Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

“No…I don’t think so.”

The boys grew silent. They were both thinking about their father, about how much he liked this particular shirt, which was the shirt he often wore when he was out trimming the hedge or washing his pride and joy: his two-toned blue and white 1955 Ford Fairlane. (This was a special memory of Wayne’s; he loved cars just as much as his father did, and was additionally crushed to learn that the Fairlane had disappeared right along with his dad.)

Wayne reached out and touched another of their father’s shirts. It was a polo shirt — the shirt he liked to play golf in. Now they saw their father’s fishing shirt, with a lure still hooked to one of its many pockets, and the brown and white striped shirt he sometimes wore to his office where he wrote his books. Rodney had said that the vertical stripes made their dad look like a football official. “Better that than a convict!” laughed Wayne, thinking of the stripes going in a different direction.

Wayne sniffed. He smelled a scent in the closet that he knew, the scent of Mitch McCall’s aftershave. It was almost as if Mr. McCall was right there in the closet handing the boys his clothes to wear.

In the end, neither Rodney nor Wayne wore the Hawaiian shirt. They found a couple of old shirts and pants from the back of the closet. These were clothes their dad hadn’t worn for many years, and they didn’t carry such strong memories for the boys.

On their way to the Professor’s house Rodney and Wayne noticed something very odd about many of the other houses up and down the street. They all had their lights on. Perhaps the same things were happening in these houses that had happened in the McCall home: children suddenly catapulted into middle and old age, older family members suddenly made very old and frail and unable to rise from their beds. There would then be urgent telephone calls between concerned relatives and concerned friends. And people would go to each other’s houses and drink lots of coffee and shake their heads and say “tut, tut” and “can you believe it?” and try to make some sense out of this latest calamity. It would end up being a very long night for many of the families of Pitcherville, just as it was proving to be a very long night for Rodney and Wayne.

For one thing, the back door that led into the Professor’s lab was locked.

“That’s funny,” said Rodney. “Professor Johnson hardly ever locks this door.”

The twins took turns knocking, but no one came to answer the door. Wayne began to feel guilty. “What if he hears the knocking and he’s too weak to make it down the stairs?”

“Well, there is only one thing we can do now, Wayne. We have to get a house key from Mrs. Ferrell.”

On their way to the Ferrell house Wayne said, “I wonder if Petey’s back.”

“And all the other children,” said Rodney. “Say, Petey only lives a block away. Let’s go over and make sure that he’s okay too.”

As Rodney and Wayne suspected, the Ragsdale house had all of its lights on, like the others. Rodney rang the doorbell. After only a moment an old woman, perhaps in her eighties, answered the door.

“Hello? What is it? Who are you?” she said.

“It’s Rodney and Wayne.”

“Oh my goodness! You are grown-up men. Rodney and Wayne — you won’t believe it! I’ve got my Petey Weety back! Petey! Petey! Come see who’s here! It’s your friends Rodney and Wayne McCall. They’re all grown up just like you!”

Petey came to the door. He was completely bald. This fact made his steel plate stand out even more. Petey’s face had aged, but standing next to his mother he did not look so terribly old. Besides the plate in his head, there was another reason Rodney and Wayne were able to recognize Petey rather easily, even though so many years had been added to his age. It was his smile. Petey Ragsdale smiled wide. Sometimes his smile would stretch all the way across his face.

“Hi Rodney. Hi Wayne. So I guess this is what we’ll look like when we’re old.”

“I guess so,” said Rodney. “Welcome home.”

“How did you get home?” asked Wayne.

“No idea. One minute I’m trying to get some sleep in that crazy cloud place. It was really hard since there was never anything to sleep on. You just float. Then the next minute — kazam! Here I am on the floor of my room and there’s a pain in my side and my neck aches.”

Rodney and Wayne remembered that their friend liked to sleep on the floor of his bedroom like an Indian. While this was an easy thing for an eleven-year-old to do, it would not be recommended for a man in his sixties.

“Still, it’s great that I’m home. Look at Mom. She’s a lot older now. She doesn’t look it, though, does she?”

Mrs. Ragsdale blushed. “That is what I’ve missed about my Petey Weety! He always says the sweetest things!” Mrs. Ragsdale reached over as if to tousle her son’s hair. But since he didn’t have any, she pulled her hand back and looked a little embarrassed.

“Come in, boys. We are celebrating Petey’s return. We will do that for a while and then we’ll spend some time being appalled at what had to happen to bring him home. But for right now, let’s all be festive!”

Mrs. Ragsdale led her two guests into the living room. Sitting on the sofa were two old men and a woman who appeared to be in her sixties. Rodney knew immediately who was who. “Hello, Mr. Ragsdale,” he said. “Hello, Mr. Craft. Hi Becky.”

“Hi,” said Becky. She had a strange look on her face, which made it hard to tell how she was feeling about what had just happened to her. Her hair was gray and she had pronounced crow’s feet about her eyes. She also had some folds in her neck that were similar to those starting to show on her mother’s neck before she disappeared, although Becky’s were deeper.

“Becky is very happy, aren’t you, Becky, that all the little children are back?” Mr. Craft patted his now sixty-something-year-old daughter on her knee. He did this slowly and stiffly as old people will sometimes do things, as if moving too quickly or fluidly was either an impossibility or was to be avoided because of the chance of injury.

Becky nodded.

“But this last hour hasn’t been easy for her.”

Becky shot her father a disapproving look, which told him to be quiet.

“I’m sorry, pumpkin,” said the very old Mr. Craft, whose face was creased with too many wrinkles to count. “I wasn’t thinking. So boys, did you hear that Mr. Armstrong is out of his bathtub now? He came out the minute his little Darvin and his little Daisy showed up. Of course they aren’t so little now, but he was glad to have them, and they were all so glad to be reunited with each other that they all climbed right back into that big empty bathtub as a family and just hugged and hugged on each other.”

“That’s so nice!” said Mrs. Ragsdale as she poured the coffee. “Would you like some coffee, Becky?”

“No, I don’t drink coffee,” said Becky curtly. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m still thirteen years old. Thirteen-year-olds don’t usually drink coffee. Thirteen-year-olds are hardly even teenagers. Oh, I just hate this! I absolutely hate it!”

Becky ran out of the room. The room was quiet for a moment except for the sound of Mrs. Ragsdale pouring coffee. Then Becky returned, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m better. This is very hard. If the Professor isn’t able to fix this, then we will lose a huge chunk out of our lives. I won’t get to be a pediatrician who makes children laugh with her hand-puppets.”

“You wanted to be a pediatrician! With hand-puppets! Oh how nice!” said Mrs. Ragsdale.

“You can still be a puppet-performing pediatrician, pumpkin,” said Mr. Craft to his daughter.