A Gift of Time

by Merritt, Jerry

  “Yessir, Yessir, I surely will. Thank you, sir.” I watched him turn around in the road and head back toward Kennett. I felt a little sorry for him. He was going to be the laughing stock of the force by end of shift.

  We needed to get off the highway. It wouldn’t be long before the trooper got to the repeater, called in his report, and learned he’d let a federal-level bust slip through his fingers. I checked the map. We could turn north a few miles ahead and make our way up to Cairo, Illinois where we could cross the Mississippi into Kentucky. From there we could turn south for about thirty miles into Tennessee. I cranked the engine as Arlene climbed back into the rider’s seat. She was visibly shaken as I pulled back onto the road and pushed the old bus into the darkness as hard as it would go.

  “I can’t keep doing this to you, Cage. That was too close.”

  “Everything’s fine. We’ll turn off on a side road just ahead and be in Mississippi by sunup. We can trade for another vehicle there. Those small town boys change cars like they change underwear. Several times a year.” Arlene didn’t laugh.

  After filling up the bus in Cairo and picking up a road map of Western Tennessee, we crossed into Kentucky. As we drove south, Arlene studied the map until the flashlight batteries gave out. She finally folded the map and leaned back in the seat.

  “See any place you want to visit?” I asked just to break the silence.

  “No. Nothing special. I was just curious.” A short time later she said she was going to repack the stuff we had thrown so hastily into the back. She rummaged around for about a half hour before returning to her seat. Neither of us said anything for the next hour and a half as the wind buffeted the bus every few minutes, rocking us in our seats. Finally she said, “One of those new Interstate highways is not too far ahead. Maybe we can stop and stretch our legs and take a look?”

  “Sure. Probably won’t be able to see much in the dark though.”

  But when we hit the Interstate 40 intersection at Jackson, Tennessee, it was lit up by floods high on slender metal poles. As we crossed over the ghostly white concrete ribbon, cars zoomed by beneath us, though it was nearly midnight.

  “Pull up there,” she said pointing as we crossed over the lanes below. I cut the engine and rolled the bus to a hushed stop. Arlene reached back and pulled her little knapsack up into her lap before glancing over at me, her face taut, full of hesitation. Then she opened the door and started to slide out before stopping halfway and turning back to me. The wind lashed her hair about as I met her eyes in the pallid light of the overhead floods. She put her hand over her mouth for a moment staring at the floorboards then glanced up at me again.

  “The way we met, Cage ...” She must have seen the confusion on my face because she fell silent again as she struggled to compose herself. “The way we met I never got to write you a love letter. So this is it.

  “I’ve loved you since that first day in your front yard when you threw the ball and it bounced off the tip of my glove and I kicked it out into the street trying to pick it up. I was so ashamed that I had wasted your time by asking for your help. But instead of yelling at me, you just said not to worry about it and kept working with me until I finally got the hang of it. No one had ever treated me like that before. Just you.

  “From that day on you were my everything. The single island of stability in my life. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning to be with you. You gave me confidence in myself. And I needed that every day.” She paused again blinking back tears. “Until you came along I hated my life so much I sometimes kicked my own shadow when I saw it. After you, all that changed.” The wind slammed the bus door into her. She pushed it back and slung her pack up over her shoulder.

  “Wait. What are you doing?”

  “Cage, I would follow you into a burning building. You know that. I even followed you into Pressley Poole’s house when I knew not to go in there. But I can’t follow you if I’m going to pull you down. You’ve done everything for me. I don’t understand why. But you have. So it’s my time to do something for you. Go back to Santa Barbara. You’re sixteen—at least everybody thinks you are. They won’t do anything to you and you can pick up where you left off. Even get your account unfrozen so you can work on your time machine.”

  She slid out but turned back one last time. “You’ll never know how much I’ve loved you, Cage. I could never tell you. I knew you struggled with some kind of blank spot in that area, and I knew you would never understand. I just hope you’ll find someone else who will love you as much I have.” She backed away and let the wind slam the door closed behind her.

  By the time I set the parking brake and stepped out onto the pavement, she was running down the slope toward the Interstate. I called, but she never turned back. She stopped for a second to throw her knapsack over a fence then climbed over after it. I took off after her but halfway down the slope I slipped on the wet grass. A blast of wind blustered from under the overpass buffeting me as I struggled up. Rain spattered around me. I reached the fence a few seconds later but she was standing on the edge of the Interstate with her thumb out. The second vehicle to pass slammed on brakes and backed up. A mud-spattered, red and white, Dodge station wagon. As she ran up, the rear door opened and she climbed inside. Moments later I stood on the spot where she had entered the wagon and watched the taillights disappear into the rain. And the wind filled the space where she had been.

  Chapter 40

  After struggling back up the slope, I sat in the bus for several minutes in near shock. The scent of Arlene’s perfume lingered on the stale air. This was insane. Something Arlie would have pulled. She had no identification other than the name everyone was looking for, and I was pretty sure she had no more than fifty dollars with her. It wasn’t that she was helpless. She had her stiletto. She always had that. But without money—it was obvious I had to find her. If she was caught and proven to be Arlie, Dad could be prosecuted too—for harboring a fugitive.

  I drove to the bottom of the overpass and crossed over to the onramp leading in the direction the station wagon was headed. It would be ten miles up the road by now, and there was little chance of catching it in the old VW, but I tried anyway. After passing two more interchanges without spotting the wagon, the hunt became hopeless. There was no way to know whether it was headed to Nashville or merely home several miles off one of the connections.

  I knew then my time with Arlene was over. She had been the only person besides Aunt Cealie I could trust. There was no going back to Santa Barbara, though. I needed a new identity and suspected there would be many new identities before I was done. But now there was no one to help me. It was a lonely affair to be on my own again at both age sixteen and eighty. Neither were years of great self-sufficiency. I had about thirty-five hundred dollars in cash left. After five years’ effort, it wasn’t much of a start on building a time machine. I shook my head to clear away the fog of little sleep, and the loss of Arlene, and turned off at the next interchange. It didn’t much matter where I ended up. Maybe a medium sized town would be best. Not so big I’d get lost in it and not so small everyone knew when a stranger blew in.

  ***

  For two years I crossed the country working odd jobs. I even played piano in dinner bars in the evenings using some of the talent I had acquired in Ell’s virtual world. Finally ending up in Montana, I discovered an easy source of money on the blackjack tables in the Indian casinos where the gambling age was 18. My math ability gave me a slight advantage over the house, but I had to be careful not to win too consistently or too much at a time. I bought a nearly new Jeep and floated back and forth among the Montana and Idaho casinos for a few months racking up almost eighty thousand. Then the dealers began to remember me. It was time to leave.

  I located a financial attorney in Boise and had him draw up papers to transfer the Dan Shepard account to Dad. The freeze was still on the account, but the attorney said he could get it removed since there was never any proof of criminal activity to support the fre
eze. That night I called Dad.

  I had been calling him periodically just to make sure he hadn’t been dragged into any legal tangles that would have ensued if Arlene had been caught, but he always told me the business that had led to our departure had blown over after a few months.

  I kept the call short, just telling him he would receive some paperwork in a few days. The account was now his. It contained nearly two hundred grand, and, if he let it ride, it would be worth double that in a few years. Triple in six or seven. He asked when I was coming back. I let him think Arlene was still with me and reminded him we would all pay a heavy price if she was ever caught and fingerprinted. He understood but was crying a little before our conversation was over.

  The next morning I took off for California. With my winnings and the money saved over the past two years, I had nearly ninety thousand to begin investing yet again.

  I bought a dilapidated hunting lodge in the hills about five miles east of Carmel and settled in. It was a time when new stocks with real growth potential were coming on the market. I invested heavily and sold when better stocks came along and reinvested in those. Returning to the exercise routine Arlie and I had followed as kids, I ran five miles through the hills daily and lunched sparingly at the Cabbage Leaf, a holistic restaurant near the ocean where the staff waved ‘life giving’ crystals over the food as they served it. They seemed not to notice the anchovies in my salad remained quite dead. Trying to stay as unobtrusive as possible, I never mentioned it.

  Being alone allowed me to work full time developing the mathematical models I would need to begin actual design of components for prototyping a glider. I spent most mornings pouring over the math in my self-imposed solitude. Then a drive down to Carmel for lunch and back for a few hours of minor carpentry work trying to return the cabin to its former glory. Eventually, though, the math took over. I abandoned the remodeling and ended up installing blackboards on most of the walls. What wouldn’t fit on the blackboards, I scribbled on reams of scratch paper strewn across multiple tables. To have a little human contact I drove up to Monterey on weekends and crewed with the day-sailors. Evenings I usually spent on the front porch thinking. That was actually my most productive time. It got my subconscious working on problems overnight and usually led to new insights the next morning.

  There weren’t many distractions. An occasional wandering bear, a temblor radiating out of the San Andreas Fault to the east, a solitary hiker. The little earthquake shocks were the most distracting. They never did much damage, but for a Florida boy it seemed unnatural for the earth to behave in such a manner.

  Most of the time, though, I labored on alone with only my ruminations for company. I still thought about Arlene occasionally. But when she had left, she had closed a door neither of us could ever open again. We were now each nameless to the other. We could never find one another again. And so, the days wore slowly on.

  One evening late, while sitting on the porch, I mulled over my recent trip back to Stubbinville, or more appropriately, High Pine across the river. It had taken me a while to find my way from the old cemetery to Aunt Cealie’s. She clapped her hands together as I crossed over the bridge to her cabin.

  “I thought that might be you, Micajah. I heared cawin’ off to the west on the old cemetery trail. It were too soon for any of my other kin to be comin’ this away.” She patted the seat next to her. She was becoming frail but remained eager for news. “Sit down and tell me all what’s been goin’ on. How is Julene and Arlene?”

  It only took a few minutes to bring her up to speed. She was greatly affected by Mom’s death.

  “Julene gone. Tha’s a great loss, Micajah. A great loss.” She stared at the porch floor shaking her ancient head as though recalling days long past. “Her mamma might not of wanted her, but she were a blessing to me, tha’s for sure.”

  Glancing up toward the tops of the cypress, she sighed. “They’s some people in this world you’d think was a angel, Micajah. Your mamma were one of ‘em. If I weren’t there when she was borned, I’d of thought I was in the presence of a angel when Julene was around. She done took care of me all dese years and I know, like mos’, she weren’t made of money.” Aunt Cealie wiped a glint from the corner of her eye. “Course, she weren’t no actual angel. Not then, anyways. It’s jus’ that you couldn’t tell the difrence. I always thought if everbody acted jus’ like they was a angel, this world would be a lot better. But that ain’t happened yet.”

  “Mom always said whatever goodness she got, she got from you, Aunt Cealie.”

  “No. She ain’t got it from me.”

  “Don’t be too sure about that. You were a blessing to me all those years after my return when I couldn’t tell anyone about coming back.”

  She reached over and patted the back of my hand. “Well, comin’ from you, I take that as the finest belaudin’ as I ever had.”

  Though her two porch crows had died several years before, their replacement flitted around our chairs as we sat together looking out over her swamp. I finally shooed him off my shoulder and asked if Arlene might have stopped by.

  She shook her head sadly. “No, Micajah, it’s been near ’bout lonesome as a Monday mornin’ church service since I seed you all off to Callyfornia.”

  “Speaking of California,” I jotted my address on a page of my pocket notepad and tore it off, “if Arlene should ever drop by, would you give her this?”

  She took the paper and hobbled into her cabin for a moment. Coming out she said, “It’s stuck in Psalms. Right next to Arlie’s verse. Yours too. I ‘spose. Or close as I can get.”

  I spent another hour reminiscing with Aunt Cealie then left her with fifty twenty-dollar bills. She fussed in great excess about how nice that was and tried to give the money back. I told her, even though she was now one hundred and seven, she had more good years left on her and might need a little cash. I also gave her a self-addressed, stamped envelope to have her kin drop in the mail if she ever needed to see me. I would be there within the week. As I stepped off the porch to leave, she asked me for a favor. The only one she had ever asked. I was somewhat disturbed by it, but agreed. I owed her. Her crow flitted from tree to tree above me all the way back to the cemetery.

  I flew out that night and was waiting in the Denver Airport for my connection to San Francisco when I noticed Barbara sitting not twenty feet from me. We would not have met yet, though she had been, or rather would have been, my wife for over fifty years. Should I introduce myself? The isolation after Arlene had become almost crippling. Surely I could trust Barbara to keep my secret. We had shared so much over the years and I knew her to be a reliable confidant.

  She glanced up at that moment and caught me studying her. I smiled and made a motion to get up but she flashed me a look of disdain and grabbed up her coat before moving quickly to another area. That simple action nearly broke me. I sat shaking as I waited for my plane. By the time I arrived back at my lodge, I was on the edge of despair. I had now lost nearly everyone. Even Barbara. Again. After that dark night standing on the edge of capitulation by the crater in my front yard, I had come full circle.

  Then a sharp tremor rattled the dishes inside the cabin and broke my reverie. I stood up and stumbled inside to check that nothing was broken.

  It must have been about midnight when the cabin shook again. I awoke with a start and stared into the darkness. Something was different this time. I reached over and clicked on the table lamp.

  My heart nearly exploded.

  “You’re a hard one to find, Micajah Fenton.”

  Chapter 41

  Ell stood beside the bed looking down on me. An awkward moment passed between us as I lay nearly paralyzed in disbelief before leaping up and pulling her to me. “Ell. You don’t know what a welcome sight you are. I never expected to see you again.”

  Then I held her at arms’ length. I shouldn’t have been able to do that.

  “But you’re not just a thought like before. You’re warm and physically here
.” I paused trying to figure out what was happening. “Or am I back in your glider again?”

  “No. You’re still in your world. The glider just dropped me off. Sorry it woke you.”

  My mind was beginning to clear. “But you’re real now. Or seem to be.”

  “I am real.”

  “But how?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and held her hands out at her sides. It was a distinctly human gesture meaning merely, here I am. Don’t worry about it.

  “Then where’s your glider?”

  “On a mountaintop near the north pole of the Moon.”

  So that was it. “Then you’re a copy.”

  “Like we discussed? Yes. I’m more like you now than like the Ell back in the glider. But I still remember the way things were between us before you chose to leave. Even though you may have forgotten, we virtual creatures can never forget.”

  “No. I haven’t forgotten anything.” I hugged her to me again relishing the warmth of human contact. Then pushed her back again. “You are human now, aren’t you?”

  “I’m human enough that anyone inspecting me couldn’t tell the difference. Well, unless they got into the cellular machinery. The glider couldn’t construct the exact image I had projected to you. Not using just DNA, anyway. So it had to fudge a little. Not much. But enough to show up at the molecular level. I’m mostly DNA-based but to get my form to match the image you had of me required some specific tailoring. I bleed just like you and perspire and need food, though.”

  We stood looking at each other for a moment before she smiled. “So are we going to just stand here all night or can I share that comfortable looking bed with you? I haven’t slept since my memory was loaded yesterday. This is all so new to me.”

  I pulled the covers back. “Then hop in.”