Time Drifters

Dad did not go to church. I remembered him coming with us at Christmas a couple of times long ago. So it was disturbing when he told me that we were going that night.

Everyone was disconnected and afraid. Behind the shock were walls of anger.

There was nowhere that felt right. It was as though every house and every building had been leveled just the same as the Towers, and yet the image of them was still standing there in everyone’s mind. What would be next?

Mom had been gone since Sunday night. A trial separation, they said. I knew it was more than that because of the size of her suitcases.

The service was unusual, of course. A meditation, a prayer, a call for peace and calm in the world. It was a visiting minister who led the worship and I felt his terror that the ceiling of the building would come raining down on everyone. I sensed it every time he looked up. I wanted to shut it off, that sense that I had. I felt raw. I wanted to run outside and hide in the woods, but I knew even that wouldn’t be far enough.

We walked outside and instead of going to the car, Dad wandered to the statue of the Holy Mother and Child that was sheltered in a garden near the back of the church.

He sat on the bench, trying to raise his head to look at Mary. I sat beside him, not knowing what to do.

“I don’t know where your mother is,” Dad said, his lower lip trembling.

My stomach sank.

“She usually stays with Carly or other friends in lower Manhattan, but none of them know where she is,” he continued. “I think… I think she may be far away. Her credit card had a large purchase on it with American Airlines. But I just honestly don’t know.”

I was stunned. I didn’t know what else could happen, but I was pretty certain it was going to be bad.

“Maybe if you hadn’t…” I cut myself off. I knew it was cruel.

“If I hadn’t what?” he asked. He turned and raised his voice. “If I hadn’t what?”

I started crying. I thought he was going to hit me but he reached out and grabbed me to him so violently. He squeezed so tightly, I didn’t know if I could breathe.

“You’re safe,” he said, repeating it quietly in my ear as he rocked me. “Thank God.”

“I’m here,” I said, kind of wishing that he’d stop strangling me, even though I was glad that he wasn’t angry with me.

“Pray for her, will you?” he said. “I don’t know if God listens to me. But he might listen to you, so please pray for her.”

I nodded. And honestly, the first thing that went through my head was that I had never asked Mom how to put fabric softener in with the sheets.

I prayed to Mary and to God. I looked at the statue of little Jesus and, for some reason, I thought about Capucine. The innocents that sometimes get harmed in the course of prayer. And that made me think about how unfair things could be. And that’s when I knew I had to go to see Mr. Danby.

#

“You’ve got to let me go back!” I yelled.

“And, for the hundredth time, I can’t,” he yelled back, facing off with me in the drive shed behind his house. He was red in the face and shaking, just as I was. There were stones lying on the bench between metal picks and tools, and three large lathes lined up and bolted to the floor in the center.

Mr. Danby walked over and snatched up a piece of rock, brandishing it towards me as though it were a weapon.

“And if I could carve you a crystal that would make that a possibility, I would,” he roared. “I’d be on my knees, begging you, saying ‘Liam, take it and reverse this Goddamned bloody world back to the way that it should be… to the way that it was just two days ago.’ But I can’t.”

I’d never seen him so angry. I saw a photo on the wall of a man in a racing suit, standing next to a car on a racetrack. He had black hair and looked young and lively. And I saw the resemblance. It wasn’t the time to ask him about who it was, if it was him in another time. It was, unfortunately, enough to divert my mind for a moment.

“Do you have a mother,” I asked, mashing together two separate thoughts about where he’d come from and the fact that I wanted to ask about my Mom.

“Of course I do, but she’s dead!” he snapped. “Of course I know what it would mean to bring her back, but I can’t help you.”

“She’s not dead,” I wailed. “She’s just not… here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, launching forward. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“Get away!” I said, snatching my arm back. “Get away and take your stupid rocks and your whole stupid Drift house with you.”

I burst through the door and ran for my bike.

“Liam!” he shouted. I could feel him catching up and then he snagged me by the arm.

“Liam wait!” he commanded, flinging me around.

“Let go!”

“She’s alive,” he said. “Your mother is alive and I know it in my bones. I do. And I’m sorry, laddie. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“What’s the point?” I said. “What’s really the point of any of it? If it’s all just going to hell?”

“I know,” he said, trying to calm me down.

“It is hell, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yes, lad,” he said. “It seems to be just that. But I’m sure…”

“You’re not!” I said, backing up. “You’re lying if you say you know what’s going to happen, because you can’t know. And if we’re living in this hell and there’s been no Drifter from the future to come and fix it, then we must be living in the splinter of time that isn’t supposed to be happening. A goddamned splinter.”

“Who ever told you about splinters?” he asked.

“So none of this really works,” I said. “Or it didn’t work good enough to make a difference.”

“That’s not at all true,” Mr. Danby said, striding forward as I was making it for my bike.

“I want to go back and change this,” I said. “Because it has to change. And you won’t let me or you’re too stupid to know how to do it. So I’m leaving.”

“No laddie,” he said.

“Can you or can’t you help me to go back?” I asked.

He paused for a long moment. I saw him rocking back and forth and shifting his jaw around as though he was saying a thousand things and chewing on them at the same time.

“I am not a stupid man, and you are not a stupid boy,” he said, his voice low and patient even though I could feel his insides churning with an angry kind of fire.

“On Saturday the twenty-second of September, 2001, at exactly 7:05pm, you will be able to Drift again.”

“Back to August?” I asked, daring him to agree.

“To help to maintain the timestream as you have vowed to do,” he said slowly.

“I never vowed to do anything,” I said. His hand landed on my shoulder with the weight of a fallen tree stump.

“When you Drift, it might be to a time when you can make right whatever needs to happen,” he continued, “and that may well be to change this, just as it very well may not be. But that is your only choice. Drift, or don’t Drift. Live in this splinter, as you call it, or not.”

“I think I’ll wait and see,” I said. “Maybe I’ll be here and maybe I won’t. And I don’t know that it really makes a damned bit of difference.”

The weight of the log was still resting on my shoulder. His eyes were burning inside and focused on mine like lasers.

“If I could do it myself, I would,” he said. “I don’t have the luxury of making a difference in any way other than to help you. But if you want to see everyone else suffer even more, then suit yourself. I’ll just have to live with the consequences of failing you.”

He released me and turned around immediately, stomping back towards the shed.

“She’s alive,” I shouted.

“Aye, good!” he yelled, not even turning around as he rounded the corner. “Now you can decide if the rest of us get to, as well.”