His old friend Jimmy Summers still lived there. Beth had told him that some time before. Jimmy attended Rose’s funeral as a sign of respect for Kevin. That was what he believed at least.
The day after the funeral, Kevin dropped off William at Beth’s house. For some reason, one he did not understand, he needed to be alone. When he finally decided to revisit the graveyard he made a crazy wrong turn, getting himself completely lost. Lost in a town he had once known from alleyway to alleyway. He recognized something finally. Something from the past. Like he was a child again, running home with his friends, Johnny, Tony, Jimmy and Billy. Playing games and stupid pranks.
Memories flooded his mind as he drove—he came to an intersection that was totally familiar, yet somehow alien. The ghastly looking railroad crossing hadn’t been there before, his child brain was sure. It hadn’t existed in the past. The cavernous train tunnel resembled the giant mouth of a stone man—open and ready to eat him alive. As the bar descended, bells started ringing—warning him of an impending train—connecting his past with his present. Kevin daydreamed back. Back to that fateful day when his life had been changed. When Billy’s life had ended. Submerged in his brain, Kevin understood.
“You killed Billy, Kevin. Do you know that?” A voice inside his head asked. The voice of time, indescribably old, was correct of course.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Kevin said.
This location, where two boys’ lives went askew, his and Billy’s, seemed to radiate a heat. He envisioned the accident—Billy working hard to remove the train tie, using all his might—then the train, loud and angry. His mind swirled with thoughts—Kevin understood what had happened. This was his destiny—as it should have been all those years before.
This place held the cards to so many lives.
The voice spoke again, “It was not your fault. Yet the choice you made, your offer to take Billy’s place, changed what finally happened. Do you understand that?”
“I guess I do. But I was just trying to protect Billy. Really.” The roar of the train in the tunnel reminded Kevin of that previous day—but there was no escape today—it sounded like a snoring giant awakening, his starving stomach screaming for food…almost as if the giant would gobble Kevin up alive. Closer—hungrier—closer—angrier—the train rumbling its approach.
“I guess I screwed everything up. Didn’t I?” Kevin knew what his whole life had been—he had lived out Billy’s dreams, his hopes…his fate. His life. Experiencing Billy’s needs, loving Billy’s wife. Things Billy would have done had he not died. Rose was Billy’s woman all along.
“I think you understand what happened. You lived for Billy, but you must die when he was to die. Do you understand that as well?”
“Why?”
“Fate is mutable, but some things must occur.”
The words seeped into Kevin’s mind. And he thought he understood. Billy would have died. Today.
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