I leaned back in the chair and took in a deep breath. “It was the first day of school, Aunt Cealie. That would be in early September. End of this summer. I was supposed to come back on that very day but the machine that does the time travelling had some problems and it couldn’t pop out exactly when and where I wanted it to. It was also making a disturbance as it hopped across time. Like that ground-shaking that scared you. Anyway, after a couple of tries, it got close enough that night you saw it. It dropped me off right into my ten-year-old self. Well, it’s more complicated than that, but you get the picture.”
“Strange as it is, I believe I do.” She stared at the porch floor for a time then glanced up at me. “Does you recall ‘zackly what time your little brother went missin’? And where at?”
“It was near the little park on Escambia Avenue right by where the city will dam up the creek this summer to make a pond for the park. We were walking home together after school and I left him on the road just for a minute while I ran down to see the new dam. He was gone when I got back up to the street. We never saw him again. It was my job to watch out for him and I didn’t. I’ve lived with that failure my whole life.”
Aunt Cealie drew in a sharp breath as she gathered her old chemise together at her throat. “Your poor mamma.” We sat together in a deathly silence for some time before she spoke again. “You reckon your time machine thing done come back and got him by mistake? I hear tell from my cousins of several young’uns disappearing just like that up near Nokomis and Atmore some time back. Just gone one day. Poof. Never heared from again, neither.”
“Oh? I didn’t know about those others. But this time machine wouldn’t be doing that. It’s something else.”
“Well, when does school start back up?”
“It was always the first day after Labor Day. This year Labor Day falls on the seventh.”
Aunt Cealie pushed up from her chair and shuffled off into the cabin. After a bit of rummaging around she returned with a Texaco calendar and a pencil. “It’s jus’ as you say. So Joey come up missin’ after school right by that pond that ain’t there yet?”
“That’s right. They’ll put the dam in this summer. You know about the park?”
“Spent some time there. I gets around.”
“How do you get across the river?”
“Same as you I ‘spect. I can swim.”
“Well, actually I wade across in the shallows up river.”
She shot me a withering look and I thought I was in for another scolding about smarting off but we had already moved well beyond that phase. “You do it your way. I do it mine,” she said tersely. “I try to get a couple of miles of town walkin’ in early mos’ days durin’ the heat of the summer. Does a little shoppin’ at the farmers market. The river cool me down both goin’ and comin’.”
“So you have some spending money?”
She loosened up again. “Had a job down in Bon Secour for a time pickin’ crabmeat at a factory. Got me a Social Security pension for my troubles. I gets by.”
“So you do, Aunt Cealie.” I downed the last of my mint tea and stood up. “Thank you for the tea.”
“You most welcome, Micajah. And thank you for droppin’ by with that stew. And that story, too. That give me something to ponder the rest of the week.”
“Well, I better get back to my camp site and turn my sleeping bag. I got it wet coming across the river this morning. I’ll come back tomorrow and pick up the pot for a refill.”
The two crows that had hopped about on the railing during our conversation ruffled their feathers and flew into the cabin as I stepped off the porch. I hoped I was leaving on good terms. It was a comfort to have someone who knew why I was here, though I doubted she could be much help. Still, she and I were alike in many ways. Both loners. Both old. And, I suspected, both with secrets best kept to ourselves.
I left with a new perspective on myself, too. While I had acquired education and wealth and respectability I had always considered myself something of a failure. Yet I had been ready to end it all that night I had met Ell. Aunt Cealie, on the other hand, had nothing, was half blind and alone, living in a swamp, but she endured it all in good spirits. I had given her a lot to think about. Time travel. Mom. And Joey coming up missing. But I had left with a lot to think about, too. Where Aunt Cealie stood alone like one of those towering cypress that rose from the dark waters of the swamp, I had collapsed under the weight of …, what? I wasn’t even sure. Losing Barbara? Growing old? Failure? Whatever it was, I still had a long way to go before I could fully compare myself to Aunt Cealie.
It took till late afternoon before my sleeping bag was fully dry. Meanwhile I puttered around adjusting the tent’s ropes until the canvas was wrinkle free then relocated my earlier fire pit over to an old log that would serve as a seat. I thumbed through the Boy Scout Handbook looking at campfire setups and before sundown had as nice a camp as any picture in the book. Before supper I stripped off and took a dip in the cold river water. Every now and then I heard a car pass by on the far bank where River Road ran along for several more miles before veering north and making a straight shot up to Wilson’s Station. Other than that, I was by myself.
Supper preparation didn’t begin as coordinated as I might have liked, but while I stirred the bean pot and flipped the sausage patties a few times my twist-on-a-stick turned golden brown over the coals, and toward the end I had it all under control. Afterwards I scrubbed out the pots and pans with sand down by the river then shook them dry.
As night came on, I relaxed by the dying embers for a time thinking about my new life so far and whether I was doing better at it. My past friends, few as they had been, had fallen away after I took up with Arlie. It didn’t matter. I was in large part still an old man and had little interest in dealing with kids. But Arlie was now one of my missions. And if I was going to reform my past disinterest in other’s emotional needs, I needed Arlie as much as he needed me. Then it occurred to me what I really needed was a Scotch on the rocks. Ah well, there were many such things that would have to wait.
The moon wouldn’t be up for a few hours. I thought about taking another swim but I was worn out mentally from the day’s events. I dragged my sleeping bag into the tent and was back in the glider with Ell soon after. It was the first dream I had had about my former life since downloading. Perhaps it was an omen things were settling down.
Chapter 18
The next morning I was up before dawn and had my fire going by sunrise. As I prepared to slice up some cheese for the eggs, I caught a movement by the edge of the river. When I looked up, a slender figure stood silhouetted against the morning mist.
I stood up. “Ell? Is that you?”
“Cage?”
“Oh, hi, Arlie.” I strained to get the disappointment out of my voice. “Yeah, it’s me. Have you had breakfast yet?”
Arlie was soaking wet. “Tripped coming across,” he explained.
“Well, get your wet clothes off and wring them out. I’ll run a line for you to hang them on. They’ll be dry in an hour.” I started to dig through my backpack for some cord. But Arlie just stood in a slanting shaft of light like he was on stage opening night. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have any dry clothes to put on.”
“Oh.” I pulled a pair of shorts out of my pack. “Here. These should fit.” Arlie took them and disappeared into the woods. “So, did you have breakfast yet?” I called out.
“No.”
“Well, you’re in luck then”
The cheese eggs were almost done when Arlie brought his wet clothes back. My pants were a little loose on him. He was a skinny kid in spite of our weight lifting and calisthenics program. I turned the bacon once more to crisp it up and asked Arlie to butter the bread. I hadn’t bothered to try to toast it. I loaded up my cooking kit plate with bacon and eggs and handed it to Arlie as he finished the bread. After dropping the extra bacon in the pan with the remaining eggs for myself, I pulled out the waxy carton of
orange juice I had brought. I passed the camp cup to Arlie and filled it to the brim. He, in turn, dribbled orange juice on my spare pants as he carried it all over to the log and sat down trying to balance it on his lap.
“Dig in,” I said as I dropped down next to him and handed him the only fork. “Sorry I didn’t bring more utensils. I didn’t think you would make it out here.” I used the spoon to scoop up some egg then bit into the bacon noting with satisfaction it was all delicious. Even the buttered bread. Arlie seemed to agree. He had wolfed his down before I was even halfway finished. I poured him some more orange juice and looked over his thin frame.
Maybe the reason the workouts hadn’t made much change in him was malnutrition. Old Man Quintin didn’t impress me as the type to make sure his kid got fed properly. Arlie’s thin shoulders looked unnatural. The depressions above his collarbones could have held almost as much orange juice as his cup. He noticed me studying him and tensed up.
“What?” he asked with a fierceness that caught me off guard. “I’m skinny. I know that. A real scarecrow.”
“Maybe there’s a reason.” I regretted the words as they were leaving my mouth. But something else had grabbed Arlie’s attention. I turned to follow his astonished gaze.
“Don’t you boys stop squabblin’ on my account. I’m just bringing back the stew pot. Save you a trip later.” Aunt Cealie was hobbling steadily across the sandy clearing toward us.
I ran over and took the pot. “We just finished up breakfast but the fire’s still going strong and I have eggs and bacon left over. How about I whip you up something for your trouble?”
“I ‘preciate the thought, Micajah, but I don’t want to put you out none. You boys gots more important stuff to do I ‘spect.” She winked at me.
I smiled inwardly at our shared secret and took Aunt Cealie by the hand to pull her along toward the log. “Have a seat here. Arlie, pour Aunt Cealie a cup of orange juice and butter some more bread while I heat up the pan.”
I sat on the sand while Aunt Cealie ate and asked Arlie about his life. At one point she reached over and pinched his upper arm. I cringed.
“You look like you missed a meal or two now and again. Am I right?”
“I eat something every day,” Arlie said without incident.
“Well, I do too but look at me. This here what one meal a day look like.” She held out a reedy arm for inspection. “You look like you gettin’ maybe one and a half.” She held him in that inquisitive gaze of hers for a long moment. “If that. I’m right, ain’t I?”
“I get lunch at school and dinner every night.”
“And that’s fine far as it go. But ain’t no school goin’ on in the summer is they.”
“I have to go.” Arlie was up and headed for the river when he remembered his clothes. When he turned back to get them off the line, I intercepted him. He tried to duck around me, but I grabbed his wrist. That got me the flat of his palm on my nose. Blood gushed, but I held on in a rush of anger that he had struck me. Arlie looked like he might be going into shock. He jerked his hand free and ran for the river but I caught him and wrestled him to the ground. I finally straddled him, caught both flailing arms, and pinned his wrists to the sand. As I hovered over him breathing out my fury, my nose dripped blood onto his breastbone. He tried a few times to buck me off but it was useless. I thought he might start crying, but he didn’t.
Aunt Cealie crept over and sat down next to us. “I ‘pologize, Arlie. I just seen too many hungry children in my time. I was worried ‘bout you.”
Arlie relaxed a little under me. Beach sand sparkled in his curls. He looked the sissy, but I had now seen a toughness in him I had not noticed before.
“It’s okay, Aunt Cealie. I’m okay. Just let me up, Cager.”
I rolled off and lay on my back next to him. What else had just changed? The future was still as unknown to me as it was my first time through. There was nothing about the past twenty-four hours that had happened before.
“Sorry about your nose, too, Cage.” Arlie was up brushing himself off.
“Yeah, you pack quite a wallop, Arlie. Too much batting practice I suspect.” I jumped up and knocked off the loose sand as my anger subsided. “Looks like most of the blood got on you,” I said nodding toward his chest. “Better go wash it off while I break camp. We’ve got a repair business to get going. That’s gonna take us all day every day this summer. We’ll have to eat hamburgers for lunch at the White Rabbit most days. Maybe it’ll do both of us some good. I could stand to put on a few pounds.”
Arlie cast a baleful eye my way then relented. “Yeah. Good idea. I could use a few extra pounds myself.” And it was over.
Great, I thought. Now there go half our earnings. Money I needed to get started on investing in growth stocks. So much for my plans of a fast fortune in the stock market. Arlie was still splashing water on his bloody chest when I returned to camp. Aunt Cealie sat gazing into the fire and for an instant I glimpsed in her the young girl she had been. Even the ravages of a century were not enough to scour away the indelible dignity and beauty she still carried in her bones. I sat down next to her.
“Thank you so much for breakfast, Micajah. It was about the best breakfast I think I ever ate.” Then she glanced down toward the river and grew serious. “But that boy down there. He got secrets ‘bout as big as anything you done tol’ me already. He goin’ really surprise you one day so you watch out.” She looked me straight in the eye. “You hear me, Micajah?”
I nodded solemnly. “I hear you, Aunt Cealie.”
Chapter 19
It was still early morning when Arlie and I waded back across the river. While I stowed the camping gear in the garage, Arlie pedaled home to change into dry clothes. I was dragging our old Truetone radio cabinet out from the corner of the living room when a tapping on the screen door announced his return.
“You in there, Cage?”
“Yeah, come on in.”
Arlie wandered across the living room rug, eyes darting about, until he spotted me behind the cabinet. “You fixing your radio?”
“No. I’m just seeing what kinds of tubes it uses. We need a list of common tubes so we can buy them ahead of time for stock. How about grabbing that pad and pencil on the coffee table and writing these numbers down as I read them off.”
I worked the old tubes loose from their sockets and read their type designations out to Arlie, who dutifully noted each in a studied silence. As I had suspected, many of the tubes were duplicates. That would save us having to stock too many to carry around. We would just have to build a working inventory as we went along. But there were still a half-dozen old lawnmowers at Arlie’s. If we could get most of those running, it would give us seed money for our radio and TV repair effort.
By nightfall we had gotten another of Old Man Quintin’s mowers working and taken in a broken one a neighbor had brought over to see if we could fix. Word was getting around.
The next day we sold the Quintin mower and cleaned the carburetor on the neighbor’s to get it running. With the additional money, we were ready.
Mom dropped us off in front of Mayes Printing in downtown Pensacola the next morning. I ordered up a hundred business cards. Mayes said they would be ready that afternoon. With time to kill, we strolled across town to the library.
I pulled out several repair books on radios and lawnmowers and Arlie and I read through them in the musty cool of the reading room. I was a quick study, of course, and was finished in a half-hour. I now had a pretty fair list of about fifteen different types of tubes one could reasonably expect to find bad in a typical broken radio. Arlie, not yet having a PhD, was a bit slower but more determined and wanted to check out several of the books to read at home, so we got ourselves library cards and loaded up on repair manuals.
We stopped off at Newberry’s luncheon counter and ordered hamburgers and milkshakes and shared a side of fries that we rested on the pile of library books on the stool between us. That used up one of our dollars. T
hen we were off to Pittman’s Electronics.
Mr. Pittman took an interest in what we were trying to do and offered a number of suggestions. He reviewed our list of tubes, modified it a bit, and gave us an old catalog of substitutes. After finding out we had nearly forty dollars to spend he pulled out an assortment of parts he said were common causes of outages. He even poked around in the back of the store and found a tube caddy with a big dent in one side. He threw that in for free, packed all of the parts in it, and left us with two dollars and some change. We thanked him and told him we would be back for more parts as the summer progressed.
Back at the printing shop we picked up our business cards.
Stubbinville Radio, TV and Lawnmower Repair
$5 plus parts
Arlie Quintin and Cager Fenton
Drop Offs at 2101 River Road
For in-home repair, call Hemlock 2-5206
I handed a few cards to Arlie.
Hey our names rhyme, Arlie noted. Maybe that’s a good sign. About that time Mom drove up. The big trip to the city was over.
***
By the end of June, we were getting several calls and a drop-off almost every day and the pace was increasing as word got around that two kids were fixing radios for a third what services in Pensacola were charging. While our fee was only five bucks plus repair parts, we had a fifty percent markup on the tubes. Most of the repairs were in-house calls requiring sweaty bicycle rides across town. In the evenings we worked on the dropped off radios up in my study while we listened to The Shadow or Fibber McGee and Molly on the repaired sets. And during the day when there were no radio repair calls, we worked on mowers that wouldn’t start and fixed them with a high degree of success. But we had yet to tackle a TV. Our first chance came in late summer in a most unusual manner.
A warm August breeze occasionally ruffled our napkins as Arlie and I ate our lunch at a faded, green picnic table in the shade of the huge sycamore outside the White Rabbit. We had already repaired old Mrs. Ethridges’ radio that morning. It took both the power rectifying tubes in our caddy to get her back to her soap operas and we had another repair lined up for that afternoon. But Arlie worried we would need more power tubes and wouldn’t have them in the caddy.
A Gift of Time Page 9