by Anthology
“This is my hobby, Mike.” She wished aloud that he would go away, and he did.
That evening, over a dinner that tasted better than dinner usually did, Gilzow asked her what she was doing, and Leveritt replied, “Pursuing mental health.” Later, she was almost unable to keep herself from laughing at one of Holmes’s stupid jokes.
Two weeks and seven cairns after she had begun, as she lay on the edge of sleep, she realized with a start that she had not thought about Ed Morris all that day.
Four days later, when she had returned from building her eighth and last cairn, she asked around for a copy of Robinson Crusoe. Nobody had one. Gilzow offered her Emma, by Jane Austen. “Close enough,” Leveritt said.
A month passed.
The supply boat arrived three days ahead of schedule. Everyone turned out to carry boxes; the first people to reach the boat yelled to those following, “Brinkman’s here!” The big man, who had been downriver for ten weeks, stood in the bow, waving his shapeless hat. It transpired that the loud, sincere welcome was not entirely for him. He had brought a mixed case of liquor.
When the supplies had been unloaded and the camp had settled down for a round or two of good stiff drinks, Brinkman sought out Leveritt and asked her to walk with him along the bluff. They had scarcely put the camp out of earshot when he heaved a great sigh, his ebullient humor fell away from him like a cloak, and he suddenly looked tired and pale under his tan and more solemn than she could recall having seen him.
“I really came all the way up here,” he said, “to tell you this personally. Two days ago, they dug something out of the marsh down by the main camp. It was one of the—part of one of the gurneys they use in the jump station.”
“Ed Morris,” Leveritt said bleakly. She had not said the name aloud since her conversation with Michael Diehl. Now, as though invoked by her speaking it, a humid wind swept up the valley, bearing a faint fetid breath of the estuary.
Brinkman said, “A Navy security officer named Hales told me about it.”
“More surprises. I’d’ve thought he’d be swearing everyone to secrecy.”
“It was too late for that. Everybody in camp knew it by the time he heard about it. Everybody.”
“What about Ed Morris himself?”
“They’re digging around. They haven’t found anything else yet, and God knows if they will. The gurney’s all twisted up like a pretzel, and one end’s melted. God knows what that implies—besides the obvious, terrific heat. The thing was buried in a mud bank. Impacted. A botanist tripped over an exposed part.”
“How long had it been there?”
Brinkman shook his head. “They’re still working on that, but even the most conservative guess puts it before the manned phase of the expedition. As to how it got there—there has to be an inquest. You have to be there for it.”
Leveritt groaned. “I don’t have anything to tell.”
“So Hales said. But people higher up’re calling the shots. Everything’s got to be official, and you’ve got to be part of it.”
“I cannot get away from this thing!” Leveritt sat down on a knob of rock and angrily kicked at the ground. “Not from Hales and the Navy, and, most of all, not from Ed Morris. I thought I’d done it, finally worked it out by myself, but—”
“I’m sorry, Bonnie. You have to go back with me in the morning. I can find work for you to do until this thing’s over.”
“Making coffee?” She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I want to be here, Rob.”
“I’ve never known you not to be willing to do what you had to do so you could do what you want to do. While you’re there—the San Diego bunch has talked about holding a memorial service. I kind of gather none of them knew Morris all that well, or liked him, or something. But he is the expedition’s first casualty. Since you were almost the last person to see him, perhaps you could—”
Leveritt shook her head emphatically. “No.”
“Bonnie, the man is dead.”
“I couldn’t eulogize him if my life depended on it. What I know about him wouldn’t fill half a dozen sentences. He talked too fast and dressed like Jungle Jim. He said he liked mountain climbing and sky diving. And I’m very sorry about what happened to him, but it wasn’t my fault.”
“Who said it was your fault?” Brinkman knelt beside her and picked at his cuticle. “There has to be one meaningful thing you could say about him.”
Leveritt sighed. She looked down at the supply boat and imagined herself on it again, sitting, as before, under the white canopy with Brinkman, drinking coffee from a thermos bottle, and glimpsing the pier and the cluster of tents and Quonset huts through the fog. She saw it all as though it were a movie being shown in reverse. She would have to go back and back and back, until she reached a point before Ed Morris had taken over her life, and start anew. This time, she told herself, I will make things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. I will be the hero of my own story.
She said, “When he found out how nervous I was, he gave me a pep talk. And just before I went through the hole, he gave me a wink of encouragement.”
“Well, then, if nothing else, you owe him for that wink.” Brinkman could not have spoken more softly and been heard.
Leveritt closed her eyes and thought of the scene in the jump station, the purposeful technicians, Ed Morris’s face framed by the bars of the railing. She looked helplessly at Brinkman, who said, “What?”
The humid wind moved up the valley again, and again she smelled the estuary’s attenuated fetor of death and of life coming out of death. She exhaled harshly and said, “Nothing.” She had meant to say that she could not recall the color of Ed Morris’s eyes. “Never mind. I’ll think of something.” The wind passed across the rocky plain, toward the ancient crumbled hills and beyond.
THE WINDOW OF TIME
Richard Matheson
Let me say, at the outset, that I don’t blame my daughter for what happened. Actually, “blame” is too critical a word. What I mean to say is that my daughter was hardly responsible for what happened. Miriam is a good soul, a benevolent human being. She never (well, almost never) found fault with my living in her home. And Bob’s. And the three boys’. And if she did find fault, it was of such brief duration as to be negligible. Bob, on the other hand—well, let that go. (The main point I want to make is that my daughter did not demean me in any way for my extended residence. She knew I was alone and friendless; all of them deceased, including my beloved wife, Agnes. Appreciating that, Miriam treated me with thoughtfulness, kindness. And, most importantly, love.)
So much for the outset. The upshot? I know that my daughter and her family were in a constant state of stress because of me. I did the best I could, using their second bathroom (I didn’t have the temerity to utilize the master bathroom) as expeditiously as possible, watching television on the small black-and-white set in my bedroom, rarely watching the fifty-five-inch LCD color TV in their living room and sharing that only when we all agreed on a specific program. Most of my personal books were in storage and scarcely ever reread. I’d read them all anyway.
Oh, there were other elements of stress. Certain foods I couldn’t eat. Medicine prescriptions I needed periodically. Rides to various doctors. (I’d lost my driver’s license in 2008 following my stroke.) Well, why go on? I was, to be brief, in the way. So I decided to leave. I had enough private income from social security and my retirement pension from the Writers Guild. (I was rather a successful series television writer in the ’60s and ’70s.) So I had enough income to keep paying Miriam by the month even though I wasn’t there.
I didn’t tell her I was leaving. I knew she’d try to dissuade me. My age (eighty-two, I’d married late), my health (questionable), my need for company (beyond question). I didn’t want to debate with her. So I just left, a parting note on the kitchen table. I didn’t take any belongings with me. I could get them after I located a furnished room or flat. I waited until Miriam had gone shopping fo
r groceries. Bob was at work (he’s a car salesman, poor chap), the boys—Jeremy, seventeen, Arthur, fourteen, and Melvin, twelve—were at school. So I decamped from the three-bedroom, two-bath Kelsey domicile (Jeremy would likely be delighted at long last to acquire his own room) and walked over to Church Avenue. (Did I mention that their house was in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn? No, I didn’t. Well, it is.) And I had seen (for some time) an ad in the local news sheet about a retirement home in that area called Golden Years. The name gave me the pip. Golden Years my foot! But I was in no position—or condition, for that matter—to go searching to hell and gone for an appropriate landing spot.
The home—I had trouble thinking of it as a “home”—was a couple of blocks west of Flatbush Avenue. The ad described it so. To be truthful, I can’t tell east from west or north from south. I assumed that I was heading in the right direction and evidently, I was. I found the house a block and a half distant from what had been the RKO Kenmore Theatre in my youth. Not a bad-looking house, cleanly painted, a sign hanging above its porch which read G-LDEN YEARS , the O missing. No mention of retirement. I had to assume it was the place I was searching for.
No doorbell. Instead, a rather portentous-looking knocker made, I guessed, of cast iron painted to resemble copper. It made such a deafening resonance when I struck it against the door that it made me wince.
An old lady answered the door. My immediate assumption was that the house was hers and she was attempting to keep from losing it by renting out unused bedrooms.
She smiled at me. “You’ve come looking for a place,” she said.
Her assumption would, ordinarily, have offended me. But her demeanor was so friendly, her voice so agreeable, that I felt nothing but acceptance in her presence. “Yes, I am,” I answered her. Politely.
“Come in then,” she said, still smiling.
There was no mention of rental as she led me down the dimlit hall. Hung on both sides were old, faded photographs and paintings. She must be almost my age, I thought although I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking. Her hair was silvery-gray, her clothes outdated, her dark dress ankle-length. She walked with a youthful step, however.
Reaching a door, she opened it. “Here it is,” she said. “Let me know if it’s what you need.” With that, she was gone.
I closed the door behind me and looked around. What I need? An odd expression to use. Fundamentally true, though. I did need some place to hang my hat. (My cap.) I needed to give Miriam a much-needed breather from my presence.
There were two windows in the room. Through the one in front of me, I could see Church Avenue, the passing cars and occasional pedestrians. Nothing special there. I looked around the room. Nothing special there, either. The furniture was as elderly as I was, equally so. No private bathroom, of course. I’d have to share. Not a problem. The house was pleasantly quiet except for the motor hum of passing vehicles. The room would do.
I moved to the other window. It looked out on a barren lot. To the right was a view of Church Avenue. I looked at it for a few moments.
And felt my spine turn to cold water. I shuddered so violently that I visualized my spine collapsing like a thin tower and splashing out of my body.
It was Church Avenue all right. But not the avenue I was accustomed to. It was unquestionably—incredibly—different. In brief, I didn’t recognize it. It was different. How different, I had no idea.
So what did I do? Old fool that I am, I raised the window and—bones creaking—climbed (clambered, actually) outside and dropped to the ground. The fall gave me spinal pain; now it was hard bone again. I ignored the pain and moved as quickly as I could to Church Avenue.
“My God,” I remember muttering. (I muttered it innumerable times that afternoon.)
It was different. Totally different. Appearing as it had when I was young.
Young! I shuffled, unable to move distinctly, and looked at my reflection in the nearest store window. No difference there. My reflection was, as usual, that of an eighty-two-year-old man—white bearded (albeit well trimmed), face not too noticeably lined, white cap covering hair-receded skull. Not too bad looking. But still eighty-two. Church Avenue might have changed. I had not.
I looked into the store. It was a butcher shop. There was a sign printed on the window: ESPOSITO MEATS.
That cold, liquid sensation in my spine again. Johnny Esposito! The Y! The gang! Was that the time I’d reached? How old was I? Thirteen? Fourteen? What? “My God,” I said again. (As I mentioned, one of many I muttered that afternoon.)
No, I was still eighty-two. But what year was I in? If Johnny Esposito was about, were Harry Pearce and Ken Naylor and all the others? Good God, could I walk up a few blocks, turn right and come to the YMCA? Would I see the old gang playing softball in the yard? Hit the porch column and get a double! Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that in ages!
No. I had to shake my head. It was all too insane. What if I could reach the Y? What if I saw my young self playing in the yard? Pitching for the Ravens. Would I stare? Walk away? Yell to myself? “Hey, strike ’im out, Rich!” Impossible. Put the crazy notion aside. So Church Avenue had changed. That was no reason to believe that the area for miles around had changed too. I was sure it hadn’t.
Or had it?
Now the entire madness of what I was experiencing flooded through me. I had time traveled! I’d written television scripts about that, but now I was actually living it! Or was I dreaming it? Was I at home in Miriam’s house, sacked out on my bed, fantasizing about my past? But, if that was true, why was I still eighty-two? Why was I experiencing every moment in my brain and body?
Only one way to validate. Keep moving. Keep looking. Should I try to find the Y? Probably not. I had no proof that this pocket of the past (insane notion) extended blocks beyond where I stood. Not knowing what had caused it in the first place, how could I be sure of its entirety? Better not, I decided. Stay on Church Avenue. Maybe that’s all there was. Go the other way. The Y and what I might find there was really immaterial anyway. The gang was part of my youth but not so important a part that I had to see it. And God knew I’d rather avoid seeing my young self playing softball. More important things to see. And who knew how long this mad excursion into yesteryear would last? I didn’t.
So I started—what, east?—down Church Avenue toward, I believed, Flatbush Avenue. The accuracy of my impulse was verified by the sight of the Kenmore Theatre marquee. I was able to see the letters. LITTLE MISS MARKER. The sight of it thrilled me. I’d seen it one afternoon after Sunday school. My sister treated my mother and me to the show; they were coming from church. How old was I? Twelve? Thirteen? Impossible to recollect, but I was getting close, I thought.
Before the show, we had lunch at Bickford’s Cafeteria, which (thrilled again) I could now see across the way, on Flatbush Avenue; I was at its intersection with Church. My God. One remembered sight followed another. Now the Flatbush Theatre on Church Avenue just past Flatbush. I could barely make out the letters on its smaller marquee. BROOKLYN, USA. I remembered seeing it. The scene in the barbershop, the customer, (a gangster, I recalled) getting murdered with an ice pick. Scary stuff to a—what?—thirteen-year-old. Fourteen? And just down the avenue was the bar-restaurant where real gangsters met and ate and even married. I’d read about it in the newspaper when I was—whatever age I was, I still didn’t know.
It suddenly occurred to me—at once thrilling and frightening—that, if I walked further down Church Avenue, I might reach the ancient brick building I knew as P.S. 81. Was it still there? Why wouldn’t it be? Unless this section of the past did not extend that far. That’s the part that frightened me. Why was all this happening to me anyway? Should I stop someone and ask? No, that would be stupid. Everyone I passed obviously belonged in this time. I couldn’t prove it, but I’m sure my expression was one of constant awe. No one I passed wore such an expression. They were in their time. I was the dazed interloper.
I wouldn’t try to explore the size of the past worl
d. If P.S. 81 was actually there, I was too unnerved to try reaching it. What if I did reach it? Would I see my young self in one of the classrooms taking instructions (in what? Grammar? Arithmetic? Geography?) from Mrs. Ottolengui? Good God, I remembered her name! That frightened me, too. Did it mean I was being absorbed back into this time? I looked at the backs of my hands in alarm. (Or was it with hope?)
No. Still old. As always, thickly veined in dark blue. I had not lost eighty-two years. Jesus Christ, what’s going on?! I wondered in sudden alarmed anger. What was the point of it all? For a moment (but only a moment) I considered rushing back to the house and climbing back through that window. Except, of course (a terrifying except), what if the house wasn’t there any longer? What if I was trapped in the past—a lone elderly gent caught in his own childhood?
No, that was impossible. There had to be some logic left in the world. Some sense to what I was going through. Why reverse time itself if there was no point to it? Why should nature distort itself so bizarrely for no reason?
All right, I decided (what other choice did I have?), I would continue and let the chronological chips fall where they may.
I crossed Church Avenue, wondering what the consequences would be of allowing myself to be struck down by one of the passing cars. A screech of brakes, an impact, the old gent flying to the pavement, most likely to his death. Who would gather up the body? Would my young self suffer the same fate when he reached eighty-two? Enigma piled on enigma. Would it happen again? A nightmarish possibility.
Anyway, I reached the curb safely, ignoring the angry shout of a motorist who had just missed sideswiping me. In front of me was the Dutch Reform Church. I remembered playing basketball in its gym. A gym in a church? I thought, confused.
With that, the charm of it all returned. No point in dark conjectures about the mystery of an eighty-two-year-old man at bay in his own past. Enjoy yourself, I thought.