I put the briefcase between my feet and held my hands out to show him they were empty, but he cringed even further down the side of the drying shed. Spittle gleamed on his stubbly chin. I looked around to be sure we weren’t attracting attention, saw that we had this part of the millyard to ourselves, and tried again. “I only pushed you because you startled me.”
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, his voice cracking through about five different registers. If I hadn’t heard the question on my last visit, I wouldn’t have had any idea what he was asking… and although the slur was the same, wasn’t the inflection a little different this time? I wasn’t sure, but I thought so. He’s harmless, but he’s not like anyone else, Al had said. It’s like he knows something. Al thought it was because he happened to be sunning himself near the rabbit-hole at 11:58 in the morning on September 9, 1958, and was susceptible to its influence. The way you can produce static on a TV screen if you run a mixer close to it. Maybe that was it. Or, hell, maybe it was just the booze.
“Nobody important,” I said in my most soothing voice. “Nobody you need to concern yourself with. My name’s George. What’s yours?”
“Motherfucker!” he snarled, and scrambled yet further from me. If that was his name, it was certainly an unusual one. “You’re not supposed to be here!”
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” I said. I picked up the briefcase to demonstrate my sincerity, and he hunched his thin shoulders all the way up to his ears, as if he expected me to hurl it at him. He was like a dog that’s been beaten so often it expects no other treatment. “No harm and no foul, okay?”
“Get out, bastard-ball! Go back to where you came from and leave me alone!”
“It’s a deal.” I was still recovering from the startle he’d given me, and the residual adrenaline mixed badly with the pity I felt—not to mention the exasperation. The same exasperation I’d felt with Christy when I came home to discover she was drunk-going-on-shitfaced again in spite of all her promises to straighten up, fly right, and quit the booze once and for all. The combination of emotions added to the heat of this late summer midday was making me feel a little sick to my stomach. Probably not the best way to start a rescue mission.
I thought of the Kennebec Fruit and how good that root beer had been; I could see the gasp of vapor from the ice cream freezer as Frank Anicetti Senior pulled out the big mug. Also, it had been blessedly cool in there. I started in that direction with no further ado, my new (but carefully aged around the edges) briefcase banging against the side of my knee.
“Hey! Hey, you, whatsyaface!”
I turned. The wino was struggling to his feet, using the side of the drying shed as a support. He had snagged his hat and was holding it crushed against his midsection. Now he began to fumble at it. “I got a yellow card from the greenfront, so gimme a buck, motherfucker. Today’s double-money day.”
We were back on message. That was comforting. Nonetheless, I took pains not to approach him too closely. I didn’t want to scare him again or provoke another attack. I stopped six feet away and held out my hand. The coin Al had given me gleamed on my palm. “I can’t spare a buck, but here’s half a rock.”
He hesitated, now holding his hat in his left hand. “You better not want a suck-job.”
“Tempting, but I think I can resist.”
“Huh?” He looked from the fifty-cent piece to my face, then back down at the money again. He raised his right hand to wipe the slick of drool off his chin, and I saw another difference from before. Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to make me wonder about the solidity of Al’s claim that each time was a complete reset.
“I don’t care if you take it or leave it, but make up your mind,” I said. “I’ve got things to do.”
He snatched the coin, then cowered back against the drying shed again. His eyes were large and wet. The slick of drool had reappeared on his chin. There’s really nothing in the world that can match the glamour of a late-stage alcoholic; I can’t think why Jim Beam, Seagram’s, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade don’t use them in their magazine ads. Drink Beam and see a better class of bugs.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“A job, I hope. Listen, have you tried AA for that little problem you’ve got with the boo—”
“Fuck off, Jimla!”
I had no idea what a jimla might be, the fuck off part came through loud and clear. I headed for the gate, expecting him to hurl more questions after me. He hadn’t before, but this encounter had been markedly different.
Because he wasn’t the Yellow Card Man, not this time. When he raised his hand to wipe his chin, the card clutched in it had no longer been yellow.
This time it was a dirty but still bright orange.
2
I threaded my way through the mill parking lot, once again tapping the trunk of the white-over-red Plymouth Fury for good luck. I was certainly going to need all of that I could get. I crossed the train tracks, once again hearing the wuff-chuff of a train, only this time it sounded a little more distant, because this time my encounter with the Yellow Card Man—who was now the Orange Card Man—had taken a bit longer. The air stank of mill effluent as it had before, and the same inter-city bus snored past. Because I was a little late this time, I couldn’t read the route sign, but I remembered what it said: LEWISTON EXPRESS. I wondered idly how many times Al had seen that same bus, with the same passengers looking out the windows.
I hurried across the street, waving away the blue cloud of bus exhaust as best I could. The rockabilly rebel was at his post outside the door, and I wondered briefly what he’d say if I stole his line. But in a way that would be as mean as terrorizing the drying shed wino on purpose; if you stole the secret language belonging to kids like this, they didn’t have much left. This one couldn’t even go back and pound on the Xbox. So I just nodded.
He nodded back. “Hi-ho, Daddy-O.”
I went inside. The bell jingled. I went past the discount comic books and straight to the soda fountain where Frank Anicetti Senior was standing. “What can I do for you today, my friend?”
For a moment I was stumped, because that wasn’t what he’d said before. Then I realized it wouldn’t be. Last time I’d grabbed a newspaper out of the rack. This time I hadn’t. Maybe each trip back to 1958 reset the odometer back to all zeros (with the exception of the Yellow Card Man), but the first time you varied something, everything was up for grabs. The idea was both scary and liberating.
“I could use a root beer,” I said.
“And I can use the custom, so we’ve got a meeting of the minds. Five-or ten-cent beer?”
“Ten, I guess.”
“Well, I think you guess right.”
The frost-coated mug came out of the freezer. He used the handle of the wooden spoon to scrape off the foam. He filled it to the top and set it in front of me. All just like before.