“How did you know I was there? In the trees.”
“I felt you.” A mocking look and a wiggle of his fingers. “I suppose since we’re the same, your presence alerted my subconscious mind. Wooooooo.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me, but I want you to listen.”
“Sure, why not? You’re entertaining and you’re harmless so far. Most people would’ve slapped a restraining order on you.” Young Brock playfully pointed a finger at Brock. “But we’re not most people, are we?”
“No, we are not.”
“So what can I do for you, F. B.?”
“I need you to change something else in the future. Last night, God confirmed exactly what it is and what needs to be done.”
“This ought to be good.”
“Last time we talked, I told you Ron had let our coffee company nose-dive into the ground. Do you remember that?”
“It was just two months ago that you stalked me at Harvey Airfield.”
“Just two months?”
“Nice!” His younger self slapped his jeans. “I didn’t know I had that talent.”
“What talent?” Brock frowned.
“Incredible acting.” Young Brock rolled the sports section into a tube, held it up, and dropped his voice. “I’d like to thank the Academy . . .”
“I’m not acting.”
“Right, right. Forgot.” Young Brock cocked his head and winked.
“Ron and I start running the company and things go well, extremely well. But it turns out someone stole all the money out from under us, and now we’re going down like the Titanic.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You have to go to business school. You can fix it. Prevent it from ever happening. You need to run the company, not Ron.”
“I hate to be the Needle Man here, Brock Senior, but I gotta.” His younger self squeezed his thumb and forefinger together and jutted them in Brock’s direction.
“You’re going to pop my balloon.”
“Exactly. Sorry. No biz school in my future.”
“It’s the only way to change things. It’s my only shot left. Our only shot.”
“Yeah, well, like I just said, business school and Brock are never going to happen. And if you really are me, you know why.”
A stray Frisbee landed at their feet, and Young Brock picked it up and slung it back to three teens forty yards away.
“It doesn’t matter. You have to go. Just like you went on those fishing trips.”
“Just one trip so far, Future Me. A fishing boat’s an up and back. Business school is the slow boat to China with a captain who wouldn’t want me on board.”
“What does that mean?”
“Why do I have to explain this to you?” Young Brock settled onto the lush lawn and plucked a long blade of grass. “Ron is the one Dad wants in business school, not me. Or did you forget? Plus, I’m not built for it, and I have no desire to study business.”
“Business is not accounting.” Brock sat and leaned in. “It’s not all facts and figures. In truth, it’s very little of that. Business is people—knowing them, understanding them, motivating them—and you’re good at that. Better than you know.”
“Wow! Another talent I didn’t know I had.”
Brock wasn’t making any headway, and he had no idea how much longer the dream would last.
“Hey, Future Brock. Wake up.” His younger self snapped his fingers. “Can we talk about something else? You’re not convincing me to go to business school, so how ’bout we drop the subject?”
“It’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Then how ’bout I go back to my newspaper and you go back to the future?”
Not much time left. His body was stirring, trying to wake up, and he knew he wasn’t going to have another chance. Lord, help!
Brock glanced around the park, searching for inspiration. Yes! There it was. He turned to himself. “Give me three more minutes. Then I’ll be gone.”
“Okay, lay it on me, F. B.” Brock leaned back in the thick grass, resting on his elbows.
Brock waved his hand over the park and leaned close to his younger self. “Picture yourself on this playground at four years old. Imagine you’re that small again. Can you do it? Your little heart pounds with anticipation of what an hour in the park will bring, but not an atom of hesitation as you traipse from the concrete of the parking lot onto the thick grass. You stare at the merry-go-round and think of the speed that comes from sitting on the very edge and hanging over the ground as your friends spin you as fast as they can. Then you spot the swings, and the rush of how high they’ve taken you in the past fills your little mind.
“But then the tiniest hint of fear inside you starts to grow, and everything else on the playground melts away—because now you’ve spotted the slide.”
He pointed over Brock’s shoulder at what had to be one of the longest playground slides in the country. At least fifteen feet high and forty feet long.
“Picture that slide, but three times as long as it is now, and three times as high. Because that’s the perspective you’d have if you were in your four-year-old body. Can you feel it drawing you in like a superpowered magnet? But there’s another part of your younger self that wants to hold back, stay safe. The part that begs you not to risk the scraped knee if you crash coming off the slide. The part that wants to hide from the fear you’d feel standing at the top. The part that wants to keep your little four-year-old soul from feeling like it was standing on top of the world’s highest building, wind whipping through your hair, your stomach squeezed like a walnut in a nutcracker and your heart hammering in your little-boy chest. But when you were young, you never gave in to the fear. You always launched yourself over the edge.
“And yet the slide in your own life right now stirs great fear in you. Because it is now higher than it ever was in your childhood. So you don’t climb. You stay in the shadows at the base of the slide and watch in safety the rare man or woman who ventures to the top, then goes over the edge.
“You’re standing on the edge right now, Brock. Deep inside there’s a desire to grasp the brass ring of Black Fedora. To put yourself in a position to run the company. To best your brother in the arena of business. But your fear strangles you. What if Ron does better at business school? What if you give everything you have, and your dad still chooses Ron to run the company?”
His younger self’s mouth opened slightly, his breaths came a hair faster. This was working.
“You are the older brother. It’s your birthright, not Ron’s. And if you do this, you’ll shift the course of your relationship with your dad. It will grow. You’ll have that connection you’ve longed for. It’s time to choose, Brock. Choose to face the fear, and step into what you were meant to do, or stay in the shadows for the rest of your life.”
Brock finished his lengthy monologue by squeezing Young Brock’s shoulder. It felt as though strength flowed out from him into the younger man’s core. Then he gazed at his younger self till he looked up.
“I know ninety-nine percent of you doesn’t believe I’m who I say am, or that this can be truly happening. Much of me feels the same. But if God has given us this gift, then we must take it and run with it like the wind.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, the most important.” Brock fixed his gaze deep into his younger self’s eyes. “Karissa.”
“What about her?”
“Love her well. Put her first. Before the company, before your drive to best Ron, before everything but God.”
As Brock uttered those final words, the piercing sound of his phone alarm shattered the dream, and he woke under a shroud of fear as to where he would find himself when he opened his eyes.
Chapter 25
SEPTEMBER 2, 1987
Wednesday morning at ten thirty, Brock walked into Java Spot, pulled a packet from under his arm, and tossed it on the counter in front of Morgan.
“What’s that?”
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“Copy of a business-school application.” He sat on one of the stools and grinned. “Mine.”
Morgan pulled the packet closer and opened it. “UW?”
“Yeah.”
“I hear it’s big bucks to go there. And tough to get in.”
“Right on both counts. But it’s one of the best.”
“Makes sense then.” Morgan pointed at him and gave a fake smile.
“I’m picking up a smattering of sarcasm in your voice.”
“You think?” Morgan leaned forward, tapped the packet, then pushed it back across the counter. “That’s not you.”
“Maybe it is. I’m thinking about going.”
“Why?”
“Because someday my dad is going to retire, and he’ll hand over the reins of the company to Ron and me, but one of us will have to be at the helm.”
“You can’t run it together?” Morgan turned and poured them both a cup of dark roast.
“That’s the plan, that we do run it together, but one of us will have control. Dad doesn’t believe in an equal partnership. Says ultimately one of us has to be in charge so when we can’t agree on which way to go, someone will be able to pull the trigger.”
Morgan opened a bag of breakfast blend and sniffed it, then set it to the side. “And you think your dad will choose Ron?”
“Of course he’ll choose Ron.” Brock toasted Morgan and took a drink of his coffee. “Unless I change things.”
“Have you talked to your dad about it?”
“Oh yeah, sure. He’s one hundred percent behind me going to business school. Been begging me to do it.”
“Speaking of sarcasm.” Morgan sighed. “So maybe your dad doesn’t see you as the business type. Is there even the slightest possibility that he’s right?”
Brock snatched the packet off the counter. “Thanks for the massive support.”
Morgan shrugged. “What does Karissa say about it?”
“That’s where I’m headed now.”
“She’s not going to like it.”
“I know, which is why I’d ask you to pray for me if you were a praying man.”
“Can’t say I’ll pray, but I’ll wish you good luck.” Morgan clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re going to need it.”
“I need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.”
Karissa and he sat overlooking Lake Sammamish. The sun had broken through the clouds, and Brock thought it the perfect setting to talk to her about the new direction he was about to take.
“I bumped into Future Me again.”
“Oh yeah?” Karissa laughed. “So this guy still claims to be you.”
Brock nodded. “He got pretty passionate about something I need to do.”
“What’s that?”
“He says I have to go to business school.”
“What?” Karissa’s tone grew serious. “Business school?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not you.”
“Exactly what Morgan said.” Brock scowled. “Why isn’t it me?”
“Are you kidding?” She drew her legs up and sat cross-legged, her hands resting on his knees. “You’re only a few units away from getting your marketing degree. You really want to tack another three years of school onto your to-do list? Doing something you’ve never shown any interest in?”
“Maybe.”
“And do you really want to get into competition with Ron? Both of you going to business school? That wouldn’t be about business school; it would be about you beating your brother.”
“He needs to be beat.”
Karissa groaned. “Come on, Brock. Don’t give in and take even one step down that trail. It’s wide, Brock, and will lead to destruction.”
“How can you say that?”
“How much have you prayed about the idea of business school?” She lasered her gaze on him. “Were you even going to talk to me about it?”
“I’m talking to you right now.” Brock raised his voice more than he wanted to.
“Let me ask again, have you prayed about it?”
“I’m just thinking about going to business school. It’s not like I’ve made a final decision.”
“Final?” Karissa cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “You’ve already turned in an application, haven’t you?”
Brock rolled his head back and forth and avoided her eyes.
“You haven’t made a final decision, huh? Yeah, right. You won’t decide till you get accepted, then the decision will be made for you.”
“I can beat him, Karissa. Dad will see it, I’ll prove it to him, and when it comes time to hand the company over to Ron and me, he’ll give me the controlling interest.”
“And will that finally tell you your dad loves you?”
“Don’t go there.”
“Where does that put us?”
“We might be delayed for a bit.”
“So we wait another three years to start our life together?”
“Three years isn’t going to make a difference when we’re talking about the rest of our lives. And if I’m running the company, our lives will be very, very good.”
“This isn’t right, Brock. I feel it.”
“And I feel it is right. So who has the direct line to God, and which one of us isn’t hearing straight?”
Karissa repeated her question for the third time. “Did you pray about it?”
“I don’t need to. This is the path I need to go down. The one we need to go down.”
Karissa stood and Brock started to join her.
“No.” She pointed at the dock. “Stay here.”
She jogged off and Brock watched her till she reached the end of the path. She didn’t look back.
Chapter 26
MAY 23, 2015
The alarm on Brock’s cell phone woke him Saturday at seven, but it wasn’t his alarm. It was Ron. Brock stared at the photo of Ron on the screen and was tempted to ignore it, roll over, and go back to sleep. But Ron wouldn’t be calling at this ungodly hour unless it was serious.
“What’s wrong?” Brock flopped back on his bed and shut his eyes. “You okay?”
“Me? You’re the one who should worry about being okay if you’re not two minutes from getting here.”
“Getting where?”
“Funny. How close are you to the gate?”
“Gate?” Brock rubbed his eyes and opened them. “Yeah, listen, I realize I just opened my eyes, and my mind is still booting up, but I’m not exactly following you.”
Brock rolled out of bed and staggered to his feet. He glanced at Karissa’s side of the bed. Empty of course. He’d begged her to come home, but she was resolute that their separation would last at least a month. Wait, the shower was running. Was it possible? Had she come home last night after he fell asleep?
“I gotta go, Ron. I gotta check on Karissa.”
“Again, you’re funny. Really, my stomach hurts, but Alaska Airlines is leaving for the great white north in twenty-seven minutes with or without us. I’d prefer it be with.”
“What are you talking about?” Brock rubbed his eyes again and glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Six and a half hours of sleep, but it felt like he’d slept only three.
“What is wrong with you?” Ron’s voice came through the phone ten decibels louder. “The plane is leaving.”
“What are you doing at the airport?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes. What are you doing?”
“The same thing we’ve done every year since Dad died. We get on a plane. We fly to Alaska. We go fishing in his honor. We try to get along for most of the trip. We catch fish. We eat them. We toast Dad. We take a few pictures. We come home. Then we plan for the next trip.”
As Ron spoke, the heat inside Brock grew to flammable levels. The dream! Had it worked? Oh please, yes.
“What about the company?” Brock sat up straight.
“Ours?”
“
Yes, ours!” He spat out the words stronger than he meant to.
“What is your problem?”
“The buyout. Did we sell?”
“Are you always like this at seven a.m.?”
“Just answer me.”
“Wake up, Brock.” A sigh of disgust filtered through the phone. “Profits of twenty-three million last year weren’t enough for you? You think we should sell the company and start something else?” Ron laughed. “Just because pot is legal in Washington doesn’t mean you have to smoke it. Duuuuuude!”
Hope exploded inside Brock. As insane as it sounded, even to himself, it had worked. It must have worked. His younger self must have gone to business school. Karissa was in the shower because she’d never left. There was no separation. He laughed and threw his head back.
“Yes!” Brock shook his fist in triumph. “It worked, brother. It actually, insanely, unbelievably worked.”
“What are you talking about?”
There was no way to explain to Ron what had happened. He wouldn’t believe it. It would be tough enough to come up with an excuse as to why he didn’t remember the trip. Best to ride this wave as smoothly as possible.
“Sorry, finally waking up. Really strange dream, you know, still kind of caught up in it.”
“In other words, I have to see if I can get us on a later flight.”
“Yeah. I blew it. Sorry.”
“You’re truly bizarre sometimes, bro.”
“You don’t know the sixteenth of it.”
“You’re paying for the change fee.”
“Without question. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Brock shook his head as he hung up and laughed again. It wasn’t possible. But it was possible. His younger self really, truly had changed things. Obviously. He must have gone to business school. It had worked. He had no doubt that when he arrived at the airport an hour from now, Ron would confirm that Brock was running the company and held fifty-one percent of the stock. And best of all, he and Karissa were back together. Wait, not back together, simply together.
As he made his way to the overstuffed chair in the corner of their bedroom and sat, waves of giddiness washed over him. Had he really done it? Yes! He needed to stop asking the same question.
The Five Times I Met Myself Page 13