Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  The screen door opened and Leslie came out. “Can I have some pie, Mommy?”

  Pat jumped up. “Of course, sweetie.” She went inside.

  Instead of following her mother, Leslie sat down in her chair. “I don’t remember your name.”

  “Annie.”

  “Annie. I like that name. I have eight friends named Judy.”

  “You have two friends named Judy, Les,” Patrick said, holding up two fingers.

  “I know. The first Judy has a turtle. I don’t have a turtle. The other Judy doesn’t have a turtle either.”

  “What does she have?” Annie asked.

  Leslie thought for a long time. “She doesn’t have a turtle. She doesn’t have a dog, either. She doesn’t have a horse.”

  Annie took a bite of her pie and analyzed Leslie. She was a very pretty girl; no early teenage acne, hair dark and long, slim, long arms, piano fingers, the beginning bumps of breasts, gangly.

  “Come get your pie, Les,” her mother called from the screen door.

  After Leslie took off Patrick said, “What she just told you is she wants a turtle, a dog, and a horse.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’ll never come right out and tell you what she wants, just what she doesn’t have, or what her friend doesn’t have.”

  “You’ve never had another dog I assume.”

  “No.” Patrick’s eyes wandered out to the corner of the yard. Leslie came out the door with her pie and set it on the table. “We need napkins, Les,” Patrick said. “Go in and get three napkins.”

  Leslie looked at her brother as though not understanding his instructions, her fork still in her hand. After ten seconds she turned around and headed for the door.

  “Les,” Patrick called. She stopped and looked back. “Leave your fork here.”

  She returned, laid her fork down, and headed for the kitchen again.

  “Les,”

  She stopped and looked at her brother again.

  “What are you going after?”

  “I’m going to get eight napkins.” She went in and the screen door slammed behind her.

  Patrick’s dad looked at Patrick and then returned to his reading. Annie sensed a communication between them but couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Maybe dad was not happy with Patrick airing the family laundry in front of his girlfriend. Or maybe dad was saying, ‘See what Les is like; she needs to be in private school.’ Maybe dad was just stretching his neck and thinking about bow hunting season.

  Leslie came back out with three napkins and her mother. She handed out the napkins and returned to her mother’s chair. Pat sat in a different chair and pulled her glass of water to her. “So, did you attend Flathead High?” she asked.

  “Flathead High?” Annie said. “You mean high school? No. Actually I’m from Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

  “Mass . . . aw . . . chew . . . sits,” Leslie said around a bite of blueberry pie. “Is that a state?”

  Patrick and his mother both looked at Leslie. “Yes it is,” Pat said. “How did you know?”

  Leslie appeared to think really hard before answering. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember any other states?”

  “Montana?”

  “Yes. That’s the state you live in. Do you know another?”

  Leslie stared at her pie in deep concentration. “Dakota,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s almost correct. There are two Dakota states; North Dakota and South Dakota.”

  “South Dakota. That’s all I know.” Leslie took a bite of her pie. To Annie she said, “Can you draw?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Les,” her mother said.

  “Not anything like you,” Annie said.

  “Annie attends MIT,” Patrick said.

  “M . . . I . . . T,” Leslie said.

  “She’s working on her masters,” he added.

  Annie saw Mister O’Reilly’s head come up, though he didn’t look her way. She also noticed that the page he was reading hadn’t changed since she shook his hand.

  “That’s really nice,” Pat said. “Patrick, as you probably know, has a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana.”

  “He told me.” Now that the conversation had shifted away from her, Annie was frantically trying to think of something to keep it that way. “Did you play any sports?” she asked Patrick.

  “Golf.”

  “Golf?”

  “Patrick hit balls with a stick,” Leslie said.

  Mister O’Reilly chuckled from his end of the porch, and then Annie laughed. “Yep! That pretty much sums it up,” Patrick said.

  Chapter 37

  June 13, 2007

  Annie sat on her front steps for a while after Patrick’s taillights disappeared around the lodge. She had actually wanted to kiss him, but not in the way she knew he would take it and that was certainly not a direction she was willing to explore. Instead she gave him a hug with the intention of kissing him on the cheek, but even then chickened out. When she put her cheek next to his she said, “Thank you.”

  Although there was still a glow in the western sky, when she looked east it was fully dark, meaning it would be a great stargazing night, but looking at the stars was the last thing on her mind. Her gaze dropped to Mary’s cabin. Only one light was on which meant that Mary was asleep and Richard was reading. Richard was the night owl, Mary the early riser. When Annie had voiced a concern over Richard not feeling well a number of mornings, Mary confessed that actually he felt just fine. It was usually after staying up late with his nose in a book that he didn’t want to get out of bed before sunrise. Annie could certainly identify with that.

  She rose from the step and went in and opened her journal. She read through her last entry about her IQ being heavy baggage and thought about Leslie.

  June 13, 2007

  Mom,

  It is strange how you can complain about one thing and then find something so ironically opposite. I was complaining about carrying around my 188-pound IQ baggage, and then I met Leslie. She carries baggage and she doesn’t even know it. She’s a brilliant artist, but in all other ways she is damaged.

  She had a terrible head injury when she was four and now blissfully floats through life—a true innocent. Patrick said she’ll never go past nine years old. At times she seemed older, other times she acted more like a six-year-old. Unfortunately, as adulthood closes in on her, she’ll become more and more aware that she is immensely different. She’ll have to be sheltered and protected or she’ll be taken advantage of. Her parents will grow old, and at some point she will be without them, only Patrick to take care of her, which he will, I’m sure. He is a good brother.

  I can only imagine what it was like during those two months when Leslie was in a coma. Patrick showed me pictures of her before the accident and then pictures after she came home from the hospital. You would not have guessed that the two were related, let alone the same child. In a blink a pretty, longhaired little girl turned into a feed-the-hungry-poster-child candidate. Fortunately she didn’t stay that way. Now she is a normal looking thirteen-year old, except for a dent in her head. Her dreams are of horses and dogs and turtles. Shouldn’t she be growing out of those kinds of dreams? What do I know? I certainly wasn’t normal at that age. I was reading my father’s textbooks. I don’t think I ever yearned for a dog. Dogs scare me, horses are too big, and what do turtles do?

  Leslie’s art is amazing, but here is the truly amazing part. I said to Patrick that it was as though all of Leslie’s intelligence was shoved into the artistic part of her brain when her head smashed against the flagstone. He took me inside the house and showed me some of Leslie’s framed art. They were everywhere: animals, landscapes, still renditions of objects, people; you name it. In her bedroom on one wall were seven years of county fair blue ribbon art. In his parents’ bedroom he showed me a simple pencil sketch of him. It was rough, though a lot better than what I attempted in my basic art 101 classes, which is
n’t saying much. “This is early Leslie,” he said, “three months before the accident.”

  She was only 4-years old, Mom! She was already an artistic genius! The accident took everything away but that. It’s like the adage; when life gives you lemons, just keep making lemonade. What I’m curious to know is would she have still made such great lemonade if the accident hadn’t happened, or would normal life have been too much of a distraction to allow her to focus on her genius?

  Do the ends justify the means?

  Am I alive because you died?

  Annie pulled her hands from the keyboard and stared at the last two sentences. Where did that come from? She put the computer aside and stood. Plates of leftover potato salad still sat on the counter. She scraped them clean and filled the sink with water, added soap, and then proceeded to clean up. When she was done she looked at the fish swimming back and forth on her computer screen, pulled the power plug and carried the computer out to the porch step.

  Did you die so that I could live? What if you hadn’t died and we had both made it back to 1987? In what way would I be different now? In what direction would you have guided my life? Would I have still attended MIT or would you have insisted I do something different than my parents? Would you have encouraged my genius or would you have tried to squash it? Dad did little either way.

  And what if Tony had lived? I would still be waiting for him. He’d still be in Iraq, maybe to be killed in some other way. But if he didn’t actually go…

  She looked up at the ceiling and considered the deeper implication of her last words. Her fingers returned to the keyboard.

  What if I went back to try and stop him from going? What would I say to him? “Hey, Tony. It’s Annie from the future. Don’t join the Marines because if you do, you’ll die February 5, 2007 and make me a widow.” He’d have thought that his fiancée had gone crazy and needed to be committed.

  Even saying that changing history is perfectly acceptable, there would be no way to change that path. And what about the real me? There’d be a real me and a future me at the same time. Either that’d convince him or he’d think that I had a secret twin. “I have a secret, Tony, but that’s not it. Secret sextuplets would be nothing compared to this.” I can only imagine that scene.

  If you had lived, Mom, I probably would have never met Tony. That certainly would have been better than to have known him and then lost him. Maybe he’d still be alive, not finding a reason to join the Marines. Did he join the Marines because of me? Oh, God, I hope not.

  I look at Leslie and see how important it is to have a mother, especially when you are different. Your mother loves you no matter what. Family loves you no matter what. As Leslie grows into an adult she’ll have her mother to hold her hand, to be there during the bad times, and there certainly will be bad times for her. Life will be cruel, no doubt about it. She’ll also have her brother. Patrick will be there to slay her dragons.

  What if—WOW!—what if I suddenly showed up in Patrick’s backyard in 1998?

  “Stop! Stop! Don’t throw that knotted rope,” I’d yell. I’d sweep Leslie up in my arms, carry her onto the porch, and then say, “Hi, Patrick. My name is Annie and you won’t know me for nine years, but I’ve just saved your sister from a terrible accident.” That would certainly make for an interesting conversation.

  If you had lived, Mom, would I have a brother, or a sister, or would you have stopped with me? What would you say if I showed up? “Hi, Mom. I’m Elizabeth Annabelle Waring, your daughter from the future. I’m here to save your life.”

  The funny thing is, Mom, unlike Tony or Patrick, you’d believe me.

  She leaned back on her hands. This is really stupid. I’m writing as though I’m planning a trip through Grandfather’s time machine to save three lives. She gazed up at the stars, considered getting out the telescope, and then returned to her journal.

  Can a person exist twice in the same time plane? Would it be possible to run into yourself? If I went back and ran into myself, I’d already know it, wouldn’t I?

  And then Annie remembered Amal Dorai, the MIT graduate student who in 2005 organized the Time Traveler’s Convention. His thought was that time travelers from various future times could come together at this one event, over and over again. He had a number of MIT professors speak at it. Her father was one who was invited to attend and to speak. “A lot of foolishness,” he had said and threw it all in the trash. Annie remembered picking the invite to attend out of the trash, and being intrigued by it. It was right at the end of her attempt to learn everything about her mother and her adventures back to 1943, and about time travel theory. She had previously never gotten involved with Amal Dorai and his crowd. They were just guessing. Most considered it a big joke. She knew the facts. But she did send an RSVP that she would attend in her father’s place, strictly out of curiosity of course.

  She stared into the darkness and thought about that first Saturday in May of 2005. Did I go? If I did, why can I not remember it? I remember everything. She closed her eyes and floated her mind back, selected the time and date, and brought up the images. She wore blue jeans, her white MIT sweatshirt, and white canvas boat shoes. Yes, I did go. I arrived at the East Campus Courtyard just before 8:00 pm and then started feeling sick. Went home and went straight to bed.

  She pulled herself back to the present and looked at her computer. It had dropped into its power saver mode. She woke it up, read the last few paragraphs and then added one more.

  Anyway, Mom, those are my thoughts and adventures for today. I wish you were here to give me some advice, and to tell me what it was like traveling back in time. Did it feel funny, or did you feel anything?

  She saved and closed the journal, and then carried the computer in and put it back on charge. Once again she looked at the two thick novels waiting patiently on the table. She felt itchy inside. She didn’t want to sit and read; she didn’t want to sleep; she wanted to do something.

  Do what?

  She had gotten chilled sitting on the porch step. She put on her red and gray MIT sweatshirt and then a jacket and her headlamp, picked up the Maglite, and stepped back out. Once she was away from the yard lights and into the trees, the darkness turned heavy. She proceeded to the river where she turned off her flashlights and looked up at the stars. Now that she knew what she was looking at it was no problem picking out the dippers and the North Star. She turned in the direction of the North Star, flipped on her lamp and started walking along the riverbank. She stopped briefly at Brad’s rock, considered lying on it and then passed on by. Maybe on the way back, she thought.

  It was a long walk, lengthened, she was sure, by the dark. Twice she was startled by noises. She gulped down her fears each time, but continued on. And then, when she was sure she had passed the spot she was looking for, a light appeared on her left, and then the shadow of someone moving across it. She quickly doused her own light and dropped to a crouch. She wasn’t prepared for someone to be awake. It was almost midnight. Maybe, though, this was good. Once she saw whoever was moving about, she’d know for sure this camp was made up of a group of mad scientists, one related to her. From her position she couldn’t see anything, so she rose to a half crouch and moved forward ever so slowly.

  Someone moved across the light again, but there was too much foliage to gain anything but silhouetted pieces of clothing. She took several quick steps to her right in an attempt to see better, snagged something with her foot, and then grabbed for air just before hitting the ground. She bit her lip to keep from screaming and saw stars that had nothing to do with those in the sky. When the pain receded she sat up and felt her head. There was a bump and a sore spot, but no blood. The headlamp seemed fine and she didn’t lose the Maglite. What is with me and wandering around in the woods at night? This is stupid. She pulled off the headlamp figuring she’d cup it in her hands to limit the light enough that she could find her way to the riverbank and the trail. Coming here in the middle of the night was stupid. She was fumbling for
the switch when another light appeared above her head, followed by a voice.

  “What’s up?”

  “I heard a noise. Just checking it out.”

  The Dweeb! She wasn’t sure who the first voice was, but the second was unmistakable. Charles Walshe. The first voice had to be Professor Bradshaw, because it wasn’t Grae or her grandfather.

  “It’s the woods, Charles. There are always noises. Be sure to lock your door because night creatures out here know how to open doors. They’ll go in and suck the breath out of you while you’re sleeping.”

  “Up yours, Professor.”

  Annie flattened out on her back and hoped he didn’t stumble over her. If he fell, she’d be pancake, and discovered. Maybe, if he got close, she’d jump up and yell, “BOO!” That would be worth it. She nearly laughed out loud at the thought of it.

  “Whatever creature you heard is probably watching you right now and you’re standing there with a flashlight in one hand—here I am—and a sandwich in the other—come and get it!”

  “How do you know I have a sandwich?”

  “It’s just a guess, but the odds are high. By the way, grizzlies love sandwiches, and they can smell them from miles away.”

  “Grizzlies! They’re all in Glacier Park, aren’t they?”

  Bradshaw laughed, and then there was another laugh. Annie knew that to be Professor Grae. She had to put her hand over her mouth to stifle her own giggle.

  “You know that river about thirty yards away, Charles.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The other side is Glacier National Park. Do you see a fence?”

  “But the river.”

  “First of all, Charles, grizzly bears live where they want to live. They’re the king of the world in this part of the country. Second, grizzly bears love water. The river won’t slow them down if they’re on the scent of a ham sandwich. To be truthful with you, Charles, it’s not the grizzly I’d be worried about.”

  Charles grunted.

  “I’d keep a lookout for the rabid raccoon. He’ll run up your leg and snatch that sandwich before you can blink an eye, probably take a finger while he’s at it. Have you ever had rabies shots, Charles?”