Time Code

by Charles Eugene Anderson

  But Jay never saw any of those reports because he would have considered those to be only for the man who had just stepped in front of him. The offender was older, from a generation who had watched too much Brady Bunch, and a man who still hoped for a Beatles reunion tour even though two of the Beatles were not alive.

  “Were those muffins baked fresh this morning?” asked the old Baby Boomer man, who Jay was angry with, of the inattentive young clerk before he even reached the front of the line. At that point, Jay should have noticed the clash of two generational wills: the ever childlike outlook of the Baby Boomers and the ever soiled view of the world by the spoiled Gen-Ys, but that sociological observation was lost to him.

  This was his moment to act. Jay had found his resolve and now he knew he would find his place in the front of the line. He’d be one step closer to the muffins he desired and one step closer to breakfast perfection. He only needed to tell the man in front of him to resume his proper place in the back, and Jay’s world could return to its original balance.

  “Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice directly behind Jay. “Excuse me, but I don’t think it is right that you stepped in front of me…I’m sorry but I’ve been waiting here longer then you.”

  At first Jay thought she might be talking to the man in front of him, but it wasn’t the case. When Jay turned to her to find confirmation in his belief, he only found that his value had to be put on hold, and surprisingly, he was the other criminal in this line.

  “I am so sorry. Can I buy you a muffin?” asked Jay.

  “I wouldn’t have said anything but this isn’t the first time you’ve done this to me.”

  “I’m really sorry. Muffin?”

  “No, coffee would be lovely,” said the woman of Jay’s dreams.

  There was a time when all the television news reports had stated that coffee was bad for the public and they should stop drinking it right away. Then a few years later the same news stations reported that coffee had certain health benefits and now it was safe to consume, but Jay never saw any of those reports.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “I usually sit over there and read the paper,” said the woman making sure her coffee tasted the way she wanted it to and not trusting the inattentive coffee clerk.

  If Jay had asked his mother, considered by many of her friends in her Tuesday night book group to be very wise woman, she would have confirmed to her only son that being married was much healthier than being single, but he usually didn’t listen to her.

  Jay had been engaged soon after he had graduated from college, but his long gone ex-fiancé seldom thought about him, or Jay about her. If Jay would have looked her up, he would have found she was now married to a dentist who she had started to date after a routine teeth cleaning.

  “You don’t drink coffee?” asked Isabella surprised by his answer who Jay had just learned her name after the two sat at a table together. “Why not? I don’t think I couldn’t make it through the morning without it.”

  “I like its smell, but I don’t like the way it tastes. I would drink it, but it taste so much like…coffee.”

  “I usually read the paper while I drink my coffee, but it doesn’t look like I’ll have time this morning.”

  “I’m sorry. You know…I can leave you alone so you can read it.”

  “Next time, apologize when you step in front of me.”

  Jay’s grandfather had died sixth months after his grandmother’s death. His grandparents had been married for nearly forty three years before she passed one night in her sleep. An edition of the Canadian Journal of Medicine had reported in a 2003 study that elderly Canadian men had a much lower life expectancy than those who wives remained alive. Jay had never had read the Canadian Journal of Medicine nor did he know any elderly Canadian men.

  “Will you be here tomorrow?” asked Jay.

  “Only if you save me a place in line, I’ll leave you this paper. You never know what you’ll find inside,” said Isabella while she took a piece of Jay’s muffin to eat on her way to work.

  Jay felt a pain inside his stomach as she left him alone in the bakery. Jay could eat his muffin, but he knew it wouldn’t taste as good as it did as it had when Isabella had been there.

  “Are you finished with that yet?” asked the older man who had cut in front of Jay in line earlier.

  “Yes…yes, I am,” said Jay as he almost handed him that day’s newspaper, but if he had, he might’ve settled back into his earlier life where he could only find morning solace in the berries of his muffin.

  “I wanted to know what is going on with Paul. I heard he is getting divorced from his new wife. It is not like he needs to be weighed down like John. Now John…there was true a genius of his generation.”

  “You know, on second thought, I would like to keep this for myself,” said Jay not letting it leave his hand, and for the first time, Jay looked forward to discovering what might be inside of its pages. There hidden inside today’s edition was an almost scholarly article about the continuing impact of the Beatles and their influence on those born after 1963.

  But that article would have to wait until Jay got out of the long line once again, and there in that bakery, he would give coffee a second chance to see if it tasted better this time then he remembered it before.

   

  Chapter 24

  Pink Unicorn Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

  When the pink unicorns showed up nobody left their homes.

  Everyone wanted them out of Tombstone, but who could help?

  Plinie the Younger, a Roman naturalist, described the unicorn as a ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse, a deer’s head, feet of an elephant, tail of a boar, deep voice, and a single horn, two cubits long, it the middle of the forehead. It was obvious he never saw a unicorn, but he wasn’t entirely wrong about ’em either. Nobody in Tombstone had ever heard of Plinie, nor could they read Latin in which he wrote his observations, everyone in the town except Doc Holliday.

  Every group has a leader, and the unicorns weren’t any different. The beast was a hand higher, had a longer horn, and was pinker than the rest. A true killer in everyone’s mind. While a pack of unicorns is called a ‘blessing,’ there were no blessings happening in Tombstone on that day.

  The bible mentions unicorns in the Book of Numbers, ‘God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn.’ There were many bibles in the dusty town, and unicorns were mentioned in them in more than one verse and only Lucifer, demons, and lepers are referenced more times.

  Yet Tombstone had crusaders. There was Marshal Virgil Earp, Assistant Marshal Morgan Earp, and temporary deputy marshals, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Were they perfect crusaders? No. Were they pure? No, nobody in Tombstone was pure. But would they be enough to overtake the unicorns?

  Leonardo da Vinci wrote in one of his journals, ‘The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself…’

  There was another book in Tombstone, The Plays of William Shakespeare, and all four of the lawmen knew them, read them, and memorized them. They knew how to deal with unicorns because the bard had told them.

  The trick? It’s control, the marrow of heroes, and the lawmen had it. Some claim it’s even stronger than the unicorn’s horn.

  The pinkest of the pink led the charge, and the rest of the blessing followed. The lawmen didn’t even pull their pistols. All of them carried pistols except Holliday who held a coach gun given to him before the fight. None of them fired. They let the unicorns advance without impeding their furious pace.

  Flesh can be torn with the sword, the bullet, or the horn. If the wooden fence of the O.K. Corral had been flesh it would’ve bled red. Even the pinkest coat can be turned dark with blood. Each unicorn impaled its horn on the corral’s wooden fence. As soon as they did, the lawmen emptied their weapons.

  Shakespeare wrote in Timon of Athens, ‘wert thou the unicorn, pride and wraith would confound thee and make thine ow
n self the conquest of fury.’ What does that mean, in English, the kind spoken in Tombstone? The lawmen waited until the last second and moved out of the way. In their rage, the unicorns wanted to pierce flesh with their horns, but they found only the wood of the corral. Helpless, the lawman’s bullets found their mark.

  One of the townsmen said to Marshal Virgil Earp, “I think we found a maiden in the next town.”

  Marshal Earp said, “Too late. Has the afternoon stagecoach come in yet? I’m waiting for some more books to arrive.”

  Chapter 25

  All I Want For Christmas...Beets

  “Quit hitting your brother with that light saber; it’s time for dinner,” said my aunt from the kitchen where she prepared our Christmas Eve meal.

  I wasn’t sure who she was talking to me or my brother. It didn’t matter because the two of us had been locked in mortal-galactic combat. I knew I could still fight my younger brother for a few more minutes. I was battling Darth Kent on top of the cushions of the davenport.

  My aunt called out happily, “I made everyone’s favorite turkey; I also made beets.”

  I had been struck down by the dark side, and my stomach started to rebel. “No, not beets” I said, yelling loudly.

  “Young Skywalker, I have you now,” said the black-helmeted Darth Kent before he unleashed his fury of attacks against me. I was defeated, and his final blow had struck my wrist. It stung. I knew I should like the food my aunt made, but beets were the most evil vegetable in all of the Empire.

  Kent said with a joy in his voice because he had gotten the better of me, “Luke, I’m not your father. Matt, you’re such a sucker.”  He laughed because he had won. “You can’t use that hand next time unless you get a fake one put on by the droid, but that’s not until the end of the movie. He took off his black helmet, and said joyfully. “I won, I won…I finally won.” Kent left the room, running past the Christmas tree and my uncle watching TV. He left me standing on the large cushion by myself.

  “Auntie, I found him,” said Cheryl. She’s my little sister, and she’s a big tattletale. “He’s on the sofa, and he’s not supposed to be playing up there.”

  “It’s not a sofa. It’s a davenport. You can tell by the raised cushioned arms, and it was made in Massachusetts,” I said as calmly as I could, trying to correct her on her limited knowledge about furniture.

  Cheryl said nothing, but she stuck her tongue out at me, and ran into the kitchen. She was as fast as a TIE fighter.

  “Matt, come on…there are Christmas beets,” said my aunt trying to lure me into the kitchen. “Hurry up, they’re getting cold. You won’t want to eat them when they’re cold.”

  “Good,” I said, but no one heard me. I was a hero trapped in the second movie. Hurry, me? No, I needed to hurry up and act out the last movie tonight, so I could see if Luke Skywalker would finally become a Jedi.

  * * *

  This is the recipe for Christmas beets…you need to keep it a secret and keep the data well hidden inside a droid. The Emperor would love to get hold of it when he builds the new Death Star.

  If you can be trusted, here’s my aunt’s recipe for Christmas Beets. Here you go:

  Ingredients

   

  6 to 8 beets quartered

  1 1/2 cups water

  3/4 cup brown sugar

  1/3 cup vinegar

  2 tablespoons butter

   

  Combine beets with water, brown sugar, vinegar, and butter. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and continue simmering, uncovered, for about 1 hour.

   

  * * *

  “We should save some food for mom,” said Cheryl while we were eating at the dining room table, and she had a worried look on her face.

  My aunt said to Cheryl, “We’ll make her a plate. I’ll leave it in the oven for her when she gets home. She won’t get off of her shift until late, but your mother says she’ll be home in time to open the presents in the morning.” That seemed to make my sister feel better and she continued eating her Christmas Eve dinner.

  I ate the turkey, I ate the ambrosia salad, but I wasn’t going to eat those beets. “Are there any more rolls?” I asked. Maybe if I ate everything else, I wouldn’t have to eat them.

  There were only a few places to get rid of unwanted food at my aunt’s house. There was the native-canine-inhabitant of the kitchen, Patches, the dog. Kent and I tried to give them to him last year when my aunt made them. All I can say about the beet incident, the beets came back up out of him, and they became a disgusting Patches-geyser.

  The regular kitchen trash can was too obvious, but there was the new garbage disposal. It was further away and on the other side of the kitchen. It would require me to use the Force, but it was possible, and the beets would stay hidden. I decided the beets would go in there.

  I looked to Kent for help, he couldn’t help me because his plan never changed.  He would wait out the beet’s siege. Kent would sit at the table all night if he had to, but I didn’t have Kent’s ability to wait. I looked at my sister, Cheryl, and I was horrified. She was actually eating her beets. It was disgusting. There was a time when she wanted only to be Princess Leia, but the last movie had changed that. Too confusing with Luke-Leia being brother-sister.

  I couldn’t believe she was eating her beets. She really did it, and Cheryl said to my aunt, “These beets are really good.”

  I was doomed.

  I knew I had no more time, and I made up my mind those beets had to go into the trash compactor right away. The only problem was me getting across the kitchen and over to where the compactor was located. My uncle had retired to the living room long ago, he called for my aunt, and she had left us to watch something important on the TV. I knew Darth Kent wasn’t going to help me because he was locked in his own battle with the root-vegetable.

  So I was surprised when Kent spoke to me, He said, “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

  He was right; I needed to use the Force.

  Cheryl was the problem, and as soon as she saw me leave the table she would tattle on me to our aunt.

  I needed more time.

  That’s when my standby-savior slowly walked into the kitchen awake from his nap; it was Patches. The old spotted dog had woken up from his sleeping corner, and had come into the kitchen to see if there was anything he might eat.

  “Cheryl,” I said. “I am going to feed Patches my beets. Please don’t tell Aunt Beru.”

  Cheryl had a horrified look on her face once she realized what might happen. She said, “Don’t. I’m going to tell. Auntie…”

  “She can’t hear you. Uncle Owen has the TV too loud,”

  “No…You’re going to make Patches sick.”

  “Go ahead tell Auntie because you’re a scruffy looking nerf-herder.”

  Cheryl jumped up and ran out of the kitchen. She was going to make sure I got in trouble for what I said to her. I only had seconds, and I had to act fast.

  I jumped up out of my seat, and I moved as quickly as I could across the kitchen. I couldn’t run because I knew I couldn’t let any of those beets hit the floor. I was fast, but I wasn’t as fast as I needed to be. I had almost reached the garbage disposal when I heard Cheryl and my aunt were about to enter the kitchen. I stopped, and luckily, I still had my fork on the plate. I grabbed it, and stuck it into one of the beets. I lifted it to my mouth when the two of them came into view. I couldn’t believe how close I had the dark-stained vegetable to my mouth, and that’s when I thought of something else to do.

  “Cheryl, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you that name. You didn’t do anything to me. Can you forgive me?”

  My aunt turned to see where the dog was, Patches was sitting on the floor, next to Kent’s chair because Kent still had turkey on his plate, and it eased her mind when she saw the dog begging next to my brother.

  My aunt seemed relieved, but once she assessed what was happening in her kitchen she n
oticed me standing there with a plate of uneaten beets.

  I spoke before she could say anything, “I was looking for Alderaan spice, I mean errr, nutmeg,” I said. “I think they’ll taste better that way.”

  If I could make it, I could throw away those beets. I was almost close enough, and once there I could dump them inside.

  After I said that, my aunt seemed more relaxed. “Here let me get them for you.” She went to a tall cupboard that lined her kitchen and contained all of her spices. When she found the container, she also found a measuring spoon and gave them the right amount of the spice.”I will sit with you and Kent until the both of you finish eating them.”

  With her words, I had been defeated. I went back to my place at the table without accomplishing my mission. The dark side had won, and I was going to have to eat those beets under my aunt’s watchful eye.

  There are times for miracles, and it seems to be on Christmas Eve. It happened when my mom came through the backdoor of the kitchen. I was sitting next to Kent, and I had almost taken the first bite.

  “Mom,” said Cheryl with a squeal, who first to see her, and Kent and I joined in as soon as we saw her too. The three of us jumped up out of our chairs, and ran to her and each of us squeezed her with our hugs as hard as we could.

  “I’m glad to see you too. They let me off early being Christmas Eve. Now, I can be with my children when they open their presents in the morning.”

  “I want a model of the Death Star,” said Darth Kent.

  Of course he did.

  “I want to be a Princess,” said Cheryl who didn’t want to be left out.

  “You’ll have to see what’s under the tree in the morning,” said my mother. She looked around the kitchen, “Oh, it looks like I’m too late for dinner. I didn’t get a chance to eat anything. No, that’s okay. I’ll take Matt’s,” she said. My mother came over to me, took my plate, and gave me a quick wink that only I could see. She said to me, “The Force is always strongest on Christmas Eve.”

  “Let me make you a fresh plate,” said my aunt. “There’s one in the oven.”

  “Yes, mom,” I said, “Let’s gets you your own plate.”

  “I’m just going to eat off of this one,” she said. “I hope no one minds.” Before anyone could say anything else, she quickly started to eat off of my plate. “These are good. Is there nutmeg on them? Beru, I think you might have to add this extra ingredient to your recipe next year.”