Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  As they strolled along Calhoun Street, Anne became glad she wore the hat. She certainly would have felt out of place without it. She added a hat to her shopping list.

  And then Anne stopped. “Sears is just down this street, isn’t it? It’s on the corner of King and Calhoun.”

  “Yes, it is!” Ruth said excitedly. “You remember this?”

  “Yes and no. In my memory Sears is no longer there. It’s in a mall up in North Charleston. I knew it used to be here, though, because I had heard it referred to as the old Sears building.”

  “A mall?” Ruth said. “What’s a mall?”

  “A mall is, or will be, a huge building which spreads over a number of blocks, full of stores, often well over a hundred. You park and go inside where you can browse from store to store without being out in the weather.”

  They started walking again.

  “Sounds nice,” Ruth said. “I look forward to it.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” Anne said forlornly. “Me too.”

  If Anne had walked into Sears two weeks earlier, she would have been devastated. Instead she was only depressed. “I was in London once,” Anne said. “I was a girl, 12 years old. University business for my father. A vacation for my mother and me. The year before she died. We spent a lot of time walking and looking, just my mother and me. In and out of stores – nice stores at first, then my mother wanted to get away from the ritzy area and find where the commoners shopped. We took a taxi, a long ride to the outskirts of London, to a little township. Her words, when the taxi pulled away and I thought we were dropped in the middle of nowhere were, ‘This is more like Milwaukee.’ I remember thinking, at that young age, that Milwaukee was fine for her but it was still nowhere for me.” They left Sears and strolled down King Street. In the stroller were two dresses, a slip and a nightgown for herself as well as a comfortable but ugly pair of shoes. For Elizabeth Anne, she picked up two plain nighties and a pair of pink knit booties. Even paying for Ruth’s slip, which she insisted on, Anne spent only $15.58. Almost as good as a garage sale, she thought as she handed the money to the sales clerk.

  “Anyway, the same thing has run through my mind now,” Anne continued. They stopped and looked in the window of a bakery. “This is more like Milwaukee, or a small British township.”

  “That’s interesting, don’t you think?” Ruth said. “A memory maybe? Could you be from Milwaukee?”

  “No. It’s near where my mother grew up. I’ve never actually been there, never met my grandparents although I understand they still live outside Chicago. My mother was on the outs with them. I was never told why. She hinted something once about running away. Somehow she wound up in North Dakota where she married my father, and where I was born.”

  “And what year was that?” Ruth asked.

  “1963.” Anne stopped walking. “Why did you ask? Did you think it would be different than the last time I told you? Like I would change my story?”

  “No! No! That’s not what I meant by it.” Ruth put her hand on Anne’s arm. “I wasn’t thinking you’re telling me stories. I fully believe you. Granted, I can’t imagine you actually being born in 1963 unless you’re a time traveler or something else really crazy. I just had this sudden thought that if I asked when you were born and you gave me a different date, that that would mean your memory was changing. You were just saying yesterday that you thought you might have a split personality. If you had told me you were born in 1938 or something then that would have been a significant difference – maybe a different personality.”

  They started walking again. Anne said, “I’m sorry. Just defensive I guess.”

  “Quite all right.”

  They stopped in front of a clothing store. “Decker’s Fine Men’s Clothing” the sign said. Sharply dressed mannequins stood in the window. Anne said, “Imagine waking up tomorrow morning in the year 1900, in a different house, a different town for that matter, knowing nothing but your own name and having only memories of a life you know could not exist.”

  “It would definitely be strange,” Ruth said.

  “Strange isn’t even the word for it. It was 1987, Ruth. The next thing I knew it was 1943. That’s a lot more than strange.”

  “Maybe you are a time traveler,” Ruth suggested again.

  Anne laughed. “That’s even more crazy. I’m a realist. That’s science fiction stuff. The key word there is fiction. It can’t be done. Never will be done.”

  “How do you know?”

  Anne looked at her.

  “I’m just trying to be open minded.”

  “Steven got into it for a while. He studied Einstein, Feynman, Kerr, and a bunch of others who all had serious time-travel theories. He even started working on a theory of his own. I sometimes read over his shoulder until one day he just dropped it. That was about the time we moved from Boston to Charleston. He said it was impossible. I agreed totally. Theoretically it’s possible and can be mathematically proven. Realistically, though, there’s no way. It would require energy beyond imagination.” Anne looked across King Street. “There’s a hat shop,” she said.

  They negotiated the cobblestones and parked the buggy. “Besides, how could I travel through time and not even know about it?” Anne started to extract Elizabeth Anne from its confines.

  “She’s asleep,” Ruth said. “I don’t need a hat so you go on in. I’ll stay out here with her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Besides,” Anne added, “I’ve already thought about it. It’s impossible, and I would certainly remember it. Maybe I was planted here by aliens and I’ve yet to receive my instructions.” She went into the shop.

  She looked at hats while in Sears and didn’t like any of them, but then she really wasn’t a hat person. Old ladies wore hats and most of these in the store looked like just that. Old ladies’ hats. Only a few were more stylish, designs toward younger women. One looked like a man’s derby with a white flower on the side. Another appeared to be the top half of a flying saucer with a broad ribbon and bow. Others had many flowers – an entire bouquet on several, with beads and pearls or a mosquito net. One did catch Anne’s eye as she walked in, but she avoided it, seeing first if there was anything else. It only took her five minutes to wind up staring at it, where it rested on a mannequin bust. It was white with a broad brim, a simple three-inch wide yellow ribbon, and three small yellow roses. It felt to Anne like walking in a meadow of flowers along a bubbling brook. The price was $3.98. She put it on. The dress she was wearing, one of three she purchased at Sears and which she was surprised she liked, went very nicely with the hat. When she stepped out of the store Ruth took one look and said, “Perfect! Wish I could look that young and pretty again.”

  Anne blushed and found a place to put the hatbox in the buggy. She had to catch up with Ruth who had already started striding down King Street, as though she had a destination in mind. Just as Anne caught up to her, she turned into a bookstore. “Be just a minute,” Ruth said and disappeared.

  Anne saw that other women left baby buggies, sometimes with babies, parked outside of stores. There was no way she would leave Elizabeth Anne, so she gathered her up, covered the packages with one of the blankets and went inside. As Anne’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw the proprietor leading Ruth to a far section. He pointed out several books. Anne turned in the opposite direction and began browsing titles. One of the first to catch her eye was, “Random Notes of Boston” by Henry P. Dowst. It didn’t mean anything to her, but the cover was attractive – a stiff board with a soft-blue cloth. It contained illustrations and engravings with tissue protection in between each. Bet they didn’t print many of these, in... she looked inside where H.B. Humphrey Company printed the vital data... 1913. She replaced it and moved on, realizing she was in the antique books section. Most were dated before the turn of the century. She wasn’t an antique book sort of person, like Steven was. He loved old books.

  Anne found herself staring out the f
ront window of the store thinking about her own thought patterns. Like Steven was! And talking about her mother and Milwaukee, and going to college in Boston, and being born in North Dakota. Things just popped out of her mouth as if they really did happen forty years from now. How can I do that and yet deny its possibility in the next breath?

  Because I’m crazy.

  I’ll have to discuss it with Dr. Bronson.

  “Wonder stories,” Ruth said after they met again outside. “I remember my boys reading these. Henry didn’t like it much. ‘Nonsense,’ he would say. ‘Filling kids’ heads with junk.’ I figured reading was reading. Anyway, I remember how they talked about the time travel stories. I don’t remember which ones they were, but it was about 1930 or 1931. That might be why Henry was so against it, I guess. Spending money on books in the middle of the depression. It kept the boys busy is the way I looked at it. Anyway, we’ll search the attic for those books when we get home. I thought I would check and see what the bookstore had. I found these.”

  Anne looked at the first book Ruth held out. The Other Worlds. “These are short stories. Wonder Stories are the same thing, Ruth. They’re just science fiction – fiction being the key word here. Steven researched the greatest minds in the world and found it impossible. The only thing science fiction writers know is what they make up in their heads.”

  Ruth laid the book in the carriage, which Anne decided was too full for Elizabeth Anne. She held out the second book she purchased. The Time Machine.

  ”H.G. Wells, Ruth? I’m not a time traveler.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense when it really comes down to it. You just said yourself that Steven researched the greatest minds in the world. Whom did he research? When was that? In the 1980s? How can you say on one hand he has done these things forty years from now, and then turn around and say it’s impossible?”

  Anne walked on for a time considering the question, the answer of which had been evading her since the night Elizabeth Anne was born. “One of the reasons I know it’s impossible, or at least inconceivable, is that if one should suddenly show up in the past, he, or she, could too easily change history. It’s the grandfather paradox.”

  “What’s that?” Ruth asked. “Do you want me to carry her for a while?”

  “No. She’s so light it’s like carrying a small pillow. The grandfather paradox is a time travel scenario used to demonstrate the lack of feasibility of traveling back in time. Suppose I was a time traveler – just suppose, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Suppose also that I found a gun and shot and killed my grandfather before he could sire my mother.”

  Ruth stopped and looked at Anne.

  “That would mean I could not be born which means I could not go back in time and kill my grandfather. If I couldn’t do that then he would be alive to sire my mother and thus I could be born and eventually go back and kill him. See what I mean. It’s an impossible loop.”

  “Why would you want to kill your grandfather?”

  “Why is not important. It’s the possibility of it that creates the paradox. It’s like going back to the Civil War and changing the outcome so that the South wins. Just the act of the change makes the possibility of the change impossible.”

  “But,” Ruth said, “what if because you were born to the daughter of the man you were about to kill you would find it impossible to pull the trigger.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t believe history can be changed. You’re right about that. That would just mean that you wouldn’t be allowed to alter history.”

  “By who?”

  “God. And he could be using you to ensure things happen just as he planned them. Maybe you are here to make sure someone else doesn’t kill your grandfather.”

  Anne shook her head. “That’s the chicken or the egg thing.”

  “You mean which one came first, right?”

  “Exactly. Except in the case of the chicken and egg, it’s just a matter of evolution over time, which created the combination. In this case, one thing has to happen before the other. History has to take place correctly the first time so that I could be created, so that I could go back and ensure it happens correctly. The first time my grandfather was alive, time had not advanced far enough yet to create me so there’s no way at that point I could be there to help him not get killed. Since he didn’t get killed, why would I have to go back in time and ensure he didn’t?”

  Ruth only blinked back at her. They were stopped on a corner, waiting for traffic to clear. A woman standing next to them was looking at them with her mouth hanging open.

  “I’m writing a play,” Ruth said to her. “We’re working on a scene.”

  The woman looked embarrassed, excused herself, and crossed the street.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Anne said. “I’m not a time traveler. It’s simply impossible. There’s some other explanation.”

  “If you say so.” They crossed King Street and began the walk toward home. “How was it you explained that watch you sometimes wear around your wrist? Didn’t you say it wouldn’t be invented for nearly forty years?”

  “Obviously I’m wrong. I purchased it in some big department store in New York or Boston, I’m sure. When I figure it out, it’ll all make sense.”

  “And what about that blow dryer thing? How do you explain that?”

  “Probably the same thing.”

  They walked along in silence for a time and then Ruth said, “I’ll bet James knows where those books are.”

  Nothing more was said about time travel the remainder of the way home, but around Ruth’s chatter about the memory of her sister when they were children, Anne considered Ruth’s question about the watch and the blow dryer. She knew her explanation didn’t make sense, but what else was there? Time travel? There was no possibility. There had to be another explanation for the watch and the dryer, and for everything that has happened to her in the last three weeks.

  Nuclear Tri-Generation! Her father had developed that theory – something having to do with time transport into a parallel plane. Stupid theory, she recalled thinking when she was a young teen. And what was it Steven researched? Same thing. Triple jump deviation.

  Another stupid theory.

  Her father and her husband.

  She adjusted the new hat against the suddenly building wind, and then gave it up and took it off. Ruth said something about how she hated her sister when she was a kid. Anne laughed, mentioned how she was an only child and together they strolled along the beautiful Charleston avenue, enjoying the warm but windy Charleston morning.

  Chapter 30

  Friday ~ September 3, 1943

  As it turned out, nothing was as easy as Roark thought it would be, but at least he wasn’t worried about being nabbed every time he walked down the street like up in Charlotte. Lots of rich people up there, but too many recent close calls. It was easy to get lost in the crowd here in Charleston with all the people who came to the shipyard to work. He heard someone say twenty-five thousand worked at the shipyard building warships. He actually considered looking for work there himself. Fortunately, the urge went away after he sobered up. No man could be his boss. He already learned that up in New York. He decided everyone should work for him and he wouldn’t ask a whole lot in return; just whatever cash and valuables they should leave lying around when they were not home. The problem was, there were too many people around. It might be easy to get lost in the crowd, but with the crowd came many more sets of eyes to see his activities.

  As Roark wandered down the street called King, and into an area of the city he had not yet been, he was thinking about how to change his way of operating. He turned off King Street onto a side street and continued walking. The houses got bigger, the traffic became less and the people on the street became fewer. He stopped to dig a half-smoked cigarette out of a pocket. Standing in one place for too long attracted attention, and attention he didn’t need. He dropped the half-sp
ent matchstick and moved on. He liked this neighborhood. It smelled of money for sure, lots of money. He kept moving and kept watching, not for immediate possibilities but for future explorations. He watched an older lady come out of a house in which he could see a gigantic chandelier. Just open your curtains for the world to see, lady. Thank you! He wondered if she lived alone. A few more strolls down this street at different times of the day would likely provide him that information. At the corner, he found a marker telling him he was on Tradd Street. He continued on, noting additional houses for further investigation.

  The man carrying the black bag and locking his house did not escape the attention of Roark as he knelt down to tie his shoe. He tipped his hat to the man as he waited for him to back his automobile out onto the street, and then continued on his way, as if taking no further notice. He didn’t look back but did memorize the address and each and every turn until he was back into familiar territory. He walked on for a long time before he spotted a young lady sweeping her front stoop near where he was about to pass. He slowed, gave her his best smile and removed his hat.

  “Good evening, Ma’am.”

  “Good evening.”

  “It sure is a nice day, isn’t it?” He ran his hand through his hair. He noted how pretty she was and then chided himself for such thoughts. No woman in his life. They just got in the way and caused problems.

  “Yes, it is,” she replied. “But it’s probably going to get hot again.”