In For a Penny (11 page)

“But what did he want? This is too weird. He was reading one of my
books.
Who would break into a house to read the books?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anything’s missing. There was money on the dresser in the bedroom, and it’s still there. Your jewelry box hasn’t been touched. …”

There was a sudden silence now, and Alan realized that the curtains were moving gently in the breeze through the open window. He ducked away down the side of the house as quickly and silently as he could, half expecting to hear the window slide open behind him or the sound of hurrying footsteps in the house. Without hesitating he set straight out across the back lawn toward the garden shed, looking back at the kitchen window and back door. The light was on in the kitchen, but there was still no one visible.

Should he get the chair out of the shed? Be sitting down for this? Reenact the whole thing exactly? He dug the five objects out of his pocket and held them in one hand, hopefully anticipating the disorienting shift, the rising of the wind, the rippling air. But nothing happened. He was simply alone in the moonlit night, the crickets chirping around him. His father appeared in the kitchen now, clearly heading toward the back door, and Alan moved back toward the grapevines, out of sight. He heard the door open as he sat down on the lawn, laying the objects on his knees, compelling himself to concentrate on them and not on the approaching footsteps, which stopped close by. He opened his eyes and looked up, feeling like an idiot. His father stood a few feet away, a golf club in his hands, staring down at him. Alan stared back in momentary confusion. He might have been looking at his own brother.

“Why don’t you just stay there,” his father said, “so I don’t have to bean you with this driver.”

“Sure.”

“What were you doing in the house?”

For a time Alan couldn’t answer. When he found his voice he said simply, “I’m Alan.”

“Okay. I’m Phil. Pardon me if I don’t shake your hand. What the hell were you doing in my house? What were you looking for?”

Alan smiled at the question, which was no easier to answer than the last one. “My past,” he said. “I was looking for my past. You don’t recognize me, do you? You can’t.”

“What do you mean, your past? Did you used to live here or something? This is some kind of nostalgia thing?”

“Yeah. I used to live here.”

“So what are you doing with my son’s stuff? That’s from his room, isn’t it? That dog and the tiki?”

“It’s from his room. But I didn’t steal it.”

“You’re just borrowing it?”

“Yes,” Alan said softly. Then, “No, it’s mine, too. I
am
Alan. … Dad.” He had to force himself to say it out loud, and he found that there were tears welling in his eyes. His father still stood staring at him, his own face like a mask.

Alan went on, pulling random bits from his memory: “You bought me the aquarium at that place in Garden Grove, off Magnolia Street. We got a bunch of fish, and they all ate each other, and we had to go back down there and buy more. And you know the cracked shade on the lamp in the living room? Me and Eddie Landers did that by accident after school on Halloween day when we were waiting for Mom to come home. That was probably last Halloween, or maybe two years ago at the most. I was the mummy, remember? Eddie was Count Dracula. He was staying here because his parents were out of town. Let me show you something,” he said, carefully laying the five trinkets on the brick pad in front of the shed door and then shifting forward to get to his feet. His father took a step back, and the head of the golf club rose where it had been resting on the lawn. Alan stopped moving. “Can I get up?”

“Okay. Slowly, eh?”

“Sure. Just getting my wallet.” Alan stood, reaching into his back pocket. He took his driver’s license out of his wallet and held it out. “Look at the date.” He pocketed the wallet, and his father took the card, turning it so that it was illuminated by moonlight. “Above the picture,” Alan told him. He heard laughter from inside the house now, and realized that it was himself, probably watching television, still oblivious to everything going on outside here.

After glancing at it his father handed the license back. “I guess I don’t get it,” he said. But clearly he did get it; he simply couldn’t believe it.

Alan put the license into his shirt pocket. “I came back from – from thirty years from now. In the future.” He pointed at the objects lying on the bricks. “You and I buried this stuff in a coffee can, like a treasure, under the first stepping stone, right there.”

“We did, eh? We buried them? When was that?”

Alan shrugged. “Any day now, I guess. Next month? I don’t know, but we buried them. We will, anyway. I came back and dug them up.”

There was the sound of the back door opening, and his mother came out onto the back stoop, looking in their direction. “What are you doing, dear?” she asked with feigned cheerfulness. “Is everything all right?” Probably she was ready to call the police.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Alan’s father said back to her. “Just … putting some stuff away.” She stepped back into the house and shut the door, but then reappeared in the kitchen, where she stood at the window, watching. His father was still staring at him, but puzzled, less suspicious now.

“You remember the time we were up at Irvine Park,” Alan asked, “and we found those old bottle caps with the cork on the back, and you got the corks out and put the bottle caps on my shirt, with the cork holding them on from the other side? And I picked up that cactus apple and got all the needles in my hand? And it started to rain, and we got under the tree, and you said that the pitcher of lemonade would get wet, and mom ran back to the table to cover it?”

His father dropped the golf club to the lawn, letting it lie there. “That was thirty years ago,” Alan said. “Can you imagine? It’s still funny, though. And there was that time when Mom lost her purse, remember, and she looked all over for it, and you came home from work and found it in the refrigerator?”

“She put it away with the groceries,” his father said. “That was last month.”

Alan nodded. “I guess it could have been.” He realized now that his father’s silence was no longer disbelief, and he stepped forward, opening his arms. His father hugged him, and for a time they stood there, listening to the night, saying nothing. Alan stepped away finally, and his father squeezed him on the shoulder, smiling crookedly, looking hard at his face.

Alan reached into his pocket and took out the odds and ends that he carried, the buffalo nickel, his pocketknife. He showed his father the little antler-handled knife. “Recognize this? It’s just like the one you gave me, except I lost that one. I found this one just like it at the hardware store and bought it about a year ago.”

“I didn’t give you a pocketknife like that.”

“You know what? I guess maybe you haven’t given it to me yet.”

“Then I guess I don’t need to bother, if you’re just going to lose the damned thing.”

Alan smiled at him. “But if you don’t, then how am I going to know to buy this one at the hardware store?”

They listened in silence to the crickets for a moment. “How old would you be now?” his father asked him.

“Forty-two,” Alan said. “How about you?”

“Forty. That’s pretty funny. Married?”

“Yeah. Take a look at this.” He dug in his wallet again, removing a picture of Tyler, his high school graduation picture. He looked at it fondly, but abruptly felt dizzy, disoriented. He nearly sat down to keep himself from falling. His father took the picture, and the dizziness passed. “That’s Tyler,” Alan said, taking a deep breath and focusing his thoughts. But he heard his own voice as an echo, as if through a tube. “Your grandson. Susan and I gave him Mom’s maiden name.”

Alan’s father studied the picture. “He looks like your mother, doesn’t he?”

“A lot. I didn’t realize it until tonight, when she was standing in my bedroom. You must have seen that the window was open… ?”

“Your
bedroom,” his father said, as if wondering at the notion. “Here.” Alan took his keys out of his other pocket. Among them was the loose house key that he had removed from the nail in the juniper. “That’s how I got into the house.”

Still holding Tyler’s picture, his father took the key. He nodded at the other keys on Alan’s key ring. “What’s that one?”

Alan held out his car key. “Car key. One of the buttons is for the door locks and the other pops the trunk open from a distance. There’s a little battery in it. It puts out an FM radio wave. Push the door button a couple of times, and an alarm goes off.” Alan pushed it twice, recalling that his own car, in some distant space and time, was sitting just thirty feet away, and he found himself listening to hear a ghostly car alarm. But what he heard, aside from the crickets and the muted sound of the television, was a far-off clanking noise, like rocks cascading onto a steel plate. The night wind ruffled his hair. And from beyond the fence, just for a split second, the dark canopy of walnut leaves looked hard-edged and rectilinear to him, like rooftops. Then it was a dark, slowly moving mass again, and he heard laughter and the sound of the television.

“Thirty years?”

“It seems like a long time, but I swear it’s not.”

“No, I don’t guess it is. What’s the date back where you come from? Just out of curiosity.”

Alan thought about it. “Eighth of July, 2001.” He found himself thinking about his mother, doing the math in his head. What did she have? Twenty years or so? His father hadn’t ever remarried. Alan glanced toward the house where his mother still stood at the window, looking out at the night.

His father followed his gaze. “Tell me something,” he said after a moment. “Were you happy? You know, growing up?”

“I was happy,” Alan said truthfully. “It was a good time.”

“You found your heart’s desire?”

“Yeah, I married her.”

“And how about your boy Tyler? You think he’s happy?” He held the picture up.

“I think so. Sure. I know it.”

“Uh-huh. Look, I think maybe it’s better if you go back now, before your mom flips. Can you? It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Alan said, realizing absolutely that the clanking noise he had heard was the sound of a jackhammer. He took the pocketknife and nickel out of his pocket again, and held them in his hand with his keys, then reached into his shirt pocket to retrieve his driver’s license.

“I’d invite you in, you know, for ice cream and cookies, but your mother – I don’t know what she’d do. I don’t think it would…”

“I know. Alan too. …” He nodded at the house. “We might as well let him watch TV.”

“Right. It would be like…a disturbance, or something. I guess we don’t need that. We’re doing pretty good on our own.”

“And it’s going to stay good,” Alan said. “Is there anything… ?”

“That I want to know?” His father shook his head. “No. I’m happy with things like they are. I’m looking forward to meeting Tyler, though.” He handed the picture back.

“If you can ever find some way to do it,” Alan said, taking the picture, “let Mom know that…”

But he felt himself falling backward. And although it came to him later as only a dim memory, he recalled putting out his hand to stop his fall, dropping the stuff that he held. He found himself now in bright sunlight, lying on the dead Bermuda grass, the words of his half-finished sentence lost to him, the onrushing wind already dying away and the smell of grapes heavy on the sun-warmed air. The telltale glitter shimmered before his eyes, and he sat up dizzily, looking around, squinting in the brightness, hearing the clanging of the jackhammer, which cut off sharply, casting the afternoon into silence. He saw that the shed was dilapidated and doorless now, the house once again boarded up. His car, thank God, sat as ever in the driveway.

His keys! He stood up dizzily, looking down at his feet. With his keys gone he had no way of…

“Hey”

At the sound of the voice, Alan shouted in surprise and reeled away into the wall of the shed, turning around and putting out his hands. He saw that a man sat in the dilapidated aluminum lawn chair beneath the silk oak – his father, smiling at him. With the sun shining on his face, he might have been a young man. Alan lowered his hands and smiled back.

“Welcome home,” his father said to him.

b
lake heard the stones clatter down around him – three circular black stones of quartz-veined basalt that had fallen out of the sky like tiny meteors washed from a celestial river. Why they had fallen on
him
was a mystery that failed to engage his mind beyond a momentary puzzlement. Perhaps they were meant to draw his attention, or to hurry him along, although certainly there was no one else visible in the dry arroyo, which rose toward remote and hazy foothills in a broad and revealing vista. Nearer by, the scrub-covered canyon walls were steep and rocky, and on the sandy creek bed the sycamores and sparse stands of alder were nearly bare, the last leaves of fall drifting lazily in the still air, piling up in silent drifts among bleached stones and lengthening shadows like autumn memories.

From where he stood on a small rise, Blake could see for miles to the south and west, where the world he inhabited apparently ended in cloud drift, and beyond which lay a world in which he had become a mere memory, a world in which life went on without him. He couldn’t quite recall what had become of that world, or how long he had been waiting there on the hilltop. It seemed to him that he had merely stopped for a moment in passing, that his way lay farther on, and in the quiet of his surroundings he heard what sounded like the rush and roar of moving water, of subterranean cataracts flowing lightless and unseen beneath the living stone of the arroyo, and he was filled with a lingering fear that the water and the turning seasons were in that very instant pirating away his small accumulation of leftover memories.