Written in Time (8 page)

The check was to arrive by Federal Express, meaning that it would be there in time for deposit. Because of that, Ellen was not surprised when she caught a weather report predicting severe thunderstorms throughout the Southeast. The storms would obviously be so severe that flights incoming to Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport would be delayed just enough that their check would not arrive until after two p.m., meaning that the deposit wouldn’t be credited until the following Monday.
 

But she bought the steaks anyway.
 

The steaks consumed, she suggested, “Why don’t we wait a few minutes before dessert, guys?”
 

Elizabeth stood up from the table, came over and felt her mother’s forehead and cheeks. “Doesn’t have a fever or anything.”
 

“Mom must be sick, though,” David cracked.
 

“So, fine, I made a dessert. It’s got broccoli in it—don’t worry.”
 

“Did you check the ingredients?” Clarence asked.
 

Her nephew obviously knew that she’d checked the ingredients. Although the rest of them kidded Clarence about it, his allergy to peanut oil was no joke. “Yes. It’s cherry cream-cheese pie. I made the crust from graham crackers, and I checked the box for ingredients. Liz double-checked it.”
 

“Well, you know I’ve gotta be careful.”
 

Jack cleared his throat, got up, said, “Be back in a second,” and walked into the hallway.
 

“What’s up with Daddy?”
 

“Yeah. Dad seems awfully quiet,” David declared, agreeing with his sister.
 

“It’s not some more of that stuff about that other Naile family,” Clarence began. “When I was up here the last time, I went home and didn’t get to sleep for a couple of hours, and I had some really yucko dreams.”
 

“Well, saddle up for some more of them, Clarence,” Jack said. He stood in the kitchen doorway, both of Arthur Beach’s envelopes in his left hand, a cigarette in his right. “Exhibit A.” Jack placed the earlier package at the center of the table.
 

David picked it up and opened it. “Like I told you before, Dad, this is some kind of a sick joke.” But David didn’t take his eyes from the Xerox of the Naile family of the past.
 

Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, next to his ashtray. He passed the second envelope over to David, then returned to his ashtray. “Check out what’s inside, son. Pass things around.”
 

“No. I was just going to stare at the envelope, Dad.”
 

“There’s no reason to get pissed off,” Jack told him. “Well, maybe there is, but wait until you’ve looked at all the new stuff, and then get pissed off. No sense doing it twice.”
 

Elizabeth and Clarence were studying the Xerox from the first envelope. “Dammit!” Clarence exclaimed. “This is some kind of nutball jerking you guys around.”
 

Ellen kept her voice calm. “When Jack and I did that book where we had this guy framed by his boss to look like a Russian spy? I did a lot of research about altering photographs. If these photographs were faked, they were done on equipment beyond state-of-the-art. And look at Jack’s holster.” Jack had obviously planned to mention the holster as well, because he disappeared into the hallway for a moment and returned with the black Hollywood rig, his pet Colt Single Action Army in the holster. “It’s empty, right?” Ellen asked perfunctorily. Jack carried a gun almost every day of his life and he never passed around a gun that was loaded.
 

“Yeah, but show everybody.”
 

Humoring her husband, Ellen removed the gun from the holster and opened the loading gate “C-o-l-t, right?” Ellen asked.
 

“Stop after you hear the O,” Jack said.
 

Ellen drew the hammer back to the second click, spun the cylinder—empty as promised—drew the hammer back the rest of the way and lowered it, closed the loading gate and returned the gun to the holster, placing the loop over the hammer. “Look at the holster in the Xerox, Clarence, and look at the holster on the table.”
 

“Want me to get my hat?” Jack asked.
 

“We get the idea, Daddy.” Elizabeth was taking the photos from the second envelope as quickly as David passed them to her.
 

Ellen studied her son’s face for a moment, not liking the expression that she saw. David had inherited bullheadedness from her side of the family, and David was not going to choose to believe this, no matter what he saw.
 

“This is a load of crap,” David announced as if on cue. “You’ve had that holster in a bunch of your gun articles, the single action, too. Somebody could have lifted the image, maybe.”
 

“I don’t think so, Davey,” Ellen announced.
 

“You didn’t really make a dessert,” David said, getting up so suddenly that his chair almost fell over. “This is just to keep us from wanting one.” He stormed out of the room. If she hadn’t known better—and maybe she didn’t know better at all—she might have thought that David was fighting to hold back tears.
 

“I’ll go after him,” Jack said, starting for the hallway.
 

“No! I’ll go after him, because maybe all David wants right now is to be left alone, not reasoned with.” Ellen pushed past her husband and ran down the hallway toward the front door. She half expected to hear the Saab starting up, or screeching out of the driveway, but as she reached the front porch, she saw the glow of a cigarette from the darkness.
 

Always more than a little night-blind, with great care she ventured out onto the darkened front porch. There were flashes of lightning in the clouds off to her left, and from behind the house. The storms were supposed to come in from the west and start to swing north. As yet, there was no thunder.
 

“It’s still far away,” David said, his voice sounding a little strained.
 

“You got another one of those cigarettes?”
 

“You quit years ago, remember?”
 

“Every once in a while, I take a drag on one of your father’s cigarettes.”
 

“It’s a Marlboro, not a Camel.”
 

Ellen Naile heard the first distant rumble of thunder. “Give it to me, and I’ll break the filter off.”
 

David shook loose a cigarette and Ellen took it, broke off the filter and asked, “Light?”
 

David lit her cigarette with a Bic, and then lit another one for himself. “You’re not in one of the photos.”
 

Ellen felt herself wanting to cry, wanted to say “Give me a hug,” but instead told him, “Probably because I was taking it, if this whole thing is real.”
 

“It can’t be real, Mom.”
 

Ellen exhaled through her nostrils. The nice thing about having given up smoking was that when she occasionally did take a puff—maybe six times a year or so—she could really enjoy it. “You ready to go back inside, Davey?”
 

“In a couple of minutes.”
 

“Smoking’s bad for you, you with your bodybuilding and everything. Don’t want to cut down on your lung capacity. You’ll be one of the top players on the tennis team next year.”
 

“If there is a next year. Why don’t you say that?”
 

“Because I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do. You know your father likes Sherlock Holmes, and there’s something Holmes says about when you’ve eliminated everything that’s probable, no matter how improbable what’s left might seem, it’s the answer. We haven’t eliminated everything yet. So who knows?” Ellen took one more drag on the cigarette and tossed it off the porch, onto the sidewalk.
 

The promised storm hadn’t come just yet, either literally or figuratively.
 

Clarence was saying, “In that one picture of the three of you guys, where’s Ellen?”
 

As Jack started to answer, he saw his wife in the doorway. “David’ll be in here in a couple of minutes.”
 

“Did you hear what I was saying?” Clarence asked her.
 

“Momma was probably taking the photo, like she usually does,” Elizabeth volunteered.
 

“Either that or I’m dead by then,” Ellen said cheerlessly.
 

“Oh, gee, thanks!” Jack snapped. “Don’t you ever, ever say anything like that again, Ellen!” His wife’s eyes hardened, and she’d be angry with him, but Jack Naile didn’t care. “There’s a logical explanation. Elizabeth is probably right.”
 

Clarence—who looked more agitated than Jack had ever seen him—said, “Logical my ass! None of this is logical at all! This is a load of bullshit! Maybe it’s that guy from Arizona who was sending you all the hate mail.”
 

“Nope,” Jack said. “Not him.”
 

Ellen added, “The typewriter used to write the note that came with the page from the magazine was a different machine. Every time I open something strange that comes in the mail, I always check. Not him, Clarence.”
 

“Well, all I know is that some son of a bitch is messin’ with your minds! That’s what it is! If I find out who it is, David and I’ll go beat the living shit out of him! We’ll make that bastard wish he’d never been born.”
 

“What are you volunteering me for?”
 

Jack looked toward the kitchen doorway. David stood there beside his mother. Jack’s and Ellen’s eyes met for an instant, and she didn’t smile at him.
 

Jack’s attention was drawn back to Clarence, who was starting another wave of vituperations. “Nobody messes with my family! No damn way! Whatever the hell nutball is doing this is—”
 

“What if nobody’s doing anything, Clarence?” Elizabeth began. “Y’all. Listen. I mean, this is impossible, right? But the pictures look real. The photo from the magazine looked real. Dad’s talking to the guy at their historical society—chamber of commerce, whatever—and he’s real. All I know about time travel is when we used to watch Dr. Who on Channel Eight on Saturday nights, but it looks like us in those pictures. So these are either terrific fake pictures or, or—”
 

Elizabeth didn’t say anything else, but started to cry.
 

Jack came over and dropped to one knee beside her chair. Ellen was beside them in the next instant, stroking Liz’s head and whispering, “It’ll be okay. Just calm down. Take a deep breath.”
 

“It’s not going to happen. Time travel isn’t real. Period,” David said, his voice emotionless, flat, almost leaden.
 

Clarence walked out of the room, sounding like he was starting to cry as well.
 

“Well, it looks like dinner has been a really big hit, Jack. Shit,” Ellen said, going over to the wall and slowly, rhythmically hitting it with her fists.
 

Jack Naile’s hands shook with rage or fear or exhaustion— maybe all three. He shook his head, lit a cigarette.
 

“That’s your answer to everything? I don’t think so, Jack! You’re just giving yourself lung cancer or something. Fine, we all go get time-transferred or zapped or whatever, and you die! What happens to the rest of us?!”
 

Ellen stormed out of the room, sounding as if she was starting to cry; and, after a second, Jack heard her running up the stairs, heading for the bedroom to cry or the bathroom to throw up.
 

Elizabeth cried even harder.
 

David just stared.
 

“Fucking wonderful,” Jack said under his breath. He turned on the kitchen faucet and put his cigarette under the spigot.
 

The thunderstorms were upon them. Ellen holding his hand, Jack Naile stared at the lightning. “I’ll try and cut down.”
 

“That’s the only good thing if this time-travel thing really happens. You would have had to roll your own in those days, right?”
 

“I guess.”
 

“And you’re too clumsy.”
 

“Right.”
 

“You going to fly out to Nevada?”
 

“Before Clarence went to bed, he told me he’d fly out there with me, at his own expense even. This is really shaking him up.”
 

“I think David’s going to start to plan for this, as a defense mechanism so he can keep himself from thinking about what happens if it really happens,” Ellen almost whispered.
 

It was nearly midnight, the rain lashing at the front porch from the northwest. Jack started walking toward the part of the porch that was getting soaked, Ellen beside him.
 

“You didn’t help things with that bit about maybe you were dead and that’s why you weren’t—”
 

“David had been thinking that, and I figured that everybody else was. Sometimes the best way to deal with something is to get it said, get it out in the open.” Ellen took her hand from his and wrapped both her arms around his left arm instead. “I bet I know what’s at the back of your mind, aside from being able to play cowboy.”
 

They could read each other, sometimes, it seemed. Jack Naile laughed a little. “My Dad?”
 

“Um-hmm. If that one photo was taken in 1903 and we didn’t look too much older than we do now—you looked like you had a little more gray—but, you could go back to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1908 and somehow see your father.”
 

Jack Naile’s father had died at age sixty-three, before either of his grandchildren had been born. “Yeah. I’d like to do that, but it’d be neat to meet him when he was old enough to talk to and talk back. Maybe that time when he flipped the fence and broke his elbow when he was maybe twelve or whatever.”