Memories of the Future (21 page)

“But the complications might not end there. Traveling through time at a terrific rate of speed might very well create an eddy in the time stream, in which case the Time Traveler, before he returned, would have to wait till the time that had passed in the future or the past exactly equaled the time that had passed in the present. But aside from all this, Julie, time travel would be too complex an undertaking for one man to accomplish alone, and a simple time machine like the Time Traveler’s simply wouldn’t do the trick. If time is tied in with light, what the true time traveler would need would be a photon field whose controls were operated by other men. Using the field, the other men would cast him into the future or the past and, after he equalized the time and space he had lost, would use the field to bring him back.”

Most of this went way over my head. I knew it went way over Julie’s, too, but she seemed to be satisfied.

Rone got to his feet. “If you folks’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in.”

Julie stood up on the seat of the chair and kissed him good night. “Good night, Mr. Rone,” my mother said, and I said good night, too. My father was still asleep in his chair.

* * *

The first snow fell in the middle of November. Julie and I wore our new overshoes to school. Rone borrowed my mother’s camera, bought some film, and in the days that followed began taking pictures. Neither he nor my father had been laid off yet, but I knew that soon they would be. I was worried that then Rone would leave, and I knew that Julie was worried, too. In one of her classes at school, the teacher had all the kids make Thanksgiving cards on which she instructed them to write down what they were most thankful for. Julie brought hers home to show my mother, and my mother showed it to the rest of us. It said:

I am thankful for:

My mother

My father

My brother Timothy

And Rone

On the front of the card, she had drawn a turkey, which looked more like a walrus than a bird, and colored it bright red. My mother hung the card upon the kitchen wall.

* * *

My grandparents on both my mother’s and my father’s side had dinner with us on Thanksgiving. They didn’t like each other, but my mother was certain that since it was Thanksgiving, they wouldn’t get into any arguments. They didn’t, but I think that this was because they were united on a common front, rather than because it was Thanksgiving. They disapproved of our letting a bindle stiff live with us; and throughout the meat and afterward, they looked down their noses at Rone.

On Saturday morning of that same week, Mr. Highbee’s hardware truck pulled into the yard and backed up to our back door. My mother came out to see what Mr. Highbee wanted. It had snowed all night, a soft, wet snow, and Julie and I were in the back yard building a snowman. My father had gone into town for a bag of flour so my mother could bake bread.

Rone, who had been working on the tractor in the barn, came over to the house. Mr. Highbee climbed out of the truck. He was short and portly. “Good morning, Mr. Rone. I’ll need your help to carry it in.”

“First,” Rone said, “we’ll have to carry the old one out. Hold the door open for us, will you, Tim.”

I did. They set the wood stove down in the snow, and the snow made it look even blacker than it really was. My mother stood by the back steps, watching. Julie stood beside her.

Mr. Highbee opened the rear doors of the truck. We saw it then. “Hold the door for us, Tim,” Rone said.

They carried it in and set it down on the floor where the old stove had been. Sunlight slanting through the kitchen window bathed it in brightness, and its whiteness threw forth a thousand particles of light. My mother and Julie had followed me inside. Neither of them said a word.

Mr. Highbee went outside and turned the gas off. He brought wrenches and pipes and valves and a pipe threader into the kitchen, and he and Rone connected up the stove. Then Mr. Highbee went back outside and turned the gas back on. He said goodbye to us, and Rone helped him carry his tools back to the truck. We heard the truck drive away. We heard Rone come back in.

My mother was standing by the kitchen table. She hadn’t moved in all this time. “It’s not meant to be an insinuation that you don’t cook well, ma’am,” Rone said.

“I know,” my mother said.

“That right front burner needs tightening. I’m going out to the barn and get a six-inch crescent.”

After he went out the back door, I turned toward my mother. I was going to say, ‘Boy, now I won’t have to chop any more wood!’ But I didn’t, because I saw that she was crying.

* * *

The following Friday both my father and Rone got laid off. Julie and I came down to breakfast the next morning with long faces. My mother had fixed oatmeal. She didn’t look at us when she filled our bowls. My father was standing before the back door, looking through the little window on top.

“Where’s Rone?” Julie asked. She was afraid he’d already gone. I was afraid, too.

“He took the truck into town. He had something made at the brass foundry and wanted to pick it up.”

“What did he have made?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

We never found out what it was, because when Rone came back, he didn’t tell us; and whatever it was, he must have hidden it in the barn.

* * *

The weekend passed and the new week began, and when Rone said nothing about leaving, we began to think he was going to stay. Then Thursday night he came into the living room and said, “I’m going to be on my way.”

For a while none of us said anything. Then my father said, “There’s no need for you to go. You can stay with us this winter. As soon as bottling season begins, I’m sure I can get you a job.”

“It’s not just because I’m not working. There’s—there’s another reason.”

“Are you leaving now?” my mother asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But it’s snowing.”

“No, ma’am. It’s stopped.”

“We—we wish you would stay.”

“I wish I could.” The touch of blueness had vanished from his eyes, but they were no longer the same somber gray they had been before.

A train whistled. The sound seemed to stab right through the house. “I’ll fix you some sandwiches to take with you,” my mother said.

“No, ma’am. That won’t be necessary.”

He had his old clothes on. “Your new clothes,” my mother said. “Aren’t you going to take them with you?”

Rone shook his head. “No—I’m traveling light.”

“But the jacket you bought—you’ve got to take that. You’ll freeze in just that coat!”

“No, ma’am. It’s not that cold. . . . I want to thank you people for your kindness. I—” He paused. Then he went on, “I—I didn’t know there were people like you. I—” He paused again, but this time no more words came.

My father got up and walked across the room and shook hands with him. My mother went over and kissed his check. Then she turned her face away.

“You’ve still got a week’s pay coming,” my father said. “Can’t you give me an address so I can have them send it to you?”

“I signed it over to you.”

“I won’t take it!”

A smile tiptoed across Rone’s lips. “If you don’t, you’ll only be making the rich richer.”

All this while, Julie and I had sat in silence on the couch, unable to move. It was Julie who snapped out of her paralysis first. She ran across the room and jumped up and put her arms around Rone’s neck. Then I ran across the room, too. Rone kissed both of us. “Goodbye, you kids,” he said.

Julie was crying. But I didn’t cry. Not quite. Rone walked out of the room real fast. We heard the back door open. We heard it close. All we could hear then was the sound of Julie’s sobs.

* * *

For a long time I lay in bed that night listening for a freight to slow as it came into town, but all the freights I heard rumbled right on by. Passenger trains never stopped in town at night, only in the morning. I heard one scream by in my sleep.

In the morning I got up before the sun came up, and after I dressed I put on my new overcoat, because it was cold outside, and my new overshoes. I followed Rone’s footprints in the snow. I could see them clearly in the dawn light. He hadn’t headed for the tracks; instead, he had struck off across the fields in the direction of town. About a hundred yards from the tree he had slept under, the footprints came to an end.

I stood there in the cold as the first rays of the sun shot over the land. Where the footprints ended, they were side by side, indicating he had come to a stop. Perhaps he had stood there for a while. It looked as though the snow around them had begun to melt and then had frozen again.

I thought at first that for some reason he might have jumped several feet ahead and then resumed walking. But the snow beyond the pair of footprints was unmarked. And then I thought, perhaps he walked backward, planting his feet exactly where he had planted them before. But if he had, I would have seen another set of tracks veering to the right or the left, and I had not. Besides, why would he have done such an illogical thing?

Somehow he had vanished in the night.

I stood there for a while longer, then I walked back to the house. I didn’t say anything about the footprints to my mother. It was better if she thought Rone had hopped a freight. I never said anything about them to Julie or my father either. Instead, I buried the footprints in my mind, and there they have remained for all these years, and it was not until I looked into the box that I dug them up again.

* * *

I took out the album first. On the first page there was a photo of the utterly beautiful woman who had been my mother. Next to it was a photo of a lovely little girl and a little boy with corn-color hair.

Below the photo of my mother was one of the tall, lanky man who had been my father.

On succeeding pages were other pictures of my mother and of Julie and me. There were photos of the house, and there was a photo of the barn. There was one of the snow-covered fields and one of the highest hill.

Beneath the album I found a card with a picture of a walruslike turkey on it. I remembered that it had come up missing from our kitchen wall. I turned it over and read the words again:

I am thankful for:

My mother

My father

My brother Timothy

And Rone

There was a pair of socks my mother had darned for him. I found the razor my father had given him. I came upon a notebook. There was nothing written in it. Instead, flattened between its pages, were two locks of hair. One of the locks was dark brown and as soft as silk. The other was the color of corn.

He must have been robbed when he first arrived. I’m sure they wouldn’t have sent him back without specially printed money. Broke, he had had to ride the rails. Then he had had to wait till the eddy he had created in the time stream straightened out; till the time that had passed in the future exactly equaled the time that had passed in the past.

Maybe if we hadn’t taken him in, he would have starved to death.

He must have had orders not to take anything back to the future with him. And he must have been sent into the past for a reason. Or maybe just to find out what the 1930s were like. The way, perhaps, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were sent to the moon to see what the moon was like.

I looked at the album and the Thanksgiving card. At the razor and the darned socks. At the notebook, which I still held in my hands.

What bleak land did you return to, Rone, that made the memory of us so dear?

* * *

I arranged the contents of the box exactly as I had found them and closed the lid. A long freight began rumbling by on the Conrail tracks. “Do you have a soldering iron and solder on your truck?” I asked Simms.

“You want the lid soldered back in place?”

I nodded. He didn’t ask why. “I haven’t got an iron,” he said, “but I’ve got a small acetylene tank.” He turned to one of the backhoe mechanics. “Dick, go get some solder and the tank. It’s not heavy.”

When Dick came back with the solder and the tank, Chuck Blain took over. It took him only a few minutes to reseal the lid. Then Simms turned to the other backhoe mechanic. “Larry, carry the box down the hill for Mr. Bentley.”

“No,” I said. I placed the box back into the hole it had been pulled from.
I hope no one disturbs it again, Rone.
I stood up and pointed to the bulldozer. “Tell the operator to bury it,” I said.