A Gift of Time

by Merritt, Jerry

“I don’t understand you at all, but I’ve given you a small present, Cager. Use it wisely.” She sat up. “Good bye, Micajah Fenton.”

  “Good bye, Lovely Pebble. And thank you for everything.” Then I pulled down the last vestige of my virtual self from the glider and it was over. I was not a copy.

  ***

  I had expected to awaken in a kind of schizophrenic fugue. A ten-year-old boy suddenly finding an eighty-year-old man living in his head. But the glider had done a magnificent job integrating all of the memories. I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. A rush of memory flooded over me at the smell of the old house. It caught me by surprise since, as a kid, I didn’t remember being conscious of it. And things I had taken for granted as a kid now entranced me as I noted my memories of home had been greatly embellished over the years. My room was smaller than I remembered. The paint shabbier. The furniture more beat up. But I finally shook it off and wandered into the bathroom to wash my face. That was when it all came home to me. This wasn’t a dream. I looked back at myself from the familiar mirror with black spots of silver rot emanating from the upper left corner. Ten-year-old eyes in a young boy’s face studied me in out-and-out astonishment. Had I actually looked like that? With sandy hair and blue eyes, I was a better looking kid than I had remembered.

  I pulled my school clothes on and headed for the top of the stairs. Joey was already standing there in his bunny jammies next to Fred the cat. I drew up next to him. What was it? Nearly three quarters of a century since I had last seen him or was it just yesterday? He was five and would be in the first grade next year. In the same school with me. I had dreaded that. Joey thought I was Superman. I didn’t want him to see the real me. The last kid chosen for baseball. Well the last one before Arlen Quinton, anyway. Good old Arlen, his anchor permanently snagged on the bottom rung.

  Joey held his hand out to me as always. I had forgotten that. Because I had always brushed by him and told him to hurry up before the Boogie Man got him. But today I took his warm, little hand and led him down the steps and into the kitchen.

  “Well, wonders never cease,” Mom said. “Look at you two holding hands.”

  I had to force myself not to run and hug her. She only had a few years left. I struggled to stay in character. But it didn’t work. I had to excuse myself.

  I rushed back up the stairs and stood at the bathroom sink shaking and trying to control my breathing for several minutes as I fought back tears. A mixture of gratitude and obligation swept over me as did an ineffable sorrow. I was getting another chance to face it all again.

  Finally I splashed water on my face and sucked in my breath before returning to the kitchen and pulling my chair up to the breakfast table. That was the routine. Dad strolled in a minute later and rubbed the top of my head as he passed by to give Joey a big smack on his cherub cheeks. Then Mom slid a plate of scrambled eggs and French toast with bacon crossed over it in front of me as Fred sidled up next to my leg waiting for the bacon scrap I always slipped him when no one was looking.

  “Thanks, Mom. That looks delicious.”

  She paused to study me. “Are you being snide, Cager.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, something’s going on. Are you in trouble again?”

  Again? I didn’t recall being in trouble a lot. She caught me puzzling over her question.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t do your homework. I’m not going to stick up for you with Miss Patterson any more. You’re on your own, buster.”

  I checked with my younger self. No, I had done my homework. Most of it.

  “No, Mom. I just realized how hard you and Dad work. I appreciate it. That’s all.”

  Dad held his forkful of eggs poised in midair. “Did you switch Cager out for this kid yesterday, Julene?” He looked up at Mom with a furrowed brow.

  Mom pushed a loose strand of blonde hair over her ear. “No. I thought you did.”

  I smiled uneasily and tried to concentrate on breakfast. The future was rearranging all around me and I was powerless to stop it.

  Chapter 12

  Fifth grade was pretty much as I remembered it, just more details again like the stink fest that partied in the seat behind me in Jimmer’s coveralls, or the apple and bologna aroma of two-dozen lunch sacks tucked under our seats. Today we were practicing our times tables. And of course, I would be staying after school again because turning in most of my homework didn’t count the same as turning in all of it. Then came recess. My least favorite time of the day.

  It was just as I remembered. Patches of Bahia grass and sandspurs surrounded an uneven, orange clay, ball diamond with a rickety backstop of partially unraveled chain link stretched over rusted water pipe. Misshapen bases caked with grime connected by faded white lime marked out the infield. Worn, green team benches bracketed the backstop.

  I was second to last choice when choosing up sides. Arlen brought up the rear. Being the last two chosen meant we were always on opposing teams. I was playing right field as usual and watching Arlen on the bench kicking at the clay, waiting his turn at bat. He rested his head in his hands and occasionally ran his fingers through his blondish curls as if in torment as his time at the plate drew near. I knew the feeling. The hope that recess would end before your turn. But his team was first at bat so all hope was gone for Arlen.

  It was two outs and their big hitter was at bat. I found myself praying the ball wouldn’t come my way. Then following the crack of the bat I watched as the little white sphere rose toward right field and muscle memory took over. I grabbed the ball easily out of the air and we all trotted to the bench for our turn at bat.

  “Nice catch, Cager,” somebody said. I looked up the see Arlen headed for right field.

  I nodded to him. “Thanks.”

  I recalled all the practice it had taken me in years yet to come to be proficient at batting and catching. I never was exceptional but was better than a fifth grader. Apparently the muscle memory of catching a fly ball passed to me during the download. When it was my turn at bat, I could feel all the batting practice coming into play again. The pitcher grinned at the thought of an easy out then stood open mouthed as I slammed the ball out of the schoolyard and across the street into a flowerbed. I had rounded the bases and was sitting on the bench again by the time the other team recovered the ball. I nodded to Arlen out in right field.

  That afternoon in detention I managed to finish the homework I hadn’t completed the night before and do all of the next day’s homework too. It was the fifth grade after all and I had a PhD in physics. I handed both homework assignments to Miss Patterson and asked if I could go. She glanced over my work before observing me over the tops of her reading glasses.

  “No mistakes. Why don’t you do work like this all the time?”

  I just shrugged. It seemed like a reasonable response for a ten-year-old, but it got me an eerily appropriate speech about how I was the father of my future self.

  “If you do a poor job now, Cager, you aren’t taking care of the person you will become. How successful that future person is depends on you doing your part here and now. Do you understand?”

  Indeed, I did. I thought her admonition too insightful to be wasted on a kid. But she didn’t know I was a kid in body only. I told her I’d never thought of it like that and promised to try harder.

  As I pushed the double doors open on my way out of the schoolhouse, Arlen was waiting for me on the bottom step. He scrambled to his feet. We had never been more than classmates passing through the system, and I hadn’t spoken a dozen words to Arlen in the past but I now had a sudden interest in him. He too was the father of his future self and I suspected he needed a good deal more help than me. Yet, as I stood there on the top step, my old self struggled to maintain the distance still separating me from Arlen. Finally the part of me getting a second chance stepped in. I felt a need to at least try to work out my past failures to connect with others. In those instances where a connection had been necessary I had alway
s done it in the most superficial manner I could manage.

  “Hi, Arlen. What’s up?”

  “How’d you do that? You know, at recess today.”

  “Practice.”

  Arlen had a pleasant face with soft brown eyes beneath his loose curls. Nice bone structure. A delicate boy. I wondered if he was gay. Of course that would never have occurred to me in fifth grade before but I had eighty years of experience on board now, and it made me something of a bigot.

  “Can I practice with you some time?”

  He was looking up at me like Joey had when I was building the tree house. Like I was… I don’t know, someone special. Someone he could count on. It gave me a queasy feeling. I proceeded hesitantly down the marble steps to join Arlen at the bottom.

  “Sure. Do you have a glove?”

  Disappointment crossed his face. “No. I don’t have any sports stuff.”

  For the past me, that would have been my out, but I let the moment pass.

  “No problem,” I said. “I have a glove my granddad gave me last year and my dad still has his first-baseman’s mitt somewhere. We can make do.”

  Arlen’s smile lit up his whole face. “I know where there’s an old bat. My dad keeps it in the closet in case he needs to bash a burglar’s skull in. I’ll bring it. Where do you live?”

  “Old River Road just north of the mill pond. The white two-story. It’s the only one in that area.”

  “Heck. We’re almost neighbors then. I live in that house next to where the old grist mill used to be at the far end of Mill Pond.” Arlen stuck out his arm. “See you Saturday morning then.” I shook his narrow hand, and he turned and ran to the rusty single speed bicycle he had left leaning against the flagpole. A moment later he was pedaling a wobbly path up the sidewalk. I made a mental note to be careful with him. Arlen was going to kill himself in a few years. I had no idea why but understood such urges sometimes overpowered a lone individual. I had been there myself once.

  That evening after dinner, I asked Dad to help me move an old desk in the basement up to the spare bedroom. “I need a better place to study and do my homework,” I offered in explanation. That was all it took. They were obviously elated I might finally be ready to buckle down in my studies. Mom even came up with an old, brass desk lamp she had used in college. A spare chair from the dining room table completed the ensemble. Since I had already completed my homework in detention, I asked where the newspaper was. Mom pulled it out of the trash. I carried it upstairs and opened to the financial page. There before me lay the doorway to my new future.

  It was late November 1953 and the Dow Jones had closed at 279.91. There was money to be made. If I could get my hands on some. I scanned down the list of stocks looking for anything familiar that I knew would increase dramatically in price in the next few years. But I was way ahead of myself. The only promising stock I had any familiarity with was Holiday Inn and that was only because years in the future I had a commander in the Army who had invested heavily in Holiday Inn and claimed to have done quite well over the years. It would have to do until enough time passed to bring up the computer and space industry stocks that made people fortunes almost overnight. At least with the motel stock I would have some assets available to invest when I hit the sweet spot.

  Chapter 13

  Saturday morning found me sitting on the front steps thinking about camping across the river the next weekend if the weather held. When I glanced across the yard at Fred the cat sniffing his way leisurely through Mom’s flowerbed, I spotted Arlen weaving up River Road on his old bicycle. He struggled to hold a bat across the handlebars and waved precariously when he saw me watching him. I had forgotten all about our practice session and shot back into the house to find the gloves. By the time I got back outside Arlen had propped his bike against the front steps bannister and was swinging the bat awkwardly as he walked around the front yard. He dropped the bat when I tossed him the first-base mitt then dropped that as well.

  “Sorry,” He said sheepishly as he picked the glove up and brushed the dust off. I had my work cut out for me.

  “Why don’t we just toss the ball back and forth to start off. So you can get used to the glove.”

  “Okay. Just don’t throw the ball real hard. I’ve never played catch before.”

  On the first pitch, Arlen lunged forward after the ball with both arms extended. The ball bounced off the tip of his glove, and, trying to chase it down, he accidently kicked it down the slope and out into the road. I knew at once if I had tried to befriend Arlen on my first time through it would never have worked. Only the adult in me took pity. He came back with the ball in hand, eyes wide in anticipation of a scathing denunciation for flubbing the catch. “Sorry,” he said breathlessly. It was a word I was to hear many times that day.

  “It’s okay.”

  Arlen relaxed a bit and regarded me with a deep sense of relief. At least that’s what I took it for at the time. Years later and a thousand miles away on this second time through I would be reminded of this event.

  “You’re just trying too hard. Why don’t you throw me the ball and watch how I catch it. You don’t need to put so much effort into it.”

  “Okay. Get ready.” Arlen began his windup.

  “Hold up a second. Why don’t you toss it to me underhanded for starters.” I was worried about the front windows.

  Arlie let fly with an underhand that caught on his pants as he swung forward. The ball dribbled across the yard to me. I tossed it back. This time he actually got the ball in his glove for a second before it fell out. “Hey, I almost had it.” His unwarranted enthusiasm made me want to cry.

  A half hour later, I suggested we take a break and walk down to the river. Maybe a camping trip was what Arlen needed to gain some confidence. I was pretty sure baseball wasn’t going to do it for him.

  “Ever been camping?” I asked.

  “No. You mean like in the woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “You want to go next weekend?” I nodded toward the woods. “Over there.”

  Arlen stared across the river. “I’ll have to ask Daddy.”

  “You have any camping gear?”

  “Like what?”

  “Backpack. Sleeping bag. Cook pot.”

  “No.”

  I leaned back against the tree we were sitting under. “Me neither.”

  “Then I guess we can’t go.”

  “Of course we can go. We just have to round up a few items. It’s right across the river. If we get over there and need something important, we can just come back. It’s not like we were going to Alaska.”

  “Where would we go to the bathroom?”

  After working out a few of the camping details like using blankets for a sleeping bag and borrowing a cook pot from Mom, I suggested we practice a little more before lunch.

  “This time we won’t use gloves. We’ll just catch it with our hands. It’ll be easier. You’ll see.”

  By the time Mom came out on the porch to call me in for lunch, Arlen was throwing the ball underhand with reasonable accuracy considering where he had started that morning. And he caught it every time. Not that it was a graceful catch, but it was a start.

  I introduced Arlen and waited for Mom to invite him to stay for lunch. But Arlen said he had to go home because he wasn’t allowed to eat at other people’s houses.

  “Is that your mother’s rule?” Mom asked.

  “No. She was killed.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, dear.”

  “It’s okay. She had it coming.”

  Mom almost fell down the steps. “What!”

  Arlen glanced anxiously at me as if looking for support then back at Mom. “That’s what Daddy says.”

  “Well, what do you say, Arlen?”

  Arlen’s mouth snapped shut. He grabbed up his battered bike and climbed on as it careened down the slope toward the road. “I have to go now,” he called out to no one in particular.

&n
bsp; Mom and I stood watching him finally gain control of the bike and recede into the distance. “Arlen’s a good kid,” I said.

  Mom looked at me and cocked her head to one side. I realized I was speaking to her on an adult level. She must have noticed. I shifted gears. “I was helping him learn to catch and pitch. He and I are always the last ones chosen on the playground every day. I don’t know what that was about. I think he has a few other problems.”

  Mom turned back to watch him wind his way down the road in his signature cycling style. “I can see that, Cager.”

  ***

  That afternoon while Mom was occupied with her petunias I pedaled my bike the mile down River Road to Arlen’s to return his bat. As I coasted along the sandy drive toward the millpond, I glided by an old, black Packard sedan. The iridescent sheen of its oxidized paint spoke of protracted neglect. Beneath a cracked taillight, the tag read 75007. It occurred to me the number was the product of two primes, 107 and 701, which shared digits in reverse order. Surprised at this coincidence, I puzzled over how I even knew it. Suddenly I was surrounded by chickens scattering out of my path with alarmed clucks. That snapped me back to reality. I rolled into the shade of two giant mimosas and braked as the chickens returned to scratching out a living along the drive.

  I dropped my bike in the dirt and stood next to it studying the area. The house was in shambles. It had been white at one time but the old lead-based paint had mostly flaked off leaving a dingy white ring of small chips amid the oil drums and assorted lawnmowers stored under the eaves. It gave me the creeps. I wondered if Arlen’s lack of coordination in sports was tied to all that flaking lead paint. In another three decades, this place would qualify as a federal environmental disaster site. Then I noticed the dark figure regarding me from behind the screen door.

  “Hi, Mister Quinton. I’m Cager from up the road. I’m bringing Arlen’s bat back. We were practicing this morning.”

  Several seconds passed as the form behind the door remained silent—studying me.

  “I know who you are.”