by Paul Melko
He kicked a half-rotten pumpkin. Seeds and wispy strings of pumpkin guts spiraled through the air. The smell of dark earth and rotten pumpkin reminded him it was a week before Halloween and they hadn’t had time to harvest the pumpkins: a waste and a thousand dollars lost to earthworms. He ignored how many credits that money would have bought.
The pumpkin field ended at the tree line, the eastern edge of the farm. The trees — old maples and elms — abutted Townline Road, beyond which was the abandoned quarry. He stood in the trees, just breathing, letting the anger seep away.
It wasn’t his parents’ fault. If anyone was to blame, it was he. He hadn’t had to beat the crap out of Ted Carson. He hadn’t had to tell Ted Carson’s mom off. That had entirely been him. Though the look on Mrs. Carson’s face had almost been worth it when he told her her son was an asshole. What a mess.
He spun at the sound of a stick cracking.
For a moment he thought that Ted Carson had chased him out of the farmhouse, that he and his mother were there in the woods. But the figure who stood there was just a boy, holding a broken branch in his hand.
“Johnny?” the boy said. The branch flagged in his grip, touching the ground.
John peered into the dark. He wasn’t a boy; he was a teenager. John stepped closer. The teen was dressed in jeans and plaid shirt. Over the shirt he wore a sleeveless red coat that looked oddly out of date.
His eyes lingered on the stranger’s face. No, not a stranger. The teen had his face.
“Hey, Johnny. It’s me, Johnny.”
The figure in the woods was him.
*
John looked at this other John, this John Subprime, and decided he would be the one. He was clearly a Johnny Farmboy, not one of the Johnny Rebels, not one of the Broken Johns, so he would be wide-eyed and gullible. He’d believe John’s story, and then John could get on with his life.
“Who . . . who are you?” Johnny Farmboy asked. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, no coat.
John forced his most honest smile. “I’m you, John.”
“What?”
Johnny Farmboy could be so dense.
“Who do I look like?”
“You look like . . .”
“I look just like you, John. Because I am you.” Johnny Farmboy took a step back, and John continued. “I know what you’re thinking. Some trick. Someone is playing a trick on the farmboy. No. Let’s get past that. Next you’re going to think that you were twins and one of them was put up for adoption. Nope. It’s much more interesting than that.”
Johnny Farmboy crossed his arms. “Explain it, then.”
“Listen, I’m really hungry; I could use some food and a place to sit down. I saw Dad go in the house. Maybe we can sit in the barn, and I can explain everything.”
John waited for the wheels to turn.
“I don’t think so,” Johnny Farmboy finally said.
“Fine. I’ll turn around and walk away. Then you’ll never get to hear the story.”
John watched the emotion play across Farmboy’s face. Nominally skeptical, he was debating how full of crap this wraith in the night was, while desperately wanting to the know the answer to the riddle. Farmboy loved puzzles.
Finally his face relaxed. “Let’s go to the barn,” he said.
*
The man walked at his side, and John eased away from him. As they walked through the pumpkin patch, John noted that their strides matched. John pulled open the back door of the barn, and the young man entered ahead of him, tapping the light switch by the door.
“A little warmer,” he said. He rubbed his hands together and turned to John.
The light hit his face squarely, and John was startled to see the uncanny match between them. The sandy hair was styled differently and was longer. The clothes were odd; John had never worn a coat like that. The young man was just a bit thinner as well. He wore a blue backpack, so fully stuffed that the zipper wouldn’t close all the way. There was a cut above his eye. A bit of brown blood was crusted over his left brow, clotted but recent.
He could have passed as John’s twin.
“So, who are you?”
“What about a bite of something to eat?”
John went to the horse stall and pulled an apple from a bag. He tossed it to the young man. He caught it and smiled at John.
“Tell the story, and I might get some dinner from the house.”
“Did Dad teach you to be so mean to strangers? I bet if he found me in the woods, he’d invite me in to dinner.”
“Tell,” John said.
“Fine.” The young man flung himself on a hay bale and munched the apple. “It’s simple, really. I’m you. Or rather I’m you genetically, but I grew up on this same farm in another universe. And now I’ve come to visit myself.”
“Bullshit. Who put you up to this?”
“Okay, okay. I didn’t believe me either.” A frown passed over his face. “But I can prove it. Hold on a second.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Here we go: That horse is named Stan or Dan. You bought him from the McGregor’s on Butte Road when you were ten. He’s stubborn and willful and he hates being saddled. But he’ll canter like a show horse if he knows you have an apple in your pocket.” He turned to the stalls on his left. “That pig is called Rosey. That cow is Wilma. The chickens are called Ladies A through F. How am I doing so far?” He smiled an arrogant smile.
“You stole some of your uncle’s cigarettes when you were twelve and smoked them all. You killed a big bullfrog with your bb gun when you were eight. You were so sickened by it you threw up and haven’t used a gun since. Your first kiss was with Amy Walder when you were fourteen. She wanted to show you her underwear too, but you ran home to Mommy. I don’t blame you. She’s got cooties everywhere I go.
“Everyone calls you Johnny, but you prefer John. You have a stash of Playboys in the barn loft. And you burned a hole in the rug in your room once. No one knows because you rearranged your room so that the night stand is on top of it.” He spread his arms like a gymnast who’d just stuck a landing.
“Well? How close did I come?” He smiled and tossed the apple core into Stan’s stall.
“I never kissed Amy Walder.” Amy had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen by Tyrone Biggens. She’d moved to Montana with her aunt and hadn’t come back. John didn’t mention that everything else he’d said was true.
“Well, was I right?”
John nodded. “Mostly.”
“Mostly? I nailed it on the head with a hammer, because it all happened to me. Only it happened in another universe.”
How did this guy know so much about him? Who had he talked to? His parents? “Okay. Answer this. What was my first cat’s name?”
“Snowball.”
“What is my favorite class?”
“Physics.”
“What schools did I apply to?”
The man paused, frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Why not? You know everything else.”
“I’ve been traveling, you know, for a while. I haven’t applied to college yet, so I don’t know. As soon as I used the device, I became someone different. Up till then, we were the same.” He looked tired. “Listen. I’m you, but if I can’t convince you, that’s fine. Let me sleep in the loft tonight and then I’ll leave.”
John watched him grab the ladder, and he felt a twinge of guilt at treating him so shabbily. “Yeah, you can sleep in the loft. Let me get you some dinner. Stay here. Don’t leave the barn, and hide if someone comes. You’d give my parents a heart attack.”
“Thanks, John.”
*
John watched Farmboy disappear through the door into the night, shuddering and then exhaling. He hadn’t even come to the hard part yet.
It would have been so easy to kill Farmboy, a blow to the back of the head, and it was his. But John wouldn’t do that. He hoped, not yet. He was desperate, but not willing to commit homicide. Or would it be suicide?
He chuckl
ed grimly to himself. Dan the Man nickered in response.
John took an apple from the basket and reached out to the horse. Suddenly his eyes were filled with tears.
“Hold yourself together, man,” he whispered as he let Dan gingerly chomp the apple from his hand. His own horse was dead, at his own hand.
He’d taken Dan riding and had tried for the fence beyond the back field. They had flown. But Dan’s hind left hadn’t cleared it. The bone had broken, and John ran sobbing to his farm.
His father met him halfway, a rifle in his hand, his face grim. He’d seen the whole thing.
“Dan’s down!” John cried.
His father nodded and handed the rifle to him.
John took it blankly, then tried to hand it back to his father.
“No!”
“If the leg’s broken, you must.”
“Maybe . . .” But he stopped. Dan was whinnying shrilly; he could hear it from where they stood. The leg had been horribly twisted. There was no doubt.
“Couldn’t Dr. Kimble look at him?”
“How will you pay for that?”
“Will you?”
His father snorted and walked away.
John watched him trod back to the house until Dan’s cries became too much for him. He turned then, tears raining down his cheeks.
Dan’s eyes were wide. He shook his head heavily at John, then he settled when John placed the barrel against his skull. Perhaps he knew. John fished an apple from his pocket and slipped it between Dan’s teeth.
The horse held it there, not biting, waiting. He seemed to nod at John. Then John had pulled the trigger.
The horse had shuddered and fallen still. John sank to the ground and cried for Dan for an hour.
But here he was. Alive. He rubbed Dan’s muzzle.
“Hello, Dan. Back from the dead,” John said. “Just like me.”
*
His mother and father stopped talking when the door slammed, so he knew they’d been talking about him.
“I’m gonna eat in the barn,” he said. “I’m working on an electronics experiment.”
He took a plate from the cabinet and began to dish out the lasagna. He filled the plate with enough to feed two of him.
His father caught his eye, then said, “Son, this business with the Carson boy . . .”
John slipped a second fork into his pocket. “Yeah?”
“I’m sure you did the right thing and all.” John nodded at his father, saw his mother look away.
“He hates us because we’re farmers and we dig in the dirt,” John said. His mother lifted her apron strap over her neck, hung the apron on a chair, and slipped out of the kitchen.
“I know that, Johnny . . . John. But sometimes you gotta keep the peace.”
John nodded. “Sometimes I have to throw a punch, Dad.” He turned to go.
“John, you can eat in here with us.”
“Not tonight, Dad.”
Grabbing a quart of milk, he walked through the laundry room and left out the back door.
*
“Stan never lets anyone do that but me.”
John turned from rubbing Dan’s ears. “Just so,” he said. He took the proffered paper towel full of lasagna, dug into it with the extra fork Farmboy had fetched.
“I always loved this lasagna. Thanks.”
Farmboy frowned, and John recognized the stubbornness; he did the same thing when presented with the impossible. He decided to stay silent and stop goading him with the evidence. This John needed a softer touch.
John ate in silence while Farmboy watched, until finally he said, “Let’s assume for a moment that you are me from another universe. How can you do it? And why you?”
Through a mouth of pasta, he said, “With my device, and I don’t know.”
“Elaborate,” John said, angry.
“I was given a device that lets me pass from one universe to the next. It’s right here under my shirt. I don’t know why it was me. Or rather I don’t know why it was us.”
“Stop prancing around my questions!” Farmboy shouted. “Who gave you the device?”
“I did!” John grinned.
“One of us from another universe gave you the device.”
“Yeah. Another John. Nice looking fellow.” So far all he had said was the truth.
Farmboy was silent for a while, his lasagna half-eaten. Finally he said, “I need to feed the sheep.” He poured a bag of corn into the trough. John lifted the end of it with him. “Thanks.” They fed the cows and the horse afterwards, then finished their own dinner.
Farmboy said, “So if you are me, what do I call you?”
“Well, John won’t work, will it? Well, it will if there’s just the two of us, but as soon as you start adding the infinite number of Johns out there . . . How about John Prime?”
“Then who gave you the device?”
“John Superprime,” John Prime said with a smile. “So do you believe me yet?”
Farmboy was still dubious. “Maybe.”
“All right. Here’s the last piece of evidence. No use denying this.” He pulled up his pant leg to reveal a long white scar, devoid of hair. “Let’s see yours,” John said, pushing down his panic. The last time he’d tried this, it hadn’t been there.
Farmboy looked at the scar, and then pulled his jeans up to the knee. The cold air of the barn drew goose bumps on his calf everywhere except the puckered flesh of his own identical scar.
When John Prime had been twelve, he and Bobby Walder had climbed the barbed wire fence of Old Mrs. Jones to swim in her pond. Mrs. Jones had set the dogs on them, and they’d had to run naked across the field, diving over the barbed wire fence. John hadn’t quite cleared it.
Bobby had run off, and John had limped home. The cut on his leg had required three dozen stitches and a tetanus shot.
“Now do you believe?” John Prime asked.
John stared at the scar on his leg. “I believe. Hurt like hell, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” John Prime said with a grin. “Yes, it did, brother.”
*
John sat in the fishbowl — the glass-enclosed room outside the principal’s office — ignoring the eyes of his classmates and wondering what the hell John Prime was up to. He’d left his twin in the barn loft with half his lunch and an admonishment to stay out of sight.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said with a smirk. “Meet me at the library after school.”
“Don’t let anyone see you, all right?”
John Prime had smiled again.
“John?” Principal Gushman stuck his head out of his office. John’s stomach dropped; he was never in trouble.
Mr. Gushman had a barrel chest, balding head, and perpetual frown. He motioned John to a chair and sat behind the desk, letting out his breath heavily as he sat. He’d been a major in the Army, people said. He liked to be strict. John had never talked with him in the year he’d been principal.
“John, we have a policy regarding violence and bullying.”
John opened his mouth to speak.
“Hold on. Let me finish. The facts of the matter are these. You hit a classmate — a younger classmate — several times in the locker room. He required a trip to the emergency room and stitches.” He opened a file on his desk.
“The rules are there for the protection of all students. There can be no violence in the school. There can be no exceptions. Do you understand?”
John stared, then said, “I understand the rule. But —”
“You’re a straight-A student, varsity basketball and track. You’re well-liked. Destined for a good college. This could be a blemish on your record.”
John knew what the word “could” meant. Gushman was about to offer him a way out.
“A citation for violence, as stated in the student handbook, means a three-day suspension and the dropping of any sports activities. You’d be off the basketball and track teams.”
John’s throat tightened.
“Do you
see the gravity of the situation?”
“Yes,” John managed to say.
Gushman opened another folder on his desk. “But I recognize this as a special case. So if you write a letter of apology to Mrs. Carson, we’ll drop the whole matter.” Gushman looked at him, expecting an answer.
John felt cornered. Yes, he had hit Ted, because he was a prick. Ted needed hitting, if anyone did; he had dropped John’s clothes in the urinal. He said, “Why does Mrs. Carson want the letter? I didn’t hit her. I hit Ted.”
“She feels that you showed her disrespect. She wants the letter to address that as well as the violence.”
If he just wrote the letter, it would just all go away. But he’d always know that his mother and Mrs. Carson had squashed him. He hated that. He hated any form of defeat. He wanted to tell Gushman he’d take the suspension. He wanted to throw it all in the man’s face.
Instead, he said, “I’d like to think about it over the weekend if that’s okay.”
Mr. Gushman’s smile told John that he was sure he’d bent John to his will. John went along with it, smiling back. “Yes. You may. But I need a decision on Monday.”
John left for his next class.
*
John walked past the librarian, his Toledo Meerkats cap low over his face. He didn’t want to be recognized as John Rayburn. At least not yet. The reference section was where he expected it to be, which was a relief. If the little things were the same he had hope for the bigger things. He’d tried living in the weird places, but sooner or later something tripped him up and he had to run. He needed a place like what he remembered, and so far, this place seemed pretty close.
He reached for the almanac. Sure, an encyclopedia had more information, but he could be lost in the details for hours. All he needed was a gross comparison.
He ran his finger down the list of presidents, recognizing all of them. He already knew this wasn’t a world where Washington served four terms and set a standard for a king-president serving for life. Turning the page, he found the next twenty presidents to be the same until the last four. Who the hell was Bill Clinton?
The deviation was small, even so. It had to be, he was so tired of running.
John found a quiet table, opened his backpack, and began researching.
*
The city library was just a couple of blocks from the school. John wandered through the stacks until he found John Prime at the center study desk in a row of three on the third floor. He had a dozen Findlay Heralds spread out, as well as a couple books. His backpack was open, and John saw that it was jammed with paper and folders.
