Shooting Matt Ch. 10

"In the late summer of that year..."

I re-read that book many times over the years but the ending never changed. The baby died. Catherine died. And Frederic Henry always walks back to the hotel in the rain.

"Can I help you, sir?"

I have no idea how long I've been standing there. My young and quite pretty inquisitor does not look overly alarmed. I assume I haven't been standing there drooling or anything.

"Where do you keep the time machines?"

She looks at me, a hint of worry flits behind her smile. I smile back.

"Old newspaper files, 'time machines'. Sorry, silly joke."

"Good one," the lack of even a polite chuckle gives lie to her words.

"Most back issues are available in the digital archives. The 'Plain Dealer'?"

"No." I tell her the name of the paper in the city where I went to school.

"Hmm," she says, frowning. "I don't know about that one. What years?"

"September. 1992."

A research task, even a trivial one such as this, is enough for her to forget my request for a time machine. Would I go back? Would I seek out Leon? No and no. I haven't repented of my earlier epiphany. I am who I am because I didn't do any of those things.

I am where I am because of who I am. Not having Leon for a roommate is not the reason I let myself forget how much I loved the library, books, and reading. Having a junkie for a wife, having a kid before we were grown up ourselves, aren't the reasons why I forgot how much I loved the library. That was me. Liam is a bright kid but he's wrong; I'm not a martyr. I didn't give up reading, camping, having fun because I was too busy being a dad, too busy working or too busy worrying about his mother. I just stopped. I ask myself why I stopped but fail to answer the question before the young lady hurries back, a triumphant smile shows her dimples. She really is quite pretty.

"We don't have copies of that paper here but you're in luck. The paper has an archive. Let me show you."

She leads me to a carrel. Inside, a very old looking computer hides, ashamed of its age. The letters are worn off the keyboard and the tower sports not one but two 3.5 inch drives. A bizarre image of Gloria Swanson, telling Mr. DeMille she's ready for her close up, pops into my head. I'm clearly losing my fucking mind.

I pull up a calendar of September, 1992. The second weekend of my freshmen year began on Saturday, September 12^th. The quite pretty young lady has left the webpage of the paper's archive open for me. The files are bad scans of microfiche. They're hard enough to read that it's easy to ignore how long it takes for the files to load. I skip to Monday, the 14^th. It's right there. The main story is about the hurricane that hit Kauai. But below the fold is the story of interest to the community.

Track Failure Stalls Grain Shipments

Local Farmers Assured Problem is Temporary

I skim the article. The railroad sidings had been automated earlier in the year. Sometime, in the late evening of the Saturday, the 12^th of September, 1992 the system failed. No trains could enter the yard to load grain. No loaded trains could leave the yard.

I scan the remaining pages. There's no story of a hobo, or older yard employee, talking a college student off the tracks. There's no story but as I stare at the screen I'm sure, if I could only talk to Leon, he'd confirm the story. I might be confused about whether or not I had ever noticed Leon's musk but I wasn't confused about this. Leon and I had not been roommates. I didn't know him in September of my freshman year. I meet him in the spring. And we had never discussed how he felt about being gay. He'd never told me, or even suggested, that he'd once been so depressed by the thought of being gay that he considered suicide. And, I didn't read the local paper in school. I read literature. I didn't give a shit about the local farm economy.

How is it then that I've managed to fantasize or dream, for the life of me I can't decide which it is, a detail about trains not running. Not only not running but not running a specific night, the second weekend of my freshmen year? A night when, I'm convinced, Leon considered allowing a train to cut him into three pieces.

I stop at the counter, ask the really quite pretty young lady, what's the best book she's read recently. Her lovely smile re-appears. She turns. Her fingers dance across the books lined up on the re-shelving carts.

"Here it is," she chirps. "I knew it had just been checked back in." She hands me the book. "It's not his usual stuff, no fantasy, just essays and criticism. I loved it."

"Good enough," I tell her. "Oh crap," I sigh, feeling my face fall. "I don't have a library card anymore."

"Not a problem," she smiles. "As long as you have a driver's license that shows you're a resident of Cuyahoga County, or a piece of mail with your address on it."

I fish for my wallet.

Ten minutes later I leave with a new library card, a book to read for the first time in years, and a head buzzing with ideas.