CHAPTER 1: The Unlikely Purlieu of the Brighton Hotel
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, July 6, 2014
‘A change needed in a grandchild has to begin with the grandfather’
~ African proverb
A hurling wind came off Lake Ontario, crazed and pitiless. It funneled down Route 3, which lay like an exposed vein, and rushed down Arsenal Street as if its sole ambition was to batter the three figures who stood shivering on the American Corner. The cold was biting, even by Watertown standards. Zak, whose eyes enclosed something wise and judicious beyond his 17 years, adjusted the fur collar of one of his compatriots, Marci. She dipped into an arctic curtsy then turned serious: “I still don’t believe you, Zak.”
Zak nudged Coffee, who rounded out the trio, “Hear that?”
Coffee, lanky and pigeon-toed, formed what might have been a chuckle had it not been so solemn, “By the end of the night, she’ll believe.”
The three crossed over to Court Street, pinching themselves together against the wind. They entered the Brighton Building, where Coffee’s father ran Enrique’s Café, nestled aside Empsall’s Department store. Christmas was still weeks away, but a good number of shoppers were about.
The trio cut through the kitchen of the Café and ascended the abandoned stairwell that led them, ultimately, to the roof.
“We don’t belong here,” said Coffee as he hunched his shoulders against the wind and the cold. “I’ve never felt right about this.”
“We won’t get caught,” said Zak, who was already scouting the horizon for phantom movements.
“That’s not what I mean,” replied Coffee.
“How long do we wait before we can get back to some hot cocoa?” said Marci, who—now sitting atop eight stories—was showing her discomfort with heights.
“After ten minutes you won’t want to leave, Marci.”
“How long you say you’ve been seeing this stuff?” asked Marci.
“Since the first snow,” said Zak.
“And they only appear when it snows,” said Coffee. “And only from the roof here.”
Marci replied, “The first snow was Veterans Day, when we had off from school.”
“Right,” said Zak, pulling out a small notebook. “And it’s snowed six times since then. You can read my journal; it’s got a record of everything we’ve seen.” Marci reached for the book. She began to flip its pages.
“So, there was this hotel over on LeRay Street you saw burn down?” said Marci.
“Yes, the Failing Hotel.”
“It burned down in 1865! And you saw that…in person?”
Zak and Coffee answered simultaneously, “Yes!”
Zak added, “Saw it from this very spot. I didn’t know what year it burned until I did a little research.”
“And this entry…you write about this thing that took place in 1899. And this one, in 1911. And…”
“They’re all true, Marci. And whatever we see tonight, well, I’ll let you write up the journal entry.”
“We even once saw Frank Woolworth!” cried Coffee.
“Yeah, he was just walking down the street with a newspaper under his arm,” said Zak. “Definitely him, though. Carriages all over the place. Bowler hats.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” said Coffee, “Zak’s become quite the historian.”
“Just gotta know where to look,” said Zak. “Watertown’s history is pretty well documented.”
“So not everything you witness is some disaster?”
“Right. Sometimes nothing more than a guy chopping wood,” said Coffee.
“That was Hart Massey,” said Zak. “Just chopping away. Got his portrait right here.” Zak tapped at his chest pocket, where he kept another binder, a sort of ready-reference book that he’d compiled.
“He had a log cabin where the Paddock Arcade now is,” added Coffee.
The snow that was gently falling began to intensify.
Marci brushed the flakes from her shoulder. Zak replaced his journal beneath his coat, and all three leaned further over the parapet there on the roof of the Brighton Building, quietly expelling little puffs of air into the inscrutable night.
Just then the snowfall took on a strange aspect: it whirled in fantastic bands of ever-shifting patterns. It was impossible to tell the direction from which it came: in fact it was coming from every direction. At first the snowfall admitted more and more light to the spectators and then less and less.
“Wait for it,” whispered Zak.
The horizon began to wrinkle. It gathered itself into folds that were at once sharp and wholly blurred.
“What’s happening?” shrieked a stunned Marci.
“Shhh!”
“Look, Marci—you see a cavity anymore on Public Square?”
Marci was dumbfounded. “It’s gone! The hole, I mean. There’s a building there now!”
“That’s the Woodruff. Which got razed in the 70’s.”
“What’s happening?” cried Marci.
“My grandfather said they had Go-Go girls there,” said an exultant Coffee.
“Go-Go?” said Marci, whose captivation was now hoisted. “Well, then, let’s go-go down there!”
“Not yet. Let’s wait to see what else appears.”
“So, can you actually touch these, ya know, apparitions? Go up to’m…into them?”
“Y’ever heard of the Avon Theater, or the Olympic?”
Marci shook her head.
“Well, when they appeared, we trucked on over and took in a movie,” said Zak.
“For real,” said Coffee. “Straight out of the 60’s.”
“So you can interact with all these….? I mean, the people, too?” asked Marci.
“Well, they were saying ‘excuse me’ when they bumped our knees. So…”
“But did they actually talk talk?”
“It was so unreal we kinda forgot how unreal it was.”
“I thought you said you can only see from the roof?”
“True. But once we spot something, it sometimes stays long enough for us to get to it.”
“Last weekend, when the long-gone Orphans Asylum over on Franklin Street popped up, we sprinted over—cus, ya know, they were kids, too—but couldn’t get a single soul to see us, let alone talk to us. They were all like we didn’t exist.”
“Look!” cried Marci, dumbfounded.
Coffee turned again to Zak: “Welcome the new believer, eh?”
Marci shouted: “That’s the Wise lot. A parking lot! There’s no buildings on that lot.”
“There is now. That’s the train station. Went up in 1853, came down in, uh….”
A voice came from behind the trio: “1962…”
The three jolted upright and turned to spot a large man standing there in the shadows. His face was weathered and his eyes were small under craggy brows. He stepped closer to the three.
Marci edged back toward the parapet. Zak studied the man’s face. Coffee took a step in the man’s direction: “Hey, Mr. Mecomanaco?”
The man smiled. Coffee then said, “It’s OK. It’s Mr. Mecomanaco. He’s the—he works for Empsalls.”
“Night janitor for Empsalls,” said the man, smiling still. “Omit nothing, Mr. Garcia, and nothing will surprise. I also live here, at the Brighton.”
“His apartment’s right above my dad’s café,” said Coffee.
Marci, still marveling at the scenes, said, “So you’ve seen, too?” and she pointed breathlessly to the seemingly solid train depot.
“For many years,” said the man. “Many years.”
“Years?” exclaimed Zak.
“More than I remember. But I’ve got it all in books.”
And Zak cried again: “Years?”
“How’s it possible?” asked Marci.
“The how, I don’t know, but the facts are kinda hard to ignore.” And the man reached into his jumpsuit and withdrew a worn sketchpad. He handed it to Zak. “At first they’d only appear when it was snowing. But after a time I could see them any time after sundown. Their time is not our time - I saw scenes from all times of day, even though it was night here on the rooftop. I started to draw them.”
“You’re a pretty good illustrator,” said Zak. “These are excellent.”
“This whole book is almost all of the rail station,” said Marci.
“Oh, I’ve got lots of other books, too. But those images are the ones that haunt me most.”
“Why so?” asked Zak.
“Come, let’s go to the café. I’ll show you more of my books. First, though, look there and tell me what you see.”
“You mean the train station?”
“No, just beyond it.”
“Well, there’s four platforms. One train. Dead silent. No passengers at all.”
“Look more closely,” urged the man.
“No, wait, there’s a woman on the furthest platform.”
“I see her, too” said Marci. “She’s walking into some sorta….”
“That’s a tunnel,” said the man. “Goes under the tracks, connects the far platform to the station—keeps ladies’ skirts from dragging through coal dust and cinders.”
Zak displayed a page from the janitor’s sketchbook; he pointed to the figure on the page: “Hey, it’s her – it’s the same woman.”
Coffee brought his eyes closer to the sketchbook. “Yeah, it is.”
Zak flipped through more pages. “She’s in all the drawings!”
And Marci asked, “This woman – do you know who she is?”
The man bent slightly over, trying to conceal his anguished face.
Coffee added, “You know her, then…?”
Mr. Mecomanaco only dropped his head and, sighing, turned sadly from the scene and said, “Come, let’s go to the café where it is bright. I’ll tell you the story…”
CHAPTER 2: Othertimes & Otherwise
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, July 13, 2014
The four wound their way down from the Brighton rooftop and took a booth in the rear of Enrique’s Café, where green shaded lamps hung low, and at their elbows were the brick, red leather and aged cherry wood that gave the café its flavor. Above them was a series of old photos depicting the industrial hey-day of Watertown: sepia-toned images of the Air Brake, Bagley & Sewall, Knowlton Brothers, Babcock Carriage and the Taggart Paper Mill, among others. Zak was absorbed in the journals that the janitor had retrieved on their way down.
“You’ve got it figured out, completely figured out!” exclaimed Zak with unabashed admiration.
The janitor lowered his head humbly and said, “Been working at it a long while.”
“So you can actually predict these appearances? There’s a real method to it all.”
“Not always. I’m not sure there is any rhyme. Or reason. But sometimes I get it right.”
“Like for tomorrow, you’ve got down…”
“If I’m right—and I may not be—the train depot will appear again. And there’ll be about eighty people boarding the 10:20, bound for Dayton.”
Zak looked up from the janitor’s books, “And it’ll be January 13th, 1890.”
“Yes.”
“And they’ll all be employees of the Davis Sewing Machine Company…leaving town,” said Zak.
“That’s right.”
“Why did they all go?”
“Davis had just closed the Watertown plant. Moved everything to Ohio. They offered free transportation to any worker who wanted to relocate. A lot of them left everything they had in Watertown to go. Everything. Half of them died in Dayton—and a good many brought back here to be buried.”
“So sad,” said Marci.
The janitor nodded and said, “Twas so long ago, you’d think the suffering would have ended by now. I used to think I was crazy, so I brought others up to the roof. Trusted friends. But no one ever saw. Except now for you. And I think I know why.”
Coffee shivered as lines from the jukebox drifted over his head: ‘suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be, there's a shadow hanging over me, oh, yesterday came suddenly….’
The janitor dipped his head again in some secret grief.
Zak continued to flip through the journals, occasionally quoting from captions: “This is cool, check it out: ‘If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.’”
Coffee added, “I like this, too: ‘Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.’ And ‘Nothing that is can pause or stay.’”
“That’s from Longfellow,” shouted Marci, beaming as she completed the verse: “‘…the moon will wax, the moon will wane. The mist and cloud will turn to rain, the rain to mist and cloud again…”
And, since all three sat in the same honors class, they spoke in unison the final line: “‘Tomorrow be today.’”
For nearly an hour the small group talked about events past. The mysteries of life. And the janitor regarded the words of these three youth as he would a philosopher’s or as his own, as equals. They agreed to meet again the following night. And as they took their leave of one another, Mr. Mecomanaco motioned to Zak: “You can have the books overnight if you like.”
The next evening, when Zak entered the café he greeted Coffee who was lost in thought as he sat alone in the booth.
“Zak, there’s something I gotta to tell you.”
“Yeah? What is it…”“My father told me that Empsalls is retiring Mr. Mecomanaco.”
“Sure, he deserves it.”
Just then Marci arrived and slid into the booth. “I heard that. Good for him. He’ll have lots of fine time on his hands.”
Coffee swallowed hard. “No, I mean, Mr. Mecomanaco: they think he’s dying.”
“What?” cried Zak.
“Are you sure?” said Marci, stunned.
“My father got it straight from upstairs.”
The three sat numb and speechless.
Then the janitor arrived, a little more rested than the night before and more fully flushed in the face, which helped the trio refute all they’d just spoken about. He said, “Sorry. Running a little late. Shall we go up? Not much time left.” And a fretful wave passed through each of the three teens.
On the rooftop they witnessed, as expected, the exodus of eighty employees of the Davis Sewing Machine Company.
“So many families now separated forever,” said Zak.
“Can’t anything be done to prevent all this?” asked Marci. “I mean, couldn’t we go back and change something.”
The janitor shrugged. “This isn’t exactly time travel, since we don’t control anything. We only see what appears. The fortunes of these people were cast long before this day.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?” asked Coffee.
The janitor thought a moment, then said, “Do you remember when Marley showed Scrooge the lost souls outside his window trying to help the young mother? Saying: ‘They seek to intervene for good in human affairs, and have lost the power to do so forever.’
The three nodded as one.
“Well, we’re not so limited. We could walk down there now. We might delay a person to his seat. But he’d just shift to another one. I don’t know if we’d make any difference or not.”
“Then again, that seat change might alter his destiny—or ours,” said Coffee.
The four lingered on the roof, solemnly watching. Eighty souls stepped aboard the railroad, and then the train puffed and tugged its way out of view.
“Come,” said Mr. Mecomanaco, “let us go to the café. There is one thing we might be able to amend.”
After they’d found their usual booth, the janitor spoke quietly. “See that album cover up on the wall?”
“Hey,” shrieked Zak, “it’s called Watertown! Never even noticed. It’s a Sinatra album.”
“Oh, god,” cried Marci. “My mother plays him constantly; my father can’t stand the guy!”
Mr. Mecomanaco continued, “It’s based on a true story. The writers, Holmes and Gaudio, picked it up it from this old JCC student, a mystic. People think the story was fiction, but it’s true.”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, the record’s about a husband who comes to meet the train he expects his long-missing wife to be on, but she never arrives. The real story, though, is that she does come. Somehow she gets trapped in the tunnel and he leaves before she’s able to get out.”
Zak raised his head: “She’s the woman in your sketches!”
“Yes. Every Christmas Eve she arrives and tries to get through the tunnel to her waiting husband. Neither knows the other is there. And they’ve never connected.”
“Terrible!” cried Marci.
“Every year it ends the same: I try reaching them but can not. She weeps until the husband departs and the whole phantom scene ends. And it’s all doomed to repeat, forever. And I, I am doomed to helplessness.”
“How long has that been going on?” asked Zak.
“Too long. Years. Too many to count.”
“If she appears only on Christmas Eve, how is it that we just saw her?” asked Marci.
“What we saw was an echo, an apparition. On the actual Christmas Eve, both hers and ours, she appears in the flesh.”
“So she’s real?!” cried Coffee.
“You could say that,” said Mr. Mecomanaco. “To me, anyway.”
“Why can’t you get to her?”
“Whenever I get near the tunnel I lose my vision. Everything goes grey. Even my voice won’t work. My feet get planted and I can’t move.”
“Well, now there’s four of us,” said Coffee.
“Yes,” said Marci. “And come Christmas Eve, we’ll be there.”
Zak then tapped a page of the janitor’s notebook: “Come Christmas Eve we’ll have more than one task. According to this, there’ll be another apparition. An explosion at the J. B. Wise Ammunition Company. It happened on December 24th, 1918…. And it will kill six people.”
The janitor nodded gravely.
Zak continued: “And we know how it will happen. A foreman by the name of Larabee will hammer on a faulty primer cap and set off a blast.”
“This is something we can change, right?” urged Coffee. “I mean, we know how the explosion is going to happen! And so can prevent it, right?”
“I suppose we could,” said the janitor. “But the consequences….” Then he flipped to another journal page, saying, “Coffee, this involves you. Or could…”
“What do you mean?”
“Your great-grandmother will marry the widower of a woman killed in that blast.”
And Marci interjected, “So, if the man doesn’t die, Coffee’s great-grandmother never marries.”
“At least not the man she did.”
Coffee paled. “It can’t work like that. It just can’t.”
“I don’t know how it works,” said Mr. Mecomanaco, “I only have my notes.”
Chapter 3: Suddenly A Medic
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, July 20, 2014
On Saturday morning, Marci, Zak and Coffee, cheerfully trudging through newly fallen snow, turned the corner from Washington onto the street that never was, Algonquin Avenue. And Coffee announced, “That’s gotta be it. He said it was the third house in.”
“I don’t get it – why’s he have an apartment at the Brighton when he already has a whole house?” asked Zak.
“I asked my father,” said Coffee, “He didn’t know, but said he was sure that whatever the reason, it was a good one.”
The three had come by invitation to the home of Mr. Mac—as they were now calling him—for what he said was going to be an ‘uncertain tour of a fairly certain past.’
“We’re pretty early,” said Marci. “Should we knock already?”
“It is pretty early,” said Coffee.
Three shovels leaned on the porch aside the front door. Zak looked at them curiously, then said, “Let’s wait a bit.” He cast a sweeping nod to his friends and they each stepped to the porch and reached for a shovel. Just as they were nearly finished clearing the driveway, Mr. Mac stepped out the door in a quaintly ancient bathrobe: “You kids didn’t have to do that – I have a blower. How are ya this morning?”
The three offered a lively harmony: “Great.”
Mr. Mac looked curiously at the trio: “So where’d you’d get the shovels? No matter, come on in!”
“Holy!” cried Coffee as he entered the sparse living room. On each of the four walls was an immense mural, landscapes from floor to ceiling. “Do you paint, too, Mr. Mac?”
“I’m not that good. No. That’s the work of a boy from the orphanage across the street. Good kid, he was…Billy Saturday. He never had a surface so large at school, so I said, ‘Nothing much I’m using my walls for.’ That one’s from a spot in Clayton, looking out over French Creek Bay onto…”
“Grindstone Island,” shouted Coffee.
“This is like what they show in art galleries,” said Marci. “Wow!”
“And he got even better, believe it or not,” said Mr. Mac.
The painting was incredibly detailed, rich with color and movement, capturing the very heart of a lazy, carefree summer day. At its center was a diverse fleet of skiffs and schooners cruising the St. Lawrence, spread out across the river like so many floating points in a swift-moving diaspora. On the opposite wall was a huddle of ever-evolving contours: hills and forests, all throbbing with the golds and reds of deep autumn, and dappled with glittering ponds and nomadic creeks.
“Tug Hill, that one” said Mr. Mac. “S’where the Salmon River begins. The Black and Mohawk, too.”
Turning toward the third wall, Marci said, “I never realized cows could be so refined…so poetic!”
“Porterdale Farms,” said Mr. Mac, smiling.
“When was that one painted?” asked Zak, stepping closer to the fourth mural, which showed a wide vista of a group of scruffy teens playing stickball. “Something familiar about it.”
“Late Sixties as I remember. All those kids lived on the street below.” A sudden reverie came over the man, and he pointed affably to the first baseman: “Good ole Garry Abare. What a kid. Went by the name of White Legs – his grandfather Rollie and I once worked together at the Daily Times…he was superintendant of the press room. Oh, those kids: I knew them all. On second is Betty Warner’s boy, Waldo. That’s Jimmy Perito pitching; they called him Bandito. There’s Bobby Connawanna – and at shortstop his kid brother, Munk. Karen Cosine over on third. Oh, she was some swimmer!” Mr. Mac stepped closer to the mural, snugly, almost as if to enter it.
Coffee touched the painting, running his finger along a wispy cloud in the cobalt sky above a string of boys sitting on the curb, waiting to bat. And Mr. Mac clicked them off one by one: “That’s Bart, Zart, Cos and Kratz. Head McKinney batting. And look at those two quarrelling by the manhole cover: that’s Buddy Hollers and Hairy Banana. Always at loggerheads!”
Marci and Zak drifted into an adjoining hallway, where upon the wall they spied an old oval-framed photo. “So he must have been married once,” whispered Marci.
“A son and a daughter, too. This was taken a long time ago,” said Zak.
“Really long time. You notice anything about the girl?”
Zak studied the face and the pair met each other’s eyes with recognition and disbelief. Marci asked, “She’s young here, but do you think it’s her, the woman in the…?”
“Probably best not to ask.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Mac sat Coffee down, engaging him with a certain urgency: “You have a special interest in the munitions factory explosion, Coffee.” Coffee did not know whether it was a question or statement.
“Well, it just seems so tragic…Christmas Eve and all.”
“Your idea: it’s to go back there and prevent it, eh?”
“I’m working out a plan. I’ve got to ask Zak about it.”
“And if you succeed, Coffee: all those people who might be saved… wouldn’t they have died by now anyway, one way or another? Nobody sidesteps death.”
“I don’t know. I mean, still, there must have been lots of grief.”
“I admit, it pains me, as it does you.”
“I’ve always wondered about ‘what if’ kinda stuff. I’ve got a ton of cousins still living in Mexico. And a ton in Texas, too. My family is the only one that came north. Who would I be today if they’d stayed in Mexico? Who would I be if they’d simply settled on the north bank of the Rio Grande?”
“You’ve some heritage.”
“My ancestors lived along that river. By the treaty that ended the Mexican–American War in 1848, my great-great-grandfather was given the choice to live in Laredo and become an American citizen, or to stay in Nuevo Laredo and remain a citizen of Mexico. My family chose neither, in a sense. They made their way north, finally ending up in Watertown. Both my mother and father helped rebuild the village after the Great Fire of 1849 destroyed practically everything. We’ve been here ever since.”
“That’s a spell longer than my own family!”
Coffee looked down at his boots with secret pride. “Do you really think we could stop the disaster?”
“Possibly,” said Mr. Mac, rubbing his chin, “…but at what cost?”
“I don’t understand. Cost?” Mr. Mac then pushed up the left sleeve of his robe, wide as a kimono’s. Coffee brought his hand to his mouth: “You were in the war, then?” The man’s elbow and upper arm were not so much disfigured as flattened and turned sideways. Scar tissue folded in on itself in zagged patches.
“Not the one you think.”
Zak and Marci joined the pair, trying hard not to stare.
“Look, no bother,” said Mr. Mac. “That’s what happens when you catch a .75-calibre fired from a Brown Bess.”
“Brown Bess?!” exclaimed Zak. “That’s a British gun – which they stopped making a hundred years ago. A flintlock musket.”
“How….” stuttered Marci. But she stopped short when she recognized that – given recent events – none of this was all that improbable. And so Zak merely said, “When?”
Mr. Mac shifted a bit: “I saw the second battle of Sackets Harbor unfolding. From the rooftop, of course. It was 1813. May. All my experiences up to that point, well, I’d never been able to interact with any of the scenes. I’d been a bystander only.”
“And so you went to Sackets?”
“Not so much went there as found myself there.”
“And you were shot?” asked a horrified Marci.
“I stood in a clearing near the village and everything was as lucid as… Well, I saw the British advancing across the bar off Horse Island. Saw them make for Fort Tompkins. The woods were filled with our militia, pestering their troops as they pushed forward. Then nothing was clear. Musket balls whizzed everywhere. Dismounted dragoons all over the place. Fighters were dropping left and right. All I really wanted to do was get back to the rooftop. Then instinctively I knelt over a colonel who had been terribly wounded – I figured I’d put the little medical training I had to work. To my surprise, I was able to tend to his wounds. I learned he died a week later. His name was Backus – he’s buried in the Arsenal Street cemetery.”
“So you were no longer just a bystander?” asked Marci.
“There were so many wounded that I just started to run to them, doing what I could with what little I could acquire. Some lived, some died. This went on for four frantic bloody hours. And it occurred to me that, in my time, all these men were long dead – but, in those moments, I had the power to reduce their suffering in some small measure. And so I labored amidst the wounded and dying: tourniquets and comforting words…until I got shot.”
“And when you returned, your arm was still…” asked Marci.
“Show up at Mercy Hospital with a musket-ball wound and you get some strange looks!” Mr. Mac then pulled down his robe sleeve. “All this is to say that, if you venture out, there’s no guarantee you’ll come back…”
The three sat in stunned silence, and, not knowing how to respond, began looking deeply into each of the murals of the four walls, scouting for unknown signs.
“But I’ve got a better story to tell, so come – let’s hop in the station wagon and I’ll take you to it…”
Chapter 4: Every River Has Two Banks
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, July 27, 2014
Mr. Mac pulled his car out and Marci and Zak hopped in the rear; Coffee slid in next to Mr. Mac up front. He ran his finger over the emblem above the glovebox, which read ‘Marathon.’ Then said, “Never heard of a car like this.”
“Sure you have,” said Mr. Mac. “It’s a Checker. You’ve probably seen hundreds of’m.”
Zak leaned forward, “I thought it looked familiar. Didn’t this used to be a cab?”
“Not this one,” said Mr. Mac. “But most Checkers are. What year would you say it is?”
“Well, it’s in great shape – looks new almost. But I’d say it’s from the mid-fifties anyway.”
“It’s a 1981 – bought it eleven years ago. But you aren’t too wrong.”
“Only by twenty-five years.”
“Well, Checker wasn’t big on change; they kept the exact same body style for more than twenty years.”
“Doesn’t seem like such a modern practice,” said Marci.
“It’s my third Checker. First one in 1959, then a ’71, now this one – and you couldn’t tell any of’m apart.”
“You sure dig Checkers,” said Zak.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Mac, chuckling. “Even the company fascinates me – so much, well…fate.”
“What do you mean?” asked Zak.
“Checker Motors started up when I was five, by this guy named Markin. He’d come from Russia. Didn’t know a lick of English. And had no money…so a janitor, a janitor at Ellis island loaned him the twenty-five bucks fee to get into the country .”
“Nice guy,” said Coffee.
“Markin was a tailor. And the only reason he ended up owning a car company was because he gave a loan to some other guy who couldn’t pay him back, so he squared the debt by giving Markin his company – which happened to be an auto plant.”
“When were you five?” asked Marci.
“Hah! You mean you want to calculate my age!”
“That’s what she means allright!” exclaimed Coffee, intrigued.
“I was born in 1917. April.”
“Same here,” said Coffee. “I mean April…of ‘76.”
“Hmmm. Then you were born the very month they tore down the building where I was born.”
“Where was that, Mr. Mac?” asked Zak.
“You know the new Henry Keep apartments on the Square? That was the site of the Electric Building. In it was a theater called Wonderland. I was born there, right in the middle of a picture called ‘All Aboard.’”
“No fooling?” asked Coffee.
“True. On the second of April. The Wonderland later became the Palace, then the Town. Now they’re all gone. My aunt named me – really just my mother’s best friend; they roomed together in the Suffrage League house when they were students at Columbia. In the School of Philanthropy. I mention her because on the very day I was born, she was sworn in as the first woman ever elected to Congress.”
“Jeannette Rankin! She’s your aunt?” asked Marci, half stunned by her own recognition.
Mr. Mac looked genuinely shocked. “How did you know that?”
“I just did a term paper on her! That same day – the night you were born – she was at the Joint Session and heard President Wilson ask Congress to declare war on Germany.”
“And she ended up voting against the war. She was a genuine pacifist,” added Zak, who’d carefully read Marci’s essay.
“That’s true. You’ve just stepped up my admiration for the schools,” said Mr. Mac. “I remember her later telling my folks: ‘I felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war she should say it.’"
“Does that make you feel a little funny, Mr. Mac?” asked Coffee in a half-whispered lament. “I mean, that World War One started, more or less, for America anyway, on the day you were born?”
“Yeah, it’s occurred to me, and it’s always been a gloomy coincidence. But there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent it. I certainly wasn’t involved.”
“What’s a coincidence, anyway,” said Marci,” except a wild fluke?”
“I’ll tell you what’s a coincidence,” said Zak. “I just started reading a book called ‘The Roots of Coincidence.’ By a fellow named Koestler. I read a lotta his stuff.”
“I’ll give you another one,” said Mr. Mac. “Though it’s heartbreaking.” And he turned to Coffee: “You know, they say that before America entered the war the Wise ammunition plant was making cartridges for both sides – the Austrians and the Serbians. Other nations, too, and ours. In their plant on the northern bank of the river. And within, oh, a thousand feet – on the southern bank, the Babcock Company was making ambulance bodies for the U.S. War Department. Ambulances destined for the front lines. So…”
Marci interjected: “So it’s likely that some of our men were shot with rounds made by Wise and then picked up in ambulances made by Babcock….”
Mr. Mac looked vacantly at the snow-covered road.
Marci asked, “Babcock: wasn’t that where the Black River Paper Company is now – the huge building at the end of Factory Street, just before it crosses over to Sewalls Island?”
Zak nodded, “Right. Built in 1870, I think.”
“They manufactured tens of millions of cartridges. Wise did. Perhaps hundreds of millions,” said Mr. Mac, somewhat bewildered.
Coffee addressed his elder, “Mr. Mac, you said there was nothing that could have been done to prevent…”
“I know what you’re thinking, Coffee. Believe me, I’ve considered it, too.”
“But if you knew the time and the place and the manner – no matter what the event – don’t you think it could be stopped? I mean, given this ability of ours?”
Marci leaned forward, “Are you still thinking of trying to prevent that explosion in the bullet factory?”
Mr. Mac replied, “He’s on to something far more ambitious now, Marci….and something quite impossible.”
Zak, too, leaned forward, resting his hand on Marci’s. “You’re not thinking you can go back and actually stop World War One, do you, Coffee? It’s crazy!”
“Why not? We have all the facts leading up to it.”
“The First World War didn’t start in Watertown, Coffee,” said Marci. “You might be able to get back to the time, but how do you suppose you’d get yourself situated in space – over there, where it began?”
“Mr. Mac, tell me that we could…” exclaimed Coffee. “There’s got to be a way!”
“If there was a way to stop war, son, then we’d not have had wars these thousands of years. I’m afraid it’s an ambition beyond all reach. No matter how much advantage we have – or seem to have.”
Coffee turned and looked pleadingly to Zak.
“For the sake of argument,” said Mr. Mac, “suppose that you could prevent the first cause of some conflict. There’d be a second cause. And if you prevented that, there’d be a third, and so on.” Zak then remembered a line from another Koestler work, and spoke it solemnly, “Look with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history and it’s hard to avoid concluding that he’s been afflicted by some mental disorder that drives him toward self-destruction.”
Mr. Mac concluded, “Seventeen million people died in the first World War. What if we went back and, without meaning to, ended up changing that figure – to, say, double that amount? It’s possible. Let me take you to a place that just might prove the point.” And the man slowed, brought his Checker to the curb, turned around and headed back in the direction from which they’d come.
Chapter 5: The Fifth Mural
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, August 3, 2014
“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
Jean de La Fontaine
Mr. Mac followed the motorcade of skiers heading up Washington Street toward Dry Hill. He then made his way along the short stretch of Route 67, flanked on either side by a pair of massive cemeteries: Brookside and Glenwood. As they passed by, pinched between two cities of the dead, Mr. Mac said, “I intended to spend the morning here – much of Watertown’s history is written in those burial grounds. But, Coffee, you‘ve got me thinking.” Coffee jittered in his seat, smiling with a pleasant disquiet. Marci drew herself slightly closer to Zak. Once past the ski slopes Mr. Mac’s Checker was the only car in the road.
“Funny,” said Marci to Zak, “I’ve never been past Dry Hill. I knew there must have been something out here.”
“It lets out on Route 12, near Burrville,” said Zak as Mr. Mac turned onto Spring Valley Creek Road. In no time Mr. Mac brought the car to a stop, and addressed his friends with restrained pride, speaking so gently that a curtain of cryptograms seemed to descend before the trio – and then was just as suddenly raised. “Billy Saturday wanted to do another painting, so I brought him here.”
“This place? What is it?” asked Marci.
“Or what was it before the cyclone?” asked Coffee.
“It’s very special,” whispered Mr. Mac. “To me.”
Zak tried calculating the nature of the buildings: “Too brick to be barns,” he said, “and too, I don’t know, too done in to be homes.”
“A church, no, a warehouse?” said Marci. “What’s left of the roof kinda looks like St. Anthony’s. Then again, that looks like a bus garage.” The handful of buildings, all in poignant disrepair, were clearly unoccupied. And had been for a long time. A congress of ruins.
“Oh, it wasn’t always like this,” said Mr. Mac. “It was the County Farm School, built sometime in the 1800s.”
“The County Farm?” asked Zak. “Isn’t that where they sent…delinquents?”
Mr. Mac laughed heartily, “Yes, wayward boys. They closed the farm in ’54. Right after that the Franciscans bought the place and made a monastery of it. They put in a chapel. When I brought Billy here in 1968 it was a fine place. A statue of St. Joseph of Cupertino out front. See the bell tower there? Oh, I thought he’d do a grand job. My fifth mural.”
“I didn’t see it in your house,” said Marci.
“It never got painted. Billy didn’t stay that long. I’d get postcards from him, mostly from Harlem, where he said he’d tracked down some relatives. Found a home. The last I heard from him was an air mail from a place called Cam Ranh Bay. But let’s go into the chapel.”
“This was a chapel?” asked Coffee.
“Once, yes. The friars only stayed a dozen years or so. It’s been abandoned since about 1975.” Zak tried the door but it was completely wedged shut. And so the four stepped gingerly through the large casing of a broken window. Bold shafts of light poured into the structure through the various fissures in the ceiling. And wherever they walked, the crunch of shattered stained glass sounded, each of their footsteps punctuating the empire of decay, the defeat of time.
“Vandals,” said Mr. Mac. “Just this year. They smashed everything.” He pivoted once, then twice, taking in the entire expanse. He smiled and said, “I was a boy here.”
“You were a monk!”
“No, this was a classroom. Long before it was a chapel. I took lessons here.”
“You mean,” asked Marci, “at the County Farm?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Mac, slightly embarrassed. “I spent a few years here.”“I can’t believe it,” said Marci, stunned. “You? Wayward?”
“Indeed I was! Come, let me show you something.” The man led the trio through a dogleg corridor into another building and then out into the back, where a sort of dilapidated lean-to protected a simple courtyard. With his boot he brushed off a section of patio, then knelt and cleared the rest by hand. The inscription scrawled into the cement read: “Camillus M.”
“That’s your name, Mr. Mac – Camillus?” asked Marci.
He nodded and led them yet further, beyond a frail fence and into a small plot of gravestones. He cleaned the snow off one that lay crooked and lonely. He touched it affectionately. “Carson Hagar was my best friend. He died in the autumn. Sixty years ago. And I’ve tried, twice, to go back and foil his death. I knew exactly how it happened.”
“Tell us, Mr. Mac,” said Zak.
“It’s not a pretty story. You see, an auger in the slurry pit was jammed and Carson went in to fix it. There are right ways to enter pits and, well – they’re full of poisonous gases that settle at the bottom. He was instantly overcome…probably dead before he even fell over. Brokenhearted I was.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Marci.
Coffee nodded in agreement, “You said you went back to save him. How were you able to get back, though, to that very day?”
“A total coincidence. One day, atop the Brighton, I saw open up before me a scene like so many others – a casual, seemingly inconsequential event. At the Crystal Restaurant. Some sort of celebration – men gathered round a radio. I went down just for laughs. A baseball game was on: the Yankees and the Cubs, and immediately I knew it was either the ‘32 or ‘38 World Series. It turned out to be the fourth game…” Mr. Mac ran his finger along the inscription on the gravestone. “I was listening to that game, October the 2nd, 1932, when I got the news about Carson.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Zak.
“Yet…there’s so much more to be sorry for.” And the man bowed. “Once I realized the date, I snatched this unattended Raleigh, a bicycle, and raced out to the County Farm. I was in time. Carson had not yet gotten into the pit. I cleared the auger, I did everything I could. But still, he went down. This time, though, another man went in after he had seen Carson drop. He, too, was overcome. And after him, another man who’d spotted the two bodies in the pit went in – and he, too, perished. Rescuers came and pulled out all three.”
“How awful!” cried Marci.
“Worse,” said Mr. Mac. “In 1932, Carson was the only one to have died in that mishap.”
“How’s that possible?” asked Zak.
“It’s more tragic than that,” said Mr. Mac, trembling. “I found myself back atop the Brighton. But the scene at the Crystal Restaurant was still going on. So I went again. I swiped another bike – this time a White Flyer. I was in time. Again I did everything I could. But the same three went in and never came out. This time, a fourth man attempted rescue, then a fifth. And neither lived. Where death had touched but one, it now – somehow, maybe because of my presence – lay its fingers on four more.”
“How could you have been to blame?” cried Zak.
“Heaven only knows. All I know is that each time I showed up, another two men lost their lives.”
“You didn’t change anything, Mr. Mac, “said Coffee. “Only the bicycles...”
“Who knows – that may have been enough – you see, Coffee, even when we mean to do good…”
Chapter 6: Letter of Consequence
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, August 10, 2014
‘Every beginning is a consequence, every beginning ends some thing.’”
~ Paul Valery
Before leaving, Mr. Mac placed his hand on the gravestone of his best childhood friend, Carson Hagar. And in turn Marci, Zak and Coffee placed their hands on the shoulder of their new-found friend.
“Let’s go back,” said Mr. Mac, and he led the three away.
As they neared the ransacked buildings Marci asked, “What did you say the name of this place was? I mean, after it was the County Farm?”
“Cupertino Friary.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Coffee, “is why we’re given this power if there’s nothing we can do with it.”
“I’m not sure it’s a power,” said Mr. Mac.
“More like a privilege,” said Marci.
“Given by who, though?” asked Coffee.
“I don’t know. But it is a privilege.”
“Maybe not even that,” said Mr. Mac.
And Zak added, “There’s got to be some kinda science behind it. Some explanation. The normal laws of nature would never allow a thing like this. Koestler said that scientists are like Peeping Toms at the keyhole of eternity. Maybe that’s all we are, peepers. And we’ve chanced upon some strange vortex that scientists will one day explain.”
“Yeah,” said Coffee, “you’d need a physicist or somebody.”
“Or a philosopher…or theologian.”
“Like Einstein.”
“Like Jonathan Edwards,” said Mr. Mac. “Or Confucius.”
“Or Bob Dylan,” added Zak, humming a line from Blowin’ in the Wind.
“Or Tracy Chapman. Or Buster Keaton,” added Marci, breaking the somber mood of the four as they made their way to the waiting Checker. Before starting the engine, Mr. Mac said, “Ya know, maybe there's no explanation at all. Maybe it just is. When you sit atop a giant waterslide, well, the slightest nudge – and there you go. You couldn’t stop yourself if you tried. It'll take you where it will and then…splash. And when we stand upon the rooftop…”
“Like gravity,” said Coffee.
“Some new law of time,” finished Zak, “which just hasn’t been discovered yet.”
The next evening, after a shift of helping his father in the café, Coffee stopped by Mr. Mac’s apartment in the Brighton. The door was slightly ajar, and Mr. Mac was spread out on a daybed, sleeping, his cap still upon his head. His shoes had been kicked off just inside the door and Coffee surmised that the man simply beat a weary path to where he reclined and failed to push the door all the way closed. The boy suppressed the temptation to enter and look round at what must surely have been a curiosity-filled room; rather, he paused, ensuring that Mr. Mac’s breathing was steady – and it was, mostly. Then he gently closed the door and headed for the stairwell that would lead him to the roof.
Once aloft, he spotted a figure already there, near the edge. He waited for his eyes to adjust and then stepped quietly closer for a better view. The figure was fixated, staring southward. He stepped closer. Then, trying to affect his best impression of their Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Griggs, he said, “Well, well, well, Miss Marci Hart – whatever are you doing in these quarters? Where’s your Hall Pass?”
Marci turned in alarm and then, recognizing Coffee, tried to affect her own impression of Blaise Blake, the school’s most nonchalant student, “Seen any good movies lately?”
“Seriously. What are you doing up here, Marci?”
“I could ask the same of you, Coff.”
“I was working. Thought I’d just come up to…”
“To peep,” Marci chuckled.
“Same as you.”
“Not anymore,” said Marci. “I’ve figured something out.” Marci looked out again into the distance. “Ever notice what a cool lookin’ building that is?” She nodded toward the old Post Office on the street opposite, lit by the merger of a pair of massive snowplows idling in the Top-of-the-Square lot. Coffee looked. And with the appreciation derived from standing aside good friends, he made a gesture signaling their collective admiration.
“Do you remember when it closed?” asked Marci.
“Not really. Last year? Or maybe the one before. All I recall was thinking of the hassle of now having to go way out to Commerce Park.”
“Zak and I were sprinting up those stairs – on the very day it closed. It was about five till five. The very last day it was open. I was mailing a letter from my mother to her sister. That’s all. As we raced up the steps I dropped it. Zak bent to pick it up. We mailed it. And it was the beginning of the end of my mother.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Ya see, Coff, my mother wrote encouraging my aunt to go on this big, life-changing work-study thing in the Caribbean. She went. She contracted this terrible infection – her face swelled up, her skin’s all splotchy, she’s got kidney problems and they say in a few years she may go blind. My mother blames herself for ruining her sister’s life.”
“That’s terrible. I never knew.”
“Well, I never much let on. Funny thing is, my aunt’s a barrel of laughs. She told my mother that she’d already known about the program and had decided to go even before the letter, which didn’t change anything. But my mother draws a direct connection between them. Everything’s her fault, she says. She’s depressed all the time; she used to sing every morning. No more.”
“I’m so sorry, Marci.”
“It’s not like I wanted to go back centuries, just to that day – and only down there, across the street. It’s no distance and hardly in the past at all. Then just not mail the letter. My aunt still would have gone. She still would have come down with the disease. But I’d be able to pull out the letter, still sealed, and shout, ‘Ma, look, I never mailed it.’ And all that sting and weight would’ve been dodged.”
“Or you could’ve written your aunt telling her not to go. Warning her what was in store.”
“And you think she would’ve listened?”
“But your aunt’s still alive, and your mother’s still alive – and the chance still exists for a better – I mean, tomorrow’s not set in stone. Change can still happen.”
“Even if that day did open up, Coff, and I had a chance to return – and, yes, I’ve been watching for it – well, I don’t think it’s possible anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see – when Mr. Mac tried to go back to help someone he knew, it was useless. He couldn’t change the outcome for the better. When he had no intentions – like at Sackets Harbor, with men he never knew – he was able to help. This time-gravity thing: I don’t think it will let you change the fate of people close to you. Only strangers.”
“That’s probably why he was never able to reach the woman in the train station. Probably why he said that now that we were here, it might be possible….that she might be reached.”
“Right. And that woman, ya know – she’s his…”
“Yes, I know.”
Chapter 7: Coffee’s Book of Peace
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, August 17, 2014
Just after sunset on the 23rd of December, Coffee and Mr. Mac slid into the last unoccupied booth at Enrique’s café. “I thought Zak and Marci might be here,” said Mr. Mac.
“Oh, they’re heading over to the Carriage House, for the Christmas party. They want us to come over later.”
“They go well together, those two.”
Coffee blushed. “Yeah. They always have. I can see’m a hundred years from now: a house on Thompson Boulevard, a nice picket fence, about forty kids. Well, maybe not forty.”
“Perhaps not,” Mr. Mac chuckled. “Say, did you ever tell how you came out with the name Coffee?”
“Oh, that was like ages ago. My father ran a Roastery down by the Fairgrounds then. All the kids started calling me ‘Little Coffee Bean.’ Not that I liked it. But then my best friends kinda took the name over from the goons, calling me Coffee, with, ya know, love. And that I liked.”
“They call that co-opting. And by birth, your name?”
“Juan Pablo.”
Mr. Mac smiled broadly, nodding with uncomplicated reverence.
“How long do you think the Brighton will stand, Mr. Mac?” asked Coffee, as he swirled a spoon through his mug, heedlessly, little runlets of hot cocoa topping the rim.
“Well, probably not as long as the pyramids, but a lot longer than I will.”
“But not forever, though?” said Coffee, quickly regretting his choice of words.
“Nothing lasts that long.”
“Some day they’ll tear it down, just like the Woodruff…and then our perch will disappear for good.” And he paused for a particle of confidence, finishing his thought: “All the more reason to take advantage of it while we can, right?”
“You don’t convince so easily, do you, young fella?” And the man smiled at the boy, a certain warmth filling the spaces between them. Mr. Mac took a napkin in either hand and dabbed abstractly around Coffee’s mug. He then pulled out a slim book and pushed it across the table, saying, “It’s considered to be the best summary account of the lead-up to World War One.” Coffee flipped through its pages excitedly. “Wow, thanks a lot.”
“You’ll see that the war wasn’t started by any single act – not even the famous assassination. Things had been simmering for forty years – everyone was fighting over territory, building up their militaries…immeasurable belligerence. A spring coiled so tightly that any little thing would have set it off.”
“I can’t wait. If I knew you were going to get me a Christmas gift.….”
“Oh, that’s not for Christmas. Just a little something. But this,” and he pulled out another small book – leather-bound, worn and seemingly ancient, “this one is.”
Coffee handled the book delicately, with uncertainty, as if it were going to disintegrate in his hands. “It sure is old. It’s hard to read the title.”
“That’s a personal narrative of the peace talks following the war. Written by a man who traveled with President Wilson to negotiate that peace. He was Secretary of State, the highest-ranking appointed official in the executive branch. His name was Robert Lansing. And he was born in…”
“Born in Watertown, I know,” cried Coffee.
Mr. Mac showed genuine surprise and regard. And before he found fitting words, Coffee continued, “I know all about Lansing! Zach first told me. But I’ve been doing a lot of research. I haven’t seen this, though.”
“I don’t know what to say, Coffee. That’s some homework! And your interest in him – more than curiosity?”
Coffee shifted. “Well…”
“Let me guess. His travels would have been well-documented. And being a native son he’d surely find himself – or be found – back in Watertown now and then. And from Watertown he’d steam to the wider parts of the world. The Orient. Europe. An historical figure like that would be easy to trace...if you did your homework.”
Coffee shifted again, avoiding Mr. Mac’s eyes.
“You’re a smart lad.”
“Not really,” said Coffee.
“In the spring of 1914, for instance, just before the war began: do you know if Mr. Lansing came to Watertown? If he soon after went overseas? How he traveled. When he traveled?”
“It was an idea.”
“A brilliant one at that! Go back in time and attach yourself to Lansing while he was in town, then stow away on his ship, on his train, till you reached that destined land?”
“It occurred to me, it might work. How else?”
“Oh, son – you’re brave if nothing else!”
“Don’t you think it would work?”
Mr. Mac met Coffee’s eyes and, without word or gesture, gave his answer.
“But we’ve got this ability, Mr. Mac – how can we not use it?”
“What do you say we head over to the Carriage House?”
As the pair stood on the American corner waiting for the light to change, a man idled up to Mr. Mac. Catching his attention, he nodded towards Coffee, saying in a half hush, “It’s a wonder they come so far north.”
“Pardon me?” said Mr. Mac with a bristle. “Say, weren’t you class of ’35…Marty Teede?”
“Probably got a bandolier under that parka.”
Mr. Mac, now red faced and fuming, shouted, “What!”
“Only in America: illegal cattle are rounded up while these people—ya know, are allowed to roam free. What’s this country coming to?”
Mr. Mac stiffened with fury, took a step closer to the man, then another step, and met him square in the face, saying: “I hardly think there’s anything I could say to a man like you to penetrate your cesspool of ignorance.” A nun, the well-known Sister Concordia from St. Joseph’s Orphanage, stood nearby, her face an amalgam of sorrow, outrage and pity; she spoke calmly to the man saying, “Sir, please consider…” The man huffed and snorted and stepped off the curb into traffic, narrowly missed by a passing taxi. “I’m so sorry, Coffee,” said Mr. Mac, putting his arm over the boy’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Mr. Mac,” said Coffee, genuinely untroubled, “That’s nothing.”
“That’s one reason why conflict will always be inevitable, Coffee. People like that seldom change. And sometimes end up running governments.”
“Why‘d he so upset you?”
Mr. Mac let out a mournful sigh. “They never even let my mother ride the trolleys. And the names they called her...her parents weren’t citizens. My father – he never really learned English. They all landed in Connecticut, but it could have been anywhere. Wasn’t just names on the street: even the papers printed things like, like calling our families the great herd of steerage slime.”
“But you’re Italian, right?”
Mr. Mac nodded. "If you came from Sicily or Calabria – like my family did – you weren’t even considered European. They said that Europe ended at Naples, and all the rest, well…."
Coffee shrugged and said, “Ogni pazzo vuol dar consiglio…”
Mr. Mac did a double take. “There’s a phrase like that exactly the same in Italian!”
“Oh, that is Italian. I’ve been taking lessons for years. Italian and German. I don’t speak hardly a lick of Spanish!”
“I’m dumbfounded. Happy dumbfounded! And stupid that I should be surprised. You’re a student, after all.”
On the other side of the American corner, across the flocking stream of passing autos, the man continued to wave his arms in spastic motions, yelping, “Go back to where you came from. Go back!”
Coffee ignored the man, but his words echoed through a different context, engendering an unintended conviction in the boy: “Go back, go back, go back.”
Mr. Mac breathed into the frigid air. “Well, Juan Pablo, there’s a party. Let’s get to the Carriage House. We should be feasting.”
And Coffee said with a smile, “A tavola non s'invecchia.”
Mr. Mac agreed, putting a genial melody to his words, “A tavola non s'invecchia.”
Chapter 8: The Door Closes
~ first published in the Watertown Daily Times, August 24, 2014
The only safe place in the world is inside a story.
~ Athol Fugard
Zak raced into Enrique’s café, which was unusually crowded for Christmas Eve. He found Marci, Coffee and Mr. Mac at their usual booth, deeply engaged in conversation.
“God, Zak, what’s wrong?” asked Marci.
Zak, still breathing hard, laid out a notebook splayed with pages filled with anything but haphazard notes: “I’ve been doing some calculations. “And tonight,” he said, catching his breath, “history is going to go crazy.”
“What do you mean?” asked Marci. Mr. Mac picked up the book and studied its pages. He then took on a strange aspect. Coffee, busily scribbling names on the face of his placemat, did not seem to hear.
“Wait,” said Zak, “I forgot to check something…” Then he rose from the booth and moved swiftly through the packed café to the phone booth at the far end. He did not lift the receiver, but flipped hastily through the phone book.
“What’s he doing? What do you think he means, Mr. Mac?” asked Marci.
Mr. Mac just looked vacantly around at all the historic photos adorning the walls of the café.
Marci read from Coffee’s paper: “‘Marshall, Kirkpatrick, Abby, Marculler, Larabee, Wesley Black, William Black.’ What’s that, Coffee?”
Coffee looked up and, from memory, simply recited the list: “Marshall, Kirkpatrick, Abby, Marculler, Larabee, Wesley Black, William Black.”
Mr. Mac put his hand on Coffee’s shoulder.
Coffee lowered his head and spoke slowly, with a faraway quality: “I read that whole book, Mr. Mac – stayed up half the night. Now I understand. I must have been a fool. It was nuts to think any one person could prevent a whole war.”
“What book?” asked Marci.
Coffee showed her the book on the world war, now splintered and dog-eared.
“But who are those people?” she asked again. “Your list there.”
Coffee went on, absently: “They died once. And tonight they are going to die all over again.”
Marci looked at Mr. Mac, then said, “Oh, the ones from the munitions factory explosion…”
Coffee then brought out another book and asked, “I want to ask you both – look at this.” And Coffee opened the book to the first sentence of the first page, which he had highlighted. It read: ‘On Sunday, the eleventh of November, 196–, while sitting at the bar of the New Parrot Restaurant in my hometown, Watertown, New York, awaiting the telecast of the New York Giants–Dallas Cowboys football game, I had what, at the time, I took to be a heart attack.’
“Why,” Coffee asked with a deeply pleading tone, “did he write Nineteen-Sixty blank? He knew the year…why didn’t he just say it? I mean, I looked it up. It was 1962. That was the Sunday the Giants beat the Cowboys. The 11th of November. Why did he just leave it blank? Why?”
“You might have asked him,” said Mr. Mac, “but he just died this summer. That’s Fred Exley.”
“He was from Watertown?” asked Marci. Both Coffee and Mr. Mac nodded.
Zak had not returned but a moment and Coffee was already leaning across the table: “What was it you were saying, Zak? About history all messed up.”
“I’ve checked it like a hundred times. Tonight will not be just one apparition, as we’ve known. But others. A lot! It won’t just be 1918. The Great Flood of 1869 – it’ll rip through. Samuel de Champlain will be landing in Henderson – that was 1615. We’ll see a mass of French refugees arriving – that’ll be 1794. For god’s sakes, we’ll see the Woodruff House being built! 1851. Steamboats in Depauville. The first Red & Black football game. 1869. We’ll see a parade of suffragettes marching on Public Square. 1919. Like I said, history gone crazy. And they will all be happening at the same time! In every direction you look.”
“Can this be true, Mr. Mac?” asked Coffee. Mr. Mac reluctantly pulled out a very slim volume from his pocket. He opened it to near the center and laid it in front of Zak, who, after a quick but sufficient glance, shouted, “They’re identical! Figures, same as mine.”
“You’re a quick study, Zak,” said Mr. Mac. “There’s only one error in all of that. And you’d hardly call it an error.”
Zak spoke more somberly, “ And I think it means something. All this activity in one night. Everything simultaneous.”
“What?” asked Coffee.
“I think it’s the last hurrah. I mean, I think all this is coming to an end. That, as of tonight, all the apparitions will cease.”
“I think so, too,” said Mr. Mac.
Coffee shifted nervously in his seat, wiping the perspiration from his brow. He rose and said, “I’ll be back…in a minute.”
Before he left the booth, Mr. Mac took Coffee by the elbow and whispered with a secret smile, “A ben far, non è mai tardi.”
After a length of time Marci looked round and said, “Wonder what’s keeping Coffee?”
Mr. Mac then pulled out a sealed envelope. He gave it to Marci and Zak. It was addressed: ‘To My Friends.’
Marci opened it and shouted, “It’s a farewell letter!”
Zak sat back in the booth, resigned, as if one riddle had been solved. “And so, he’s got a head start.”
Mr. Mac, looking nervous but speaking calmly, said, “Indeed.”
Zak stood: “And we, we have work that must be done.”
The three then ascended to the roof. Just as predicted, the train station wavered and rose up from the asphalt parking lot; in a wink the woman was there again, forlorn, seeking her way to the tunnel. Just then several more apparitions rose up, filling the view of every horizon. History swirled about the three like a strangely familiar creature pummeling their senses.
“Let’s go before it’s too late,” shouted Zak. When they arrived at the train station several towering vortices of snow, buffeting and disorienting, began to swirl around the ensemble, at them. The janitor was breathing hard and stumbling. “Keep your hands in mine,” he shouted. “You give me sight, Marci; you give me strength, Zak. And Coffee….Godspeed, lad.”
Suddenly the trio was across the tracks from the woman, who in her terrified grief saw nothing. She stood on the lip of the tunnel, trembling.
The janitor shouted: “Elizabeth, don’t go in there! Walk across the tracks!”
The woman paused, stunned by the ancient voice. “Who speaks?”
The man then shouted again, “The tracks. Come across the tracks. It’s safe.”
The woman rushed more quickly for the tunnel.
“Elizabeth, please!”
The woman stood still, trying to peer through the raging blizzard.
The janitor cried, “Sam! Sam! Over here.”
The woman turned away again.
“Quickly, Elizabeth, he’ll be leaving soon. The chance will never come again.”
And against her nature the woman stepped onto the tracks. “Papa?”
“Come, dear. Come across. Sam is here. Waiting.”
“Papa! Papa!”
And thus the anguish of the ages came to rest. Disintegrated. Vanished.
In Zak’s journal Marci wrote a final entry: wrote of the embrace, the reunion, the revelations…. She wrote of how Christmas had come to the munitions factory and how Christmas had passed, snug and preserved.
She wrote of how they saw Mr. Mecomanaco only once more, from the roof, boarding a northbound train. Wrote of how they descended the abandoned stairwell one last time, past a melancholy apartment, now empty, and past what was once Enrique’s Café.
As she put down her pen, she recalled how tightly she held onto Zak’s hand as they left the Brighton that night, walking before the wind, which seemed to be heading back out Arsenal Street—as if being chased back to the lake from which it came.
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