Time Drifters

When you get home from school and you can smell cookies or bread baking, you know it’s going to be an excellent night. But if you smell bleach and cabbage instead, you might as well find a place to hide.

It happened about three times a year. I knew that Mom was waiting to hear from her agent about whether she landed a big part because she often cleaned to keep her mind occupied.

“Have to do it anyway,” she’d say. But the bigger the part and the more she wanted it, the more extensive the cleaning. Dad said quietly and “just between us guys” that he thought of bleach as the smell of fear. How true it was.

I didn’t know why we couldn’t afford a cleaning person to come and help Mom do the nasty jobs that she detested so much. Lots of other kids’ parents had them. I suggested it once, saying that Julio’s mother did cleaning and I’d heard she didn’t charge that much. That’s the night Dad gave me the long lecture about how everyone in the household contributes something, and that help from Julio’s mother was not necessary because Julio’s mother wasn’t sleeping and eating in our house. That’s when I vowed that I would personally hire her as soon as my allowance was increased.

Cabbage rolls weren’t a punishment. They were okay. But I had begun to think that Mom was trying for some kind of code with Dad because she always seemed to serve them when she was angry.

“Just something quick out of the freezer,” she’d say like clockwork when they appeared. And right on time, there was going to be an argument that night. Or, as Dad would call it, “a heated discussion,” since he swore to me the two of them never had fights. Right!

“Your Mom just has a fiery personality,” he’d say. “It’s part of why I love her.”

I tried to make it better, and sometimes it seemed to work for a little while, at least until they came back into each other’s crossfire. And no matter what I’d done at school that was good or praiseworthy, no matter what movie I suggested that we watch, or what game I suggested we could play, they’d get on each others’ case, big-time.

I could ask them how they met and they looked happy when they talked about that, even though—from how I saw them—they didn’t seem to match the people they were describing in their memories. I couldn’t figure out what had changed them, and it was hard to keep trying the same trick. And, despite the flashing smiles, they didn’t feel happy. My gut still felt churned up.

It was the same thing that happened whenever I tried to tell them how I saw the world. I felt stuff and they would just say it didn’t exist. I often wondered if they really were my parents, although I knew I looked a bit like each of them.

That night, when the back and forth comments started during kitchen clean up, I said I was going to my room. Mom kissed me goodnight and Dad gave me a kind of squeeze, although I didn’t like to get too close when they were angry. The hug usually felt mechanical and I had the sense he might flip at any moment and turn the anger on me instead.

I played a video game and then went out to brush my teeth. When I was done, I noticed that the “tone” had calmed down. What had happened? It could be helpful to know, in the future, I thought. So I tiptoed around the creaking spots in the upstairs hallway and tried to listen without them knowing.

“I’m sorry,” my Mom said.

“I know, I know,” said Dad, sounding reassuring. It was a relief to hear them soft again.

Dad kept repeating that it was all okay. Mom was agreeing.

“You know,” Mom said, “I sometimes wonder how it might have all been different if we hadn’t had Liam.”

My heart stopped and froze cold within one second, and then it started beating louder than before.

“It’s a matter of timing,” Dad said. “But then, could you imagine things without him?”

“No,” Mom said. “I mean, I do wonder… but, no. I can’t.”

“So we go on as best we can,” Dad said.

#

Lying in bed that night, I decided to tell two lies. Not really lies, but close.

The first was to my teacher. I asked her for permission to leave just five minutes early.

“We’re driving to go pick up something for my Science Fair project,” I said. That was a true statement. What I think the teacher believed was that “we” meant me and one of my parents.

The second lie was going to be to Miss Prankle, if she tried to confirm what Mom and Dad had said.

“Make sure you ask your parents if they mind me driving you,” she’d told me while we were standing on the driveway.

Between bleach and cabbage rolls I knew the answer was going to be negative. And I really liked what Miss Prankle had said about adding “perspective” to my display.

“Give it some historical context,” she’d said. “What better way to show the judges how far the technology that you’re featuring has come through the years? It’ll give everyone a physical display of the way things used to be… the contrast between new and old.”

That sounded completely smart. My art teacher talked about contrast, as well. Like putting a stripe of yellow between blue and purple so both colors would look better, being offset by their near opposites.

Miss Prankle was a pretty cool lady. Odd, no doubt. But she’d surprised me a lot with how quickly she’d gotten the car jacked up and the wheel changed.

And the whole time she was doing it, she had asked me questions about my project, and she had only stopped me a couple of times to ask where each of the parts was going to be in the display. She’d even corrected me once about a photo of the cross-section of the human eye and brain that I’d said was going onto the back panel when I talked about it being up on the left side instead. So I knew she was really paying attention. Mom did that sometimes but Dad would usually just end up with a glazed look. He’d smile and nod and then look back at his reports or blueprints, or end up staring at the TV without even muting the commercials. That’s when Mom said he was really tired and it was best just to leave him, “to process things,” as she put it.

And that’s how I ended up in the car, driving through town with Miss Prankle only twenty-four hours after we had first met. Up Broadway and over the bridge at the Pocantico River on our way deeper into Sleepy Hollow, up the mountainside until we crested the ridge and rolled into a kind of valley. Miss Prankle seemed like a nice person, not like anyone who would try to kidnap me or do bad things. But I was still paying close attention to where this friend of hers lived. I couldn’t drive the car, but I knew I had to look out for bus stops and landmarks. It was what Dad called being “responsible for yourself.”

We turned the corner by an old church building that had a SOLD sign on it. Mom was excited that someone was going to put in a store or a restaurant or something. It looked like it was about to fall down at any moment.

That got me thinking about this old film projector we were going to get and what I would do if it broke while I was borrowing it. I had no idea how to fix that.

“Maybe the projector this man has is too old,” I said. “That might not be good.”

“Old tings, not so bad,” Miss Prankle said with a thick Jamaican accent and a very deep voice. She burst out laughing with a deep chuckle. The sound rumbled through her whole being like the echo of thunder on a hot summer night.

“You don’t look Black,” I said, instantly hating myself for putting it like that.

“Ho!” she chuckled in surprise.

“Sorry,” I blurted, feeling heat rising in my cheeks and in my ears. “I meant to say… I mean, you don’t look like you come from Jamaica. That’s what I meant.”

“That’s okay,” she nodded, pursing her lips while her eyes narrowed on the road ahead. “You say what’s on your mind. Better than talking through secrets. Only snake people smile and stare, with glossy eyes, while they’re thinking something totally different.”

“Mmhmm,” I murmured. She could interpret that response in a lot of ways. A good idea to let her fill in the blanks.

I wondered if she thought there really were snake people somewhere, or if it was just a kind of idea of how she saw some folks. I figured it was better to leave it alone. I’d gotten in trouble two years ago for drawing teachers’ faces on farm animals. I thought it was clever and Mom secretly admitted that I’d done a pretty good job after she’d picked me up from detention, but the two of us were in the minority.

“The fact that Mr. Dubkowski recognized himself in your picture, I think speaks for itself as to your talent,” Mom had said.

We had barely crested the hill on another country road when Miss Prankle slowed and carefully turned the car into a narrow gate. A few tall trees stood like sentinel guards on either side of the gravel driveway. It was steep at the top and then leveled off in front of the massive, sprawling home; a mish-mash of old and new.

I’d never seen the place before but my stomach jumped just as though it was a long forgotten memory that had suddenly come back. It was hard to describe, but I felt like the building saw me before I’d seen it. As though it had a sort of throbbing pulse and I could feel it in my chest. It definitely had that Sleepy-Hollow feeling and I was scared and fascinated all at once.

“You alright?” Miss Prankle asked. I guess I’d gasped, or something.

“Yeah, fine,” I lied, my heart still thudding. “This is where your friend lives?”

“I think he’s even here,” she said, pulling the car around in a circle. We were stopped in front of the enormous front porch that wrapped around to the right side of the building. There were sections that looked like they had been added on because they were still made with red brick, but they didn’t have the same kind of intricate woodwork over the eaves or around the windows.

I could see a big old car, something like a Cadillac convertible, parked beside a newer model Land Rover. For some reason, the jeep made me feel better. It wasn’t like everything here was outdated.

The screen door opened and a very odd patch of grey fur emerged. It was almost square and tilted from side to side as it approached the broad wooden steps that fronted the porch. It made its way over the packed furrows of snow and ice. Miss Prankle nodded for us to get out of the car and I soon saw that the patch at my feet had a funny little dogface attached.

“Teabag!” A man’s voice came from inside. “What exactly are you…”

The man froze when he saw us.

“We made it,” Miss Prankle said, still standing by the driver’s side door.

“Is it today?” he asked, and I noticed a slight Irish accent. He wiped his hands with a colorful rag. I saw him do a double take when he looked at me. I felt instantly shy, so I squatted down to let the dog sniff my hand.

“Yes, Colin,” she said, her voice strained. “I called, remember?”

“That’s Teabag,” he said. “He doesn’t bite, unless there’s something to eat.”

I heard the screen door shut and looked up. The man came forward to the edge of the porch, standing in tall moccasins and painters pants that were marked with multi-colored splotches on the sides. It seemed he didn’t always have a rag in hand and that he’d use his pants as the next best thing. The thick scent of turpentine drifted by, so I assumed he used oil paints—the only thing that dissolved oils. I liked that he was an artist.

“And no, don’t ask me what kind he is… I don’t know,” he said. I stared at him this time just as Miss Prankle moved to his side and turned him back to face the door, so their exchange could be private.

Adults and secrets.

“Hey there,” I said, daring to pet the very matted fur. Teabag was definitely the most non-threatening animal I remembered meeting. He nudged my hand and followed with a cordial couple of licks, though is tongue felt kind of dry, more like the tongue of a cat.

“You really do look funny,” I said to him, laughing. “More like a used teabag.” The dog bowed his head, as though he was used to getting teased about his odd shape.

“I know… it’s delicate,” the man said, his voice rising above their hushed conversation. I knew the familiar tones of an argument. “But I only get one shot at screwing it up.”

“I don’t have to have the projector, really,” I shouted towards them.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Miss Prankle responded cheerfully, instantly walking to the car. “This is Mr. Danby, and he has it inside for you, my dear. Colin, this is Liam Trinder,” she concluded, waving me to approach the porch as though it were all settled.

By the time I shook the man’s hand, Miss Prankle was magically back at my side, handing one of her long wooden boxes to Mr. Danby.

“The ones we discussed,” she said lightly, nodding at the contents. “But I don’t need them for a week.”

“Or sooner, perhaps?” Mr. Danby muttered, looking suddenly awkward with his burden.

“Do you want me to take them?” I asked, remembering that they were quite heavy.

“Ah… no, no, lad. Thanks,” he responded gruffly, pulling the box farther from my grasp. “Just get the door, if you don’t mind.”

I did so and then waited until Teabag had made the difficult trek across the porch in loping pursuit of his master.

By the time I was inside the elegant entrance, Mr. Danby had already opened the lid of the long box and set it on top of a narrow credenza hugging the broad staircase that rose along the right side of the house.

“Wow,” I said, pleased to finally see the contents, even though I was a little surprised there was such a fuss, given what was inside. “That’s a lot of… rocks.”

“Crystals,” he corrected me. “Raw format. And yes. There’re a lot of ‘em.”

I had my arms clasped behind my back, so he’d know I wasn’t going to go touch something I wasn’t supposed to, which was funny because he was looking expectantly at me and then at the rocks.

“See any one that catches your fancy?” he asked, passing a hand nervously over the pony tail in which he had his white hair pulled back.

I frowned at him. I got what he meant, but I figured he must not talk to a lot of kids, using words like that… or maybe it was an Irish thing. He got flustered and shuffled down the hallway, walking into a room that looked like it might be the kitchen.

“Just… just wait there, if you would… for a moment,” he said, disappearing and adding a muffled, “Please,” from some other room he’d vanished into.

There were dried leaves and gravel on the rug and also multiple pairs of work boots and shoes pitched around in the hallway. It didn’t seem like he had much company stopping by; either kids or adults. Even so, the home – at least the entrance and the older part of it to the left that I could see – was more than suitable for a grand lifestyle. I wondered who had built it. Was Mr. Danby the last remaining descendant of an old Tarrytown family or one of the New York City financiers that retreated up here on weekends?

The hallway walls were lined with cherry-coloured panels. The staircase pillars weren’t overly intricate, but they were hand carved. Dad had showed me how to look for the marks of real age in homes. That’s how I knew this place was made a long time ago, because the floor boards were made of broad and dark planks. Trees didn’t grow big anymore because lumber companies wouldn’t wait that long before felling them, and there weren’t saw blades big enough to cut them, so the lumber was more narrow now.

In the sitting room, there were expensive-looking antiques; red oriental carpets and wingback chairs with fancy standing lamps beside them.

A white cat with black paws and one black ear was stalking a shimmering light on the hardwood. I turned around to see that a circle of stained glass was mounted in the wall of the stairwell above me. The prism the cat saw was coming from a beveled jewel, reflecting the light from a bare bulb strung at the top of the staircase. I strained to look past it and, without thinking, I rested my hand on the long credenza where there were some keys and a pile of mail jostling for a perch beside Miss Prankle’s box of rocks.

That’s when I heard the noise. That vibrating buzz again, like a doctor’s pager going off.

Only it wasn’t electronic. It was a stone. A crystal.

I spun and saw the stones close to the middle of the box shaking. They were moving so quickly, their shapes and edges were blurring, but I could still see some were rose colored and others were white with a greenish tint.

I reached out and poked one of them. There was no electric shock. No heat. No cold feeling. The buzzing had increased, though. It had to be something to do with me.

I used my thumb this time and tried to roll the stone in the center, but as soon as I had budged it, I realized that the sound was getting louder and stronger. It wasn’t the top stones that were causing the commotion, it was the ones underneath.

“Coulda’ sworn I’d kept that film with the projector…”

With Mr. Danby approaching, I jumped back to the other side of the hallway. As soon as I did, the vibrating stopped.

“It may just be in the…” Mr. Danby touched the doorknob to a cupboard under the massive staircase, but his brow furrowed deeply when he looked at how far I was from the open box of stones.

“What are you doing?” he asked gravely.

“Nothin’,” I shrugged. “Just waitin’.”

Harris had accused me once of being a horrible liar. He said that my “tell” was that I took on a Southern accent.

“Tom Sawyer’s a good liar,” I had said, defending myself.

“We’re gonna be teenagers soon, Lee,” he said. “You need to work on the poker face or you’ll find yourself alone, ‘cause I don’t plan on having a boring life.”

He made an excellent point, although I thought Harris was usually the boring one.

Mr. Danby cocked his head, pointedly looking at my hands.

“They’re some nice stones you have,” I said casually, trying to imply that I’d seen a lot of them in my day.

“Thank you, but they’re actually Miss Prankle’s,” he said, watching my fingers closely. I unfurled my closed fists, to indicate I’d taken nothing, just in case that’s what he was worried about.

“If you find one you like, let me know,” he said.

This was confusing, since he seemed so protective of them. Fortunately he moved on, opening the door and searching briefly inside the sizeable crawl space.

“Nope,” he said, sighing and looking absently at the front door. “It’s a sweet little Bell and Howell, with an animated film from the 1940s. I’ve got it threaded to show you. But where?” he continued, scratching the back of his neck. “Be right back.”

The cat began slinking into the living room, making a haunting, yowling noise.

I looked back towards the crystals, but decided to leave them alone. If I were somehow making them act weird, it wouldn’t be the stones that got blamed for it.

The cat appeared to be making a report to another one lying across the heater at the front of the room. It was brindle brown, with tiny tufts of orange, light yellow and dark fur that made it look a bit like the splotchy sides of Mr. Danby’s painters pants.

Inside, I could see the living room was attached by a sizeable, square portal to another large room. That far one had a high ceiling and bookcases along the walls and massive windows on the far side. It looked so cool, like the set for a play my Mom took me to in Rye, New York. A murder mystery. The Observatory, they had called it.

Mr. Danby even had a huge green palm in a pot near the front of the building, just like in the play. Instead of a bay window, this house had a partial greenhouse-kind-of-solarium section that flooded the room with the evening light. I wanted to see how it connected to the floor.

But just as my foot hit the first large step down into the room, I heard thunder. I wheeled around and looked to the windows. I hadn’t seen the lightning flash.

I took another step down to stop and listen. The rumble grew, like there was a subway train charging into an underground station.

And it wasn’t just the sound, or just me acting weird. I could see a statue on the coffee table shaking. A set of crystal decanters was dancing on the metal tray on the desk. I stepped away from them towards the middle of the room, but the floorboards started to shake. The edges of the large carpet that I was standing on began to ruffle and rise, as though there were air blowing up from underneath it.

This must be an earthquake.

“Mr. Danby!” I yelled.

I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. Run outside? Duck and hold onto something?

“Liam?”

His voice was distant. I ran towards the entrance and we met in the hallway.

“The floor…” was all I could sputter.

“What is it, lad? What happened?” he said, breathlessly.

“It’s right there,” I said, turning just as I realized that the sound had stopped. “Did you feel that?”

“What?”

“The… earthquake?” I said meekly, now sorry that the sound was gone and yet, once again I was telling people about something I couldn’t prove.

“No,” he said pausing to listen. “Where did you feel it?”

“Just here, a moment ago,” I answered, nodding to the next room.

“In there, or in the Great Room?” he asked.

I shut up completely. I knew for a fact that strange things were happening, but if I told him his house was rattling, or that I’d been where I wasn’t supposed to be, I could get into worse trouble.

“I think I should go,” I said, feeling disappointed with myself for fibbing.

“You might very well have felt something,” he said, oddly encouraging me.

“No,” I said.

“Well, just wait a second,” he said, stepping around me. “Wouldn’t you know it!” Mr. Danby moved his jacket from the landing on the stairs and revealed that the projector had been there all along. He apologized for having forgotten such a simple thing.

It was honestly very cool and surprisingly small for old technology. It had rounded edges and not a speck of rust anywhere. He plugged it in and showed me how it worked. The projector lens was on a hinge that swung away from the body of the machine, and the threading of the strip of film from one reel through the projection sprockets to the second reel was as simple as could be, and as obvious as the gear chain on a bike.

The film was titled “Kiko” and it was a black and white cartoon of a boxing Kangaroo. I wasn’t paying much attention while Mr. Danby was trying to explain how some people used to put boxing gloves on kangaroos. It seemed absurd and sort of cruel to do it in real life. I was trying to think how I was going to project this image onto the boards at the back of my display.

Plus, I kept looking back at the box of stones, torn between wanting to stay far away and wondering if I should say something. Had I just been chicken in not touching them again?

By the time I got back to Miss Prankle, it felt like I’d been inside for a long time. She simply waved to Mr. Danby from inside the warm car and we drove off.

“See anything interesting?” she asked.

I explained to her how the projector worked and how I was thankful for the special help to go and get it. When she got quiet, I decided to be brave.

“Do you think rocks can have vibrations?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she said, surprising me with the quick affirmation. “Everything in the universe has a vibration. Science shows us that even hard things, like rocks, are made up of vast molecular space. It’s all energy with the appearance of solidity. The cosmos, our universe is ever expanding… you know that, don’t you? So change is an ongoing process. Vibration is in everything and everywhere. The question is, can we perceive it?”

“Wow, interesting,” I said. “Do you perceive it?”

“That’s profound,” she laughed. “What kind of perception are we talking about? Or, rather, getting back to your own question… do you believe that rocks have vibrations?”

“Yours do,” I said before I realized what I was letting slip.

She looked at me. “You noticed that, did you?”

I fought back a smile. She hadn’t told me I was crazy.

“How did they do that?” I asked.

“Mr. Danby is an artist of many talents,” she continued. “He has a stone cutter and polisher. He’s surprisingly good, by the way. He knows how to work with the quartz and crystalline formations I bring. For millennia, people around the world have thought of stones helping to conduct and augment natural vibrations… for healing and all sorts of activities. You’re wearing one right now.”

I was surprised, but she pointed to my wristwatch.

“An LCD readout,” she noted. “That’s a liquid crystal display. Clever how science capitalizes on all types of pulses. So, yes, Liam Trinder. I definitely think rocks have vibrations.”

“And his house?” I asked. She remained quiet, so I didn’t know how much buzzing and shaking she was talking about.

“You’ll see it again, won’t you?” was all she said about it.

We set the date to take the projector back after the Fair just as she pulled up to my house. I was grateful that Mom’s car wasn’t back in the driveway, and I was able to use my own key and wave goodbye without anyone seeing a thing.

I was also glad to know that I could sneak another look at the Great Room. Maybe by then, I’d have the guts to ask him for a real tour. I wanted to know why his house could shake so much, and find out then whether or not I was the only one to perceive it.