“Well, look at mine. How old do you think I look?”
“About the Professor’s age, I guess. Probably a little older.”
“How old is the Professor?”
“Well, Aunt Mildred baked him a cake for his birthday in February and she wouldn’t put candles on it because she said it might burn the house down.”
“That doesn’t tell us how old he is, Rodney. Will you wake up and think?”
Rodney chewed on his lip for a moment. “I know that his birthday is February 29. It’s the leap year day that only happens every four years. And this year—1956—is a leap year, which means that the Professor has to be an age that is divisible by four. And so I believe he is either sixty or sixty-four or sixty-eight. I would say sixty-four.”
“Do you think we’re in our sixties too?” Wayne felt the top of his head. “Hey, Rodney, I still have some hair.”
“But it’s pretty gray.”
The boys grew silent, each pondering their new predicament. Then Rodney said, “I think the Professor has added too many years to everyone’s ages. Instead of adding eleven years and eight months to put us back to where we were, he added over sixty years.”
“Why would the Professor do that?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose, Wayne. Remember that he said he wasn’t certain what might happen when he turned the machine on.”
“What does that mean, Rodney, for the town?”
Rodney thought about this for a moment. “Well, I would guess that if all those years have been added to our true ages, then all those years have also been added to everybody’s ages. That means we now live in a town with a whole lot of really old people.”
“You mean like the Professor? Like Aunt Mildred?”
Rodney nodded.
“How old do you think Aunt Mildred is now?”
“115. Maybe 120.”
“Gee, that’s pretty old, Rodney. I hope she isn’t dead.”
“Me too. Let’s go find out.”
The two boys who now had the voices and bodies of men in their sixties, got out of bed and, without stopping to find some clothes, raced to their great aunt’s bedroom. The door was shut. They knocked. They waited.
Then Wayne said to the door, “Aunt Mildred? Aunt Mildred, are you still alive?”
“Don’t ask her if she’s still alive,” said Rodney. “Don’t ask people questions that can only be answered one way!”
“But that’s the way I want her to answer it. I want her to say ‘yes.’”
“Well, she isn’t saying anything. And she didn’t say anything when we knocked, either. We’d better go in and check on her.”
Wayne opened the door, and the boys stepped inside. “Turn on that reading lamp,” said Wayne, pointing to the standing lamp that Aunt Mildred used to read her romance novels and her issues of Ladies’ Home Journal in her comfy arm chair. Rodney switched on the lamp. It cast a dim light around the room. But it was enough light for Rodney and Wayne to see their great aunt lying in her bed.
“Get a little mirror,” said Wayne. “We should hold a mirror up to her mouth, like they do in the movies, to see if she’s still breathing.”
“I have a better idea,” suggested Rodney. “I’ll take her pulse.” Rodney reached under the blanket and gently pulled out Aunt Mildred’s arm. It was very thin and scored with veins that ran up and down it. The skin was loose and blotched with dark age-spots. Rodney took the wrist between his fingers and felt for a pulse.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No — wait. There’s a beat. Okay, where is the next one? There’s another one. Her heart rate sure is slow.”
“Probably because she’s the oldest person in the world, Rodney! But this is good. She isn’t dead.”
Just then, Aunt Mildred opened her eyes. Calmly, she looked at the boys and said in a small and feeble voice, “Hello, Rodney. Hello, Wayne. Is it morning yet?”
“No, Aunt Mildred,” said Wayne. He looked at the Big Ben alarm clock that sat next to the bed. “It’s just a little past midnight.”
“What’s wrong? Why are you two out of bed and why do you both look like middle-aged men?”
“Because we are middle-aged men, Aunt Mildred,” said Wayne. “Rodney thinks that we must be in our sixties. Say, is that middleaged or old?”
“It depends on whom you ask, dear,” said Aunt Mildred. She spoke in a breathy, slightly labored voice. The boys leaned in to hear her better. “If you are thirteen, then someone who is in his sixties could be considered quite old. But if you are as old as I feel right now, sixty-something could be considered quite young.”
“Well, you probably feel old, Aunt Mildred, because you’re 115, maybe even older,” said Wayne bluntly.
”Oh.”
“Although that isn’t your real age,” added Rodney.
“I know that, dear. My mind is just as sharp as it’s always been. It’s my body that feels worn out. Oh my word! I just thought of something.”
“What is it, Aunt Mildred?”
“My friend Mrs. Craddock at the Shady Rest Nursing Home— I knit socks for her and take her chocolate pudding — she must now be as old as one of those big ancient tortoises at the zoo. Maybe older!
Rodney and Wayne nodded, not knowing how to respond. Wayne thought how strange it was that his great aunt should be talking about reptiles when he had just been dreaming of them. Sometimes Wayne’s mind wandered to things that were slightly off the subject at hand.
“Well, let me rest, boys, and then in the morning, you will have to serve me breakfast in bed, because I don’t think I have enough strength to go down to the kitchen. I would like something easily digestible. And don’t forget the cinnamon.” Aunt Mildred closed her eyes.
“I’m going to the Professor’s house,” said Wayne.
“Right now?” said Rodney.
“I have to find out if he’s all right.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” interjected Aunt Mildred drowsily. “If he’s like me he probably just wants to sleep.”
“But I don’t think we should wait until tomorrow, Aunt Mildred.”
Aunt Mildred didn’t respond. She had fallen back to sleep.
“I suppose you’re right about checking on the Professor,” whispered Rodney to his brother as he closed the door behind him. “We’ll only toss and turn and worry the rest of the night. But we should first try to reach him on the phone.”
The boys used the telephone in their father’s bedroom, happy to call someone without assistance. Wayne let the phone ring a dozen times but the Professor didn’t pick up.
“Now I’m really worried,” he said.
“Let’s go over there,” said Rodney.
The two boys walked to their father’s closet and began looking for shirts and pants and shoes that they could wear, since all the clothes in their own closet were sized for thirteen-year-old boys. “I think we are now the same size as Dad,” said Wayne, just as Rodney pulled out his father’s favorite Hawaiian shirt. It was yellow and had pineapples on it.