by Jerry Ahern
“Look at the picture! Look, Jack!”
He didn’t have his glasses, but a little squinting helped a lot. A caption beneath a black-and-white photograph described a street scene from northern Nevada in 1903. The street was broad, unpaved, dusty, obviously the main drag. Horses and wagons were in the street, as were various pedestrians. On the far side of the street from the camera was a board sidewalk, several wooden storefronts adjacent to it, the buildings packed together like row housing. One of them, the far left edge of its sign almost obscured by a hanging advertising shingle, read “Jack Naile—General Merchandise.”
Jack Naile lit a Camel from a half-empty pack and took the Suburban out of park. He made a right, caught the traffic light and paralleled the railroad tracks, made a U-turn across them and then a quick right into the lot for the bank’s drive-thru. “How’s about a cup of coffee when we get home?” Jack asked.
“Sounds good.”
They were able to pull up at the actual window, Ellen ready with the deposit slip. He signed the check and passed it to the pretty, smiling woman on the other side of the bullet-proof glass.
Jack Naile turned up into their steep driveway and, after stopping briefly to let Ellen out, put the Suburban under the portico; the passenger door couldn’t be opened once the Suburban was parked. Parking under the portico always reminded Jack of sticking a size-thirteen foot into a size-twelve shoe. Ellen was already unlocking the house. Jack crossed the broad front porch, and they let themselves in, Jack making a quick right off the shotgun hall and into the office. He wanted to be working on the book, but he had to finish the roundup article. The magazine piece was running too long, but that couldn’t be helped. Pretty soon he’d be stuck until Ellen got the rest of the photos taken and they got them back. That, of course, meant better than twenty miles each way to the only place around that developed black-and-whites. He heard the piss-poor excuse for a car that had at one time been a Saab pulling into the driveway. Without looking away from the computer screen, he called out, “David’s home, Ellen, Elizabeth. Ellen? You hear me?”
“I’m not deaf!”
The front hallway door was just outside the open door to the office. When Jack Naile heard the door opening, he called out, “Hi, David. Your mom’s got something to show you and your sister. Came in the mail. How was summer school?”
“Okay. I’m gonna be late for work, so I’ve only got a minute.”
Jack saved what he’d just written and got up from the creaky old swivel chair his father had given him when he was two years younger than David. The chair was used and looked it. Lookswise, it hadn’t changed much since he’d gotten it. But its creaking was getting ominous.
“Elizabeth? You dressed yet?” Jack Naile shouted up the stairs to his daughter. “Come on. See this thing we got in the mail!”
“Coming, Daddy! Just two minutes.”
“I don’t have two minutes, Dad,” David called back over his shoulder as he headed into the bathroom.
“You want a sandwich or something?” Ellen asked as David started to close the door.
David stuck his head out and said, “Yeah. But I’ve gotta hurry.”
“I’m making tuna salad. Want one?”
“Sure.”
Jack Naile lit a cigarette. He could hear Elizabeth starting down the stairs. For a fifteen-year-old girl, she had the loudest feet. Maybe it was the shoes.
“When you finish your cigarette, you want a sandwich, Jack?” Ellen asked as he entered the kitchen.
“Sure, princess,” Naile said, leaning across the leg of the L-shaped kitchen counter and giving Ellen a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Smells good.”
“How can you smell anything with that cigarette? You should quit. David wants you to quit. Elizabeth wants you to quit.”
“You want me to quit?”
“Well, if you die because you keep smoking, I can always marry a rich doctor or something. Go ahead. Expose all of us to secondhand smoke. You don’t care.”
“Yeah, right.” Ellen had achieved the effect she’d sought. Jack stubbed out his cigarette.
“Okay, what’s this thing in the mail?” Elizabeth asked.
Jack turned around and glanced at his daughter. She was beautiful, just like her mother, even though she took after his side of the family more. Both kids did, really. Ellen had the gray-green eyes, just like her father and mother. David and Elizabeth had brown eyes, like his. All four of them had the same hair coloring, dark reddish brown, but David’s always looked black. David had curly hair like Tom Selleck, but used mousse and all sorts of other stuff to make his hair appear straight, whereas Elizabeth, of course, had straight hair and tried to make it hold a curl.
“Well, what came in the mail?” Elizabeth repeated.
As Jack Naile was about to answer, he heard the toilet flush. “Give your brother another minute. We want to see what both you guys think.”
Elizabeth shrugged resignedly and sat down on the deacon’s bench at the kitchen table. Jack Naile started to light another cigarette, but Ellen said “Here” and put a dessert plate in his hand with a tuna-salad sandwich and half a kiwi on it.
After what was about two minutes—Elizabeth already had her sandwich and Jack Naile’s was half-consumed— David entered the kitchen. “Here,” Ellen Naile said, putting a plate in her son’s hand. “You want another one, the bread’s right there.” She took a bite of her own sandwich.
“Where’s the thing that came in the mail?” Jack Naile asked his wife.
“Right where you put it.” She took it off the kitchen table and handed it to him.
Jack set down his sandwich and sat down at the table. As he opened the envelope and extracted the page cut from the magazine, he declared, “This is really bizarre.”
“It’s a picture of an old town,” David announced, looking over his father’s shoulder. Elizabeth had come around to stand beside him. “What’s so amazing—”
“Your father wants you guys to look at the name on the store on the far side of the street.”
“‘Jack Naile—General Merchandise,’” Elizabeth read aloud.
“Ohh. Yeah, that is weird,” David announced as he sat down and started eating.
“How’s the math class?” Elizabeth asked her brother.
“I’m getting it. I think I’m going to get an A, whereas, if I’d taken it in the fall, well . . .”
“Have you got a store meeting tonight, David?” Ellen asked.
“As assistant manager, I’ve gotta be there.”
“No, I just wanted to double check. You going to have dinner with us?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jack Naile swallowed the bite of sandwich that was in his mouth. “Doesn’t anybody have anything to say about the photograph? You guys realize how odd the spelling is for our last name? And then it’s even the same first name! I mean, this is really strange. And what an idea for a book!”
“A book?” Elizabeth repeated.
“Why did you ask that?” David asked his sister. “Now Dad’ll take the next twenty minutes—”
“Hey, think about it!” Jack insisted. “What would happen to a family just like ours if—somehow—we got thrust back in time to turn-of-the-century Nevada?”
“I’d be late for work,” David supplied.
“No, I mean we could have one hell of a book if we used ourselves as the basis for the characters and then worked out all the planning that would be involved and—”
David’s smile was indulgent as he told Jack, “It could never happen, Dad. What? Are they going to invent a time machine or something? Are they going to bump into some crazy professor with a DeLorean like Michael J. Fox did in the movies? Nobody’s ever going to believe it, Dad, because it couldn’t happen in real life. I’ve gotta go.”
David was up. Elizabeth said, “You don’t know that it couldn’t happen, David. And that is our name on that store almost a hundred years ago. I think Mom and Dad have a good idea.”
David
didn’t say it, but Jack could read his son’s thoughts on the young man’s face: either “Suck-up” or “You shouldn’t humor Mom and Dad on stuff like this; they need to write something serious.”
David shot everybody a smile and started down the hall.
Jack was up, Ellen had never sat down for more than a second and Elizabeth was already following her brother down the hall. “We’ll wave at you, David.”
“Fine. See you guys.”
The practice of waving was a family tradition, so much so that anytime David or Elizabeth went out with their friends, all of their friends would wave as well. It went according to a well-established pattern; depending on the clemency of the weather it was conducted either wholly from within the house by the storm door (which also involved flashing the porch light) or from the front porch.
It was a warm—too warm to Jack’s way of thinking— and dry day, so the exterior wave option was automatically selected. As David was starting down the front steps, his sister was already saying “Give me a kiss, David.” David, of course, did not, but smiled.
David was getting into the Bondo-gray splotched Saab as Jack Naile closed the storm door.
David, an excellent hand with a manual transmission, was already coasting out of the driveway in reverse as Jack went for the customary cigarette.
Jack barely got the cigarette lit in the flame of his Zippo before it was time for the first volley of waves. Jack frequently waved with two hands. Elizabeth sometimes did the two-handed, and that was her selection. Today Ellen, sanest of them all, made her usual one-handed wave. This all transpired as David passed the house. David acknowledged with a gesture halfway between a wave and a salute, accomanied by a slight nod of the head.
Jack Naile took another drag on his cigarette as David made a full stop at the corner. David made the left. About thirty feet after completing the turn, it was time for the second volley. Jack again used the two-handed option, as did Elizabeth. Ellen one-handed it. David, in turn, acknowledging the second volley, honked the Saab’s horn.
Jack took another drag from his cigarette, walked down the front steps and dropped the filterless cigarette to the concrete, crushing it under his foot.
The wave was officially over.
“So, you want to help your mother and me with the book, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth, already starting to go inside, responded, “Let me think about it.”
“That’s fair, Jack,” Ellen interjected.
“It’d beat watching Oprah and Donahue, kid.”
“If I were sixteen instead of fifteen, I wouldn’t watch that much TV.”
In fairness, she hung out with her friends a lot, read a lot of Danielle Steele and was waiting on word about a part-time job. Sometimes she even helped out in the office. Jack shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigarette. He could sympathize with Lizzie; not being old enough to drive had to suck . . .
The scrunchy in her ponytail was giving Ellen a little headache, so she took it off, stopping in the downstairs bathroom to run a brush through her hair. That done, she continued on her way to the office. As she entered the room, Jack wasn’t writing. He was picking up the telephone. “What are you doing? I thought you were working on the book or the article or something. You’re trying to find out more about the photo, right?”
Jack looked up from the telephone’s keypad and their eyes met. “I’m checking with that little town’s chamber of commerce. For the heck of it. Wanted to, ahh . . .”
Jack had pretty eyes—so dark—even when peering out from within a sheepish smile. “Fine.” Ellen sat down at her desk. Their two desks dominated the center of the office, the fronts of the two desks facing, touching. Jack believed in UFOs, thought Bigfoot was the missing link and, every once in a while, got into serious discussions about the JFK assassination, about which he was actually quite well-informed. After over twenty-three years of marriage, dating four years before that and knowing each other as friends for three years before that, she was used to Jack’s penchant for going off on tangents.
Ellen picked up The Skeptical Inquirer and began looking through it. She could hear her husband talking, but wasn’t really paying attention until she heard him put down the receiver and say “Shit.”
“What?”
“The historian’s out of town for a while and can’t be reached.”
“He’ll be back.” As she said that, her eyes drifted across the photos on the wall nearest the hallway. There was a big painting of John Wayne as he looked in Hondo and, next to it, a color photograph of Richard Boone as he looked in Have Gun—Will Travel, one of Jack’s favorite old television programs. Jack even had a hat like Richard Boone had worn, low-crowned and black; one of Jack’s holster-making friends had made an almost perfect duplicate of the hatband.
On other walls in the room there were pictures of Clint Walker, Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels—mingled with photos of David and Elizabeth. There was even a picture of Theodore Roosevelt, one of Jack’s big heroes, in his cowboy mufti, standing beside a large black horse.
Ellen wondered just what it was that her husband was hoping to find out about the photograph they’d been mailed? Did he really wonder if, somehow, they were— ”No,” she said aloud.
“What, princess?”
“Nothing. Why don’t you get back to work, Jack? I’ll get out of your hair.” As she left the office and entered the hallway, her eyes flickered toward the hall tree. The black Stetson was there, lurking . . .
Unlike departures, there was no arrival ritual, no waving at all. Ellen’s thirty-four-year-old nephew, Clarence, merely let himself in through the front door of their house with his own key and sang out his characteristic “Hi. It’s me.” “Hi” was Northernese for “Hey, y’all!” All of them were Illinois-born damned Yankees who came to Georgia in the late 1970s. Non-damned yankees, of course, were the kind who were merely passing through. Only Liz, who was less than two when they migrated southward, had what Jack Naile still thought of as a Southern accent. However, Elizabeth could turn it on and off like a faucet, as required.
Jack got up from the kitchen table, stepped into the hallway and responded, “Hiya, Clarence! Ellen’s got dinner nearly ready. Good to see you, son!”
For the time that Clarence was in Air Force Electronic Intelligence, in Greece for the last three-and-one-half years of his hitch, they had seen him precious little. Since then, after a year doing pretty much the same thing, but as a civilian, he had moved to Atlanta and taken a job managing a multiplex, which Jack had always thought was a waste of talent. However, it did allow more frequent socializing, for which he, Ellen and the kids were grateful.
Clarence was Ellen’s late sister’s son, after her death brought into their home in Illinois while still in his teens. They had pretty much raised him from then on, and looked on him as an extra son. Ellen, nine when he was born, had carried him home from the hospital. Jack had met Clarence for the first time—Clarence had punched him in the stomach—when Clarence was not quite seven years old.
“So, how’s the movie business?”
“I’ve got some posters for David and Liz. They’re in the car. Remind me to bring them in before I leave.”
“So, how you feeling?”
“My back’s bothering me a little, and I think I’m getting a cold.” With that, Clarence sneezed.
Ellen announced, “Dinner’s ready.”
“I’ll call the kids,” Jack volunteered.
Clarence ate as if food were about to be banned, as much as a pound and a half of Ellen’s homemade lasagna. After dinner, they would all probably play Trivial Pursuit, Clarence and David and Ellen on one team, Jack and Elizabeth on the other. Somehow, Jack knew, that was supposed to make it fairer, a more even match, which was not entirely true. Both Clarence and David followed professional sports, Clarence more so. Jack Naile had seen two broadcast television football games in his life and had no idea how the scoring was figured beyond the obvious thing that a touchdown was go
od.
After dinner, and saying the obligatory but sincere “Anything I can do to help?” Jack steered David and Clarence into the rec room, while Ellen put things away and Elizabeth helped her.
Jack had the photograph on the coffee table and showed it to Clarence.
“I agree that the photo is an interesting coincidence. That’s all that it is,” David announced, as if forming Clarence’s opinion for him.
Clarence, six foot two and named after his fourteen-inch shorter grandfather, plunked down on the far end of the sectional sofa. “It’s interesting. It’s also creepy,” he added with a laugh.
Jack leaned back into the center of the sectional, feeling very pleasantly full, and lit a cigarette. “Creepy in what way, Clarence? You mean that it might actually happen?”
“He doesn’t think that. Do you, Clarence?”
“No, David. No. No, Jack. I mean, the same name thing.”
“He’s right, Dad. Nothing more to this than two men separated by almost a century who happen to have the same name. God knows, the guy who sent the picture to you could have doctored it just as a joke. There’s nothing to it.”
Jack Naile supposed that it was only fate that one member of the family had to be sensible.
Jack sat at his desk, but his eyes weren’t on the screen of his computer, nor did his fingers stroke the keyboard. In his hands, he held one of his most prized possessions, a Colt Single Action Army .45, a second-generation gun made in the early 1970s, worked on for him by the world’s fastest draw, and one of the finest trick shooters in history, Bob Munden. The revolver had originally been nickel plated, but after Bob’s work on it, the Colt was sent to another old friend, Ron Mahovsky, who had Metalifed it over the nickel, making it look like brushed stainless steel but more impervious to rust. The original checkered hard rubber grips were replaced with black buffalo-horn two-piece panels from Eagle grips.
The barrel was seven and one-half inches long. The trigger pull was fourteen ounces. It was the perfect Colt.
Jack Naile set the single action down on the desk and picked up the telephone.