Back to the Future (3 page)

“Let me borrow this,” he shouted back over his shoulder at the bewildered student. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.” Less than a minute later, he was skateboarding down the front steps of the high school, gliding in a wide arc onto the main drag of wide sidewalk bounding Town Square. Glancing nervously to his right, he passed the Hill Valley Bank’s time and temperature board just as it changed from 3:57 to 3:58. A man making a transaction at the Versateller leaped to avoid the oncoming figure, tripping himself and falling backwards in the process. Then it was Marty’s turn to gasp, a car bearing down on him so rapidly he had to pirouette like a ballerina to maintain his balance. For a half block after that, he raced out of control, his arms flailing and body tipping to 45-degree angles until he slowly managed to right himself.

Just ahead, the YMCA building beckoned. Leaning forward to gain even more speed, Marty pivoted at the steps, grabbed the skateboard and ran into the building.

His group, known as the Pinheads, was already set up. Nearby, Jennifer also waited, nervously checking her watch. As he raced onto the stage, she let out a noisy sigh of relief and Marty winked at her.

A fat man, also glancing meaningfully at his watch, stared intently at Marty.

“Are you ready?” he asked coldly.

Marty nodded. His guitar, amp and microphone were already set up for him. Sitting quickly, Marty took a deep breath and tuned up in the shortest amount of time possible. Then, grasping the microphone, he looked toward the dance committee and spoke with a voice that rang with confidence. “All right,” he said. “We’re the Pinheads, and we’re gonna rock ‘n’ roll!”

The band kicked into a hot number, Marty’s fingers dancing across the strings and frets in a complicated lead line. Keyboard, bass and drums followed, embellished his thematic figures, hit the rhythm harder, preparing for the transition into Marty’s first variation.

“Fine,” a metallic voice called out. “That’s enough. Thank you.”

Marty could hardly believe his ears. In fact, he continued to play even as the rest of the Pinhead sound dribbled off into confused silence.

“Thank you,” the fat man repeated. “May we hear the next group, please?”

Marty came down off the stage in a daze. Had he gone through an afternoon of hell for
this?

“What happened?” he asked Jennifer.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “You sounded great. Maybe they’re looking for something else. Something more like Lawrence Welk.”

Ten minutes later, as they walked home, he was still in a state of shock. Jennifer put her hand on his ann. “Marty,” she said comfortingly. “One rejection isn’t the end of the world. You’re good and you’ll succeed one day.”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for music.”

“Sure you are,” she persisted. “You’re really good and so are the rest of the guys. The audition tape you made is really great.”

She handed him the cassette he had lent her a few days before. “Promise me you’ll send it to the record company before you decide to quit.”

“But what if they hate it?” Marty sighed. “What if they say, ‘Get outa here, kid, you got no future’? Why should I put myself through all that anxiety?”

Jennifer didn’t answer.

“Jeez,” Marty said finally. “I’m starting to sound like my old man now.”

Jennifer looked at him quizzically.

“He’s kind of a pushover,” Marty explained. “No guts. People are always using him.”

“Well, they say all our emotional anxieties come directly from our parents,” she smiled. The words coming out of her mouth sounded a bit strange even to her. Where had she heard the phrase? Sociology class?
People
magazine? She wasn’t sure, but it sounded plausible.

“In that case, you can kiss me off right now,” Marty muttered.

“I’ll just kiss you instead,” she said, reaching up to peck his cheek.

They walked hand-in-hand for a while. “Is your father really that bad?” Jennifer asked finally.

Marty shrugged. “I think deep down inside he means well,” he said. “But the man just can’t get it together.”

They had reached Town Square, and the presence of the big Toyota dealership, with its gleaming recessed windows and spotless showroom, made Jennifer think of happier things. “Well, at least your dad’s letting you borrow the car tomorrow night,” she smiled. “That’s a major step in the direction of getting it together.”

Marty nodded.

They stopped at the edge of the glass and looked inside at the salesmen circling potential customers like lions readying their attack on smaller beasts. “How come there are no used car saleswomen?” Marty asked. “I’ve never seen a woman selling cars, have you?”

Jennifer shook her head. “Maybe women can’t lie as well as men,” she offered.

Marty laughed, turned his gaze to a tricked-out four-by-four pickup truck in the showroom.

“Hey, check out that four-by-four,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great to take that up to the lake tomorrow night? We could put our sleeping bags in the back…make out under the stars.”

“Mmmm,” Jennifer replied.

“Someday, Jennifer, someday,” Marty said.

Looking at her smooth profile and even white teeth was starting to make him feel better. Perhaps music wasn’t everything after all.

“What about your mother?” Jennifer asked as they turned away from the window and continued walking. “Does she know you and I are—”

“Are you kidding? She thinks I’m going camping with the guys.”

“Would she mind if she knew the truth?”

“Yeah,” Marty replied. “If she found out I was going camping with you, she’d freak.”

“I’m that bad, huh?”

“It’s not you. It’s a moral thing. She’d give me the standard lecture about how she never behaved that way when she was in high school. She must have been a real goody-two-shoes, I’ll bet.”

“Most people then were, weren’t they? I mean, that was way back in the 1950s, before the pill or rock ‘n’ roll or a lot of things that were really good.”

Marty nodded. “Yeah, I guess it wasn’t easy, growing up in those primitive days.”

They were opposite the former Courthouse Building of Town Square, which had seen better days. The 1950s, in fact, had been the heyday of this part of town. Then people gathered at Town Square to socialize, do business, simply pass the time of day or evening. There had been a Texaco station here then, a soda shop, florist, the Essex movie house, a record store, a realtor’s office, women’s dress shop, Studebaker dealer, barber’s, an Ask Mr. Foster travel agency, stationery store, Western Auto appliance center and numerous other small businesses. Now nearly all were gone, victims of progress and lack of adequate parking. Many of the building facades were boarded up, covered with peeling notices and signs. One set of election posters read:
RE-ELECT MAYOR “GOLDIE” WILSON. HONESTY, DECENCY, INTEGRITY
. The picture beneath the inspiring words showed the face of a black man, about fifty years old with a gold front tooth. “This was where Mom used to hang out,” Marty said.

“There used to be a soda shop here.”

“I guess you couldn’t get in trouble there,” Jennifer smiled. “Anyway, maybe she’s just trying to keep you respectable.”

“She’s not doing a very good job, is she?” Marty laughed, sliding his arm behind her back. “Terrible…”

“Wonderful…”

They were standing with their hips touching, about to kiss…

“Save the clock tower!” a grating voice suddenly ordered, causing them to jerk apart.

Simultaneously, a donation can was placed between the two teenagers. It rattled hollowly, as if there were only two or three lonely coins inside.

“Save the clock tower!” the voice repeated.

Jennifer and Marty turned to look at the person who had interrupted them. She was a middle-aged church-type woman with prematurely blue hair. Her upper lip, Marty noted with just a touch of revulsion, was covered with nearly enough fine hair to provide an aspiring young man with a decent mustache. Under her arm were dozens of printed flyers.

“Please make a donation to save the clock tower,” the woman said, rattling the can again.

“Lady, can’t you see I’m busy here?” Marty asked. Ordinarily, he would have been pleasant to the interloper, but the events of the day had worn his nerves to a frazzle.

The woman was not put off by his lack of interest, however. Stepping between the two youngsters, she addressed them with swiveling head.

“Mayor Wilson is sponsoring an initiative to save or repair that clock,” she intoned, pointing to the stopped clock mounted high on the old courthouse tower. “We at the Hill Valley Preservation Society think it should be preserved exactly the way it is, as part of our history and heritage. Thirty years ago, lightning struck that clock tower and the clock hasn’t run since. We at the society feel it’s a landmark of scientific importance, attesting to the power of the Almighty.”

Marty took a deep breath, preparatory to interrupting her spiel, but apparently that was it. They had heard the complete speech.

“All right, lady,” Marty said, relieved that they didn’t have to listen to even more. “Here’s all I have at the moment. A quarter. Is that O.K.?”

“We’re delighted with anything,” the woman smiled, revealing badly stained dentures. “A good cause can get by with nickels and dimes because it has the backing of the people. A bad cause, even if funded by millions from evil sources, is nevertheless bound to fail.”

Marty nodded, started to leave with Jennifer.

“Don’t forget to take a flyer,” the woman urged. “It tells the whole story of the clock tower.”

Marty took the flyer from her hand.

“And here’s something for your friend.” the woman continued, thrusting yet another flyer at him.

Something nearly snapped in Marty then. For a long but as many as he could carry, telling the woman he would distribute them at school. Then he would look for the nearest trash can and dump them. At the last moment, fortunately, he realized that the woman, though irritating, really meant no harm.

“Thanks,” Marty said, taking the flyer and handing it to Jennifer.

With a curt smile, he grabbed his girlfriend’s arm and guided her away from the crusader as fast as he could move without breaking into a run. A few moments later, they were safely around the corner.

“Now…where were we?” he said.

Jennifer snuggled closer to him, looked both ways and then turned her face upward toward his.

“Right about here…” she murmured.

They moved closer. Marty could smell her skin, feel her breath against his chin. Slowly he put his hand on her neck, just below the ear and bent to kiss her…

A car horn shattered the magic moment. Jennifer looked away from him and Marty saw annoyance in her eyes. “That’s my dad,” she said.

“How did he find you here?” Marty asked.

“Just luck.”

“The kind of luck I’ve been having all day.”

“Nothing lasts forever, not even bad luck.” The horn honked again.

“I’ll call you tonight,” Marty promised.

“I’ll be at my grandma’s,” she said.

“What’s the number?”

“243-8480.”

Marty repeated the number, got two numbers transposed. “You should have saved one of those flyers,” Jennifer said. Then, looking at her hand, she saw that it still clutched one of the propaganda pieces. Waving to her father to wait, she took out a pen and wrote something on the back of the paper and thrust it at Marty. Then she hopped in the car and left. Marty waved and watched her until the car was out of sight.

Only then did he look at the paper. On it was written the telephone number and the simple phrase: “I love you.” Marty smiled.

Folding the paper, he put it in his pocket and skateboarded down the street toward home.

“If only I don’t die of a heart attack or a stroke first,” Dr. Emmett Brown muttered aloud.

He was close to seeing his dream become a reality. No doubt about that. One by one the scientific and physical obstacles had been eliminated. Was this to be “the day”?

“Don’t count on it,” he replied to himself. There was no use getting too high, he reasoned.

At sixty-five, he was one of the nation’s most talented and most unheralded inventors. In fact, no one except Marty McFly even knew of his accomplishments, but that didn’t matter. Soon all that would change. His lifetime of struggle, of being the recipient of ridicule, would suddenly turn golden.

He looked around his workshop, which was nothing more than a garage filled with the detritus and equipment that had been accumulated over a forty-year period. Some of that gear included a jet engine, piles of circuit boards, enough automobile parts to build at least two cars, a short-wave radio, Seeburg jukebox, workbench with welding equipment, the remnants of a robot, a working refrigerator, and dozens of clocks. Clocks were Doc Brown’s favorite collector’s item. He had everything from cuckoo clocks to digital models—and every one was in dead sync with the others.

The presence of so many timepieces was not accidental.

Time was Doc Brown’s latest, and perhaps final, dominating, interest. During the 1950s, he had tried to uncover the secrets of the human mind via a variety of mind-reading devices. None had worked. A half-decade earlier, he had been smitten with the theory that all mammals spoke a common language. Some other schemes included the notion that gold could be mined by superheating the earth’s surface, that each person’s age was predetermined and could be revealed by studying the composition of their fingernails, and he published a paper which claimed that the sex of babies could be predicted before they were conceived. The fact that all of Doc Brown’s work yielded nothing should have discouraged him but did not. Through the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and into the ’80s, he continued to experiment, earning perennial scorn as the crazy scientist of Hill Valley.

Now, on October 25, 1985, he was ready for fulfillment. He had worked out every element of his time-travel theory until it was perfect. By the end of the century, scientists and historians would be using his device to explore the future and past, and through this exploration, work to improve the present. His view of time as a dimension was summed up in the simple explanation he once gave to the editor of the Hill Valley newspaper. “I think of time as spherical and unending,” he said. “Like the skin of an orange. A change in the texture at any point will be felt over the entire skin. The future affects the past and present, just as the past and present affect the future.”