Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  "Tracy," the others whispered, and he felt the joint being taken from his hand, and he sat on the floor, watching the others.

  Slowly they celebrated their strange communion, sharing the bread and wine of their youth, speaking names of those gone away:

  "Keith," said Sharla, and the glowing ember moved on, and Woody's ears were filled with a sound of flame, as if the burning end of the joint was starting to set the world on fire, and the flame seemed so much brighter now, and the name of Keith sang with a crackle of fire.

  "Dale," Eddie said, and Dale, they all breathed, the sound reverberating in the air, becoming one with the music, the song of lighting fires, and the fire burned now, it was blinding, and he could not see who bore it, what new Prometheus was passing its wisdom on.

  Another name, another voice. Was it Diane? He couldn't tell, because his voice and the voice of the others all chanting, praying, singing the name engulfed his memory, until the name and the flame filled the world.

  Other names were spoken, and he repeated them, not recognizing them now, and the fire song had stopped, and another song was being sung again, the song about breaking through, and when Woody peered through the glare of the fire, it seemed to him that his friends' faces were as they had been years before, that time had rolled backward, that the great white flame shone on bright, unlined flesh, glimmered on dark, ungrayed hair, and their eyes looked at him in the same way, filled with wonder and delight, and they came together, slowly, deliciously, as through water they could breathe.

  Hands touched, arms embraced, and he thought what they all thought, that they were here now and here then and would be here forever, that they were pure and ideal and immortal, and that all their ideals, their hopes and dreams still blazed inside them, never dead, never dead, but sleeping, and reawakened now, set on fire once more by the night, the music, by each other, by love and peace and freedom and happiness, and they were one, thinking with one mind, speaking with one voice, linked by flesh and soul, a human mandala that spun around and around, until all the faces blurred into one, and he was Diane who was Frank who was Eddie and round and round and Sharla and Curly and round and Judy and Alan and round and round and Tracy . . .

  She was alive and in them and of them and everything dead was alive again, dead lover, dead friends, dead dreams, and he moaned and laughed and howled and wept and prayed to God, who was himself and all of them, the living and the dead, all immortal, eternal, ageless, infinitely wise—

  until the fire began to diminish, its song to fade in his, their, its ears, fragmenting the holy consciousness of what they had become, the senses of God dulling, the universe leaking through the void so that stars, nebulae, self grew cold, silent, black.

  Black.

  Chapter 8

  His eyes were closed.

  That was why it was dark, why it was so black. It was like the joke, wasn't it? I can't see . . . so open your eyes.

  He did.

  They were on the floor, all of them, shoulder against shoulder, hands holding arms holding hands, legs touching, knee rubbing knee, eight of them in a closed circle of flesh. All of them appeared as dazed as Woody, their eyes blinking as if confused, heads shaking in an effort to bring their thoughts back to reality and the present. There was something else too, something Woody couldn't immediately define, a change of some kind.

  Woody's left hand was holding Sharla's right, and his right wrist was wrapped by Eddie's long fingers. Slowly they released their holds on each other. Woody's fingers felt stiff as he rubbed the red marks Eddie's grip had made.

  "What the hell happened?" said Alan. His voice sounded thick, as though no words had passed through his throat in years.

  Curly barked a laugh that sounded mired in phlegm. "Before," he said. "Happened once before, you remember? A mass high. A fucking mass high is what it was. A communal zonk."

  "Curly," Alan said in a choked but accusing tone, "what was in that grass?"

  Curly shook his head. "Nothing—just grass, I swear.”

  “Then I'm gettin' old," Sharla said. "Never thought grass would whack me out like that. I mean, I was gone."

  "We were all gone," Frank said. "I'm just glad we didn't stay. Does everybody feel okay?"

  Woody did a quick self-analysis, taking deep breaths, stretching his muscles, rotating his neck. He did feel good. His lungs seemed to fill with more air than usual, his muscles felt taut, even the extra inch of gut he had been concerned about for the past year or so seemed to have decreased, and he pulled his belt in a notch, then shrugged to indicate that he was all right, as did the others.

  "What time is it?" Curly said, stepping into the dining room to look at the wall clock. "Ah. Just a couple minutes since we started."

  "What difference does it make?" said Judy.

  "I'm just thinking that maybe there was a little opium in that shit—puts you out for what seems like a long time, but it's really only a minute or so. Maybe we got a little extra bonus."

  "What the hell?" Woody heard Alan say softly. "My watch is gone."

  "You must have forgotten it," Diane said.

  "I never forget my watch." Alan was staring at his wrist as though his left hand was missing.

  "Forget it, Alan," Eddie said. "You don't have to be anywhere but here tonight. So let's have a beer—and no more dope, if you please—and lighten up."

  "God," Curly said, shaking his head. "This'd be enough to turn me into a head again."

  "Forget it, Curly," said Frank.

  "It was just so weird," Curly said. "It was like we were all one person . . . like that other time."

  "You said that before," Woody said. "That it happened once before. What do you mean?"

  Curly frowned, trying to remember. "I don't remember when exactly, but there were a bunch of us here, and somebody had brought along some opiated hash or something equally exotic, and we all smoked it, and we all had the same kind of hallucination . . .” He trailed off, deep in thought, trying to bring back the time.

  The memory touched something in all of them, and one by one they began to nod, to remember. "We ended up in a circle," Diane said. "We shared a pipe or something, and we were all in a circle."

  "Who brought it?" said Judy. "I can't remember who brought it. It's like it was just there."

  "It was the future."

  They all turned and looked at Sharla, who was staring straight ahead at a poster on the wall.

  "We talked about it afterward," she said, as if intoning a mantra. "We thought we'd gone into the future."

  "What," said Alan. "You mean like science fiction?"

  "No. Don't you remember? It was something about our future. We saw—"

  "We saw each other older," Judy said, as though the memory had just hit distinctly. Her face was tight with the effort to recall more. "I can't remember anything else, but it was like we were older." She gave her head a sharp, quick shake. "Damn," she said. "Nothing else comes."

  "I remember that night too," said Eddie. "Sort of," and the others nodded.

  Woody remembered it as well, just barely, like a dream dreamed long before, but one that had made a tremendous impression on the dreamer.

  Silence shrouded the room until Curly roughly cleared his throat. "Well, I'm getting a beer," he said. "I'll stick to legal drugs from now on."

  Woody joined him in his trek to the bathroom, and others followed, getting beers and walking back into the living room. As Woody sipped from his glass, he thought the beer tasted different somehow—sharper, crisper, with more of a bite than it had before. It tasted like Iron City used to taste.

  And when he sat back down on the floor, the music sounded better too. There was a clarity to it, and it seemed that scratches he knew were there had vanished. Maybe the grass was still doing its magical work, laying a patina of dream over reality.

  He felt sure he was right after he took Alan's pack of Kents from atop the foot locker. He tapped one out, slid out the book of matches wedged in the cellophane, and stopp
ed. He turned the pack all around, examining it carefully, then said, "Alan," and tossed it to his friend. "That pack. Where'd you get it?"

  "What are you talking about?" Alan said, glancing down at it. "I brought it from home, the carton's in the—" And he stopped, gazing down at what he was holding. "What the hell . . ."

  "It's not there," Woody said.

  “Jesus." Alan turned the pack over and over, as if it were a stubborn Rubik's Cube.

  "What are you looking at?" Frank asked.

  "The warning label," Alan said. "It's gone. There's no goddam warning label on this pack." Alan laughed in disbelief. "Wait'll I show them this at the office. What a hoot! We've been trying to get these bastards off for years, and now a printer's error or something—" Suddenly he blanched. "Shit, I wonder how many of these got out."

  "Not many," Woody said. "In fact, it's probably one of a kind."

  Yeah, Woody thought, trying to keep down his excitement, his thought that something very strange, very incredible was happening, something that Woody, even as he yearned for it, couldn't bear to think about.

  He looked at his friends through the dim haze of smoke, saw Curly standing, talking to Diane, noticed that he didn't seem as bald as he had before. It was as if a brush of hair was pushing its way out of his scalp like spring grass, too slowly for the eye to see. And Sharla's hair too, cut short and conservatively, seemed bushier, the patches of gray on the sides lost in blackness.

  They haven't noticed yet, he thought. We look like we expect each other to look. Unless you watch for it, like I am, you never notice anything changing, not until it's almost complete.

  Complete.

  And what would completeness be? he wondered. How far would it go?

  "Look at each other," Woody said loudly enough for everyone to hear him. Their conversations stopped as they turned toward him.

  "Look at each other's face, hair. Look close."

  They did, and around the room, hands went up to touch hair, faces. Others felt their stomachs or hips. Still others examined the backs of their hands, touching gingerly as if expecting the skin to flake off.

  Woody stepped between Diane and Sharla. "There are fewer lines," he said, his gaze lying like lead on Diane's features.

  "My hair," Curly said softly, running his palm slowly over his head. He gave a queer laugh. "It's coming back."

  "You're right, Woody," said Eddie. "I can't see it happening, but it is. Slowly. Like the minute hand of a clock. Jesus, I feel younger."

  "Maybe," said Frank, his voice shaking, "what we feel is stoned."

  "No, Frank," Judy said. "I don't know what's happening, but something is. Look at my hand." She held it up in front of his face. "I haven't had my wedding ring off since the day we got married, and look. There's not even a pale spot where it used to be. If the ring was ever there, it's not now, and hasn't been for weeks."

  "My wedding ring's gone too," said Diane.

  "So's mine," said Alan, and Curly indicated that his was also missing.

  "Where's yours, Frank?" Judy said.

  Frank looked at his hand. Woody saw the fingers tremble. "Probably at home on the dresser, that's all."

  "Look at the clock now," said Curly, his voice tense with excitement. The clock's second hand, a thin, dark line against white, was moving not with the usual speed of a second hand, but far more slowly, creeping at a pace that allowed them only to sense the indication of movement rather than see it. "What the fuck is happening here?" Curly said.

  "There's something wrong with it, that's all," said Frank.

  "Yeah," said Sharla, patting her afro as if it were an animal that might bite. "There's something wrong with everything around here."

  "We . . . we're stoned," Frank said. "That's all. We still must be stoned."

  Woody shook his head. "I've never felt more straight in my life. We're not stoned, Frank. What we're seeing is real."

  "Yeah? What the hell are you saying—that we're actually getting younger?"

  "No," Woody said gently. "It's not that. Not just that."

  "I think I know what you mean," Eddie said, gazing at the palms of his hands as if at the map of some unexplored country. "The cigarette pack . . . the missing rings, the watches, the clocks . . . and us, for Christ's sake." He looked up at Woody, his eyes haunted by the knowledge. "We've gone back, haven't we?"

  Woody nodded. "I think so. I think we've gone back. In time."

  "Oh for sweet Jesus Christ's sake," said Frank, at the end of his patience. "That's easy enough to bust a hole in." He went over to the little orange television, plugged it in, twisted the On knob, and turned off the amp. Woody was just about to tell him that the picture tube was dead when an image started to appear on the tiny screen.

  "We'll see how far in the past we are when a music video comes on." But it was not a music video that they saw.

  "Bill Cardill," said Curly. "We used to watch him every Saturday night. But he hasn't been on for years."

  "It's a rerun then," said Frank. "A retrospective or something."

  "Listen." Eddie reached over and turned up the volume.

  ". . . so we'll show it to you again," said the man on the screen. "Man, ever since I was in that movie last year, you guys keep wanting to see this scene. I mean, have I got a Hollywood career ahead of me or what? Okay, roll it . . ."

  A scene came on then from the original Night of the Living Dead, where the reporter, played by Cardill, is questioning the police chief.

  "He said last year," Curly said. "Living Dead came out in '68." Eddie nodded. "That means that this is 1969, if you can still add."

  "Shut up," Frank said, his eyes on the screen. "Now wait a minute, just wait a minute . . ."

  The scene ended, and Cardill was on screen again. "Don't tell me, you loved it. Well, Romero's planning a sequel, and maybe if enough of you write in, they might make me the star this time."

  "They didn't do a sequel until 1979," Curly said.

  "This is an old clip, that's all," Frank insisted.

  "We'll be right back to Vincent Price in The Pit and the Pendulum after this," said Cardill, and was replaced by a bald man standing in front of a row of cars.

  "Come on down to Randall Chevrolet today! We've got all the new 1970 cars and trucks you've been waiting for!"

  “Jesus," said Judy. "And I suppose they're showing a goddam retrospective of car commercials too, Frank?"

  "This is stupid!" Frank dug in his pockets. "Look! Look at these coins! We're talking eighties . . ." His voice trailed off as he saw what his hand held.

  Woody picked the coins off Frank's palm. Not one of them had a date later than 1967.

  "We're younger," and Woody turned to see Diane standing up, squinting at the others in the dim light. "We're all younger now. It's been happening as we've been talking. God, look at us. You're right, Woody. I don't know how, but we've gone back."

  "No," Frank said in a far softer tone than before. "It's impossible, it's irrational, it's . . . unbelievable. And I can't believe it."

  "My hair is back," said Curly. "It's short, cut just like it was when I was swimming, but it's back. And that's real."

  "Look at your wallet, Frank," Woody said, and Frank took a worn brown wallet from his hip pocket, a wallet that bore little resemblance to the Coach billfold Woody had noticed and remarked upon before.

  As Frank flipped through the cards, Woody caught glimpses of an Iselin student I.D., an activities card, a Selective Service card, a sorority photo of Judy, and an oversized green-yellow card that had been each twenty-one year old student's dearest possession.

  "Your Liquor Control Board card," said Woody. "How long since you've needed that to buy a six-pack?"

  The others were going through their personal possessions now, marveling at things forgotten, but here again. Woody opened his own wallet, the brown leather one that fell apart the summer he was graduated, and saw the photograph of Tracy, the one he still carried. Though its edges had worn to a leathery softness
, they were now crisp and sharp.

  He was back. It was true. He had come back.

  "Turn off the TV," said Alan, looking as though he had just become aware of something the others hadn't. "Turn it off." Eddie twisted the switch, and the image faded to a hot pinpoint of light, then vanished. "Now listen."

  They did. There was nothing, not a sound except for their own shallow, excited breathing.

  "No cars," Alan said. "No music. No voices from people outside. Nothing." He got up and walked quickly to the dining room windows that overlooked the street. "My God," he whispered.

  Woody and the others joined him. The cars parked on the street below were a variety of late sixties models—a gold Corvair convertible, a stubby Renault Dauphine, two VW beetles, and a huge, boxy-looking car that Woody thought might be a Buick. But it was not the cars that commanded their attention as much as the sight in, or rather on, the Dodge showroom window across the street from the building in which they stood.

  The street level window was only one story high, so they could not see themselves reflected in it, but what they could see was the mirror image of The Alternative Book Store.

  Its windows were no longer dark and coated with dust. Instead, two ceiling lights glowed feebly, revealing shelves filled with books and magazines, a brightly colored rack of underground comics (Woody could see the reversed letters, PAZ, and remembered the hilariously obscene contents of ZAP comics), a banner with black swastikas emblazoned on vicious red, a poster of Che Guevara with a gold star on his black hat, a pegboard against the back wall crowded with helmets, like vertical mushrooms.

  "Some scientists think," said Alan slowly, his quiet voice sounding huge in the silence, "that time's like a big sheet. And maybe there are places where the sheet folds over on itself."

  "I thought that was space," said Frank.

  Alan shrugged. "Space, time—same thing."

  "With that kind of thinking it's obvious you were a political science major," Eddie said, but no one laughed.

  "Maybe we ought to go outside," Curly suggested. "See if it's really the same down there."

  "No," Woody said. "We'd better not split up." He looked nervously at Curly. "Suppose the rest of us went back somehow while you were out there? What would happen to you?"