“Why don’t you just go back outside?” I said from the comfort of my stool.
“Don’t you know who I am? I’m Mad Dog Donaldson.” He growled.
“Of course you are,” I said.
He slammed the door on his way yelling back at me, “I’ll give you two minutes to say your goodbye’s and get yourself a gun. Then you better be out here.”
All the eyes turned on me. Annie’s were the saddest. Oh sweet Annie, if I were a younger man I wouldn’t have wandered so long. I would’ve married that woman the day she become one.
“Oh don’t do it, Joshua. We’ll stand by you. He can’t get all of us. He only has six bullets.”
I laughed a little. Don’t know why I liked being called Joshua. Felt like all the love in the world when it came from sweet Annie’s lips.
“That’s six too many, Annie. Besides he don’t scare me none,” I said.
“I swore I wouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain no more.“ Sherriff said, “But Jesus Christ, Joshua, don’t you know who Mad Dog Donaldson is?”
The room erupted, everyone trying to tell me the worst story they had heard attached to that name.
Bad things. The massacres, the petty thievery that always amounted to something cold blooded. It all had kept me up late at night just thinking about it. They spoke with hatred and they spoke with fear. There wasn’t an ounce of respect. All they wanted was Mad Dog to either leave them alone or get dead real soon.
And now he was here among them.
The Sheriff refused me his pistol. I hadn’t carried one in a year, not since I settled in Pinewood. Weren’t any good reason for it, not until today.
Annie tugged at my sleeves.
“You’d have him gun down an unarmed man?” I asked the Sheriff. He glared at me and then unbuckled his holster. Then he stuck me with his star.
“Make it legal. That way if he kills you they’ll bring all the Marshalls down on him once and for all.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” I muttered.
It was hotter than I remembered. It should’ve started to cool off it was almost supper time and yet the sun still blazed like it was noon. What was it back East that had driven me West? Was it too much shade? That couldn’t have been it.
Just seems it’s a lot easier to get a fresh start where no one else is fighting to be. But then you get the lawless and ruthless. You get carried away thinking it all belongs to you, everything that’s not under the cover of shade. And you get to thinking others owe you for stepping out in your sunshine.
“Not so yellow after all.”
I’d heard better greetings in my day. I turned and faced him in the street. He sneered in the shade of his hat. His fingers began the tickle the air like he’d done this before.
“You really want to make a name for yourself?” I asked.
“I’ve got a name,” he said sternly then suddenly burst into a great big laugh. “Are you expecting pity cause you’ve never heard of Mad Dog Donaldson?”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said.
He pulled his pistol and his shot rang out. Only he was already falling to his back because I’d shot first before I ever spoke.
It felt awful to kill a man again. It reminded me why I quit. Why I didn’t want to ever pull that trigger again.
“You killed Mad Dog Donaldson!” Sheriff Roy Woods ran towards me and patted my back. “I bet there’s some kind of reward for that! Annie, get on the wire! We have Mad Dog!”
“That was a quick shot,” Old mac proclaimed.
There were all kinds of hooting and hollering but I know it weren’t Mad Dog Donaldson lying in the dirt. No, Mad Dog was still on his feet and in my boots. I could’ve corrected the stories that would come this day forth but truth was I liked these people. I liked that they thought I was better than the thug I’d let Mad Dog become.
Here I was just Joshua and Mad Dog was finally dead.
I had witnesses.
THE END.
GREEN LIGHTS
The police officer approached Jamie Darren’s car. Jamie rolled down his window and sighed, trying to remember how fast he was going but he knew that couldn’t be the problem. The officer went through the routine questions, deliberately slow as if part of the punishment for having violated the traffic laws he would have to sit in a corner for fifteen minutes.
“Is there a reason you ran that red light?” The officer was getting angry because it was not the first time he asked.
Jamie shook his head, “I thought it was green.” Wasn’t it? He played it back in his head and he knew it had turned green quite a ways before he would’ve even applied the brakes to slow down.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you did. You saw a line of traffic finish up and you assumed their light would be turning red and that perhaps there was no danger. Instead of slowing down you took a chance and sped up through the light which a few seconds later would turn green. You ran a red, Mr. Darren.”
Darren was too scared to argue. He didn’t have time to argue today. He accepted his ticket.
Jamie pulled into his office. He looked at his watch. He was a minute late. For the first time in his life he would be late. He had always allotted enough time for strange instances like being pulled over but on the one day that he had to be on time for work he was a minute late.
It was only a minute he thought, he could play that off, pretend not to notice the time, he could just as easily blame his watch for being off. Maybe that explains why he ran the red and thought it was green, he was stressed beyond his awareness. Would using being pulled over as an excuse even help him? Of course not, they needed a person who played by all the rules, some one responsible.
“Sorry I’m a couple minutes late today…” he started as he saw his boss walking out of the meeting room. The very meeting room they were supposed use. He hadn’t even waited an extra minute. All of Jamie’s hope was swept away.
“Funny.” The old man said with a smile. “I’m not quite ready for you yet.” Jamie’s heart gave up he had blown the promotion. “Why don’t you grab us some coffee and I’ll be in in ten minutes.” He laughed, “I like you Jamie, you’re always early.”
Jamie looked at his watch, he had been wrong. He was still ten minutes early. Jamie made the coffee and sat down in the conference room. It was a long table with a stack of files on the far end and an array of chairs that normally sat the entire team. It felt lonely. He fueled his jitters with more coffee.
He regretted the coffee five minutes into the meeting. Jamie would just have to hold it. He used it to focus on what he was talking about instead of being nervous. All he had to do was get through his presentation and his interview for the new position would be done.
And then he could use the restroom.
“Phenomenal.” His boss said as he concluded his presentation. “You are doing excellent work.” The older man stood up and held his hand out to shake Jamie’s.
The job was his. Jamie was so excited he was at the urinal. He could afford to run all the red lights in the city now. He couldn’t wait to hear their offer, but he knew the job listed at high sixes. That was already five times what he currently made. He was almost glad he’d nervously sucked down a total of two coffees; some how it was the most refreshing pee he’d ever taken. It felt like the first pee in a new life. He was laughing at himself.
His boss didn’t laugh. He grunted as his eyes flicked down and then back up to Jamie’s with a sharp look of disgust and puzzlement. Jamie felt it on his leg. His wet pants clung back onto his flesh. It was warm.
He noticed the files still on the corner of the table. He was in the conference room and he had just stopped peeing. His boss’s hand was letting go of his. The older man stepped back and didn’t look at him.
“I guess that will be all.” He said and dismissed himself leaving Jamie standing in a puddle. What had just happened? He skirted to the restroom and was standing at the urinal again. He was finishing off the pee he’d cut short in the c
onference room. He was confused. Had his mind simply slipped a disc? He knew he was in the restroom. He could recount shaking his boss’s hand and then making a casual dash for the restroom. It had to have been a nightmare. He was still asleep in his bed at home. He would wake up and have to drive into work, stress, he thought, it’s all stress.
But it wasn’t.
He knew he had to run home and change his pants. He could tell the way his boss didn’t address it, he didn’t know how to handle the situation. Jamie would have to apologize; maybe he had a medical condition. Is there a medical condition for peeing your pants when you are forty-three years old?
On his drive home someone honked at him. He didn’t know why but they seemed unhappy with him. The light had been green. He didn’t think anything more of it until he stepped into an ice cold shower.
Had the hot water already run out? He’d checked it with his hand just before he stepped in and it was hot and there was steam. Now it was gone. Just what the heck was going on? Why was this day of all days trying to become the worst in his life?
Jamie tried to think of how to mend the job he’d literally pissed on but it only made it worse. When he came out of the shower it was already four o’clock in the afternoon. Had he really been in the shower that long? A loud sound boomed outside his townhouse door. He felt it in his teeth. He flung the door open.
He heard the birds and the traffic like nothing had happened. He waited a while longer in case it was thunder or, no, perhaps just a big truck backfiring. Nothing seemed to change. He was finished. He hung his head and it almost felt good to admit it was over. His world had ended. He was finally free to start from scratch. He thought he could be somebody different at a new job. Somebody better liked or perhaps he could finally stop caring and learn to coast. Or maybe he could just keep going nuts and showing up to his current job just to see how long it would take for them to fire him or have him committed. The clock on the microwave caught his eye.
It read 10:00 a.m.
He knew it to be wrong and figured he ought to check his phone in case his boss had called to fire him. Now it couldn’t have been wrong, could it? It received its time from a satellite he thought.
It read 10:05 a.m.
Jamie checked everywhere he knew there to be a clock. His cable TV preview channel, the news networks, the weather channels, his alarm clock, his computer was last and it only confirmed what all his other sources had. It was still morning. He must’ve read the clock wrong when he came out of the shower. That certainly made more sense than having passed nearly eight hours in the shower.
He still felt the boom he heard in his teeth. He could feel them in his gums when normally he forgot they were there. He knew he hadn’t imagined that sound, even if it was just an engine backfiring it was another thread of the already strange and horrible day.
Breathe deep, he thought. Make a phone call to your boss and tell him you weren’t feeling especially well and that you are embarrassed. He’s a man, he should understand how a medical disorder in that region would be something you aren’t comfortable talking about. He might not promote you, Jamie, but he won’t fire you. Jamie mouthed the words as he thought them.
He looked outside. The sky was orange and much darker than before. It felt like evening. He refused to be tricked by the clocks again and looked straight ahead. How long had he been sitting there?
The man in front of him was dressed in a suit and tie and had a briefcase in front of his knees. He looked old for his age, like he had smoked and tanned too much and then abruptly gave up both habits and was nothing more than a pale wrinkled thirty-something. The man looked as bad as Jamie felt only perhaps less confused. In fact the man sitting in Jamie’s living room looked as if he had a purpose.
“Can I help you?” Jamie could hear the trembling in his voice, could the man? Remain calm he told himself, act natural.
“You keep slipping, Jamie.” The man said with a nod at the end of his sentence.
“Am I now?” Jamie got smart for the first time all day and it felt great to mouth off a little when he’d been so docile earlier.
“Did you know the speed of the ocean’s currents can affect how fast or slow the Earth revolves? Could you imagine if the currents stopped cooperating with the Sun? Our whole planet would be completely still. Would we start to lose the gravity that binds us? Would we all go mad from never ending days and nights, Can you imagine being permanently stuck at six o’clock in the morning? Almost time for the sun to come up. Imagine a permanent sunrise or an unending sunset. When I tell you, you are slipping up, Mr. Darren, you should act in terror for your actions are permanent.”
Jamie smirked. He would’ve laughed it he was certain the man he was sitting across from was not insane. But if he wasn’t sane then he wasn’t sitting there with Jamie, which would mean, no, Jamie didn’t want to think he’d snapped finally.
“I do not scare you, Mr. Darren?”
Jamie raised his eyebrows. The man shrugged, politely disagreeing.
“Have you not noticed how you think you are at one point in time when you are in another? Even now you have not experienced most of your day in chronological order. We sit here at 6:34 P.M. And the sun sets in two more minutes. And you can’t account for what happens to you between ten in the morning and now. Can you? “
Things had seemed out of place. He hadn’t run a red light, but the cop said he had. Jamie was at the urinal when he started peeing and then he was in front of his boss, the clocks, and the shower. It was all dream logic; even this meeting could not possibly be real. His stress had sent him over the edge and this was the final straw convincing himself of his insanity, letting it devour him whole.
“Right.” Jamie sneered.
“It is causing a problem, Mr. Darren.” The old man said pulling his briefcase onto his lap. The loud clasps sounded as he opened the case. “You are running red lights.”
Now Jamie knew this was some mad dream.
“What do I need to do to make you leave?”
“You simply need to fill out form A of this Residuals contract.” The man lifted the contract and closed the briefcase setting the finger thick packet of papers on top.
“Form A, eh?”
“It simply states that you will accept responsibility and remain in this time and refrain from thrusting the tides of time.”
Jamie repeated the last part with taunting sarcasm, “tides of time! And if I don’t?”
“That is not my department, Mr. Darren. And I am most happy that it is not. Unpleasant jobs are hard to live with.”
“Most jobs are hard to live with.” He looked the man over, “Is that why you look so haggard? What are you thirty going on ninety?”
“If you would start at my birth year far older, but I can tell you I’m not even thirty yet.”
“Right, and what’s this Residuals contract mean?”
“As I stated, it’s about claiming responsibility should the fluctuations of time you have caused alter the world’s last present course. In which case you may be tried and convicted of serious crimes against humanity. But,” he chuckled, “I assure you most of the time, the good you have done outweighs the negative and the charges are dropped. It’s really just standard procedure.”
“So what’s the point in signing anything?”
“We used to kill violators on the spot.”
Jamie gave the contract a longer look. If this were a dream nothing bad could really happen if he signed it just in case?
“Alright.” Jamie beckoned with his hand. The man stood up, he was taller than Jamie expected. The man smiled as he handed the packet over the coffee table. He was sitting again when Jamie looked up from all the legal jargon.
“I guess I’ll need a lawyer.”
“Oh but I am your court appointed lawyer.” The man replied.
“You’re telling me to take the plea?”
The man nodded.
Jamie made it obvious that he was rethinking his decision as he
flipped through the tiny text lining whole pages.
“You don’t realize what you have done. After your first slip, we noticed, and by your third we had instigated reversal. One slip forward requires two back.”
“So you guys made me piss myself?”
“The two I referred to, are people like yourself. They had to go the other way to keep this world of ours rotating in the correct direction, understand?”
“So I made myself piss myself?”
The man wasn’t going to dignify it with an answer, his nose even perked up and to the side like he was above such questions.
“So just to be clear we’re talking about time travel.”
“If I simplify my metaphor will it be clearer? Imagine an old record player, right now you’re the needle skipping back and forth.”
Jamie let out a loud laugh. He tried to make it louder.
“If I can be honest with you, Mr. Darren, you are being wholly unoriginal in your reaction to this news. I have met many like you, accidentally slipping forward and backward in time, no clue how their day started out normal and suddenly it is a nightmare.”
“Okay, so do they come around and believe you?”
“Most. I would be lying if I did not admit that most signed the paperwork just to get me to leave.”
“In which case we’re no longer your problem. Some one else will come take care of us?”
“If necessary.” The man replied. He cleared his throat and stared at Jamie intently.
“Got a pen.”
The man nodded towards the table, and sure enough there was a pen Jamie had not noticed before. He wondered when the man had placed it there. He picked it up. A rather pleasant feeling of static emanated from the pen.
“Is this magic?”
“An ordinary pen, Mr. Darren.” The man assured him.
Jamie was paralyzed as the debate returned to him. Just to make him go away, he thought as he brought the pen to the line. He pressed the pen against the paper but not so much that a drop of ink worked its way on to the paper. Then he pulled it away and looked at the man.
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