I had some vague plan of heading to Toronto. Someone at school had said that Yonge Street and Yorkville were the places to go, so I imagined I might be able to hustle something up and remain anonymous in the city. The Coke truck was only going as far as Sundridge, so they let me off there with a free bottle of Coke. The next ride was to Burke’s Falls, and after that to a gravel road that headed east into the bush, south of Bracebridge. The last guy, a plumber going in to do some work on a cottage, let me off on the highway late in the afternoon. After trying to hitch a ride for half an hour, fearful that the cops might find me at any moment out on the highway and with what looked like a storm coming in the west, I noticed a sign on the east side of the highway that said “Boat Launch”. I figured there was bound to be somewhere down there to hide away, even if I had to break into a cottage for the night. I hoisted my backpack and set off away from the highway.
Ten minutes later, I walked into a broad dirt parking lot that ran down to a lake. The wind had picked up and the surface of the lake was choppy with rising waves. At the foot of the lot, where it sloped down towards the water, a dozen small boats with outboard motors bobbed in the slips that ran out from two wooden docks. The boats rubbed up against old tires put there to cushion them, making a chorus of low knocking thumps.
A grey barn board shack sat against the forest. The roof hung out over what looked to be a window where, maybe during the height of summer somebody served ice cream and pop and candy from inside. It was closed and there was nobody around. Through the window I saw that there was nothing on the shelves. A freezer was unplugged with the top propped open. I could easily break in and spend the night inside, and it didn’t look like there would be anyone turning up anytime soon. As I was thinking about the least noticeable way to break in, I saw the car, almost hidden under the trees on the far side of the lot, facing the water.
The sky was quickly turning black. There was a sudden flash off in the distance and I counted to see how far away it was. Before I had counted to nine, thunder rumbled and the first light drops of rain fell. I ran over to the car, wondering if it had been left unlocked.
Once under the tree, I could see that the car was a convertible, almost brand new, but it wasn’t one I recognized. I had learned the difference between a Ford, a Plymouth, and a Chevy early on. Though the car was locked, whoever the passenger was had left the window on the far side cracked open a couple inches. I went around and slid between the car and the branches of the tree. Fitting my arm between the upper edge of the glass and the frame of the convertible top, I reached farther in and was able to wiggle my finger under the button and pop the lock. Inside, I could smell how new it was as I opened the driver’s side door. The rain started coming down harder then, the clouds boiling blackly over the lake. As I slid into the driver’s seat, the wind gusts buffeted the car and the storm began throwing down small hailstones that soon changed over to torrents of rain.
I was grateful to be out of the wet, rubbing my sleeve across my forehead and looking around inside. Beautiful, I thought, running my hands over the dash. Jesus, what I would’ve given to have one of these. Hell, just to have enough money to buy one of these. They must have cost four grand at least!
In those days I had modest dreams. Didn’t want much, though being rich wouldn’t have hurt. I knew enough about myself to know I wanted to work with my hands. I knew I loved cars and liked taking things apart and fixing things. Books and studying didn’t appeal to me, but touching something as fine as this … well, that gave me a thrill that went deeper inside me than anything else.
But then I reached into the glove box and found a key way at the back. When I drew it out I wondered if it was a spare for the car.
Put it back, I told myself. Not yours!
My hand moved to the ignition and inserted the key, thinking even as I did it that I shouldn’t.
I turned it and the car jerked forward and stalled.
Damn it, shoulda pushed in the clutch.
I had scared myself. Breathing heavily, I sat listening to the rain while my heartbeat stilled. There was nobody around.
What would it hurt to try it just one more time …
The second time, it revved into life. That car just about purred in the rain.
I thought I could drive it all the way to Toronto. But no, I’d never make it … Just a little drive … not far and bring I’d bring it right back. Nobody’d notice … nobody was around.
The car moved almost on its own. The gears were easier than I had thought. Feeling more confident, I wheeled the car out of the parking lot and found the switch to turn on the lights.
Just a little ride …
I turned out of the yard onto the side road. You’re doin’ all right, I told myself, jerking hesitantly through the gears and bringing the Mustang up to speed.
Just a little ways …
Soon I was riding along comfortably through the rain and was even thinking about turning around.
Yeah, best take it back before I screw up.
Lightning flashed suddenly, close this time. Everything went white and the terrifying crack of thunder was so close it shook the ground. Everything flared and I was stunned. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the rain was upon me, so much of it that the wipers weren’t clearing it off. I scrabbled for the knob to turn them on full. That was a mistake.
I cursed, feeling the car tilt onto the shoulder and lean as it slid toward the shallow roadside ditch. I hit something soft and grunted as I was thrown against the steering wheel. With the breath knocked out of me, I could only gasp for air, thinking I was dying. I almost passed out listening to the sound of rain smacking hard against the Mustang’s canvas roof.
When I could finally breathe, I saw that the rain had thinned enough so I could make out the ditch in the car’s headlights. There was a bank of earth ahead I had ploughed into and now the car was stuck in an upward diagonal tilt.
I tried the ignition. Thankfully, it started. Shifting into reverse, I tried backing out, but either the car was too heavy or the angle was too steep. Or maybe there was too much mud.
I’d really gone and done it now.
I turned off the engine and sat thinking for a moment, nursing the pain in my chest and listening to the rain and far-off thunder.
I took off at a run.
Somewhere in my flight down the backroad toward the highway, I realized I still had the key in my hand and hurled it away into a field.
Goddamned people, leaving their goddamned keys out where anybody can goddamned find them!
Nobody stopped to pick me up on the highway, even when they could see me, so I spent the night in the corner of an abandoned farmhouse, shivering and listening for sirens, half sheltered under a collapsed roof. But nobody came for me, and the next morning I caught a ride with a salesman. Later, south of Barrie, I found a guy driving a truckload of engine parts to Toronto.
My time on the Yonge Street strip lasted almost two months before they found me and dragged me back to North Bay.
* * *
Grace hardly spoke after we left Weber’s. She just stared ahead through the windshield, occasionally leaning forward to look up into the sky. “Make the next right,” she said finally.
“Thought we were going to Pritchard’s Landing?” I asked as I turned onto a side road.
“Eventually,” she replied, “but for now we have one other place to go. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
She had me make a left at the next concession and then another one. We were headed west, back toward the storm, when she spoke next. “Looks like we had better put the top up.” Her voice was kind of strained and her eyes were squinting, almost shut, staring through the windshield.
“We gotta be almost there. The rain’ll hold off ’til then, don’t you think?”
“No, this won’t wait,” she said. “Pull over.”
I pulled off to the shoulder and got out.
The sky had grown progressively darker and grey clouds with black
fringes marched towards us over the trees. As if to remind us of the need to get under shelter, the clouds lit up with chain lightning. The thunder rolled over us as I unbuttoned the cover and flipped the latch to free the top. It popped up on its metal frame.
Grace sat silently, staring off into the distance as I drew the canvas top up over the Mustang.
“Just reach up and snap it in,” I called to her through the rising sound. A wall of wind and rain was racing towards us across the fields. A rushing wave, it tossed the grain and shook the maples lining the road.
Grace did nothing.
“Dammit!” I cursed, still holding the top with one arm as I struggled into the driver’s seat. “You’re not even gonna help one little bit?”
She just stared fixedly at the rain, so I reached up and started snapping the top in place.
“You better roll up your window or you’re gonna get w—” I began, but she opened the car door and was out before I knew it.
“Stop! It’s too wet!” I called out, but she was gone. The rain was falling in earnest, pattering against the top like thrown gravel. Water streamed down the windshield. Suddenly the lightning struck again, closer this time, and in the flare of light I saw her struggling against the wind, her dress flying around her as she ran away down the road.
“Jesus, you crazy, goddamned …” I cursed as I put the car into gear and started off to follow her. Had she suddenly gone off her head? This was dangerously crazy, out in this kind of weather. “Dammit!” I cursed again as I leaned forward, squinting through the driving rain. I sure as hell didn’t want to run her over, so I kept the car in second gear. Five minutes later, I realized she must have left the road.
What was I supposed to do? People would blame me if anything happened to the crazy old bird. But suddenly, it was there. The sign. A small one, weather-beaten with paint flaking off. ‘Boat Launch,’ it said, with an arrow pointing to the right. A dirt parking lot sloped down to a lake. I couldn’t believe it. This was the place where I stole that car.
Jesus, it was all coming back. Even the shed was there. I thought it would have fallen down in all those years since or at least been replaced by something bigger, better. With a kind of resignation, I parked the car under the trees facing the lake and stared grim-faced through the rain.
I turned off the ignition, not sure what to do next. Why would Grace bring me here and run off like that? Where the hell was she?
As I sat there, I went over all of it: the running away, the hitchhiking, the landing here, and the car, but I could not think of what was happening to me. I rubbed my hand over my face and felt strange. Reaching over, I turned the rear-view mirror towards me. As I did, there was a brief flash of lightning and I thought I saw …
My hand scrabbled for the interior light switch and I flicked it on. The face of my fifteen-year-old self, thin with cheekbones speckled with acne, stared back at me. I looked down at my hands. The tats were gone, no LOVE or HATE in ragged blue, just young, soft fingers unworn by time and hard living.
“Jesus!” I said aloud. “What’s going on here?”
Even my voice was younger. I stared at myself in the mirror, running my hands over the unwrinkled skin and the downy growth of hair on my upper lip. And then I laughed. I was young again, and my life—my whole life—was before me. And I was sitting in the car once more with the storm beating around me. I was reliving everything that had happened that night. And I sat there in the driver’s seat, smelling that new car smell. I laughed out loud.
The lightning flashed. I reached toward the glove compartment and felt around inside. The key was there. I pulled it out and held it wrapped in my hand. And there I sat.
Just a little ride … echoed in my head.
Just a little ways …
Then with the key resting warmly in my palm, as the lightning flashed and thunder cracked loudly over the wind-whipped waves out on the lake, an old memory sprang forward from some other part of my mind, long set aside. From a deep, secretive corner where I had stuffed memories from darker times.
* * *
I was sitting at a table, one of those cheap, arborite veneer rectangular ones they have in cop interrogation rooms. There was nothing on the walls but a mirror meant to hide a one-way viewing room, and I knew someone was probably watching from behind it. The chair felt hard under me. The light was too bright.
A cop sat across from me—a cop with greased back hair who smelled of Brylcream. “Sit up!” he barked at me. Someone sat beside me, a younger guy with a chinless face, some lawyer they’d given me. He whispered to me.
“Jimmy,” he said, “they think you have something to do with stealing a car a few months back.”
“Don’t know why,” the cop said, “maybe it’s the way you are just too cocky, but I believe you were down near Pritchard’s that day. I think you stole that car and if I can ever prove it, I’ll hang it on you, you little prick.”
“If you’re not gonna charge me then fuck off!” I yelled at him. Yonge Street had changed me, toughened me up. By then cops didn’t faze me. He glared at me and I stared right back at him. Deny. Deny. Deny.
And afterwards, after the anger, after the lying, my face hot and flushed, the two of them were out in the hallway. Through the noise of the station, I could hear only small snatches of what they were saying.
“ … little bastard was there. I’m sure he’s …”
“He says no and you have no proof, so …”
“… manslaughter charges …”
“Manslaughter?” The lawyer’s voice was louder then. “With what proof, huh?”
“ … they hadn’t screwed up the evidence in Bracebridge. Jesus, Tom, that little bugger’s gonna walk away free …”
And then I heard a sound from behind the mirror. Crying. Someone was watching me and crying. I stood up and looked into the mirror, trying to see beyond it. It was as if we were staring at each other and, though I couldn’t see them, whoever was there could see me. I went over to the switch and turned off the light, but when I returned to the mirror and put my face up close to it, I could still see only movement and a door opening to a lit hallway. Standing silhouetted against the light was a girl, a young woman with red hair, and as she rushed into the hallway, before the door closed, she glanced back at me and I saw her tear-streaked face.
Over the next few decades, when I was drunk or stoned out, that memory would come back to me, as if some part of me knew it was somehow important.
Sitting in the Mustang, I realized what I had done. I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but I had. I had only meant to escape, but I hadn’t. Instead I had trapped myself in a life I would never have wanted.
I began crying. For absolutely no reason I started blubbering like a baby. Just sat with the key in my hand bawling my eyes out. And when I was finished I put the key back. As I let go of it, this wash of relief, like warm rain, descended on me. I looked into the rearview mirror at my young, unlined face and saw that the past could really be changed. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and grabbed my duffel bag. I didn’t want to be in the car and I knew somehow that my not taking it was important to more than just me.
It was raining like a son of a bitch, so I ran over to the shack. Under the projecting eave of the stand, there was a dry spot. I squatted there cold, tired, and wet, but I knew somehow I had to wait there.
I was shivering, cursing myself for being stupid, when I heard her. Out there, out on the lake, a woman was calling out. “Help,” she yelled, “help me, please!” Feeling then that I knew why all of this had happened, I left my backpack and ran out onto the dock. I reached the end and could just barely make her out. There, in a boat, a woman was using a paddle in a frantic attempt to make it to the dock. There was an outboard motor but it had obviously become useless, that or she was incapable of starting it. She was losing to the storm; it was pushing her farther out into the lake and the darkness.
I looked around for something, anything to use to help her. There was a small
rowboat tied up to one of the slips. I found oars hidden under the canvas of a nearby motorboat and jumped into the rowboat, attaching the oars to the oarlocks. Then I had another thought. I hopped out and ran back up to the Mustang, leaned in and grabbed the key. Sticking it into the ignition, I turned on the headlights and set the beam on high before running back to the dock. It was easier to see her out there then.
Ten minutes later, I pulled the rowboat alongside her, the rain still pelting down furiously. “Please help me,” she cried, “I ran out of gas. I’ve got to get my husband to the hospital. He’s bleeding badly!” I looked closer and could see she was standing over an unconscious man huddled against a seat in the bottom of the boat.
“Come up to the front,” I called over the rain. “Toss me that rope and I’ll tie it off and row us in.”
She came forward, tossed over the bow rope, and then returned to the guy huddled on the floor of the boat. I set off, pulling as hard as I could against the current and the waves. It took a while to get us back on course towards the dock, but gradually we drew closer. All the way in I was glancing over my shoulder at the lights of the red Mustang, using it as a guide to see where I was going.
As we drew closer the lights shone on her and I saw what I somehow knew I would see. Squinting past me, blinking the rain away from her eyes, was a twenty-something-year-old Grace, with the most determined look in her eyes. Her bright auburn hair was pasted to her forehead, but I recognized her as the girl from behind the mirror.
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 37