Here by Mistake (24 page)

They watched as the Brandon, Stephen, and Sarah in the image explored the basement. Sarah emerged from behind some crates looking shaken. (“That’s when the grizzly scared me,” Sarah said, pointing.) She walked down the middle of the basement, paused to browse some snapshots, and started walking again. She drew closer, then closer still, and stopped when she was as tall as the Sarah watching her. She looked up and down and from side to side with a puzzled expression. (“I’m trying to figure the niche out,” Sarah said.) Then Brandon and Stephen ran out of the stacks and stood with her.

“Wild,” Brandon whispered. “They’re looking right at us, but they don’t see us.”

“We see them,” Reginald said. “Why can’t we hear them?”

Quint shrugged. “It’s not a TV.”

The Brandon in the image grabbed the wide black bars and pulled them away. In his hands the black bars became slats. Quint glanced at the pliers in his hand and pushed them into his back pocket.

“In a minute they’ll go through,” Brandon said. “All set?”

Stephen slipped off his jacket, folded it neatly, and set it on the floor next to Brandon’s and Sarah’s. He took off his glasses and zipped them into a side pocket of his backpack. Sarah tucked her cell phone into a button-down pocket of her jeans and retied her Nikes. “My shoes almost flew off before,” she said. Stephen donned his backpack and clipped the strap across his chest.

Brandon checked his pockets and made sure his Adidas runners were laced tightly. “Well, that’s it, I guess,” he said. “Reginald . . .”

Reginald had backed away from the niche and was standing near the conveyor belt. Brandon went up to him and, not thinking, offered him a fist bump. Reginald grabbed the fist and pried the fingers open. Looking away, he grasped Brandon’s hand. “Thank you, B,” he said formally.

Brandon laughed. “‘Thank you, B’? Thank you, Reginald. You saved us.”

Reginald shrugged.

Brandon held onto his hand. “See you again?”

Reginald bowed his head and tried to pull his hand back. Brandon held on for a moment, then let go. He started to turn away.

“Stop,” Reginald said.

Brandon stopped.

“You promised,” Reginald said, looking him dead in the eye. “No more hating.”

Brandon gave him a nod which was almost a bow. “I promise.”

The Sarah in the image was arguing with Brandon. He took her gently by the shoulders and moved her away from the niche.

Brandon approached Quint and stuck out his hand. “Quint, I can’t think what to say . . . Um, thanks.”

Quint grabbed his hand and pulled him into a bear hug. “I’ll miss the fights, B,” he said, slapping him on the back. “Now my life’ll be borin’ again.”

Brandon held on to him. “I wish—”

“No wishes.” Quint smiled. “Just remember, y’owe me a conversation about our friend, Mr. Niche.”

Reluctantly Brandon let him go. “Okay,” he murmured.

Stephen and Sarah quickly said their goodbyes to Quint and Reginald.

The Brandon in the image, braced by Stephen, leaned toward them. Just when it seemed he would pop out of the niche and land on the factory floor, the image dissolved and the recess churned anew. It settled quickly with an image showing only Sarah. Quint, Brandon, Stephen, Sarah, and Reginald watched her panicked figure, face twisted, screaming in silence. She ran toward the stairs, ran back, and bolted toward them. The image vanished and the churning resumed.

“It’s time,” Brandon said. He gave the snapshot to Quint and the thumbs-up to Reginald. He did his best to smile. “See you in forty years.”

Quint held up the snapshot. “See y’tomorrow,” he said with a wink.

Brandon clasped hands with Stephen on his right and Sarah on his left. He stared boldly into the recess. “Now.” They dashed forward and disappeared into the churn.

Reginald shrieked and buried his face in Quint’s chest.

The recess settled quickly but did not produce an image. Instead, it deepened into the amber metallic hue of the rest of the niche. Quint separated himself from Reginald and went up to it. He brushed the recess with the back of his hand. He pressed his palms to the cold, hard metal. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered.

“Ow,” Brandon cried. He tumbled head over heels, flipped over Stephen, and landed on his back.

“B? Okay?” Stephen asked, himself rubbing his tailbone.

Brandon sat up slowly and nodded. “You?”

“As soon as I find my glasses. My backpack flew off after all.”

“Here it is.” It was Sarah’s voice. She poked her head out of the green folds of a comforter she had landed on. “It hit me in the face,” she snapped, handing it over.

Stephen unzipped the side pocket and took out his glasses. The taped stem had come off. He put them on anyway.

“They sit straighter on your face than before,” Brandon said, rotating his shoulders. “Can everyone stand?”

They got stiffly to their feet. Brandon raised his head and saw the niche—shining as always and leaning against the stone wall. He went up to it and knocked on the recess. It was solid. He turned around. Row upon row of stacked crates stretched before him. The smell he recalled from his aunt’s basement filled his nostrils. A smile spread across his face.

“Everything’s the same. We made it. We’re back!”

“We’re back,” Sarah agreed. “But it’s not the same.” She waved her hand across piles of comforters, blankets, and pillows on the floor. “These weren’t here.”

“That’s right,” Stephen said, flipping the quilted corner of a sleeping bag with his foot. “Where’d they come from?”

A hearty laugh, familiar yet deeper than they had become accustomed to, cut through the stale air. A broad figure stepped out from behind the first row of stacks. His salt-and-pepper hair and two days of white beard caught the light. His gray eyes were smiling. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ve been waiting forty years for this.” He spread his arms and grinned. “Welcome back, y’all.”

Brandon took an amazed step back, then ran and threw his arms around him.

Quint laughed again. He held his friend tightly. “Welcome home, B,” he said.

They climbed the stairs to the kitchen. “Let’s sit down a minute,” Quint said. They took seats around the same table where, forty years before, they had planned their move on Kingsworth Shoes. Quint leaned back and blushed as his young friends studied him.

Brandon started off. “I have questions.”

“Me too,” Stephen said.

Quint nodded. “Tomorrow, we—”

“What happened, Quint?” Brandon cut in. “You didn’t look this old before.”

Sarah answered him curtly. “Yes, he did. He’s the same as when we left.”

Brandon glared at her. “No way. His hair’s grayer, and there’re bags under his eyes.” He pointed to the bags.

“He had those before,” Sarah snapped.

Stephen leaned across the table for a better look. “That’s right, they’re no different.”

Quint huffed, “As I was saying, tomorrow—”

“I think we changed time and caused it somehow,” Brandon cut in. “He looks fatter, too.” His voice became contrite. “I’m sorry, Quint. I didn’t mean to change things up and do this to you.”

Sarah lost all patience. “You’re crazy, B. He was just as fat before.”

Smack! Quint’s palms hit the table, and everyone jumped. “Y’all are looking wonderful, too,” he said evenly. “Now, as I was saying, tomorrow we all need to talk. It’s important. Be at my place at eleven, okay?”

Everyone agreed.

“Sir,” Stephen said.

Quint was massaging the bags under his eyes. “Yes, my man.”

“Today’s the day we left for 1965, and”—he leaned his chair back to see out the window—“it still looks like afternoon. Did we come back right after we left?”

Quint was nodding before he had finished. “Yes. Y’all got back less than a minute after Sarah ran through.”

Stephen gasped. “You were in the basement the whole time.”

“I knew today was the day. I hid in the stacks with the quilts. When y’all left I threw them in front of the niche as fast as I could. I’d just finished when y’all came back.”

Brandon flexed his shoulders and winced. “Thanks. It would’ve been some landing without the soft stuff.”

“You could’ve stopped us going through in the first place,” Sarah said accusingly.

Quint’s features then hardened into an expression Brandon had never seen on him. “Hold it right there, Sarah,” he said, thumping the tabletop with his finger. “I could’ve stopped y’all, but not in the first place. Remember, this was the point where time wrapped around. Y’all did your deal with the niche by yourselves in the first place. I wasn’t in the basement then. Y’all came charging into 1965 and turned it upside down, whether you wanted to or not. I and others have lived with your changes for forty years. They’re part of us. We don’t need a sermon from y’all now that it was all a screw-up. So I’m not apologizing for letting y’all go through the niche today. When it mattered—in the first place—it was y’all who made the decision. Do you read me on that?”

Sarah paled and slid her chair back. “I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry.”

“Sir,” Stephen said uneasily, “did bad things happen because of us?”

Quint’s anger left him as quickly as it had come. “I don’t remember saying that. I think I just said there were changes.”

“What changes?” Brandon and Stephen said together.

Quint rose from the table. “Tomorrow, my place, eleven.”

They got up and left the house. Quint walked up the driveway and raised the garage door. He backed his 2004 Acura down to where Brandon, Stephen, and Sarah were standing.

“I was expecting the Edsel,” said Brandon, smiling.

A faraway look came to Quint’s eye. “Best car I ever had,” he said softly. “Kept it going ’til sixty-nine, when the engine block cracked. This one’s okay, but there’s no suspense.”

Stephen looked up from his reflection in the door. “Suspense?”

“Hasn’t backfired once since I bought it.” He nodded to the back seat. “Y’all want a lift?”

Brandon gave him a wave. “No thanks, Quint. See you tomorrow.”

Quint backed into the street and drove off. Brandon, Sarah, and Stephen started for home. Brandon studied every house they passed for changes but found none. Stephen frowned as one modern car after another drove by. “Boring,” he grumbled as a 2000 Chevy Cavalier zipped up the street. “Nineteen sixty-five had a classic every minute.” Sarah jumped with glee at the sight of a satellite dish on a house. She flipped open her cell phone and squealed when she got a connection.

They came to Brandon’s house and stopped at the end of the driveway. Brandon traced in the gravel with his toe and tried to find words for his friends. “I hope everything’s okay for you at home. You never barked on me for what I did . . . um . . . thanks.”

Sarah kissed him on the cheek.

Stephen shook his hand warmly. “Wouldn’t have missed it, B.”

At that moment the screen door of the Jones house flew open. A stout woman with curly brown hair stepped onto the landing and shook out a blanket. As she turned to go back inside she spotted Brandon and waved. “Hello, B,” she called out.

Brandon stood as if frozen.

“Say hello,” Sarah whispered.

Brandon raised his arm and mimicked the woman’s broad wave. “Hi,” he called with a foolish grin.

The woman nodded happily and went back in the house. His hand still in the air, Brandon turned to Sarah.

“Who’s that?”

Sarah took his arm and pulled it down. “How would I know?”

He turned to Stephen.

“I don’t know, B,” Stephen said slyly, “but I think she likes you.”

Sunday, June 26, was bright and cool. Brandon, Stephen, and Sarah reached Quint’s door at ten minutes before eleven.

Quint answered the bell, holding his coffee. “Come on in,” he said. “Time got away from me this morning. Was on the computer ’til four.” He brought them into the living room and moved two stacks of computer CDs from the couch to the end table. “Pardon me, my man,” he said, easing past Stephen to get to the kitchen. He returned with two chairs.

Brandon flopped down happily on the couch. Nothing made him feel better than Quint’s place—in 1965 or 2005. He stretched and yawned and noticed the coffee table. For the first time he could recall it was not piled high with financial reports and business magazines. It held only a snapshot, face down, and a few sheets of paper. He turned over the snapshot. Sure enough, it was the one of him and Quint comparing biceps. Then he did a double-take. When he looked up, Quint was grinning at him.

“This doesn’t show your tattoo.”

Quint raised his left sleeve. “What tattoo?”

Brandon stared at his arm and checked the snapshot. “You had it taken off?”

“Never got it. I decided to trust what you told me back in sixty-five—that I’d regret it. Sooo . . . thanks, B.”

“I gave you this,” Brandon said, holding up the picture. “It showed a tattoo.”

Quint reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a yellowed square. “No, you gave me this, forty years ago. The one in your hand was taken yesterday.” He dropped his snapshot on the table.

Brandon set his picture next to Quint’s. “Why’d we take the one yesterday?”

“I wanted to, for laughs,” Quint said. “I just zinged you about that skinny muscle of yours and you were more than happy to pose.”

“Why isn’t one of the pictures burning up?” Sarah asked nervously.

“Because they’re not the same thing in the same time,” Stephen said.

Quint nodded. “Y’all are becoming quite the experts in this time travel business.” He took up his picture and patted Brandon on the back. “Keep the new one, B, if you’re not embarrassed by it.” He stepped into the kitchen and returned with three Dr. Peppers.

Brandon slid the papers on the coffee table over and flipped the top one. He read the footer:
http://www.philadelphiainquirer.org/archive/y1998/326/18
. “What’s this, Quint?”

“A newspaper article from 1998. Got it off the Internet.”

Brandon glanced at the title—“The Children’s Hospital’s Healing Hand”—and immediately lost interest. He pushed the papers away.

Quint settled himself on the couch with his coffee. “It needs more time than that, B. Why don’t you read it to us?”

“Quint, we want to know the changes,” Brandon said impatiently. “We won’t get them from old newspapers.”

“Oh, won’t y’all? Just read it.”

Stephen and Sarah were now interested. Brandon grumpily took up the papers and made a show of rustling and snapping them. He read aloud: “The five-year-old patient, pale and bald, lay in his bed. He showed no interest in the stuffed animals surrounding him. His eyes and mouth were expressionless. The doctor pressed a hand to his forehead and stroked his cheek. ‘Billy, we’re going to make you well,’ she said softly. She went on to explain in skillful children’s English what a bone marrow transplant is and how it would help him. Billy, an inpatient at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman Oncology Unit, smiled weakly. The doctor, Chief Oncologist and Unit Director Victoria Stanhope, smiled back and—” Brandon’s hand twitched and the papers got away from him. “Stanhope,” he gasped. “She’s—”

Quint nodded.

“The girl you saved,” Stephen whispered.

Sarah snatched the papers off the carpet and started reading.

“Wow,” Stephen exclaimed. “Wow!”

“Do we really know it’s her?” Brandon asked. “The same Stan- hope?”

Quint started to answer, but Sarah cried: “Yes! It says here her father was the governor. And . . . it says she fell off a horse when she was five.”

“It’s her,” Quint said. He set down his coffee and lay a warm hand on Brandon’s shoulder. “B, a long time ago I reamed you for stopping that horse, and I was never so wrong in my life. I said it then and I’ll say it now, too. I’m sorry. That day you did the best thing anyone could ever do.”

“A doctor,” Sarah whispered, immersed in the article.

“She helps kids,” Stephen said excitedly.

Brandon felt warm in the face and a little dizzy. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

The doorbell rang. “As if on cue,” Quint said, grinning.

“What?” Brandon asked.

“Nothing.” He got up and made for the kitchen. “Get that for me, will you, B?”

Brandon’s legs felt like rubber as he walked to the door. The rubber turned to jelly when he opened it.

“Hello, B!” Reginald Jones boomed. He took a long step forward and thrust out his fist.

Brandon jumped back and fell over a box of old magazines. He got up and stiffly returned the fist bump. Reginald threw an arm over his shoulder and playfully dragged him into the living room. He let go at the couch and Brandon, head spinning, took his seat.

“Reginald, what a surprise.” Quint laughed, returning from the kitchen with a soda and a chair. “Take a load off.”

Load? The word struck Brandon, for Reginald Jones, while big, was no four-hundred-pounder now. He stood tall and straight and moved with a bouncy step—not old Jonesy’s waddle. In fact, in the stuck-out ears and goofy grin of the man before him Brandon saw nine-year-old Reginald—not his old, nasty neighbor.

Reginald shook hands with Sarah and Stephen. He took the chair from Quint and set it at Brandon’s end of the couch. He held his Dr. Pepper high. “Here’s to a happy ending,” he said. All raised their bottles and drank the toast.

Brandon kept drinking until his soda was finished.

“So, you all made it back with no bumps or bruises?” Reginald asked, taking his seat.

“Not too many.” Stephen smiled.

Sarah nodded.

Brandon nodded too. He was trying to look at Reginald and not look at him at the same time.

Reginald saw this and burst out laughing. He got up, pushed the coffee table out of the way, and planted his chair directly in front of Brandon. “Tell me, B,” he said, taking his seat again, “am I so different from that kid you sat with on the curb that day? That kid whose tears you dried? That kid whose mother was drunk?”

Brandon sank into the couch. “I . . . I didn’t say she was drunk.”

Reginald’s face softened, and he grasped the back of Brandon’s hand. “I know you didn’t,” he said kindly. “Thank you.”

“And . . . you don’t look so d-different.”

“But you remember something else, don’t you, B?” Reginald said. “The guy who tried to kick you when your football landed on his grass. The guy who barked on Stephen.”

Brandon considered making a run for the door.

“That didn’t happen . . . now,” ventured Stephen. “Did it?”

“No, it didn’t,” Reginald said, his eyes on Brandon. “B, from the time you could walk you’ve been playing on your lawn, my lawn, it didn’t matter. I knew from the day you were born you’d grow into the boy who helped me when I was small. Who bucked me up when I really needed it. Believe it or not, we’ve been great friends from the time you were yea high.” He held his hand two feet off the floor.

Brandon tried to imagine ever having been friends with old Jonesy.

Quint spoke up. “So there’s the downside. Y’all made things better, but y’all remember the old stuff. The changes’ll take time to learn. Time to get used to. It won’t be easy.”

Brandon felt dizzy and put his head back on the couch. Sarah left her chair and sat down next to him. She started to whisper in his ear but kissed him on the cheek instead. The ticking of the clock on the mantle was the only sound in the room.

“It’s still worth it,” Stephen said finally. “Isn’t it, Sarah?”

“Um . . . yes. It shouldn’t be too bad.” She smoothed her hand over Brandon’s cheek. “B?”

Brandon raised his head. “I wouldn’t change it back even if I could. I’m glad we went to 1965.” He looked squarely at the man before him, so different from the Jonesy he had known all his life. “I remember what I promised you like it was yesterday,” he said without irony. “I meant it, and I mean it. No more hating. Just tell me one thing. I used to call you Jonesy, because you hated it. Now, what do I call you?”

Reginald’s face puckered. “Well, when your mom and dad are around, you call me Mr. Jones. But when it’s just you and me, you call me . . .” He leaned forward. “R.”

Brandon’s mouth fell open. “R?”

“R and B,” Quint roared, spitting up his coffee. Everyone laughed except Brandon, but Sarah put her face in his, and in a moment he was laughing too.