Authors: Irving Belateche
With that done, we overturned some chaise lounges on the back patio and moved others to the middle of the lawn.
Then, though both our cell phones (mine being Alex’s) had no reception, we used them as old-fashioned watches and coordinated our moves. In seven minutes, I’d be in the house, at the end of the hallway, ready to go into the study, and Eddie would start rapping on the French doors, drawing whoever was inside, outside.
Then I’d go into the study.
Seven minutes later, I was standing in the dining room, on one of the paint tarps that covered the floor, ready to head down the hallway.
I heard the rapping. Eddie wasn’t fooling around. It was loud and continuous, demanding a response.
Voices rose from the sitting room, and seconds later footsteps rattled down the hallway, heading toward the back of the house.
So far, so good.
When the footsteps had completely receded, I hurried down the hallway, and was just about to step into the study, when I heard someone clearing his throat. One man had stayed behind, and he was in the study.
I quickly headed back down the hallway, through the dining room and the foyer, and out of the house. This time, instead of circling around the side of the house, I circled around the garage, not wanting to end up anywhere near the patio when I got to the back.
That worked out well. I found myself on the other side of the azalea bushes. I skirted along them, moving toward the back of the property. Through the pink blooms, I caught glimpses of the patio, so I slowed a bit to see if Van Doran or Weldon were out there.
Two men were on the patio: one standing, looking over the lawn, and one righting the chaise lounge. And though I was thirty yards away, there was no doubt about who the man looking over the lawn was.
Albert Einstein.
The shock of seeing him stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn’t dare breathe for fear of ruining this preposterous moment. After a minute or so of gawking, I checked out the other man, expecting to see Weldon or Van Doran.
It was Henry Clavin.
A young and healthy Henry Clavin.
Had Einstein been discussing the physics of time travel with Clavin? Was Clavin some kind of savant after all?
Just then, a third man stepped out onto the patio.
Weldon
.
He walked up to Einstein and they exchanged a few words. Then he looked out over the lawn, into the woods, fixating on something. After a few seconds he turned to Clavin, who’d just finished righting the chairs, said something to him, and pointed to a spot in the forest.
The spot where Eddie was hiding.
Clavin headed across the patio, onto the lawn, and toward the forest. Apparently, although people may have been innocent in the past, they weren’t stupid.
I stood stock-still, hoping to avoid discovery, and hoping that Eddie was fleeing. Weldon scanned the woods for another minute or so, then he and Einstein retreated back into the house.
I had no idea how long Clavin would search the forest, but I wanted to catch up with Eddie as soon as possible. Plenty could go wrong with us on the run together, but if we got separated, that would spell disaster.
Heading toward the back of the property would present the risk of running right into Clavin, so I raced east instead. The forest eventually thickened, and as I dodged tree trunks, one question ran through my mind. How was I going to fix anything when things seemed to be getting worse?
I made it to the iron fence that ran along the side of the property and headed toward the back. I kept a lookout for Clavin, in case he’d taken his scouting mission out this far, and for Eddie, and made it to where the fence ended without seeing either.
There was no wooden fence across the back of the property, so it must’ve been a later addition. As I was wondering if that could’ve affected where Eddie had retreated to, I heard a “hey” and spun around.
It was Eddie’s voice, but I didn’t see him.
“Up here,” he said.
He was standing on the branches of the tree above me, clutching the trunk. “Treasure-hunting experience. No one ever looks up.”
“Where’s Clavin?”
“Was that the guy who came looking for me? The guy you said I resurrected?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie started shimmying down the tree trunk. “He turned back.”
I walked over to the other side of the fence. “Let’s get out of here.”
Eddie caught up to me and we headed toward the road. “What did you find in the study?” he said.
“I wasn’t able to get in. Weldon hung back.”
“But wasn’t that him who came out on the patio at the end there?”
I didn’t respond because I knew what he was getting at and didn’t like it.
“Why didn’t you wait?” he said, getting to his point.
Be patient.
“How was I supposed to know he’d head out?”
“Because that was the plan.”
“The plan didn’t work.”
“It looked like it worked to me.”
“Okay—so you should’ve gone in. You would’ve waited. Now we’re going to have to try again.”
“It’s going be tough to break in a second time. Our diversion put them on notice.”
“We’ve got no choice.”
Chapter Thirteen
I may have been mad at Eddie for calling me out, but he was right. If I’d waited a minute or so more, Weldon would’ve left the study. Next time I’d have to think more like a commercial archeologist and less like a scholar. Research was one facet of this journey, but so was action.
Proper action.
Besides, what was the point of being mad at Eddie when it was looking more and more like Alex was the one to blame for this mess? He was the one who’d used the portal in the first place. He was the one who’d recommended me for the UVA job, not because he was doing me a favor, but because he’d wanted to find out if Einstein’s secret was about the portal.
The sun was setting and the forest was swathed in amber light. That soothing glow helped me focus on the next step—getting back into Weldon’s estate and searching that study—rather than blame others for my own failure.
Our footsteps crunched the underbrush, and neither of us spoke. Soon I found myself thinking about the bigger picture, not just the mission at hand. The building blocks of history. The facts. The kind of facts that were rock solid, documented, and confirmed. The kind of facts that never changed. Only the interpretations of those facts changed.
But if all facts changed, then there was no history.
There had to be some facts that didn’t change and never changed. And those facts kept the whole shebang together.
Einstein is the key. His secret is the key.
“Eddie, do you have any ideas about how to get back into that house and into the study?”
“We have to scout the place first.”
“Like common criminals.”
“Common criminals would just break in again. Scouting the place is a little more sophisticated. I say we wait until tomorrow so we can scout the place in daylight. And there’s always the chance that they’ll leave during the day.”
Waiting until tomorrow seemed like an eternity, but right now, trudging through the forest of 1950s Maryland, I didn’t have an alternative. At least, not yet.
*
We made it to the road as dusk descended. The amber light had faded and stars were starting to dot the sky. Night hadn’t fallen yet, but without the light pollution that the next sixty years would bring, the stars were already way brighter than any I’d ever seen.
With more than ten hours to kill before daylight, it was time to find a place to regroup. Headlights were approaching from a distance, and I was suddenly conscious of what we were wearing. Blue jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers.
“Let’s stick to the woods instead of the road. I don’t think we came dressed right.”
“We’ll pass. Grown men didn’t usually wear jeans and T-shirts, but even in the fifties some people refused to grow up.”
“Sounds like a rationalization.”
He laughed. “It is. If we can’t get back right away, we’ll need new threads.”
The headlights swooped past us without slowing down. It was another one of those oversized sedans, but this time Eddie didn’t call out the model.
A few more cars passed, and Eddie asked, “What’s down this road?”
“In sixty years, not much. So I’m guessing not much now.”
But past the treetops, about a half-mile up head, I saw a bluish light flickering above the forest.
“What do you think that is?” Eddie said.
My first thought was based on conjecture. It was an overpowering floodlight from one of the isolated houses out this way. My second thought was based on fact. It was that shuttered drive-in that I’d seen on this road.
“It’s a drive-in,” I said,
and it’s no longer shuttered.
Eddie upped his pace. “Sounds like a perfect place to regroup. I wonder what’s playing.”
A wave of cars passed us, and as we moved closer to the drive-in, I saw much more traffic from the other direction. People were pouring in from town.
It wasn’t much longer before huge, orange neon letters announced that we’d arrived at the
Oriole Drive-In
. If I’d been with the original Eddie, he would’ve made the same connection I did, to a certain photo and a certain man’s tie. More synchronicity.
The title of the night’s feature was right below the neon,
This Island Earth.
“Wow,” Eddie said. “You picked a great night to go to the movies.”
“We’re not going to the movies.”
“I’m going.”
“We can’t risk it. We have to lay low.”
“It’s not going to be the end of the world if we see a movie. I’m not going to pass up the chance to see
This Island Earth
with the audience it was intended for. In case you didn’t know, it was a big- budget extravaganza that made history, cinematically speaking, and you’re a history professor.”
It was clear that Eddie wanted to soak up the fifties.
“We can’t risk changing history even more. What if we change it so much that we can’t go back?”
“The changes are already happening. Remember the trails? That’s how you convinced me to help you. Watching a movie isn’t going to make things worse.”
Eddie walked toward the drive-in.
I hesitated, then caught up with him.
We stepped up to the chain-link fence that separated the woods from the huge lot. The lot was a whirlwind of activity. Cars were maneuvering into spaces, groups of teens were hurrying to and from the concession stand, and families were setting up lawn chairs and picnics in front of their cars. An animated short was unfurling onscreen above the commotion.
“You’re not planning on lifting some collectables from in there and bringing them back,” I said.
“Are you a time cop now?”
“Just sayin’. Your lucrative business is based on fifties memorabilia, and you’ve hit the jackpot.”
“How do you know about my busin—Oh. I told you in the future.”
“Eddie’s Emporium.”
“Well, I must’ve been a real talkative fellow.” He looked back to the screen. “Check that out.”
On the massive screen, an animated polar bear was singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” to a ferocious guard dog. The cartoon was hand drawn, the traditional way, with no CGI. It was sumptuous, rich and warm.
“That’s
The Legend of Rockabye Point
,” Eddie said, “nominated for an Academy Award.”
“Hey, you gotta pay!” someone shouted from the other side of the fence.
I looked down and saw a kid walking toward us. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, eyes that seemed strangely familiar.
“You can buy walk-in tickets,” he said when he reached us. “This one’s worth it.”
Not only did the kid’s eyes look familiar—so did the kid. I moved closer to the fence and read the shiny, plastic nametag pinned to his shirt.
Richie Morgan.
My pulse quickened and my legs went wobbly.
How can this be happening?
I was face to face with my dad.
Chapter Fourteen
“How much is a ticket, little man?” Eddie said.
“Twenty-five cents for walk-ups.”
I forced myself to remain steady. What the hell was this about? I didn’t understand time travel, but at least running into Einstein made some kind of sense. This didn’t. Why was my dad here?
Eddie reached into his pocket, checking for change. “I think we can afford it. We’ll come around front.”
Riche started to walk away. “Enjoy the show!”
“Richie,” I said.
“Yeah?” He turned back.
I had to talk to him. If running into Einstein made some kind of sense, then running into my father must’ve, too. Even if didn’t know why.
“I want to talk to you about something,” I said.
He approached us again. “What is it?”
I didn’t know, yet.
Eddie looked at me, curious, as if he wanted to know, too.
“Harold Weldon,” I said.
Richie moved closer. “What do you want to know about him? My dad used to work for him.”
Maybe this was going to come together after all. “We’re writing a story about Mr. Weldon for the Pittsburgh Gazette,” I said. “He won’t talk to reporters, so it’s hard to get any information about him.”
“You’re reporters?” Richie looked us over, as if he were just noticing that our sneakers weren’t quite right and our haircuts didn’t quite fit in. “You don’t look like reporters.”
Not a good start.
“We pretended to be Weldon’s cousins from California,” I said, hoping that would explain our odd style choices. “But he still wouldn’t talk to us.”
Eddie shot me another strange look, and I wanted to tell him that it was his turn to be patient, that this was my dad, and to let me play this out.
“You said your dad used to work for Weldon?” I was hoping to get Richie back on topic.
“Yeah. But not anymore.”
“What’d he do?”
“He painted some of the rooms.”
I remembered the tarps in the dining room. “Isn’t the place still being painted?”
“Yeah, but…” Richie looked down, avoiding my eyes. He was ashamed of something. His dad—my grandfather—must’ve been fired.