THIRTEEN FOR DINNER

Twenty-four

TWENTY-FOUR

            Mike looks like ten miles of bad road, another hick saying my momma uses to describe someone who looks atrocious. He’s still wearing his serving pants and white shirt which is not very white anymore. The bow tie is long gone and his cool surfer hair is beginning to dread. He’s eyeing  me like I am an apparition and the relief on his face immediately melts into confusion, no doubt wondering why I am dressed to the hilt in southern belle attire. 

            “Ave,” he manages to say and I think if he wasn’t so cool he might break down and cry.

            “Mike?” I answer back still as shocked as he is. I think we both want to ask the same question but I get mine out first. “How did you…?”

            “I was in the kitchen cleaning up when the lights went out. Then things began getting weird, and when I finally got a candle lit, the kitchen was different. Then I heard you pounding on the wall and yelling for me but I couldn’t get to you.”

            He’s becoming agitated as he recounts his story and his eyes take on a desperation I have never seen in my happy go lucky friend before. He runs his hands through his gnarled hair as if he is reliving the horror all over again. “I could hear a clock, chiming off the time and I heard everyone in the dining room start screaming but I couldn’t get to you. God, all this time I thought you were dead.” I see the tears he’s trying to keep at bay, one slips past his coolness, leaving a crooked dirty trail down his cheek.

            “Oh Mike,” I half laugh as I embrace him. We hug for a moment. He holds me tight and I feel him kiss the top of my head.

            “I would have died if anything happened to you,” he whispers but I know Quillan can hear him. “I have beat myself up over and over for asking you to sit in on that stupid dinner.”           “It’s alright,” I say, “I survived it. I’m fine.” Looking up at him, I ask the question I’ve been eager to know since he stepped from the shadows, “Where have you been all this time?”

            As soon as I ask it I think maybe I shouldn’t have. As eager as I am to know, the recounting only seems to agitate him more. I’m no therapist but I think he has a classic case of traumatization.

            “While I was looking for a way to get to you I found a tunnel in the back of the pantry in the kitchen. I followed it and it led me up through the root cellar on the east side of the property. When I noticed the van was gone, I began running for help but I couldn’t find the highway, everything was gone.” His distress is on the rise now so I rub his back, hoping to calm his nerves.” The next thing I know is some back woods sheriff, dressed like he’s in a western, picks me up for public drunkenness. When I demand he lets me use the phone he tells me I’m talking crazy. I ask for his cell he says okay but then locks me in some dirty jail telling me he’s keeping me there until I sober up. “It makes no sense. I feel like I got sucked into the effin twilight zone.”  I want to laugh but dare not, Mike’s frustration is evident. Still keeping me close he looks over at Quillan. “You were at the dinner too huh?”

            Quillan nods.

            “What the hell happened to us?”

            Quillan gives me a slight nod, allowing me to answer, yet I am not sure just how much of the truth Mike is ready to hear. I tread cautiously sugar coating it as much as possible.

            “Seems we got to participate in a time travel experiment. We’ve traveled back to 1859.”

            “What the hell? There’s no such thing as time travel!”