Now, for some reason I could not comprehend, I was standing here in my cousin’s back yard, miles away from the city, all alone and—
No. I wasn’t alone.
The little dark-haired girl had come here with me. Her name was Jenna, and I’d seen and talked to her no more than two or three times in my youth. She stood just a couple of feet from me, and even though I was totally convinced she was a hallucination, she looked very real standing there, watching me in the same fashion as she’d watched me all those many years ago, when we were both very young and had our entire lives ahead of us…
That was another strange thing about all this. Back then, we were both just a couple of years apart. But right now I was the same forty-two that I’d been the last three or four months—a grown, mature adult male slightly past his middle years… However, Jenna hadn’t changed at all. She was still ten or eleven years old…
“Jenna?”
She nodded.
“You’re still here.”
Another nod.
“That was you back there? At the park bench?”
“That was me.”
Something was very, very wrong. Worse, it was making no sense.
“And you’re still…the same age you were when I…when I saw you last…”
She smiled.
“How can that be?”
No reply.
“What’s going on?”
A shrug.
“Jenna, please tell me what’s going on. Why am I here?”
“I brought you here.”
“Yes. I kind of figured that one out all by myself. But why? How is all this possible?”
“I wanted you to come back. I wanted you to come back and see me…one more time.”
What did that mean? And why did it sound so final?
“But why here? Why now?”
“This is where it all began.”
“Where all what began? Jenna, please talk to me. Explain this to me.”
“I will. In time, I’ll tell you everything.”
“In time?”
She nodded, but said nothing else.
I scanned the area. It only took me a few moments to discover that nothing had changed. More than twenty-five years had gone by since I’d been here last, but this place looked the same. Even though I’d heard over the years from my cousin and from several other sources that the woods had been cleared years ago to make room for a development of condominiums and town houses, the woods remained unchanged and completely unaffected by the years. Johnny’s house hadn’t changed at all. The same swing stood just twenty feet or so from Aunt Evelyn’s rock garden in the back yard, where it had been since Johnny and I were seven or eight. The swing didn’t look any older, nor had it been affected even in the slightest by rust or by the elements. The French doors leading to the game room still looked just as new as they did when Uncle John had them installed when Johnny and I were both around eight or nine. I expected to see definite signs of age—or at least some wear—on the roof. However, the shingles hadn’t aged a single day.
The cars parked in the driveways of the other houses on the block even looked the same.
It was almost as if time had stood completely still…
“Jenna, what did you do?”
“Like I just said, I wanted to bring you back.”
“Back where?”
“Back here.”
“But why?”
“I needed to.”
“Again, why?”
“I have to tell you a few things.”
“Jenna, you can tell me something right now.”
She nodded.
“Why are you still a little girl?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
“What will I see?”
“Everything.”
I scanned the area again. Everything had a soft, dreamlike quality to it…yet it all felt so incredibly real that I couldn’t call any of it a dream.
“Jenna, please tell me how you were able to bring me here…and why it looks like we’ve gone back in time…and why you’re still the same little girl I remember when I was twelve years old…”
Without a word, she held out her hand.
I just stared at it.
She wiggled her fingers, beckoning me to grasp her hand.
I ignored it. “Jenna, the last time you touched me, something strange happened.”
“Take my hand, Bill.”
“I honestly don’t think I should…”
“Please?”
Her innocence—as well as the sincerity emanating from her—made me melt. I knew right then that she hadn’t done all this—whatever all this actually was—to hurt me. I sighed and did as she asked.
The moment our hands touched, darkness enveloped me again.
CHAPTER TEN
The darkness vanished instantly.
Jenna and I were standing outside one of the tenement complexes on the other side of the woods. It was the late afternoon. Judging by the warmth and humidity, I guessed that it was late summer. Kids were running up and down the sidewalk behind us but didn’t pay any attention to us. I suspected that they couldn’t see us.
Once again, my curiosity—as well as my fear—began taking over, and I found that I was more than slightly shaken by all this.
“Jenna, what are we doing here? How’d we get here? What is all this?”
“Sshhh!” She let go of my hand, brought it up and pressed her index finger against my lips. I felt its warmth, its firmness. Right then I realized this wasn’t a dream. It was real.
She finally pulled it away and pointed to the window just a couple of feet from us.
Inside the dimly-lit room, a big, burly man around forty-five sprawled in an armchair, drinking beer and watching television. He was dark and balding, and hadn’t shaved in several days. He wore a stained white sleeveless tee shirt, loose-fitting jeans and open-toed sandals, and scratched his ample belly as he slurped beer from a can and stared at the TV screen. When he finished the beer, he crushed the can and tossed it on the stained carpet. It joined the group of six others near the cluttered cocktail table. Then he turned toward the archway on his left and yelled, “More beer!”
Moments later, Jenna came in through the archway carrying a can of beer. Keeping her distance, she held it out to him. He snatched it from her so roughly that it nearly knocked her off-balance. He cracked open the can. Some of it bubbled up, the froth sliding down the side of the can and gathering thickly on the back of his hand. He wiped the spill on his pant leg. “What took ya so goddamn long?” Then, as she turned to leave, he reached out and swatted her on the back of the head, knocking her down.
Without a word, she got back up and scurried out of the room.
I found this extremely difficult to watch. “Jenna, why are you making me—“
Once again, she said, “Sshhh!” But this time, instead of shushing me, she shushed herself, and when she turned to look up at me, there were tears filling her large brown eyes.
The man in the chair finished his beer. He tossed the crushed can on the floor with the others and belched loudly. Then he yelled, “C’mere, bitch!”
Nothing.
He squirmed out of the chair and staggered closer to the archway. “Better get your scrawny ass here, you stupid little snot!”
Still nothing.
“If I have to hunt ya down, you’re gonna wish you were dead!”
Head down, Jenna appeared stiffly in the hall.
“Where’s my dinner?”
A shrug.
“I asked ya a question, ya little moron!”
Sighing, Jenna raised slowly her head and looked him straight in the eye. The moment her face came up, he slapped her viciously across the face, knocking her to her knees.
“I ain’t gonna ask ya again, bitch!”
He took a step toward her. She scrambled to her feet and scurried out of the apartment.
“Get your mangy ass back here, goddammit! I ain’t through with
ya! And I want my dinner!”
I had to force myself to keep from turning away from the window. The tiny hand holding mine had grown cold and began trembling. It gripped mine with so much force that it cut off my circulation. Just as I turned to gaze at the terrified little girl beside me, she looked up at me with tear-stained eyes and sniffed.
“Was it just the two of you?” I asked softly.
“My brothers had already left home by that time. It was just me and my older sister…for a little while…”
“What happened to her?”
Another sniff. “Pauline died right after Momma left. Pneumonia.”
“How long were you…how long did you…” I had no idea how to ask her how long she’d been forced to live like this.
Before I could get my question sorted out, she put her other hand over mine. Darkness fell over us again.
When it cleared, we were back at the foot of the hill behind Johnny’s house, watching two young boys walking into the woods. One of them was my cousin; the other, of course, was me.
Jenna and I watched closely as Johnny and my other image climbed the two large oaks. Her hand still gripped mine, but not nearly so tightly. She no longer trembled. I turned to gaze at her face. She was smiling brightly; her tears had gone.
Just then, Johnny slipped on his branch and began sliding back down.
Jenna laughed. She turned to me. “I was really glad you won.”
“Why?”
“I never liked Johnny.”
“Why not? He was an okay guy.”
Her smile vanished and she frowned. “He treated me…like everyone else.”
I knew better than ask her anything else. I remembered how he’d dismissed her when I’d first asked about her.
As Johnny trudged back up the hill, favoring his skinned side, arms and legs, my younger image climbed back down from the top of the tree.
My image walked over and stood about twenty feet away from the little girl coming out from behind the bushes. It was Jenny’s image, and the moment I saw this, everything about that day came back to me in a flurry.
“Hi,” my image said, smiling.
“You climb good,” the Jenna-image replied, also smiling.
My image puffed up a little. I remembered how great she’d made me feel when she’d said that. “It was nothin’.”
“You did better than Johnny.”
My image shrugged. “I don’t get a chance to climb at my place. Not enough good trees in the neighborhood.”
She nodded. “I’m Jenna.”
“I’m Bill.”
My image moved closer and began staring at her.
“How’d you get the black eye?”
She stopped smiling and pushed some hair across her face. “I fell.”
“Really?”
“I gotta go.” Then she spun around and scurried back through the woods.
My image watched her for a few moments. Then it spun around and scurried up the hill.
When I turned back to the little girl standing beside me, holding my hand, I saw that she was smiling through her tears. “Jenna, why did you bring me here?”
“You were the only one who smiled at me that day,” she said. “The only one who was nice to me. Stepdad…he beat me that day…hurt my eye and gave me bruises no one else could see. He knew how and where to hit me so it wouldn’t show…so the Child Protection people…so they wouldn’t be suspicious. I didn’t go to school for a long time because I didn’t want anyone staring at my eye.”
“But Jenna…if you’d gone to school, your teachers would have done something. They might have taken you away from him.”
The hatred began showing behind her tears. “I didn’t want to go to a state home. Besides, I didn’t want anyone staring at me. They stared at me enough, made fun of me enough.” She sighed. “Even your cousin did…he laughed at me, too, just like everyone else… I didn’t want that. You were the only one who…the only one who ever smiled at me. The only one who was ever nice to me…”
My heart was about to shatter into little pieces. I don’t know how I managed to hold myself together. I decided not to dwell on it. I needed to focus on something much more important. That had all happened in the past. Everything felt very real, but they were all shadows of events that were long gone. Past events didn’t belong in the present.
This made no sense.
“Jenna, what is all this? Why am I here? Where did you come from? How and why did you bring us back here? This is horrible. I know it can’t possibly be pleasant for you...“
She touched my hand once again.
The darkness returned.
***
When daylight returned, Jenna and I were standing at the end of the block, just a hundred yards or so from the woods separating the run-down tenement complexes from my cousin Johnny’s subdivision.
It appeared to be the middle of the afternoon. At the opposite end of the block, the neighborhood playground covered most of a weed-choked, trash-littered lot. Junk cars sat in various stages of deterioration along the curb. Beer bottles, soda cans and food wrappers cluttered the sidewalk. The exhaust-laden air rang with the cries and screams of kids playing and fighting.
Once again, Jenna’s hand had gone cold. She began trembling and clutched my hand tighter.
“I’m right here,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand in reply.
“Jenna, why are we here?”
Silently she pointed straight ahead with her free hand.
Two figures were walking down the street, away from us. It only took me a second to realize that the figures were Johnny and myself. We were two or three years older than we’d been in the tree-climbing episode.
“This place is too noisy for me,” my younger image said.
“Me, too,” Johnny’s younger image replied.
“Why’d you bring me here, then?”
He shrugged. “Something to do. I’m kinda bored with video games. Thought ya might like seeing the rest of the neighborhood.”
“I’d rather be back in your game room, watching a movie.”
Jenna turned to me. “Remember any of this?”
I tried, but nothing would come. “I remember coming here a couple of times, but nothing specific stands out.”
“Just wait.”
Three dirt-smudged punks about eleven or twelve years old walked right up to our younger images. They wore baggy pants, oversized sweatshirts, and beat-up tennies without laces. The biggest and burliest stood between them, looking us up and down. Scowling, he said, “Wanna help us beat up a kid?”
The scene suddenly began growing clearer in my memory banks as I watched it unfold.
My image turned to Johnny. “Yep. Being back at the house, sitting in your dad’s recliner and watching a movie sounds really good right now.”
The bully sneered at us. “Ya want to or not?”
“Five of us?” Johnny asked. “Beating up one kid?”
“Sounds kind of one-sided, doesn’t it?” my image said. As I watched now, I remembered that the bully’s left ear looked badly mangled. “What’s wrong? You guys afraid of this kid?”
The leader moved closer and puffed out his chest. He was at least two years younger than either of us and nearly half a head shorter than me. But he still tried his best to look bigger. “Ain’t afraid a nothin’!”
“Then why do you need five guys to beat up one kid?” Johnny asked flatly.
“Wanna fight?” he asked, moving closer to my image.
“Get out of my face.”
His eyes blazed. “Make me!”
I’d never been a fighter, but this moron had made me angry. Besides, I didn’t like anyone invading my space. He looked and smelled bad, and I knew that if I didn’t do anything, he’d force me to make a move.
Anyway, I never liked bullies—especially cowardly ones who needed help fighting their battles. I also knew that if you backed down from a bully, you’d be considered easy prey.
&n
bsp; My arm instinctively lashed out, shoving him to the sidewalk. He landed squarely on his ass and sat there, stunned, his cronies snickering at him. Growling and rubbing his tailbone, he struggled back up, but his pants had hiked down a few inches, making it much harder to regain his footing. He took a cautious step toward me. When I refused to back away, he ran off, holding up his pants and tossing, “Assholes!” over his shoulder.
“You’d better run after your hero,” my image said to the other two.
Without a word, they ran off in the same direction.
“Remember now?” Jenna asked, gazing up at me.
I nodded. “I guess it slipped my mind because it wasn’t really that important.”
“It was important to me,” she said softly, squeezing my hand again.
“Why?”
“I was the kid they wanted to beat up. And when you ran them off…” She was smiling again.
“Why’d they want to beat you up?”
“I didn’t let them push me around. Every time they pushed me, I pushed back. They even ganged up on me once and tried holding me down, all three of them, but when the leader—Viper, he called himself—bent over me to spit in my face, I bit off part of his ear.”
I wanted to laugh.
“I wasn’t really mean,” she said. “I just had to be tough. It wasn’t a very nice neighborhood.”
“I knew all about your neighborhood.”
“You…don’t think that was wrong, do you? Biting off his ear?”
“Not really. Besides, he had a spare ear he could always use for emergencies.”
She laughed.
“Jenna?” Something had just occurred to me. “How did you know that even happened?”
She pointed to one of the junk cars parked along the curb, about twenty yards from us. The figure of a scrawny little girl knelt on the far side, just behind the front bumper. She was watching the three punks running away.
Before I could say anything else, she touched me again.
Johnny, the street, and the playground all vanished in a swirl of darkness.
A Ripple in Time Page 7
