D. MacHale - The Never War

The subway train came to a stop, the doors opened, and people flooded out onto the platform. A few saw what was going on and quickly jumped out of the way. Others ducked back inside the subway car. The old guy kept his hands on our shoulders and led us over toward the train. As we walked, he kept talking.

“Every one of these good people are witnesses. This isn’t some lonely back alley. You can’t hide in the shadows. Your dirty work is on display for everybody to see, and remember.”

The old guy definitely had the gangsters thinking. Now even the nasty guy looked unsteady. In the meantime, we were moving closer to the open subway door. All I could do was hope it wouldn’t close before we got there.

“I believe you two are smart gentlemen,” our friend continued. “You understand what I’m telling you.”

I didn’t think the gangsters understood anything. I thought the old gent was confusing them. But that was okay. If it gave us time to escape, I didn’t care what was going through the minds of these bad guys. The old man turned us around so we were still facing the gangsters. Our backs were now to the open subway door. He kept us moving though. He gently pulled us backward and onto the subway train. A few seconds later the three of us stood inside the car. Now I prayed for the doors to shut.

“I am so proud of you gentlemen,” said the old man to the gangsters with a smile. “You are two upstanding individuals.”

Everyone waited for something to happen. The gangsters stood with their mouths open. Every single person in the station was afraid to move. Spader, the old guy, and I stood just inside the open subway door.

Time stood still.

Then a bell rang on the subway train and the doors started to close. That woke the gangsters up. They both jumped for the train. They were a ways behind us, so they leaped onto the train through the set of doors farther back on our car. At that instant, the old man shoved Spader and me forward. We all jumped off the train and back onto the platform at the exact moment the doors closed behind us… with the gangsters trapped on board!

A second later the train began to pull out of the station. The three of us watched as the subway car slid past, along with the two gangsters. The nasty gangster grabbed at the door, angrily trying to pull it open. But it was too late. Next stop for them…someplace else. The old guy smiled and gave him a wave as they disappeared into the tunnel ahead. All around us, people started to move again. They all seemed a little shocked, but none more than Spader and I.

“That was incredible!” Spader shouted. “You had them stupefied.”

“You saved our lives,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

The friendly smile dropped off the old man’s face. In an instant he went from a warm, charming grandpa to a serious man on a mission.

“Follow me,” he said sternly, and walked off.

Spader and I didn’t move. “Should we?” Spader asked me.

A second later people started to gather around us. They were moving in like we were two escaped animals from the zoo. We had caused a pretty big disturbance, and they wanted to know why. This was not a good place to be.

“Absolutely,” I answered, and ran to follow the old man.

The guy may have been old, but he was quick. He was already halfway up the stairs to the street. Spader and I barreled through the turnstile and ran after him. I was in such a hurry to catch up that I didn’t stop to think about what we would see outside. But when we got to the top of the stairs, reality hit me square in the face. We had arrived in a different time.

This was the same section of the Bronx where Uncle Press first brought me to begin this adventure…over sixty years from now. But as much as it was sort of familiar, it was also way different. I recognized many of the buildings. Even in my time there were no modern steel-and-glass structures in this neighborhood, so a lot of these same buildings would be around sixty years from now. The only real difference was that in 1937, they looked clean and new.

The big, obvious difference that jumped out at me was the cars. They were all so old. But theyweren’told. Here in 1937 they were the latest models. Very strange. Traffic was just as hectic here as in my time, and the street was jammed with ancient vehicles. There was an odd smell, too. It was kind of like chemicals. It took me a while to realize that this was long before people worried about clean air and car emissions and unleaded gasoline and all those things that are supposed to keep pollution down. These cars were all spewing old-fashioned, full-leaded, full-stink emissions. It reeked.

Another thing that caught my eye was the billboards. They were everywhere, advertising things I never heard of. There was one showing a lady with a big smile who brightened her teeth not with toothpaste, but with tooth powder. Another had a guy looking all sorts of happy because he gassed up his car with “Esso” gasoline. Still another showed a group of quintuplets, all girls, who were advertising a soap made with olive oil. Gross. Wasn’t that like washing with spaghetti sauce? I knew this was Earth, but it sure felt like a different planet.

Spader stood right by my side, looking dazed. This all must have been strange to him, too. But in a very different way.

“You two going to stand there all day?” We looked to see the old African American guy standing by a yellow cab, holding the back door open for us.

“Look,” I said. “Thanks for bailing us out and all, but we’re not gonna get in that cab with-“

“Vincent Van Dyke is my name,” he said with a smile. “My friends call me Gunny.”

“O-kay, Gunny. Like I was saying, we got things to do so-“

“I know you do,” Gunny said. “I know all about it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Spader asked. “What do you know?”

Gunny chuckled and said, “I know that if you want to start looking for Saint Dane, you might need my help.”

It was like the whole world had stopped again. Did he really say what I thought he said? I turned to Spader. He looked as shocked as I felt.

“Yeah,” Spader said. “I heard it too.”

The old guy didn’t move. He stood with his hand on the open cab door and a smile on his face.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Like I said, my friends call me Gunny. And I’m pretty sure we’re all gonna be good friends, seeing as I’m the Traveler from First Earth.”

He held up his hand to show us that he was wearing the familiar silver ring with the dark gray stone in the middle.

Our visit to First Earth was getting more interesting by the second.

Fifty-ninth and Park, my good man,” Gunny said to the cabbie as we got into the car.

It was a big, old-fashioned cab with lots of room in back. I think I have to stop calling things “old-fashioned,” though. This was First Earth. This was 1937. This was the past, but it was today. Totally whacked.

The cabbie pulled into traffic and headed toward Manhattan. Along the way I kept looking out the window to see the differences between First and Second Earth. The odd thing was, it really wasn’t as different as you might think. I wasn’t exactly an expert on history and all things New York, but from the view of a kid from Connecticut who had only been to the city a few times, I was surprised to see how similar things were.

Like I wrote before, the most obvious difference for me was the cars. I’d seen old cars before, but always in some black-and-white movie or picture. When I was a little kid, I thought the whole world was black-and-white in the “olden” days. But I’m here to tell you, things were definitely not black-and-white in 1937. The sky was just as blue, the sun was just as yellow and the grass in the parks was just as green as on Second Earth. But the cars were mostly black. Some were cream colored and a few gray, but black was definitely the most popular color. They rode a little rough, too. The three of us bounced around in the back of that cab every time we hit a pothole. Yeah, they had potholes in 1937 too.