Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  “They disappeared!” Steven’s mind chewed on that thought for a minute. He stood, paced the room, then stopped and looked out the window, noting again without concern the limousine sitting at the end of the cul-de-sac. “That means I’ll succeed. They disappear from your time because I brought them back.” He turned back to James, excited. “I’ll bring them back!”

  “I hope that’s the case, Steven.”

  “They disappear. What other explanation is there? Where else would they’ve gone? You don’t think they could have run away, do you, or have been kidnapped or something?”

  “Anything’s possible. The circumstances around her disappearance...” He realized he was about to say too much, already had, “... well, I wasn’t there when they left,” a minor technical lie, “so I really don’t know if you brought them back or not.”

  Steven started pacing again. “Circumstances? What do you mean by that? What aren’t you telling me? What kind of circumstances? What else is going on that leaves you with doubts as to where they went?”

  James took a deep breath. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “What does that mean?” Steven’s voice began to flare. “That’s all you know or that’s all you want to say? What are you hiding?”

  As a professional law enforcement officer for 42 years, James’ instincts were to stand up. At six foot four and built like a bull, that was often all it took to back down someone with a violent or aggressive attitude. But in this case, he didn’t want to use that power. He came to talk to Steven and help him, not bully him. He remained sitting and tried to remain calm. “I’ve come, Steven, to let you know that she arrived safe and sound. I’m sure you’ve been worried. I’ve also come to...”

  “I don’t give a shit about why you’re here,” Steven interrupted. “She disappeared around some kind of circumstance and you have reason to believe it may not be because I brought her back. What the hell is that circumstance? You think I’ve been a little worried. Hell, I’ve been out of my mind and then you walk in here with this crap. You can just get the hell out of here!” He pointed to the door. “I don’t need this shit!”

  James didn’t move.

  “I’m serious, God damn it!” He stepped to where James was sitting and grabbed his arm. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  James always prided himself on being cool at all times, calculating his every move when approaching a possible violent situation. But that was his job. This was personal. He knew it was too easy to lose his temper and say or do something rash. He dropped back on his professional demeanor, calculated his next move with a cool calm head and then exploded out of his chair, picking Steven up by his belt and shirt front. He slammed him against the wall, rattling pictures and glassware in the hutch. “Listen you son-of-a-bitch! You’re the one who somehow fucked up. And now, your wife who you vowed to protect and take care of on that June afternoon in 1983 in Boston, is lost two generations away. Yeah, Steven, I may not have been there, but I was close by. I’ve been at every major event in Anne’s life since the day she was born. She’s confused and afraid because at this moment she has no idea how she got where she is and is busy questioning who she is. She was dropped into a foreign land with only the clothes on her back and then thrown straight into the birth of her child. She doesn’t know about time travel at this point, Steven, because the bag you sent her the night before last did not have an explanatory note, and the letter you’re going to send her, she doesn’t get. She thinks she is going insane and should be locked up in a mental hospital. Everything she remembers about her life does not exist. It’s only Elizabeth Anne who keeps her from truly going insane.” James let him go and Steven slid to the floor like a deflated balloon. “And maybe a little, I would like to think, because of me and my mother. We both loved her. My mother took her in as a daughter. And I, well, I think only you could understand how I loved her, still do, always have. But...” he pulled Steven from the floor, shoved him toward the sofa and returned to the easy chair, “she was always true to you.

  “My love for her was one way; unconsummated, unfulfilled, and has haunted me for nearly a half century. It was because of Anne that I married the woman I still call my wife. It was because of my feelings for Anne that my marriage has seen some very shaky times.” He picked up his glass, saw it was empty and placed it back down. “Why do you think I’m here, Steven?” He waited for an answer but Steven only stared at him. “Because since I couldn’t have her, the least I could do is make sure she gets back to you.” He stood, picking up the glass. “That’s my speech. Do you have ice? I could use some water.”

  “Sure,” Steven said quietly to James’ retreating figure. “In the freezer.” He listened to the sounds of James in the kitchen and thought of how those same sounds had meant that Anne was preparing dinner or a snack or just being busy doing something. He wondered if he would ever hear those sounds from her again. He looked at the bridal picture, now hanging askew. He stood and straightened it, and was still staring at it when James returned.

  “She was surely beautiful that day, wasn’t she?” James said.

  “Yes, she was.” Steven stepped away and looked at James, now seated again. “So why didn’t you stop it?”

  James looked again at the bridal photo. “Pardon me?”

  “So, why didn’t you show up two days ago and stop it from happening?”

  “Oh!” James smiled at him. “I’ve thought long and hard about that. Anne had it right, I believe. She concluded that she was sent back to ensure history takes place properly. She said that we are all just pawns in some grand scheme of things, doing preordained things in some set orderly fashion. She was sent back in time for a reason. It may be due to your screw-up, but you are also just a pawn, made to screw-up so that she could make the time jump and do what she had to do. If I were to intercede, none of that would happen. Not only would I not be here, but I would have no knowledge of Anne or you and thus couldn’t stop what happened. It can get very confusing to say the least. But I do believe I’m being directed on what to do and there’s no way I could do anything else. If I had tried to stop the events, some other event would have kept me from it. Her travel through time had to happen and now I’m here to help you get her back. Whether you’ll be successful, I don’t know. I have reason to be inclined to think so. It’s the same reason something tells me you have no need to know. As a matter of fact, I’m prone to telling you only as much as you need to know to be successful. No more. Again, I feel that if I were to try telling you more, something would prevent me from doing so. Yes, there are some odd circumstances around her disappearance that could possibly lead someone to believe you might not be successful. That’s as much about that as I can say. There really are only two reasons I’ve come. One I’ve already accomplished by letting you know she arrived safe and sound.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and reached it out to him. “This, Steven, is your key to getting her back.”

  Steven took the card and looked at it. He recognized it as coordinates, something every South Carolinian was familiar with. Hurricane tracking charts could be found at any grocery store during hurricane season. “What, or where is this?”

  “That’s the exact coordinates where Anne is going to be looking for communication from you. I take it you’re familiar with the Casey Community Graveyard on Old Monck’s Corner Road?”

  Steven remembered a graveyard he and Anne had wandered through, an area of grave-markers and stones off the county road. For some reason Anne was entranced by it and spent some time reading all the gravestones. “I don’t recall it had a name, but I do remember the place, yes.”

  “Good. We’ll take a ride out there so you can get a better lay of it. The main thing is you have to get the location to her so she knows to go there. You’ll put it in the letter you’ll send.”

  “But you just said she doesn’t get it.”

  “She’ll get it eventually and then everything will clear up for her. One more thing. For reasons I c
annot even say, you cannot tell her directly where she’s to go. You have to be cryptic. Turn the card over. Do you recognize those words?”

  Steven looked on the backside of the card and read it out loud.

  He followed virtue

  As his truest guide

  Lived as a Christian

  As a Christian died

  “It was carved on a gravestone. It was the one thing in the graveyard that intrigued her. She even said she didn’t understand why it seemed so important. That was only last weekend.”

  “That convinces me even more about the preordained path. She was preparing for her trip. Those coordinates match the place were that gravestone lies. All you need to give her is that quote and she’ll know where to go.”

  “But why do I have to be cryptic? Why can’t I just say, go to the graveyard on Old Monck’s Corner Road and to this gravestone? And how do I know she’ll figure this out, understand its meaning?”

  “I was there, Steven. She’ll know what to do immediately. The reason you have to be cryptic is that the letter will fall into unscrupulous hands for a time. It can’t be obvious where she goes. That’s all I can tell you.” James laid his glass down. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Casey graveyard.”

  Chapter 17

  Monday ~ July 20, 1987 ~ 0410

  My Dearest Anne,

  First, I want to say I love you and miss you terribly. I feel so very sorry and extremely guilty for what has happened to you. I lay awake at night unable to sleep, dreaming when I do – fitful dreams, nightmares that I’ve forever lost you, more nightmares than I care to think about. I pray every night and every day, every hour that you are safe and doing well, and that you and you alone are receiving the things I’m sending you. Especially the money. Enclosed with this letter is a little more. $79.00. That’s all I could find which is appropriate for the time. I hope it will be enough.

  We are preparing to rebuild the system to bring you back. This will be my only communication for a while, not a long while, I pray. I don’t know how long to tell you – weeks, months. We did not know at the time, as all our tests were on small, inanimate objects, that the nuclear cyrotron wasn’t able to easily handle the load of an adult. Not only do we need to recreate many of the physical components but also must procure greater amounts of plutonium and titanium cobalt, not easy to obtain from behind our curtain of secrecy. Anyway, it is going to be a while I’m afraid.

  Immediately following this transmission, power to the system is going to be cut. Tomorrow morning, only a few hours away, Jerry and I, and the crew will begin tearing the system down. It took us four years to build, Anne. I pray it doesn’t take that long to do it again.

  Neighbors and friends believe that you have gone to Boston. That seems to be okay for the time being, but I believe that they are going to eventually suspect that we have separated. I have no choice but to let the rumor go when it happens. There’s no other explanation I can give them for your absence.

  And so, until next time and each and every time when you are watching Cheers, and full of grace, remember,

  He followed virtue

  As his truest guide

  Lived as a Christian

  As a Christian died

  I love you,

  Steven

  “Are you sure she’ll understand this? Cheers and full of grace.”

  “I was the one who put it in her hands, Steven. It appeared to me she made sense of it almost immediately. Of course, I had no clue what it meant until she confided its meaning to me.”

  Steven stared at the letter for some time. Without looking at James he said, “But she did confide in you. She apparently told you everything.”

  James could tell by the tone of Steven’s voice that he was better off saying nothing. All his life he was never able to tell anyone, even his mother, how many times he held Anne in his arms, how many times he yearned to do more than comfort her during those moments when it all became too much for her, how many times he wanted to pull her face up to his and feel her lips on his, how many times he wanted to tell her he loved her, and the one time he actually did and she seemed to do nothing more than brush him away, how many times he treated Elizabeth Anne as his own, and wished she were. He looked at Steven’s down-turned head and said nothing.

  “You must have been pretty close.” Steven lifted his head to look directly into James’ eyes.

  James thought again about all those memories, all those feelings: the smell of her, the weight of her, her graceful movements, the sparkle in her eyes, the dimples when she smiled, the softness of her skin. He thought about his own unfulfilled urges and needs. “As close, Steven, as a brother and sister can be.”

  “Are you ready, Steven?” Jerry said.

  James and Steven turned together to Jerry, standing in the door. “Ready, Jerry.”

  Jerry looked at James. “This still just blows my mind. For 44 years you’ve kept this. You knew it would happen long before we even conceived the idea. Does anyone else know?”

  “Only two people knew besides me,” James replied. “One was my mother who passed away a few years back.”

  Steven walked over to the glass cage with the letter and an envelope emblazoned with Anne’s name. He pulled from his wallet the last of the pre-1943 money he found and folded that inside the letter, placing all into the envelope. He lick-sealed it and gently laid it on the floor inside the cage.

  “The other,” James continued, “was someone I haven’t seen nor heard of since. I don’t think he is of importance, even if he is alive today.”

  “Why didn’t you step in and stop this?” Jerry asked.

  “My mother and I had some very long, late night discussions on that. Some rather heavy theories developed on the effects time travel would have upon the human race, particularly along the realm of altering history. What can we muddle with? What can we screw-up?”

  “What did you conclude?”

  James shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever is meant to happen, happens.”

  Jerry looked at James’ face for a few seconds as though expecting more. Finally he said, “That’s it?”

  “In a sense, yes. Several parallels to that would be, whatever has happened, will happen. Whatever will happen, has happened.”

  “In other words,” Jerry waved his hands in the air, “we have no control.”

  “We’re puppets.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  James shrugged his shoulders again. “It’s just a theory. I do believe – I’m certain actually – that there’s some kind of force guiding us, though. It’s that force which has brought me here, but has also kept me from interceding too early. It’s that same force which, a week ago, invited Anne and Steven to the Casey Graveyard where she became enthralled by a poem engraved on a headstone, the grave marker where she would later, or should I say earlier, go every Tuesday night for many weeks.”

  “How many weeks?” Steven asked. “How long will it take us to rebuild?”

  James opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought for a few seconds. “Apparently, I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Apparently! What do you mean by that?”

  James saw the hackles rise up in Jerry, and somewhat again in Steven. James held up his hand. “It’s simply a matter that I’m being controlled by this other force. You can call it destiny if you wish. Whatever it is, I’ve felt it since I took a leave of absence from my job as a Charleston Police Officer in 1962 to move to Bismarck, North Dakota in order to bear witness to Anne’s birth. It has been an obsession since. I think it has always been an obsession. It just didn’t surface until her birth.”

  “She wasn’t born in 1962,” Steven said.

  “1963 actually. Yes, I know; however, at the time I was only able to deduce from conversations with her that she was born somewhere between January 1 and about June 1 of that year. So in December of 1962, I packed up and went to Bismarck to wait. For nearly thre
e months I waited, not knowing what her father’s name was, hoping that it would become obvious once I saw the birth announcement in the paper.”

  “Was it?” Jerry asked.

  “Annabelle Elizabeth Hair. There was no doubt. Anyway, I had no control from then on. My obsession with going to Bismarck, North Dakota, for a reason I couldn’t even tell my wife, almost did our marriage in. After that, it was every year on her birthday as well as other events. I watched dance recitals, softball tournaments, and state swimming competitions. I went to spelling bees, geography bees, and high school track meets. It was one thing after another to keep our marriage alive over all those years. It was about the time that Anne graduated from high school that Abby and I separated. I retired and moved to Boston, renting an apartment not far from MIT.”

  James smiled. “It was very interesting when you arrived to start work on your doctorate, Steven. I wondered how you two would meet, figured it would be through her father, but of course it wasn’t. It was like reading a book, in which I knew the ending but nothing else. It was fascinating to watch you two grow together.” James looked at Steven and Jerry with their mouths sealed shut, hanging on his every word. “Sorry. I went off on a tangent. What I meant to say is that for more than twenty years I’ve wanted to do more than watch Anne from a distance. I wanted to talk to her, hold a conversation with her, even if on no other subject than the beauty of a flower. I didn’t. There was always something holding me back. I’ve always referred to it as a force. It would allow me to get only so close, and that was it.”

  “In all these years you’ve never spoken to her at all?” Jerry asked.

  “Well, there was once. 1973. Not long before, she had turned ten years old. Sixth grade. Should have been fifth but she skipped that grade. It was at the school spelling bee, which she had just won. I was disguised, as I always was if I thought she might see me. I was worried she would recognize me later, or earlier I guess, when she pops back to 1943. Anyway, the spelling bee was over and much of the auditorium had cleared. She was still surrounded by her family, friends, and teachers. I rose from my seat, walked up the aisle of the auditorium and into the lobby. I stood there for a time, looking out into the twilight, as proud, if not more proud than her mother and father. Suddenly, she entered the lobby by herself, walked past me and then turned around. ‘You’re not here for anyone, are you?’ she said to me.”