I decided to get off the bus in Ward’s Hollow, buy the stuff Cross wanted and pretend I didn’t know he had locked the shelter door last night. If he said something about it, I’d act surprised. If he didn’t . . . I didn’t know what I’d do then.
Village Variety was next to Warren’s Esso and across the street from the Post Office. It had once been two different stores located in the same building, but then Mr Rudowski had bought the building and knocked down the dividing wall. On the fun side were pens and pencils and paper and greeting cards and magazines and comics and paperbacks and candy. The other side was all boring hardware and small appliances.
Mr Rudowski was on the phone when I came in, but then he was always on the phone when he worked. He could sell you a hammer or a pack of baseball cards, tell you a joke, ask about your family, complain about the weather and still keep the guy on the other end of the line happy. This time though, when he saw me come in, he turned away, wrapping the phone cord across his shoulder.
I went through the store quickly and found everything Cross had wanted. I had to blow dust off the transistor radio box but the batteries looked fresh. There was only one New York Times left; the headlines were so big they were scary.
US IMPOSES ARMS BLOCKADE ON CUBA
ON FINDING OF OFFENSIVE MISSILE SITES
KENNEDY READY FOR SOVIET SHOWDOWN
Ships Must Stop President Grave Prepared to Risk War
I set my purchases on the counter in front of Mr Rudowski. He cocked his head to one side, trapping the telephone receiver against his shoulder, and rang me up. The paper was on the bottom of the pile.
“Since when do you read the Times, Ray?” Mr Rudowski punched it into the cash register and hit total. “I just got the new Fantastic Four.” The cash drawer popped open.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.
“All right then. It comes to twelve dollars and forty-seven cents.”
I gave him the hundred-dollar bill.
“What is this, Ray?” He stared at it and then at me.
I had my story all ready. “It was a birthday gift from my grandma in Detroit. She said I could spend it on whatever I wanted so I decided to treat myself, but I’m going to put the rest in the bank.”
“You’re buying a radio? From me?”
“Well, you know. I thought maybe I should have one with me with all this stuff going on.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just pulled a paper bag from under the counter and put my things into it. His shoulders, were hunched; I thought maybe he felt guilty about overcharging for the radio. “You should be listening to music, Ray,” he said quietly. “You like Elvis? All kids like Elvis. Or maybe that coloured guy, the one who does the Twist?”
“They’re all right, I guess.”
“You’re too young to be worrying about the news. You hear me? Those politicians . . . ” He shook his head. “It’s going to be okay, Ray. You heard it from me.”
“Sure, Mr Rudowski. I was wondering, could I get five dollars in change?”
I could feel him watching me as I stuffed it all into my book bag. I was certain he’d call my mom, but he never did. Home was three miles up Cobb’s Hill. I did it in forty minutes, a record.
I remember I started running when I saw the flashing lights. The police car had left skid marks in the gravel on our driveway.
“Where were you?” Mom burst out of the house as I came across the lawn. “Oh, my God, Raymie, I was worried sick.” She caught me up in her arms.
“I got off the bus in Ward’s Hollow.” She was about to smother me; I squirmed free. “What happened?”
“This the boy, ma’am?” The state trooper had taken his time catching up to her. He had almost the same hat as Scoutmaster Newell.
“Yes, yes! Oh, thank God, officer!”
The trooper patted me on the head like I was a lost dog. “You had your mom worried, Ray.”
“Raymie, you should’ve told me.”
“Somebody tell me what happened!” I said.
A second trooper came from behind the house. We watched him approach. “No sign of any intruder.” He looked bored; I wanted to scream.
“Intruder?” I said.
“He broke into the shelter,” said Mom. “He knew my name.”
“There was no sign of forcible entry,” said the second trooper. I saw him exchange a glance with his partner. “Nothing disturbed that I could see.”
“He didn’t have time,” Mom said. “When I found him in the shelter, I ran back to the house and got your father’s gun from the bedroom.”
The thought of Mom with the .38 scared me. I had my Shooting merit badge, but she didn’t know a hammer from a trigger. “You didn’t shoot him?”
“No.” She shook her head. “He had plenty of time to leave but he was still there when I came back. That’s when he said my name.”
I had never been so mad at her before. “You never go out to the shelter.”
She had that puzzled look she always gets at night. “I couldn’t find my key. I had to use the one your father leaves over the breezeway door.”
“What did he say again, ma’am? The intruder.”
“He said, ‘Mrs Beaumont, I present no danger to you.’ And I said, ‘Who are you?’ And then he came towards me and I thought he said ‘Margaret,’ and I started firing.”
“You did shoot him!”
Both troopers must have heard the panic in my voice. The first one said, “You know something about this man, Ray?”
“No, I-I was at school all day and then I stopped at Rudowski’s . . . ” I could feel my eyes burning. I was so embarrassed; I knew I was about to cry in front of them.
Mom acted annoyed that the troopers had stopped paying attention to her. “I shot at him. Three, four times, I don’t know. I must have missed, because he just stood there staring at me. It seemed like forever. Then he walked past me and up the stairs like nothing had happened.”
“And he didn’t say anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, it beats me,” said the second trooper. “The gun’s been fired four times but there are no bullet holes in the shelter and no bloodstains.”
“You mind if I ask you a personal question, Mrs Beaumont?” the first trooper said.
She coloured. “I suppose not.”
“Have you been drinking, ma’am?”
“Oh that!” She seemed relieved. “No. Well, I mean, after I called you, I did pour myself a little something. Just to steady my nerves. I was worried because my son was so late and . . . Raymie, what’s the matter?”
I felt so small. The tears were pouring down my face.
After the troopers left, I remember Mom baking brownies while I watched Superman. I wanted to go out and hunt for Cross, but it was already sunset and there was no excuse I could come up with for wandering around in the dark. Besides, what was the point? He was gone, driven off by my mother. I’d had a chance to help a man from the future change history, maybe prevent World War III, and I had blown it. My life was ashes.
I wasn’t hungry that night, for brownies or spaghetti or anything, but Mom made that clucking noise when I pushed supper around the plate, so I ate a few bites just to shut her up. I was surprised at how easy it was to hate her, how good it felt. Of course, she was oblivious, but in the morning she would notice if I wasn’t careful. After dinner, she watched the news and I went upstairs to read. I wrapped a pillow around my head when she yelled at David Brinkley. I turned out the lights at 8:30, but I couldn’t get to sleep. She went to her room a little after that.
“Mr Beaumont?”
I must have dozed off, but when I heard his voice I snapped awake immediately.
“Is that you, Mr Cross?” I peered into the darkness. “I bought the stuff you wanted.” The room filled with an awful stink, like when Mom drove with the parking brake on.
“Mr Beaumont,” he said, “I am damaged.”
I slipped out of bed, picked my way across t
he dark room, locked the door and turned on the light.
“Oh jeez!”
He slumped against my desk like a nightmare. I remember thinking then that Cross wasn’t human, that maybe he wasn’t even alive. His proportions were wrong: an ear, a shoulder and both feet sagged like they had melted. Little wisps of steam or something curled off him; they were what smelled. His skin had gone all shiny and hard; so had his business suit. I’d wondered why he never took the suit coat off, and now I knew. His clothes were part of him. The middle fingers of his right hand beat spasmodically against his palm.
“Mr Beaumont,” he said. “I calculate your chances at 1016 to 1.”
“Chances of what?” I said. “What happened to you?”
“You must listen most attentively, Mr Beaumont. My decline is very bad for history. It is for you now to alter the time-line probabilities.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your government greatly overestimates the nuclear capability of the Soviet Union. If you originate a first strike, the United States will achieve overwhelming victory.”
“Does the president know this? We have to tell him!”
“John Kennedy will not welcome such information. If he starts this war, he will be responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, both Russians and Americans. But he does not grasp the future of the arms race. The war must happen now, because those who come after will build and build until they control arsenals that can destroy the world many times over. People are not capable of thinking for very long of such fearsome weapons. They tire of the idea of extinction and then become numb to it. The build up slows but does not stop and they congratulate themselves on having survived it. But there are still too many weapons and they never go away. The Third War comes as a surprise. The First War was called the one to end all wars. The Third War is the only such war possible, Mr Beaumont, because it ends everything. History stops in 2009. Do you understand? A year later, there is no life. All dead, the world a hot, barren rock.”
“But you . . . ?”
“I am nothing, a construct. Mr Beaumont, please, the chances are 1016 to 1,” he said. “Do you know how improbable that is?” His laugh sounded like a hiccup. “But for the sake of those few precious time-lines, we must continue. There is a man, a politician in New York. If he dies on Thursday night, it will create the incident that forces Kennedy’s hand.”
“Dies?” For days, I had been desperate for him to talk. Now all I wanted was to run away. “You’re going to kill somebody?”
“The world will survive a Third War that starts on Friday, October 22, 1962.”
“What about me? My parents? Do we survive?”
“I cannot access that time-line. I have no certain answer for you. Please, Mr Beaumont, this politician will die of a heart attack in less than three years. He has made no great contribution to history, yet his assassination can save the world.”
“What do you want from me?” But I had already guessed.
“He will speak most eloquently at the United Nations on Friday evening. Afterwards he will have dinner with his friend, Ruth Fields. Around ten o’clock he will return to his residence at the Waldorf Towers. Not the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but the Towers. He will take the elevator to Suite 42A. He is the American ambassador to the United Nations. His name is Adlai Stevenson.”
“Stop it! Don’t say anything else.”
When he sighed, his breath was a cloud of acrid steam. “I have based my calculation of the time-line probabilities on two data points, Mr Beaumont, which I discovered in your bomb shelter. The first is the .357 Magnum revolver, located under a pallet of rice bags. I trust you know of this weapon?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“The second is the collection of magazines, located under your cot. It would seem that you take an interest in what is to come, Mr Beaumont, and that may lend you the courage you will need to divert this time-line from disaster. You should know that there is not just one future. There are an infinite number of futures in which all possibilities are expressed, an infinite number of Raymond Beaumonts.”
“Mr Cross, I can’t . . .”
“Perhaps not,” he said, “but I believe that another one of you can.”
“You don’t understand . . . ” I watched in horror as a boil swelled on the side of his face and popped, expelling an evil jet of yellow steam. “What?”
“Oh fuck.” That was the last thing he said.
He slid to the floor – or maybe he was just a body at that point. More boils formed and burst. I opened all the windows in my room and got the fan down out of the closet and still I can’t believe that the stink didn’t wake Mom up. Over the course of the next few hours, he sort of vaporized.
When it was over, there was a sticky, dark spot on the floor the size of my pillow. I moved the throw rug from one side of the room to the other to cover it up. I had nothing to prove that Cross existed but a transistor radio, a couple of batteries, an earplug, and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-three cents in change.
I might have done things differently if I hadn’t had a day to think. I can’t remember going to school on Wednesday, who I talked to, what I ate. I was feverishly trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. I had no place to go for answers, not Miss Toohey, not my parents, not the Bible or the Boy Scout Handbook, certainly not Galaxy magazine. Whatever I did had to come out of me. I watched the news with Mom that night. President Kennedy had brought our military to the highest possible state of alert. There were reports that some Russian ships had turned away from Cuba; others continued on course. Dad called and said his trip was being cut short and that he would be home the next day.
But that was too late.
I hid behind the stone wall when the school bus came on Thursday morning. Mrs Johnson honked a couple of times, and then drove on. I set out for New Canaan, carrying my book bag. In it were the radio, the batteries, the coins, the map of New York, and the .357. I had the rest of Cross’s money in my wallet.
It took more than five hours to hike to the train station. I expected to be scared, but the whole time I felt light as air. I kept thinking of what Cross had said about the future, that I was just one of millions and millions of Raymond Beaumonts. Most of them were in school, diagramming sentences and watching Miss Toohey bite her nails. I was the special one, walking into history. I was super. I caught the 2:38 train, changed in Stamford, and arrived at Grand Central just after four. I had six hours. I bought myself a hot pretzel and a Coke and tried to decide where I should go. I couldn’t just sit around the hotel lobby for all that time; I thought that would draw too much attention. I decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building. I took my time walking down Park Avenue and tried not to see all the ghosts I was about to make. In the lobby of the Empire State Building, I used Cross’s change to call home.
“Hello?” I hadn’t expected Dad to answer. I would’ve hung up except that I knew I might never speak to him again.
“Dad, this is Ray. I’m safe, don’t worry.”
“Ray, where are you?”
“I can’t talk. I’m safe but I won’t be home tonight. Don’t worry.”
“Ray!” He was frantic. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ray!”
I hung up; I had to. “I love you,” I said to the dial tone.
I could imagine the expression on Dad’s face, how he would tell Mom what I’d said. Eventually they would argue about it. He would shout; she would cry. As I rode the elevator up, I got mad at them. He shouldn’t have picked up the phone. They should’ve protected me from Cross and the future he came from. I was in the sixth grade, I shouldn’t have to have feelings like this. The observation platform was almost deserted. I walked completely around it, staring at the city stretching away from me in every direction. It was dusk; the buildings were shadows in the failing light. I didn’t feel like Ray Beaumont any more; he was my secret identity. Now I was the superhero Bomb Boy; I had the powe
r of bringing nuclear war. Wherever I cast my terrible gaze, cars melted and people burst into flame.
And I loved it.
It was dark when I came down from the Empire State Building. I had a sausage pizza and a Coke on 47th Street. While I ate, I stuck the plug into my ear and listened to the radio. I searched for the news. One announcer said the debate was still going on in the Security Council. Our ambassador was questioning Ambassador Zorin. I stayed with that station for a while, hoping to hear his voice. I knew what he looked like, of course. Adlai Stevenson had run for president a couple of times when I was just a baby. But I couldn’t remember what he sounded like. He might talk to me, ask me what I was doing in his hotel; I wanted to be ready for that.
I arrived at the Waldorf Towers around nine o’clock. I picked a plush velvet chair that had a direct view of the elevator bank and sat there for about ten minutes. Nobody seemed to care but it was hard to sit still. Finally, I got up and went to the men’s room. I took my book bag into a stall, closed the door, and got the .357 out. I aimed it at the toilet. The gun was heavy, and I could tell it would have a big kick. I probably ought to hold it with both hands. I released the safety, put it back into my book bag, and flushed.
When I came out of the bathroom, I had stopped believing that I was going to shoot anyone, that I could. But I had to find out, for Cross’s sake. If I was really meant to save the world, then I had to be in the right place at the right time. I went back to my chair, checked my watch. It was nine-twenty.
I started thinking of the one who would pull the trigger, the unlikely Ray. What would make the difference? Had he read some story in Galaxy that I had skipped? Was it a problem with Mom? Or Dad? Maybe he had spelled enigma right; maybe Cross had lived another thirty seconds in his time-line. Or maybe he was just the best that I could possibly be.
I was so tired of it all. I must have walked thirty miles since morning and I hadn’t slept well in days. The lobby was warm. People laughed and murmured. Elevator doors dinged softly. I tried to stay up to face history, but I couldn’t. I was Raymond Beaumont, but I was just a twelve-year-old kid.
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