Chapter 10: Oh No, He's Outside ... Looking in.

"Momma? Who is Tim?"

"Wendy, remember when I told you I brought my diary ... Tim is in the diary. It's complicated and I might get it wrong ... so," She handed me her diary.

The original title had been Journey. The newest title was STOPWATCH.

I read it. Straight through, one sitting.

While she caught up with Violet and Tim, the Shaman, I read. This was momma's life before and just after she married. I finished it. I jumped up and headed for the Club. I have to pee.

She didn't say a word when I handed it back, just handed me AFTER THE FALL.

Violet is a sister, adopted and given to Tim. Violet is a journeyman shaman.

Now I knew where the money, airplanes and houses came from. I knew WHY Daddy had 3 wives, why they all fly, but most of all, I knew why momma reacts so well in emergencies. Momma had LIVED. She didn't float from day to day. The Ensign was not momma's first.

"Momma? Did you ever want to be normal?" I asked her when I finished AFTER THE FALL.

"What is normal?" Mothers ... answer a question with a question.

I had to ponder that for a little bit: Four moms, eight sibs, half a million nephews and nieces. I OWN a half million dollar boat. I have a Time Piece. This is Pentwater, 1928. I could come up with only one answer; "I don't know, I've never had it."

She looked at me like I'd been the one who discovered the world is round, "I would say, then, that the life you have is normal for you."

I got it. "Ok."

"Are you ready to keep the watch?"

"I think I want to be normal ... as normal as I can ... for awhile longer. The watch changes things. It's 1928. I was born in 1973. It should be 1986."

All I wanted to do was get away for the summer. I wanted a last shot at being a kid.

"I was 12, now I'm 13.

"When you and daddy used the watch you came back to the same time you left?"

Mom nodded.

"Can we go home before school starts?

"Am I going to be 12 again?"

"Since we got the watch back from Tim it's only been used twice. The first time it brought us back from Colorado.

"I had everything I ever wanted and the money to enjoy it. Why use it again?

"The second time YOU used it to save our lives ... we still have to go forward. I won't leave you here. I want to get the crate home. To Be Picked Up When Called For. Daddy has a part to play in this adventure."

I said, "I want to go home, to 1986, that home. How do we do it?"

"I think we sail out the channel at night, press the stem and sail back in. If the bridge is still here we're stuck."

That sounded dire.

She skipped right past that thought, "You hungry? Tim is buying. Let's eat. We'll come back, load the crate in his plane and let him deliver it to Brinks."

She looked at me, "Yes, you're going to be 12 again."

Shit!

Dinner at the Antler is whole different proposition than lunch. Lunch, it's a Tavern, abet with no beer.

Weekend dinner, it's Pentwater's solution to a Five Star. The food is good, very good.

The entertainment superb, the piano man would fit right in at a posh club in New York.

The singer is sultry, the wind instrument band is years before Benny Goodman.

The Antler closes between 5:00pm and 7:00 to make decoration changes.

When the doors open at seven, there is Valet Parking, a Red jacket, uniformed Doorman, a mustachioed maître d'hôtel in his station. Suddenly, you are in a very fancy restaurant ... they have booze, quality stuff from Canada, lobster is available, Porterhouse or any other steak. There is French cuisine on Saturday.

Tim, dressed in the former owners clothes, took us to the Antler for dinner. It was good, but it wasn't Frank in the kitchen and it wasn't Ernie at the counter. It was the weekend.

The weekend is when the Chicago Board of Trade members leave their mistresses to swelter in penthouse suites and come north to visit their wives and female children. Banker's hours? Not these guys.

They leave Chicago at noon Friday, board their 75 foot yacht with their older sons, play daddy to wives and offspring for three days and scurry ... like cockroaches in the kitchen when the light comes on ... for their expense accounts and fluff on Monday morning.

Fridays and Mondays, the bridge is open, closing only when someone wants to cross to the other side.

Four days a week, the Coast Guard heads out the channel, pulls snap inspections on passing freighters and watches the local girls sun themselves on the beach side dunes. Every crewmember with more than six months service, has the best German optics they can afford.

Every now and then, no more than three or four times in an entire season, they have to rescue a fish tug with a breakdown or arbitrate an unofficial fishing area dispute.

Four days a week, the Coasties service the lighthouse and can buoys, polish the brass, measure the depth of the channel and play.

Friday through Monday they rescue idiots, give tickets for excessive wake in the channel and send hardhat divers down to install cockpit drain plugs forgotten ... again ... on two or three pleasure boats a day so Anderson Salvage and their floating crane can pick up the hull. It keeps the locals in money.