Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  But he’d never considered what would happen to his other self when he showed up until Annie demonstrated it Thursday night. At the time he’d thought all his plans, all his dreams, were gone. If he were to die here his other self would never return. Annabelle would lose her father instead of her mother. He fretted half the night until it suddenly occurred to him that that was exactly as it should have been.

  Bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, he waited at the corner for traffic to pass. Rebecca would do a much better job than he did as a single parent. A girl should always have her mother. Besides, he’d had his turn; though he didn’t think he did all that bad a job. Still, Rebecca would have done . . . will do much better. She didn’t deserve to have her life cut short.

  When traffic was clear he staggered across the street, passed a bagel vendor who was open but had no early business, and continued around to the north side of the historic building onto the sidewalk along State Street. He stopped again and pushed both palms against the wall of the Old State House and leaned hard; black specks danced about the brick in front of his face; air wheezed in and out of his gapping mouth. If he wasn’t minutes from his death he would worry that he was dying. He started to chuckle at the irony and then became afraid that he actually would die before he made it, now no more than 150 feet away, half a football field, or worse yet, that he would black out only to wake up in time to watch Rebecca die before his yes, just out of his reach.

  The wheezing eased and huge intakes of cool morning air took over. He looked down the length of the building to the crosswalk where State St. met Devonshire, where the crosswalk met the sidewalk, where Rebecca was not going to meet the end of her life. The floating spots turned from black to a fuzzy gray and Robert straightened up. Keeping the wall as a crutch he began making his way down the side of the building. When finally he arrived at the corner he looked at his watch and attempted to calculate the minutes remaining. It was useless. All he could do was wait for Rebecca and the car to appear. At the moment he was completely alone.

  A minute ticket by, and then another. There was no Rebecca. There was no white car. There was no one. He looked North up Devonshire. Was he that much too early? Did he not figure Day Light Savings Time? Of course he did. He’d thought of everything. A sudden movement at the corner of his eye caused him to spin around. Someone, a young man in gray workout clothing crossed Devonshire at a quick walk and prepared to head up the south side of the Old State House.

  “Excuse me,” Robert called and rushed toward the man. “Can you tell me the time?”

  The man stopped and looked at his watch. “Almost 8:00. But this old watch is a bit fast so maybe five till.” The man took a closer look at Robert. “Are you okay?”

  Robert straightened his posture and inhaled. “Yes.” He didn’t need someone taking notice of him suddenly. “Yes, I’m just fine. Thank you for the time.”

  Satisfied that all was well with the old man, the young man continued on his way. Robert watched him for a few seconds and then peered down at his own watch. At most, a few minutes. He put his hands on top of his head, took another deep breath and then turned around. If he hadn’t already sucked in a lungful of air he would have sucked in another. Coming directly at him from around the corner of the building was the object of his obsession; her stride, her carriage, her beautiful face, everything that he cherished, everything that dominated his memories and his dreams for the past 31 years.

  “Sweet Becca.” The words escaped from him before his mind registered the mistake.

  Rebecca stopped and stared at the man who had suddenly called not just her name, but the name used only by her husband. Less than twenty feet away, he looked exactly like her husband, only older; a lot older. Robert’s father had been dead for six years. Besides, Robert never looked like his father. Leery, she stepped back.

  “Becca.” Robert shuffled forward, his hand held out as though trying to convince a snarling dog that he was friendly.

  Rebecca stepped back again. Who was this man with her husband’s face, her husband’s voice? Who was this man poring sweat, hair askew, rumpled clothes, frail like death? Some maternal instinct suddenly rose within her suggesting she should offer him help. He took another step toward her and a different, much stronger instinct sent her back three. “Who are you?”

  Robert stopped. He was scaring her. He hadn’t planned for her to see his face. He hadn’t planned to talk to her, didn’t know what to say. “I’m a friend. Please.”

  A truck passed through the green light on Devonshire and roared by; exhaust pored over them. As Rebecca waved her hand about in front of her, Robert gagged and coughed; a wave of nausea and dizziness sent him to one knee; black spots rose up from the sidewalk. He shook his head, blinked and looked up. If his heart could have stopped at that second, it would have. Instead time slowed. Beyond Rebecca’s waving hand and the concern that registered on her face, approaching the same intersection through which the truck had just passed, came a white convertible slowing for the now red light. A slice of sunlight flashed bright off the convertible’s hood and ignited a head of blond hair blowing high and wild in the wind. Robert opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. He tried to rise but his screaming mind had no control over his sluggish body, over the slow-motion scene. For minutes . . . hours it seemed he watched the scene unfold, the players take their marks, the unstoppable prepare to explode before his eyes.

  Suddenly the convertible bolted forward; the head of blond hair slammed back against the headrest. At first it appeared the car would race past until suddenly it jerked right as though the woman’s hand still had evil control of the vehicular projectile. Her blond head bounced off the closed window of the open convertible and the car bore down on the corner of the building. “No!” Robert yelled, jumped to his feet and rushed at his wife of 31 years past.

  Annie paused at the west end of the Old State House. A young man in gray sweats approached up the south side of the building and stopped at a bagel vendor. She jogged past him on the reverse of the route he had just taken. She was half way down the building when she heard her grandfather yell, “No!” She was barely up to a full run when there came a crash that shook the building and the air around her.

  Robert immediately realized his greatest error, knew that there was no time to push her out of the way and throw himself in front of the car in her place. While focused on him and his stupid antics Rebecca had paid little mind to the car rushing toward the corner of the Old State House. Robert’s sudden recovery from near collapse caused her to turn and flee, seeing the white convertible only a split second before it struck her. She flew into the air, ricocheted off the brick building and landed in a heap at Robert’s feet. Some part of her body—hand, foot, elbow or simply the tremor of the nearby impact—cracked a single pane in the nearby eight-pane window.

  A short adrenaline rush zapping what little strength he had left, Robert collapsed next to the bloodied and broken body of his Sweet Becca and cried.

  Chapter 69

  July 3, 1976

  Annie slid around the corner and froze. From what little she knew of her grandmother’s death she had formed a picture in her head that could have come from a low budget movie with inexperienced actors. The scene before her blew the picture from her mind. Her grandfather was lying beside who had to be her grandmother, his arms around her, his head on her breasts. At first she wondered if they’d both been struck. She ran to them and shook his shoulder.

  “Grandfather! Are you okay?”

  He mumbled something but Annie couldn’t understand him.

  “What? Grandfather, are you hurt?”

  “Leave me alone!” His voice was harsh, growly.

  She looked up at the car. A woman was collapsed face-first into a deflated airbag. Her hair splayed out over the steering wheel. Annie knew that the woman would make it to the hospital where she would later die. There was nothing Annie could do about that, nor should she if she could. Still, worr
ied the woman would suffocate with her face in the airbag, she ran to the car, reached over the bloodied driver’s window and pulled her back in her seat. Satisfied that she was breathing and hoping that someone was calling 911, Annie returned to her grandfather.

  She grabbed his arm and pulled. “You can’t stay here. We have to go.”

  He shook his head and jerked from her grasp. “No!”

  She grabbed him harder, digging her fingers in this time. “Yes, now!” she said firmly.

  A car screeched to a halt and a woman got out. “Oh my God!”

  “You have a cell phone?” Annie said. “Call 911.”

  “A what phone?”

  Annie looked at the woman, momentarily not understanding her question. A child popped up from the passenger seat, unbuckled and too small for a front seat air bag. It was that, of all things, that reminded Annie it was 1976. Airbags were relatively new. Few cars had them and then only for the driver, though the one in the convertible would do nothing but prolong the woman’s life another hour. Having a small child in the front seat was no big deal, and seatbelts laws were weak. In the split second it took Annie to put all those thoughts together, it also occurred to her that cell phones were still fifteen years away.

  “Phone! Find a phone. Call 911.”

  A man came out of a nearby building. “I’ve called the police,” he announced and ran over to where Annie struggled with her grandfather.

  Annie pointed to the convertible. “Check her. I think she’s still alive.” As the man rushed over to the car Annie pulled her grandfather’s face around to face hers. “Damn it, Grandfather! You can’t do this.”

  Robert was unresponsive: unfocused, lethargic, pale. Annie shook him and then slapped his face.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Annie didn’t realize that the woman from the car was standing over her. She started to invent an explanation when her grandfather’s eyes came into focus.

  “Stand up, damn it!” With both hands she hooked him around one bicep and pulled him to his feet. “He’s my grandfather,” she said to the woman. “He wasn’t in the accident; just happens to know her. He was distraught. I was trying to snap him out of it.”

  “By hitting him?” Her voice rose several octaves.

  Annie started to open her mouth when her grandfather raised his hand. “It’s okay,” he said. Annie sensed that he was gaining his own power and eased her grip on him. “It’s okay,” he said again.

  “It looked to me like abuse.” The scorn in the woman’s voice hadn’t slacked.

  “Abuse!” Annie pointed at the woman’s car where her young son hung out the driver’s window. “You drive around with your child unbuckled and you dare accuse me of abuse?”

  The woman’s face went from accusatory anger, to guilt, and then back to anger. She stepped back and looked down at the dead woman. She turned white and spun around. Annie was afraid she was going to pass out, but then she returned to her automobile and began talking with her son.

  “Come on,” Annie said to her grandfather. “We need to get out of here.”

  Robert nodded and shuffled with her to the corner of the building. Just before turning up the south side of the Old State House and out of site of the accident he looked back. “I killed her.”

  Annie tightened her grip. “You did not! Go! Damn it!” she said and they started up the side of the building

  “I didn’t plan for her to see me. I didn’t see her coming and then there she was.” He pulled at his hair and Annie had to stop and grab his hands.

  “Stop it!” she yelled at him.

  “Don’t you see? It was my fault. She wouldn’t have been on that corner if she hadn’t seen me. I stopped her and then scared her. She ran from me . . . ran in front of the car.” He jerked a hand free and pulled at his hair again. “If I hadn’t come . . . I killed her.” With that he began coughing.

  Suddenly his weight became too much for her and she pushed him against the brick wall. After a few futile seconds she let him slide to the ground and waited for the coughing fit to subside.

  “She’s alone,” he finally said.

  Annie bent forward to put her ear close to his mouth. “What do you mean, ‘She’s alone’?”

  “Annabelle. She’s home . . . alone. I’m not there now because . . .” He coughed hard several times and then seemed to settle. “. . . because I’m here. I’ve got to leave.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Annie looked to the far end of the building where the bagel vendor stood with his back to them. She looked back from where they had come. It was only twenty feet to the end of the building but everyone was around the corner, focused on the accident.

  As sirens started filling the air she pulled the seeker from her pocket, found the button and pressed it twice. “Pull up your knees,” she said. When her grandfather did as he was told she stood with the seeker just over his head and pressed it twice again, waited ten seconds and then pressed it twice more. All the time her head was swiveling back and forth, east and west, from one end of the building to the other. “When I get you home, Grandfather, you’re grounded.”

  Robert did not reply to his granddaughter’s attempt at humor. He sat on his bony butt, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, fingers in his hair. There was no humor left in him, in his life, what little there was left. His death would not come quick enough. He was thinking about that, contemplating a way to speed the process when the signs of his return to 2007 began.

  As soon as Annie noted the beginning of the event, she stepped away from him. She had been considering how to get herself gone as well, figuring there was no way two events at this spot could go unnoticed. She looked east and west again. Still satisfied there were no witnesses she looked back down at her grandfather. The glow was no longer on him. It had followed her. She looked at the seeker in her hand.

  Robert noticed it as well. “They’re locked onto the seeker.”

  “Shit!” She stepped forward and handed it to him.

  “No!” He tried to hand it back.

  “There’s no choice. Tell them to pick me up where we landed in half an hour. If I’m not there, reach out every hour on the hour after that.” She stepped away and the glow grew. “You got that, Grandfather?”

  He looked at her, his eyes big and sad. He nodded. The brightness of the glow increased until Annie had to throw up a hand to shield her eyes. Her heart pounded as she counted the seconds. Way too long, she thought. “Come on! Come on!” The light flared and went out.

  Annie dropped her hand. Her grandfather was gone and the vendor still wasn’t looking her way. She swiveled her head west and came face-to-face with the woman, eyes wide, jaw hanging open.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Struggling to think of a response to think of what to do, Annie said nothing.

  The woman stumbled in retreat and then turned and ran back to the corner of the building. “Over here! The witness is over here, the one who slapped the old man.”

  And then a blue uniform appeared.

  Chapter 70

  July 3, 1976

  Paramedics gently and efficiently removed the woman from the car. The coroner confirmed the obvious, what the police and then the paramedics had already determined, that Mrs. Robert Hair, Rebecca Hair, died at the scene. Annie wondered why she wasn’t more upset over the death of her grandmother. She was sad, yes, but she felt nothing different than when she looked at old pictures in Grandfather’s photo album and listened to him talk about her grandmother. After a time she began to suspect why she felt nothing. She wasn’t supposed to be here. This was not her real-time. She was viewing history in a video scrapbook.

  She dropped her head into her hands and corrected that thought. She was trapped in a video scrapbook where she had no emotional connection.

  She looked at her feet where they were propped on the door frame of the police car. She was sitting on the edge of the back seat looking past the open car door. She wasn’t under arrest—she
hadn’t committed a crime—but the officer had placed her there and told her to wait. She obeyed police officers, so there she sat watching the police, paramedics and some guy with a camera. At first concerned that he would get her picture, she kept her face averted. When he seemed to be focused elsewhere she had forgot about him.

  She wondered why she didn’t take off as soon as her grandfather was safely gone, why she didn’t just give the woman the finger and then run for it.

  Because she panicked, that’s why. She panicked when she realized what the woman had witnessed, and then froze solid when the blue uniform, with gun, appeared. After that any attempt at escape meant possible capture and then arrest and then answering a whole lot of questions for which she had no believable answers. She couldn’t chance getting arrested. Hang around, tell them what she saw, which honestly wasn’t much, make up something about her grandfather, about where he went and let what the woman claims she saw speak for itself.

  He vanished in a bright light.

  The police are going to believe that for sure. Which one of them is going to appear credible?

  The woman and the child sat in their car, in front of the police car, also detained. Kate Dexter was the name Annie heard her give to the officer. Annie may not have been emotionally involved with what was going on, but she certainly was stressed. She looked at her watch and realized she had no idea what time it was. She had told her grandfather every hour on the hour. Whose hour would he go by? Hers or theirs? Theirs of course because that’s the time that was on her wrist. That’s what she had to assume. Assume! God she hated that word. It could more than make an ass of her.

  Apparently having completed with his accident duties, the officer who detained her went over to talk to Mrs. Dexter first. Annie closed her eyes and continued to rest her head in her hands.