by Andy Andrews
They did. And again, they looked back to Franklin. Still nothing.
Franklin inhaled deeply and exhaled with a big whoosh. “All right, people . . . ,” he said as if warning them not to get this wrong again. “In relation to the amount of sand with which you began this little party, how much sand is in the upper half of the hourglass at this time?”
They looked closely, and Winston said what David had been thinking. “There’s a bit less.”
“Exactly!” Franklin exulted. “I thought so. Not always having the hourglass within my own sight, it was hard for me to keep track of just how much sand was falling. And I do keep track of time, you know.” They looked at him blankly. “‘Do not squander time, for that is the stuff of which life is made’? ‘Time is money’? ‘Lost time is never found again’? ‘You may delay, but time will not’?” He looked at them expectantly. Again, there was no recognition in their faces. “Oh, come now,” he said. “Those are my quotes . . . my adages. Surely you must have heard some of—”
Franklin had not seen Winston wink at Lincoln. He cleared his throat, dropped the subject, and continued. “The point I was trying to make was that I have a particular interest in the passage of time. Always have. So I sat in the theater, worrying as you at the table laughed and joked and told stories to each other about each other. It was enough to make me come out of my skin!
“But every time I managed a good look at the hourglass, it seemed to me that you had plenty of time left.”
Winston frowned. “It was shoved down my way, you know. Right in front and a bit to the left of me. I glanced at it often as well, and several times I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Like you, I thought, We are wasting time here. But again, there always seemed to be enough sand. As if we were in no danger of it running out.” He paused and thought. “Except for that one time.”
“When?” Franklin asked. “Exactly when?”
Winston looked at the others as if he were trying to remember the specific moment. “It was after Gabriel had given us the lecture. As I recall, he had gone and we were talking about the black dog.” He looked at David. “You were discouraged—we all were, actually—and we began to discuss depression.”
The others nodded, and Churchill continued, still deep in thought. “Right at the first of that discussion, I looked at the hourglass and thought it almost empty. I turned back to you all and was looking for an opening to tell you all to forget the conversation, just get the next Traveler out here! A minute or two later, I looked back and the sand was higher in the top again.
“So I began to keep an eye on it.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Frankly, I have always considered myself a bit daft—I know I can’t see well—therefore, I never said anything.”
“You are not daft, Winston,” Franklin said. “Not in this place, you aren’t. As I said before, I now believe this to be the hourglass. Humanity’s hourglass.”
David frowned in disbelief, and Franklin said, “Why not? Why would He not put humanity’s hourglass right in front of us? From the beginning, we have been assured that humanity possessed the power of choice.”
“Think with me,” Franklin said. “When humanity behaves wisely, is it conceivable that there might be more time in humanity’s hourglass? When humanity behaves foolishly and with contempt, might humanity be on a shorter rope?”
Franklin looked from one to the other as they stood in the middle of the theater. He could tell they were buying into what he was suggesting. He pointed to the hourglass and said, “Look at it! This is the timepiece of mankind!”
Then his face went white. “Oh no,” he said to himself. “Oh . . . no.” The group huddled closer to Franklin in an effort to hear what he was saying.
“What?” Lincoln asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Look at the sand,” Franklin said intently. “Look at the sand.”
What he had seen—what they now saw—was that the sand in the top half of the hourglass, while still there, had dropped precipitously.
“We see, Franklin,” Lincoln said with urgency and concern in his voice. But they did not see. They had to be told.
“Two things very quickly now,” Franklin said with a tremble in his voice. “One: time is running out. See?” He pointed and they nodded. “Two”—Franklin looked at them—“there is still time.
“Gentlemen . . . and ladies,” he said, addressing Joan and Anne, “there is still time. If sand still remains in the hourglass of mankind, then there is still time for mankind.”
“But we used up all five chances to answer,” David said.
Lincoln jumped in. “I don’t think that matters, David,” he said. “All that with Gabriel . . . what did he say?” The president’s mind was working desperately. He cocked his head as if he had pulled from his memory exactly what he intended to find. Then he smiled. “Gabriel said, ‘I thought you believed there was value in the struggle.’ Then he said something about ‘the winds of adversity filling the sails of accomplishment.’
“We were put off by his statements, for we thought he was throwing our own words in our faces.” Lincoln narrowed his eyes and looked closely at David. “But when you said, ‘Those words are something you say to someone so that they will fight on even when everything looks hopeless,’ that was enough for the archangel, and he left. Gabriel was telling us to fight on, even though everything looked hopeless.”
Lincoln turned his eyes to Franklin and pointed to the hourglass. “You are right, my friend,” he said. “There is still time.”
CHAPTER 12
Call them together and tell them what’s going on,” David said to Franklin. “They’ll listen to you.”
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Franklin said without delay. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. There has been a development.”
Quickly, people moved to their seats. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Franklin said over the noise, “please take any seat. Just sit down, please. Time is of the essence!”
At the table, where the chairs were filled with the original occupants, Winston was already grousing to David and Lincoln. “Well, why couldn’t he have just come out and said it? Why not say, ‘Fellows, we have a little extra time on the clock. Be my guest. Take another shot at it’? Why all the drama?”
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Franklin was speaking again from the end of the table—the position most had come to think of as Gabriel’s place. “Without taking the time to go into the wherefores and why-arts,” he said, “let me get right to the point: we have more time to complete this task.”
He pointed to the hourglass. “As you can see, there is still sand in the upper half, though we have now determined its fall rate to be somewhat increased since the archangel left the room. Don’t make me explain it. Let’s just get to it.”
Franklin peered over his eyeglasses, examining the room. “Anne? Where did Anne go?”
“Here, sir,” came the voice from the young girl. She had her hand raised from the second row.
“Help me, Anne,” Franklin said. “Please, come here.” As she approached the table, Franklin said to the crowd, “We’ve been all over the room with each other by now, so we might as well forget that rule.”
He turned to Anne. “Dear? Please, if you don’t mind, settle yourself right here beside me.” He reached out and moved the hourglass to a position directly in front of her. “You are the proper height,” he said, “to monitor the level of sand. Interrupt as you please, dear child, but keep us informed as to the time we have left.”
Addressing the large audience again, Franklin said, “I believe another rule with which we can dispense is the edict against mingled conversation. With Mr. Ponder’s consent, I move we allow anyone to speak during the time we have left.” David signaled his agreement.
“Please . . . please!” Franklin said loudly as everyone began to talk at once. “We must do this in an orderly fashion. Let’s hurry, but please, one at a time!” He pointed. “President Truman.”
Truman stood fr
om the third row behind David. “Responsibility should be considered. I’ll sit down and let you take it from here.”
“Excellent,” Franklin said. Withdrawing writing utensils from his coat, he turned to David. “Mr. Ponder,” he said, “exchange places with me, if you will. I propose to record the suggestions so that we have a basis for discussion. You, sir, are the leader of this summit. Take this position, sir.”
David moved to the place that Gabriel, then Franklin, had occupied. It occurred to him to sit back down and allow someone else—anyone else—to lead the gathering. He was beyond discouraged or angry or confused. David was numb. But during his life, there was one thing the Seven Decisions had proven to him over and over again . . . He knew that victory did not always go to the smartest or the best looking. Breakthrough—physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, and in every other way—came to the person who persisted without exception.
So even though he wanted desperately to quit, to let someone else lead, to slide into the background, David squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and started over. “Okay!” he said, forcing a chuckle he did not feel. “We know what the answer is not, and we have a better understanding of the time issue, so I’d say we are in a much better spot than we were a few minutes ago.” Several laughed, and there was a smattering of applause.
“Anne,” he said, indicating the hourglass to the young girl, “where are we?”
“I don’t know the time exactly, of course,” she answered, “but the sand is falling at a steady pace.”
David thanked her, then held up his arms and swept the crowd with his hands. “Ideas? Anyone? Let’s go!”
As Travelers across the theater began to rise and speak, David glanced down at Lincoln, who gave him a nod and a proud smile. Winston waggled his eyebrows and flashed him a V sign with his fingers. It was Churchill’s trademark: the V-for-victory symbol of his fight against the Nazis. With it, he had inspired the world.
“Forgiveness,” Mother Teresa said, and there were several cries of, “Second!” in her wake.
“Let’s discuss fairness,” said Eleanor Roosevelt. She also had her supporters.
All across the theater, as fast as Franklin could write, one after the other, answers were proposed. “Never quit!” Martin Luther King said.
“Second! That’s it!” followed his words from several voices.
“Kindness!” someone said behind David.
“Tolerance!” someone called, which was followed almost immediately by “A sense of humor!”
“Charity or prudence!” called another. “Write them both down!”
They never stopped to discuss anything in great detail, and as the ideas began to slow, so did the enthusiasm they had felt at still being in the game. Somehow, all the Travelers seemed to know that their answers were only different versions of those that had already been considered—that had already been rejected.
Several times, David had looked to Anne for guidance on the amount of time they might still possess, but the tiny girl only caught his eye once, and that was to give him a confused shrug. The other glances he took only revealed her scowling concentration.
After a pause in which the theater had grown silent, Franklin looked up from his task. To David, he said, “Is that it? Should we discuss these now?”
David answered by asking the assembly, “Does anyone have anything else they would like to submit? I believe we need to—” He stopped. Without warning, Anne had reached up and grabbed his arm fiercely. Looking down, he could see that she had not removed her gaze from the hourglass and, in fact, was still looking at it.
Anne got her face a little closer to the object and pulled David down with her. Lincoln and Churchill being the closest, they also stood and leaned over the table to see what the twelve-year-old had spotted. “Look,” she whispered as she pointed to the top half of the glass.
What had startled her was obvious, and now an icy chill filled David’s very being. The sand from the top had begun to flow rapidly through the constriction into the bottom of the device. For a reason they didn’t dare stop and determine, the sand, which had been flowing at a steady rate since they had begun close observation, had now begun to surge through the aperture as if someone had enlarged the opening. “It will be over in five minutes at that rate,” Winston said.
David turned to the audience, most of whom were now standing to see what was happening. “The sand,” he said with a growing panic, “has apparently—well, it has definitely— increased its rate of fall. I don’t know why, but we need to figure this out quickly. Anyone?”
Joan left her chair and went to join Anne. She put an arm around the girl as they both monitored the hourglass. Eric, Carver, and King David hovered nearby.
“Anyone?” David pleaded again. “Does anyone have anything?”
“Should we call Gabriel?” someone said. “If we asked—”
Anne and Joan interrupted, speaking over each other in alarm. “It’s speeding up! The sand is falling faster!” they said.
“No,” David muttered. “Oh no.” But it was true. If the sand had been falling fast before, now it was blistering a pace from the top of the glass to its bottom.
Around the hourglass, all those from the table were gathered closely. Several from the theater seats had also come close. They were frozen. They were out of time. “Sixty to ninety seconds, I would estimate,” Franklin said.
“Sixty for certain,” Winston whispered. “Look. It is actually speeding up.”
Some in the theater turned around as if they couldn’t bear to see—it seemed so strange to even say it—the end of time.
“Thirty, I would imagine,” Lincoln said softly.
Tears flooded David’s eyes as the top of the glass began its final whirlpool to emptiness. Ten, David thought. He was caught somewhere between anger and despair. He didn’t know whether to curse or cry. Five . . .
“Do something!” a voice cried. “Do something!” It had come from the darkness of the theater, somewhere in the rows beyond five or six. David wheeled on the sound and actually took several steps toward the area of the offender. His fury boiled over in that instant. After all this time, he thought. All this work and someone has the gall to tell us to—”
“David!” Lincoln barked. David knew he had crossed the line. He had shown his lack of self-control to everyone, and now the president was calling him down.
But that wasn’t it at all. As David turned back, knowing now that it was all over, he met the incredulous stares of his friends. “David,” Lincoln said in an astonished voice, “it stopped.”
David frowned. “What stopped?” he asked.
“The sand,” Lincoln said, pointing to the hourglass. “It stopped.”
Slowly, as if afraid to move, David returned to the table. Benjamin Franklin had his face close to the glass, examining it very carefully. He put a finger up as if to tap it, and Winston slapped it away. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t bloody breathe on it!”
It was true. For some reason David could not determine, the sand had stopped flowing. There was definitely sand in the top of the glass, but it was motionless. Even the tiny, dry whirlpool was still intact.
Eric spoke. “I really don’t even want to bring up this possibility,” he said, “but is something stuck in it?”
No one knew.
“Exactly when,” Franklin asked Anne and Joan, “did the sand stop?”
The girls agreed. “The sand stopped immediately,” Anne said, “right after the man yelled.”
Many more people had made their way to the floor now. The whole theater, it seemed to David was crowding around the table to get a glimpse of the hourglass that had ceased to flow with only seconds remaining.
“What did he yell?” David asked. “‘Do something’? Didn’t he yell, ‘Do something’?” Heads were nodding all around, but no one had any idea why someone crying out in desperation at a critical moment would have gained a reprieve, if indeed that was actually h
appening.
David felt more than heard the movement behind him and turned as a man said his name. “Mr. Ponder?” the man said.
The man looked familiar, but David couldn’t figure out why or how. He was an older gentleman with gray, almost white hair. He had a long, drooping mustache that, while it would be out of place on another person, looked elegant on him. He wore a gray suit that showed off the color of his hair, and around his neck he wore a string tie, a black one.
As they all stared, the man said, “Do something.”
This was obviously the same man who had yelled from the audience and had now made his way to the table. David felt that same surge of anger that he had experienced moments before. Whether this man seemed familiar to him or not, this was not the time to interrupt, David thought, and was about to say so, when the man spoke again.
“We met at Gettysburg, Mr. Ponder,” the man said. “I am Joshua Chamberlain. And the answer, sir, is ‘Do something.’”
For a moment, everyone continued to stare at the new arrival. Most did not recognize his name, but David did. The anger left him immediately, and he reached out to shake Chamberlain’s hand. “Joshua,” he said. “It’s good to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. We are both a bit older than the last time we met.” Chamberlain chuckled politely.
“Joshua,” David said and gestured to the group gathered around. “Please explain what you said. I’m afraid we don’t understand. Is this . . . whatever you said . . . really the answer?”
Chamberlain pointed to the hourglass. “I believe so,” he answered, inhaled deeply, and began. “It came to me at the last second. I was up on the eighth row—in the dark—and every time you took a break, something nagged at me. It wasn’t until just a moment ago that I realized exactly what that was.
“As time was running out here, I remembered another moment in my life when time was running out. It was at Little Round Top, Gettysburg—July 2nd, 1863—when the enemy was coming up the hill for what would surely be the last time. My men—three hundred that morning, at this point shot down to eighty—were out of ammunition.
