The Other Side of Life
Page 4
“Why the past?”
“As I said, practical considerations. I can say nothing more about that. Nor can I tell you what will become of you. All that will remain unchanged is your age, your gender, and your North American heritage. You will be unmarried and childless, with no immediate relatives still living.”
Kelsey thought of his deceased father. His mother, who suffered from dementia and no longer recognized her only child. His uncle, feeble now, and in an institution somewhere in West Texas. And of course his wife, drowning in gin and vermouth, whereabouts unknown. He was truly alone.
He returned his attention to Leavitt. “As is the case now.”
“Yes, as is the case now.”
“Thanks to you.”
Leavitt blinked, keeping his face expressionless. “Let me be clear, Commander. You and only you are responsible for your own path. Nothing we do here has any bearing on your fate or those around you.”
“Yet you and I are having this conversation.”
“As I said, your situation is unique and—”
“Why?”
Leavitt sighed. “I do not know. I am merely following instructions.”
“From who? Don’t answer that. I know who. So why are you offering to change my path? Are you trying to change something in the past?”
“That is not what we do here. We cannot change the past or ordain the future. We can provide appropriate…guidance, if you will, when circumstances warrant, but that is all.”
Kelsey’s head was spinning. “Wait. You just said that you cannot change the past, but that is where you’re going to send me. Won’t that be changing the past?”
“It certainly won’t change anything in 1941. I don’t mean to sound callous, but if you were to perish on the Nevada, no one, other than a handful of friends and shipmates whom you have mostly alienated, will miss you.”
“No need to sugarcoat it, Leavitt.”
“As for your new path, that will indeed precipitate some minor changes. But I assure you, the universe will be safe. I hope that is clear.”
Clear as mud.
“What happens if I refuse?”
“You will return to the Nevada and the care of Pharmacist Mate Wallace. You will not recall anything of this place or this conversation.”
“But if I choose this other path, I won’t remember anything about my life? This life?”
“No. You do, however, have a core, as do we all, formed over the arc of your existence. That core cannot be changed, even if you have no memory of your past and where you came from. In other words, to borrow the phrasing you used with Red, you may still have the capacity to act like a jackass. You just won’t remember how or why you developed that capacity.”
Kelsey ignored the dig. “And you can’t tell me where I’ll be? Anything?”
“You will be a thirty-one-year-old North American. You will see the same reflection in the mirror as you do now. You will still have what we call impulses. If you have a liking for chocolate ice cream today, or jazz music, or eighteenth century Russian poetry, you will likely continue to do so. But all personal memories will dissolve from your mind. None of that will have ever occurred. No memory of your family, your naval career, your childhood. Or, most importantly, this conversation.”
Kelsey sat back, absorbing those consequences.
“What memories will I have?”
“Those of the individual you will become.” Leavitt paused. “I know this is somewhat overwhelming for you.”
“I’m just not sure I understand all of this. Or why I have been singled out.”
“It’s not important that you do. In a short time, whichever course you choose, you will have no recollection of this conversation.”
“Those are my two options?”
“Yes.” Leavitt gestured toward the other cars. “And that’s two more than any of them will receive.”
“I want a third option.”
“Excuse me?”
“A third option. I want to stay here.”
Leavitt drummed his fingers on the table. Kelsey couldn’t tell if he was considering the request or trying to control his temper.
“Please,” Kelsey pleaded.
Leavitt’s face softened. “She is not here, Commander. This is what we refer to as a transitory station, nothing more. But that is beside the point. I don’t mean to sound unfeeling, but I must disabuse you of any notion that you will see her again. You won’t.”
“Why not?”
“It just doesn’t work that way. Her path has ended. I can’t be more specific.”
“Just to be clear, if I choose this other path, I won’t remember anything about my current life? Nothing at all?”
“No,” Leavitt said, his voice firmer now. “And there are consequences that must be weighed. You must expect an existence where you have no recall of Lucy Evelyn Kelsey. The happy times, and all the rest. Her first words. The first time she held your hand and called you Daddy. Her first broken arm. You must ask yourself if those memories that you treasure so much are worth the heartache that torments you. You will surely be troubled that you may make the wrong decision, an irreversible decision. I understand such a bind, but I am afraid a decision is necessary nonetheless. We can return you to your ship. All I can promise, is you will make a full recovery from your wounds, and you will continue as Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Kelsey. From there, your path is wholly undetermined. Or, we can take you…elsewhere. Your fate there will also be unwritten. I have shared with you all I am permitted to disclose. The decision is entirely yours. In either case, you will remember none of this, and nothing of me.”
“How much time do I have to decide?”
“Minimal, I’m afraid.” Leavitt pulled a pocket watch from his vest. “This train will arrive at its destination in thirty minutes. You will have to be off of it by that time. I’ll come find you here.” Leavitt pushed his chair back.
Kelsey reached over and gripped his forearm. “Damn it, Leavitt, where is this other path? Surely you can tell me something? Anything!”
“I’m sorry, I cannot tell you that which I do not know. It must be entirely a leap of faith on your part.”
“Bullshit. You know more than you’re telling me.”
“I truly know as much as you do. I do know that you will be sent where there is a need.”
Kelsey released the man’s arm. “Okay, last question, I promise. Why me? You have to answer that. Why do I get this choice?” He gestured toward the other cars. “Why not them?”
There was a blast from the train whistle, and Leavitt waited for it to finish. “Like you, Commander, I follow a chain of command. That decision, as you might say, is above my grade.”
He stood. “We’ve arrived at our next stop. I will leave you with your decision.”
Leavitt began walking away and then came to an abrupt halt, turning back to Kelsey. “One last thing, Commander. I might be out of turn here. I truly wish you had the opportunity to have seen your daughter again. I meet a great many people who pass through here. Some good, some…not so good.”
He paused, and seemed to be considering his next words.
“I know you don’t think very much of yourself. But I met her. She was on this very train once. She is, well, quite lovely. I know what she meant to you, and you to her. And I know that thinking of her saddens you beyond measure. But one thing I have learned during my time here, is that the very essence of a child is not shaped on its own. She had quite a bit of help getting there. From what I know, most of that came from you. And someone like you, well, now that she is gone, you might be needed less by her, and more by someone else.”
Kelsey was dubious. “Me. Someone needs me.”
“Perhaps. And yes, you. The jackass. You were unfaithful to your wife and unkind toward your subordinates. You drank to excess, you even cheated on your college entrance exam. Hardly a model citizen. And yet while you are doing your best at this table to make me dislike you, it won’t succeed, because I kn
ow you too well. A colleague here once taught me that there are two sorts of people in this world. Imagine a burning building with scores of people trapped inside. There are those who would rush in without a second thought to their own personal risk. And there are those who seem to have an innate aversion to exposing themselves to certain danger.” Leavitt snapped his fingers. “The decision is split second, instinctual. And for all of your shortcomings, son, you would run into that burning building. Every time.”
“You say that with such certainty.”
“Who kept returning to that bridge, Commander?”
“So who needs me?”
“That would be something for both of us to discover, wouldn’t it? The choice is yours. Good day, Commander.”
Leavitt pulled on his conductor’s hat and stepped out of the car, leaving Kelsey alone for thirty minutes to contemplate a decision he had already made.
CHAPTER 4
He bought Lucy her first baseball mitt when she was six. By her seventh birthday, she knew how to oil and condition it herself, and had scratched her initials into the faded leather. It rested on her nightstand while she slept, just as Kelsey’s had when he was her age.
The mitt was last used just a month before the accident, part of one of the more memorable plays in the history of the Island Youth Baseball League. Kelsey was sitting in the bleachers, sharing a bench with a cigar smoker, a parent of one of the boys from the visiting Army Air Corps team. It was the last inning and the home team was up by one. The third baseman had just booted an easy grounder, giving the Army team first and second with only one out.
“She’s crying,” the man said with a belch and disdain in his voice. “I’d pull her out of there if I was their coach. Not fair to your boys to have her out there. Ain’t complaining, of course. She just might give our boys this game.”
Kelsey glanced at the man before turning back to his daughter. “She’ll be fine.”
The man didn’t hear him, too busy opening another Schlitz. “No business being out there,” the man muttered. “Betcha she’s the daughter of some candy-ass admiral.”
Kelsey was only half listening to the man. They were all in civilian clothes, so he could have been an enlisted man or General MacArthur. Kelsey did not care; his attention was squarely on Lucy at third base. The opposing batter was about to step into the batter’s box.
“Hit it to the girl!” called one of the Army boys. There was an eruption of laughter from the visitors’ dugout. Then another loud joke about her doll being a better fielder.
“Keep it together, Luce,” he whispered under his breath.
But he could see there were still tears. And she was looking down at the ground. She took these things too hard, as he once did. He would have to work on that more.
He had vowed to stay quiet in the stands. But not today. Not now.
“Lucy!” Kelsey called out. “Call the play!”
No reaction.
“Lucy!” he shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Call the play!”
Her head snapped up automatically in response to the three words she had heard from her father over and over again as they practiced at the school field, every day his ship was in port. Just the two of them. And a dugout full of imaginary base runners.
She shot a single finger into the air, and Kelsey smiled to himself, fairly certain that none of her other teammates on the field knew what that meant.
“Any base!” she cried out, her ponytail whipping back and forth as she surveyed the field. “Play’s at any base, one out!”
A couple of punches into her empty mitt and the girl was in her crouch position, balanced forward on the balls of her feet. The crying had stopped, replaced by a signature, gritty determination no one but her father could possibly understand.
And then it happened. The third pitch, the hitter sent a soft drive right down the third base line. With three quick strides, Lucy speared it in the air. She wheeled around, seeing the runner from second was already halfway to third. As he skidded to a stop and reversed direction, she was already chasing him down, easily outracing him to the bag and tagging his back with the gloved ball. Perhaps a bit harder than necessary, as the boy tumbled to the ground.
Double play. Game over.
As the home bleachers erupted in cheers and Lucy was swarmed by her teammates, Kelsey turned to the man next to him. His mouth was agape, the man stunned by what had just occurred.
“Actually,” Kelsey said, slapping the man on the back, perhaps a bit harder than necessary, “I’m just a lieutenant commander.”
The sudden shouting nearby woke Kelsey from his deep slumber with a start.
The sounds were familiar enough. The jingle of coins. Some good-natured cursing. And then that sudden whoop of triumph.
Even before he opened his eyes, Kelsey knew he was listening to the sounds of a spirited card game. He had played in quite a few himself at sea, the most memorable the one he joined as a wide-eyed ensign in ’33. It hadn’t been the fraternity house game he was accustomed to, and before he knew it, he was in deep hock to a chief petty officer the size of Joe Louis. It took Kelsey the better part of a year to pay that off.
There was another flurry of voices as two of the players traded colorful insults. For a passing moment, Kelsey thought he might be back on the old Saint Louis, his first destroyer.
He wasn’t of course. He was lying on a rock-like bunk, a heavy blanket draped across his legs, staring at rotting wooden rafters that had been feasted on by termites. He pushed himself up to his elbows, then sat up fully, swinging his legs over the side.
A mistake. His face flushed and there was a sharp pain behind his eye. The room seemed to wobble as a wave of nausea swept through him. Kelsey gripped the edge of the bunk, squeezing his eyelids together as he steadied himself and took a few deep breaths.
Stripped down to his white skivvies, he felt the brisk air pass across his bare arms and legs. He waited a full minute as the pounding in his skull slowly subsided, his fingers probing the bandage that the top of his head was swathed in.
“Doc Peters did that,” said a youthful voice next to him. “He looked pretty sober, at least for the Doc. Them stitches should at least be straight.”
Kelsey opened his eyes again. The room was steady now and his vision came into focus. A young man, a boy really, sat on the cot next to his, pulling a needle and thread through a ragged flannel shirt that had already seen its share of mending. The boy smiled at him with a mouthful of crooked teeth, his moon face beaming with earnestness. His blue uniform shirt had a sheen of dirt on it, as did the matching trousers that were tucked into a worn pair of riding boots.
Behind the boy, Kelsey could see the card game in motion on the next bunk, some men wearing blue shirts as well, others in sweat-stained undershirts. The men were a squalid bunch, their odor mixed with cheap tobacco smoke hanging in the air.
Kelsey wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked at the boy.
“Where am I?”
“Company A barracks. You was brought here yesterday. Whit—Lieutenant Whitaker—found you out cold near the crossroads.”
One of the card players leaned back and chimed in. “Well, well. Looks like the Doc actually saved a patient.”
The man stood and walked to Kelsey’s bunk.
“Kirch, don’t just sit there yapping, go get Mrs. Garrity.”
The boy jumped from his cot and scurried out the door.
Kelsey looked up at the man. He was shorter than Kelsey, but barrel-chested with thick forearms, and he had an unlit corncob pipe clamped between his teeth. The three stripes on his sleeve were almost superfluous; the man had the hardened, scornful look that had been the trademark of non-commissioned officers since the Roman Legions. He took the pipe out of his mouth and used it to gesture toward the small stack of clothes sitting on the boy’s cot.
“For you. My name’s Walsh. Platoon sergeant. You got a name, mister?”
Kelsey ran his hand over his face.
Walsh, waiting for a response, scowled at Kelsey. “Not a tough question,” he grumbled.
I’m still Malcolm Kelsey. But I’m not supposed to be.
They fucked this up.
“Suit yourself,” a piqued Walsh said, returning to the card game.
Kelsey reached for the clothing while surveying his new surroundings. There were two long rows of cots, with crates—or footlockers, he supposed—in front of each, and racks of rifles against the wall. A barracks, as Kirch had said. Kelsey pulled a red cotton shirt over his head, wincing as he felt a dull ache in his rib cage. The wool trousers came next.
He stood slowly, pausing for a few moments as his head cleared and equilibrium returned. He took a baby step, waiting until he felt sure he wouldn’t fall. Another step, more sure-footed this time. Two more steps, and he was nearing the doorway that Kirch had raced through. He made it to the door and pushed it open, leaning against the door frame while he raised his hand to shield his eyes from the daylight that greeted him.
Kelsey breathed in the fresh air, riveted by the scene before him. The barracks stood among several other similar structures, each lining a large parade ground where clusters of soldiers were going through close-order drills. Others dawdled about as uniformed men often do. A small column on horseback trotted past him, pairs of blue-shirted men separated at perfect intervals, while a trio nearby disassembled a cannon that looked to Kelsey like a museum piece.
Kelsey slumped heavily against the door frame.
Is this what Leavitt was talking about? Is this my new path?
The boy returned, winded, and eyed Kelsey with concern. “You okay, mister? You don’t look too good.”
“Fine, yes.” He stepped back inside and returned to the cot, rubbing the back of his sore neck. The boy followed him.