Chapter 102: Pay It Forward

Sunday, March 27, 1983

While driving home after Study Group, I looked over at Angie.

“I think we need to write a letter to Gene’s father.”

“Now?” she said, then shook her head. “Of course, now. You’ve got a plan, and there isn’t a lot of time.”

“A few months, I think. I’m pretty sure it happens in July or early August. Not late August.”

“Why not late August?”

“Because of another thing I just remembered a couple of days ago. A hurricane is going to hit Houston in late August. We can’t do anything about that, but we can get prepared ourselves.”

“Wait! I remember that! It was right after school started!”

“Yeah. It shut everything down.”

“We didn’t have power for ... weeks!”

“That’s something I’m hoping to fix.”

“Good! Late August with no air conditioning sucks!”

While Mom and Dad were watching some TV, I got on the computer, fired up a (primitive, in my opinion) word processor, and the two of us composed a letter. After an hour of word-smithing and debating approaches, we’d come up with a letter that we hoped would work:

Judge Richardson,

I ask you to please read this note all the way through. I understand that you are a rational person and a believer in facts, and this note will seem crazy. Nevertheless, please hear me out.

I occasionally see bits of the future. What I see isn’t always correct, and it certainly isn’t always helpful. That said, I believe that if you do not take action to prevent it, you will perish in a car accident this summer when another car goes out of control and strikes yours. I do not know the time or the place, though I believe it may be on I-45, and I feel it is likely during a thunderstorm. I am certain of neither, however.

In hopes of convincing you that I am not simply making things up, I will make two predictions. Either may be wrong, or — of course — they may simply be luck. However, I think they will happen.

First, I believe that the University of Houston will beat Louisville next weekend and advance to the championship game. Second, I believe that they will lose the championship game, likely in a very close outcome, and that the eventual winner will be North Carolina State.

All I am asking you to do is to drive with particular caution, no more and no less. I have no motive in this other than to help you and your family. Seeing the future is sometimes unpleasant, and it does my heart good when I help others.

Regardless of how the games come out, I urge you to take particular care, especially when you have to drive in a thunderstorm. Should this save your life, you may never know it. If, in some way, you become convinced that I was right and thereby saved your life, do not seek to pay me back, but rather pay the debt forward to another deserving soul.

Please do not make me feel like Cassandra in a few months.

I wish you and your family the very best of luck, now and for many years to come.

A Friend

P.S. By the time this happens, it would be too late for you to take care. However, if you experience a major hurricane hitting Houston in August, that will be another sort of proof. Please do not let your guard down simply because you have survived my premonition, but I hope you are still here, and in a position to worry about downed trees and power failures, in a few months.

Angie and I looked at each other.

“Think it’ll work?” I said.

She shrugged, then nodded. “It’s wacky, but it has a good hook, and it asks him for nothing at all other than to take caution. There’s nothing he can look at and say, ‘Well, they’ll be back with demands later’ or the like. We can’t blackmail him because he drove safely, or even because he believed a crazy psychic.”

“Yeah. If he reads it, we’ve probably won.”

She brought up a point that we’d been over before. “Do you think we should ask him to do something to show that he’s listening?”

“I thought we’d agreed not to.”

“I did, too, but reading it ... well ... I feel like him taking some small step to acknowledge it might commit him to take larger steps.”

“Good point. How about...”

We discussed it for ten minutes, then added the following:

P.P.S. If you wish to let me know that you’re considering my warning, please put the enclosed sticker on your mailbox. Seeing it would make me happy.

I found an American Flag sticker that seemed just right for a judge to have on his mailbox. Then I printed the letter out and put it and the sticker in an envelope, which I addressed using Dad’s old mechanical typewriter. We wiped everything down as carefully as possible as we went, using plastic bags as gloves.

A top-notch forensics team in 1983 would be hard-pressed to do much with what we’d given them. Oh, they likely could figure out the brand of the typewriter, but there wouldn’t be any secret identifiers from the typewriter or printer. If they found the typewriter, they could match it, and maybe the printer, but neither was likely. I’d mail it from a busy mailbox. We’d used water to wet the seal on the envelope, so there should be virtually no DNA, not that DNA would even be considered in 1983.

It was as fool-proof as we could manage. If we saw no sticker, we could try plan B, but I had no idea what plan B was. Confront Gene’s Dad? That was fraught with danger. Get someone else to confront him? Not much better. Enlist Gene? How, without revealing ourselves?

I had a matching flag sticker, and if nothing happened, we could perhaps do something with it. What that might be ... who knows?

Monday, March 28, 1983

Angie and I got the letter in the mail bright and early. With any luck it would be at Gene’s house that day or at most the next. I wanted it there before the games were played, of course.

We got the results from Yates’ Last Chance tournament during Drama and Debate. Memorial had sent only a limited number of kids to the tournament. In Drama, Marsha qualified in Humorous Interp. In Debate, Stacey qualified in Extemp. Apparently, since her last name is Yates, there’d been some joking made about that. Sheila also qualified in Extemp.

That put our State total at a somewhat absurd thirty-eight kids. Sixteen Drama qualifiers and twenty-five Debate qualifiers (three of us - me, Angie, and Sheila - were qualified in both).

With Meg and Steffie, we’d exactly hit the forty-seat capacity of the bus. I was pretty sure we’d be fine (there were laps, after all!), but we might be the only high school to fill a tour bus.

Through some magic that Linda’s father had performed, we had a great deal at the Howard Johnson in Austin where I’d stayed so many times before ... and also just twice. The deal was good enough that the boys would get four rooms, two kids each, and the girls would get twelve rooms, with some fours, some threes, and one two: Lizzie and Janet. They, as adults, were booking their own room, and Meg was ... ignoring the situation.

It could’ve potentially gotten Meg in trouble, but it also could be explained as her ‘removing any potential of impropriety.’ Of course, for it to cause trouble, someone would have to rat Meg out, and there was no chance of that. Not only that, but they’d have to escalate it to Principal Riggs, who would almost certainly sit on it as long as he possibly could. Janet and Lizzie would claim to have done nothing inappropriate, of course. It was very likely that they’d do no more than snuggle and kiss, at least not until after the last night of the tournament and maybe not even then. Tournaments are exhausting!

Yes, Angie got a room with her girlfriend. Cammie was included in the group, which meant that Angie and Paige would keep it to snuggling and kissing. I was pretty sure Mel would not approve of watching, to say nothing of joining in.

I was sharing with Gene. That could’ve been awkward, what with him being Angie’s ex-boyfriend, but hopefully it wouldn’t be, if things worked out with Sue. Gene was a great guy and deserved love and companionship, and I knew he’d found much less than he’d wanted in high school the first go-round. We weren’t the close friends this time as we’d been then, but it was hard to judge simply because I had so many more friends this time. Either way, I felt better after having finally done something to help Gene’s father.

Darla, Linda, Sheila, and Sue decided to share a room. Perhaps I was simply being too vain, but I had to imagine that my name might turn up in that group.

Tuesday, March 29, 1983

The NCAA tournament had played out exactly as I’d expected, with Houston and NC State staring at each other across the brackets, Louisville and Georgia, respectively, in their way.

Everyone’s opinion was that Louisville and Houston would decide the tournament. They were both top seeds, after all. Georgia was a four-seed, while NC State was a six-seed. Surely, neither of those upstarts would beat the big guys?

I was able to get eight-to-one odds on NC State winning it all. On twenty thousand bet, that would ... risk me getting my legs broken for other reasons. Of course, the worst-hit bookie would be Gerry, at eighty thousand. On the one hand, he’d be upset; on the other, I was certain he’d more than cover it with all of the losses on Houston (and there would be so, so many losses on Houston).