41
For Frank Porter, it was easy to decide. He knew right away that the person in front of him was from the future. Was he sent here to take him back? Was he a good guy or was he somebody who would cause him grief? Regardless of the answers to his questions, he was sure this person was there for him.
“Can I help you?” Frank asked with a tone that let his new guest know he was not impressed with the intrusion.
“Well, I think you might be able to! You are Frank Porter?” William had asked the question as if to say that he knew the answer and he knew he had found the person he had been looking for.
“Well what if I am? Who are you and why have you come here?”
“I was telling a friend of mine in town how I have been looking for a way to get back to my family for many days now. You see, this friend is someone I have come to trust. I believe it is a mutual friend of ours, Mr. Stan Wilson, who runs the local repair garage. I have been renting the room above the shop and working for him for the last three weeks.” William was speaking as if he had finally found somebody who should know exactly who he was and how he got there. This small talk was just something that had to be done to get to the business at hand.
“I know you need to know who I am, Frank. By the way, do you mind if I call you Frank?”
“Well that just depends, my friends call me Frank, and I have not decided yet whether you area friend or somebody I should kindly ask to leave.”
Frank did not want to give William the impression that he was concerned or felt threatened by his visit in any way, so he punctuated his statement with a smile. This was very important for William. Up until now he was not sure if Frank Porter was inclined to help him.
William extended his hand out and made sure he returned the smile. “Nice to meet you, Frank. My name is William Monterey. I hope you will be kind enough to give mea bit of your time.”
“Okay, Mr. Monterey, you have piqued my interest. Would you like a cold drink? Let’s go inside.”
“Bill…”
Frank stopped his walk toward the front porch and looked back to William and, before he could acknowledge him, William spoke again to make sure to cement this new friendship.
“I want you to call me Bill. All my friends do!” This was the first time William had asked somebody to address him as Bill. He just realized how important that was. Prior to meeting Frank Porter, he did not think Bill was an appropriate name for himself. Bill was too modern a name to be used by any of the people he had met so far. Except for this person. William was positive Frank could relate to the name Bill perfectly.
Frank smiled and shook his head as if to say “Okay, you made your point, you are not here as a bad guy, now get your ass in the house and tell me what you really want!”
William was astounded that this new person on his journey was the only one who seemed to act in a mannerism he was comfortable with.
“Can I get you a beer, Bill?”
“A beer would be great, Frank, thanks.”
Frank looked at him again with a look a father usually gives a son after having made a smart remark. “I am going to get you a beer out of my icebox here and then I need you to tell me what I can do for you!”
A thought came to William. He figured he might as well get to the point and ask Frank a question that would give him an idea where he was from. “From your icebox, huh? Tell me, Frank, do you ever miss a refrigerator?”
Frank stopped in his tracks. He was about to open the icebox, but all he could do was stand there statue-like. He decided the beer was no longer important. He turned to William, who was standing there looking at him with a bit of a smirk on his face, meant to say “gotcha!”
“A what, you say?” Frank wanted to make sure he had heard William correctly, or perhaps not admit that he knew what a refrigerator was.
“Well, don’t tell me you have forgotten how great it was to just plug in the icebox back home and not have to bother putting ice in it or running out of ice, not to mention the mess these things make. I decided that the one in the room I rent from Wilson is not worth the hassle…” William was carrying on intentionally as if trivializing the fact that he was from a place Frank was trying to forget.
“Look, Bill, why don’t you get to the point, what is it you want from me?” Frank’s voice had noticeably changed. It crackled as he spoke, and he almost appeared to be frightened. At this point, he was not sure what to make of William’s intentions. Was this new so-called friend sent to take him back to the place where he did not want to return?
“I apologize for not being more straightforward. I guess I am so elated to have found you that I am not sure what to say. I almost feel like taking two steps toward you and doing a high-five with you, like we’re watching the Super Bowl together on TV and our team just scored a touchdown. There I go again speaking like you know exactly what I am talking about. The television, as you might remember, won’t be invented for another 30 years or so and I am sure the NFL does not exist yet.”
Frank was visibly shaken and growing very impatient. “Bill I am going to ask you…”
William did not let Frank finish. “Wait… wait a minute. Let’s sit down, and I will start from the beginning without all this dancing around.”
Frank looked at William and said “You sure you can do that?” and motioned with his hand in the direction of the small dining room table. William was already walking toward the dining room and quickly sat down before Frank had taken a step in the same direction. Frank shook his head, not sure what to expect next, and proceeded to join William.
“Look, Frank, you do not need to pretend you do not know what I am talking about…”
It was Frank’s turn to interrupt William. “I did not say I do not know what you are talking about.” Frank paused so that he could choose his next words carefully, but the only thing he could say was: “How is my son doing? And since you brought it up, who won the Super Bowl this year? And I have to admit if there is one thing I miss the most, it is my double-door fridge.”
William sat back and let out a sigh, and then on the spur of the moment, he lifted up his hand and waited for Frank to do the same. Frank was more than willing to do something he had not done for a few years now. The two men slapped a high-five so hard that they both simultaneously shook their respective hands to react to the stinging sensation that came with every well-delivered high-five.
They both started laughing, almost uncontrollably. William blew at his hand and Frank stood up and walked across the room to where the icebox was and placed his hand on the half-melted block of ice that was inside.
“You probably never found an ice cube this big in your refrigerator.” Frank actually lifted the dripping cube of ice out of the icebox and held it up for William to see. “Let me get you that beer since I am here. I bet you have not seen anybody else in these parts put their beer in an icebox. I do miss the aluminum cans.” Frank put the ice back and quickly wiped his hands with a towel that was nearby. He proceeded to take two pint-sized brown bottles out of the icebox. The bottles had an old-type of stopper with the flip lock and ceramic top and rubber washer that William remembered seeing a number of times when he was a kid. Frank handed one of the bottles to William. “You know how to open that type of stopper, don’t you?”
“Sure I do!” William had already found the flip part of the stopper and the bottle made a small pop sound as soon as he released the top. He pulled the stopper back and took a drink of the beer directly from the bottle. “Well, Frank, I think it is time I cut to the chase and tell you about my story and see how it compares to yours’.”
Frank smiled and lifted his beer from the table a few inches and tilted the top slightly toward William. “I am all ears, amigo, let’s hear what you have to say.”
“Frank, I need you to help me. I am not sure if you want to go back to the time that sent you here. And by the way, I do not know who your son is. I hope you do not think I was sent here for you, because I am sure I was not. I think you and I have traveled in time for our own reasons. I still am not sure what mine is. But I know one thing and that is that I am glad this happened to me and I will go back. At first I was really upset about the whole thing, and I was worried I would never see my wife and daughters again, but I never gave up hope and I have always believed I can get back to them. I still do, especially now that I have found you.”
Frank was listening very closely to what William was saying. He was staring at the beer bottle in front of him but hanging on every word William had said so far.
“Tell me, William, what year have you come from and how did you get here?”
“What year? You know it never occurred to me that you could be here from any time in the future. I figured we came from the same year. You see when I told Stan Wilson I was from a place he could never know and that I longed to return there, he told me my words sounded a lot like yours in the way you described the place you came from. I did not think much of it until he told me he thought you were crazy. He said you always explained fixing your car by methods he had never heard of. He told me that when you go in to use his shop to work on your car, you talk about things he does not understand. Okay, so that might not be so strange. I take it you were a mechanic in the future.”
Frank nodded in agreement. “I specialized in English cars, mostly Jags, MGs and Morgans. I had clients who would not let anyone touch their cars but me. I loved to work on those cars. Wiring was one of the things I did best. English cars are known to be a nightmare. They referred to Lucas, the company that made most of the wiring in English cars, as the Prince of Darkness. I would solve problems that other mechanics could not. I was the best!”
“Well even if Wilson thinks you’re crazy, he does believe that one day a mechanic will hook a car up to a machine that will troubleshoot the engine. He said you told him that you know for sure that one day a mechanic will be able to ‘scope’ a car’s problems just by hooking the engine up to a machine that will compute any failures and suggest repairs. Compute! That was the word I needed to hear. Compute as in computer, scope as in computer scope! I was shocked when he told me. I had to know who you were and where I could find you. That was an hour ago, and here I am.”
Frank was noticeably relieved to hear William tell him how he had come to find him. Something so simple and so straightforward, not some plot created by a superior being designed to take Frank back to the place and time he had come from. He did not want to leave his life here and, most of all, he did not want to leave his mother and his new wife. “Bill, I am sort of relieved you are here to seek my help and not because you were sent here to carry out some deed that would make me want to kill you before you could.”
William was startled a bit by Frank’s comments and Frank could sense it.
“Actually I may have been kidding about the kill you part. But I would have forcibly removed you from my house if you were here on some mission to take me back to a time I left behind for good. You see, unlike you, Bill, I do not want to go back. Sure I miss my son, but I know he is doing fine, and I am sure he is getting on okay on his own. He is grown up now, and I gave him a very good upbringing, well a lot better than the one I had, let me tell you.”
“Did you have only one child, and what about his mother?” William wanted Frank to talk about his story so that he could get to his situation and find out what Frank knew and what he could use to help him get back to his family.
“Paul was my only son. His mother, Carmen, could not have any other babies after him. I hope she is okay. She and I got along, but we were not in love any longer. Actually I am not sure if we ever were. As a matter of fact now that I have found Linda I know we were not. I have come to know real love with a woman only because of my wife, Linda, who is out with my mother. They both live here, and I do expect them home anytime now. Bill, you will have to stay for dinner. Linda is an amazing cook.”
“Wait a minute! Did you say your mother? Are you telling me your mother, your real mother is here? You came back from the future to find your real mother here? By the way, when did you come back, I mean what year did you leave behind?”
William was racing with his questions; he had placed both hands flat on the table in front of him and leaned forward slightly toward Frank.
“Whoa, slow down a bit, you’re likely to blow a gasket.” Frank got up and turned around toward the window. He pulled back the curtain to see if the car he had heard was his own pulling into the driveway and, of course, he had recognized the engine. Sure enough, his wife and mother had arrived.
“I need to help the ladies bring in the groceries. We will have to continue this conversation after dinner. I would appreciate it if you did not mention a word about this topic, I mean the coming from the future part and where you are from, and that you still have to tell me… there is a lot you need to tell me, but it will have to wait. Understood?”
William nodded a yes and stood up as well. “Frank, I have waited this long, I can wait a couple of hours, so if you don’t mind I will take you up on your offer. I have not had a good home-cooked meal in awhile. Why don’t I go out to help you so you can introduce me to your mother and your wife? I am really looking forward to meeting them.”