Up, Back, and Away

by K. Velk

  The bike was too big for him. He couldn’t quite keep his toes on the pedals at the bottom of their arc if he sat on the seat, so he stood on the pedals and revolved them once, twice. The English Boy trail was steep and the bike gained speed quickly. When it got rolling fast, he jumped onto the seat and held tight to the grips. The red and yellow trees flashed by in a kaleidoscopic blur at the edge of his vision. The bike juddered over the tussocky grass. The bouncing turned Miles’ involuntary scream into a machine-gun staccato that merged oddly with the humming air around him. “Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!” He could hear himself screaming, though it was like yelling underwater.

  Just before he reached the Gate, Miles stood again on the pedals and threw his whole 125 pounds into one more revolution of the chain wheel. He squeezed the grips with all his might and shut his eyes just as hard. In the space of a heartbeat, when he judged he should have been through the Gate, and would need to bear right to make the curve, he cracked his eyelids open – just in time to see the birch trees flash past on either side of him, and to catch a split-second glimpse of a thick, dark, low-hanging branch, dead ahead.

  He tried to duck but the heavy limb caught him square in the center of his forehead. Miles felt the bike fly out from under him; he felt himself go briefly airborne, and then everything went very black and very still.

  3. Don’t Say Anything

  His next thoughts seemed a long time in coming. Where was he? Visiting someone? That seemed right. He had gone on a plane with his parents. But where? His face was wet. Had he spilled something? He was sick – no – hurt. His head hurt. He was hot.

  He felt suddenly unspeakably nervous but then, just as suddenly, his confusion cleared and he relaxed. He was home. He was in his own bed in his own room in Dallas. No one here would be angry with him about the mess. They would feel sorry for him. Consuela would bring him Sprite and Saltines. His mother would get something nice for him on her way home from work.

  The light was odd, though. The big, round stained-glass window over Miles’ bed showed Adam and Eve under the Tree of Knowledge. Miles – who had always been drawn to old things – loved that window. It had been rescued (at his insistence), from the “scrape-off,” the old house that had formerly occupied the ground where the McTavish’s architect-designed white cube now stood. But the light his window was casting now wasn’t right. It was too bright. And the air was wrong too. It was damp and heavy. Maybe the air conditioning had broken down? Miles’ confusion returned.

  He tried to lift his head but it hurt so he stopped. “I’m hurt,” he said aloud, realizing that there was someone in the room with him, and that this someone was Professor Davies.

  The Professor stood with his back to Miles, next to the model train layout in the far corner of the big room. He was leaning over the layout and moving something: a tree or a little building. Then, despite feeling so awful, Miles was angry because it was his layout and no one was supposed to touch it. He was about to yell, but then he remembered that the Professor knew the layout even better than he did. When the Professor had seen it for the first time, he had collapsed into Miles’ desk chair and asked for a drink of water. He told Miles later, at the hospital, after the Gypsy, that he knew the place that Miles had built – the made-up village that Miles had constructed all by himself over a period of five years, before he had ever even met Morgan Davies.

  The Professor had been there, he said, to the real place that the model represented.

  Miles had always called his model railroad town “Dibden.” But in the hospital, Professor Davies had said, “No. It’s Tipton. And I grew up there, a hundred years ago.”

  “I’m hurt,” Miles said again. Professor Davies turned and looked at him. He had an oxygen tube in his nose just as he’d had at the hospital.

  The Professor walked toward him, and Miles was worried that he would pull the tube out, moving around like that. Then Miles would have to put it back in, but he didn’t know how to put in oxygen tubes. He was just a kid! He was going to call out to him to stop, but before he could speak, the Professor was standing over him and looking right down into his face. Miles noticed how his bushy white eyebrows were peaked in a way that gave him a slightly devilish look. The clear plastic tube hung strangely before his snowy beard. The Professor was holding a small washcloth. He wetted a corner of it with his tongue, like a mother in a restaurant getting ready to clean a toddler’s messy face. Somewhere very close by, a dog barked. The McTavishes didn’t have a dog and Miles wondered if one had snuck into the house. He hoped so, and that his parents would let him keep it. He had wanted a dog for such a long time.

  “Listen to me,” the Professor said, as he began wiping Miles’ face. “It’s going to be all right. Help is here.” His voice was firm. His look was grave. “Do you hear me?” The Professor lowered his face further; the tube brushed Miles’ chin. “Now, remember what I told you. Are you listening? When you’re not sure what to say, Miles, don’t say anything. Repeat that.”

  Miles didn’t think that the Professor had ever said that to him before, but he repeated weakly, “don’t say anything.”

  Then the washcloth, gentle as it was, hit a spot on Miles’ forehead that sent a stabbing pain clear through his skull and right down to the center of the earth. He cried out, and in response came another voice, not the Professor this time, but the much louder voice of a boy.

  “Molly!” the voice cried, barbed with panic. “Molly, Stop! My God! Stop!”

  4. A Friend

  The sound of rapid, shallow breathing was very close to Miles’ right ear. So he was not in his room after all. Where was he?

  “Don’t say anything,” he repeated in a dazed whisper, moving his hand drunkenly over his face to brush the Professor’s oxygen tube away. He opened his eyes and his field of vision was occupied by the nose and tongue of a big beagle puppy. Then the dog’s face disappeared with a jerk and was replaced by a boy’s.

  “Hey fella, you’ve had a bit of a knock, haven’t you?” said the boy. Miles’ eyes focused with a strange slowness. He guessed the boy was not much older than himself, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He was wearing a white shirt that buttoned up the front and a black cap with a short brim. He was smiling, but his eyes were full of alarm. The boy spoke with an accent, unmistakably an English accent.

  So, it had worked. “Don’t say anything,” Miles thought again, and remembered, too late, that Professor Davies had mentioned during their hospital talk that he had also been knocked off the bike on his journey through the Gate.

  “It’s called the English Boy trail because a logging crew were cutting a new ski trail there when they found me,” he explained. “I’d apparently hit my head on a low-hanging limb, though I never saw it. I must have lost consciousness for a time. A clout on the head was a lucky thing, though, in its way. I had no explanation for the men who found me, you see, as to how an English boy on an old bicycle had landed on a raw ski trail on a Vermont mountainside in 1957 with no idea where he was, or when he was, or how he had come to be there. They assumed I had amnesia, which proved most convenient as things turned out.”

  The boy now leaning over Miles held the dog firmly by her leather collar as she whimpered and strained to lick a little more of the blood off Miles’ face.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I guess,” Miles said, not meaning it, but what other answer could he give? He struggled to get up on his elbows.

  “Whoa, whoa. Don’t move. Hang on a bit. Take a deep breath or two. You’re cut pretty bad there… Have you got a clean hankie?”

  Miles was going to say “No,” but then remembered that, strangely enough, he had a whole pile of handkerchiefs. Unfortunately he had landed on the haversack and was now laying squarely on top of them.

  “In my bag…”

  “Well, then, I guess you’re goin’ to have to sit up. I’ll help. Go real slow.” The boy took Miles by the shoulder and eased him up.

  “You aren’t goin’ to faint, are you?�
�

  The world swam into view. Miles saw he was still in the woods, but a different one from the Vermont woods he had seen when he had last dared to open his eyes. Here the leaves were summer green, and the air was not October-sharp, but heavy and humid.

  “No. No. I won’t faint. At least I don’t think I will.”

  The boy looked at him intently. “Well then, you’re not from around here are you?”

  “Uhhh…”

  Fortunately, the boy didn’t wait for an answer.

  “I’ll just run and fetch the doctor.”

  “No! Don’t go! Please!” Miles managed, just barely, not to clutch at his helper. “Let me think a minute.”

  “There, there. I warn’t goin’ to race off on you. Don’t worry. But you need the doctor, that’s plain.” Miles was blinking blood out of his eyes.

  “Let’s have your hankie. Can you get it or do you want me to?”

  “It’s in the bag, on the bottom, I think.”

  “By the way, I should say pleased to meet you and all. I’m Jack Peppermore and this is Molly, as I guess you’ve figured. Lucky I thought to bring some water today. I don’t always carry it but it was so hot.” Jack separated one hankie from the pile and splashed water on it from a canteen on his belt.

  “I’m Miles McTavish,” Miles said, gingerly touching his forehead.

  “You’re Scots, then? You don’t sound it. Should I…?” Jack held the damp hanky uncertainly.

  “Oh. No. I’ll do it.” Miles took the cloth and began carefully wiping in the vicinity of his eyebrows. It was quickly sodden with blood. Miles’ thoughts raced and tumbled.

  “The scalp bleeds like anything,” said Jack. “It’s probably not so bad, only you’ve got a bit of a flap torn loose there.”

  Miles felt fresh horror, picturing his poor torn skin.

  “I am sure it will be just fine though, once you get a little doctoring,” Jack added hurriedly in an encouraging tone. “Not that it looks too bad, mind. Still, I don’t think that one hankie’s goin’ to be enough. Maybe it would be better if we tied one or two around your head, to bind it like. You want me to?”

  “Yes. I guess. I think that sounds like a good idea, and then maybe if I could…” A terrifying thought seized Miles.

  “Where’s my bike?” He tried to hop up but was off balance and tumbled back down on his side.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” Jack put a gently restraining hand on Miles’ arm. “It’s right there, see?”

  The black bike was laying on its side about ten feet away. The rear wheel was turning very slowly.

  “Is the bag still on the front?” Miles asked with naked panic.

  Jack went and got the bike. The front tire was flat and the rim bent, but the little bag was still hanging on the handlebars with the straps securely closed. Miles was overcome with relief.

  “I…I..,” he stammered, “it’s all I’ve got. I would never be able to get home without it.” He bit his tongue. Fortunately, Jack didn’t ask a follow up question. Instead, he wandered in the direction from which Miles had apparently come and kicked a rock that was sticking up out of the ground.

  “I think your front wheel hit that stone – and hard too. You must’ve have been going fast, somehow…” Jack regarded the thick woods with a puzzled expression. Clearly it was not a place where a cyclist could race through. “There’s a bunch of queer old rocks stickin’ up here and there in this bit o’ woods,” he said. “I guess it’s lucky it was just the wheel got bent.”

  “Well, and my head,” Miles couldn’t resist adding. He thought of the drama this injury would have created at home and worried for a moment that he would start to cry. He did not want to cry in front of this boy.

  “I’ll bet that you hit that branch there.” Jack leaned the bike carefully against a tree and pointed at the culprit. The branch extended straight out from an enormous, dark tree, at just about head height for a boy on a bicycle.

  Molly beat Jack to the spot where Miles’ flat cap was lying. She took it in her teeth and was ready to race off with it, but let go at a sharp word from Jack. He picked it up and shook off some pine needles.

  “Oh, right. I saw that branch – but too late.”

  Miles surveyed the scene, looking for the pair of oak trees he’d been told to expect and a well-worn footpath between them. Not there. He saw only one oak tree, the sinister, gnarled thing with the bludgeoning limb. He noticed a mossy stump, big as a dining room table, across from the surviving oak. Someone had cut the other one down, that was clear. It had been cut some time ago and the footpath was lost. What could that mean for getting home?

  He felt his heart begin to hammer but he took a deep breath and tamped down his panic. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to take this moment by moment, one crisis at a time.

  Jack was also looking up and down the scene. “Funny,” he said. “I’ve been through here before and never noticed, but it does look like a bit of an old path here – maybe a deer track.” Miles saw it too, a faint, narrow track, just a razor line really, that passed underneath the surviving oak tree.

  “It’s probably plain enough in winter,” Jack continued, “when the bracken dies back and the leaves are down. Still, it’s a funny place to try and ride a bike.”

  “I, I’m lost,” Miles managed.

  “I had more or less figured that,” Jack said. “But what’re we jawbonin’ about? Let’s tend to that head of yours.” Jack knelt beside his patient and tied a folded handkerchief very carefully at the back of Miles’ head. The pain was only just bearable. If his parents or Consuela had been present, Miles was sure he would be wailing like a siren. He thought they might be yelling too – there was so much blood, and a flap, an actual flap of skin. And what about his brain? What about his BRAIN? Wasn’t this what they called “traumatic brain injury?” He wished desperately for a moment that Consuela and his parents were there and the thought almost broke him. Almost, but not quite.

  The bandaging treatment was repeated with another handkerchief. A third was used, at Jack’s suggestion, to wipe the blood that had spread over Miles’ face and neck. After the final wiping, Jack studied Miles with a doubtful expression.

  “Are you sure that you wouldn’t want me just to run and fetch the doctor? It wouldn’t take but two shakes.”

  “No, no. Please.”

  “Well, if you say so. But don’t you go dyin’ on me. However would I explain a dead stranger in these woods, and me just happenin’ along? Some would blame me, certain.”

  “No. I’ll be OK. I won’t die.” What a bizarre thing to be saying! In fact, Miles wasn’t altogether convinced that he wasn’t about to die, but he was not the least bit tempted to wait alone in these eerie and perilous woods for help to be brought to him.

  “You can lean on the bike if it helps,” Jack said, pulling Miles to his feet. “You couldn’t ride it with that buckety wheel, even if you was fit for riding, but it’ll push all right. Molly! Come!”

  The boys stumbled about in the thick woods for a short distance before gaining the cart track where Jack and Molly had been walking.

  “So where are you from?” Jack asked. “You’re a Yank, aren’t you?”

  Jack took hold of Miles’ upper arm with a strong grip as they stepped out onto the track. Molly crossed back and forth in front of them, continuing her mad sniffing.

  “No. I’m from Texas.”

  “Texas? Well, you are a long way from home.”

  “Yes”

  “And then, you’re a Yank.”

  “Oh. I thought you meant ‘Yankee.’ In America that’s people from the north. Texans aren’t Yankees.”

  “Well, in England all Americans are Yanks as far as we’re concerned. Ma said there was lots of ‘em around here during the war. Not many since then, though. My aunt told me there was some couple in a big motorcar came through Tipton a few years back. They wrote a book about motor touring in England meant for other Americans, she said, but I ain’t seen any
around myself. Fact is I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with a Yank – til just this minute.”

  So Miles was near Tipton. He knew Tipton of course, from his model railroad and from the study of it he had made on Google after his hospital meeting with Professor Davies. He had a fair idea of where he was, in the southwest of England, not far from the Welsh border. But what was the date in this place? When was “now” now?

  “How old are you?” Jack asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Kinda little for fifteen, aren’t you?”

  Miles didn’t answer. What was there to say?

  “Not meaning any offense, I’m sure,” Jack added. “Sometimes I talk before I think. I’m seventeen and, as I am sure my Ma would say, I ought to know better. Where are your people?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your mother and father and brothers and sisters and such.”

  “Uhmm. My parents are gone. Not living, I mean.” This statement had the advantage of being true at the moment. Still, Miles felt very strange saying it. “I don’t have any brothers and sisters. It’s only me.”

  “Oh. Condolences. Did your dad die in the war? Mine did.”

  “Which war?” Miles asked.

  Jack stopped in his tracks. “Whatever do you mean? The Great War, a’ course.”

  “World War One?”

  “Eh?”

  “The First World War?”

  “I mean the Great War,” Jack said talking slowly and loudly, as though he were addressing someone very deaf or very stupid. “The 1914 to 1918 war, with Germany?”

  “Oh. Right,” Miles said. “I was confused. I’m having trouble thinking clearly.” Miles realized he might also find it convenient in the hours and days ahead to have suffered a head wound.