I was two strokes with a curved needle away from having the new rip in my catamaran’s trampoline repaired when I heard the phone ring. From my driveway to the house is a short dash, but I continued sewing. I doubted the call was earth shaking, and the stitching I’d done with the finesse of a plastic surgeon, would look like something the cat hacked up the instant I let go of the heavy nylon thread.
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, three days after my forty-ninth birthday. I felt over-fed and less than philosophical about the number fifty looming in on me. It’d been windy all week in San Diego and I wanted to take my boat out to see if I could out-sail the blues that fouled my mood, like a cigar smoldering in new carpet.
I finished the repair, only poking my thumb once, then went into the house to see if the caller had left a message. The answering machine winked at me with its one green eye. The message was from my mom.
“Jimmy,” she said, her voice warm and soothing like pizzicato in a favorite violin concerto. “I was cleaning out my closets yesterday and I found something of yours. Call me.”
What my mom found was an envelope that I’d had for years. It was something that served more as a lesson in patience than a possession. Mom’s call refreshed my memory of the day I’d received it, although I still had no idea what it contained.
It was September 1965. I was in Pacific Beach waiting for my folks to pick me up after taking my new surfboard out for the first time. I’d been saving money from my paper route for what seemed an eternity with my eye on the nearly new Gordon and Smith I’d seen in George’s Surf shop on Mission Boulevard. Each time it seemed that I was close to having enough money for the board, a tire would blow on my bike or something else would happen to set me back. My grandmother passed away that summer, in mid August. She left me one hundred thirty-five dollars, with specific instructions that I use the money to buy that surfboard.
While waiting for my folks, in the little park at the foot of Law Street, an older man, who I remember thinking looked like a beatnik or a beachcomber, walked up and asked if I was Jimmy Mitchell. I told him I was.
“I was a friend of your grandmother,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t recognize me, but I have something I want you to have. The scruffy man handed me a manila envelope with my name on the front. Under my name, he’d written with a felt pen. Do not open until November 26, 2000.
The man put his hand on my shoulder. “I want you make me a promise,” he said “Keep this in a safe place and please, don’t open it until the date written on the envelope, will you do that for me?”
The man made me swear to God, even had me cross my heart and hope to ding my new board. He stared through me. I remember thinking he was looking into my soul. I swallowed hard then promised him that I’d do as he asked.
When I told my parents about the man, they tried to place him, but couldn’t. Though he seemed ancient to me, he was surely many years younger than my Grandmother and her other friends.
I remembered wanting badly to open the envelope and even holding it up to the light hoping to get a clue of it’s contents. My sister Gayle said it was probably something dead that would stink-up the house.
The pure volume of strapping tape sealing the packet intrigued my dad, who could extract humor from any situation. “Son,” he said in his gulf-coast drawl. “You best get-to sawing. As dull as your mama’s knives are, it could take thirty-five years to open this rascal.”
The envelope languished for years in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Then when I went away to college I turned it over to my mom for safekeeping.
Mom was pulling weeds in her garden when I parked in front of her immaculate little house in North Park. She rinsed off her hands with the hose and gave me a hug. I followed her inside, smiled at the old photo of her and dad that hung over the mantel. Dad looked proud and healthy dressed in crisp Navy whites, obligatory cigarette in his hand. I felt mom’s loneliness for a moment, missed dad’s humor and wondered how he would look if he were with us today.
Mom handed me the old envelope. It was brittle with age and tattered around the edges. November 26, 2000, seemed so far into the future back in ’65. Now it was only two days away.
“Almost threw it away, with a stack of old magazines this morning.” Mom said. “To tell you the truth, I’d almost forgotten about it. Your grandmother was a such a character,” Mom said, then smiled, as if her words opened a trove of fond memories. “But,” she said with a chuckle. “She had some oddball friends.
“She attracted the bohemian types, most without a pot to piss in, so if you’re expecting something valuable, don’t get your hopes up. Still, I’m glad you didn’t open it, shows strong character. Especially, considering how little patience you had when you were a boy.”
Mom patted the arm of a chair, meaning for me to sit, then eased into her rocker. “You going to open it now?” she asked.
I laughed. “What, and break my promise? No, I’ll wait. What’s two more days after waiting thirty-five years.”
Mom fixed a pot of tea and we talked for a while. I left around two, stopping on my way home to visit my long time friend Greg Shiley. Greg was like an adopted member of my family. We’ve been friends since first grade. He’s my age, generous as they come but a bit on the eccentric side. My parents always treated him like part of the family, as did my grandparents. They bought him gifts at Christmas, threw him birthday parties and his school pictures hung on the wall at Grandma’s house in Imperial Beach, next to those of Gayle and me.
Greg lost his parents at an early age in a car accident. He stayed with his aunt and uncle but he lived at our house. He was smart as a whip, a whiz at anything electronic, but as I said eccentric.
He was working in his garage with the door up when I pulled into his driveway. He trotted out to my old Ford, huge toothy grin beaming through his gray shaggy beard dressed in the T-shirt that he’d bought during a trip he and I made to Barbados three years ago. It was his favorite, worn thin as gauze. On the front was a gaudy, hand-painted parrot flying over a tropical beach carrying a bottle of Mount Gay Rum.
“Come look Jimbo!” he shouted excitedly. “Fucker’s gonna work this time.”
I followed Greg into his junk strewn garage. He looked like a mad scientist gone to seed. On his workbench, a monitor from a computer flickered in the dim light, connected to a series of circuit cards and finally to what looked like his old VCR.
“What the fuck is that?”
Greg tugged his beard, hitched up his baggy jeans. “Goddamn time machine, Jimbo.”
I wanted to laugh, but sadness swarmed over me like locust.
Greg had suffered a breakdown after his second tour of duty in Vietnam. The nightmares he brought back from the war made his life a frightening hell. He sought solace in heroin for a time and once attempted suicide. Crazy talk of time machines wasn’t a good sign.
I waved my fears away and returned my attention to my oldest friend. Greg’s eyes glowed like burning coal. He looked like a gnome dancing around his garage, showing me this treasure and that. I told him I thought that perhaps he should touch base with a counselor at the VA Hospital. My suggestion dimmed the fire in his eyes.
Greg was quiet for a moment, then he opened the rusty old fridge he keeps in the garage and pulled out two bottles of home-brewed beer. We sat on the front steps savoring his latest brew, reliving tales of summers long past as the sun sank behind Point Loma. When it was time for me to go, he walked with me out to my car.
I hinted again, that I thought checking in with the VA might not be a bad idea.
“No, Jimbo.” he said, crossing his arms. “Besides, after talking to those asshole shrinks for a little while, you start to think you’re the one who’s crazy.”
I watched Greg’s eyes twinkle, then he, laughed. He swatted my belly with the back of his hand.
“Let’s get out in the water sometime, Jimbo. That’s all I need. If a day of surfing can’t fix what ails you, then fuck it, you can’t be fixed.”
I drove away watching Greg in my rear view mirror. I felt worried about him, and a little guilty. I’d skirted the draft, mostly because my folks had the money to keep me in school to ride the deferment train until the war ended. Greg wasn’t so lucky.
Saturday I went back to his house, hoping that I would see sanity in his eyes. His old Rambler was in the driveway, but his doorbell echoed without response. His bicycle was parked in it’s usual spot, under the pepper tree in the back yard, and through the dirty garage window I could see his surfboard leaning against the wall.
I waited on his front steps for an hour listening to birds singing in the cold November sky. Later when I got home, I called the VA, hoping he was there, but no luck.
The next day I made another trip to his house. A new cobweb across his door told me that he hadn’t returned. I let myself into the backyard through the squeaky gate and walked to the back of his house. His bedroom window was slightly open. I removed the screen, pushed the window up and climbed inside. The air was cool inside and slightly musty. I must have unconsciously damned up a stream of fear that I’d be greeted by the smell of rotting human flesh, I vented a long sigh as I stepped into the hall.
Greg’s house, is much like his garage, cluttered with a lifetime’s collection of miscellany. It would be impossible for anyone, other than Greg to tell if anything was missing, maybe even difficult for him. I noticed the trashcans were all empty, except the one in the kitchen. It contained the empty box and foil wrapping from a pack of Polaroid film. It wasn’t like Greg to leave town and not tell me. But, wherever he’d gone he’d apparently taken his camera.
I replaced Greg’s screen locked-up and drove home, as the sun sagged off to the west. As soon as I walked into my house, I called Greg’s number and left a message on his answering machine, asking him to call me.
At sunset, the phone rang and I thought sure it was him. I dashed across the room and snatched it out of the cradle, “Greg?” I said, into the receiver.
“No, just little old me,” Mom answered. “It’s November twenty-sixth.”
“And?”
“Did you keep your promise and wait open the letter?”
I told her I’d forgotten about the letter and mentioned that I was a little worried about Greg, without going into too much detail.
I heard concern in Mom’s voice, though she told me not to worry. “Greg’s a big boy,” she said, then asked me to call her as soon as I heard from him.
I poured myself a beer, took the old envelope out onto the porch, wishing that I could mustered more excitement for something so mysterious in my history.
I sawed through the brittle packing tape with a steak knife and carefully removed the contents. There was a short note and a time-yellowed Polaroid snapshot of old Mission Boulevard and the scruffy man who’d given me the envelope so many years before. This time, I recognized him immediately. It was Greg Shiley. Greg stood in front of George’s first Surf Shop. Big toothy smile beaming through his gray shaggy beard, wearing his favorite T-shirt. The one he’d bought three years ago in Barbados, with that gaudy hand-painted parrot on the front.
The note simply said, in big sweeping letters: It worked Jimbo. Told you!
Time Travel in The Matrix: Find Hope, Suspense and Inspiration in the Series "Ricky Back in Time"
Have you ever been haunted by "what-ifs," REGRETS and mistakes you can't correct?
Ever felt like the whole world is against you?
Imagine a univ
“The year is 2011 and Samuel Elmsmore is adrift in the universe. After a series of breakdowns he awakens as a virtual prisoner in a hostel for the mentally ill. He’s estranged from his family and friends, and is jobless after an unfortunate incident
