Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  Jerry put his coffee cup in the sink. “He isn’t the only one who feels that way, James. There isn’t a man on this team who wouldn’t be part of stringing you up and then pulling out finger nails until you talk.”

  “Even you?”

  “I’m trying to be objective. It’s damn hard. It’s like you’re a little kid with a secret which you hold in everyone’s face and get pleasure in not revealing.”

  “Believe me, Jerry, there’s no pleasure. I ache inside to tell it all.”

  “Then why the hell are you here at all? Why didn’t you just stay away until it’s over?”

  “I’ve thought about that again and again, and I keep remembering Anne’s theories, her reasons for why she appeared in 1943. Her words were, ‘I think I’m here to make sure it happens.’”

  “Make what happen?”

  “History. To make sure history happens as it’s written. She believed her being there was part of history and because it had already been written, she could only do her part – nothing more – nothing less.”

  “And you think you’re here to make sure it – whatever it is – happens?”

  “Yes. If Steven and the rest got a bug up their butts and decided to try and bring her back next week, it’ll be before she has performed the mission she was sent there to do.”

  “Mission? What are you talking about? You believe this total accident was planned? Some mission to save history?”

  “No doubt in my mind.”

  “And you think you’re on a mission as well?”

  “I believe this is all one big mission and Anne is the lead player. All the rest of us are in support of her.”

  “This is crazy.”

  Steven stepped back into the conference room. His temper had eased. They both looked at him and he said to James, “I can’t go home. You’re driving.”

  Chapter 53

  Friday ~ November 5, 1943

  Sunlight sliced through the dusty window, past the Civil War display – the same display that was there three months before – directly onto the shelf of turn of the century titles. Notes On Boston by Henry Dowst was still there. Steven was Boston born and raised and a bit of an old-book buff. She figured this would be a great inanimate object. She slid the book from the shelf.

  But it wasn’t heavy enough.

  The proprietor hadn’t acknowledged her presence, likely hadn’t noticed. She could hear his voice from a back corner where she remembered there to be a reading nook with a coffee pot on a hot plate, and some comfortable chairs. There were two voices and she slowly began moving in that direction, browsing as she went. She decided on a second book, found a lot of ideas, but nothing that struck as well as Notes On Boston.

  On the last row, just before turning into the reading nook, she spotted a collection of short stories by Sherwood Anderson. But he isn’t that taken by Anderson. He prefers Fitzgerald or Faulkner or... She glanced around the corner at the gentleman sitting at the table talking up to the proprietor, and then jumped back. The hand holding Notes On Boston went up to her chest.

  Hemingway!

  The fourth name she was about to mutter under her conscious was Hemingway, and then – there he was – not ten feet away.

  Here! In Charleston?

  She scoured her memory for everything she knew about him, which wasn’t much other than looking over Steven’s shoulder and listening to him talk about the writer he was so impressed by. She recalled he lived in Key West with his wife – Martha – or was it Mary? He went through a lot of wives. Had to be Martha. He met Mary in London, late in the war.

  No matter.

  He’s here. Maybe he’ll autograph a book.

  She turned back to the stack where she had seen Anderson and scanned for anything by Hemingway. She started to panic until she spotted three copies of For Whom The Bell Tolls. She plucked one off the shelf and then stepped around the corner.

  Suddenly finding Ernest Hemingway looking up at her stopped her in her tracks. This is stupid. I’m acting like a groupie getting to touch a star or something. He’s just a man, remember, just like all those professors in Boston, just like Admiral Harris. Just a man. And I don’t even care for his writing. “Pardon me.” A good-looking man at that. But a womanizer. He’ll cheat all over Martha when he meets Mary. Just a typical man.

  The oval face with a black mustache smiled and said, “Yes?”

  Typical man! That’s not fair. Not all men are that way. Many are. He is. “It seems a tremendous coincidence, but I just selected this and then I find you sitting here. Would you mind autographing it?”

  He accepted the book from her and then chuckled. “At first I was flattered that a beautiful woman should recognize me. Now I’m curious how much I resemble this Henry Dowst, especially since he wrote this when I was... ah...” he found the date of publication, “when I was fourteen. I would be glad to scribble something in here, for you but professionally it would be rather inappropriate.”

  Anne looked at the book still in her hand. “Oh! I’m sorry, Mr. Hemingway. Wrong book. For Whom The Bell Tolls is this one. I gave you Notes On Boston. How could you’ve written that? You live in Key West with your beautiful wife, Martha. Maybe if there was a Notes On Key West or something.”

  He took the book from her and opened it to the flyleaf. With the pen posed he laughed. “Notes On Key West. Interesting. Have to think on it.” He looked up at her. “Tell me Miss...”

  “Mrs. Waring... Ah... Anne Waring.”

  “Mrs.! Hmm. Too bad. Will this be for yourself, or a gift for someone?”

  “No! It’s for my husband, Steven... Steven Waring.” Anne could feel her racing heart and was sure her face was flushed. Get a grip, Annabelle.

  “Of course.” He wrote for only a few seconds and then handed both books back to her. “What are you doing for lunch?”

  They sat in a café across the street and down a block from the bookstore. He had chosen a table near the window. “I like to watch people,” he said. Anne’s books sat to her left while two more bites of tuna salad sandwich lay in front of her. They talked of several things, he doing most of it as she gradually relaxed.

  “I get the impression, Anne, that it’s your husband who reads me, not you. In fact, you would not give me a favorable critique at all.”

  Anne carefully chewed the last bite of sandwich and followed it with a gulp of lemonade. “Why do you say that?”

  “In reference to my writing you speak only of your husband’s opinion. Either Mrs. Waring has no opinion – which is fine, as it’s believed by some that women should have no opinion – or Anne Waring is withholding it. I’m inclined to the latter as you appear to me to be a woman a tad ahead of her time.”

  Anne nearly choked on her lemonade. “First of all, Mr. Hemingway...”

  “I wish you would call me Ernest.”

  “Certainly, Ernest. All women have opinions. They’re simply suppressed into the notion that it doesn’t count beyond rearing children, cooking meals, and cleaning house.”

  Hemingway leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I hope I haven’t called a tiger out of the cage.”

  Anne smiled. “Sorry.”

  “There you go. You’ve an opinion – you voiced it and then apologized for it. It wasn’t I who suppressed it.”

  Anne considered that for a few seconds. “Could it be that we are trained by men through the years to apologize immediately after slipping out an opinion he might not agree with?”

  “We have trained you? I would think it’s more that you want it that way, you want to be subservient.”

  “Subservient, Ernest! Ha! No male/female relationship should be built on one being subservient to the other. They are partners in the family structure. As in all partnerships, each member has his or her strengths and weaknesses, and these are not always based on their sex.”

  “But,” Hemingway pointed his finger in the air, “seldom are they still equal. One of them will become dominant over the other. It’s the natu
re of things.”

  “It’s the nature of man – I use that word in the broader sense meaning mankind, engulfing both sexes – that one arm be dominant over the other. Does that make one subservient to the other? Certainly one is often stronger, but they still work together as a team. A man and a woman are no different. A married couple will lean on each other’s strengths, but just because he is stronger and leaves home to work – because he isn’t patient enough or doesn’t have the stomach or the stamina to keep up with diapers and bottles – doesn’t make him tougher or smarter.”

  “I have a feeling this is going somewhere and I’m going to wind up getting dragged behind the boat.”

  “Maybe you should be dragged behind the boat. Where is your family right now?”

  “Home.”

  “Home in Key West while you and your Crook Factory run up and down the coast in your boat, the Pilar, in search of German Submarines, which you have not and will not find.”

  “There are a lot of men away from their families fighting the war,” Hemingway said. “I’m at least trying to do something.”

  Anne ignored the irritation in his voice. “It’s guilt because you’re not over there being shot. You did your time in the first war, heroically I might add. Now it’s drinking and fishing. That’s all you’re doing. You’re not giving anything to your country, so what are you giving to your family?”

  “Martha and the children are living well thanks to me. My pen has done well for us.” He picked up her copy of For Whom The Bell Tolls. “I thank you for your contribution.”

  “Have you thought, Ernest, that it may not be your money they want, or your fame?”

  He leaned back in his chair, his mouth set.

  “It just might be you.”

  He held up his hands. “All right! All right! I admit I don’t spend as much time at home as I probably should, but I’m a writer and my kind of writing is based upon trials and tribulations of people and I certainly can’t find that hanging around one place. And it’s what people want to read.”

  “Humph!” Anne said.

  “It’s what I burn to write. And that brings us back to where we started – your opinion.”

  “You just got a load of it.”

  “Yes... that’s for sure. But you still haven’t given me your critique on my writing.”

  Anne tried to force another sip from her glass. The last drop trickled onto her tongue. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there. Isn’t it enough that I purchased your book?”

  “But only because of your husband. If not for him, you would not have considered it. Why?”

  Anne took a deep breath. “Frankly, Ernest, I find your writing trivial and boring.”

  Ernest scrunched his face into serious thought.

  “It may be that since I don’t read a lot of fiction, I can’t really see the point of it. I was forced to read your Old Man In The Sea at a time when I would rather have been breaking down the structure of a uranium isotope. What in the hell was the point of a man being dragged around an ocean by a fish?”

  Ernest Hemingway blinked back at her. “Excuse me?”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth that Anne realized her fatal mistake. Hemingway had not yet written Old Man In The Sea. “I’m sorry. I must be thinking of someone else, another writer whose name I don’t recall.”

  Hemingway said nothing. He sat rock still, both hands on the table, back perfectly straight, brow creased, eyes squinted – only half focused on her face.

  “Well,” Anne said. “I guess it’s time I get going.” She dropped a dollar on the table and swept up her books, her purse already over her shoulder. “It has been a real pleasure meeting...”

  He suddenly broke from his trance. “Wait!”

  “Thank you for an enjoyable lunch. I believe very strongly that a woman has a right, a God-given right to her equal share in the world, Mister Hemingway, and with it comes her right to her opinion. However, it was inappropriate for me to voice it at you after you invited me to lunch. I apologize only for that, not for the opinion.”

  “But...”

  She held out her hand, which he accepted. “It has been a tremendous pleasure meeting you, Ernest Hemingway.”

  “The pleasure has been mine.”

  Anne laughed. “I’m not so sure.” She turned and went out the door. On the sidewalk Hemingway caught up with her.

  “I’m sorry, Anne. I have to ask you – what... how... I mean to say that I’ve been considering a story about a man and a fish for some time – my fish story. There’s no other writer, is there? My hunch is you don’t forget names. You don’t forget anything.”

  Anne didn’t answer, didn’t know how to answer.

  “How could you have possibly known?”

  Well, Anne thought, here goes nothing. “Some say I’m a psychic, Ernest. Sometimes I get myself in trouble because the line between what has happened and what has yet to happen is often invisible. You’re right. There’s not another writer. What happened is I suddenly caught myself reading your future. I’ll leave you with this. You will write it – not soon – and it will be very successful. Thank you for your company, Mr. Hemingway.”

  As Anne walked away, she could feel his eyes piercing the back of her head. She expected to feel his hand on her shoulder but at the corner, just before turning to proceed eastward to Ruth’s house she glanced back. He was still standing where she left him, in front of the café, looking, his hands dangling at his side.

  “Stupid!” she muttered to herself and walked on.

  Ernest Hemingway stared after the strange Anne Waring until she disappeared around the corner. People walked around him for another five minutes as he pondered their conversation, all her words. Finally he extracted a small notebook and a pencil and wrote her name, then the words uranium isotope and Old Man In The Sea. The Crook Factory, he thought as he stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. If she doesn’t like my work, why does she know so much about me? He removed the notebook again and beside her name he wrote, psychic.

  Chapter 54

  Thursday/Friday ~ November 5, 1987/1943

  Jerry stood to the right of Steven, looking at the transfer station – the glass cubical now standing empty. Not for long, I hope. He turned and looked at each man who nodded in return. He looked at the clock, waited the final ten seconds, and then keyed his mike, “Okay. Let’s bring it up.”

  The hum of equipment changed moderately. Robert Hair bent over an oscilloscope, made a few adjustments and then looked at Jerry.

  “Are we ready?” Jerry waited for a thumbs-up from each person, a verbal confirmation from Clyde and Peter in the power plant, and then said, “Engage.”

  This time the hum of equipment changed considerably. Ear protection was comfortable but not totally necessary. Jerry was wired to overhead speakers and directly to the power plant. They had already discovered, though, that each person was going to need to be wired; Jerry was hard to hear once everything was up, even with the speakers. The modified headsets came in that afternoon, but it would take a day to set up and test.

  Every eye was now on Robert. Engaging meant they had sent out the bubble to the time and location – back 44 years, to the coordinates of Reverend Nelson’s Grave. One of Robert’s brainchildren was devising a way of measuring the amount of disturbance in the bubble. This disturbance showed up as spikes on the cathode ray tube of his oscilloscope. He could convert the spikes to mass, to within a few kilograms, as well as tell if it was moving or stable.

  He made several adjustments.

  They waited.

  Finally his hand came up, thumb pointed to the side. It was agreed that when it was determined that the expected mass was in place, and it was stable, there would be a ten-second wait before initiating the extraction. Robert’s hand signal meant it was stable. He was counting the ten seconds, watching that the mass remained stable.

  But instead of the expected thumbs up, the hand went down.

  The wind was blowing, tree
s whipping back and forth, the chill biting deep with each surge. And then Anne could see it. A glow. Out of the darkness appeared a bubble of light. In the center of the light sat the two books she had placed there only moments before.

  “Rain!” Ruth said. “It’s going to ruin the books if they don’t take them soon.”

  Anne looked around for something to put over them, but there was nothing but their coats. She saw James suddenly dash away and run across the field of graves, his hat preceding him under the power of the wind. When she looked back, the flap of the top book, Notes On Boston, lay open and pages were flipping wildly. “My note!” She ran forward, not reaching the books before the note she had written to Steven, went flying out, heading in the same direction as James and his hat. She went after it.

  Meanwhile, Ruth found a stone and quickly moved in to place it on the books. In the dark, Ruth was sure the note was gone. She looked up at the sky and willed the rain to hold off just a little longer.

  “What is it, Robert?” Jerry moved up behind the professor and looked at the spikes displayed on the screen.

  “There was a surge, like someone stepped into the bubble, and then out. It’s pretty much stable now.”

  “That would be Anne,” James said above the whine. “The note she wrote blew out of the book. A storm is coming in and the wind picked up all of a sudden. Now she is chasing after it.”

  “Should we wait until she recovers it?”

  “No. It’s dark and we never do find it. You’ll go without it. But you should see another surge first.”

  They watched for a few more seconds, and then, as predicted, the voltage spikes jumped, surged back and forth for several seconds and then returned to the previous state.

  “That’s my mother. She put a stone on the books. It’ll remain stable now. The rain is about to hit.”

  “Okay.” Jerry stepped back. “Proceed.”

  Robert’s hand came up slowly, his eyes on the scope. He stuck out his thumb and began counting. At ten, he rotated his hand to thumbs up.

  “Extract!” Jerry ordered.