Chapter 13: Prophet and Seer

With Carrie convinced that she was helping me keep a secret, the last few weeks of school passed uneventfully. Unlike the year before, I had lined up my own job, and this time, there would be no surprises.

The fact that I was going to be working for Mr. Porter at the Porter Ranch, taking city folks out to experience a few nights on the high desert or on the Columbia river had most of my friends believing it was because of Greta, but that was only a part of it. I wanted to learn the area, and especially the river.

Shortly before the school year ended, I gave Carrie a visit at her house for a chat.

"Carrie, I made you a promise, and I'd like to keep it over the holiday weekend. We need to arrange a get-together. A dinner or something. You and Joe, Greta and me, Bennie and Sissy, maybe Luther and Brian Nileson. I'd like to invite Matt Thorson and Roger and Amelia Cort too."

"A dinner sounds good. When and where?"

"Good question, and one I don't have answers for at the moment. I'll get back to you, but I wanted you to know I was working on keeping my promise."

The Memorial holiday would have been a good time, but that day marked the beginning of the summer season for the Porter Ranch, and for most of America, and since the holiday hadn't been moved to Monday yet, the thirtieth was a Wednesday this year, the middle of the week. We had the weekend before it to enjoy, and then it was full time work for almost everyone. So those last few weeks of school, while everyone was worried about finals and yearbooks and the end of school, I was busy getting a dinner arranged.

Mom and Dad, offered to host my dinner, and it made sense to have it at our house, since they were both already in on the secret, so to speak. Luther and Matt Thorson both accepted the invitation. Matt asked if he could bring his girlfriend Abby, and I said yes, of course. Luther said he had a girl he'd like to invite as well. I knew his date to both the big school dances this year had been Rebeca Jeffreys, and that was who he planned on inviting.

I was surprised when Roger Cort didn't make the same request. Sissy Mitchell and Bennie had been dating all year, but Roger didn't have anyone he felt comfortable in inviting apparently.

Brian Nileson wanted to come, but he was going to be out of town with his dad on a buying trip for almost the entire time between the end of school and the Memorial holiday. Work was starting up full time for him at the Mercantile, and he and his dad were going to be on a business trip to Portland and San Francisco. I really wanted him in on the secret, with the eye to getting the entire family in on it. Having a large stock of the kinds of things the Mercantile had on hand, and the kinds of things it could have if Mr. Nileson ordered them, could come in handy. Very handy.

Mom and Dad had a minor argument over the menu, with Dad wanting to barbecue something and Mom wanting to do spaghetti. I surprised both of them by voting for the spaghetti. I was going to be eating stuff off the grill all summer long. I'd have all the barbecue I could stomach before the summer was over.

Once I had responses from everyone, I concentrated on getting out of school and getting ready for my first day on the new job. I was going to spend a lot of time on horseback, so I needed to add to my gear, mostly with more jeans, and shirts. I wasn't much of a one for cowboy hats, but I was going to need one as part of the outfit. I rummaged through the collection of used ones that the Porter's had on hand and settled on a well used, but still serviceable straw hat that felt good and fit perfectly just above the ears.

The big expense was my new cowboy boots. I'd grown too much in the last year to fit the old pair still sitting in my closet, grown too much to even fit into my Dad's, and I hadn't looked at getting them when we went shopping for school because I'd gotten a pair of Red Wing work boots instead. I could've worn the Red Wings, but the kind of wear you got from riding was different, and the Red Wings were my motorcycle shoes.

Yeah, I know, I would have made fun of me for calling it a motorcycle too, but it was all I had for now.

As the day of the dinner approached, my nerves got worse and worse. I was having trouble sleeping, and there were no dream visitations to blame it on. Truth be told, I would have welcomed another visitation, but it didn't look like it was going to happen. It didn't either, but I did see Sammi in the bathroom mirror. I'd been forced awake at two in the morning by an achingly full bladder, a groggy dash for the bathroom to relieve the pressure ensued, and as I washed my hands after, there she was, looking back at me from the mirror.

"This is as good as we could do Sam. Relax. Get some sleep tonight. The same reinforcements that have made you faster and stronger and smarter are going to make people want to trust you and follow you. As long as you believe in yourself, so will they."

"Thank God!" I said in relief, more to myself than to Sammi. "Thanks Sammi," I added, looking up at her reflection in the mirror.

"No problem!" she said with a smile. She began to fade in the mirror, my own reflection slowly replacing hers.

"Oh! By the way. Nice package!" a faint giggle sounded in my head, and I shook it, wondering if I was still groggy from sleep, or whether that had just happened.

Whether it had happened for real or not, my subconscious must have bought it, because I slept like a baby the rest of the night and slept in until almost ten.

"Hey there sleepyhead," Mom said when I came down the stairs.

"Hi mom," I said, looking around her into the kitchen to see if there was any breakfast left.

"There's bacon in the fridge, and I saved you a couple of waffles, they're on the plate in the bread warmer."

"Mmm," I mumbled, "thanks."

"Didn't you sleep well?" Mom asked.
"No, in fact I had a good sleep last night, for the first time in days really."

"Your dad and I were worried that you were worrying about tonight."

"Oh I was too, Mom," I gushed out. "Something fierce, but I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw one of my others selves in the mirror, and she told me that it would be fine."

"She?" Mom asked.

"Well, yeah, She. The laws of probability suggest that there should be an equal amount of female and male Sam Kendalls."

I saw the look in her eye, and pulled her in for a hug.

"Yes Mom, Samantha Kendall, the daughter you might have had, was tall, pretty, and smart."

This revelation threatened to throw Mom completely off track, so I had to remind her that we had a big crowd coming, and she had promised spaghetti.

My internal head count had fifteen people, counting Mom, Dad and I, and there was no way we were serving dinner for fifteen at our normal dining room table, or in our small dining room. The question was, did we want to try and use the living room or not? We considered the furniture rearrangement possibilities, and decided the living room was not an option, not if we wanted to use it after dinner for revealing the secret. As it was, we were going to have to scrounge up some chairs from somewhere, or have people sitting on the floor. We were able to split the difference, essentially, by extending the dining room table out into the living room and adding folding chairs, borrowed from the Argus', who had a bunch of them. The smaller table in the kitchen was used as a serving line so that we didn't have to pack food back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. All in all, it worked out well, and the dinner itself went fine, everyone there knew everyone else to some degree or another. Matt and Luther's girlfriends were the two least known among us, but weren't strangers. Mom and Dad had even met Matt's girlfriend Abby at several of the team's cross country meets.

The spaghetti was delicious, as was the salad and garlic bread Mom served with it. Desert was ice cream with some of Mrs. Cort's finest peach preserves as topping. Everyone made sure to tell Mom how much they enjoyed it - several times!

When Mom started trying to clear the empty plates and bowls from the table, she had volunteers immediately for help with all the cleanup, including the dish washing. Dad, Luther, Matt and I disassembled the extension to the kitchen table and got the parts stored away where they'd come from. The living room was straightened up and ready for occupancy by the time we'd come back in from the storage shed.

Coffee, tea or root beer were offered, and soon everyone was sitting, drinks in hand, in the living room. I stood by the kitchen doorway, looking at everyone, my stomach roiling just a little again. It was time, and there was no going back.

"A few weeks ago," I began, nodding towards Carrie. "Carrie came to see me. She had noticed that I wasn't behaving like myself, and she wanted to know what was up."

There were some murmured comments, mostly towards Carrie.

"She was right. Something was up, and I asked her then if she would wait until school was out to hear the explanation. She agreed, and that is the purpose of this dinner tonight."

"God, your not sick too, like Mr. Greer, are you Sammy?" Bennie asked in an anguished voice.

"No, not sick, but in some ways better and worse. I died, Bennie. Dead and gone, but not gone how you would expect, and not dead when you'd expect."

I got a collective 'huh?' from everyone in the room.

"I died of a heart attack in August of 2007." I let the year sink in for a moment. "I had just turned sixty. I died trying to change a tire on my truck. When I died, I left my old body and was drawn back here, to my young body, and I woke up in it sitting on the grass outside of school, the last day of eighth grade."

"Oh my God!" Bennie said. "Was that why you were so out of it Sam?"

I nodded my head at him and grinned. "I had to yell at him to get his attention when I saw his mom pull up to get him." Bennie told the room. "He was completely out of it, I thought I was going to have to kick him to get his attention."

"Beginning that day, there were two Sam Kendall's in this body. The one who was here already, and me."

I spent quite a while talking about my first life, and what had happened to the Sam Kendall who lived it. I didn't glamorize it at all, pointing out all the things I saw as failures in my life. Matt was the first to ask the question I'd been waiting for.

"So Sam, is this a second chance? A chance to live your life over?"

"I thought so, at first, but I've learned since then that it is a much more complicated situation than that." I paused for effect, and once it felt right, I dropped the other shoe. "I'm not the only Sam Kendall to come back to this time and this body. There are two others so far, and more to come, though I'm not sure how many.

I talked about Sammy, the Sergeant and Sammi, and how they had each taught me things I needed to know.

"We've come back with a mission, I'm told. A mission to save humanity, because sometime between September and November, in 1966, the world as we know it is going to end. Somewhere in those months, most of the humans on Earth are going to be wiped off the face of the Earth."

"How?" Luther asked.

"I don't know," I answered.

"Is it going to be nuclear war?" Carrie asked.

"No. Well, I'm not sure, but I don't think so. From what I know so far, I believe it is going to be aliens." I paused again and saw they weren't processing that yet. "From outer space. Aliens from another planet, or another galaxy, or who knows where."

Half the people in the room broke out in laughter at that moment.

"Oh man!" Joe yelled. "You really had us going there for a minute, Sam!"

I let the laughter die, and when they all began to see that I wasn't joining in with them, it died quickly. I looked at dad, and he nodded, stepping forward.

"When Sam told me this last summer, I found it hard to believe too, so he gave me some proof. He told me that Roger Maris would hit 61 home runs, and break the Babe's record on the last day of the season. He told me about the Berlin Wall going up, and a few other things. When the first of them came true, I took a trip to Vegas and made some bets. Every prediction he made came true, and we've made over thirty thousand dollars because of it."

That got a loud swell of noise going, and we waited again for it to die down.

"I'm not asking you to believe me yet," I offered. "Instead, I want you to have the same kind of opportunity to confirm that I'm telling the truth. I've got a few pieces of information to give you of things that are going to happen this summer, and we can get together again afterwards."