Colliding Galaxies

  ***

  “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”

  Psalm 90:12

  1.

  Sarah Gibson was a big woman and she found the wooden pews in the chapel uncomfortable if she sat in them for more than a few minutes. She twisted around, waiting for the last strains of Here I Am, Lord to die off. From where she sat, it looked like everyone else was just as hard-fannied as she was. The whole place was squirming like a kindergarten class.

  Sarah leaned over to whisper into Mildred Cunningham’s ear.

  “You’d think we all had hemorrhoids, the way we’re all sliding and shifting around.”

  Mildred was near eighty, delicate rice-paper face with a permanent smile pasted on between heavily rouged cheeks under a delicate feathered pink hat. “Most of them do, honey. Most of them do. Just be still awhile longer. Aren’t they beautiful…those flowers…roses and hydrangeas and all. Pete would be proud of us.”

  Sarah sniffed. “Pete would gag, same as me. He wasn’t much for ceremony. Just a little whiskey and a deck of cards…that’s all he needed.” She sat back in the seat, shifted her fanny once again—God that hurt!-- and stared morosely ahead. Funerals made her want to go wee-wee.

  Ten minutes later, the tiny chapel at Brighton Woods East was empty, save the colorful sprays of flowers, and an old portrait of Pete from decades ago, when he was young and black-haired with a mischievous grin, before the cancer got him.

  Everyone retired to the small open-air atrium that formed the courtyard of Brighton East and shuffled around wondering what to do with the rest of the morning.

  Sarah sat in the warm sun, smelled the lemony odor of the pygmy magnolias dotting the courtyard and wished to God she had her Scotch in her right hand, but the bar over in B-West wasn’t open until 4 pm. Still three hours to go.

  Conrad Bell sat himself down beside her on the bench.

  “Yes, sir—“ Bell bellowed, for he had once been a stage actor and he tried on roles like Mildred tried on hats—“I surely will miss old Pete. Grumpy as all get-out, but he had character. Man like that ought to have had more time.” Bell chewed on his fingernails when he didn’t have anything better to do. Sarah couldn’t stand to look at them. Conrad’s fingernails resembled half-split chunks of firewood.

  “You get your allotment,” Sarah muttered. “That’s all you get. You have to use it the best you can.”

  Conrad was about to reply when old Joe Harper shambled over and sat himself down on the same bench, wedging himself between the two of them.

  “Going to miss Pete myself, I am,” he mumbled. Joe Harper was staff. Brighton Woods employed the tall, gangling crewcutted fellow as a gardener and lawn man. He lived in a one-bed over in B-West, right on the ground floor, where he could get out at all hours to tend the flowers and things whenever it suited him. Joe was dressed up in a corduroy jacket and pants today. He had a face like an old worn-out car seat and he looked about as comfortable as a cucumber in a casserole.

  He was also an employee of the Time Service and ran a time portal out back of the main wing of Brighton West, but the others didn’t know that.

  “We all are,” Sarah sighed, pulling hard on the cigarette. The tip flared red and smoke blew from her nostrils. She shook her head. “Maybe it’s just me.”

  “How’s that?” Joe asked. He wriggled a bit, eking out some more room between her and Conrad Bell. Bell sulked and stared off at the sky.

  “Maybe I’m just being selfish. But you know what I’m going to miss most about him?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Playing bridge and gin rummy all hours of the day and night.” She smiled at the thought. “Whew…that man could play.” She looked down at Joe Harper’s knee, a little threadbare. God alone knew how old those pants were. “I’m not being selfish, am I? I suppose it’s a dream. I’d just like to turn the clock back a little, have one more Scotch, one more game of bridge. Is that too much to ask for?”

  Conrad Bell smirked. “Curtain’s come down, honey. The show’s over. One by one, the audience is heading for the exits.” He chewed on his fingernails. “That’s the way it is around here.”

  Joe Harper kicked at imaginary dirt clods on the walkway. The Time Service had given him only a few more days to find someone, maybe a week. Mandatory retirement…the gods of bureaucracy had been hurling that thunderbolt at him way too much the last year. He cocked his head slyly, “Maybe not, Sarah. Maybe not. You know that little garden I been working on, out back of the tool shed?”

  Sarah nodded. “The Japanese place? I heard you were doing something new back there. What about it?”

  Harper was already standing, getting his long legs into gear. He bent toward her ear, so Bell couldn’t hear them, lowered his voice. “Tonight, after dinner…when it’s just dark…met me in the garden behind the shed. Down by the Japanese pool.”

  Then he was gone. Sarah looked crosswise over at Conrad Bell. He was still working a hangnail, chewing on it like a strip of beef jerky. He didn’t seem to have heard. Just as well with old Joe Harper trying to proposition me like that.

  Suddenly she felt chilled, even in the rising heat of the mid-morning sun. Uneasy over what Joe had just said to her—did I imagine something?—Sarah got up and ambled off across the courtyard, toward her own unit on Brighton East’s second floor.

  2.

  It was muggy and stuffy in the dark woods west of the main compound, flies and mosquitoes and lightning bugs strobing the air, when Sarah Gibson stepped off the pool deck that connected the two Brightons and headed across the lawn toward the East Woods. The land was gently rolling, tending downhill toward the service road that wrapped around the western edge of the woods, and Lockhart Creek beyond. The creek had no official name but everybody called it Lockhart Creek. That was because Vic Lockhart, who lived at Brighton West, was always wading and fishing in it.

  It was after nine p.m., nicely dark, and Sarah was nervous. What was it that old Joe Harper wanted to show her? She’d fooled around enough in her younger years, so she figured she’s seen just about everything a man could do, but you never knew.

  Sarah stepped carefully along a dusty dirt path as she made her way down a hill toward the service road. She crossed the road and entered denser woods on the other side, the Brighton Woods. Everybody called them the Black Forest. The woods were dark and gloomy, even in daylight. Now, she had only armies of crickets and fireflies for company. She felt her way along carefully, treading a path as much from memory as feel.

  It had been a long time since she had been this far.

  In time, a dim, yellow glow materialized through the thorny vine ahead and Sarah made for it. The glow turned out to be the lantern on the front of Joe’s tool shed. The gardener was right where he promised, painting some fencing on a pair of old sawhorses. Behind him the shed was silvery gray, with wood siding and a slate roof. It sagged from the years, like an old horse. Joe looked up as a branch snapped, noticed Sarah and smiled.

  “So you finally made it, I see. Welcome to the shed.”

  Sarah was dubious. Her eyes narrowed. “Now, Joe…if you’re planning on something foolish—“

  Joe looked hurt, scrunching up all the crinkly lines around his eyes and mouth as if he’d been shot. “Not at all, not at all. Just thought you’d like to see something.”

  “And what would that be?”

  He motioned her around the back of the shed. “My new garden. Come on—I’ll show you.”

  Cautiously, she followed. A few dozen yards back of the shed, the brush opened onto a clearing, where Joe had fashioned a Japanese garden, right there in the middle of the Black Forest.

  The clearing was roughly elliptical, maybe twenty yards long, ten to fifteen wide. It was dominated by an egg-shaped pool, some four to six feet deep, with a small wooden footbridge at one end. A small grotto beyond the footbridge was made of smooth, ro
und stones, fashioned into the arc of a low wall, overlooking the deepest end of the water. A stream fed into the other end of the pool, where Joe had fashioned an earthen dam, creating the pool from the backflow out of Lockhart Creek. A gravel path filled with white stones led down to the pool, by the footbridge, and resumed climbing on the other side, toward a small pagoda mounted on a rocky rise. The pagoda was ringed with bronze lanterns—Joe called them yukidoro—and hordes of flies swarmed around the gently swaying lights. Water burbled and foamed around the bridge pilings. With the buzz of the flies and moths, only the burble and a steady drip-drip-drip from water gliding down the grotto walls filled the clearing.

  Joe swept his arms around proudly. “Welcome to my garden. It’s called the Time Garden.”

  Sarah took a deep breath, letting her eyes follow the natural forms and contours of the place. “Why, Joe, it is a beautiful place. So peaceful here. Why do you call it the Time Garden?”

  Joe winked at her. “Back at the chapel, you said something…do you remember? You told me you wished you could turn the clock back, have one more bridge game with Pete Eldridge.”

  Sarah nodded. “I say a lot of things. What do you expect from a fat old woman?”

  Joe beckoned her down to the footbridge. They crossed to the middle, then stood there, leaning over the railing, peering down at the roiling, foaming water. “You don’t want anything more than any of us wants. The Time Garden can make that possible. If you do it right, you can go visit Pete Eldridge. Have that last bridge game.”

  Sarah figured she had heard just about every come-on a man could come up with. “Joe Harper, that’s the biggest pile of horse manure I’ve ever heard. Pete was buried this morning. You were there, same as me. You expect me to believe this nonsense? What’ve you been drinking?”

  Joe Harper was dead serious. “Trust me, Sarah, I know what I’m talking about. I’m the gardener for this place. Maybe operator is a better word. Been doing gardening and landscaping for longer than you know. The Time Garden’s special. It ain’t no ordinary garden.”

  “That I can see…you’ve done wonders here. But really…let’s just leave old Pete out of this. He’s in a better place now.” She headed back across the footbridge to the bank. “If I really wanted to go back, I wouldn’t be visiting Pete Eldridge anyway.”

  “Who would you visit?”

  Sarah seemed to sigh, as she trudged up the dirt path. She stopped halfway, rubbed her eyes behind her big ‘fashion-frame’ glasses. “Probably Del. My husband. Never got to say good-bye to him properly. He shipped out in September ’44. First Infantry. He was in France that fall. Died at Bastogne.” She looked down, scuffed at some gravel, made a small pile with the toe of her shoe. “Bastard went and got himself killed. I never got so say goodbye…in fact, we had a fight the night before. He left mad…and never came back—“ She clenched her teeth, bit her lips and took a deep breath. “I can hear his voice right now, just like it was today—“

  Joe was sympathetic. “Sarah…come down here.” He came off the footbridge, stood on a slate landing beside the bridge piling. “I want to show you something.”

  Without understanding why—maybe it was his voice—Sarah obeyed, silently trudging back down the hill. She took Joe’s hand when he offered it. They stood together on top of the slate landing, watching the patterns of swirling water, watching the reflected light of the lanterns break up into crazy forms.

  “The Time Garden is like a door. Kind of a gateway or portal. If you go through it, the right way—and I’ll have to show you how—it’ll send you to whenever and wherever you want to go. Back into the past. Even into the future, though that’s a bit trickier.”

  Sarah cocked her head, regarded Joe Harper quizzically. “You’re serious, aren’t you? How do you know all this?”

  Joe beamed. “’Cause I run the portal. I’m the operator. Best damned operator in the whole Service, too.”

  Sarah glared at him for a long minute, not knowing what to say. Was this real? Was he pulling her leg, like he always liked to? Then, she dabbed at a few tears with a handkerchief. “Sorry…maybe it’s the funeral. Never had a proper one for Del…there wasn’t enough left of him. Grenade or something…Army wouldn’t really say. ‘Killed in action.’” She shuddered. “I kept his Purple Heart for a long time. Then I lost it. Just like I lost him—“

  Joe cradled her shoulders with his big ropy arms. “Sarah, trust me…you can see Del again. You can say goodbye. You can say anything you want to, change anything, just the way you want it. Want to try it out?”

  Sarah suddenly stood upright, steeling herself. She snuffled back the last teardrops. “What a ridiculous idea. Why are you telling me all this…baloney?”

  “’Cause it’s not baloney. I been working on this garden for a long time…finally tinkered and scrounged and nurtured it along enough so that it works, at least most of the time. That’s the key to it—time. Something we don’t have a lot of around here…none of us do. We shouldn’t be wasting what we have. This garden lets you go back, re-live what you want to, change anything you’d like—“

  Sarah pursed her lips, studied the gardener as if he were a specimen she’d just discovered, a strange new creature she’d stumbled over in the woods. “You really are serious…about all this--?”

  “Dead serious.” Now it was Joe’s turn to show off a sort of half-cocked smile. “But there’s one little catch.”

  “Of course there is. What is it?”

  Joe took a deep breath. “Well, it’s like this. There’s a mandatory retirement age. The Service enforces it, no exceptions. My time has come…I have to leave. And I need a replacement, someone to take over. Run the portal. Keep her in good order…it’s a lot like gardening. You like gardening, don’t you, Sarah? I mean, plants and dirt and all.”

  “Sure, I—“ but she stopped in mid-sentence. Her eyes narrowed and she regarded Joe Harper with a mixture of incredulity and sympathy. Then she nodded. “I guess the funeral affects all of us differently. It’s okay, Joe. I get it. I’ll play along.”

  But Joe seemed hurt by Sarah’s reaction. “It ain’t no game, Sarah. I’m serious. Why don’t you try her out? You’ll see what I mean.”

  She stifled a half-chuckle. “Why not? What have I got to lose? Like you said, none of us has that much time. May as well live a little.” She made up her mind. “Okay, Joe Harper, I don’t know what you’re selling, but I’ll buy. What do I do?”

  “Well, first thing is…you get in the water.”

  Sarah studied the foaming pool. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, ma’am…just ease on down there—here, hold on to me, I’ll help you—“ He held her under her arm—after she’d removed her slippers—and let her sit for a moment on the slate landing. When she was ready, she pushed forward and slid in one motion right into the pool, sending a big splash all over Joe Harper. She giggled, and shivered.

  “It’s not as cold as it looks…in fact, it feels real good. You want me to strip…are we going to shag, right here in the grotto?”

  “Not at all.” Joe went around the bridge piling to the grotto side, calling her. “Come under the bridge to about here—“

  Sarah glided through the foam. The water came up to her waist. She reached the spot Joe had indicated. “Now what?”

  “See the rock wall in front of you?”

  “I see it.”

  “At the very base of that wall—right in the center of the curve—is an opening. It’s about the size of your head and shoulders. You can squeeze through it, even you can—“ he added, when Sarah looked skeptical. “The way the Time Garden works is…you just duck below the water, hold your breath, and find that opening in the rock wall. Stick your head through and kick off. The Time Garden will do the rest.”

  Sarah glared up at him. “Joe, that’s the most cockamamie idea I ever heard. You
want me to go under the water? Hold my breath and go below the surface and hope to hell I find this opening? And squeeze through it?”

  Joe beamed. “That’s how she works. Tried her out myself just the other night.”

  “Oh, really. And where did you go when you tried her out?”

  Joe seemed to blush in the shadowy lantern light. “Rather not say, exactly…kind of personal. But it works. I came back okay. Kind of a shakedown cruise, you might say.”

  Sarah was shaking her head. “This is insane. We should both be sent to our rooms for stunt like this. Joe…if I didn’t know you better, I’d-“

  “Just try it. Hold your breath and go below. Hold out your hands. See that big black rock, right there?” He pointed to a fist-sized stone just above the waterline. “The opening’s right below it. Maybe four feet down. But you’ll have to hold your breath, kind of grope around to get into it.”

  Sarah chuckled. “I’ll bet—“She made up her mind. “Well, why the hell not? What’s a girl got to lose? Hey…if I drown here, just tell Vic and Mildred I was stinking drunk…had ten Scotches in my room and wandered off. They’ll believe that. This…no one will believe. I don’t believe it myself.”

  “Remember—put your head through. And kick. Kick hard.”

  Sarah nodded, sucking in huge gulps of air. She started to feel dizzy and stopped, then, suddenly without warning, she ducked her head under with a splash and a geyser of bubbles. In seconds, her floral print blouse disappeared from view.

  Joe stood silently by the side of the grotto wall, counting the seconds. Five…ten…fifteen…twenty…twenty-five…thirty—Most people didn’t stay down any longer than half a minute.

  For a few anxious moments, Joe continued counting, fidgeting with some moss he’d laid in along a seam in the wall. At fifty seconds, he began to worry a bit, but just as he started to move, a great crashing wall of water erupted from the pool.

  Like a surfacing whale, Sarah Gibson flung herself upright and stood swaying, shedding torrents of water, laughing like a little girl. She shook her short red hair and made motorboat sounds with her lips. Then she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and burst out laughing again.

  “Joe…Joe…I was there! I don’t believe it…I was there…right there—“

  Joe Harper bent down and extended a hand. “Grab hold, Sarah…let me help you out.”

  At first, she wanted only to twirl and splash about, but she finally consented to Joe’s assistance. Laboriously, she waded over to the side, and Joe hoisted her up onto the slate landing. She shook like a big shaggy dog and giggled. Then she hugged Joe and kissed him wetly on the cheek.

  “Fabulous…just fabulous…we were at Jimmy’s Peanut Bar. Downtown Reading, PA. It

  was just like it always was…peanut shells all over the floor. Smoke in the air, booze all over the place. People talking too loud, laughing. Card games and liquor and—“ she suddenly beamed a wide smile, followed by a low, mischievous grin. “—and Del. My glorious Del, right in the middle of the biggest game of all.” Suddenly, she became aware of where she was, that she was drenched and shivering and her hair was a mess. “Joe…Joe…how long was I there? It seemed like days, maybe a week. We went to a movie…it was Bogart, I think. Had a malt afterward. Went to the Prescott Hotel for a big steak dinner, spilled champagne all over me—“

  Joe was toweling her dry even as she chirped about what she had seen and done. “You were gone…maybe forty-five seconds in all. All totaled.”

  “You’re kidding—that can’t be right. It was several days…I’m sure of it. And I finally got to say goodbye to my Del…the right way, the way we always did.” She nodded, that mischievous smirk again. “God, he tasted good.”

  “Nope, only about forty-five seconds underwater…that’s all.”

  Suddenly, Sarah frowned. “This place really works. Just like you said it would.”

  “I told you it would.”

  “Then it’s like…what would you call it…a time machine?”

  “More of a gateway, I would think. I just call it the Time Garden.”

  Sarah was thinking, her eyes narrowed. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just you and me, so far. I was hoping I could interest you in taking her over. You know, after I leave.”

  “Mmm…we’ve got to keep this place quiet. How does it work anyway? Where else could I go? Could anybody use it?”

  Joe laughed, holding up hands to fend off all the questions. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, one at a time.”

  “Joe this is fabulous…do you see that? We could probably go back into our childhoods—“ Her face darkened, her lips tightened. “—I could get even with that damned bitch Margie Cole—she was always borrowing things, my clothes, my dolls, all my stuff—“

  A pained look came across Joe Harper’s craggy face. This wasn’t working at all the way he had hoped. “Sarah, there’s a few things you ought to know about the Time Garden.”

  But Sarah Gibson was already cooking up schemes. Who to tell? What to tell them? “My God, the possibilities—what did you say, Joe?”

  “Only this—you have to understand some things about the Time Garden.”

  “What things?”

  Joe stood up and went over to the footbridge, then climbed up to the center of the span and peered down at the water. It was still foaming, even more than before. “It’s kind of fragile, for one thing. Easy to disturb things. There’s one important fact—the portal don’t last forever. None of them do. They’re just like us…they’re born, they live their allotted span, and they die. Kind of peter out. And they don’t work for free. Now, tell me: you want the job or not? I need to know.”

  “Never mind the job…what exactly are you saying?”

  “Just this—that every time a person uses the Garden, it takes a cut. A cut of time. It subtracts the same amount of time you spent inside the portal…er, from your life. Balances the books, sort of.”

  “What! What the hell are you saying—“ Sarah started to stand up, lost her footing, started to slide toward the pool and just managed to snag a rock, to hold herself out. She floundered for purchase…by the time Joe could get there, she had managed to hoist herself further up the bank. She was panting and her face was red. “What did you just say?”

  Joe shrugged sheepishly. “Maybe I should have made it clearer…every time you use the Time Garden, you lose time from your life. You live an equal amount of time—less. You can go back if you want, even edit and revise things if you want. You can even go forward, although that’s a bit harder. But there’s always a price.”

  Sarah frowned at the prospect. “I’m a fat old woman, Joe. I don’t have that much time left. And you’re saying…now, I have even less? How much less?”

  Joe shrugged. “Hard to say. Maybe a few days. It’s kind of proportional. I’m not sure how it’s determined. Only that it happens.”

  Sarah thought about that for a few moments. Then she threw up her hands. “What the hell…I guess it was worth it. Just seeing Del again—but I wish you’d told me before I went under.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, well, c’est la vie…as Conrad always says. Look, Joe, we should kind of keep this under wraps…you know what I mean? Control it…so not everybody knows about it. Jesus, if this gets out…there’ll be chaos all over the place. Imagine it: a time portal at a nursing home. It’d be like dropping a planeload of chocolate into a nursery. No—“ a determined look hardened her face. “—this we have to sit on for a while. Make sure it gets used properly.”

  “I completely agree with you, Sarah. Then you’ll take the job?”

  “Let me think on it. I would like to tell a few people though. Like Mildred. Paxton Brewster…people like that. Is that okay?”

  Joe was agreeable. “A small group, that would be fine. Remember, this place’s kind of fragile. I wor
ked a long time to get it going, make it like it is. It’s okay by me to tell other people, but promise me you’ll be careful. Not everybody can handle this. And there’s a lot you need to know.”

  Sarah was already scheming how to break the news. She got up and brushed herself off.

  “You’re telling me. Look, I’ve got to get back…before the guards send the dogs after me.”

  Sarah Gibson left the clearing without looking back. She had a million things on her mind.

  3.

  The next morning, Sarah Gibson took breakfast in the Colonial Room, and found a table near the window. It was sunny and bright out. Vic Lockhart was polishing off his scrambled eggs at the same table. He motioned her over and Sarah relented. They weren’t alone long. Inside of ten minutes, Angel Havener joined them, followed by Annie Jacobs and Conrad Bell.

  Sarah decided to tell them all what had happened. She had to tell someone before she burst. She didn’t tell them that Joe Harper was retiring.

  They were skeptical, to say the least.

  Vic had egg juice dribbling down his mouth when he answered. “Sarah, I saw the same movie, not six months ago. Had…oh, who the hell was it?—Mel Gibson, I think. Some nuclear war destroyed the world…something like that.”

  Sarah looked at him sourly. “That egg’s not the only thing that’s scrambled. I’m telling you guys…it happened. I got to see my Del, just like he was. I got to finally say goodbye to him…the right way, this time.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

  Angel Havener was worrying with a piece of toast. “Luv, if there was really a time machine out there in the woods, I’d be first in line. Hey, Conrad, you and me…we could go into the future. See if Last Night in Prague ever gets produced. Maybe we’ll even get on Broadway.”

  Sarah picked flakes off a cream cheese bagel. “The only way you’re getting on Broadway is by taxi, fellows. Why don’t you two just grow old, like the rest of us? You’ll never be finished with that thing.”

  Conrad Bell nodded. “She’s right, you know, Ang. Who wants to see another skit about Jews and Nazis? If there really was a time machine, we could just turn back the clock to 1933, get rid of Hitler right then and there. Then where would we be…no subject, no play.”

  Vic was still skeptical. “I’m not even from Missouri and I still need to be shown. Where was this so-called gateway, anyway?”

  “Out by Joe’s tool shed.”

  “And Joe built the place, all by himself?”

  Sarah nodded. “Tended it is probably a better description. He is the gardener, after all. Beautiful spot in a clearing in the Black Forest. There’s a pool and a pagoda.”

  Annie Jacobs sat at the end of the table, her face wreathed in steam from a mug of hot tea. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my David again.” She had a sweet smile, a gentle half-arc of amusement between her high cheek bones. “He’d come home from patrol and give me the biggest hugs…practically crush my ribs, he would.” The smile got wider. “Then, he’d have his beer and play with Katrina and the dogs. And we’d have our supper…Lord, he did love that fried chicken and mashed potatoes.” Her smile abruptly vanished. “I’d go back to the morning he left, before he was shot. I wouldn’t let him leave…knowing about that drug deal he was investigating.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Vic was saying. He smoothed back tufts of sparse white hair, forever trying to make them cover an advancing forehead. “I mean…how’d you wind in that Peanut Bar, Sarah? Probably just hallucination. I bet Joe put something in that pool…turned you psycho or whatever. Like hypnosis.”

  “Yeah, a regular Houdini,” said Angel.

  Sarah was quiet. “I don’t know exactly how the thing works. Joe said he would explain it to me…you just stick your head in and kick off.”

  “Underwater?”

  “Under the pool. It wasn’t deep.”

  Vic stood up. “This is silly. I’m a rational man. Old as dirt, maybe, but I still got something up here—“ he tapped his head, felt the sparse hair and smiled sheepishly. “Inside, I mean—“ He headed off.

  “Where are you going?” Conrad asked. “You left half your plate—“

  Vic was heading for the door to the pool deck. “Out to see Joe. He’s just pulling Sarah’s legs, that’s all. Playing on her fantasies. It’s all a scam. ‘Bilk the old farts—‘ Oldest game around. I want to see what his game is.”

  “Me too.” Conrad shot up and hustled after Vic. The two of them struck out across the lawn and soon disappeared into the East Woods.

  They found Joe Harper pruning vines around the edges of the English Garden. Mildred Cunningham had a small vegetable patch at one end.

  “Joe—hey, Joe,” Vic called out. He ambled up to the gardener. Joe looked up from his shearing, took off his baseball cap and wiped his forehead.

  “Thought I heard something. What’s up?”

  Vic jammed his hands in his pocket, not sure how to begin. “So, I was talking with Sarah this morning, see, and she rattles off this tale about a time machine back in your Japanese garden. I could see she was all worked up…how she said she’d gone back to see Del, got to be with him once again, before he shipped out to Europe and all.” Vic’s face scrunched up into a look of pain. “Joe…Joe Harper, you shouldn’t be doing things like that to an old lady like Sarah. The woman’s got her memories…why don’t you just leave her be?”

  Joe had a way of looking at you, like you had done something naughty and he might haul off and smack you, but his better nature would surface and then his shoulders would droop and he’s sort of cough and laugh at the same time.

  “I’m sorry for any pain I caused Sarah. She was kind of down at Pete’s funeral. Heck, we all were. I was just trying to help.”

  Conrad had hustled up to stand beside the men. “You really got a time machine out there? That’s what Sarah said you had.”

  Joe snickered. “Ain’t no machine about it. It’s just a garden, that’s all.”

  “But this garden…this portal or gateway or whatever it is…she said you could go places…other places, other times. You could kinda travel far away. See loved ones in the past.”

  Joe nodded. “Future, too. ‘Course, that’s a bit harder.”

  Vic stabbed a finger into Joe’s chest. “So there is a time machine. Some big government secret, I’ll bet. Who are you working for, mister?”

  Joe laughed. “It’s no secret. And like I said, it’s not a machine. More or a door, like you said. I’m just the keeper, sort of the operator you could say.”

  “Can we see it?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you.”

  The three of them went deeper into the woods, crossing the service road—they had to wait while a small truck filled with topsoil passed by—‘heading for the Bistro Restaurant up by the lake…they got some erosion there—‘Joe told them. Presently, they arrived at the small grotto. It was hot outside and mosquitos and flies buzzed about the clearing. The waters of the pool were calm.

  Vic studied the clearing from every angle, climbing the footbridge, scrutinizing the pagoda, scuffing at dirt around the base of the rock wall. Experimentally, he tossed a few pebbles into the water, looking sideways to catch Joe’s reaction. There was none.

  “Doesn’t look like much to me,” he announced. “What’s the big deal?”

  Joe explained how the Time Garden worked. “There’s a catch though, just like I explained to Sarah. You don’t get something for nothing. Every time you use the Garden, it subtracts time away from your life. Balances the books, I like to say.”

  Vic’s face was the picture of skepticism. “And you built this?”

  “I keep it up.”

  “Well, pardon me for saying so, but I just don’t buy it. Look, Joe, I’m a vet. I got shot at plenty of times by Chicoms and gooks in Korea. Even got captured. Spent time in a POW camp. Anjin, it was
called. Hell on earth, if ever there was one. I believe what I see with my own eyes.”

  “Why don’t you try it, then?”

  Vic stuck out his chin. “All right, I will.” Then, he bit his lips, toyed with a thought for a moment. “Tell me something, Joe. How long you been at Brighton Woods?”

  Joe Harper shrugged. Long enough, according to the Service, he said to himself. But he didn’t say that. “They hired me back in ’61. Started out on the maintenance staff. Fixing tractors and such.”

  “That’s not really what I meant—“ Vic groped for the words. Conrad Bell was thinking the same thing.

  “What he’s trying to say is—how the hell did you come up with something like this? Assuming it works. Are there blueprints or something? You see it on TV? Get some help from Santa’s little elves?”

  Joe held up a hand, chuckling. “I always knew this spot had possibilities. Just look at it. Secluded. The light’s just right. Something about the materials, the lay of the land, the way the shadows fall…any gardener could see it. You just have to have a feel for this kind of thing.”

  “But you’re not just any gardener…are you?”

  Conrad blurted out. “Sarah said you were some kind of time gardener. What the hell is that? Maybe you could be in my play.”

  Joe shrugged, swatted at some flies with his cap. “All of us in the Service, we’re basically the same. We just work with what nature gives us, same as any gardener. Move stuff around, fix it up. That’s all.”

  Vic had made up his mind. “I want to try this time machine. What do I do?”

  Joe suddenly turned serious. He explained the procedure. Vic and Conrad listened carefully, eyes narrowing, wondering if it weren’t all a big prank. Sarah had done things like that before. Once, back in ’48, someone had bet her that Truman would beat Dewey in the election. Always ready to take on a dare, Sarah had told the bettor that “if Truman beats Dewey, I’ll push a peanut down Pennsylvania Avenue with my nose.” When the big day came, the sidewalks had been jammed with reporters and photographers. “Quite a sight that was,” Vic admitted. “Big woman like that, kneepads and all, nudging a little peanut down the street with her big nose.”

  When Joe was through explaining, he asked, “You still want to do this?”

  “Hell, yes, let me at it!” Vic was already snatching off his shoes and stripping down to his underwear. “Just one question: how do I control it? How do I know how to get to a certain time?”

  Joe thought about that for a moment. “It depends on how far you go through the opening. And how fast. You’ll have to experiment with it, try different tricks. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I’ll bet.” Vic slid off the slate landing and shivered in the waist deep water. “Cool, isn’t it?” The waters had begun to lap and foam around the footbridge as he waded underneath and approached the grotto wall. “And I just go under?”

  “All the way to the bottom.”

  Vic swallowed hard, took a few deep breaths. “Well…here goes.” He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped below the surface.

  Conrad and Joe both ran silent counts. Thirty four seconds later, Vic’s drenched head burst out of the water and he flung his arms out like an old-time preacher.

  “Wow! Just…wow!” he exulted. He had a big grin on his face. Conrad and Joe helped him up onto the edge of the pool. He shook off like a dog, then accepted a dry towel from Joe. “Just like you said, pal—“

  “Where’d you go?” Conrad asked. “Where’d you go? What happened?”

  Vic just sat there, shaking his head. “What time is it? I must’ve been gone for days.”

  “Thirty-four seconds,” Joe said. “We counted it together.”

  “What? That can’t be right—“ Vic suddenly turned dark. “I mean I was there, right there…the whole thing happened right in front of me…just like before. Had to be two, maybe three days. A week, even.”

  “What, Vic? Where were you?”

  His eyes started tearing up. “Back in Korea. The day I was captured—“ he shook his head. “All of them—Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion. First Marines. Jesus, it was cold. Freezing wind, howling wind, sleet like hell. Chicoms cut us off, got behind us on the main supply road. We fought like crazed cats but there were too many of them.” Vic wiped at his eyes, embarrassed. Conrad sat down beside him on the slate landing. “We were captured, marched for several weeks north, to the Yalu River. Over the river. Shithole called Anjin. I wanted to escape…I should have tried but somehow—I couldn’t just leave my buddies, you know—“ he choked back something, straightened himself up. “Several of us—we tried to kill ourselves. But that didn’t work either—our hands were too frostbitten. That’s what I saw. All over again. And Petey, too…he was still alive—“

  Conrad looked up at Joe Harper, who was busily resetting some stones in the grotto wall. “Then…it’s true…it works…just like you said.”

  “I told you it would.”

  All of a sudden, Conrad was excited. “This is incredible. It’s a dream. It’s science fiction. It’s nuts. My God, Vic, do you realize what this could mean? We’re sitting on a gold mine here. We could charge for this, charge admission. Build a big park…it’d be like Disney, even better.”

  Vic was still shivering from the water, from the icy winds of Anjin, from re-living the most painful moment of his life, one he had long since buried in the deepest hole of his mind he could find. “I got a lot of questions, still. Like…how the hell does the thing work? And who are you, really?”

  Joe Harper shrugged, placing more stones around the edge of the pool, cleaning up after Vic’s excursion into the past. “Just a simple gardener.”

  “Bullshit. Either this is some kind of mass hallucination or—“

  “—or a wish machine,” suggested Conrad. “Like Aladdin’s lamp. Do I get three wishes?”

  “Hardly. Like I said,” Joe went on, “I’m just a gardener. I do the same things any gardener does. I prepare the soil. I plant seeds and water them in, nurture ‘em just the right way. Takes a special touch, around this garden, but it’s really not any different.”

  “What about weeds? You get weeds here?”

  “Sure I weed out what doesn’t belong. I prune and trim. At the end, I harvest the fruits and start the cycle all over again.”

  Vic stood up, groaning and creaking. He stared Joe right in the face. “What, exactly, do you grow here?”

  Joe stood up from his work too, stretched a bit and scratched his head. “Maybe ‘grow’ isn’t exactly the right word. Any garden is basically a machine to recycle stuff, isn’t it? Gardens take air, and nutrients and water and recycle them through the stuff you plant, changing them a little, but basically putting back into nature. I do the same.”

  “With plants.”

  “With time.”

  “You recycle time?”

  “That’s what I do.”

  Vic wandered off, balancing himself on the edge stones of the pool, still dripping wet, his white hair plastered to his bald pate. “This doesn’t make any sense. I thought time was like a river, flowing from the past into the future.”

  “A lot of people think that. Actually, this garden…the portal you just went through—is more like a defect in a set of curtains. A rip in space-time, that’s how some think of it. They’re all over the place—these tears or rips—sometimes in the most unlikely places. I just tend this one. I found it a long time ago…actually the Service told me about it. Then I just kind of helped it along, helped it grow, ‘til I felt it was ready.” Joe’s face took on a somber cast. “Now the Service tells me I got to retire. I need somebody to take over. You wouldn’t be interested, would you?”

  Vic started to say something, but Conrad was growing more excited at the possibilities. “It’d be perfect for a theme park. With a big stage. Plays every night…lots of edgy stuff, fringe theat
er, absurdist Kafkaesque fare…that’d go great with the setting here.”

  Vic stopped by the pagoda, felt along its lacquered wooden sides. “So you’re saying you need someone to take over. Like a new gardener, a new operator?”

  Joe leveled an even gaze at Vic. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t much like it, but time waits for no man.” He chuckled at his own little joke. “But we can recycle it.”

  Vic was intrigued. “What exactly do you plant here?”

  “Oh, I just tend the garden. I seed the portal with what it needs to grow and be sustained. The technical term is chrontronium or some such, I believe. I don’t rightly know all the details. But I do know that every portal starts out as a kind of rip and this stuff is what allows us to manage it, use the portal, kind of keep it balanced. Then I make sure nothing gets into the garden that shouldn’t be there. I weed the bad stuff out, prune and trim things so the portal is stable. Not too big, not too small. Truth is, all these buggers want to snap right shut. Nature’s funny that way. Space-time wants to be smooth and even no rips or tears or defects. In the end, I usually have to add stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I believe we’re calling it newtime now. Some kind of displaced chrontronic matter…basically wasted time, unused time. Everybody’s got some. Think of it as kind of like seeds. Use ‘em properly, sprinkle ‘em in and water ‘em real good and you can extend the portal’s existence almost indefinitely. ‘Course, that ain’t ever happened to me. These portals always dry up.”

  “Then what?”

  Joe shrugged. “Then I move on. Service gives me a new assignment. They find me another one.”

  “And you could teach me all this…how to prune and operate and seed and weed and all?”

  Joe nodded. “Most definitely. We could start right now, if you want.”

  But Conrad wouldn’t be denied. “I want to try it. Can I have a go?” When Vic and Joe looked oddly at him, he spread his hands. “What? I got the same needs as anyone. Hey, I’m not young anymore. Look, I never made a big splash on the stage or anything, but I’m okay with that. It’s just that I got a daughter. Molly. I just want to see if she makes it…she’s in Hollywood now. Had a couple of screenings, a few cameos. Nothing big. Her mother blames me for all of it. I’m the one who put the acting bug in her head. If I knew she was gonna make it, I could rest easier. Tell off her mother…that would give me a lot of pleasure to do that. A lot.”

  “I don’t see any harm in it,’ Joe told him. “But I have to warn you: going into the future is different.”

  “Different…in what way?”

  Joe rubbed his chin. “Well, it’s harder to control. The portal isn’t as stable going that way. It’s like the future is a rubber sheet—it wants to resist you, kinda pushes you back. You can stretch it some, but the further you go, the harder it pushes back. But, by all means, try it. I’ll help you out.”

  Eagerly, Conrad started pulling off his moccasins and shorts. Pretty soon, he was stripped down to his underwear, his ample belly protruding out over a well-worn elastic band. Conrad was hairy and overweight and completely at ease in the buff. He eased himself into the water, shivering as he did so, then waded below the footbridge and stood waist-deep in foam and spray before the grotto wall. He looked up at Vic and Joe.

  “Well, wish me luck. Works the same way…you just go below and push through?”

  “The same way,” Joe told him.

  “How do I make sure I’m going into the future and not the past?”

  “Just wiggle a little…you’ll see what needs to be done. The portal’s pretty sensitive lately since I tuned her up.”

  Conrad nodded gravely, took a few breaths and submerged like a bottle filling with water.

  Vic and Joe started a count.

  At sixty seconds, Vic looked over with concern at the time gardener. “It’s been a minute, Joe. That seems like a long time. Should we be worried?”

  Joe shook his head. “Not yet. Conrad’s got big lungs. He’ll know when it’s time.”

  Vic sniffed. “Big lungs, my ass. He’s an old windbag, if you ask me.”

  Nearly another minute went by, a total of one hundred and ten seconds. Conrad popped to the surface of the pool like a fat hairy cork, bobbing and grinning, slapping the water with exhilaration.

  “It’s true…it’s true! The thing works just like you said it would!” Conrad dog-paddled to the slate landing and hauled himself up, with help from Vic and Joe. He sat heavily, out of breath, heaving in great gulps of air.

  “I…made it…” he gasped. “I really…made it…saw Molly…took…awhile…but I saw…her…some small theater…place was half full, mostly men…couldn’t quite…make it out…but the film had her face…right there—“ he made a small figure of a screen with his hands—“…big as life…there…were several men…didn’t quite…catch…the story—“ he burst out laughing, slapped playfully at the water, finally getting some breath back. “—my Molly…my flesh and blood…she finally made it…in the movies—“

  Vic frowned, studying the grotto with a skeptical eye. “Joe, be straight with me. You put something in the water, didn’t you? Some drug or something. Maybe this is just some kind of wish machine, rather than a time machine.”

  Joe seemed hurt by the idea. Pain made waves across his face. “Vic, this is a time machine,” he said firmly. “And I most definitely did not put drugs in the water. This water’s right from Lockhart Creek…hell you ought to know…you spend enough time wading in it.”

  “I had to ask that, I guess. Sorry, but…well, I just don’t get it. It’s too good to be true. And you want me to learn how to operate this thing?” Vic made a face. “How’d you get into this gardening business, anyway?”

  Joe shrugged, sweeping off straw and leaves from the slate landing, straightening the place up a bit. “Oh, it’s been in my family for a long time. Just kind of took to it, I suppose. Thing is this portal’s kind of funny. It’s kind of been deteriorating lately. Don’t think she’ll last too much longer. I’m going to have to do some maintenance on her…you should stick around and learn some of that, Vic.”

  Vic didn’t want to hear about deterioration. “You think we…you…can keep it going? I mean…a time machine, for God’s sake. What retirement home wouldn’t want a time machine? Maybe we ought to charge for it, like Conrad said.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair. It’s open to everybody…as long as it lasts. Service policy.”

  “How long do you think it’ll last?”

  Joe stooped on the side of the pool, trailed his fingers through the water and tasted it. He winced a little at the taste. “Hard to say, exactly. A few days, a few months, maybe a year. Depends on a lot of things: how much it’s used, how far away in time you go, what you do there, a lot of things. No doubt about it, we got us a job keeping this one up.”

  Vic dipped his own hands in the pool and tasted it. It tasted just like pool water to him. What did Joe see in it? “You mean we can kind of—wear it out?”

  “Oh, sure. It’s like any machine. You can wear any machine out, if you overuse it, don’t keep it up. But don’t you fellas worry none—I’ll keep her going. I’ll teach you all the tricks you need to know.”

  Vic turned to Conrad. “We got to keep this quiet. Just the few of us who already know. The rest of Brighton Woods finds out about this and there’ll be a stampede. The old folks’ll wreck this thing for good if we aren’t careful. Joe—promise me, will you? Promise me you won’t go running your mouth around the place about this.”

  Joe spread his hands. “Can’t promise that, Vic. Wouldn’t be fair. I don’t advertise it a lot anyway. But if someone asks—“

  “That’s okay,” Conrad told him. “Just keep doing that. We’ll take it from there.” His eyes met Vic’s in a glimmer of understanding. “Come on, old man…let’s get back to the Big House.
We got some thinking and planning to do.”

  So Vic Lockhart and Conrad Bell left the time garden to Joe, who told them he planned to fix a few things before he turned in. He promised he’d catch up with them at breakfast the next morning—the same place: corner table by the veranda in the Colonial Room, the one with the uneven legs.

  Vic and Conrad hustled back through the darkened forest, their hearts racing, their minds filled with ideas and possibilities.

  Later that night, Vic stole out of his room on B-West’s third floor and went downstairs. It was after midnight and he hadn’t been able to sleep. Sometimes, it helped to go outside and prowl around the grounds, chat with the staff, walk the service road into and out of East Woods, just some kind of physical activity. His mind wouldn’t let him rest. It was in overdrive, revving up a million ideas a minute.

  Down in the atrium, he ran into a midnight bridge game. Sarah Gibson was there, smoking a cigarette (she hadn’t done that in years; something big was on, you could tell). Annie Jacobs was there too, with Angel Havener rounding out the trio. Annie was in her pale yellow robe and muffs, ever-present hot tea steaming on the side of the table. Angel wore red shorts, white tank top. A wide-brim golf hat and glowing pipe completed the ensemble.

  “Just who we need, a fourth player,” Sarah called out. She waved Vic over.

  Vic didn’t sit down. “I suppose you guys can’t sleep either.”

  Angel puffed vigorously on his pipe. His head was enveloped in pungent smoke. It smelled like musty fruit. “Nonsense, my boy…we’re just here keeping the squirrels company. Dinner not agree with you again?...what was that brown crap with the gravy, anyway? I complained and Chef Cosmo told me to mind my own business.”

  Vic turned a chair around and straddled it backwards, peeking over Annie’s trembling wizened brown hands to see what she had. “I’d call—“ he advised her. She swatted him on the nose.

  “You’ve been to the time garden,” Sarah observed. It wasn’t a question. Vic didn’t try to deny it.

  “Is it written on my face? We were just having some fun with Joe, that’s all. Cheap trick, if you ask me. Some kind of mass hypnosis. By tomorrow, it’ll all vanish.”

  “It’s already tomorrow,” Sarah said tartly. “And I don’t think it’s a trick. Do you?”

  Vic turned serious, decided his usual wisecracking wouldn’t work. “No…hell, I don’t know. You went through…what do you think?”

  Sarah sat back, sipped at a milk, most likely laced with something. You could check just about any pocket in her blue robe and you’d find a flask of something. “It’s either the biggest scam I’ve ever seen or—“ she bit her lip, remembering how Del’s lips had tasted on hers, that last night at Jimmy’s Peanut Bar “—one hell of a trick ride. They can do all kinds of magic with mirrors and computers and such now. Disney does it. Look at TV, the movies. What’s real and what isn’t? Does it even matter?”

  Angel huffed. “I haven’t been through it. I choose to believe you’re all a bunch of gullible old farts. No rational man believes in time travel, certainly not time travel on demand…dial up a time and go back to it. See your loved ones one last time, step right up, little lady…c’mon. Maybe Joe’s been eating the mushrooms. Maybe Chef Cosmo’s feeding them to us. Wouldn’t be the first time. I smell a scam here. A big one. And we’re the perfect marks…a captive audience wasting away our final days playing bridge and swinging to Benny Goodman and attending life enrichment courses, for God’s sake. What the hell is that?”

  “You haven’t been through,” Vic said quietly. “You wouldn’t talk like that if you had. It’s real enough…question is: what do we do about it. Old Joe says he’s retiring. Nobody else knows how to operate the damn thing.”

  “I haven’t tried it either,” Annie said softly. She was a frail, yet regal and proud black lady, wrinkled and small, always trembling as Parkinson’s claimed more and more of her muscles. She glared at all of them. “I haven’t been past the English garden in…goodness knows, a year or two. Maybe longer.”

  “Honey,” Sarah patted her hands, “there’s mosquitos and flies out there. The ground’s marshy…you might fall, break a hip, or worse.”

  “Stop patronizing her,” Vic said. “The lady just wants to have some fun…let’s help her. Annie—“ Vic bent down and patted the side of her head. “Don’t you worry…old Vic’ll help you. I’ll carry you out there myself if I have to.”

  “With what—a wheelbarrow—“

  “Shut up,” Vic said. “Annie, you really want to try this? You really want to go to the time garden? You’ll have to go underwater, hold your breath—“

  Annie coughed violently, dribbling phlegm and mucous down her chin as her body was wracked with a wave of spasms. It went on for three minutes, the worst episode in days. Sarah looked at Angel, while Vic comforted her. It’s getting worse, her eyes told them. Annie’s face turned pale and her hands fluttered around her. Weakly, she pushed Vic away, finally regained her speech, but her voice was strained.

  “If…there’s a way…” she croaked out, “…that I can see…my David…once more…stop that shooting…” she nodded, started to rise, but her hand slipped and she collapsed back down onto the chair, half into Vic’s arms, as he caught her. “—I want to go—“

  “Okay…okay…” Vic promised her, helping her sit upright, urging a sip of the tea, stroking her hair, while Sarah dabbed at sweat and sputum coating the sides of her cheeks. “I’ll tell you what…how about tomorrow. It’s awful late now. You need rest. Get your strength back. If you’re okay tomorrow, I’ll take you out to the time garden. Me and Joe’ll help you. Okay?”

  Annie nodded faintly, seemed satisfied. She buried her face in the cup of tea, inhaling its hot vapors.

  Vic looked at Sarah and Angel. Angel was pale himself, afraid Annie would expire right there in front of them. He was funny about that. Death was an everyday event at Brighton Woods. But Angel didn’t want to talk about it. Angel always changed the subject.

  Sarah’s lips were tight. She glared at Vic, eyes narrow. “You’re not going to monopolize that thing…I won’t stand for it…we all have the same rights here…nobody’s going to take my Del away from me again…not this time—“

  4.

  The next morning was cool and misty, with fog rising off the lawn behind Brighton West. It was Vic Lockhart who discovered that old Joe Harper, the Time Gardener, had died, killed tragically overnight in a car accident just outside the gates of Brighton Woods. Hit by a delivery truck, hit and run, the police determined. Apparently, he’d been hauling something in a wheelbarrow across the highway, right where the road bent around the entrance canopy to Brighton Woods, when the truck hit. Knocked him sixty-two feet, it was reported, hell of an impact, and landed his broken body in a culvert on the other side.

  A few hours later, the incident was known all over Brighton Woods. The B-West bridge group gathered at a damp wrought iron table, in the gloom of the mid-morning fog, wrapped in robes and light jackets against the chilly air, and discussed what to do next.

  “Well,” Sarah murmured, over her coffee cup, “what the hell are we going to do now?”

  Angel Havener chewed thoughtfully on a bagel, cream cheese squeezing out on both sides of his mouth. “How about nothing? As in: this was all a bad dream and we imagined the whole thing. Old farts live in the past anyway…you know that.”

  “We can’t just ignore it,” Vic said. He wore a dark gray pea coat and a white nautical cap with elaborate insignia on the peak. “Joe worked hard to build that garden, kept it up. It’d be wrong to let it go. We’d honor Joe, I’m sure, by taking over the job.”

  “Taking over the job?” Sarah was incredulous. “Who do you think you are? We’re all inmates here—you think the Administration’s going to let us run the place? And what do you know about running a…er, time garden anyway?”

  Vic forced
his fists to unclench. Some days, Sarah just made him want to—“I know one thing…the garden’s deteriorating. Going away. It’s getting used up fast, Joe told me.”

  “That’s because you and Conrad are hogging the thing to yourselves. Like little boys in a sandbox…this is my castle and you can’t get in.”

  “Hold on, Sarah, just hold on, will you? I got a plan for that too.” Vic had spent much of the night tossing and turning in bed, half in and out of sleep, visions of time gardens mixing with snowy Korean hillsides and frozen Chicom faces fading into white-jacketed Brighton staff members. All very confusing, very troubling. He’d stayed awake half the night, watching some Gregory Peck movie on the tube, working out ideas on paper, like he always did, scribbling to think. “I got it all worked out. We’ve just got to set up some kind of system. Some kind of schedule, with passes, maybe even reservations. It’s the only way this is going to work.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” Sarah said. “There’s enough of that around here as it is…passes for the gym, passes to the theater, passes to take a crap…why don’t we just use the honor system. We are adults here, you know. At least, most of us are.”

  Vic scowled. It wouldn’t take much for him to haul off and sock the woman right in the kisser. “Because,” he seethed, “some of us have no honor. Trust me…this is for the best. Now—we need to vote…somebody’s got to manage the system. Be the gatekeeper. Punch tickets and so forth.”

  “You do it, Vic,” said Conrad. “And how are we going to keep the thing going now that Joe’s gone…what do we know about running a time garden?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad…Joe showed me a few things. I think I can handle the basics.”

  Sarah just rolled her eyes, but Conrad was worried. “Is there an admission price?”

  “No, you dolt, there’s no admission price. This is just a way to keep everybody happy. We’ve got a finite resource out there. Everybody should have a chance to use it.”

  “What about Miss Annie?”

  Vic remembered his promise and checked with her. Annie Jacobs appeared a small, shrunken child, looking like some kind of mummified remains from a tomb, her petite black frame lost in the slats of the big deck chair. Her eyes were shut tight and she was breathing shallowly.

  “Annie, Annie…wake up. You still want to go to the time garden today? Are you feeling okay…feeling strong enough?”

  For such a wizened figure, her voice was surprisingly strong and clear. “Mmhhmm. See my David, I do.”

  Vic patted her hand. “That settles that. What say we talk about this on the walk out. It’s a twenty minute hike. Conrad, you and me will have to help Annie. We’ll put her through and see if she can’t find David.”

  Conrad liked the idea. Everybody was pulling for Annie. “Maybe she can find old Joe Harper too. Get us some instructions on how to keep this time garden up. I suppose he didn’t leave any operator’s manual lying around.”

  Half an hour later, the bridge group had found their way to the garden. Vic and Conrad scouted the perimeter of the clearing, just to make sure no one else was about. Sarah and Angel helped Annie Jacobs down to the side of the pool, helped her pull her jacket off. She wanted to stay in her dress, which billowed out like a balloon as soon as she dropped into the water. She shivered uncontrollably, until Sarah eased into the water beside her and hugged her to keep her warm.

  Vic explained what she was supposed to do, several times, making the frail old black lady repeat each step, until he was sure she understood.

  “It’s important, Annie. You have to hold your breath and grope around underwater. You won’t have much time, so you have to find it fast.” He turned to Conrad. “Maybe one of us should go with her.”

  The actor shook his head. “Not enough room, Vic. She’ll do fine. Annie’s a strong lady.”

  “Right. Anyway, when you find the opening, shimmy through. You have to kick a bit and kinda tug with your hands…but once your head’s through, you’ll have light and air and then you kind of spin—“

  “—only you don’t get dizzy—“Sarah added. “It feels good actually. Like your shedding old stuff, getting into a new skin—“

  Conrad bent down to the pool, took Annie’s hand. “Honey…I know you’re going backward. But trust me, the future’s better. You have to twist around, really contort yourself to get there, it’s different from the past.” He smiled broadly, thinking of Molly on the big screen. “But it sure is worth it. It’s more than worth it. Anyway, good luck, sweetie—“

  Annie Jacobs smiled. Like a Cheshire cat, the smile lowered itself to the water and disappeared below the surface. Only the billowing pale pink dress marked where she had been. Soon, it too was gone.

  “Somebody keep the count,” Vic called. “My watch isn’t working…hasn’t been working right since I went through.”

  “Fifteen seconds…so far—“ Conrad made the count. “She’ll do fine…she’s a strong lady, that one.”

  At three minutes, a ripple of concern began to surface. Vic and Sarah stirred uneasily, glanced sideways at Conrad, whose eyes were fixed to his watch.

  At four minutes, there was still no sign of Annie. The waters of the grotto were eerily still. Not a single ripple disturbed the pool. There were no bubbles, no foam, nothing.

  At four and a half minutes, Vic moved down to the landing and bent his face closer to the water. “Anybody see her? I don’t see a thing.”

  “Too dark, from here,” Angel said. He was anxious, tapping his feet on a smooth river stone embedded in the grotto wall.

  At five minutes, Vic couldn’t stand it any longer. “Something’s wrong—“ he started ripping off his jacket, then his shirt. “I’m going in—“

  Conrad did the same. “Me too.”

  Both men eased into the pool and groped for a few moments, then at a signal, they both ducked under. After ten seconds, froth and foam churned the water and then, in an explosive geyser of water, both men erupted into the air. Vic cradled the prostrate body of Annie in his arms, Conrad helped hoist her legs up. Her face was pale, deathly blue.

  “Somebody help me get her up—“Vic yelled. He waded through the water to the slate landing and, working with Conrad, passed the petite black woman up and over to dry ground. Angel and Sarah dragged her feet around and situated her head against a wad of jackets from the men. Conrad and Vic climbed out.

  “Somebody go get the nurses. Get Will…he knows stuff! Call the clinic…right now!”

  Angel hustled off at a trot through the forest. Vic pushed everybody away and bent to Annie’s face, feeling inside her swollen mouth, trying to make sure her airway was not blocked. Then he bent forward and started resuscitation efforts.

  Sarah was shivering in spite of herself. “God…oh, God…let it not be too late…please, God, let it not be—“

  Will Moreno, the day guard, and two nurses and one physician from the clinic arrived at the garden in about ten minutes. Dr. Broadley was the physician, slim, dark-haired, former champion swimmer—Broadley was the love object of half the females at Brighton. He glared at the assembly, barking orders.

  “Get me some covers…she’s going into shock. What the hell are you people doing anyway…is this some kind of weird rite? Initiation ceremony? You’re all nuts, or worse…this woman doesn’t belong out here—“

  “Can you help her, Doc?” Vic asked quietly. “Just shut up and help the lady, will you?”

  Annie Jacobs pulled through, barely, and was taken to Deerfield Clinic, for observation overnight. Later that night, after being given a sedative and having her lungs and heart thoroughly checked, she was put on a respirator and left alone for a while.

  Vic and Sarah came by, prevailed on the nurse at the duty station to let them at least see her. She relented, reluctantly, and they went in. Annie wasn’t asleep.

  Her voice was tinny, barely audible behind the respirator
mask. She was crying softly, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Sarah came over, dabbed at the tears. “What’s wrong, Sweetie? What is it? Doc Broadley says you’re going to be okay…just a little water in your lungs. Few days and you’ll be as good as new.”

  “I saw him…Sarah—“ she whispered softly. “My David…I seen him…couldn’t stop him…the gun came out…” she trembled and her lips quivered so much the mask seemed in danger of sliding off. Vic fixed it back. “He got shot…I never saw before…how it went down…so horrible—“ she shook her head, made a face, “so horrible, so much blood.”

  “Then you did go through?” Vic asked. “You made it?”

  “Oh, yes…my Lord…I saw all of it…everything…God wanted me to see it—“ she coughed and a nurse appeared quickly in the door, a stern look on her face

  “She needs rest, you two.” She motioned them out.

  But Annie grabbed a hold of Sarah’s sleeve, puller her closer. “I went through the time garden, Sarah, really, I did. It was—“ she struggled for the right word “—horrible and wonderful at the same time. David got shot. I couldn’t stop it. I tried…tried to save him and protect him…” her hands clutched Sarah tighter, squeezing and trembling at the same time, “but I couldn’t. I tried to revive…bring him back, but half his head—“she choked on her words, more tears rolled down her cheeks. “I didn’t go back fur enough…something pulled me away…I have to go back again—“

  “You almost died in that pool, Annie.”

  “I have to go back…have to go back further…I don’t care about dying…David got shot…if I can stop it—“

  “It’s past time,” the nurse insisted. “Come on out, you two…let Miss Annie get some rest.”

  On his way out, Vic remembered something. “Annie…did you see Joe anywhere around? Joe Harper?”

  The frail black woman was pawing at her respirator mask, wanting to pull it off, fussing with the nurse. Her voice was thick.

  “No. I didn’t see no Joe Harper. Didn’t see nobody but my David—“

  5.

  For the next several days, the atmosphere at Brighton Woods was tense and apprehensive. Tempers were short, conversations clipped and the staff brusque and irritable. Annie Jacobs stayed in Deerfield Clinic. Dr. Broadley was insistent. “She needs to be under observation…her bronchial tissues and lungs are weak, inflamed. I want to run some tests.”

  And Will Moreno, the day guard, had orders from the Administration to keep everybody away from the time garden.

  Several days went by and no one was allowed to visit the garden where Annie Jacobs had nearly drowned. “Sorry,” Will, the guard, would tell them. “I got orders from the Big Man…no one goes near that place. In fact, there’s been talk of fencing it off. Maybe tearing it down completely.”

  Sarah Gibson was incredulous. “What! You can’t be serious. After all the work Joe Harper put into that place…it should be a memorial to him. They can’t do that.”

  Vic Lockhart was furious. “I want to talk with the Administrator. What does he think this is…some kind of POW camp? The nerve—“

  Late one afternoon, in the Colonial Room over tea and cookies, the bridge group decided they couldn’t allow the Administration to tear down Joe Harper’s time garden. It was an outrage. Clearly, they would have to act.

  “But what can we do?” Conrad Bell asked. He was breaking off small nubs of chocolate chip from his cookies and building a separate pile of them on his plate, making ready to have an orgy of chocolate, even soliciting others’ cookies for donation. “We could demonstrate…have a sit-in outside his office.”

  “Get real,” Vic snarled. “They want to keep the old farts in line. Everything’s got to be official and approved and age-appropriate. You know how it works. Any time the inmates start having fun on their own, it’s a threat.”

  “We need a new gardener,” Sarah said quietly. “Someone like Joe.”

  Conrad patted Vic on the shoulder. “Here’s your man…always volunteering for the tough missions…just ask him.”

  “Shut up. Since you raised the matter, Joe did show me a few things. But that garden’s failing. It’s going to break down pretty soon. Joe told me that and I can see it myself. I got to figure out how it works, how to fix it. We don’t want to lose it now.”

  Angel Havener brushed imaginary lint from his corduroy jacket and sniffed. “Who else could do it? You’re perfect, Vic.”

  Sarah glowered at the prospect but said nothing.

  The discussion rambled on but more and more, Vic seemed the best candidate. By five o’clock, it was time for everybody to get ready for dinner—tonight was Italian night and Chef Cosmo had promised a surprise—no more rubbery spaghetti that gave everybody the runs.

  “We have to decide,” Conrad was sure. “Why don’t we vote?”

  “I’m not a candidate,” Vic lied. But it didn’t matter. Majority ruled and Vic was elected the new tender of Joe’s garden. The time gardener.

  “You’ll do fine,” Conrad told him.

  Secretly, Vic thought he probably was the best candidate. He’d studied what Joe did, asked a lot of questions, gotten a few answers. But he knew he didn’t really know any more about how the garden worked than anybody else. He looked at each of the others in turn.

  “We’re all in this together, agreed?”

  There was a general nodding of heads.

  “And we keep this to ourselves…at least for the time being. We can’t have every old geezer in Brighton Woods diving into that pool trying to relive his favorite moments. Agreed?”

  Nods again, not as certain.

  “We’ve got to have a plan,” Vic decided. “If I’m the time gardener, we’re going to do this by some kind of system.”

  Sarah was sour about having Vic in charge. “As long as it’s equal. Everybody gets equal time. Nobody hogs the garden.”

  Vic pointed a finger right at her. “Exactly my plan, lady. Democracy in action.”

  “So what is our plan?” Angel asked. “Don’t keep it a secret.”

  “Well—“Vic scratched what was left of his hair, twirled a few tufts in his fingers, trying to think “—seems like we have to do several things.”

  “Well, enlighten us, o’ great leader—“ Sarah muttered.

  Vic ignored her. “We’ve got to convince the Administrator to leave the garden and the grotto alone…we could offer to keep it up ourselves. I know Mildred’s big into gardening. I’ve done masonry work before. We can do it…I’m sure we can. Then, since I’m no expert on how this time machine works, we’re going to have to run some experiments, see exactly how it works. Joe said it was starting to deteriorate. And we almost lost Annie, so maybe he’s right. Trouble is…I haven’t the faintest idea how to fix the damn thing.”

  “Mmm—“ Conrad said. “and he didn’t leave repair instructions, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Everyone was generally agreeable with Vic’s plan. Everyone except Angel. He snuffed and wheezed…he did that when he wanted attention.

  “What about you, Dr. Havener? What’s eating you?”

  Angel shrugged. His big shoulders moved like a mountain. “I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Look—“Vic pointed out, ticking off ideas on his fingertips, “it’s probably not safe…you saw what almost happened to Annie.”

  “I don’t care—I want to make a trip. Like Conrad here…into the future. Maybe it works okay that way—we don’t know it doesn’t. Annie went back in time. Maybe forward still works.”

  Vic was shaking his head. “Angel, why risk it right now? We may be able to fix the garden, make it safer.”

  “And you may not fix it,” he replied. “The whole garden may go kaput and I’d be stuck right here…with nothing—“ he stopped, his face lowered and he stared at cookie crumbs on the table.

  Angel had pancreatic cancer. Everybo
dy knew that. His days were few and some days, he struggled with the certainty of his own mortality.

  Vic swallowed hard. They had to stay together. If the bridge group fell to bickering and whining, the time garden was as good as lost forever.

  “Why the future, Angel? None of has a future… we all know that. We have to accept things…that’s the way it is. There’s nothing in the future, for any of us.”

  “You’re wrong—“ he blurted out, near tears. “I want to see what happens to gay people…see if life’s any better for them. Fifty years ago…I came out, made peace with what I was, looked myself in the mirror—“ he snuffled, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose with a big honk “—decided I was, you know, all right. I was all right. Now…the end’s coming…I just want to see how it turns out. Fifty years from now. Not necessarily for me, for others. It’s been a fight, the whole thing’s been a struggle, one day at a time—“

  “Okay, okay—“ Vic surrendered. He hated men crying. It wasn’t right when men shed tears. “Don’t lose your marbles, Ang.”

  There was an embarrassed silence around the table. Angel had been doing so well. No one offered any resistance. Vic promised Angel he could be next to use the time garden.

  “But I want to check the place out first. Plus we have to get the Administrator on our side. Can’t have Will out there trying to arrest us or something. He’d probably have a heart attack trying.”

  That said, the agreement was in place. The bridge group of B-West would take over running old Joe Harper’s time garden.

  6.

  The very next night, Vic and Conrad and Sarah were on hand, as Angel wiggled out if his size 48 trousers and jacket, shimmied down to his underpants, and stood on the side of the grotto pool, chewing the end of an unlit pipe.

  “You’ll have to lose the pipe,” Vic said. “Water and flame don’t mix too well.”

  “Very funny.” Angel handed it to Conrad, who gingerly carried it by his fingertips as if it were highly contaminated. He dropped it on the grass back of the footbridge.

  “You understand what I explained to you?” Conrad asked.

  Angel nodded. He sat on the slate landing and slipped into the water. “I duck my head under and grope around for the opening. Then kick hard, twist a little to get into the future time stream and pull myself through.”

  “That’s how it worked for me,” the actor said. “I can’t explain it but it worked.”

  “If it works at all,” Vic muttered. “That water ain’t foaming as much…I don’t know what that means…maybe nothing. But it always foamed like Sarah’s bathtub before.”

  “What the hell do you know about my bathtub?” Sarah asked.

  “Never mind…Angel…we always do a count when a person goes under. Safety precaution. I should have reacted quicker with Annie.” He reached out and put a firm hand on Angel’s massive shoulder. “If I get to three minutes and you haven’t come back up…I’m coming in after you. Understood?”

  Angel nodded silently. “Here goes—“he pinched his nose and submerged in a spray of bubbles. Soon enough, the waters of the grotto were still.

  “Start the count,” Vic ordered.

  “Liftoff and the clock is running…” Conrad read off the dial of his watch. “Coming up on twenty seconds. Mark—“

  Vic stood staring down at the tawny brown water, squinting for any sign of Angel below the surface. It was opaque and eerily still. “Wise guy. Just let me know at one minute.”

  Time passed with glacial slowness, as Vic, Conrad and Sarah stared hard at the faint ripples breaking the surface of the water. No sign of Angel.

  One minute passed.

  Two minutes.

  At exactly three minutes, Vic couldn’t stand it any longer. He ripped off his jacket and shirt and leaped feet first into the water. Ducking under, he scrambled frantically, feeling with feet and hands for something, anything…and then he bumped into it…a huge, unmoving mass. It had to be Angel.

  He went down, Conrad joining him, and the two of them strained and groaned to lift the dead weight of the body up to the surface.

  Angel Havener wasn’t breathing. They turned him over and steered him to the side of the grotto. Sarah was thunderstruck, horrified, her hands in her mouth.

  “Help…help me…get this guy…UP!”

  They rolled and pushed and heaved and dragged, the three of them, until finally they managed to get Angel up and over the slate edging and onto the grass. He rolled upright, his mouth blue, eyes wide open, a look of surprise on his face.

  Vic pulled himself out of the pool and knelt down to begin resuscitation, but it was useless…they could all see that.

  Angel Havener was dead.

  “Oh…oh, God…” Sarah snuffled, wiping her eyes, hyperventilating, her hands fluttering, useless about her face. “God…what are we going to—is he…is he?”

  Vic looked up, his own eyes glazed and narrow. Slowly, he nodded. “It’s no use…he’s gone—“

  Sarah Gibson burst into tears.

  Conrad knelt alongside Vic as he smoothed back Angel’s hair, still plastered to his forehead. “What happened—why didn’t he come up?”

  Vic was already thinking fast. “I don’t know, dammit. Something went wrong. Maybe it’s the portal…maybe it malfunctioned. Joe said it needed work.”

  Sarah dropped to her knees, stroking Angel’s hair. “He didn’t care if he lived or not. With that cancer—“

  “You think he did this deliberately?” Conrad asked.

  Vic shrugged. “The real question is: what do we do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Vic stood up, looked around. He wandered back up toward the tool shed, poked his head in the door. Then he came back.

  “It’s a cinch we can’t tell anybody what happened?”

  Sarah was incredulous. “We have to tell the nurses. We have to tell the guards and staff. Poor Angel deserves to be treated right.”

  “Sarah, listen to me: if we tell the staff, that’ll be the end of the garden. The end of the time machine. They’ll never let anyone near here again.”

  Sarah snuffled. “Maybe they shouldn’t—“

  Conrad said, “—no, listen, maybe Vic’s right. If we don’t tell anybody what happened, for a few days at least, maybe we can figure out how to fix this thing. Sarah, listen to him for once…it makes sense. Joe Harper left us with an incredible gift here…it’s up to us to use it right. Do right by Joe.”

  “But…what about Angel?”

  Vic said, “Looks like an accident to me. Conrad, there’s room in the shed. Don’t start bawling, Sarah, now, just keep it down, will you? It’s only for a few days.”

  “It isn’t right.”

  But Conrad and Vic were already carrying the lifeless body of Angel Havener up the hill to the tool shed. Vic kicked the door open with his foot and they shuffled and dragged the body inside. It was pitch black but there was enough light from the bronze lanterns around the pool to provide dim illumination.

  They situated Angel in a corner, propped upright and wedged between an old sawhorse and a stack of seed bags.

  “He’ll be all right for a day or so,” Vic decided.

  “Till the flies get him. What about the smell?”

  Vic was already shutting the door behind them. “We have to fix the time machine first. Then…maybe we can put him closer to the service road or something.”

  “I know…maybe down by the cart bridge…the one that goes to Deerfield Clinic. Tell ‘em Angel kind of fell off, died in a fall into the creek. Sort of a suicide.”

  “Now you’re talking. Come on—“

  They said no more, any of them, that night about Angel Havener. The thought that they had just committed murder, or assisted in a suicide, hung heavily in the air, but it was never voiced.

  “You think the time machine’s conked out?” Conrad asked. He washed his h
ands in the pool, drying them on his pants, and fanning them in the cool air. “Gone kaput?”

  Vic shrugged, walking around the grotto. He rubbed his chin, folded his arms, scratched the back of his head. How the hell did the thing work? In the Marines, he’d been a pretty good country mechanic. He could always get a jeep or a deuce and a quarter truck going, even in the middle of a firefight. But this thing—this time machine—

  “It’s got me stumped,” Vic admitted. “Except, maybe—“

  “What?”

  “Well, I keep thinking back to something Joe said. He once told me the garden works on wasted time, unused time.” He stopped at the very top of the grotto wall, sat down with his legs dangling over the pool. The waters were perfectly still.

  Conrad joined him. “Yeah, so--?”

  “Just this. I’m thinking Angel drowned, either by accident or—maybe he wanted to. If the garden works on unused time, maybe Angel really went before his time, you know? Maybe there’s some unused time there, something we could use. Joe said it was like fuel, sort of.”

  “So what do we do now?” Conrad asked.

  Vic was working it out in his head. He took a deep breath. “The way I got it figured…there’s only one way to keep the portal going…if I understand Joe right. We’ve got to send one more person through. Maybe we can get one more use out of it, get back—somewhere in the past—to where we can find Joe. He said there were other time gardeners too. Then we can learn what can be done, if anything, to repair or restore the portal.”

  “Hey, if you’re right, maybe we can put Angel’s body back through too,” Conrad said. “Put him back through…to a time before he died. Kind of like bringing him back—what do you think?”

  Sarah was having no part of this scheme. “I think you’ve both gone off the deep end. I’m quite certain only the Lord God Almighty can raise the dead.”

  “We don’t know if it’ll work or not,” Vic said. “I’m just saying it’s worth a try.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’ve changed my mind about this thing. Maybe we ought to just leave it alone. Let it go. It killed Angel. Nearly killed Annie—“

  “Sarah…knock it off. Angel died because he wanted to,” Vic said. “We all knew what was going on. The man was terminal…he had a few months, if that. It wasn’t the first time he tried to knock himself off.”

  “Vic Lockhart, shut your mouth. Don’t speak like that. Every minute of life is precious…Angel was just—“

  “Crazy,” Conrad finished the sentence. “Suicidal…there I said it again. What are you going to do about it?”

  She stuck out her tongue. “At least the man should have a dignified burial. Sticking him up there in the tool shed, like a sack of seed…really—“

  “Sarah, so help me—“ Vic warned her. “If you go blabbing this to the staff, I’ll strangle you myself.”

  “You wish—“

  Conrad held up his hands. “Kids, really. Save the drama for later. Vic, what’s the plan?”

  Vic stood up, hand on his hips. In the shadows of the grotto, he looked almost feral. Only a faint reflection from the bald spot on the back of his head spoiled the image.

  Vic knew something that he could never tell them, something that had been bothering him for years. He should have died at the Anjin camp in Manchuria. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d been lucky. But maybe it wasn’t really luck at all.

  “I’ll go through again. Tomorrow night. I guess it’s sort of my responsibility now, anyway. You guys can keep this to yourselves at least that long, can’t you?”

  Sullenly, they both nodded. “What about Angel? You just going to leave him up there?”

  “Nope,” Vic said. “I’m taking him with me when I go through. Old Joe may be right…Angel went before his time. Maybe we can use him to re-charge the garden. Maybe there’s some things I can do too, to balance things out. It’s worth a try anyway. There’s not enough room for both of us, but somehow I’ll make it. Are we agreed then? Tomorrow night…right here…say about 9:30?”

  “I may get drunk instead,” Sarah insisted. “That’s the only way any of this makes sense.”

  “I’ll drag her along with me,” Conrad promised.

  And so they finally, reluctantly, agreed to Vic’s idea.

  7.

  The next night came and it was cool and damp, a chill breeze blowing through the Black Forest. Sarah was red-eyed when Vic and Conrad collected her from her apartment in Brighton East. But her breath was clear.

  “Honest, guys, I haven’t had a thing to drink.” She shambled after them. She didn’t tell them she’d been crying most of the day.

  Will Moreno was curious, even suspicious, at the trip and stopped them before they went out onto the pool deck.

  “I was just fixin’ to close the deck. Wood’s kind of slippery out there. Mildred almost lost her footing earlier this evening.”

  “Mildred could lose her footing taking a nap,” Sarah said tartly. “We’re grown-ups, for heavens’ sake. I think we can make it out to the table on our own.”

  Will fiddled with his big white moustache. “Maybe so, but you three be careful. I’m keeping my eye on you, just the same. Administration doesn’t want any unnecessary injuries.”

  “As opposed to necessary injuries—“ Conrad came back. They pushed by the guard stand and exited Brighton West onto the wooden deck. It was clammy and Sarah drew her sweater tighter.

  “Let’s go,” Vic decided. “No sense putting this off any longer.”

  “What about Will?”

  Vic didn’t have to answer. He’d already arranged for Dorothy Wright to create a little diversion. In fact, the commotion had already started behind them. They quickly made their way into the East Woods, while several staff members hustled after the naked black woman, who’s suddenly appeared in the common room and dropped her pink chiffon robe in front of everybody.

  Sarah chuckled at the sight. “Dottie does have a way with men, doesn’t she? Too bad she’s too old to do her can-can routine.”

  The woods were damp and dripping from the light drizzle that had fallen most of the day.

  Vic and Conrad retrieved Angel’s body from the back of the tool shed. He had started to smell but the shed contained most of it. They lugged his body down to the grotto and laid it on the landing by the footbridge.

  Sarah put a hand on Vic’s shoulder. “You know you don’t have to do this. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Vic was already stripping down to his underwear. “Spare me the speech, will you? If I’m going to be the time gardener, then I’ve got to start acting like one. See what’s messing this thing up. I’ll be okay. I’ve been through before.”

  He climbed into the pool, then worked with Conrad to maneuver Angel’s body over the side. Angel had been a heavy man,, weighing well over two hundred and fifty pounds. In death, he seemed to weigh a ton. Vic struggled to keep him afloat.

  “Wish me luck,” he said, after he had finally oriented Angel’s head toward the grotto wall.

  “Don’t run off with any cheap sluts,” Sarah told him.

  “Hey,” Vic waved at her, “there’s nothing cheap about this kid. When I was in the First Marines, they used to call me ‘hot-hands.’ Won just about every game of blackjack ever played.”

  “Good luck, then,” Conrad called.

  Vic shoved Angel’s head underwater and submerged with the corpse as it began to sink.

  He floundered with the body for a few moments, groping for the opening he knew was there. Finally, his fingers probed along the rock wall and found the seam. It seemed smaller than he remembered, but he figured that was an illusion.

  Holding his breath, he struggled with Angel, finally grasping the dead man around his ample waist, then nosing forward through the murk.

  When he was sure he had found the opening to the time portal, he kicked as hard as he could,
squeezing Angel’s arms tight and shot through, banging his cheek on the side of the gateway.

  For the briefest instant, he was dizzy, then spinning like a ball, over and over and over again, whirling like he‘d done as a kid on the merry-go-round…you could almost make yourself sick if you leaned way back while you were spinning, and he loved to do just that—

  Then he was freezing cold and tumbling and when he opened his eyes, he realized he was falling, spinning around, over and over again and he was picking up speed, as his body thrashed and crashed through snowdrifts. Finally, after his lungs were on fire and he was about to burst, he slammed into a rock at the bottom of a hill and it practically knocked him senseless.

  He lay there, dazed for a moment, just trying to get his bearings, then with a dawning sense of dread, knew for sure that he had been here before.

  It was an icy snowfield in Manchuria, just outside the camp gates, with a warm glow emanating from the guard towers, just over top of the snow banks. The wind howled around him and the blizzard seemed to pick up strength.

  He was back in Korea. And Angel Havener was nowhere to be seen.

  But something was wrong. Vic Lockhart, Private First Class of Charlie Company of the 1st Marines, United States X Corps, blinked open an eye and knew that what he was seeing had never happened.

  He was outside the gates of the Anjin camp.

  A couple of times after he’d been taken prisoner by the Chicoms and the gooks, he’d tried to escape. But he’d never made it. That was the lie he had lived with for so many years…that’s what he had to change now…and to hell with Angel Havener.

  The truth was he’d never been outside the compound until that hot, sweltering day in July, 1953, after the armistice and the big truck with the UN crest had come by and scooped them all up from the dragon’s maw and delivered them to joyous freedom.

  So what was he doing here?

  Vic scrambled to his feet, squinting through stinging sleet crystals and the howling wind. He heard voices on the wind, Chicoms, and he scuttled off toward what little cover there was, a scrawny line of bushes half buried in snow in a culvert at the base of the hill. Then he stopped. More voices. They were everywhere, all around him.

  He was trapped. Even as he realized it, faces materialized out of the ice fog, faces and barrels of rifles. Suddenly the culvert was crawling, alive with faces and guttural voices.

  “—li fang…zhu li fang!—oi! Oi!”

  He got up to his knees and put his hands behind his head. It was so cold, he didn’t really care. Kill me here, red bastard, go ahead and shoot, goddamn it! Get it over with.

  But they didn’t shoot. He was roughly hoisted to his feet, stumbling in the deep snow and his hands were quickly bound with rope. Before he knew it, he was marching, shuffling and slipping and sliding up and down the hills, north, always north, back toward the very mouth of Hell itself.

  Just like it had been five weeks before, when the Chicoms cut Charlie Company to pieces three days after Thanksgiving.

  As soon as Vic Lockhart and Petey and Oscar saw the watchtowers of Camp Seven, four miles northeast of the town of Anjin, they knew they had reached their final destination. The death march from the battlefield at Hill 1282 near Yudam-ni had lasted almost three weeks. Well over half the column of prisoners had fallen out, dead from frostbite and exposure, dead from Chinese bullets, dead from slipping on icy mountain passes and falling hundreds of feet into ravines.

  Those remaining were dead too, Vic figured. They just didn’t know it yet.

  That includes me. Vic knew he should have died on the march. But he hadn’t. Maybe if he had, the Time Garden would work better. No, don’t even think like that.

  Somehow, some way, unaccountably, they had survived it all. Vic had prayed every morning, when the guards made them lie down in the scrawny bushes and packed them with snow to conceal the column from aerial reconnaissance, prayed that Death would take him and deliver him from the ordeal. But every night, after shivering in forty-mile an hour winds and swirling blizzards, he rose at bayonet point just after dusk, took his meal of watered-down gruel and stale bread, and marched on through the night, slogging up and down icy hills, across frozen rice paddies. Slogging, trudging and finally the last week limping on swollen and numb feet toward the Yalu River valley and the border.

  Vic was certain as he could be that he knew what Hell was and he told himself he didn’t need any sing-song preacher from the back-woods of Alabama to explain the concept.

  Camp Seven was officially known as Prisoner Re-education and Corrective Labor Camp Number Seven, administered by Unit 681 of the Fiftieth Field Army of the Chinese Peoples Volunteers. For all the grandiose administrative title, it was a spartan rectangle of huts and barracks-style wooden beam buildings, arrayed in concentric squares, surrounded by three rows of barbed-wire fence, overlooked by thirty-foot high truss work watchtowers at opposite ends of the main rectangle. There were two squares of barracks abutting each other, inside a quadrangle stockade, surrounded by the camp administration hut and guards barracks, themselves inside another perimeter of wire and icy ditches, all well open and crisscrossed with excellent fields of fire from the watchtowers.

  Vic knew he had been here before. Outwardly, Camp Seven looked like it always had. But something seemed different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  The next morning came, cold and gray, and a loud knocking stirred the prisoners. Three Red guards appeared in the doorway. One of them, senior in rank, shuffled through the night’s snowfall into the barracks and glared around at the newly arrived men. He shuffled some more, kicking at a few bodies, until he came to the tiny alcove where Petey and Oscar and Vic lay all entwined for warmth.

  “Ka!” he barked. “Ka hu tsien…zomo, zomo!” His buddies bent down and hoisted Pfc. Vic Lockhart up by his arms. The Marine, still groggy, staggered to his feet, but the guards didn’t give him time to stand upright. They dragged him anyway, feet scrambling to keep up, out the door, into the snow, then jerked him fully upright and quick-marched him off to the inner quadrangle gate. The gate creaked open and the guards with Vic, carried along like an unwilling dog, passed through.

  Goggins and Noland, the Army guys, had seen it all before. Petey dragged himself up and stood beside the doggie sergeant, bleary-eyed, shivering in the chill wind, as they peered out the flap-window.

  “What the hell---where are they taking Lockhart?”

  “City Hall,” the Army man said in a low voice. “Bad news for your pal.”

  “City Hall?”

  “That’s what we call the camp administration building. You can just see it through the gate…that building with the chimney. Only chimney in the whole fuckin’ camp.”

  Petey’s blood ran cold. “Interrogation?”

  “Yep.” Noland shut the flap and went back to some whittling he had been working on, some kind of wood carving he was fashioning with a shaved-down belt buckle off someone’s uniform. “Looks like the ‘Mayor’ has taken an interest in our new visitors.”

  Petey just stared at him.

  Lieutenant Lu-Si-lingh was the strangest ‘mayor’ Private First Class Victor Lockhart had ever laid eyes on. He had a pig’s face, with an upturned nose and narrow slit eyes, and a smidgen of black moustache that looked for all the world like a grease stain. In fact, in different circumstances Vic might have even laughed at the Red lieutenant’s appearance. He looked like some kind of Three Stooges version of a Chinese laundryman, the very kind of soldier that Tenth Corps C/O General Almond had said Americans shouldn’t be running from at all, only a few weeks before.

  The camp guards had dragged Vic into a small room, furnished with a stool and a table and chair arrangement. Vic stood before the table, more or less at attention, while Liu handwrote some kind of order on a piece of paper. He tore off an edge of the paper, where he had been writing, and handed it to one of the guards. Then he motioned for Vic to sit
on the stool. When he didn’t budge, Liu looked up, his eyes hardening. He glowered coldly at the American, then gestured again. This time, Vic was assisted by the guards, who rammed his butt down hard onto the stool, like he was a pile driver. The stool wobbled a moment. Vic found himself sitting below the table, staring up at the Mayor of Camp Seven.

  “Your name, please?” Liu spoke passable English, accented with some kind of strange twang that reminded Vic of a Kentucky mountain man.

  “Lockhart, Victor LaRue. Private First Class, United States Marines. Serial number one-seven-six-three-oh—“ he grunted as a rifle butt slammed into the side of his face, knocking him off the stool and onto the hard wooden floor. The guards held his head down for a minute and Vic got a splinter up his nose.

  “Don’t play games with me, Yankee soldier,” Liu hissed. He rose behind the table. “Prisoners who try to escape do not play games.”

  Vic figured he had heard wrong. He didn’t remember ever escaping from Anjin…this time stream was all wrong—but now Liu was going on—

  “One simple rule here…I ask, you answer. You answer exactly. You tell the truth.” He nodded to the guards, who jerked him upright and plopped him down on the stool again.

  “Okay, American soldier, let us try this again. Where are you from?”

  Vic just glared at the Chinaman. This was all wrong. This had never happened. After a few moments’ pause, Liu nodded ever so slightly to the guards. In the back of his mind, the Marine had already labeled them Moe and Curly. Another rifle butt to the head sent Vic flying to the floor, this time with a bloody nose.

  “I asked a question, American. You do not understand the rules? It’s time for a lesson.”

  At that, Moe and Curly began kicking Vic in the ribs, kicking him in the head, slamming the butts of their rifles into the small of his back. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming, but pain won out and he cried in agony, then curled into a fetal position as the kicks rained down on him. This went on for five minutes.

  Liu had his goons hoist the Marine back up and plop him on the stool. He wobbled, dizzy for a moment. Moe nudged him in the back to keep him upright. Silently, Vic thanked the guard.

  “Again, Private. Where are you from?”

  This time, Vic mumbled, “Chicago.”

  “That’s better. You are a rich American family?”

  Vic stared sullenly. Somehow, he had come into the Time Garden the wrong way. Maybe it was Angel…he’d affected the passage. He remembered being tortured a few times. But he was sure he’d never been outside the camp. He was being tortured for escaping, but he knew he had never escaped. This was wrong.

  Now, Liu’s moustache was twitching like a mouse. It was a signal. The blows came again, again to the head and back. The room spun around and the floorboards rushed up to his face. Vic found his eyes swollen shut; he could barely squint through tiny slits. More blows, more kicks, more rifle butts. Curly had a snarly face. Moe seemed more sympathetic. His whole body throbbed, begged him….

  He was jerked upright, slouching in the guards’ grasp, and roughly situated on the stool. They had to steady him to keep him from toppling over.

  “What do you think about rich people, Private Lockhart? Rich American families are leeches, sucking the life out of the working class. I know you come from a rich family. Do you know what happens to rich people in Korea?”

  Vic just stared.

  “Insects, Private. That’s what rich people are. We are not kind to insects here. Show him what happens to insects.”

  Vic cringed and felt the blow to his head, which sent him sprawling to the floor again. Blood spurted and his face fell into a pool of it, his own blood. He groaned and writhed a little, then a boot heel came down on his face, grinding his nose and eyes into the boards further, splinters and blood and sawdust and spit scraping his face from chin to forehead.

  “Insects are destroyed!” ‘Mayor’ Liu yelled. The camp commander came around from behind his desk and leaned over Vic’s fallen body, screaming in his ear. “Destroyed mercilessly!” Liu stood up, gestured for the American to be erected again. It was a struggle, as Vic went limp, barely conscious from repeated head butts.

  “Your comrades have given up on you, Private Lockhart. You came through those gates into my camp. But you will never leave. Your comrades won’t wait for you.”

  “Wha--?...no…they—“ The Time Garden had to work—he couldn’t be left here to die like an insect.

  “Private, you are an insect. American GIs don’t like sniveling, rich bastard insects like you. That’s why President Truman sent you to Korea. To get rid of you. Eh? You don’t believe me--?”

  Liu backhanded Vic in the face, a stinging, blood-flinging slap that burned his eyes. Somewhere in the dim and dark corners of his consciousness, Private Victor Lockhart realized it was the guard Moe who was keeping him upright, keeping him on the stool, occasionally wiping the blood off his face. Something about Moe—

  Vic realized the pig-faced ‘Mayor’ of Camp Seven had some kind of metal studs on his gloves. He slapped the Marine again, carving up his face into neat rows of bloody gashes.

  “You think Truman gives a damn about insects!” Liu screamed at him. He grabbed the Marine by the chin and jerked Vic’s face up, leering into his purplish eyes, mostly squeezed shut. “Look at me! Your precious President Truman is a liar, a wicked rat of a liar! He sent you here to murder Korean babies! You do murder babies, don’t you, Private?”

  Vic mumbled something incoherent, shaking his head groggily. “Nunhhh…garden,” was all he could croak out. His tongue was cut and blood frothed in his throat. He started coughing, spitting up blood.

  Liu backed off, ordering his hands to be tied. Stout cord was produced and Vic was lifted bodily off the stool, held at attention, as his hands were bound tightly behind his back. He felt a hand on his head, forcing him down, forcing him to squat and he complied. But Moe had placed a piece of 2x4 board behind his knees. He was made to squat down in a low crouch, holding the board pinned between his thighs and shins, hands tied behind him.

  I thought Moe was the good guy—

  The guards made sure his hands were extended as far as they could go, pulling so hard, he thought his shoulder would pop out of its socket.

  “Now, Private Lockhart, this is more like it,” Liu cackled. “Now you are not an insect. You are a jet airplane. The jet airplane that kills Korean babies and women. But we have jet airplanes too, you know.”

  As if on cue, the two guards rammed their knees and boot heels into Vic’s ribs again, then made all kinds of bombing and strafing sounds, firing imaginary machine guns at him, as they dove and swooped like birds around the Marine. He fell over at the first blows. It didn’t matter. Moe and Curly just put him back in the same position and kept up their blows and jet sounds.

  This went on for twelve hours.

  When he came to, he was numb and frostbitten—he couldn’t even feel his toes anymore. It was dark but there was a line of light ahead of him. He knew where he was…in the freezing cold punishment cell, the little tin box out by the edge of the quadrangle, between the barbed wire fences. No-man’s land.

  He couldn’t remember any more. Had he tried to escape? Had he gotten out and been caught? Had he dreamed the whole thing? Old Joe Harper was right…the Garden was getting finicky…you couldn’t trust it. It needed work. But it didn’t matter now. His body was wracked and shivering, broken and bloodied. Dried snot-cicles mixed with blood in his hair and beard. He rolled slightly and shudders of pain shinnied up and down his body, burning everything with fire.

  He lolled semi-conscious for what seemed like days. Then, a creaking noise echoed through the tin box and the light suddenly exploded in his eyes. He raised a hand, saw a face.

  It was one of the Red guards. Moe’s fat cheeks materialized out of the gloom, his breath frosty in the chill.

  M
oe smiled a toothless smile, helping him up, helping him to his knees, as he crawled out of the box. Winds scoured snow off nearby drifts, flinging sleet into his eyes and he staggered, wobbled, until Moe hoisted him up, draped an arm around his shoulder.

  What the hell was going on?

  Now, unaccountably, Moe spoke English, halting, but understandable.

  “I have a message for you, Yankee soldier.”

  Vic was dizzy, disoriented, delirious. He couldn’t feel his own feet and nearly collapsed. “Message—what message?”

  “There’s something I want to show you. Come on—get up, Yankee—“

  Stunned, half-delirious, Vic limped with help from Moe, out of the tin box and across the blowing snow field of the inner quadrangle. At a signal from the Red guard, the outer gates were flung open. They headed out of the camp, across a shallow ravine, across a frozen pond and toward a bleak patch of stunted, wind-blasted trees topping a rise, both leaning on each other, trudging through knee-deep snow.

  Vic and Moe staggered up to the top of the rise, bent to shield themselves from the blizzard. The wind drove swirls and small cyclones of snow across the field before them. Yet, as he squinted, Vic saw what he thought was a small rectangle of light, just ahead. At Moe’s urging, he moved closer.

  It was subzero, arctic, early in the morning. Beyond the rise, across a frozen rice paddy, he saw a small gathering of Manchurian peasants, bundled against the wind, wraiths in the wan orange glow of a small searchlight on a nearby tower. They were hacking with crude hoes and rakes and shovels, scratching at the hard-frozen soil, trying to make a meager garden of potatoes and radishes in the swirling snow.

  Vic blinked hard, wiped moisture from his eyes and squinted again. It didn’t make any sense. Why try to plant in the middle of the winter? He was sure he was delirious, imagining things.

  He raised his voice over the moan of the wind. “Just tell me one thing, will you?”

  Moe watched the peasants diligently scratching and scraping. “What is that?”

  “Did I actually escape the camp? Did I get out?”

  Moe turned slightly so his voice could be heard. He cupped a hand over his mouth, bent closer.

  “All things are possible, Yankee soldier. Anything that is planted…in the time garden…will grow.”

  Vic was confused. “Do you know me, then?”

  Moe nodded, ever so slightly. “And you know me.”

  Vic shook his head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. His face was swollen, his back and legs weak from the beatings. That much was real. He had the bruises to show for it.

  “You said you had a message. Is it from Joe…Joe Harper?”

  Moe just stared at him. “I’m Joe Harper.”

  Vic blinked. He tried wriggling his toes inside his shoe-pacs. He couldn’t feel them. Frostbite, most likely. He couldn’t feel any of this. Joe had died…the medical examiner—“It was an accident…that’s what it was. A tragic accident…Joe…you…you shouldn’t have been out in the road that night.”

  Moe didn’t say anything.

  The question formed on Vic’s lips before he knew it. “If you are Joe…I don’t know how…can you tell me what to do to fix the portal? All this…and Angel…him too—“

  Moe, the Chicom guard, switched his burp gun from one shoulder to another, as if it were becoming heavy. His waist was ringed with cord, and ammo clips clinked every time he moved, every time the wind howled.

  “You told me you wanted to work with the garden,” Moe said.

  Vic thought about that for a moment. He had said that. He had sort of assumed Joe’s position, told Sarah and Conrad and the others he’d do it, do whatever it took to the keep the garden—the portal—working. But it wasn’t working, not any more. It had killed Angel, nearly killed Annie Jacobs. For all he knew, it might have killed—

  “I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  For the first time, Moe smiled faintly. He indicated the gathering of peasants with the barrel of his burp gun. “They too are gardeners.”

  Vic watched them. “Looks kind of hopeless to me. Scratching at the ice and snow, trying to plant crap that’ll never grow. Hell…it probably won’t survive the night. Why do they do it? Why bother? Is that what it means to be a gardener?”

  Moe raised his burp gun, pointing with the dull black barrel toward a section of dilapidated fence nearby. Vic followed the barrel, shielding his eyes against the sleet. He moved a bit closer and was stunned to see the stacked bodies of camp prisoners, piled two and three high alongside the fence. A neat pile of bodies, still clothed in camou jackets and ponchos and field gear.

  With a start, he realized the peasants weren’t planting a garden at all. It was a graves detail. They were burying the dead of the camp.

  “What—?”

  Moe’s voice was firm, even above the keening wind. “There are the seeds, Time Gardener. You said wanted to know how to fix the garden.”

  Vic could only croak out a reply. “But how--?”

  “I once told you the garden works by using wasted time, unused time. Remember?”

  Vic nodded, pale and nearly gagging. Moe’s English was definitely improving.

  “A war zone, such as this, is the perfect place to harvest unused time. Here, people die before their ‘allotted span.’ You want to operate the portal, you want to be a time gardener, this is what you do….”

  “—dig graves…?”

  “Travel… to war zones. Places of conflict. Inner cities. Anywhere there is a lot of unused time. It’s a difficult job. I tried to tell you that. A somber job. Emotionally draining at times.” Now, Moe regarded him with a hard look to his face. “You still want to do this?”

  Vic decided he did not. And in that moment, he took off running. Slipping and sliding across the icy hills, he made for the open gates.

  No one followed him. He expected to hear the rattle of machine gun fire, see a line of tracers stitching a path across the snow, maybe right up his back.

  But no one lifted a finger. He was so startled, dodging frozen bushes and falling face first in a snow drift, that he never saw the frozen pond ahead of him. It was just barely light. He streaked across the pond, quickly losing his footing, cartwheeling in the air like a child’s doll thrown away.

  The ice cracked. Vic fell through, into the freezing water.

  8.

  The light was blindingly bright and Vic groaned, covering his face. The sleet had stopped. He was sweating, draped in sheets. A faint smell of ammonia and pine assaulted his nose. He tried to sit up, but failed.

  He was in a bed, room 411, at Deerfield Clinic. A respirator mask covered his nose and mouth, taped to his cheeks. Faces and voices slowly materialized out of the void.

  The nurse was a pleasant black woman, starched white gown and big teeth, and dazzling eyes. Her ample bosom massaged his face as she removed the mask, adjusting some other tubing. Vic looked down. His arms were bruised, purple and angry red, his skin intubated with glucose and other lines. From somewhere behind his head, a steady beep-beep-beep was annoying him. A cart stand clinked as the nurse—her nametag said Kendrick—moved something over his head.

  “You’re looking a lot better today, Mr. Lockhart. More color in those cheeks. And your eyes are clearer. You feelin’ any better?”

  Vic sat up, with effort, and the nurse—it came to him that her name was LaTreece Kendrick—puffed up several pillows for him, then told him to say ahhh and swabbed out his mouth and inside his cheeks with some kind of iodine solution. His throat was parched and burned. Nurse Kendrick had anticipated that and was ready with a cup of crushed ice before he could croak out a request.

  “What—what happened—to me--?”

  Another face. A man. Dr. Broadley hovered just behind the nurse’s shoulder, tapping a clipboard with a pen.

  “Mr. Lockhart—Vic…you are one lucky man. I’ll say that muc
h for you. We thought you’d left us…but here you are…getting stronger by the minute too. I’ve got to run some tests this afternoon, if you’re up to them. Neural response, pulmonary capacity…I’d say you swallowed about half that pool out there.”

  “I was…in the pool—the pond—“ Vic started to remember, hazily at first, then more details began to come to him.

  “It’s more truthful to say the pool was in you,” Dr. Boadley joked. He read off something on an instrument face from the cart stand, wrote it down, and made a slight moue with his lips. “Just about the whole pool, at that. You were about as drowned as a man can be when we pulled you out. Tried CPR, electroshock, just about the whole works. It was touch and go for a while.”

  “I died.”

  Broadley sniffed. “Not just yet, Mr. Lockhart. Not on my watch anyway. Looks like you’ll live. But I’m keeping you in the hospital for a few days. Observation and some more tests. I can’t release you until I know what caused all those bruises. One hell of a subcutaneous edema, if you ask me.”

  Broadley started to go, but Vic managed to snag his hand. Broadley stopped.

  “Yes, Mr. Lockhart?”

  “Ummm—Angel. Mr. Havener…did you find him? He was in the pool with me.”

  Broadley looked puzzled. “Mr. Havener? Why, no…no one else was in the pool with you. Who are you talking about…this Mr. Havener? Nurse—“

  Vic waved it off. “Never mind.” He sank back in the pillows, a smile forming on his face. Angel made it after all. “I was just hallucinating, or something.”

  Broadley left but nurse LaTreece Kendrick was stern. “You rest up, Mr. Lockhart. Don’t you be trying to get out of that bed without help. You’ve had quite a time out there…you just rest.” She took his hand, placed it on a set of buttons on a keypad on the armrest. “You need anything at all, just press this button right here. One of the nurses’ll be right in…okay?” She smiled sweetly, fluffed the pillows some more and exited the room.

  Vic drifted back to sleep. Angel Havener…the old fag, he made it after all. A smile was forming on his face, even as sleep closed over him.

  It might have been hours later, perhaps even days, when Vic woke up. He was still in the room. Everything looked the same. The cart was still beeping. It was night outside. He still had nasty bruises on his arms and neck.

  Sarah Gibson came by a little later, followed by Conrad Bell and Annie Jacobs. Conrad had smuggled in a few goodies and Vic quickly hid the chocolates and the flask under his pillow before Nurse Kendrick showed up.

  “So what happened?” Sarah asked. “We’ve been dying to know…but Doc Broadley wouldn’t let us in. What did you see…did you find Joe? What happened to Angel?”

  “They never found Angel’s body,” Conrad insisted.

  Vic half smiled. “And they never will. Angel made it somehow, made it…to—“ he shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it…the other side, the new world, a new time, his own dream or nightmare…whatever.”

  Sarah whipped out a small box and opened it up on the side of the bed. “You want to play some pinochle?”

  “I’ve got a deck of cards, too,” Conrad added. He extracted his own deck from the pocket of his jacket, fanned them through the air.

  Annie Jacobs had brought a small bouquet of flowers. Vic sat up, kissed her wrinkled forehead gently, took the bouquet and laid them on his lap. “Thanks, sweetie. These from the garden?”

  Annie nodded. “Mildred’s garden. Those cheap things in the gift shop are all so colorless. They smell like wrapping paper.”

  “I’ll treasure these…more than you know.”

  “So…” Sarah interjected, “what’s the scoop? You didn’t find Joe?”

  Vic thought of the Red guard Moe. “I did find Joe.”

  “Did you learn anything…like how to fix the time garden? Get it running again so I can visit my Del. What did he say?”

  “And my Molly too,” Conrad added.

  Vic lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes. “First of all, Joe’s not coming back. He’s in another place. Another time.”

  Sarah put her card deck down on the side of the bed and grabbed a chair, pulling it up next to Vic’s bed. She propped her head up on his knees. “But you’re taking over, right? You’re operating the portal, aren’t you? He gave you the instructions?”

  Vic shook his head. “Sarah, I’m not taking over. I’m not going to be the Time Gardener.”

  Sarah slapped at his knees, incredulous. “What! What are you saying? How the hell can I see my Del if the portal doesn’t work right? You’ve got to do it.”

  Annie’s face had fallen. “And my David…I surely do look forward to being with my David.”

  Vic waved them all quiet. “Look…it’s like this, okay? The garden’s kaput. It’s failing. Hell, maybe you can operate the thing, Sarah. You’ve been through it. Or you Conrad.”

  “Not me,” Conrad protested. “I don’t know anything about machines—“

  Sarah shrugged. “Del always said I could tune those TV rabbit ears better than anyone.”

  “Running the Time Garden involves a lot…a lot of time, I guess. A lot of—“ he thought about the Manchurian peasants burying dead POWs. “—I don’t know. Joe told me some things, showed me some things. Maybe it’d be better to let the garden deteriorate and die. Close it off. I’ve seen things—“

  “What things?” Sarah wanted to know.

  Vic sat up abruptly, brushing Sarah’s hands off his knees. “You remember when Joe said the Time Garden recycles time. It runs on the time people waste. Time that’s not used.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “When I went through this last time, I went right back to Anjin…that POW camp I spent two years in. Two friggin’ years of my life. That’s where I saw Joe. You know what he told me? He said if you work as a time gardener, you spent a lot of your time in war zones, POW camps, inner cities, places where people die. Places people die suddenly, before their ‘allotted span’ is up. Sarah, that’s what the time garden runs on. That’s where there’s a lot of unused time. That’s where I would be spending most of my time.” Vic shuddered, remembering all the kicking and the rifle butts and the cursing and slapping…”Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want any part of it. This time machine takes too much to keep up. No, sireeebob…I say let it go.”

  Sarah didn’t know what to say. Her face was crestfallen. “What about my Del? Or Conrad here…or Annie? They don’t get to go back…see their loved ones again?”

  “Can you make an egg from an omelet?

  Sarah took a deep breath. “It’s not fair. But then who the hell ever said life was fair? At least, I did get to see my Del one last time, wish him goodbye. But it would have been nice to—“ she smiled sheepishly .”…you know. What the hell…maybe that’s just selfish. I just wanted more time with Del. But I guess he already gave it up…to the time garden, I suppose.”

  Conrad shook his head slowly. Annie wiped a tear from her eyes.

  “My David…that gun…I can see it now…the bullets just starting to come out…just a few more seconds…he could have—“ She wiped more tears.

  “It’s for the best,” Vic told them. “Trust me…we’re all better off without this thing. It’s like driving a Rolls-Royce. Yeah, it looks great and you go around in style. But it’s also expensive as hell to run. That portal out there is the same way. Costs too much to use. We have to shut it down.” He started picking through the assortment of chocolates Conrad had brought, watching Sarah begin to deal some cards at the foot of his bed. “These time gardens are nothing but recycling plants, Sarah. That’s all they are. They recycle time. All the time you and me and Conrad and everybody else wastes. All the time we’ve lost. People who die suddenly, before they should. Like Angel. All that time doesn’t just vanish. It goes somewhere. It goes through these gardens.”

/>   “So where does it go?” Conrad asked. He helped himself to some of the chocolates.

  “To wherever it’s needed, I guess. There’s only so much time. People don’t use what they have. The excess is somehow skimmed off, recycled through the garden. It’s there for us, any of us, to use.”

  “Joe said the time garden subtracts time from us too, every time we use the thing.”

  “It’s a machine. It balances inputs and outputs,” Vic said. “Like any garden. Pour in the ingredients.” He shuddered at the image of the bodies of dead camp prisoners, stacked like fire wood outside the gates of Camp Seven. “Out come the flowers or the fruits.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Sarah decided. She patted Vic’s feet, still under the covers. “Let’s play…and for the record, I’ll be whipping your ass in pinochle just like I always do. Your move, Vic. And don’t keep me waiting. Time’s a-wasting.”

  They all got a good laugh from that.

  “Don’t go getting your panties in a wad, woman. There’s lot’s of time. I’m just planning what I’m going to do tomorrow…Doc Broadley said he might release me tomorrow morning.”

  “Scotch and cigars at the Bistro?”

  Vic shrugged; it was a pleasant memory. “Maybe. Maybe not. First thing in the morning, I’m heading out to that garden. I’m going to drain Joe’s pool and patch that opening with some Quikrete. Then maybe we can have a little peace around here.”

  After that, he dove into the game. And for the first time in months, Vic Lockhart managed to hold his own against Sarah Gibson and Conrad Bell.

  Good as his word, Dr. Broadley released Vic from the Clinic the very next day. Straight away, Vic collared Conrad and the two of them set to work planning how to drain the pool and patch the portal entrance.

  Vic borrowed some hose and several bags of concrete and wheel-barrowed it out to the garden. Doing the hard physical work made certain muscles and joints sore and he still had bruises from his last trip through the garden, but the work brightened his thoughts. Just to be doing something physical seemed to help.

  They drained the pool to the lower side of the Japanese pagoda—that took several hours—and then Vic and Conrad crawled down onto the rock and stone slabs that formed the bottom and dragged bags of concrete patch up to the entrance at the base of the grotto rock wall. Over the next few hours, they plastered and sealed the opening, grunting and sweating in the humid morning air.

  When it was finished, Vic sat back, wiped sweat from his face and took a deep breath. “I’m glad that’s done. I really don’t like fiddling around with machines I don’t understand.”

  Conrad’s face was covered with concrete dust and leftover mud from the pool. “You know, I will miss that thing, Vic. At least, it brought us old fogies together for a while, gave us something to work on together.”

  “It was becoming a headache.”

  They climbed out of the pool and that’s when Vic slipped and busted his head wide open on a slab of rock. Conrad flapped around like a drunken bird for a minute, then collected himself and raced stumbling all the way back through the East Woods to Brighton West to get some help. Inside of ten minutes, still bleeding profusely, Vic was taken back to Deerfield Clinic, head wrapped up like a mummy, being wheeled into the very same room he’d just been discharged from.

  Conrad went with him. After a cursory exam, the blood was stanched, his face washed and the cut was stitched up. It took almost thirty stitches. Examinations for concussion were scheduled an hour later.

  “You could have died in that fall, Vic,” Conrad told him. “You were lucky.”

  Vic nodded. He did have a splitting headache and some blurred vision. “That seems to be happening a lot lately. But I guess it’s just not my time yet.”

  They both looked at each other for a moment and then suddenly burst out laughing.

  END

  Atomgrabbers

  Introduction

  This story is actually the launch vehicle for my serial Nanotroopers. It introduces my main character, one cadet Johnny Winger, a young man curiously adept in the world of atoms and molecules as if he were born to it. Winger never was much one for following the book. He relies on hunches and notions and instincts. Sometimes that gets him into trouble. But many times, his instincts are right and he saves the day.

  Moreover, Johnny Winger finds in his nanoscale robotic friend ANAD a sort of kindred spirit. He comes to think of the infinitesimal little bot as a sort of brother and this odd companionship serves him well in the midst of a major crisis that erupts just as he is ready to make a decision about joining Quantum Corps.

  We all anthropomorphize our tools. We develop enduring relationships with our cars, planes, a favorite lawn mower, maybe even a can opener. But when the tool has the personality and intelligence of a five-year old, the relationship can get complicated….