Sandcastle for Pegasus

by Bob Avey

  “What the heck are you trying to say, kid?”

  Martin felt a heavy hand being placed upon his small shoulder. The authorities had arrived. “You and I end up at odds over my son, Luke. He means the world to me, Jackson. I’m here to change things so you will not feel animosity toward Luke, just because he’s different.”

  “Are you Martin Taylor?” The man behind the heavy hand asked.

  “Yes, sir. And I don’t wish to be a problem. In fact, I’m glad you’re here. But, please, just give me a moment?”

  Martin turned back toward Jackson Stewart. “Just remember me, Martin Taylor, and what we talked about here today, okay?”

  The policeman, a rather large but gentle man, led Martin away. “The next time we meet,” Martin said, talking to Jackson, “I will give you a keyword, so you will remember. The keyword is Sandcastle.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARTIN

  Friday, September 13, 1991, 6:00 p.m.

  Martin felt about six inches tall as he and his mom and dad walked into the living room of their home in Broken Arrow. The flight back from Williamsburg had been tense and quiet with just enough conversation exchanged to communicate basic demands. Now that they had entered the house, and no one had made a move to take up life as normal, Martin suspected the evening would deteriorate. But when his dad dragged a kitchen chair into the living room and situated it in the middle of the room, a sick feeling formed in Martin’s stomach.

  With the chair in place, Martin’s dad placed both hands on Martin’s shoulders and guided him gently but firmly into the chair. “All right, young man, this has gone far enough. Do you have any idea of what you just put us through? Your mom is—” He paused and gestured with his hands as if to say, ‘See, see what you’ve done? Your mom is a basket case.’ “Martin, it’s time you learned to consider the consequences of your actions.”

  Despite his situation, Martin felt a tinge of pride for his father. He might as well have been talking with Grandpa Frank because that was exactly the kind of thing Grandpa would have said. He guessed his father had been listening after all. Now, as Martin sat there like a suspect in an old Elliot Ness story, sweating beneath the heat of the lights as the minions of justice urged him into spilling the beans, he thought maybe he should come clean. He was compelled to just tell his parents the truth, no matter how unbelievable that truth might be.

  “Okay, Dad, Mom, you’re right. You deserve better than this. You deserve the truth. But let me preface it with a warning.”

  Preface it? Warning? Come on, Martin. You wouldn’t have used words like that when you were eight years old.

  Then again, he wasn’t trying to hide anymore, was he? “What you’re about to hear,” Martin continued, “is going to solidify in your minds that, yes, your son has completely lost his marbles.”

  Martin’s mom and dad exchanged glances with expressions that said, yes, they had noticed he’d been acting a tad bit weird.

  “Martin,” his dad said. “Stop stalling and start talking.”

  Martin shifted in the chair. There was nothing left to do now but just jump in with both feet. Except he couldn’t do that, could he? What had he been thinking?

  “Just remember this,” he said. “All things are possible through our Father in Heaven.”

  Martin paused, wondering if he should have said that. Grandpa Frank had been a religious man, but for reasons Martin had never understood his dad had not followed that path. Religion was never mentioned in the house that young Martin grew up in. He hadn’t been raised in a Christian environment, and it wasn’t until later in life that he had established his faith.

  Martin waited for an answer, though the expression on his dad’s face or, more correctly his lack of expression, said it all. He was trying to comprehend how his son, who he rarely talked to about ordinary matters, much less something as important as believing in God, might have come to such a conclusion.

  “How could you possibly know that, Martin?”

  Martin recalled the moments when he’d shared his father’s thoughts, but only from a self-imposed distance. “It’s called faith, Dad.”

  Martin’s father turned and walked over to the sofa where he collapsed into a sitting position. “What did I do, step off into the Twilight Zone?”

  A sensation came over Martin that said he had done what he’d come here to do and had, in fact, already gone a little too far. It was time to leave.

  “Mom, Dad, I am sorry for all the problems I might have caused you through the years but remember this; I love you both. I love you with all of my heart.”

  Martin closed his eyes and offered a silent prayer for help with this matter. It was then that an image appeared in his mind, and he saw words, written like clouds in the sky, though it happened only in his mind, and displayed was the date December 20, 1999.

  . . .

  Martin adjusted quickly to the time shift. He had jumped into the mind of sixteen-year-old Martin Taylor, driving his GTO. Having become adept at intermingling with the mind of a host, Martin erected the protective mental barrier but let enough communication filter through so as not to jar young Martin too much when the time came. After all, a powerful muscle car was no place to have your concentration compromised.

  He thought back. His dad had never understood why Grandpa Frank had given Martin his old watch on his sixteenth birthday, but Martin did. Martin had admired the old timepiece from early childhood, and Grandpa Frank took notice of small things like that. If the truth be known, however, it was the 1964 GTO Grandpa had always kept in his garage until Martin’s birthday that was the beginning of the barrier between Martin and his dad. Martin had always loved cars, and one of the first things he would do when they went to visit Grandpa was go to the garage and admire the classic ride. The conflict between Martin and his dad was not an impenetrable wall, but it was enough of an obstacle to make a comfortable relationship difficult. Then again, things had never been all that good between them, anyway.

  Martin downshifted the old Pontiac and introduced himself as ‘the random thoughts’ responsible for sending eight-year-old Martin to Williamsburg back in 1991. Sixteen-year-old Martin was more willing to accept such a concept, though not so eager to take a backseat to the older, more experienced version as before. Martin reassured his host it would only be a temporary inconvenience, but he also insisted on revisiting Jackson Stewart, the same person who had been the target the first time around.

  It was no secret. Martin feared any type of confrontation, always looking for ways to get around whatever problem that had arisen. Though no matter which way he looked at meeting with Jackson Stewart again, he realized there was no real way to skirt the issue. On the other hand, he didn’t know how Stewart would react. There was always the outside chance that his earlier encounter had been more effective than it had seemed, and Stewart would be cooperative, even complicit. For reasons he did not completely understand, he did not think that would be the case.

  He felt ashamed for harboring such negative thoughts. After all, he had secretly promised Grandpa Frank that he would try to rise above self-doubt, accept himself for who he was, and do his best with it. He was a traveler now. That gave him certain responsibilities. He was strong enough to pull this off. God had blessed him with this unusual ability for a reason.

  The younger Martin was enjoying the drive so much that when Martin suggested they go to the library for a little espionage-like research, he mildly protested but only because the excursion would temporarily interrupt the exhilaration generated by the GTO.

  That was how Martin ended up at Woodward Park, sitting in the muscle car trying to familiarize himself with the old Nokia cell phone he’d had when he was sixteen. So as not to forget it, he had li
sted his phone number in the phone’s contacts. Now, he wrote the number on a piece of paper next to the present phone number for Doctor Stewart’s office. He’d found the office number using the computer at the library.

  Martin had not known Doctor Stewart would have an office in Tulsa in 1999 because he didn’t know for sure when Stewart had made the move from Williamsburg. He’d only known this time and place had been shown to him. And since Stewart was here in 2020, there was a good chance he would be here now.

  Making that phone call was disturbing to say the least. He was out here all alone with no one to turn to for guidance and no real way of knowing if he was doing it right or even if he should be doing it at all, whether his actions were helpful or harmful.

  When someone answered the call, he almost lost his nerve and disconnected, but something urged him on. “Could I speak to Doctor Stewart please?”

  “I’m sorry,” the voice of someone who sounded like a young woman said. “The doctor is presently seeing patients and won’t be available until later. Is this an emergency?”

  “Not exactly,” Martin said, though what he was trying to do was, as a matter of fact, an endeavor of urgency. “But it is extremely important I speak with him. If I leave my number, will you have him call me back as soon as possible?”

  “I can give the doctor the information and let him know what you said, but I can’t promise anything. Are you currently a patient with the clinic?”

  “No,” Martin said. He suspected, though, that if he wasn’t careful in what he said, he might well be recommended for a psychological evaluation. “I’m a friend from the doctor’s past.” And in the future, Martin thought but did not say. “I’m pretty sure he will want to talk with me. Just tell him Martin Taylor is in town, and he wants to talk about sandcastles.”

  After a long pause, the receptionist said, “Sandcastles?”

  “That’s right,” Martin said. “Just give him that message. He will know what it means.”

  After leaving his number, Martin leaned back in the seat of the GTO and waited. He had talked with Doctor Stewart many times before, but this time the prospect of it left an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was strange that only a few days ago he had tortured himself over the decision of what to get Susan and Luke for their birthdays, and now he was tampering with the fabric of time. He had known this on some level, but it was now as if someone had torn down the dam holding such heavy thoughts back, and now his life was flooded with fear and anxiety.

  In the silence of the otherwise empty park, Martin watched an elderly couple walk past his car and onto the grassy area. Being December, the grass was brown and dormant, but in the spring it would again be green. Seeing the couple reminded him of Susan, and he wondered where she might be right now. These thoughts aroused young Martin’s curiosity. The two had been taking notice of each other when passing in the hallways at school, but Martin wouldn’t get up the nerve to ask her out until January of next year—one of the best decisions he had ever made. It turned out Susan felt the same way about Martin, and by September 2000 they were married.

  Thinking of time brought back memories of John Rainbow, the unusual man Martin had encountered in May 2014 at Saint John’s Hospital. He, too, had been there to stop Doctor Stewart from causing the stillbirth of Alice Stewart’s child, Angela. Martin wondered if John had succeeded, and if he would approve of Martin’s recent traveling activities.

  The sound of Martin’s old Nokia cell phone going off startled him out of his trip down memory lane and brought him harshly back to the moment. When Martin answered, he heard a voice that sounded somewhere between curious and angry.

  “Who the hell are you?” The voice demanded.

  Martin straightened in the car seat, wondering what to say, or if he should say nothing and simply hang up. What would John Rainbow have him do? He would probably tell Martin to go home and stop meddling in things he had no knowledge of. But Martin couldn’t do that even if he wanted to, not if he wished to continue operating within a version of his own body.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” he said. “But for the sake of clarity, it’s me, Martin Taylor, the kid that showed up at the College of William and Mary in 1991. You gave me something to eat. I don’t know if I thanked you for that or not, but if I didn’t, I should have. It was an act of kindness, which is exactly why I keep trying to reason with you. You’re a good person.”

  “Maybe so, but your calling me and telling me this proves nothing. You could be some nutcase who knew Martin Taylor well enough to know that story.”

  “Come on, Jackson, what motivation could anyone have for doing that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nutcases don’t need a reason. At any rate, it certainly doesn’t prove you’re a time traveler.”

  “Who said I was?”

  “You did, remember? Now let me ask you something. You told me in 1991 that something bad was going to happen to me, and less than a year later, a lunatic lumbered into my parents’ home and slaughtered them. Now, how could you possibly have known that, unless you had something to do with it?”

  Martin squeezed the phone, wondering how to respond to such a question. He hadn’t known. He couldn’t even blame it on the time travel. It had been nothing more than an educated guess on his part.

  “You’re a psychologist,” he said, “and probably make informed guesses about people all the time. I was simply doing my own version of that. I saw the way you behaved and your acts of kindness, and it just didn’t add up to the behavior you display later in life. I realize that is about as clear as mud, but it’s the truth. And my reason for doing this now is the same as it was in 1991. I hope to talk some sense into you before you harm my son, Luke, in 2020.”

  “Back to that again? Your story is consistent. I’ll give you that much. Look, this probably won’t come as much of a shock to you, but for most people it would. You see, my father was interested in time travel. In fact, his work in engineering involved such theories. He passed along his enthusiasm about the subject to me. He kept a lot of notes and entrusted them to me when he passed away. I would like very much to meet with you and talk about this. Would that be possible? Perhaps you could stop by my office sometime today?”

  A sensation of nervousness crawled up Martin’s spine, and he glanced around, wondering if he was being watched. He didn’t see anyone, but Doctor Stewart’s invitation worried him as well. “I don’t think I’ll do that,” he said, “but I’d be willing to meet with you somewhere in public.”

  “Do you have a lack of trust for people in general, or are doctors more specific to your condition?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Martin said. “It has more to do with my particular situation than with my state of mind. Not knowing who I can trust, it pays to be careful.”

  “All right, Martin. I’ll humor you and agree to your conditions, but only because my curiosity outweighs my better judgment. Give me the particulars of where and when, and I’ll do my best to be there.”

  Once again, an unexplainable feeling that he was being watched—no, more like an understanding that someone was nearby, lurking behind the tree line or a nearby rock—came over Martin. It was similar to the sensation he’d felt at the cemetery where Candy Barnes was buried after Tanner had left him alone there, and twice more, once at the restaurant with Susan and again at the hospital when he’d met John Rainbow.

  “I’m sure you know where Woodward Park is?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Is that the place?”

  “It is,” Martin said. “I’ll be in the parking lot, sitting alone in a white GTO with a black convertible top, vintage car, you can’t miss it.”

  “All right, Martin. It might take a while so don’t give up on me. You will k
now it’s me because I will pull up beside you and wave.”

  Not long after Martin had disconnected, a car pulled up beside him, and the passenger waved.

  Martin checked his watch, which happened to be the watch his Grandpa Frank had given him, the one he would still be wearing in 2020. It hadn’t taken long at all. Only a few minutes had passed since he’d talked with Doctor Stewart.

  Martin nodded and climbed out of the car, an act of trust the younger Martin questioned.

  Martin leaned against the GTO and waited. He could already see it was Jackson Stewart, a few years older than the man Martin had met in 1991 and a few years younger than the Doctor Stewart of 2020. When Jackson Stewart approached, Martin extended his hand in a gesture of friendliness. “Martin Taylor,” he said, “but I can tell from your expression that you recognize me.”

  “Nice ride,” Jackson said. “You’ve grown since our last meeting, but, yeah, there’s no mistaking that you’re the same kid I talked with at the rally years ago. Honestly, I had my doubts. You take persistence to a whole new level.”

  Martin ran his hand along the top of the GTO. “My Grandpa Frank surprised me with it on my sixteenth birthday. I hope to pass it along to my son, Luke, some day. He’ll probably never be able to drive it, but nothing says he can’t love it just the same. Luke means the world to me, Doctor Stewart. My son, Luke, and his friend, Candy Barnes, are the source of my persistence. All I can ask is that you remember the things we’ve talked about, put the names to memory, and maybe when 2020 comes around you will have a change of heart.”

  “My parents meant the world to me, too, Martin, and the man who took their lives was a source of pain and worry for everyone he came into contact with. The world would have been a better place without him. But I didn’t kill him, Martin. The State of Virginia took care of that. So, I don’t see why you’re so concerned about me and your son. You’ve got me all wrong. I’ve dedicated my life to helping people with mental disorders, not hurting them.”