What's really written on Liberty's tablet? This:
I’M THE STATUE OF LIBERTY!
Gimme your tired, your poor? Is you crazy?
Gimme your broke, worthless dudes with clue disabilities?
Gimme your cheaters, your promise-breakers?
Gimme your lazy-ass weasels yearning to drink free on my couch...
while I’m at a jay-oh-bee paying the bills?
Are you shittin’ me, people?
If I wanna hunky monkey with no money, honey, I’ll go to the zoo!
Why is Liberty so peeved? Well, it's part of a long story. Okay, she's (literally) at the beginning of a novel titled THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES. That book kick-started this low-budget blog, which is dedicated to, in no particular order, the Statue of Liberty, the misunderstood city of Detroit (the jewel of the Midwest), heart-breaking doo-wop ballads, wandering Detroit expatriates here and abroad, vinyl records, all things obsolete, the faded, the vanished, beautiful stuff that has gone "poof" and popped out of sight. And, of course, America's foremost curator in search of a museum -- "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood. Mr. Fleetwood is also a deejay and host of The U-turn Time Machine Show.
(This is a Time Machine. Imagine drag-racing through the decades with this, honking your horn through the 1940s and 1950s, throwing beer cans through the window through the 1960s.)
This blog is also dedicated to weary pilgrims searching for their place in this world where nothing stays in place. If that journey doesn't tire you out, nothing will. And if you're beat and broke and need a place to collapse, feel free to spend the night at The Museum of Sudden Disappearances. We completely understand. We've been there. Many times. One wing of our museum is dedicated to 18th century fainting couches. We have over 200 plush couches, and can accommodate an entire neighborhood that feels the need to faint. Bring the folks. Bring the kids. Come on over and faint.
This woman was listening to Jim Fleetwood's midnight show on the radio, and just heard that the legendary Dancing Dictators of Doo-Wop will no longer be singing and dancing across America's street corners, and touching the nation's soul. She fainted. Can you blame her?
Or, for those who prefer to collapse in luxury after getting hammered with the grim news that their favorite TV show has been canceled, imagine keeling over and falling face down on this.
At any rate, relax and read, on or off the couch. Below is an excerpt from the novel, PAST IS PRESENT, a sequel to THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES. What's it about? Well, it's just over 100,000 words. So it's about 400 pages. And yes, both stories feature Jurassic Jim, who loves heading backward as the world moves forward. Also, these are thrillers with a backbeat. Feel free to laugh, gasp, and dance through the pages. Deejay Jim would encourage it.
PAST IS PRESENT
first 2 chapters from a novel by
Thomas Davidson
Time is like a river.
It flows one direction,
but with a little force
you can go back.
But like a river,
everything you do has a ripple.
—
Kevin R. Hutson
In
memory of Jayne Voskuil
Prologue
WIZARDS, CARS, STARS
October 3, 1968
Life must be lived forwards,
but can only be understood backwards.
— Kierkegaard
Buddha sat fuming
beside her on the front porch.
Etched on his
little green belly was the word: incensed. Jasmine smoke poured through
Buddha’s ceramic ears. Enlightenment never looked so furious. The world is strange, Linda Mitchell
thought, each day presents the familiar
in unfamiliar ways. An uneasy feeling stirred inside her, again, as prickly
as thorns, until footsteps snapped her dark reverie.
The screen door
squeaked open in the fading twilight. Her three-year-old wore a pink sweatshirt
depicting Little Red Riding Hood inside a dark forest. Celestial slid her
Mother Goose book onto Linda’s lap, and climbed aboard the wicker chair. Behind
the living room window, a black-and-white Walter Cronkite flickered on the TV
screen. “And that’s the way it is,
Thursday, October third, 1968.”
“What shall we read
tonight?” When she opened the book, a sheet of paper fell onto her lap, a
crayon picture of a face in a window. Her back stiffened. “Who is this, Cel?”
Inside the floppy
hood, Cel’s sky-blue eyes drifted toward their little white bungalow with green
shutters. A whisper on the wind: “I dunno. I just drawed it.”
Linda pinched the
paper, lingering on the drawing until she heard a noise.
A rusty VW van
clattered up Stardust Lane
and stopped. Its bumper sticker announced: I
brake for hallucinations. A shaggy-haired man waved. “Hello, ladies.”
Cel pumped her hand
in the air. “Hi, Trippy!”
“Peace!” He flashed
the peace sign with two fingers.
“Peas!” Cel echoed.
She tried a V-shape, but only her middle finger popped up.
“Whoa!” Trip said.
“That’s a little harsh for a preschooler.”
“Honest, she
doesn’t get it from me.” Linda first met Peter Van Winkle in junior high
school, when he weighed ninety pounds with two pounds of pimples, and wore pants
that surrendered several inches of shin. A classmate suggested that Van
Winkle’s brain was on permanent vacation. The nickname stuck—Trip Van Winkle.
Linda set the book
on a crate, next to Buddha and a box of incense cones. She jogged down her
front walkway, six cement squares. The square adjoining the sidewalk announced
to the world in yellow-chalked words: Mitchell Mansion this way. A green arrow decorated the
next square, with the chalked proclamation: Cel’s
Castle straight ahead. But the third square warned in screaming red
letters: Goblins begone!
Linda stood on the
curb, facing the van. “Any update on Kenny Grogan?”
“I went to see him
again yesterday. He’s still…” Trip looked at her as if from a great distance,
his eyes creased with worry. “And Blue dropped from sight.”
She swayed on her
feet as her paisley, button-front long dress rippled in the breeze. “I last saw
Blue and Kenny here on Sunday, and later that night when Blue showed up alone.
But I have the strangest feeling he’s been around here again.”
“Is that guy
weird…or what? If he fell out of a window, he’d fall up.”
“What’s his story?”
Trip shrugged,
scratching his goatee. His green army jacket hung loose on his thin frame, a
faded red bandanna tied through one of the epaulets. When he adjusted the
door’s rearview mirror with his left hand, she saw a red line between his thumb
and index finger, running into his sleeve. His tour of Vietnam went without a scratch.
During his R&R in Bangkok,
alas, he got robbed and stabbed in a rainy alley behind a massage parlor, and
suspected his taxi driver was somehow involved. But he wasn’t sure because the
rain blurred his bloodshot eyes. Sometimes life tattooed the hands of callow
boys from Columbus High School in western Massachusetts.
He finally answered,
“I don’t even know his real name.”
Linda recalled Blue
lurking on her porch—six feet tall, jet-black ponytail, and an ornate design
stitched on his shirt. “It’s the
legendary phoenix being consumed by fire,” he’d said. His sapphire eyes
sparkled, intense as an electrical fire, when he revealed the back of his
shirt. “And this is the phoenix rising
from the ashes.”
She shook off the
image, and asked, “How’s Kenny?”
“He looks like he
got shock therapy at Castle Frankenstein. Been flying four days on Saint Anthony’s
Fire. Get this, he said Blue was into the CIA. But with a head full of acid, he
just as easily could’ve told me that Superman flew by to play pinochle.”
Linda leaned
against his door. “He what?”
“That was my reaction. I don’t mean that he
belonged to the agency, but he’s fascinated by its history, its drug
experiments.”
“I don’t want him
suddenly showing up, ever again, not with Celestial here.”
He watched her
intently. “Anyone ever tell you that you do that a lot? Rock back and forth
when you’re deep in thought?”
She waved it off.
“Be careful. That guy is twisted.”
“He’s worse. The
dude’s crooked molecules from the hat down. If he comes here again and you’re
alone, get out. Take Cel and run. You don’t want him inside the house.”
Linda turned, seeing
her walkway warning: Goblins begone!
“Sunday night, when I told him to leave, he said ‘It’s cool. Cool as
permafrost.’”
“Linda, the guy
belongs in a freakin’ hospital—blowing his nose in the curtains.”
She leaned back on
her heel, an admonitory finger waving in the air, and said, “Watch out.” Then
she headed back to the porch and scooped up Cel and Mother Goose.
A pool of lamplight
shone through the window screen and illuminated a wizard on the open page. He
wore a purple peaked hat and long coat decorated with silver crescents and
stars, and stood on a deserted road filled with rocks and stones. Next to the
wizard was a nursery rhyme:
For every evil under
the sun
There is a remedy or
there is none.
If there be one,
seek till you find it;
If there be none,
never mind it.
When the breeze
shifted, bamboo wind chimes the size of bones rattled from the awning, the sound of a magic spell being cast. Jasmine
smoke swirled across the page. The wizard appeared to be staring up at Cel from
a fog-bound road. She pointed at the little man with the long coat. “Spooky.”
Linda thought of
Blue. “If you see a spooky wizard, do you know what to do?”
“Nuh uh.”
“You hide.” Linda
put her hands over her face, peek-a-boo style, her long, chestnut hair falling
forward. Her daughter’s hair was lighter, the color of sand on a sunny beach,
on a secret island that never-ever appeared on a map. “You duck and cover.”
“Duckie cover,” she
repeated solemnly, head bouncing. “Ho kay.”
The phone rang. Cel
scooted into the front room and picked it up. Linda, peeking through the screen,
tied on a brown headscarf the color of a boxing glove. Cartoon characters
covered the cloth. A two-inch Underdog stood on Linda’s forehead, the caped
canine ready to spring into action. Cel loved Underdog.
Cel stood by the
fish tank, receiver to ear, forefinger tracing an imaginary line on the glass.
A plastic peace symbol glistened at the bottom of the tank. Until last week it
was a kitchen wall ornament, but Cel took it down, carried it from room to
room, and eventually dropped it into the water, turning it into an orange
starfish.
Linda went inside,
snapped off the TV and took the receiver. “Hello?”
The caller was
humming a tune.
The Earth’s axis
shifted a notch; her voice went cold. “Who is this?”
She turned toward
her daughter and noticed a blazing red rose on the dining table in the
adjoining room, near an open window. The phone fell from her hand, hit the edge
of the fish tank and splashed inside, descending on the peace symbol like a
predator. The goldfish nervously circled the black receiver and coiled wire.
“Come on, Cel,
let’s go for a ride. We’ll have ice cream, would you like that? Maybe we could
go to the drive-in, stay out late, huh?”
Cel danced with
joy, making the floorboards squeak. “I take my Mother Goose?”
“Yes, sweetheart,
let’s go. Let’s duck and cover.” She grabbed their jackets, took Cel’s hand and
kicked open the door, hurried past Buddha through the jasmine fog, down the
steps. The wind sounded the alarm along the street—rattling red, yellow and
orange leaves. They escaped in their ‘62 Chevrolet Corvair Monza, nicknamed the Monsta.
They sped down Elmont Avenue, past
the neon golden arches of McDonald’s Restaurant with its sign: OVER 2 BILLION HAMBURGERS SOLD! Linda monitored her rearview
mirror, finally turning at Beacon
Boulevard. Columbus
had two drive-ins. The Bel-Air across town drew a more genteel crowd than the
nearby Galaxy, a theatre known for its drunken patrons igniting into fistfights
in the lot.
Another glance in
the mirror. A dozen headlights behind her, moving from lane to lane like a
stampede.
Blue.
“We going to the
movies, mama?”
“Yes, honey, won’t
that be fun?”
A car broke from
the herd, closing the gap.
“Can we see Snow
Light, mama?”
Two white lights
approached the Monsta. Linda tried to appear calm as the wind lifted her hair
beneath Underdog.
“Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs? I don’t think it’s playing tonight.”
Two bright polka
dots glowed in her rearview mirror.
Her eyes darted for
an escape until she spotted the Galaxy Drive-In ahead. She pulled over to the
far right lane and turned for the drive-in’s entrance.
In front of the
Galaxy was a miniature golf course. A giant green leopard with black spots
crouched at the entrance. Nearby, a ten-foot, duck-billed platypus with fire-engine
red fur stood guard at the first hole of the course. But the central attraction
was an enormous, purple hippopotamus that swallowed golf balls. The animals
mesmerized Cel from behind the windshield.
Castle Dracula
Frankenstein’s
Freak-Out
Linda looked at the
marquis, then at her daughter, made a silent prayer, and crept behind a monkey-shit
brown ‘59 Ford. As the attendant passed a ticket through the Ford’s window,
someone sneezed. He stepped back, said something to the driver. The teen got
out and opened his trunk. Three red-faced boys popped up like Jacks-in-the-box.
“Look, mama,
they’re sleeping in there.”
“Not exactly, Cel.”
The world of grown-ups
was crammed with mystery. Golf ball-eating hippos, car trunk naps. Her
daughter’s eyes sparkled with anticipation, wondering what awaited her inside
this place called the Galaxy.
The Ford turned
around. The Monsta pulled up.
“Kids under twelve
are free,” the teenage attendant said. “That’ll be two dollars, please. And
beware, tonight is special effects night.”
She couldn’t help
but notice his clear emerald eyes, the flicker of boyish innocence that would
soon be gone and never return. These days she noticed that sort of thing,
unbidden, and always felt a feathery twinge in her heart. It wasn’t that long
ago, really, when even Trip Van Winkle had that same coltish glint in his eyes.
When they all did. Without turning, she instinctively reached over and held her
daughter’s hand. Cel’s fingers were as warm as…sand on a sunny beach, on a
secret island that never-ever appeared on a map.
“Special effects?”
Linda echoed. “What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
She dug into her
suede-fringe shoulder bag.
He smiled. “I hope
nobody’s hiding in your trunk.”
“Nuh uh,” Cel
assured him.
He hunched down
under the neon lights, a Galaxy logo
on his red cap. “Sweetheart, I sure hope your daddy isn’t hiding back there. He
isn’t, is he?”
“Nuh,” the little
girl said, leaning forward with both pink hands on the dashboard, “my daddy
died in the Vet Man War.”
The attendant’s
face flushed with blood. His eyes flicked skyward, then down again. He handed
Linda a ticket and waved her through, not taking her money.
Her daughter’s
response made her hands tremble, so she gripped the steering wheel to hide her
reaction, and said, “You’re very kind, but—”
“Please. Have a
good night, ladies.”
Linda hesitated
before pressing the pedal and turning off the headlights. The Monsta entered
the dark, gravel lot and gravitated toward the middle. Tinny voices crackled
from hundreds of speakers mounted on car windows.
Cel’s eyes were
glued to the windshield. “Mama?”
A sky-high vampire
appeared on the giant screen in a black cape as big as night.
“It’s just a TV.”
She tapped her daughter’s knee. “A very big
TV.”
They found a space
near the center of the lot, surrounded by tail-finned Chevies, DeSotos,
Ramblers. The screen cast an artificial moonlight on the rooftops.
Linda hooked the
speaker onto her window. Blood-curdling screams filled the car. She winced, set
it back on its rack. “I think we can hear just fine without that, hmm?”
“Ho kay.”
A half-full bottle
of warm ginger ale was wedged between the front seats since the day before.
Linda unscrewed the cap and took a sip.
“Can I have orange
pop?”
“Well, I guess
we”—she turned in her seat and looked through the rear window—“I guess we can
go to the concession stand. Come on, Cel.”
As they walked in
the dark, hand-in-hand, across crunchy gravel toward the yellow neon, a teenage
vampire flew by with a black nylon cape. “Hello, ladies.” He licked a front
windshield, a glass graveyard for head-on-collision bugs. The occupants
squealed. “I love to suck the
windows.” He flared his cape with both hands and disappeared.
They hurried into
the drive-in’s jammed concession stand. A green ghoul stood next to a trash can
by the door, dabbing his shirt with a fistful of paper napkins. “Some jerk hit me,” he told the counter girl
pouring soft drinks.
“What?” The counter
girl had a rubber knife stuck in her back, bleeding catsup. Whenever she
turned, the knife wiggled.
Cel saw the knife
and her eyes lit up. She tugged on Linda’s sleeve.
“It’s okay,” Linda
said. “It’s not…uh…” Three years into motherhood and she was already running
out of explanations for the adult world.
The ghoul said, “I
knocked on his window like I’m s’posed to, and he hand-grenaded a Coke at me. What a nasshole.”
“Watch your mouth,”
a man in line said, “or I’ll punch your lights out.”
“I said ‘a
nasshole,’ not ‘an asshole.’”
“Kid, you’re one
sass away from a full-body cast.”
Cel shook her
mother’s thumb. “What’s a nasso?”
The ghoul scowled,
tossed the wet napkins on the floor in disgust, and retreated outside. Linda
squeezed up to the counter, ordering a large orange soda and popcorn.
A skinny vampire
with plastic fangs rushed inside. “Thum one thnuck up from behind and thook my
cape!” He faced the counter girl and spit out his fangs. “I quit!”
“Come on, Cel.”
Linda held the snacks. “Let’s go back to the car.”
The green ghoul
stuck his head inside the door. “Yo, pops! Come kick my teeth, you shit-head!”
“You little punk.”
His two boys yelled Dad! and chased
after him. The man crashed into Linda on his way out. She spun—her popcorn and
soda flew through the air—and fell back into the crowd.
Regaining her
balance, Linda looked around. Cel was gone. She muscled through the crowd,
stepped outside, called Cel’s name. Someone yelled shut up! and a car horn blared. A giant werewolf dominated the
screen. Every speaker in the Galaxy crackled with howls. She ran down a lane,
calling her child.
#
Cel stopped by a
big black car and bent over, holding her knees, hearing screams all over the
Galaxy. Her heart was going boom boom. A vampire, as big as a building, was on
the giant TV, with the biggest teeth in the world. Teeth as big as trees. And
boys who looked like monsters ran between cars. And where was mama? Boom boom.
She leaned against the car with one hand, her knees shaking. Where was...
A big man in a cape
approached, resembling the wizard with the long coat in Mother Goose. He
stopped and said, “Come here, Celestial.”
She’d seen this
wizard on the front porch with mama, and peeking in the window today. Boom
boom. Boom boom. Where was...
Then she remembered
what her mother had told her about spooky wizards. Hide. Duckie cover. She bent down and crawled behind the front
wheel, under the car, hearing footsteps on gravel. Someone grabbed her foot and
her shoe came off, because she tied that shoe and not her mama. Mama tied them
tight. Cel said “uh-oh” and kept crawling into the dark cave under the car.
Above her, the
sound of voices.
#
“Who’s...that guy?” the teenage boy said, looking
at the eerie man standing in front of his car. “He’s looks too grown-up to be
working here.”
His girlfriend,
Vickie, huddled next to him. She hid her face behind the big sponge dice
hanging from the rearview mirror. “Scooter, this place gives me the creeps.
Let’s go—now.”
The caped man
glared at them through the windshield, then bent down by the front bumper and
vanished, as if searching for something. He reappeared and began circling the
car like a shark.
“I seen enough.”
Scooter grabbed the keys.
Vickie bounced in
her seat as if she sat on a tack. Either she was crazy, or a voice rose from
the rubber floor mats. “You hear it?”
“Huh?”
“There’s like a
weird voice by my shoes!” She shuddered as the caped man drifted by her side
window. “The floor mat said, ‘uh-oh.’ Oh Scooter—I gotta pee!”
Scooter lowered his
window, unhooked the speaker and dropped it. Paranoia flared in his eyes.
“We’re outta here.”
#
Voices above her.
Cel lay on her back, looking up at the bottom of the car, hiding like mama told
her. Nearby, two shoes crept alongside the car. The wizard went round and
round. Then something fell from the sky and hit the ground. It bounced and
landed by the back tire. A speaker. A voice in the speaker said: “Dracula is here! Run before it’s too late!”
A moment later, a big blast. The engine roared above her feet—one with a
silver shoe, one with a pink sock. Rust flakes sprinkled onto her forehead like
little bugs.
Boom boom. Boom
boom.
Scared, she backed
up, scooting herself over the gravel with her heels. The stones made her think
of the spooky wizard in her book, standing on a rocky road. Maybe this was the
same road. But she had to stop when she felt it. Just behind her head, a big
hunk of sharp metal hung from the car’s stomach. Pinned down, no room to
squirm. Beside her ear, a werewolf howled through the speaker. And the wizard’s
feet were gone.
From straight up
inside the car, a girl’s voice: “Hurry up, he’s crazy!”
The wizard’s arm
appeared, his fingers crept toward her like a spider, touched her ankle without
the shoe. She stared at the car, an inch above her nose, and pretended she lay
hidden beneath her bed. A drop of goo hit her chin, oozing down her neck. She
tried to kick the wizard’s hand, move her foot away. How did the wizard find
her hiding spot? Cold metal behind her head, couldn’t back up, pinned in.
Wizard fingers pulled her sock. Boom boom. Boom boom. Where was mama? Boom
boom.
A curl of smoke
from the exhaust pipe trickled under the car, swirling over her. Another trick.
Just like the picture book wizard, looking up at her from the foggy road. She
had to act. Boom boom. She squeezed her eyes tight and imagined a special
nursery rhyme. A magic spell. She whispered: “Wizard, wizard, go away...come
again, another day.”
The tires moved,
crunching gravel. The metal hunk advanced, kissed the crown of her head, then
lifted up like a balloon, tracing her scalp, tickling her baby hair. Her magic
spell was working. She wouldn’t be cut in half. Boom boom. Boom boom.
“Wizard, wizard, go
away,” she repeated as the shock springs groaned.
From the corner of
her eye, she saw the back tire climb over the speaker, making the werewolf howl
again. The car rose, as if driving over a big rock. The metal floated past her
face like a dark knife, coming down above her chest.
“Come again...”
Boom boom. Boom boom.
It dragged across
the length of her hoodie—scraping the zipper—slid between her legs, past her
knees. It finally bent the tips of her toes forward, and moved on.
“...another day.”
The car passed
above her like a storm cloud. Now she saw stars. The spell worked, the wizard
gone. What a night in the Galaxy!
#
Linda heard the
commotion, turned, saw a tall, caped man prowling around a black car.
Headlights, an engine. She ran up, saw the car pull out, and spotted a silver
shoe on the ground. She gasped, picked it up. Total heart attack. Suddenly Cel
appeared, lying on the gravel, smiling at the sky. “Duckie cover, mama.”
“Oh my God!” Linda
gasped, scooping her up. Her baby had a dark goatee of oil on her chin. “Are
you all right, honey, are—?”
“Wanna hear my
magic spell?”
“I’m so sorry, Cel,
I feel like such a bad mom.”
“Wanna?”
Nearby, someone
whistled a familiar melody. Linda thought of the mysterious phone call, and
froze. Her car was out there, somewhere, but all the rooftops and windshields
looked the same under the stars. Steel and glass cookies cut from the same
cookie-cutter. She thought of her late husband, Jack, and felt his wedding band
on her right thumb. Reliable, resilient, resourceful Jack. What would Jack do?
Think, girl...think!
Beside her was an
empty car. She opened the driver’s door and pushed Cel into the front seat.
Then she scrambled inside and slammed the door, sending a shudder through the
metal.
“Hey!” someone
cried.
Linda turned and
saw a shirtless boy lying in the back seat with his topless girlfriend. The boy
sprang up in his white jockeys. The girl crossed her arms over her bare
breasts. The smell of pot and spilled beer hung in the air.
The boy rallied his
manhood: “Hey, what the fuh—”
Linda jingled the
keys, stomped the gas. The car bolted out of its space, ripping the speaker’s
cord in half. The two teens squealed.
Cel studied the
topless twins with a serious face, and attempted the peace sign. “Piss,” she
greeted, and gave them the finger.
Linda spun the
wheels between the rows of parked cars with the headlights off.
“Lady,” the boy
protested, “get out of my car or I’ll have you arrested!”
“Shut up or I’ll
have you busted.”
“Busted?”
“For smoking a
bone—ten years in maximum security.”
“Lady!”
Cel faced the
teenage girl. “Look, no shirt.”
Linda reached over
and pointed her daughter’s head away from the back seat. “Watch the nice movie,
Cel, come on.” To the boy, she snapped, “Indecent exposure in front of a
minor—you’re looking at twenty years in D-Block, buck-o.”
“Listen, lady, I
don’t want no trouble. We can forget this ever happened...”
Linda glanced in
the rearview mirror at the girl: “How old are you?”
“Six…sayteen.”
Linda shifted her
eyes in the mirror and addressed the boy: “Sixteen will get you twenty. How
dare you take that little girl to the passion pit. I should slap you silly.”
“Jesus Christ,
lady, whaddya want from me?”
Outside the car,
two drunken men were barking at the moon. A flying box hit the front windshield.
Popcorn exploded across the glass.
“Look, mama, it’s
snowing.”
“Not exactly,
honey.”
A beer can sailed
over their hood. A second can hit the rooftop and splashed down Cel’s side
window.
“Mama, it’s
raining.”
“What kind of a
dump is this?”
Two vampires, a
werewolf, and a green ghoul suddenly appeared at the side windows, growling and
licking the glass. Cel watched in horror and let out a whoop. Her hands flew in
front of her eyes.
“Hang on, Cel!”
Linda raced to the edge of the lot and punched the brakes. A Nixon & Agnew in ‘68 campaign button
was pinned to the sun visor. She muttered something, slipped off her shoe, took
aim, and trashed the bulb in the dome light with its heel.
The boy nearly had
a seizure. “Hey, this is my dad’s car! He’s gonna kill me!”
“I can’t have that
light up when we leave.”
“Do something,
Butchie,” the teenage girl said, “don’t just sit in your shorts.”
“Friggin’ hippie
chicks!” Butchie whined. “My old man was right. He said: ‘Stick with the
greasers, son. Stay on the Slick ‘n’ Stick program. Slick your hair with
Brylcreem, and stick with Elvis. Them hippies got tie-dye brain fry.’”
Linda turned to
Butchie. “Count to ten, punch on your headlights, and floor it. Or I’ll call
the cops and you’ll spend prom night in the penitentiary.”
His muddy brown
eyes were vibrant. “Lady—it’s a deal! One...two...four...”
“Don’t cheat!”
“One…two…three…”
She grabbed Cel
like a football and escaped, sneaking through the lot to their car.
“…eightnineten!”
The two teens barreled for the exit, a rooster tail of gravel shooting from the
rear tires. The stones sprayed a row of cars, igniting death threats.
When Linda and Cel
were safe inside the Monsta, they peeled out of the Galaxy.
#
At the first set of
stoplights, Cel turned and noticed it—a fiery red rose in the back seat, on top
of her Mother Goose. She squeezed her eyes shut, made two fists, and whispered,
“Wizard, wizard, go away...”
She peeked. The
flower was still there, so she finished her magic spell.
“...come again,
another day.”
Part One
THE U-TURN TIME
MACHINE
October 1993
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time
future,
And time future contained in time
past.
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets:
“Burnt Norton”
Chapter 1
“So the real estate
agent sold the house and you have to be out by when?” Janelle asked.
“End of this
month.” Sally Mitchell sat in Janelle’s parked car and repositioned her feet.
Her knees brushed the glove compartment. One of the drawbacks of being five-ten
in your stocking feet, aside from making short men squirm, was riding with a
five–three driver. The front seat was always pulled up. Knee-knockin’ always.
Janelle Sawyer
chewed on a twirl of canary yellow hair. “Halloween is your last day.”
“Aunt Alice is in
her condo now. And besides, I want to move to Boston and get settled before graduate school
starts in January. Can you believe it? Six years later and I’m a student
again.”
“How’s Alice?”
“Her knees aren’t
very sturdy, and she’ll be seventy-six next month. But her new place is on the
first floor, no stairs to climb.”
Alice Reardon,
Sally’s great aunt, never married, spent nearly forty years as a secretary and
later, manager, at Shrieve-Willis Paper Company located in downtown Columbus and, at the age
of fifty, began to single-handedly raise Sally. For that reason, along with the
enormous affection Sally felt for her aunt, she came to the house of her
childhood on Maple Street
in June, and stayed while Alice
convalesced from knee surgery. By mid-summer it was obvious her aunt needed
smaller quarters. In early September, Alice
awoke in a different bedroom for the first time in nearly a quarter century.
Sally faced the
side window and looked at the house. “I’ve begun cleaning it out. There’s a lot
to rummage through, family things. And yet there’s this feeling...”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know,
really.” She turned back to Janelle, her best friend at Columbus High School,
Class of ‘83. “I sense something a bit strange inside the house. Maybe it’s all
the childhood things, the toys and games. I feel like I’m going back in time.
When I moved to Boston
ten years ago, I thought I left all this behind me. But when I came back this
summer, it’s as if I stepped back in time. Everything seemed the same.”
Janelle patted her
friend on the thigh. “Whenever we visit our parents, we regress.”
“It’s not that way
with my aunt and me.”
“Ponce de Leon had
it all wrong. If he wanted to find the Fountain of Youth, he should’ve spent a
long weekend in a car with his mother.” Janelle paused and looked at her
friend. “You’re thinking about Graham again, aren’t you?”
Sally knew she’d
been busted. Was her face that easy to read? She blushed, turning away. “Yes,
I’m thinking about him, and all the rest of it. To think I quit teaching to
start an antique limousine service called Cars ‘n’ Stars—what was I thinking? Beware of business ventures
with your boyfriend.”
“Unless your
boyfriend’s family is rich.”
“Graham said the
client should feel like a celebrity in the back seat of an antique limousine.
Particularly at night, driving around town under the stars. Hence: Cars ‘n’
Stars. He assured me it was poetry.”
“The only time men
are exposed to poetry is when they take a squirt and see a limerick scribbled
on the rest room wall above the urinal.”
Graham and Sally
started out with a burgundy 1940 Oldsmobile 90 with whitewall tires, and later
acquired a satin blue 1947 Chrysler
Town and Country
convertible with a shiny harmonica grille. But the two began to drift apart in
the spring. When she arrived in July to assist her aunt, she also saw it as an
opportunity to put some space between her and Graham, giving them time to sort
things out.
Janelle draped one
arm on the steering wheel. “So tell me, how’s the hardest-working man in show
business?”
Sally smiled.
“Jim’s fine. He’s been fun to have around.”
“That man.” Janelle pursed her lips, then
tried to hide it with a smile.
“His new apartment
opens up on the eighth, this Friday. His landlord spent the first week making
some overdue repairs.”
“You took pity on
him and let him stay at Alice’s
house.”
“Jim said he was
the victim of a rent increase, turning him into a homeless deejay. How could I
turn him away?”
“I suppose he’s not
a bad guy.”
“But?”
“But talk about no
money and no prospects.”
Sally looked
squarely at her friend, a department manager for Bank of New England. She knew
it was impossible for Janelle to imagine the
hardest-working man in show business holding down a respectable job. “Don’t
be too hard on him. He’s a good guy, a little eccentric, but—”
“A little? I’m glad you’re not serious
about him.”
“We’re friends, Jim
and I.”
“In other words...”
Sally smiled when
she said, “Yes, he’s still on the couch.”
“So what’s he like
to have around? Dare I ask?”
“He’s kind of...how
would I say? He’s actually really sweet, it’s just that...”
“Yes?”
“Last month he
turned 37, but it’s as if he just came to this planet. I can’t really explain
it.” Sally giggled. “He told me his birthday, which is September 9, 1956. Do
you know what happened on that date?”
“Let’s see,”
Janelle said, pulling the collar of her crew neck sweater up to her chin.
“Earthquake?”
“His mother
delivered him the very night, the very hour that Elvis first appeared on the Ed
Sullivan Show. Jim said it was ‘harmonic convergence.’”
“Oh, my God!”
Janelle threw her head back, clapping her hands and stamping her feet on the
floor mat like a flamenco dancer.
“Can you believe
it? He has an odd take on everything. He’s just—”
“He’s Jim,” said Janelle. “Jim Fleetwood—or
shall I say ‘Captain?’ So, how does Riley get along with your house guest?”
“Unmitigated
mistrust.”
“Good for Riley,”
Janelle said.
“Riley usually
sleeps on the bureau in the bedroom. One night last week, he went into the
living room and saw Jim asleep. Riley jumped up on the arm of the couch, took
aim, and sprayed Jim on the chest. Shot him right in the heart. Jim woke up and
started shouting. Riley got him good and hid beneath the bathtub.”
“Men,” Janelle said. “I grew up with three brothers, I know how they tick.”
A thin smile played across her mouth. “What a buncha...reptiles.”
“And on that
note...”
Janelle started the
ignition. “Honey, you need a mammal with money.”
“You know what Jim
calls himself? A member of the earning disabled.”
“Oh God, an earning
disability. That man.”
Sally got out of
the car and stooped down by the side window. “He says he’s income-challenged.”
“My advice, stick
with Graham.”
“He called again
last night. He wants me to move back to Cambridge
with him.”
“You could do
worse—drastically worse. So, what’s
he say about your roommate?”
“Jim’s name always
puts a lull in the conversation. I don’t think Graham quite knows what to make
of it. He calls Jim ‘the Wrong-Way Corrigan of the nineties, flying against the
currents of the hip and the haute couture.’”
“Wrong-Way who?”
“The American
pilot, Douglas Corrigan. In 1938, he set out to fly solo from New
York to California, but went the
wrong way and landed across the ocean in Ireland.”
“Oops.”
“That’s Jim in a
nutshell, always heading in reverse.”
The driver burst
into another flamenco dance behind the steering wheel.
“Remember, Graham
is Tiffany—Jim is Wal-Mart.” Janelle grinned and stepped on the gas.
Prologue and Chapter One of "Past is Present," a quirky thriller with a 4/4 beat. E-book available at Amazon.
