I shrugged again. He tipped my chin up so that I had to look at him. At the kindness in his face, my eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“For breaking the forswearing?” he asked.
I weighed my answer carefully and decided that a lie at this moment would be the worst thing I could give my father.
“No,” I said, “I had to try. What I’m sorry for is that I failed. I didn’t change anything.”
“I should scold you, you know,” said my dad, “but I think I need two fully functioning kidneys in order to do it properly, so it might be a while.”
I smiled through my tears at this. And then my head was on his chest. In my ear, his heartbeat was a steady thrum that felt as big and permanent and elemental as the dance of stars, the force of history. My father smoothed my hair. I could have stayed like that forever, but I had something to say and I wanted to stare straight into my dad’s eyes while I did it, green to green.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m going to save you, anyway. In the here and now.”
“Good,” said my dad.
I blinked.
“Hold on,” I said. “You really believe I can?”
“Sure,” my dad said, like he was surprised by my question. “You’re you, for starters, and the best place to save anyone is always the here and now. Plus, most saving happens by changing human hearts and minds, and when human hearts and minds are involved, there’s plenty of reason to believe.”
For a second, time folded up inside my head and there was Josh in that old dusty shed, saying, “I know Luke!”
“Margaret?”
My dad tugged a piece of my hair to bring me back.
“Sorry, but what you said, you reminded me so much of Grandpa Joshua. The way you keep faith in people, even though so many awful things have happened to you.”
“That’s because Grandpa Joshua and I bother to do the math.”
“What math?”
“For every big, bad, attention-getting thing that happens, there are thousands of small good ones, acts that might even seem ordinary but really aren’t, so many that we can forget to notice them or to count them up. But it’s what has always amazed me: not how terrible people can be to each other, but how good, in spite of everything.”
I needed time to ponder this, but already, Officer Georgopoulos was getting up, clearing his throat, saying it was time for me to go. I leaned over and kissed my dad’s cheek.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said.
“I know you will,” said my dad.
All the way home in the car I was silent, but my mind was whirring and blinking like those machines back in the hospital room, so I was almost surprised Dr. AJ couldn’t hear it. The way my dad said things, well, it was hard not to just accept them, but what he’d said about hearts and minds, about all the small goodnesses adding up to amazing, I needed to work that out for myself. I wanted to believe it, but there was so much awfulness looming so large all around me: my dad stabbed, Judge Biggs’s voice sentencing him to death, Mr. Ratliff stabbed, Aristotle lynched, and, looming largest of all, so big he blocked the light, Elijah Biggs. Maybe I couldn’t do it, have faith like Grandpa Joshua and my dad. Maybe I was too mad inside to do the math.
But then we drove down our street and it was lined with cars, and when we got to the driveway, I saw that every window in our house was a rectangle of light, and I could hear the voices even before we were out of the car.
The house was full of friends. Friends and food, casseroles and pies on every surface. Charlie’s whole family, including Grandpa Joshua, the Darleys, the Blakes, the Tiklas sisters who were almost a hundred years old, a couple of my teachers, Reverend Mike from church, and there was my mother, who should’ve been asleep, pouring coffee into Mrs. Darley’s cup, and her smile and the graceful curve her body made when she leaned to pour didn’t look tired at all. And then, in my head, there were others: Aunt Bridey holding me while I shook, Officer Georgopoulos with his head stuck in his book, Doc O’Malley tossing out the rope, Josh carrying me to The Octagon while the stars pressed down.
We were all there, together, holding each other up.
And there was Charlie, coming out of the kitchen with a stack of plates, seeing me, and putting the plates down to come talk.
“We have to save him ourselves,” I told him. “You, me, and Grandpa Josh. In the here and now.”
“Let’s do it,” said Charlie.
That night, I wrote a letter to my town, one I’d send off to our local newspaper, the Victory Voice. I guess I hoped they’d publish it, but that didn’t matter so much to me. What mattered is that I wrote it and meant every word. It could’ve been a sad letter or an angry one. It could’ve been a rant or a moan or an ice-cold slap in the face. But I didn’t want to be Luke, who let the bad turn him ugly inside. So I did the math, and I wrote a thank-you note to Victory. It took a long time.
Charlie
2014
THE NEXT DAY, I FILLED MARGARET IN on some Major Vital Facts about the Great Nation of AstraZeneca.
“Location,” I said, because it sounded like a very snowy place, “forty miles northwest of Greenland.” You probably know this already, but Greenland is even snowier than Iceland, which, to be honest, is kind of green.
“Uh-huh,” replied Margaret. She was a thousand miles away, thinking about all the things she needed to think about. But in my opinion, sometimes you just have to relax and let your mind turn to . . . AstraZeneca.
“National Pastime,” I continued, “Narwhal Rasslin’.”
“Yep,” said Margaret absently.
“National Costume,” I persisted, “the Bearskin Jumpsuit.”
“The. Bear. Skin . . . ,” murmured Margaret.
I know this may sound silly, but I was trying my best to take Margaret’s mind off her troubles, if only for a few minutes, so I was a little peeved at the lack of attention she was devoting to my Major Vital Facts. “You’re not listening!” I complained.
“I am too!” retorted Margaret.
“National Dish,” I said.
“Yes?” said Margaret.
“Beef with Snow Pants.”
“Mmmm,” Margaret replied. “Good.”
“See!” I said.
“I am listening!” she fired back. “You said Beets with—”
We stopped in front of my house. Kind of small. Sky blue, squat, and dusty. But better than a tent like my grandpa lived in when he was my age. There was a kayak in the basement my dad and I were nearly halfway finished building, and had been for three years—and the night before an algebra test, seats at my kitchen-table study sessions were harder to come by than tickets to the University of Arizona homecoming game.
Margaret must’ve had a bazillion things to take care of at home, but Grandpa Joshua had specifically instructed me to bring her to the guest room, where, since he’d been visiting for over a week, he now had enough laundry scattered around to outfit a polar expedition.
“Margaret . . . ,” began Grandpa Joshua when he saw her.
And I guess he could’ve said just about anything at that moment, since he hadn’t seen her for a week, or maybe seventy-six years, depending on how you were keeping score. But out of all the possibilities, what he picked was “Good girl!”
I wish I knew how he did that. I hope I learn sometime. One day I want to be able to say it all, the total totality of what needs to be said, in two words or less.
Then he hugged her. That, too. I wanted to learn how to do that.
And when she burst into tears he pressed her head against his sweater. Add that to the list.
“It didn’t work! It didn’t work, it didn’t work, it didn’t work!” Margaret sobbed. “I was sure we could save them. We had so many chances. Every time we had an idea, I thought they’d finally be safe. It’s not fair!”
“I know, honey,” said Grandpa Joshua. “I know.”
And as she cried it out against Grandpa
Joshua’s sweater, I understood how much it all added up to, everything she’d seen and endured in the present and in the past, and I thought about how brave Margaret O’Malley really was, and all I could do was hope that, when the time came, I’d measure up.
“Thank you, Grandpa Joshua,” Margaret said when she could talk again. “Thank you for choosing me that night. Even though I almost wish you—”
“It’s the rightest decision I’ve ever made,” declared Grandpa Joshua.
“There was nothing you could do to save Luke?” Margaret asked gently. “After it was over?”
“The next day,” replied Grandpa Joshua, “I found him alone in his tent. I talked, but I couldn’t make him hear. He’d seen his father hanging from that rafter by then. I told him it wasn’t what he thought. I told him that men hired by the Victory Corporation had done it, that his father would never have taken the coward’s way out and abandoned him, but he didn’t hear. All he said was, ‘Some people there’s just no saving.’”
“Biggs had already started filling his head with lies,” Margaret supplied.
“And as always, they were exactly the right lies,” added Grandpa Joshua. “The poor kid couldn’t help but believe them. When Biggs got him to think his dad had killed himself to escape facing the consequences of his actions, it confirmed his worst fears about his father being a coward. And when Luke was most shaken up, angry, and confused, Biggs offered to put him up in his mansion on the brick side of town.
“By then, the miners were completely beat. Anybody who hadn’t slunk away into the desert had gone back into the mine. That was the beginning of a long, hard time for my family. Without so much as a peep, my father took a pay cut, worked longer hours, paid higher rent, and put up with any other punishment Biggs could think of for the rest of his life, just so we’d have a place to live. Dad was broken by what happened to his friend. Hollowed out. Bereft.
“Mom begged Luke to come live with us. I did too. But Luke was mixed up by Biggs’s lies, and his confusion turned to disgust: disgust for Canvasburg, for miners, for my family, for me—for anybody in a position of weakness. Soon, there was nothing left of Luke but the smile . . .”
Grandpa Joshua’s voice faded away.
“What about his smile, Grandpa Joshua?” pressed Margaret.
“He still . . . well . . . smiled,” Grandpa Joshua faltered. Everything he’d told us so far had been hard, I knew. But what he had to say next seemed like more than he could face. “And I guess if you hadn’t known him before, you’d never have been able to tell the difference. But I could tell. Preston could tell. My mom and dad could tell. Preston said it was like Luke smiled at himself . . . for smiling. Like there was some joke hidden in the middle of everything, and the joke was—nothing was the least bit funny.”
Silence fell. Hard.
“That was when he got hateful?” I finally asked.
“Exactly, Charlie,” said Grandpa Joshua sadly. “That was when he got hateful.” And it seemed to do Grandpa Joshua a little good to put it like this, even though it was a horrible thing to have to say. I sure hope it helped.
“And now, saving him,” sighed Margaret, “feels like trying to move Mount Hosta.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” mused Grandpa Joshua. “How hard it really is to alter history.”
“Me too,” said Margaret.
Of course, I hadn’t been through what they’d been through, so I didn’t know how it felt, but I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut and listen, hoping to figure it out.
“And I got to wondering if,” Grandpa went on, watching her closely, “maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to change history without—”
“—without changing the past!” replied Margaret excitedly. “I thought the same thing!”
And they were off to the races, speaking plain English that I couldn’t understand. Change history without changing the past? What kind of sense did that make? “Grandpa?” I asked. “Can I ask one minor question? What in the heck are you guys talking about?”
“What we’re talking about, Charlie,” said Margaret, “is the same thing you and I talked about last night. We couldn’t save Lucas in 1938. But maybe we can save him in the here and now.”
“Maybe we couldn’t stop Aristotle’s betrayal,” continued Grandpa Joshua, “and maybe we couldn’t save his life, God bless him. Maybe we couldn’t clear his name back then and redeem his son’s spirit. But maybe—maybe we can do it in the present. The old Luke Agrippa is still inside Lucas Biggs somewhere. I know it is. I know part of him still wants to believe his father was good, and strong, and to believe he himself is good and strong, too, even if he doesn’t know that’s what he wants.”
I was a little bewildered by all this, but as Grandpa Joshua talked, I saw a look in his eyes that I understood. He believed in his friend. He felt the same way I’d feel if the forces of evil descended on Margaret and stole her. I’d feel awful, but I wouldn’t give up on her. Grandpa Joshua had spent the last seventy years hoping for his best friend to come back, and he was still hoping.
“But how can we change Lucas Biggs?” asked Margaret. “We haven’t got anything now we didn’t have the moment he sentenced my father to death. We’re as lost today as we were then. And even if we had anything new or knew anything different, why would he listen to us? Why would he believe us? What could we tell him, that I time traveled?”
“That’s one thing we’re never going to do.” My grandfather frowned, rummaging around in the pocket of his suitcase.
“Would Judge Biggs listen to you, Grandpa Josh?” I asked.
“He hasn’t for over seventy years,” replied Grandpa Joshua. “I don’t see why he’d start now.”
“If only that old Mr. Ratliff could come back from the dead to tell him what happened in that meeting,” I said. “Or if Aristotle could tell him it wasn’t like he thought. No suicide. No running away. No fear. If he just could’ve spoken to Luke one last time. Maybe that’s what Judge Biggs has been waiting for all these years. For his dad to tell him what happened.”
“But the real Aristotle is gone,” Margaret cried. “Without a trace. Now he’s just a lie in our history book. His accomplishments, his dreams, his good name evaporated the day he died. Elijah Biggs made sure of that.”
“Here,” said Grandpa Joshua sadly, retrieving a battered pencil box from deep inside his suitcase. In it was nothing but a scrap of cloth and an old-fashioned fountain pen. “This is all there is of Aristotle.”
“These are the things that fell out of his pocket when Elijah Biggs tried to murder him,” said Margaret sadly. “I scooped them up. And when I left, I gave them to you.”
“And I kept them,” said Grandpa Joshua simply. “His pen and his handkerchief.”
“Hold on,” I said, reaching for the cloth. “Let me see that.”
Margaret handed it over.
“This is a lot more than just a handkerchief,” I said, looking it over.
Sometimes when I look at things long enough, they give up their secrets. Even though my brain is usually a mess and my thoughts typically swarm around like ants on a picnic blanket, when Grandpa Joshua walks with me outside of town, at night, as I stare at stars, they seem to shift until they form a message that tells me where I fit in. Not quite as spectacular as some people’s ability to see passageways through time, but still, it comes in handy.
And as I gazed at the ragged cloth, stained brown with what we all knew was Aristotle’s blood, it began to change like that. Hidden beneath the blood were shapes, shapes that formed a pattern, a design that had been very important to somebody once.
“Under the stain,” I whispered. “Look. A star.” And in the light of the guest bedroom, we could make out the contours of an eight-pointed star. I turned the cloth over to find the stain wasn’t as heavy on the back. “It’s colored,” I murmured. “Gray and pink. A long time ago, it must’ve been black and red.”
“He called it his talisman,” offered Grandp
a Joshua. “I thought he just meant it was his lucky handkerchief.”
“Is it a quilt square?” Margaret wondered. “Or a flag?”
“It’s a symbol,” I declared.
“Of what?” asked Margaret.
“I don’t know,” I said. But now I was beginning to understand history, too, maybe a little like Grandpa Joshua and Margaret after all their travels and experiences. In these shapes Aristotle used to carry around in his pocket, and in the way they fit together, there was a meaning that had to do with right now.
“I couldn’t bear to look at it again after you left, Margaret,” lamented Grandpa Joshua. “But I couldn’t bear to throw it away, either.”
In one corner of the “talisman,” figures appeared. Not really appeared. They must have been there all along, but I could suddenly see them: letters.
“‘For L,’” I said, “u-k-e.”
Margaret and Grandpa Joshua leaned in to look.
“I see!” yelped Margaret.
“So do I,” said Grandpa Joshua, softly.
“For Luke,” I said, wonderingly. “Aristotle was going to give this to Luke?”
“He had it at the meeting,” said Grandpa Joshua. “This must be what they were talking about while I was trapped outside the room. The memento. Before you came in, Margaret. I heard their voices.”
“This square meant something to Aristotle, something important,” I continued.
“And it was supposed to mean something to Luke,” added Margaret. “But Aristotle never got a chance to deliver his message.”
“So we’ll have to deliver it for him,” I said. “After we figure out what it means. What do we know about Aristotle? I mean, his past? Where could this have come from? What could it have meant to him? What kind of star has eight points? Do you think Aristotle has any relatives left anywhere who would know?”
“Aristotle’s family stayed behind in Greece,” Grandpa Joshua said slowly. “He never saw them again after he left. I think he must’ve made some friends in the US before he came to the coal mine in Arizona, though. There was that reporter he knew, based in Denver. Walter . . . Walter . . . Mendenhall! I remember how he talked—I think he and Aristotle were young fellas together in West Virginia. But that’s all I ever heard about Aristotle’s past,” lamented Grandpa Joshua.