Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  When Chief Ortmann pulled up in front of James’ house, he asked, “Are you on duty tonight, Officer Lamric?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Good. Because you look like hell. Get some sleep.”

  “Yes, Sir,” James sighed and then yawned.

  Chapter 40

  Monday ~ September 13, 1943

  Thief Reveals German Spy After Being Nabbed at Gee Gee’s

  Sidney Maxwell Searoark of Brooklyn, New York, was apprehended early Sunday morning while exiting Gee Gee’s, a drinking establishment owned by Gavin Gallagher. A subsequent search of Mr. Searoark’s premises resulted in the discovery of numerous other stolen items among which were a German codebook and a large amount of German money. Questioning of Searoark led the police to the home of Doctor Nathaniel Bronson, a highly respected practitioner at Roper Hospital.

  Bronson stopped reading the article and considered whether the accompanying picture of him with two other doctors looked anything like his current disguise. Certain that he was safe, he placed the News and Courier, six cans of soup and a box of crackers onto the counter. The dollar bill and change passed between them without the clerk even glancing up. He accepted the change and turned his face away from a young boy who was waiting next to him with a sack of sugar in his arms. Kids were the worst. As soon as they see a picture they’ll be analyzing everyone for resemblance, even their own relatives. Kids did not yet know the idea of impossible. Of course, what are the possibilities he read the paper yet – or can read at all for that matter?

  I’m getting paranoid. He went out the door avoiding the eyes of an old woman approaching with a cane, and got into the car. Maybe I have reason to be a little paranoid.

  He was going to have to stay out of sight for a while, maybe a month or two, until arrangements could be worked out. Or, maybe he could make emergency contact tonight – tell them that both he and the codes were compromised. He could recommend he kidnap Mrs. Waring and then the U-boat could pick them both up and take them out of country.

  He analyzed himself in the mirror and considered driving into town for a more palatable meal. He looked from the mirror to the newspaper photo and back several times. Not good enough, he decided. He started the car and headed for the beach house.

  He needed to recover the backup codes and then draft the message.

  Chapter 41

  Tuesday ~ September 14, 1943

  Anne fidgeted over the book that lay in her lap, and then closed it and looked at the clock.

  5:07.

  Elizabeth lay in the sweet-grass bassinet Anne found on a shopping excursion, her eyes bright and alert after a nap and a full stomach. She suddenly got excited and started swinging her arms and legs until the rattle, firmly grasped in her right hand, grabbed her attention. She stopped and stared at it, tasted it, and then started swinging her arms and legs again.

  Anne watched until once again the rattle caught her attention, and then turned to Ruth. “This is going to use a lot of your gas coupons.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Dear. We’ll be fine.”

  “But every week! Clean out there and back! Who knows how long it’ll be. I can pay for the gas and all but how much do you get in coupons?”

  Ruth paused long enough to pull more yarn, then continued. The clicking of her knitting needles in between their words competed with the ticking clock. “I wouldn’t worry about it. That car hardly ever gets used. There won’t be a problem.”

  Anne stood and looked down at what Ruth was doing. “What are you knitting?”

  “Booties for Elizabeth.”

  “Oh! Nice color.”

  “I always wanted to do something pink, but all I had were boys. Henry wouldn’t have stood for pink on either of them.”

  “Neither would Steven, I imagine. Are all men like that?”

  “It seems so. I’d understand it once they’re old enough to interact with other children... but babies! It shouldn’t make any difference.”

  “I’m going to go out and see what James is doing.”

  “He’s just tuning it up,” Ruth said. “But go ahead. I’ll watch her.”

  “Thanks.”

  James listened to the engine for a few seconds and then turned the air intake adjustment screw on the side of the carburetor. The idle became rough so he returned the setting to where it was.

  That’s the best it’s going to get, he thought to himself. He stood up straight, suddenly felt a presence, and jumped several inches. Anne was next to him. “I didn’t see you standing there,” he attempted to explain.

  “Been here at least a full minute. What are you doing? Is it running okay?”

  James wondered if he had talked out loud, hoped he didn’t and said, “Running fine. I just like to be sure when making a long trip.”

  “This is a long trip?”

  “Well, no. A long trip would be to Greenville.”

  She laughed. “In my day a long trip is to Chicago or Boston. Atlanta would be on the edge. Hell, I could be up in Greenville in barely more than three hours in my Celica, two if I didn’t have to worry about the cops.”

  “Cops?”

  Anne put her hand on James’ arm. “I’m sorry. Highway patrol. The speed limit is only 55 miles per hour. That’s a real nuisance when my Celica will do a hundred without sweating.”

  “A hundred miles per hour?”

  “Oh, sure. They do more than two hundred at the races.”

  “Ah huh.” James tried really hard to ignore Anne’s hand on his arm. He had worked it all out with himself, spending the last two days going over and over it all, not liking what he saw of himself. He wanted her, often ached for her, and he knew if she never made it back to her time there was a chance she might accept him, maybe even learn to love him. And then he caught himself looking for a scheme to keep her from going back and he came to start hating himself, his selfishness, and his lack of consideration for her. She already had a husband, a man she loves and who loves her, the father of her child. Of course, that’s what she wants – to get back to him. And why would she want to settle for anyone else if there’s the slightest chance of getting her old life back? She would never be happy.

  And so he checked himself, got a handle on his feelings, and told himself he would do whatever it took to make her happy and if that meant losing her, then that’s the way it would be. With that he had drifted asleep, awaking in the early afternoon, after only five hours. He felt refreshed and quite satisfied with his new state of mind. When he came downstairs, he found being near her was much more comfortable. He wasn’t so damn tongue-tied.

  And then she touched him and a jolt ran through him.

  He pulled the hood down and moved from her reach in the process. “Two hundred miles per hour! That’s as fast as an airplane.”

  “A slow airplane maybe,” Anne laughed. “You’ll be able to have breakfast in Paris, get on the Concord at 8:00 Paris time, and be in New York for breakfast at 8:00 New York time.”

  “That’s impossible!” James said incredulously.

  “In 1987 we are not far from saying that nothing is impossible. I could tell you things that would blow your mind, yet, to me, are just regular and every day. That radio you have in the house that takes up four square feet of floor space and stands five feet tall – you’ll be able to carry it in your pocket and listen to it from a little speaker which fits in your ear; and it will sound a whole lot better.

  “The fact that the earth is round was considered impossible at one time, James. As a matter of fact when the automobile was invented it was believed that going faster than sixty miles per hour would be dangerous to one’s health.”

  James said, “It seems to me a young woman was saying, not long ago, that even time travel was impossible.”

  Anne looked at him for a long time. “Yeah. I did say that, didn’t I? Just goes to show that if a person says it can’t be done, someone will do it.”

  While James put his tools away and cleaned up, Anne sat next to
Ruth and watched her. “I should show you how to do this,” Ruth said.

  “I tried once but I was a dismal failure. I was just talking to James about the future and it got me to thinking. I’ve been really angry with Steven for doing this and not even telling me about it. Do you know what I would have said if he had told me?”

  “That he was crazy,” Ruth suggested.

  “That he was crazy, and that it was impossible. Now I get to thinking about all the inventions and discoveries of the last couple hundred years and consider all those inventors who were also told they were crazy – Alexander Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin, and Wilbur Wright. I’ll bet when Louis Pasteur said he could cure diseases from mold, people scoffed him. And I’ve realized something. Steven Waring is now right up there with them. My husband. His name will be in the history books, probably win a Nobel Prize.”

  “Do you really think so, Anne?”

  “Of course! Why not? This has got to be one of the greatest discoveries ever. I can’t wait to get back there to learn how he did it.”

  Ruth stopped for a second, looked at Anne and said, “Well,” the needles continued their rhythmic patterns, “it seems to me if his discovery became well-known we would have time travelers all over the place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kind of like explorers. Once Columbus discovered America, the explorers came from everywhere. Let’s face it, Anne. There would be people standing in line to go back and visit George Washington and watch our country being built, or back to Bethlehem and find out when Jesus was actually born. I sure don’t recall reading of strange people showing up, standing around watching Jesus being crucified. You can’t deny that would be the number one thing we would want to prove or disprove.”

  “What are you saying? Do you think I’m a one-time success and they’ll not be able to do it again?”

  “It’s not so much whether they’ll be able to do it again, but whether they’ll want to do it again.”

  “What...?”

  Ruth set her knitting aside and turned to face Anne, taking her hands in hers. “I love you like a daughter, like you’ve been a part of my life since you were born, but for two days now I’ve been trying to figure out why you’re here.”

  “Why I’m here!” After unsuccessfully trying to read the answer in Ruth’s eyes, Anne said, “Why? What have you figured out?”

  “I feel very selfish.”

  “Selfish!”

  “I have a daughter and now I’m about to lose her.” A tear escaped one eye and ran down Ruth’s cheek.

  “We don’t know that,” Anne insisted.

  “Maybe it’s the mental rambling of an old woman, but I’ve come to the conclusion that you have to go.”

  More tears.

  “You are not meant to be here. You saved Johnny’s life and I’ll always be grateful... and guilty because I don’t think you were meant to do that. He should have gone down with the Plymouth, but you came back from the future and interceded. You changed history.”

  Anne shook her head. “No! I didn’t, Ruth. It seemed like I did, but Johnny was on that track already. I only convinced him to do what he would have figured out himself anyway. Don’t give me credit for saving his life. He did that on his own. Without me here he would have done what most boys do – go against their mother’s wishes and make their own decision.”

  Ruth considered Anne’s words for a moment. “Maybe.”

  Anne continued. “But I know what you’re saying, and it isn’t like I haven’t thought about it myself. Good Lord, it’s all I’ve thought about since Sunday morning. If I’m here totally by accident, then I need to make as little impact as possible until Steven figures out how to get me home.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Ruth wiped at her tears.

  Anne chuckled. “That consideration is almost funny. I figure I’ll just keep living on until I do something which ripples through the future causing me either not to be born in 1963, or not to be here in Charleston in 1987 and POOF!” he hands went into the air, “I’d just disappear.”

  “That would be weird.”

  “I could be downtown and a crowd of people could just watch it happen. But, there’s another possibility.”

  Ruth wiped at the remainder of her tears. “What’s that?”

  “What you just said. That this is not an accident. That I’m meant to be here, whether it’s permanent or for just a short time.”

  Ruth’s voice became quiet. “You mean God brought you here.”

  “I can’t say I’m a big believer in God so I won’t say it’s God. Let’s call it a force that keeps everything in balance. It may be the same force that controls nature; the check and balance of Earth or of the cosmos. A force so all encompassing it controls everything from the mating ritual of the fruit fly to the life and death of a star.”

  Ruth’s brow creased in perplexity. “God.”

  “Okay. Okay. Maybe I’m getting a little carried away. But, what if there’s some force that has sent me here on a mission? If we think too hard about it, it does seem I could alter history just breathing the air, but I’ve been here two months already. I should have thrown something off balance by now. Maybe my presence so far is just a small ripple and hasn’t affected anything beyond Charleston, but I really have a hard time believing that.

  “Let’s consider how many people I’ve interacted with. The night I arrived here I upset the routine of an entire barracks of men. Maybe they settled into their routines after I was taken to Roper Hospital, and continued their weekend as if I never appeared. There are the Navy corpsmen and the doctor who transported me to the hospital, and the chief who delivered the bag to me the next day. Maybe they all settled back into their routines by Monday morning. Then there’s Roper Hospital. I touched a lot of lives there, and then you and James and Johnny. If I did influence Johnny’s decision, then that’s rippling around the world. Our shopping excursions put me in a position to touch many more lives, and then there’s the trip out to look at the graveyard and meeting the Thigpen family. There’s probably more I haven’t thought about. I can’t believe that by now I haven’t touched something that would cause a web-like effect through the country to the point that either I wouldn’t be born, or I wouldn’t have married Steven, or any number of things.

  “It would only take something small. My parents met in Chicago. What could I do here that would change the timing of things over the next eighteen, nineteen years which would alter events such to cause that meeting not to take place?”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” Ruth said.

  “I heard somewhere one time that every one of us is a maximum of two handshakes away from the President. That means we all know someone who knows someone who knows the President. If you think about it, it’s most likely true in at least 99 percent of the people. If you lay that on a level plane, you could accurately say that everyone is only two handshakes away from anyone else. It could be as simple as my being waited on at Sears ahead of someone in a hurry who, as a result, is late for an interview for a job he winds up not getting because he is late. Instead, he goes to Columbia for another interview but gets in an accident and dies. His brother, who works for the government in Washington, D.C., takes a leave of absence to attend the funeral and is not able to finish the document his boss, a Senator, must have before attending a meeting with the President. As a result, the President refuses to support the new bill which would affect a new inner-city housing project, thus altering the paths of my grandparents in Chicago so that they would never meet, and my mother would never be born.”

  Ruth blinked a couple of times. “Not very likely.”

  “I agree. If I were to just drop in, and then leave, a far-reaching impact would not be very likely, but consider how often I touch another life; after weeks and months, something should catch; should have caught. Even if I stayed in this house and never left, just the fact that it affects yours and James’ lives, and how and when you interact with other people, would
eventually cause something far reaching.

  “The point I’m trying to make is that the longer I’m here without causing a change in the future, the more I’m convinced I’m part of the design. I can’t imagine I’ll be here for long. Likely, I’ll remain until I’ve done whatever it is I need to do – I may never even know what that is – and then I’ll either be extracted by Steven’s machine or I’ll die.”

  Ruth’s eyes opened wide. “I can accept the one, but I don’t even want to think about the other. Not for you and certainly not for Elizabeth Anne. If what you’re saying is true, then it would even be true for her.”

  Anne looked at Elizabeth still awake in the bassinet. “Yes. It would.”

  “Then I certainly don’t like that option.” She looked to the clock ticking on the mantel. “James!” she yelled. “Are you ready yet?”

  He appeared at the top of the stairs. “Yes, Ma. I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  The first visit to the gravesite, the first Tuesday that is, wasn’t much different from the Sunday before, except it wasn’t raining. 7:00 came and went, and then again the three of them searched for evidence of any previous arrivals until James finally said they needed to start heading back while they still had daylight.

  “Oh!” Anne said. She looked up the road toward where the Thigpens lived, considered voicing her thoughts then said, “Okay.” She really wanted to talk with Danny Thigpen about renting the cabin that stood only a short walking distance from the site, from the spot in front of the gravestone that may be her door home. Will be our door home, she had to force herself to think, not may be. Got to think positively. But will Danny rent her the cabin? Why not? It will likely stand empty until spring, or maybe until first harvest. What will I say if he asks why? How far will my money go? Could I do something to earn my keep? How much would he charge and how long will I have to wait? And what if I never hear from Steven?

  “Is there something else, Anne?” Ruth asked.

  Anne realized she was still staring up the road. “No. I’m ready.” How could she tell Ruth that she wanted to move out, up here to this cabin? Especially after their earlier conversation. I’m like a daughter, she said. And though no one will ever replace my mother, she comes damn close.