She understood that she had reached an unexpected turning point in her life. She felt the way people must feel in a plane crash, or when their house goes up in flames. Now everything was different; nothing would be the same ever again. In the wake of these events, it wasn’t possible to construct an ordinary idea of the world and how it worked. There was no way to make any of this fit.
But she was calm. Outside the context of the decaying woodshed—outside of the woods—even the monster had ceased to be frightening. He wasn’t a monster after all; only a strange kind of man who had had some strange kind of accident. Maybe a curse had been placed on him.
They carried him into the bedroom, where there were more of the machine insects. She helped Archer lift him onto the bed. Archer asked in a small voice what else the man needed. The man said, “Time. Please don’t tell anyone else about this.”
“All right,” Archer said. And Catherine nodded.
“And food,” the man said. “Anything rich in protein. Meat would be good.”
“I’ll bring something,” Catherine volunteered, surprising herself. “Would tomorrow be all right?”
“That would be fine.”
And Archer added, “Who are you?”
The man smiled, but only a little. He must know how he looks, Catherine thought. When your lips are nearly transparent, you shouldn’t smile too much. It creates a different effect. “My name is Ben Collier,” he said.
“Ben,” Archer repeated. “Ben, I would like to know what kind of thing you are exactly.”
“I’m a time traveler,” Ben said.
They left Ben Collier the time traveler alone with his machine bugs. On the way out of the house Catherine saw Archer pick up two items from the kitchen table: a blue spiral-bound notebook and a copy of the New York Times.
Back at Gram Peggy’s house, Archer pored over the two documents. Catherine felt mysteriously vacant, lost: what was next? There was no etiquette for this situation. She said to Archer, “Shall I make us some dinner?” He looked up briefly, nodded.
It had never occurred to her that people who had shared experiences like this—people who were kidnapped by flying saucers or visited by ghosts—would have to deal with anything as prosaic as dinner. An encounter with the numinous, followed by, say, linguine. It was impossible. (That word again.)
Step by step, she thought. One thing at a time. She heated the frying pan, located a chicken breast she’d been thawing since morning, took a second one from the freezer and quick-defrosted it in the microwave—she would eat this one herself; Catherine didn’t believe in nuked food, especially for guests. She didn’t much believe in pan-fried chicken, either, but it was quick and available.
She set two places at the dinner table. The dining room was large and Victorian, Gram Peggy’s cuckoo clock presiding over a cabinet stocked with blue Wedgwood. Catherine started coffee perking and served dinner on the Petalware she’d picked up at a thrift shop in Belltower—because it seemed somehow wrong or impertinent to be eating from Gram Peggy’s china when Gram Peggy wasn’t home. Archer carried his two souvenirs, the notebook and the New York Times, to the table with him. But he set them aside and complimented her on the food.
Catherine picked at her chicken. It tasted irrelevant.
She said, “Well, what have we got ourselves into?”
Archer managed a smile. “Something absolutely unexpected. Something we don’t understand.”
“You sound pleased about that.”
“Do I? I guess I am, in a way. It kind of confirms this suspicion I’ve had.”
“Suspicion?”
“That the world is stranger than it looks.”
Catherine considered this. “I think I know what you mean. When I was eighteen, I took up jogging. I used to go out after dark, winter nights. I liked all the yellow lighted-up windows of the houses. It felt funny being the only person out on the street, just, you know, running and breathing steam. I used to get an idea that anything could happen, that I’d turn a corner and I’d be in Oz and nobody would be the wiser—none of those people sleepwalking behind those yellow windows would have the slightest idea. I knew what kind of world it was. They didn’t.”
“Exactly,” Archer said.
“But there was never Oz. Only one more dark street.”
“Until now.”
“Is this Oz?”
“It might as well be.”
She supposed that was true. “I guess we can’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t think we should, no.”
“And we have to go back in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t forget about it and we can’t walk away. He needs our help.”
“I think so.”
“But what is he?”
“Well, I think maybe he told us the truth, Catherine. I think he’s a time traveler.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m past making odds on what’s possible and what isn’t.”
She gestured at the notebook, the newspaper. “So what did you find?”
“They belonged to Tom Winter, I believe. Look.” She pushed aside her chicken and examined the paper. Sunday, May 13, 1962. The Late City Edition.
U.S SHIPS AND 1,800 MARINES ON WAY TO INDOCHINA AREA; LAOS DECREES EMERGENCY … DOCTORS TRANSPLANT HUMAN HEART VALVE … CHURCH IN SPAIN BACKS WORKERS ON STRIKE RIGHTS
The front page had yellowed—but only a little.
“Check out the notebook,” Archer prompted.
She leafed through it. The entries were brief scrawls and occupied the first three pages; the rest of the book was blank.
Troubling Questions, it said at the top.
You could walk away from this, it said.
This is dangerous, and you could walk away.
Everybody else on the face of the earth is being dragged into the future an hour at a time, but you can walk out. You found the back door.
Thirty years ago, she read. They have the Bomb. Think about it. They have industrial pollution. They have racism, ignorance, crime, starvation—
Are you really so frightened of the future?
I’ll go back one more time. At least to look. To really be there. At least once.
She looked up at Doug Archer. “It’s a sort of diary.”
“A short one.”
“Tom Winter’s?”
“I’d bet on it.”
“What did he do?”
“Walked into a shitload of trouble, it looks like. But that remains to be seen.”
Only later did the obvious next thought occur to Catherine: Maybe we walked into a shitload of trouble, too.
Archer slept on the sofa. In the morning he phoned the Belltower Realty office and told them he was sick—“Death’s door,” he said into the phone. “That’s right. Yup. I know. I know. Yeah, I hope so too. Thanks.”
Catherine said, “Won’t you get into trouble?”
“Lose some commissions, for sure.”
“Is that all right?”
“It’s all right with me. I have other business.” He grinned —a little wildly, in Catherine’s opinion. “Hey, there are miracles happening. Aren’t you a little bit excited by that?”
She allowed a guilty smile. “I guess I am.”
Then they drove down to the Safeway and bought five frozen T-bone steaks for Ben, the time traveler.
Archer visited the house every day for a week, sometimes with Catherine and sometimes without her. He brought food, which the time traveler never ate in his presence—maybe the machine bugs absorbed it and fed it to him in some more direct fashion; he didn’t care to know the details.
Every day, he exchanged some words with Ben.