Time Drifters

Thomas had not only found McCully Street, but he had turned right off of Kalakaua Avenue and disappeared. We caught up with him where he had stopped on a small bridge leading to the mainland.

Calico read him the riot act, again, telling him that we were in this all together. I was surprised and a bit disappointed that she hadn’t mentioned the flask, but she was running point, being eldest.

Heading up McCully, we had to climb a steady slope. Ahead of us in the distance were foothills with huge shrubs and trees and farther up were mountaintops that had very little vegetation on the sides. Clumps of clouds hung along one section of the mountainous ridge, looking like pillows perched on the headboard of a giant’s bed.

Thomas kept stepping into people’s front yards, poking at the orange and purple tropical flowers that grew out of broad-leafed plants. Calico threatened physical pain, but it didn’t seem to curb his curiosity.

We’d just arrived at a cross street when I saw it.

Looking to the right to check for traffic, my eyes took in the crisp outline of the mountains to the east of us. I followed the unobstructed ridge towards the west, coming across a familiar formation against the sky. I turned back and saw that we were high enough to look out over the ocean. I started shaking.

“Liam, c’mon, let’s go,” Calico said as she stepped off the curb. But I couldn’t move. Tears began streaming from my eyes but every time I blinked, I kept seeing them; the stream of fighter planes emerging in the distance.

“They’re here,” I said. “The planes.”

“What is it?” she asked. I pointed and she followed my finger. She kneeled down and held me by the shoulders.

“Trinder, what are you seeing?” she said, softly. “There’re no planes, honey.”

“There are,” I insisted. “I saw them. The attack. Tomorrow morning, when they come. Dozens of them. Hundreds. From right there.”

“Has he gone crazy?” Thomas said.

“You mean you think you see them?” Calico asked. “Is this one of your feeling things?”

“No!” I shouted. “I saw them. When I came in. I was late and I couldn’t stop it. It’s all happened. Tomorrow. And it’s too late. The bombs and the explosions. The smoke. Black, huge smoke. Just like the Trade towers.”

“Oh my God,” Calico said, the penny dropping. “That’s what you were saying… why you looked so….”

Everything came down on me all at once. The sight of the planes. The flames and explosion. The world getting ripped apart. My body was shaking; my stomach felt like it was melting into cold goo. I was terrified. And even worse, I know I only had myself to blame for all of it.

I must have said so, because Calico kept holding me tighter and tighter, and all the while saying, “It’s not your fault, honey,” over and over.

I remember looking over Calico’s shoulder and seeing the white picket fence on the corner lot. The clean, squared edge of the rose bed and the yellow and pink blossoms, impossibly cheery in the golden light from the sunset. The frilly curtains in the window and the old woman’s face as she peered out at us from inside her tidy little bungalow. I remember the dry dirt on the edge of the sidewalk with the two half buried cigarette butts sticking up next to a clump of grass. The street sign saying Algaroba Street. I saw it all while Calico was calming me down. And I dared to look up at the mountain again and out to the water. There were no planes. Not now… not yet.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone,” Calico said, still kneeling in front of me. “I’ve never heard of that. Jumping ahead like that. So sorry.”

A man approached us from across the street, and his dog was straining on his leash, desperate to get my attention.

“Angie, get back. Get back,” the man said, tugging on the leash to restrain the white and gray Lhasa Apso. Angie was not about to leave without a proper greeting and the soft fur, wagging tale and happy pink tongue made me smile through the tears.

“She thinks she knows everybody’s business,” the older man said, looking like he wanted to know ours as well. When Angie turned her curiosity to Calico’s shoes, lying on the sidewalk, that as a cue to action. She bid the man a good evening and moved us across the street, continuing our climb, and all of us on the lookout for Metcalf Street.

I felt pretty numb. I followed the others, scuffing my feet on the ground. I looked up and saw the clouds on the mountain had gone a cold blue. Behind us, the sun had already set. And the next time it rose I knew the world would be different.

“So tell me,” Thomas insisted, his voice rising loudly enough for me to hear.

“Tomorrow is December 7, 1941,” Calico said.

“So?”

“Pearl Harbor,” I said. “It’s right over there,” I added, pointing to the west.

“Oh my God!” Thomas shrieked. “Oh, my God, we’ve gotta tell somebody.”

“Jesus, Daddio!” exclaimed Calico. “Will you keep it down?!”

“But we have to!” he said.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not why we’re here,” Calico insisted.

“It’s already happened,” I said.

“No it hasn’t,” Thomas countered.

“Yes it has,” Calico said. “Liam saw it, during this Drift. I don’t know how, but he knows it’s already happened. So it has.”

“But if we’re still here on the night before…,” Thomas sputtered.

“All due respect, you’re exhausting!” Calico said, mustering patience. “Do me a favor. Before you Drift again, will you please ask all of these questions to your postmistress, or station person?”

“But…”

“We are here to keep this guy, Sam, at the dance. Period,” she said, marching right past Thomas. He looked at me, appealing for reason. “If we ever get there… which is why I’m going on ahead, with or without you.”

“If we’re here, then it means we can make a difference,” he said. He looked at me but I could barely even shrug.

“If we’re here, it’s because one thing has gotten off course,” said Calico, wheeling around and zooming towards Thomas as quickly and nimbly as a pelican diving for a fish.

“Do you want to live here during the war?” she said in a hoarse whisper, looking around to ensure we weren’t being heard. “And then maybe survive long enough to catch up with your own time just before you die?”

He shook his head.

“Even at that, changing this event would change everything after this,” she continued. “You likely wouldn’t get to go back to Rochester or Seneca, or wherever you came from. Because you’d have made choices here that altered the timestream.”

Calico was fuming and Thomas was pinned in place, trying to take it all in. She turned away for a moment and looked back at both of us.

“Maintain the timestream,” she said. “That’s what we’re here for. That is way more than I should have to say to two first-year Drifters. Lord help me if I’ve put any of us in danger for having to spew it all.” Her face softened and her shoulders relaxed. She turned and looked at me.

“What happened just before you shimmered? Out on the road?” she asked.

I told her about the car and the explosion on the pavement. She nodded.

“You still need me to guess why you were out there?” she asked. “I don’t think any of us are supposed to stop the attack. We would’ve all come in much sooner. I don’t think you’re the reason for that, anymore than you are for the smoke at the Trade thing you mentioned.”

I shuddered, both from the memory of the planes going into the Twin Towers as from the realization that I’d just told a future event to someone from the late 60s.

“Maybe we can’t save these people,” she said, softly. “But I have a feeling we’re here for the next generation. And that’s somethin’ we do have the power to change. And we must.”