New Kind of Thread Idea: Your Vintage Life

[cchgn]

I'd get myself as, quickly as possible, to either a bookie or a Speculater( which ever had the most money) and we'd both quietly make a bunch of money, while I hang out at his place, 'til he gets me credentials.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Can you tell me how many men were arrested for not showing a draft card, and what happened to them? I find it hard to believe that this was considered a serious crime after VJ day.

I can't get Google News to work at the moment to dig up the details, but there were cases, usually tied to AWOL situations -- soldiers skipping camp during the early months of 1946 after growing impatient waiting for their discharges. Since soldiers surrendered their draft card on induction into the military, lack of a card was reason for suspicion.

The WW2 draft remained in effect in the US until 1947, and inductions under that draft continued thru 1946. The provisions of that law specified that failure to carry a draft card could subject the violator to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. In practice, it might more often earn the violator a night in the city jail while the police checked with the local military authorities to see if the man in question was wanted, and only if the man had come to the attention of police for some other reason. A beat cop with a chip on his shoulder could easily find a reason to run in a "suspicious character," especially if he wasn't known in the neighborhood.

In any event, the Original Poster suggested possible obstacles for his scenario, and my suggestion was that a man wandering around without identification or money could easily get hauled in for vagrancy. Many American towns enforced tough vagrancy laws specifically to discourage drifters, a legacy of the Depression, and a vagrant without a draft card would draw the additional attention of military authorities as a matter of course.

As for debating the Constitution, this isn't the thread for it, and I have no interest in pursuing that line of discussion.

 

[plain old dave]

If I could riff off of Lizzie's take (vintage person transferred to Now)

Day 4.

She awoke to the sound of that wretched Dr. Gordon arguing with someone in the hall, and the noise getting closer. 3 men in the awful, poorly-tailored suits the few men she had seen wear suits here insisted on wearing entered her room, closely followed by Dr. Gordon and that woman in pyjamas that claimed to be a nurse.

Dr. Gordon was NOT amused.

One, a burly man that might have been a Marine, told the Doctor, "Leave. NOW. Or I WILL arrest you."

"Marshal, this woman needs professional care."

"Doctor, that is none of your concern. PLEASE. Leave the room."

Dr. Gordon, seeing he was out of his league, angrily stormed out of the room. The burly Marine locked the door, confusing her. The other 2 weren't quite as rough-looking as the Marine, one was a slender, bookish man in his early 40s and the other might have been an FBI agent. The bookish man showed her a card with his picture and a small gold square at the bottom which read, "Wallace Wilcox, United States Department Of Energy." He spoke.

"I'm Dr. Wallace Wilcox. I'm with the United States Department of Energy. The big man there is Deputy Marshal Thibidoux with the US Marshals' Service, and the other fellow is Special Agent Reading with the National Security Agency. We really are here to help you. Let me ask you something though."

Warily, she answered, "What?"

"Do you know anybody that has moved to Tennessee recently to take a defense job?"

"My neighbor... I heard he got a job in Knoxville at a demolition plant or something."

The bookish man smiled, slightly. "Well, I actually work at that 'demolition plant.' I'm a project manager there, and, well... to make a long story short, you traveled through time. The bright light you saw, just before the crash?"

"Yeah?"

"That's what we call an energy flux, and it took us til late last night to find you. Special Agent Reading is up for a promotion for this."

The smaller man puffed up a bit.

"We aren't quite sure how it happened, only that it DID. You may be able to help us, and you'll be leaving this hospital now. If anybody at the hospital here ever even THINKS about you, we'll lock 'em up UNDER the nearest Federal Penitentiary." He handed her a bag that was almost made out of cellophane. "Here are your things, you are officially under Federal protection."

 

[LizzieMaine]

I like that -- I haven't really thought about any explanation for *how* she got shifted.

Here's a scene that could fit in a bit earlier...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"I'm still sensing hostility," said Dr. Gordon, his arms folded in front of him, his clipboard on his lap.

"Gee, I wonder why," she replied, in a limp, disinterested voice. That seemed to be the only voice she could muster now, after god knows how many days of those pills. "My mouth is always dry, everything tastes like metal, and I sleep all day. You still won't let me see my family."

"We can't locate your family," he countered. "We won't be able to unless you cooperate a bit more with us and give us something more to go on."

"Listen, I told you -- I told you where to find them," she mumbled. "My mother lives in Weskeag, and Ernie and me live right in town, 18 Orient Street."

"And I told you there's no house at 18 Orient Street. I showed you a picture, remember? The picture of the parking lot behind the bank. There are no houses there. There are no houses on that street at all. There haven't been for a very long time."

"You could find them if you wanted to. You could find them if you believed me."

"I believe you believe what you believe, but..."

"And I believe you're full of..."

"Ah, ah, there's that hostility again. We were going to work on that, remember?"

"You still won't get me a radio."

"Well, I told you I'd work on that, and I did." Gordon reached into his white coat, and pulled out a small rectangular object, another of those little black boxes that seemed to bristle all over his person. He unwound a cord wrapped around the box and offered it to her. "Just put the little soft things in your ears, like that, right. Just press that silver button there with your thumb to turn it on, and press those arrows there to change the station.

She did as he instructed, and heard nothing that made sense. The first voice was a thundering, rumbling baritone caught up in some sort of frantic political argument with another man, who sounded like he was talking over a telephone. She winced and pushed the arrow. The voice changed, replaced by a shrill, nasal tenor screeching something about football. Another press of the arrow yielded a glass-voiced woman giving a weather report, followed by a chord of thunderous, dramatic music entirely unsuited to the bland nature of the forecast. And a final press of the arrow yielded another baritone, this one declaiming furiously about "the rapture, the coming rapture of the saints." She let the earphones drop and handed the device back. "There's nothing on," she murmured without expression. "There's nothing on at all."

"I'd like you to come with me," said Gordon, rising slowly from the chair. "I'd like to show you something."

She took the invitation without protest. Anything was better than this damn bed, anything was better than sitting there looking into that skinny, supercilious face and its stupid beard. Her shoulder still ached, but she took advantage of any opportunity to move around. Usually her trips outside the room were limited to short walks to the nurse's station or the pharmacy, but this time Dr. Gordon guided her down a corridor and into a room she hadn't seen. Several cheap leatherette-looking couches were situated along the walls, there were low tables strewn with ragged-looking magazines and a couple of nondescript paper-covered books. And against one wall, another low stand held a large, flat black rectangle.

"Sit down here," said Dr. Gordon, gesturing to one of the couches. He sat down next to her, holding yet another black box, this one studded with colored buttons. "Do you recognize this?" he asked.

She shook her head and took the object, manipulating it in her hand. He pointed to a red button at the end of the device and indicated that she should press it. She complied.

There was a click at the opposite end of the room, and she jumped with surprise as the black rectangle on the table lit up with the image of a dark-haired pinch-faced woman in some sort of black robe, whose jaw ratcheted in silent but ferocious admonition of a chubby dark-haired man who stood before her.

"Movie?" she murmured. "movies?"

"Television," corrected Dr. Gordon. "Do you recognize it? Television."

"I've seen -- television," she replied in her tired monotone. "World's Fair. Ernie and me went, we saw -- television. This big camera, and we stood in front of it. Gave us little cards. Television. Big wooden box like a radio, open up the cover and there's a mirror you look in. Not like this."

Gordon indicated a yellow button, and when she pressed it, the sound came to life. "You entered into this agreement, Mr. Rafferty," the pinch-faced woman brayed, as the chubby man flinched, "and you WILL live up to this agreement. Judgement for the plaintiff!"

Gordon indicated a white button, and when she pressed it, the image changed. The pinch-faced woman was replaced by two bull-necked men in neckties seated behind some sort of desk, with the image of an enormous spinning basketball looming on the wall behind them. "First round draft choice WILL be the decider here, first round draft choice!" one was declaring, jabbing at the second man with a thrusting, pointing finger. The second man shook his head ostentatiously and thundered back "No way, no way, no way."

She pressed the white button again, and immediately flinched in shock and embarrassment as a thumping, screeching wail filled the room, and an overinflated young blonde woman in a tight-fitting, torn white dress writhed and moaned across the screen, pumping her loins in approximate time to the rhythm. She looked at Gordon, who seemed completely absorbed in the performance.

She pressed the white button again, and a large, heavy-set man in a dark pinstripe suit filled the screen, a man with the most bizarre haircut she'd ever seen, a slick pompadour at the front of his head and long, greasy locks flowing down his coat collar at the back. The man had piercing blue eyes and another of those repugnant beards and made threatening gestures with a closed Bible. "My 'No Evil Oil' is prayed over for 17 days, 17 days," pleaded this monstrosity, "and I want you to have it, I want you to have it right now, I want you to have these blessings a thousand fold, if you will just pick up the phone, pick up the phone right now and call, call the number on your screen. It is red, red like blood, red like the sacred blood of Jesus, my No Evil Oil, blessings a thousand fold if you call right now..."

She pressed the red button and the screen clicked back into darkness. "Television," she murmured. "Television."

Dr. Gordon scrawled a short note on his clipboard, but she had nothing further to say. She simply murmured that one word, over and over again as he led her back to her room. "Television."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Gingerella72]

May I respectfully request more, Lizzie? I love time travel-fish out of water stories. And do they locate her now-elderly daughter?

 

[plain old dave]

Thanks, Lizzie. Seemed to me that ORNL, being heavy duty into quantum physics as they are, might have some interest in a time flux. Good vehicle to get Our Lady up to 21st century speed, too. "The Woman Who Did Not Exist". NSA seemed a great means for ORNL to find her, too. More tonight.

 

[LizzieMaine]

May I respectfully request more, Lizzie? I love time travel-fish out of water stories. And do they locate her now-elderly daughter?

All in good time, so to speak.

This next scene follows a couple days after the previous one, but still before the Feds show up...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"I think it's a good idea for you to watch a little television when you feel up to it," said Dr. Gordon. "I think there are things you'll see that might help to -- well, emphasize the difference between what you think and what -- ah -- really is, if you follow me."

"I don't like it much," she replied. "It's too loud, for one thing, and it moves too fast, and it makes my eyes hurt if I look at it too long. And it doesn't make any sense to me, most of it. Well, there was one thing I saw, it was Lee Tracy and Glenda Farrell and they were fighting this monster or something."

"An old movie."

"Well, I remember seeing it before, maybe nine or ten years ago, at the Tivoli. I went there with a boy I knew -- not Ernie, he came later -- but this other boy, I knew from school. I don't like scary pictures, but he -- um -- wanted to see it, and I remembered it all this time because it was -- uh -- scary. But I saw it again yesterday, and it was -- different, I dunno, maybe I remembered it wrong, but it didn't look like I remembered. I -- um -- tried to find it again today but it wasn't there, but there was something different with -- she looked like Bette Davis, but she was *old*, like she was playing an old lady but she looked like she was really -- old."

Dr. Gordon's pen flicked across the clipboard. He didn't look up, but gestured for her to continue.

"There was this other thing I saw. There was this man, this skinny man with a bow tie on, and he had this box, like a telephone booth only bigger. And he had this girl with him, this girl in a tennis skirt, only it wasn't white, and they were running around and yelling a lot, and there were these things like garbage cans on wheels yelling back on them, and there was lots of -- um -- explosions and fighting. But inside the box, this booth he had, he said it was a 'time machine' and he could fly around to different times and centuries and all."

Dr. Gordon continued to write. "Go on, go on," he said.

"Is that what happened to me? Did I fly around in time?"

Gordon put down his pen. "That's just a story. It isn't real. People don't travel in time. You didn't travel in time."

"But everything I remember..."

"You believe you remember those things," Gordon insisted. "But..."

"I know -- know what I remember. I know who I am."

"I know you believe that," Gordon interrupted. "But what you're saying simply isn't possible. It isn't reality."

"Then how did I get here? How did I break my shoulder? How do you explain that you can't find my family?"

"It's up to you to explain that. Only you know the truth."

"That's the first -- first thing you've got right since I've been here."

She turned away from him, burying her head in the pillow. He tapped his pen on the clipboard and said nothing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Continuing to fill in what happens before the arrival of the Feds.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It's wasn't just the color that irritated her about his shoes, it was that scuffy-squeaky noise they made against the floor as he approached, and the little puff of air, the foot flatulence that pooped out the back of the shoes with each step. She heard the scuffy-squeak and she heard the puff approaching, and she knew he was standing at the foot of her bed. She didn't want to open her eyes. but she knew he'd stand there staring at her until she did.

She didn't want to talk to him. She hadn't been taking the pills -- she palmed them, pretended to swallow, and flushed the tablets down the toilet as soon as Nurse Pajamas waddled out of the room. And she was getting her energy back, she was thinking more clearly now, more clearly by the day. Thinking of how to get out of this place, thinking of how -- somehow -- to find her way home.

But he was still standing there, with his stupid blue puffy shoes and his clipboard and his wiggy-waggy pen, and there was no use delaying the inevitable. She rolled over and sat up.

"Well well," she said with just the right touch of acid in her voice. "Good morning Mr. America and all the ships at sea."

He pulled up the chair and sat down without a greeting or an ackowledgement. It was becoming a tired routine, this game he played with her, this baiting he did. Every day he'd try to goad her into making some revelation he seemed to think she was refusing to provide, and every day she'd glare at him, like he was the repulsive cartoon bug in an insecticide ad.

The dance started this morning with a new step. Dr. Gordon tossed a folded newspaper onto the bed. "I thought you might like to take a look at what's going on in the world today," he said. "I'd be interested in your opinions.

"My opinion of your shoes hasn't changed," she sneered as she took up the paper with her free hand and unfolded it. "Why's it so skinny?," she asked, as she opened the paper to its full width, several inches more narrow than any paper she knew. "Why is everything around here so damn skinny?"

The pen began to wiggy-wag itself across the clipboard, and when he finished making his notes, Gordon reached across the bed and pointed to a photograph on the front page of the paper. "Do you recognize this man?" he asked.

She examined the picture. "Not really," she concluded. "He kind of looks like Charlie Swathmore, used to work with my pa down on the docks. He was an Indian."

"No," replied Gordon, "He's the President."

"Now who's crazy?" she snickered. "Charlie Swathmore is dead -- had a load of tapioca slip down the pile on him about five years ago. He's *not* the President."

"No, the man in the picture. He's the President."

"Does Eleanor know?"

"No, no," snapped Gordon, not knowing if she was serious or if she was now baiting him, and not liking that he didn't know. "He's the current President. He was elected six years ago and reelected the year before last. And he's not an Indian -- Native American. He's African-American. Black."

She put down the paper. "You mean -- colored?"

He nodded a non-verbal "whatever." "What do you think about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"About a black man -- about a 'colored man' being President."

"Well, Joe Louis is a colored man, and he's the Champ."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You're the one that asked."

"Does it bother you?"

"Does what bother me?"

"That he's President. A colored man couldn't be President in 1942."

"No, Mr. Roosevelt's the President. He's a cripple, and he does all right with it."

The pen flicked madly across the clipboard. "Don't you have any -- opinions -- about black -- colored people?"

She thought a moment. "Should I have opinions on people I don't even know?" She folded the newspaper and tossed it back across the bed. "I don't know any colored people. Never met any. So I don't really think anything about it one way or the other."

He sat up and looked at her. The pen stopped wagging. That wasn't the answer he was expecting.

"I'll tell you though," she continued. "I'd like to meet Joe Louis. I'd like to shake his hand and tell him how proud we all were the night he beat that friggin' heinie, that Schmeling. Ernie and me took the radio out on the porch that night and the whole neighborhood was out there in the dooryard listening to the fight. We had a regular party going, Butchie and Alice Philbrook went up to the Armenian's and got a case of beer, and they hadn't even got the bottles open and the fight was over. Jeezuz did he beat that big stiff."

She trailed off, caught up in the memory. The pen was wagging faster than ever.

"I was about six months gone with Maggie that night. It was hot out, really hot night, and I thought I was gonna get sick. Ernie set me down on the doorstep and rubbed a cold beer bottle on the back of my neck to cool me down." She felt herself tearing up.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed. "WHY WON'T YOU FIND MY HUSBAND!"

The pen clattered to the floor. As he bent to retrieve it his face betrayed nothing. But beneath the professional mask, Gordon felt that uncomfortable sensation he'd felt a couple times before, but had brushed off, like an unwanted fleck of lint on his sleeve. But here it was back again, pulled to the surface by the unexpected burst of anger, the mingling of grief and blind, helpless rage in her voice.

What if she really *was* telling the truth?

 

[plain old dave]

Day 4.1

Dr. Wilcox, Marshal Thibidoux, and Special Agent Reading exited the room and left her to prepare to leave. These clothes were not what she had on when she wrecked the Plymouth. There was a pair of the Mickey Mouse shoes, a pair of faded dungarees with a very low waist, and a man's undershirt. The undershirt had a picture of a vagrant on it, and said something about "metaphysically", whatever that meant. I suppose a lot has changed in 70-odd years, she thought as she gathered her things and walked out the door.

"You ready?" asked Dr. Wilcox.

"From the second I got in this crazy place. Let's go!"

Marshal Thibidoux got up out of his chair in the hall, buttoning his jacket. She saw a glint of gunmetal. He IS a US Marshal, after all, she thought.

"Special Agent Reading is in the car, but pursuant to this court order we have to gather your records and ensure the hospital keeps NOTHING. This shouldn't take long, Ma'am."

Just then, Dr. Gordon came down the hall with two Sheriff's deputies. He had a self-righteous smirk on his face.

"County Sheriff's deputies. I will have to ask you to keep your hands in plain sight, and I will need to see identification. If you're carrying weapons, that is a violation of State law."

Deputy Marshal Thibidoux turned beet red. She could tell he wanted to break Dr. Gordon in half. And honestly, she didn't blame him. He slowly removed a small wallet, like she had seen G-men carry in the movies, and 2 folded sheets of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket.

"Deputy, I am Deputy United States Marshal Lyndon Thibidoux, and here are my credentials. These are a writ of habaeus corpus for one "Jane Doe", here, and a search warrant authorizing me to impound any and all paper and or electronic documents on the premeses regarding Ms. 'Doe.' I would appreciate your co-operation."

The deputy's eyes grew wide as he examined the badge and warrants. He looked at Dr. Gordon, who was starting to look... confused.

"Doc, this is a Federal Marshal and as best I can tell he has a valid writ of habaeus corpus AND search warrant. I will have to ask you to cease and desist interfering in the service of these Federal warrants, or I won't have a choice but to take you to jail."

The next few minutes, her last few at that crazy hospital, were a flurry of action. Another man in a baggy suit, this one saying he was a hospital administrator, brought a small gadget about half the size of a cigarette lighter and a stack of papers. He looked... scared.

"H-here at Memorial Hospital, we... we always support our Nation. Please accept our sincere apologies, and this thumb drive and file are every bit of information we have on Ms. "Doe" here. You may rest assured that our electronic files have been destroyed, and Dr. Gordon's reprehensible actions will be handled. "

The Marshal curtly thanked him for his cooperation, and they walked out into the parking lot, where Dr. Wilcox and Special Agent Reading were waiting in the funniest looking Ford she had ever seen. It was a sort of sparkling charcoal, only about half as high as any Ford she had ever seen. It had US Government plates, and about the only way she knew it was a Ford was the Blue Oval on the back. Marshal Thibidoux opened the door for her, she got in, and he went around and got in the back on the other side.

They eased out of the parking lot and out into traffic. She noticed there were NO traffic cops, and almost every intersection had a traffic light. She idly wondered if there was a streetcar strike as they came up a slight hill and merged onto the biggest highway she'd ever seen. What'd they call this on the newsreel? The Germans have them... Auto-something?, she thought. Dr. Wilcox pressed a button on the car radio, and Amos and Andy came on.

He said, "Tennessee's a long way, and I imagine you're about beat. Thought you'd appreciate an Amos and Andy, see what's new at the Jot 'em Down Store."

"Thanks, but the Jot 'em Down Store is in Lum and Abner. I like Amos and Andy better anyhow."

She tried with all she had in her to keep up with Amos and Andy, but just couldn't stay awake. She was soon sound asleep as they drove on through the night to the Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile, back on the home front..

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dr. Gordon sank in his chair, a cup of chai steaming at his side. His wife had yoga tonight and the kids were at math camp or something -- it was so hard to keep track that he really didn't try much anymore. He was thankful for the solitude, thankful for the time to think, to try and piece together this puzzle that had dropped into his lap and then, before he'd had a chance to solve it, had been snatched away.

He snapped open the lock on his desk drawer, and took out the folder of documents he'd gotten from the State Library that day, printouts from faded microfilm of the Weekly Courier, the old local paper. Those jackbooted government thugs had taken his computer files from work, but he had some names and dates to work with, and no matter what they did they couldn't reach into his mind and erase what he knew.

He unclipped the folder and turned over the first sheet, a printout of a piece of the Courier's front page from Thursday, September 17th 1942. SEARCH FOR CITY WOMAN CONTINUES read the headline.

"State and City police were searching this week for Mrs. Ernest R. Dellings, 30, of 18 Orient Street, who was reported missing by her husband after failing to return home on Friday last. According to Mr. Dellings his wife had gone to visit her mother, Mrs. Arthur J. Elwell of the Pond Road in Weskeag, and had failed to return home at the expected hour. Mrs. Dellings was last seen leaving work at the First National Store on Main Street shortly after 5:30 pm on September 11th. She was believed to have driven to Weskeag in the Dellings' green 1937 Plymouth sedan, Maine registration number 34-862. Although all filling stations in Henry County have been alerted to watch for this vehicle, the car has not been sighted.

"Mrs. Dellings is described by her husband as five feet, four inches in height, weighing approximately one hundred and thirty five pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes, a three-inch diagonal knife scar on her upper left forearm, two one-inch burn scars on her right forearm, one at the wrist and one midway between wrist and elbow, and a large pockmark on her back approximately thirteen inches from the base of the neck. She was last seen wearing a grey and blue print dress, a green coat, brown walking shoes, a black hat, and rimless spectacles."

Gordon sipped his chai and sighed. It would have been possible for her to learn all of this herself thru careful research, but the description matched exactly. He had viewed the scars himself, and they were not recent -- they had faded with age, suggesting that if she had gone to the extent of scarring herself to match the description, she'd had to have begun the charade years before. It *could* all be some sort of elaborate hoax, everything he'd come to question could be explained by some sort of complicated plan, some sort of thorough preparation.

Or Occam's Razor could apply. The simplest explanation might just be that she was telling the truth.

But if she was telling the truth, everything he'd come to believe as a man of science was out the window. He was not a metaphysicist. All his life he'd been proudly agnostic, proudly a man of the rational world, not given to believing in the unbelievable, the impossible, the irrational. And yet...

He placed the folder on the desk and took a small plastic bag out of his shirt pocket. He'd been carrying it around in the pocket of his lab coat for several days and had completely forgotten about it in all the confusion when those Federal busybodies got involved. He emptied its contents onto the desk and examined each item carefully. There was a nail file with a green plastic handle, slightly yellowed from use. There was a small penknife bearing a three-pointed insignia with an eagle and the letters "G. S." Girl Scouts, most likely. She seemed the type to have been a Girl Scout. And there was a small key ring.

He examined each key carefully. One was a brass-colored Yale key, probably for a door lock. There was a small, square-headed serrated key marked "Master Lock Co.," which probably went to a strong box or a padlock. And there were two keys, a triangular-headed brass key and an octagonal-headed aluminum key stamped "D P C D." Car keys, most likely. Keys to the car she'd been driving that night. The police had the car, unless the Feds had already collected it. But he had the keys.

He turned his attention to the key fob, a little rectangular tag made of some kind of pressed cardboard with a metal rim. One side said "Finder -- Deposit in Any Mailbox. Postage Guaranteed. Disabled American Veterans, 2840 Melrose Avenue, Cincinnati Ohio." The other side was cream-colored, with green printing. At the top it read "MAINE 1942." Along the bottom, it read "VACATIONLAND." And in the middle were five numerals: "34 862."

He tossed the keys from hand to hand. The nurse had taken the items in the little bag out of her handbag that day when he went thru her wallet, and had put them aside. Nobody remembered to put them back with her other belongings, and in the rush when the Feds showed up, nobody bothered to ask about them. He was afraid to reveal he had them, but he knew better than to just throw them away. And now they looked like another piece of the puzzle.

He sipped the chai again and took out the next sheet. It was an obituary, from the Courier, dated Thursday May 22nd, 1947.

"ERNEST R. DELLINGS.

Funeral services will be held on Wednesday May 28th for Ernest R. Dellings of this city, who passed away Monday at Henry County Hospital after a long illness. Mr. Dellings was born August 8, 1912 in Fort George and had resided in this city since 1930. He was employed as a mechanic at the Fireproof Garage on Main Street, and had earlier served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, helping to construct Maiden Hills State Park. He was a member of Tillson Lodge No. 124 of the Knights of Pythias, and the Union Street Methodist Church.

Mr. Dellings was married on August 26, 1937 to the former Frances W. Elwell. Mrs. Dellings was reported missing in 1942, and has not been found. He leaves a daughter, Margaret Anne, age nine, who resides with her grandmother Mrs. Arthur J. Elwell in Weskeag. Funeral arrangements by Burpee & Strong, visiting hours Monday from 4 to 7 pm."

Gordon riffled thru the remaining documents. There was a copy of Ernest Dellings' death certificate, citing "respiratory failure, comp. of tuberculosis" as his cause of death, and a sheaf of court documents from 1949 in which Frances Dellings was declared legally dead. And at the bottom of the stack, he noted a death certificate for Mrs. Arthur J. Elwell, who passed away in 1950 at the age of 74.

That left the girl, Margaret Anne. What happened to her after 1950? She was twelve years old then -- did she live with some other relative, was she placed in an orphanage? Is she still alive today? So many questions, so many mysteries waiting to be solved.

Gordon shook his head, as if to clear his mind. What nonsense he was thinking, allowing himself to get caught up in this story. The answer to the mystery lay in rational thought, not science fiction, not wild-eyed fantasy.

But Ernest and Frances Dellings had been real people. He had the evidence in his hand. And that meant Margaret Anne Dellings had to be a real person as well. And that meant he had to find her.

If only to prove that all of this was a magnificent hoax.

 

[plain old dave]

Day 5, I-81 just outside Staunton, Virginia.

They had just had breakfast at a diner on the road, a garish yellow place called the “Waffle House.” The food was good, though Frances had never thought of waffles with pecans in them. They had gooooood coffee, too. The people were all just so unkempt. All the men wore undershirts with words and pictures on them and a sort of short-billed baseball cap with all manner of printing on them, too. And almost all of them were tapping away at the black boxes like that infernal Doctor had, each about half as thick as a pack of cigarettes. People would sit right across from each other and tap away on these things Dr. Wilcox called “smart phones.” It didn't seem too smart to her, ignoring people right in front of you. She began to understand why her clothes were so disshevelled. The future was…. Unkempt. Nobody had any sort of pride in their appearance, the men didn’t shave, the women dress like men. But for all that, this Waffle House was a classic roadhouse diner, full of honest working people. She liked the place well enough, but that hillbilly music just got on her very last nerve.

She would sometimes listen to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM out of Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday nights and she liked Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys well enough. But THIS was just… loud. They paid for their hearty breakfast and left the diner.

Before getting back on the highway, they stopped for gas. Frances just thought the service station attendants were a little slow when Special Agent Reading got out and pumped the gas. Surprisingly, he never paid anybody for it. Just stuck a playing card in the gas pump, filled the tank, and left. Apparently that was normal, as the State Police didn't come after them. After they got back on the road, Dr. Wilcox turned some music on low in the car as they merged with traffic. She was surprised to see they were soon going 75 miles an hour, yet this Ford was quiet and smooth as a house. Dr. Wilcox looked in the mirror and said,

“I’m sure you’ve got a LOT of questions for us.”

“You can say that again. First off, what day is it? I was beat after we left the hospital yesterday."

“It’s Sunday.”

“But there are so many cars on the road, and all the stores are open?” She was confused.

“Almost nowhere has blue laws anymore. People still go to Church, but they go shopping after."

"Pity. It's nice, just relaxing on Sunday afternoon. Something else: You, you look like a scientist. Lyndon there looks like a G-man. But Special Agent Reading… What’s a “National Security Agency”? Part of the FBI? Secret Service?”

Special Agent Reading chimed in.

“Morris Reading, Special Agent, National Security Agency. You might say we’re information specialists. Our job is to, well, know things. The FBI comes to us for help. I have learned quite a bit about you, Mrs. Dellings.”

“Really?”

“Yes. After the flux, I started watching police reports for miles in every direction. All these easel-looking things you saw people using like typewriters in the hospital and at the Waffle House?”

“Yeah?”

“They’re very advanced adding machines, like what you use at the grocery store in your accounting job, but can make millions of calculations a second. And as they communicate by radio, if somebody puts something on one anywhere in the world, I can find it. I found the State Police officer that initially responded to your accident early yesterday morning and that led us to the hospital.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes. To make a very long story short, Frances, we know you’re not crazy. You really were born in 1913, and we are going to do all we can to get you back, but that’s Dr. Wilcox’s department.”

Dr. Wilcox chimed in. “Yes, that’s more MY end. I will make this as straightforward as I can. We have a pretty good idea how you got here. You know how sometimes the current in a stream does odd things instead of flowing normally, a rip tide?”

“Yeah…,” Frances said, tentatively.

“Well, time greatly resembles a river, and the bright light you saw before the wreck was a flux in the time/space continnum.”

Frances got excited. “Can you make a rip tide again? Can you get me back to my family?”

Dr. Wilcox got distant, his brow furrowed in the rearview mirror. “We’re not sure, but we’re working on it.”

“Okay, I see a lot about science in the newsreels. Took Edison hundreds of tries to invent the light bulb. It might take your brain trusters a while to figure out how to get me home."

The car grew quiet for a few minutes as the Virginia countryside rolled by. Frances got very thoughtful and serious.

"I saw the soldiers on the front page of the paper. Color pictures on a Sunday paper makes sense. Sunday's special and all. The soldiers in the one picture though, looked like Heinies."

She very quietly and tentatively asked,

"I know the war had to end somehow. Can you tell me who won?”

The car got very quiet, and Frances was almost trembling she was so afraid of the answer. Had Hitler and the Axis forced America to negotiate? She couldn't imagine Mr. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill ever giving in, but while she hadn't read the story the soldiers on the front page of the paper sure looked a LOT like Hitler's Afrika Korps, especially their helmets. Dr. Wilcox finally spoke.

“A lot of my colleagues would disagree, but I don’t like concealing things. We did, and a good bit of what it took to win happened where we’re going in Tennessee. You must NEVER tell a soul what we’re telling you. NEVER. Where we’re going won’t even be on any maps for 10 years yet from YOUR now, and the Germans and Japanese had no idea Oak Ridge was there until after we won the War.”

Frances was somber. She remembered the gold stars in her neighbors’ windows, her neighbor's unearthly howling the day the Navy chaplain came to tell her her husband would never come home from a place called Guadalcanal. The boy down the street that, she prayed, was still alive. He joined the Army last summer, and had just got to the Philippines when the Japs started the war. They got the last letter from him the Monday after Pearl Harbor with the mail, the day Mr. Roosevelt became Dr. Win-The-War. She grew quiet again.

“Let’s say you can’t get me home. Can I meet my family?”

Special Agent Reading’s brow furrowed. “There’ll be time for that once we’re in Tennessee.”

The car grew very quiet again, and Frances was filled with an awful sense of foreboding. There was something Special Agent Reading knew he wasn’t saying.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was a nervous habit and it annoyed people, but he couldn't stop doing it. Tap tap tap tap tap went the pen against the side of the table. "Mark," said his wife.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

"Mark!"

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

"MARK!"

Mark Gordon knew, after twelve years of marriage, that he had three "Marks" before she lost her temper. It didn't matter what he did, what irritating tic he developed, when Rochelle said his name for the third time, he knew he'd better stop.

"What are you thinking about," she asked. He'd been preoccupied about something for weeks now, and it was getting on her nerves even more than all those little things he did, the rearranging of the refrigerator shelves in alphabetical order, the folding of his socks and arranging them by color in the bedroom dresser, the constant tap tap tapping of that damnable pen. "Marry a doctor," her mother had said, "you won't be sorry." Thanks mom, she thought. She'd hoped that moving to this sleepy little Maine town -- they called it a city, but it was nothing more than a town -- would loosen him up, but he'd only gotten more tightly strung as the years went by. Even the twins, Hayden and Jayden, couldn't stand to be around him more than absolutely necessary. They'd left the house before he came down for breakfast, so it was just the two of them, and that's when it was always the most uncomfortable.

"What?" he asked.

"What are you thinking about?" she repeated. "You've been wandering around here like a zombie for the last month, and last night you didn't come up to bed until after two AM!"

"I had some work to do, a troubling patient."

"Were you on that computer again? You know what the counselor said about that, you need to channel your energies in a more productive way."

"I wasn't on the computer, Rochelle. I was working."

"It's an addiction, you know! It's an addiction just like any other, and I don't understand why you need to do it."

"Look, I don't want to talk about this, all right? You know I can't talk about patients with you."

"Maybe you can talk about this," she said from between gritted teeth, and dropped the green-handled nail file on the table.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded.

"It was on the floor under your desk in the study," she replied. "Whose is it? Don't tell me, that redheaded phlebotomist, right? The one with the french manicure?"

"Rochelle, this has nothing to do with you. And you really need to stay out of things that don't concern you."

"That's the whole problem with this marriage, isn't it. Your life doesn't concern me."

"I'm a psychiatrist! I deal with confidential situations, troubled patients, and I can't have you poking your nose into my business!"

"WHO IS SHE!"

"I can't discuss this. I have to go." He picked up his jacket and briefcase and started for the door. "Rochelle. Please. This has to do with a very very troubling case, and I don't know how to handle it anymore. I just don't know how to handle it. And -- there are things going on that I just can't explain right now. But I promise it has nothing to do with you, nothing to do with -- us. Please."

Rochelle sat at the kitchen table glaring at the carefully-matched placemats. "Have a good day. The boys have soccer practice tonight, I'll be picking them up at 6:30. Dinner will be in the oven."

Gordon got into his car and backed quickly out of the driveway. He wasn't going straight to the office this morning, not quite yet. He had a side trip he wanted to make first, and he wasn't sure if it was going to work out, but he had to try. It was early, and there was little traffic -- honestly, there was never any traffic here, not compared to how it was in Wellesley -- and he used the drive to turn over the situation in his mind.

He knew Margaret Anne Dellings was still alive, or at least he was 99 percent certain of it. He'd been up until 2 am searching genealogical websites, and had found that Margaret Anne Dellings married a man named Walter Hutchins in 1960. There were no entries in the Social Security Death Index for a Margaret Hutchins born in 1938 with a Maine-issued social security number, and he was hoping that meant they were still married, or that she was still, at least, going by that name, and that therefore she was still alive. He had searched on one of those People Finder websites and had tracked down a 75 year old Margaret A. Hutchins living in Whitfield, a little farm town halfway up Route 17, about thirty miles away. He couldn't find a phone number for her, but he knew enough about small Maine towns to know that if he stopped and asked at the Whitfield post office, someone would tell him where to find her. Maine towns, Maine people were like that.

The sun was already bright in the sky as he drove along the twisting, two-lane road, and he had to turn his sun visor to block the drivers' side window to keep the glare out of his eyes. The traffic rush of state workers on their way to jobs at the Capitol was already passed, and there were few construction delays. He pulled up to the Whitfield Post Office, a low-slung whitewashed concrete bunker, after a little less than half an hour, and immediately strode inside.

A sleepy, heavyset man with a spectacular combover took him outside and pointed him in the direction he needed to go. Ten minutes later he crunched into the gravel driveway of a small white house with a rustic-looking red-stained deck. An obese white cat crouched at the edge of the deck, casting aspersions on Gordon's person as he stepped up and rapped sharply at the aluminum storm door.

There was a rustling sound, and the inner door opened.

"Mrs. Hutchins, I'm..."

"If you're one of them Jehovahs," warned the gaunt, elderly woman, "I don't want any."

"No, No, I'm -- a friend of someone you might know," Gordon fumbled. He cursed himself for not rehearsing a smooth presentation, for just winging his introduction. He was no good at this sort of thing.

"Well?" snarled the woman. "What's this all about?"

Gordon squinted thru the screen, trying to get a closer look at the woman on the other side of the door. She was medium height, not heavy, with a bush of greyish-white curls standing up on top of her head, permed and teased in the traditional manner of elderly Maine ladies for generations. Her mouth turned downward, and her face was deeply lined. But her ears stood out from the side of her head, just like the ears of that man in the work clothes in Frances Dellings' snapshot. And she had the same dark, angry eyes -- the same dark, angry eyes that had flashed across that hospital bed at his ridiculous blue Mickey Mouse shoes.

"Mrs. Hutchins, I -- I want to talk to you about -- your mother."

"My mother's dead. And good riddance. Now get out of here or I'll get my shotgun and run you off."

The door slammed.

Gordon swallowed. The cat stretched and yawned, flexed its claws, and began licking its bottom.

This wasn't going to be easy.

 

[scottyrocks]

This is one of the most fascinating threads I have read here.

Lizzie, if you were to continue this into a published novel, or short story, I'd buy it.

 

[plain old dave]

Day Six, Somewhere along I-81 or I-40 in Tennessee.

Frances watched the rolling Tennessee hills go by. Very similar to her own Maine, with white clapboard churches, farmhouses and barns. It seemed like there must be a Missionary Baptist Church for about every 50 Tennesseeans. Dr. Wilcox had thoughtfully brought some Benny Goodman along, which he played on tiny chrome records he called "CDs". Had some Guy Lombardo, too, but she never was very big into Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians. A thought had been ambling about in her mind, and she thought it was a fair question.

"You all have airplanes, don't you?"

Marshal Thibidoux answered, "Of course. Why?"

"If you have airplanes, they must be like something out of Buck Rogers and we could have been in Tennessee a few hours after we left the hospital. Why drive halfway across the country instead of fly?"

Dr. Wilcox responded, "That's a good question, and there are a few good reasons.

"First, our shrinks thought you'd be disoriented from the flux and that a slow transition into the world your grandchildren would live in would be better.

"Second, your lack of modern ID makes air travel VERY difficult. About 10 years ago, some Arab terrorists attacked America's infrastructure with jet airliners, and even knocked down the 2 tallest buildings in New York City. Several thousand people lost their lives on what's called 'nine-eleven'."

"So THAT's what all the flag signs with the 2 skyscrapers and the words "911 Never Forget" mean.

She grew introspective for a second.

"It's your Pearl Harbor."

"Yes, and ever since that horrible day security for air travel has been significantly greater. Finally, the NSA believes the United States is not the only actor seeking the time flux technology. It was decided that the lowest profile way to get you to the Labs to help us was a road trip."

"Makes sense. Other 'actors'? If we won the war, who else has got that kind of money or spies? The Reds?"

"No, the Soviets collapsed about 20 years ago. The Russian organized crime cartels ARE a concern, though, but not the primary one. I'm really not at liberty to say much else."

The car got quiet for a while, with soft swing music playing in the background.

Dr. Wilcox broke the silence.

"I know you're anxious to re-unite with your family, but given all the various concerns we will have to move very carefully. For THEM, you disappeared without a trace 72 years ago. We HAVE located Ernest, but have not made contact yet. People of your generation are not as adept at communication as your grandchildren will be, but we're staying on top of it. You answer the phone when you're good and ready, and not a second before."

"Fair enough. I know Grandmother would go days without answering the 'phone. When will we be to these... labs?"

They went by a mass of billboards, she assumed, for a tourist resort. "Bass Pro Shops", "Dollywood" and others. She finally saw 2 things she recognized: A roadsign for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which she had seen Mr. Roosevelt dedicate on the newsreels, and something which gave her hope that, somehow, everything would turn out all right: Here in the middle of what looked like Maine farmland, the biggest baseball stadium she had ever saw. As crazy as everything was in the future, the people still like baseball.

"We're about 2 hours out of Oak Ridge now."

"Good. Sooner we get there, the sooner I can get home."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maggie Hutchins' fingers trembled as she lit the Pall Mall and took a deep draw. She knew she shouldn't smoke, she knew the damn things would probably kill her, but if they were going to, sometimes she wished they just hurry up and do it already. She was sick of it all, sick of the loneliness, sick of having to live with the memories. Sometimes she could go for days, weeks even without thinking about her life, her past, only to have something kick over the walls she'd built around that part of her mind, like kicking over an anthill, letting the memories come flooding out.

That skinny bearded ba***rd on the doorstep, what business of it was his? She'd moved out here to get away from people who knew who she was, to get away from people who plagued her with questions, with fatuous "sympathy," with prying and pushing and prodding. Walter had tried to prod her to talk about it, early in their marriage, and when he couldn't break thru her defenses, he gave up. When he died, it was like a potted plant dying for all she'd noticed. She'd become hard and cold and angry, because that seemed to be the only way to keep people from prying in her affairs.

She could barely remember her mother. She was barely four years old when it happened, and a four-year-old doesn't remember things like an older child. The memories come in fragments, of scenes engraved on the mind by a flash of sunlight. The only memories she had of her mother were scenes like that, fragmentary moments of sight and sound and smell. That summer day a woman in an apron made out of a Pillsbury's Best flour bag sat on a rough wooden doorstep cutting little pieces of an apple off with a pocket knife and feeding them one at a time to a little girl. The image of that woman, in a yellow bathrobe on a cold morning, lighting a scrap of newspaper with a wooden kitchen match and dropping it thru the top of the hulking, smelly oil stove. The smell of that woman's cheek as she held the child against her shoulder during a blaring, thunderous storm, and the sound of the rain driving against the window glass.

The most vivid memory she had of that woman was a birthday party, her fourth birthday party. Her father was there, in his dark clothes smelling of gasoline, her grandmother was there, short and fat and bustling around the tiny, cramped kitchen. The next-door neighbors were there, the laughing, black-haired man they called "Butchie," and his angular, gum-chewing wife Alice, along with their child, the energetic little boy Mikey, who pulled the pan out from under the ice box and tried to give Hank the Cat a bath. And her mother, wearing a cone-shaped paper hat, carrying a custard pie with four candles stuck into its surface.

There was no cake that day, because of the war she imagined, but she could still remember the taste of that pie. Because it was the last memory she had of her mother. Just a few days later, she was gone.

The memories of what happened were blurry and jumbled. She remembered her father's panicked eyes, standing in Mrs. Kelly's kitchen yelling into the wall-mounted telephone. He had ridden out to Weskeag in Uncle Butchie's car to pick her up at her grandmother's house -- something about her mother having to work late. It was a Friday night and on Friday nights they always had supper with Gran. But they waited and waited and Mum never came, and she remembered her father pacing the floor. When they finally went over to the Kelly place to call the police, everybody went along -- Daddy, Gran, Uncle Butchie, and a little girl who had no idea her whole world was already crumbling.

It grew even more jumbled from there. She remembered Daddy and Uncle Butchie standing in the corner of the Kelly kitchen arguing and waving their arms, Daddy's dark eyes standing out from his pale, thin face like gleaming chunks of coal, while Gran kept running to the window every time she heard a car go by. She remembered Mrs. Kelly giving her her a glass of milk and a Uneeda biscuit and telling her everyuthing was going to be all right. She remembered the policeman in his dark blue coat and his cap with the patent leather visor that shined like the shoes she wore to church on Sunday. She remembered spending that night alone at Gran's, while Daddy and Uncle Butchie went off with the policeman.

She took another drag off the Pall Mall, feeling it burn her lungs. She exhaled slowly, looking around her own tiny kitchen. It was dusty, faded, and cold, just like she was. She didn't have any pictures on display, she didn't have any family memorabilia, she didn't *want* to remember. She tried so hard not to remember, and now, dammit, it was all flooding back.

She remembered being back home in the little house on Orient Street, the little house where Daddy and Mum had sat in the living room every night after supper, Daddy in the low blue chair and Mum in the tall yellow one, listening to the boxy radio on the side table. She remembered how Daddy called Mum "Frannie-pannie," and how Mum called Daddy "Erns." She remembered how when something silly or embarassing happened Daddy would laugh and in a deep, rich voice like Andy on the radio, he'd say "I is regusted." And she remembered that she never really heard him laugh again after that night when the police came to the little house, three policemen in dark blue coats and hats and a tall, baldheaded man in a brown suit, and took Daddy away with them. They took her next door and she sat up crying all night while Aunt Alice tried to comfort her and Uncle Butchie paced the floor punching his palm with his fist. "He didn't have nothing to do with it," he kept saying. "I know he didn't have nothing to do with it, he ain't that kind of man."

She remembered when Daddy came home the next day, his face paler and his eyes darker than she'd ever seen them, and she remembered the bruise on his neck that he tried to cover by keeping his shirt collar buttoned. And she remembered all the nights after that when he'd sit in the little kitchen with the lights turned off, just staring into the darkness. Sometimes she heard him crying.

And she remembered the way people whispered when they went downtown, how they leaned back with their hands in front of their mouths and made a little pointing gesture in their direction. And she remembered the way Daddy would hold her hand even tighter, and she felt the tension in his body as he kept a firm, solid step past all the whisperers.

And most of all she remembered that night when he couldn't stop coughing and she saw the clots of blood in the kitchen sink. She ran next door to use the phone, and she remembered Uncle Butchie helping the men from the ambulance carry her father out of the house. She remembered seeing him in the hospital, standing there with Aunt Alice and looking at her father and thinking his face looked like a Halloween skeleton head sunken into the white pillow.

She lived with Gran for a while after that, but Gran was sick too, and she remembeed how Gran would never want to leave her house, how she'd gotten sharp and mean and wouldn't go to Daddy's funeral. She was unhappy there, and finally Uncle Butchie and Aunt Alice took her in. That was even harder, living next door to her own old house, seeing other people living there, another child playing on the front porch where Daddy used to sit on summer nights after work, just staring, staring out into the darkness.

She hated school, hated it. She wished she could move far away where nobody knew her, nobody knew what had happened. She'd heard the stories the other kids told, nothing is ever secret for long on a playground. She knew they talked about her father, how he'd cut the brakes on the car so his wife would drive off the road and into one of the old limestone quarries outside town, quarries full of water where a car and a woman's body would never be found. They said "he did it for the insurance," whatever that meant, and they snickered and goaded her when they were feeling especially cruel.

And she remembered that day in May when she was twelve years old and Mikey Philbrook -- a boy she'd known all her life, a boy who was as close to her as a brother -- got into a petty, stupid argument with her about something so trivial she couldn't remember what it was. But she remembered what he said -- "Hey, it's Mother's Day Sunday, why don't you go out to the quarry and visit her?" -- and she remembered the red fog that came down over her eyes. She remembered, vividly, snatching a heavy iron stapler off the teacher's desk and pushing Mikey to the schoolroom floor, and beating him, beating him until he screamed for mercy. She remembered the other kids pulling her off him, and she remembered how funny his face looked, and how the blood stained his sweater and his shirt and ran all over the tiled floor.

They sent her away after that, to a place called "Sweetser," and they called her incorrigible, and she remembered being just what they called her -- fighting with the other girls, fighting with the teachers, fighting with the staff, daring anybody to say anything to her. And she remembered the hatred that bubbled out of her in the night -- hatred for the woman who'd just disappeared, who'd made her father just give up and die, who'd probably run off with some other man or something, and who never once tried to find out what had happened to her only child.

She crushed out the Pall Mall, and sat alone in the kitchen watching the last curls of smoke drift to the cracked, yellowed ceiling. Good riddance, she'd said to that skinny ba***rd on the doorstep.

And she meant it.

 

[Nobert]

This is one of the most fascinating threads I have read here.

Lizzie, if you were to continue this into a published novel, or short story, I'd buy it.

I may just wait until the movie comes out.

 

[cchgn]

You know, on most forums I'm on, there's a section for stories that folks write.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Dr. Gordon sat on the edge of the rough concrete barricade, gazing off into the distance toward the other end of the rusted old iron bridge. He hadn't bothered to go back to the office after the disastrous encounter with Margaret Hutchins. The reality of the whole situation had crashed down upon him, the ridiculousness of what he had nearly convinced himself to believe. Science fiction. Fantasy. Comic book nonsense. Time travel is impossible, and every sensible person knows it.

But if every sensible person knows it, why had he driven out here, past the southern outskirts of town and onto the overgrown spur off Route 1. They'd bypassed this part of the road more than thirty years ago, oldtimers had told him, because the bridge over the Weskeag River was seventy years old and too difficult to maintain anymore. There was a new, modern-looking steel and concrete bridge spanning the river about a hundred yards to his right, and when it was finished they'd just cut off this little loop of road, threw up the concrete barricades, and left the bridge to decay on its own. He knew some of the locals liked to fish off it, and it was still used for foot traffic, but no car had driven across the span since the Reagan Administration.

And yet, he could look at the edge of the barricade and see fresh scratches in the surface, and scrapings of dark green paint from where the fender of Frances Dellings' Plymouth had piled into the concrete. She couldn't have been driving very fast, but the impact was enough to break her shoulder, he'd seen the evidence of that first hand.

He picked up a chunk of the barricade that must've cracked off when two thousand pounds of Detroit steel slammed into the edge. She must've tried to steer around the barricade at the last minute, he figured, but couldn't see well enough in the dusk to completely swerve around it -- and if she had, she'd have risked skidding into the weedy, overgrown drainage ditch. He sat on the edge of the barricade, absently rapping the concrete chunk against its top, where other cracks and fractures revealed the rusted rebar inside.

Decay. Entropy. Was that the end result of everything, he wondered. Seventy-two years ago, this was the middle of U. S. 1, and that bridge was alive with traffic. Now it was just a mass of scrap iron, and the roadbed was gradually being reclaimed by the soil around it. He could look down the slope toward the bridge and see the tire tracks where the oncoming car had crushed down the grass and weeds that had long since broken thru the cracked, decaying old pavement.

The tracks gave him an idea. He flipped the concrete chunk into the brush, and began walking down the slope toward the bridge, following the path of the impressions the tires had made in the grass. As he got closer to the bridge, the weeds grew taller, and he could see they were even growing on the bridge itself -- birds must've dropped seeds, leaves and bits of debris must've blown onto the surface of the roadbed over the decades, piling up and decaying, decaying away into a sort of layer of topsoil, where the seeds had taken root and flourished. Moss and grasses and even the occasional pathetic looking little maple tree. Nature reclaiming its own, and so much for the works of man.

The bridge didn't look any too sturdy, but Gordon figured if it could support a Plymouth, it could support his weight, and he walked out onto the roadbed. Here and there he saw the evidence of occasional use by pedestrians, fishermen, and bored teenagers. A crude drawing of a phallus, delineated in orange spray paint thrust upward along one of the rails, and fragments of broken beer bottles crunched underfoot as he neared the middle of the bridge.

He stopped there, realizing something was odd, something didn't look right. He looked ahead, toward the barricade at the other end of the bridge, the twin of the one he'd just examined, and the uphill slope that led back onto the main road, the ghostly remnant of Old U. S. 1. It looked much like the section he'd just walked -- except for one thing. The weeds stood about shin high right up to the edge of the highway. He looked behind him and saw the clear impression the Plymouth's tires had made in the weeds as it skidded toward the other barricade.

South end of the bridge, crushed weeds.

North end of the bridge, tall weeds.

Gordon felt dizzy, almost nauseous for a moment as the full import of what he was seeing crashed into his mind. He clutched the rusted iron rail, turning his head from right to left over and over again, as if to prove to himself that he was actually seeing what he saw.

Either the Plymouth had dropped out of the sky, lowered onto the bridge by some gigantic helicopter as part of the ultimate hoax -- or it had materialized in the middle of the bridge out of thin air, already in motion toward the barricade at the south end.

It couldn't be. It just couldn't be.

But. There. It. Was.

 

[plain old dave]

Day Seven: Oak Ridge.

It had been a full day, that was for sure. They arrived, just as promised, in the town of Oak Ridge about 2 hours after she saw the giant baseball stadium. The hotel was a surprise. Called the Doubletree Inn, it was the tallest building around. Had a full restaurant, indoor swimming pool, ‘phones in the rooms, an elevator, the works. And there was one of the Waffle House diners in easy walking distance. The future never ceased to surprise, even the parking lot was something new. She really hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but almost every vehicle in the parking lot looked a lot like a Chevy Suburban. So she asked Dr. Wilcox about it as he stopped the car.

“Is there a funeral director convention in town or something?”

Somewhat confused, Dr. Wilcox answered. “No, why?”

“Almost every car in this parking lot is a TRUCK and they ALL look like Chevy Suburbans. Everybody knows the only people that drive those are funeral directors. That’s what they use to take the flowers to burials.”

“Oh! Well, those are all different makes, Fords, Chevies, GMCs, Dodges, foreign ones… They’re called Sport Utility Vehicles and they became the American family car of choice about 15 years ago. We’re here, and we have you a reservation. It’s under an assumed name, to avoid trouble like back in Maine.”

He handed her a tiny playing card with her picture on it. It had her picture on it all right, but the name was “Sarah Jackson” and it said she was from Kennebunkport. He handed her another card, this one said “Visa” and had the same name on it, Sarah Jackson.

“Just for now, you’ll go by “Sarah Jackson”. We want to keep a low profile, you understand. Sarah is an accountant with the Department of Energy, on a short-term assignment to the National Security Directorate over at the Labs. That won’t attract attention, as the Department uses the Doubletree all the time for people on assignments like this. The other card is what we generally use for money. Give it to the cashier, she will run it like you saw Special Agent Reading do for gas earlier, and you’ll usually sign the little slip of paper they give you. Be sure and sign it as “Sarah Jackson.” They will ask if they can use the card for “incidentals”, like maybe meals or drinks if you’re so minded at checkin. You can feel free to use it for that. I think you’ll really like the rooms, this is the best hotel around. Get comfortable, but you might want to turn in early. Tomorrow will be a full day with our team working on getting you home, and we got you some nicer things to wear too.”

She checked in, that was pretty straightforward. A hotel was a hotel, even in the future. This one had an elevator, and she picked up the small satchel they had given her with soap, toothpaste and things like that and rode the elevator up. The room was about halfway down the hall, and she easily opened the door. It was spacious, and well appointed if a bit plain. Queen sized bed, office desk and chair, and a comfortable parlor chair was about the size of it. There was one of those televisions on the dresser across from the bed, but after her rough time with the one at the hospital back in Maine she wanted nothing to do with this… television. There was a small bakelite box on the nightstand next to the bed, right in front of the telephone.

Before looking at the box, she decided to set a wake up call with the Operator. The clerk said she could set a wakeup call, and she picked the receiver up off the hook and waited. All it did was buzz, and she realized Dr. Wilcox said there weren’t operators any more. You made calls by pushing buttons. She pressed the one marked “Oper”, assuming it was short for Operator. It was, and she left a wakeup call for 6. Plenty of time for fried eggs, bacon and coffee at that Waffle House diner across the highway.

On closer examination, the bakelite box turned out to be a radio. She started trying the buttons and it came to life with the loud music most people seemed to like in the future. She moved the thumbwheel marked “Tuning” and different stations came in. She heard a sports announcer calling a basketball game, a very angry colored man, more of that jarring loud music, and somebody singing in what she thought was probably Spanish. She began to think radio in the future had nothing going for it, but noticed a switch marked “AM/FM”. She clicked it, and THIS was what radio was supposed to sound like. Hollow static, whistles and weak stations a-plenty. The set had a dial that looked like a slide rule, but the numbers were right there. Wasn’t dark yet, so no use of trying for any of the clear channel stations, like WLW or WGN or… Wait a minute. Frances realized they were just a few minutes out of Knoxville, and that meant Nashville and WSM were just West. But that would have to wait. For now, she absently tuned the dial. Angry people shouting about politics, a few religious stations, then…. Hillbilly music. The radio was just below 600 when she heard a string band, a train whistle imitation, and Roy Acuff’s unmistakable high tenor. She couldn’t help singing along.

“It’s the combination, on the Wabash Cannonball.”

Apparently Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys were going to cover “The Wabash Cannonball” and do a fine job of it. The announcer stated this was AM-580, from the hills of Roane County. And as if planned, a hillbilly brother act started playing “The Hills of Roane County”, a sad ballad. She had heard the song for years, even by the Carter Family one night on the Grand Ole Opry on WSM. She looked out the window, and it hit her. Marshal Thibidoux had said they would be IN Roane County at these “Labs” in the morning. She was listening to a song about the hills of Roane County while looking at the same hills. The station was located in a theater apparently called Yonder Holler, and she determined to go see some live hillbilly music, unless Doctor Wilcox could get her home first.

The song was a long one, and they started singing about marrying at the age of 30, rambling the whole world before going back home to Roane County and the trial in the village of Kingston. They were singing about HER. Frances’ thoughts turned to Ernest, her family, and her small town back in Maine. She missed them so, and the tears welled up. Somehow, she KNEW Ernest was long gone, but little Maggie…. What she wouldn’t give to just see her one more time. She let it all go. Just buried her head in the pillow and cried herself to sleep.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Dr. Gordon was very much a man of the Internet Generation, and he usually seemed to think that if he couldn't research it on the web, it wasn't much worth researching. But the internet didn't have what he needed now, and as he walked into the Public Library he felt like something of a time traveler himself. He didn't know if they had what he was looking for, but if they did it'd cut a lot of work off his search time.

He walked up to the reference desk, where a young dark-haired woman was typing away at a computer. "Um, hi," he began. "I'm wondering if you have city directories here, going back to, say, the early 1940s."

"Right over there behind the encyclopedia shelves," she replied without hesitating. "We have them going back to 1890, but only the twentieth century volumes are on those shelves. If you need the nineteenth century volumes, they've been moved to Rare Books downstairs."

He thanked her, and stepped across the lobby to the indicated shelves. The books were large and tattered, the covers emblazoned with display ads for long-vanished local businesses. The 1942 volume was missing, so he pulled the book marked "1941" off the shelf, and began flicking thru the pages. He couldn't quite remember the name he was looking for, she'd only mentioned it that one time when she was talking about listening to some boxing match on the radio, but it was the only lead he had left. The listings were alphabetical, and the type was tiny. "Arvidson, Maynard E., furniture dealer, res. 24 Crescent Street." "Bachman, George S., lobsterman, res. 82 Trinity Street." "Carstairs, Agnes H., school teacher, res. 35 Brewster Street." Name after name after name, line after line, the grey block of type broken only by ads along the bottom of the page by ads for "A. C. McLoon Inc. Shell Range and Fuel Oils, Ice, Provisions and Supplies," "Bazarian Fruit Company -- Fresh Fruits and Vegetables -- Beer and Ale" and "The Fireproof Garage, Main and WInter Streets, Tydol and Veedol Products."

He had to be getting close. "Ah, ah!" he whispered to himself as he came to a page containing a familiar name. "Philbrook, Philbrook, that was it." But which one? There was half a page of Philbrooks. He scanned his finger down the page, and tried to remember the street address. "China Street? No, Oriental Street? No, no -- Orient Street, that was it, Orient." He squinted, and spotted what he was looking for. "Philbrook, Donald K. Machinist. Res. 16 Orient Street. Donald. She called him Benny, Bobby -- um -- Butchie, that was it. But this must be the one, only one it could be."

He slipped the book back onto the shelf, and moved briskly to the row of computers along the opposite wall. Sliding into an open chair, he opened a browser and began searching. It didn't take him long to find what he was after. Donald "Butchie" Philbrook had died in 1987 -- but he was survived by his wife Alice and his son Michael. There were several Alice Philbrooks, but the one who interested him had died in 1990. But there were three Michael Philbrooks -- and one of them was 76 years old and lived in Maplewood, a town just twenty miles down the other side of Route 1.

It was a long shot, but at this point it was the only shot he had.

Another quick search brought up Michael Philbrook's phone number. He stepped to a corner of the lobby and punched in the digits. "Hello?" came a hoarse, elderly voice.

"Is this Michael Philbrook?"

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Mr. Philbrook, was your father Donald K. Philbrook?"

"Yeah, they called him Butchie, but that was his right name. Who'd you say this was?"

"Mr. Philbrook, this is Dr. Mark Gordon of Donahue Memorial Hospital. I'm calling because I'm looking for information concerning a Margaret Anne Hutchins. You probably knew her as Margaret Anne Dellings. She lived next door to you when you were children."

"What the hell is this all about? I ain't seen Margaret Dellings in sixty years. How would I know anything about her?"

"Mr. Philbrook, I need to know what happened to her after her parents -- died, and you're the only person I can find who knew her then. Please, this is very important."

There was a long silence on the line. Gordon heard the wheezing of the old man's breath.

"I'll tell you what I know," he finally replied. "But it ain't pretty."