Time Flying (8 page)

I nodded, wondering why AM General Security, which I admit I didn’t even know existed, would care whether or not I had talked to a fifteen year old girl about…Oh, Betsy didn’t have anything to do with it. It was Dean. He had asked his father about “Humvees,” and…

“According to Mr. Sawyer’s son and daughter,” Powell began, in an authoritative, almost Jack Webb-like voice, “you asked them about my company’s plan to build a vehicle for the United States Army called the ‘Hummvee,’ and we would like to know how you came upon this information.” His gaze was direct and unwavering.

I shrugged, leaning back a little in my chair. “I’m really not sure,” I lied. “I read Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver…Could have been any one of those.”

Powell was ready for this answer, and replied, “Any plans for a new Army vehicle are classified, and there has been no release of any information whatsoever. It is impossible for you to have learned even the proposed name of any such vehicle by reading any of those magazines.” His posture remained rigid, and like his attitude, unyielding. “So let’s try this again…”

“No, we won’t try
anything
again,” my father interjected. “You asked for an opportunity to ask my son how he knew about some new vehicle AM General is designing…”

“May be designing,” Powell said, interrupting.

“Okay, may be designing,” my father mimicked, “and you got it. He told you where he probably read about it. Anything else?”

Powell’s sagged a little, revealing an opening my father took advantage of. “You’re not the police, or the government. You asked your question, and I think we’re done here.” My father stood up, followed by my mother. The interrogation, not nearly as complete as Powell had wanted, was over. Mr. Sawyer looked like he was about to throw up.

“Wait a minute,” I said, as Powell straightened after picking his never-opened briefcase up from the floor. “You’re here because you think I found out about the Humvee from Dean or Mr. Sawyer. I didn’t. I asked Dean about it because I knew Mr. Sawyer works for one of the car companies, that’s all.” I had everyone’s attention.

Powell put his briefcase back on the floor and  nodded at me, indicating he was listening. I looked over at my father, who did the same thing, so I continued. “I was at the library last week, studying and took a break to read about Jeeps. I had a book open, something like ‘The History of the Jeep in World War Two,’ I think,” I said, figuring there must be a book with such a title, as I wove a tale of complete bullshit.

“So, I’m reading, and this guy comes up behind me, saying, ‘you know, the US Army is getting rid of Jeeps, just like they got rid of horses and mules,’ or something like that,” I said. The look on Powell’s face had gone from skeptical to more interested as I added in some detail, knowing what he would want. “I’d never seen him before, he seemed a little crazy. He was wearing a t-shirt that said something like ‘Flint Supply…Flint Auto Supplies…There was something added on to it right here,” I said, pointing with my left hand to a place just under my right shoulder, “peace sign and a letter ‘A’ with a circle around it.” I shrugged as if to indicate I didn’t know what that was all about, and congratulated myself on setting this clown on a path looking for hippie anarchists spilling AM General’s secrets about a new vehicle they’re designing for the military. 

Powell was hooked now. He sat back down quickly, opening his briefcase, which held only a new, unused pad of paper , two or three pencils and a small, brown paper bag, containing something square. A sandwich, I imagined. He extracted the pad, a pencil, and using the closed briefcase as a lap desk, began writing notes. I gave him a few more made-up details, which he enthusiastically wrote down. Mr. Sawyer was visibly relieved, as was my mother, but my Dad’s eyes held some suspicion. 

After a few more minutes, the tension in the room had lifted completely, and the security man put his notepad and pencil back into his briefcase, snapping it shut in a satisfied manner, nodding to himself at a job well done. He looked up at me, extended his right hand, and when I did the same, shook mine, warmly saying, “Rich, thank you. This helps a lot. We would really appreciate your keeping anything you may have heard from this fellow to yourself. The company is working with the Army to develop a new vehicle, and though it’s no longer classified, we would like to keep a lid on as much information as possible.” I nodded my understanding. 

Powell then turned to Mr. Sawyer, who looked like a different person now, and said, “Ron, this obviously had nothing to do with you, but you were absolutely correct to report it. I’ll report it was all just a coincidence.”

We all looked at Powell, then and Mr. Sawyer, who smiled weakly in reply. Powell, realizing his error, dug the hole a little deeper, “Uh…Ron is one of the project managers for the Materials Division, so…” He realized he had probably said too much, and stopped.

“Okay, well, I’m glad we could help clear this all up,” my dad said, indicating the way out, which both Powell and Mr. Sawyer took, saying their goodbyes, Powell again thanking me. As the front door shut, and my mother watched the two men walk back toward the Sawyer’s house, and said, “Thank GOD.” She shook her head. “I thought he was from the government.”

“He definitely wanted you to think so,” my father replied, looking over at me and saying with a small smile on his face, “Rich, I don’t know what that was, but I could tell you were bullshitting the guy. What really happened? How did you know about the…What do they call it?”

“Humvee,” I answered.

“Humvee, right, how did you know about it?”

I shrugged and lied again. “Dean told me. I really didn’t want his dad to get in trouble. He didn’t tell me very much, and it never occurred to me it might be a secret.”

My father nodded, understanding. “Yea, I get it,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. The boy’s probably scared enough he’ll keep his mouth shut about what his father does.”

I nodded. I knew I wouldn’t make the mistake of talking about the future again, and if I’d truly learned the lesson, things several years later would have been simpler.

Much simpler
.

FOUR

The Road Not Taken

The “Humvee” drama seemingly over, I woke up the next morning to WNAP playing the hits of 1976, got dressed and walked out of the house to find Dean and Betsy standing beside the El Camino, ready to ride to school. As surprising as it was to me, I was relieved and happy to see them. Back to normal. April turned to May, which seemed to last about a week before June's warm, sunny days meant the end of the school year. I was strong, and those 20 pounds I had packed on during my inactivity melted off. In my 30s and 40s, battling being a few pounds overweight and the lingering painkiller addiction I never completely controlled, I would often have dreams about running. In my dreams, I ran, and ran and ran, without tiring, exhilarated at the freedom and the sheer pleasure of the physical activity. In real life, I had always hated running, because I had never been 'slim,' but also because running was always used as punishment. Not hustling enough during practice? Run. “Suicides," usually, where you would have to start at the baseline, run to the free throw line, back to the baseline, then to half-court, and back. Four stages — free throw line, half-court, other free throw line, full-court, all in thirty-seconds. If you didn't hit that mark, you kept running until you did. Saturday practice meant foul shooting, where we would shoot a hundred, and the more you missed, the more you ran. How could you love something constantly used as punishment, unless you were a masochist? I’m no masochist, so I hated running.

Not this time, though. A couple weeks after I woke up back in 1976, I decided if I was going to repeat this portion of my life, real or not, I wouldn't repeat all of my mistakes. So, I started running.

Trails snaked through the acres of woods around our suburban house, so I started slowly, working through the pain of my damaged left leg, as well as the general discomfort of being 20 pounds heavier than I had ever been. By the first day of June, the pain had become infrequent, and I weighed 190, which worked well for me at 6’3”. Determined to do what I had not done the last time I experienced 1976 - play basketball my senior year of high school — the work came relatively easy. By the end of June, I even started going to the gym, mornings and late afternoons, working for my Dad's company in the middle of the day, making for a busy, but happy time. I thought of 2007 a lot, still at a loss to explain the whole experience, but life in 1976 had become so routine, it was getting easier to not be distracted by the mystery. At night, while lying in bed, and often while running and working out, I would, in my mind, run through things from my life in 2007. I reminded myself of my address in San Diego, my phone numbers, my email addresses, the URLs of the websites I liked, the technical specs of the various Macintosh computers I owned. I thought about anything that didn’t exist in the mid 70s, worried if I forgot about the future, it might somehow cease to exist, and my wife and daughter there would no longer be real. I didn’t want to face the thought of Molly and Samantha disappearing from my mind. All else could go to hell, but not them. I tried, in my mind, to relive in detail, experiences with my family. My daughter's first birthday party, her second, the first Christmas we spent with my parents. I refused to allow them to not exist in my life. I even considered looking Molly up in this time, but since she would only be only 12 years old right now, I figured that was a bad idea.

So, I tried to keep my future life fresh in my mind and worked on the current one. I wondered whether my actions here would have any impact on that future life when I returned (which I desperately hoped I would), because I was doing things I had not done the first time, applying both hindsight and a lot more maturity. It was a fascinating thing, especially the relationship with my father. Cold and distant when I first arrived back here, my working to overcome the physical and emotional problems that stemmed from my injury seemed to earn a lot of respect from him. I remembered the coldness and distance, but never realized what caused it, until I came back with as much life experience as he had here. He considered himself responsible for what happened to me, the injury I sustained while working for him, and for how it derailed my plans. The first time, I didn't grow at all through the adversity. My father saw me struggling and blamed himself. Not this time, though. In this version of things, the adversity made me stronger than before, but before long, I realized in truth, the strength making this transformation possible was actually created during the dark years when I bottomed out and failed. It was a causality loop that bordered on paradox.

Whatever the cause, my father and I had reached an understanding in this timeline we hadn't developed until much later. He was visibly relieved, at least relative to how I remember him from this time, and as a result, what was important to him as well as to me, involved me having the flexibility to train in the mornings and late afternoons, and work for him when I was available. So, I got fitter and fitter, got to know my father better and made some money. 1976 shaped up to be a great year, this time around.

The last Friday in June 1976, was blessed with almost perfect weather, the air clear and a little crisp in the morning as I walked into the gym at about 8am. Rain overnight had dampened the parking lot, shared by only one other car. I had a red pair of sweat pants and a loose basketball jersey on, carrying my gym bag with a fresh change of clothes. I walked through the hallway connecting the six doors leading in to the gym floor, dropped the gym bag on one of the courtside bleachers, and sat down on the hardwood floor to stretch. My routine had become a two-hour cycle of activity: stretch, run bleachers, stretch some more, do some light strength training, run yet again and then shoot free throws, and jump shots, finishing things off with some ball handling and suicides. A lot like a practice, but harder, I figured, and I had decided if I still found myself here in the fall, I wanted to be much farther ahead of my teammates when the practice season started.

In truth, I relied on my future knowledge, which included, among other things, knowing how Michael Jordan managed to do all the things he'd done. As the story went, Jordan had been cut from the team as a sophomore, and realized he would have to work much harder than everyone else, and did. So, I followed the example of the now thirteen year old MJ, a boy living in North Carolina who hadn’t even learned the lesson he taught me yet, and worked harder than anyone else I knew even dreamed of working.

Stretching done, on my third circuit running along the bleachers at the top of the gym, the sweat that started rolling down my face went from cool to clammy, I slowed a couple steps before the pain struck. And God, what pain! A cold, sharp icicle from nowhere that seemed to impale me. My legs gave way, and I sagged, stumbling, reaching out with my right arm to catch myself, somehow managing to keep from tumbling down the 30 rows of bleachers. I eased myself down to the wooden bench bleacher seats, dimly aware of a sound coming from inside me, an agonized moan, before everything exploded in a flash of white energy, and the top of the gym became a gray textured surface a few inches from my face. A cacophony of noises and voices rang in my ears, and I smelled smoke mixed with what seemed to be burning rubber. One voice seemed louder than the others.

“Sir? Can you hear me sir?”

The source of these words, agitated and excited, his voice sounding unnaturally high and reedy, was nearby, but out of sight. I knew the words were directed at me, but I had no idea how to respond, and couldn't even begin to do all that was necessary to talk to him. I blinked, and he must have taken that to mean I had understood him, because he then said, “We're going to get you out of there. Just hang in.”

Moving wasn’t possible, a crushing pressure pushed me down into whatever lay underneath me, so the only response available to me involved shifting my eyes left toward where the voice seemed to be coming from. When I did, a young, thin man with close-cropped brown hair, round wire frame glasses and a white shirt with some sort of logo patch rolled into my frame of vision. The insignia floated right in front of me, but I couldn't make sense of the writing it contained. The man turned his head and shouted to someone out of my field of vision “Jalen, JAWS!”