Time Line

by Rex Bolt

  She was a good hearted lady, and Pike couldn’t remember if her personal life had ever come up--maybe it had actually, once, where she told him matter of factly that her marriage years ago hadn’t worked out. Either way, she was terrific at her job, and Pike was convinced early on that running the library--or whatever her official role was--was exactly the right fit. You had to envy that.

  “It’s good to see you as well,” Pike was saying, and Frankie reached across and patted his hand, not like a mother exactly but more like a big sister might.

  There was that one time though--Pike cutting through a residential neighborhood one Saturday night, and there were a bunch of people dressed up going up the steps of a big house, and Pike could have sworn one of them was Frankie, and she had on a short miniskirt and some kind of lacy stockings as he remembered it . . . and that had been hard to process. If it was her, what the heck might have been going on there.

  Pike was in one of those moods, having slept the 12 hours and then gotten ahold of Frankie and meeting her here, 8:30 at night now, where you want to clear the decks and you don’t mind butting in a little bit.

  So he went for it, and said, “Before we get started on the other thing . . . and you don’t have to answer . . . but was that you I saw one evening, a few months back . . . dressed to kill if I do say so myself . . . heading into the big corner house on I think it was Marlboro Street?”

  There was a hint of embarrassment from Frankie, Pike was pretty sure, and he might have been reading into it but he thought her cheeks reddened just a hair.

  If there was anything to it, she composed herself quickly. She said, “You absolutely may have. I participate in . . . it’s a private theater group. And yes, we dress up, and get fully into character. It’s a wonderful outlet for me actually.”

  “What play were you doing that night, then?” Pike said, on board with her now, that made sense.

  Except she seemed to hedge slightly, and said she couldn’t remember the specific one, without knowing what night it was . . . and Pike figured you better leave it at that. That if she wasn’t being entirely truthful, and did have something mysterious going on, so be it. That, God knows we all have secrets.

  “So,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Now on the two tasks you gave me . . .”

  “Dang, sorry about presenting them that way,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be pushing you around there.”

  “Don’t by ridiculous. As you know, I love a research challenge . . . The first, the young man who played football, I’m afraid I’m not there yet.”

  “That’s okay,” Pike said. “Really, don’t sweat it.”

  “Oh no,” she said, “I fully intend to unlock that one. I do have some leads.”

  This of course could be good and bad. This was the kid who Pike went to San Francisco for, about 20 years ago. The deal was the kid became paralyzed as a result of a play in a high school football game.

  What Pike had done--which sounded crazy but seemed to do the job--was he inserted himself briefly into the game the week before the one where the kid got screwed up--and Pike himself injured the guy, not brutally but enough to keep him on the sidelines the next week, when the fateful play did occur--or was scheduled to.

  And all seemed well and good until Pike returned home and later found out that yes, the kid didn’t get paralyzed, but that he had something else going on in life that may be messing him up.

  Pike couldn’t locate the guy to find out and ran it by Frankie and she wanted to help. So there you were.

  Pike said now, “You know I just did a long drive with someone, and it was weird how the conversation worked its way toward a story where a guy goes back about 50 years.”

  Frankie said, “Do you feel that was entirely coincidental? The direction of the conversation?”

  She would do this some times, ask him the direct questions he didn’t love answering. He knew that she did have a brother-in-law who told stories of himself doing some traveling. It wasn’t clear whether Frankie entirely bought in, but the woman was at least highly open-minded, which you could appreciate.

  And at this point . . . if you asked Pike whether he bought in . . . he wouldn’t be 100 percent sure either.

  The whole business--such as it was--was still mostly a big blur, to be honest . . . and it still didn’t match the textbook definition of making sense.

  Back to Frankie, Pike said, “This may have been coincidental. But the slightly spooky part, this person adds at the end, almost like an afterthought, that the guy in the story has a similar experience to me with the football kid . . . if any of that makes sense, and if you even believe me . . . which I get, if you don’t.”

  “Not a concern, I’m with you honey,” she said, and Pike was more than fine with that.

  Totally separate, but since you were referring to Heidi--God knows where she was at this point, only that she was with Jack--that much was clear--and that could mean a lot of things. No point losing sleep over it, you knew the girl a total of 2 days--give or take.

  Pike did feel a little guilt though, thinking of Bill, Heidi’s good guy uncle in Arizona. Pike had assured him he’d take care of her. You’d hope you could loosely apply that to having Jack showing her around. Since you trusted the guy. Mostly.

  The other thing of course, Heidi was an adult and made her own bed. Something kind of funky Pike was realizing--Jack was almost 19, he’d admitted to Pike once that they had him repeat first grade, which was in Milwaukee.

  So unless this latest incarnation changed something with that, which was unlikely--and you combine that with Heidi turning out to be off-the-charts smart, it wouldn’t be surprising that she skipped a grade someplace . . . So who knows, they probably weren’t very far off each other in age.

  Frankie said, “I’m not following you completely though. The person referenced in the story also is a football player? Or encounters one?”

  “I’m explaining it sloppy,” Pike said. “The parallel part--the book character thinks he adjusts something, for the better . . . Only to find, it, like, sets off something else equally bad, maybe worse.”

  “How so?”

  “Ooh boy. What kind of shook me up, the specific guy--he gets saved from being mentally screwed up . . . and then because he’s not mentally screwed up, he gets drafted to Viet Nam--which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. He would have avoided it.”

  “And he unfortunately, perishes in the Viet Nam war?”

  “That, or survives it, but comes back majorly screwed up a different way.”

  Frankie took a moment and said quietly, “Well, we assume that phenomenon to be true--in theory--do we not?”

  “Sure, and probably backed up somewhere in the 10 Rules, right?”

  “An equal and opposite reaction is what is referenced, I believe.”

  “Okay fine. And without going into details . . . let’s just leave it that I’ve experienced some of that . . . But not at this level.”

  “Until perhaps this case, your football player friend.”

  “Yeah him,” Pike said.

  Frankie didn’t say anything, which was appropriate. She hadn’t solved that one yet, so why speculate.

  Pike said, “Pivoting on you for just a sec . . . nothing to do with any of this . . . really. But could someone really go--you know, inter-dimensionally--and change a historical event?”

  Frankie smiled. “I was in a bookstore in London last year,” she said. “The oldest one still standing, it dates to the 18th century. A splendid operation on the famous Piccadilly Circus.”

  “Let me guess,” Pike said, “that’s a street. Also--splendid--is that in your normal vocabulary, or you’re going British on me now?”

  “Indeed,” she said, whatever that meant. “What I’m driving at--you’ll find an entire section there that on some level is exploring the question you are posing.”

  Pike said, “More directly . . . could someone stop Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  This got Franki
e shifting around. She and Pike both knew they largely avoided the specifics of what Pike may or may not be capable of doing. But this was quite a supposition.

  “How would someone manage that?” she said, not that differently than Heidi had wondered about it in Jack’s truck in the middle of the night.

  “You’re supposed to tell me,” Pike said, trying to lighten it back up, and Frankie smiled, and the potentially world-changing moment on the table . . . hypothetically of course . . . had passed.

  The ice cream place was starting to close up, they were sweeping and mopping, and Pike and Frankie went outside. She said, “The second task you gave me, I located Audrey Milburn.”

  It took a minute to register, and then Pike felt his jaw slam open and his head was spinning, and his voice was weaker . . . as he asked her to repeat what she just said.

  “I was able to trace the family to Rochester, New York,” Frankie said. “From there, in 2009, they moved to Amsterdam. In the Netherlands.”

  “Oh,” was all Pike could manage, his throat tight.

  “Which was a brief stint apparently. Later that year, they appeared in Vero Beach, Florida.” Frankie had her notes out, her reading glasses on. “Yes, that’s what I thought,” she said, “it was 2012 when they settled in Epic Junction, Kansas.”

  Frankie closed her notes and let it hang, and Pike couldn’t come up with anything to say--how could you, right now.

  Pike had missed Audrey terribly after the Milburns left, but lately--and maybe it was a defense mechanism--he’d managed to push her mostly out of his conscious mind.

  It had become almost as though he never knew her. Which was not quite accurate. It was more like, he knew her, but in a dream, and you woke up and moved on. Now and then you remembered the dream, but the impact had diminished.

  So here with Frankie--the real here and now--Pike was stunned, blown away by Frankie’s simple, concise delivery of the information, not that different than a TV newscaster reading a report.

  A million questions swirled around, but it was too much for tonight. He said good night to Frankie and she got in her car and left, and he stood there a while . . . and finally he pulled out his phone and figured he better see what was up with Jack and Heidi.

  Chapter 19

  Neither one of them returned his text, which ticked him off, and by midnight Pike was exhausted again despite the monster nap today, and he sent a final text to Jack, telling him to let Heidi into the basement and set her up on the couch down there.

  Jack of course had the key--this went back to when they constructed The Box and stuck on their own outside lock--and Pike didn’t feel great about not being able to provide a better overnight arrangement, but he couldn’t think of any. His original idea, driving up here, was he’d be the one squaring Heidi away down there, making sure she was comfortable, and he’d even introduce her to his parents if they were around . . . but what could you do.

  So Pike hit the sack--he did take the time to find Epic Junction, Kansas, on a map, but that was it--not knowing what the story would be, since still neither Jack or Heidi had answered him back. And that was one thing that crossed his mind sometimes and was doing it again now . . . if he ever had kids, rule No 1 would be answer people’s texts and emails. Jeez.

  Around 3 in the morning, with Pike at that stage of sleep a few hours in, the REM pattern or whatever, where you’ve got perfection and it’s like a drug and you’re on a kind of high--that was when Hannamaker interrupted it all with a tap on the window.

  And it wasn’t exactly a tap, since Pike’s bedroom was a full story up, it was the idiot tossing a pebble at the glass from the backyard. Multiple ones in fact until Pike got the idea and woke up and opened the darn thing.

  Pike was rubbing his eyes and the words came out slurred. “You got a lot of nerve pal . . . Of all the garbage you’ve pulled recently, this takes the cake . . . What in the world are you doing?”

  “Sorry Bud,” Jack said. He looked away for a second like a little kid who got caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t have--but then he met Pike’s eyes again strong and said, “You need to help me out here.” Pointing downstairs, the basement.

  Which was weird, why would something like that be necessary if Jack set Heidi up down there like he instructed? And if for some crazy reason they were both locked out--then where was she?

  You didn’t want to wake up the neighborhood--much less his parents and little brother and sister--by continuing this ridiculous dialogue with Jack out the window . . . so Pike extremely reluctantly pulled on his jeans and went downstairs and around back.

  “What they did, I told ‘em to get out of there, then some guy pulled a knife on me,” Jack said.

  Pike was significantly more awake now. “Huh?” he said.

  “Not Fox, but some dudes who used to hang with Fox. I’m not believing this.”

  Pike was trying to process it. “Where’s Heidi?” was the first logical thing you better find out.

  “She’s okay,” Jack said. “They don’t know about her. Being down there . . . These jerk-faces, they’re messing around in The Box.”

  Which was on the other side of the basement from the little living area that Pike’s dad had fixed up once when he was going to turn the whole basement into a huge family room. What he did complete wasn’t bad though, Pike had hung out there a bit, with various people, plenty of privacy.

  Including Gee, his original girlfriend Cathy. That part sure seemed like a long time ago.

  Jack too, Pike remembered now, when Pike helped him move the drums that his step-dad was going to sell, Jack slept down there for a while.

  Pike said, “That was a bad idea of mine.”

  “Giving a key to Fox you mean?”

  “What else am I referring to?” Pike said. “Though you’re right, in the bad idea department I guess you can take your pick.”

  “You were right the first time,” Jack said, and Pike couldn’t argue this one. When he and Jack built the darn thing they started up a little makeshift band, and different kids started dropping in . . . and after all that had gone down between Pike and Fox, and Fox’s old man, Pike, in a moment of wanting to move past stuff, gave Fox a key so he could--not come as he pleased for Gosh sakes, but use The Box now and then. Pike supposed it was sort of a peace offering.

  And honestly up to this point it had gone okay. Fox was back at Hamilton and Pike would see him in the hall and they didn’t have a lot to say to each other but at least it was civil.

  Now apparently, whether Fox was involved or not, or whether he unfortunately passed that key on to someone else . . . we had a problem.

  “The obvious thing,” Pike said, “should we call the police.”

  “Yeah I thought of that, I almost did,” Jack said. “But then there’s fallout maybe . . . who knows how it plays out.”

  Pike had to agree with this, plus you had Heidi camping out down there which didn’t help your cause and you had your parents not aware of any it, which really didn’t help it.

  There were the two ways down there, the main way from inside the house being the other. So Pike and Jack quietly went back inside and Pike opened the door alongside the kitchen and they tiptoed downstairs.

  Heidi was up and standing next to the furnace, twisting her hands around, and Pike hoped she didn’t know that someone--allegedly--pulled a knife on Jack . . . and she seemed okay, concerned, but not at that level.

  And allegedly, because you couldn’t trust Jack. He was in the ballpark--usually--with the root of what he told you, but he could still embellish the heck out of it.

  Pike was putting it together, that what seemed to have gone down was Jack saying goodnight to Heidi, and her phoning him an hour or two later, that there was something going on in the other part of the basement.

  So Jack would have hustled over there, used his own key, and admittedly in Jack fashion probably wasn’t overly diplomatic in confronting whoever was in The Box at that moment--and some guy reacts and threa
tens him. Putting Jack in the back yard throwing stones at Pike’s window.

  There were some instruments permanently installed in The Box, starting with Jack’s drumset, where without thinking they built the box structure around it without leaving a door wide enough to ever get the things out of there--and Pike added a couple guitars and someone stuck in a bass and a short keyboard.

  Right now, you could hear these jerkells playing the instruments. Pretty faint fortunately, since Jack and Pike had paid attention to soundproofing the heck out of The Box when they finished it off. But these guys now, it was more like they noticed the instruments and started fooling around. No skill on display except for one guy picking a guitar, who you could tell could play a little.

  “Which guy,” Pike said to Jack, leaving out which guy what, not wanting to alarm Heidi.

  “Big guy,” Jack said, trying to keep it light also. “Tattoos rising out of the top of his t-shirt.”

  “Any, like females in there?” Pike said. That’d be all you needed, having to worry about something going on in that department as well.

  “Not that I saw,” Jack said, and Pike knew what this meant, the viewing part, since you typically climbed up the rope and swung over the top of one wall of The Box and dropped in.

  “Excuse us,” Pike said to Heidi. “Continue to make yourself comfortable, we’ll be right back.”

  They moved out of earshot and Pike said, “So what . . . the guy like, points it up at you?”

  “Nah, I dropped all the way in. It was normal enough at first, I’m asking them to please leave. I told ‘em I was you, and they were keeping me awake.”

  “Very thoughtful of you to involve me. How’d they react to that?”

  “Two ways. First, none of them ever heard of you--I realize there’s three of ‘em, now that I’m recreating it . . . Second, the one guy told me to do you know what to myself.”

  “That tatted one?”

  “No, different one. The tatted guy only came to life when I grabbed the other one and jammed his face into the sheetrock . . . Sorry about that by the way, we’re going to need to do a small patch job.”