Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

John placed about a third of his money in the hiding place. Another third he’d hide in his room. The last third he’d bury. He wouldn’t deposit it like he’d done in 7489. Or had that been 7490? The cops had been on his ass so fast. So Franklin had been looking the wrong way on all those bills. John had lost eighty thousand dollars.

No, he’d be careful this time. He’d show legitimate sources for all his cash. He’d be the talk of Findlay, Ohio, as his inventions started panning out. No one would suspect the young physics genius. They’d be jealous, sure, but everybody knew Johnny Rayburn was a brain. The Rubik’s Cube-no, the Rayburn’s Cube-would be John’s road to fame and riches.

He climbed down from the loft. Stan whinnied at him, tossing his head to get his attention and maybe an apple.

“Of course you can have one, Stan,” John said.

John took an apple from the basket and reached out to the horse. Suddenly John’s eyes were filled with tears.

“Hold yourself together, man,” he whispered as he let Stan gingerly chomp the apple from his hand. His own horse was dead, at his own hand.

He’d taken Dan riding and had tried the fence beyond the back field. They’d galloped through the grass, throwing mud behind them. John had felt Dan leap, felt the muscles twist and clench. They had flown. But Dan’s hind left hadn’t cleared it. The bone had broken, and John ran sobbing to his farm.

His father met him halfway, a rifle in his hand, his face grim. He’d seen the whole thing.

“Dan’s down!” John cried.

His father nodded and handed the rifle to him.

John took it blankly, then tried to hand it back to his father.

“No!”

“If the leg’s broken, you must.”

“Maybe…” But he stopped. Dan was whinnying shrilly; John could hear it from where they stood. The leg had been horribly twisted. There was no doubt.

“Couldn’t Dr. Kimble look at him?”

“How will you pay for that?”

“Will you?”

His father snorted and walked away.

John watched him tread back to the house until Dan’s cries became too much for him. He turned then, tears raining down his cheeks.

Dan’s eyes were wide. He shook his head heavily at John; then he settled when John placed the barrel against his skull. Perhaps he knew. John fished an apple from his pocket and slipped it between Dan’s teeth.

The horse held it there, not biting, waiting. He seemed to nod at John. Then John had pulled the trigger.

The horse had shuddered and fallen still. John sank to the ground and cried for Dan for an hour.

But here he was. Alive. John rubbed Dan’s muzzle.

“Hello, Dan. Back from the dead,” John said. “Just like me.”

His mother called him to dinner, and for a moment he froze with fear. They’ll know, he thought. They’ll know I’m not their son.

Breathing slowly, he hid the money back under his comic book collection in the closet.

“Coming!” he called.

During dinner he kept quiet, focusing on what his parents mentioned, filing key facts away for later use. There was too much he didn’t know. He couldn’t volunteer anything until he had all his facts right.

Cousin Paul was still in jail. They were staying after church tomorrow for a spaghetti lunch. John’s mother would be canning and making vinegar that week. His father was buying a turkey from Sam Riley, who had a flock of twenty or so. The dinner finished with homemade apple pie that made the cuts on John’s hands and the soreness in his back worth it.

After dinner he excused himself. In his room he rooted through Johnny Farm Boy’s book bag. John had missed a year of school; he had a lot of makeup to do. And, crap, an essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, whoever the heck that was.

John managed to get through church without falling asleep. Luckily the communion ritual was the same. If there was one thing that didn’t change from one universe to the next, it was church.

He expected the spaghetti lunch afterwards to be just as boring, but across the gymnasium John saw Casey Nicholson sitting with her family. That was one person he knew where Johnny Farm Boy stood with. She liked him, it was clear, but Johnny Farm Boy had been too clean-cut to make a move. Not so for John. He excused himself and walked over to her.

“Hi, Casey,” he said.

She blushed at him, perhaps because her parents were there.

Her father said, “Oh, hello, John. How’s the basketball team going to do this year?”

John wanted to yell at him that he didn’t give a rat’s ass. But instead he smiled and said, “We’ll go all the way if Casey is there to cheer for us.”

Casey looked away, her face flush again. She was dressed in a white Sunday dress that covered her breasts, waist, and hips with enough material to hide the fact that she had any of those features. But he knew what was there. He’d seduced Casey Nicholson in a dozen universes at least.

“I’m only cheering fall sports, John,” she said softly. “I play field hockey in the spring.”

John looked at her mother and asked, “Can I walk with Casey around the church grounds, Mrs. Nicholson?”

She smiled at him, glanced at her husband, and said, “I don’t see why not.”

“That’s a great idea,” Mr. Nicholson said.

John had to race after Casey. She stopped after she had gotten out of sight of the gymnasium, hidden in the alcove where the restrooms were. When John caught up to her, she said, “My parents are so embarrassing.”

“No shit,” John said.

Her eyes went wide at his cursing; then she smiled.

“I’m glad you’re finally talking to me,” she said.

John smiled and said, “Let’s walk.” He slipped his arm around her waist, and she didn’t protest.

John reached the outskirts of town in an hour, passing a green sign that said: “ Findlay, Ohio. Population 6232.” His Findlay had a population in the twenty thousand range. As he stood there, he heard a high-pitched whine grow behind him. He stepped off the berm as a truck flew by him, at about forty-five miles per hour. It was in fact two trucks in tandem pulling a large trailer filled with gravel. The fronts of the trucks were flat, probably to aid in stacking several together for larger loads, like a train with more than one locomotive. The trailer was smaller than a typical dump truck in his universe. A driver sat in each truck. Expecting to be enveloped in a cloud of exhaust, John found nothing fouler than moist air.

Flywheel? he wondered. Steam?

Despite his predicament, John was intrigued by the engineering of the trucks. After ten more minutes of walking, past two motels and a diner, he came to the city square, the Civil War monument displayed as proudly as ever, cannon pointed toward the South. A few people were strolling the square, but no one noticed him.

Across the square was the courthouse. Beside it stood the library, identical to what he remembered, a three-story building, its entrance framed by granite lions reclining on brick pedestals. There was the place to start figuring this universe out.

The library was identical in layout to the one he knew. John walked to the card catalog-there were no computer terminals-and looked up the numbers for American history. On the shelf he found a volume by Albert Trey called U.S.History and Heritage: Major Events That Shaped a Nation. He sat in a low chair and paged through it. He found the divergence in moments.

The American Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War all had the expected results. The presidents were the same through Woodrow Wilson. World War I was a minor war, listed as the Greco-Turkish War. World War II was listed as the Great War and was England and the United States against Germany, Russia, and Japan. A truce was called in 1956 after years of no resolution to the fighting. Hostilities had flared for years until the eighties, when peace was declared and disarmament accomplished in France, which was split up and given to Germany and Spain.