Previous chapter | Chapter One of Theda’s Time Machine
On the banks of the Kaw River, Kansas, 1933.
Fifteen-year-old Asa Jackson shot two birds before the last of the stars winked out in the umber sky. Next to bird hunting, his favorite way to pass the time was palling around with his best friend, Jasper Rankin. Last night they had commandeered the barn loft and evicted a barn owl along with a small flock of swallows that exited into the night in a series of flying v’s. The boys didn’t yet know it, but this fleeting pocket of time contained the waning days of their boyhood. They slept without this knowledge, which was why they slept perfectly.
At the first crow of the rooster, they shook hay from their flannel shirts and followed the barking of the birddogs as Mr. Rankin packed the 1932 Ford pick-up with rifles and birdshot. This scene tumbled through Jackson’s mind in sepia flashes: the sun illuminating the golden reeds and rising redwing blackbirds flashing crimson like decks of spilled playing cards. The boys hunkered down, eyes searching the horizon for flapping black shadows. The Depression, that crushing daily reminder of lack, held no sway over the land that knew not of its existence. Billy was Mr. Rankin to a young Jackson, his handsome face void of the boyish angles and strong jaw, the thick hair streaked with silver.
Army City, Kansas, 1918.
“Back off, Jack!” Billy Rankin yelled.
Jackson threw him onto a pile of trash.
The back alley of the Arcade was mercifully empty. The only inhabitants weaving around the piles of garbage that some sad sack would have to shovel were a trio of black and white alley cats that hissed and yowled as they scattered, dropping fishtails and half-eaten pieces of meat in their wake.
Billy groaned and rolled onto his stomach. Jackson stepped over a reeking array of food scraps and grabbed Billy’s tunic just behind the arms, hauling him straight up as if righting a fallen scarecrow that suddenly came to life.
“Let’s talk, buddy.” Jackson’s left hand released the coat and he locked his elbow around Billy’s throat. Billy bent forward with a force that almost knocked him to his knees. Jackson smiled. He had at least fifty pounds on Billy and if this little scumbag thought he was going to flip him over, he was an imbecile.
“Not too fun is it, Rankin?” He said into his ear. The alleyway was deserted but with all the activity in the vicinity, it was only a matter of time before someone showed up. “Where’re your friends? Fighting one-on-one has never been your style, has it?”
Billy straightened up so fast that this time Jackson was almost knocked backward. He shifted his weight onto his back foot when a long white piece of broken wooden fence sailed through the air and knocked him square on the head.
The hit wasn’t hard enough to do real damage and his hat had buffered the blow, but it startled Jackson enough that he loosened his grip around Billy’s neck and let go of his tunic. Damn that smarts! Instinct took over and his right hand plunged into his coat pocket and threaded his fingers through the trench knife.
Billy wiggled like a caught trout and turned just enough to raise the fence piece again and go for a better knock on the head. Had it been anyone else, he might have landed the blow and ended the fight. But Jackson, a spy behind German lines who had wielded daggers in a war twenty years in the future, sliced through the shoulder of Billy’s coat and tunic, right on the biceps.
Billy yelled and Jackson threw him forward again, but this time he didn’t tumble into the trash but turned and raised the wooden fence post. His face paled, and he dropped the wood and held onto his hurt arm.
Jackson stared at the knife in his hand and a buzzing sounded in his ears. Oh no, not now. Don’t let me slip now. And he didn’t slip, but the memory of the first time he had seen that scar sparked from another dimension where it had been waiting for him since he was fifteen.
Toward the end of the morning hunt, when five dead ducks lined the grass and the bird dogs reeked of marsh water, Mr. Rankin removed his shirt to shake off clinging cattail fuzz. There was a jagged scar across his right bicep. Where did you get that one, Mr. Rankin? Jackson had asked. The boys loved the war stories, not yet realizing they would have their own to tell in a few short years. Mr. Rankin paused and young Jackson, who didn’t yet know he possessed certain gifts, felt an inexplicable unease as the elder Rankin smiled tightly. Got it before leaving for Europe in ’18. From a little scuffle over at Funston. Never stitched up right, is why you still see it.
Jackson’s chest heaved, and his outstretched arm that held the knife dropped a few inches. I gave him that scar. I cut him before I was even born. Billy’s eyes were watchful and he said, “What’s the matter, Jack? Losing your nerve? Here.” He pulled his tunic apart with one hand and displayed his upper chest. “Don’t have the balls to finish? Do you?”
Jackson just shook his head. Mere seconds ago his rage was so powerful that plunging the knife into Billy’s chest would have felt like a relief. Now the anger drained with the force of a waterfall. In front of him was the father of his childhood friend, a kid who was good, nothing like his old man. Jackson didn’t even know if he came back from the second world war. The man before him would return and live to see the 1930s. In that moment in March of 1918, Jackson knew he couldn’t kill Billy.
Andersen was right. His arm fell even further. He was right about everything. He had foolishly held onto the belief that Andersen was wrong, and if he could stop this flu, his mother would be saved. The bitterness of that realization made him drop the knife almost to his knees. All this time trying to save her was wasted, and that made him want to bay in the alley like the grey wolves in the hills. He could have just gone to his childhood home, and just let his eyes, the eyes of her son, gaze upon her. The only time he had seen her before she died was with watery infant eyes that held no memory.
Billy clutched his arm and his expression slowly changed from terror to certainty that his life was no longer in danger. “Felt a little bad about putting you in the cellar like that, as if you were one of those sissy boys,” he said. “As payback, I’ll do you a favor now. I’ll let you come with me. Boarding the train in less than an hour. You can serve your original purpose.” He slowly buttoned his tunic again and grimaced. The material on the shoulder was tinging red.
Jackson said through icy lips, “That’s rich. You’re not leaving this alleyway.” But even to his ears his bluff sounded hollow.
Over the tall walls of the Arcade, sirens rang in different tones. Police cars and military police. All the guns were coming.
“I beg to differ, Jack. They’re going to get you. And the girls, too. Then I can’t help you,” he shook his head in mock sadness and replaced his hat. “You different now. Talk different. Don’t know where you got those clothes but they suit you better than the uniform. You a Kraut spy?”
Jackson shook his head no. His mother was lost to him, but there was another who wasn’t. Theda. “Where’s doctor Evora?”
Billy smiled. “The good doctor? He won’t be seeing the light of day for much longer. Same with his wife and younger daughter. Sorry about that,” he snickered when he saw Jackson’s expression change. “Part of my deal was to let me have the pretty one for when I get back.”
“What deal?”
“I ain’t no doc and I ain’t no high-falutin’ scientist either, but I saw those sick hogs more than once and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on over there. And when we took the first sissy boy down there, I knew. Seen the body when we took it out. Nasty bug, this is gonna be.” He stepped closer to Jackson. “You could’ve been the one to do the job, Jack. Could’ve had the honor that I hold now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
And as if summoned, a line of mucus dripped from Billy’s nostril. Oh, Jesus. They gave it to him. Jackson backed up.
Billy wiped his sleeve under his nose. “War’s gotta end somehow,” he said softly. “And this is the way to do it, all quiet-like. Once I get over there it’s just a matter of time before those Krauts get a little bit of the bug.”
“You fool,” Jackson barely got the words out. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah? Who’re you to say?” He replaced his hand over his wounded shoulder. “You think there’s a difference between this and how they’re killing? They got guns that cook people alive. Drop gas canisters and the wind shifts and even their own boys go down choking. You telling me I’m bad for killing the Krauts like this when every single man here would burn ‘em up? Who made you God, Jack, to judge it?”
“You’re going to kill our boys,” Jackson said simply, and inside his heart throbbed in a painful knot.
“I’ll tell you what. I’d rather die in a hospital bed than drown in a trench with rats crawling all over me. I’m doing them a mercy.”
He could no more talk Billy into retreat than he could change time. It was useless. Billy was sick. He had just been inside the Arcade. It was already over. Someday, Private William Rankin would take his son and a young Jackson duck hunting and by then this memory would be buried into the deepest recesses of his mind, never to be examined again.
The sirens grew louder.
“I’m going to save our boys, Jack. And when I come back from the war, that little peach Violet will be waiting for me in Philadelphia. And no snobby parents will stand in my way of marrying her, either. Harris promised.”
“Harris?”
Billy chuckled and walked past Jackson toward the opening of the alleyway. “Harris has an uncanny way of knowing just what’s gonna work and what won’t,” he said and blood drained from Jackson’s face. Thrax.
He couldn’t go back through the Arcade. The cops would go through the front doors first. He had to find Theda. She said the slaughterhouse. That’s where her father is. That’s where she’s heading.
“So long, Jack. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. Remember that.” And he walked through the opening of alley in fall of snowflakes that burst from the pregnant sky.
Oh that one hit hard. Nicely done!
That was a tricky piece, Alison. Good reading.