by Dan Garmen
Now, while saying all of this, delivering this emotional download I'd been writing in my head for over three decades, I understood when I finished, Amanda would in all probability, excuse herself to go to the ladies room, but instead stop off at the pay-phone and call someone to come and get her, Steve, probably. I realized the words I'd used talking to Amanda, though coming out of the mouth of a 17 year old, expressed the experiences of someone 30 years older, someone who has had time to think about it, and was interested only in telling the truth, not getting into her pants. I never for a moment considered the possibility she would take this in any way other than in confusion and maybe even some fear. But, I had to say all of it, and I wanted her to hear all of it, regardless of any potentially embarrassing outcome.
In the end, I was wrong about Amanda Tully, because she proved herself to be much wiser and more mature than I ever imagined. While I talked, leaning forward on the table between us, my own arms folded to keep my hands from shaking, she listened intently, and when I finished, I think with the part about her never being far from my thoughts, two or three seconds passed, and she leaned in, half stood up from the chair she sat in, reached out to me, grasping my arms where my elbows met the table, drew herself in and kissed me.
Believe me, it wasn't a friendly, social peck, either, but instead a full-on, passionate, open mouth kiss I never expected to get from Amanda, or anyone else, for that matter, sitting across the table in a family pizza restaurant. I figured in for a penny, in for a pound, and kissed her back. While it went on (and on and on) I am somewhat surprised and fascinated to report that just like in the movies and romance novels, the rest of the world seemed to fade away and this one kiss became my entire existence.
It hadn't been the first time I'd been kissed, even at this point the first time through. Though I have to admit that I'd started a little late, Connie Garrison, Penny Wilson and Leslie Taylor had all preceded Amanda, but none of those kisses had been like the one that ended when I became aware of someone standing beside the table. Denise, our waitress, waited with our pizza and a small, wry smile on her face. I glanced around to see we had become the floor show. A kiss like the one I just happily participated usually occur at Noble Roman’s, but since I wasn’t really 17, being the evening’s entertainment didn’t affect me that much. Amanda, however, was a little less comfortable with it, her face blushed even redder than it was, and she demurely grimaced, leaning back and putting her hands in her lap.
Denise, her eyebrows raised theatrically, placed the pizza in the middle of the table and said, “Don't make me have to turn the hose on you two.” She laughed as she left, and our audience turned their attention away, back to their dinner conversations. Out of the corner of my eye, though, caught a glimpse of a hulking figure disappearing out the front door of the restaurant. Though I couldn't be sure, I had the sinking feeling I'd just seen Nicky Collins leaving.
Not good.
Amanda's face still held a reddish tinge, a small smile on her face as she took a bite of her pizza. I did the same, and we ate in silence for a couple minutes. Finally, she looked up at me, took a drink of her Coke and calmly said, “I had no idea you felt that way.”
A lopsided smile formed on my face and I shrugged. ”I know what you mean.” Then, my eyes meeting hers, I asked, looking conspiratorially toward the other people in the restaurant, “Where did that kiss come from? I sure didn't expect something so…awesome.”
Amanda returned my gaze without blinking. After a few seconds, she began to slowly shake her head. “You know, for somebody so smart, somebody who can tell the future, you don't pay a lot of attention to the present, do you?” Her smile grew, and I understood I was being toyed with, now.
I shifted my attention back to my pizza, and smiled. “Oh, I pay attention, Amanda. You don't seem to realize what a force of nature you are. Believe me, I get it.”
Her gaze softened a bit, and we lapsed back into silence for a minute or two, until a spark of inspiration hit me and I asked “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Going out with Steve,” she replied, then adding, “Well, I was.”
“Break it. Let's go out, for real, a date.” No more dancing around this shit, I thought.
The thought of breaking her date with Steve and going out with me, seemed to set Amanda back a little. I thought this odd, since a few minutes ago, we were in a lip-lock she had instigated, and now the thought of breaking a date with the boyfriend who ditched her in the high school parking lot made her stop for a moment. Only for a moment did she hesitate, though, answering, “Sure. Pick me up at 7?”
“You bet. Movie?” I asked.
“Why not?”
We finished our pizza, I took her home, and got a brief kiss on the lips at the door just before it closed. I drove home, the excitement of what had happened still intensely dominating my thoughts. I had spent 30 years regretting not saying the things I had said tonight at Noble Roman's, and look how it had turned out. My God, what a waste of those years, I thought, but as soon as I'd formed the thought in my mind, I flashed on Molly and Samantha and the life I had built in the years leading up to 2007. An intense wave of guilt washed over me, and I choked up a little, missing them, but I wasn’t the me they lived with, I reasoned. I was, in my mind of course, but this body, this person living in 1976 was a different personal altogether. I just happened to be carrying their Rich Girrard around in my head. Molly was 12 years old right now, and Samantha wouldn't be born for another 16 years. She didn't even exist in this world, which made me sad. My episode on the bleachers this morning showed me 2007 was always close, I could almost reach out and touch it, but for the moment, didn’t want to.
Not just yet, anyway.
SIX
Acceleration
It always seemed to happen too quickly. My world, a bubble I was strapped immobile into, hit the water with a jarring 'thump' before I had gotten as much air into my lungs as I would have liked. Over the course of my career, I had done this at least 30 times already, so familiarity balanced out some of the disorientation, as the g-forces pressed against me, fighting the bulk of the water. My little world spun around and hung me upside down, 10 feet or so underwater.
The first time I did this, the water and muffled sounds disappeared, and I found myself looking up at a bright light that then became a concerned looking face, which was itself vanished and became a searing light I later realized emanated from a small pen-style flashlight being shined into each of my eyes. In the far distance a siren wailed, but got neither closer nor farther away, while a constant rushing sound I quickly identified as road noise provided the background. An ambulance, voices, and an almost overwhelming amount of much noise threatened to drown me. Then, I was back in the water, free of the restraint straps, choking, having taken in a big breath of nothing but water, while two frogmen in scuba gear dragged me to the surface. Such was my first time in the “Dilbert Dunker,” a Naval Flight Officer Candidate, living in a hell otherwise known as Pensacola, Florida and staffed by Marine Corps Drill Instructors who seemed to want to either drown, or in some other painful way, kill me with their bare hands. During the nicer moments, they simply screamed at us. I was in basic Flight Officer training in the Navy, working toward the day the United States Navy would let me fly in their jets, but not as a pilot, since thanks to my 20-40 eyesight I didn’t qualify, but as a Naval Flight Officer. I hoped to be a “BN,” or “Bean,” a Bomber/Navigator, in A-6 Intruders, carrier-based bombers.
This time, in 1990, riding the “Dunker” was, if not for fun, much more relaxed an operation. I had rotated in for a 6 week training cycle, under a program to test the process of having experienced officers taking brief refresher courses before going back to their squadrons to prepare for a deployment. Amanda waited for me in Bellingham, Washington, near where my squadron, VA-145 “The Swordsmen” were based at NAS Whidbey Island. A deployment was coming up in a couple months aboard USS Ranger, and I was well aware of the role VA-145 would play. T
he rhetoric involving Saddam Hussein was heating up, and though I had no memory of which ships participated in Desert Storm, the scuttlebutt around Whidbey suggested Ranger and “The Swordsmen” would be in the middle of the fight, which was fine, and what I trained for.
I didn’t follow this path the last time I lived these years, and always regretted the decision. As I had done so many times since I woke up in 1976, I decided to choose a course of action different from the first time. So far, making different choices worked out well and joining the Navy seemed to be the right thing to have done. I waited for the “Dilbert Dunker” to jerk to a stop, and the bubbles to disperse from around me, before I could begin releasing myself. I was calm, but a little apprehensive, the memory of the lightning fast trip back to 2007 always near when I did this. This time, however, I stayed firmly in 1990 and the dark cloud of anticipation dissipated with the bubbles.
I carefully and deliberately began unsnapping the restraints holding me in this cage, meant to resemble the cockpit of whatever aircraft the trainee ended up crewing. Fourteen years before, I had chosen a different path in my relationship with Amanda. We started dating the night after I spilled my guts and she kissed me at Noble Roman's, and from then on, we were inseparable. We made graduated from different colleges a couple, Amanda studying dance at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana and me playing basketball. Coach MacLaren had been right. A good senior year at Ben Davis, topped off by us winning the state tournament, and I was actively recruited by a number of schools, settling on the biggest one that offered me a scholarship, Purdue University. Muncie wasn’t far from West Lafayette, where Purdue is, so we were together most weekends. I would travel to Muncie outside of the basketball months, and she visited me during the season.
Spring break in 1978 proved a tense time, even though I was relative secure I had nothing to worry about, since Steve Collins was long ago out of the picture, but I had to beg, plead and barter to get Amanda to agree to a week away from school that was also a week away from alcohol and automobiles. Amanda never drank too much…Well, almost never…But I was worried about being around others that year who did. Once the Wednesday in April I had circled on the calendar I kept with me constantly had passed, life seemed lighter and easier.
At Purdue, unlike in my previous experience, I was a serious student athlete. I wasn't All-American, but contributed to the Boilermaker basketball team, part of the starting lineup the last half of my Junior, and all of my Senior years. So, when I finished, and donned the cap and gown for the commencement ceremony in West Lafayette, I went down in Purdue's basketball history as one of the solid, productive non-stars, destined to be forgotten a couple years after graduation by all but a handful of die-hard fans, the one starter whose name it took them the longest to remember when discussing those seasons. Superstars remained in the consciousness for decades, but my type of player came and went in the blink of an eye.
It was toughest on my father, who had graduated from Indiana. To have to be a Boilermaker fan for four years was not easy for him, so I didn’t give him any grief when as soon as I graduated, the cream and crimson came out again, and my parents became “Hurryin’ Hoosier” fans again. For my father, the most memorable moment of my career at Purdue came after the buzzer marked the end of my last game against Indiana, at Assembly Hall in Bloomington. The Hoosiers had beaten us by four points, and Coach Knight, working his way across the floor, making a point of congratulating all the opposing team’s graduating seniors, came straight at me, leaned his head in close, his right arm around me, and said, “We never should have let Schaus get you,” referring to our coach, Fred Schaus, “good luck, Rich.” He punctuated his well wishes by patting me on the back twice. Knight, a hulking bear of a man, not always evident watching him on TV, since he’s usually surrounded by big basketball players, in his enthusiasm, probably eft a mark, but I didn’t mind. High praise from a coach Tom MacLaren had always had so much respect for. My dad witnessed it all from his excellent alumni seats, and when he and my mom met me as I emerged from the locker room 45 minutes later, I could tell he was flush with excitement.
Proud of what I accomplished at Purdue, I also found my athletic experience and engineering degree made me a desirable Naval Officer candidate. Since I had always loved flying, I jumped at the chance to pursue the career I had been interested in my first time through the turn of the decade, but drifted away from committing to.
Just like in my first life here, my parents moved to San Diego while I attended college, but because of my basketball scholarship, I didn't move with them. Their lives pretty much went on unchanged from the other timeline. Amanda's and my lives seemed to be in a kind of temporal “bubble,” where the ripples of change caused by my following a completely different course seemed to fade at an increasing rate the further from us. We led completely different lives, but not much of the rest of the world seemed to be at all affected.
Even though my relationship with Coach MacLaren never deteriorated as it had the first time, nothing I tried to do ended up changing his fate. During my senior year, in the three years that followed, I had a number of talks with him about the dangers of heart disease, but since never experienced a single symptom, he shrugged off my nagging. I even got excused from practice to be at the game the night I knew Coach MacLaren would suffer a massive heart attack in the locker room. An ambulance and EMT were stationed at all games, but to be sure, I ordered and paid for a private ambulance service to be at the gym as well, parked right outside the doors by the home locker room.
My preparations couldn’t change history, though, and it proved to be Coach’s time. The heart attack, massive, and right on schedule ended the Coach’s life just as it had in my original timeline. I came to watch the guys play, I had told him, and would love to show my support in the locker room before the game. He bought that ruse, never questioning how I could be there, and not at practice. MacLaren asked me to go to his office to get him another play-plan clipboard, and must have collapsed right after I left the room. I picked up the board from his desk, and glancing through the window that looked into the locker room,I could see him lying on his side on the floor. I didn't even bother going to him, but instead, flew out the door to the outside and shouted for the paramedics in the ambulance I had hired. By the time they got to him though, less than a minute after I first saw him on the floor, he had died. They later told me his death had probably come before he hit the floor.
Even though I knew full well Coach MacLaren was going to at the very least, have a serious heart attack, and at the worst, die (again), being closer to him this time hit me harder than I thought it would. Standing at the gravesite four days later, I reflected darkly on the predicament I was in, able to change so much, but powerless in so many other ways. The inspiration hit me to look for answers in the same place I had the night I drove back to Cincinnati after reading the letter from my grandfather.
Gary.
This time, I knew I wouldn’t have to engage in a conversation that spanned a dozen cell phone calls, because well, there weren’t any cell phones yet, and he wouldn’t be traipsing around the Texas outback. He’d be in his dorm room at M.I.T.
Before the Big 10 season got started, the team played a game not far from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where M.I.T was located, so I snuck out game day morning for a quick trip to meet my best friend. Gary was going to love this.
I found my way to Cambridge, and the Registrar’s office, staffed on that day by a college basketball fan, who recognized me instantly. I explained that I was looking for my “cousin,” Gary Danner, a student at the school, but don’t have any contact information for him, no dorm address, or even a phone number. I remembered Gary telling me he lived in the dorms all four years at MIT, so I knew I would find him on campus.
Except I didn’t.
He wasn’t at MIT, or as my new friend, the Boilermaker-loving Registrar’s Assistant told me, after consulting the school’s computer network that was experimentally connected to other school
s, there was no Garry Danner registered anywhere he could find.
I thanked my new friend and fan for his help, and wandered out, wondering how the hell this could be? I had only been back in my past for a couple years, but already could tell, outside of people and events I interacted with, nothing changed. If some sort of randomness existed that could change things without my influence in this timeline, I hadn’t seen any evidence of it yet. How could my actions here change where Gary went to school? I wondered. Maybe Gary didn’t really even go to MIT Maybe it was all a lie!
As much as this possibility disturbed me, it seemed to be the only explanation. Garry was a year younger than me, so he would have been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for three of the four years I attended Purdue. He should have been here at this time. Did he have a different name? I remembered seeing his diplomas, undergrad and graduate, both in the name of “Gary Richard Danner,” his middle name being the same as my firstMIT. Garry is a genius, so if he forged the documentation of a graduation from the prestigious MIT, I figured so what? Intuition told me, however, something that simple wasn’t the answer.
I took a cab back to the hotel near the campus of the college we were playing, just in time for a light lunch before we went to the arena for an afternoon workout. The game was that night.
I didn’t try again to find Gary, not really sure what to make of the whole situation. So, except for no Gary in this timeline and the changes arising from Amanda and me being together, the world went on as it had before. I didn’t have another episode taking me back to 2007 until my first experience in the Dunker, so when it did happen again, it was quite a shock. I never told Amanda any more about my experience, which probably seems quite strange. But you have to realize while I lived through the 70s and 80s again day to day, the thought I had imagined the future grew stronger and stronger. I found myself doing my “remember 2007” exercises less and less, and though so much of what I saw in the news I had seen before, many things in my life were different this time, imagining this was the real life and the other one in 2007 with Molly and Samantha was fantasy did not prove terribly difficult. I would be lying , however, if I said the ache in my gut over the family I left in 2007 ever eased, let alone disappeared.