“Oh, I don’t know,” said her father as he stirred yet more sugar into his coffee. “If you want my opinion, I don’t think I was a very good one. Look at all the trouble I caused.”
“Well, you made one good thing happen,” said Lucy’s mother. She reached across the table and squeezed Oscar’s hand. “You found Oscar!”
The story Lucy’s mother and father concocted for Aunt Helen, Uncle Byron, and Sheriff Jensen later that morning was an elaborate one. Lucy was barely able to follow the string of glib lies her parents invented. Oscar was introduced to everyone as a distant cousin — a descendent of the original Oscar Martin who had disappeared in 1914. According to Lucy’s father, the original Oscar hadn’t died. He had gone to Texas and later started a family. Her father claimed to have gone down to Texas to meet the modern-day Oscar, an orphan who was the last surviving descendent of the original Oscar. As Lucy’s father was traveling to Texas, the modern-day Oscar had somehow found his way up to Iowa. Lucy’s mother described how Oscar had pretended to be Earl Norby, then convinced Lucy that she should run away to Texas to find her father.
Lucy’s personal opinion was that the story was a lot more complicated and even less believable than what had really happened. All the same, it seemed to satisfy Aunt Helen, who at last put an end to Sheriff Jensen’s probing questions by putting her arm around Oscar and saying, “Just think if Lavonne could be here now! How happy she’d be to see her brother’s grandson, even if all her talk about magic did turn out to be nonsense!”
The day after they came home was a Saturday. It was also a very important day in the town of Martin, for it was Earl Norby’s birthday. “The church is having a party,” Aunt Helen told them. “The whole town will show up. Maybe you folks will want to come, too.”
They drove to the party in the station wagon, and Oscar marveled at their automobile as it rolled down the highway into town. “It’s so quiet — like a magic carpet,” he said. He poked his head out the window to watch the buildings on Main Street drift by. “Sunderlund’s Store used to be there!” he said, pointing to a vacant lot with a couple of tractors in it. “And the livery was there,” he added, pointing to the Prairie Cafe. “This hasn’t changed,” he said as they pulled up outside the church.
Oscar had come down to breakfast dressed in his clothes from 1914, but they had found him something more modern so as not to attract attention at the birthday party. All the same, whispers rippled through the crowd gathered at the picnic tables set up in the yard behind the church. Yet Oscar didn’t seem to notice that everyone was gawking. His eyes were searching for someone. “Look! There’s Earl!” he said, moving forward.
“Over here, Jean!” called Aunt Helen, waving to them from a table laden with food.
So Lucy and her parents went one way, and Oscar went the other, and pretty soon the party went back to being a party. Almost everybody knew Lucy’s father, and he kept turning to her mother to introduce her to yet another childhood friend. Lucy watched them. Her mother was laughing as her father told a funny story to someone. She moved closer to him and he put his arm around her. It’s another happy ending, thought Lucy. Her father was home, and for the first time, it seemed to her that her family might really belong in The Brick after all.
She looked around for Oscar, finding him where he had been sitting ever since they arrived, on a lawn chair next to Earl Norby. Oscar leaned forward. Lucy was too far away to hear what he said. Whatever it was, it made Earl throw back his head and laugh.
Oscar would go home, too, thought Lucy. He would travel back through time to be friends with Earl again. He would find his family, and his story would have a happy ending, too.
Just then a voice spoke close to her ear. “Seems your cousin has a pal.”
Lucy looked around and saw Sheriff Jensen. “Cousin?” she said in surprise. Then she remembered that as far as Sheriff Jensen knew, Oscar was her distant cousin. She followed his gaze across the church lawn to where Earl was tracing a curve in the air with his cane, illustrating a story he was telling. Oscar interrupted Earl, giving him a friendly shove, and they both broke into laughter.
“You’d think they were old friends,” said Sheriff Jensen. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” Lucy murmured.
That night, when Lucy was trying to go to sleep, thoughts about time crept into her mind again.
“Talking like old friends,” Sheriff Jensen had said at the picnic. Well, of course, they were old friends, Oscar and Earl — torn apart when they were teenagers. But if Oscar went back to his own time, their friendship wouldn’t end abruptly. They would grow up together. Lucy could imagine them graduating from high school. Maybe Oscar would be the best man at Earl’s wedding. Or maybe they would quarrel about something and go their separate ways. There was no way to tell. The only sure thing was that their future would be different.
But in this case, the future was already the past. And that was the problem.
It took some concentrating to figure it out. By writing in The Book of Story Beginnings, Oscar had set in motion a long chain of events that began with his own disappearance. But just suppose Oscar were to go back to a time before he had written his story beginnings. Having come back to the past from the future, Oscar would know not to write them. As a result, he wouldn’t disappear. Aunt Lavonne wouldn’t spend her entire life trying to find out what had happened to him. And I wouldn’t even think of looking for The Book of Story Beginnings, thought Lucy. It wouldn’t even be in the smokehouse for me to find.
One after another, Lucy thought of all the things that would never happen if Oscar went back in time. It was as if she were adding china cups to a precariously tall stack; suddenly, she thought of something that sent all the cups crashing. If Oscar went back in time and warned himself not to write in The Book of Story Beginnings, then he wouldn’t be here now. But if he wasn’t here now, how could he go back in time to warn himself?
Lucy got out of bed. Pushing open the door to the hall, she listened for a moment to the murmur of voices from her parents’ room. Then she went to Oscar’s room. His door was closed. He had been very quiet after supper, going up to bed even before it was dark outside. But there was a slit of light under the door. Lucy hesitated, then knocked.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Can I come in?”
Oscar opened the door. His desk lamp was turned on, and Lucy saw his composition books in a neat pile within its circle of light. One of the books was open.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to write.” Oscar crossed the room to the chair. He threw his leg over it and sat backward, facing Lucy. He rested his arms and his chin on the back of the chair.
Lucy sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been thinking about time,” she said. She described her thoughts about how everything had already happened one way, and how it would have to happen another way when he went home. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she concluded.
“You’re right,” said Oscar when she was finished. “It doesn’t make any sense. And I’m not going home.”
“What?” Lucy stared at him.
“I thought of everything you just said, too. Then I talked to your father.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was pretty sure the traveling talisman could send me home.”
“Then you should go!” said Lucy.
“I can’t.” Oscar’s voice was firm.
“But why?”
“Because I don’t know what will happen if I do!” Oscar raised his head and looked past Lucy, into the dark corner behind her. “When I was talking to Earl today, he told me how he met his wife at college. I never thought Earl would go to college. He and I were going to travel after high school. We talked about going to Mexico or Canada, even Europe maybe. Well, what if I went back and we did that? What if Earl never went to college? What if he never met his wife?”
Oscar gave a sigh. “Don’t you see? If one
thing changes, other things change, too. Who knows? Maybe you would never have been born if I went back in time.”
“Of course I’d be born!”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m here! I was born,” said Lucy, scowling. It was frustrating to have to defend something as obvious as her own existence, and even more frustrating to feel that her defense might not be adequate.
“The point is that you might not be. It depends on how time works, which is something nobody knows for sure. Your father says that some people — scholars, I guess — think only the present is real. The past and the future don’t even exist. That isn’t much help, as far as I can tell. And some people say that the future and the present are made up of a lot of different worlds. Each world comes out of a different set of circumstances that might have happened in the past. So, depending on the circumstances, you might exist in one or more worlds —”
“But what does all that mean?” Lucy interrupted.
“It means that nobody knows for sure what will happen if somebody goes back in time,” said Oscar. “Anyway, that’s why I’m not going back.”
“But that’s not right!” Lucy practically spat the words out. How could Oscar sit there so calmly and say something so wrong? She thought of what he had said about stories needing to end happily. It was as if Oscar were being cheated. “It isn’t fair. I’ll talk to my father,” she told him.
“No! I’ve already talked to him. And it’s not his decision. It’s mine.” Oscar’s desk chair was the kind that swiveled, and he turned it now so that his back was to her. “I want to write in my journal,” he said without looking around, and Lucy knew he wanted her to go.
But it isn’t fair, she thought. Hot tears burned in her eyes as she closed Oscar’s door behind her. “It isn’t fair,” she whispered. “He’s got to go home.”
One morning at breakfast, a few weeks after the birthday party, Lucy’s father made an announcement. “I’m going to take a teaching position at the community college this fall.”
“I thought you didn’t want to teach chemistry anymore,” said Lucy.
“Well, it’s only two classes in chemistry, and I’m much more excited about the other class I’ll be teaching. It’s on the history of science — the history of alchemy, actually. That book of Lavonne’s is going to form the basis of my lectures,” said her father. “Besides, we’ll need the extra money. Your mother has decided she’s going to start writing again.”
“I want to try writing some short stories,” said Lucy’s mother.
“Really?” said Oscar, looking up from the cereal box he had been reading.
Lucy saw her parents glance at each other. Oscar hadn’t talked much since the day of Earl’s birthday party. This was the first time he had expressed interest in something.
“I know you like to write, Oscar,” said Lucy’s mother, smiling at him. “Maybe we can share ideas.”
Ideas for stories, thought Lucy. As if they hadn’t already had enough stories for a lifetime. She thought of The Book of Story Beginnings. It was up in the attic now. “Locked up safe and sound,” her father had promised her mother, though Lucy suspected that he took it out for examination every once in a while. He was curious about what he called its “unique metaphysical properties.”
Lucy wondered if Oscar was thinking about The Book of Story Beginnings. She knew he wouldn’t tell her even if she were to ask. Along with not talking to her parents much, he had stopped talking to her as well. In fact, she hardly ever saw him these days. Sometimes he shut himself up in his room. But on most days, he left the house after breakfast and didn’t come back until supper. Where he went he didn’t say, and when Lucy dared to ask, he said, “Just around.” He seemed to be a different sort of person now. He was still polite — Oscar was always polite — but it felt like nothing more than good manners. He had become closed off, secretive with his thoughts.
Sometimes Lucy thought she knew what Oscar was thinking and feeling. “He’s sad,” she told her father. “He misses his family. How can he bear to be here with us?”
“Give him time,” said her father.
Because she had nothing else to do but wait for summer to end and school to begin, Lucy began to play her violin. She practiced each day in the music parlor, spending more time and effort than she ever had before. The sonata she was learning was difficult, full of scales that went up and up like the stairs in the Statue of Liberty, and complicated by so many trills there didn’t seem to be enough room for her fingers to play them. One afternoon she grew frustrated. Halfway through the sonata, her fingers slipped into an easy piece she hadn’t played in ages, a fiddle tune. She played it again, it sounded so pretty. It’s just the sort of thing Ma would play, she thought.
Then she tried to work out the melody of “Billy Boy,” playing it over and over, experimenting with little trills, sliding her fingers gypsy-style up and down the strings, making the violin “sing like a soprano,” which was what her old teacher always used to say, until at last the violin really was singing, and Lucy felt a rush of pleasure like gold showering down on her.
Suddenly, a movement from the doorway made her stop. Her violin bow scraped into a sour note.
It was Oscar.
Lucy didn’t know what to say. “This is your ma’s violin,” she said at last, holding it out to him.
“I see,” said Oscar, but he didn’t move to take the violin.
It hurt not knowing what Oscar was thinking, like having him close a door, leaving her outside. “You play well,” he said. He turned and went out the front door. Lucy watched him from the window as he crossed the lawn and disappeared down the road to town.
That night Oscar didn’t come home for supper.
“Ray called,” said Lucy’s father as they sat down at the kitchen table. “He took Oscar around in the patrol car this afternoon. Oscar’s having supper over at Ray’s house tonight.”
“Sheriff Jensen!” Lucy said in astonishment.
“That’s right.”
“What’s he doing with him?”
“Having fun, I suppose,” said her father. “Oscar and Ray have kind of hit it off.”
“Ray’s been very kind,” said her mother. “It’s been a hard adjustment for Oscar. I’m sure he’ll make friends at school, but right now, he must feel pretty alone.”
Alone! If Oscar felt alone it was because he hadn’t done anything but be alone. I’m alone, thought Lucy. I know what it’s like to be alone. It stung her to learn that Oscar had sought company elsewhere.
After supper she waited for him on the front porch. She pretended to read a book at first. Then the sun sank in the sky and it grew dark, and she gave up pretending. The mosquitoes began to attack, and she swatted at them for a while, feeling sorry for herself and angry at the mosquitoes, or angry at something less easy to target than a mosquito. At last she went inside and got the bug spray.
When she came back, Sheriff Jensen’s car was pulling away. Oscar waved goodbye, his tall form caught for a moment in Sheriff Jensen’s headlights. He looked oddly modern in a T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs.
Lucy sat down on the steps and pumped repellent into her hand, slapping it on her arms and legs. She didn’t look up as Oscar came toward her.
“That smells awful,” he commented. “What is it?”
“It keeps mosquitoes away.”
“That and all your friends. Ma used to make us use citronella. I thought that smelled bad.” Oscar took the bottle and sat down.
“That’s probably enough,” Lucy said finally. The sight of Oscar splashing half a bottle of bug spray on his arms made her feel braver than usual, and she dared to ask a question. “What were you doing with Sheriff Jensen?” She didn’t mean for her question to sound like an accusation, but somehow it did.
Oscar didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know,” he said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “He’s a funny guy. I guess he makes me think of my pa.”
“
Your pa!”
“Well, sure. My pa was really funny sometimes. We’d go off and do things together, like fishing — even working in the barn, or hard jobs like chopping ice. He was always making me laugh — well, not always, I guess. Sometimes he made me madder than a hornet. But when we did have a good time . . .” Oscar paused, looking out into space. “Ray just makes me laugh,” he added. “A fellow needs to laugh — that’s all.”
Of course! Feeling so alone and sad, Oscar needed to laugh. Lucy’s heart melted a little. “Do you — do you miss your ma and pa?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Oscar.
Lucy waited for him to say more. She watched the tiny lights of the fireflies. They moved questioningly through the darkness, as if they were making a map of the night air.
“Do you ever think about them, Lucy?” said Oscar.
“Who?” Lucy thought Oscar meant his mother and father.
“The King and Queen, Captain Mack and Millie, all of them.”
“Oh!” Lucy had to shift her thinking. “I don’t know. Sometimes, I guess.”
“Do you suppose they’re still there, wherever there is, going on with their lives?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “Maybe they’re like people in a story. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that’s it.”
“Maybe,” said Oscar. “But don’t you think there are some stories that are more alive than that? When you put certain books back on the shelf, don’t you feel as if the people inside are going on with their lives after the story is over?”
Lucy felt that way about most of the books she loved.
“The King was a little bit like my pa,” said Oscar. “My pa had a temper like that. He’d go along pleasant as anything, and then something would set him off. He was always sorry about it afterward, I think.” Oscar looked at Lucy. “I guess you think everybody reminds me of my pa,” he said with a wry smile.
The Book of Story Beginnings Page 22
