The Memory Tree

by John R. Little

  “Problem, Mister?” Jones was looking at me with a scowl that told me I had been staring at him without realizing it. After all, the man was long dead.

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just wanted a paper.”

  “That’ll be fifteen cents.”

  As I opened my wallet, I wondered if the currency I was carrying would pass muster with Jones. I tried to think if there had been any major redesigns of the dollar bill in the past few decades, and I knew there were. Color was embedded in the bills now, not just the stark green and black of the older currency. Although I always carried a hundred dollars or more with me wherever I went, it would all be useless to me here.

  I thought of all this, seizing the chance to grab onto something I understood, like money, leaving the bigger, more important issues, like “What the fuck is happening?” for the moment.

  I pulled out a handful of change from my pocket and found a couple of dull dimes, handed them to Jones, and added, “Keep the nickel,” hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at the coins. He didn’t.

  Old Man Jones was almost a caricature of a grumpy old storeowner. He was fat and had a short gray beard that always seemed unkempt. All the kids were afraid of him, but nobody knew quite why. We all went shopping at the store together, since none of us wanted to go in alone.

  It was here Mel and I stole that pack of cigarettes so long ago. She distracted Jones by pointing at different kinds of candy and asking about each. Old Man Jones hated selling candy, and he almost yelled at Mel, but she stood her ground, making sure she asked enough questions about the red peppermint hearts and the multi-colored jawbreakers to give me the time I needed to pocket the Camels.

  We never bothered to do it again. It was just a game.

  Jones took the dimes from me without a care. It was so odd to see the wobbly old cash register he used to ring in the sale. It had a group of round buttons ranging from one cent up to two dollars. I had no idea what he would do if he made a sale higher than that.

  “Anything else, Mister?”

  “No,” I said, still staring at the cash register. “No, thanks again.”

  “You new in town?”

  “Just passing through.” Wasn’t I? “I’ve heard this is a nice town.” I didn’t really know how to continue the thought, knowing Old Man Jones must’ve pegged me as a complete idiot.

  “Well,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything else.” He raised his eyebrows, as if to indicate it was about bloody time I moved on. I did.

  By the time I stumbled out of the Grocery, the shock was starting to wear off. Not the confusion, the uncertainty, the fear, the overwhelming feeling of being lost, but I was starting to think a little clearer. I was no longer feeling like a zombie, wandering wherever my feet happened to take me. A modicum of control was returning. There were practical considerations to occupy my mind.

  I needed a place to sit and rest.

  One of my favorite places to read when I was a kid was a little park nearby. With my newspaper in hand, I walked down and turned into the park. Crippling Park. I had forgotten the name, and now, I had no idea what it meant. I didn’t much care, either. Probably named for some dead and forgotten war hero.

  The park was very compact, only an acre or so, rectangular in shape, with the thin end butting up to Main Street. The fronting was only a hundred feet wide, but it went a fair ways back, clear through to the next street over, Jervis Street.

  Large Oak trees protected the perimeter of the park, and there were a few nice fountains and a generous supply of solid wood park benches scattered throughout. The trees kept the traffic noises out, and that’s what made it perfect for reading. Solitude, quiet, and on top of that, most of Nelson’s citizens totally ignored the park, so it provided a great deal of privacy.

  Right then, there were only a couple of kids in the park, halfway down, tossing a football back and forth.

  I found a nearby bench and opened the paper to find history from my past lit up and come to life.

  Much of the front page was about a possible local drought, and I didn’t really care much about that. I remembered the farmers worrying about a drought every year, whether it was a real threat or not. At the bottom of the first page, though, was a story about the upcoming Presidential election. Nixon was the front-runner for the Republicans, but he wasn’t yet confirmed. The rumors were that he might end up running against Eugene McCarthy. At this point, the editorial pages were predicting a heavy McCarthy win, although it was unclear what that prediction could possibly be based on. President Johnson was trying to stay out of the election, having decided not to run, but he obviously wanted McCarthy to win. The article focused on Johnson’s integrity, leaving politics to others so he could concentrate on ending the Vietnam War.

  I thought back to the secrets and lies of the Johnson administration, secretly sending more and more of our troops to Vietnam while publicly denouncing the war and calling for it to end. Kennedy, Johnson, and later Nixon, all sent so many of our innocent soldiers to their deaths in a lost and ultimately unimportant war.

  I skipped much of the local news, since it meant little to me. I didn’t recognize the people who were being talked about or the issues that seemed to matter. Most of the stories seemed like immature gossip columns. They included snippets about minor police matters, under-use of the public swimming pools, a false alarm that called the volunteer fire department to work, and other stuff too mundane to worry about. Who cares about this stuff? I wondered.

  Next, I read the sports section. The Mets were having a good year, but there was little mention of the Cardinals and the Tigers, who were destined to meet in the World Series in a few months. A small corner article mentioned only in passing that Bob Gibson had just hurled his fifth consecutive shutout. Denny McLain wasn’t mentioned at all, although he was already racking up a string of wins that would leave him as the last 30 game winner in the twentieth century. Maybe forever.

  I followed the Tigers in 1968, totally by fluke. It was the only time I ever cheered for a World Series winner right from the first pitch of the season to the last. I usually managed to root for losers, switching allegiances each spring like an unfaithful dog.

  In entertainment news, Hendrix was playing at the Kingdome in Seattle. Man, would that have been something to see.

  And then I found the stock market listings.

  Tech stocks were not really part of the scene in 1968. No Microsoft, Intel, Google, Dell, Oracle, eBay. Not much in the way of drug stocks, and the concept of genetic engineering was only a vague notion, not even rating a decent science fiction story.

  How the world would change.

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was sitting at 929, the bottom of a long ramp leading it up to the 12,000 I had left it at only a few hours earlier, even after the horrific downslide of 2000. Of all the news I looked through, this was the fact with the biggest impact on me. I could only vaguely remember the Dow at 2,000 or so, and here it was half of that. And, according to the

  Times-Record, this was high and there was a crash just waiting to bring the market down to where it belonged. If only they knew. The crash they predicted didn’t come until the tech bubble burst more than a generation later.

  I skimmed the rest of the paper, noting the weather was supposed to be good, nobody I recognized was in the obits, and the want ads were of no value. Except possibly for rental housing. I wondered if I would need that and decided I’d better hang onto the paper for a bit.

  I shook my head, realizing I had inadvertently fallen asleep. I blinked and took a deep breath, quickly reminding myself what had happened and where I was. Organizational Skills 101. Take stock.

  Looking around, I realized the nightmare was still on. I was still sitting on the same bench in Crippling Park. I had been awoken by the sounds of birds calling to each other. I listened to their plaintive cackles as I looked around the park.

  The day still shone with bright sunlight, almost as if no time had passed since I sat down. The
baking heat felt better in the park, with the trees and grass radiating a small amount of coolness. The diminutive gardens just felt like peace.

  There were two little girls nearby, playing near one of the fountains. They each wore similar light blue frilly dresses. They also both wore their long brown hair in braids, which sent a brief memory of Mel shooting down my mind. A second glance showed they weren’t really that similar to Mel, but the thought persisted.

  A bit farther down the park was a young boy, reading. I felt a tightness of my chest as I looked and realized here was the teenage me, reading a book I still remembered.

  Chapter 7

  The book was a cheap paperback edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was a novelization of the movie. It seemed so ironic that I remembered the real 2001 passing so uneventfully a handful of years ago. There was no HAL, no black monolith waiting patiently on the moon, no space journey out to Jupiter.

  My younger self was absorbed in the book and seemed to be about halfway through. I stared openly at him, as he sat just twenty feet away from me. His hair was almost pure white and curly, which I had completely forgotten. In my late-teens, my hair darkened to the sandy brown I have today, and I keep it short, so the curls don’t show. He wore a dingy blue shirt that might have been a dress shirt once upon a time. Brown trousers and dirty blue sneakers filled out the rest of his poorly matched wardrobe.

  I was looking at myself, and again a complete sense of unreality spread over me.

  Not possible.

  But here I was. Once again, I forced myself to concentrate exclusively on practicalities.

  The sun was starting to lower a bit as late afternoon stretched its wings. I do need to think about a place to stay, I thought. I remembered there was a group of houses on Jervis street that had rooms for let. Maybe I’d try one of them.

  But, I couldn’t leave yet. Not when Sam (“Little Sam” my mind called him) was sitting there. I felt like I was staring at one of those funhouse mirrors that distort your face and body, making you fat instead of thin or vice versa. This mirror shed almost forty years, providing a perfect reflection of my childhood.

  Finally, I worked up the nerve to walk over to him. “Hi, pal,” I said.

  He looked up at me. I knew he would talk to me. When young, I never had a proper fear of strangers, which seems really odd in retrospect. One of life’s lessons never passed down from my parents, I guess. Too many real dangers squashed any potential other ones to the bottom of the bin. Strangers never hurt me; only the people I knew did that.

  “Hi.” His voice was gentle and soft, feather-like, almost a whisper. That was the way of his life. Fear ruled him more than any other factor. Not fear of strangers. Fear of home.

  “Good book, isn’t it?”

  He nodded and looked at the cover, as if he hadn’t looked closely at it before. He was just avoiding my eyes. “I wanted to read it before going to see the movie,” he said.

  “I read that when I was a kid,” I said. “I’ll remember it forever. You’ll love the movie, too.”

  Little Sam looked up at me, and didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally, he asked, “You lost?” He tried to smile, but it was forced from lack of practice. His eyes were wide, bright blue. If he had grown up in another family, he’d have been handsome.

  “Yeah, maybe a little. I’m just passing through town and I’m looking for a bed and breakfast to stay at.”

  “A what?”

  “A . . . a room I can rent.”

  “You talk funny.”

  I pursed my lips, surprised by his honesty. “Yes, well, I’ve come a long way.”

  “The lady next door to my place is always talking about renting a room in her basement. I think it used to be her daughter’s place, but she’s not there any more.” His shoulders slumped, as if he was ready to be yelled at. For saying too much? I wondered.

  I nodded. “Maybe that’s just what I need.” His story did vaguely ring a bell, and I thought it was worth a try. I remembered Mrs. Williamson as being a quiet old lady. Quiet? Well, maybe a despairing cold-hearted spinster was a better description. But quiet. Just the kind of landlord I’d want.

  “Thanks, pal. I’ll try that.”

  As I started to walk away, he yelled, “Hey, don’t you want to know where she lives?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I’m a bit distracted.”

  He gave me the address which I knew as well as my own home in Seattle, and I started to move on. I glanced back as I left the park and could see him looking back toward me. I waved and he waved back.

  Weird.

  Main Street was almost empty of traffic. Rush hour wasn’t a concept that mattered here. I vaguely wondered if the term even existed yet. Little Sam hadn’t known what a B&B was. How many other words and phrases would I use that would make people stare at me? I decided I needed to be ready to talk about any odd language I might use by ascribing it to the artsy crowd in Seattle.

  I started to create a mini-autobiography of a fictitious life.

  I stopped suddenly, hit by a memory. A brand new memory of my childhood. I held my breath, shocked as my brain tripped across it, fully blown, my own recollection of the day I was reading 2001 in Crippling Park and a stranger came up to talk to me.

  The memory wasn’t there before. I swear it. I had never met the guy. But now, I remembered it as clearly as anything else. The stranger was tall, stocky, slightly imposing, and he spoke strangely.

  My hand automatically covered my mouth as I stopped near a red brick storefront. I thought back to that

  long-ago time. The park, the book, the stranger.

  And something I had no explanation for -- something the stranger had said. He said he had read the same book when he was a kid. But, when he said that, I knew he was lying, since the book had only just been released this summer, the summer of ‘68, to tie in to the movie.

  I never understood why he lied to me.

  Chapter 8

  I left Crippling Park and walked back down Main Street going north, heading in the general direction of my childhood home and the neighbor, Mrs. Williamson. The more I thought of it, the more I liked the idea of renting a room next door to where I grew up. It just felt like the right thing to do.

  As the Park receded behind me, my feet moved slower and slower until I was barely shuffling along the empty street. At four o’clock, the city was like a ghost town compared to my Seattle, but it even seemed empty compared to what I remembered of my youth here in Nelson. Every few minutes a car would drive by, but there was really much less traffic than I expected to see.

  My biggest problem was money. How could I pay Mrs. Williamson for a room? That’s why my feet were dragging.

  I couldn’t use the money in my pocket. She may be old, but nobody could mistake the bright blue and brown anti-counterfeit measures of twenty-first century bills for any currency available in 1968.

  Nope, I had to find a way to get some present-day cash, and I had little time to do it.

  My first thought was to borrow it from Little Sam, but that idea left me quickly, since I knew very well he had no money to speak of. That’s why the library was so special to me when I was him. It was free.

  I could steal the money, and I was surprised I actually seriously considered this option. My clinical, problem-solving side came to the fore and this seemed like an obvious solution. Only a small part of me was worried about the ethical problems arising. Then, a thought: I could find a way to steal money, but leave my own money in its place. It’s not technically stealing, since the bills I left would actually be worth something in the future. I almost laughed at the thought of somebody holding on to my currency in the hope it would become valuable one day.

  Wouldn’t happen.

  Besides, I might get caught. No, not a good choice.

  I stopped walking. This was a bigger problem than I had originally thought. Where the heck could I get any money?

  How much would I need? was another question. Depends how long I’m here,
I answered myself. Things were awfully cheap compared to what I was used to. Could I manage on a hundred bucks a week? Less? I had no idea.

  The stock market.

  Given time, I could invest money in the stock market. I knew which companies did well in the late sixties. This idea died almost as quickly as the theft idea. I didn’t have any seed money, and I didn’t know exactly what the timing was. Besides, it wouldn’t work fast enough to find me a place to sleep tonight.

  Horse races?

  Could I find a place to bet on the ponies? But, today wasn’t the Kentucky Derby or any of the other big races, and I didn’t even think there was an off-track betting place in Nelson. It was way too conservative. On top of that, I had no idea who won any races in 1968. Was that the year of Northern Dancer? Secretariat? No clue.

  I was running out of ideas and stared desperately down the street. Maybe I’d have to find somebody to plead with, beg some money. There were no other beggars on the street, which amazed me.

  Then, my eyes fell on the triple bronze balls of Tod Clark’s Pawn Shop a half-block down the street, and I smiled.

  I almost ran to the store, not knowing if it was near closing time.

  A buzzer rang as I pushed the door open. A small, beady-eyed man lifted his head from a small clock he was studying on the counter. He was clearly very attentive, very protective of his store. “Yes, can I help you?”

  “I’d like to pawn a ring.” I moved to the counter and twisted my wedding ring off.

  He took it cautiously but didn’t say anything for a moment, turning it in his hands. He then patted the pocket on his overalls and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe. “Very pretty,” he said. He had a slight accent I couldn’t place. Italian maybe, but washed out by living in America for a long time. “We don’t get much like this here. That’s quite a diamond you got.”