10/28-30/1999 ghef Ashbrook
There was an old man once who stopped by a village with a horse, he was just passing through. They two walked slowly up to the front of a veterinarian shop. A man came out and asked him what was wrong with the horse. The old man said they were racing a train when the horse got scared and hit a tree. The man listening made a face when the old man said this, but he said nothing. Then the old main said he was going to buy up residence in the down. This time the vet asked why. And the old man said that he couldn't leave the horse, that he would stay and walk with it by the day, for the rest of its life, and then he would buy another horse and ride the fifty miles to his final destination. In the mind of the waiting man arose a storm of disagreement, and a controversy surrounding an accusation, and foresight. He knew the town would be a talk and he knew the man would be thought a munchhole if he was staying on account of the horse. For one thing the horse would probably outlive him, and for another he was only fifty miles from his destination. They could walk that in a few days. And he didn't know if he agreed with the town.
Without thinking, he said, "Well you know, you can stay at my place."
The old man smiled slowly, and the younger man didn't quite believe he'd said it. And too he said, "I have a large yard, a small farm and a bunch of other horses with grounds." He wasn't sure what to say next, because, to his horror, the second statement wasn't true. And for a moment he was standing in a building before someone's desk, then a moment later back outside the front of his clinic. Then he looked at the old man, his face wasn't as joyed as it was a moment ago. And the old man said, "Can you take care of my horse for a few days?" And the younger man said, "Why yes, you can stay at my place for a few days." The old man then looked even more surprised than the first time, and said, patting his horse, "Would you believe that, Wally, you don't even have to tell them why you came. That's awfully good of you sir." The man listening made a face when he heard this. He felt like saying: "What on earth is going on," but instead he smiled, and said "sure." He told him he got off work at eight, and that he could meet him back at that same spot and follow him home then. The old man smiled, "My name is Pat," he said, "it's good to meet you." And he gave him a stern look, shook the hand tightly, raised his chin, and slapped the younger man on the shoulder and was off. The younger man went back into the shop, and sat down at his desk and realized at the last minute that someone was in the chair already. The girl shrieked out a protest and he stood back up and apologized, and went back around to the other side of the desk. Then someone came into the office, and stood right there in front of the door, with a suit on. The person said, "Frank, your in my office, your in my chair. What's going on, oh, have you met Lisa?" Frank looked at the girl, and the girl just started chatting away with the man that'd come in. He looked around the building, and it seemed a little bigger than he remembered it. And then he noticed something at the next desk down which was in a row of desks, which was strange in itself since he'd only had one desk in his office at the clinic. The picture that had caught his eye looked like the family that lived next door to him, he walked over to the desk and sat down in that chair and looked around the desk at all the pictures in frames. And it was the family all right, but Bill Menthol wasn't there, it was himself instead. He looked at himself in all the pictures, weddings and sport-camps and awful posed shots. He didn't even know the woman's name, or the kids' names. And then he remembered, they did have a big backyard at that house. Then he got up from the chair and looked in one of the desk drawers, and found a wallet with an id that had him, but not as Bill Menthol, as Todd Picknick. He then opened the long drawer under the flat of the desk and got out the keys to the car he didn't have. Then he stood straight and went over to the standing closet, and got out a jacket, and the man at the desk to the left shouted for him to stop messing with his clothes, so he closed the closet and apologized and walked out the door. It was a big city, it was a different city than before.
He hailed a cab, and when he got in the kid said, "Hey Todd, you go'in to the bar, or are you just going home." He thought for a minute. He took a pen out of his pocket, twisted the cap, and handed it to the driver of the cab, and it was not one of those English cabs from earlier in the twentieth century. The kid took the pen, and drove him as far as the next person who had their hand out, and said nothing when the man got out. He stood and looked around as the cab drove off. He didn't know what city he was in .
He walked a few blocks and then saw the old man walking his horse. He ran up to him and said "Hello." The old man stopped walking and looked at him as if he expected him to say something. He wanted to ask the old man what he should do. But the old man spoke up again, "Do you have a tractor?" he asked.
The young man scratched his head. A girl with bright red hair walked by, she snagged his attention and he watched her go by. It reminded him of his wife, or his first girlfriend. Then his memories shifted like a sandy bed sea floor, rolling over to the pictures of the woman on that desk in that large office, then the daughter. Her name was Sandy, their daughter's name was Shelf. He made a face, disgusted with the production quality of the memories.
"Do you have a tractor?" the old man asked.
"Ah... look." The younger man said scratching his head.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to impose. I mean, you've been so generous. Your right, it really isn't my place to be demanding."
Then the younger man had the flash of a memory, of he himself as a boy, and the old man many years younger, the two of them were in a boat in the middle of a lake. Then there was another boat, and people were hanging over the sides with large cameras and microphones. In the memory he looked back at the old man, and the old man smiled and held up a bowl of breakfast cereal, and he tilted his head and blinked. The young boy in the boat made a face, and the people in the large boat began yelling and waving their arms. They held up pictures drawn of himself in the boat with a huge grin on his face. "Why don't you just talk?" The boy asked. Then a jeep drove up to the large boat on the surface of the water, and all the camera and sound crew of the boat jumped off onto the surface of the water, where they made only small splashes and sunk down no further than an inch or two, and they all got into the jeep and sped away. Then the boy noticed another even larger boat, also full of a camera and sound crew in mid film. A lady on deck sitting in a director's chair, who happened to be the same as the red haired girl who'd just walked by, smiled at him and gave him a thumbs-up.
Then the old man said, "I said, do you still like strawberry ice cream?"
The young man's vision came back to focus on 'the old man in the city.' "I don't know," he said. "It's been such a long time since I had any. I imagine it would still taste good."
"Come over here for a minute." The old man said. His horse began urinating on the street as it walked behind him.
The young man made a face, and followed the old man to the side of a building where there was a door on the side of a building where there oughtn't to have been one.
"Let me think," the old man said. "I believe… 1935 was a good year for strawberry ice cream." Then he extended his arm and punched '1935, June, 3rd, Elmsdale, Fourth and Roseham,' onto a key panel with a little display by the side of the door. "It's so nice," he said. "With these newer models you don't have to use Latitude and Longitude coordinates like you used to. Remember when everyone had to carry around those 'Bidsley Coordinates Guides,' everywhere, that was such a pain. These new panels are great."
The young man made no face.
The old man put his hand on the palm scanner and when a green light came on he opened the door. Then he walked though the opening and motioned for the younger man to follow, and he held out a stern finger to his horse, who whinnied.
They came out of a door on the side of a post office where there oughtn't to have been one, and walked out into the middle of a street with noisy old black cars moving along, honking at camels. The old man said, "Yeah, you see that sand dune over here, and the Arab market. It's sort of strange that the A-rabs have the best ice cream, but it's a fact. It happened in Wisconsin too. If you go there in certain years the towns are split where a large portion of Mongolia was sewn onto the American continent. Eventually they outlawed tampering with the main files. Now they just use copies for that. Most of the records are ok. No one really cares to mess with the main files as long as you can get a copy of anything you want."
When they got to the other side of the street, they walked into a candy shop called "Ahib's Rising Kandylini." Inside there were tables of young kids gawking at scantily dressed Arabian women who were walking all about giving people their orders of food and drinks. The women were all smiling to themselves. The old man walked up to the counter and held up two fingers. "Strawberry," he said. In a minute an Iranian man with an accountant's visor handed him two large waffle cones of strawberry ice cream.
"And how are you gointo bay today?" the man asked.
The old man pulled a packed of papers out of his coat. "There's this company in Europe now, called Ben and Jerry's. This is a list of all their flavors so far and the recipes to make them. It's good stuff." It was like going to a foreign country and getting paid to speak your own language.
The man took the paper from him, his eyes wide. "Tank you berry much," he said.
The two of them left the shop, the young man turning to take one last look at the waitresses before he shut the door.
"How did you know I liked Strawberry ice cream?" he asked as the old man handed him one of the cones.
"Well, in what I guess you'd call an alternate future of yours, we worked together. Unfortunately you got destroyed. So we went back to get you at an earlier age."
"I got destroyed? How?"
"We were at a diplomatic convention and you were in the kitchen when some Trobinians took one look at you and decided you'd due nicely as a stew for their Chancellor. It took us nearly a week before we could find out exactly what happened to you. And we all felt sort of bad because we'd all had multiple portions of the stew. It was really good."
"You mean I'm standing here talking to someone who has eaten an alternative future me?"
"Yes."
They walked back over to the door around which a small group of kids had gathered, debating why they hadn't seen it before. But they backed off as the old man walked up to it.
Before the old man punched in the location he looked around, then he waved. "Hey Clea. How are you?" The younger man looked around to see who he was talking too. And behind the kids who had been around the door there was a young girl with blond hair and glasses looking out from behind a bread-delivery truck, and she waved hesitantly. Then the old man reached into his coat and pulled out a futuristic looking wristwatch with a little key pad and screen, and he hurled it through the air and the girl caught it and ran off. Then he punched in the codes and keyed his palm and the two of them went back into the city they were in before.
"Who's Clea," the young man asked as the old man shut the door.
"Hold on a minute," he said. He typed a bunch of things into the key panel and then turned to the younger man. "Ok, put your palm up to the scanner."
The younger man did so. "Ok," the older man said, and the younger man took his hand off. "Now listen carefully. You name is Pull Teabag. Your identity-pin is 5NNDMT4THC. Got that?"
"Yeah I got it."
"Do you want me to write it down for you on a piece of tree-paper?"
"No." Then Pull watched the man key in that information, and then the screen went blank.
"Ok. Now you can use any one of these doors. Think you can handle it?"
"Yeah. Thanks. But who was that kid, and what'd you give her?"
"That was Clea. I gave her one of these," he pulled up his sleeve and pointed to a similar watch-device. "We're going to be pulling her out of that time soon."
"Do you usually do this kind of thing?"
"No. Four months ago she hacked into one of the doors and ended up in Rome. It could have been a scandal."
"What do you mean she hacked in?"
"We don't know how she did it. As far as we know she's just a shoe-shine's daughter. They think she's smarter than any of the programmers we have. You two are going to work together."
"What? You mean a future her?"
"No."
"But she's like ten years old. Don't you think that's a little strange?"
"She's eight."
"Ahh."
"Don't worry. We're going to regress you to a similar age."
Pull made a face.
"You'll still have your current thought capacity, and a little extra. We need two kids for a project that's coming up in May. And one of them has to be real."
"And I won't be real if you regress me?"
"You weren't real before we ate you. Don't worry. We've got our best writers building your childhood."
"Yeah, I think I've seen parts of it."
The old man laughed. "You mean the advertising shoot on the lake when you were ten? That's one of my favorites."
"You're gonna make me a freak."
"So."
"I don't know. I guess you know what your doing."
The old man nodded and he started walking away with his horse. "I'll see you at eight." He said. "Wally must be tired. She's been standing around all day."
"Is she really hurt?" Pull called after them.
"No," he said. And at that they were gone around the corner of a building, and Pull was alone again and he didn't even know what city he was in. "Why didn't I get one of those watch things?" he said to himself, looking at his thin peppermint stripe Swatch.
He began walking through the streets. He tried to piece together what had happened during the day. He wanted to tell Breg all about it.
It was still early in the day. He stuck his hands in his pockets and finger-twiddled lint balls. He looked in the windows of the shops as he went by. Hat store. Shoe repair. Kitchen supply. Art shop. Kung Fu School. Sun Glass Hut. Music store. He ate the ice cream as he went. It was quite good, with big chunks of strawberry that weren't overly frozen. Then he looked across the street and saw a tea shop, and he figured that since it was still morning he'd get a cup of something.
He crossed the street, stopping for the small round helicopters that were taking off and landing. When he got to the door and opened it, air poured over him that was thick with herbs and scents he'd never smelled before. But as he walked in he noticed the air was also host to an ephemeral white smoke and the unmistakable stench of skunky buds. On his way to the counter he passed a table where a large group was talking over drinks and passing around cannabis reefer splifs and hammer bubblers and side-cars and chillums and chubblers, even a one foot glass bong, and in the middle of the table sat a spider like hand blown hookah, which he could see contained the traditional hash dotted with cherry embers fueled by that suction rush of air.
When he got to the counter he looked up at the menus, but made a face when he saw that he couldn't read any of it.
"Can I get you something to eat or drink?" said a man as he came out of a door which pull guess went back to the kitchen. The man was holding a tray full of clean glasses that he proceeded to put away.
"Do you have any earl grey?" Pull asked.
"No. I'm sorry, we don't have any black teas."
"You don't have any black teas?"
"That's a different kind of tea shop. They usually serve alcohol and steak and coffee too, which we don't serve. I can give you directions to one if you'd like."
"No, no. It's just that, ah, I can't read your menu."
"Oh that?" the man pointed up. "That doesn't say anything."
"oh."
"We have jars on the counters along that wall. You can just pick something out and tell me."
"Thanks."
"Sure thing."
Pull walked over to the wall and began looking over the large jars. Most were clear glass. Some were blue. Some ceramic. Some wood. He hadn't thought there were this many kinds of tea. Some green shrunken, or balled, up leafs. Some flowers. Others powders. He spotted a blue jar called: "Go Back One Space." He lifted it and pulled off the lid to see what kind it was. When he pulled the lid off there was a little cloud of tea dust that escaped. And in the moment it took to dissipate he thought he saw a bird's eye view of his town, where he was a veterinarian. He put the vessel back on the shelf.
He went back to the counter and ordered a cup a chamomile and sat down at the bar. Was he really a veterinarian, he wandered? Did that town really exist? Was he just an elongated after-taste from some old man's morning cup of nostalgic tea? Then a girl with bright red hair walked by him and dropped off a big cone joint in front of him, next to his cup.
He finished his tea and put the reefer in his pocket and waved to the man at the counter as he went out the door. And he didn't get a foot from the door before Ms. Elchwin called out to him and walked up with her heavy clopping steps.
"Where were you all morning?" she asked. "Rita's been trying to reach you all morning and she said she called five places and nobody knows where you are. I'll have to tell her I've found you. Where were you?"
"An old man came into town this morning. I was helping him with his horse," he said.
She gave him a look as if she didn't believe him.
He smiled. "What? I'm a vet for visitors too, you know."
"Well just remember to call Rita as soon as you get back. It's her your going have to have a story for. Louise got his foot cut on the fence again. That's Saint Bernards for you. Anyway, I'll catch you around." And she walked off as quickly as she came, leaving Pull alone on the main street of his old town, a half a mile from his clinic.
He turned toward the gas station where a truck had just pulled in. In the back were four German Sheppards, two black labs, a pointer, and a mastiff. Grover Clay had always had at least seven dogs as long as Pull had known him. And they were always happy and showed every sign of being well cared for. The back of the truck wasn't used for anything else, and it was padded and had a cover for inclement weather, designed just for them.
He turned the other way and began walking to his apartment, even though it was in the opposite direction from his clinic, and his car. And as he was passing by Jack's Masonry and Drill Bits, he saw May Bilker scolding her twin sons who were playfully attempting to drill holes in each other. And Pull remembered Clea. If it hadn't just been something he ate, he'd be seeing her again. He tried playing back in his mind that glimpse he'd gotten of her before she ran off. He didn't even know what kind of questions to ask that would put a pointing edge to his curiosities. And when he walked by Margaret's sandwich shop he noted a door in the alleyway, one that oughtn't to have been there.