Time Travelers Never Die (19 page)

“—I know, Shel. Let it go.”

“Okay.”

“And let’s not do any more of this living history, all right?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that.” He was thinking about Monday. “You know, you don’t need to take time off from school if you don’t want to.”

“I can’t go in like this.”

“How about if I take you home? You stay there until you’re okay. Keep away from the school. Take two or three weeks. Whatever you need.”

Dave laughed. “Yeah. Right.”

“You’d better keep your converter.”

“That sounds good. Yeah. I’ll be careful with it.”

Shel nodded. “I know you will.” He cleared his throat. “Your family has a cabin in the Poconos, right?”

“Yes.”

“Would anybody be there right now?”

“At this time of year? No. Not a chance.”

“You could recuperate there.”

“But who’s going to cover my classes?”

“You will, partner. Just leave it to me.”

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales. . . .

 

 

 

 

IT
was a two-hour drive to the cabin. The last eight miles took him up a single-lane dirt road with a series of hairpin turns. Dave’s father, in his most unflinching style, had picked the highest place in the area for the family cabin. The woods were thick, and the cabin had a magnificent view of Starlight Lake. But the stars were hidden by thick clouds when he arrived. Even the lights along the lakefront were little more than distant smudges.

There were supposed to be bears in the area, but he’d never seen one. All the same, his folks had kept him close when they’d come here during his childhood summers. They’d expected he would love the place, but the problem had been a lack of other kids. The only people close by were the Bakers and the Hertzogs, both of whom were retired couples.

He was near the top of the road when he saw headlights around the curve. He edged cautiously forward, found a space off to one side, and pulled over to make room for the other vehicle. It blinked its lights as it passed.

The cabin was a triple-decker, with living room, kitchen, and veranda at midlevel. His folks still came here every summer, and he usually spent a week or so with them.

He slipped into the driveway, the security lights came on, and he got out. The place had always been too remote for him. But at the moment it was ideal.

He’d brought a few books. And he’d stopped and picked up some groceries and painkillers. He needed two difficult trips up the outside staircase to get everything indoors. It was mid-December, and the cabin was cold. He turned on the lights, and adjusted the thermostat.

He plugged in the refrigerator and put everything away. Then he made a sandwich and topped it off with a rum and Coke. Unsure how the painkillers would interact with the drink, he left them aside, eased himself into an armchair, and put on the TV. One of the cable news shows.

They were still getting fallout from the failure of the Syrian-Iraqi peace effort, but he didn’t care much about politics at the moment. He just wanted voices in the room. Shel had made him promise he’d call when he arrived. So he did, using the landline since he’d left the cell phone, along with his driver’s license, with the Selma police.

Shel asked what he planned to do while he was there.

“I’m just going to hang around here and sleep and read.”

“I think I’ll pass on that.”

“What’s that?”

“Okay. That’s good to hear.”

 

 

AFTER
he’d gotten past childhood, life at the cabin had been pleasant. It held good memories for him. He’d brought women here from time to time. But it was a long trip, so there had been only a few. Those he’d really liked. One in particular. Erin Stackpole. An odd name for so beautiful a woman. And Katie had been there once.

Erin was the only woman who’d ever really hurt him. They were never formally engaged, but he’d assumed an altar lay in their future. Then one night, with no warning, at least none that he’d picked up, she’d simply told him it was over. That she wouldn’t be able to see him anymore. She’d offered no explanation, no mention of someone else having come into her life. Just the announcement: “I’ve enjoyed it, Dave. But it’s time for both of us to move on.”

He hadn’t questioned her. Too much pride for that. “Okay,” he’d said. “You’re sure?”

She said she was. And Dave had shrugged and walked away.

Looking back now, he suspected he could have held on to her. But he’d never actively pursued her. Never let her know, never
told
her, how he’d felt. He’d thought she could see what he felt. That it was enough. His feelings were out there, visible to the world.

So she’d said good-bye, and he had simply acquiesced. He’d never called her again. Do that, he’d thought, and she won’t realize what she’d lost. No, it was better to wait for her to signal that she wanted him back. Dumb. But he’d waited for a call. Or a chance meeting that wasn’t really a chance meeting. Or a Christmas card.

Something.

But, of course, it never happened. And he never saw her again. A year later he’d heard she was getting married.

The conversation on the TV drifted in and out. Scandal in high places. Charges of corruption. A deranged preacher claiming a recent volcanic eruption in Alaska had been a divine reaction to something or other. The lunacy never stopped.

The pain in his ribs drifted in and out, as well. And his legs had stiffened during the long drive. Funny how little of the attack on the bridge he actually remembered. He still didn’t recall precisely what had happened to
him
. But the doctors had told him that was not unusual. Gradually, they said, it would come back.

THE
sofa was too small for him. So he limped upstairs, climbed into bed, shut off the lights, and allowed the darkness to swallow him. The cabin, with its locked doors, and its mountaintop isolation, provided a barricade against the outside world that, at the moment, he needed.

He’d always thought of the present in Henry Thoreau’s terms, as a narrow dividing line between two infinities, the past and the future. But that had changed. If he could go back and
visit
Galileo, living on the cusp of the Renaissance, then it meant that nothing ever
ended
. In another place, at this moment, they were still fighting the English Civil War. But no, that was the wrong terminology. Not at this
moment
. Rather, in some hidden compartment along the timeline, the violence was always there, the killing still going on. Selma was never really over. There was another compartment where Russians were trying to hold on against Napoleon. And still another in which the Inquisition was burning Gior dano Bruno.

Sure, you could argue there was a positive side. Socrates could still be found in the dimensions, discussing faith, beauty, and the good life with his friends. There was still a place where Dave was happily in bed with Erin. But what were the pleasures of ordinary people when measured against the Holocaust? Or the butcheries of a Stalin? Or the African genocides still being carried out in an age that pretended to be enlightened?

Sleep came late, though it
came
. It stole up the stairs and wrapped him in its dark folds, and he slipped finally into oblivion.

 

 

SUNDAY
was unseasonably warm. Branches swayed in a mild breeze, and a pair of blue jays had landed on the veranda railing. Far below, a few sailboats were out on the lake.

He made bacon and eggs, added orange juice and coffee, and realized how much he missed the morning paper. There’d be no mail either, of course. The post office, remarkably,
did
deliveries up here, but there was a hold on for the cabin.

Big Al
, the ranking morning cable news show, had nothing but a celebrity divorce story, predictions about a sales surge during the holiday season, and stories about the secretary of state who had been caught by a live mike saying that the world would never have peace as long as it had religion. His office had just issued a “clarification,” probably making things worse, by specifying which religion he was talking about. And a battle had erupted over battery-powered garments that permitted telephone sex.

He shut off the TV and picked up one of the books he’d brought along. It was Michael Corbett’s
Winter of Discontent
, which had urged the introduction of lie detectors to presidential debates and IQ tests for candidates. There was no attempt to set a minimum standard, but Corbett’s plan would require that results be placed on the record. Candidates, of course, could decline, but only at their peril. However, no one really knew what the effect might be. Recent studies had shown that a majority of voters would be put off by a candidate with a high IQ.

Winter of Discontent
was essentially a manual on how to make government more responsive. And more rational. He liked some of the suggestions, but they all required an electorate that paid attention. Maybe the problem, he thought, was the way history was taught. The classes he’d attended in high school and college had consisted mostly of committing factual information to memory. Dates of battles, names of politicians and generals, and descriptions of events that changed society, like the Reformation and the Napoleonic Wars.

Why not give students a hypothetical time-travel device? ‘You can go back and talk to one person in an effort to change an outcome. Say, to head off the Civil War. Who do you talk to? And what short-range outcome are you looking for?’

He read for a while, but it took an effort with one eye swollen half-shut. Eventually, he gave up and drifted off to sleep.

 

 

IN
the middle of the week, Shel called again.
“How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“How’s my replacement?”

“I doubt it.”

Dave laughed. “Who’s with him? Anybody I know?”

“The guy has good taste.”

“And what have you concluded?”

 

 

HE
started feeling sorry for himself, cooped up in the cabin. It was almost Christmas, and he didn’t even have a light to hang on the door. So, as the aches in his ribs and legs diminished, and the swelling around his eye receded, he decided it was time to get out. On Saturday the twenty-second, he drove down to Clifton, the closest town of any size, bought a cell phone to replace the one he’d lost, and treated himself to a turkey dinner at a family-owned restaurant. Then he selected a ringtone. He’d had a few chords from Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor on the old one. That used to get people staring. Maybe it was time for something a bit less majestic. He decided, eventually, on a simple bell chime.

When he’d finished, he went to a movie, the latest installment of the Batman films. Then he wandered into Mac’s Bar, which had loud music and a lot of women.

He danced away the night and drank too much. Not a good idea when he had to negotiate a mountain road going home. He spent much of his time in Mac’s with a young woman whose name was Marie Dupré, and he wondered whether he could persuade her to drive him back to the cabin.

She smiled politely when he issued the invitation. “I think you made a mistake, Dave,” she said. “I don’t do that.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Good.”

“Sorry.”

It was just as well. He didn’t need any complications. But the alcohol, and maybe Marie, had made him nostalgic. While talking with her, he’d been thinking about Erin.

Still, he wasn’t sure how he was going to get home. Dave wasn’t much of a drinker to start with. And he couldn’t very well sit in Mac’s Bar and slug down Cokes. He wondered whether the town had a taxi.