by Rex Bolt
“Well I’m not sure about the Chico years,” she said. “I suppose I could find out . . . What else?”
“When they came back to Beacon after, did they move directly into your same house?”
“No. We lived on Blake Street when I was born.”
“Blake, over by the park?”
“Yes . . . Do you know that house that’s painted the wild colors?”
“With the palm trees?”
“Right next door to that, a little cracker box.”
“What years?”
“Goodness, you aren’t letting up, are you? . . . We moved right before Kindergarten, so . . .”
“So, say 13 years. Which makes it 2003, give or take?”
“That sounds correct.”
Pike said, “Okay let me get this straight then . . . If your dad’s 44, that means they graduated from Hamilton in 1990 or so . . . they lived in Chico early to mid ‘90’s, then they moved to Blake Street, lived there late ‘90’s, early 2000’s, then your place ever since . . . Right?’
They were on Highway 99 now, about a half hour from home. Audrey reached over and began massaging Pike’s shoulders.
“You’re a goofy boy,” she said. “I had no idea you were such a local history buff.”
“Well I like to keep this stuff straight,” he said. “Timelines and whatnot. It gives me perspective.”
“Perspective on what?”
“That’s a good question,” Pike said, and they laughed.
“But seeing as how this apparently is important,” Audrey said, “I’ll pin my dad down, and let you know.”
“I appreciate that . . . You sure today was okay for you? A lot of driving.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “The driving’s been almost as much fun as going in the ocean was.”
“Speaking of that . . .”
“Yes, speaking of that, you should have come in . . . although I understand how you’d be drained from football, and you just want a few weekends where you can take it easy. It must have been nice yesterday as well, not having anything you had to do . . . What did you do, anyhow?”
“Nothing interesting,” Pike said, thinking about the smell of the disinfectant in the custodian’s closet. “While we’re on the subject, you surprised me with the bikini there, at the end.”
“Is that so,” she said.
“Yeah. You notice, I didn’t stare too hard.”
“You could have,” she said.
“Oh,” Pike said.
Chapter 4
It was an odd feeling being back at school Monday, everything seemingly pretty normal and routine, except for the one small detail that he’d time-traveled out of the son-of-a-bitch two days ago.
At least he thought he had. Mitch had him questioning that now. Questioning his own sanity, is more what it was.
No way though he could have been mixed up on arriving on Aubrey’s sidewalk. Right?
The thing to do, what he’d been dancing around, was he had to perform another experiment, as Mitch called it, and make something happen.
If he couldn’t do that successfully, then to heck with it, this was all a bad dream. And a real dumb one.
What would you do though?
Pike obsessed over this for a couple of days. On Wednesday, he took Audrey for ice cream after school and she pulled out a folded piece of binder paper that had the dates and places that Pike had been after.
“You have nice handwriting,” he said. “I could never do it like this, because I can’t read my own.”
“Funny thing,” she said, “I think it was good for my dad to dredge it all up when I asked him . . . A kind of catharsis.”
“Well please thank him,” Pike said.
“So now you know all our family secrets.” Audrey winked at him. “Some day maybe I’ll even know yours.”
“Let me ask you something, though,” he said. “This is just for my own amusement . . . but if you could go back and change some little thing, like in a comic book or something . . . and the guy wanted to prove to himself it worked, how would you handle it?”
Audrey shook her head and smiled. “I must say, the mystery continues. I don’t mind though.”
“Meaning I got you off balance?”
“To say the least,” she said. “Getting back to your question, I have no idea what you just asked me.”
“Okay here’s the deal,” he said. “I went to library the other day, roamed around some of the science fiction, dudes going back in time, and what not . . . I get to thinking, I should try to write a story.”
“I see . . . were the characters going forward in time as well then? Into the future?”
Pike hadn’t considered that, and it threw him a curveball. It was too overwhelming to conceive of in his case, one more thing piled on.
He said, “Nah, let’s just keep it they can only go back.”
“So you’re a writer now, among other things,” Audrey said. “That’s terrific!”
“You’re jumping the gun big-time. A wannabee writer. At the most . . . In any case, my guy would have to go someplace and do what, to prove himself?”
“Well, if you want to be a bit mischievous . . . how about he goes back and changes some bad grades he received? So he gets into a better college.”
“Okay . . . that’d be one idea . . . I was thinking more, not involving himself.”
“Well, maybe move something then? Change a location?”
Pike was turning it over. “That’s not bad,” he said. “I think you’re on the right track.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely . . . Hey, you should write one of these things. Forget about me trying to do it.”
“Writing a science fiction story is not on my immediate agenda,” she said. “And something tells me it’s not on yours either . . . Is it?”
“It may not be,” Pike said. “Something to think about, though.”
“Just like your 26-year-old friend? Something to think about there too?”
“Hold on now, that’s a whole different thing,” he said.
Fortunately, Audrey still wasn’t mad. She was jerking his chain, but having fun with it.
“So let’s put this all in perspective,” she said. “This attractive female friend is a time traveler from the future . . . She wants to contact my family in the past for some reason, either here in Beacon or in Chico . . . Mitch is trying to interfere with the whole thing . . . But the man you and Mitch spoke to last time, before you got so hungry again, he can straighten everything out . . . Am I on the right track?”
“You are,” Pike said, “and you’re beautiful.”
He put his arm around her, and they left the ice cream place and he drove her home. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, but they had school on Friday. They used to have it off, but some genius decided there were too many school holidays as it was. So it wasn’t a typical weeknight, but Audrey said she should study.
***
Audrey’s suggestion on moving a location was perfect, but trying to come up with the specifics was killing Pike. Meanwhile Thanksgiving with his family was a dud. Just the family sitting there, going through the motions, not much spark. His mom’s turkey and stuffing, honestly, had been better. Not a particularly happy scene. There was at least some decent football on.
On Friday Marty Clarke said a few guys were going snowboarding at Tahoe after school, his uncle had a cabin up there, Clarke said, and did he want to come.
It sounded really good actually, but Pike said, “Appreciate you asking me, man. I’m going to stick around though. Tie up some loose ends.”
“Suit yourself,” Clarke said. “I don’t know about you, but this hick town’s getting old in a hurry. Weekends around here are way overrated.”
Pike couldn’t disagree with him, but he was determined to take care of business, and Saturday in the school closet was the right place. He thought of something. Could he alter their little trip somehow? Like they go up there, they snowboard, but then he make
s it that one of them didn’t go after all? He sidetracks that one guy? That proves that he really can do it?
This was getting stupid. Finally it came to him, simple and clear. Idiot. Go back there and use your strength to change something physical, plain and simple. Rip something in half, or some shit. Just take care of it.
By Saturday afternoon Pike had sort of figured it out. On the visitors’ side of the Hamilton football field there was a high scaffold, permanently set up, where photographers would go up and film the games. It was a good vantage point. You climbed a ladder and then there were 2 x 6 floor boards and a railing. The whole thing was pretty rickety.
That was beside the point. There was a letter H up there that framed the back of the platform.
Just go back a day, climb the sucker, take the damn H down, and set it on the grass. Wouldn’t that take care of it?
Hopefully it would, and he could move forward with more important stuff.
Saturday started off the same as last week, not many people around, the gym door being open, but unfortunately Julio the custodian was at school. The closet door was open, the light was on, and Julio was powerwashing one of the locker rooms.
“What are you doing here?” Pike said. “I thought you didn’t work weekends.”
“What, you keep track of my schedule now?” Julio said. But he was friendly, one of those guys who whistled while he worked.
“Well are you going be taking a break soon? Or leaving for the day?”
“Damn, Gillette. What’s up with you?”
“Only . . . cause if you weren’t,” Pike was thinking on the fly, “I’d buy you lunch.”
“Well that’s nice of you,” Julio said. “And also strange of you. But I already ate.”
“So an early dinner then . . . or some take-out.”
Julio shut down the power washer and gave Pike his full attention. He said, “Man, I watched you play. I enjoyed it. Didn’t know you were one weird individual.”
“Can I give you ten bucks, to go to Subway or something?” Pike said, hoping he had that much on him. “I got a little workout routine I want do in the gym, should only take twenty minutes or so.”
“You mean yoga type stuff?” Julio said, laughing. “Where you meditate or whatever it is, and you need quiet?”
“I know you’re kidding, but that’s not far off,” Pike said, and it wasn’t. He pulled out the money.
“Fine, whatever. You want something too, or you don’t eat that crap?”
“I’m good, thank you,” Pike said, though actually he was ravenous and the suggestion made it worse.
Julio went in the closet, got his jacket, and a minute later Pike could hear his car starting up.
The closet felt about the same. There was some stuff moved around and the disinfectant smelled different, slightly minty. Pike closed the door and turned off the light.
This time he’d taken a picture of the football field, specifically the Wildcats logo at the fifty-yard line, which was hand-painted by one of the art classes and pretty unique. He sat on the cold cement floor again and turned on his phone and focused on the picture. He visualized yesterday, Friday, kids coming out of class, and specifically Clarke and the guys who were going snowboarding, having a little get-together in the parking lot before they took off for Tahoe.
It was easier knowing what to expect. First the mild, and after a few minutes the deeper relaxation. Then came the spinning, finally the shaking, a little bumpier this time, and then boom.
Pike looked around. He could smell grass, football grass, a good thing. He was on a field, sitting right in the center, and he stood up. There were metal bleachers on the home side, and less extensive wooden ones on the visiting side. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to figure out this wasn’t Hamilton High School.
No. The stadium configuration was different, and god dang it, there was no Wildcats logo on the fifty yard line. There was zip. Just beat-up grass.
Things felt vaguely familiar and Pike tried like the devil to place where he was.
On the fence behind one of the end zones there was a paper banner, pretty shredded up, you could barely read the left part but right part ended in i-l-s.
Pike tried to run through teams and schools he might know and then it hit him: Blue Devils. And probably the dumb banner had said Go Blue Devils or We Love You Devils or whatever.
Which is why now the field was familiar. Pike had been here not this season but his junior year, when he was on the bench and didn’t get in the games. This was Bellmeade High School.
The first thing Pike thought of at that point was am I going to run into that kid Anthony who I knocked out and visited in the hospital?
He realized he had more important things to worry about.
First of all, what day was it? Not to mention year.
One good sign was he could hear kids yelling, like they might be at P.E. or playing basketball outside at lunch. So it probably wasn’t Saturday, which meant he’d at least changed days.
He walked off the field and headed over to the main school area. It wasn’t quite what he thought, there was no P.E. or lunch going on, just some guys shooting baskets that had the look of kids hanging around after school.
Pike picked a short kid sitting on the sidelines by himself, who was probably just a freshman, and he said with as much authority as he could, “Okay I’m going to give you a quiz . . . What time is it, and what’s the date? Come on, quick.”
The kid seemed a little flustered, and immediately told Pike it was 3:12, and December 2nd.
That was promising so far, the 2nd would have been yesterday, a Friday. “2015?” Pike said.
“What are you talking about,” the kid said, “2016.”
“I was just testing you,” Pike said, extremely relieved to have established all that, and he walked past the basketball players and the main building toward what he remembered to be the center of town, as he tried to figure out how he’d get back to Beacon.
Bellmeade was in Uffington, so it wasn’t that bad, about an hour away. He walked a few blocks and got his bearings, and there were a couple of one-way streets that felt more major than all the others, one going east and one west, and Pike figured he’d be needing the one that went east, and there was a little bus shelter where people were waiting for a city bus.
It didn’t take long for Pike to decide to stick out his thumb. He’d only hitchhiked once in his life, he’d always been afraid to try it, and that one time he was with two other guys at a Sharks hockey game and they only needed a ride a couple miles to where their car was parked.
It wasn’t that easy, it turned out. If felt like everyone and his brother was passing him by, and Pike was trying to come up with a plan B. Which was essentially call somebody and feel like an idiot, not to mention having to explain himself.
He thought of Clarke, who was dependable in these situations and didn’t ask too many questions, but then of course he had his Tahoe thing. Either way, he was about to give up on the hitching gig when a car pulled up and stopped, an SUV with a bunch of hyper girls and what looked like a dad driving. The dad opened the window and said, “Are you Pike Gillette?”
Pike said he was.
“They made me go around the block and come back,” the dad said, pointing to the back seats with his head. “One of ‘em recognized you . . . You need a lift somewhere?”
“I appreciate your asking,” Pike said. “I’m trying to get to Beacon though.”
“That’s where we’re going. So today’s your lucky day. Or unlucky, if you can’t take the noise.”
He was a friendly guy, and Pike got in the passenger seat, and the man introduced himself as Henry. The fortunate part as it turned out was Bellmeade was playing Hamilton in basketball, and that’s where they were going, to watch the game. The girls looked young, like freshmen and sophomores.
“Little early though, isn’t it?” Pike said.
“JV’s,” Henry said. “They start at 5:30. We have a daughter pla
ying.”
“Well this sure helps me out,” Pike said. “Door to door service.”
“You playing any more sports, besides football?”
“No, just that. You knew I played, how?”
“Yeah well the reason Patsy, in back, recognized you is you evidently injured her brother in a game, and stopped by to see him . . . Which is admirable.”
Wow. The hospital room with Anthony and his parents, and Cathy with him too, had been a blur. He wasn’t aware of one of these kids in the SUV being there as well.
“My little brother wasn’t so lucky,” Henry continued. “Poor kid. He’d only played one quarter of football, his whole life . . . which amounted to 12 minutes. The first play, the second quarter, he sticks his head in there, the ballcarrier coming around the edge, except his technique is no good . . . Head down, form a disaster. An accident waiting to happen.”
Henry was composing himself. Pike kept quiet. The girls in back were giggling about something, not listening.
“Bottom line . . . my brother Jeff didn’t get up. Like Anthony or anyone else.”
“Oh my god,” Pike said. “He . . . died?”
“In a way. He’s in a chair. He’s got some movement of his arms. Zippo below the waist. All we can hope for is medical advances, stem cells, that whole drill . . . Hopefully in his lifetime.”
Pike blew out a deep exhale. “How old is he?” he asked Henry.
“38.”
“And where did this happen?” Pike felt himself getting into it, like he had with Audrey in the car. Not wanting to, but not able to reign himself in either.
“Up in the city. Frisco. Galileo High School.”
“Wait,” Pike said, “didn’t O.J. Simpson go there? That scumbag.”
“He did. So did I. We grew up in the Marina.”
“That where he still lives then? Your brother?”
“He’s in Monterey. He’s a tough guy. I’m proud of him. He goes about his business, one way or the other.”
“Is he . . . married, or anything?”
“No, never happened . . . at any rate, sorry if I bent your ear. Remember to count your blessings, every time you walk off that field.”