A Loop in Time (11 page)

It took a lot of driving but John made it and was sitting outside of the nursery looking in when he felt someone’s arm around his. He looked down to see Susan in a blue hospital night gown. She looked a little run over but no worse for wear.

“We do good work,” she said to John.

“I’ve seen his baby pictures, but there is nothing like seeing him in person.”

“It must be kinda weird looking at your father as a baby.”

“My son, too, and you have no idea.”

“Should I be jealous?” Tim’s voice came from behind them. John turned to look at him. Tim had an arm load of flowers and was wearing his best suit.

“Just spending time with my grandmother,” John replied.

Tim came up to the window and said, “he does look a lot like you.”

“Yes and, in twenty years people will say I look a lot like him.”

As the three of them looked at the new baby, Tim handed the flowers over to Susan and she looked up at him and smiled.

“We are going to name him Steven. I hope that is the right name. I forgot to consult you first. We haven’t finished the paperwork yet so we can always change it.”

“Steven is a fine name,” John replied.

“Oh, good, Steven it is then.” Susan was happy about that.

“So when do you go home?” John asked.

“Not till tomorrow. They want to make sure that the baby is doing fine, “Susan responded. “How long are you in town?”

“Just a few days. Granger and I are going out for drinks on Friday.”

“Good, stop by before you go, we need to talk to you.”

“No problem.” The benefits from coming from the future is that life has so few surprises. John already knew what she was going to ask. He already knew what his answer was. It had been decided forty five years earlier by his previous self. He supposed another previous self had made the same decision yet another forty five years before that. It was a loop in time.

When he headed to his car, he drove over to the motel where he was staying. It was the best in town and a lot better than the garage he used to live in. There was not much to do that night but watch television. He wondered why he had even had the cable installed in Idaho. He never had time to watch it. He didn’t even know what programs were on this year.

He didn’t stay long in the room. Instead he went out to a nice restaurant. There were few all night diners but he managed to find one. He sat down and the waitress came over right away.

“What can I get you?” She was blonde with a ponytail. She was petite but had ruggedness in her beauty.

“I’ll just get a hamburger and some root beer.”

She shook her head back and forth. “The hamburgers here are horrible. You want the country fried steak. It’s amazing.”

John smiled, “all right, I will take the country fried steak.”

“Coming right up,” she said as she walked off.

Ten minutes she was back with two plates of food. She set them on either side of the table. John was shocked when she sat down across from him.

“Listen,” she said. “There ain’t nobody else in the joint and it’s my break time anyway. I hope you don’t mind a little company.”

“Um, no, not at all.” He did mind, but didn’t want to be impolite.

“I figured you ain’t married ‘cause you got no ring on your finger and you are out, alone, in the middle of the night.”

“You are good at reading people. I will have to admit that,” John replied.

She smiled and then started cutting into her steak. “I’ve been here a few years. Didn’t want to go to college like my dad wanted, just wanted to work. Now I’ve worked and all I think about is going to college. You a soldier from the base?”

“You got that one wrong. Well, I was an Air Force pilot once, but I crashed a plane so I am no longer. I fly crop dusters in Idaho now.”

“What’s your name? I guess I should tell you mine first. I am Emily, like the badge says. My last name is Anderson.”

A chill went up John’s spine. He knew the name. The face was younger than the one he had seen before, by about forty five years, but it was her. “Hi, um,” he stammered, “I am Ja…I mean John Buck.”

“Is that a real name? I mean, not to hurt your feelings or nothin’, but it just doesn’t sound like a real name and you almost said another name.”

John had to smile real hard. She talked the same as she would in the future. Aunt Emily, he would call her as a kid. She wasn’t his real aunt, so he thought at the time, but Uncle John’s wife. He loved his Uncle John. Uncle John wasn’t his real uncle either, so his grandma explained one day. He was just a very close family friend. He didn’t know it as a kid, but he would become Uncle John.

‘How could I have forgotten Aunt Emily?’ he thought to himself. He had told Susan that he was going to stay single because he didn’t remember Emily.

“No, it’s not my real name. It’s my legal name now. I told you about the crash. I had amnesia and didn’t know my real name. Now I do, but it’s too late, all my paperwork, driver’s license and also my pilot’s license has John Buck on it.”

“So what is your real name, then?”

“Jason Ralston.”

She thought about it for a minute and said, “I like John Buck better.”

John laughed out loud. When he regained his composure he asked, “Do you always sit down with customers and insult their real names?”

She smiled, “no, this is a first. There is something different about you. I can’t put my finger on it. You aren’t like anyone I have ever met. I was just trying to figure out what is going on. You have a story don’t you? A very long story that you ain’t told very many people? I want to hear that story.”

“I do have a story, a very long story. You are even in that story although I didn’t know when I came in this restaurant that you were here. You won’t believe my story; I wouldn’t believe it either had I not lived through it. I just can’t tell you my story.”

“I have tomorrow off. You and me are going for a long walk in the park. You are going to tell me that story you can’t tell me.” Someone else came into the restaurant so she got up, but before she walked off she bent down and gave him a kiss right on the lips. “That is payment for your story.”

John laughed, “It’s going to take a few more of those to pay for my story.”

She wrote down her address on the back of his bill. “Pick me up there at two pm.”

When John finished his dinner he put the payment on the table along with a large tip. He put the bill in his pocket. He shouted at her from across the room. “See you tomorrow.”

She smiled at him on his way out.

It was two o’clock exactly when he pulled up to her apartment. It was in a complex. The buildings were just one story high, but there were three buildings that went way back. The apartments had flat roofs and plaster on the walls. John found the right letter and knocked on the door.

She opened the door, still in her pajamas. To his surprise she grabbed his face with both of her hands and gave him a big kiss. “Is that enough payment or do you need more?”

“Maybe a couple of more,” John said.

She kissed him twice more. “Okay, come in while I change clothes and then we are going to take that walk in the park.”

He sat at the kitchen table while she went into the bedroom to change. When she came out, she was wearing a nice blue pantsuit. “Okay, let’s go. There is a park around the corner. Let’s take that walk.”

“Sure,” John said. He was going over and over in his mind how he was going to tell her. He knew that he would marry her later on, but didn’t want to scare her away for now. “Which would you believe more, me being an alien or me being from another time?”

“Are those my only options? I paid for the truth, how about we start with that.”

John cleared his throat. “The truth is I did crash an airplane. I crashed forty five years before I took off. Somehow I have come back in time, I don’t know how. We were testing a new engine that used energy waves to increase its speed. It worked in all of our tests on the ground, but when we fitted it in a plane, it went into hyper speed in the atmosphere. It was too much for the plane as it was not made to go that fast. It started falling apart so I ejected. I hit the air at such a speed that I went unconscious. When I came to I was in a hospital with amnesia.”

“Oh, I heard about a crash. That must have been yours. There were a couple of soldiers talking. Nobody sees a waitress, so I was able to listen in while I was pouring them more coffee. They were talking about a plane made out of strange material. One of them said it was Russian and the other said he hoped not because the plane was way advanced.”

“That was my plane. It’s made out of composites to keep its radar profile down. It must have been invisible to today’s radar.”

“Wow, so how’s the future turn out, and what does it have to do with me?”

“You believe me?” John was astounded.

“Like I said, I read people really well.” She gave him a quick smile. She wasn’t sure she believed him but if she said she didn’t, he would stop talking and she was enjoying the story.

“Well, as it turns out, you are my aunt in the future. Of course I am not born yet in real life. I came to Arizona to see my father. He was born yesterday.”

“Your father just got born yesterday? Wow, that’s amazing. So how do I get to be your aunt? Who do I marry? Because I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Well, that’s the interesting part. I am my own uncle. At least I am called Uncle John. I am actually my own grandfather, but I won’t know that until I come back in time.”

She stopped walking and looked him in the eye. “How are you your own grandfather?”

He wondered why he was telling her all this since he had just met her and didn’t know if he could trust her. She was just so easy to talk to. Besides, he rationalized, she was a heck of a fun aunt.

“I got my memory back on my wedding night. I married my grandmother. We have since had the wedding annulled, but it was too late. She got pregnant. She is already married again and everyone thinks he is the father, but he can’t have kids because of an old war injury.”

She giggled, “You had sex with your grandmother. Awkward. Nobody wants to see their grandmother naked.”

John gave her a crooked smile, “I don’t know, she looks pretty good naked at this age.”

Emily just shook her head. “You’re bad.”

They continued walking but John could see that she was deep in thought. When they got to a park bench she sat down so he sat down beside her.

“So, I am supposed to marry you?”

“Um well, that is what happened in the past so I assume it will happen again in the future. I shouldn’t have told you that part. Now you’re going to get all weird on me.”

“If I am going to marry you, then we need to work on that kissing of yours, because, frankly, you stink.”

Aunt Emily was never one to mince words. She always said what she was thinking. She put her arms around him and they practiced for the next hour and a half.

When they were done she said, “There, that’s better. A few more practices like that and you will be as good as gold.”

John looked at his watch, “sorry, I have to go. I am meeting a friend for drinks. I will walk you home.”

She looked a little sad. “How about if I come with you? I want to meet your friends; after all, we are getting married.”

“Sure,” John replied. He saw no reason not to.

The couple walked to the car and then drove over to the bar to meet with Lieutenant Granger. He was surprised to see John with a woman. “Hello, who are you?”

“I’m Emily. John and I are supposed to get married.”

John’s face got bright red when she said it.

“Oh, so you are engaged? When did you meet? John hasn’t told me anything about you.”

Emily laughed, “We met at three o’clock this morning. John hasn’t asked me to marry him, just told me that we were married in the past and will be in the future, if that makes any sense?”

Granger smiled. “Shockingly, it does. So she’s the one. How did you find her?” he asked John.

“Wait a minute,” Emily interrupted. “That makes sense to you?”

Granger smiled again. “Yes, shocking as it may seem, it does. John still had amnesia when we figured out that he actually came from the future. We were relieved, because we thought he was a Russian spy and if that were true he had technology in that airplane of his that was decades ahead of what we had.”

“Really?” Emily sat back in her chair. “I thought he was just giving me a line to go out with him. I thought that he was so creative that I had to give him a try. Wow, so have you told anyone?”

“No, and you shouldn’t either. We figured it would be the end of our careers if we started telling our leadership that a man from the future had crashed. Beside, John is a great guy, and we didn’t want Washington dissecting him.”

Emily laughed at the last part, but then stopped when Granger didn’t crack a smile. She looked suddenly worried. “Do you really think they would have?”

“You never know with those government types. We didn’t want to take the chance.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” John interjected. “How about some drinks first?” He motioned a waitress over.

“I’ll have a beer,” Emily said before the others could talk. “And I want a sandwich, too. I’m starving. I never got breakfast.”

Granger already had a drink so John ordered for Emily and himself. The three of them talked about nothing and everything, far into the night. Soon last call was upon them and they left the bar. John didn’t feel he could drive so he called a cab.

“What about your car?” asked Emily.

“I will pick it up in the morning, right when I go to see my son and visit with his mother.”

Emily’s eyes perked up. “Can I come?”

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”

“Yes, but not until later.” She had a pleading look on her face.

“Okay, after I get my car, I will swing by and pick you up.”

“Great.”