Time Twisters

by RABE, JEAN

  Now I knew I was in love—but I’d better not introduce her to Bill Wandsworth.

  Speaking of Bill, I had a call from him at work the day after my talk with Axel Gruber. “Okay, Justin,” he said. “I’m licked. I’m ready to pay off that bet. I was sure I had a reference to ‘shrink’ in one of my pulps, but damned if I can find it. Meet me at Liam’s and I’ll pay you.”

  When he handed over the ten that evening, I pondered: was this the same ten I gave him when I thought I’d lost the bet, which meant I’d broken even? Or had I now never given him that ten, which meant I was ten dollars ahead? Another time travel paradox.

  A BETTER PLACE

  Linda P. Baker

  “You’re not really stupid, you know?” When Old Jerry said it, I was looking at the lines and fractures of skin that surrounded his eyes. Gram had an old bowl that she said had belonged to her grandma, and it had lines like that in it. She called it crazed, the lines that branches and connected, then branched again. I had always liked to sit and look at it, to try to follow one of those jaggedy lines to its end. But even when I used my fingers to help my eyes along, I never seemed to find an end.

  Old Jerry turned his blue gaze on me. “You know?” he repeated, forcing me to think about what he’d said, instead of thinking about his crazed face.

  “I guess,” I said, turning my face to the sky. It was a rare warm, almost windless day, and I could almost see the sun through the clouds. It looked blue, like Old Jerry’s eyes. “Gram always said I caught to things quick. It just don’t seem to work the same here.”

  “It works just the same here, and don’t you let nobody fool you into thinking different.”

  Gnash was gone the day I found Old Jerry lying in the street, dying.

  The old man was in the gutter, so still and blue at first I thought he was dead. Dead ones were nothing unusual, but it was better not to go near them. Don’t go near the dead ones. All kinds of things could come from the dead ones, bugs and disease and worst of all, dreams where the dead one’s face chases you through a fog. But then Old Jerry groaned.

  For a stupid, helpless moment, I stood looking down at the old man. Gnash wouldn’t like it if I helped the old man, but then I remembered Old Jerry telling me I wasn’t stupid.

  Good thing Gnash was gone, then. Not gone on one of his mads, but gone to take care of some “bizness.” When he said “biz-z-zness” with that particular whirr in his voice, it meant I didn’t want to know what kind of business. And even if I had been bold enough to ask, all it would have got me was a slapping.

  Old Jerry was dirty and cold, and when I turned him over, his eyes rolled back up his head. But he knew my name. He whispered it as I tried to get him up. He was one of the few who did know my name. Most just called me “girl,” or “Gnash’s girl.” I never thought of myself as Gnash’s. But it didn’t hurt for others to think I was. He was sneaky and mean and he knew a lot of people’s secrets. He got by, and so long as people thought I was Gnash’s girl, I got by right alongside him.

  Old Jerry roused enough to help me get him on his feet. Even with him helping, I didn’t have the strength to get him up the stairs to our place on the third floor. I got tired of walking the stairs, but only a crazy would choose a ground-level squat. Too easy to break into. Too easy to wake up in the dark of night with someone sitting on your chest, pressing a bottle dagger to your throat.

  A few steps at a time, propping Old Jerry on the wall when he started to slide down, I got him into the first room on the bottom floor. It had once been many rooms, but now was just a big one with the bones showing. The walls had long been knocked down and burned for heat, the windows broken out for knives. The bars over the windows were still there, rusted over but still straight. The cloth on the floor was long gone, too, also burned, so that I had to let the old man slide down the wall and slump over on cold, hard concrete.

  His coat, an old leather thing so worn that the filling showed through, was only on one arm. After a minute of struggling with him, I decided it would be easier to take it off than to get it all the way on, so I rolled him and shoved and pulled until it came loose. He was wearing a couple of old T-shirts beneath, the writing so faded on the top one I couldn’t tell what it had once said. His arms were thinner than mine and soft, like rubbery sticks poking out of the thin black cotton. I wrapped the coat around him.

  I risked leaving him alone long enough to run upstairs for a blanket and a tin can of water.

  The old man had rolled over on his back by the time I got back to him. He clutched the old coat across his chest, and his breathing was labored and wet sounding. My boots grated on the floor as I moved, and the sound woke him. His eyes were blue, like my gram’s, like the summer sky. I hadn’t seen the sky blue much; it was mostly gray, or fuzzy white with rain, or pitch black at night.

  He smiled at me as I shucked off my jacket and made a pillow of it for him. The shirt I had on underneath was a frilly thing with long ruffled sleeves, and it didn’t keep out much of the cold.

  I shivered as I helped him raise his head to take a couple of sips of water, but then he choked and fell back coughing. The sound was gurgly, and I realized what was wrong with him. He had the water sickness, Gram called it “new-something.” I couldn’t remember the word, just that Granpa Summerlin had died of it the year I turned twelve. Twasn’t nothing to be done for it, although Gram said there used to be meds for it.

  When he’d stopped coughing, Old Jerry reached out and caught my hand. His grip was stronger than it should have been for someone who sounded like he had mud in his chest. His voice was as spindly as his arms. “Came to . . . say . . . goodbye,” he gasped, then let go of my hand and started coughing again.

  “Shh-h-h-h . . .” I dipped the ruffled end of my sleeve in the water and wiped off the worst of the dirt on his forehead and cheeks and the spittle that had bubbled up on his lips. “Sh-h-h . . . don’t talk so. You just need a rest out of the wind.”

  He paused in his coughing long enough to look at me with one of those piercing old-person expressions. The kind they use to tell you just how stupid a thing you just said was. “Want you to have my treasure,” he said, his voice suddenly plain as could be. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  “Treasure, girl, is in here,” Old Jerry tapped his head, “or here,” and then his heart.

  We were sitting on a broken piece of concrete that had once been shaped like a long chair, looking at the street before us, a river of shiny, wet black that spilled off in four directions. A mangy-looking dog was sniffing through a pile of rubble across the way. I wondered how he’d managed to live this long without being eaten.

  “There’s those who think treasure’s something to put in your pocket. A shiny trinket, or a sharp knife. But you know that ain’t right.”

  Most of Old Jerry’s talk was cryptic, filled with things long past, things long forgotten. Things he didn’t remember that his parents or his grandparents had told him. But he understood the things I knew, about the land and wind and the mountains. Said he’d come down himself, after his wife died. Like me, he hadn’t wanted to live up there alone. He understood when I said I couldn’t bear to watch the trees die. So I’d come down out of the mountains, into the city, to see if I could find a better place.

  I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm while he slept. He didn’t sleep easy. He kept waking himself up, coughing and mumbling words that I couldn’t understand. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t know me, or even where he was.

  I didn’t know much about him, except that he was one of the ones who didn’t put down a bedroll in any one spot for long. He kept moving from place to place, drifting, searching. I sorta understood it, but then I didn’t. I’d come down out of the mountains searching, but from the tiny sliver of the world I’d seen, one place was much like the other, gray and dying. Some places were going slowly, some quietly, some with lots of shouting and bleeding, but all were dying, just the same. I wasn’t happy here, just gl
ad to be in a place where the dying was quieter.

  I regretted now that I’d never asked him what he was searching for. “One more story,” I whispered to him and stroked his hot forehead. It was what I used to say to my Gram, when she was trying to get me to settle and go to bed. “Just one more story and then you can sleep.”

  As the light outside turned the medium gray of afternoon, he seemed weaker. His coughing was harder, but it seemed to move him less, like his body was letting go of all that breathing and living stuff. His voice grew weedy, but easier to understand.

  I could pick out words in the mumblings. “Green” and “the” and “scorpion.” My name. And “treasure.” Still he mumbled about his treasure. I supposed that what passed for treasure down under wouldn’t be much. Dry boots. A tin of fish, maybe. Socks without holes.

  I kept washing his face with my sleeve, thinking how mad Gnash would be if he caught me using precious rainwater for a dying old man. I wondered if I dared use a stick of our wood to start a fire.

  There was a decrepit mattress, mostly rusty innards and bits of fluffy guts, in the room across the way. A couple of squatters had slept over there for a couple of nights before Gnash discovered them. If I brought it over and propped it against the window, it’d keep out the worst of the wind. But it would have also shut out the light. Funny, I’d never minded dark in the mountains, but I hated the stifling black of the city. Especially inside.

  As the afternoon wore on, I did finally rip a pile of the stuffing out of the mattress and make another quick run upstairs for a light off our firestove. The stuff burned with a horrible smell, a cross between burning hair and melting plastic, but it warmed me through to the bone. Old Jerry paused in his rambling and coughing and turned toward it.

  We were sitting by the pond, in a place that still bore a sign that had once said City Park. All but a piece of the y and the r were gone, long ago salvaged to make someone a knife or a spear tip. The water in the pond was a dull green, the same as the sunlight, and skimmed over with an oily, fuzzy skin.

  I watched Old Jerry’s hands sketch a story in the air. His fingers were long and pointed at the ends, except for the one that was missing after the second knuckle. The backs were as lined and cracked as his face, and one had a deep scar running along the back of it up into his sleeve. I imagined it crawling up his arm, coming out on his neck, snaking up his cheek to join the deep crater at the corner of his eye.

  “You must be very old.” The words popped out, interrupting his story of an adventure he’d had over on the carved mountain.

  He’d glared at me, then grinned, showing a gap where a tooth was missing, and said “Big girl, you have no idea.” He’d called me “big girl” for a long time, until I told him my name, because I towered over him. I towered over most people, even Gnash, who seemed bigger because of the way he carried himself.

  Now I said it to Old Jerry again, smoothing my fingers over his forehead. His skin felt slack, like the man inside had melted down. “You must be very old.”

  “What the hell are you doing?!”

  I jumped, knocking over the last of the water. I’d been listening for Gnash, ever since the light started to die. I’d thought I would hear him starting up the stairs and have time to stomp the fire, go out into the hallway and explain before he saw Old Jerry.

  I scrambled to my feet, clumsy as I always was around Gnash. “It’s Old Jerry. He’s sick.”

  Gnash pushed past me and killed my little fire with one stomp of his big boots. “You stupid bitch! I could see that fire for two blocks. You trying to get killed?”

  I didn’t see any way that a fire no bigger than a cat food tin could be seen out the window, but I didn’t argue. I dropped my gaze.

  Gnash was a big bully. I’d known that only two minutes after meeting him, but so long as I was careful what I said, he didn’t hit me.

  “I found him outside. He’s real sick. I think he’s dying.” I took a quick breath, then held it to keep myself from babbling more. Gnash didn’t like it when I babbled.

  Gnash gave Old Jerry a rough shove with the toe of his boot, leaving a smear of ash across the edge of the blanket. “What’d you bring him in here for? You’re just gonna have to drag him out again. He’ll smell up the whole place, and the rats’ll come out for sure.”

  He reached down to grab Old Jerry by the collar and the coat came loose in his hand. Gnash tossed it aside and tried to tug the blanket off Old Jerry, but it wouldn’t come loose. Gnash shoved at him. “Stupid, using a blanket on a sick old coot. He might have something.”

  “He’s got wet lungs. You can’t catch it.”

  This made Gnash braver, and he shoved Old Jerry onto his back and tried to yank the blanket free, but the old man had twisted it up in his gnarled old hands, and he didn’t let go easily.

  “Don’t!” I protested before I thought.

  Gnash wheeled on me, his face red and his teeth bared. Any minute now, he’d be doing the thing that got him his name, gnashing his teeth in anger. Fists were never too far behind the grinding teeth.

  I didn’t like that he was between me and the door. “Stupid bitch! Why not? It’s my blanket. Who said you could bring anybody in here anyway? I never told you that you could.” He kicked the empty can, exposing the telltale spot of wet on the concrete. His face got even redder. “You wasted water on him?!”

  His voice was like a thunderclap. Worse than a thunderclap, because I knew thunder. This I didn’t know how to handle. He’d taught me lots of things about surviving in the bricks, but not what to do to stop the yelling.

  He took a step forward and I took one backward. I was taller than he, but when he was like this, I felt like I was three feet tall. I felt like he was burning up all the air in the room, sucking all the blood out of my muscles. He slapped me, open handed. If it had been his fist, my cheekbone would have split instead of just the skin over it. I fell, landing hard on my ass, but I didn’t make a sound.

  Gnash liked it better when he got a sound out of a blow. He was raising his fist when Old Jerry coughed, a terrible one that sounded like his lungs must be coming up, and he mumbled, “Treasure.”

  Gnash froze.

  Shamed to the bone for what I was doing, I leaped at an excuse that would keep me from a beating. “That’s why I brought him in. He kept saying something about treasure. I knew you’d want to talk to him. I knew . . .” My voice ran down as I scrambled to figure out what I knew. What I could convince Gnash that I knew. “He was in the street outside. I was afraid somebody’d come along and hear him before you got back.”

  And then I ran out of “I knews” and of breath, and I sat there, gasping, waiting to see if my excuse was good enough. A trickle of blood dripped off my jaw and onto my shirt. I felt it, a blossom of warmth against my chest.

  Gnash turned slowly to Old Jerry. Went to one knee and grabbed the old man by his shoulder. Shook him roughly and growled at him. “Treasure. What treasure, old man?”

  “Don’t.” And when Gnash glared at me again, “You’ll make him cough. He can’t talk when he’s coughing.” But I was too late.

  Old Jerry twitched as if he’d been hit in the gut and coughed so hard that snot and blood spewed out of his mouth. Gnash cursed and fell back onto his ass. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so horrified by the sounds Old Jerry was making, like bricks crashing against each other but with a sucking wet sound added.

  I crawled to him and struggled to turn him onto his side.

  The rest of the slime burbled out of Old Jerry’s mouth onto the jacket under his face. My jacket. The whole mass was mostly blood shot through with streaks of yellow-green. I swallowed. I’d never be able to wear that again. It made my stomach churn to touch him and risk getting some of that slime on me. Since my jacket was ruined anyway, I teased one of the sleeves from under his chin and used it to wipe his face.

  He mumbled something but the words were garbled.

  “Ask him about the treasure,” Gnash said, poki
ng me in the back.

  I wanted to tell him to ask himself, but I didn’t want another slap. “Jerry, hey . . . Old man . . .” My shirt sleeve was barely damp now, but still cool. I patted his fevered face with it, careful not to get near his mouth. I didn’t want any of that slime on me, any more than Gnash did. “Talk to me.”

  “Ask him,” Gnash hissed.

  Old Jerry opened his eyes. For a moment, I thought he was going to just come right out of his stupor and start talking. His gaze went to the cut on my face, or at least, I imagined it did. I raised my hand up to it, trying to cover the blood.

  “Do you think there’s a better place?”

  We were at my favorite place in the city, at the edge of a field. It used to be called a “green,” according to Old Jerry. The only green in the city now was the occasional weed poking up through the trash, and even then, it was more a sickly yellowish green.

  “A better place than what, girl?”

  I waved my hand all around us. “Than this. Gram said she was sure there a better place. That’s why she told me to come down. But . . . I don’t think this was what she meant.”

  Facing the green was a building with all its rooms showing. Its wall had fallen into a heap at its feet, leaving all the rooms inside showing. It looked like a bunch of little boxes, stacked one on top of the other. I liked imagining that each box had its own color, and furniture and pictures on the wall, just like the pictures in Gram’s books.

  In our box, Gram and I sat in a room painted the color of Old Jerry’s eyes. Gram was clacking her knitting needles together, making a sweater with all the colors of the rainbow. I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by books. I loved books.

  We’d had a few books, and I’d brought my two favorites with me when I came down. But Gnash had burned them two hard, cold months ago last winter. I’d grieved to see them go, but Gnash was right. Better warm without books than dead with them. I could recite them by rote, but it wasn’t the same as it was to holding the pages between my fingers, as smelling the papery, dusty scent.