“Telephone poles.”
“Aaach. What’s your name?”
“Jill.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Thanks.”
“How far you going?”
“Dallas.”
The woman nodded, and a strange look came into her eyes. Her voice changed in a subtle way. She was more serious. And she sounded far from drunk. “Aren’t you a little young to be hitchhiking? You should go back home.”
“I know who you are.” The realization was sudden, but Jill knew that she was right.
“And who is that?”
“Gypsy Myra.” Jill turned and leaned her back against the truck’s door, laid her arm along the back of the truck’s bench seat that they shared. “I created a comic book about you. But there’s something beneath that.”
Jill thought she blinked away tears, but couldn’t be sure. “And what might that be?”
“You tell me.” Working with a bunch of radicals, yelling at protests, arguing political points, and being thrown in jail multiple times had honed Jill’s naturally assertive nature.
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. It has something to do with the Game Board, right?”
“The Game Board?”
“The Infinite Game Board. That’s what we call it. Brian and Megan and I.”
The woman nodded, as if satisfied. “I do know where you are going, Jill, and I knew where to find you. But you do not have to do this.”
“I need to save Kennedy. Once he is assassinated—”
“History will take a different turn, to be sure. The history that you will be in.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There are an infinite number of histories, Jill. And I am beginning to believe that when you average them all out, none of them is any better or worse than the other. Each has their share of happiness, misery, prosperity, poverty, inhumanity.”
“But it’s all local,” said Jill. “I’ve heard this before.”
“You have?”
“Not about an infinite amount of histories, no. But you have to work with what’s around you. Change that. It’s hard work. But once you change things, there’s a ripple effect. You go into a poor neighborhood, start with the little kids. Maria Montessori went into Rome’s poorest neighborhood. All the kids were little hoodlums, defacing property, dirty, no manners. And just by thinking scientifically about how humans learn and by developing targeted materials that isolated each step to be mastered, she helped them learn to read in just months. Four-year-old Italian children whose parents probably didn’t know how to read. And now my own mother has a Montessori school in the United States. It’s spreading. That’s what I’m talking about. You need a seed amount of people who have an idea of what to do.”
“This is just amazing.”
“What is?”
“That you’ve turned out this way.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I know your parents. But I’ve never met you. It’s just amazing that you have thought about these things at your age.”
Jill was surprised. “But that’s all we talk about, my friends and I. How to make things better. How to change the world.”
As she drew these frames, fifteen years later, it all came back. The background was jumpy, like Krazy Kat’s Coconino County. And drawing helped her remember what Myra said next: that her name was not Myra.
It was Eliani Hadntz.
* * *
Jill bent from side to side to uncrick her back. The sky was growing light; she’d been sitting on her stool for hours. Making words come out of the character’s mouths in little balloons. My Othertime Trip to Dallas. In front of her was a pen-and-ink drawing of Hadntz in the truck, complete with red bandana, as if Jill had sketched it while leaning back against the passenger door as wind riffled the paper, washed here and there with color. She looked around her table. As she worked, she had, without paying much attention, spread all her watercolor supplies around once again. It looked as if a tornado had struck.
Jill forced herself to look at the pictures, the narrative, that had emerged. It took up most of the sketchbook. Her heart was pounding hard, as if she had just awakened from a nightmare. She hadn’t consciously remembered these details. Maybe this was what it was like to be hypnotized—one suddenly recalled things that the conscious mind had forgotten. Or hidden from itself. Or—hadn’t the therapist mentioned post- traumatic stress syndrome? She didn’t know if this was what had really happened.
But it felt true.
And now, with a desire that almost made her sick in body and in mind, she wanted the Infinite Game Board back. But she’d left it in Dallas.
She wanted it just as much, if not more than, the joker who had called her, demanding it, or the Device, back.
Whoever the hell he was.
When It Landed
July 4
N
OBODY WAS HOME
when the school began to grow, way, way back on the huge acreage that even Sam had not been able to thoroughly tame.
Bette had placed the seed she’d received at her PO box at the far reaches of the property within a dense screen of oaks and kudzu. The tiny meadow was frequented by urban fox and deer, as well as the occasional neighbor kid. Nobody could see it because there were trees all around it.
Whens reached the embryonic school several days later, by a narrow path about a hundred feet long, lined, his mother often warned him, by poison ivy, though she constantly sprayed and pulled and mowed. She was terribly allergic to it. She often threatened to plow it under, pave it over. Whens seemed immune, and liked to go down to the meadow to think, lying on his back inside the circle of giant oak trees, in a round place of tall grass flattened by a deer. The creek burbled nearby, and the leaves and grasses made whispery sounds in the breeze.
But this time, after dragging his shirt free from blackberry thorns, he rounded a bend in the path and almost stumbled into the school.
He stared at it, wonderstruck. The walls were shimmering and translucent, and it looked like half of a big strange ball. A half-sphere, he thought, a …
hemisphere,
a word he’d learned in school. He knew at once that he would not tell his mother about it. She got so worried about every little thing. And this, he had to admit, was a rather big thing. He would swear Bitsy and Zoe and Abbie to secrecy—with blood, if possible. Sitting cross-legged during the afternoon, he watched the thin skin thicken while Manfred lay panting next to him. It had a round door and a little tunnel that led into the main dome. Kind of like an igloo, maybe.
He heard his mother yell, in her cross voice, “Whens! Time for dinner! Where are you? What did I tell you about—”
He jumped up instantly and ran out onto the lawn behind the house. “I’m right here.”
“You weren’t back in all that poison ivy, were you? You’re probably covered with ticks.”
He ran up the steps. “What’s for dinner?”
* * *
Later on that night, Bette descended her secret stairway, stretched, lit a cigarette, and headed down into the woods to examine the thing she’d seen from her garret window. It was small, but recognizable, a three-dimensional realization of the plans for the Q-School she had sent to Hadntz.
My God,
she thought.
It really worked
.
Jill’s Party
July 6
J
ILL’S PARTY BEGAN
when a few neighbors poked their heads in the front door and asked if they could help, and when Jill said no, helped anyway.
Emmie from across the street filled an old copper tub in the kitchen corner with pop bottles and her husband poured bags of ice on top. Brian tapped the beer ponies and started one of their dad’s reel-to-reel tapes; this one was titled “1939/4.” Cindy pushed Jill out the kitchen door and told her to get ready.
Jill took a shower in the third-floor bathroom, letting cold water sluice luxuriously through her hair, washing away the sweat of the day. Someone had cleaned out the tub, which was nice. Megan, probably. Her missing shampoo was here too.
The temperature was pushing ninety, but downstairs an array of fans alleviated the heat. A huge industrial-strength fan in the second floor ceiling pulled in cool evening air through wide-open windows. The house had no air-conditioning; it had been designed, with thick plaster walls, high ceilings, and cross-ventilation to remain almost comfortable on even the most sultry of Washington summer days.
She pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped out of the claw-footed tub onto the cool mosaic floor and peered out the window into the backyard. About fifteen out-of-control children chased a ball. Good. Wear them out. Whens was screaming loudest.
Whens was such a funny little boy. A few days ago she’d found the picture of Sam and Bette that she’d painted propped next to his bed.
“Why did you take it?” she had asked.
He looked worried. “Is it okay?”
“Of course, sweetie. I’m glad you like it. I was just wondering why.”
“The lady is very pretty,” he had said, and smiled.
Grabbing a towel, Jill walked down to the second floor, rubbing her hair. In the dressing room, she donned the white silk pants she had planned to wear and discovered that they were too big. She looked in the mirror, dismayed. The waistband hung on her hips. Well, she hadn’t been very hungry lately.
She pushed hangers aside and came to a chic, simple dress that had belonged to her mother. She recalled seeing Bette wear it, along with a pillbox hat. It was a rather Mondrian dress, bisected with heavy black lines which contained hot pink, the color of the spring azaleas in the side yard, bright yellow, and a strong, Greek-sea blue. Might as well try it.
Cindy opened the door just as Jill, with some difficulty, finished zipping it up.
“Ooh, la la!”
“Does it look all right?”
Cindy tilted her head and put one finger next to her mouth. “Madam, it could go from an embassy party to a PTA meeting with only a few changes. Let me show you a new silk scarf that
just
came in that would accessorize it perfectly—”
“Oh, shut up.”
“It looks great. Comb your hair and get on downstairs. Guests are arriving. And,” she said, glancing at Jill’s bare feet, “I know what you’re thinking, but no running shoes. I’m serious.”
Jill sighed and pointed at a pair of flat shoes that resembled ballet slippers.
“God, no. These.” Cindy picked up a pair of white, very high heels, and handed them to her. “Got any pearls?” She ducked when Jill threw one of the shoes at her, and ran down the hall laughing.
* * *
When Jill got downstairs, Cindy shoved a glass of ice water into her hand and told her that absolutely the only thing she had to do was walk around and chat. Jill gulped the water on her way to the buffet and poured Scotch over the ice. She examined the bottle, intrigued. She’d never heard of Teacher’s.
Everyone raved about Jill’s dress, her upswept hair, the magnificent house, and the extraordinary mixture of guests. The house was full of people, and they overflowed onto the porch and into the yard.
By now, the children had been rounded up by their team of two seasoned, negotiation-proof babysitters and were somewhere upstairs, for once not the loudest contingent in the house.
She spent an hour circulating and sat down at a table in a dark corner of the screened-in porch with a glass of dark ale, watching the crowd.
One couple danced to a Benny Goodman tune. Others took advantage of being semi-outdoors to smoke. Most everyone had a glass in their hand. A man in a far corner of the porch, clean-shaven, sat in a wicker chair smoking, a glass of whiskey perched on the arm of a chair, reading a book and nodding along with Glenn Miller. The top of his head had a bald spot.
Something about him seemed familiar. In fact, he put her in mind of Wink, her father’s old friend. Excited, she made to stand up and get closer. The lights blinked off, right then, and just as everyone groaned, came back on.
But the lights were dim and few, now, and a British RAF officer sat across the table from her, looking haggard, though he smiled broadly at her. Dark varnish, marred by a veritable collage of ancient carvings, covered the heavy, ancient, table on which their pint glasses sat, both well below the pint line. At the ornate bar across the room about fifteen people, in forties-style dress or military uniforms, perched on tall chairs or stood with one foot on the brass rail. The same couple still danced; the tom-toms of “Sing, Sing, Sing” beat in insistent pulse; the place smelled of centuries of spilled beer.
The same Wink-like man sat in the corner, this time perched on a barstool, wearing some kind of Army hat. A blond WAC, her back to Jill, spoke and gestured to him with urgent intensity. He responded now and then. Finally she bowed her head as if thinking, looked up again, nodded, and turned to leave the pub.
Jill was going to follow her when she heard the ominous buzz of a V-1 rocket, one of thousands of winged bombs launched from skids on the Continent. They had been falling for months.
All conversation stopped as the distinctive reverberations of hell’s own power mower, augmented a hundredfold, roared overhead and went suddenly silent. The fuel had cut off; a full ton of explosives was falling. Somewhere nearby. Or directly overhead.
No one spoke for thirty seconds, but the RAF officer looked into her eyes as what might be the last few seconds of their lives passed. An explosion sounded; pictures on the wall shook. The officer smiled. “Newcastle, I was saying. But if you…”
Someone pried her fingers from the glass of ale. Cindy was bending over her. “Yo. Jill. Coffee break.”
“Iced, I hope,” she managed to say.
Cindy pulled up a chair and sat next to her. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. Am I?”
“You had a strange look on your face. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“None. I’m fine.”
Cindy patted her on the shoulder. “People have been asking about you.”
Jill gulped coffee and stood up. “Nobody said this would be easy. Thanks, Cindy.”
The man in the corner, the RAF officer, the blond WAC, and the entire 1940s scene had vanished.