Here by Mistake (25 page)

They reminisced about 1965 for another hour. Reginald talked about his fight with Jack Halstead the day they had all met. “Jack’s a lawyer in town now,” he said cheerfully. “Turned out to be a nice guy.” Sarah recalled their walk that last night through the cold, dark streets to Kingsworth Shoes. Brandon brought up their close call with Officer Doug and Robbo in the factory. Quint told of his astonishment at the sight of moving pictures in the niche. Stephen mentioned
The Beverly Hillbillies
, and Brandon admitted it was not his favorite show. Reginald didn’t seem surprised and didn’t seem to mind.

Quint got up from the couch. “Back in a second,” he said. He disappeared down the hall and came back with something in his hand. He threw the something at Brandon, who reached out and caught it.

“What’s this?” Brandon asked. He held the thing by its ends and let it roll out. It was an old red-checkered shirt. “Wow, Quint, you kept this!”

“A bit faded from its glory days,” Quint said, “but I thought you might want it for old time’s sake.”

Brandon spread the shirt across his chest. “Last week I wanted to burn this thing. Now I want it. Thanks.”

“Ho-ly smokes,” Reginald said, glancing at his watch. “I have to get moving. The missus expected me ten minutes ago.” He got up to go.

“Missus?” Brandon said.

“You’ll find out when you’re married, B. Your time’s never your own.”

“Married,” Sarah whispered to Brandon. “That’s who the lady was.”

Reginald overheard her and stopped on his way to the door. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t I married before you came to 1965?”

Brandon pursed his lips at Sarah, and Reginald had his answer. He turned his left hand over and delicately touched the ring on his finger. His eyes were shining. “Well, I’m married now, B, sixteen years. I’m henpecked as hell, and loving every minute of it.” He gave Brandon a soft tap on the arm.

A thought came to Brandon and he blurted it out: “Quint, have you still gotten divorced twice?”

“Sure have, B, and I’m loving every minute of it, too,” Quint said. He gave Brandon’s other arm a tap. “Y’all are good, but you can’t work miracles, you know.”

Reginald started to leave and stopped again. “Hey, why don’t you all come to my place for barbecue next Saturday? My missus makes the best ribs you ever tasted.” He laughed at the surprise on Brandon’s face. “Actually, you have tasted them, but I guess you don’t remember.”

Brandon came to himself and said yes. Sarah and Stephen also accepted.

“Good,” Reginald said. He nudged Quint with his elbow. “You’re invited too, Casanova, if you don’t have a hot date.”

Quint slapped Reginald on the back and walked with him to the door. When he returned a minute later he took one look at Brandon and grinned. “What’s the matter, B? Too much too soon?”

Brandon was staring blankly ahead. His hair was in a wild shape from his having just run his hands through it. “Huh?” he said, looking up. “What, Quint?”

Sarah reached up and smoothed his hair into place.

“Nothing,” Quint said. “Anybody want another soda? We need to talk.” His voice was now serious.

“More?” Brandon asked incredulously. “There’s more?”

“Yes.” Quint put on his reading glasses and took a square of paper from his back pocket. “This came late yesterday from Faye’s lawyer. Apparently her will was read last week, and I wasn’t even told about it. This is a list of her specific bequests.”

“What’s a bequest?” Brandon asked.

“Things she left to people,” Stephen said.

“That’s right,” Quint said. He sat down on Reginald’s chair and unfolded the paper. “Guess what she left to one Brandon William Stratham?”

Brandon shrugged. Then he stiffened. “Not . . .”

Quint read from the paper: “‘Á Roman wall ornament, with Latin inscription, dedicated to the spirit of youthful exploration and discovery.’” He pulled off his glasses and looked hard at Brandon.

“Okay, so?” Brandon said defensively. “It’s not my fault. I didn’t tell Aunt Faye to leave me anything.”

“Wow,” Stephen whispered.

Quint slid the paper back into his pocket. “You owe me a conversation about our friend the niche, remember, B?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Want to have it now or when we’re alone?”

Brandon didn’t want to have it at all. “Now’s good,” he murmured.

“All right,” Quint said. “What’ll you do with the niche?”

“What d’you mean?”

Quint’s eyes flashed and he leaned into Brandon. “You know damn well what I mean. Will you use it again? Go through time again?”

The moment Brandon had put off forty years earlier had arrived. “Yes,” he heard himself say.

“Sure,” Sarah said. “We’ll do Mardi Gras sixty-six in New Orleans.” She put her head back and laughed. No one joined her. She stopped and looked at Brandon. “B?”

Brandon’s mind was racing.
Aunt Faye left me the niche. It's mine! Wait . . . what's Sarah saying?

“You’re not serious?”

Serious? What's she talking about?

Sarah got off the couch and stood over him. “You’d do what we just did, again?” she asked coldly.

Brandon looked up at her. “Yes.” A stony silence followed, and he asked, “Well?”

“Can I go with you?” Stephen asked breathlessly.

“Sure!”

Sarah stepped back from both of them. “Are you two crazy? We could’ve been killed. We barely made it back.”

“You’re just stuck on the bad parts,” Brandon said dismissively.

“Bad parts? What were the good parts?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, puh-lease,” Sarah said disdainfully. “Okay, make it easy for me. What’s so great about getting lost where we don’t belong and maybe getting killed?”

Brandon felt hot in the face at the “puh-lease.” Sarah would never understand the good parts. How could she? She’d spent half her time in 1965 crying. He stood up and got in her face. “What’s ‘great’ is not . . . knowing . . . what’s . . . next. In 2005 every day’s like yesterday. In 1965 crazy stuff hit me all the time. Stuff I didn’t expect. And the stuff I did expect wasn’t there, because it wasn’t invented yet. It was cool seeing what people did before stuff was invented. It was cool seeing what they thought about things. It was so wild I didn’t know up from down sometimes. I was scared, and I was stoked, and I want that. I want it!”

Sarah paled and backed away from him. She gestured to Quint as if to say, “Tell him he’s crazy.”

“Bad parts,” Quint mused. “The whole thing could’ve been a bad part, B. It could’ve blown up in our faces a dozen times. Mr. Robb might’ve called the police. Reginald might not’ve gotten the keys. We might’ve been caught in the factory . . .”

“That kid in the park might’ve cracked your head open with that brick,” Sarah put in.

“Y’all were damn lucky to come out of it safe and sound,” Quint said.

“All morning you’ve been talking about the great things we did,” Brandon told him. “Now you’re saying don’t ever do them again.”

“Y’all did do good, and I’m damn proud of y’all,” Quint said evenly. “But y’all were also lucky. And sooner or later, luck always runs out.”

“Next time we’ll plan it better,” Stephen said. “It won’t be an accident like this one.”

“Plan it how?” Sarah snapped. “You don’t know what you’ll find. How can you?”

“And another thing,” Quint said. “Going to the past changes the present. What if y’all make a terrible mistake . . . maybe cause someone to be killed instead of saved. What then?”

Brandon shook his head firmly. “That won’t happen.”

“You’re not thinking, B,” Quint said. “What if you just talk with someone for a minute and delay him crossing a street. Then he crosses and gets hit by a car that wouldn’t have been there a minute before. What about that?”

Brandon asked, “Are you for real, Quint?”

“Sir,” Stephen said, “we can do that in 2005. You could keep us here a minute longer than we wanted, and a car could hit us.”

“That’s right,” Brandon said. “Anyone can do a thing like that, anytime.”

“But if it’s done in the past, everything that follows gets changed,” Quint said. “What gives Mister Brandon Stratham the right to do that?”

“We all change things just doing what we do every day, Mister Coster,” Brandon shot back. “What’s the difference?”

Quint got off his chair and stepped to him. “The difference,” he said angrily, “is that y’all would change not just the future, but the present. ‘We all’ don’t have the niche to muck around with history and turn our lives today upside down.” Brandon shrugged, and then Quint exploded: “What gives y’all that right?”

Stephen jumped up and pushed his way between them. “Stop it,” he cried. “Stop it now.”

They stepped apart and sat down.

“I don’t think it has to do with rights,” Stephen said, straightening his glasses with shaking hands. “I don’t think the present is special just because it’s the present.”

“I don’t think so either,” Brandon said to Quint. “Doctor Stanhope and Reginald did better because we went back. And you know it.”

Quint pointed out the window and demanded: “What’s to stop me from going over to Faye’s right now and taking a sledgehammer to that damn thing?”

“It’s mine,” Brandon said. “That’s what.”

Sarah sat down next to Brandon. “I don’t care if the present flips over a hundred times,” she said in a voice too sweet for the moment. “But I’m not losing you to that crazy time machine. Promise me you won’t use it again.”

“No.”

She lost the sweetness. “Promise me.”

“No, I’m—”

Brandon stopped at the sight of Quint, slumped in his chair, looking very sad. He thought back to the Quint he had taken leave of only yesterday. That Quint had been almost a kid himself—a kid looking out for three younger kids, a kid taking every chance he could think of to get those kids back home. The one in front of him was old and gray and looked tired now. This Quint had always been there for him, letting him hang around, listening those times when he couldn’t stop talking, never being too busy. The two Quints: they were the same person, with one big difference. Arguing with eighteen-year-old Quint had been fun, and he missed it already. Arguing with fifty-eight-year-old Quint was no fun at all. It made him feel lousy.

“Quint,” Brandon murmured. “I owe you. I’ll do anything . . .”

Quint looked up.

“ . . . except give up the niche.”

Quint exhaled and rubbed his eyes. “It’s okay, B. Just promise me this: Before you use that damn thing, you and I have another talk.”

“Sure.”

Brandon still felt badly for Quint. Then he remembered a conversation they had had a long time ago. “Quint, whatever happened to Gabriel?”

“Heard he did some time for loan-sharking while I was still at Tulane. After that I don’t know. I still think about the night we made the bet. Still wish you’d never seen him.”

Brandon nodded. “Remember what I told you forty years ago?”

“You said you’d never see me differently because of him.”

“That’s right. And I don’t.”

Quint’s tired eyes smiled and he chuckled. “Fair enough. Thanks, B.”

Sarah cut in. “Never mind Gabriel. You and I need to talk more about the niche, B. You’re not using your brain on this one.”

“Forget it, Sarah. You’re not getting your way this time.”

She laughed lightly. “No?”

“No.”

“Want to bet on that?”

Brandon smirked. “You owe me four Dr. Peppers already.”

“I knooow,” Sarah said. “That’s too many. Let this bet settle everything. If I can talk you out of it, you buy me a Dr. Pepper. If I can’t, I buy you one.”

“Forget it. You can’t win it.”

Sarah turned to Quint and Stephen. “You’re my witnesses.” She offered her hand to Brandon.

Brandon was just sick of arguing. He took her hand and shook it.

It was midafternoon before Brandon got home. He ran upstairs to his room and changed into his Jethro shirt. The niche was his, and the adventures to come would make 1965 look like a walk up to Broadway. He stepped in front of his mirror and pushed his fists into the air. “YES,” he said.

His mother would ask him where the shirt had come from. He would say it was just some old thing Quint had given him, which was true enough. His father wouldn’t notice the shirt, any more than he ever noticed anything. He could bounce past his dad in astronaut gear and not get a second look.

That morning his father had gotten all over him for leaving his socks on the floor. Socks on the floor. Knocking Reginald on his face and calling Stephen the N-word was okay, but not socks on the floor. Quint would say his dad was only ten, most kids rip into geeks, blah, blah, blah.

Brandon sneered as he recalled his dad in 1965. He slid open the top drawer of his dresser and took out a pair of black dress socks. He dropped them in the middle of the rug and left the room.

At five that afternoon John Stratham was reading the Sunday
Rollings Journal
in his easy chair in the family room. The air conditioner, on high, was fluttering the edges of his paper. Brandon came in, stepped over some advertising sections, and sat on the couch.

“Dad,” he said.

His father didn’t answer.

“Dad.”

His father snapped the paper. “Hmmm? What?” he asked. He went on reading.

Brandon glowered at him. “Nothing.” He got up to leave.

His father folded the paper and put it aside. “Brandon . . . wait.” He took the remote from his lap and aimed it at the air conditioner. The roar came down to a whoosh. “What’s up?”

Brandon tried not to sound angry. “If you’re busy, that’s okay.”

“I’m not busy. Come on.”

Brandon stepped over the advertising and sat down again. He began nodding at nothing in particular. “Anything in the paper?”

“Not much. What’s up?”

“Um,” Brandon said, “um . . . ”

His father waited.

Brandon cleared his throat. “Before school was done we had a guest speaker in health class. The guy talked about bullies and bullying, things bullies do. I’ve been thinking about it.” He felt a pang of embarrassment cribbing Quint’s words from 1965: “If I’m honest with myself, I have to say I bullied a few geeks in my time. I wasn’t good to them. I kicked them to the curb.” He tried to look his father in the eye. “Did you ever bully anyone, Dad?”