Chapter 4: A Sieve in Time

"Sammy! Quitting time!"

Brian was yelling at me from across the yard, and I barely heard him over the hum of the seamer. I didn't take my eyes off the bag, or the seamer's foot until I was done with it, but once I had the twine cut and the bag on the table I looked up and waved in acknowledgment.

Two weeks after starting work, I was now sacking feed pretty much on my own. It was repetitious work, but not rocket science, and it freed up Brian to work more with the yard crew. I was also now trusted to 'process' the order tickets.

Nileson's sold a little bit of everything, especially feed, grain, lumber, pipe and other plumbing supplies, and it was the local place to go for farm equipment and other do-it-yourself hardware.

In this part of the world, in the early 1960's, there was no such thing as deciding to be a Do-it-yourselfer or not as I had been used to towards the end of my first life. If you didn't do it yourself it didn't get done, and if you didn't want to live that way, you needed to move to the city and become an apartment dweller. That was so much the pervasive attitude it almost rose to the level of being official.

The feed and seed was one of Nileson Mercantile's basic offerings, and while the flow of seed in and out was seasonal, most of the feed came and went in a constant, steady stream. There was always feed to be sacked every day, either for an order or for the floor.

"Don't forget tomorrow's a freight day," Brian yelled, as he saw me going towards the back of the store. "See you at eight instead of nine."

I got home to an empty house, except for Ned, and he at least was happy to see me. With Dad gone back east, Mom was spending a lot of time 'visiting' with friends and neighbors. She wasn't much of a gossip, to the best of my recollection, so I assumed this was actually visiting, rather than gossip sessions. Not that some of that didn't wind up happening anyway. Hell, I even heard gossip at work at the Mercantile.

With Mom not at home, and tomorrow being an earlier and longer work day than normal, I decided to check on Benny. Carrie had left for Indiana three days ago, so it was Benny and I against the world for now, although Roger and Amelia Cort had been involved in pretty much all of the things we'd done since school got out. Not that there were a lot of them. Benny and I were both working six days a week.

I was beginning to think that Amelia might be interested in Benny, because she seemed to always wind up in his vicinity whenever we did end up doing things, which mostly meant hanging out at the spot or down at Harwell's.

Benny was busy when I called, getting ready to go with his family to a get-together with another family. I told him about the upcoming freight day for me, and told him I'd see him this weekend.

I still needed to give Ned an opportunity to stretch his legs, so I went upstairs to change, stopping for a moment as I did to look at the deposit slip for my first paycheck, pinned to the corkboard on the wall behind my desk.

Paydays at Nileson's were the fifth and twentieth of every month, which meant I'd gotten paid at the beginning of the previous week, and the first paycheck of my life had been for seven days of work; two Saturdays, at six hours each, and five other days of three hours each. Twenty seven hours of work, and after the various taxes were taken out, the check had been for almost twenty dollars.

The discussion about what would happen to my paychecks happened the night before Dad left for his trip. Their amazement at my sudden ability to slice and dice veggies had been tabled in favor of this new conversation, which I was actually glad to hear, despite its potential impact on my finances.

I shouldn't have worried, I guess. Dad's position during the discussion was revealing, and for me, profitable, at least in the short term. It sounded as if Mom's surprise job was a surprise to Dad too, and he raised the point that echoed through my reality.

"What if he had refused, Helen?"

"Well he didn't Bill."

"But he could have, Helen."

"But he didn't, Bill."

I wanted to interject an 'I was going to', but they were addressing each other by their first names, and that was never a good sign.

Fortunately, whether Mom's decision had been good or bad, there was no bad result, and assigning blame was not a big part of their natures, and while he was upset, Dad wasn't one to dwell on what was past. He simply told me that my first two paychecks were mine to do with as I pleased, and any savings plan would begin only with my third paycheck. This made me happy, and whatever crimp this put in Mom's plans, she saw she was outnumbered and the matter was settled. Starting on July 5th, I would begin depositing all but five dollars of each paycheck into a savings account. Except that Mrs. Nileson had already mentioned that we would be getting paid on Monday the 3rd, rather than Wednesday the 5th, to allow for the holiday.

Mom and I had already been to the bank in Hermiston to set up a dual account which required both our signatures to withdraw funds. I knew this was a polite fiction for the near future. Until I turned sixteen, she could sign my name along with her own and it would be legal.

While Ned and I jogged over towards Burnside, I wondered about the future, both the one I remembered, and the one I was heading towards now. When I got to Burnside, I glanced down the road towards Benny's house, and the Corts, no signs of any activity down that way at all.

I decided to keep on going, and Ned and I ran the rest of the way to the start of the trail to our spot on the creek.

'What the hell, ' I decided, and turned onto the trail and kept right on running. I shoved Ned's ball into a pocket on my shorts, to remind him that we didn't chase the ball here, and kept half an eye out for a good stick for him. The other eye was still turned inward, as I remained more or less lost in thought. I still spent every quiet moment I found myself in thinking about my circumstances, and the miracle of living my life over again, and the ability to make changes to that life.

When we got to the spot, Ned went crashing into the water first thing, and I followed him, stopping just long enough to slip my shoes off before dipping my feet in the water. The cool feeling was very nice, but I was mindful of the rules, and since there was no one else with me, I stayed out of the water, and went up by the elm, finding a nice shady spot, and stretching out for a nap.

With the sounds of Ned splashing around, and the shade of the tree to shelter me, I got my mind completely on my concerns, and as I relaxed, they came into clear focus. I was a time traveler within my own life, and I had already changed my own future dramatically. That change had already impacted my family, including Ned, and who knew how it might effect others down the road.

It was not just about going back in time either, other changes were becoming obvious. The nightly 'bumps', the sweating while I slept and the aching joints had persisted.

I was beginning to have some clue to what all but the bumps were about. The schedule of my push through puberty had changed. In just the two and a half weeks I'd been here, my body had began to sprout hair, thicker and faster than the first time, and about a year earlier than in my last life. I now had legitimately dark patches in my arm pits and my groin. Last night I'd decided to check on a hunch, and measured myself on my door jam, comparing my self measurement against the mark Mom had added my first day back. Unless I was screwing up the measuring, I had grown an inch and a quarter since that day.

I had added an inch somewhere else too, and that was even more surprising. If this kept up at the current pace, I'd be bigger than I had been in my previous adult life before the summer was out.

I was already looking forward to changing one of the biggest negatives of my first life, the humiliation of being one of only three boys to start high school without pubic hair. I was also going to be far more fit than I had been the first time. I don't know if it was the same sort of unusual acceleration, but the running with Ned and the heavy work at Nileson's was already starting to have an impact on my muscles. I definitely had more muscles in my arms, legs and shoulders than I had in my first life. I didn't have a lot of experience with fitness in either life, but I had the impression that these changes were happening faster than would be natural or normal. Having recently been moved back in time almost fifty years sort of opens you up to the possibility of unnatural occurrences.

I worried about other things, especially about changing the future. Dad's mention of President Kennedy while talking about his Peace Corp job reminded me of his assassination, only a few years away, along with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy before the end of the decade. That led me to other events in my old life, The Challenger disaster, the Marine barracks in Beirut, the World Trade Center bombing and the events of 9/11. I thought about John Lennon, the Exxon Valdez, and Vietnam.

Vietnam. Crap. I was going to graduate from high school in the spring of 1965. The war, and the draft would be in full swing. I had four years to find a way to avoid or accept military service.

Vietnam had probably saved my life the first time around. I know that sounds crazy, but it did. The draft lottery didn't start until 1969, but 1965 was the year that LBJ really escalated things, and I was drafted two months out of high school. I was firmly convinced by that time that life was no bed of roses anyway, so I reported, and was in Vietnam before the year was out.

I was no great soldier, but I lived through it, almost unscathed, at least physically. It has been said before, and more eloquently than I could, but war changes you. It woke me up from the self-induced walking coma I had slipped myself into, and brought the world back to life for me.

You can know history, and you can have knowledge based on personal experience, and the two may overlap, but they are utterly, utterly different kinds of knowing.

Yes, I knew things, and knowing them, perhaps I could prevent great tragedy, but I'd already seen how things that had changed in my personal life wound up happening anyway, for completely different reasons.

Yes, I knew things, but I was a boy, thirteen going on fourteen and not even in high school yet. How was I going to influence things from the tiny corner of the universe that was Cold Lake, Oregon?

Yes, I knew things, but who could I tell? How could I feel safe, carrying the information I did, if it became known? Even if no one believed me, I would be treated like I was crazy, perhaps even taken away from my parents and locked away somewhere with the other mental patients.

That I was here was incontrovertible, but a reason for my return had not been revealed to me. Would it be, some day? Would I discover that my return was for a purpose, beyond the second chance at a good life that it gave me?

If I had a purpose, I would find it or it would find me. If I was meant to reveal the fact of my return to others, the moment would come when I would make that decision. In the meantime, I would be content to work on my second chance and the mostly unknown future of Sam Kendall. For certain, I had four years to work on whether this Sam Kendall was going to try to re-experience Vietnam. Those thoughts processed, I drifted off quietly to sleep.

-oOo-

My first freight day at Nileson's had not gotten off to a good start. I woke up late, and had to beg Mom for a ride to work, or I would have been late. Because I was rushing, I forgot my baseball glove, and I had to miss a chance to get a little workout in with Mr. Greer. We had been doing that during breaks, and sometimes a little before work started. He was disappointed that I didn't have my glove, but he did make me an offer that I was happy to agree to.

"Sammy, you need some time with a bat in your hands this summer too, and on a baseball field. Why don't you come over to the field tomorrow after church. Chuck and Bob are going to be there, and I'd like to see you hit the ball a little. You always had a good eye, but no power. With the workout you've been getting here you might just be more of a power hitter than a contact man like you used to be."

I always had been pretty good at getting on base. I just couldn't hit it very deep, and wasn't much of a runner once I got on base. Mr. Greer might be right. Maybe with all the work and all the running, that had changed.

"Yes sir, I'll be there."

"Do you still have cleats that fit?"

"I don't know sir. I haven't tried them on since last year."

"Well, wear them if they fit, and bring them with you if they don't. I'll try and find a pair from someone to swap you."

So I guess forgetting the glove wasn't that much of a bad start, but the freight was bad enough!

Cold Lake wasn't a stop for the railroad, but there was an old short line that ran through town on a route that used to be run between Hat Rock and Hermiston before it meet up with another short line that ran a similar kind of small scale route to Pendleton. It saw almost no traffic anymore, but several of the local businesses had joined forces to create the Cold Lake Commerce Society, and they worked out a deal to lease a short haul locomotive on a regular schedule from Union Pacific to bring their freight on consolidated cars out on what was now called the Cold Lake spur. The old passenger terminal that had once existed beside the track had been torn down and replaced with a warehouse and freight yard, small by most standards, but suited to the purposes of the folks in Cold Lake.

That Cold Lake Commerce freight yard was a half a mile from Nileson's Mercantile, and on the opposite end of town from Weisse, the main road that made the big diagonal swath through town. A few years ago Mr. Nileson had paid to have a private spur track hand built that ran right into his equipment yard. They even leased what they called a 'mule', which sort of looked like a pygmy locomotive, but with regular wheels with rubber tires as well as railroad steel wheels. It was yellow with the word TrackMobile printed in block letters on the side. I remember thinking it was 'really neat' when I was younger. To be honest, I still did.

I showed up at the Nileson's Mercantile yard at 8, but the adult crew had been over at the yard since 5 this morning, loading freight from the consolidated cars into the Nileson-specific cars, two of them, along with a third car which was full of feed. The car had internal partitions, and the large central one was full of chicken feed and the two smaller partitions had sheep and horse feed, one type in each.