Ripples Through Time (10 page)

“Yeah,” Jason said. “It’s like baseball, only with a motor
bike.”

“I like it. Sounds dangerous,” Rickie said. “Maybe you could
change the name. Something like ‘Murder Ball.’ People could carry chains or
something, and the point would be to knock other people off their bikes too.”

“No,” Jason said, shaking his head. “You’re missing the
point. It’s supposed to be futuristic. Like a future sport. It’s not
dangerous.”

“Why not? People like danger? And how
wouldn’t
it be
dangerous? You’re riding around chasing a ball on a motorcycle.”

“Yeah, but it’s the future. I think one of my characters
will be a famous motor ball player.”

“Cool,” Rickie said. “That’ll explain why he enjoys killing
people.”

“He
what
?”

“You know, why he likes killing people since he’s a pirate. He
can run them down on his motorcycle and stuff!”

Jason felt his jaw hanging open. He fought down the urge to
punch his brother. Instead, he crumpled the sheet of paper up in his fist.

“What are you doing? I liked that part!”

Jason threw the paper in the trash can. “Let’s go eat.”

Jason was surprised when he and his brother arrived in the
kitchen to find their mother wrapping tin foil over their dinner. He could
still smell the cooked food in the air and his stomach grumbled. She glanced up
at them as they came in.

“Oh Jason, Rickie. Get your shoes on and grab your coats.”

“What, why?” Rickie asked. Their mom stuck the pot and a
tin-foil wrapped loaf of bread into the fridge.

“You don’t need to ask questions.”

Jason headed for the door and grabbed his shoes. It was cold
outside, the middle of January, and he had a big overcoat hanging on the rack. He
slipped it over his shoulder and headed for a chair to finish putting his shoes
on.

“Where are we going?” Rickie asked.

Jason watched his mom set her hands on her hips. The glare
she leveled at Rickie could have melted steel, but Rickie met it with a bland
look on his face. Emily was skinny with long black hair tied into a ponytail. It
hung loose over her right shoulder. Her lips were pursed the way she got whenever
she was angry. Which, anymore, seemed to be any time she argued with Jason’s
thirteen year old brother.

“We,” she said, emphasizing each word, “are going to Mr.
White’s house. They have invited us to dinner.”

“See mom? That wasn’t so hard,” Rickie said, joining Edward
and putting his own shoes on. Emily only sighed.

“What for?” Jason asked. They’d gone to the White’s for
dinner a few times before but not in a few months.

“They invited us.”

“Oh,” Jason said. “Why?”

“Because it’s a nice thing to do,” she replied, “and Rickie
is friends with Alan.”

“Adam,” Rickie corrected.

“Oh,” Jason replied.

“Just put your shoes on.”

Jason turned dutifully to finish his task. Once he was
finished he stood up and finished putting his coat on. “Well, I hope we still
have chicken.”

“Not a chance,” Rickie said. “Jenny doesn’t like chicken,
remember?”

“Oh,” Jason remembered, chagrined. “Oh right.”

Beth came bounding down the stairs, still in her school
clothes and with her winter coat on. She was two years younger than Jason. She
had her dad’s curly hair with her mom’s eyes; she was also a little monster, a
fact she managed to keep a secret from adults. Bethany, Jason knew, could get
away with murder if she wanted.

“I’m ready!”

“Okay good,” Emily said. “We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

“Is dad coming?” Jason asked. His mom glanced at him, a sad
expression on her face.

“No. Not tonight. He’s working late at the track for Mr.
Rhodes.”

“Oh, he’s at the track tonight? Can we go see him?” Jason
asked. He loved going to the track and petting the horses. It wasn’t very often
that Jason got to go with him. When Calvin did take one of the kids, he usually
took the little monster instead.

“The track?” Rickie echoed. “I hate going there.”

“Yeah, it smells there,” Bethany said, scrunching up her
nose for emphasis. Jason knew that if her dad was here asking who wanted to go
to the track, Bethany would be jumping in excitement. “Me and Rickie don’t want
to go there.”

“We can’t tonight anyway,” mom said, “since we have to go to
your friend’s house for dinner, Rickie.”

“Okay good,” Beth said, flashing that winning smile that
kept her out of trouble. Jason wanted to punch her. She always got what she
wanted.

“Everyone out to the car,” Emily said. Rickie opened the
door and the cold air spun its way into the kitchen, carrying a smattering of
snowflakes that melted as soon as they hit his skin. Jason glanced past and saw
that it was coming down hard.  

He hated snow. He wished they’d never moved from the south. He’d
only been seven when they moved, but he still knew how much warmer it was there
than here.

He hurried out to the car, fighting the slippery surfaces to
keep his feet. It was a ’72 Buick his dad bought a few months ago, not long
after they came out, painted the ugliest shade of maroon.

He waited impatiently for his mom to unlock the doors so he
could climb in. By contrast, Emily had to call several times for Bethany to
come get in the car.

Bethany was standing in the middle of the yard, eyes closed
and tongue out and spinning circles. It took three calls to wake the immature
girl up, and still another thirty seconds to get her inside. Rickie was in the
front and the other two in back.

His mom turned on the radio but Jason tuned it out.
Christmas music. Uggh. Instead he spent his time thinking. The motion of a
vehicle, for whatever reason, helped his mind to relax. He found that riding in
a vehicle was when he did some of his best thinking. Right now he was going
over details from his newest story in his mind.

He would have to scrap the Motor Ball detail now. It was
corrupted; Rickie had that effect on everything. But that didn’t mean it was a
totally useless idea.

Maybe there was another game. Some other sport that people
partook of in the future. He was going to set his book maybe four or five
hundred years from now, and it was important to find the right details.

“Do I have to play with Jenny?” Bethany asked, pulling Jason
from his thoughts.

“What honey? No, no you don’t
have
to play with
Jenny,” Emily said, “but it would be nice of you. She doesn’t have a lot of
friends.”

“She’s weird,” Bethany said. “Everyone at school says she’s
mental and that’s why she doesn’t come most of the time.”

“She’s just different,” Emily said. Bethany shrugged. Jason
saw her legs hanging above the car floor and kicking absently at the air. Beth
was rocking back and forth.

Whereas Jason liked spending time in the car, Beth hated it.
She hated sitting still. No attention span.

They drove down the street, watching the snow fall and
listening to the wind whistle around the outside of the car. Their town was
small. The landscape surrounding it was mostly farmland. The house where Adam
lived was only a few miles away, but it was still a ten minute drive on the
slippery roads.

“How was school?” mom asked. Jason glanced up and saw his
mom’s eyes in the mirror. She was asking him.

“It was okay,” he said. ‘Boring’ and ‘pointless’ were two
extra descriptors he didn’t bother adding.

“You guys probably won’t have school tomorrow,” Emily said,
still trying to get them to interact. “Not if the snow keeps falling like
this.”

“Uh huh,” Bethany said, still kicking her legs. “That’s what
my friend Tracy said. My friend Tracy said that we should go to the park…”

Jason found his mind wandering again. He decided he was
going to rename his main character. Using his own name was decidedly too
arrogant, especially for the
main
character. Maybe a side character, one
the reader wouldn’t really remember. Or even a villain. That could even be fun,
to be the villain in his own story. But not the main character.

The car turned onto the driveway leading to the White house.
The snow was a little over an inch deep now and not slowing. It was falling
faster, if anything.

They piled out of the car and made a beeline for the house. Even
Bethany didn’t stop this time. The snow was coming down too hard, layering
everything in puffs of white. The door opened as they approached, spilling
yellow light onto the snow covered front lawn. It served to highlight the
flakes hovering in the air in a way that was disorienting.

Jason found it to be distinctly beautiful, watching the
flakes blown by the wind every which way. Each flake special, different in its
own subtle way from all of the others. Magical.

“Sorry we’re late Grace!” Emily said as the door slipped
closed behind them. Jason brushed the snow off his coat and began unzipping. “I
forgot about your invitation.”

“Oh, it is no issue,” Mrs. White said. She helped Bethany
take off her coat and then began hanging them on a rack. After Jason’s coat was
taken care of, he began the laborious task of removing his boots. He wouldn’t
dare risk Mrs. White’s ire by keeping his boots on and tracking mud or snow
through the house. “I trust you made it here okay through that dreadful snow?”

“The roads were slick, but empty,” his mom said.

“Ah. Well the food is ready as soon as you all are.”

“That’s good because we are starving,” Emily said, and they
both laughed.

The children were ushered into the living room where they
saw Edward and Adam sitting beside a knee high table doing homework. They were
close to the hearth where a fire was blazing merrily along. Jason could feel
the visceral heat as the logs crackled and popped. He loved that sound.

The room was very crimson. Jason had only been here a couple
of times before, usually with Rickie. A circular rug dominated the floor and
the walls matched it with a deep wine colored hue. A mounted ten point buck
loomed over top Mr. White in his reclining chair. He was busy reading a
newspaper, turning pages with a sharp flick.

Jason’s father always read the paper first thing in the
morning with a cup of coffee, but Mr. White liked to read his in the evening
with his pipe or a cigar. Blue smoke drifted lazily out of a meerschaum pipe
held in his right hand. He glanced up as they came in and smiled.

“Ah, Emily,” he said. His eyes were dark and in the dim room
the firelight flickered off his glasses. The rims were very thin, which Jason
knew meant they were expensive. “I’m glad you and the kids could make it.”

“We almost didn’t,’ Emily said. “The snow is really coming
down.”

“We made pot-roast,” Mrs. White said.

“
Damn
,” Rickie muttered. Bethany giggled and mom
glared at them both.

“That sounds lovely,” Emily said.

Mrs. White turned to her husband. “Robert, are you nearly
finished?”

“Just one more article, dear, and then I’ll be ready to eat.
Perhaps you could set the table?”

Mrs. White smiled and nodded, turning back to Emily. They
started walking back toward the dining room, and Mrs. White said: “So I heard
you were thinking about buying a new car?”

“Yes, Calvin has been having trouble getting ours to start
for a few weeks now.”

“It’s new though?”

“We only just bought it,” Jason’s mother agreed. “But we
might need to trade it in and get something else.”

“Not one of those dreadful
foreign
cars, I hope,”
Mrs. White said, rounding the corner. “I couldn’t imagine you in one of those…”

They drifted out of ear shot. Rickie dropped down next to
Adam on the floor and they engaged in a hushed conversation. Probably about
dumb stuff. They knew not to be too loud for fear of bothering Mr. White.

Bethany sat on the couch next to Edward and leaned over to
read his homework. “We learned that last year,” she declared in a proud
whisper. She followed that up a few seconds later by pointing at his paper and
saying: “you got that one wrong.”

Jason watched both groups for a few seconds and decided
neither was inviting him to join. They weren’t very interesting anyway. He
instead followed his mother into the kitchen.

“…agree completely,” his mom was saying. Both women had a
stem glass in hand filled with a yellow golden liquid. Wine. He’d tried it
before, but it tasted like juice that went bad. He knew that one day he would
have to learn to like it—all writers did—but for now he was satisfied with soda
pop or water.

His mom turned when Jason entered. “Jason, could you set out
the silverware?”

He shrugged and grabbed a handful of forks off the counter. The
plates were already set—they were thin with flower decorations—and a vase of
plastic yellow roses sat at the center.  The dining room was entirely different
from the living room, lighter in color. More inviting, less homey.

He knew from the last time he’d been here that as Mrs. White
brought out the trays of food, she liked to replace the vase in the middle with
the entrée. She didn’t like to leave the center of the table empty and wanted
everything to be symmetrical. Personally Jason didn’t care. Food was food. At
home they usually ate in the living room and watched TV. But if Mr. White
didn’t bring it up to his wife as strange, neither would Jason.

He finished setting the forks out on top of the napkins and
headed back toward the kitchen. Then he hesitated, turning back to the table. He
counted the settings, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. No, just
what he’d thought. He headed back into the kitchen.

The women were still talking and laughing, but they both
stopped when they saw that he had a question. Mrs. White tucked a loose strand
of hair behind her ear and smiled. “Yes dear?”

“Why doesn’t Jenny eat with us?”