“I say that I see your point.” Al struggled to his feet. It was painful to watch him, but when I started to get up, he waved me back. “Nah, stay there. I’ve got something for you. It’s in the other room. I’ll get it.”
7
It was a tin box. He handed it to me and told me to carry it into the kitchen. He said it would be easier to lay stuff out on the table. When we were seated, he unlocked it with a key he wore around his neck. The first thing he took out was a bulky manila envelope. He opened it and shook out a large and untidy pile of paper money. I plucked one leaf from all that lettuce and looked at it wonderingly. It was a twenty, but instead of Andrew Jackson on the face, I saw Grover Cleveland, who would probably not be on anyone’s top ten list of great American presidents. On the back was a locomotive and a steamship that looked destined for a collision beneath the words FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE.
“This looks like Monopoly money.”
“It’s not. And there’s not as much there as it probably looks like, because there are no bills bigger than a twenty. These days, when a fill-up can run you thirty, thirty-five dollars, a fifty raises no eyebrows even at a convenience store. Back then it’s different, and raised eyebrows you don’t need.”
“This is your gambling dough?”
“Some. It’s mostly my savings. I worked as a cook between ’58 and ’62, same as here, and a man on his own can save a lot, especially if he don’t run with expensive women. Which I didn’t. Or cheap ones, for that matter. I stayed on friendly terms with everybody and got close to nobody. I advise you to do the same. In Derry, and in Dallas, if you go there.” He stirred the money with one thin finger. “There’s a little over nine grand, best I can remember. It buys what sixty would today.”
I stared at the cash. “Money comes back. It stays, no matter how many times you use the rabbit-hole.” We’d been over this point, but I was still trying to get it through my head.
“Yeah, although it’s still back there, too—complete reset, remember?”
“Isn’t that a paradox?”
He looked at me, haggard, patience wearing thin. “I don’t know. Asking questions that don’t have answers is a waste of time, and I don’t have much.”
“Sorry, sorry. What else have you got in there?”
“Not much. But the beauty of it is that you don’t need much. It was a very different time, Jake. You can read about it in the history books, but you can’t really understand it until you’ve lived there for awhile.” He passed me a Social Security card. The number was 005-52-0223. The name was George T. Amberson. Al took a pen out of the box and handed it to me. “Sign it.”
I took the pen, which was a promotional giveaway. Written on the barrel was TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR TEXACO. Feeling a little like Daniel Webster making his pact with the devil, I signed the card. When I tried to give it back to him, he shook his head.
The next item was George T. Amberson’s Maine driver’s license, which stated I was six feet five, blue eyes, brown hair, weight one-ninety. I had been born on April 22, 1923, and lived at 19 Bluebird Lane in Sabattus, which happened to be my 2011 address.
“Six-five about right?” Al asked. “I had to guess.”
“Close enough.” I signed the driver’s license, which was your basic piece of cardboard. Color: Bureaucratic Beige. “No photo?”
“State of Maine’s years away on that, buddy. The other forty-eight, too.”
“Forty-eight?”
“Hawaii won’t be a state until next year.”
“Oh.” I felt a little out of breath, as if someone had just punched me in the gut. “So… you get stopped for speeding, and the cop just assumes you are who this card claims you are?”
“Why not? If you say something about a terrorist attack in 1958, people are gonna think you’re talking about teenagers tipping cows. Sign these, too.”
He handed me a Hertz Courtesy Card, a Cities Service gas card, a Diners Club card, and an American Express card. The Amex was celluloid, the Diners Club cardboard. George Amberson’s name was on them. Typed, not printed.
“You can get a genuine plastic Amex card next year, if you want.”
I smiled. “No checkbook?”
“I coulda got you one, but what good would it do you? Any paperwork I filled out on George Amberson’s behalf would be lost in the next reset. Also any cash I put into the account.”
“Oh.” I felt like a dummy. “Right.”
“Don’t get down on yourself, all this is still new to you. You’ll want to start an account, though. I’d suggest no more than a thousand. Keep most of the dough in cash, and where you can grab it.”
“In case I have to come back in a hurry.”
“Right. And the credit cards are just identity-backers. The actual accounts I opened to get them are going to be wiped out when you go back through. They might come in handy, though—you can never tell.”
“Does George get his mail at Nineteen Bluebird Lane?”
“In 1958, Bluebird Lane’s just an address on a Sabattus plat map, buddy. The development where you live hasn’t been built yet. If anybody asks you about that, just say it’s a business thing. They’ll buy it. Business is like a god in ’58—everybody worships it but nobody understands it. Here.”
He tossed me a gorgeous man’s wallet. I gaped at it. “Is this ostrich?”
“I wanted you to look prosperous,” Al said. “Find some pictures to put in it along with your identification. I got you some other odds and ends, too. More ballpoint pens, one a fad item with a combination letter-opener and ruler on the end. A Scripto mechanical pencil. A pocket protector. In ’58 they’re considered necessary, not nerdy. A Bulova watch on a Speidel chrome expansion band—all the cool cats will dig that one, daddy. You can sort the rest out for yourself.” He coughed long and hard, wincing. When he stopped, sweat was standing out on his face in large drops.
“Al, when did you put all this together?”
“When I realized I wasn’t going to make it into 1963, I left Texas and came home. I already had you in mind. Divorced, no children, smart, best of all, young. Oh, here, almost forgot. This is the seed everything else grew from. Got the name off a gravestone in the St. Cyril’s boneyard and just wrote an application letter to the Maine Secretary of State.”
He handed me my birth certificate. I ran my fingers over the embossed franking. It had a silky official feel.
When I looked up, I saw he’d put another sheet of paper on the table. It was headed SPORTS 1958–1963. “Don’t lose it. Not only because it’s your meal ticket, but because you’d have a lot of questions to answer if it fell into the wrong hands. Especially when the picks start to prove out.”
I started to put everything back into the box, and he shook his head. “I’ve got a Lord Buxton briefcase for you in my closet, all nicely battered around the edges.”
“I don’t need it—I’ve got my backpack. It’s in the trunk of my car.”
He looked amused. “Where you’re going, nobody wears backpacks except Boy Scouts, and they only wear them when they’re going on hikes and Camporees. You’ve got a lot to learn, buddy, but if you step careful and don’t take chances, you’ll get there.”