My hero, Cole Rogers, just shy of five foot seven inches, could snap a person's neck in an instant. On a softer note, he was my dad. His sure smile, always accompanied with a nod, won me over a thousand times. A hundred years ago he'd have been a jockey in love with thoroughbreds and places like 'Saratoga' or 'Oak Lawn.' But he arose from the crude oil pit of the sixties on his Harley, a 'ghost rider' whose flames lit up my sky. In love with metal parts, hoses, gasoline tanks, oiled tracks and chains, he embodied the spirit of Paradise Speedway.
I remember as a kid watching my dad, at one hundred forty pounds, throttle 'Rock' Rogers, his three hundred pound cousin, at our 1968 house reunion at Paradise Lake. I remembered his superhuman virtues, skinny tight muscled arms, and short legs pumping him to touchdown.
[Brush DC Motor]
At Paradise Speedway he shattered the Memorial Day lap times repeatedly, even on his last day in 1974.
I grew to know Cole straight through others' lenses, eight-millimeter film clippings of him competing in heats, skiing in a choppy lake, chopping dirt Blm trails up climbing hills on his Harley. Long ago, when he called me his 'Little Trevor,' or 'Lt,' I stood in the length of his shadow for protection.
Would you sell your soul to return to your childhood? I did. Stepping on the shoulders of giants, I returned to August 1969, leaving my pregnant Susan to worry for me in October 2010. I had a life/death ask to make of person there; I didn't know who, either my dad Cole, mum Sylvia, or myself.
Susan introduced me to the time gate. Her degrees in biology, physics and science of mind gained her access. I traveled to the night before my eighth birthday, when I got Puddles. I'd just botched up my trip to 1961. I half staggering to see that eight fingered cop again, waiting for vengeance. But to catch me in that meadow, he'd have to of climbed that mountain 8 x 365 days; fatiguing.
I crawled straight through brush to a landing, and then let the steep trail whisk me two miles to a log truck road near Paradise, Oregon. I ate the dusty gravel. Susan had pushed me straight through the gate with just a few heart pills, a syringe, and a wee black box with a knob on it. Susan had mentioned something about a sub-station as she handed it to me, rushing me straight through the time gate, so I knew it was a radio. She'd said, "Use this as a last resort, Trevor. If you can't get to the gate..." and as her voice faded all I could make out is if I couldn't make it to the gate I was to inaugurate the sub-station. I played with it, couldn't get it to work. It didn't even light up or buzz static. I didn't mess with it long. I'd had no rest since the 1961 debacle.
Susan would be fearfully scanning the August 1969 obituaries. If she checked Paradise Hospital's records, she'd see a Forest service employee returning to Paradise from fire-watch had brought me into the crisis room at 4:17 pm and registered me under the name on my forged Id, 'Leo Benson.' I suppose the records might also show a nurse who knew Leo Benson's sister Sylvia Rogers, contacted her with the news her brother was at Paradise Hospital, and Sylvia Rogers came at once.
I'd chosen 'Leo Benson' as my cover name. Leo was my uncle, so I knew adequate about his life I could sass the difficult questions. Besides, some said I could be his twin. The sight of my parents shocked me, especially since the last time I'd seen them they were dead. My dad, Cole had these piercing raven eyes that made me feel guilty. If he knew why I'd come to 1969, he'd have snapped my neck.
My parents, Cole and Sylvia Rogers, believed I was positively my uncle Leo. They invited me to stay and offered me a room. I chose the living room sofa, and slept into the next day, sounds of clanging pots and pans and Sylvia's voice, and the smell of white cake. It was my birthday in 1969! My eight year old self, wee Trevor ran nearby me, arms spread as if he were a plane. And dad, Cole, bought me Puddles! I watched wee Trevor slap and kiss that tiny dog and tease it with snacks saying, "Roll over, Puddles. Roll over." He shielded that tiny dog from getting squashed by my size elevens. I was 'Uncle Leo on the couch,' sick, weak. Even now the house was old, though a brighter yellow, red shutters. The willow tree's branches wiggled in the wind next to the white Mercury in the gravel drive. And the field, tall grass if you needed to hide. The new swing that rocked and creaked in the yard would one day be old, remembered, abandoned.
Cole exterminated a rat that night. I heard him shaking the tin lid of the garbage can as he threw the vermin out with the trash. I kind of idea he wanted to toss me out. I heard Sylvia putting wee Trevor to bed.
"Mom, it hurts."
"What hurts?"
"My chest hurts."
"You shouldn't eat so fast; you've got heartburn."
"It hurts positively bad."
The voices faded. My eyes rolled into my head. Sylvia kissed Trevor, listened to him. "...and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." She whistled as she trotted into the kitchen. I shivered in my quilt.
I heard Trevor chanting again; then he wailed. As wee Trevor forty years ago, I'd enveloped myself in blankets, plugging my ears in case I heard a voice call me to 'come here.' If I'd known what worse disturbances the next forty years held for me. Puddles scratched and clawed that stable door. I was surprised Cole didn't get up and let him in. I knew Trevor was listening, probably with his warm flashlight by now, reading comics and planning how to saving Puddles. Cole grew bigger in my eyes when he bought me Puddles. But still this house bled sorrow. For Cole they'd place the stone. For Sylvia they'd cut in the last numbers. '1974.'" But Cole, Sylvia, Puddles; once again breathed.' And, once again, the rough threads of that sofa scratched my skin.
Mom's 'Old Revival' radio show didn't awaken me at 6 am like I expected, but wee Trevor woke me with Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, and Daffy Duck. As wee Trevor I'd jumped onto the cold floor of this house each Saturday morning and crouched, wool blanket in hand, by the warm tubes of the Tv. I'd clung to Puddles, but I could never cling tight enough; within the year Puddles would lay under the grass.
But now wee Trevor held Puddles and laughed. He didn't care the Tv had only black and white, and it buzzed and crackled. He thumbed straight through Tv Weekly with a pencil, marking off a cartoon here he'd like to watch, someone else cartoon there. The year that Tv's tubes went bad, wee Trevor would imagine from just sounds and a feint photo all sorts of scenes that probably weren't even on the Tv.
"Angie, cartoons are on!"
"Go watch em yourself, Trevor. I'll be in."
"No you won't. Come on, get up."
I was a die-hard.
"Did I wake you up, Uncle Leo?"
I'd been messing with that wee black crisis radio, trying to get a station. "No, kiddo," I lied, "you didn't wake me." I supposed if I weren't able to reach the time-gate at eleven fifty six Friday night in Munter Meadow, which lay a half hour drive on motorcycle from here, then I was to tune in to a definite sub-station on this radio to set up a new meeting point. I couldn't get any kind of center on it, but I supposed it might only light up nearby the time of the gate opening.
I put the radio in my coat and watched Trevor cling to the wiggling Puddles. "I'm just a wee thirsty," I said. I had a foresight of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi for my parched tongue. I shed the blanket and walked into the kitchen, occasion the refrigerator.
"You can't drink the Pepsi, Uncle Leo," said Trevor. "Today's Saturday."
"I know, kiddo," I said, "mom's 'go to market' day. The 'nuclear age' refrigerator motor vibrated my head, development it ache. I steadied myself against the door and gazed straight through the porthole. A half empty bottle of milk. Quarter block cheddar. Incorporate of bruised tomatoes. And a quart bottle of Pepsi, half empty, sealed with a snap top. 'Of course, in 1969 if you consumed Pepsi by the six-pack you were deemed social misfit. I chose a tiny glass from the cupboard, poured a trickle of Pepsi into it, and gulped. It burned.
The scratched up door hung open. As I strolled down the steps into the 'shop,' Tv blasted "Underdog!" Cole 'owned' this quiet shop. He'd pegged his double ended wrenches and precision screwdrivers on the east wall. He'd incommunicable countless tools into steel toolboxes and aluminum tool chests. And he'd turned the workbench Uncle Hank carpentered for him into a haven for Black & Decker power tools. The bluish-red stain on the fifty-five gallon barrel pulsed a stream of pounding incognizant regret into my already disturbed mind.
A pattern of light on that shack's face wall outlined a door. An icy breeze, uncle to all headwinds that had jerked my Pegasus kite from yellow field to thin blue sky, refreshed me. I creaked open my childhood door. A young sun blinded me. I walked ahead anyhow. A rusty can sat on scuffed up grass near a Toro lawnmower, its lid next to it. So the lively rat, a conquered creature, traveled from Cole's trap to trash-can, to lie amidst Campbell's soup-cans, wrinkled blue carbon sheets and potato peelings, destined to be strained straight through the belly of a German shepherd then farted into the field. Can our brain do us any better?
I turned toward the house squinting. In a gray haze of the dim lit stable - a red stingray bike. It tickled me. I saw a second, taller bike. 'Our Christmas bikes wow.' Sis and I had met at the Christmas tree enraptured. I'd loved my red stingray. We'd covered roughly every inch of our bikes with reflective tape to make them look like race bikes.
The wind blew the wet grass. I shivered. Chimes jingled, sprinkling song from above to dissipate in the wind. The sun arose above the yellow field; the field of my dreams. I remembered most a weather-beaten log in the midst of the field. Its stump sat beside it, perfectly notched, proof of the faller's hand. That log, once my refuge; now held my hopes. Honeysuckle, clover, thick stinging blackberry vines, wet green sprouts taking over for the straw. This field had haunted me. Wow, to visit your earliest memory of home, to sit and talk to your parents over tea. To get up in the middle of conversation and say, "excuse me for a few moments; I'd like to go out and take a look at the field of my childhood." The white three stories 'mansion' far across the field had a large rolling vegetable garden for a back yard. The garden haunted my conscience. I'd stolen from its six-acres, the milk of cantaloupes and watermelons, the elixir's innocence dripping from my chin onto the old log. I savored Tanya's pink tongue before the melon, our mouths mixed, but she dumped me when her mom grounded her for eating our stolen fruit. I'd climbed the two trees, the ones that grew twisted. I wedged myself, feet against one tree, back against the other, and crab climbed till I looked like a bridge. I panicked when my feet and body spread too far apart. I yelled for Tanya. Finally, I managed to slide to the ground, dizzy and scared.
You taking me to Bob's shop today?"
I whirled, and then froze. As I gazed at him, I saw my shadow. I knew 'little Trevor' was me. I'd seen him blow out the candles of our eighth birthday cake. But where do our souls separate? Does his soul enlarge into being mine, or do our souls cleave into two parts at each microsecond of our lives, to split into an infinite number of people? I know I was Trevor, but what now?
Whether or not wee Trevor shared with me my soul, I needed to impress myself upon this family. If I couldn't, they'd never allow my request. I desperately wanted their approval. I'd put my life in their hands, make them believe, beginning with Trevor -- the weak link. "Trevor," I said, "did you know I can be a magician?"
Trevor frowned at me. "No, Uncle Leo, do you juggle?"
I laughed. "No, but I know things only a magician would know."
"What kind of things?"
"Things about you, your thoughts."
The whites of Trevor's eyes widened into saucers. "I don't want whatever to know my thoughts."
"Why? I think it'd be neat. Besides, I already know anyway!"
Trevor shuffled his socked feet on the gravel where it spilled into the garage.
"Don't worry, I won't embarrass you. But...what was it you asked me a wee ago?"
"If you'd walk with me to Bob's Market."
"The convenience store? Yes, Bob's shop is very beneficial to you at this point in your life, isn't it?" My mind raced. "Let's see, kiddo. You pine for Hostess, a Hostess black-berry pie."
"What?" Trevor straightened like a rubber-band. "How did you know?
I've got powers," I said, trying to speak his cartoon language. "You went to Bob's shop recently, didn't you," I said, "all by yourself?"
"Mom told you." Trevor frowned.
"Need more? Ok, why'd you ask me to walk with you to Bob's shop if you can walk alone? Hmmm, let's see, on your first trip across the highway to Bob's Market, you came home late. So, how did Cole put it? 'Son, if you can't be trusted with wee things, who's ever going to trust you with much larger matters?'"
Trevor nodded sheepishly. "And I got grounded, so I can't walk there myself. Mom told you a lot."
"Mom told me nothing; I just know a lot." I patted the stubbles on his head. We didn't explode, which disproves one theory. "Trevor, you strutted in that door. You looked at the comics on your left and felt jealous of Angie because you had to pay 15 cents for a Dc comic and she lived in a time she could get them for 12 cents."
"Yes!" Trevor's jaw dropped.
"Yeah Trevor. Then you looked at the Hostess Twinkies and Pies for 18 cents, but no, too much; you got a candy bar. Your dad loves Snickers, so...oh, first you wanted Three-Musketeers; they're so huge in that silver package; but wait, its size is just fluff. Snickers though, ahhh, so appetizing and filled with syrupy peanuts."
"Wow, Uncle Leo," said Trevor. "You're psychic."
"No kid, get that word out of your mind." I could imagine how the very Christian Sylvia would react to the word 'psychic.'
"Then what are you, Uncle Leo?"
I gazed at the field. The wind blew tall stalks of yellow swaying like an elfin crowd. "A man that's lived in this field with you a long time. I'm a friend who will stick closer to you than a brother."
"A twin brother?"
"Yes, Trevor, even closer than a twin."
Trevor looked up, confused. "Who's your dad, Uncle Leo?"
"My dad?" The fresh painted yellow of the house invited me. "Cole Rogers."
"What?" Trevor's eyes popped open. "You're a liar, Leo," he said. You're not my brother!"
The request Part (1 of 4)