The Time Traveler's Almanac

“I’ve kept them safe. He’d put a sum aside for them from shrine offerings and I saw they had that. Got my own bit of bother and strife tucked away. We know in this job we aren’t the first. And won’t be the last. Living on a loan of time so to speak.”

He pointed to the ruined shrines. “The gods have gotten wise that things will not always go their way.” The corporal told her about defense works and traps he was building. Like a tenant telling the landlady about improvements he is making, thought Julia. She knew that was the way it would be between them and that she would always miss her noble Alcier.

Just before she left, Smalley asked, “I wonder if I could see your son, m’lady. Sometime when it’s convenient.” Julia said nothing. She visited her grandmother, eighty and erect, living in Taos in a spare and beautiful house. Her companion was a woman from the Pueblo, small, silent and observant.

“Timothy is the whole point of our involvement,” said the old woman. She sat at a table covered with breeding charts and photos of colts. “You and I are the precursors.”

“He’s just a child.”

“As were you when you were taken to the shrine. Think of how you loved Alcier. He would have wanted you to do this. And you shall have your rewards. Just as I have.”

“And they are?”

“At this point in your life, you would despise them if I told you. In time, they will seem more than sufficient.”

Julia knew that she would do as the Rex had asked. But that summer Robert was stationed in Hawaii. So she went out to be with him instead of going to Mount Airey. The next August, she gave birth to Cecilia, her second daughter. The year after that, Robert was in a naval hospital in California, injured in a crash landing on a carrier flight deck. His shoulder was smashed but healed nicely. A three inch gash ran from his left ear to his jaw. It threw his smile slightly off-kilter.

He seemed distant, even in bed. Tempered like a knife. And daring. As if he too sensed death and destiny and the will of the gods. When the war was over Robert had a Navy Cross, a trademark smile and a scar worth, as he put it, “Fifty-thousand votes while they still remember.” Over his own father’s objections, the young Macauley ran for Congress from the West Side of Manhattan. The incumbent, one of the old man’s allies, was enmeshed in a corruption scandal.

Robert won the primary and the election. His lovely wife and three young children were features of his campaign. Julia paid a couple of fast visits to the cabin. On one of them the corporal told her, “I know it’s a kid will be my undoing. But it will be a little girl.” On another he said, “The gods would take it as a great favor, if you let me speak to your son.” Thus it was that one lovely morning the following summer. Julia left her two little daughters in the huge nursery at Joyous Garde and brought Timothy to Stoneham Cabin. As if it was part of a ritual, she had Mrs. Eder pack lunch.

Julia stuck a carton of the Luckies she knew the Corporal favored into the basket and started up the hill. Her son, age seven and startlingly like the father he rarely saw, darted around, firing a toy gun at imaginary enemies.

The corporal, tanned and wiry, sat on the back porch, smoking and cleaning his rifle. Tim stared at him wide eyed.

“Are you a commando?” he asked after the introductions were made and he’d learned that their guest was English

“Them’s Navy,” Smalley said. “And I’m a soldier of the Queen. Or King as it is.” Julia stared down at Mirror Lake. Except when Smalley spoke, she could imagine that Alcier was still there. Something even more intense than this must have happened to her grandmother after the death of Ki Mien.

“Have you killed anybody?”

“Killing’s never a nice thing, lad. Sometimes a necessity. But never nice,” Smalley said. “Now what do you say that we ask your mother if I can show you around?”

Later, on their way back to the cottage, Timothy was awestruck. “He showed me traps he had set! In a jungle! He told me I was going to be a great leader!”

As her grandmother had with her, Julia demanded his silence. Timothy agreed and kept his word. In fact, he rarely mentioned the cabin and the shrine. Julia wondered if Smalley had warned him not to. Then and later, she was struck by how easily her son accepted being the chosen of the gods.

Fashion had passed Mt. Airey by. That summer, the aging bucks at Bachelor’s Point drawled on about how Dewey was about to thrash Truman. And how the Rockefellers had donated their estate to the National Parks Service.

“What else now that the Irish have gotten onto the island.”