Nick of Time

by Julianne Q Johnson

  "You are correct, Aunt Tulia. I have had more than enough excitement for one day, but I'm not about to spoil you guys' fun. Run off and ride some more rides. Why don't I meet you back here in a couple of hours?"

  "Sounds like a plan," Aunt Tulia agrees. "See you then."

  "Bye, Nick!" Brenda grabs her sisters by the hands and begins dragging them off.

  "Try not to fall off of any rides!" I shout after them.

  Their only response is a burst of giggles.

  I wander around for a while and end up at a duck pond. The pond has a nice wooden deck around it sprinkled with benches and picnic tables. Happy families sit at the tables, refueling with carnival food and free sodas before they head back into the fray.

  Their drinks remind me of the free soda the park offers its guests, and I swing by the nearest vendor to get a cup of Sprite. No diet soda for me. Between my daily rushes of adrenaline and my fairly vigorous morning exercise routine, I am prone to skinniness. I'm fit and strong, but gangly. I have to consume a lot of calories just to hold even.

  Returning to the pond, I notice bright red machines which dispense what looks like round pellets of dry cat food. They look like gumball machines with the most unappetizing gum ever invented. I'm not sure what the pellets are made of. For all I know, it's Purina Duck Chow. Sitting my soda down at an empty table, I fish a couple of quarters out of my jeans' pocket and purchase a giant handful of the brown pellets.

  I sip my soda as the ducks swarm to the newest victim of the bright red machines. As I sprinkle the food among them, giant, colorful koi swim to the surface of the water and compete with the ducks for a mouthful of kibble. This amuses me so much I return to the snack vendor to get change for a buck and feed them more. I refill my Sprite while I'm there. I'm thirsty and it's free, so why not? I wonder how many Indiana families flock to this park instead of the larger King's Island in Cincinnati because they save so much money on soda. It seems to be an effective marketing strategy because the old park is packed with amusement seekers.

  It's a nice park. We'd picked the old wooden coaster because it looked tame enough for Brenda's first experience, but the park has newer, more modern rides with bright metal structures and enough loops to please even the most discerning of enthusiasts. They have an extensive water park as well, and my cousins had enjoyed the water rides through the morning. It might not be as gigantic as King's Island, but it is a fun park and less expensive as well.

  The ducks and fish seem to know instinctively the second I run out of quarters and swim off to find more suckers. To my right, I see some children begging their father for change, and the ducks eye them hopefully.

  Finishing my drink, I throw the cup in a nearby can and amble off towards the midway. While I don't want to ride any more rides, perhaps a game or two would kill some time while I wait on the girls. A little girl jostles me, and I run into a twenty-something man causing him to drop his corn dog into the dirt. He is wearing one of those Homburg style hats and scowls at me through an impressive handlebar mustache.

  "Sorry, man. A kid bumped into me."

  Unhappy hipster man continues to glare in silence as he makes a big production of picking up the wayward corn dog and throwing it into the nearest bin. His disdainful facade breaks briefly as he misses the can and has to retrieve the corn dog a second time.

  "Let me buy you another one."

  Again I am ignored. Hipster man turns his back on me and disappears into the crowd.

  "I probably saved your life, you ungrateful bastard," I mutter under my breath.

  It could be true, for all I know. My "curse," as I like to call it, isn't all heroic rescues atop speeding roller coasters. Sometimes weird things happen, seemingly at random, and I never know what would have happened if I hadn't been there. Take hipster dude. Maybe he would have choked on the deep-fried treat, or maybe it had been tainted with botulism. A little girl runs into me, I run into Disdainful Man, and the corn dog terror bites the dust. I don't always get to know the outcome of my curse's intervention.

  It's damned annoying, but what can I do?

  I play a couple of games, but the angry hipster has spoiled the mood. I do win a stuffed toy turtle dyed a rainbow of colors by popping a balloon with a dull dart. I threw it hard enough the midway worker had trouble getting the dart out of the board. The plushy is small but cute. It's girlie enough I think I can get away with giving it to Brenda without her sisters being too jealous.

  I meet up with my family at the designated time, and Brenda is delighted with the small stuffed turtle. Her sisters coo over it appreciatively but don't seem offended I have only one plushy offering to make. They're good kids, my cousins.

  It's late in the afternoon and the girls are getting tired. We've got an hour and a half drive back to Indy, so we decide to get an early start.

  We're almost to the front gate of the park when I stop in my tracks.

  "Tulia, I know it's a little early for dinner, but can we get something to eat before we head back? My treat. I'm starving." Despite the big lunch we'd had a few hours ago, I am suddenly ravenous. The thought of making a long drive before I had dinner was not to be entertained.

  "Well, sure Nick, if you want to. You girls hungry?"

  They are growing girls, so of course they are hungry. We head back towards the duck pond and its convenient picnic tables. Along the way, we stop at a red and green stand selling Italian sausage and I buy us gigantic sandwiches covered in onions and peppers and dripping with grease. The same stand sells deep fried green beans, and I buy an extra large order so we can pretend we're eating something healthy.

  I scarf down my sandwich, eat more than my share of the green beans, and finish Brenda's sandwich when she gets full.

  "You're like a garbage disposal," Kayla teases and the girls all laugh.

  "Hey, I'm hungry." I grin back at the giggling trio. "I'm still hungry, actually."

  I eye the rest of my aunt's sandwich, but she shoos me away, which makes the girls laugh again.

  "Hey, look." I point at another nearby food stand painted a gloriously garish mix of blue and orange. "They sell elephant ears. I haven't had one of those since I was a kid. Who wants one?"

  Aunt Tulia agrees to an elephant ear while my young cousins opt for the more modern funnel cake. I have both. The funnel cake comes with a thick blanket of powdered sugar and the crispy deep fried dough of the elephant ear is sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Both are delicious.

  "Nick, I honestly don't know where you put it," my aunt says, shaking her head.

  "Hey, I'm a growing boy."

  My cousins burst into giggles again, and we throw away our trash before heading out of the park. I'm finally full, though I do stare wistfully at a stand advertising deep-fried Twinkies as we pass it.

  "No more, Nick!" My aunt is shaking her head again. "You'll get sick on the ride back."

  We make a pit stop at the restrooms before we leave, and then stroll out to the car. The girls pile into the backseat and Tulia rides shotgun. I drive a four-door Accord because of my job, and while the girls are a little cozy in the back seat, they have enough room to get by.

  As we pull out of the parking lot, a traffic report comes on the radio. There's been a sixteen-car pileup with casualties on the highway we planned to take home. All northbound traffic has been at a standstill for forty-five minutes, and it's anyone's guess how long before the authorities can clear the road. I pull to the side of the road to consult my phone for a good route to get us to state road thirty-one. It's a smaller road, only two lanes most of the time, but it will get us back to Indy.

  As I get ready to head for thirty-one, I hear Theresa talking in the backseat.

  "It's a good thing cousin Nick got so hungry. We could have been in that accident if we'd left when we were going to."

  I look over at my Aunt. She looks at me with the same serious expression I imagine is on my own face. I pull the car back onto the road and we head for home.

  Two hours
later, thanks to the poky little state road, I drop my aunt and cousins off at their home near Avon. The girls give me sleepy waves from the front door. I continue to my apartment in Speedway. It's not a fancy place, but it's cheap and the neighborhood is all right. My feet drag on the stairs up to my second-floor apartment. I am beat. Between the fun in the sun at the amusement park and the adrenaline rush from the boy's rescue, I feel like I could sleep for a week.

  Three

  Despite the fact I went to bed relatively early the night before, I wake up late the next morning. A quick text to my friend, Todd Clarke, and our breakfast plans become our brunch plans. As we set a new time, he jokes about whether I'll show up this time.

  He's a good friend. I can't tell you how many times we've had plans and I have failed to show up because of some bizarre coincidence or another. Just last week we were supposed to watch the game over at BW3s, eat some wings and drink some beers. I got a flat tire on the way. While I was standing on the sidewalk looking at the tire and trying to decide if I wanted to change it myself or not, a man rushed out of a nearby shop and ran right into me. I got the breath knocked out of me. The thief broke his ankle and ended up being an easy catch for the security guard chasing him. I called roadside assistance. By the time a nice dude in a local tow truck got my tire changed, the game was over and Todd was back home.

  I apologized, but he wasn't huffy about it. He knows more about my crazy life than anyone outside of my family, and he accepts me as I am.

  After the text, I turn on the coffee pot and head into the living room to do my morning workout. While I'm laid back about most things, I am nearly fanatical about my workout. I rarely leave home before putting in at least thirty minutes of exercise and weight lifting, and when I do skip my routine, it makes me cranky the rest of the day. It makes sense, I suppose. I'm thrown into intense situations on a nearly daily basis and I often have to rely on my strength and dexterity to handle them. I don't think anyone can blame me for wanting to keep in shape.

  This morning, I take it a little easy on the dumbbells. My arms are still sore from the grab and hold on the roller coaster yesterday, and my right hand is stiffly clumsy. I do fewer push-ups than usual but the normal amount of squats and sit-ups. After the calisthenics, there's ten minutes of basic yoga and I'm done for the day. A shower, a quick cup of coffee, and I'm off to meet Todd.

  It's a short drive to the Waffle House, which is our favorite place that serves breakfast twenty-four hours a day. Since nothing unusual happened on the trip, I arrive early and snag us a booth near the jukebox. I order a cup of coffee and feed the jukebox a few bills. By the time Todd joins me, Twenty One Pilots is playing and he gives me a thumbs up.

  We order quickly. Both of us know the menu by heart. I get my usual hearty breakfast special. It's pretty cheap, and it comes with eggs, choice of meat, hash browns, toast, and a waffle. They'll put stuff in the hash browns as well, and I get mine with onions, tomatoes, and chunks of ham. Todd orders his usual as well, a double order of hash browns with everything but the kitchen sink on them plus a side order of bacon.

  The waitress who takes our order flirts shamelessly with Todd. I'm not surprised; he's a good-looking dude. He looks short when he stands next to me, but Todd is six foot tall. It's not his fault his best friend is a giant. Todd's got the blackest hair you've ever seen and a neatly trimmed goatee to match. In the midst of all the hairy darkness, he has startlingly pale blue eyes which are usually crinkled in the corners from his perpetual state of jolly amusement. He's a good guy, and I count myself lucky to have him as a friend.

  "Say, sweetheart." Todd can get away with calling women he doesn't know by pet names because anyone can see he's completely harmless. "Why is it hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs?"

  "I don't know. Why?" The server is cute, blonde, and smiling at Todd with good-humored indulgence.

  "Because they always take things…literally!"

  She laughs with greater enthusiasm than the tired joke deserves. Todd has a way about him which makes people want to be part of the fun. She steps away, giggling, and puts in our order before bringing Todd a large cola. Even I don't drink soda before noon, but Todd is an around-the-clock soda addict.

  "So, did you have fun with the girls yesterday?" Todd takes a long pull of his cola and closes his eyes in pure sugar-high bliss.

  "I did. For a while anyway. Then something happened."

  "That's what she said."

  I roll my eyes at the outdated line. It's so Todd. If you want to hang with him you have to get used to the bad jokes. "Really? That line's so last millennium."

  "Hey, there's old, and then there's classic."

  "And there are some folks who obviously can't tell the difference."

  "Cool story, brah. So, what happened yesterday?"

  He listens patiently while I tell a tale of roller coasters, angry hipsters, and massive pileups on the interstate. Todd loves these stories and regularly threatens to write them down in a book some day. I'm not concerned about it. Even if he did, who would believe it was anything more than a fantastical tale?

  "Looks like the Callaghan Curse was in rare form at the amusement park. Good catch with the kid. A little guy like him wouldn't have a chance of surviving a fall from even the tiniest of coasters."

  "The curse seems to be getting more intense as I get older." Breakfast arrives and I take a minute to grab a few bites before I continue. "I used to get maybe one incident a week. Now it's practically every day and sometimes multiple times a day. I don't know how long I can keep this up."

  "I've told you before. I know it sounds harsh, but just because you are right there when something happens, it doesn't mean you have to do anything about it. The world's problems are not your responsibility."

  "What am I supposed to do? Watch some little kid become a smooshed stain on the midway and do nothing? I couldn't live with myself if I could prevent something bad from happening, but I sat there and did nothing."

  "Why you so salty, brah?"

  "Shut up."

  "Look, Nick, I know you can't sit around watching kids fly off roller coasters. You're the hero type."

  "Like you would do it any differently if it was you." I tear off a hunk of toast and chew it with angry enthusiasm. Todd is right. I am aggravated.

  "I'm not even going to pretend to know how I'd react if I were in your shoes. I might jump off a cliff for all I know. But you...whether you like it or not, you are indeed the hero type and it worries me."

  "Why?"

  "Like you said," Todd pauses for a moment to chew a bite of his sloppy, over-the-top hash browns. "The rate of incidents is speeding up. What happens when it reaches four times a day, ten times, twenty? You are barely keeping up with things now."

  "I don't have a choice. I won't sit by and watch people get hurt when I can do something to help."

  "I know that, hero--"

  "Don't call me hero."

  "I know you won't give up, but it's wearing you down, man. Eventually, you are going to reach a point where it's not humanly possible to keep up, and I think it's going to break you."

  "You think I'm not painfully aware of what it's doing to me? What am I supposed to do about it?"

  "Well, maybe we need to think outside the box. You always call this thing a curse. What if it is?"

  "What? Like an old-fashioned evil-eye type curse? Now, who's being unrealistic?"

  "What if it was? What if, when you were born, your mom looked at some gypsy woman funny and she cursed you for life?"

  "You can't be serious?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. All I'm saying is maybe instead of letting this thing run your life, you try to do something about it."

  "Like what?"

  "Hell if I know. Maybe we should find a Wiccan or someone to do some woo-woo stuff and lift the curse."

  "Woo-woo stuff? Todd not only are you seriously deranged, but you watch too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

  "With the way your life is going
, maybe the trouble is you watch too little. You ever think of that?"

  I roll my eyes again, and we both settle in to finish our meal. Todd flirts with the waitress some more as we pay our bill.

  "Daylight's wasting, bro. I had better log some hours."

  "Yeah, me too," I agree. "Catch you later."

  Todd and I both work for Riderz, which is kind of like Uber's red-haired stepchild. It works the same. You log in when you want to work, and the system finds you people who need a ride. Clients pay Riderz through the app, and then the company sends you a check once a week.

  It's not a bad gig if you like to drive. You set your own hours and you don't have to handle the money side of things. It's perfect for me and my crazy life. I went to business school and graduated with honors, but it's hard to keep a job when you have one unexcused absence after another. It doesn't matter if you were pulling a busload of nuns from a flaming crash, the boss wants a worker who is going to show up every day and on time.

  Riderz fixed my work situation for me. I don't make a great deal of money, thus my cheap apartment in Speedway, but I make enough to get by.

  I head for the airport. It's one of the conveniences of being a driver on the west side of Indy. I'm close to the airport, which is a never-ending font of people looking for rides. I usually get all the work I want.

  I pull into one of the parking lots that's farther away from the terminal. It's not a pay lot, so I can sit here forever if I want to, and it's less than five minutes from the terminal. I log into my Riderz account, and it isn't ten minutes before I got my first fare.

  My work day begins in a blessedly normal fashion. I take an older woman and her purse dog to a fancy hotel in downtown Indianapolis. I don't even make it back to the parking lot before I get a businessman that needs to go all the way to Greenfield. It's a well-paying fare, and we talk baseball the entire time. I am lucky enough to get a return fare on the Greenfield trip. A guy in Lawrence is flying out to Idaho to meet his brand new grandbaby. He shows me a picture on his Smartphone. Cute kid. Brand new, but already has a mop of dark hair.