there was nothing they could do.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s been a month since anyone’s seen you. It’s Tuesday. Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“We thought you had moved away or were dead or something. You don’t work here anymore.”
Jacqui ran a hand through her short blond hair. “I need to talk with John. Where is he?”
“He’s in California closing the Toberton deal. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“What am I supposed to do until then?”
“Gosh, Jacqui. I don’t know.” She placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”
A tremor raced through her back and hips, weakening her legs, and a pain shot from the back of her head out through her eyes. Everything seemed to turn inside out for a moment, like a photograph’s negative. “I don’t feel alright.”
As Jacqui drove home, her thoughts whirled. She tossed three painkillers into her mouth and chased them with some bottled water. Lori had told her that during the third week of her “disappearance” John had called the police. They obtained a warrant to enter the house, but found nothing out of the ordinary. “FM 103.5” she said. The voice of B.J. Thomas crooned out the end of a song: “because I’m free . . .nothin’s worrying me.” The digital readout displayed the time. 10:00AM. The DJ continued with a traffic report followed by the weather. Thanksgiving should be milder than usual around the District with rain coming in across Maryland on Saturday. Some delays possible for travelers through Dulles International Airport.
“Off,” she said and the radio shut down. She noticed that cardboard turkeys and pumpkins covered store windows and Santa Claus was appearing as well. She drove into her driveway and saw that the yard was coated with leaves. It had just been mid-October! She had completely missed the changing of the foliage. The pile of newspapers remained in front of her door. The most recent date was November 15th. The Post had probably canceled her subscription for non-payment.
She headed to the closet to hang up her coat and read the time on the clock: 2:00PM. “What’s wrong with you? He said you’d keep time.” She opened the face and spun the hands backward three hours plus. Then she opened the smaller door below and saw that the little lever still pointed upward. She placed a finger against it and shoved it down to the lowest position. A bolt of fire lanced through her skull. She leaned against the wall and decided to lie down. She made it as far as the sofa.
It was still daylight when she woke to the sound of her phone ringing. She found it in the kitchen and checked the caller I.D: Unknown.
She held it up to her ear. “Yes?”
“Hello Jaqueline Kimble. You have had quite a day I would imagine.” The man’s voice held a light British accent.
“Who is this?”
“Please believe that I am a friend -- perhaps the most important person in your life at this moment.”
The pain in her temples threatened to glaze her vision. “Tell me who you are or I will have this call traced!”
“I am calling on behalf of Mr. Harold Armbrister. Earlier today you purchased a clock that once belonged to him.”
Earlier today? “Harold Armbrister went missing over a year ago and it has been a month since I have been to Xavier’s. I’m calling the police.”
“Please do not do that, Mrs. Kimble,” the man said quickly. “You have purchased a very special timepiece indeed. It is more dangerous than you may know, but then I believe you have already experienced some of its effects, haven’t you?”
“I’m listening.” She held her voice firm, but sat down gently on her couch.
“What I have to say is best delivered in person. Would you be willing to meet me and bring it with you?”
“Why? Do you want it back?”
“No,” the man said quickly. Then his voice softened. “My employer’s time with it is over. But he was concerned that . . .” He paused. “Will you meet with me?”
Jacqui could see the clock from where she sat. The pendulum was rocking steadily. The hands pointed to the time: 4:00PM. But what day was it? She went to the front door and pulled it open. The grass was green and uncluttered with leaves. One newspaper rested on the step. She stooped and read today’s date on the front page.
She stood up, shaking. “Tell me what is going on.”
“As I said, I would rather speak with you in person.”
“Alright. I want to see your face, too, when I tell you what has been happening to me.”
“Or course. One more thing. Before you leave your house, make sure the lever in the clock is in the middle position.”
She drove through Fairfax and noticed that Jack O’Lanterns had returned to front stoops, smiling toothlessly into the increasingly cold afternoon breeze. Santa had returned to the North Pole. She called her office as she approached the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. The secretary picked up and she asked to speak with Lori. There were no urgent messages for her and Lori had never heard of a Rob Keener.
The man had said he would be wearing a Washington Redskins jacket and would wait for her on a bench at the east entrance of the World War II memorial. She pulled the car into an empty parking lot. She realized that she knew nothing about Armbrister other than what she had read on the Internet. She glanced down at the clock on the seat beside her. Had two clicks of a brass lever taken her into the future and then back to the present? It was impossible to believe. She wondered about Armbrister’s experience with the clock. Given its awesome capabilities, why would the man sell it? What if he had not given up the clock voluntarily? The man had achieved power and wealth on an immense scale and then disappeared. If the clock was as powerful as she feared, what might he be willing to do to get it back?
She exhaled loudly and put the car back into gear. Come on! Let’s get this over with. She comforted herself that it was daytime and cars came and went continuously through the area. Even so, she reassured herself by touching the mini-taser in her purse. It was about the size of a lipstick but it packed enough of a jolt to put someone down long enough for her to get away.
Five minutes later, she pulled into the parking area and scanned the nearby benches for a man wearing a cranberry football jacket. Aside from a few bundled up picture-takers, she saw no one. “Guess I’ll have to look for him,” she said.
She reached for the door handle as someone tapped on the passenger door window. A red-faced man with gray hair combed tightly across his forehead was bending down and smiling at her. Can I come in? she read his lips through the safety glass. She nodded.
She pulled the clock closer with one hand and slipped the other into her purse as he opened the door and got in. “Mrs. Kimble? I hope I didn’t frighten you pecking on your window like that. It’s just that the blood thins a bit past seventy and I thought we could talk better out of this air.”
Something about the man played in the back of her mind, as if she had met him somewhere before. He seemed genuine enough as he waited for her reply. “Hello,” she managed. “What do you want?”
“All I want to do is help you.” He smiled as if a funny thought had occurred to him. “You do know that you possess -- as you might say -- all the time in the world?”
His attempt at humor irritated her. “Who are you and what do you know about it?”
His smile disappeared. “You can call me Mr. White. Your clock is a wonderful and terrible thing. As you have probably surmised, it is a means of slipping through time.” His eyes dropped to the clock and Jacqui saw a wave of something pass through him, as if he both desired it and was repulsed by it. “Would you tell me what has happened to you so far.”
Jacqui told him about her apparent trip to the future and return to the present. “Since then I have had bad headaches, worse than any migraine.”
He sighed. “They are one of the reasons Mr. Armbrister quit using the device,” he said. “The effect of crossing temporal boundaries accumulates until it can no longer be endured. He said that he dared not slip one more time.”
“How does it work?”
“I do not know exactly. He had the best scientists examine it, but as far as they discovered, it is just an ordinary clock. He never told them what it could do. His next option was to track the manufacturer – a small shop on the north end of Kobe, Japan. Sadly, he found that the shop had burned the same year that the clock was made. The entire inventory was lost and the company never recovered. This clock was the only one to survive.”
“How many times did he time travel?”
The man settled in his seat, enjoying the comfort of the warm car. “As I said, ‘slip’ is a more correct term. ‘Travel’ implies that one is doing the moving. Time is always moving and we are carried along with it at its pace like leaves on the surface of a steam. When the lever is in the center position, you move along with time. When you move the lever downward -- into reverse – you release your hold on the moment and time flows on leaving you in the past. Have you ever ridden the cable cars in San Francisco?” Jacqui shook her head, her eyes moving off his face and back again. “When the operator releases the clamp on the underground cable, the car stays put and the cable goes on. Mr. Armbrister believed that the clock functioned like a clutch on the transmission connecting you to time’s engine. It’s effects are demanding, but they are mitigated somewhat by the function of the date calibrator.”
“What is that?”
White pointed. “Right here. You set the blocks to the date you wish and then flip the lever in the appropriate direction. It functions like a cruise control and reduces the stress upon the user.” He saw Jacqui’s expression of incomprehension. “You slipped without setting a parameter? It is a miracle that you ever returned or even that you woke up. You could have been forever out of time!”
“I went into the future. How could I go somewhere that doesn’t exist yet?”
White watched a mounted police officer check on two disheveled men sitting on a bench who were warming their hands over what looked like a burning can of Sterno® scavenged from the trash. “Haven’t you experienced déjà vu or woken from a vivid dream that you forgot in minutes?”
“Sure, everyone has.”
“Could it not be one way of describing a slip into the future that has been mostly forgotten?”
“But I haven’t forgotten what happened to me.”
“Really? How much can you remember?”
Jacqui started to answer but found that she could not recall details of that day -- such as the color of the car in her parking space or the name of the man at her desk. She remembered her friend Lori, but that might have been because she had already known her before the ‘slip.’ She shook her head in frustration.
“The experience will soon fade out of your memory completely. That is why the myth of returning from the future with information on which to build a fortune is impossible. The knowledge just doesn’t last long enough. Even if you wrote it down, since it wasn’t your true future it is of no consequence.”
“What do you mean?”
“That future became possible only when you were taken out of the equation of its past. Had you remained in the present nothing like that could have happened. Now that you are back, your future is, as they say, what you make of it.”
Jacqui sat silently listening to the autumn wind blow around the car. A couple walked by holding hands, heading toward the monument.
Mr. Smith spoke again. “How the clock works is not what is most important. I want to help you understand why it came to you.”
“After what you told me, I wonder if I really use it at all.”
“Time has a character of its own. You cannot manipulate it without cost. Especially when one travels to the past.”
“Did Armbrister do that? Travel to the past?”
He sighed. “Yes, once. It was the last thing he shared before he left. I have never seen him again.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Think of the great discoveries humanity has made. Fire. The wheel. Gunpowder. Electricity. String theory. Innovations driven by the desire for control. How often do people wish they had the opportunity to go back and fix the things that caused pain, defeat, or even death? How many long for power over their destinies? Would not such a control be a blessed assurance? The clock offers that ability. Mr. Armbrister gave into the temptation.
“Temptation? You make it sound like it is evil.”
“No, Mrs. Kimble. It is not evil. Evil does not exist in things. Guns, money, political power – none are evil, but all offer power and control. The evil -- and the good -- is in us.”
Jacqui changed the subject. “What happened to Armbrister?”
White’s eyes dropped to his lap. “Five years ago, he and his wife were returning home from a thirtieth anniversary trip to the Poconos. Their car hit a patch of ice and went over the side of the mountain. He fell free and ended up on the hillside with nothing more than a broken arm. His wife and continued with the car down the slope into some trees. She was killed.”
Jacqui stared at the downcast man. He seemed so sad, as if he himself had suffered the loss. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“It was a year later that I traveled with him in Southeast Asia. He was despondent and hoped to distract himself from his grief. He found the clock tucked away in a Buddhist monastery in a northern province of Vietnam. A Japanese general had brought it with him during World War II. The clock got left behind at the war’s end and was stored away by the monks. He told me that it reminded him of a clock that hung on the wall of his childhood home and since the monastery had fallen into disrepair, the monks accepted his generous offer.
“Like you, he learned by accident what it could do. He decided to travel back to the day of his wife’s death and keep the accident from happening. He succeeded.”
“Wait a minute. If he succeeded in changing the past, how would you know anything about it?”
He smiled wryly. “I accompanied him. When we returned to the present she was alive. But there was a problem. While she had no memory of her dying, neither did Mr. Armbrister have any memory of the alternate past he had created for them since their return from their anniversary. He hadn’t really been there. He changed their world, but he could not change himself.”
Jacqui struggled to get her mind around the idea. “At least he had her back and they could build a new life together.”
Smith’s shoulders sagged even more. “Time has a will that cannot be denied. You can dam up a river and it will serve you for a season, but eventually a flood will come that cannot be managed. The headaches are a warning. If they are ignored, more . . . difficult matters will arise.”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Armbrister worked hard to conceal his ignorance from her. He managed to learn many things about that lost year through clever conversations with mutual friends. I cannot imagine how exhausting it was for him to sort it out. He came to believe that she suspected he was hiding something. She never accused him so he never had to deny anything, but a year ago, he came home to an empty house. It was a week later that I knocked on his bedroom door with his breakfast. He was gone.” He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “I found this on the nightstand.”
His jaw trembled as he began to read. “‘My Dear Austin. I am sorry that I have put you through all of this. Please forgive me. Thank you for your service and your friendship. Having you beside me through this horrible experience has kept me from going insane. I know now that there is no longer a reason for me in this time. I will take a final journey and I hope that wherever the river takes me, I will find a measure of peace there.
“‘Do not use it! I thought for a time that destroying it was best, but I know now that its demolition would not deliver me from my predicament. The clock exists for a reason. The evil does not lie within the device. It must continue to exist, but I pray that you will choose a way to keep it safe for all our sakes. Please dispose of my goods and keep a fair portion for yourself. Disperse the remainder amongst the charities I have favored. You will find the appropriate signed documents in my desk drawer. Put me and this whole matter out of your life as best as you can. Farewell until the renewal of all things. Your employer and friend, Harold.’”
Austin White slipped the paper back into his pocket. “I was so distraught over his departing that I paid little attention to the details of the liquidation of his estate. I lost track of the device during the ensuing sales. I only learned today that the shopkeeper had acquired it and then sold it to you.”
Jacqui looked down and saw that she was cradling the clock tightly to her chest. Her plans of profiting from future knowledge and correcting past mistakes disappeared like steam rising from a cooling pot. “Maybe I should I give it back to you!”
He recoiled against the car door. “Don’t tempt me!”
“I don’t want it either!” she shouted. “Why tell me all of this if there is nothing I can do?”
“Mr. Armbrister believed that it needed to be hidden away. Human beings weren’t ready for such a thing. Maybe someday but not yet.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Maybe this will help.” He handed her an envelope he had drawn from an inside jacket pocket. Jacqui opened it and found a debit card. “The account holds five hundred thousand dollars. Spend some and invest the rest. You and yours are now responsible for it.”
He opened the door and stepped out. “Wait!” Jacqui called above the wind. “What if I make a mistake? What if something happens?”
“Something always happens. Whatever does, it’s up to you to decline the offer.”
“What offer?”
“The most basic of temptations, Mrs. Kimble -- to become a master of your time instead of its steward.”
Jacqui watched Austin White cross 17th Street and disappear beyond a line of trees in the direction of the Washington Monument. She lay the clock on the seat. This was insane. But she had experienced the power of the device. OK, so manipulating the future was not an option. But what would be wrong with going into the past and preventing bad things from happening? That wouldn’t make her into some evil manipulator of the time stream. She would be more careful that Armbrister. What could be wrong about stepping into yesterday to prevent plane crashes and drive-by shootings? She should try something simple at first, like returning to the moment when she first met Bill. If I knew then what I know now . . .
She shifted the car into reverse and took her foot off the brake. She heard a woman’s scream and instinctively hit the brake. The car lurched to a stop after rolling only a couple of feet. A frightened looking woman ran toward the rear of her car. Jacqui looked into her rearview mirror and saw a curly red head just above the level of her trunk. The woman gathered up the girl and carried her back to the sidewalk, shooting a frightened glance at Jacqui. He lips formed the words Are you crazy?
Jacqui shifted the car into park as her heart beat powerfully, adrenaline rushing through her. If that woman had not noticed, or had been unable to scream -- or had Jacqui been listening to the radio with headphones, or had she hit the gas a second sooner, three histories would have changed forever. What if I had run over that girl?
Her head swerved every way as she drove home on the alert for danger. She pulled into her garage and climbed out of the car, fumbling for her keys with shaking hands. She hung the clock on its place on the wall and headed for the bedroom where she sat on her bed and kicked off her shoes. Too many things were forcing themselves uninvited into her life. It was getting too hard to keep up with everything, to plan for every contingency, to avoid every danger.
The clock sounded a chime for the half hour.
Now she could do something about it. She would be careful. She went into the hallway and opened the clock face. The numbers and hands stared back at her. She turned the dials to seven o’clock on the morning she desired. She opened the little door and her eye fell on the poem fragment: Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn. She clicked the lever to the down position and braced herself for another headache as she set the pendulum in motion. Each step grew darker as she retraced her path to the bed. Her last memory was that of falling toward the embrace of the comforter-covered mattress.
------------------------------------
Andrew Johnson responded quickly when he received the page, but the mid-October storm that had blown ten inches of snow into the Shenandoah and Potomac Valleys made him frustratingly late. Many commuters still drove the old-style wheeled vehicles that didn’t manage the drifts as well as his hovercraft. He had to wait three times for trucks to clear stalled vehicles from the roadway before he could finish the trip to his mother’s nursing home.
He stepped into the doorway of her room and his sister Grace greeted him with a hug. “There’s nothing more we can do here.” She wiped away tears. “They’ve already called Anderson’s funeral home. I wish I could stay, but I’m late picking up Robby’s kids from school.” She lay a soft hand upon his arm. “Are you coming over later?”
“Sure. Emily’s feeling better now. I think she’ll feel up to it.”
The covers had been pulled up to his mother’s neck and her exposed arms had been crossed over her stomach. He noticed a pale band of skin on her eighty-seven-year-old left wrist. “Where’s her watch?” Over the thirty years she lay in that bed it had been an unexplained mystery as to why Jacqueline Johnson would become agitated unless she wore a timepiece.
“I have it in my purse. I just thought it would be nice to keep it.”
“We should leave it on her. You know how she always wore one.”
“Alright. I guess there are plenty of others.” She fastened it back on her mother’s wrist.
“I’ll stay here and confirm the arrangements,” he said.
“Ok. See you later.” She squeezed his hand.
He sat down on the plain white loveseat and pondered his mother’s quiet form. He and his twin sister had never known their father. She told them that he had been a good man, but that some things in life just didn’t work out no matter how hard you tried. Over all, life had been good before the stroke that had left their mother in a persistent coma. It was almost unreal how nothing bad ever happened to them up to then. She said they had a guardian angel, though Andy knew that she really had no room in her thoughts for such sentiments.
The first major stroke took her speech at fifty and she had to retire a year later. The last aneurysm burst the day before her sixtieth birthday. She had known ahead of time that something was wrong and Andy only found out after the fact that she had pre-arranged for her care at the nursing facility. She ate and drank when they placed food in her mouth, but she gave no other sign of awareness. Still, on the occasions when Andy stayed overnight with her, he would wake to her mumbling sentences and fragments from stories into which he could make no connection.
A nurse entered the doorway. “Mr. Johnson?” Andy stood recognizing the woman who had cared for his mother the last five years. “I’m sorry about your mother.” She hugged him briefly and then handed him a manila envelope. “This is yours now.”
Andy looked at the tan package. “I don’t understand.”
“She gave us directions that when she died, you were to have it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“OK. Thanks. I appreciate the care you gave Mom.”
“It was our pleasure.” The nurse left. Andy opened the envelope and tipped it up. A five by seven index card and a small key spilled out into his hand. The card bore the address of a storage facility written in his mother’s handwriting. The key bore a number: 777.
The phone rang on the nightstand. He picked it up. “Hello, this is Jacqui Johnson’s room. This is her son Andrew.”
“Hello, Mr. Johnson. First, let me express my condolences over your loss of your mother. I know how difficult these last years must have been for you.”
“Thank you. Who am I speaking with?”
“My name is Abraham White. My grandfather was an acquaintance of your mother’s. Could I have a moment of your time to discuss some business they conducted a long time ago?”
“If you are referring to the clock,” the man said, “it certainly does. All of our merchandise is in good working order.”
She heard an undercurrent of pride in his voice, absent of the cloying smugness in most that left a bad aftertaste. “Does it keep time?” she continued, keeping he eyes forward.
“I did not know that one could ‘keep’ time, Miss . . .”
She allowed a quarter turn toward this peculiar man and looked into his round face with one eye. He returned her gaze with an inviting smile. She dropped her eyes a degree and read the badge on his dark green shirt: Xavier. She completed her turn and faced him. “My name is Jacqueline Kimble. I don’t see a price tag. How much are you asking?”
Xavier paused just long enough for her to understand that negotiations would not be simple today. “To answer your first question, be assured that the mechanism is very precise, especially for the era of its creation. And yes, it is for sale.” He quoted her a price ten percent beyond what she had in mind to pay.
“Tell me about its previous owner. I purchase only those things that have been well-cared for.”
His smile grew even larger. “I am delighted that you are interested in this piece’s story. Too many these days think that time’s turnings begin and end with them.” Xavier adjusted his stance like a fencer preparing for a counter stroke. “We obtained the clock at auction from the estate of a Mr. Harold Armbrister.”
“Armbrister -- the millionaire who disappeared?”
“Yes, sadly so. It was the admirable and yet lamentable fact that he outlived the rest of his family that occasioned the auction. This particular clock hung in his library.” Xavier paused and looked past her. “The total in the library was well over twenty-five thousand.”
“Clocks?” She envisioned a cavernous hall covered with timepieces. Something out of Wonderland. The ticking would be raucous.
Xavier shook his head. “Books, Miss Kimble. No one can manage that much time.”
Mildly flustered, Jacqui turned back to the clock. Its twelve-inch face perched above a rectangular wooden box that held the gears and the pendulum. A glass pane edged with a gold covered the face and opened on two light metal hinges. Simple hands pointed at black numerals marking the time. Small block numbers denoted the date, month, and year.
“It is a attractive piece,” she admitted.
“Perhaps you feel it reaching out to you.”
Jacqui turned around a little more quickly than she planned. “What do you mean?”
She felt Xavier’s eyes lock onto hers. “The pearl of great price,” he said. Jacqui looked at him, waiting. “From the Biblical story, Miss Kimble. When you come across such a treasure, all else will lose value compared with it.”
Her brow twisted upward as she puzzled out his meaning. “It’s not like I’m going to sell my soul or something. It’s just a clock.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Something made her start to take a cautious step back, but she caught herself before she actually moved. “You must admit that the price is modest compared to others of its generation.” He reached around her and she leaned away as his hand brushed past her breast. He opened the little door and revealed the pendulum. “Here you can see a note saying that it was crafted in the year 1910 in Kobe.”
She bent closer to read and her nose picked up a scent of some woody spice from within the small space. “Japan?”
The shopkeeper inclined his head in a slight bow. “A product of shall we say, a more reflective era?”
Jacqui pointed at a tiny lever mounted on the right wall of the works compartment. “What is this for? It looks like a kind of switch.”
“Some clocks were customized to the buyer’s specifications. Does the note give any instructions?”
She squinted again. “Much of the writing is smeared or worn off.” Near the bottom she found small words written in English script and read them aloud. “‘Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn.’ Is that a poem or something?” She pressed the lever up with her finger and it clicked into place. She pressed down until it passed two clicks through its original location and settled in the lower position. Nothing happened. “I guess I’ll find out what it does later.” She checked her watch and set the time: 10:01. She tapped the pendulum to start the clock.
“I’ll take it. It will look good in my entry way.”
“You are furnishing a new house?”
She twisted her head around. How . . ? She drew a breath to slow her suddenly pounding heart. “There was a fire. We tried to go back in and save what we could, but . . .”
“We? Is there a Mr. . . .?”
“No. Yes. I mean, not for much longer. The divorce was already in process and the fire simplified things.” Her eyes dropped to the floor before she could catch herself. “There wasn’t much left to fight over.”
“I am sorry, Mrs. Kimble. I do not mean to pry. I cannot imagine how . . . “
Her jaw hardened and she raised her eyes to meet the shopkeeper’s. “He’ll be fine with his part of the insurance money.” She turned back around to the clock. “This is not quite the same as the one I lost. It will help me start over.” She countered with the price she originally had in mind.
Xavier nodded. “I hope that you find that to be true.” She walked to the front desk to complete the transaction and the chimes of the clock rang out ten times as the hour struck.
Simpler times. Jacqui pulled into the driveway of the two-bedroom ranch house where she would start her new life with work and friends. She cradled the clock in her left arm as she slid her keycard through the electronic lock of her front door. She heard a reassuring click as the security system disengaged. She pressed down on the handle and the door slid silently open. Most of the necessary furnishings were already in place – appliances, living room and bedroom furniture. A new wardrobe hung in the walk-in closet and dishes, pots, and pans filled the cabinets along with groceries. Curtains dressed up the windows. She unpacked the clock and set it on the table. It was the first piece that would start giving the place character. Just in time for her favorite time of year -- autumn.
Character. Charm. Appeal. Those were the things that made life interesting. Bill’s lack of the above had provoked her decision to leave before she wasted any more of her life. Six months into the marriage all he could talk about was work and bills. And then there was all his nagging about starting a family. They had agreed to wait at least five years. How had getting married turned a fun-loving man into such a bore? The pre-nuptial would restore some of the money but there was nothing to do about the lost time and energy. If only she had known . . .
She found a place on the wall between the coat closet and the hallway bathroom and drove a nail through the drywall into a stud. With the clock mounted, she stepped back to view it. She visualized herself waking in the early morning to the sounds of its chimes striking six o’clock -- or seven if she had come in late the previous night. She set the time and opened the little door. The lever was still set in the lowest position. She placed her fingertip under it and popped it two clicks into the upper position, started the pendulum, and closed the door. “What are you for?” she said to the tiny piece of brass. “Maybe I can find something about you on the Internet.”
Minutes later, she changed her mind. Instead of searching the Internet, she ate a light dinner in the company of a good book and finished the evening with a hot bath. On the way to the bedroom she noticed the time: eleven o’clock.
The next morning she awoke with a headache and sunlight streaming through her window. She threw back the covers and stumbled into the bathroom. She had never slept this late! Ten minutes later she plunged through her front door, almost falling over a pile of newspapers individually wrapped in plastic on her small porch.
Someone’s idea of an early Halloween prank? Thirty minutes later, she drove into her building’s garage and found an unfamiliar car parked in the spot she had won and kept for eight months as the company’s high producer. She rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked into her office -- third on the left. The door was open and a man was sitting behind her desk talking on the phone.
“Who are you?” she said from the doorway.
“I’ll get back to you,” the man said into the phone and then hung up. “Excuse me?”
“Who are you?’”
“Rob Keener. Why?”
“What are you doing here?”
“This is my desk.”
“No, it’s not.” She looked at the bare walls and nearly empty bookshelf. “What have you done with my things?”
“Wait a minute! I’ve worked here since I was hired two weeks ago. I’ve never seen you before.”
She reared back, her shoulders straightening. “I am Jacqueline Kimble, the top sales generator at this company!”
A shocked voice announced itself over her shoulder. “Jacqui? My God! Is it you?”
She turned around and recognized Lori Stine, the office manager. “Who else did you expect? What’s going on? First somebody’s taken my parking space and now this guy’s in my office.”
Lori led her into the hallway and spoke in a lowered voice. “Jacqui, where have you been?”
“What do you mean? You know that I had to spend the weekend setting up my new house. I’m sorry that I missed the trip to Chicago with you and Ben, but now its Monday and I’m back.”
“No, it’s not.” Lori shook her head.
“It’s not what?”
“It’s not Monday.”
“Sure it is. Last night was Sunday and I woke up this morning. Monday.”
Lori shook her head again as if she was trying to clear her thoughts. “After a week, John tried to call you but you didn’t answer. He sent Ben over to see if you were OK but your house was locked up. He found your car in the drive, but not you. After another week he called the police but they said that there was nothing they could do.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s been a month since anyone’s seen you. It’s Tuesday. Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“We thought you had moved away or were dead or something. You don’t work here anymore.”
Jacqui ran a hand through her short blond hair. “I need to talk with John. Where is he?”
“He’s in California closing the Toberton deal. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“What am I supposed to do until then?”
“Gosh, Jacqui. I don’t know.” She placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”
A tremor raced through her back and hips, weakening her legs, and a pain shot from the back of her head out through her eyes. Everything seemed to turn inside out for a moment, like a photograph’s negative. “I don’t feel alright.”
As Jacqui drove home, her thoughts whirled. She tossed three painkillers into her mouth and chased them with some bottled water. Lori had told her that during the third week of her “disappearance” John had called the police. They obtained a warrant to enter the house, but found nothing out of the ordinary. “FM 103.5” she said. The voice of B.J. Thomas crooned out the end of a song: “because I’m free . . .nothin’s worrying me.” The digital readout displayed the time. 10:00AM. The DJ continued with a traffic report followed by the weather. Thanksgiving should be milder than usual around the District with rain coming in across Maryland on Saturday. Some delays possible for travelers through Dulles International Airport.
“Off,” she said and the radio shut down. She noticed that cardboard turkeys and pumpkins covered store windows and Santa Claus was appearing as well. She drove into her driveway and saw that the yard was coated with leaves. It had just been mid-October! She had completely missed the changing of the foliage. The pile of newspapers remained in front of her door. The most recent date was November 15th. The Post had probably canceled her subscription for non-payment.
She headed to the closet to hang up her coat and read the time on the clock: 2:00PM. “What’s wrong with you? He said you’d keep time.” She opened the face and spun the hands backward three hours plus. Then she opened the smaller door below and saw that the little lever still pointed upward. She placed a finger against it and shoved it down to the lowest position. A bolt of fire lanced through her skull. She leaned against the wall and decided to lie down. She made it as far as the sofa.
It was still daylight when she woke to the sound of her phone ringing. She found it in the kitchen and checked the caller I.D: Unknown.
She held it up to her ear. “Yes?”
“Hello Jaqueline Kimble. You have had quite a day I would imagine.” The man’s voice held a light British accent.
“Who is this?”
“Please believe that I am a friend -- perhaps the most important person in your life at this moment.”
The pain in her temples threatened to glaze her vision. “Tell me who you are or I will have this call traced!”
“I am calling on behalf of Mr. Harold Armbrister. Earlier today you purchased a clock that once belonged to him.”
Earlier today? “Harold Armbrister went missing over a year ago and it has been a month since I have been to Xavier’s. I’m calling the police.”
“Please do not do that, Mrs. Kimble,” the man said quickly. “You have purchased a very special timepiece indeed. It is more dangerous than you may know, but then I believe you have already experienced some of its effects, haven’t you?”
“I’m listening.” She held her voice firm, but sat down gently on her couch.
“What I have to say is best delivered in person. Would you be willing to meet me and bring it with you?”
“Why? Do you want it back?”
“No,” the man said quickly. Then his voice softened. “My employer’s time with it is over. But he was concerned that . . .” He paused. “Will you meet with me?”
Jacqui could see the clock from where she sat. The pendulum was rocking steadily. The hands pointed to the time: 4:00PM. But what day was it? She went to the front door and pulled it open. The grass was green and uncluttered with leaves. One newspaper rested on the step. She stooped and read today’s date on the front page.
She stood up, shaking. “Tell me what is going on.”
“As I said, I would rather speak with you in person.”
“Alright. I want to see your face, too, when I tell you what has been happening to me.”
“Or course. One more thing. Before you leave your house, make sure the lever in the clock is in the middle position.”
She drove through Fairfax and noticed that Jack O’Lanterns had returned to front stoops, smiling toothlessly into the increasingly cold afternoon breeze. Santa had returned to the North Pole. She called her office as she approached the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. The secretary picked up and she asked to speak with Lori. There were no urgent messages for her and Lori had never heard of a Rob Keener.
The man had said he would be wearing a Washington Redskins jacket and would wait for her on a bench at the east entrance of the World War II memorial. She pulled the car into an empty parking lot. She realized that she knew nothing about Armbrister other than what she had read on the Internet. She glanced down at the clock on the seat beside her. Had two clicks of a brass lever taken her into the future and then back to the present? It was impossible to believe. She wondered about Armbrister’s experience with the clock. Given its awesome capabilities, why would the man sell it? What if he had not given up the clock voluntarily? The man had achieved power and wealth on an immense scale and then disappeared. If the clock was as powerful as she feared, what might he be willing to do to get it back?
She exhaled loudly and put the car back into gear. Come on! Let’s get this over with. She comforted herself that it was daytime and cars came and went continuously through the area. Even so, she reassured herself by touching the mini-taser in her purse. It was about the size of a lipstick but it packed enough of a jolt to put someone down long enough for her to get away.
Five minutes later, she pulled into the parking area and scanned the nearby benches for a man wearing a cranberry football jacket. Aside from a few bundled up picture-takers, she saw no one. “Guess I’ll have to look for him,” she said.
She reached for the door handle as someone tapped on the passenger door window. A red-faced man with gray hair combed tightly across his forehead was bending down and smiling at her. Can I come in? she read his lips through the safety glass. She nodded.
She pulled the clock closer with one hand and slipped the other into her purse as he opened the door and got in. “Mrs. Kimble? I hope I didn’t frighten you pecking on your window like that. It’s just that the blood thins a bit past seventy and I thought we could talk better out of this air.”
Something about the man played in the back of her mind, as if she had met him somewhere before. He seemed genuine enough as he waited for her reply. “Hello,” she managed. “What do you want?”
“All I want to do is help you.” He smiled as if a funny thought had occurred to him. “You do know that you possess -- as you might say -- all the time in the world?”
His attempt at humor irritated her. “Who are you and what do you know about it?”
His smile disappeared. “You can call me Mr. White. Your clock is a wonderful and terrible thing. As you have probably surmised, it is a means of slipping through time.” His eyes dropped to the clock and Jacqui saw a wave of something pass through him, as if he both desired it and was repulsed by it. “Would you tell me what has happened to you so far.”
Jacqui told him about her apparent trip to the future and return to the present. “Since then I have had bad headaches, worse than any migraine.”
He sighed. “They are one of the reasons Mr. Armbrister quit using the device,” he said. “The effect of crossing temporal boundaries accumulates until it can no longer be endured. He said that he dared not slip one more time.”
“How does it work?”
“I do not know exactly. He had the best scientists examine it, but as far as they discovered, it is just an ordinary clock. He never told them what it could do. His next option was to track the manufacturer – a small shop on the north end of Kobe, Japan. Sadly, he found that the shop had burned the same year that the clock was made. The entire inventory was lost and the company never recovered. This clock was the only one to survive.”
“How many times did he time travel?”
The man settled in his seat, enjoying the comfort of the warm car. “As I said, ‘slip’ is a more correct term. ‘Travel’ implies that one is doing the moving. Time is always moving and we are carried along with it at its pace like leaves on the surface of a steam. When the lever is in the center position, you move along with time. When you move the lever downward -- into reverse – you release your hold on the moment and time flows on leaving you in the past. Have you ever ridden the cable cars in San Francisco?” Jacqui shook her head, her eyes moving off his face and back again. “When the operator releases the clamp on the underground cable, the car stays put and the cable goes on. Mr. Armbrister believed that the clock functioned like a clutch on the transmission connecting you to time’s engine. It’s effects are demanding, but they are mitigated somewhat by the function of the date calibrator.”
“What is that?”
White pointed. “Right here. You set the blocks to the date you wish and then flip the lever in the appropriate direction. It functions like a cruise control and reduces the stress upon the user.” He saw Jacqui’s expression of incomprehension. “You slipped without setting a parameter? It is a miracle that you ever returned or even that you woke up. You could have been forever out of time!”
“I went into the future. How could I go somewhere that doesn’t exist yet?”
White watched a mounted police officer check on two disheveled men sitting on a bench who were warming their hands over what looked like a burning can of Sterno® scavenged from the trash. “Haven’t you experienced déjà vu or woken from a vivid dream that you forgot in minutes?”
“Sure, everyone has.”
“Could it not be one way of describing a slip into the future that has been mostly forgotten?”
“But I haven’t forgotten what happened to me.”
“Really? How much can you remember?”
Jacqui started to answer but found that she could not recall details of that day -- such as the color of the car in her parking space or the name of the man at her desk. She remembered her friend Lori, but that might have been because she had already known her before the ‘slip.’ She shook her head in frustration.
“The experience will soon fade out of your memory completely. That is why the myth of returning from the future with information on which to build a fortune is impossible. The knowledge just doesn’t last long enough. Even if you wrote it down, since it wasn’t your true future it is of no consequence.”
“What do you mean?”
“That future became possible only when you were taken out of the equation of its past. Had you remained in the present nothing like that could have happened. Now that you are back, your future is, as they say, what you make of it.”
Jacqui sat silently listening to the autumn wind blow around the car. A couple walked by holding hands, heading toward the monument.
Mr. Smith spoke again. “How the clock works is not what is most important. I want to help you understand why it came to you.”
“After what you told me, I wonder if I really use it at all.”
“Time has a character of its own. You cannot manipulate it without cost. Especially when one travels to the past.”
“Did Armbrister do that? Travel to the past?”
He sighed. “Yes, once. It was the last thing he shared before he left. I have never seen him again.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Think of the great discoveries humanity has made. Fire. The wheel. Gunpowder. Electricity. String theory. Innovations driven by the desire for control. How often do people wish they had the opportunity to go back and fix the things that caused pain, defeat, or even death? How many long for power over their destinies? Would not such a control be a blessed assurance? The clock offers that ability. Mr. Armbrister gave into the temptation.
“Temptation? You make it sound like it is evil.”
“No, Mrs. Kimble. It is not evil. Evil does not exist in things. Guns, money, political power – none are evil, but all offer power and control. The evil -- and the good -- is in us.”
Jacqui changed the subject. “What happened to Armbrister?”
White’s eyes dropped to his lap. “Five years ago, he and his wife were returning home from a thirtieth anniversary trip to the Poconos. Their car hit a patch of ice and went over the side of the mountain. He fell free and ended up on the hillside with nothing more than a broken arm. His wife and continued with the car down the slope into some trees. She was killed.”
Jacqui stared at the downcast man. He seemed so sad, as if he himself had suffered the loss. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“It was a year later that I traveled with him in Southeast Asia. He was despondent and hoped to distract himself from his grief. He found the clock tucked away in a Buddhist monastery in a northern province of Vietnam. A Japanese general had brought it with him during World War II. The clock got left behind at the war’s end and was stored away by the monks. He told me that it reminded him of a clock that hung on the wall of his childhood home and since the monastery had fallen into disrepair, the monks accepted his generous offer.
“Like you, he learned by accident what it could do. He decided to travel back to the day of his wife’s death and keep the accident from happening. He succeeded.”
“Wait a minute. If he succeeded in changing the past, how would you know anything about it?”
He smiled wryly. “I accompanied him. When we returned to the present she was alive. But there was a problem. While she had no memory of her dying, neither did Mr. Armbrister have any memory of the alternate past he had created for them since their return from their anniversary. He hadn’t really been there. He changed their world, but he could not change himself.”
Jacqui struggled to get her mind around the idea. “At least he had her back and they could build a new life together.”
Smith’s shoulders sagged even more. “Time has a will that cannot be denied. You can dam up a river and it will serve you for a season, but eventually a flood will come that cannot be managed. The headaches are a warning. If they are ignored, more . . . difficult matters will arise.”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Armbrister worked hard to conceal his ignorance from her. He managed to learn many things about that lost year through clever conversations with mutual friends. I cannot imagine how exhausting it was for him to sort it out. He came to believe that she suspected he was hiding something. She never accused him so he never had to deny anything, but a year ago, he came home to an empty house. It was a week later that I knocked on his bedroom door with his breakfast. He was gone.” He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “I found this on the nightstand.”
His jaw trembled as he began to read. “‘My Dear Austin. I am sorry that I have put you through all of this. Please forgive me. Thank you for your service and your friendship. Having you beside me through this horrible experience has kept me from going insane. I know now that there is no longer a reason for me in this time. I will take a final journey and I hope that wherever the river takes me, I will find a measure of peace there.
“‘Do not use it! I thought for a time that destroying it was best, but I know now that its demolition would not deliver me from my predicament. The clock exists for a reason. The evil does not lie within the device. It must continue to exist, but I pray that you will choose a way to keep it safe for all our sakes. Please dispose of my goods and keep a fair portion for yourself. Disperse the remainder amongst the charities I have favored. You will find the appropriate signed documents in my desk drawer. Put me and this whole matter out of your life as best as you can. Farewell until the renewal of all things. Your employer and friend, Harold.’”
Austin White slipped the paper back into his pocket. “I was so distraught over his departing that I paid little attention to the details of the liquidation of his estate. I lost track of the device during the ensuing sales. I only learned today that the shopkeeper had acquired it and then sold it to you.”
Jacqui looked down and saw that she was cradling the clock tightly to her chest. Her plans of profiting from future knowledge and correcting past mistakes disappeared like steam rising from a cooling pot. “Maybe I should I give it back to you!”
He recoiled against the car door. “Don’t tempt me!”
“I don’t want it either!” she shouted. “Why tell me all of this if there is nothing I can do?”
“Mr. Armbrister believed that it needed to be hidden away. Human beings weren’t ready for such a thing. Maybe someday but not yet.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Maybe this will help.” He handed her an envelope he had drawn from an inside jacket pocket. Jacqui opened it and found a debit card. “The account holds five hundred thousand dollars. Spend some and invest the rest. You and yours are now responsible for it.”
He opened the door and stepped out. “Wait!” Jacqui called above the wind. “What if I make a mistake? What if something happens?”
“Something always happens. Whatever does, it’s up to you to decline the offer.”
“What offer?”
“The most basic of temptations, Mrs. Kimble -- to become a master of your time instead of its steward.”
Jacqui watched Austin White cross 17th Street and disappear beyond a line of trees in the direction of the Washington Monument. She lay the clock on the seat. This was insane. But she had experienced the power of the device. OK, so manipulating the future was not an option. But what would be wrong with going into the past and preventing bad things from happening? That wouldn’t make her into some evil manipulator of the time stream. She would be more careful that Armbrister. What could be wrong about stepping into yesterday to prevent plane crashes and drive-by shootings? She should try something simple at first, like returning to the moment when she first met Bill. If I knew then what I know now . . .
She shifted the car into reverse and took her foot off the brake. She heard a woman’s scream and instinctively hit the brake. The car lurched to a stop after rolling only a couple of feet. A frightened looking woman ran toward the rear of her car. Jacqui looked into her rearview mirror and saw a curly red head just above the level of her trunk. The woman gathered up the girl and carried her back to the sidewalk, shooting a frightened glance at Jacqui. He lips formed the words Are you crazy?
Jacqui shifted the car into park as her heart beat powerfully, adrenaline rushing through her. If that woman had not noticed, or had been unable to scream -- or had Jacqui been listening to the radio with headphones, or had she hit the gas a second sooner, three histories would have changed forever. What if I had run over that girl?
Her head swerved every way as she drove home on the alert for danger. She pulled into her garage and climbed out of the car, fumbling for her keys with shaking hands. She hung the clock on its place on the wall and headed for the bedroom where she sat on her bed and kicked off her shoes. Too many things were forcing themselves uninvited into her life. It was getting too hard to keep up with everything, to plan for every contingency, to avoid every danger.
The clock sounded a chime for the half hour.
Now she could do something about it. She would be careful. She went into the hallway and opened the clock face. The numbers and hands stared back at her. She turned the dials to seven o’clock on the morning she desired. She opened the little door and her eye fell on the poem fragment: Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn. She clicked the lever to the down position and braced herself for another headache as she set the pendulum in motion. Each step grew darker as she retraced her path to the bed. Her last memory was that of falling toward the embrace of the comforter-covered mattress.
------------------------------------
Andrew Johnson responded quickly when he received the page, but the mid-October storm that had blown ten inches of snow into the Shenandoah and Potomac Valleys made him frustratingly late. Many commuters still drove the old-style wheeled vehicles that didn’t manage the drifts as well as his hovercraft. He had to wait three times for trucks to clear stalled vehicles from the roadway before he could finish the trip to his mother’s nursing home.
He stepped into the doorway of her room and his sister Grace greeted him with a hug. “There’s nothing more we can do here.” She wiped away tears. “They’ve already called Anderson’s funeral home. I wish I could stay, but I’m late picking up Robby’s kids from school.” She lay a soft hand upon his arm. “Are you coming over later?”
“Sure. Emily’s feeling better now. I think she’ll feel up to it.”
The covers had been pulled up to his mother’s neck and her exposed arms had been crossed over her stomach. He noticed a pale band of skin on her eighty-seven-year-old left wrist. “Where’s her watch?” Over the thirty years she lay in that bed it had been an unexplained mystery as to why Jacqueline Johnson would become agitated unless she wore a timepiece.
“I have it in my purse. I just thought it would be nice to keep it.”
“We should leave it on her. You know how she always wore one.”
“Alright. I guess there are plenty of others.” She fastened it back on her mother’s wrist.
“I’ll stay here and confirm the arrangements,” he said.
“Ok. See you later.” She squeezed his hand.
He sat down on the plain white loveseat and pondered his mother’s quiet form. He and his twin sister had never known their father. She told them that he had been a good man, but that some things in life just didn’t work out no matter how hard you tried. Over all, life had been good before the stroke that had left their mother in a persistent coma. It was almost unreal how nothing bad ever happened to them up to then. She said they had a guardian angel, though Andy knew that she really had no room in her thoughts for such sentiments.
The first major stroke took her speech at fifty and she had to retire a year later. The last aneurysm burst the day before her sixtieth birthday. She had known ahead of time that something was wrong and Andy only found out after the fact that she had pre-arranged for her care at the nursing facility. She ate and drank when they placed food in her mouth, but she gave no other sign of awareness. Still, on the occasions when Andy stayed overnight with her, he would wake to her mumbling sentences and fragments from stories into which he could make no connection.
A nurse entered the doorway. “Mr. Johnson?” Andy stood recognizing the woman who had cared for his mother the last five years. “I’m sorry about your mother.” She hugged him briefly and then handed him a manila envelope. “This is yours now.”
Andy looked at the tan package. “I don’t understand.”
“She gave us directions that when she died, you were to have it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“OK. Thanks. I appreciate the care you gave Mom.”
“It was our pleasure.” The nurse left. Andy opened the envelope and tipped it up. A five by seven index card and a small key spilled out into his hand. The card bore the address of a storage facility written in his mother’s handwriting. The key bore a number: 777.
The phone rang on the nightstand. He picked it up. “Hello, this is Jacqui Johnson’s room. This is her son Andrew.”
“Hello, Mr. Johnson. First, let me express my condolences over your loss of your mother. I know how difficult these last years must have been for you.”
“Thank you. Who am I speaking with?”
“My name is Abraham White. My grandfather was an acquaintance of your mother’s. Could I have a moment of your time to discuss some business they conducted a long time ago?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)