Once Beyond a Time

by Ann Tatlock

  “I have asked him to give a message to Sheldon. Apparently, I am not allowed to see your husband. I can see only you.”

  “A message?”

  She nods. “I have to go check on Nicholas now. But I hope I’ll see you again soon.”

  Before I can respond, she is gone. I hear footsteps on the stairs, but they are coming down, not going up. In another moment, Sheldon enters the kitchen. But of course, it is suppertime. I have let the afternoon get away, and I have nothing in the oven.

  “Meg?”

  “I’m sorry, Sheldon. We have some cold cuts in the fridge. I’ll have some sandwiches ready in a minute.”

  “Oh no, it’s not that. It’s …”

  “What, Sheldon?”

  He is frowning, as though perplexed. “I’ve just been talking with Gavan. He said to give you a message from a Mrs. See.”

  “Mrs. See?”

  “Yes. Apparently, your friend Celeste works for her. She lives in Asheville.”

  “Yes, I know who she is. You have a message from her? For me? She knows about me?”

  “She must, yes. She told Celeste who told Gavan who told me. And I am to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Simply that spring will come. She says it may not seem like it now, but spring will come.”

  The breath catches in my throat.

  “Does that mean something to you?” Sheldon asks.

  I try to nod. “I’m not sure what but, yes. Yes.”

  He takes a step toward me, hesitantly. “There’s something else.”

  I look at him expectantly. “What is it, Sheldon?”

  “Something Celeste asked me to give you.”

  I wait. He takes another step.

  He says, “If you don’t mind, I—” He opens his arms. “She asked me to hold you.”

  I gaze at him standing there, arms inviting me to him. “She did?” I whisper.

  He nods.

  I hold my breath and blink my eyes, but it is no use. The tears escape. “Is it all right?” I ask.

  “Please.” He nods again.

  I move to him, this stranger, father of my son. I lean my head into his shoulder, and his arms encircle me. Grief binds us because the grief is ours, his and mine. But we haven’t carried it together until this moment. Now, the weight lessens and comfort rushes in, rattling the chains and locks and tombs, and unearthing the memories of what our love had been. For the first time in months, I wonder whether someday we might know that love again.

  48

  Sheldon

  Friday, October 11, 1968

  THE YOUNG COUPLE considering the ’63 Chevy Impala hasn’t been able to make up their minds so far. They’ve come over from Asheville three times since last week, have taken the car out for a test drive twice, and, even now, the husband is poking around under the hood like he’s looking for verification that the car somehow, in some way, has his name on it. It’s a nice vehicle, the SS 409 with four-speed manual transmission, which apparently is at the root of the problem as far as my making this sale goes. The wife keeps insisting they’d agreed to buy an automatic, a pact the husband apparently forgot the moment he set eyes on this sleek red Impala.

  She’s sitting in the driver’s seat, using the rearview mirror to freshen her lipstick while her husband eyes every inch of the car’s inner workings.

  “Remember what I told you, Lenny?” she hollers out the open window. “I’ve never driven a manual before, and I don’t want to start now. It’s too much extra work.”

  “It’s a cinch, honey,” Lenny says. “Nothing to it. You’ll see.”

  “But I just don’t understand this clutch thingy. I mean, I’ve only got two feet. How can I be working three pedals at once?”

  “You don’t work three at once.” Lenny stands and slams the hood shut. He wipes his hands on a handkerchief dug free from his pants pocket. “Listen, honey, I’ll teach you everything you need to know to drive it. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll love it.”

  She frowns. She closes up the lipstick tube and drops it in her purse. “Yeah, well, you’ve got to promise me you won’t yell if I make a mistake.” Her freshly painted bottom lip pokes out in a respectable pout.

  “Aw, honey, you know I’d never yell at the most beautiful woman in the world,” he says.

  Newlyweds, I’m guessing, or else this guy just really wants this car.

  He leans in through the open window and kisses her. “What do you say, sweetie? Shall we take her home?”

  From her smile, I assume he’s won her over.

  “I guess she would look pretty sitting in the garage.”

  The man lets go a whoop. “Now you’re talking,” he says, slapping the roof happily with an open palm.

  He helps his wife out of the car and kisses her again as though I’m not standing right there, awaiting their decision. With one arm around his young wife’s shoulders and looking as though he’s just won the grand prize on “Let’s Make a Deal,” he turns to me and says, “Where do I sign?”

  As I lead them to the office, my thoughts turn to Meg. We were just like this young couple once, she and I. In love and full of hope. I can almost remember what that was like. I can almost remember believing it would never change.

  We step into the trailer, and I usher them to my desk. Ike Kerlee is out on the lot with another customer—though a still-smoking cigarette is slowly burning itself out in the ashtray on his desk. One of these days, he’s going to burn the trailer down and years of paperwork with it. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see it go, though it might leave Steve in a bad frame of mind and Ike Kerlee without a job.

  The husband and wife settle themselves in the two gray metal folding chairs across from me while I remove the proper paperwork from the drawer. I tap the bottom edge of the papers on the desk to form a neat pile, then lay them down in front of me at a slight left-leaning angle. Picking up my ballpoint pen, I click open the retractable nub and am ready to gather the information I need to make this sale. I raise my eyes to the couple and notice that the woman looks quizzical. Her eyes go from my nameplate, to my face, down to the nameplate, back up to my face. It has been in the Asheville paper, and she has made the connection. I see the pity and the fear in her eyes. Hesitantly, she says, “You’re the one with the son …”

  That’s all she says—though perhaps she should have said, without the son—but we all know what she means.

  “Yes,” I say, nodding slightly.

  The husband coughs, looks at his shoes. She glances at him, back at me. “We don’t have kids yet, but I can only imagine. I’m … I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man pulls out a cigarette, lights it. “The police still looking?” he asks.

  “Not actively,” I say, “though the investigation is still open, of course.”

  He takes a deep pull on the cigarette. She clutches her hands together in her lap. I suppose we all wish she hadn’t brought it up.

  “Mr. Crane?” she says.

  “Yes, Mrs. Sanderson?”

  “Will you give your wife my condolences?”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  “I don’t know how she can—” she stops herself, eyes roaming the room—“possibly manage,” she finishes.

  I put the pen down and fold my hands on the top of the desk. I lean closer. “Well, you see,” I say, “there’s something my wife and I are both holding on to.” This may not be necessarily true for Meg yet, but I will speak for her.

  They too lean closer, looking at me expectantly.

  “There is one thing we know for sure,” I go on. “God is with our son or our son is with God. Either way, God is in this with us.”

  The man clears his throat, takes one last nervous pull on the cigarette, crushes out the half-smoked stick in the ashtray. The woman’s eyes have come to a standstill on my face. Her mouth is open slightly, her brow furrowed. I can only guess at the thoughts passing through her mind, but I have a sen
se that they are tumbling, somersaulting over themselves in a bid to understand what I have said.

  And then she smiles. So small, it almost isn’t there. But that, coupled with a growing light in her eyes, tells me she has heard what I was trying to say.

  I have just preached my first sermon in the used car lot of Birchfield Chevrolet.

  49

  Meg

  Tuesday, December 24, 1968

  AND SO TIME passes. Minutes and hours. Days and weeks. And now months.

  I will always figure time now from the day Digger disappeared.

  A light snow drifts down from the night sky. Winter is here. Tomorrow is Christmas day. No one can survive four months alone in these mountains, especially a child.

  Why then does my heart still hope?

  Simply because I wouldn’t otherwise be human?

  Sheldon tells me, “God is with him, or he is with God. Either way, God is holding Digger in the palms of his own two hands.”

  That is what Sheldon says. And part of me believes him.

  We stand here now, the three of us, in the backyard where I last saw Digger. Bundled up in coats, scarves, gloves, and knitted hats, Linda holds one of my hands, Sheldon the other. We lift our faces to the sky, to the shining star that has been here since that day. The day everything changed and from which we measure our new lives.

  We’ve been quiet for several long minutes, but finally, Sheldon says, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.’”

  Then, silence again as we consider that. It’s cold enough that our breath forms small clouds in the air.

  “Dad?” Linda asks.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Do you really think it could be the Star of Bethlehem?”

  “Yes, honey, I do.”

  “But, I mean … that was two thousand years ago.”

  Sheldon nods. “That seems to be the gift of this house, doesn’t it? If you go into town, or anywhere else, you can’t see the star. Only here.”

  “But why?” I whisper. “What is the star supposed to mean for us?”

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever know?” I ask.

  Sheldon nods again. “Yes. At the right time.”

  “When will that be, Dad?”

  Sheldon’s profile lights up with a small smile. “You’re asking the wrong person, Linda. God alone knows the answer to that. Right now, all I know for sure is if we could peel back time, go through yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, all the way to two-thousand years ago, we’d come to the moment when God put skin on and entered the world.”

  Linda sighs heavily, her breath drifting off into the night air. “I never really thought of it as true,” she says. “It just always seemed like another story; something somebody made up.”

  Sheldon nods but says nothing. I wish the angels would appear to us the way they did to the shepherds and tell us what it means.

  “What I really don’t understand,” I say, “is, why us? Who are we that such an extraordinary thing should happen to us; that we’d be the ones chosen to look into time? You’d think God would pick people who are—I don’t know—famous, or important somehow.”

  Sheldon doesn’t look at me, but I can tell he’s thinking about that. Finally, he says, “Maybe we’re more important to him than we think.”

  I feel Linda squeeze my hand. “Well, Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.”

  My heart lifts with an unexpected joy. “Merry Christmas, Linda,” I say.

  “Merry Christmas, honey,” Sheldon adds.

  We need to go in now. It’s late and we’re getting cold.

  But Linda thinks of one more thing. Looking up at the star one last time, she says, “Merry Christmas, Digger.”

  The star twinkles overhead. The heavens are silent and yet, we go to bed carrying something like hope in our hearts. It shines like a point of light in an otherwise dark place.

  Part 2

  What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is.

  If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

  —Saint Augustine

  50

  Linda

  Sunday, April 6, 1969

  IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT, but I can’t go to bed until I’ve finished writing this stupid English paper that’s due tomorrow. All year the teachers have treated me kind of special, in a good way I mean, because of what happened. They’ve always said if I needed extra time to get an assignment done, I should take it. But I never have. Not once. And I’m not going to start now. I couldn’t do that to Digger.

  Mom and Dad went up to their rooms a couple hours ago. I’m sitting here at the dining room table with books and papers spread all over the place. I’m trying to write about what an Emily Dickinson poem means, and I don’t know if what I’m saying makes any sense. When I chose this poem, Mrs. Crowell looked at me all funny and asked if it was really the poem I wanted to write my paper on, and I said yes, because it’s one poem of Emily’s I may actually identify with. I mean, I know she’s talking about someone dying in their house, and how she has to sweep up her heart and put her love away because she won’t want to use it again until eternity—yeah, I think I understand that. I just hope what I’m writing makes sense to Mrs. Crowell, since she’s the one grading it.

  Mom won’t accept that Digger’s gone. She says she thinks he’s still alive. I wish I could say I agree with her, but I don’t see how he could be alive after all this time. I mean, really, what kind of miracle could be keeping an eight-year-old kid alive out in the wilds by himself? Digger wasn’t even a boy scout, for crying out loud. It’s not like he knew how to make a fire or scrounge for food or make a tent out of leaves or whatever. And if he did get lost out there, it’s not like he wouldn’t have wandered into a town somewhere, begged a dime from someone, and called us to come pick him up.

  Face it. Digger’s gone and he’s not coming back. He’s dead and we’re never going to see him again.

  I think Dad thinks the same way I do, but I’m not sure. Still, I don’t see him trying to convince Mom to accept that Digger’s gone. He’s just kind of letting her go on hoping if she wants to.

  Carl will be coming home from Vietnam soon. Maybe he can get through to Mom, help her to accept what’s happened. At least she’ll be happy he’s home.

  The house has been mostly quiet since Digger left, as far as that time thing goes. The star still shows up every night, but we don’t see people very often. I’ve seen Austin a few times, and Mom and Dad have seen their own people a couple of times. But that’s it. If it’s God who’s running this show, he’s playing out a pretty long intermission.

  Okay, I’ve got to wrap up this final paragraph and get ready for bed. How to sum up what I said Emily’s saying, which may not be what she’s saying at all, but who knows what anyone’s saying when they’re speaking in poetry? I—

  “Hello, Linda.”

  I jump about a foot at the sound of my name. “Austin!” I holler, and it comes out so loud I wonder whether Mom and Dad will wake up. But I can’t help it. I’m so happy to see him. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  It’s probably a stupid question. He’s not doing anything other than sitting across from me at the table. He’s drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop.

  “I wanted to see you,” he says. “I was hoping I could … somehow.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  He stops drumming. “No. I mean … well, listen, Linda, I’m going to war.”

  “You’re going to war?”

  “That’s right. Today President Wilson called for war on Germany and the Congress declared it. I’m going to sign up.”

  I knew it was coming, but I don’t want to believe it. “But aren’t you a pacifist, Austin? You told me yourself, you don’t believe in war.”

  “I don’t.” He shakes his head hard. “I don’t. But now that it’s here, I can’t run from it like a coward. I’ve got to go.�
��

  “Well, why don’t you at least wait until you’re drafted?”

  He’s still shaking his head like he can’t stop. “I’m going now. I’m not waiting.”

  I can’t change the past. If I say anything wrong, he’ll disappear. So all I do is nod.

  “Listen,” he goes on. “I know you know who wins this war, and I also know you can’t tell me. So I’m not here to find out.”

  “All right,” I say. I feel stupid, but I don’t know how else to respond. Anyway, I don’t care about telling him who wins. I just want to beg him not to go. Because I know he’s buried in France, and he’ll never see America again.

  “So I’m here to say good-bye,” he finishes.

  We look at each other a long time. There are tears running down my cheeks. His face looks calm enough, but his hands are clenched up into fists like he’s already looking for a fight.

  “I’ll miss you, Austin,” I say. I’m so choked up it’s no more than a whisper.

  “I’ll miss you too.” Now his eyes shimmer, and I think maybe he’ll cry, but he manages not to.

  “What do your parents think about you signing up?” I ask.

  “I haven’t told them yet.”

  I nod. “Guess they’ll find out soon enough though, huh?”

  “I’m going into Asheville to sign up in the morning.”

  I pick up the pen that had fallen out of my hand when he appeared and tap it nervously on the notebook in front of me. “I wish I could ask you to write to me but …” I finish by lifting my shoulders.

  He understands. “Of course I can’t. So I wanted to give you something. To remember me by.”

  “How?” I ask. “How can you give me something?”

  “I left it somewhere for you to find,” he says, nodding toward the kitchen. “On the hearth there’s a yellowish colored stone shaped like an oval. If no one has fixed it between my time and yours, then it may still be loose. Lift it up, and you’ll find what I left you.”

  “Should I look now?”

  “Yes. I want to know whether you get it.”

  I nod and push my chair back from the table. He follows me into the kitchen where I kneel at the hearth and look for the stone.