Time Flying

by Dan Garmen

  I had no response, because what she said was true. Amanda had found my “future history” journals I'd been writing to help exercise my memory and, I don't know, maybe at some point prove to myself what I had experienced really happened. I kept my mouth shut and decided to let her talk until she had said everything on her mind. I needed to know what Amanda had figured out.

  After a couple seconds' pause, Amanda continued as I drove the car. “Is it some kind of trick? Are you psychic? How do you know what's going to happen?” Amanda asked, still calm, but the intensity in her voice rising. “And what you wrote about this man who is going to become President, Bill Clinton? I never heard of him until I read what you wrote…This 'dot com' stuff you say is coming…” She paused, but I remained silent.

  “Until tonight,” she continued, “ it was just a little weird, but when you said to Dennis that the day you passed out at school was your first day back here…” Amanda trailed off for a second, before saying in a shaky voice, “What the hell is going on. What has BEEN going on, Rich?”

  It was a situation I had hoped to never be in, having to explain to my wife about my time traveling, about living a life that didn’t include her past the age of 18, about a life where we weren’t married and Michael and Aaron didn’t exist. My plan? Never having to deal with the issue, but I realized now I had been a fool, thinking I could simply slip by without needing to tell the story, and a bigger fool for not coming up with a plan to do so.

  Amanda deserved the truth, even if hearing the truth convinced her of my insanity, which after all these years, was a possibility I still didn’t discount.

  The last five minutes of our conversation took place in Amanda's parents’ driveway, where we sat with the car running. I took half a minute or so to gather my thoughts. Amanda deserves the truth, I thought, but not quite yet.

  “Amanda, you and the boys are everything to me. You've made me happy, too. I promise, I'll tell you everything.” I turned to the right and now took Amanda's hands in mine. She gave me a sad, worried half-smile.

  “Can your folks watch the boys tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Sure. They'll love it.”

  “Good,” I nodded. “Let's take the boys to visit Thelma in the morning, and then you and I take a road trip. I want to show you something.”

  This time, Amanda nodded without saying anything.

  We got out of the car and walked arm in arm up to the house. We walked arm-in-arm up to the house, Amanda wrapped up warm in my flight jacket, since the temperature had fallen more than we expected. We were met by Jeanette and Gene when we walked into the living room. Their expressions told me something was wrong. A chill of fear knifed through me, the boys. Amanda must have flashed a similar reaction to the expressions on their faces, because right off, Jeanette said, “The boys are fine.”

  I looked at Amanda, both of us heaving sighs of relief. But then, another sinking feeling washed over me. Amanda's mom said, “Rich, I'm so sorry. Darnell Coleman called about an hour ago.”

  I nodded, understanding.

  “Thelma passed away this evening.”

  EIGHT

  Angels 30

  The sky threatened rain the next morning, but as we drove west out of Indianapolis everything remained dry. I had talked with Darnell the previous night and again in the morning to make sure he didn’t need anything. He didn’t, of course. Thelma raised strong sons. Darnell expected his brother Christopher home later in the day.

  Darnell assured me all of Thelma's funeral arrangements had been made...By Thelma, herself, of course…So nothing except some signatures remained left to do, nothing I could help with. I promised him I'd be there for the wake, scheduled for Wednesday evening, and the brief graveside service on Thursday morning. So, we decided to take the day-trip I had proposed to Amanda.

  We had driven US Highway 36 several times. In my previous life here, Amanda and I made the trip together only once, but since we became a couple while still in high school this time around, Amanda spent several weekends and a few summer weeks at my family's lake cabin. By the time we hit Rockville, the cloud cover went from solid to broken, showing bigger and bigger patches of blue sky. When we turned onto Highway 41 in the middle of “downtown” Rockville, the clouds had all but disappeared, leaving us with a beautiful fall day.

  The driving proved easy, with little traffic on the road, so we made good time on 41, cruising past little towns whose odd names I remember from childhood. Bradfield Corner, Mecca, Hudnut and Lyford slid past, separated by huge farm fields and unnaturally regular sections of trees. The bright, vivid greens and yellows of the corn, soybeans and other, unidentified (to a city boy, anyway) crops revealed artist-worthy subjects at almost every bend in the road.

  The night before, I had promised Amanda the whole story when we got to Belton. Now that we were on the road, I had to swear to her there was no “other woman,” no other family I had been hiding, and all what I wanted to show her had been put there long before my birth. I promised what I was about to show her would help explain this all, she calmed down a little.

  Now, with the sun shining as we left the outskirts of Rockville, I still sensed her uneasiness, but the quiet freedom of driving on a beautiful day like this helped her relax a little and enjoy the trip. I think she could tell I wasn't overly concerned about finally coming clean about what was going on, and which helped keep her from worrying her whole world was about to change. My own lack of anxiety was a little surprising to me, especially with the news we received upon arriving home about Thelma passing away. She died peacefully, with friends and family around her, after living a long and mostly happy life. I did the math, and realized with her time traveling, Thelma lived 105 years, all but the last three or four of them without any serious infirmity. Not many of us get a century of good health. Though I missed her already, she wouldn't have tolerated a lot of weepy mourning. From hearing her stories, I think Thelma had done more of that than she was comfortable with when her own grandmother died the first time, and I think she decided excessive mourning did no one any good.

  We reached Belton about 11am. Driving through town slowly caused feelings of déjà vu bordering on a physical dizziness. Not helping was that Belton appeared almost exactly like it had, or will, in 2007, which happened to be the same as when I was a kid. The houses, for the most part, were neat and in good repair, but none of them were new. The old houses I remembered from both the 1970s and 2007 still stood, looking...well...again, the same. None of this had any impact on Amanda, of course, since this was her first time in Belton. She'd been to our place on Long Branch Lake, but for her, Belton was just a turnoff on the highway to the cabin.

  We followed the same route I'd driven when I came here in 2007, driving by my Great-Grandmother Margaret's house, and pointing it out to Amanda from the street. The house had been vacant when I last passed by, 17 years in the future, but now, was clearly occupied, lace curtains on the windows and a car in the driveway. The paint looked better this time, the house itself neat as a pin. Once past Margaret's house, I accelerated a little, heading toward my father's boyhood home, where I'd met Annie Bennett and Liz Monahan, the mother and daughter who gave me the letter which put this whole thing in motion, and where I would supposedly meet my Grandparents in 1933. Before today though, my traveling back to 1933 seemed a slim possibility, unreal enough to be no more than the ghostly remnants of a dream from years before. Living with these odd and improbable possibilities for so long, they ceased to feel like the certainties the letter attempted to prove. Driving into Belton on this autumn day in 1990 however, everything which seemed to be paused or in a kind of stasis suddenly jerked into forward motion, the clock alive and ticking once again. A fleeting, dark thought wondered if I had triggered something by coming here.

  I pulled the rented Ford to a stop in the same spot where I had parked my Chrysler Pacifica in 2007, and regarded my father's old house, which appeared the same as before, the color of the wood trim around the windows maybe
a slightly different shade, and the red brick a little deeper and richer. The tree out front seemed as big and full as when last I saw it, but this time, even though the temperature was every bit as comfortable, no one sat on the front porch as before. The doors and windows were all closed, the drapes drawn, and the driveway empty.

  We got out of our car and walked across the silent street to the front walkway. Halfway to the door, I understood. No one lived in the house, which meant this would be a little more complicated than I had hoped, but then again, perhaps not. I planned to tell the current owner there was a letter intended for me in their house, along with a one ounce gold coin. If they would let me have the letter, they could keep the coin.

  Once I got past the big tree in the front yard, the 'For Sale' sign in one of the front windows became visible. Amanda and I walked up the steps of the front porch and looked around, Amanda walking across the porch, trying to peer in through the window, while I took my leather notepad out of my pocket and copied down the real estate agent's name and phone number, wondering if I would be able to find a pay phone somewhere along the main street of town. One of the enduring frustrations I endured, being in the past these 15 years, was the lack of a cellphone in my pocket. Of all the conveniences I enjoyed in 2007, the small cellular telephone topped the list I can't tell you how much I looked forward to having another Motorola Star-Tac.

  I flipped the notebook closed and glanced up at Amanda, who regarded me curiously. I smiled at her. She had been so patient. In her position, would I have stayed so quiet, following her, waiting for the time she picked to let me know what the hell was going on?

  “What, are we going to buy this place?” Amanda asked, an ironic smile on her face.

  I doubted I would be so calm about this kind of thing, and the trust implied made me love her all the more.

  “No, I need to show you something inside” I answered with a smile of my own.

  My wife's puzzled expression returned to her face.

  “Let's take a walk,” I said. “I’ve got a story to tell you,” I continued, turning and taking the porch steps down to the sidewalk. “Actually, I have two, and we need to find a pay phone.”

  We walked down Parke Street toward the Belton Post Office at a pace which allowed us to talk and as she listened, not saying a word, I told Amanda the story of my lives.

  90 minutes later, I stood under the tree in the front yard of the house my father grew up in, my hand on the thick, rough bark, tracing the contours down the trunk. A beautiful tree, planted almost 60 years ago, it now rose above the street, sidewalk and house in the prime of its life. I had seen this same tree, unchanged, 15 years in the future, and as I gazed upward into its branches six feet above me, I reflected that for this tree, time passed at a much slower pace. I would change in many different ways over the next 15 years, but to this tree, those years would be almost nothing. We occupy the same earth, use the same elements to live, but experience time in a much different way.

  While examining the tree, and enjoying the beautiful afternoon, every few seconds, I'd throw a glance toward Amanda, looking for any kind of hint about how she was processing the story I had told her. She sat on the top step leading up to the porch, her arms wrapped around her knees, head turned to the right, away from me. This was how Amanda processed things she didn't understand, withdrawing from everything and concentrating all her mental energy on solving the problem her. Though I'd never witnessed her wrestling with something this enormous, I'd been through the process before.Trying to get her to leave her isolation and communicate at best got no result, at worst brought down her wrath. I had learned patience, dealing with these silences. They were a pretty rare occurrence, but not so rare I hadn't learned to recognize them in the early stages.

  Two-thirds of the way through my story, I had called the real estate agent from a pay phone in front of the Post Office, and he said he'd meet us at the house in about 90 minutes. We sat on a bench for the next 45 minutes or so, and I finished my narrative. While I spun out this story that I worried would lead Amanda to believe she married and produced children with a lunatic, I realized, much like when I poured out my heart to her at the pizza restaurant in 1976 and several times since then, I felt like two people, the “me” living this life, telling this tale, and the “me’ watching the show, criticizing the performance and thought processes as they happened.

  Sometimes, a part of my intelligence wondered if perhaps one of these me entities represented the one living this life before the guy from 2007 barged in and took over like an older brother. Would this transformation have split me into two people? If so, which “Me” told Amanda the story?

  Or, did my time travel create two separate Rich Girrards, both a melding of memories, intelligences and knowings of the two original people. Somehow, this idea seemed more likely. And so, if through all this, my consciousness divided into these separate psychological components which seemed to work pretty well in concert, could my experience be a much more common, more human experience? Is it possible the separate people we all think we are is the truth, because we all travel in time and inhabit many, or even all of the separate, discrete versions of ourselves? Maybe the uniqueness of my experience was not that I traveled in time, but that I was aware I had done so? Perhaps Rich Girrard isn’t as special as I thought? Believe it or not, waiting under the tree in Belton, Indiana, my wife silent, deciding how to deal with this massive and unwelcome blow to her sense of the world, not being special would be a gift from God.

  We had walked back to the house in silence, to wait for the real estate agent. I told Amanda I wanted to get into the house and prove to her the story I told her is the truth. My Grandfather's letter would be in a beam in the basement of the house. Liz had shown me the beam and from where their son had removed the letter and gold coin. He had made a neat job of cutting a small compartment out of the wood and shaving the block down so it fit snugly back into the hole. In order not to weaken the beams, my Grandfather had cut the compartment out right above a post in the middle of the basement, and put two small steel posts in to further strengthen the support. The letter and coin’s hiding place would be easy to find if you knew where to look.

  My plan was to tour the house with the real estate agent, discuss buying my father's boyhood home, and unlocking a back door before we left. We would then return later in the afternoon, retrieve the letter and Amanda could see what set me on this path. Sure, my plan constituted unlawful trespass, but I believed circumstances warranted my breaking the law, in this case. How I would explain our presence to the police if we got caught, I had no idea, but I had to try. I thought the letter would prove to Amanda I wasn't crazy. The course my life had taken differed enough from my first, that I wouldn't be back here in 2007, unless I decided I wanted to come back. With the letter in my possession, there wouldn’t be anything for Annie and Liz to find, so their role in the story would be finished, at least in this timeline.

  I looked over at Amanda, and this time watched as she wiped tears from her face. I walked over to her, and as her eyes slowly made their way up to mine, instead of anguish in those eyes, they were filled with anger.

  “All this time, you've been carrying this around with you, not telling me,” she said, a statement, rather than a question.

  Spreading my arms in appeal, I replied with “How was I supposed to tell you? There were a LOT of times I didn’t know what was real!” Whether defense mechanism or serious belief, I couldn't tell, but I would sometimes go entire years believing THIS life was real, the other one a figment of my imagination. I think the solid acceptance of both of my realities being real was only about five years old.

  “So, this other wife, who is she? Do I know her? Do you see her? Does she know all this?” Amanda demanded. Then, a slightly hysterical laugh erupted from her and she said, “I can't even believe I'm thinking this is real. Jesus Christ.” I began to realize telling her was a huge mistake, because when Amanda got this angry (for her to swear or said, “
Jesus Christ” was “outside her normal behavior envelope” as Pat would say) as a reaction to pain, to her being hurt. What amazed both of us, was that she seemed to be accepting the time travel as real, her first thought not questioning my sanity. My fidelity was in doubt, but not my sanity.

  “No, I've never seen her,” I said, but then stopped. “Well, once, in college, but I DIDN'T EVEN TALK TO HER.”

  “Really,” Amanda said, another declaration, without a trace of a question mark in her tone.

  “She went to University of Iowa,” I explained. “We went there for a game and I looked her up in the student directory. A couple of the other guys and I walked around campus until we found her dorm. We were walking up to the front door, and she and some friends walked out. I saw her. That was it. I swear.”

  I didn't tell Amanda WHY I never tried again to contact Molly, though. The truth is, the pain was simply too much. I was with two of my Purdue teammates and when she came out of the front door of the building, my heart leapt to my throat, but she walked by, not even noticing me. The rawness of the emotions of five years apart from her overwhelmed me. This thing had been a fun little episode I assumed to be a kind of lucid dream, and I had been able to block out the reality of all I’d lost when I found myself back in 1976. Seeing the 18 year old Molly, my wife before we ever met, and realizing without considerable effort and luck she would never even know my name, brought 2007 back in a huge, destructive rush.

  In the game that night, I turned the ball over 6 times, didn’t score, and fouled out. As I walked past Coach Schaus after the fifth foul, early in the second half, he didn't even acknowledge me as I found my seat at the end of the bench. Luckily, we won, no thanks to me. The Coach and I never spoke about my performance, because by the time practice resumed the next week, I decided the time traveling was all a dream, a fantasy, something I cooked up for some strange, psychological reason. I focused on 1980, and tried everything I could to forget about Molly. I never played so badly again.