by Shawn Inmon
It was jarring. There was such a disparity between what he saw in front of him, and what he had seen as he watched the massive landslide and eruption.
He pulled into the parking lot just past the bridge that crossed the Toutle River. Once again, he saw JD’s beat up old pickup truck there. He looked at the other vehicles scattered around and tried to guess which one belonged to Merlin and Sapphire. He focused on the VW van with the flower power stickers as the likely suspect.
He checked his backpack, sprayed himself from head to toe with DEET, and set off at a steady pace.
Not gonna run at breakneck speed and end up knocking myself out again.
By mid-afternoon, he came to the same spot where he had seen Merlin and Sapphire, and there they were. They had a fire built up and Sapphire was bent over a cast iron frying pan. Merlin was lounging in his lawn chair, absolutely unchanged from the last time Joe had seen him.
Joe walked toward them, raising a hand in greeting.
“Greetings, weary traveler,” Merlin said. “Can I offer you a beer?” He peered more closely at Joe, took in his birthmark, then immediately dismissed it. “Or are you old enough to partake of the nectar of the hops?”
Joe smiled and shook his head. “I am not. But, thank you.”
“Just another adventurer, wandering up to get a peek at the mountain before she blows, then?”
“Believe it or not, that’s why I’m here.”
Joe had played this conversation over and over in his mind, but could never come up with a way to say what he had to say without appearing crazy.
“Do tell.”
Joe took a deep breath. “I have no idea if you guys will believe this or not. I’ll tell you that if some strange kid walked into my camp and told me this story, I wouldn’t believe him. It feels like I have to do it, anyway.”
Sapphire straightened up, pulled the skillet off the grill over the fire and said, “Kids! Lunch! Come and get it!” She turned to Joe. “That’s a heck of an introduction. You’ve got our attention.”
“I’m just going to tell you, and let you guys do with it what you will.” He steadied himself, took a deep breath, and plunged ahead. “I’ve already lived this life. In fact, I lived more or less this exact scene, but it was later in the day last time. The volcano’s gonna blow early tomorrow morning, and anyone who’s camping in this area will be killed. The Toutle will overflow, the trees are going to be blown down by the force of the blast. I warned you about it last time, and you got out in time to save yourselves. I went on and tried to save my friends, who are camped just up ahead, and we all died. I woke up and started the whole damn thing over.”
“You’re right. That’s a lot to swallow,” Merlin said.
“I don’t expect you to believe me. I just knew I couldn’t sit home on my couch today, knowing how nice you guys were to me and let you just die. Last time through, I forgot my mosquito spray and you dug an old can of DEET out and sprayed me down. You were really kind.”
Merlin lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before he spoke. “Knowing a camping family has a can of DEET doesn’t exactly make you Kreskin, does it?”
“Nope. And neither does knowing your name is Merlin, and your wife’s name is Sapphire, even though those are unusual names. I’m sure there’s a bunch of reasons we could think of why I would know that. Maybe your coworkers sent me up here as a practical joke. Except they didn’t.”
Merlin and Sapphire exchanged a long look, filled with wordless communication. Two gangly, dirty, half naked kids emerged, a boy and a girl. Both had long hair, dirty faces and happy smiles. “Where’s the food?” the boy asked.
“Over on the table, Eat up.”
“Anyway,” Joe said, “I just felt compelled to come and tell you that. Now, you can do whatever you want with it. I’m going to hike on ahead and tell my friends, even though I don’t expect them to listen to me, either. Thanks for being so cool with me last time around.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“I’m Joe. Joe Hart.”
“Where you from?”
“I live down in Middle Falls, Oregon. Not too far. How about you guys?” I already know the answer, but it’ll seem rude if I don’t ask, I guess.
“Winlock. A guy named Merlin should be from somewhere named Winlock, right, since there are no towns in Washington named Warlock.” This seemed like a rote recital, a funny line he had used a thousand times before.
Merlin lapsed into silence, lost in thought, but raised a hand in good-bye as Joe returned to the trail and hiked on toward the mountain. When Joe got to the bend in the trail where their campsite would disappear from view, he turned and looked.
The adults were sitting close, talking, but they weren’t packing up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Joe picked his way down the trail. He knew he had more than enough time to get in and out, and he remembered where the small spur trail was that led to JD and Bobby’s campsite. He found it by mid-afternoon and walked into the camp to find them sacked out on sleeping bags by the fire. They hadn’t even bothered to set up their tent yet. All their gear was still stowed, except for their bags.
I guess this explains why they were up in the middle of the night when I found them last time. They hadn’t gone to bed yet.
Joe made no effort to be stealthy. In fact, he cleared his throat and went out of his way to step on several sticks in his path. They slumbered on.
Joe stood over the two of them and said, “If this was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you’d both be toast.”
Bobby opened one eye and squinted at Joe.
“You guys must have just got here. How in the world are you asleep already?”
“Joe? What the heck?”
“Didn’t you guys just get here?”
“Nah, we drove up and set up camp after we got off work yesterday afternoon. We stayed up until the sun was starting to come up. We decided a little nap was in order before we set up camp.”
Well, at least some things are different, then. Good to know.
JD sat halfway up, then leaned over on his elbow. He rubbed his face and said, “What the heck are you doing up here?”
“I came up here to try and save you guys.”
JD glanced from side to side. “Save us from what?”
“Save you from the damned mountain. It’s about to blow.”
“What? I hadn’t heard anything about it.”
A moment of sudden inspiration hit Joe.
“Yeah, the government made the announcement this morning. They’ve got indicators that the mountain’s gonna blow in the next 24 hours. They’ve blocked everyone from coming in. Haven’t you seen any of the helicopters that have been flying over? They’ve been broadcasting the evacuation over loudspeakers.”
JD and Bobby both craned their necks, looking for helicopters with loudspeakers. Unsurprisingly, there were none in the sky.
“No, man, we’ve been sacked out for a few hours. Holy hell.”
Bobby’s head seemed to clear after a minute. “Wait. How the heck did you find us?”
“Long story. I stopped by your house, and your mom told me you’d gone up to the Toutle to camp. I had this idea you might not hear the evacuation order, so I decided to come up and get you. But, that’s it for me. I’m outta here now. It makes me nervous. They said it was gonna blow, but I figure it’s not an exact science.”
Time to shut up, now. I’m a terrible liar. The more I say, the more likely I am to give myself away.
“Well, don’t be in such a damned hurry,” JD said. “I don’t have a death wish. We’ll come with you.” He glanced at Bobby, who nodded, and started rolling up his sleeping bag.
Fifteen minutes later, they were hiking back toward the parking lot. Joe glanced at his watch. 3:45. plenty of time before dark. After a mile’s hike, they came to where Merlin and Sapphire were camped. Their site was almost completely broken down.
“Looks like they must have heard the helicopters,” Bobby sa
id.
“Umm, yep,” Joe said. I am an absolutely crappy liar. Why add unnecessary details? I should have just let them make up their own mind. Soon enough, they’ll know I was bullshitting them, but by then, they should be safe, at least.
Merlin saw the three of them and waved. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Found ‘em!”
Joe nodded, gave him a thumbs-up, and continued walking.
“You know those people?” JD asked.
“I just talked to them on the way in to find you guys.”
Soon enough, they turned the corner and emerged into the parking spot.
“This is where we part company, boys,” Joe said. “I’ll be cruising in comfort in the Olds from here on out.”
“Hey,” Bobby said, reaching out with an up-high handshake and a half-hug. “Thanks for coming to get us. We probably would have slept through the whole damned thing.”
“No biggie. Couldn’t let you guys just die up here. I’ll see ya.”
JD and Bobby climbed into the truck and this time, they beat Joe out of the parking lot, spraying a little gravel and laughing as they went.
Joe eased the Olds out onto the Spirit Lake Highway and kept the speedometer at a steady 25 MPH. When he came to the bridge that crossed the Toutle River, he slowed to a roll. He glanced left, where he had once seen death approach. A shudder ran down his spine.
It was an uneventful trip home, although Joe didn’t really breathe easily until he crossed the bridge over the Columbia and entered into Oregon.
It was almost ten o’clock when he walked back into his tiny house. When he opened the door, the phone was ringing. He picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”
It was JD’s voice on the other end of the line. “What the hell, dude? You just lied to us? Seriously. What the hell. Were you pissed off that we didn’t invite you along, so you wanted to ruin the trip for us? You could have come, you know.”
Joe sat down at his small kitchen table. He was exhausted. He had known this was coming, but he had no answer.
“Go to bed, JD. Call me when you wake up in the morning.”
JD DIDN’T CALL THE next morning, but he did call in the afternoon.
When Joe tore himself away from the television coverage of the blast to answer the phone, the first thing he heard was, “How did you know? There was no alert. There were no helicopters. That was all BS. So, how did you know?”
“If there was a believable explanation, I would give it to you, but no matter what I say, I know from experience you’re not going to believe it.”
“Try me.”
Joe sighed. He looked at the television, showing the same shot it had been showing all day. A massive plume of ash and steam boiled up from the ruined mountain.
“Sure. I’ve already lived this life twice before. I knew the mountain was going to blow. Last time when I tried to rescue you, it took me too long to find you, and I got killed too, but I don’t get to just go on. I keep recycling over and over. This time, I made up a story to get you out of there, because otherwise I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Bullshit.”
“And yet, here you are. If I hadn’t come to get you, where would you be?”
“I’ll say ‘thank you,’ but this is too damned weird for words. I gotta go.”
Joe listened to the phone click, then nestled the receiver back into its cradle.
The final addendum to Joe’s volcanic adventure arrived a few weeks later.
He didn’t have a mailbox of his own, so Claire always stuck his mail into a plastic bag and left it on his porch. In mid-June, he came home to find a single item in the bag. It was a postcard with a painting of a mighty wizard on the front with a long, flowing beard and a fierce expression.
When he turned it over, he saw it was addressed to “Joe Heart, General Delivery, Middle Falls, Oregon.”
Middle Falls is like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, even if it’s misspelled.
To the right of the name and address were just a few words, written in a majestic scrawl. “Thank you for our lives, and for our children.” It was signed, “Merlin and Sapphire.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
For the rest of the summer and early fall, Joe prepared for his next adventure. Now that he had managed to pull off one rescue—even though he did need a do-over to get it done—he was more hopeful.
History can be changed.
To prepare for the next item on his checklist, he listened to his Beatles and John Lennon records ceaselessly, read books about New York City and The Dakota building in particular.
He sent away for information from the New York Tourism board and silently wished, for the one thousandth time, that Google was around in 1980.
I could make all the arrangements I needed in an hour online. Instead, it’s taking me months, and I’m still not sure I’m getting everything done.
He filled a notebook with everything he could remember about what happened that early December evening in 1980. Of course, there was no real research he could do on the event, because it hadn’t happened yet. The eventual assassin was still completely anonymous. Joe remembered that the killer had come from Hawaii, but that information did him no good. He wasn’t the type to preemptively go and attack someone before they had done anything. Things changed from life to life, and he hoped that his trip to New York would be much ado about nothing. Still, he prepared himself for the upcoming battle the best he could.
When he read a blurb in the November Rolling Stone magazine that had a preview of the upcoming Double Fantasy album, he knew it was time to go. He made his airline reservations, and thanks to the info he got from the Tourism Board, he was able to book a hotel near Central Park called The Empire. It wasn’t cheap—there were no cheap hotels in New York—but it was more affordable than anything else he could find. He constantly had to remind himself that he wasn’t poor, or broke, or in danger of becoming either. He knew his father’s royalties would continue at least until 2004. He just couldn’t break the habit of living as frugally as possible.
In fact, he lived so inexpensively, that even though he only worked part-time for Stan, he still was making more than he was spending to live. Meanwhile, the royalty checks piled up in the bank, adding on to the proceeds from selling the house.
There wasn’t much handyman business in the middle of winter, but he let Stan and Claire know that he would be gone for a few weeks, anyway. Over the previous two years, he had grown close with them. He would never presume to call them his adoptive family, but that was Joe, who tried never to assume. Whether he would say it or not, that was what they were, and how they thought of him.
When it came to the trip, what he told them was mostly the truth—that he was going on a trip to New York City because he had always wanted to. He intended to see the Statue of Liberty, visit some of the famous museums, and take a trip to the top of the Empire State building.
He made no mention of hoping to change a history that hadn’t happened, of course.
The evening before he left, Claire knocked on his door, which was rare. No matter how Stan teased her about keeping an eye on Joe, she had scrupulously maintained her distance.
“Come in,” Joe said, a smile lighting his face, as it always did when he saw Claire.
“I can’t stay,” Claire said. “Stan always thinks I’m bothering you. I brought you a few things for your trip. First,” she said, holding out a small, hardback book, “this is for your plane ride.”
Joe turned the book over. Its cover was worn smooth and its edges gone soft. The cover read “The Sirens of Titan,” by Kurt Vonnegut. Joe’s eyebrows raised.
“I love Vonnegut, but haven’t heard of this one.”
“It’s my personal favorite. I picked it out just for you.”
“Now, somewhat more mundane, but also more delicious, I have made you some chocolate chip cookies. Airline food is always so awful.”
Joe accepted the cookies, then hugged Claire. “Than
k you. You didn’t have to do all this.”
“Be sure to bring the book back. It’s a library book.”
“Of course.”
“And,” she paused and looked deep into his eyes, “be careful.”
Joe looked innocently at her, until she squinted an ‘I know better’ look at him. “My family has a touch of future vision. I probably should have told you that when you moved in.” She smiled impishly and let herself out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Joe parked his car in the long-term parking lot at Portland International Airport and checked his suitcase. Through three lifetimes, he had never been on an airplane, and his stomach fluttered at the thought of flying. He checked in at his gate hours early, because he had no idea how difficult it would be to get through security. In 1980, there was no security in place, so he was there in short order. He unpacked his book, filched a cookie from the bag, and read.
The airport was busy, and everyone was hurrying from one place to another, so few paid attention to Joe. It was unusual for him to be around so many people and have no one glance, at least surreptitiously, at his birthmark. It gave him a pleasant feeling of belonging to an anonymous crowd.
Joe’s flight wasn’t full, and he lucked out and ended up with a window seat with no one sitting beside him. The aisle seat was filled with an older lady who concentrated on a Perry Mason mystery book.
Joe watched the takeoff out the small window with interest. He felt a small frisson of electricity when the plane’s wheels left the runway and realized he was up in the air for the first time. Soon enough, though, the plane passed through the thick cloud cover typical of a Pacific Northwest December day. The only difference to Joe was, he was looking down on those clouds, instead of up.
He once again pulled The Sirens of Titan out of his backpack and found the baggie with the chocolate chip cookies. He took two out and offered one to the older lady one seat over.
She glanced at him, seeming to notice him for the first time. Because of how he was sitting, she could only see the right side of his face, so there was no pity in her expression.
