Mr. Was (14 page)

—P.H.

U.S. Navy Transport
Alexander
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere
July 30, 1942

Dear Andie,

They got us packed in here like sardines. The only way a guy can get a breath of air that doesn't smell like some other guy's sweat or vomit or worse is to sneak up on deck after lights out and find a spot on the leeward side of this rust bucket they call a ship. It's the middle of the night right now and they don't want us to show any lights, so I'm under a canvas with a flashlight, leaning up against one of the big guns.

The waves are as high as a house. About three quarters of the guys are seasick. As I write this, I can hear somebody a few yards away from me puking out over the rail. It's night now, but in the day you can see these schools of little silver fish that follow the ship. I think they live on the half-digested remains of our dinners, only they seem to enjoy it more.

I'm one of the lucky ones who isn't bothered by the waves. But it will sure feel good to walk on solid ground. They've finally told us where we are headed—some place called the Solomon Islands, wherever that is. Scud thinks it will be like paradise, with coconuts and native girls in grass skirts! Only somehow I don't think so and even if I do see a girl in a grass skirt, I'm sure she won't be nothing compared to you. I miss you a lot.

Probably you'll never read this, but it feels good to be writing anyway. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to send it. I can't believe how far away from Memory I've traveled. I wish sometimes I'd never let Scud talk me into joining up. I could be working with you in the munitions plant. We could see each other every day. This isn't my war anyways. But of course you wouldn't have respected that, would you, Andie? Even though I know we're going to win this war, anyway, and nothing I do or don't do is going to change that. No matter what happens to me.

Scud talks about you a lot. I have to tell you, Andie, I feel like a rat sometimes.

Love,
Jack

P.S. Today is my seventeenth birthday. Happy birthday to me.

U.S. Navy Transport
Alexander
August 12, 1942

Dear Andie,

This ocean is so big, and we've been on it for so long, I've almost forgotten what it feels like to stand on a surface that is not constantly moving. Even when the sea is dead calm, the deck vibrates and echoes with the turning of the engines. The propellers that drive this ship are as wide as your corncrib is high.

We're getting pretty itchy after two weeks at sea. There's not much to do here except try to stay out of the way and try not to think about what is to come. Our platoon leader, a guy named Williams who is all of twenty-three, tells us in no uncertain terms that some of us aren't going to make it back. Most of the guys on board don't believe him, but I do. I don't remember much about what happened in the South Pacific, but I do know that a lot of soldiers died. I'm starting to wonder if it was such a good idea to lie about my age and join the Marines. What's done is done, I guess.

Scud has been killing time by playing in the poker game that seems to be going on twenty-four hours a day. So far he's lost all his money and most of mine. I don't mind, though, since I figure we're either going to make it back, or not. How much cash I've got in my pocket won't make a bit of difference.

I'll never forget what you said to me that day last February, the day I told you that Scud and I had signed up with the Marines.

You said, “Don't die, Jack. I want you to come back.”

I said, “Don't worry. Me and Scud, we'll be back.”

I remember we were standing in the kitchen. You said, “You just make sure you come back.” You pressed your palm against my chest. You said, “Scud will take care of himself. It's all he cares about.”

That was the first time I knew I had a chance with you. I'd always thought you were Scud's girl, the way he talked about you, the way you let him talk. Then you clasped my hand in yours. You had been washing dishes, your hand was red and hot with little soap bubbles still on your knuckles. You pulled my hand to your breast, and then you kissed me, your father sitting in his chair just around the corner not ten feet away. If I close my eyes I can still feel your breast beneath my hand, your lips touching mine.

Andie, the feeling I get, remembering those last weeks with you, it's like it hurts but at the same time it feels so good.

I still think we should have told Scud. You said it wouldn't be right to send him off to war that way, but like you said, Scud can take care of himself. What about me? I'm the one who has to live a lie, listening to him tell all the guys about this great gal he has back home, winking at me, and me not able to say a word.

There I go again, feeling sorry for myself.

Love,
Jack

U.S. Navy Transport
Alexander
August 15, 1942

Dear Andie,

Remember last winter just before we shipped out, that day we stayed up late with your father drinking his home brew, and he fell asleep, and we were talking and I told you I was from the future. I keep wondering, did you believe me? Or were you just being polite? I've told almost nothing about my history because, frankly, I was afraid you'd think me insane. And I wouldn't blame you.

I'm lying on my bunk. I can feel the engines.

If you had told me you were from the future, maybe
I
wouldn't have believed
you.

I guess it doesn't matter. I know it's true. The door is there. When I get back I'll show it to you. It's in the closet of the small bedroom on the third floor of Boggs's End. Actually, there are two doors. You have to go through the door in the closet and down a flight of stairs to get to the door that really matters: The fifty-year door, as Mr. Boggs called it. The door is made of metal, and it is very cold. It used to be that you could go through the door from the outside, too. That would take you into the future. But that's impossible now, since I carried out my promise to Mr. Boggs. I suppose this doesn't make any sense to you. What difference does it make? I won't be sending this letter, anyway.

Here comes Scud.

(Later) Scud is curious about this notebook. He wants to know what I can find to write about. Of course, I'll never let him see it. I can't imagine what he'd do if he knew about you and me. I wish we'd just told him. Oh well. It's something we can deal with when we get back.

I must be feeling pretty guilty, because I just loaned him my last fifteen bucks, even though I know he's going to lose every last dime.

Love,
Jack

U.S. Navy Transport
Alexander
Somewhere in the South Pacific
August 16, 1942

Dear Andie,

Do you have secrets, too? I have been sitting thinking about all the things I haven't told you, and I wonder whether there are things you haven't told me. Are you really who you say you are? Or are you a being from another planet? Or an angel come to Earth to torment me by being in my heart, yet thousands of miles away?

This voyage is making me crazy. Sometimes I wonder whether all the things I think have happened to me were real, or just a waking dream. When we were in boot camp the guys used to talk about what you'd have to do to get a Section Eight. That's what they call it when one of the army docs signs a paper that says you're too crazy to be sent out into the jungle to die. Some guys say the only way you could get a Section Eight would be by trying to kill yourself, but I think if I just talked about what really happened to me, they'd have me in a strait jacket faster than you can say “time travel.”

But the fact is, Andie, I was born in 1979. At least, I think I was. Sometime maybe I'll tell you all about it. About how my grandfather Skoro tried to kill me, but he was the one who died. And about my parents. Let me tell you about my mother—

(pages missing)

—how I decided to go back through the door. I'll be an old man by then, but I have to try to change things. Do you think I'm crazy now? Well, if you don't, it's probably because I haven't told you about the Boggses.

I always wondered what would happen if I went through the door again, when I was already in the past. I mean, if I went back into the house and climbed up to the third floor and went back through the closet door, down the staircase, and out through the cold metal door. Would I go even farther back in time? And what if I stepped out into a time before the house had been built? Would I be able to return?

The week before Scud and I got on the bus to Fort Snelling, I decided to find out. I walked over to Boggs's End and pulled the boards off a window and climbed inside. Talk about creepy. It was daylight outside, a crisp, sunny February day, but inside the house was dark because of all the boarded-up windows. Every step I took sent up a cloud of dust.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor and went to the closet and, sure enough, there was the door. I went down the steps to the metal door. I sat there in the dark for a long time before turning the knob and pulling the door open and stepping out into the summer sun.

I'm trying to remember the first thing that hit me. I think it was the clouds. I was looking out over the edge of the bluff. Above, the sky was hazy blue, with the sun hammering down, the air hot and thick with
moisture. But out across the river, a huge thunderhead rose up so high I had to tip my head back to see it. I heard thunder, faint and far. Pillars of rain fell from the cloud onto the far shore and lightning flickered on the Wisconsin bluffs, yet I could feel the sun on my shoulders.

I heard children's voices.

Two little black-haired girls in white dresses were playing with a baby goat. One of the girls was wearing a bonnet. Have you ever even
seen
a bonnet except in fairy tale books? The other girl had tied her bonnet onto the baby goat's head. The goat chewed on the string. The lawn was bright green, the grass cropped. Two full-grown goats rested in the shade of an oak tree. I turned and looked back at the house. The vines I remembered were gone, replaced by a bed of hollyhocks. The white paint was new. The metal door shone like a mirror. I started toward the edge of the bluff to look down on the town, but was distracted by cries from the two girls. They had seen me. The baby goat trotted toward me. The girls turned and ran back around the house. I thought about going back through the door, but I still hadn't learned where I was. I continued toward the edge. The town came into view. At first, everything looked normal. I might have been in 1942, or in 1994, or anywhere in between. Then I noticed that there were no cars. There were wagons, and a buggy, and horses.

“Good day!” said a deep, booming voice.

A tall, black-bearded, shirtless man in gray overalls
and a wide-brimmed straw hat stood a few yards behind me.

I said, “Hello.”

He stared at me, his ruddy face motionless, arms crossed, big, rough hands resting on thick biceps. Behind him, standing at the corner of the house, a small woman in a black dress held a baby to her chest. The two girls peeked out from behind her, their dark eyes staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder. The man shifted his feet, and for a moment I thought he was going to rush at me and fling me over the precipice. But suddenly he smiled, showing a set of brilliantly white, perfectly ordered teeth.

“Would you care for a glass of lemonade?” he asked—

(The bottom half of this page is charred and for the most part illegible.)

—of the little girls crawling around under the picnic table. Mrs. Boggs, who never uttered a word the whole time I was there, busied herself by making sure our glasses were replenished, offering us more plums, cookies, and apple wedges, and shaking her fingers at her daughters whenever they threatened to misbehave, which was more or less all the time.

Mr. Boggs, unlike his squirmy offspring, wasted no motion. When he chose to move his large body, his actions were considered and precise. For instance, when he took a swallow of lemonade, he lifted the
glass to his mouth with a single motion, and poured its contents down his throat. Only his eyes remained in constant motion. As near as I could tell, they missed nothing—

(missing page)

—about the door,” he said.

I did want to know, but I'd avoided asking.

“It must have been a considerable shock for you, young man. You must have come from . . . what? About nineteen thirty-seven?”

“Nineteen forty-two,” I said.

Mr. Boggs laughed. “About what you'd expect from a fifty-year door,” he said. “They never were worth the metal they're made of. Sloppy, very sloppy. So, you must be having that war right about then, eh?”

I nodded. “What do you mean about the door?” I asked.

“It's a fifty-year door, young man. Only it doesn't hold to spec. Shoddy manufacturing. You never know when you're headed for.”

I struggled to make sense of what he was saying.

“You mean if I go back, I might wind up some different place?”

Mr. Boggs thought that was really funny. Even Mrs. Boggs smiled.

He finally said, “Don't worry about it, son. You always go back to where you came from, it's just that
you can't know for sure where you've been—

(illegible)

—you understand?”

I didn't. I was still trying to deal with the idea of being back in 1887. What Mr. Boggs was asking me to do seemed reasonable, and I had agreed to do it, but I didn't think I'd ever understand.

He shook his head sadly. “You don't understand, do you, son?”

I shook my head.

“But you'll do as I ask?”

“I'll do it.” The texture of the air had changed from warm to clammy. The storm moved across the lake.

“You know, you never told me when you were from.”

“Nineteen forty-two.”

“I mean before that.”

“I was born in nineteen seventy-nine.” The thundercloud's leading edge eclipsed the sun.