Beth’s novel part 02

 Ages: Jessie is 24, twins are 27, Samuel is 30

 

 

 

Joel – 2018

 

The apartment is so quiet that it’s making Joel feel slightly nervous. Ben has gone to a bar in Midtown with some friends and although Joel usually goes along on those outings tonight he stayed behind. He tidies up the kitchen from the takeout Chinese they ate before Ben left, washes the forks and glasses, stacks them in the dish drainer, wipes off the little table by the window that looks out onto the wall of the building beside them. Gives the floor a quick sweep. Takes the overflowing bag out of the trash can and ties it up, sits it by the door to carry down to the garbage chute later. Puts another trash bag in the can.

When he can’t think of anything else to do he gets his laptop out. Once it’s booted up he checks to be sure the browser history is still turned off because Ben will try to snoop. Ben knows something is going on. Joel can tell by the way he’s acting, the way he will suddenly appear behind Joel and try to sneak a look at his computer screen and question him, seemingly casually, about what he’s working on. Ben knows Joel is keeping a secret from him and it’s driving him crazy. Keeping secrets from each other is the opposite of what they’ve done all their lives. They always kept secrets from everybody else and shared all their own secrets. It’s hard to get used to and Joel isn’t happy about this situation, but he can’t do anything about it. Not yet.

The browser history is not turned off. It’s been turned back on since he used the laptop last night.

“Dammit, Ben,” he mutters. He should change his password, but if he changes his password it will be obvious that he’s trying to keep Ben out of his computer and there will be no doubt at all that he’s hiding something from his twin. Then he’ll either have to come out with it or they will be in the most serious fight they’ve ever had in their lives. Joel isn’t ready for either one, so he just turns the history back off again.

All of his notes are in a folder that’s buried inside another folder containing work stuff. It’s called “NonProfit Microdata Trends”;  the most boring title he could think of. And even if Ben did manage to excavate the notes they wouldn’t make any sense. Maybe. He sighs and tells himself that if Ben somehow gets that far, he’ll just give up and admit everything. He probably should do that anyway…but not yet. He hasn’t quite figured it all out and he doesn’t want Ben involved. Joel wholeheartedly believed in Samuel’s powers when they were kids, while Ben made fun of him for being gullible and said Samuel just wanted to seem like the special one even though he wasn’t. Joel never completely lost that faith, despite growing up and realizing Samuel was just a normal human. Probably. Now a part of him wants to unravel the mystery, to find a happy and free Samuel living in some magical far away land. Then he’ll tell Ben “See? SEE?? I told you he could do anything!”Of course that’s Kid Joel’s reasoning. He knows the time machine didn’t work, and that Samuel just left them without a word. He’s living someplace perfectly normal, working a dull unfulfilling job, and however he got there it was not via magic. But Joel still needs to find out the truth and he doesn’t want cynical Ben interfering.

He’s been searching covertly for quite awhile now. Of course they all google Samuel now and then, but he’s as absent from the internet as he is from their lives. Which indicates to Joel that he’s not using his real name. Or that he’s dead, although that’s something he’s not going to seriously consider. He focuses on the concrete things about Samuel. Like his love of weird stuff – aliens, UFOs, time machines. They’d shared one clunky old computer as kids, using it for homework mostly because their grandfather took a dim view of modern technology, and Samuel used to frequent UFO forums. He also had a blog on a site called YouAreHere but wouldn’t let anyone read it. Joel doesn’t know what his blog was called, so hasn’t had any luck finding it on the Wayback Machine. But it’s a thread of a connection, he hopes, and he’s been reading a whole lot of other blogs and forums that are currently active, hoping to run across something promising.

He keeps going back to one particular night when he and Ben had just turned thirteen. The night they hid Samuel in the attic. Something is hovering on the edge of his conscious about that night. Something Samuel said to him. It keeps almost clicking, then whisks away before he can quite catch it. He stretches out on the couch with the laptop on his legs. Closes his eyes, makes his breath slow and deep for a few minutes, and tries one more time to drag it up to the surface of his brain.

 

*************

 

He keeps going back to the ghost stories. Samuel used to tell them so many ghost stories that Joel has often wondered how they ever slept at all, and he still finds himself unaccountably nervous in dark quiet rooms. The house they grew up in was built before the Civil War by the dim faded people who stare out from their tintypes in their grandmother’s oldest family picture album. Samuel loved to make up elaborate tales about those vanished mysterious ancestors. Gruesome stories about how they died from bear attacks or were sliced up by marauding robbers or fell down bottomless wells and were never seen again. Terrifying stories about how they still wandered around their old house at night looking for revenge.

Oddly Joel only found the thought of those distant dusty ancestors frightening when he was listening to Samuel’s gory stories late at night. During the daylight hours he’d always felt a fondness for their ghosts, a kinship that went beyond them being related to him far back in the murky past. He felt like they were watching out for the house’s current inhabitants, slipping around, keeping an eye on things. Kind of like Albert believed they were his own family way back then, and he was there too, although that is nuts and Joel isn’t going quite that far. But… maybe it really wasn’t the ghosts, he thinks now. Maybe it’s something beyond the ghosts.

Joel slows his breath, pictures a peaceful river flowing by at his feet, his whirling tumbling thoughts caught up in the water. Pictures those thoughts floating past him, lets them go bobbing off downstream and out of sight. When his mind is quieter, soothed by the hypnotic river, he focuses on that night, on the quiet sleeping house, the room upstairs he and Ben shared.

The room is dark, with only vague outlines of their bunk beds, their dressers on each side of the closet door, their small desks on either side of the open window. The night is black and moonless. It’s summer, and the slight warm breeze carries the croaks of frogs and the hypnotic chirps of crickets inside.

Joel remembers waking up suddenly, all his senses on high alert. He’s heard something, something beyond the ghosts and the night sounds. It’s his turn in the coveted top bunk, and from there he can see into the branches of the huge oak tree that rises up past the window and into the sky.

His eyes adjust and he can see an odd dark shape in the tree that he doesn’t remember being part of the branches. The tree seems to be moving a lot more than the slight breeze would allow for, and terror grips him. He tries to call to Ben but can’t get anything to come out, like nightmares where you need to scream but just sit there with your mouth open, waiting on the monster. The shape slides closer to the window, and the top of it morphs into a pale oval, the outline of a face. Joel flings himself off the top bunk and into the floor, flails his arms around the bottom bunk, still trying to get something to come out of his mouth.

The window screen falls in and lands on top of him just as Ben sits up saying, “What? What is it?” Joel finally has gotten his lungs to fill with air and is about to scream when the pale featureless face hisses “Shhh!!! It’s just me!”

“Samuel?” say Ben. “What are you doing out there?”

The shape pours itself through the window and piles into a heap on the floor. His snickery laugh makes Joel’s limbs go limp with relief. He pushes the screen off and crawls over to where Samuel is lying under the window, reeking of beer.

“What were you doing, swimming at the brewery?” Ben asks, suddenly beside Joel on the floor, poking at Samuel.

“Never mind what I was doing,” whispers Samuel. “I didn’t mean to scare you guys, I thought you’d be asleep.” His voice is slurry, and he isn’t making any effort to move from where he’s landed.

“Well, I think we would be asleep if you hadn’t come crashing through our window,” says Ben. “Are you okay?”

“Why were you coming through the window?” Joel asks.

“So Grandpa wouldn’t catch me, duh!” Samuel tries unsuccessfully to muffle his laughter.

“That was a great plan!” says Ben. “No flaws in that one, pal. There’s no chance anyone could have possibly heard you and the window screen smashing into our room!”

They all listen, and Joel is surprised to realize there are no sounds at all in the hallway. No Eddy coming to see what’s going on, no Grandpa stomping up the stairs. No curious pajama-clad Albert or Jessie shoving their door open.

“I think you got really really lucky,” he tells Samuel. “Where were you?”

“Just out, with Quentin.” He still isn’t moving.

“Come on,” Ben says. “We’ll help you get to bed.”

“Nope, think I’ll just stay here awhile…” his voice  fades away. Ben and Joel look at each other.

“He’s sloshed,” Ben whispers.

“What are we going to do with him?” Joel asks. “We can’t take him to his room, Eddy will wake up.”

“No, we can’t. And he can’t stay here, either. How would we explain that when Grandpa comes to wake us up?”

“We’ll put him on the bottom bunk and one of us will go get in his bed,” Ben suggests.

“That’s as bad as letting him sleep on the floor. Same outcome when Grandpa comes in.”

Ben is quiet for a moment, thinking. Samuel’s breathing deeply, with a slight snore.

“Great, now he’s asleep,” Joel says. “Where do you think he was?”

“The Roadhouse,” says Ben knowingly.

“That’s not true,” Joel says, although he’s not too sure.

“Yes it is. I heard him and Quentin talking about it. They go a lot, I think.”

“What do they do there?” Joel thinks of the creepy cement block building by the river, several miles outside town. There were always stories about fights and shootings and mysterious disappearances associated with the Roadhouse.

“They go drink, idiot,” Ben says. “And meet women, probably.”

Joel stares down at Samuel, appalled. “Grandpa will kill him, Literally. He’ll never let Samuel leave the house again if he finds out.”

“So we better make sure he doesn’t find out,” Ben says. He’s quiet for a moment, then whispers, “I know — we’ll take him up to the attic.”

“How are we going to get him up there? It would be easier to take him down to the cellar.”

“No, they’ll hear us if we go downstairs. We’ll take him up there where Jessie plays house, and put him on that old sofa.”

“There are rats up there,” Joel says, shivering. And ghosts, he thinks, but doesn’t say that.

“Oh, there are not. Squirrels, maybe, but no rats. The cats keep the rats out. He’s the one that told you that – he was just trying to scare you.”

“Well, it’ll serve him right if there are rats,” Joel says. “So how are we going to get him up there?”

“If we can wake him up enough to walk, we can get on either side of him. That way we can kind of drag him if we have to.”

Joel thinks about it but can’t come up with a better plan. They jab at Samuel until they get him to stir a bit. “Come on, Samuel, wake up,” whispers Ben. “We’ve got to get you to bed.”

Samuel is muttering something, but Joel can’t tell what he’s saying. He feels around for Samuel’s arm, and pulls on it until Samuel slides flat out in the floor.

“Come on, Samuel” he says. “Do you want Grandpa to catch you?”

“Nope,” Samuel mutters. “Leave me alone, okay?”

“You get that arm, and I’ll get this one,” Ben says. They heave at Samuel until all three of them are on their feet, Samuel wavering dangerously between them. He is taller and heavier than either of the twins, and it’s hard for them to hold him up, but by fitting his arms around their shoulders, and putting their arms around him, they manage to steer him across the room.

“Quit it, you guys,” Samuel complains, weaving off to the left and nearly making Joel run into the wall as they reach the door.

“Okay, you listen to me now,” Ben whispers, putting his face close to Samuel’s. “We’re taking you up to the couch in the attic, and you have to be really really quiet, unless you want Grandpa to hear us. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Samuel yawns, his head rolling.

“I think he’s going back to sleep,” Joel whispers, struggling to hold up his half of Samuel.

“He’s passing out,” Ben said. “How the hell much did he drink, anyhow?”

They open the door as quietly as possible, sliding through it sideways with Samuel between them. Then they move slowly down the hall, Samuel floppy and the twins dragging him along. He starts to say something, and Ben claps a hand over his mouth. They drag him past Eddy’s door, then past Jessie’s at the end of the hall. Beyond that is the door to the attic stairs. Joel pulls it open as silently as he can with one hand while hanging onto Samuel with the other. Samuel is starting to hum something, and Bens put a hand over his mouth again.

They maneuver Samuel up the first three steps towards the attic, and Ben shuts the door behind them, then says, “We’ve got to have a flashlight. We won’t be able to see a thing up there.”

“I can’t see anything here,” Joel whispers. Samuel is leaning heavily on him, breathing into his ear.

“Stay here with him,” Ben says. “I’ll go back and get my flashlight.”

Ben lets his half of Samuel slump down onto the stairs, pulling Joel down too. “Well hurry up,” Joel whispers. “It’s really dark in here.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Ben whispers back. “He created all the ghosts, so he can protect you from them. Maybe.”

“Oh, thanks – that’s very helpful. Go on, so we can get this over with.”

Ben slips back out the attic door, leaving Joel and Samuel in the pitch dark, Samuel leaning against Joel so heavily that Joel feels trapped. It’s so dark he can’t see Samuel’s face, not even as the pale oval from the window. He gives Samuel a shake, whispering, “Wake up. We can’t carry you all the way up there.”

“Mmmmmm” Samuel murmurs, sinking even lower on the steps. He slides away from Joel, landing against the wall, and Joel jabs him with an elbow.

“Come on, Samuel, this isn’t fair,” he says. The darkness and silence was scary, and he was trying not to think about all the ghosts wandering around their house, especially in the attic. Friendly or not, he doesn’t want to see any of them.

“Oh, nothing’s fair,” Samuel says.

“What are you talking about?” Joel whispers. “Are you awake?”

“I’m always awake,” Samuel whispers back. He sits up little and leans against Joel again. “I’m tired of being awake.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Joel says. “How come you’re doing this?”

“Because I can’t sleep,” he whispers.

“You’re really drunk – you don’t even know what’s going on.”

“Oh, I know. You know too, Joel. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“What do you mean?” Joel says, wishing he could see Samuel’s face. The dense darkness and the way Samuel is talking makes chills run down his spine. Samuel’s hair smells like Jessie’s flowery shampoo, a surreal contrast.

“Just wait. Wait and see.”

“I wish you’d shut up,” Joel whispers.

“I used to see aliens,” he said, his voice all strange and light. “I used to see them a lot, but I haven’t in a long time now. I know you did too.”

“What?” Joel says, jabbing Samuel with his elbow, hard this time. “What aliens?”

“Ow,” he says. “Don’t do that. I’m serious, now. Listen to me. This is important, Joel.”

“Okay,” Joel says, suddenly still. “Tell me.”

So he does, as they lean together on the stairs in the dark. Samuel tells him about seeing aliens until he was thirteen, being visited by them and not being able to talk about it to anyone ever. No one would believe him. Grandpa would think he was possessed by Satan and who knows what he’d have done to remove the demons. Samuel didn’t understand what was happening until he was old enough to read about how some people were set apart and the aliens would visit them, and sometimes even take them away. And he was telling Joel now because Joel saw them too, when he was just three years old.

“I never saw aliens,” Joel says. “You’re just trying to scare me!”

“Yes, you did,” he said, his voice low and hypnotic. “You did. You thought they were angels. You told Mom about them. It happened a bunch of times, until it stopped. You were always up in the field above the house when you saw them, and they would appear in front of you and tell you stories. They were tall as trees and they glowed, you said. They looked like people made out of light.”

“I did not,” Joel says, shivering. “You’re making this up and I’ve leaving you here by yourself in about two more seconds. How would you know this, anyhow? If I was three, you’d have just been six. You couldn’t remember it. AND I wouldn’t have been up in the field by myself if I was just three.”

“Yes, I do remember it. I do. I didn’t know what it meant until much later, of course, but I remember you telling Mom. And I remember Grandpa being really upset about it, and saying it was demons. He made Mom let the preacher do some laying on of hands with you, to drive the demons out.”

“Dammit, Samuel, shut up,” Joel says. His eyes are stinging with sudden tears. “You’re making this all up.”

“I’m not, buddy,” he whispers. He puts his arm around Joel, pats his shoulder. “I swear I’m not. Grandpa was really upset about it. I bet Eddy remembers too. You probably shouldn’t ask him, though. I never told anybody about what I used to see. They wouldn’t understand what it means.”

“What does it mean?” Joel whispers.

“That you’re different, buddy. We’re both different, and I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it. I really don’t. But I’m trying to figure it out. That’s what the time machine is all about, you know. They use time machines. I don’t know how to make it work, but they do. Maybe a tin can time machine will reel them in. Oil Can What.” He laughs.

“What does that mean?” Joel asked, even more confused. “What oil can?”

“It’s a joke,” Samuel says. “It’s a joke the Tin Man makes in Wizard of Oz. It’s what I named the time machine,”

“I don’t remember that joke at all,” Joel says, and Samuel laughs again. “Nobody does,” he says. That’s why it’s so funny.”

They sat in silence then. Joel feels tears on his face although he doesn’t know what he’s crying about. Suddenly he’s too tired to be mad. He leans against Samuel, tries to remember. There is something about the tall glowing people, the pasture…but it won’t come clear, and then the door at the foot of the steps is creaking open. Joel jumps, startled, and Ben whispers “It’s me. Sorry I took so long, I had to go all the way to the kitchen for a flashlight.”

He turns it on, shines it on their faces.

“Quit it,” Joel whispers, trying to block out the light. “That hurts my eyes.”

Ben moves the beam out of his face, bends down to peer at Joel.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” Joel hisses, pulling away from Samuel and getting up. “Let’s get him upstairs so we can get out of here.”

Ben glares at Samuel, who is leaning against the wall, smiling at them in the dim flashlight glow.

“What did you say to him?” Ben says. “Why did you make him cry?”

“I am not crying,” Joel says louder, jerking at Ben’s arm so the beam of the flashlight flies wildly around the narrow stairwell. “Let’s go, Ben.”

“All right, all right,” says Ben, giving Joel another look. They take Samuel’s arms again and pull him to his feet, then half drag him up the rest of the stairs and into the attic, lay him down on the dusty old sofa. Ben throws a blanket over him that he’d brought from the twin’s room and pulls a bottle of water out of his pocket.

“Here, I’ll leave you the flashlight too,” he says. “Don’t play with it or somebody might see the light.”

Samuel looks up at them from the couch, still smiling.

“Will you be all right?” Ben asks him, suddenly worried. “Do you want us to stay with you?”

“No, you guys go on. Get some sleep. Thanks.” Samuel’s voice is faint again, distant. Joel bends a little closer to him, and he reached out and touches Joel lightly on top of the head.

“‘Night, buddy,” he murmurs. “Dream about them again.”

He shuts his eyes, and Ben looks at Joel. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Joel says.

He never did tell Ben, and when Ben asked him what Samuel meant he pretended not to remember. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt like it should just be between him and Samuel. Especially after Samuel vanished, it was something that Joel still had, a link that nobody else knew about.

Joel’s eyes fly open. He’s back in the present, in his apartment, lying on the couch with the laptop asleep on his legs. He sits up, rubs his hand through his hair. That’s it, he realizes. That’s what he was missing, the last piece that snaps in and transforms the jumble of bits he’s been collecting into a picture that suddenly makes sense. He wakes the laptop up, types quickly into the search bar, and smiles as the link to a blog pops up. A blog about crop circles, UFOs, and aliens. Called Oil Can What. He’s found Samuel.

 

 

An elaborate design fills the page. As he examines it the pattern resolves into a five pointed star, with smaller stars woven throughout the inside and around the outside of the central star’s arms. All of the stars are inside a circle, and they rise, bright fresh green, from a background of flattened crops. The photos are drone shots. The one he’s looking at, the first photo on the blog’s page, is a tight shot of just the circle with the central star and its smaller satellite stars tucked inside. As he scrolls down there are at least twenty more aerial photos from all sorts of angles and distances. Many of them are long shots of the landscape, the circle full of stars turned tiny with distance in the background or off to one side. Long emerald fields stretch out for miles, bordered by rows of trees, low hills rising gently on the edges. It’s an irregular patchwork of fields in all shades of greens and browns. It’s beautiful. He can see white dots of sheep scattered around the pasture that runs along the left side of the star circle’s field, and thick red flowers in another, so far away that he can’t tell what they are. It suddenly reminds him of the poppies in The Wizard of Oz – how weirdly fitting, he thinks. Is there a link there? Probably not. Maybe not.

Oil Can What’s blog entry comes after the final sweeping landscape photo, and says that this crop circle is important. Clearly it was not created by those unnamed guys with planks and ropes who like to claim they are behind all the crop circles. They love pulling everyone’s strings, Oil Can What says. They love stirring up controversy and driving a wedge in the crop circle community. And they have created some of them. Enough to know how doing them by hand works, enough to describe in great detail how they make their artistic pieces. Which are artistic, absolutely, he’s not going to argue with that. But then they have a laugh at everyone who believes aliens hovered over the field and beamed some light down and swooped around a few times and poof! Created a fully formed crop circle!

This one isn’t theirs, Oil Can What says.

 

I know this one isn’t theirs, because I was there. I knew something was going to happen. I had it from a reputable source. My usual reputable source that I can’t share with you now, but I will soon. Well, maybe not soon soon, but as soon as I can. There is a lot going on! This is important! And this is one more step in the direction we are all headed. Or, the direction we all better be headed. 

I was on that hill. Right beside the horse. I was looking down over the fields below. It was dusk, the last rays of the sun nearly gone. I could see lights in the windows of The Barge, and more lights from the canal boats like sparkly little beads lined up on the water, and the twinkling fires from the campground beside The Barge. It had gotten a bit chilly and I was digging around in my backpack for my jacket when I felt the electricity in the air. Or, maybe not so much electricity as a change in the air. A move from total stillness to… something else. Something charged, something ready. I looked up and saw the light. A little bobbing light that seemed to be way off on the horizon at first. Then it suddenly zipped from left to right, still appearing to be on the horizon. Then….it was right in front of me. It was hovering, swaying a bit, moving from side to side.

It’s very strange, but I can’t tell you what exactly I saw. I’m not sure I saw anything. It’s like I skipped a chunk of time, like I jumped forward in time and the next thing I knew the hovering light was gone and the crop circle had appeared in the field below me, across the canal from the Barge. It was very faint from my vantage point because it was almost dark, but there was enough fading light to see the design burned into the wheat. I felt like all the air had been sucked off my hill. I felt like the white horse was staring at me, nodding its head. I ran down the hill to the field, tripping more than once in the almost-darkness with the momentum I worked up, flinging myself towards the circle. And when I got to the bottom, I was on the edge of this amazing creation. Bent plants, flattened at the perfect angles, their nodes unbroken. No damage, all entwined. No humans in sight. No aliens in sight either, but they wouldn’t be, would they?

 

Joel stops reading. Scrolls back up to the top of the page and looks at the header links. “Crop Circles” is the section he’s in. The link to “White Horses” is beside it, then “Standing Stones”. “Connections” is the next to last one, and finally there’s “About.” He starts to click “About”. Stops. Goes to the kitchen and gets a beer out of the fridge. It’s only 11 in the morning, and the beer is not even a good one. It’s some strange micro brew called !!Zounds!! that Ben brought home weeks ago which tastes bizarrely of grapefruit and pine needles, but it’s the only beer in the fridge and he feels strongly that he can’t click on “About” without fortification. He pops the can, pours it into a glass, takes a sip. Squinches his face, sighs, takes a longer sip, and sits back down in front of the computer.

Hovers over “About.”

He already knows what he’ll find, but now that the moment has arrived after all these years of searching, his hands are shaking and he doesn’t seem to be getting enough air into his lungs. “Breathe,” he tells himself. He shuts his eyes and takes three long deep breaths. Calm, calm, calm. And then he clicks.

The picture is very small, especially compared to the screen-filling crop circle pictures. A man stands in front of a long low building that’s painted lavender, the sun in his eyes. There’s an ornately lettered sign on the wall of the building, but it’s too small to read. Joel tries zooming in but the closer he gets, the blurrier everything becomes. The man is squinting a bit as he smiles at the photographer. He has black hair, a pointy face, a mischievous grin that makes Joel’s heart skip a beat, then makes him grin back, then laugh out loud. Samuel is still Samuel, even after all these years.

The description under the photo is brief.  Simon Timejumper searches for aliens, checks out standing stones, white horses, and other potential oddities, and is keeper of the Oil Can What blog. He’s currently a staff member of the Crop Circle Education Center in Wiltshire, England.  

Simon Timejumper?

There’s an email link, but Joel doesn’t click it. He needs to think.

The sudden rattle of keys at the front door startles Joel so violently that he sloshes grapefruit/pine needle beer all over the table, narrowly missing the keyboard. He slams the laptop shut just as the door opens.

“Hey,” says Ben, tossing his jacket onto the couch. “I thought you’d be at work. No wonder I kept locking the door instead of unlocking it.”

“I’m doing some stuff from home today,” says Joel, trying to look casual and like he hasn’t just discovered their long-vanished brother standing in front of a crop circle education center in England. Ben pauses, frowns at him.

“Are you okay? You look a little weird.”

“Oh, yeah, fine, I’m just….I had some strange issues to deal with this morning. Work issues.” He tries not to look at the laptop. He realizes now it probably seems weird that the computer is not open on the table with his actual work stuff in view. “What are you doing home so early?”

“I switched shifts with Janice. She needs to do some kid thing tomorrow that she’d forgotten about, so I told her I’d cover her tomorrow if she’d take my shift today. So, surprise day off, hooray!”

Ben flops down onto the sofa and pulls out his phone. Joel opens the laptop back up, closes the blog fast as he can, and pulls up his work email. Ben looks back over at him. “You really do look weird,” he says. “You’re very pale. Especially for work problems. Is there something I need to know about climate change destroying us all way earlier than we were expecting?”

Joel laughs, a little weakly. “I think I may be coming down with the flu,” he says. “I feel kind of weird. That’s partly why I decided to just work from here today.”

“Ewwww,” says Ben. “Stay away from me, Plague Boy.” He goes back to his phone.

“Actually, I’m going to go lie down for a bit,” Joel says. He slides the laptop under his arm and grabs the dripping beer, trying to be discreet, but Ben isn’t watching him. “Good idea,” he says. “You just yell if you need anything.”

“Right,” says Joel. “I will definitely let you know.”

Safely in his room, he stretches out on the bed and starts working on a plan.

 

 

 

Joel – current time 2018

 

Four weeks later Ben is driving him to the airport.

“Okay, I will admit I am really really jealous,” Ben says as he weaves his old silver Fit through the traffic on 285. “How lucky are you, finagling a trip like this!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty great,” Joel agrees, staring out the window at the tractor trailer that looks inches away from smashing into his side of their car, and trying not to panic. Ben is a daredevil   driver who loves the thrill of close calls. And speed. And feeling like he’s Number One in the interstate race.

“I’m surprised the Conservancy could come up with the money for sending you to do historical site research in England. They always seem so …broke.” Ben looks at him sideways.

“Please keep your eyes on the road,” Joel says, bracing himself against the dashboard. “They are always broke, but it’s not that much money in the scheme of things. And they are really interested in how the National Trust and English Heritage are conserving their ancient sites. Which are a whole lot more ancient than our ancient sites, so there’s a lot of historical expertise we can benefit from. Jesus, Ben, look out for that Mercedes!”

“Well, that makes sense,” Ben says, veering expertly around the Mercedes who is going far too slow in the fast lane. “Good for you, and good for them!”

It actually does make sense, and it’s how Joel has managed to get his supervisor to agree to him taking this extended trip, even helping expedite his passport. He’s going to do research at various sites and bring back a lot of information on British historical preservation. Along with finding Samuel. He hopes that will work out as well as they expect but he’s got a flexible return so can cram it all in. Maybe.

Ben zips around three cars and dives over onto the exit for Hartsville- Jackson International Departures.

“Next time I am definitely driving,” Joel says. “I’m going to be sick before I’m even on the plane.”

“Oh, you love it,” Ben says, speeding down the ramp. He slings them onto the American Air Passenger Unloading lane and then comes to a standstill behind a line of traffic that’s creeping towards the terminal.

“Damnation,” says Ben. “I knew it was too good to be true, actually making it to the airport in record time.”

“It’s fine, we left really early,” Joel says. “At least it’s moving.”

Ben is quiet for a moment, staring at the gigantic black SUV right in front of them.

“I really would love to see England,” he says. “Maybe next summer we can go and stay with Jessie for a couple of weeks.”

“We could,” says Joel. “That would be fun.” He is suddenly awash with guilt over all the things he’s about to do that Ben has no idea of. Samuel has overridden everything else he would normally be feeling, and never in their lives has he kept something like this from his family, especially Ben. He’s been so focused on Samuel that he’s shoved everything else into a far away closet in the back of his mind. And finding Samuel is fraught with disaster. What if he shows up at the Crop Circle Education Center and Samuel is horrified? Or furious? Won’t talk to him, tells him to get lost? At the very least he’ll be shocked, since Joel decided not to contact him ahead of time. Samuel never got in touch with any of them in all the years since he vanished, so it’s highly unlikely he’ll be happy about being found. He’s changed his name, he’s moved across the ocean. He is not expecting a visitor from the past.

“Joel,” says Ben. “You have turned awfully green. Are you going to be okay with an eight hour flight? I mean, it is a little late now, but maybe get some medicine in the airport? I don’t think they sell Valium, but anti-nausea pills might help.”

“I’m fine,” Joel says. “I’m just …nervous.”

“Of course you are,” Ben says. “It’s your first trip overseas! This is exactly why I should be coming with you.”

“I wish you were,” Joel says. And it’s true. Ben has always been his anchor. It will be like he’s missing a piece of himself without Ben there to lighten everything up and share the adventure.

They finally reach the curbside passenger drop off after what feels like a month. Ben maneuvers into a tight spot between an older Buick and a little Frontier pickup and pops open the hatch. Joel pulls out his small maroon carryon and his worn blue backpack.

“Excellent job packing,” Ben says. “I hope they have washing machines in England.” He’s watching Joel, an odd look on his face.

“I’m pretty sure they do,” says Joel. “Thanks for the ride. And sorry you aren’t coming along. This time.”

“Yeah, me too,” says Ben. “Give Jessie a smooch for me. Tell her we’re already planning next summer. We’ll bring Eddie and Quentin and Albert. It will be an invasion.”

Joel laughs. For a dangerous second he is on the verge of telling Ben everything. The whole reason for the trip, the real reason: that Samuel is right this minute probably sitting in that UFO pub and having a pint with all his friends who aren’t them, without the slightest idea of what is headed his way. His eyes are suddenly stinging.

“Oh my god, you need to get inside that terminal right now,” Ben says, laughing. “If you start crying I am driving away and not looking back. You know I can’t take that, you baby.”

Ben hugs Joel so suddenly that it nearly knocks him over, both with the force and with the surprise. Then he lets go, says, “Okay, bye, have fun! Text me so I’ll know how you got there!”

Then he hops back into the Fit, sticks his arm out the window and waves, pulls out right in front of a huge Ford truck with a menacing grill on the front, and is gone.

 

Twelve hours later, Joel is walking a bit unsteadily through the jet bridge that connects his plane to Heathrow’s Terminal 5, clutching his carry-on in one hand and the straps of his pack in the other. The flight had been uneventful, and he’d actually manage to sleep through a chunk of it thanks to a couple of ibuprofen sleep-aid pills and noise canceling earbuds. It was a long time to sit though, especially with someone jammed into the window seat beside him and people constantly pushing past him in the aisles. And that was after waiting for several hours at the Atlanta airport for his flight to depart. He’s had lots of time to read the crop circle books he brought and think about what he’s going to say to Samuel. Or Simon. But he’s here at last, and as he steps from the claustrophobic jet bridge into the busy terminal he realizes that he’s surrounded by British accents. It makes him feel lighter, and the sheer excitement at finally being in London is outstripping his anxiety over surprising Samuel.

He checks his phone and decides to wait a bit to text Jessie. It’s only 6:45 in the morning and he still has to go through Customs, which reportedly takes ages. She’s already given him detailed instructions on getting the tube to the Leyton station, which is close enough to her flat that a taxi will be reasonable. He pulls a colorful little tube map out of his pocket to check again. Just one change, the Piccadilly Line to the Central Line, then on to Leyton. Excitement and adrenaline are kicking in, and he heads off towards UK Arrivals with purpose.

After standing for an hour in the Customs line, he’s feeling a little less full of adrenaline. At 7:35 he finally texts Jessie, and her response of YAY!!! followed by a bunch of celebratory horns spouting confetti makes him smile. At last his creeping line reaches the security booths. He answers a few questions about his visit, his passport is stamped, and he’s officially in England. “Yay!!! he thinks to himself, trying not to grin too obviously.

More walking, more following signs to the Underground station. He successfully purchases an Oyster Card from one of the ticket booths, and is pleasantly surprised when touching it to the yellow circle makes the turnstile instantly open. The underground isn’t a completely alien creature since he and Ben lived in New York for a little while years ago and often took the subway, so he’s able to relax a bit once he’s on the correct platform. The train to the Piccadilly Line arrives surprisingly quickly, and he steps onboard, relieved to find it relatively uncrowded. More passengers join him as they get closer to the Central Line junction, and by the time he reaches Holborn the car is full of tired commuters dressed in black, young people in track pants and hoodies, and tourists. They look at their phones or read copies of Metro, and nobody makes eye contact. Joel watches the stations go by, darkness whirling past with quick breaks for poorly lit platforms where people are staring at their phones until the train pulls in, then leap into action when the doors whoosh open. He’s lulled by the clacking of the wheels and amused by the quietly authoritative automated voice that tells everyone to mind the gap and announces the upcoming stations. He has nearly nodded off by the time they reach Holborn and is startled to hear the voice telling him to alight for the Central Line.

The switch to the Central Line is easily done, and Joel is surprised at how soon the calm voice tells him that the next stop is Leyton.  The tube has emerged above ground and he has a view of row houses, streets lined with shops, and a gray London sky flashing by outside the window. He texts Jessie to say he’s reached his last station, and his phone pings immediately with “So have I!”

What??? he wonders, but once he’s hopped off the train and tapped his Oyster card at the turnstile, he sees Jessie waving madly at him from the station entrance.

“I had to meet you!” she says, laughing, as she rushes up and grabs him in a hug.”I actually started to go meet you at Heathrow, but…that would have been a little crazy.” She looks even younger than he remembers, although it’s been over a year since he’s seen her. Her short hair is still dark and spikey, and she is thinner than she was when she left for London. She pulls him out of the station exit doors, asks how the trip was, asks if he’s about to keel over from the flight, flags one of the black cabs that’s lined up on the street outside, and says, “This is on me – I’ve never wished I had a car till now! I am SO glad to see you!”

The cab only takes a few minutes to drop them at Jessie’s flat. It’s tiny: just two rooms above a kabob shop. The neighborhood looks like it’s seen better days, with roll-up security doors on many of the shops and a lot of peeling paint, but Jessie assures him it’s safe enough.

“Safe enough?” he says, alarmed. “How safe is safe enough?”

She laughs, says “It’s very working-class. The crime rate here is low for the city. I always carry my little personal alarm thing, and I don’t go wandering around by myself late at night. Dad.”

“It looks interesting,” he says, looking out the window of her main room. There’s a little grocery directly across the street with so much produce stacked on its sidewalk stands that he can’t see their door. The bright blue and red signs tell him the shop sells wine, fruit and veg, confectioneries and newspapers. You can also exchange money and top up your phone. Beside it is a nail shop, then a little coffee shop. There’s an astonishing number of chicken takeaways in both directions. Red double decker buses and black cabs zip by below him. Another cab painted like the Union Jack with a Vodaphone ad saying “London’s Calling” makes him laugh.

“It’s amazing,” she says, looking out of the window beside him with a smile that tells him she’s found her spot.

 

During the next three days Jessie shows him around London. They walk for miles. Past Saint Paul’s Cathedral, past the Tower of London, across Tower Bridge, up and back down the South Bank, underneath the London Eye, past the looming pointy Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. They stare up at the impossible, astonishing gothic complexity of Westminster Abby. Ride the tube, ride double-decker buses, have pints and meals in pubs. Walk through St. James Park, throw bread at the ducks. Stroll around Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square and Soho with hordes of tourists. Jessie photographs everything. Joel’s feet ache and he feels like he’s still walking when he sleeps, but he’s never enjoyed a trip so much. Jessie is happy and cheerful, and somehow while he wasn’t around she’s become a confident and entertaining young woman. He has moved Samuel to that handy little closet in the back of his brain, and doesn’t even find it difficult to avoid telling her why he’s really here. He’ll tell her afterwards, shock her with the news that Samuel’s practically been her neighbor for the last year. Finding him will be a happy surprise! Or a terrible disaster, and in that case he’ll never have to say a word about it. Fortunately she’s very interested in his cover reason, the research on historical preservation in the UK. She knows a lot about some of the ancient sites he’s planning to visit so it’s been surprisingly easy to pretend that’s the only reason.

The visit flies by, and Joel is sorry to leave when he finally catches the tube back to Heathrow. He’s going to rent a car and drive to Wiltshire, and they’ve agreed that renting one at the airport then heading out to the countryside will be a lot safer than trying to navigate through London traffic when it’s his first time driving with the steering wheel and the roads on the opposite side of what he’s used to. He’s read up on road rules and watched a lot of You Tube videos of driving through the roundabouts. Apparently there are roundabouts of varying complexity every few miles in England.

“You’ll be fine,” Jessie tells him as she hugs him outside the Leyton station. “I’ve done it quite a few times now. Just remember to stay on the left when you’re on the two lanes roads, and go left around the roundabouts instead of right. And when you’re on the four-lanes, keep to the left unless you’re passing someone. Or as they say, ‘overtaking’. Keep telling yourself LEFT and you won’t have any problems!”

“I’m glad I’m not starting off here,” Joel says, watching the traffic flying past them, the little cars weaving in and out and blaring their horns at one another.

“The most important thing is don’t panic. The roads are going to seem insanely narrow once you get off the M4, so be ready for that. Your Mini will be perfect. Take your time, and just wave nicely if anyone honks at you. Because they will.”

They hear the rumble of the train heading towards them, and Joel dashes into the station, turning to wave at Jessie. “I’ll see you when I’m done,” he calls, and then the train is there and he’s hopping on board.

It’s an hour back to Heathrow, and this time he is alert and enjoys the trip. He does some more crop circle reading, and when he’s tired of that he reads up on the area where he’ll be staying. He’s rented an Airbnb in Marlborough, a little historical market town that seems pretty close to most things he’s going be checking out. Especially the Crop Circle Education Center, which is twenty minutes away and near the Barge Pub where all the UFO/Crop Circle fanatics seem to hang out. The Alton Barnes White Horse is near the pub too. It’s one of eight white chalk horses left in Wiltshire. He’s planning to do some legitimate research on them, as some of the original white horses have been lost and he’s interested in the preservation of the remaining eight.

At Heathrow he finds the shuttle to Hertz, where he’s reserved a Mini. It’s tiny and bright blue with what looks like racing stripes up the hood. It’s easier than he expected to get the hang of shifting gears with his right hand, and after a few trips around the parking lot to practice, he heads out the gate and towards the M4. It’s unnerving to be driving on the left side of the road but he congratulates himself for not trying to drive through London first thing. Everyone on the M4 is going the same direction at least, so he doesn’t have to worry about a head-on collision yet. He keeps to the far left lane and takes deep breaths when gigantic trucks fly by him. After half an hour without any incidents he’s feeling much more comfortable and is able to enjoy the countryside. Fields of cattle and sheep, little villages, old brick houses, church spires flash past him. When he sees a blue sign for a services area he decides he’s ready to venture off the motorway and carefully takes the exit. He’s quite impressed with the services area’s variety of offerings: fuel, a news shop/drugstore, a bookseller, a Costa Coffee shop, and a stunning variety of fast food opportunities. The rest rooms are sparkling clean and there’s even a Travelodge hotel. Much better than the US, he decides, where if you need gas, coffee, a restaurant and a hotel off the interstate you have to drive to each one separately.

He buys coffee and a scone, then sits and watches the travelers come and go until he feels ready to tackle the M4 again. Back on the motorway he feels even more comfortable driving and is a little sorry he didn’t bring another cup of coffee along to enjoy. It seems to take no time to get to the exit for the A338, which will take him right to Marlborough. After he exits he’s glad he didn’t bring the coffee along. The “A” roads are narrow and this one is just two lanes, so traffic seems to be coming at him head-on. He stops admiring the pretty landscape and focuses on staying in the left lane, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to feel his hand start to cramp. He encounters his first roundabout as he approaches a tiny town whose name he completely misses. Happily it’s a very simple roundabout. The GPS calmly directs him to keep left and then tells him where to exit it so he’s headed toward Marlborough again. But first he’s got to navigate through the little town center where the street is so narrow he’s afraid of scraping against the cars he meets and the cars parked along the high street.

By the time he’s on the other side of the little town he is regretting not just taking the train to Wiltshire, but as he drives onwards through the countryside he calms down a bit. The road seems wider after the town’s narrow streets and there really isn’t much traffic. Before long he’s entering Marlborough with more roundabouts to navigate and a lot more traffic. Cars are parked on both sides of the street as well as down the center in a long row of tightly packed vehicles. At least he can creep along, not worrying about delaying the traffic behind him. The town looks beautiful out of the corner of his eye, old brick shops stretched as far as he can see. When he’s finally reached the end of the high street he is a nervous wreck, but happily the GPS informs him that his destination – his Airbnb lodging – is just ahead on the left. He’s never been so glad to pull off the road in his life.

The place he’s rented is very small, just one bedroom and a tiny kitchen and bathroom, but it’s all he needs and it’s close enough to walk into Marlborough if he wants. Which sounds like an excellent idea once he’s laid on the bed long enough to recover a bit from the harrowing journey. On foot the town is much nicer than from the car. Shops and pubs and restaurants bustle with shoppers and he can appreciate the gorgeous old buildings. He stops at the first pub he comes to, The Fox and Hare, and gratefully has a beer and an excellent plate of fish and chips.

 

Now it’s time to carry out the part of the plan that’s brought him here.

Two hours later he is pulling into the car park outside The Barge. The last road he was on was the tiniest yet, so narrow that it made the A338 look like an interstate. He feared meeting vehicles coming the in opposite direction and was ready to pull off the road completely if he saw one ahead, although there was basically nowhere to pull off with the hedges and gorse bushes right on the edges of the pavement. When he finally did meet his first oncoming car they flew past him without even slowing down and he realized there was more room than it appeared, especially with the teeny Mini. Still, it was harrowing and hard to enjoy the spectacular countryside. He’s weak with relief when he finally arrives at the Barge after missing the turn twice.

Of course it’s not just the drive making him feel weak, he thinks as he sits in the car for a few minutes gathering his nerve. It’s what is about to happen. Any moment now, if Samuel/Simon is inside the Barge, where judging by his blog posts he often seems to be. But he might be at the Crop Circle Education Center, and he also might be on vacation in Scotland or gone to France for a little break. His most recent blog entries haven’t mentioned any upcoming trips but he may not want people knowing where he is. People who could be looking for him. People who may be about to give him a tremendous shock. There’s only one way to find out. He gets out of the car.

The Barge is a gorgeous two story inn with a chimney on each end, built in 1810 of golden stone with some red brick patched in after a fire in the 1850s. It sits beside the Kennent and Avon canal, so close that it looks like you could step from the pub’s door into one of the colorful canal boats tied up against the bank. The Alton Barnes white horse is on the hillside across from the canal, its chalk lines glowing a brilliant white against the bright green grass. Joel stands and admires the horse for a few minutes, taking some photos with his phone for reference. Finally he turns back to the Barge and stares at the green door. A couple comes out, laughing and juggling pints and plates of sandwiches. They both smile at him and sit down at one of the picnic tables beside the canal.

“Go on in, mate,” the man says cheerfully. “You’ll be glad you did, it’s a lovely place!”

Joel smiles back, says, “I’m sure of that!” He takes a deep breath and pulls open the heavy door.

Inside the pub is light and airy, with a number of large windows looking out at the canal and the white horse beyond. There’s a long bar with a row of dark elegant taps, and shelves with assorted colorful bottles on the wall behind it. Several arched entranceways lead into adjoining rooms. Joel can see a bit of the room that’s on the right side of the bar, bright swirls of green and blue on the wall and ceiling. He knows it’s a mural from reading up on the pub and starts to go investigate, but turns back to the counter when the bar woman comes around the corner with a tray full of empty glasses and says, “Hello, didn’t hear you come in! What can I get you?”

He orders a pint of their house beer, the Croppie, and takes it to a little table near the door. It’s too early for dinner and too late for lunch, so there aren’t many people in the pub: an old man at a window table looking out at the canal, a young couple playing darts quietly and badly on the other side of the room. No Samuel in sight. He’s not sure what exactly he expected, but this feels anticlimactic. At least the beer is excellent, he thinks. And Samuel is probably at work, or at home, or out traipsing around the fields after crop circles. This was a long shot, and he’ll be here for awhile.  No point in being disappointed. Or relieved either, he reminds himself.

He picks up his beer and walks through the archway that leads to the mural room. The mural is so astonishing that it stops him in his tracks. It covers the top quarter of all four walls plus the entire ceiling. It’s so intricate and massive that he can’t take the whole thing in. There’s an enormous smiling yellow sun on the ceiling, a decorative crop circle beside it with a light fixture in the center, a green face with bright blue eyes and leaves for his hair and beard. Stonehenge fills up most of one wall and bends onto the ceiling above it, and there’s a line of standing stones from Avebury. Huge green and blue swirls that look like personifications of the wind blow airily across one side. He’s transfixed, can’t take his eyes off of it, sees more amazing detail everywhere he looks. He hasn’t noticed anything else in the room, doesn’t see the three people gathered around a low table at the back until someone slowly says, “Joel??”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessie – 2018

 

My phone is buzzing, but I’m ignoring it. I’m in a pub in the East End, near my teeny flat, with a bunch of kind-of-friends who are also people I work with. I love being out in London. I just love London, honestly. All of it, including the seedy parts, like my flat that is dark and ancient and damp. London is old and new, fast and slow, loud and silent. Full of history. London has felt like home since the day I arrived, and I’m not sure why since it’s pretty much nothing at all like home.

I’m working on a bitter pint, packed onto a booth in this weird old/new gastropub that used to be an actual neighborhood local before the economy tanked and the locals got bought out by corporations. Everyone is bright and happy and full of cheer, at least outwardly, because our little fringe paper has inexplicably won a big award in the news world and it means a little more stability all around. I think maybe I’ll be safe here a little longer, protected from getting shipped back to the US, since I still have active work with an award-winning paper in England. I’m glad for a chance to be out celebrating. Joel left early in the morning for his own work in Wiltshire, and my flat felt very lonely after he had gone.

“Your phone is buzzing!” says Annabelle, who is another of our paper’s reporters and is sitting smushed up beside me in our narrow booth.

“IS it?” I say, hoping that it will stop. I’m sure it’s Joel letting me know how his day went, and although I’m eager to hear about his drive and his lodgings I’d rather wait till I’m not in a noisy pub and can talk properly. I’ll text him in a few minutes and call him later. Annabelle cranes around to see my screen which  I’ve forgotten to turn face down. Or, better yet, put in my bag.

“Who’s Ben?” asks Annabelle, all eyes and ears suddenly, delighted to think I have a mysterious man I’ve kept hidden away from all my workmates. It just adds to the enigmatic allure of my weird quietness and my disinclination to share anything personal whatsoever which totally clashes with my Americanness.

“Ben?” I say, looking at the screen myself. “Ben’s my brother. Why is Ben calling me?”

Suddenly I’m thinking maybe I better pick up. Ben never ever calls me. He only texts and rarely does that. The screen goes blank as I reach for it.

“I should call him back,” I tell Annabelle. I slide out of our booth, squeezing past the massive block of pub patrons trying to get served at the bar, and fight my way outside.

On the sidewalk in the chilly dusk I check to see if Ben’s left a voicemail, but he hasn’t. Or if he did my phone hasn’t figured it out yet; overseas messages don’t always get delivered promptly. So I hit redial. And stand there shivering, waiting for Ben to pick up.

“Jessie,” he says finally, his voice oddly faint, as if we’re on a long-distance line from the past that has just barely made the connection.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. A bus goes whooshing past and for a second I can’t hear anything.

“…tell you…”

A couple of black cabs are blaring their horns at each other on the street in front of me. Several guys in the pub’s doorway are laughing uproariously.

“Jesus,” I say. “Ben, hang on, I can’t hear a thing -”

I go around the corner into a side street, and the noise fades a bit. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, I tried to get Joel but his phone is off,” Ben says, a little clearer now. “I guess. Or maybe he tossed it into the canal. Hard to tell with him.”

“What IS it?” I am fighting the urge to shriek.

There is a second of silence.

“Jessie, honey. I’m sorry.”

Ben doesn’t use endearments. Kind Ben is really scaring me. I lean against the wall, unable to breath.

“It’s Grandma,” he says. “We just got a call from the nursing home.”

“Oh,” I say. My brain can’t seem to come up with anything more.

“They said they found her in the in the bed, already…gone. It was peaceful, they said, although I’m not sure how they knew that.”

My stomach feels like it’s down around my shoes. “But she was… she hadn’t been sick, had she? I mean, nothing new?”

“No, Eddy and Quentin just saw her yesterday, and said she seemed the same as ever. But she had looked weaker every time I saw her these past months. The nurse who called said she’d been sleeping a lot more. I guess it wasn’t really unexpected, although it feels like it.”

I lean against the wall and rub at the tears on my face.

“I was going to call her while Joel was here,” I say. “We completely forgot about it.”

“Well, it’s not like she would have known the difference,” he says, a little too briskly. “Can you let Joel know? Do you know where he is?”

“Of course I do. He’s in Wiltshire. He just left this morning. He may be having phone issues but I’ll keep trying him,” I say.

“Let me know when you can get a flight. We’ll wait on the funeral till you can get home, of course,” he says. “I’ll pick you up from the airport. Or Eddy will.”

“Okay,” I say. I stare down the side street, vaguely wondering what those shadowy figures hunched together way down at the far end are doing. Someone is shouting on the street out front and someone else is laughing.

“Where are you?” says Ben. “I’m assuming not safe and sound in your apartment.”

“Just out,” I say. “At a pub with some friends. It’s…how’s Albert?”

“He seems okay. I’m not sure how much has gotten through. You know how he is.”

“Yeah. All right. I’ll call you when I figure out the flights.”

I watch another bus go flying past. “And…thanks for letting me know, Ben.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second, then laughs. “Well, it seemed better than waiting till Christmas.”

I laugh too, and look up between the buildings to see a little slice of darkening sky and faint stars.

 

 

 

 

 

Joel – current time (2018). Directly continued from last piece

Joel is frozen.

He’s still holding onto his beer and the first thought flickering through his mind is at that least he didn’t drop it dramatically, with glass shattering and the delicious Croppie flying everywhere. His mind doesn’t seem to have a second thought. It has gone completely blank. Smooth and empty. It’s like the wind has been knocked out of him, and he can’t find enough air to speak. All he can do is stare at Samuel and cling to his pint glass.

Samuel stands up from the table, very slowly, not taking his eyes off Joel.

“Joel?” he says again, taking a step closer, like he’s approaching a timid animal. Carefully, even holding out one hand. “Is it really you?”

Joel takes a very deep breath.“Hey, Samuel.”

“Samuel? Who’s Samuel?” asks one of the people still sitting at the low table against the wall, underneath a large topographical map with colorful pins scattered all across it. Joel glances over, doesn’t have room in his mind to register anything about him or the woman sitting next to him other than they are both staring, transfixed.

Samuel glances at them too, says, “That is a really long story.”

He looks back at Joel, a smile slowly moving across his face. Before Joel realizes what’s happening, Samuel takes the pint out of his hand, sits it down on the nearest table, and wrapped his arms around him. Then he holds Joel at arm’s length, says, “Oh my god, Joel, I cannot believe it!”

“Me either,” says Joel. He’s smiling too now, although it also feels like he’s floating above them, looking down on this strange reunion. Floating Self tells him to get back down there and be in the moment. The moment he’s been planning for years, the moment he is finally reunited with Samuel. Now that the moment has arrived, he’s not at all sure that he wants to be in it. “I…ummm… I really don’t know what to say! This is just…this is weird.”

“Let’s go outside,” Samuel says, putting an arm around Joel’s shoulder. “We can walk by the canal and…” he breaks off, laughs. “And catch up! We have a lot of catching up to do!”

Samuel looks over his shoulder at his friends, who are still watching them with fascination, then spins himself and Joel around to face them. Says, “Oh, introductions – this is my brother Joel. We haven’t seen each other in, well, ages. Joel, this is Nigel and Rayven, my friends from the Center. Guys, I’ll catch you later.”

“Okay,” says Nigel, his brow furrowed a bit in confusion. “I didn’t know you have a brother. And should we be calling you Samuel now?”

Samuel grins at him. “Let’s not confuse things any more than we have to,” he says.

“Nice to meet you,” Joel says, starting to add that Samuel’s got more brothers than have shown up today and a sister too, but decides against it. Clearly Samuel has not filled his friends in on his former life.

Samuel maneuvers him to the front door, down the stone steps, and onto the canal path so quickly that Joel can’t quite keep up with what’s happening. Once they are on the canal path Samuel stops and turns to face him. He’s beaming  at Joel, which is a relief, although Joel can’t seem to beam back.

“I cannot believe it’s really you,” Samuel says. “What are you doing here? How on earth did you find me?”

Picnic tables are scattered all around the yard by the Barge. There’s an empty one right beside them, looking out over the peaceful canal with a clear view of the white chalk horse on the hill. Suddenly Joel cannot take another step. He sinks down onto the bench, bends over so his head is nearly on his knees, tries to get his vanished breath to come back.

“Are you okay?” Samuel asks, concerned. “You used to have asthma attacks – are you having an asthma attack? You got them when you were upset – is this causing it? Can I help? What can I do?”

He sounds so frantic that Joel starts to laugh, and sits back up again. “No, it’s fine, I haven’t had asthma in years, I’m okay.” It does feel a tiny bit like the air-stealing asthma attacks from his childhood, he realizes, but he can actually breathe. It was just that he seemed to forget how for a few minutes. He takes a couple of deep breaths slowly. No wheezing, no tight chest. Samuel watches him anxiously, sits down beside him.

“That was weird,” Joel says, when he feels more normal again. “Wow, great way to spring myself on you, right?”

“Yeah, way to go, pal! Just waltz right in, make me think I’ve seen a ghost, and then collapse and die in front of me. That is a very theatrical move. I’m going to keep that one in mind.”

Suddenly they are both laughing, harder and harder, so hard they are leaning against each other, and both are wiping tears off their faces.

When they have recovered a bit, Samuel remembers their beers and goes back inside to retrieve them. And probably to have a quick word with his friends, Joel thinks. He wonders how much they know about Samuel’s past. Not much, he figures.

Samuel plops down beside him again, hands him the Croppy, takes a sip of his own dark beer. Looks at Joel, and says, “So. How did you do it? How did you find me?”

“It was the blog,” Joel says. “I found the blog. Oil Can What. And it just clicked.”

“What clicked? What do you mean?”

“That was the time machine’s name.”

“The time machine? How did you know it’s from the time machine?”

“You told me,” Joel says. “Remember?”

“I didn’t tell you that,” Samuel said, staring blankly at him. “I never told anybody that. Well, I told Quentin but he wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“Yeah, you told me. That night you fell through our window, and me and Ben drug you upstairs to sleep in the attic. You and Quentin had been out drinking.” He considers a second. “You probably don’t remember, actually. You were really drunk.”

“I do not remember that at all,” Samuel says. “Wow.”

“I knew when I saw it,” Joel says. “I knew it was you right away. And of course your picture is there. You really haven’t changed that much.” He looks closely at Samuel. He hasn’t changed very much considering the time that’s passed. Same sharp pointy face with some added wrinkles, same clear green eyes, same black floppy hair with a few grey streaks thrown in. He’s wearing faded jeans and a dark green sweater with raggedy cuffs, exactly the sort of thing he would have worn way back then. It’s like he can see Samuel from all those years ago looking out at him just beneath Current Samuel.

“You’ve changed,” Samuel says, studying him. “Last time I saw you, you were a little pudgy kid. A cute little pudgy kid,” he adds. “And a really nice kid. You always stuck up for me.” He’s smiling at the white horse on the hill now. “Ben would argue with me about what color the sky is, but you always believed in me. Now you’re all grown up. I almost wouldn’t recognize you.”

He stops quickly, glances at Joel.

“Wait,” Joel says. “How did you recognize me? You haven’t seen me since I was 13, but you knew me as soon as I walked in. Did you….did you know I was coming?” For a disorienting second he’s that 13 year old again, completely believing in magical Samuel who knows everything and can do anything.

“What?” says Samuel. “Of course I didn’t know, how on earth would I know that? I’ve never been so shocked in my life seeing you walk into the pub! Good thing I don’t have heart problems, pal.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Joel says, back to reality again. “Nobody knows. Not even Ben knows. So how did you recognize me that fast?” 

Samuel is fidgeting with his pint glass, turning it around and around on the table, looking at out the white horse again. He takes a long drink, glances sideways at Joel.

“Grandma sends me pictures. Well, she used to send me pictures, she can’t anymore of course.”

“What?? Grandma sends you pictures? Grandma knows where you are?” There goes his breath again. “How does she know that, Samuel?”

“Deep breaths, buddy,” Samuel says. “She’s known since I left. She’s the one who helped me, she gave me the money after…that night at the church.”

“Oh my god, are you saying that Grandma has known where you were all this time?  All these years, after you just vanished without a trace, and Grandma knew all about it but never thought to mention it to anyone? Or maybe she did mention it! Who else knows? Does everybody but me know? Have I been wasting all this time I’ve spent trying to find you, when I could have just, oh, asked Grandma? Or Eddy or Jessie or Ben or Quentin? How about Albert, does Albert know too?” Joel is shouting. His vision is turning shimmery. This is not at all what he was expecting from their reunion.

Samuel is taken aback, and the few people who are scattered around at the other tables are staring at them now. Joel is standing up although he doesn’t remember leaving the bench. He’s looking down at Samuel, furious, thinking distantly that he’s actually going to hit him. He’s never hit anyone in his life, except for Ben. When they were kids. Years ago. He didn’t even hit Ben very often.

Samuel reaches out and takes his hand.

“Shhhhhh,” he says, “It’s okay, buddy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I vanished, and left you behind. Nobody else knows, just Grandma.”

He jerks his hand out of Samuel’s grip, and turns to the canal path.

“I need to walk,” he says. “I need to think about this.”

He starts off down the narrow canal path, away from the Barge. He walks as fast as he can, considers running for about a second, but even with the chaos whirling in his head he knows that is probably overly dramatic. And he hates running. He doesn’t turn to see if Samuel is following him. He hopes he’s not. He also hopes he is. He kicks hard at a little mound of gravel on the side of the path, scatters it, walks even faster.

There are endless colorful canal boats lined up all along the path, but he barely sees them. At the fifth or sixth one, though, a scruffy tabby cat comes strolling down the makeshift wooden ramp from the boat to the path and meows at him loudly. Joel can never resist a cat. He stops, scratches its raggedy ears, lets it rub its face against his hand. It’s purring and gazing up at him with squinty green eyes.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you a canal cat? Is this your boat?” It answers loudly, rubs on his legs. “Are you inviting me aboard? Do you know how to drive this thing?”

He looks more closely at the boat, which is a faded blue ramshackle creation with colorful potted plants lined up on top of its roof and all sorts of clutter on the tiny front deck. A couple of broken chairs, a rusty grill, a beat up metal cooler. What appears to be the top half of a grandfather clock leans beside the door hatch. The cat looks at the boat too, then back at him proudly and rubs against his legs again.

“You found Arthur,” Samuel says from behind him. “Arthur and Stan live on this boat.” He bends down and scratches Arthur between the ears. Arthur rubs on his hand too. “Arthur is a very good boy,” Samuel tells the cat. “He’s got good taste, too. He doesn’t invite just anybody onto his boat.”

Arthur meows loudly again, walks up the plank and looks around at them.

“We’ll come back when Stan’s home,” Samuel tells the cat. “Thanks for asking us in, though.”

Arthur hops onto one of the battered chairs and starts washing a paw dismissively.

“See you, Arthur!” Samuel tells the cat, and gives Joel a little pat on the shoulder.

“Can I walk with you?” he asks. “This is a lot to process. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” says Joel. He starts down the path again. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Am I overreacting?”

“Probably not,” Samuel says, falling in beside him. “It was kind of a shitty thing to do, leaving you all like that.”

“Yes,” says Joel. “Yes, it was a shitty thing to do. We kept expecting you to come back, like any minute. Just show back up again, tell us all the places you’d been, make us laugh. Let us go back to normal.” He pauses. “I don’t think I ever quit expecting it.”

He looks out at the field across the canal. Sheep are grazing peacefully just on the other side of the water, underneath the white horse. All facing the same direction, ignoring them.

“There sure are a lot of sheep here,” he says. “You don’t see that at home. It’s cows everywhere at home.”

“Yeah, this is Sheep World,” Samuel says. “Sheep Universe.”

“How could Grandma keep this from us?” Joel is feeling the heat rising in his chest again. “Why would she even want to? I mean…I can see why she wouldn’t have wanted Grandpa to know, at least when you left. But that was years ago! And Grandpa’s been dead for, what, eight years now? I think at some point it would have been a good idea to maybe mention that she knew where you were!”

He looks at the peaceful canal, notices a family of ducks cruising by in a straight line, watches the water lapping gently against the stone sides of the canal. Calm, he tells himself. Be calm. Like the water.

“Grandma is a master of keeping secrets,” Samuel says. “She always has been. And of course she wanted to protect me.”

Joel waits for Samuel to say more, hand him some explanation that will make it all crystal clear, but he doesn’t. They walk along in silence for a few minutes, then Samuel laughs, and says, “I just realized that with all the shock and theatrics, I haven’t even asked if you have somewhere to stay! Or when you got here, or if you’ve seen Jessie, or…”

“So you do know Jessie is in London,” says Joel. He fights back a sigh. “I’ve been staying with her since I got here. Which was Saturday. Did you not think about going to see her? It’s not that far to London.  You’re practically neighbors.”

“I wasn’t positive,” Samuel says. “Grandma told me she was, but I wasn’t completely sure it was real. She was really mixing things up by then. She told me several times, though, so I figured it was true.”

“If only there was a way to find out,” Joel says, looking sideways at him, feeling the anger boiling up again. “Like, maybe get in touch with us?? I mean, honestly, Samuel, why would you keep this up? It’s been years, Grandpa’s gone, the church is… well, I don’t know what the church is now, but it’s not anything to do with us anymore. Why didn’t you just come back? Or at least contact us? The rest of us?” Joel hears his voice getting louder again, and makes an effort to tamp it down.

Samuel looks out over the canal, at the field, at the grazing sheep.

“I don’t know,” he says, very quietly. That hangs in the air for a few moments as they keep walking, while Joel waits for more. Then he practically feels Samuel intentionally switching gears.

“Hey, where are you staying, though? I’ve actually been living at the Crop Circle Information Center lately, which is not very roomy but you’re welcome to a couch.”

“How can you not…” Joel breaks off. The look on Samuel’s face is strange, suddenly remote. He’s still watching the sheep.

“I got an Airbnb in Marlborough.”

“Oh,” Samuel says, his face suddenly clear again, “Marlborough is really nice. It’s a very pretty little town. Good choice!” He glances up at the sky then, says, “You know, it’s getting kind of late. Have you driven at night at all? Because you may not want to drive after dark until you’re used to these roads.”

Joel looks at his watch, realizes with a shock that it’s nearly 8:00. The sun is low over the fields, casting a dreamy golden glow. He hasn’t even thought about trying to navigate these roads at night, and it’s definitely going to be dark before he gets back. That does sound like an extremely bad idea.

“Okay, you may not want to do this,” Samuel says, grinning a bit, “but I would love to drive you back up to Marlborough if you’ll let me stay on your couch.”

 

 

Before heading for Marlborough they go back inside the Barge and have a quick dinner with Samuel’s friends, who are politely unquestioning about the sudden appearance of Simon Timejumper’s mysterious American brother. Nigel and Rayven both work at the Crop Circle Information Center, although it sounds like they’re volunteers and not paid employees. Very keen volunteers, though. Nigel is scruffy and short, wearing a t-shirt featuring a huge-headed, big-eyed green alien standing beside a tipped-over UFO. Rayven is taller than Joel is, with a serious gaze and long dark hair gathered in bunches with random colorful clips. Joel tells them a little about his cover reason for visiting Wiltshire – the ancient stones, the white horses, the chance to see how the UK deals with its historical artifacts so his own employer can develop some ways of improving their preservation methods – and Nigel tells him about his own experiences as a metal detectorist and how he recently found three Roman coins in a field a few miles away. “They’re at the British Museum being evaluated,” he says. “Fingers crossed they’re legitimate! That could bring in some cash.”

Joel notices that Rayven’s earrings are a design he recognizes from his crop circle reading. They are made of thin silver, a graceful crescent of circles that start tiny, gradually grow larger, then at the crescent’s center decrease again and end in a spiral at the bottom. She has been much quieter than Nigel, but when he admires the earrings she tells him she makes crop circle jewelery and sells it at the Information Center.

“It helps bring a little support to the Center,” she says. She tells him the first crop circle of the season appeared a few days ago, and it was unusually complicated for this early in the year, so they are hoping for a good season and a lot of interested visitors.

“I think it’s an excellent sign,” she says, leaning over confidentially. “You know the last few years have been a bit disappointing.”

“Lots of man-made ones?” Joel asks, knowing from all the reading he’s done lately that there’s been a great deal of controversy in recent years between the people who think all the circles are man-made and the firm believers that they are created by aliens. A couple of guys have claimed they are the creators and posted videos of themselves making the circles with planks and ropes, but Joel finds it hard to believe they’re behind all of them. Or even most of them. Or any more of them than they’ve released videos about, which is only five or six mediocre ones.

“Oh, lots and lots, love, it’s a terrible thing,” says Rayven with a small sigh. “Back in the day, they were all so complicated and they would appear in the blink of an eye. Everybody knew they couldn’t be made by humans. Now there are so many simple ones that show up in fields by the road, right by a car park, handy for collecting fees from everyone who goes to have a look. And now everybody thinks all of them are man made.”

“But they’re not?” asks Joel.

“No, love, absolutely not,” she says with a smile. “I’ve seen them being created myself, out of nowhere, in an instant.”

Before Joel can ask her more, his phone starts buzzing. He pulls it out of his pocket and sees it’s Ben. Samuel has been in a seemingly deep conversation with Nigel but looks over with that sixth sense Joel remembers and says, “Ben?”

“It is,” Joel tells him. “I haven’t called him since the morning I got to London. He’s probably checking to see if I’m still alive. I’ll take it outside.”

He heads for the door, wondering if Samuel is going to attempt to explain yet another brother, and answers the call as he’s going down the stone steps. There’s nothing but silence on the other end.

“Ben? Can you hear me?” he asks, then looks at the screen. Ben’s tiny picture has vanished, the call dropped. He sees he’s missed three others from Ben in the last hour. That can’t be good. Before he can hit redial the phone buzzes again and Jessie’s picture pops up.

“Jessie,” he says. “What’s wrong? I’ve missed a bunch of calls from Ben and I lost the last one.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I just talked to him.” Her voice sounds wavery.

“Oh.” He realizes why. “Is it Grandma?”

“It is. She’s gone. They found her in her bed a few hours ago.” She takes a breath. “Apparently it was peaceful.”

It’s not a shock, but he still feels a bleak hole open in his chest.

“Ben says they’ll wait on the funeral till we can get home.”

“Okay,” he says. He’s walking slowly towards the canal again. Most of the boats are lit up now, cheery glowing windows reflecting on the water. “We’ll… I’ll drive back over tomorrow. Back to London. We can figure out flights.”

“I’ll do some checking tonight,” Jessie says, then pauses. “I meant for us to call her while you were here, and I completely forgot. I haven’t called her in weeks. It had gotten so hard to talk to her on the phone that I just…kept not doing it.”

“I know,” he says. “I never called her often enough. But she didn’t have much of a grasp on time, so I’m sure it didn’t seem like that long between calls.”

“Or maybe it seemed even longer,” Jessie says, with a small sigh. “Eddy and Quentin went to see her pretty often, at least. And took Albert.”

“They took Frank too,” Joel says. “One of the last times I talked to her she told me a giant dog had brought her some chocolates. I thought she’d dreamed it, then Eddy told me later they took Frank when the weather was nice enough to sit outside, and he’d carried a gift bag of chocolates up to her and dropped it in her lap.”

Jessie laughs, and says, “He is a good boy. I’ll be so glad to see Frank again.”

Joel almost tells her who else she might be seeing, but stops himself. They say goodnight and hang up.

“Is everything okay?” Samuel is standing beside him so suddenly that Joel nearly drops the phone.

“Jesus, do you always sneak up on people like that? Is it an alien catching maneuver?” he asks, then feels bad about being sarcastic. “That was Jessie. Grandma passed away.” He realizes after it’s out of his mouth that he could have broken the news a little more gently, but then thinks maybe it’s fitting for someone who intentionally hadn’t seen her in all those years.

“Oh,” Samuel says. “Oh, I’m sorry. I knew she wasn’t doing well at all, but … it’s still kind of a shock.”

There’s a definite wave of unreality washing over Joel. Grandma gone, Samuel here, Samuel knowing all about Grandma, Grandma knowing all about Samuel, nobody else having any idea… it’s giving him a headache and he just wants to get back to the Airbnb, have a long hot shower, and go to bed. Forget about everything and everyone for a few hours.

“Do you still want to go back to Marlborough with me?” he asks.

“Of course,” Samuel says. “Let’s go say goodbye to Nigel and Rayven and head on over.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Jessie (2018)  

 

I tell Joel I’ll meet him at the Horse and Wagon pub around the corner from my flat when he gets back to London. I get to the pub early although I don’t expect him to be on time since he’s driving back from Wiltshire. It’s a long trip even when things go smoothly and this time he will be navigating traffic too which is a little worrisome. Sitting around the flat alone was making me even sadder, though.

I order a pint of Guinness for myself and find a little table by the window where I can see out into the street so I’ll spot him coming from the tube station. The pub is tiny and dim, dark wood paneling and darker wood floors. It’s nearly empty except for a few old men at one end of the bar and a bored barman staring at his phone. The old men are watching a soccer game on a little television that’s crammed onto a shelf crowded with bottles over the barman’s head. Not soccer, football, I correct myself, and try to see who’s playing.  Most of my coworkers are huge football fans, but I still can’t tell one team from another. The figures dashing around on the small screen are impossible to identify, although one team is wearing red so maybe it’s Manchester?

Just as I’m picking up my phone to google red-uniformed football players and add to my British sports knowledge, I spot Joel coming down the street with his bouncy walk, his carryon in one hand and his pack over his shoulder. In a minute he’s come through the door and is looking around the pub, squinting in the sudden dimness.

I wave at him from my table. He’s got me in a bear hug before I can even get up, and is kind of crushing my face in his chest, but I am suddenly so happy to see him that I don’t mind. He pulls back, and I realize his grey eyes are shining with tears.

“Oh my God,” I say, when I can catch my breath. “Are you okay?”

He collapses into the chair beside me, drops his pack into the floor and swipes at his eyes quickly, half-laughing.

“Wow, maybe I’m not,” he says. “I think I’m coming all to pieces.”

“It’s pretty understandable,” I tell him. “I know it’s no surprise about Grandma, but…” I trail off, my eyes prickling. Of all my brothers, Joel is the only one who is perfectly fine with letting other people see his emotions. He’s actually a lot more fine with it than I am, and I rub at my own eyes and stare out the window at all the pedestrians walking briskly past, trying to act like I’m not about to burst into tears myself.

“How was the drive?” I ask, still not looking at him. “Did you have any problems with the traffic in town? Have you had lunch?”

“It wasn’t bad,” he says. I can feel him staring at me. “Most of it was four lanes and I’m already an England Driving Pro, so I just stayed in the slow lane and let the GPS tell me where to go. We… I stopped for a sandwich at one of those handy Motorway Services on the way. I do think I need a pint, though.” He gets up, pats me on the arm, and goes over to the bar. I watch him as he catches the barman’s eye, orders a pint, and joins the old men in staring up at the television while he waits for it. One of them says something to him that I can’t make out, and they all laugh at whatever he says back. He’s beaming at them like he’s never seen anything as marvelous as they are and they are all grinning back at him.

He returns to the table with his golden pint, and sits down again beside me. Stares into my eyes, and says, “Jessie there’s something I need to tell you.”

My body immediately goes into alarm mode. I can’t seem to breathe, and all my muscles tense up, which I know is ridiculous. He’s probably just misplaced his passport, or something equally annoying but not devastating. Panic has always been my default reaction to the unexpected, though.

“What is it?” I finally manage. “What’s wrong?”

“Ummmm… it’s not wrong, exactly,” he says. He’s staring out the window now. A bus whooshes by, so noisy and so close to the window that we both jump a bit. “It’s good, really good…” He trails off again, and takes a deep breath. “It’s just… weird.”

“Weird?” I repeat. I am watching his face now. “How do you mean, weird?”

He finally looks back at me, completely serious. “You’re not going to believe it. I don’t quite believe it myself. Yet.”

I feel my patience about to snap. “For fuck sake, Joel, what is it? Just tell me!”

He takes a deep breath, looks back out the window, and says, “Samuel’s here.”

For a second it seems like all the air is being sucked out of the pub, in another, bigger whoosh. I look around the room, unable to process what he’s saying.

“Samuel’s here?” I manage to say. Joel actually lets out a tiny laugh, and I turn towards him so suddenly that I feel a little faint. I fight a bizarre urge to smack him.

“Well, not in this pub,” he says. “I didn’t sneak him by you in my pack. He’s across the street. In that little park down the road a bit.”

I stare at his pack, trying to get my brain to catch up with his words. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I tell him, and take a very long drink from my Guinness. He nods, and takes a drink himself.

“I know,” he tells me. “It’s a lot to process. As someone already told me.”

”No, Joel,” I say. My voice sounds to me like it’s coming from a deep weedy abandoned well. I can’t seem to get my eyes to focus on him. “It’s not a lot to process. It’s… impossible. It is not possible for Samuel to be here. Or, in the park or whatever you said. Samuel is gone, he’s been gone for years and years, he’s… not HERE.” My voice has risen without me being aware of it, and the old men at the bar are sneaking looks over at us.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Joel says. “I found him.”

My mind has come to a standstill. The entire pub has gone silent, including the football game crowd on the television. It takes a second to realize the silence is in my head.

“What do you mean, you found him?” I stare at Joel, who in turn is staring at his beer. “How could you find him? When did you find him? You’ve only been gone one night!”

Joel laughs. “It’s kind of a long story,” he says. “Involving a whole lot of …online research. I’ve been looking for ages. Well, I know we’ve all googled him but I’ve been really looking.”

“What do you mean, really looking? Did you…hire a detective??”

“No, I didn’t have to go that far – I was focusing on that obsession he always had with aliens and weird mystical stuff, and I… well, I found his blog.”

I still can’t get my head around what he’s saying.

“Why didn’t you tell us? Why would you keep that a secret?”

He finally looks up at me with a little smile.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I was positive I’d found him. And he did disappear intentionally. I figured if he wanted us to know where he was, he would have told us himself. So I needed to see him in person. To … assess the situation, I guess.”

“Wait,” I say. “That’s why you’re here? To physically find Samuel, not to do research? He’s been in England all this time?”

“He’s not been here the entire time, but it has been quite awhile. He’s been in Wiltshire, doing crop circle…stuff. That’s what his blog is about. I am doing preservation research for work too, but that was the main reason. Finding him.”

I take another long swallow of Guinness, and a little voice in my brain tells me I better slow down. I tune it out. In the lull I can hear the tinny crowd noises from the football game and the murmur of other, surely less bizarre, conversations around the pub. Traffic and pedestrians keep zipping by our window as if it’s a perfectly normal day. My thoughts are careening around my head like the little white ball on the television.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you got here? I could have gone with you to find him!”

“I needed to know how he felt about being tracked down before I told anyone.” Joel looks out the window, sighs a bit, then looks back at me. “I’m sorry, I probably should have taken you with me. It just seemed like something I had to do myself, after all the time I’ve spent hunting him.”

I laugh then, surprising myself. “You sound like he’s some kind of wild exotic animal.”

“He kind of is,” Joel says. “After all these years, it’s like capturing a … sparkly unicorn. After following it into some bizarre parallel universe.”

That makes us both laugh, then Joel says, “What do you think? Are you ready? I told him to wait in the park until I text him. We didn’t want to give you a heart attack by just springing him on you.”

“Well that was thoughtful,” I say. “This way wasn’t at all shocking. But yeah. I guess. I think I’m ready.” I’m not sure that’s true at all. My stomach is churning and I am suddenly terrified I will have to run to the loo and throw up. I have no idea how to prepare for meeting my long-lost beloved brother who vanished out of our lives without a trace all those years ago.

Joel taps out a text, sits back, looks at the television. I look at it with him, then study the old men at the bar who are still watching the game, then stare out the window again. A red bus stops for a minute at the light, blocking my view of the street. When it moves, there’s a man standing on the other side of the road waiting to cross. My heart skips. He’s thin and dark haired. His sharp pointy face is unmistakable.

“Oh my god,” I breathe, and Joel looks out and breaks into a grin.

“There he is!” Joel waves out the window, and Samuel catches sight of us. For a second I half expect him to take off, flee like the unicorn he apparently is, but instead he smiles back, gives us a wave, and jogs across the street towards us. A car coming the other direction stops short and honks the horn.

“Clearly he’s not got the whole ‘look left’ thing down,” says Joel. “How sad would it be for him to get run over just as you’re about to reunite?”

I don’t answer because I’m running for the pub door, and then being swept up in a hug from my long-lost mystery brother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessie: 2018 

 

I have an endless array of things to say to Samuel after all these years. Instead here we sit, the three of us at the pub table, watching one another over our pint glasses for what feels like an impossibly long time. There’s an even more endless array of things I need to ask him. How could you go off and leave us, vanish and never come back? How could you not even say goodbye? But my mind is a vast empty cavern and all I can do is stare at him from across the grainy, chipped wooden table. He stares back, a tiny smile on his face, green eyes slightly worried. He looks just like I remember him, just like he is in my old photos. Skinny, sharp faced, floppy black hair. But with the addition of lines around his eyes and streaks of silver mixed in with the black hair. He’s not nearly as tall in reality as he is in my memory.

“I can’t believe you’re all grown up, Jessie,” he says. “It’s so strange, you were just a little kid last time I saw you.”

“Well, it has been a few years,” I say. “I was only ten when you… vanished.”

“Do you still love horses?” he asks, smiling a little more. “That’s all you used to talk about. You would stage those elaborate horse shows out on the front porch with that big box of toy horses you had, and be the announcer for all the events.”

I laugh. “I remember that,” I say. “Esmeralda would never cooperate when I tried to do a horse show with her, so I’d use the toy ones. Manhattan always won, despite being a fourth of the size of the rest of them. And having a taped-up broken leg.”

Joel laughs then. “I’d forgotten about Manhattan,” he says. “Ben used to call him Brooklyn or Staten Island or Yonkers to make you mad.”

“Especially Yonkers,” Samuel says, laughing too now. “You hated it when he called that poor horse Yonkers.”

“Yeah, Ben could be a jerk,” I say. “He was just jealous that I had friends.”

We are all laughing, and it feels so normal that the tension in my chest is loosening, flowing out of me. It doesn’t seem quite as unreal to be sitting in a London pub with Samuel. I can almost overlook that vast gray gap of years between us. That could just be the Guinness, though.

“So how long have you been in England?” I ask Samuel. It feels safe to ask that now.

“A pretty long time,” he says. “Years.” He’s not looking at me. He’s looking out at the street, watching the cars zip by. “I came to do some research, and ended up staying.”

“Research on what?” I ask.

“Crop circles,” he says. “And alien…stuff.”

“What, like alien aliens? Like little green men aliens?” I want to laugh but stop myself. He looks very serious.

“Well, they aren’t necessarily little green men, but yeah. That kind of aliens.”

“He’s working at the Crop Circle Education Center,” Joel says. “In Alton Barnes. Near Marlborough.”

I’m not sure what to think about that.

“So we’re practically neighbors,” I say. I am fiddling with my beer coaster, turning it up on one corner and trying to spin it. The pointy-hatted man on the Abbot Ale logo whirls around like he’s working some sort of spell.  “How weird neither of us knew the other one was here.”

Samuel doesn’t say anything, and I look up.  He and Joel are watching each other.

“Did you know I was here?” I ask slowly. “Seriously, Samuel?”

He takes a breath.

“You actually knew I was here, but didn’t get in touch? Why would you not want to see me?” My eyes are stinging.

“I’m sorry, Jessie,” he says. He’s playing with his own coaster now, making a little red crown spin. I can’t tell what beer it’s advertising. It’s going too fast.

“I don’t understand why you hated us so much,” I say to the table. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Tears are running down my face and I swipe at them angrily.

“Hate you?” Samuel says, sounding genuinely astonished. “I didn’t hate you – I loved you guys, all of you! I missed you every single day after I left. It was awful, I felt like the only person on earth, like I’d been through some terrible apocalypse and everyone but me was gone. Except that nobody but you, just my family, was gone. Everyone else was still here, walking around and going to work and shopping and doing all the things normal people do. But I was all alone.”

I finally look up at him as I scrub at my face, trying to make myself stop crying in the middle of the pub. He’s staring back at me, his eyes red too.

“Well, you could have picked up the phone,” Joel says quietly. “Or emailed. Or just sent a postcard. There were a lot of things you could have done, Samuel.”

“Besides just abandon us forever,” I add.

“I always meant to,” Samuel says. He keeps spinning the coaster. “But first it was too soon, and then… I guess then it seemed too late.”

“It’s not too late now, though,” I say. “Is it?”

He catches the coaster, snaps it down on the table, glances sideways at me. “I hope not,” he says.

“Of course it’s not too late,” Joel tells us firmly. “It’s time. You need to come back with us, Samuel. At least for Grandma. ”

“She never talked about you after you were gone,” I said. “She would change the subject if any of us brought you up.” I thought that would hurt him, and a dark part of me wanted it to. But he just nods slowly.

“I know,” he says. “She was afraid she’d slip up.”

“What do you mean, slip up?”

“She knew,” Joel tells me, quietly. “She knew where he was this whole time. And she told him when you came to London.”

His words don’t make sense at first. I run them through my head again and each one works, but put together in a sentence they are a discordant jumble. They threaten to make my whole world shift and I can’t allow them to form meaning.

“I’ll be right back,” I say abruptly, and get up from the table. I feel wobbly and my head seems miles from my body. I think of Alice in Wonderland, when she eats the cake in the White Rabbit’s house and shoots up so high that she can’t see her feet anymore. I can still see my own feet, to my relief. I watch my scruffy gray sneakers make their way to the loo, with me hovering far above them.

Thankfully there isn’t anyone else in the loo. It’s an off time of the day for a pub visit, too late for lunch and too early for evening festivities. It will fill up after five, when everyone leaves work, but I’m alone now. I look at my white face in the mirror. The whiteness is accentuated by the mascara that’s smudged crazily under my bloodshot eyes, and I grab some toilet paper to rub it off. It smears more, so I end up washing my face with hand soap that smells like bad aftershave, and icy cold water out of the tap. I get soap in my eyes. It’s a good excuse for them being so red, I think. Like Joel and Samuel didn’t see me crying at the table. All this time my mind is refusing to go anywhere near what Joel just told me. The cold water on my face feels good, makes me feel a little less Alice and a little more me.

Breathe, I tell my white face in the mirror. Don’t think, just breathe.

The door opens and one of the bartenders comes in. She flashes me a smile, then frowns a bit.

“You okay, love?” she asks, studying my pale water-splashed face and my swollen eyes.

“Fine,” I say quickly, “I’m fine! I just…”

She looks so concerned and attentive that I feel my eyes filling up again.

“Those guys I’m sitting with?” I say, with no idea that I’m going to say this until it’s out of my mouth. Her eyes narrow, expecting trouble. Ready for it. “One of them, the black haired one…he’s my brother. Well, they’re both my brothers, but I haven’t seen this one since I was like 10. And he’s… just shown back up. Out of the blue. He went off and left us years ago and now I’m having a beer with him and oh my god why am I telling you this???” Suddenly I am overcome with the giggles. Oh, I think very clearly to myself, I am losing my mind! Fantastic!!

She’s smiling at me, and hands me more unspooled toilet paper which makes me realize that I’m crying again.

“Well that sounds very exciting and very distressing, all at the same time,” she says. “Did you like this brother before he went away?”

“I adored him,” I tell her. “He was my favorite person in the world.”

“So, it’s probably good he’s back, right?” she asks, smiling at me.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s good he’s back. It’s just confusing that he’s back. I’m not sure what to do with it.”

“Maybe, to start with, just enjoy it,” she says. She pats me on the arm. “And see how it all unravels.”

“Okay,” I say. “That does actually make sense. I think.”

“Good luck!” she says, and disappears behind the stall door. I throw some more water on my face quickly, and go back to our table, feeling a little closer to my feet.

Joel and Samuel look like they’ve been having an intense conversation. They are bent towards each other, faces serious. Both of them stop talking and watch me as I sit down.

“Are you okay?” Joel asks. “I mean, I’m sure you’re not okay, but do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m sorry,” Samuel says again. He starts to say something else, then stops. He looks a lot older and grimmer than he did when he first came through the doors.

My phone rings before I can reply. It’s Eddy. I wave my screen with his picture flashing at them, and say, “I’m taking this outside. And I am not telling Eddy about you, Samuel. You are going to have to do that yourself.”

 

The conversation with Eddy is quick and distracting enough that I don’t have to consider what I’m hiding from him. Who I’m hiding from him. We hadn’t agreed on the best way to reveal Samuel, or if we were going to reveal Samuel at all, and I definitely wasn’t going to be the one to do it. Eddy tells me that they are going to wait two weeks to hold the funeral for Grandma, so that Joel and I have plenty of time to get home.

“I know Joel just got there, and you probably need to get things set up with your boss,” he says. “You may be able to get a less grueling flight with a little more notice too.”

His voice is calm and steady, like it’s always been. I wish he was here. I’m tempted for a fraction of a second to spill everything and let him sort it out. Eddy always knows exactly what to do. But it’s not just my secret to tell, so I keep my mouth shut.

“That sounds good,” I tell him. “How are you guys doing? How’s Albert?”

“He’s okay,” Eddy says. “He’s been much quieter than usual. He and Frank are taking a lot of walks.”

I start to ask more about himself, and about Quentin, but I am too bogged down with the weight of what I know and he doesn’t, so I tell him I have to go but will call him with our flight plans as soon as I can. Then I stand outside the pub for a while, looking at nothing. I’m dreamily considering just walking off down the street, doing a runner – doing a Samuel – when he says, right behind me, “Jessie?”

“Jesus, Samuel, don’t scare me like that,” I say, although he really didn’t startle me as much as I was pretending he did. I must be used to his sudden appearances already. “I’m just… thinking.”

“I can’t imagine what you have to think about,” he says, grinning a little, looking less grim that he had in the pub.

“Eddy says they’re holding off on the funeral for a couple of weeks so we’ll have time to get there. Well, for me and Joel to get there, I mean.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s good. That will give us a little more time too.” He looks at me sideways, from under his floppy dark hair. “I mean, if you want that. I totally understand if you would rather I just…vanish again.”

“What? Of course I don’t want you to vanish again, you idiot!” I’m not sure whether I want to hug him or hit him. I settle on neither. “I want to know what happened. I want to know why you left, and why you stayed gone. And why you told Grandma, and she didn’t tell us. I want answers, Samuel.”

He takes a breath, looks off down the street himself. “I’ll try, sweetie. It’s not that easy.”

We watch a black cab pull up against the curb. A man and woman in business suits climb out, clutching leather satchels. They are obviously bickering, but so quietly that I can’t hear what they are saying even as they pass us, glaring and gesturing at each other.

“I know,” says Samuel. “Since we have some time, we’ll go to Glastonbury! Have you ever been?”

“Where they have the music festival every year? Not yet,” I say. “Radiohead was there last summer and I was dying to go but it sells out in like ten seconds. And I don’t think I’d enjoy camping in a huge field of mud with hundreds of thousands of strangers. In the rain.”

He’s grinning at me. “Oh, it’s not about the festival,” he says. “It’s about the Tor. It’s about the weird stuff. And we can pop by Avebury and Stonehenge too.”

“I have been to Stonehenge,” I tell him, “but it was just a quick bus trip. Impressive but kind of touristy.”

“We have to broaden your horizons, buddy,” he says, all lit up. “I want you to understand why I’m here.”

At that moment, Joel comes out of the pub door. “What are you guys doing outside?” he says. “What did Eddy want?”

“We’ve got some extra time,” Samuel tells him. “And we’re going to Glastonbury!” He’s positively glowing now, beaming at us with delight. Joel and I look at each other.

“I think it’s some kind of pilgrimage,” I tell Joel.

“That’s exactly what it is!” Samuel says, and puts an arm around each of us. “A pilgrimage! We’re going on a pilgrimage and everything will make sense. Well, maybe everything will make sense.” He laughs, and hugs us both. “Maybe it will just make things worse, but at least we’ll have tried!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• End is abrupt, per R scene takes off when she’s talking to S. Make longer. Good time for J to face what she’s feeing about what he did, and that he knew she was in London 

 

Jessie – 2018

 

I can’t sleep. Too much has happened in way too short a time. I lie there in my bed by the open window, listening to the traffic on the street below. Cars, horns, voices floating up. Sounds I’m so used to by now that they don’t keep me awake anymore. I try deep slow breaths, emptying my mind, counting backwards from a thousand. I don’t look at my phone so I won’t know how late it is. Nothing works. I start to drift off, then my brain snaps me back to reality. My grandmother is dead, and two of my brothers are currently sleeping in my tiny breakfast/living nook, thousands of miles from home, one of them suddenly sprung from the past with no warning at all.

When I was young, back when we were all still at home,  I went through spells of not sleeping. My window would be open then too, with chirps and trills of crickets and tree frogs and night bugs drifting in. I would lie there motionless under the blue and green linked-ring quilt my grandmother made before I was born, watching the stars through the window, looking at the dark shape of Snake Mountain, feeling like something was about to happen. The floorboards would creak, and I’d hear those weird middle-of-the night noises that our old house makes, small thumps and scratches, little thuds. Things Grandpa said were squirrels or mice, things Samuel said were probably the ghosts of Civil War soldiers. I’d lie there and listen, and then I’d hear my brothers.

Whispers, feet padding from one room to another, a low radio… it seemed to me back then that my brothers never slept. They would stay up talking and playing cards, and I’d fall asleep at last to the far-off whispers and the distant music from the radio, protected from the dark by my wakeful brothers. Sometimes, though, I wouldn’t go to sleep either.  I’d lie there listening to them until finally I’d have to get up too. I’d tiptoe down the hall peeking into rooms to see where they were, what they were doing. Those were the nights when nobody could sleep and Samuel would tell us ghost stories. I’d usually find them all in the room he and Eddy shared, the one at the farthest end of the house from our grandparents. The lights would be off, with just Samuel’s oil hurricane lamp burning, turned down so it cast weird flickering shadows on the walls. Everyone would be there, Albert too, sitting in the dark. I’d climb up onto the bed, get between Joel and Ben, and listen to Samuel make up horrible stories about vampires and werewolves and bloodthirsty ghosts. He always sat in the floor, and the lamplight made him look like a ghost himself, flickering and spooky. We’d huddle together, shiver and snicker at Samuel’s gory stories until none of us could keep our eyes open.

There are no sounds now from my breakfast nook. No ghost stories from Samuel, no faint music. I give up and look at my phone. It’s 2:20 am. Samuel has convinced us to go to Glastonbury in the morning, and having a project does seem like a good idea. Hopefully they won’t be up terribly early. I turn on my nightstand lamp and pull my little box of photos from under the bed. I like going through them, especially when I’m feeling particularly alone and far from home. Or if my brain is churning around madly like it is tonight. When I was eleven one of my aunts gave me a little cheap camera, and I would carry it around everywhere. It took surprisingly good photos, clear and sharp even though the colors have faded a bit now. There’s a certain essence of time you can recapture by looking at old photos, those moments that are a unique instant, standing out by themselves. Frozen moments that will never happen again. Looking at the photos suddenly seems like the exact right thing to do with Samuel back in my life so abruptly, and currently just on the other side of the door.

I dump the box’s contents on my bed and sift through them. I took a lot of pictures of my family with that little camera. Grandpa in his overalls, out by the barn with buckets in his hands. Looking at me with that level and unsmiling gaze, the light flashing off his glasses. Another of him standing beside the big dark blue Buick we had back then, dressed for church in an old-fashioned black suit. Still not smiling. Grandma on the porch, her hands full of beans she was shelling, frowning a bit and probably telling me not to take her picture like that. Grandma hanging up clothes on the line, her face thoughtful and relaxed, not realizing I was there. One of her just sitting in the swing in her best church dress, dark with long sleeves and little ruffles up the front. She’s smiling at me in this one, and looks like she’s about to say something to me. I stare at it for awhile, trying to remember what she was telling me.

There’s Albert peering out from under the porch, only his round pale face showing. Another of him sitting on the stone steps in the back of the house with his mud-colored hair on end, grinning at the camera. Eddy in his green graduation gown, smiling too, looking like a normal teenager instead of the gawky introverted too-smart hermit that he was in high school. Joel and Ben wrestling in the back yard, with Esmeralda watching them over the fence in the background, probably hoping for a treat.  A lot of the pictures of Samuel are slightly blurred because he couldn’t stay still long enough to have his photo taken. I have a few good ones of him too, mostly when he was absorbed in something and didn’t know I was there. There’s a clear one of him working on that big pile of pieced-together, castoff bits of old cars and farm machinery that he always said was a time machine. He’s sitting on the barn floor gazing at it reflectively, motionless.

I find my favorite next. It’s all four of my brothers, along with Albert and Quentin. We had walked to town on a Saturday, all of us restless and at loose ends. We strolled along the river and sat awhile on the rock wall that runs beside it. Across the river the hill rises almost straight up with a thick cover of woods, and the leaves were starting to burn with color. I took their picture as they sat on the wall. Eddy is on one end, the collar of his blue jean jacket turned up against the October chill in the air. He’s looking off at the river, his eyes silvery. Ben is beside him, turned towards him, saying something that’s long gone. The breeze has ruffled Ben’s hair up and he’s got his hands jammed in his pockets. Albert is sitting beside Ben, looking down at his knees, but you can still see his face. He looks perplexed, like he’s just thought of some very puzzling question. Beside Albert is Joel, smiling at me, and beside Joel is Quentin. Quentin’s looking at the river too, not smiling, his dark narrow eyes far away. Samuel is sitting beside Quentin on the rock wall. He is looking right at me, right into the camera, his white teeth flashing. He’s motionless and unblurred, clear as I’ve ever seen him. I can make out every detail of his face, his green eyes, his sharp nose, his delighted grin. He looks like he’s about to share some wonderful secret with me. Maybe the secret of why he left us, I think, trying to make the boy in the photo merge with the near-stranger who walked into the pub today and explain it all to me. It doesn’t work.

This is the picture I always end on. I gather them all back up and am putting them into the box when I hear a tap on my door, so faint that I believe I’ve imagined it at first. Then someone says, “Jessie? Are you awake?”

I slide off the bed and crack the door open to find Samuel on the other side. “I saw your light,” he whispers. “I thought you might be up.”

I step back and motion him in. “Can’t you sleep either? I’m sure the floor isn’t very comfortable.” I shut the door gently behind him so we won’t disturb Joel.

“The floor’s fine, I’ve spent plenty of time on floors.” He laughs, looks around my tiny room. “I think it’s just… too much all at once. I thought maybe you’re feeling the too-much yourself.”

“I guess so,” I say. I’m not sure what I feel, but I don’t want to tell him that. Sitting in the pub for hours we’d at least skimmed over what happened way back then. Why he left, where he went, why he never got back in touch. Kind of. None of it was enough, and at the same time it was an overload, way too much to process for any of us. I have so many questions still that I can’t get them untangled.

Samuel would be pacing if there was room to pace, but there’s barely enough space to squeeze between the door and the bed.

“I know there’s so much more to ….” He stops suddenly, spotting the box of photos still sitting on the bed. “Is that pictures? Old pictures?”

It is,” I say, scooping up the box and handing it to him. “I took them years ago. It’s all of us. I was looking at them when I couldn’t go to sleep.”

He sits on the edge of the bed, and I sit down beside him since there’s nowhere else to go. He pulls out one photo and then another, studying them.

“I remember these,” he says. “At least the ones before I… while I was still at home. Wow.”

He pulls out one of me sitting on Esmerelda, just outside the pasture gate. I look at it too, smiling at how tiny I look on that big calm horse. Tiny and serious, I’m sitting up straight and posing like we’re headed into a show ring.

“Oh, I took that one,” Samuel says, his face glowing. “Look at you two! The Dreadful Duo, always off on adventures.”

“I still miss her,” I say. “She was my best friend.”

This is making me miss a lot of things, I think, but I let him keep thumbing through the stack of photos.

He pauses again at a picture of Grandma at her sewing machine. It’s another one I’d snapped before she realized I was there. She’s bent over the old black and gold Singer that she bought when she and Grandpa were married, whose soothing whir had been the background for my entire childhood. Her face is a study in concentration, and she’s guiding a piece of light blue fabric under the needle.

“That was a dress she made for me,” I suddenly remember. “I hated it!”

“You would never wear dresses,” he says. “It drove her nuts. When you were really little she’d force you into a dress for church and you’d cry until she threatened you with a switching. Or Grandpa had a word with you. You did listen a little better to him.”

“Well, yeah, he was terrifying,” I say. “Or, not terrifying, but…”

“He could be kind of terrifying,” Samuel says. He pulls out another picture, this one of Grandpa walking out of the barn, the sun cutting low over the mountain so he’s hardly more than a silhouette. It’s hitting his glasses, making them look like little fires. Samuel studies it for a minute. “You’ve got a great eye for photography,” he says. “I hope you kept it up.”

“I did,” I say. “I even take some photos for my job, although I’m mostly a writer.” Then I realize what Grandpa is carrying.

“Wait,” I say. “Is that a snake box he’s got?”

Samuel bends over the photo, squinting. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s definitely a snake box.”

I look closer too, and wonder how I never realized he was carrying a snake box despite looking at that picture a thousand times. The dark box in his hands blends in so well with his shadowiness from the low rays of sun that it’s hard to see. Until you DO see it, and then it’s impossible to not see.

“When did you take this?” Samuel asks. He turns it over but unfortunately I wasn’t a good historical documenter as a kid and a lot of my old pictures aren’t dated.

“I’m not sure,” I say, studying it too. The barn has looked exactly the same for my entire life, and Grandpa never seemed to change either. There isn’t anything else in the picture that could be used to date it.

“It’s definitely before he got to where he couldn’t get the boxes out of the loft,” I said. Then added without thinking, “Before I had to get that last one down for him.”

Samuel looks over at me, puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asks. “What last one?”

I wish I hadn’t said that, but I can’t figure out a way to back out of it now.

“I climbed up into the loft and got a box down for him,” I say. “He asked me to do it. Right before he died.” Suddenly I can’t look at him, and I can’t look at the photo either.

“Oh,” Samuel says. He stares down at the photo again, then laughs a little. “Maybe he got this one down for ME.”

“It’s not funny, Samuel,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done it. I should have told him no.”

“It was kind of hard to tell him no,” Samuel says. “I can attest to that. I couldn’t tell him no. I took off forever instead of telling him no.”

We look at each other.

“But what did he do with it?” Samuel asks. “The one you got down? Is that what…” he trails off.

“Yes, that’s what he did,” I say. Suddenly I feel something hot bubbling up out of the center of my chest. “He found a snake and put it in the box, and then he used it to – do whatever the fuck he thought he was doing with it. The snake did what snakes do, and that was it. AND Albert saw what happened, and it was pretty much all my fault.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” he says. “If he asked you to get it for him, what were you supposed to do?”

“I could have just not done it,” I say. “I could have told him I couldn’t get it down by myself, and then told Eddy what he asked me to do. Eddy would have thought of something. I should have at least told him after I did it, and he could have stopped Grandpa. I could have told Grandma. Or somebody. But I just went ahead and got it for him, then didn’t say a word.”

“Well, you didn’t KNOW what he’d do,” Samuel says. He pats my arm, very gently. My eyes are stinging. I want to pull away but I also want the contact.

“I should have known. But it was such a weird thing to ask, and he hadn’t messed with snakes for years. Not since you … went away. He had been getting a little confused for awhile. I thought he just wanted to see it, I guess.” I sigh then, rub at my eyes. “I don’t know what I thought.”

Samuel stares at the picture again. “I wish I’d been there.”

I’m not sure what to say to that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Maybe put this and next section together?

• Need more underlying tensions, jabs at each other maybe, remembering things that get S defensive maybe. Jessie could have internal questioning and answering over S’s responses. Should be fraught with questions – not just S but why crop circles and aliens are his thing. Maybe have him talk in scientific and spiritual way trying to make them understand. Also it may make them more concerned about his mental/emotional stability.  

• Verbiage in current UFO stuff – listen to links, make S talk like a UFO person 

•  

• Not sure they are really grieving appropriately, since grandmother raised them. Need to work that in somewhere, or reason why they aren’t -or that they are doing it in different ways? Can’t think about it now?? Kind of insinuated that earlier with Jessie, I think 

• When J is reading the blog, Rhonda is confused about whether she’s quoting it. She’s not, maybe reword to reflect that’s what she’s reading

 

• *Jessie reading S’s blog post about seeing the crop circle appear – maybe rework? Seemed rushed, although I don’t want it to sound too much like Joel’s version of it. She could also read other posts if I work in more of them ***put in a different one, can say she read the one joel did also, prob first

•  

 

 

Jessie: Glastonbury

 

It takes around three hours to get to Glastonbury from London, and we get a fairly early start despite the very late night before. I call my boss first thing and he’s surprisingly understanding about me needing a few unexpected days off on top of my plans to fly back to the US for my grandmother’s funeral. I suspect my never ever missing work helps. I promise to keep on top of emails, and he wishes me luck.

Samuel is completely unconcerned about his own work at the Crop Circle place. Apparently there are loads of volunteers who don’t mind filling in. He’s been very vague about his plans with us so far. He won’t commit beyond this weird pilgrimage to his magical mystery spots. Our only firm plan so far is to go to Glastonbury, and then back to Wiltshire. Maybe to take Samuel back home, maybe to pick up stuff for him to stay with us till we fly back to the US. Everything is undefined, which seems to fit this weird situation.

I fall asleep on the back seat of the Mini before we even get to the M3. The previous day felt like a rollercoaster on a rampage, and I’d barely slept. It’s a relief to just surrender to oblivion with Samuel behind the wheel and Joel navigating the route on his phone. I don’t regain consciousness until the car slows down, bumping over a rough patch of pavement into a services area petrol station. I sit up groggily as the driver’s door slams, confused for a second about why I’m in a tiny car with Joel and a stranger. It takes a minute to remember where I am and who’s with me. Samuel is outside punching buttons on the pump, and Joel looks back at me, smiling.

“Hi, Sleeping Beauty,” he says. “I was starting to get a little worried we’d done you in.”

“Where are we?”

“Ummmmm… Amesbury,” he says, looking at the map on his phone. “It’s another hour or so to Glastonbury.”

Samuel opens the drivers door, and beams at me as he gets in. “She’s alive!” he says. “I bet you feel better!”

“I do, actually,” I say. He hands us each a big cup of coffee, tosses a bunch of cream cups and sugar packets into the odds-and-ends well beside the gearshift, and heads back to the highway. I look out the window at the fields flying by, patchwork squares in varied shades of green, bright yellow gorse along the borders, dotted with white sheep. The coffee is strong and reassuring.

“So, Samuel,” I say, taking another sip. “What’s so special about Glastonbury? What makes it… pilgrimage worthy?” That’s not what I really need answers to.

“Well,” he says, looking at me in the rear view mirror, “There are all sorts of reasons for a pilgrimage to Glastonbury! It was a medieval pilgrimage hotspot, for starters. Christians used to visit the Glastonbury Abbey during the Middle Ages. Joel, you will be really interested in the Abbey, as far as conservation goes. It’s amazing – it dates back to the 12th century, and has been in ruins since at least the early 1700s. What’s left is enormous partial walls and arches, with huge hunks missing. It’s impossible to describe, really – you have to see it. Be with it.”

Joel’s already pulled it up on his phone. “Wow,” he says, holding it so I can see the pictures of the abbey’s vast, half-vanished, elaborately flourished arches. “Okay, that looks worth checking out.”

“That’s not even the best part,” Samuel says. “Google the Tor. That’s where our pilgrimage is going.”

I lean over the back of Joel’s seat so I can see his phone. He pulls up a pictures of a very tall, terraced hill rising far above the green fields surrounding it. There’s a massive stone tower at the very top.

“Interesting,” I say. “That’s an awfully big hill out there all by itself. What’s the tower?”

“It is interesting,” Samuel says. He keeps looking over at Joel’s phone instead of at the road, which is a little unnerving. “Nobody knows why it’s terraced, and the tower is all that’s left of a 13th century church. It was likely a spiritual site long before the Christians, though. Rumor has it – ancient Pagan rumor has it – the Tor is hollow underneath and that’s where the lord of the Celtic underworld lives, in a fairy realm. Or maybe there’s a cave is under there that leads to the fairy land. And supposedly the Holy Grail is there, underneath the Tor. Jesus’ uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, brought it to Glastonbury. Maybe. Also Jesus visited with him as a kid. Maybe. Basically it was spiritual magnet for Pagans and Christians, and it still is.”  

“Ooooh,” Joel says, still looking at his phone. “It may be the Isle of Avalon!”

“King Arthur’s Avalon?” I ask, trying to remember that tale.

“Yeah,” Joel says. “It’s another legend – King Arthur went to Avalon after his last battle, and died there.”

“Oh, here’s a fun tidbit,” Samuel says. “Back in the late 1100s, the monks at Glastonbury Abbey said they’d found his grave on the grounds. His and Guinevere’s. That brought in the pilgrims! It was so happily timed that later on historians decided it was actually a publicity stunt to bring in money. The Abbey had burned a few years before, and they needed to rebuild.”

Joel laughs. “I love the idea of monks pulling publicity stunts 800 years ago,” he says.

“Glastonbury is still King Arthur mad,” Samuel says. “They really play the myths up, especially for the tourists.”

“But you’re personally not mad about Glastonbury just because of King Arthur, right?” I say.

Samuel grins at me in the rear view mirror. “No, that’s not my personal connection,” he says. “Mine is more…otherworldly.”

“Oh, here we go,” says Joel. “The UFOs.”

We’d touched lightly on the UFO topic the night before. Samuel had mentioned his work at the Crop Circle Education Center briefly, and I’d looked at his blog, but didn’t have time to do more than skim the most recent posts which explored the link between crop circles and aliens. There was just so much else going on that I didn’t ask him more about it.

“So….” I say, “You think they exist?” I try to keep my voice neutral. Like I’m interviewing him for an article. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I make a mental note to bring that up later. I’m going to need some intriguing material to make up for all this time I’m taking off.

“I do,” he says, our eyes meeting in the mirror again. “I’ve seen them.”

“Were you traveling in the time machine when you saw them?” asks Joel, and he laughs.

“Not for every sighting,” he says. “Maybe a few.”

“And they make the crop circles?” I ask. I do actually know a little about it, since I’ve been living in England near where the crop circles appear every summer, especially in Wiltshire. I know there’s an enormous amount of debate about whether it’s aliens or pranksters with ropes and boards. There’s also quite a lot of joking about them, as well as a lot of annoyed farmers who don’t like losing their crops, first to the circle makers and then to sightseers tromping through the fields for a look. But I want to hear what he thinks.

“They do,” he says. “Well, not all of them. Not anymore. That’s one of the things we do at the Education Center- try to work out which ones are real, and which ones are just hoaxes. Unfortunately there have been a lot of hoaxes, especially in recent years. But there are ways to tell. And there are plenty of really elaborate circles that couldn’t possibly have been made by a couple of guys in a few hours in the dark.”

“He’s seen them appear,” Joel tells me. He swipes at his phone, turns around in his seat and hands it to me. “Read the most recent post.”

“I have seen them appear,” Samuel says. “And ‘appear’ is exactly what happens. What I’ve seen didn’t take hours of somebody dragging ropes and planks of wood around a field. First the circles weren’t there, and then they were there. And they always happens at night, when it’s pitch dark. So, yeah, there are some real ones. Some alien ones.”

I look at the blog on Joel’s phone. In Samuel’s post, it’s late at night and he is sitting on a hill in Wiltshire that looks over a field and a canal. He’s right beside one of the white chalk horses. He feels a peculiar change in the air, and sees strange hovering lights in the distance that are suddenly right in front of him. Then they are gone, and there’s a fully formed crop circle in the field below. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up when I finish reading.

“Okay,” I say, “that is really weird.”

“That wasn’t the only time,” he says. “I may be a UFO magnet. And the Tor is definitely a UFO magnet. It’s a major intersection of ley lines, and that creates massive energy. Supernatural energy.” He’s smiling, but his eyes are dead serious.

“Ooops, turn right here,” Joel says. “I nearly missed it with all this otherworldly talk.”

“Here we go!” Samuel says, and zips onto the road towards the town.

 

I’m surprised at how easily we find public parking, and how reasonable a ticket for the little out-of-the-way lot is. It’s a short walk to the main street, and I am struck immediately by how colorful the town is. The first thing I see is a huge mural on the side of a building with twisty gnarled trees, the ruins of what must be the Abbey with a rainbow over it, and a hand holding a huge sword that’s emerging from a blue lake with hovering butterflies. “There you go – first King Arthur reference,” says Samuel.

As we head down the street that eventually leads to the Tor path I realize why Glastonbury looks so strangely familiar, with its bright multicolored shops featuring books, art, tarot supplies, and psychic readings.

“Oh my god, it’s Asheville!” I say. Joel laughs, and agrees.

“Yep, there’s the magician doing tricks on the corner! And look over there at the guy in dreads with a didgeridoo and a miniature horse!”

It is a miniature horse, just standing around looking bored as his dreadlocked owner chats with a woman wearing a pink tutu, huge black platform heels and pink fairy wings.

“Really?” says Samuel. “Asheville has changed since I last saw it.”.

“Well, it has been awhile,” Joel tells him.

 

It takes about 20 minutes to reach the path that leads to the Tor. We get a glimpse of it once, the strangely tall hill with a tower right on top, but it’s surprisingly evasive to be so close by. We pass the entrance for the Abbey, but sadly there’s a tall stone wall blocking the view of the ruins. All you can see is the very top of its remains. Samuel says we’ll come back later and go inside. First things first! Joel asks when we’re planning on having something to eat, and Samuel tells him it’s best to climb up on an empty stomach, to keep from blocking all the psychic energy we’ll be running into.

“Oh, that sounds like lots of fun,” Joel says. “At least we did have all that coffee.”

“There’s a great pub near where we parked,” Samuel tells him. “It’s been here since the 1400s, and has excellent food. We can stop in there on the way back. It’s called the Pilgrims Inn, so actually I think we’re required to have dinner there. And a beer.”

“If we live that long,” sighs Joel, but keeps walking.

The path starts just off the main street, crosses a field, and passes though a gate with a latch to keep the sheep from escaping. Once through the gate we’re at the bottom of the Tor itself. The path gets wider and has gentle steps, a smaller terrace to climb the terraced Tor. We can see the tower far above us as we start up, strange and out of place, one remaining bit of the Middle Ages looming dramatically into the sky.

“This is it,” Samuel says, looking up at the tower like it’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. “Time to experience the energy! It’s a pretty steep climb, but it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. It’s even better after dark, but for your first visit I think we need daylight.”

“Thank you,” Joel says.

We all take a swig from our water bottles, and start up the path.

 

 

 

 

• What’s Joel’s reaction to Jessie basically outing him to Samuel? And how does S feel about it? Is he uncomfortable? Doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal at all

•  Was albert hurt by being in time machine? Maybe do a before and after? Something should happen – conflict. At least some change in him afterwards, even if small. Something they would remember now and it makes sense? 

• Maybe S locked him into box? 

• Does the tower function as a way to explain the time machine – or IS it a time machine??

 

 

Jessie 2018: Glastonbury

 

We head through the gate, and follow the narrow path that leads to the Tor. The terraced hill looms up ahead of us, the rock tower stretching into the blue sky. It’s still far enough away to seem unreal, rising mysteriously from nowhere. Samuel is in the lead, with Joel following as the path is too narrow for walking comfortably side by side. I’ve fallen behind a bit and stopped to read the information sign that gives a little history about the landscape and the Tor’s past life. The terraced hill was once an island surrounded by watery marshes before being drained and transformed into the current fields and farmland. The 14th century rock tower on top is all that’s left of St. Michael’s Church, which replaced an even earlier church destroyed by an earthquake in 1275.  Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was hung, drawn, and quartered on the Tor when Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in 1539.

It’s dizzying trying to take this in, so I snap a quick picture of the sign with my phone to study later. As I’m about to stick my phone in my pocket I see a small black rabbit sitting by the path, staring at me. We had bunnies all over the place when I was growing up, but I’ve never seen a black one. I stare back at him, then take his picture too. He blinks at me, unconcerned, and nibbles at the grass. I start to Google black rabbits, but Samuel and Joel are getting way ahead of me, so I smile at him instead and hurry to catch up.

The path starts climbing and for a few strange minutes the tower completely disappears, despite there still being a hill directly ahead. It’s quickly become steep. I stop to get the good Canon camera out of my pack and take some pictures of the view below us. The green and gold fields stretch into the distance and the town of Glastonbury is starting to appear from beyond the lower trees. I already need to catch my breath, which makes me think that maybe I should start doing some hill walking in addition to my mostly flat jaunts around London. Up ahead of me Joel has stopped too and is staring out at the view, while Samuel continues to bound up the terraced trail effortlessly. Clearly he does a lot of hilly walks on his alien hunts.

I catch up to Joel and we both pull out our water bottles.

“Samuel’s job is keeping him in better shape than mine does,” Joel says. “And I don’t understand how that tower just vanished, but is back now.” He takes a long swig of water.

We look up at the tower. It’s in full view again, with the path leading us directly to what looks like an enormous arched doorway at the base. I can see a few tiny figures scattered around on the very top of the hill.

“This is a strange place,” I say. “I’m wishing I’d done a little more reading up on it now.”

Samuel has paused way up ahead of us. He gives us a wave, then gazes out at the view.

“So do I,” Joel says. “But maybe it’s better to have an unfiltered idea of what it is.”

I stare at him. That doesn’t sound very Joel-like. He raises his eyebrows at me. “I mean, we’re trying to understand him, right?” He nods up towards Samuel, who is still staring at the landscape below like he’s searching for something in particular. “This is obviously a really important place to him. Maybe it’s best not to have any preconceived notions about it.”

“Other than what he’s told us, you mean?” I say. “Which certainly isn’t much. This whole thing is … weird. Good, of course, but… I don’t know what we’re supposed to actually do with this.”

As I say it, I realize how true it is, and I feel more out of breath than the climb can account for. The figure on the hill is staring out into the distance with the wind blowing through his hair like some kind of poster boy for The Mysteries of The Tor, and I can’t seem to make him align with my vanished brother. There’s a disconnect between our long-lost past life and this current one which has appeared so abruptly. I can’t make all these jagged pieces fit together.

“Are you mad at him?” I ask Joel, with no idea that’s what’s going to come out of my mouth. “Are we mad at him?”

He looks at me, then looks up at Samuel again. Samuel waves one more time, shouts something that vanishes into the wind, and resumes bounding up the hill towards the tower.

“I’m not sure,” Joel says. “Well, yes, of course I am! I think.” He rubs his hand through his hair in such a Samuel-like gesture that it makes me want to laugh.

“I don’t know what I am,” he says.

“Me either,” I say. We watch Samuel getting smaller and smaller as he climbs the hill. “I’m so happy to see him again, but…I am so…” I stop.

“Confused?” he suggests, smiling at me. “Because I am definitely confused. It’s like …”

“Oh my god, it’s like the time machine,” I say. “It’s like one minute we were hanging out at home, playing cards or something, all of us in the den with Eddy and Ben and Albert, and all of a sudden Samuel has dragged us to the barn and shoved us into his time machine. And locked the door. And twisted the dial. To this day, and this time.”

“Wow,” Joel says, laughing. “It is! But I don’t think we’d be so much older ourselves if that’s what happened. Maybe.”

“I guess not. We’d be kids, seeing our old people selves climbing up the Tor now. And we’d be in great danger of affecting the timeline of the future.”

“Yeah, probably not what actually happened,” he says. “I hope. I don’t see any kids lurking around.” I look around too before I can stop myself. There’s someone on top of the Tor, way off to one side of the tower, setting up a tripod. Another figure standing in the arched doorway, so tiny I can’t make out details. A couple sitting on the grass slope.  No kids. Nowhere for them to hide.

We start walking again, following Samuel’s increasingly shrinking form ahead and above us. The path is a bit wider now that we’re on the terraced part, and we are able to climb together. The sun is warm and the steady breeze is just enough to keep me from feeling overheated as we trudge along.

“I did believe it would work,” Joel says. I’m trying to get a good shot of the red brick farmhouse far below us that’s come into view as we get closer to the top and the vista broadens.

“You believed what would work?” I ask, fiddling with the camera’s shutter setting. The sun is quite bright, and everything seems overexposed through the lens.

“The time machine,” he says. He pauses to let me take a couple of shots and peer at them on the screen. “I thought it was real.”

“Oh,” I say. I look at him. “Well, you were pretty young, right? I hardly remember it at all.”

“I was when he started it,” Joel says. I snap the lens cap back on and we start walking again. Samuel has disappeared from view. He must have reached the tower, which is looking more impossibly tall the closer we get. From this vantage point, down below, it seems to be fifty stories high. I know that’s not true; it’s just a strange illusion. You can see blue sky on the far side of the huge arched doorway now, and what looks like blocked windows rising above the arch. It’s very gothic. I expect there will be all sorts of angels and demons peering out of the ancient grey stonework when we get close enough to see them.

“The thing is, I thought he got it to work with Albert,” Joel says. He doesn’t look at me.

“What?” I pause, stare at him. He keeps walking and I have to take a couple of running steps to catch up. “What do you mean, he got it to work with Albert?”

“Well, it sounds crazy now,” he says, giving me a sideways glance. “But something happened with Albert. I mean… it seemed like something happened with Albert. I thought it worked. I was convinced for years.”

We’ve finally reached the top of the Tor, and the tower is overwhelming. I can’t figure out whether I need to stare at it or at Joel. Samuel is nowhere to be seen. There’s also the spectacular view to stare at, with fields and farms and the town of Glastonbury stretching out in greens and browns and golds as far as I can see in all directions.

“Maybe you should tell me what happened to Albert,” I say, careful to keep my voice steady. I take a couple of photos of the view, and a few more of the tower without really paying attention to what I’m doing. We’re at the arch now and I have to point the camera straight up, so the viewfinder is full of massive ancient stone walls slanting into blue cloudless sky. That’s a little unusual too, part of my brain tells me. It’s not blue and cloudless all that often here.

Joel sets his pack down with a thump onto the ground, and digs his water bottle out.

“Nothing happened,” he says. “I mean, nothing I can really…verify.”

“What did Samuel do to him?” I ask.

Joel takes a long swig from his bottle. “He didn’t do anything to Albert, Jessie. He just…made him believe he did. I guess.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. I’m thirsty but too distracted to dig out my water bottle.

“Albert thought he was with his other family.”

I can’t figure this out. “But he always thought he had another family. Like during the Civil War. That’s no secret. Other than being a forbidden topic of conversation, I mean. And Grandpa telling him he was going to Hell if he didn’t quit talking about it because that was Satan’s handiwork.”

“No, it’s more than that,” says Joel. “More than just thinking he remembered them. Which was weird enough, granted.” He’s looking off into the distance over the landscape, not looking at me. “He told me he was actually with them. Physically, not remembering them from all those impossible years ago. He said Samuel sent him to see them. Samuel used the time machine to transport him back there for a little visit.”

“Well that’s just…crazy,” I say. I put a hand out and lean on the tower. The rock is warm and rough.

“Of course it’s crazy,” agrees Joel. “But Albert believed it and I believed it too. For a long time.” He looks at me, frowns a bit. “Are you okay?”

He pulls my water bottle out of the side pocket on my pack, hands it to me. “Drink,” he says. “And sit down.”

I sit down harder than I mean to and lean back against the wall of the Tor. Open my bottle and take a very long swig. Joel sits down beside me. A couple of people with walking sticks and big backpacks come through the arch from the other side, say hello to us, and start back down the path. I wait until they are out of hearing.

“Did Albert tell you that?” I ask. “Because you know Albert has always had some issues with reality. I don’t believe it would be a huge stretch to think Samuel sent him on a little vacation to see his imaginary other family.”

The warm stones at my back make me feel a little more grounded, as does the water. I have another swallow.

“I know,” he says. “Albert is absolutely Albert. But when he told me about it, the detail was just…“ He pauses. Looks up at the tower over our heads. “It was intense. And he wasn’t supposed to tell anybody. He promised Samuel he wouldn’t tell, but I overheard him ask Samuel if he could do it again. I figured it out he was talking about the time machine. Then I convinced Albert I already knew about it, so he could talk to me and it would be fine.”

“Wow, that’s conniving,” I tell him. “That sounds like something Ben would do, not you.”

“I know,” he says. “And if it helps, I still feel kind of bad about it.” He smiles at me, but his eyes are dead serious.

“You don’t still believe it, do you?” I ask. “I mean, seriously. That would be insane.”

“Oh no,” he says. “Of course not.” He pauses. “Well, not really.’

Before I can lose my temper with him, Samuel materializes right in front of us. Obviously he’s just come around the corner of the tower, which is not all that big at the base despite being extremely tall, but it still startles me.

“Hi!” He says cheerily, and sits down beside Joel. “Isn’t this amazing? Once you’ve recovered from the climb, go inside. It’s like a very tall stone box. There’s an interesting historical plaque. The last Glastonbury abbot was hung right here.”

“Yikes,” says Joel. “That’s grim.”

“Samuel,” I say, measuring each word carefully. “I want to know what you did to make Albert think your time machine worked.”

He stares at me blankly for a second, then his face lights up. “OH,” he says. “Okay. Let’s go inside the tower, and have a rest on the benches. It’s a good story. And the inside of the tower kind of reminds me of the time machine.” He hits us with that wicked grin I still remember, and hops up, holding out a hand to each of us, and we follow him through the archway.