The Mine (32 page)

"You weren't supposed to see that before Christmas, Grace. Joel was very clear."

"Well, it seems he's clear about a lot of things."

Grace closed her eyes and tried to process the facts as Katie stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. Joel had left for good, he had lied, and he had used her friends to deliver a message he didn't have the courage to deliver himself. Taking a breath and bracing for more, she picked up the letter and continued reading.

"I'm not from Montana. I'm not even from this time. I'm from Seattle and a future so distant that I have yet to be born. I am the grandson of Virginia Gillette."

Grace dropped the letter and pushed the envelopes away as rage swept over her face. She had read enough. She could not believe that a man she had loved so purely, and so completely, could abandon her so flippantly and cowardly.

The future? Oh, Mr. Smith, you are a clever one.

Grace shook off Katie's hand, grabbed the juice glass, and threw it at the sink, where it shattered into dozens of pieces. She got out of her chair, slammed a cabinet door shut, and paced around the kitchen until she heard the phone ring.

"I'll get it," Katie said, turning away from the shattered glass.

"No. I'll get it."

Grace ripped the handset of the black rotary-dial phone and shoved it to her face.

"Hello."

"Grace, is that you?"

"Yes, it is."

"Oh, thank God I caught you. Have you heard the news?" Edith Tomlinson asked in a voice that was both measured and brimming with stress.

"No. What news?"

"You'd better sit down, dear."

"What news?"

"Turn on the radio."

Grace pulled the handset from her face and turned to Katie. She shook her free hand toward a radio at the end of the kitchen bar and snapped her fingers.

"Katie, turn on the radio."

"What station?"

"I don't know. Just turn it on."

Katie moved swiftly toward an appliance that had not been used in days. She plugged it in, pulled it forward, and turned a knob. Within seconds Grace had the answer to her question.

"According to administration sources, the Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet, based at Pearl Harbor, began at 1:25 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Additional reports to our studios in New York indicate a coordinated air assault on Ford Island, Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, and other military installations on the principal island of Oahu."

"I'll call you back," Grace said into the mouthpiece.

She returned to her chair and tried to absorb two brutal losses: the man of her dreams and a country at peace. She glanced at the dark dining room and saw Katie stare out a partially covered window to the rainy street beyond. She retrieved the letter.

"I can't explain it. I don't expect you to believe it. But it's the truth. I entered a glowing room in a mine in 2000 and walked out in 1941. I knew war was coming, just as I knew about Conn and DiMaggio and Williams. I knew Tom would enter the Army. I know his fate. I know how the war will end and how the world will evolve."

Grace put her arms on the table as rage gave way to confusion. She grabbed the Christmas card, closely examined the image on the front, and brought a hand to her forehead. Of all the possible cards he could have picked, he had selected one displaying a single candle – a vivid reminder of their first night together. What was he trying to say? She felt dizzy and nauseous but pulled herself together and continued reading.

"On December 8, I entered the same mine and returned to my time. I wanted to take you. I agonized for days. I never wanted to leave you. But I knew I did not belong in your world, just as I knew you did not belong in mine."

She paused to consider his story. If true, it would explain his winning bets. But it was just as likely that he had been very lucky. Predicting war required less imagination. Many had warned of conflict for months. The claim he was Ginny's grandson was novel but backed by no proof. Grace found it far easier to believe that Joel had left her for something else, or
someone
else, than to believe he had traveled fifty-nine years through a hole in the ground. As she resumed reading, her anger slowly returned.

"I am sorry I lied to you. I am sorry I left. I am sorry I could not have been the man you wanted. You deserve better. Just know that my feelings for you are real and that I will never forget you. I will never stop loving you."

Grace put the letter down and looked at the radio. The reports were more frequent now, more detailed. She thought of Tom and Ginny and then Paul. He had been stationed at Ford Island. She worried about his safety and questioned how she could have traded such a fine, honorable man for a charlatan she barely knew. She also thought about Linda and wondered if it was too late to make amends and restore their friendship.

She was about to go to Katie and provide much-needed comfort when she spotted the small brown envelope on the table. She had not bothered to open it and considered tossing it in the trash. No trinket from Mr. Wonderful could possibly make up for his lies and abandonment. But she opened it anyway. She tore off the sealed end, turned the envelope upside down, and watched a small, strange-looking token drop to the table.

Grace picked up the item and saw it was a coin, a golden coin, an American dollar. The piece appeared freshly minted and bore the image of a stoic young woman with a sleeping infant strapped to her back. The woman was striking, angelic, the picture of innocence. But it was a number on the front of the coin that arrested Grace's attention. It was a date she had never seen. It was the year of the millennium, a year Joel had referenced, a year six decades away.

Grace grabbed the table and tried to steady herself as her head swam and her body went limp. She dropped an arm to her side and let the coin fall to the floor. She stared blankly out the kitchen window as the tears began to flow.

CHAPTER 64

Helena, Montana – Monday, December 8, 1941

The ride to the mine was a relatively quiet affair, which was just fine with Joel.

After leaving Grace on her doorstep Friday night, he had not wanted to talk to anyone, whether train passengers or waitresses or hotel clerks or pedestrians asking if he had heard details about Imperial Japan's attack on U.S. military installations in Hawaii. He just wanted to go home and put an awful weekend behind him.

As the cab driver turned off the highway onto Gold Mine Road, however, Joel asked him to turn on the radio. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's war address to the nation streamed through the rattling speakers. He figured he might as well get his last bit of history while the getting was good.

The driver, an older, less talkative version of Witty Pete, stared at him through the rear view mirror but did not say a thing. He did not ask him about the war or the speech or why a young man who should have been standing in a recruiting office was instead asking for a ride to an abandoned mine in sub-freezing weather.

He did, however, say it would cost extra to negotiate the goat trail. Joel did not mind. Unlike his last trip out, he had plenty of money and was more than happy to pay whatever it took to get to the mine. He gave the driver a ten-dollar tip and a twenty to wait outside the shaft for thirty minutes.

At eleven twenty Joel stepped out of the cab and walked up a muddy road past Bonnie and Clyde's Ford and three structurally safe buildings to an unobstructed hole in Colter Mountain. Except for a few puddles in the lot and snow on the treetops, the scene looked virtually unchanged from the previous May.

Joel had considered wearing warm clothes but decided against it. He still did not understand the mechanics of this geologic wormhole and did not want to needlessly increase the odds of failure, whether that meant failing to return to the future or failing to return intact. So he wore the same clothes going in as he had coming out and purged images of
The Fly
and
The Philadelphia Experiment
from his mind. Candy in Chains and the cattleman crease cowboy hat would ride again.

For the same reason, Joel left behind all personal belongings from 1941, including the Christmas card from Grace, and did not bring a flashlight. He figured his knowledge of the main shaft and the bright late-morning light would be enough to get him to the magic room or at least close enough to crawl. He entered the mine at 11:25 a.m. Mountain Time, just as he had on May 29, 2000.

The precautions paid off or, at the very least, did him no harm. About halfway to his destination, he saw a faint blue light that he had feared existed only in his mind. When Joel reached the chamber, he saw another comforting sight. The flashlight he had left behind lay where he had left it. It shined brightly against a doorway with a low-hanging beam. When he picked up the light, he directed it toward the back of the room and saw his favorite reptile. All was right with the universe.

Despite the presence of the snake, Joel walked a few feet into the chamber and placed his hands on the cold, illuminated rock. He figured any gesture that might improve his chances of getting home was worth the risk. For five minutes he inspected the cavity, keeping a healthy distance from his venomous companion. The place was as mysterious and fascinating as ever. But a more thorough examination would have to wait for the next planetary alignment. Satisfied that he had gone through a sufficient number of motions, he saluted the rattler, ducked under the low-hanging beam, and exited the room.

Once in the shaft, Joel noticed two things he had not noticed before: dirt on his clothes and a dull ache in his head. He put his hands to his temples to stifle the pain but found that that only made it worse. Since when did he get migraines?

Steadying himself, he flicked the flashlight on its brightest setting and proceeded through the shaft. He walked just twenty feet before another shoe dropped. The room at his back with the soothing blue glow exploded in a violent spasm of blinding white light. Joel fell to his knees, dropped his head, and covered his eyes. The flash exacerbated his headache tenfold and launched a galaxy of shooting stars. But just that fast it was over. The painful white light disappeared, taking the soothing blue glow with it. The magic room lost its magic. Studio 54 went black.

Concerned that change spelled trouble, Joel picked up his step. What was that all about? Had he escaped just in time, or stumbled into something worse? Would he find 2000 at the end of the shaft – or 1882? Just how precise was this time machine anyway?

Joel's worry was short-lived. As he drew closer to the outside world, he noticed that the daylight was brighter and the air warmer. The rails and beams took on a familiar, weathered, abandoned appearance. So did the side shaft. Even the brown bats assumed their usual posts. When he reached the entrance, he saw a jagged breach in a boarded barrier. His handiwork had not been disturbed. Confirmation came seconds later, when he passed through the narrow opening into the welcoming sunshine and saw his best friend sitting atop a large boulder.

"Where the hell have you been?" Adam asked with slightly extended arms and an incredulous expression.

"How long have I been gone?"

"Thirty minutes, at least."

"Just thirty minutes?"

"Yeah. Which means you are twenty-five minutes late," Adam said as he climbed down from the rock. "What did you do, take a power nap?"

Joel initially dismissed the flippant comment. Adam had a right to be pissed. But when he thought about the specific reference to sleep, he considered a possibility that now seemed as plausible as ever. What if his sojourn through 1941 had been nothing more than a crazy dream brought on by a bump on the head? Perhaps like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
he had simply experienced some high-quality REM action.

"I was gone just thirty minutes?"

"That's what I said. Do you want a prize or something?"

Joel smiled. Adam had not lost his toxic tongue. He was still a smart-ass in a Red Sox jersey. But was everything else as it appeared?

Seeking definitive answers, Joel walked to the parking lot and looked for anything that might support the power nap theory or at least confirm that he had come back to the same planet. He recalled the fascist society that had greeted the returning time travelers in "A Sound of Thunder" and decided he could do without something like that.

When Joel reached his red Toyota, he found it as he had remembered it. Two mountain bikes hung on a black metal rack in back and partially obscured a "Visualize Whirled Peas" sticker on the bumper. He peered inside and saw a CD by R.E.M. protruding from the disc player and a copy of the Helena paper from May 29, 2000, lying on the dash. A Memorial Day tribute filled most of the front page. Nothing was written in German or Russian or some crazy language that might have evolved from a date with Grace Vandenberg.

He scanned the premises and saw more of what he expected to see. The buildings at the mine had broken windows and serious structural issues and the lot was empty. No rusting Ford sat among the weeds. Bonnie and Clyde's getaway car had gotten away.

There was every reason to believe that Adam's estimation was spot on, which cast serious doubt on what Joel had thought was a real experience. He could not have possibly crammed six months of 1940s living into thirty minutes. Grace, Ginny, Katie, Tom, and others had been nothing more than pleasant figments of his imagination. When the two piled into the SUV, Adam tapped anxiously on the glove box and checked his phone. It had run out of power. He whined about his sunglasses.

"Can we go to the Canary now?"

"Sure," Joel said. "Just let me get my bearings. I think we can go back and still be home by midnight. What time is it?"

"I don't know. My phone just died. It's probably close to noon."

Adam looked at Joel.