The Changing Lives of Joe Hart

by Shawn Inmon

  “About John? Yeah, I just turned on the news and saw it.”

  “John?”

  “John Lennon. He just died of a heart attack in New York.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, this is a dark and ominous day.”

  Joe was pulled from his sadness by the expression on Claire’s face. “That’s what you meant, right? That John had died?”

  Claire gave a half-shake of her head, then said, “Let’s sit down on the couch. I have terrible news, and there’s no way to soften the blow.”

  “What? What else could it be?”

  “Your friends JD and Bobby—such sweet boys—were killed in a car accident early this morning.”

  Joe shook his head. “No, that can’t be right. I just saw them last night. They were going to the bowling alley and asked if I wanted to come along.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but they’re gone now, Joe. Oh, this is so horrible. I’m sorry I have to be the messenger with this awful news.”

  Claire wrapped Joe in a comforting hug, but there was little comfort for him.

  It feels like everything I’ve done in this lifetime—saving JD and Bobby, saving John Lennon, is for nothing. It can’t be a coincidence that they both died on the same day. The universe is trying to tell me something. But what?

  “Why don’t you come over and sit with us tonight? I don’t want you here all alone.”

  Joe nodded absently, then said, “Maybe. I need to call and leave a message for Yoko, and I’ve got to go see JD and Bobby’s parents. They’re devastated, I’m sure. There’s nothing I can do to make it less devastating for them, but I have to try.”

  “Well, we’ll be home all night. Stop in any time the lights are on. Maybe your visit to their parents could wait until tomorrow.”

  Joe nodded, but didn’t commit. Claire patted his hand, laid a hand on his shoulder, then let herself out.

  The wave of emotion Joe had been holding inside burst out and he broke down is hiccupping sobs.

  For John. For JD. For Bobby.

  For a wasted life.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  As he had once done for a lifetime, Joe Hart retreated to the safety of his home and did his best to stay there. He called Debbie at the animal center and told her he wouldn’t be able to be in for a few more months. He ate only what he had on hand until he faced the prospect of a dinner of fish sticks and pancakes. That finally drove him out of his house and to Safeway to restock.

  Unlike his first life, Joe didn’t lock the world out forever. Eventually, he started having dinner with Stan and Claire once a week.

  He finally managed to get through to Yoko and they shared tears over the phone. Before they hung up, Yoko told him that John had indeed recorded Rodrigo Hart’s Forever for You.

  “He had meant for it to be on the next album, but it was the only song he finished. I’m going to make sure it’s released as a single. That’s what John would have wanted.”

  Joe hung up, promising to stay in touch and wondering if they would.

  What in the world do we have in common, other than John, who is gone now?

  With Bobby and JD dead, he found himself at a loss for friends once again.

  Where does a twenty year old guy go to make friends? I make a lot of friends at the shelter, but those are all of the four-legged variety. In a few more months, I’ll be old enough to go into the bars in town, but that doesn’t interest me. I remember playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons with a few of the guys in high school. Maybe I should look up some of them.

  In the end, he did none of those things, but he did start to leave his house again. One sunny Tuesday afternoon in late May, he packed himself a lunch and drove the Olds over to Whitfield Park. He spread a blanket out and sat down with his sandwiches and his book. Since Claire had reminded him that Kurt Vonnegut had a lot of other books he hadn’t read, he had been reading his way through his catalog. At the moment, he was reading Breakfast of Champions.

  Joe spent a nice few hours quietly reading and soaking up the sun, trying to refill his depleted supply of Vitamin D.

  Eventually, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and Joe grabbed his brown bag and blanket and headed back to the Oldsmobile. He dropped the blanket in the trunk and unlocked the driver’s side door, but didn’t climb in. He felt a sudden urge—almost a psychic push—to go for a walk around the park.

  He locked the door and set out to walk a lap around the outer edge.

  Exercise won’t hurt me. Haven’t gotten a lot of that since I got shot. It’s time to get moving again.

  The cast on his left arm had been removed, but his left arm didn’t look normal, still. When the cast first came off, the atrophied arm inside look like it belonged to a much smaller person. Physical therapy had helped that, but it was still scrawnier than his right, and the scar from the shot and surgeries would never go away.

  Sitting in the doctor’s office, examining the arm for the first time, he had said, “What’s one more scar, anyway?”

  Joe set out at a good pace and was halfway around the park when he passed a series of three park benches. They were all empty, except for the middle one. That bench was occupied by a young woman with straight, dishwater blonde hair. As Joe approached her, something tugged at his memory, as though he almost—but not quite—recognized her.

  When Joe was just a few feet away, the woman said, “Hello, Joe.”

  Joe slowed, then stopped, doing his best to retrieve where he had seen her before.

  “Hi,” he said, uncertainty showing in his voice. “I feel like we went to school together?”

  The woman laughed, scooted over, and patted the bench beside her. “Come on, sit down. Let’s talk.”

  “I feel embarrassed that I can’t quite place you,” Joe said, perching on the edge of the bench as though he might want to make a quick getaway. The woman was dressed oddly, especially for Middle Falls. She was wearing a long white robe the color of pale moonlight on snow. The robe shimmered and seemed to move even when she sat still.

  “I’m Carrie,” the woman said.

  Joe snapped his fingers. “Yes! That’s it! You were a couple of years ahead of me in school.” A sudden thought jumped into his mind. Before he could stop himself, he said, “But, wait. Weren’t you...” He couldn’t force himself to finish the sentence.

  “Murdered? Yes, in your first life, I was. That’s why, when you were restarted, no version of me was present here.”

  “And, just like that, I don’t understand what the heck you mean. Restarted?”

  “When you died in 2004 and woke up back in 1978.”

  Joe’s mouth fell slightly open. “How...”

  “As you can see, I am no longer from around here.” She smiled a little at that. “It’s all about perspective, Joe. And, if you remember me from high school, you must have been pretty perceptive. I was almost invisible to most people.”

  “There were times I wish I could have been invisible, but I got through it.”

  “Yes, you did better than I did in that regard. I had a hard time getting through it. But,” she said, rearranging a fold in her robe, there’s something I want to talk with you about.”

  “Excellent change of subject. Sure, go ahead.”

  “First, can you accept that I know who you truly are, and what journey you are on?”

  Joe glanced at a group of children kicking a soccer ball back and forth. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “It might be simpler to just show you.” Carrie reached into the fold of her robe and pulled out a glass cylinder filled with cloudy images. She feathered it to a stop, then glanced up. The soccer ball one of the children had kicked hung in mid-air. A chickadee that had been flying overhead hung there like it was part of a child’s mobile. Everyone and everything but them was frozen in time.

  Joe waved his hand in front of his face to verify that he, at least, was still able to move.

  “So, what you’re saying is, we’re living inside the Matrix, just like the
movie with Keanu Reeves.”

  Carrie adjusted the cylinder and the ball continued its arc. The chickadee continued its flight, unaware it had been defying all known laws of gravity. She smiled at Joe and shook her head. “No, not at all. What I’m saying is, there are more forces at work here than is generally known or accepted.”

  “Since I’m sitting here talking to someone who was murdered what, four, five years ago, and I just saw you stop time with your little thingamajig—“

  “—Pyxis,” Carrie said. “It’s called a pyxis.”

  “—Okay, your pyxis, then, I guess I have to believe you.”

  That’s a strange feeling, though. When I presented people with something that felt impossible to believe with very little evidence, I expected them to believe. And now, here I am, doing the same thing, even with concrete evidence in front of me.

  I mean, I do believe you. But, who are you, other than someone I went to school with?”

  “I am what you might call a Watcher. Some might call us angels, although that gets into pretty complex Biblical conversations I don’t want to have.”

  “Nothing to worry about there. I’m not religious.”

  “Believe it or not, that will actually benefit you when you get out of this cycle you’re in.” Just as Joe opened his mouth to ask a question, Carrie said, “And, no, I’m not going to tell you what that means. I am here to help you, though.”

  Joe closed his mouth and waited patiently. He had scooted back on the bench now, too fascinated to think of running away.

  Besides, what good does it do to try and run away from a woman who can stop time?

  “Okay, shoot. Not literally. I mean, if you’ve got a little glass thing that can stop time, I can only imagine what kind of a gun you would have hidden in those robes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “You’ve always been one of my favorites, Joe.”

  “Hold on. What do you mean – for the last four years since you died and became a—a watcher?”

  Carrie shook her head. “Think about it. I just showed you how flexible time can be. I’ve been watching over your life for a long time. Here’s a secret, although you probably won’t realize the full extent of it while you’re still wrapped up in this illusion of life. You are part of my true family. Even odder, the boy who killed me is, too.”

  Joe blanched. “That’s quite the family blow up, then.” He looked up and to the left, trying to recall something. “What was his name, the guy who did that to you?”

  “Michael. Michael Hollister. He’s off on another life now, and doing quite well, actually.”

  “Not killing any more young high school students?”

  “No, he’s completely broken the habit. He and I worked things out. He apologized and I forgave him. In the end, he did me a favor. I was stuck in a loop, and he helped me get unstuck.” She stood, and the luminescent robes flowed around her, shimmering and giving off a light of their own. “Come on, let’s walk. I so rarely get back to Earth, I’d like to spend it moving.”

  “Where are you normally?” Joe asked, standing and walking beside her.

  “Oh, a place called The Universal Life Center. It’s really a boring place. Not worth talking about. Now. You have to stop distracting me, and let me get down to the business of why I came to talk with you.”

  Joe drew a zipper across his mouth and tossed the invisible key over his shoulder.

  “Do you remember Abigail Green?”

  That surprised Joe. “Yeah, of course. She helped me a lot.”

  “She helped me, too. I saw her too, once upon a time and another lifetime ago.”

  Joe snapped to attention. “That’s right! She mentioned another patient, a woman had talked to her about being a time traveler, but she wouldn’t tell me who it was. Was that you?”

  Carrie nodded. “I was still trying to find my path. My mom had just died and I felt lost, so my dad took me to see her. That’s not important, though. Here’s what is. If you had to boil down what she helped you accomplish into a single idea, what would you say it was?”

  “Eeesh. That’s so tough. We worked on so many things.”

  “Of course. But was there a general theme?”

  “I guess the idea that when Mom was alive, I learned to behave in certain ways to deal with her drinking. Like, maybe, if I stay in my room and be quiet, Mom won’t drink so much today. Basically, trying to use what I say, do, or don’t say to influence how other people act.”

  Carrie nodded and smiled. “In another few years, that might have been labeled “codependency,” but that term wasn’t in popular use in 1978. Okay. Good.”

  Joe looked relieved, as though he had passed a test. “She and I talked a lot about that stuff, but she also encouraged me to go to Al-Anon, and that helped a lot, too.”

  “Now, let’s look at this same question in regard to your lives. When you first woke up back in 1978, you were confused, as anyone would be. Once you recovered from that, though, what did you decide to do?”

  “Well, I knew I wanted to change my life, so I went about doing that. I saw Ms. Green, I finally got myself out of the house, I volunteered at the shelter, I met Mr. and Mrs. Fornowski.”

  “Yes, exactly. And, all that was perfect. That’s the whole idea behind the recycling of certain lives—to give them a chance to get on a better path and address things they didn’t in their first life.”

  “I didn’t address anything in my first life. I didn’t do anything, period.”

  “Yes, I know. I am a Watcher, remember?”

  “The thought of someone having to watch me do nothing for twenty-five years is painful.”

  Carrie shrugged, a uniquely human gesture in someone who was no longer human at all. “Continuing on. Once you did all those good things, what did you do next?”

  “Next?” Joe continued walking alongside Carrie, contemplating an answer. “I suppose next, I put a list of things together I wanted to accomplish. I decided I wanted to save my friends from being stupid and dying in Mt. St. Helens. It took me two tries, but I did it. Then, I wanted to stop John Lennon from being killed, and I did.”

  Speaking those memories were like ashes in his mouth. He had succeeded, but the universe had checkmated him anyway. “In the end, it didn’t change one damned thing, but I did it.” His voice was tinged with bitterness.

  “Joe, I know you’re hurting from those losses. You built your whole life around saving those people, and then they died anyway.”

  “Did you do that?” Joe asked, a sudden, heated accusation, his eyes flashing anger at the thought.

  “No. I try never to interfere to that degree. Anything like that happens well above my pay grade. Let’s just walk a little more.” She looked at Joe. “This is supremely odd for you, I suppose, but it is odd for me as well. After so many years of seeing you in my pyxis, it is slightly surreal to be able to hold a real conversation with you.”

  After they had walked on another hundred yards, Joe calmed down and felt sorry that he had accused Carrie. Everything about her showed that she cared about him. Joe drew a deep breath. “Okay, sorry. I think I’m just frustrated. It feels like I’ve wasted two lifetimes and I’m right back where I started.”

  “Are you, though? Could the Joe of your first life gotten on a plane and flown to New York? Would he risk his own life to drive hundreds of miles to save his friends? Would he even have been capable of that?”

  “No,” Joe said quietly, seeing the truth in her words.

  “So. If we put all of this together, what do we get? Include the lesson that you learned with Abigail Green, then add in what you’ve been trying to do. Where does that leave you.”

  Joe stopped, pondering. Finally, a realization arrived full-blown, so clear a lightbulb could almost be seen above his head. “It leaves me at odds. On the one hand, my lesson is to focus on myself and to stop controlling how everyone and everything acts. On the other, I am devoting my life to trying to change and control things.” He looked
at Carrie with a kind of awe at having made the connection. “And so, the harder I try to control the world, the less the world will be controlled. I can only control myself.”

  “As I said, you have always been one of my favorites, Joe.” Carrie’s smile was proud, but slightly sad.

  Joe looked down at the grass, gathering his thoughts, then turned to Carrie. “So, then...” His words were cut off in mid-sentence.

  She was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Joe drove home in a daze. So many new concepts and ideas crowded into his brain that he wasn’t able to give any one of them more than a moment’s attention before another shouldered it aside.

  As Joe pulled into the alley behind his home, KMFR radio was playing softly in the car. You’re Just What I Needed by The Cars faded out and a song began to play that Joe had never heard before, yet sounded hauntingly familiar. He put the car in park, but didn’t turn the ignition off.

  What is that song? I know it, but, not quite.

  It wasn’t until the chorus that he recognized the song—Forever for You, but it wasn’t his father singing it, of course. As far as Joe knew, his father’s version of that song hadn’t been played on the radio in many years.

  As the final notes faded away, the disc jockey back-announced, “That’s Forever for You, by the late, great, John Lennon. It seems impossible that he won’t be making more music, but he left us with this one, and I think you’re going to be hearing a lot more of it. Gone too soon.” A commercial for a local clothing store came on and Joe switched the radio off. He sat in the car, both worn out and mesmerized by the events of the day.

  Joe heaved himself out of his car, unlocked his door and went inside. He didn’t want anything other than a peaceful, quiet house to gather his thoughts. He sat on his couch and thought of the revelations of the day.

  I really am living my life over and over. Carrie is the living proof, although she vanished so quickly, I could probably be convinced she was a mirage, too.

  A sudden, horrible thought occurred to Joe and he sat bolt upright, then raced to his kitchen table. He picked up the phone and dialed information. When the operator answered, he asked for a number in Washington State, then jotted it down. He dialed the number as fast as the rotary dial would allow.