A Hitch in Time

by Emery C. Walters

  “Is anyone hurt?” called a voice.

  How should I know? The kids and dog/s had run off into the woods. The kitten and I were fine. The baby was fine. My pants were dead but I had more. The woman? The car? From inside the wreck you could not miss her still screaming, “My baby, my baby, I’ve killed my poor damn baby!”

  Okay, this was going to get ugly. With all the attention focused on the woman, I drifted off back into the woods and then along the road until I came to clean, pure, normal traffic once again. I had a moment of insane glee, pure joy: no kids, no crazies, no babies, no—fuck. Here they came. Jimmy, the other—dog—and one of the kids. They trooped right up to me happy as clams. I looked at Jimmy. Joy. I looked at the other—not a bear cub, please God—okay, not a bear cub, but I couldn’t tell, in the gathering dusk, what it was. Check. And the kid? I stared at him. He had his finger in his mouth, even though he was about twelve years old. Now that I got a good look at him, he seemed familiar.

  “I was kidnapped,” he said. “Thank God you’ve set me free.” He took his finger out of his mouth and smoothed down his eyebrows with it, then tilted his head and smiled at me. His dimples popped out.

  I took a deep breath and looked around us. Dark was falling rapidly and the woods behind us were utterly black. I didn’t want to be out here at all, let alone with this—posse of mine. But who in their right mind—for a change—would pick us up? And I had to be careful with a kid along, not that I believed he’d really been kidnapped by that nutcase but I sure couldn’t leave him out here and it’s not like there was a handy cop around. Oh no, in my wisdom I’d sneaked away from the handy cops.

  And it was getting ready to rain, storm, really black clouds rolling against the black sky, thunder, and tears. Boy and second dog (whatever it was) both crying and whining. Right then a large car of some sort pulled up and cautiously I leaned out to see what the driver looked like, but by the time I could see him the back door was flung open by my newly adopted brother and everything piled in, so I closed it up, opened the front and climbed in too. As we whizzed away the storm broke, and my driver shouted gleefully over the noise, “Ass, grass, or cash, nobody rides for free!”

  Chapter 9

  Before I could faint, throw up, and open the door, he laughed like a maniac and said happily, “I’m just kidding, unless of course…nah, you don’t look like the kind with a bag of weed on you. Anyhow, you’re dying to know about this car, aren’t you? Talking of drugs, speed, ha-ha, little private joke there.” He cocked his head as if listening. “What’s that, God? Be nice, even if it hurts? Well, okay. Now I’ll tell you about the car since you asked nicely.” Was he talking to me or God? What the…? What did I let myself in for this time? But just then it started to hail and this—thing—had a cloth roof and I expected we’d get murdered, but he explained why we wouldn’t. Eventually.

  “I just got this car,” my driver smiled. “My name’s Jeff. I, ah, liberated it from prison. It deserves to be driven; it likes it on the wild side. You see there’s this museum near where I live, a big, famous auto museum, and this is the 1939 Lincoln Sunshine Special Presidential Limousine used for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, plus, it was left unlocked and closest to the side door. The roof is reinforced with steel and she gets…” I had to tune out; I was still in shock. Another stolen, only really stolen now, vehicle, with me in the shotgun seat. Or the death seat, since once again there were no seatbelts but at least there wasn’t any baby, either.

  “This baby,” Jeff started, but I cringed and he glanced at me, one eye closed like Popeye or a pirate. I quickly figured he meant the car as he went on, “is powered by a 150hp, 414 cubic inch V12 L-head engine.” I caught something else about bullet proof glass and storage places for pistols but then the sheer warmth and comfort of it, combined with the monotonous drone of Jeff’s voice, put me right to sleep. The last thing I heard was Jeff’s voice saying, “I can’t stand all that Frank Sinatra shit that was so popular when this car was made, so I brought my own CCR music, ‘‘Proud Mary’’—the extended version, of course.”

  I think I mumbled, “The Who?” and he said, ‘No, not the Who, CCR!”

  It was sunny and dry when I woke up. It was apparently the next morning. I had no idea when it was, really, or where I was. It was still blissfully quiet but a voice was declaring war somewhere and I sat straight up. Oh my God, we’re at war! What? I looked over and saw Jeff laughing at me. The voice was his, and he was reading from an old newspaper. I must have looked completely hilarious because Jeff was giggling and turning red. “Your face!” he laughed heartlessly. “It’s just President Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan, relax, you weren’t even born then!”

  My stomach chose right then to growl at the man, and he smiled almost normally and said, “Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast. The kids—I mean the kid and the animals—already have theirs, yonder on the picnic table. See this diner?”

  I did.

  He laughed. “They know me here—but they let me come in any way!”

  It was true, and that’s exactly what our waitress said, too. We ordered and our food came, and it was delicious, but of course I was starving. I could watch my sort of nameless ‘brother’ and the pets out the window as they sat at the table and ate. Some more neatly than others, of course.

  When my mouth was full of bacon, the waitress asked, “Where’d you get the wolf cub?” and I almost choked. “He’s good with that kid, you wouldn’t expect that.” I looked again. She wasn’t referring to my human out there. Nope, now there was a baby goat with the others. Jimmy (of course) lifted it up by the scruff of its neck and pushed some chow or whatever they had, over to it. So did the wolf cub.

  The waitress came back for our plates. She looked outside again and her eyes narrowed. “I know that kid, there was someone looking for him just the other day. Seems like he was kidnapped or something. Jeff, you didn’t…” and her horrified eyes cut from Jeff to me. “Two of them?” she hollered. “I know you’ve always wanted to have a threesome but I thought you liked women!”

  “Time to go!” Jeff hollered back, and threw a twenty on the table. He grabbed my arm and we fled. We gathered up the posse and climbed into the car and off we went in the usual gravel-spurting, rubber-peeling roar that I was getting so well used to.

  While my breathing was still harsh, he was laughing again. “I do like women, but not that particular one anymore. At least she didn’t accuse me of liking the goat, too!” And I had to laugh with him. Besides, the goat, like the rest of us, was just a kid. Jeff read my mind again. “And I don’t like them underage, either!”

  Once things settled down, Jeff asked me where I was going. I told him about Aunt Sophie. He asked where she lived and I told him that. His face turned red.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Had there been something in the paper?

  “Nothing,” he replied, “It’s just such an old-fashioned name. It really takes me back, like this car.”

  I could agree with that, as once again the car was older than the last. I wondered if time travel was possible. I wondered how I could get rid of, I mean, if Aunt Sophie would allow all my free-loaders, I mean pets and ‘brother’, to stay with us there on her farm? Or if I’d get arrested for this having the kid I’d brought along but what else could I have done with him? He sure was good with the pets. I looked in the back. There he was, half asleep, curled up around Jimmy, the cat on his lap, the baby goat and the fox, no, wolf cub, right; curled up asleep, and a large bag of grass clippings spilled all over them.

  “I smell something,” Jeff said, sniffing the air.

  “I—do too, now that you mention it,” I muttered, willing him to not look in the back seat. But, of course, he did, “Holy smoke the church is on fire!” he shouted.

  I said, “What? Where?”

  Jeff drove off the road, safely, skillfully. “Weed! That’s weed! Where’d all the weed come from!”

  Nobody answered, but one or two of the gun compartme
nts were standing open now. Jeff laughed until he had a coughing fit. He pounded the steering wheel. He leapt out before he peed himself. I did not get the joke. The backseat was full of weeds—oh, weed, I figured out slowly in my dim, over-protected mind. That kind of weed. I was so clueless I’d had no idea.

  They’re all asleep,” I said when Jeff got back in.

  “Nah, they’re all stoned,” he said. “Let’s get out of here! It was my lucky day when I picked you up. That’s what I said, remember? ‘Ass, grass, or cash’.”

  I joined him glumly, “Nobody rides for free.”

  We parted ways at the next large junction, where I’d be getting off the highway and onto the local road that led to Aunt Sophie’s. Jeff had insisted I keep some of the weed. He’d run into the small corner store where he dropped me off, buying up plastic bags, mumbling about his fortune being made. He left just before the woman in the store, who had been staring at my ‘brother’, called the police.

  Chapter 10

  The rest of us were sitting outside on the wooden porch when they showed up, in the form of one police car, and one officer, who happened to be a woman. My menagerie slunk beneath the porch. My boy said, “This man saved my life. I’ll tell you all about it but I want to see my grandma first. She lives…” but I didn’t hear the rest. Now that the boy was safe, I wanted to get away. No cops for me please, with all those animals and a bagful of weed and money and God knows what the gift I’d been given earlier was, so off I went, not under the porch, but behind the building, where one by one, the animals followed. I wanted one more ride, but I didn’t want it to be in a police car!

  Well, I got that one more ride, but true to my travelling backwards in time, this one was a wagon full of hay. Yup, with a tobacco spitting driver with two huge horses. I thought he was probably Amish but hadn’t they all gone away with the last century? A shiver went up my back. Time travel, oh my God. For a minute I really believed in it. Then most of that belief went away on a surge of logic. Some of it did not. The man invited us all up when he heard Aunt Sophie’s name and said he would have us there in half an hour.

  I was so confused. I was both relieved that I was almost there and sorry my trip was over. Just think of what I would have missed if I’d taken the train. Although…later I heard the very train I would have been on had derailed halfway here! I might have been killed! You just never know.

  Relaxing in the wagon I almost wished I really had gone back in time; things must have been so much easier then, in some ways. I wished I were young enough to believe it had happened; think how cool that would have been. And I would have pretended to be—or would I really have been—so shocked when it proved to just be a coincidence. Still, when we pulled up in front of Aunt Sophie’s farmhouse and she and her friend came out on the porch dressed in clothes from the last century, my heart did flips, I started to have a panic attack and Jimmy put his paw on my lap. The driver looked at me sternly. “Don’t be nervous,” he said. “They’re just lesbians. Ain’t nothing to be afraid of.”

  I—wait, what? And I started to laugh, little bubbles of giggles and unmasculine tee-hees coming out of my mouth like I’d never heard before. I got down, with the animals following, thanked the man, and started toward the house.

  Aunt Sophie yelled, “Hurry up, we don’t want to be late for the car show and reunion at the Grange!”

  This went over my head. I was still giggling when I washed up and watered the herd. I joined them out front and we all climbed into something else out of the past. My shock must have shown because Aunt Sophie said, her eyes twinkling, “What, haven’t you ever seen a horseless carriage before?” and we were off in a loud poof of dust and smoke. At the last minute Jimmy jumped up onto the running board and I had to drag him inside, where he sat proudly beside me, his ears and tongue flapping in the bit of breeze our slow speed brought.

  Holding onto her floppy hat with one hand and steering with the other, Aunt Sophie introduced me to her friend. The woman looked familiar somehow. “This is my wife, Maureen. We got legally married just last week! I can’t believe that after 48 years of being together, we were finally able to make the same commitment as any straight couple. Now if one of us dies first, the other will be able to take care of our final wishes, be with us in the hospital or hospice, and of course, inherit all we’ve worked for so hard together.”

  I was overwhelmed. I’d never thought about all that stuff. Sophie and Maureen smiled at each other. Jimmy barked his approval and we all laughed. Then I remembered where I’d seen Maureen before, or, well, a painting of her, and I blushed hard.

  While this was all a big surprise to me, it wasn’t over yet. Just when I’d stopped believing that you could go back in time, we arrived at the Grange, where we were surrounded by old cars, several of which I realized, I’d seen before—and even ridden in. Sophie’s wife, Maureen, and I were arm in arm, walking around the field. We both had ice cream cones. Jimmy was with us when we saw Chuck’s wife there with one of the boys and the baby (the human one). With her were two police officers. As we walked by her husband Chuck came running up, trailing two policemen himself, screaming at her. This conversation ensued, while Maureen and I watched, like two little kids at a Saturday matinee.

  Cop: Is this the man, ma’am?

  Wife: Get away from me!

  Baby: WAH! Blurt.

  Boy: Daddy, Daddy!

  Chuck: Come here son, get away from her! Where’s Jimmy?

  Cop: Is Jimmy the boy she kidnapped?

  Chuck: (mirthless) That’s my goddamn dog; where is he! First you kill my baby and now you lost my dog? (cuss words and epithets)

  Cop: Murder? What the hell? You killed his baby? Then whose baby is this?

  Wife, looking around frantically, seeing me: “Him! It’s his!”

  Maureen: No way, he’s been here with me and Sophie the whole time.

  Me: perfectly sublime and innocent smile.

  Behind my back Jimmy came sneaking along, then rushed over and bit both Chuck and Wife soundly, growling fiercely, then, still with a piece of fabric in his mouth, came happily back to me and we all walked away.

  I was flooded with joy as I realized not only did I love this dog, but he was the most beautiful dog I had ever seen; after all, it’s not just beauty that is only skin deep, but sometimes, ugliness is also, hiding the beauty that lies within. This I realized, also pertained to cars and people as well. It was as if a huge light bulb went off in my head.

  Next we walked past the white van, now half painted with naked women on one side and a witch on the other. Chuck must have been thinking of his wife, or both of them. I was still confused over the wife/wives situation but I didn’t even want to think about it. Not my business; not my problem.

  The kids from the van were all hanging around too. The boy who had—anyway, one of them smiled and winked at me. I smiled back and then grinned at Maureen as she said, ‘‘Oh, he’s such a nice boy. He does our heavy cleaning for us and mows the lawn. You’ll be seeing a lot of him this summer.’’

  I didn’t tell her I’d already seen quite a bit of him and liked what I’d seen. We grinned at each other. This visit was looking so much better than before. I was bursting to have my first summer romance and now it looked as if the game was on. Oh, yes, indeed. Wasn’t one of the songs I’d heard something about ‘lookin’ for love’? Well here we are! Hello there!

  Phil and Ms. Barge were hugging between their two cars. “I thought you’d sold it!” Phil cried.

  “No, I wouldn’t do that to you, it was in the barn!” Ms. Barge said, patting his shoulder.

  Phil said, “You can buy yourself that camera now; I know you’ve been wanting a new one. If we could keep this car, then we can surely afford a nice new camera for you.’’ Ms. Barge winked at me, smiling over Phil’s shoulder. “I did buy it but I don’t think I want it anymore.’’ She nodded at me and suddenly I knew what she had given me, and I could hardly wait to use it. Even more important was her belief in
me, that I could achieve something wonderful and helpful to others with it. She was now right up there with Bob for—I don’t know, I don’t know the words. Maybe there aren’t words, but I’d never forget either of them.

  Even better still—maybe my new ‘friend’ would pose for me. Gotta love digital, I thought happily. I was so happy I could have cried. Bless her, dear Ms. Barge. It made me kind of warm up to my own mother, and I wondered if she was really as nice as Ms. Barge; yes, I think I’d been misjudging my own mom. It was something to think about; yet another gift from one of the people I’d met, and in the long run, more important than a mere camera.

  And there came Jeff, steaming into the parking lot with six police cars behind him. I laughed and laughed until I realized that the old fake Dodge police cars were lined up just a bit farther on, and that the ones chasing Jeff were real ones.

  “Oh look,” said Maureen to Sophie as we met her again, “there’s your nephew!” Sophie and Maureen both smiled fondly. “The Staties are here. Looks like they’re after him again.”

  Sophie narrowed her eyes, and as Jeff went flying by, the wheels of the heavy vehicle flinging grass and dirt behind him, a dozen or so plastic bags came flying out the window. People, including Sophie, grabbed them and tucked them out of sight.

  “Speedy delivery!” came Jeff’s voice, trailing behind him, as if he’d done this many times before—I wouldn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. But I think I did.

  Sophie smiled proudly. “Doesn’t he always drive the nicest cars?”

  Maureen smiled. “I remember that one. I rode in it several times when Mr. Roosevelt was out of town. With Eleanor, of course.” She sighed fondly.

  A couple of high school kids came over waving pencils at me. “Can I have your autograph? I never met anyone famous before.” All of them, the boys and the girls, looked from my face to my crotch and back up, and most of them blushed.