Mr. Was Page 11

  I’m lying on my bunk. I can feel the engines.

  If you had told me you were from the future, maybe I wouldn’t have believed you.

  I guess it doesn’t matter. I know it’s true. The door is there. When I get back I’ll show it to you. It’s in the closet of the small bedroom on the third floor of Boggs’s End. Actually, there are two doors. You have to go through the door in the closet and down a flight of stairs to get to the door that really matters: The fifty-year door, as Mr. Boggs called it. The door is made of metal, and it is very cold. It used to be that you could go through the door from the outside, too. That would take you into the future. But that’s impossible now, since I carried out my promise to Mr. Boggs. I suppose this doesn’t make any sense to you. What difference does it make? I won’t be sending this letter, anyway.

  Here comes Scud.

  (Later) Scud is curious about this notebook. He wants to know what I can find to write about. Of course, I’ll never let him see it. I can’t imagine what he’d do if he knew about you and me. I wish we’d just told him. Oh well. It’s something we can deal with when we get back.

  I must be feeling pretty guilty, because I just loaned him my last fifteen bucks, even though I know he’s going to lose every last dime.

  Love,

  Jack

  U.S. Navy Transport Alexander

  Somewhere in the South Pacific

  August 16, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  Do you have secrets, too? I have been sitting thinking about all the things I haven’t told you, and I wonder whether there are things you haven’t told me. Are you really who you say you are? Or are you a being from another planet? Or an angel come to Earth to torment me by being in my heart, yet thousands of miles away?

  This voyage is making me crazy. Sometimes I wonder whether all the things I think have happened to me were real, or just a waking dream. When we were in boot camp the guys used to talk about what you’d have to do to get a Section Eight. That’s what they call it when one of the army docs signs a paper that says you’re too crazy to be sent out into the jungle to die. Some guys say the only way you could get a Section Eight would be by trying to kill yourself, but I think if I just talked about what really happened to me, they’d have me in a strait jacket faster than you can say “time travel.”

  But the fact is, Andie, I was born in 1979. At least, I think I was. Sometime maybe I’ll tell you all about it. About how my grandfather Skoro tried to kill me, but he was the one who died. And about my parents. Let me tell you about my mother—

  (pages missing)

  —how I decided to go back through the door. I’ll be an old man by then, but I have to try to change things. Do you think I’m crazy now? Well, if you don’t, it’s probably because I haven’t told you about the Boggses.

  I always wondered what would happen if I went through the door again, when I was already in the past. I mean, if I went back into the house and climbed up to the third floor and went back through the closet door, down the staircase, and out through the cold metal door. Would I go even farther back in time? And what if I stepped out into a time before the house had been built? Would I be able to return?

  The week before Scud and I got on the bus to Fort Snelling, I decided to find out. I walked over to Boggs’s End and pulled the boards off a window and climbed inside. Talk about creepy. It was daylight outside, a crisp, sunny February day, but inside the house was dark because of all the boarded-up windows. Every step I took sent up a cloud of dust.

  I climbed the stairs to the third floor and went to the closet and, sure enough, there was the door. I went down the steps to the metal door. I sat there in the dark for a long time before turning the knob and pulling the door open and stepping out into the summer sun.

  I’m trying to remember the first thing that hit me. I think it was the clouds. I was looking out over the edge of the bluff. Above, the sky was hazy blue, with the sun hammering down, the air hot and thick with moisture. But out across the river, a huge thunderhead rose up so high I had to tip my head back to see it. I heard thunder, faint and far. Pillars of rain fell from the cloud onto the far shore and lightning flickered on the Wisconsin bluffs, yet I could feel the sun on my shoulders.

  I heard children’s voices.

  Two little black-haired girls in white dresses were playing with a baby goat. One of the girls was wearing a bonnet. Have you ever even seen a bonnet except in fairy tale books? The other girl had tied her bonnet onto the baby goat’s head. The goat chewed on the string. The lawn was bright green, the grass cropped. Two full-grown goats rested in the shade of an oak tree. I turned and looked back at the house. The vines I remembered were gone, replaced by a bed of hollyhocks. The white paint was new. The metal door shone like a mirror. I started toward the edge of the bluff to look down on the town, but was distracted by cries from the two girls. They had seen me. The baby goat trotted toward me. The girls turned and ran back around the house. I thought about going back through the door, but I still hadn’t learned where I was. I continued toward the edge. The town came into view. At first, everything looked normal. I might have been in 1942, or in 1994, or anywhere in between. Then I noticed that there were no cars. There were wagons, and a buggy, and horses.

  “Good day!” said a deep, booming voice.

  A tall, black-bearded, shirtless man in gray overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat stood a few yards behind me.

  I said, “Hello.”

  He stared at me, his ruddy face motionless, arms crossed, big, rough hands resting on thick biceps. Behind him, standing at the corner of the house, a small woman in a black dress held a baby to her chest. The two girls peeked out from behind her, their dark eyes staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder. The man shifted his feet, and for a moment I thought he was going to rush at me and fling me over the precipice. But suddenly he smiled, showing a set of brilliantly white, perfectly ordered teeth.

  “Would you care for a glass of lemonade?” he asked—

  (The bottom half of this page is charred and for the most part illegible.)

  —of the little girls crawling around under the picnic table. Mrs. Boggs, who never uttered a word the whole time I was there, busied herself by making sure our glasses were replenished, offering us more plums, cookies, and apple wedges, and shaking her fingers at her daughters whenever they threatened to misbehave, which was more or less all the time.

  Mr. Boggs, unlike his squirmy offspring, wasted no motion. When he chose to move his large body, his actions were considered and precise. For instance, when he took a swallow of lemonade, he lifted the glass to his mouth with a single motion, and poured its contents down his throat. Only his eyes remained in constant motion. As near as I could tell, they missed nothing—

  (missing page)

  —about the door,” he said.

  I did want to know, but I’d avoided asking.

  “It must have been a considerable shock for you, young man. You must have come from . . . what? About nineteen thirty-seven?”

  “Nineteen forty-two,” I said.

  Mr. Boggs laughed. “About what you’d expect from a fifty-year door,” he said. “They never were worth the metal they’re made of. Sloppy, very sloppy. So, you must be having that war right about then, eh?”

  I nodded. “What do you mean about the door?” I asked.

  “It’s a fifty-year door, young man. Only it doesn’t hold to spec. Shoddy manufacturing. You never know when you’re headed for.”

  I struggled to make sense of what he was saying.

  “You mean if I go back, I might wind up some different place?”

  Mr. Boggs thought that was really funny. Even Mrs. Boggs smiled.

  He finally said, “Don’t worry about it, son. You always go back to where you came from, it’s just that you can’t know for sure where you’ve been—

  (illegible)

  —you understand?”

  I didn’t. I was still trying to deal with the idea of being back
in 1887. What Mr. Boggs was asking me to do seemed reasonable, and I had agreed to do it, but I didn’t think I’d ever understand.

  He shook his head sadly. “You don’t understand, do you, son?”

  I shook my head.

  “But you’ll do as I ask?”

  “I’ll do it.” The texture of the air had changed from warm to clammy. The storm moved across the lake.

  “You know, you never told me when you were from.”

  “Nineteen forty-two.”

  “I mean before that.”

  “I was born in nineteen seventy-nine.” The thundercloud’s leading edge eclipsed the sun.

  “Hmmph!” He crossed his arms and lowered his thick black eyebrows. “I suppose you know that when you do as I ask, you’ll be stuck. You won’t be able to return to the nineteen nineties.”

  Lightning flashed.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Oh?” He seemed amused. “How?”

  “I’ll age,” I said.

  Mr. Boggs’s eyes widened. Then he began to chuckle, the deep sound of his laughter joined by thunder—

  (Several pages here were missing, torn, or obscured by brown stains.)

  Henderson Field

  Guadalcanal

  August 18, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  The scaredest I’ve ever been was when we went over the side of the ship, climbed down those cargo nets, and rode the landing craft up onto the beach. They told us the beachhead was secure—the first landings were twelve days ago—but Jap snipers were shooting at us from the moment we hit shore, but not one of our guys got killed. A fellow from Mississippi named Atkins took one in the knee. Lucky guy. He gets a free ride back to Pearl.

  Remember I said we might land on some tropical paradise? Well, you can forget about that. The name of this island is Guadalcanal. Nobody seems to know what that means. There are no canals here, but the guys have all started calling it “The Canal.” What there is, is mosquitoes and biting flies and spiders the size of crabs and crabs the size of cats. The beaches are all right to look at, but between the bugs and the snipers, I wouldn’t want to do any sunning there. About twenty yards in from the water’s edge at high tide you run into this kunai grass that stands maybe seven feet tall and has edges like a bread knife. The stuff is almost impenetrable, and there’s about a hundred feet of it between the beach and the jungle, which I haven’t been in yet but I hear it’s even worse—

  (illegible)

  —sitting in the tent that serves as our mess hall, looking out over the muddy, shell-holed airstrip we now call Henderson Field, which was the first thing we took away from the Japs. Nobody else is here right now, since it’s way past dinnertime. It’s a good place to be alone, and with close to twenty thousand of us here, that’s not easy.

  God, do I miss you.

  Love,

  Jack

  Henderson Field

  Guadalcanal

  September 2, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  We are all waiting for Washing Machine Charlie. There’s no point in trying to sleep until he’s come and gone. He comes every night, sometimes early, sometimes late. You can hear him a long way off and it’s true, he sounds like a washing machine: chuffa-chuffa-chuffa.

  Washing Machine Charlie is a Jap night bomber.

  Imagine you are lying in your tent, sweating buckets, slapping mosquitoes, hungry as you’ve ever been. Most of the supplies were lost in the landings, and you’ve been living on rice left behind by the Japs. You are waiting. Sometimes he comes early; other times you wait till five in the morning to hear the sound of a distant washing machine. Shuh-shuh-shuh. The sound gets louder: chuffa-chuffa-chuffa. You close your eyes and grit your teeth and then you hear the explosions. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  They are small bombs, thrown by hand from Charlie’s small plane. Most nights no one is hurt, and after Charlie has left, you can sleep. Scud says that’s the whole point. Charlie wants us to lose sleep waiting for him.

  But Charlie’s nothing compared to Tojo Time. Tojo Time is what we call the daily Jap bomber raids on the airfield. A black flag goes up from the pagoda in the middle of the airfield. Seconds later, you can hear the fluttering drone of their approach—sometimes as many as twenty bombers. As soon as they are in sight, all hell breaks loose. The antiaircraft guns start firing and everybody else heads for the slit trenches and foxholes. Then you hear, even through the antiaircraft fire, the shhhhh sound of falling bombs. The bombs hit with a whump whump whump, like a giant’s exploding footsteps. Whump whump whump. Six to eight big steps from each bomber, and if you are one of the unlucky ones, the giant will stomp you flat in your tent.

  After they leave, the dead are counted, the wounded are treated, and the rest of us start filling in the craters in the airfield.

  Other than that, we are all bored. Our platoon, which is attached to Colonel Edson’s B Company, will be hitting the jungle again tomorrow. There’re all kinds of rumors about a big Jap force building up out in the jungle, and maybe it’s true. Most of the information that gets filtered down through the ranks is bull, but you never know. This will be the third time our platoon has been out, and in a way I’m looking forward to it. It’s either that, or wait for the malaria to get you. Almost a quarter of the guys in our platoon have got the bug. What malaria does is, you get the sweats, then a few hours later you get the chills, then you get the sweats again. At first, they say, it’s not so bad, but after a few cycles it wears you out and it’s all you can do to lift a glass of water. Most of those who got it can handle it, but four of us are in the hospital and Simmons has actually died of it. That leaves only eighteen of our platoon in fighting shape, and we landed on this pesthole with twenty-nine.

  Flanagan, Mrosak, and Hoff were all killed on the airfield when they were helping mount a bomb on one of the P-400s and somebody screwed up. Desimone tripped over a mine the first time we went out on patrol. Billig got appendicitis. They say he’s going to be okay. And Sergeant Sadowski, he got stomped by the giant.

  And I still haven’t seen a single Japanese on the ground. I haven’t even shot my gun yet.

  By the way, after Sarge Sadowski got stomped, Scud got himself a field promotion. It’s Sergeant Scudder now, and you better remember it. He’s still the same Scud when it’s just him and me together, but when anybody else is around he treats me like his favorite dog.

  Love,

  Jack

  P.S. I got a promotion, too. It’s Corporal Lund now. But you can call me Jack.

  Henderson Field

  September 10, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  I got a bad feeling. I got a feeling I’m going to die. I haven’t even been born yet, and here I’m about to die. I should be worrying about my mother. If I die, I won’t be able to save her. But all I can think about is you.

  You know that rumor about the Japs coming at us through the jungle? Well, it’s official now. They’re out there and they’re coming this way. Colonel Edson has told us we’re to secure a ridge about a mile south of the airfield. What that means is that the Japs are going to have to go right through us to get to the airfield. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Andie, but I got a feeling it’s gonna be bad.

  (Later) Now I got an even worse feeling. I just got back from a “dinner” that was nothing more than a scoop of rice, a bowl of piss-yellow bouillon, and a cup of something—I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be coffee, tea, or dishwater. Anyway, I was walking back to the ghetto (which is what we call our little tent city way on the other side of the airstrip) holding a piece of canvas over my head to keep the rain from running down my back, when I saw somebody crawl out of my tent. I was a ways off, and it was hard to see through the rain, but I think it was Scud.

  That’s one thing you aren’t supposed to do. Go in somebody’s tent.

  Andie, I think he was looking at this notebook.

  I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to go talk to him. We’re heading out into the jungle. />
  I guess it’s now or never.

  (Unlike the previous entries, which were inscribed with a blue ballpoint pen, the final pages of the notebook are written in pencil. Many of the words are smeared and difficult or impossible to decipher.)

  Well, I was right. Dead right. I’m going to die, Andie. For all practical purposes, I’m dead already. My right eye is swollen shut, or maybe gone. I don’t know, when I touch it, it hurts so bad I can’t tell what’s left there. I’m all alone, except for the dead man at my feet and about fifty Japanese soldiers camped a few hundred yards upwind of my position. It’s only a matter of time before they notice the cave, before they find me.

  I was right about Scud, too. He read the notebook. He didn’t admit it, of course—when I accused him he gave me his “what, are you nuts?” look.

  “Then what were you doing in my tent?” I asked him.

  “I wasn’t in your damn tent, Corporal,” he said.

  I wondered how much he’d had a chance to read—

  (illegible)

  —moved us out two hours before dawn. The ridge we were supposed to secure was about a mile inland from Henderson Field, and our platoon was to occupy a little knob of rock another quarter mile beyond the ridge. There was supposed to be a sort of trail leading from the airfield to the ridge, but the mud got so bad that Lieutenant Cole decided we’d be better off cutting straight through the jungle, climbing over the waist-high roots and using our bayonets to hack our way through walls of vines and patches of kunai grass.

  You’d think a mile isn’t all that far to walk, but in the dark, trying to get through the tangle of roots, vines, saw-toothed grass, and sinkholes, carrying forty-pound packs and enough guns, mortars, grenades, and ammo to destroy half the Japanese army, we’d be lucky to make five hundred yards an hour. That’s assuming nothing goes wrong.

  Twenty minutes into the jungle, Jesperson, a big tall kid from Arkansas, had twisted his ankle so bad the lieutenant told him to try to make it back to the base. There wasn’t much else we could do, since Colonel Edson was counting on us being in position by 0700. Then it started to rain.