by Paul Melko
“Yes. I’m taking Casey Nicholson out.”
“Casey?” His father held the plank as John hammered a nail into it. “Nice girl.”
“Yeah, I’m taking her to a movie at the Bijou.”
“The Bijou?”
“I mean the Strand,” John said, silently yelling at himself for sharing details that could catch him up. The movie theatre was always called the Palace, Bijou, or Strand.
“Uh-huh.”
John took the shovel and began shoring up the next post.
“What movie you gonna see?”
Before he could stop himself, he answered, “Does it matter?”
His father paused, then laughed heartily. “Not if you’re in the balcony, it doesn’t.” John was surprised, then he laughed too.
“Don’t tell your mother I told you, but we used to go to the Strand all the time. I don’t think we watched a single movie.”
“Dad!” John said. “You guys were . . . make-out artists?”
“Only place we could go to do it,” he said with a grin. “Couldn’t use this place; your grampa would have beat the tar out of me. Couldn’t use her place; your other grampa would have shot me.” He eyed John and nodded. “You’re lucky we live in more liberal times.”
John laughed, recalling the universe where the free love expressions of the 60s had never ended, where AIDS had killed a quarter of the population and syphilis and gonorrhea had been contracted by 90 percent of the population by 1980. There, dating involved elaborate chaperone systems and blood tests.
“I know I’m lucky.”
*
In the early hours of the morning, John slipped across Gurney, through the Walder’s field and found a place to watch the farm from the copse of maple trees. He knelt on the soft ground, wondering if this was where John Prime had waited for him.
John’s arms tingled as he anticipated his course of action. He was owed a life, he figured. His had been stolen and he was owed another. He’d wanted his own back, and he’d tried to get it. He’d researched and questioned and figured, but he couldn’t see any way back.
So he was ready to settle for second best.
He’d trick the John Rayburn here, just like he’d been tricked. Tease him with the possibilities. Tickle his curiosity. And if he wasn’t interested, he’d forced him. Knock him out and strap the device on his chest and send him on.
Let him figure it out like John had. Let him find another universe to be a part of. John deserved his life back. He’d played by the rules all his life. He’d been a good kid; he’d loved his parents. He’d gone to church every Sunday.
He’d been pushed around for too long. John Prime had pushed him around, Professor Wilson, the cat-dogs. He’d been running and running and with no purpose. And enough of that. It was time to take back what had been stolen from him.
Dawn cast a slow red upon the woods. His mother opened the back door and stepped out into the yard with a basket. He watched her open the hen house and collect eggs. She was far away, but he recognized her as his mother instantly. Logically, he knew she wasn’t his mother, but to his eyes, she was. That was all that mattered.
His father pecked her lightly on the cheek as he headed for the barn. He wore heavy boots, thick ones, coveralls, and a John Deere cap. He entered the barn, started the tractor and drove toward the fields. He’d be back for breakfast in an hour, John knew. Bacon, eggs, toast, and, of course, coffee.
They were his parents. It was his farm. Everything was as he remembered it. And that was enough for him.
The light in John’s room turned on. John Rayburn was awake. He’d be coming out soon to do his chores. John waited until this John went into the barn, then he dashed across the empty pumpkin field for the barn’s rear door. The rear door was locked, but if you jiggled it, John knew, it came loose.
John grabbed the handle, listening for sounds from within the barn, then shook it once for a few seconds. The door held. He paused, then shook it again and it came open suddenly, loudly. He slipped into the barn and hid between two rows of stacked bales.
“Hey, Stan-Man. How are you this morning?”
The voice came from near the stalls. This John — he started thinking of him as John Subprime — was feeding his horse.
“Here’s an apple. How about some oats?”
John crept along the row of bales, then stopped when he could see the side of John Subprime’s face from across the barn. John was safe in the shadows, but he needed to get closer to him.
Stan nickered and nuzzled John Subprime’s head, drawing his tongue across his forehead.
“Stop that,” he said, with a smile.
John Subprime turned his attention to the sheep, and when he did so, John slipped around the bales and behind the corn picker.
He realized something as he sat in the woods, and his plan had changed accordingly. John wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t a smooth talker. He couldn’t do what John Prime had done to him, that is, talk him into using the device. John would have to do it some other way. And the only way he could think to do it was the hard way.
John lifted a shovel off a pole next to the corn picker. It was a short shovel with a flat blade. He figured one blow to the head and John Subprime would be out cold. Then he’d strap the device to his chest, toggle the universe counter up one, and then hit the lever with the end of the shovel. It’d take half the shovel with him, but that was okay. Then John would finish feeding the animals and go in for breakfast. No one would ever know.
John ignored the queasy feeling in his stomach. Gripping the shovel in two hands, he advanced on John Subprime.
John’s faint shadow must have alerted him.
“Dad?” John Subprime said, then turned. “My God!” He shrank away from the raised shovel, his eyes passing from it to John’s face. His expression changed from shock to fear.
John’s body strained, the shovel raised above his head.
John Subprime leaned against the sheep pen, one arm raised, the other . . .
He had only one arm.
Nausea washed through John’s body and he dropped the shovel. It clattered on the wood floor of the barn, settled at John Subprime’s feet.
“What am I doing?” he cried. His stomach heaved, but nothing came up but a yellow bile that he spat on the floor. He heaved again at the smell of it.
He was no better than John Prime. He didn’t deserve a life.
John staggered to the back door of the barn.
“Wait!”
He ran across the field. Something grabbed at his feet and he fell. He pulled his foot free and ran into the woods.
“Wait! Don’t run!”
John turned to see John Subprime running after him, just one arm, the right, pumping. He slowed twenty feet in front of John, then stopped, his hand extended.
“You’re me,” he said. “Only you have both arms.”
John nodded, his breath too ragged, his stomach too tense to speak. Tears were welling in his eyes as he looked at the man he had contemplated clubbing.
“How can that be?”
John found his voice. “I’m a version of you.”
John Subprime nodded vigorously. “Only you never lost your arm!”
“No, I never lost it.” John nodded his head. “How did it happen?”
John Subprime grimaced. “Pitchfork. I was helping dad in the barn loft. I lost my balance, fell. The pitchfork caught my bicep, sliced it . . .”
“I remember.” In John’s universe, he’d been twelve, and he had fallen from the loft while he and his father loaded it with hay. He had thought he could carry the bale, but he hadn’t been strong enough and he’d fallen to the farm yard, knocking the wind out of himself, bumping the pitchfork over as he fell. The pitchfork had landed next to him, nicking his shoulder. His father had looked on in horror and then anger. The scolding from his mother had been worse than the nick. “I just got a cut on my shoulder.”
John Subprime laughed. “In one world, I lose my arm, and i
n another I get a scratch. Don’t that beat all.” Why was he laughing? Didn’t he realize that John had meant to steal his life?
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you come inside and have some breakfast?”
John looked at him, unsure of how he could ask that. He yelled, “I was going to steal your life!”
John Subprime nodded. “Is that why you had the shovel? Then you saw my arm. No way you could steal my life. You’ve got two arms.” He laughed.
“It wasn’t just that,” John said. “I couldn’t bring myself to hurt . . .”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How could you possibly?” John yelled. “I’ve lost everything!” He reached into his shirt and toggled the universe counter. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”
“No. Wait!” John Subprime yelled.
John backed away and pulled the lever.
The world blurred and John Subprime blinked away.
There was the barn and the farmhouse, and off in the distance his father on the tractor. Another universe where he didn’t belong. He toggled the device and pulled the lever. Again the farmhouse. He didn’t belong here either. Again he moved forward through the universes. The farmhouse was gone. And again. Then it was there, but green instead of red. He toggled it again and again, wanting to get as far away from his contemplated crime as possible.
The clouds flew around in chaotic fast motion. The trees he stood in were sometimes there, sometimes not. The farmhouse bounced left and right a foot, a half foot. The barn more, sometimes behind the house, sometimes to the east of it. The land was the one constant, a gently sloping field. Once he found himself facing the aluminum siding of a house. And then it was gone as he transferred out.
A hundred times, he must have transferred through universe after universe where he didn’t belong until finally he stopped and collapsed to the ground, sobbing.
He’d lost his life. He’d lost it all, and he’d never get it back.
He rested his head against the trunk of a maple and closed his eyes. After the tears were gone, after his breathing had slowed, he slept, exhausted.
*
“Hey there, fella. Time to get up.”
Someone poked him. John looked up into his father’s face.
“Dad?”
“Not unless my wife’s been hiding something from me.” He offered a hand, and John pulled himself up. John was in the copse of maples, his father from this universe standing beside him, holding a walking stick. He didn’t recognize John.
“Sorry for sleeping here in your woods. Got tired.”
“Yeah. It’ll happen.” He pointed toward Gurney with his stick. “Better be heading along. The town’s that way.” He pointed north. “About two miles.”
“Yes, sir.” John began walking. Then he stopped. His father hadn’t recognized him. Which meant what? John wasn’t sure. He turned back to him. “Sir, I could use some lunch. If you have extra. I could work it off.”
Bill Rayburn — John forced himself to use the name in his head. This man was not his father — checked his watch, then nodded. “Lunch in a few minutes, my watch and my stomach tell me. Cold cuts. As to working it off, no need.”
“That’s fine.”
“What’s your name?”
“John . . . John Wilson.” He took Professor Wilson’s last name spontaneously.
John turned and followed Bill across the pumpkin field toward the house. The pumpkins were still on the vine, unpicked and just a week until Halloween. Some of them were already going bad. He passed a large one with its top caved in, a swarm of gnats boiling out of it.
He remembered the joke his father had told him a week ago.
“How do you fix a broken jack-o-lantern?” he asked.
Bill turned and glanced at him as if he were a darn fool.
“I don’t know.”
“With a pumpkin patch,” John replied, his face straight.
Bill stopped, looked at him for a moment, then a small smile crept across his lips. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
The barn was behind the house, smaller than he remembered and in need of paint. There was a hole in the roof that should have been patched. In fact the farm seemed just a bit more decrepit than he remembered. Had hard times fallen on his parents here?
“Janet, another one for lunch,” Bill called as he opened the back door. “Leave your shoes.”
John took his shoes off, left them where he always did. He hung his bag on a hook. It was a different hook, brass and molded, where he remembered a row of dowels that he and his father had glued into the sideboard.
John could tell Janet wasn’t keen on a stranger for lunch, but she didn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t until she and Bill were alone. John smiled at her, thanked her for letting him have lunch.
She wore the same apron he remembered. No, he realized. She’d worn this one, with a red check pattern and deep pockets in front, when he was younger.
She served John a turkey sandwich, with a slice of cheese on it. He thanked her again as she did, and ate the sandwich slowly. Janet had not recognized him either.
Bill said to Janet, “Got some good apples for cider, I think, a few bushels.”
John raised his eyebrows at that. He and his father could get a couple bushels per tree. Maybe the orchard was smaller here. Or maybe it had been hit with blight. He glanced at Bill and saw the shake in his hand. He’d never realized how old his father was, or maybe he had aged more quickly in this universe for reasons unknown. Maybe a few bushels was all he could gather.
“I should work on the drainage in the far field tomorrow. I’ve got a lake there now and it’s going to rot my seed next season.” The far field had always been a problem, the middle lower than the edges, a pond in the making.
“You need to pick those pumpkins too, before they go bad,” John said suddenly.
Bill looked at him.
“What do you know of farming?”
John swallowed his bite of sandwich, angry at himself for drawing the man’s resentment. John knew better than to pretend farm another farmer’s fields.
“Uh, I grew up on a farm like this. We grew pumpkins, sold them before Halloween and got a good price for them. You’ll have to throw half your crop away if you wait until Sunday, and then who’ll buy that late?”
Janet said to Bill, “You’ve been meaning to pick those pumpkins.”
“Practically too late now,” Bill said. “The young man’s right. Half the crop’s bad.”
“I could help you pick them this afternoon.” John said it because he wanted to spend more time there. It was the first chance he’d had in a long time to relax. They weren’t his parents; he knew that. But they were good people.
Bill eyed him again appraisingly.
“You worked a farm like this, you say. What else you know how to do?”
“I can pick apples. I can lay wood shingles for that hole in your barn.”
“You been meaning to do that too, Bill,” Janet said. She was warming to him.
“It’s hard getting that high up, and I have a few other priorities,” he said. He looked back at John. “We’ll try you out for the day, for lunch and dinner and three dollars an hour. If it isn’t working out, you hit the road at sundown, no complaining.”
John said, “Deal.”
“Janet, call McHenry and ask him if he needs another load of pumpkins and if he wants me to drop ’em off tonight.”
*
John waited outside the County Clerk’s window, his rage mounting. How damn long did it take to hand over a marriage certificate? Casey was waiting for him outside the judge’s chamber, nine-months pregnant. If the man behind the glass wall took any longer, the kid was going to be born a bastard. And Casey’s and his parents had been adamant about that. No bastard. He’d said he’d take care of the kid and he meant it, but they wanted it official.
Finally the clerk handed over the license and the two notarized blood tests and John snatched them from
his hand.
“Thanks,” he said, turning and heading for the court building.
After the wedding he and Casey were driving up to Toledo to honeymoon on the last of his cash. In a week he was scheduled to start his GE job. He was going to work one of the assembly lines, but that was just until the book he was writing — The Shining — took off.
The trip to Toledo served the purpose of the honeymoon, as well as the fact that he had meetings regarding the screwed-up Rubik’s Cube. It still irked him. The patent search had turned up nothing and they had built a design, one that finally worked, and they’d sunk $95,000 into a production run. Then they’d gotten a call from the lawyer in Belgium. Apparently there was a patent filed in Hungary by that bastard Rubik. The company Rubik had hired in New York to market the things had gone under and he’d never bothered to try again. Someone had gotten wind of their product and now they wanted a piece of the deal.
The lawyer had wanted to drop him like a hot potato, but he’d convinced him that there was still cash to be made from it. Some cash at least. He’d have to pay a licensing fee probably. Kiss some ass. But there was money to be made. He’d stick it out with John, though the retainer was just about gone.
Casey waved as he rounded the corner on the third floor in front of the judge’s office. Casey sat on a bench, her belly seeming to rest on her knees. Her face was puffy and pink, as if someone had pumped her with saline.
“Hi, Johnny,” she said. “Did you get the paper?”
He hated being called Johnny and he’d told her that, but she still did it. Everybody used to call Johnny Farmboy Johnny so he was stuck with it. Some things just couldn’t be changed.
He put on a smile and waved the certificate. “Yeah,” he said. “Everything’s ready.” He kissed Casey on the cheek. “Darling, you look radiant.” He’d be glad once the baby was out of her body; then she could start dressing the way he liked again. He hoped her cheerleading uniform still fit.
The ceremony was quick, though Casey had to dab her eyes. John wasn’t surprised that none of Casey’s friends were there. Getting pregnant had put a lot of stress on her relationships. Field hockey had been right out.