48 - broad outlines

The others had gone in. Alice and I sat in adjoining rockers on the front porch. I balanced a cup of coffee on the arm of my chair. She drank ice tea. Condensation beaded on the glass. The only light was from the street lamp. We were in patchy shadows behind the large camellia bushes, hidden from people passing by.

At supper and later outside with everyone present, the broad outlines of our stories had been established.

We had gone first. Mother told how we had moved from Baltimore to North Carolina where we had been ever since, father working for various woodworking plants, her keeping house although lately she had been thinking about getting a job. Tommy told about being an apprentice molder mechanic. I told about my lightning strike and what had happened this morning - at least some of it. Sitting across from me at the dinning table, Alice seemed especially interested in the lightning strike, where I had been, how long I had been out, the after effects.

When it was her turn, Alice related a similarly abbreviated history of her family. She told us they had moved from Baltimore to New York after the war. She said her mother owned a little art gallery and her father was a lawyer with a big firm in Manhattan. She said they lived near Central Park and that she was a third year physics student at Columbia and planned to get her PhD, but maybe not at Columbia. Tommy looked at me and whistled soundlessly. Cutting into the steak that my mother had unfrozen and grilled for the occasion Alice laughed and said her little brother, the baby who was born the last year we were in Baltimore, was now six feet four inches tall and weighed 200 pounds and could eat three of those.

My mother had remarked, “I think I still have one of your mother’s drawings.”

Alice replied, “She still speaks of you.”

After adjourning to the porch, wreathed in smoke from everybody’s cigarettes Alice explained her visit, relating how she had been driving to Miami to see her grandparents and happened to remember that we once lived in Shelby and decided on a whim to detour through this part of North Carolina. She looked us up in the phone book at the Gulf station downtown (across from the pretty Methodist church) and asked the nice man for directions. He said yes he knew T.G. and led the way to our house on his three-wheel motorcycle.

I said, “And here we are.”

Her voice, hesitant now, softer, answered from the dark, “And here we are. Down the rabbit hole.”

“So you are that Alice.”

“And you are that T.G.”

“Yep. Down in the hole. Where they keep the devil.”

I reached out; her hand appeared from the dark. We touched, did not let go. Her hand was smooth, strong. Her palm was wet from the tea glass.

“I thought you were a little too interested in my lightning story.”

“It was my story too. That’s when I knew it was you.” She paused. “What happened to us?”

“I don’t know. We died I guess.”

She slowly withdrew her hand. I was reluctant to let go. “How many times for you?”

“Four. I got struck by lightning when I was 72, shot when I was 20, fell off a cliff when I was 72 again, and drowned when I was five. Of course you were there the last time. What about you?”

“You have been busy. Three for me. Lightning at age 72, a car wreck at 20 and the drowning at five.”

“You are no slouch.” I gestured toward that driveway. “Was the wreck in that Volvo?”

“Yes. In my previous reincarnation. On this trip actually.”

“But not this time?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And of course there is the dropping in on people. Or into people. Do you do that?”

She shook her head. “I have done it but I am not sure I will anymore.”

“I don’t think I will either.”

“One of those feelings? Like in Baltimore when we both knew we had to get in that boat and drown.”

I sipped my coffee, which had become tepid. “Yes a feeling.”

We were silent. I heard her rocker creak. She had pulled her knees up to her chest, was hugging her legs like a little girl. She said, “You said something the last time, just before we drowned. About people with a machine. What did you mean?”

She stopped rocking, waited for me to answer.

“It was my second reincarnation. I came back to Shelby as an old man again and this time I knew - had a feeling that I was supposed to talk to this man, Colm. He had made a fortune in the computer business and retired to Shelby where he grew up. I occupied him before I told my story - that is why he believed me. He and his brother-in-law, a physicist from Yale, built a machine, a computer, that lets people do what we do. They called it the ‘many worlds machine’. His son, Abby, was the test subject.”

“Many worlds. Ah. What happened?”

“A man, somebody like us - with a shimmer - was taken over by them, the others. He killed Colm and his wife. I killed him before he could kill Abby.”

“Why?”

“Why did they do it? I don’t know. Maybe they have a plan. Maybe we do it ourselves, have some volition. I don’t know. Anyway, I fell off a cliff with a girl named April who was also taken over and I ended up in Baltimore for a little while with you. It doesn’t make much sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

We both rocked for several minutes, not saying anything.

I announced. “I had an accident. Or maybe they had an accident with me.”

Holding her tea glass, she twisted her rocker around so it was facing me. She put her legs down. I could see a flash of skin, pale in the street light. “What kind of accident?”

“Before the episode this morning, which was a reincarnation of the episode when I died by gunshot, I ended up between things. Beyond nothing - in no place. I can’t describe it. I think they were trying to send me somewhere and messed up. Or maybe I couldn’t do it anymore. I got stuck - or came loose. Somebody had to come and get me. After that, like you, I had a feeling that I would not be dropping into anybody anymore or dying, at least not until the last time when I go for good. That part of me is used up.”

“What kind of something or somebody came to get you?”

“I don’t know. A presence. I didn’t see anything. I mean I really didn’t see anything.”

A car with a broken muffler came roaring down Lee Street, headed out of town. I waited until the noise had passed. “Did you also have an accident?”

“No. Maybe they learned from you.” She rocked forward. Her knee touched my knee then fell away. “Is there a pattern or a theme to your travels?”

I nodded in the dark. “It’s Lee Harvey Oswald. All the people I dropped in on were involved with him in one way or another. I’ve seen him as a toddler, a teenager, and an adult. He’s an interesting guy. Do you have a theme? Do you see Oswald?”

She waited a long time. “No, I see Kennedy. I am Kennedy.”

“What do you do?”

“I try to influence him to be careful. What do you do?”

“I try to get people to kill Oswald. I don’t really want him dead. But that seems to be my job. Maybe I am supposed to rewrite history.”

I could see her head shake in the patchy dark. Her voice was certain now. “No that doesn’t make sense. In an infinite number of worlds, in an infinite number of universes there is bound to be at least one where Kennedy survives.”

“Maybe you’re right. Stephen told me about that - about the infinite worlds.”

“He was one of those with the machine?”

“The brother-in-law.”

Just then, mother, who seemed to like having a girl to look after, pushed open the screen and stepped out on the porch. She said, “Alice, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you go to bed. I’ve got T.G.’s room ready for you. You two can talk more tomorrow.”

Before going in I had a chance to whisper one more question, “Did you actually remember that we lived in Shelby?”

“No. I dreamed it. That’s what I do now.”